Our Takes Daily

U.S. Catholics head Down Under

Catholic News Agency

In what American organizers claim is the largest international delegation to World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, the United States will send 15,000 young people to Australia for the July 15-20 event.  The pilgrims, most of whom are in their late teens and young adult years, are traveling in 1,140 groups of various sizes, with the largest being 520 people. They will be joined by 50 U.S. bishops, including Cardinal Francis George, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Organizers estimate about 100,000 young people from Australia and 125,000 people from abroad will attend the week-long event later this month. More info here>>

China’s testosterone problem

The New Republic

Three decades after the institution of China's one-child policy, there are 37 million more men in the country than women, thanks to sex-selective abortion. One of the results of that extreme imbalance, the New Republic reports, is a disturbing trend throughout the world’s most populous country — macho violence. Young men are taking part in war games and getting involved in crime at an increasing rate. More info here>>

A Catholic patriot

BustedHalo

As we prepare to celebrate the nation’s independence on Friday, Busted Halo remembers Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers, who believed the American experience and Catholicism were not mutually exclusive. “The discerning mind will not fail to see,” he wrote in his book “The Church and the Age,” “that the American republic and the Catholic Church are working together under the same divine guidance, forming the various races of men and nationalities into a homogenous people, and by their united action giving a bright promise of a broader and higher development of man than has been heretofore accomplished." More info here>>