News Items

The Forum regularly posts news articles of interest here from a variety of sources and news outlets. You can check back here or view the most recent ones from the homepage. We also archive these articles here, for those doing research, with news going back to 2006. Use the menu on the right to explore the archived articles.

News

Catholicism as Antidote to Turbo-Capitalism

July 12, 2009
Carter Dougherty
New York Times

MUNICH — The collapse of Communism in the East two decades ago did not provide much of an opening for the Catholic Church to influence economic policy, but perhaps the near-collapse of Western capitalism will. Two German authors — one named Marx, the other his patron in Rome — are certainly hoping so.

New sins, new virtues

July 9, 2009
The Economist

As the world heats up and economic dislocation ravages the poor, religious leaders offer up their diagnoses and prescriptions

GLOBALISATION, technology and growth are in themselves neither positive or negative; they are whatever humanity makes of them. Summed up like that, the central message of a keenly awaited papal pronouncement on the social...

Pope proposes new financial order guided by ethics

July 7, 2009
By Nicole Winfield
Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI called Tuesday for a new world financial order guided by ethics and the search for the common good, denouncing the profit-at-all-cost mentality blamed for bringing about the global financial meltdown.

In the third encyclical of his pontificate, Benedict pressed for reform of the...

How Confucianism could curb global warming

June 26, 2009
The Christian Science Monitor
By James Miller

How Confucianism could curb global warming

Now here’s a curveball to secular Western policy experts: China’s intellectuals are openly debating the role of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism in promoting the Communist Party’s vision of a harmonious society and ecologically sustainable economic development.

Thomas Berry (November 9, 1914 - June 1, 2009)

For Tributes, Photos, and Obituaries of Thomas Berry, visit: http://www.thomasberry.org/tributes_and_photos/index.html

Brazilian faces retrial over murder of environmental activist nun in Amazon

April 8, 2009
David Batty
The Guardian

A Brazilian court has ordered the arrest and retrial of an Amazon rancher acquitted of orchestrating the murder of American nun and rainforest activist, Dorothy Stang.

Para state’s highest court threw out last year’s verdict, which found Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura not guilty of the 2005 shooting of Stang, 73, who campaigned for 30...

Love the Earth? Bless the Sun

April 2, 2009
Julie Wiener
The Wall Street Journal

The Carbon Tax: A Moral Issue

April 8, 2009
Father Paul Mayer
The Huffington Post

Yu Dan and China's return to Confucius

August 29, 2007
By Sheila Melvin
New York Times

BEIJING — China spent the greater part of the last century struggling to become a modern nation. This often-brutal, but ultimately successful, quest led it to pillory its own intellectual heritage and embrace such foreign philosophies as communism and capitalism.

But after so many years spent looking...

Religion and the environment in China

October 26, 2006
By Martin Palmer
China Dialogue

Religion can play an important role in protecting the earth’s natural heritage, says Martin Palmer, who reports on the Buddhists and Daoists committed to conserving China’s sacred mountains and wild animals.