The question, “What are you giving up for Lent?” is a common enough prompt to a conversation among Catholic people, one which, as often as not, rambles drearily through preferred diets, bad habits and delicacies that may well be done without for a bit.

But does that add up to using the time constructively? Maybe there is something that could be taken on during Lent that may not just result in a smaller stomach or finer sense of well-being, but a minor conversion in our faith lives.

WARSAW (CNS): On a damp street in Warsaw, Poland, not far from St. Florian’s Cathedral, a tiny mattress lies on display behind a safety-glass window, installed at waist height on a dull gray wall. 

To the left, a door sign reads Sisters of Our Lady of Loretto. Across the teeming thoroughfare a multi-storey hospital gazes down over rutted sidewalks. 

WASHINGTON (SE): Billed as a saint to transcend partisan politics, the champion of the Catholic Labour Movement in the United States of America (US) from the time of the Great Depression of 1929 to 1932 through to her death on 29 November 1980, Dorothy Day was put forward by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as a candidate for sainthood in December 2012.

New Delhi’s young gang rape victim has paid the ultimate price for being a woman in India.

A few days after her funeral, people will return to their daily routine and the horror of violence against women will recede from memory. But it will not be long before we hear of another rape.

In one of the more traumatic weeks in India, the media exposed their bigotry and their blood thirst in ample measure over the tragic death in Ireland of an Indian dentist, Savita Halappanavar, from Karnataka state, of septicemia following a miscarriage, and the execution by hanging of Ajmal Kasab, a 25-year-old Pakistani citizen, who had been part of a terrorist commando group that killed over 160 persons during a hotel hijack in Mumbai four years ago.

The launch of the Apple iPhone 5 prompted a crazy rush on outlets by people vying to be among the first to get one. But that is not likely to be the end of it, as the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and the iPad Mini have both joined it on the market.

People flock to get hold of these knickknacks, which boast faster streaming speeds than their predecessors and added functions.

During this 50th year since the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the bishops of Asia will gather for their deferred meeting in Vietnam during December for the first Plenary Assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences since they met in Manila in 2009.

The anniversary of Vatican II is significant, as the council was a momentous event, not least of all for the Church in Asia.

MACAU (SE): “What difference does it make if our universe loses a few million years from its projected billions-of-millennia lifespan?” Father Louis Gendron asked at a seminar held in the Macau Institute of Tourism on November 7 and 8 on the theme, Humankind and Nature: An endangered system of interdependence in today’s globalised world.

HONG KONG (SE): “Seeing is believing.” A slice of popular wisdom, but when it comes to faith, or believing in God, Australian theologian, Adam Cooper, is adamant that it is the ears that give us the entrée to faith, not the eyes.

“Sight only backs up hearing,” he said. “Sight can be deceived,” as there are such things as optical illusions, “but the word of God does not deceive.”