wfn.org | ALC Noticias Dec 19 2005 Puerto Rico Peru Uruguay Brazil Venezuela

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ALC NEWS SERVICE
E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org

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CONTENT

PUERTO RICO: Toys are a tool to reduce social violence, said Caribbean
Justice and Peace Project
PERU: Evangelicals address critical situation of the elderly in Peru
URUGUAY: Methodists reject crimes committed by the military dictatorship
and say "it is time to ask for forgiveness"
BRAZIL: Journalist says that The Simpsons has significant religious content
VENEZUELA: Presbyterian and Reformed Youth promote "ethical resistance"
campaign against consumerism

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PUERTO RICO
Toys are a tool to reduce social violence, said Caribbean Justice and Peace
Project

San Juan, Dec 16 (ALC).  Wanda Colón Cortés, director of the Caribbean
Justice and Peace Project called on authorities to reformulate educational
practices to include non violent conflict resolution and proposed
recovering the value of play and toys as a tool to reduce social violence.

The project recommends avoiding violent toys that represent war,
militarism, death and violence, themes that predominate in movies,
television and above all in video games where the objective is to kill and
destroy your opponent. This fun contributes to desensitizing children and
young people, she said.

This Christmas the Caribbean Justice and Peace project launched its Non
Violent Toys Campaign as it has for the past 19 years. "Our call is aimed
at adults so they realize they are the first educators of their children,"
said Colón Cortés.

She emphasized that parents must be aware of the importance of play in the
formation of values and behavior of children and young people. "We call on
them to select non-war and non violent toys and to dedicate time to playing
with their children," she said.

The pacifist organization recognized the efforts of diverse entities in
Puerto Rico that work in favor of promoting values of life together and
social solidarity to reduce violence in the schools and in society in general.

As examples she cited the EcoPeace project, directed by Carlos Muñiz
Osorio; the Peaceful School Life Together of the Puerto Rican Workers
Union, led by Roberto Pagán and work in favor of early education on the
part of Dr. Maria de Lourdes López Cintrón of the Pedagogy Department of
the University of Puerto Rico, Bayamon.

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PERU
Evangelicals address critical situation of the elderly in Peru

Lima,  Dic. 16 (ALC).  Of Peruvian adults over the age of 60, 1.2 million
do not have any pension or economic support. By 2025 the number of elderly
is expected to double in a situation marked by difficult access to social
security.

In order to address this alarming reality, close to 100 leaders from
different Evangelical Churches and institutions from civil society and the
government attended the National Seminal "Toward a Ministry for the
Elderly" organized by the Urban and Rural Mission - Peru (MUR - Peru) and
the National Evangelical Council of Peru (CONEP).

A report by the Working Group of NGOs sponsored by the Inter-American
Development Bank established that 7.6 percent of the population is over the
age of 60 and only 40 percent (800,000) have a pension.

The figures "express the high degree of vulnerability facing this
population," said Oscar Bravo, MUR- Lima coordinator who participated in
the study. According to projections from the Pan-American Health
Organization and the World Health Organization, by 2025 the number of
people over the age of 60 will represent more than 12 percent of the
population.

If the situation facing the elderly is already difficult, it is even more
uncertain for those who will reach this stage within 20 years, given
difficulties in accessing social security because of growing labor
informality and the extensive application of labor flexibilization
mechanisms since 1990.

The event, held in Congress, was sponsored by Urban and Rural Mission -
Latin America (MUR-LA), the Citizen Participation Board of Congress and the
Working Group of NGOs on the Elderly.

The event began with a prayer by Victor Arroyo, executive director of
CONEP. Eva Flores, moderator of MUR-LA then spoke about the "exercise of
citizenship as a practice of faith," about exercising citizenship linked to
the spiritual commitment to serve, in particular the elderly.

The president of CONEP, Pastor Rafael Goto, questioned the exclusion, the
abuse and the abandonment facing the elderly as a consequence of the
current excessive cult to youth and "productivity."

The experience of the elderly makes them natural contributors to transmit
culture and values, said Goto, after calling on the Church to overcome the
existing stereotype about the elderly and to recognize it as one more stage
in life that contains a series of possibilities and opportunities.

Blanca Ramirez, of the Associations of the Elderly of Callao, the port city
adjacent to Lima, said that the elderly want respect for their right to
decide and called for concrete actions to benefit the elderly, in
particular the poorest.

For her part, Lucila Yujra, of MUR- Juliaca said that people in areas
outside the cities also have rights. "I go from door to door and visit our
sisters and explain and talk to them. We have rights, I say. The
municipality, the State, should provide attention, services."

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URUGUAY
Methodists reject crimes committed by the military dictatorship and say "it
is time to ask for forgiveness"

Montevideo, Dec 15 (ALC). No ideology is enough to justify the repression,
torture, murder, burial and silencing of another human being," said the
Methodist Church of Uruguay (IMU) in the wake of the discovery of two
graves with the remains of the disappeared in Pando, 30 kilometers from
Montevideo and in the Infantry Battalion 13, based in this city.

"The news and photos of the first remains of the detained, disappeared
bring back the horror and dehumanization of those dark years in Uruguay (.)
in these images the past comes back with all its force," said the IMU in a
statement.

The IMU added that what happened is "aberrant, disqualifies those who did
it and shames us as a Nation." It added that it is necessary to know who
did it and why. Those "responsible must confront their family, their
neighborhood, their country."

The statement entitled "It is time to ask for forgiveness," signed by
Pastors Oscar Bolioli and Luis Mochetti, president and vice president
respectively of the National IMU Board, said it is time to give the country
an explanation about the deaths, disappearances, tortures and human rights
violations.

Between 1973 and 1984 Uruguay lived through a civil-military dictatorship
that left an undetermined number of victims and disappeared. According to
the denouncements, at least 50 people were murdered, many of them in
prison, while the number of disappeared is estimated in 210, 170 in Argentina.

This week, after three months of excavations in Montevideo and the
department of Canelones, anthropologists found two skeletons and the
remains of clothing belonging to victims of the de facto regime. According
to some media reports, the remains of at least 35 detained disappeared
people were discovered.

The Methodists said that those responsible are those who "were silent,
those who looked the other way, those who justified what happened, those
who allowed it even when they had the influence to stop these things from
happening but did not want to avoid them."

The Methodist Church also made a mea culpa when it admitted that "even when
we thought we did too much, opening doors, given refuge, raising awareness,
we discovered that it was not enough to save these lives."

It warned that the past can return "when there are still signs of
intolerance and when we feel that in other lands reasons to use horror as a
means to avoid terror are once again wielded."

In March socialist Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez ordered a search for
clandestine graves in military terrains and obligated the military to
report about these supposed burial grounds.

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BRAZIL
Journalist says that The Simpsons has significant religious content

SAO PAULO, Dec 14 (ALC). The Simpsons, which was harshly criticized by
Evangelicals and conservative politicians when it was first aired 15 years
ago, has significant religious, faith and value content, said US journalist
and writer Mark Pinsky, author of the book "The Gospel According to the
Simpsons - the spiritual life of the Worlds Most Animated Family."

"I like to think that we find God in the most fun places and where we least
expect it," said Pinsky, in an interview published by the Evangelical
magazine "Eclesia."

The US Journalist, who declares himself to be a committed Jew, said that
the TV series mocks all modern institutions and religion but never
questions the existence of God.

"The Simpsons pray before each meal, they go to Church every Sunday, they
read and refer to the Bible and pray out loud in difficult moments," said
Pinsky.

It reflects the "religious life of the majority of Americans more precisely
than any other American TV program," he said.

The sin that the Matt Groening series most criticized is hypocrisy, he
said. "The principal sin that has gradually weakened Christianity in
America in the past 400 years is not sex or money, but	hypocrisy," he said.

Despite the fact that the Simpsons are notoriously Protestant - between
Presbyterians and Lutherans - they demonstrate that salvation comes through
works and not divine grace. "In this sense, they theology is more Jewish
than Christian," he said.

He said he began to watch it with his children. He then began to write
about the series, admiring the messages it sought to transmit.

"The series is a picture of the worst and best of American society," he
said. The Simpsons live in Springfield. They are Protestant, they attend
the local Church and they are involved in common daily temptations.

Pinsky is also the author of the "Gospel according to Disney" which he also
decided to write when he watched cartoons with his children.

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VENEZUELA
Presbyterian and Reformed Youth promote "ethical resistance" campaign
against consumerism

MARACAIBO, Dec 14 (ALC). A group of Caribbean and Latin American youth from
the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches of Puerto Rico, the Dominican
Republic, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil agreed to take on an "ethical
resistance" against consumerism and the current social system of exclusion
and death which is "disguised as development and well being."

"We are called to live an "abundant life" they affirmed, after proposing a
campaign using the slogan "We do not give up our dreams, we turn our backs
on consumerism."

At the end of November, the young people participated in an event convened
by the Youth Department of the Alliance of Presbyterian and Reformed
Churches of Latin America (AIPRAL) to analyze the effects of the market on
the peoples of the region and approved a statement.

In a statement the young people sustained that in the face of the dominion
of the powerful that characterizes current society, it is important to
promote a "critical and reflective thinking about the type of society that
the God of love wants for us."

In today's society the most important value is economic wealth, while the
injustice of powerful nations over the poor, imposes a model of economic
and social inequality that punishes those who do not enter the game of the
capitalist system, they said.

At the same time they rejected "accommodating" Biblical texts to sustain
the capitalist system, based on a misinterpretation of the Word,
"converting religion into merchandise."

They expressed concern about the conformity of young people in a present
without dreams or utopias "converting us into children o fan easy life,
doing only that which gives us pleasure. We are children of the search for
immediate satisfaction and not convictions," they noted.
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