Eric J. Lyman 11-12-2013

The Vatican said it would display for the first time bones believed to be the mortal remains of St. Peter, the leader of Jesus’ 12 apostles, to mark the end of the Year of Faith on Nov. 24.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, wrote in Monday’s editions of L’Osservatore Romano, that the Catholic faithful making a pilgrimage to St. Peter’s tomb to mark the end of the Year of Faith will enjoy “the exposition … of the relics traditionally recognized as those of the apostle who gave his life for the Lord on this spot.”

Fisichella was referring to the long-held belief that Peter was crucified upside down and died in either A.D. 64 or 67 on the spot now marked by the Clementine Chapel inside the basilica that bears his name.

Anna Hall 11-12-2013
Photo: Bykofoto/Shutterstock

Among the largest phenomena that have arisen from foreign debt crises and loan repayment structures are predatory hedge funds, known as vulture funds. Simply said, vulture funds intentionally target the debt of financially distressed nations. They monitor the likelihood of a country’s ability to gain international debt relief. Right before the country receives aid, vulture funds buy up the nation’s debt. Then, they call in their debt bonds, suing the country once it receives resources that help debt cancellation. The result is that vulture funds, after buying distressed debt for pennies on the dollar, turn around and sue to recover up to ten times the purchase price.

Because vulture funds locate themselves in such offshore tax havens as the Cayman Islands, the companies or individuals remain a secret. Many times, there is no source of reliable information on who actually owns them, making accountability impossible. 

As the U.S. Catholic bishops began their annual fall meeting on Monday, they were directly challenged by Pope Francis’ personal representative to be pastors and not ideologues — the first step of what could be a laborious process of reshaping the hierarchy to meet the pope’s dramatic shift in priorities.

“The Holy Father wants bishops in tune with their people,” Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican ambassador to the U.S., told the more than 250 American churchmen as he recounted a personal meeting in June with Francis.

The pontiff, he added, “made a special point of saying that he wants ‘pastoral’ bishops, not bishops who profess or follow a particular ideology,” Vigano said. That message was seen as an implicit rebuke to the conservative-tinged activism of the bishops’ conference in recent years.

Almost since his election in March, Francis has signaled that he wants the church to strike a “new balance” by focusing on the poor and on social justice concerns and not overemphasizing opposition to hot-button topics like abortion and contraception and gay marriage — the signature issues of the U.S. bishops lately.

Benedict Varnum 11-12-2013

Thinking back, I haven’t always been great about getting my car “winterized.” I grew up in fairly temperate Kansas, and mostly parked in a garage at home. There didn’t seem to be too great a chance of the car’s malfunctioning on me, and I was often more interested in where the car was getting me than whether it was in prime shape. I knew the car would never be perfect, but by and large, it seemed functional.

Then I moved to Chicago, where the winters were colder, the streets harder, and a garage a rare luxury. Suddenly winterizing seemed a bit more critical.

Today I am (by virtue of my baptism and in a way specifically called for by my ordination vows) partly in the business of serving as a prophet. Oh, I don’t rate myself as too great of one, but I do think that God has made me a part of that work. I may not be all of Christ’s Body, but I’m a piece of it. So prophecy and transformation are some of my duties too. And the season of Advent has me thinking a bit about whether I do enough to “winterize” my prophecy.
 

Dave McNeely 11-12-2013

I cannot start a fire. Often, this is the case even with a dry match in my hand.

As a person of relative privilege from the West living in an age of microwaves and igniter switches, this would not generally be a problem, aside from the embarrassment such ineptitude might cause. It would, however, be a problem if I were, say, stranded in the East Tennessee countryside and left to fend for myself against an alliance of desperate, vengeful college students.

Such is the conundrum I face this approaching weekend with my participation in Carson-Newman University’s third annual Hunger Games

the Web Editors 11-12-2013
[God] divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap. In the daytime [God] led them with a cloud, and all night long with a fiery light. [God] split rocks open in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. [God] made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers. - Psalm 78:13-16 + Sign up to receive our social justice verse of the day via e-mail
the Web Editors 11-12-2013
O Lord, let my soul rise up to meet you as the day rises to meet the sun. Thank you God, that each morning you provide a new opportunity for us to follow you. We offer you the best of what we have, what already belongs to you. Let your tender mercies come to us that we might live. Amen. - From Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
the Web Editors 11-12-2013
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. - Audre Lorde Audre Lorde + Sign up to receive our quote of the day via e-mail
Liz Schmitt 11-11-2013
Joey Longley/Sojourners

Editor’s Note: This post contains two of many testimonies given at an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) listening session at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. The EPA held sessions in 11 regional offices across the country to allow the public to comment on the agency’s plans to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions — one of the heat-trapping pollutants that contributes to climate change — from existing coal and natural gas-fired power plants. The public was invited to share up to three minutes of spoken testimony to an EPA panel for the agency’s consideration. We also have multiple other testimonies in parts two and three.

At an emotional worship service, considered one of the largest gatherings of Christians and Jews, some 1,600 British men and women filed into Westminster Abbey Sunday to mark the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Also known as the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht was a series of coordinated attacks carried out by Nazi paramilitaries and civilians against Jews throughout Hitler’s Germany and parts of Austria between Nov. 9 and 10, 1938.

More than 90 German Jews were killed and 30,000 more sent to concentration camps.

During the hourlong service, a candelabra from the Belsize Square Synagogue in central London was processed through the abbey where England’s kings and queens are buried.