NDU Spirit, a periodical bulletin about campus life at OUTLINE Notre Dame University - Louaïze, issued by the Public Relations Office A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT 2 November 2003 - Issue N° 29 I- SPECIAL COMMEMORATIONS Ë John Paul’s Jubilee 3 Mother Teresa 5 Consultative Committee Deans of Faculties II- ACADEMIR AFFAIRS Ë Union of Arab Universities - NDU Membership 7 Michigan Mayor and Dearborn Visit 8 Editor-in-Chief Mr. Dana Pratt, President of AFN 9 George Mghames WEERC Initiative 9 Memoranda 11 Ë III- STUDENT AND ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES English Editor M. McAlister on American Images 12 Kenneth Mortimer LERC Forum 14 Ë Welcome to Dr. Yachouhi 18 Father Boulos Wehbe, Director SAO 19 Reporting North News 21 Ghada Mouawad Communio 22 Ë Admissions in Action! 2003-2004 22 Shouf Shorts 24 With NDU in Saïda 25 Representatives of Faculties Oil Spills, Istanbul - Drs. Walid Assaf & Ali Hammoud 26 and Student Clubs IEEE Meeting at NDU 27 A story of Water - Department of Sciences 28 Ë Historic agreement between NDU and Sorbonne 30 IBER Award to Dr. Viviane Y. Naïmy 32 Layout Technopub s.a.r.l. Microsoft Prize for NDU 32 Recycling Awareness - Dr. Tony Hage 33 Ë Romanticism, Culture and Translation - Dr. Naji Oueijan 34 Research and Development Dinner 35 Print Meouchy and Zakaria IV - OPINION AND CULTURE Ë Slowness - Kundera’s novel read by Dr. Youssef Yacoub 36 Que Veulent les Chrétiens du Liban? Dr. Georges Labaki 37 Notre Dame University - Louaïze Poems - Dalia Kharboush and Valerie Aoun 39 Zouk-Mosbeh Tel: (09) 218950/1/2/4/5 A Cruise to the Isles of Greece - Fadia El-Hajj 39 Barsa Tel: (03) 749402 - (06)416101/2/3 Maaloula - K.J. Mortimer 40 Shouf Tel: (05)511202-4-5-6 Seeing Orange and Red - Joe Chamma 43 email: [email protected] Something for you Grey Matter 44 A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT This has been a tense summer for the suffering terminally ill (as Middle East, with wars and rumours distinguished from the switching off of wars. Unfortunately, on both sides in certain cases of life-support there have been voices talking of a machines.) In one country after conflict between East and West and another it is becoming possible for between religions. But these have same-sex couples to adopt children, been voices with no authority to for purposes that can easily be speak on behalf of any religion. Every imagined; this has even led to a trade Christian authority has spoken against in wretched East European orphans war, His Holiness the Pope, Their who need special bodily and mental Beatitudes the Patriarchs and even His care, and not to be morally twisted by Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, the perverted passions of adults. All Primate of the Church by Law these practices start with the thin end Established of one of the Coalition of the wedge, the plea of hard cases, partners. Further, in the capitals of to finish with massive abuse. A false the countries of Christian tradition appeal is made to supposed rights there have been enormous popular that simply do not exist, because they demonstrations against war in the are divorced from the sense of duty. Middle East, numbering even a Human rights are not a false ideal merely invented by certain Western Every right supposes a duty and every million, greater than those in the duty a right. For example, abortion Arab and Islamic countries governments that fail lamentably to cannot be defended on the grounds themselves. We are glad to say that practice what they preach, as some that a woman has a right to do what Muslim leaders in our region have have been led to believe. But these she likes with her body; on the recognised this fact and proclaimed rights have no reality except when contrary, we all have a duty to keep their appreciation of the attitude considered in the light of the moral ourselves in good health and to care adopted by the official heads of the law arrived at by reason and firmly for those who are dependent on us. Christian Churches of apostolic imposed by God’s revelation to the tradition. May such voices always be children of Abraham. It is too often heard above the confusion of political forgotten that Christianity is itself an We have just been celebrating the and economic interests. Eastern, not a Western, religion. True silver jubilee of the enthronement of Christians, Muslims and Jews (in the Pope John Paul II and the His Holiness Pope John Paul II played real sense of the word) are united in beautification of the universally loved a decisive role, recognised by no less their condemnation of the moral Mother Teresa, in the presence, a person than former Soviet President abominations now being taken for incidentally, of the Muslim religious Gorbetchov himself, in the overthrow granted in the secularised world. authorities of Albania. Both these of oppressive atheistic Communism. Herod is rightly considered a monster outstanding personalities of our age But since then he has shown equal for having murdered a couple of have declared themselves strongly for concern about the injustices caused hundred innocents, but the the human rights of the poor and the by global capitalism. Ordinary abortionists are mass murderers who unprotected, preaching love and not Africans in particular have suffered out-Herod Herod – in some places war or materialistic selfishness. They from wars provoked by the struggle even “partial birth abortion” is stand for the true jihad in favour of for Africa’s rich mineral resources; allowed, that is to say the murder of a true human rights, one that should while rulers and war-lords salt away baby while it is actually being born. unite all believers in God, His in foreign banks the money with In parallel articles in a Lebanese revelation and his moral law. Let no which they have been bribed, the weekly, the Melkite Archbishop of one divide us. people suffer from grinding poverty Beirut and the greatly respected and are massacred by their tens of Sheikh Fadlallah both condemned Reverend Boutros Tarabay thousands. euthenasia, the actual killing of the President 2 NNU SPIRIT JOHN PAUL’S JUBILEE ope John XXIII opened wide and image around the world, when public high school and enrolled in Pthe Vatican windows for some 99% of Catholics could not imagine Cracow’s Jagiellonian University fresh air to enter the Church, but Mass being celebrated in any lan- and in a school for drama. When Pope John Paul II has himself been guage other than Latin, when Stalin the Nazi occupation forces closed a tornado that has swept the world. said scornfully, “The Pope? How the university he worked from 1940 Not many people alive now can many divisions has he?” to 1944 in a quarry and then in a recall the time when, following the chemical factory in order to earn his overthrow of the Papal States, the The preparation of the young Karol living and avoid being deported to Pope was called “the prisoner of the Wojtyla for his sacred calling dif- Germany for forced labour. But in Vatican”, when the Catholic fered widely from that of his prede- 1942 he managed to begin to pre- Church was overwhelmingly cessors in the papacy. Not for him pare for the priesthood in a secret French, Irish and Italian, when no the stifling routine of the old-fash- underground seminary and was radio or TV carried the Pope’s voice ioned junior and senior seminaries. one of the pioneers of a clandestine In 1938, aged 18, he graduated from theatre that defied the Gestapo. NNU SPIRIT 3 and continued his studies at Lublin nity and vast crowds in Lebanon, Catholic University. Here he where his Exhortation gave a clear became professor of moral theology direction and renewed confidence and social ethics. He became auxil- to the faithful. No less touching iary bishop of Cracow in 1958, arch- was the reception given him by the bishop in 1964 and a cardinal in civil and religious authorities in 1967. He made an important contri- Syria and his visit to the great bution to the elaboration of the Ommayad mosque. Vatican II Constitution Gaudium et There has been some surprise at the spes. number of cardinals Pope John Paul He has proved to be an outstanding has created and the number of per- intellectual, with a grasp of modern sons he has canonised (476) or beat- and Far Eastern philosophy outside ified (1,315). But this has been the ecclesiastical routine of so-called because he reaches out to the whole “Thomist” scholastic studies. As world, to all five continents and archbishop he was deeply con- their countries, little Lebanon cerned with social and economic included, and to every social class. questions, insisting that the Church Everywhere Christians now have had to provide a better answer than saints and beati that they feel belong Marxist Communism. As Pope, to them, other than French and even during recent years when fail- Italian clerics and nuns. With the ing health has prevented him from recent consistory of October 12th, enjoying the sporting activities of there are now 135 cardinals entitled his athletic youth, his activity has to elect a new pope, of whom no been astounding and his mind has less than thirteen are Africans, two lost nothing of its vigour. Since the of them Nigerians. Thirteen are start of his pontificate in 1978, when Asians and five are from Oceania. his election astounded the world In Africa and Asia the Church is expecting yet another Italian, he has flourishing with a dynamic entirely completed over one hundred tours of its own and can no longer be con- outside Italy and over one hundred sidered a mere colonial project of and forty within Italy.