Based on Pope Benedict XVI's weekly teaching on the relationship between Christ and the Church, Jesus, The Apostles, and the Early Church tells the drama of Jesus' first disciples - his Apostles and their associates - and how they spread Jesus' message throughout the ancient world.
Ukrainian bishops of the Latin and Byzantine rites should make special efforts to collaborate, Pope Benedict XVI said at a meeting with the members of the Ukrainian bishops' conference.
His response to the question, "What's your issue with church authority?", once again remind me of why I became and remain a Catholic.
Everyone seems to like Chancellor Merkel. But how much power does she really have? Recent infighting among cabinet members shows that it may be quite limited.
Chancellor Merkel used a speech before the UN General Assembly to bring up concerns about Iran and to push forward Germany's bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Angela Merkel moved swiftly to mend ties with Washington when she took power 2 years ago, forging a close bond with President Bush over barbecues in eastern Germany and cosy White House dinners. But as Merkel flies to the US this week to speak to the UN, small cracks are emerging in a relationship both sides have worked hard to nurture following the strains of the Iraq war.
Chancellor Merkel's meeting with the Dalai Lama has sparked a serious diplomatic crisis between Germany and China. The Chinese are especially angry since they had protested the meeting earlier this month by summoning Germany's ambassador to China in Beijing.
How can Europeans be brought to realise that their cultural heritage both unites and differentiates them and that this heritage is a vehicle for mutual discovery and understanding?
A deepening crisis in French public finances has exposed a growing rift between President Sarkozy and his Prime Minister.
Poland's requests for changes to a EU treaty on institutional reforms are causing concern in EU capitals which fear that a forthcoming summit intended to complete the treaty with a flourish, may turn instead into a flop. "It will be a political nightmare if we don't get this right in Lisbon."
Serb leaders are looking for a showdown on Friday at face-to-face talks in New York with Kosovo Albanians demanding independence for the breakaway province. Backed by a resurgent Russia, Serbia plans to mount a vigorous diplomatic challenge to this strategy over the next 2 months.
The chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, met with Condoleeza Rice last week - and told her that Prime Minister Olmert agrees, finally, to turn eastern Jerusalem into the capital of a future state of Palestine.
The Ethiopian government says it has formally notified Eritrea that it considers it to be in material breach of the Algiers Agreement. The treaty ended a two-year war between the two countries in 2000.
The violence spawned in Darfur has spread deeper into Chad and the Central African Republic. That's why the UN Security Council in New York is expected to vote Tuesday to send a new UN-European force of up to 4,000 peacekeepers here for one year.
The Iranian president's meeting with an anti-Israel Jewish group in New York and a television series in Iran about the Holocaust reflect the country's complex relationship with its Jewish population and reveal a sympathy from their Muslim compatriots that is hidden by Tehran's bombastic rhetoric toward Israel. What is crucial to the Iranian government's thinking is the somewhat fuzzy but bold line they draw between the Jewish religion and the state of Israel.
Many Iranians reacted angrily Tuesday to the combative introduction of President Ahmadinejad by the president of Columbia University, calling it "shameful" and saying the harsh words only added to their image of the US as a bully.
Yes and no...
President Ahmadinejad used the stage of the UN to launch a broad assault on the US yesterday, accusing Washington of violating human rights. He predicted that the era of Western predominance in the world was drawing to a close and would be replaced by a "bright future" ushered in by the return of the 12th imam, a messianic figure in Shia Islam.
Just when you thought the War Party was down, and nearly out, President Ahmadinejad did them the favor of paying a visit to New York. This gave the usual suspects an opportunity to rehearse, so to speak, for the coming war with Iran.
The war that Dick Cheney has been planning against Iran, has moved from the back burner to the front, and those who say they do not see this are either blind or complicit. Military deployments are in place, while the statements of intent to wage war, issued by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, have been hyped in British and American news outlets.
Congress signaled its disapproval of Iranian President Ahmadinejad with a vote Tuesday to tighten sanctions against his government and a call to designate his army a terrorist group. The swift rebuke was a rare display of bipartisan cooperation in a Congress bitterly divided on the Iraq war. It reflected lawmakers' long-standing nervousness about Tehran's intentions in the region, particularly toward Israel—a sentiment fueled by the pro-Israeli lobby whose influence reaches across party lines in Congress.
While hoping that the "uniqueness" of the nuclear issue will make it possible to gain Russia's support, the Westerners are wondering about the degree to which the close interests that link Moscow and Teheran will carry weight in the negotiation opening on new sanctions to impose on Iran.
Allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons could destabilize the world and lead to war, President Sarkozy told the UN on Tuesday. "There will be no peace in the world if the international community falters in the face of nuclear arms proliferation. If we allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, we would incur an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world. Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace. They lead to war."
To a certain extent, all of us are what we think. And what we read determines our thoughts. Ergo, we are the product of what we read. No wonder I am confused most of the time. What I have been reading lately is terribly confusing and contradictory. Please don't disturb me until Armageddon.
Bush's appearance before the UN General Assembly was an entirely predictable exercise in imperialist arrogance, rank hypocrisy and double-talk in service of American big business. Behind the virtual silence on Iraq and Iran, new and more terrible crimes are being prepared.
Leave it to a couple of neoconservatives to ruin a perfectly good Bible story. I'm referring, of course, to the piece on the opinion page of Friday's War Street Journal entitled "Jonah's Dilemma" in which the authors compared President Bush to the Prophet Jonah.
It's twilight at the White House. First it was voters and now it's the president's friends who are abandoning him. Thank God, says conservative luminary Newt Gingrich. According to Gingrich, Republicans can only hope to hold onto power by breaking their ties with Bush.
President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president. In an interview for the new book "The Evangelical President," White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has "been urging candidates: 'Don't get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.'"
Vice President Dick Cheney will speak to a super-secret, conservative policy group in Utah on Friday. He will address the fall meeting of the Council for National Policy, a group whose self-described mission is to promote "a free-enterprise system, a strong national defense and support for traditional Western values." The organization - made up of few hundred powerful conservative activists - holds confidential meetings and members are advised not to use the name of the group in communications
You can learn most of what you need to know about the future of the Democratic Party by paying attention to two different groups.
To truly appreciate what the sleek spinmeisters at the top of the right-wing echo chamber are saying, you've got to dig into the crazies that dwell at the bottom.
Oil rose back above $80 today, with investors expecting weekly US data to show crude stocks declining further in the world's top consumer.
The dollar has fallen to yet another all-time low against the euro, after further weak US economic data. Figures showed that US consumer confidence has fallen to a near 2-year low, while house prices have seen the sharpest drop in 16 years. Taken together, analysts said the data boosted expectations that the Fed will cut interest rates again when it next meets in October.
The European currency hit another high against the dollar, but with fewer exporters reliant on US buyers, it's far from the worst problem.
Stocks markets struggled around the world Tuesday on fresh evidence that US consumer spending was slowing amid the worst housing slump in more than a decade. And a closely watched report in Germany showed consumer confidence was ebbing in Europe's largest economy.
The awkward truth is that most of us are two minds: As consumers and investors we want the great deals. As citizens we don't like many of the social consequences that flow from them.
Shares in many of the largest US home builders have plummeted by half this year. That has left pretty much all of them trading below the value of their assets.
The bankers know:
Why are such senior figures suddenly so concerned about their reputations? What do they see coming that causes them to go into a very public "not my fault" mode? These comments are de facto admissions that the global financial system is bankrupt, and that the efforts of the central bankers to contain the collapse have failed. Something catastrophic this way comes, and the bankers know it.
"Isn't it an opposition and resistance to your old way of thinking? We'll never grow if we don't push to the edge." "Your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your flesh and your flesh becomes your character."
That's the question proffered in the most recent Christianity Today poll. I selected the "more than 10" option, but, after thinking about it, perhaps should have chosen the "more than I can remember" option, if only to allow myself to think more highly of my Bible-ownership status than is warranted.
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