News

As the Vatican reels from scandal, even some Catholic priests are now demanding the Pope's resignation (BostonHerald.com, "W. Mass. priest calls for pope to resign," April 12, 2010).  When scandal or political turmoil reaches a boiling point, what should a church … or a nation do?

Beyond the Roman Catholic sex-abuse scandal, the news is full of additional coups and political intrigue. State and religious governments around the world are in turmoil.

Zimbabwe. Iceland. Greece. Is America next? The growing weight of an overwhelming national debt combined with at least twenty lethal, economic "trigger mechanisms" has created a financial "nuclear time-bomb" for America. And, as the world just witnessed in Greece, debt can devastate a nation.

What plays out in our daily news today would have been very shocking only a few years ago. We hear and see things in the news that violate all civil rules for good taste and decorum. Social mores and acceptable behavior have changed dramatically in less than a generation.

The sun is the most powerful force in our solar system.  And, it is also potentially the most deadly.  Recently, there has been growing excitement that the next "solar maximum" could render power grids, the Internet and telecommunications networks inoperable, and could even destroy modern civilization as we know it.  What do science and Scripture reveal about our massive, nuclear neighbor?

It was just a faded snapshot, a long-forgotten picture of my grandfather and his three sons, leaning on their vintage car in front of the family's farmhouse in the Arkansas Delta. It must have been about 1933 or 1934.