Watching the World

Clergy View of Moral Code

◆ There are clergymen in the National Lutheran Church of Denmark who reject the fine moral code of the Bible for one that each person makes up for himself. Regarding this, Dean Harald Sandbæk of Copenhagen’s Harbor Church said: “Everyone must work out his own moral standards himself . . . If you look in the New Testament for moral laws, you look in vain.” Clergyman G. Hintze stated in the Lutheran parish magazine Vedbœk-Gl. Holte Kirkehilsen that “the standards and rules of conduct found in the Bible are not in essence Christianity, but such have to be made up new again and again, dependent on time and place and who is to use them.” Clergyman Carl Blem observed in the Copenhagen paper Rødovre Avis: “In this time of moral confusion the Church has only one thing to say: Your sins are forgiven. That is the Church’s opinion about youth and morals, sex life, contraceptives, and sexual relations before marriage. . . . there is no authority saying what is the right thing to do, one has to choose one’s own authority and follow its morals.” Professor of theology P. G. Lindhardt stated: “Seeing that the Christian morals consist of personal responsibility and nothing else, you will understand that you cannot argue against intercourse between unmarried persons on the basis of Scriptural teaching.” The moral standards of the Scriptures, however, are very clear, and are in sharp disagreement with the above views.

Youth Insane from LSD

◆ While at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a twenty-one-year-old youth took some LSD on two occasions on the gamble that it would not damage his brain. He lost. He had wild hallucinations. His disturbed thinking finally led to his sniping at people with a rifle from a church in Spokane, Washington. After killing a man and wounding four others he was slain by police bullets.

Smoke Poisoning

◆ Though perhaps unbeknown to smokers who fill a room with tobacco smoke, they are actually poisoning with cadmium everyone breathing the air in the room. According to Dr. Harold G. Petering at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, people who smoke tobacco are a significant source of cadmium pollution. If a person were to smoke during eight hours one pack of cigarettes in a room that is ten feet by twelve feet, there would be one hundred times more cadmium in the air than is normal. The cadmium level continues above normal even after the smoke in the room dissipates. This means that a nonsmoker in the room is being poisoned by cadmium along with the smokers. Is that showing neighbor love?

Mars Under Scrutiny

◆ Three spacecraft are now orbiting the planet Mars, one belonging to the United States and the other two to the Soviet Union. On December 7, the Soviet Union announced that its second craft had released a capsule that soft-landed on Mars, but signals from that capsule suddenly ceased. As the three spacecraft orbit the planet they are examining it with electronic gear. Visual examination by television cameras is hindered by what appears to be a raging dust storm that is enveloping the planet. A clear picture of Phobos, one of the two moons of Mars, was received from the U.S. spacecraft. The dimensions of Phobos are only 13 by 16 miles, and Deimos, the other moon, is half this size.

TV Condemned

◆ At Windsor, Ontario, Canada, magazine publisher Arnold Edinborough charged that television must bear the responsibility for much of the alienation and violence in North America. He said: “Television is by far the most pervasive influence on people.” It is his view that television leads to the rejection by children of many of the values stressed by TV, such as in its commercial advertising, which in turn leads to “the rejection by the young of other adult values as well.”

Priest Criticizes Catholic Fund

◆ The parish priest of St. Mary’s Church in Bunder Hill, Illinois, criticized the American Catholic bishops fund for using $8,500,000 for community self-help projects instead of for financially depressed parochial schools. He said: “Bishops have no right to go begging money from state legislatures for school aid when they didn’t use a penny (of the $8,500,000) for their own schools.” He cited the case of a predominantly black parochial school in Detroit that will have to close because of a shortage of $10,000. Yet a like sum was given by the bishops to the Detroit Metropolitan Welfare Rights Organization.

Sound Pollution

◆ Life in modern-day civilization requires endurance of a constant flood of noise, especially in the cities. According to Peter A. Breysse, an assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Washington, excessive noise can cause headaches, nausea, temporary or permanent hearing loss, muscle tension and even alterations in breathing pattern. One way the background noise level can be reduced is by planting hedges and trees around one’s house. It has been found that mass planting of trees, shrubs, vines and grass along highways can reduce the noise level by as much as 60 percent.

Increased Speed with Slime

◆ Water friction caused by turbulence slows down ships and requires a great expenditure of energy in order to move them rapidly through the water. Fast-moving fish have overcome the problem with slime. The Pacific barracuda, for example, can reduce water friction by as much as 65.9 percent because of the slime on its body. The slime dissolves in water only in the presence of turbulence caused by swift motion. As the top layer of slime dissolves, the property of the water is changed, causing the turbulence to subside. Thus the fish can move swiftly without a great expenditure of energy. When the slime collected from a barracuda was dissolved in water to a concentration of less than one percent, friction was reduced by 44 percent.

Archaeological Looters

◆ The looting of archaeological sites is becoming a problem in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, Thailand, India, the Middle East and Africa. The stolen archaeological items are then smuggled out of the country and sold to art dealers who can get big prices for them. One carved stone monument from a looted Mayan temple in Mexico may sell for as much as $80,000. Since these monuments may weigh tons, looters cut them up with power saws so they can be smuggled out of the country. Recently when a group of Indians in Mexico happened to come upon a Mayan temple that was being looted, the looters killed three of them and wounded the other two. One of the wounded men was able to reach a town where he summoned police help. Greedy men have no respect for life or archaeological treasures.

Dissatisfied Lutherans

◆ Seven Lutheran churches representing 8,000 members severed relations with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod recently and established the Federation for Authentic Lutheranism. It was estimated that twenty more churches will join them. Two other Lutheran groups with their own organizations claimed to be in sympathy with FAL beliefs. They are the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod with 326,000 members and the 2,500-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Irradiated Wood Chips

◆ A new process for combating the decay in wood chips that are stored outdoors while waiting to be converted to paper and other products may reduce the $200 million loss in raw wood chips experienced every year world wide. The decay is caused by fungus and other microorganisms. The new process involves bombarding the chips with high-velocity electrons. A side benefit claimed by its developers is an improvement in pulp yield by as much as 6 to 10 percent. Paper and pulp mills have expressed both interest and skepticism.

Swimming Babies

◆ Can six-month-old babies swim? A Quebec swimming instructor has proved that they can. He first teaches them how to float on their backs. When a baby has learned this, it can be put in the water face down, and it will turn itself over and float. He considers this a good age to begin swimming lessons, as the child has not yet become afraid of water. Swimming lessons began for his own son at the age of four weeks. Now the four-year-old child knows all the main swimming strokes. He can swim the length of a pool several times.

Warm Moon

◆ From a five-foot hole drilled in the moon by Apollo 15 astronauts, surprising news has been coming to earth. Information from instruments placed in the hole has been transmitted to earth by radio and shows that the moon has an unexpectedly high flow of heat from beneath its surface. Scientists say that this means that theories on the moon’s formation will have to be changed.

A Dangerous Cleanser

◆ A chemical known as hexachlorophene has been used for bathing babies in hospitals, but now warnings against the use of hexachlorophene have been issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Experiments with animals have revealed that this substance is absorbed through the skin, and in high concentrations it can cause severe brain damage. It appears in lesser concentrations in about 4,000 different products, some of which are feminine hygiene sprays, numerous bath soaps, shampoos and deodorants.

Expensive Health Foods

◆ People who are disturbed over chemical additives to food have been willing to pay more for foods without them. In some instances the difference is substantial and, many persons feel, unjustified. At hearings on health-food abuses held by the U.S. Department of Consumer Affairs, witnesses testified that health foods were often excessively high priced and not necessarily organic. One witness compared two loaves of bread, the first being sold at health-food stores for 98 cents and the other, with ingredients not significantly different, selling for 45 cents in ordinary markets. Another witness said that there are at least thirteen popular items sold in health-food stores that can be purchased much cheaper in supermarkets.

Celibacy Reaffirmed

◆ In a pronouncement by Pope Paul VI the prohibition against allowing married priests in the Roman Catholic Church was reaffirmed. This was in harmony with the recommendation made by the Bishops’ Synod held in the Vatican from September 30 to November 5, 1971. A majority of 107 adopted the recommendation, whereas 87 voted for a more liberal one. Forbidding people to marry is out of harmony with the Holy Scriptures. See 1 Timothy 4:1-3, Catholic Douay Version.

Teaching, a High-Risk Job

◆ In the United States teaching school has become twice as dangerous as working in a steel mill. Every year 75,000 teachers are injured seriously enough to require medical attention. Crime in schools has been growing so rapidly that some schools have closed-circuit television cameras in every room, tape recorders for teachers to record personal threats and policemen posing as students. Since 1965 the security guards in the schools of one city were increased from 15 to 102. In another city they went up from 170 to 382.