By Aruna Bhowmick

As we celebrate our Republic Day, it is time for some soul searching. How much progress have we made in the past six decades and how vibrant is our democracy?

Once every 12 years, we welcome the most honoured of the animals of the Chinese horoscope…the dragon! 

The Chinese New Year of 4710 is our 2012 and the dragon celebrated is the Water Dragon. There are other dragons such as the Wood Dragon, the Fire Dragon, the Earth Dragon and the Metal Dragon. 

By Father Desmond de Sousa

Not all social change is acceptable to the person of faith. But social transformation in the direction of the values of the kingdom of God is a faith commitment.

The Christmas season is over and the Chinese New Year is just around the corner. For people living in a society like Hong Kong, which places a big emphasis on consumerism, these festivals can almost become like being invited into a time of retail therapy to help us forget about our everyday worries.

Advertising propaganda encourages us to spend as much as we can on gifts and personal effects, all in the festive spirit. 

Many Catholics make Christmas a time to introduce the faith to their neighbours. The festivities on snowy, wintry days always attract the young and the curious to the churches to experience the Christmas atmosphere.

In a village church in a mountainous area of Lanzhou diocese in Gansu province, Brother Peter prepares liturgies and cultural performances for Christmas Eve. 

DURBAN (SE): Over 10,000 people are expected to attend the United Nations (UN) Framework Conference of Climate Change, (COP) which was opened on November 28 in Durban by the president of the Republic of South Africa, Jacob Zuma.

Observers say that the location of the conference in South Africa is a significant choice, as it is a reminder to delegates that solving climate change cannot be divorced from the challenge to eradicate poverty.

A T-shirt produced in the United States of America (US) carries the words, “A woman’s place is in the house” emblazoned across it. It was illustrated against a picture of the residence of the US president in Washington DC, the White House.

No woman has ever had the opportunity to live there except as the spouse of a president or a member of staff, but it is probably only a matter of time before the world sees a female president of the US.

In the last two centuries, the Church experienced a growing concern about the role and vocation of the laity prompted, to a large extent, by damage done to its intellectual and operational structures by anti-Church government policies in most nations that were once thought of as being Catholic.