Watching the World
Dope at “Singles Party”
◆ At a “swinging singles” party in Los Angeles, California, twenty-seven persons who were eating potato chips and corn chips were sent on hallucinogenic trips. They were rushed to the hospital for treatment. The chips were individually laced with LSD, the sheriff’s office said on April 6. Laboratory tests showed that each of the chips had been impregnated with the liquid form of the drug. About a dozen others at the party who appeared to be ill refused treatment. None were aware that the chips had been seasoned with LSD. Authorities stated that a man with a history of heart trouble fell into a coma, but was reported later to be in satisfactory condition. Parties can be dangerous.
More Die on Everest
◆ Mountain climbing is at best a treacherous business. Climbing the highest of them all, Mount Everest, which reaches 29,028 feet into the sky, is a most difficult task. Twenty-one persons are known to have been killed in attempts to conquer it. Recently a Japanese team set out to scale the peak to perform a new feat, that is, to ski down one of the slopes. But at an altitude of 18,860 feet, six Sherpas guiding the Japanese expedition were killed by a huge block of ice that knocked them into a crevasse.
Personal Air Pollution
◆ Air pollution resulting from industrial and motor wastes is hazardous to health. But personal air pollution resulting from tobacco smoking is even more dangerous to health. The use of tobacco has been declared by the surgeon general of the Public Health Service the greatest public health hazard, responsible for 360,000 deaths in the United States in 1965. The surgeon general also stated that in 1965 there were 77,000,000 man-days lost from work because of time taken off to smoke, an additional 88,000,000 man-days lost from work because of sickness caused by tobacco, and an additional 310,000,000 man-days of partial disability because of tobacco. The financial loss of this alone, disregarding the 360,000 who died, is estimated to be over $19,000,000,000!
Feeling the Reader Pinch
◆ Declining interest in religion and religious institutions is acutely affecting the religious press in the United States. For example, the New World, official newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, lost more than 67,000 subscriptions last year. The Catholic Press Association and Our Sunday Visitor, Catholic publications, also show significant decreases. A recent survey of ten major denominational periodicals indicates that all but one of the magazines suffered circulation losses last year. Clergyman Alfred P. Klausler, executive director of the associated Church Press, stated: “There is a general revolt today against the establishment, including the institutional church.”
Significantly, the publications of Jehovah’s witnesses have greatly increased in circulation. Comparative ten-year figures show the following: The Watchtower May 1, 1960, 3,800,000 copies published in 56 languages; The Watchtower May 1, 1970, 6,200,000 copies published in 73 languages. Awake! April 22, 1960, 3,075,000 copies published in 21 languages. Awake! April 22, 1970, 6,150,000 copies published in 26 languages.
Safest in Sweden
◆ The World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, stated that Sweden is the safest place in the world to have a baby. The figures released by the agency showed that in 1966 the maternal death rate in Sweden dropped to 11.3 in 100,000 live births; in 1953 the rate was 69 in 100,000. The report reveals that the United States is tenth, with 29.1 deaths in 100,000 live births.
“Collapse of the Church”
◆ The Roman Catholic Church is confronted with a crisis unprecedented in centuries. Dropouts from the ministry are reaching a new high. Increased resignations and the decline in the number of seminarians in most countries show that the condition is worsening. Especially is this so in Latin America, where the shortage of clergy was already extremely acute. Bishop Peter Koop of Brazil recently sounded this warning: “We have to make a choice right away: either to multiply the number of priests, both celibate and married, or look forward to the collapse of the church in South America.”
Pope Warns Priests
◆ Priests and laymen who stray from the doctrinal paths of the Catholic Church were warned by Pope Paul of punishment. “Woe to that man by whom the offense cometh,” said the pope. The church’s law on celibacy should be obeyed, the pope told his listening audience. However, on the same day in Milan, Italy, priest Martino Grimoldi, 43, announced that he planned to marry local kindergarten nun Caterina Zone, 33, who played the organ in his church during mass. Two days later the pope called the declining number of men entering the priesthood a critical church problem.
Married Popes
◆ Historians estimate that, of the 262 popes designated by the Roman Catholic Church, approximately 40 were married. Even as late as the ninth century a married man, Adrian II (867-872), ascended the papal throne.
Alarmed over VD
◆ Hungarian physicians are alarmed over a jump in venereal disease (VD) among teen-agers. “Group sex” is cited as the main cause of the increase. A published report stated that group activities are spreading like an epidemic, that boys and girls aged 15 to 19 have been caught up by a wave of “irresponsible sex liberalism and formed sex clubs.” Venereologists say the number of teen-agers getting VD therapy in Budapest has doubled in the past 13 years. The actual increase in cases may be much higher, since many cases are not reported.
In America a national survey of private physicians has disclosed that, although they treat about 80 percent of the cases of venereal disease, they report only one in nine to public health officials. Syphilis is now on the increase in 29 states. Gonorrhea is reportedly out of control. In 1967 syphilis contributed to the death of 2,381 Americans, making it second only to tuberculosis among communicable diseases as a reported cause of death.
Smoking Starfish
◆ Drug abusers on the Gold Coast of Australia are smoking the Crown of Thorns starfish. Parts of the starfish are believed to produce hallucinations when dried and smoked.
A Priest’s View
◆ A 30-year-old Roman Catholic priest seeking dispensation from the obligation of lifelong bachelorhood said: “Like the typical candidate for the priesthood, I entered the seminary at the age of 14. For the next 12 years I was isolated from the world. I visited my home for a few weeks in the summer. But I was instructed to avoid the company of young women, never to be alone with one, never to have a date. . . . In what position was I to make a lifelong commitment, abdicating the use of my sexual endowment in any manner whatsoever? People speak about such young men as making a free, deliberate, solemn promise. But how could we be said to be free when we knew virtually nothing about love, marriage, the conjugal life or the joys of parenthood? Weren’t we rather the innocent victims of cradle robbing and brainwashing, which rendered it impossible for us to make a free, intelligent and truly human decision?”
Sizable Tax Income
◆ The church tax rate in West Germany is fixed by the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, and the tax is collected by the State. In 1968 the Protestant income from the tax was about $465,600,000 and that of the Catholic Church about $355,200,000. This is in addition to church collections, and does not include considerable direct grants from the State that are used to help finance the churches’ central administration. The total income of these churches in 1969 was about $1,000,000,000, and by 1975 it is expected to reach about $1,620,000,000.
Evaluating Church Tax
◆ Some people in West Germany believe that the whole system of the church tax is wrong. They regard it as odd that you can stay in the church if you do not believe in God and if you regard the resurrection as a fairy tale, but that you are kicked out if you do not pay your taxes. Perhaps that points to where the churches’ heart is.
Church in Politics
◆ Jesus Christ urged his disciples not to involve themselves in this world’s affairs. But today’s clergy are urging their parishioners to do the contrary. F. M. French, an Anglican priest, said the church “must share a great deal of the blame for the problems we now have.” If the organized church in Canada ever hopes to correct some of the social injustices it has fostered, he said, it must become politically active.
Schoolchildren Learn Sex
◆ Berliners were shocked to learn that their schoolchildren, ranging in age from 8 to 14, were encouraged by scientists of the city’s Free University to undress and enact scenes of sexual intercourse. The discovery, made early in April, startled parents because they had not been asked for consent and had, as a rule, not even known that their children attended such classes. The scientists declared that their purpose was “to emancipate working-class children from the repressive influence of their home education by exposing social exploitation and sexual compulsions.” Instead of freeing children from guilt complexes and feelings of isolation, they were destroying them through sexual corruption.
Wealth a Public Issue
◆ The Roman Catholic Church in America is pleading for public aid to operate its parochial schools. But the Catholic church refuses to disclose its assets and income. This church wants the support of American taxpayers but refuses to tell the taxpayers what money it already has. It is clear that this church has tremendous financial resources at its disposal, which belie its cry of poverty. In the book The Churches: Their Riches, Revenues and Immunities, Martin A. Larson and C. Stanley Lowell claim that the wealthiest Church by far is the Roman Catholic. Some of its assets and revenues are estimated as follows: Religiously used real estate, $54,000,000,000; passive income (stocks and bonds), $650,000,000; active business income, $1,200,000,000; grants from government, $4,500,000,000, for a total of about $60,000,000,000. Add to this the donations of the faithful, which run about $5,000,000,000 annually, and at least $1,500,000,000 more from gambling, wills and legacies, and community funds. Here are assets and revenues exceeding $66,850,000,000. Catholic priest Richard Ginder stated that the Catholic Church must be the biggest corporation in the United States; that their assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T. and U.S. Steel combined; and that their roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the rolls of the United States government. It is this organization that is pleading that the American taxpayer pay its bills.
Pollution and Religion
◆ Ted Noffs, pastor of the King’s Cross Wayside Chapel in Sydney, Australia, said the one thing saving organized religion from extinction in the United States at present was the pollution issue. The pollution issue, he said, its immediacy and urgency, was displacing the attention of youth from confrontation with the church institution. If the pollution problem were solved and the Vietnam War ended tomorrow, the church as it is known would disappear almost immediately, declared the cleric.