Quotes:

MORTENSON: I learned both from my father and a wise old village chief … let the people make the decisions. And that’s the basis of all our efforts. We provide skilled labor, materials, teacher training, but the community has to provide free land, free resources, free sweat equity, meaning 2 to 5,000 days of free manual labor. But they also make the decisions.

MORTENSON: We basically don’t have any sales pitch. I’ve gone to marketing schools, and they say how can you go out without asking for money. We do write about what we do. But I think the key, at least for us, is — although it might sound fairly insignificant — is children. We have a program called Pennies for Peace, and that’s a program where children learn about philanthropy. They’re also encouraged to do things on their own. And last year we raised $1.4 million just from Pennies.

Pope Benedict has warned that a form of colonialism continues to blight Africa.

Opening a three-week synod of African bishops, he said political colonialism was over. But he said the developed world continued to export materialism – which he called “toxic spiritual rubbish” – to the continent. Almost 200 bishops from 53 African states have gathered to discuss how the Catholic Church can help resolve the continent’s social injustices and wars. The Pope says he will attend as many of the working sessions of the synod as possible, his other duties permitting.

African treasures

Unaccustomed rhythms of Africa filled the huge St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, as Pope Benedict formally opened the special synod, reports the BBC’s David Willey in Rome. 
A choir from the Democratic Republic of Congo sang hymns in the Kikongo and Lingala languages, and prayers were also said in Swahili, Portuguese, Amharic, Hausa and Arabic.

More and more Africans are becoming Catholics

Pope Benedict praised Africa’s rich cultural and spiritual treasures, calling them a “spiritual lung” for the world. But he said the continent was afflicted by an export of the “so-called ‘first world’… [the] toxic spiritual rubbish” of materialism. “In this context, the political colonialism is never finished,” the Pope said.

He said Africa also suffered increasing religious fundamentalism, in the form of religious groups which “act on behalf of God” but “teach intolerance and violence”.

The Pope said evangelisation was “urgent” in Africa – though the Catholic Church is already growing faster there than in any other part of the world, nearly trebling in size to 150 million followers over 30 years.

This will be the second synod of bishops organised at the Vatican to be devoted specifically to the problems of Africa. The first took place in 1994 at the very moment when the Rwandan genocide was beginning, but turned out to be little more than a talking shop, our correspondent says.

Among the experts invited by the Pope to address the synod – which has only advisory powers – will be the former head of the joint UN/African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur.

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I heard from a student who asked if there was something to read as more background for understanding the Encyclical letter we are reading.  Catholic Social Teaching is a huge topic, big enough that even Masters degree programs don’t cover it all.  In this class, we’re looking at the tip of the iceberg – its most recent statement.  Here are some other places you can get some more information (and I will bring some examples to class).

Seven Key Themes of Catholic Social Teaching – U.S. Bishops website. Notice the sidebar with links to particular issues, particular areas of the world, and more. They have Educational Resources on each of these themes, pages for International and Domestic (US) issues.  There is a tremendous amount of information linked through this page.

The Office for Social Justice of the St.Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese has another great website, including links to various programs that are carried out to put the Catholic social teachings into practice.  Their Catholic Social Teachings page includes some pages of quotations and a menu of links to the major documents, with some commentary on each.

Finally, we have a reference book in our library (see the photo) that deals with particular topics in Encyclopedia fashion.  I will try to get it to bring to class so you can see it.

The following is a post from the blog Sociological Images, where it appeared as The Social Construction of Social Problems.  The image was prepared by a graphic design artist for the purpose of conveying the gap between social problems as we construct them (i.e., our concern and actions) and the realistic personal risk of each problem.  The graphic isn’t perfect – we don’t know the source of the data, and there might be more accurate ways to make the point – but, as the authors of the original post state, the image generates awareness that the perceived, constructed problem may, or may not, mesh with the realistic risks. (Sister Edith)

From “Sociological Images” blog

One way to study social problems is to take a social constructionist approach.  This approach suggests that the degree to which a social problem is perceived as problematic, as well as the kind of problem it is understood to be, is a function of social interaction.  For example, many Americans consider drunk driving to be a very bad thing and a serious threat.  Drunk driving is not only embarrassing, it is punishable by law, and a conviction could result in social opprobrium.  It wasn’t always that way, and it still isn’t all that stigmatized in some parts of the U.S. and, of course, elsewhere.

So, social problems aren’t immediately obvious, but need to be interpreted and presented to us.  And, of course, some people have more power to deliver a message to the public than others.

Artist Susannah Hertrich developed this graphic (via) designed to bring to consciousness the difference between the likelihood of harm from certain threats and public outrage:

Social Problems

I am unsure as to how she measured both “public outrage” and “actual hazard” but, giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that this information is based on some reasonable systematic measurement, the image nicely draws our attention to how some social problems can receive a disproportionate amount of outrage, contributing to their social construction as significant or insignificant social problems (or, alternatively, their social construction as public problems for which outrage is appropriate and useful, versus private problems that have no public policy dimensions).

So, for example, heat is seen as relatively harmless even though, as Eric Klinenberg shows in his book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, it kills many, many people every year and is severely exacerbated by social policies both directly and indirectly related to weather. But the people who die from heat, and those who love them, tend to be relatively powerless members of our society: usually the elderly poor.

Conversely, the threat of terrorism attracts a great deal of public outrage, but is not a significant threat to our individual well-being. Still, certain members of our society with an ease of access to the media and authoritative roles in our society (mostly politicians and pundits) can raise our fears of terrorism to disproportionate levels.

Similarly, bird flu makes for a fun story (as all gruesome health scandals can) and gun crime feeds “mainstream” fears of the “underclasses” (often perceived as black and brown men). Both make for good media stories. Less so, perhaps, pedestrian accidents.

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The more recent issue to receive attention is that of texting while driving.  It came to people’s attention as a result of several public accidents – a subway conducter who sent a text message milliseconds before crashing into the back of a stopped train, for example.  The issue of texting while driving has now been taken up by several claims makers.

It has been covered repeatedly on Minnesota Public Radio, most recently here and earlier here.  It is not clear whether the claims that this is an issue are making any headway.

A British public service announcement has been receiving wide-spread attention.  It is lengthy, and only the first few moments show the texting. All the rest is the aftermath of the serious accident that results.
Warning: this ad is graphic and sad.  It is a good example of using emotion to make a claim – but I advise you to exercise caution and good judgment about choosing to watch it.