Susan Burns has been posthumously awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Catholic Educational Exhibitors "for her many years of work in support of Catholic education." Burns was the Resource Publications, Inc., sales manager and wife of publisher Bill Burns. Mary Dalton, NCEE president, said, "All of us who remember Susan realize how richly she deserves this award." The award will be formally presented at the National Catholic Educational Association's annual conference in Philadelphia in April 1996.
-NW
"Technology has been used to improve the efficiency of adult learning but not transform it," says Angela Ann Zukowski, MHSH, in the February/March issue of Momentum. Zukowski, who is the executive director of the Center for Religious Communication at the University of Dayton, says transformation is a set of interlocking processes. It involves realigning adult religious education with the information age, redefining the roles in the newly realigned programs, and reengineering processes to achieve in-depth learning. Traditional methods, she says, are now obsolete.
Zukowski sees religious education moving into global information networks. She suggests four "realities" trigger this movement. First, virtual communities will expand to the point where they become the common setting for religious dialogue. Regional and national conferences will become a thing of the past.
Second, we will need to refocus on what it means to "be" Catholic. Learning will no longer take place in controlled environments but in the diverse world of the global community where there is a wide variety of religious thought.
Third, the need for small Christian communities will intensify as individuals begin to crave solitude and occasional refuge from the massiveness of the global community.
Finally, since cyberspace will also become the ordinary forum for political dialogue, Catholics will need the net-skills required for entering into the dialogue in order to have an influence on the secular agenda. -NW
"Many competent doctors maintain that a condom of reliable quality is today the only means of prevention [for AIDS]. As such, it is necessary."
This statement would not be newsworthy except that is comes from Bishop Albert Rouet of Poitiers, France. He is the chairperson ofthe French Roman Catholic Bishops' Social Committee. According to a recent report in the New York Times, the committee is suggesting that the use of condoms could be justified in some cases. This contradicts the Vatican's general condemnation of artificial birthcontrol.
Rouet's comments appeared in a committee report titled "AIDS:Society in Question."
-NW
(This article orginally appeared in MODERN LITURGY, 23:4. Copyright (c) 1996 Resource Publications, Inc. May not be reproduced without permission.)