Germany: more funds for kindergartensMore funds for kindergartens: that’s the request of the Committee of Catholics in Bavaria, formulated in a communiqué issued in Munich on 25 March. According to the Committee, the costs incurred by the Federation, Länder and local communities for kindergartens must be “increased substantially” over the amounts previously planned. “Other European countries spend more than twice as much as Germany” on kindergartens, says the communiqué. The educational and formative role of families also needs to be improved, according to the Committee, through a “substantial increase of expenditures on measures for the formation of parents. Parents, continues the communiqué, must be “supported by compensation for family expenses”, which should be considered “in the first place a compensation for family services”. From this point of view, the Committee has expressed a negative view on the state funds allocated to parents and extra-familial educational institutions, since they respond “neither to the needs of genuine freedom of choice for education in the family or in care structures, nor to the standards required for qualitatively optimal care outside the family”. In increasing the provision of care, the primary aim must be to “improve quality in the educational and formative sector”, and avoid discrepancies between kindergartens. Therefore, the Committee has appealed to Bavarian politicians to do everything in their power to “achieve and guarantee” the best possible service. The Committee also claims equal educational opportunities also for immigrant and disabled children, as well as those who come from disadvantaged families. Portugal: Porto, diocesan mission in 2010 The Bishop of Porto, the Most Rev. Manuel Clemente has appealed for “commitment to active and creative responsibility that may look to the year 2010 as a propitious occasion for a diocesan mission that can be postponed no longer”. The bishop made his appeal during the celebration of a Mass of Confirmation, in the course of which he also announced the diocesan mission planned for 2010. It has the title: “A liberating programme: co-responsibility for the new evangelization”. “This will be an occasion – explained the bishop of Porto – in which all the Christian communities of the diocese – parishes, congregations, associations and movements – must show themselves able to dedicate themselves, with that same ardour, those new methods and expressions, indicated to us a quarter of a century ago by John Paul II”. With a population that exceeds two million inhabitants and with a participation in Sunday mass of the order of 20%, the diocese is also characterized by its elderly clergy, whom Bishop Clemente hailed as “heroic for the dedication they have shown on numerous occasions, in spite of their advanced age and precarious conditions of health”. To tackle the future in a proper way, he added, “it’s essential also to better exploit the contribution of the laity: that means developing their specifically presbyteral function, in terms of preaching, assisting in the Eucharist, spiritual accompaniment and sacramental reconciliation”. In the same perspective, the bishop referred to the permanent diaconate: “I’m happy about the general support given by the clergy of our diocese to the revival of formation for these valuable assistants of the diocesan clergy, and I’m sure that in the next few years the role they play will spread and become more general in our parishes with advantages for preaching, the sacraments, and socio-pastoral activities”.England: children growing up in too much of a hurry”English children are growing up in too much of a hurry”, says Jim Richards, head of the “Catholic Children’s Society” of the archdiocese of Westminster in London. Richards was reporting the results of a survey conducted by the publisher Random House, according to which over half of parents in the UK think that childhood now finishes at the age of eleven. 53% of adolescents aged sixteen or even less are now permitted by their parents to stay out after eleven at night, while 45% of parents permit their sixteen-year-old kids to spend the night in the home of their girlfriend/boyfriend and 71% of parents admit that their children have little respect for their authority. “The same thing is happening in the age group from eight to ten. A chain of shops has been selling a T-shirt for girls of this age group bearing the slogan: ‘so many boys, so little time’. It’s not right that a girl of this age should wear a T-shirt of this type”, comments Richards. All this is against a background in which a video game on the internet called “Miss Bimbo” is proving a big hit among young girls: it consists in creating and dressing an avatar, a virtual person, and participating in a beauty contest, to win which girls are encouraged to use virtual slimming pills or plastic surgery, which can be purchased in ‘bimbo-dollars’. If a player exceeds the virtual budget, to continue the game she must send a text message transferring one and a half pounds. And that’s real money!
