Could be over 30,000. Keep the prayers coming y'all ... this is simply awful!
Check out Asianet (link via Amy) for updates, and a Christian perspective. I'm sure Catholic Relief Services (and Caritas International) will be involved in the relief efforts as well.
2 comments:
Much as I generally admire and concur in your take on events -- and certainly agree with the appropriateness of prayers for the victims of this catastrophe as suggested in this entry -- may I enter a very mild caveat regarding another posting: namely the Christian perspective on these things. I say a mild caveat because I am far from the sort of relativist who regards all religions as equally valid and all as carrying the same fundamental message. I take the view that to subscribe to the Christian creeds implies the position that others' creeds are less -- shall we say -- satisfactory; but civility and political common sense restrains some of us from making that implication express. Some of us, of course, including thee and me.
That being said, surely it is a little cheeky to purport to bring to bear a uniquely Christian perspective on natural disasters involving massive loss of life. India and Pakistan, you will recall, immediately sprang to the aid of America with respect to Hurricane Katrina, and obviously not out of any Christian perspective on these things. (Nor, I think, was it wholly or even mostly a matter of cynical sucking up to a sometimes very short-memoried superpower which has the power to make things very uncomfortable for the rest of us when it is displeased, though there may have been a little of that.) So too, one now hopes that the civilised -- and not uniquely Christian, though it is that too -- virtue of compassion will be what brings aid to Pakistan.
Hmm: thanks assiniboine. Poor choice of words on my part, perhaps. What I meant is: check out Asia Net to see how Christians are responding to this crisis, not because others response is not blogworthy, or somehow of less value and significance, but I, as a Christian, have an interest in that perspective. I agree, we can all hope that there is a widespread *human* response to this catastrophe, irrespective of creed.
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