CHURCHES IN BRIEF
Poland /1: parish funds for schoolbooks For the new school year, the president of the Polish Bishops’ Conference and Archbishop of Przemysl Msgr. Jozef Michalik, called for the establishment of a parish fund to support families in need – especially large families – in the purchase of schoolbooks. Accordingly, also diocesan bishops will contribute to the dedicated fund with a part of their salary. “I consider it a duty, stemming from our priestly mission”, Michalik said. “The schoolbooks needed for the new school cycle represent a considerable expense for the families”, he added. The prelate pointed out that the new texts should be “kept in such a way so as to ensure their use also in the future”, he added. Michalik pointed out that working mothers don’t always have the opportunity of dedicating themselves fully to the upbringing of their children and therefore “often teachers and the catechist have to make up for the children’s lack of specific education within the family environment”. In Poland, where compulsory school age ends at 12, in the years 2013-2014 4.5 million pupils started school. In the Country there are 520 Catholic schools, with increasing numbers of students.Poland/2: GOSC’s 90th birthday The first issue of the Catholic Weekly “Gosc Niedzielny” (The Sunday visitor) dates back to September 1923. Over the past years the Catholic weekly that is celebrating its 90th anniversary, with over 134 thousand copies sold past July, has become the most read weekly publication in Poland. Today’s “Gosc” is a 100-page magazine with a TV supplement and 19 diocesan supplements. It employs 130 journalists and news desk collaborators across the country. In the special issue released for the anniversary, Piotr Legutko underlined that it has always been funded with its readers contributions and not through advertising. “Gosc bears evidence to the fact that readers are treated with respect, this approach will be rewarding”, Legutko said. He added: “the crisis in the press in not an effect of the technological revolution, nor of the fact that people are no longer reading. In fact, it is a mere consequence of low-quality products offered to the readership”. Fr Marek Gancarczyk, editor-in-chief of the magazine, said: “It was expected that weeklies would cease existing long ago, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, in the difficult period of the Communist regime, and then later on owing to the competition of media powers”, but facts are proving the Catholic newspaper right. Germany: the creation of the “Dialogue Encyclopaedia” A few days ago the first lexicon of Islamic and Christian terms, titled “Dialogue Encyclopaedia”, was presented in Munich. For the first time Christian and Muslim scholars jointly authored a common book of reference for their reciprocal faiths. The “Dialogue Encyclopaedia”, presented after seven years of work, is available in German and Turkish. Most of the scholars that authored the volume are from Ankara University and from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. The lexicon contains over 600 key words, such as “Last supper”, “Imam”, “teaching”, “Sura” or “wrath of God”. As regards particularly significant terms for both religions, such as “doomsday”, there exist both a Muslim and a Christian explanation. There are also in-depth annotations on themes that are detrimental to mutual relations such as the Crusades and the Jihad. The purpose of the 850 pages is to overcome language barriers and other barriers to the understanding between Christians and Muslims. The project has been funded by the European Union and by the German Interiors ministry. The English version is presently being drafted. Portugal: communicating in a digital environment The director of the national Secretariat for Social Communications of the Portuguese Church presented the Communication Days, scheduled to take place in Fatima next October 3-4, inviting all professionals in this sector, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, to “reflect on the opportunities offered by digital media”. “Communication media shouldn’t be merely understood as tools that help the Church’s evangelization, but as models. They constitute a real and true communicative environment: they have created and determined a new way of being men and women”, said canonical João Aguiar Campos. The program proposed by the Days (http://www.ecclesia.pt/jornadas2013/) calls upon everyone to analyse, characterise and discover the problems brought about by this new environment at professional and pastoral level.
