Insight on the News
Pope’s African Dilemma
● During his recent trip to Africa one problem Pope John Paul II had to deal with was how far his Church had gone toward adapting to local marriage customs. “In many parts of the bush,” reports the New York “Times,” “priests and bishops are polygamists. A Belgian theologian in the capital asserted the other day that it was not polygamy in the strictest sense but, in the church’s word, ‘concubinage.’ When it involved a clergyman, he said, multiple marriages were never formalized.” The theologian also said: “Everyone recognizes it is irregular for a priest to have wives, so there is no ceremony.”
On the other hand, the pope has taken a strong position advocating celibacy. Ironically, the positions of Church leaders from both Africa and the Vatican are contrary to the teachings of Christ and the Bible. Polygamists and those who live together without the benefit of marriage commit fornication and/or adultery. They were to be put out of the congregation—certainly not hold the office of priest or bishop. And, says the Catholic “Douay” Bible: “It behoveth therefore a bishop to be blameless, the husband of one wife”—not necessarily a celibate.—1 Tim. 3:2, 12; 4:3; Matt. 19:9; 1 Cor. 5:9-13.
Does Money Bring Happiness?
● The failure of social programs to help native populations in countries taken over by “civilization” is often blamed on lack of money. But the case of Alaskan Eskimos raises serious questions about this conclusion. In fact, says Canada’s “Alberta Report,” the Eskimos themselves commissioned research which “concluded that an oil-based annual income of a hundred million dollars is well on the way to totally destroying the natives as individuals and as a culture.” The article notes that “just 15 years ago these people, the Inupiat, . . . largely maintained the spirit that caused many early explorers to describe the original Eskimos as the happiest people in the world.” What happened?
“In the late 60’s, the massive Prudhoe Bay oil and gas reserves were discovered along Alaska’s North Slope,” explains the article. “The whites flooded in. Worse, white dollars came along.” Individual Eskimos now receive an income from oil of some $20,000 a year, yet their situation is described as “appalling.” Adult alcoholism in the community reportedly is 70 percent, and the most common cause of death is said to be violence. Hence the effect of all this money “has been ruin,” observes “Alberta Report.”
This tragic result to a formerly happy people illustrates in an extreme way the fallacy of thinking that mere material assets can solve man’s ills. In fact, they often cause just the opposite, as the Bible notes, causing the unwary to “fall into a temptation and a snare and many senseless and hurtful desires, which plunge men into destruction and ruin.”—1 Tim. 6:9.
True Revival or Hollow Illusion?
● Many are under the impression that there is a religious revival in the United States today. A recent Gallup Poll sponsored by the evangelical magazine “Christianity Today” indicates how deep this “revival” runs. On the one hand, the poll found that about two thirds of the general public believe that the Bible is the Word of God. On the other hand, observed the magazine, “It is apparently one thing to BELIEVE that the Bible is God’s Word and quite another to read it.” Among church members, the poll found that only 18 percent of Protestants and 4 percent of Roman Catholics read the Bible daily; 41 percent of Protestants and 67 percent of Catholics read it less than once a month or never.
One authority quoted in “Christianity Today” said: “We are having a revival of feeling but not of knowledge of God. The church’s most serious problem is that people both outside and inside the church do not really know who God is and what he requires of us.” This is precisely the religious situation that the Bible itself says would prevail in “the last days” of this world’s system: “They will keep up the outward appearance of religion but will have rejected the inner power of it.”—2 Tim. 3:1, 5, “Jerusalem Bible.”