THOUGHTS ON WORLD NEWS

Reading today’s NY Times, I was treated to a medley of horrors that can only have been perpetrated and then documented by members of the human race … a neighbor who throws sulfuric acid into the face of a small child who lives next-door, scarring and blinding him; the discovery of at least 42,500 previously unknown Nazi slave labor camps, Jewish ghettos, concentration camps, POW camps, sex-slave brothels, ‘killing centers’; a web community of men fixated on writing about mutilating and literally devouring women; and Maureen Dowd’s column about writer’s Colm Toibin’s new work exploring Mary (mother of Jesus), and the idea ‘that we were somehow saved and redeemed by a crucifixion.’ Toibin observes that ‘The idea of human sacrifice is something we really have to think about, even people who are practicing Catholics, the idea of taking a single individual for the sake of any cause’ – an idea that I too have been pondering lately, along with the ritualistic consuming of bread and wine which Catholicism considers to be, not merely symbolically, but literally converted into Christ’s body and blood during the celebration of the Eucharist. While I found much of my day’s reading abhorrent, there is usually some palatable ‘redemption’ to be found somewhere, such as in this heartwarming article ('Found Our Son in the Subway'):

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/townies/