Watching the World
QUALIFIED CLERGY SHORTAGE
“Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders alike are haunted by the challenge of maintaining the number and quality of their clergies,” reports The New York Times. “Complicating the situation is the possible divergence that many religious leaders see between the needs of the church and the background and goals of many of those aspiring to the clergy.” Seminarians today are said to be “distinctly different” from those of just 25 years ago. In Protestant seminaries, a much larger percentage of those now seeking ordination are women. And since there are fewer applicants, the seminaries have been under pressure to lower intellectual standards and admit more marginal students. Catholic officials have been concerned about the seminarians’ sexual attitudes and about the priesthood’s “attracting an unusually high number of gay candidates.” The report adds: “One difference between today’s seminarians and their predecessors appears to be true regardless of faith or denomination, gender or age: They are less thoroughly grounded in their own religious tradition.”
WITNESSES’ GROWTH WORRIES ITALY’S CATHOLICS
“Warnings about Jehovah’s Witnesses have become a frequent pulpit topic in some Rome parishes,” says The Catholic Standard and Times. “What concerns the Church is the Witnesses’ rate of growth and their energetic and apparently successful methods of recruiting new adherents.” Earlier in the year, seminary professor Monsignor Lorenzo Minuti told Pope John Paul II “that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are ‘moles’ undermining the Church and compared them to an ‘epidemic.’” He called on the church to take preventive measures, as if stopping a plague. According to Minuti, the number of Kingdom Halls in Rome increased from 10 in 1982 to 66 in 1989, whereas there are only 44 temples and churches for all other non-Catholics in the city. “The secret to the Witnesses’ success in the land of popes and churches is their evangelical zeal,” the paper said, calling for “a new Catholic evangelization of Italy.”
THE VANISHING GIANT
The blue whale is not out of trouble yet. There are far fewer of them left than scientists had hoped. All hunting of the blue whale was banned back in 1966, but it is not rebounding from the brink of extinction. Before the days of commercial whaling, there were as many as 225,000 of them. Scientists were hoping that there were from 11,000 to 14,000 left. But preliminary results from direct counting suggest that there may be fewer than 1,200 or 1,500. The giant whales, which grow up to 100 feet [30 m] long and weigh up to 150 tons—about as much as a herd of 30 elephants—may well be the largest creatures ever to inhabit the earth. They nurse their young for a year, take six years to mature, and give birth only once in two years. Thus, they recover slowly from depletion. But illegal poaching may also be a factor in their small numbers.
DEMAND FOR BIBLES
The demand for Bibles in the Soviet Union has been increasing, and despite shipments of two million copies during an 18-month span, the demand continues unabated. As reported in the Church Times of London, “more bibles were imported into the Soviet Union during 1988 than in the whole period since the 1917 Revolution.” In contrast with earlier years, entry permits have already been approved for additional shipments from the United Bible Societies.
EASIER CHILDBIRTH
Women will have easier deliveries in childbirth if they assume a squatting position, obstetricians in England say. A study of some 400 deliveries has shown that most women giving birth function better in an upright position than in an inclined position. The study found that a supported squatting position allows for stronger and more effective pushing, thus significantly reducing the length of the second stage of delivery and the need for use of forceps. Two supports are now in use, birth chairs and birth cushions. Dr. Jason Gardosi of the Milton Keynes General Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England, who headed the study, recommends the use of the cushion, as it can be placed directly on the bed and makes for an easier delivery by allowing a wider opening of the pelvic bones. Of the women using the device, 95 percent said they would use the squatting position again for their next birth. Interestingly, this is the position referred to in the Bible at Exodus 1:16.
NEW PHONE SERVICES
Phones with memory, automatic dialing, hands-free operation, and digital display, among other things, have become commonplace. But they still ring only when a call comes through. That is now changing. As phone companies in the United States install new signaling equipment, they are offering a host of new services that a phone will perform if you just press a couple of buttons. Included are: call trace—this logs the caller’s number with the phone company even if the call was very short and the caller has hung up; call block—numbers programmed into the phone hear a message that you are not taking calls right now; repeat call—tries a busy number for up to 30 minutes while still allowing you to make or receive other calls; return call—if the phone stops ringing just as you get to it, this function calls the number of the last person who was trying to reach you; priority call—gives a distinctive ring when a call is received from certain numbers; caller ID—shows on a screen-equipped device the number of the person calling.
REBEL HAIR
New York and Los Angeles have spawned yet another fad in hair styles: close-cropped haircuts with various patterns shaved in. Designs have included the New York City skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge, and prestigious-looking company logos. According to The Wall Street Journal, a movie helped popularize the style because a leading character had a pattern of thunderbolts cut in his hair. As to why the hairstyle was chosen, the Journal quotes the movie’s director as saying: “We were trying to find something to show a rebellious spirit.”
PHOTOGRAPHIC FEAT
When the spacecraft Voyager 2 sent back clear and detailed pictures of Neptune, currently the planet farthest from the sun, its creators were ecstatic. In its 12-year, 4.4-thousand-million-mile voyage, the small one-ton spacecraft took advantage of a planetary alignment that occurs just once every 176 years. It first visited, in succession, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, sending back information from its 11 scientific instruments, including two television cameras. At nearly 2.8 thousand million miles from earth, sending high quality pictures of Neptune and its moons was not an easy feat. Sunlight there is a bare one-thousandth of the brightness that falls on earth, necessitating long time-exposures and panning of the cameras to prevent blurring. By the time the signal from Voyager’s 20-watt transmitter reached the tracking stations on earth, it had diminished to a fraction of a thousand-millionth of a watt and was mixed with the electromagnetic noise of space.