The Vatican has the Highest Rate of Crime in the World?

Misdemeanor crimes per-capita that is, with most of the perpetrators apparently fleeing to Italy:

Rome – The Vatican saw 1,300 misdemeanor crimes committed last year, propelling that state to the top of the global per-capita statistics.

527 persons live in the Vatican, but some 18 million people visited the territory located in Rome last year.

The papal state’s news agency VIA reports that the Vatican prosecutor decided to pursue 171 cases.

Almost 90 percent of the listed incidents fall under the category of petty theft, mostly pickpocketing, but a majority of perpetrators remain unpunished as they “flee to Italy“.

It has also been announced that Vatican’s measures aimed against money laundering were more strict than those in Italy, and that the pope last year set up a “financial information service” aimed at cooperating with other states and tracking movement of money.

The service is expected to start work in April of this year.

Statistics can be misleading at times…

HT:   New Advent

Coptic Style Icons

By Dr Stephan Rene. And fine Icon writing he does indeed:

Further to a recent posting about a Coptic style Stella Maris icon, here are two more icons by Dr Stephane Rene in his ‘neo-Coptic’ style. St Joseph of the House of David and Mary Mother of the City are in St Joseph’s Catholic church, in Bunhill Row in the City of London. I remember this Church because it is just around the corner from the offices of the Catholic Herald, where I once worked. They come courtesy of a NLM reader who brought them to my notice. So if you’re reading thank you Martin Pendergast and Sr Jean for supplying the images.

The name, St Joseph of the House of David, is a reference to the fact that St Joseph, although poor, was of the Royal House of David. There are four narrative scenes from the gospel in each corner. The one of the Holy Family in a boat is depicting them on the Nile – representing the period of exile. Notice also the beautiful patterned border the Dr Rene has designed.

In this huge icon (3 metres x 2 metres). Mary is shown coming from an enclosed garden (a reference to the sybolism in the Song of Songs). The peacock is a traditional symbol of eternal life. The stream flowing from a cave represents the womb from which Christ emerged to live among us and give us the living water.

Above and below are in situ photographs (kindly taken especially for this by Mr Pendergast) to give a feel for the scale of the icons.

Fantastic!

The Stella Maris icon can be seen here.

Coptic tradition icons are always special.

Addiction or Sinful Habit?

Is gambling an addiction or a sinful habit? What about pornography? Overeating? Drinking? Shopping? Checking email? Texting? Watching television? Playing video games? Working? They’ve all been called addictions. Is that really what they are?

You’re challenged to give the above a read here.

On the Separation of Church and Faith

Joseph Black, who blogs at Onesimus Online - it’s a good blog (and even better now that he has converted to Orthodoxy) - has an interesting post on the  separation of Church and faith.

This excerpt is the conclusion:

… Now before you think I’m about to launch into some ‘Protestants are bad and Orthodox are great’ routine, we Orthodox are far from perfect.  I think theologically the Orthodox have managed to maintain the balance between faith and church (here’s where being allergic to change helps!), but the local parish reality often falls short.  But I am very new and hardly know what I am talking about.  However, I was a Protestant for many years, both a pastor and a theological educator, and my experience was that the trajectory within Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, Presbyterianism and on the mission field was/is not a good one with respect to the relationship between church and faith.  The ‘churches’ that we are producing are fundamentally flawed and weak.  The Christianity that we produce may be vigorous, but our gatherings and communities are too often hardly the sort of demonstration of transformed lives and agape love that the NT seems to indicate is normative.  It is beyond time for us Christians to think again about the purpose of our salvation with respect to the local church and to regain a Biblical vision and passion for what God is up to with both gospel and church.  Failure to bring the two back together will eventually result in the irrelevancy of both, in my opinion at  least.

 

But do read the whole post here.