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'"Contamination" ... is an evocative term. When people speak for an ideal of cultural purity, sustaining the authentic culture of the Asante or the American family farm, I find myself drawn to contamination as the name for a counterideal. [The Roman playwright] Terence [whose plays acquired that label to describe his conflation of Greek plays into a single Roman comedy] had a notably firm grasp on the range of human variety: "So many men, so many opinions" was a line of his. And it's in his comedy "The Self-Tormentor" that you'll find what may be the golden rule of cosmopolitanism - Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto; "I am human: nothing human is alien to me." The context is illuminating. A busybody farmer named Chremes is told by his neighbor to mind his own affairs; the homo sum credo is Chremes's breezy rejoinder. It isn't meant to be an ordinance from on high; it's just the case for gossip. Then again, gossip - the fascination people have for the small doings of other people - has been a powerful force for conversation among cultures. 'The ideal of contamination has few exponents more eloquent than Salman Rushdie, who has insisted that the novel that occasioned his fatwa "celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotch-potch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world." No doubt there can be an easy and spurious utopianism of "mixture," as there is of "purity" or "authenticity." And yet the larger human truth is on the side of contamination - that endless process of imitation and revision. 'A tenable global ethics has to temper a respect for difference with a respect for the freedom of actual human beings to make their own choices. That's why cosmopolitans don't insist that everyone become cosmopolitan. They know they don't hav

While religious and secular perspectives on forgiveness are not necessarily consistent with each other, however, they agree in their attempt to address the painful fact of the pervasiveness of moral wrong in human life. They also agree on this: few of us are altogether innocent of the need for forgiveness. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fish: "The words both 'True Grit' films, & Portis's novel, share are these: 'You must pay for everything in this world. There is nothing free with the exception of God's grace.' But free can mean (1) distributed freely, given to anyone and everyone; OR (2) given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious. The novel says, 'You cannot earn that grace or deserve it." FS: Jesus' story of "The Prodigal/Lost Son" suggests a 3rd notion: grace is freely given to all humans, who may not recognize its presence. Human values differ from God's in judging which person or outcome is ultimately "good" or "bad." Grace is an unearned gift. But to believe it is dispensed capriciously is more a characteristic of Greco-Roman cosmology.

Development of increasing appreciation of Mary's role among Church Fathers

Luther's veneration of 'Mother of God'

New Protestant interest in Mary's role in the Christian story

"Moral distress - knowing what is ethically appropriate but being unable to act on it because of obstacles inherent in a situation - was first described in 1984 in a book on nursing ethics. Subsequent researchers focused primarily on the experiences of nurses and found that those who suffered from moral distress often became reluctant to interact with patients and other providers. In one recent study, 15 percent of nurses left their jobs because of moral distress."

"Those who work in geriatric care are among the worst paid in the health care system. Is the time I spend as a surgeon excising a patient's cancer worth 10 times more than the time the primary care doctor spent finding the cancer in the first place?" Dr. Gawande, who examined the problems of medical care for the aged last year in The New Yorker, pointed out that as we grow older, "we don't get one problem at a time." "People with multiple problems need time, and that is not cheap and is currently not paid for by medical insurance," he said. "It's not possible to address five different problems in a 20-minute visit." Dr. Gawande, who examined the problems of medical care for the aged last year in The New Yorker, pointed out that as we grow older, "we don't get one problem at a time.... People with multiple problems need time, and that is not cheap and is currently not paid for by medical insurance," he said. "It's not possible to address five different problems in a 20-minute visit."

from "Experiencing Death" (Advent-&-Passion?) I had imagined being there beneath sunlight/ with the procession of martyrs/ using just the one thin bone/ to uphold a true conviction/ And yet, the heavenly void/ will not plate the sacrificed in gold/ A pack of wolves well-fed full of corpses/ celebrate in the warm noon air/ aflood with joy . . . .

"...As a transplanted Englishman one thing to which I've become rather sensitive is which prejudices New Yorkers are permitted to express in public.... It's really fine to say totally uninformed things about Mormonism in public, at dinner parties or wherever."

In a globalized economy, the countries that pay the most and offer the greatest chance for advancement tend to get the top talent. South America's best soccer players generally migrate to Europe, where the salaries are high and the tournaments are glitzier than those in Brazil or Argentina. Many top high-tech workers from India and China move to the United States to work for American companies. And the United States, with its high salaries and technological innovation, is also the world's most powerful magnet for doctors, attracting more every year than Britain, Canada and Australia - the next most popular destinations for migrating doctors - combined.

Interview by John C. Reed, MD, PhD - CEO, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, La Jolla, California.

'Capitalism must be corrected: The social doctrine of the Church stands above existing economic systems, since it confines itself to the level of principles. An economic system is good only to the extent that it applies the principles of justice taught by the Church. As Pope John Paul II wrote in 1987, in his encyclical letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: "The tension between East and West is an opposition... between two concepts of the development of individuals and peoples, both concepts being imperfect and in need of radical correction... This is one of the reasons why the Church's social doctrine adopts a critical attitude towards both liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism." '

"In a major encyclical addressing the economic questions raised by the upheaval in Eastern Europe in 1989, Pope John Paul II warned capitalist nations yesterday against letting the collapse of Communism blind them to the need to repair injustices in their own economic system. "The encyclical, "Centesimus Annus" ("The Hundredth Year"), includes the fullest, and in many ways the most positive, treatment of the market economy in any papal document. But praise is typically followed with qualifications and ringing reminders about economic failures in both developing and developed countries."

What did the makers of America believe about God and religion? The subject is stirring the very rancour they wanted to avoid. Dec 17th 2011 | Washington, DC

Focus only on Natural Law

>'With unrealistic expectations of our ability to prolong life, with death as an unfamiliar and unnatural event, and without a realistic, tactile sense of how much a worn-out elderly patient is suffering, it's easy for patients and families to keep insisting on more tests, more medications, more procedures. >Doing something often feels better than doing nothing. Inaction feeds the sense of guilt-ridden ineptness family members already feel as they ask themselves, "Why can't I do more for this person I love so much?" >...At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture. When a case such as this comes along, nurses, physicians and therapists sometimes feel conflicted and immoral. We've committed ourselves to relieving suffering, not causing it. A retired nurse once wrote to me: "I am so glad I don't have to hurt old people any more." '