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African cardinal criticizes Black Lives Matter movement for ‘dismantling’ civilization July 7, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – South African Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier strongly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement for its “dismantling” of civilizations and cultures.  Napier, himself a black man and archbishop of Durban on the South African coast, tweeted that a “ brief study of the founding statement of ‘Black Lives Matter’ indicates the movement is being hijacked by the interests & parties committed to dismantling the very values, structure & institutions which have over the centuries undergird the best civilisations & cultures!” After his original tweet on July...

On satiNapier opposed sati. This was the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. Sati was rare in Sindh during the time Napier stayed in this region. Napier judged that the immolation was motivated by profits for the priests, and when told of an actual Sati about to take place, he informed those involved that he would stop the sacrifice. The priests complained to him that this was a customary religious rite, and that customs of a nation should be respected. As recounted by his brother William, he replied: "Be it so. This burning...

Virtually every priest who has worked in Africa knows that this is a serious pastoral issue Every now and then someone says something interesting on Twitter. Just yesterday Cardinal Napier, the Archbishop of Durban, reminded us all of something we ought not to forget. (see post below) Cardinal Napier describes a real and pressing question: polygamy is widespread in Africa, and Catholics in the West cannot ignore this. Catholic teaching and practice must be such that they are able to be inculturated in a wide variety of settings. An initiative might go down well in Berlin or Vienna, but how...

A senior Catholic cleric took a swipe at the press during an exchange with a Twitter follower late Friday. Wilfried Cardinal Napier is the archbishop of Durban, South Africa. He also holds various offices in the Roman Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy, and is one of the African continent’s most prominent ecclesial figures. “Thank God I live in Africa, where we base our faith on the Scriptures & Church Teaching, & not every papal interview!” he tweeted. The cardinal was criticizing the largely secular global press that has tended to report the pontiff’s extemporaneous comments without sufficient theological context, often leaving...

Hour-long hailstorm may have caused 1,000-year freeze, say scientists An hour-long hailstorm from space may have changed the climate of the Earth in 11,000 BC, leading to a freeze lasting more than 1,000 years, scientists say. Published: 8:00AM BST 02 Apr 2010 An hour-long hailstorm from space may have changed the climate of the Earth in 11,000 BC, leading to a freeze lasting more than 1,000 years, scientists say. A comet may well have caused the earth to freeze for over 1,000 years Photo: GETTY The catastrophe, caused by a disintegrating comet, wiped out large numbers of animal species and...

A new report showing state government continues to tap into its capital project accounts to pay its operating bills sparked bipartisan fears Wednesday that Connecticut may need a loan later this year to keep its finances running smoothly. And though state Treasurer Denise L. Nappier also wrote that total available cash remains "adequate" right now, she added that pressures on the state's cash flow continue to mount. "The common cash pool balance has fallen substantially during the year," Nappier wrote June 1 in her monthly report to the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. "...The common cash pool is trending downward...

The actor, who was known for tough-guy roles, also appeared in "Philadelphia," "Silence of the Lambs" and "Rambo: First Blood II." Charles Napier, an actor who was known for his tough-guy roles in movies like Blues Brothers, died Wednesday afternoon at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital, according to reports. He was 75. The actor was reportedly found sometime Tuesday morning in his Bakersfield home after having collapsed and was taken to the hospital, where he was put on life support in the intensive care unit. Around 1 p.m. Wednesday, he was taken off life support. The cause of death is unclear, but...

The K-T Impact Extinctions: Dust Didn't Do It Scientists basically agree that an asteroid struck the Earth some 65 million years ago and its impact created the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, Mexico. More controversial is the link between this impact and a major mass extinction of species that happened at the geological (K-T) boundary marked by the impact. But what mechanism did the impact trigger to cause mass extinction? The conventional theory is that impact dust obscured the sun, shutting down photosynthesis and snuffing out life. Kevin Pope from Geo Eco Arc Research shows in the February issue of GEOLOGY ...

Chunks of a comet currently splitting into pieces in the night sky will not strike the Earth next month, nor will it spawn killer tsunamis and mass extinctions, NASA officials said Thursday. The announcement, NASA hopes, will squash rumors that a fragment of the crumbling Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (SW 3) will slam into Earth just before Memorial Day. "There are some Internet stories going around that there's going to be an impact on May 25," NASA spokesperson Grey Hautaluoma, told SPACE.com. "We just want to get the facts out." Astronomers have been observing 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, a comet that circles the...

Police currently have Interstate 40 near Fesslers Lane [in downtown Nashville] shut down in both directions. Police say officers are investigating a suspicious vehicle that they believe may have weapons and an explosive device inside. The ATF is also on the scene and police are requesting the bomb squad. Traffic is backed up in the area so drivers should avoid the area.

NPR.org, April 2, 2005 · "Tip O'Neill was correct," says Father Tom Reese, editor in chief of America, the Catholic weekly magazine. "All politics is local... even in the Catholic Church." Reese suggests that instead of focusing on the possible papal candidates as a bookie would look at horses in the starting gate, try to think about the election from the point of view of the electors, the cardinals who cast the votes. "Each cardinal is thinking, how will this candidate go over in my diocese?" Reese says. "If you're from the Third World, you're concerned with people who are...

Microscopic analysis, reported in the current issue of the journal Geology, revealed a 3-inch-thick layer of "shocked quartz" — a form of the mineral produced only under intense pressure like that of an impact — that dated to 35.5 million years ago, when a space rock slammed into the Earth about 120 miles southeast of present-day Washington.

In May 2001, engineer Paulina Zelitzky, President, ADC Corporation, Victoria, B. C., Canada and Havana, Cuba, announced the discovery of megalithic structures 2,200 feet down at the western tip of Cuba. November 19, 2001 Havana, Cuba - The story about a possible megalithic site half a mile down off the western tip of Cuba first broke this past May when a Reuters News Service reporter interviewed the deep ocean engineer who first reported unusual sidescan sonar of the discovery. Her name is Paulina Zelitsky. Ms. Zelitsky was born in Poland, studied engineering in the Soviet Union, was assigned to ...

Mesopotamian climate change Geoscientists are increasingly exploring an interesting trend: Climate change has been affecting human society for thousands of years. At the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in December, one archaeologist presented research that suggests that climate change affected the way cultures developed and collapsed in the cradle of civilization — ancient Mesopotamia — more than 8,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found evidence for a mass migration from the more temperate northern Mesopotamia to the arid southern region around 6400 B.C. For the previous 1,000 years, people had been cultivating the arable land in northern Mesopotamia, using natural rainwater...

Did Asteroids and Comets Turn the Tides of Civilization? By Mike Baillie The heart of humanity seems at times to have lost its cadence, the rhythmic beat of history collapsing into impotent chaos. Wars raged. Pestilence spread. Famine reigned. Death came early and hard. Dynasties died, and civilization flickered. Such a time came in the sixth century A.D. The Dark Ages settled heavily over Europe. Rome had been beaten back from its empire. Art and science stagnated. Even the sun turned its back. "We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigor of...

The Dark Ages : Were They Darker Than We Imagined? By Greg Bryant Published in the September 1999 issue of Universe As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, a review of ancient history is not what you would normally expect to read in the pages of Universe. Indeed, except for reflecting on the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet (when it should have been as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth - three times closer than Hyakutake in 1996), you may...

Public release date: 3-Feb-2004 Contact: Dr Derek Ward-Thompson derek.ward-thompson@astro.cf.ac.uk 029-2087-5314 Cardiff University Astronomers unravel a mystery of the Dark Ages Undergraduates' work blames comet for 6th-century "nuclear winter" Scientists at Cardiff University, UK, believe they have discovered the cause of crop failures and summer frosts some 1,500 years ago – a comet colliding with Earth. The team has been studying evidence from tree rings, which suggests that the Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter. The scientists in the School of Physics and Astronomy believe this was caused...

Reworked images reveal hot Venus By Dr David Whitehouse Mars it is not: Reprocessed Venus image As the world looks at Mars, an American scientist has produced the best images ever obtained from the surface of a rather different planet - Venus. The second planet from the Sun is blanketed with a thick layer of cloud. Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed and recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian surface which is hotter even than the inside of a household oven. Original digital...