"Consumerism is the drug of an unjust society" Discuss.

Humans

This week in the news we heard about a man who stayed with a dying fellow passenger in a tube tunnel, one of a number of heroic stories to emerge from the 7/7 bombings inquest. In the same week we also were told of another man who systematically tortured and eventually murdered a toddler who was distracting him from his X-Box. We humans are capable of so much, both good and evil. I was reminded of the lyrics of a Bruce Cockburn song.

From the lying mirror to the movement of stars
Everybody's looking for who they are
Those who know don't have the words to tell
And the ones with the words don't know too well

Could be the famine
Could be the feast
Could be the pusher
Could be the priest
Always ourselves we love the least
That's the burden of the angel/beast

Birds of paradise - birds of prey
Here tomorrow, gone today
Cross my forehead, cross my palm
Don't cross me or I'll do you harm

We go crying, we come laughing
Never understand the time we're passing
Kill for money, die for love
Whatever was God thinking of?

Mothers! Stop going to Church!

I came across a blog today that quotes some Swiss research* that apparently shows where both parents attend church regularly, 33% of their children will end up regular churchgoers. However, if only the father attends regularly and the mother not at all, then the number goes up to 44%. The blog makes an important point about the role of fathers in the spiritual welfare of their children, but it would seem that the child's chances of becoming a regular attender are BETTER if mum stays at home or goes shopping on Sunday mornings. Well, in Switzerland at any rate.

Isn't research wonderful?

*The demographic characteristics of the linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland, Werner Haug and Phillipe Warner of the Federal Statistical Office, Neuchatel. In The Demographic Characteristics of National Minorities in Certain European States, Volume 2 of Population Studies No. 31, edited by Werner Haug and others, published by the Council of Europe Directorate General III, Social Cohesion, Strasbourg, January 2000.