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At Your Service
The Church of the Holy Ghost, Balham, London
by Bess Twiston Davies

I crept out of Holy Ghost after midnight, but the worship was still going strong. Incense billowed upwards near the burning bush, a wooden structure laden with candles; at its apex the Eucharist encased in a gold and glass monstrance. Three hundred or so young people, many teenagers, huddled round.

Tonight, some were scattered through the pews, listening to a sermon on conversion â€" a fitting theme for the feast of the conversion of St Paul â€" and the need to repent.

“If we deny the need to repent, we are saying, effectively, that everything is as it should be,” says the priest, Father Stephen Langridge. He gives graphic examples of a fallen world: nation bombing nation, people losing their jobs or houses in the credit crunch, husband turning on wife.

Clear, lucid and packing a punch, Langridge’s sermons are renowned in the diocese. Tonight he invites us to consider how the Gospel â€" Jesus summoning Simon Peter and the Galilee fishermen to follow him â€" might apply to us. “You and I are also followers of the Lord and are asked to stay with the Lord, to live a life of holiness, by living with the presence of Christ within your hearts and your mind turned towards the Lord,” he says.

Holy Ghost, an Edwardian church in a South London square, has a lively following. About 1,200 attend weekend Masses, a number which has doubled since Langridge arrived in 1995. “People are looking for something beyond the material salvation the world offers; that offers hope for the future,” he says. “They want to make sense of their lives.”

To this end, Holy Ghost aims to offer “catechesis from cradle to grave” â€" past courses include marriage enrichment and how to create a Catholic culture in the home. Nine of the 23 young men signed up for a vocations weekend with Langridge today and tomorrow (he is vocations director for Southwark Diocese) attended the three-day Youth 2000 retreat over the new year. “When young people spend time with the Lord they ask what He wants them to do,” says Langridge, who after tonight’s Mass is addressing the young adults’ group in Visitation House across the road. The topic is Charles Darwin and the Culture of Death.

Aided by a snappy slideshow, Langridge explains the real issue that the Roman Catholic Church has with Darwin. Not evolution per se, but the subsequent understanding that “Man is a species in evolution” rather than, as described by the Catholic catechism, that Man is “the pinnacle of creation”, a species unique in having both body and soul. This confers equality on all.

We see quotes from The Descent of Man, Darwin’s 1871 work, which contains what to some modern ears are unpalatable theories on “lesser” races versus “civilised” stronger races. A few slides later we arrive at eugenics â€" a natural conclusion of thinking that “weaker” human specimens should be gradually eliminated.

It makes for chilling viewing. The questions it raises are awkward, discomforting. Are we so different today in proposing euthanasia for the elderly? For the disabled? And for those seriously ill? The questions linger long after I have departed Holy Ghost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFbmDLiGakw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVxJ7LtCKq0

The Brain that Changes Itself
(CBC Newsworld)

For centuries the human brain has been thought of as incapable of fundamental change. People suffering from neurological defects, brain damage or strokes were usually written-off as hopeless cases. But recent and continuing research into the human brain is radically changing how we look at the potential for neurological recovery.

The human brain, as we are now quickly learning, has a remarkable ability to change itself - in fact, even to rewire itself.

The Brain that Changes Itself, based on the best-selling book by Toronto psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Norman Doidge, presents a strong case for reconsidering how we view the human mind.

Dr. Norman Doidge travels across North America to meet some of the pioneering researchers who made revolutionary discoveries about the plasticity of the human brain. He also visits with the people who have been most affected by this research - the patients whose lives have been forever changed - people once thought of as incurable who are now living normal lives.

Known in scientific circles as "neuroplasticity," this radical new approach to the brain provides an incredible way to bring the human brain back to life. Some of the cases that we meet are:

    * Roger Behm, a blind man who is now able to see via his tongue (and can throw a basketball into a garbage can to prove it).
    * Cheryl Schiltz, who was written-off by doctors when she lost her sense of balance due to a drug's side effect. Once sentenced to a lifetime of wobbling, her brain rewired itself through a seemingly simple therapy, and has now regained her balance and returned to a normal life.
    * Michelle Mack, one of the greatest examples of the brain's ability to adapt: she was born, literally, with just half of her brain.
    * Michael Bernstein, who suffered a debilitating stroke in the prime of his life, paralyzing the left side of his body. He's now back to his former life, as his brain functions have been rerouted and re-invigorated.

The implications of this research, presented by Dr. Doidge through these compelling stories, are enormous. The impact is just beginning to be felt in research, medical and rehabilitation circles. Simply put, the brain we once thought we knew turns out to be quite different than the one we discover in this documentary: the human brain is a surprisingly resilient and adaptable part of the body.

"What this documentary clearly shows is that we need to re-examine what we think we know about the human brain," explains the film's director/producer, Mike Sheerin. "We see first-hand some remarkable therapies - the stories are almost miraculous - but in every case you're left with the feeling that it's not the science that's amazing. What's amazing is the human brain. This long overdue new approach to the brain will change all of our lives down the road."

The Brain that Changes Itself is directed by Mike Sheerin and is co-written by Dr. Norman Doidge and Mike Sheerin and produced by 90th Parallel Productions Ltd. in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and ARTE France.

WASHINGTON (CNN) â€" Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

“The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.”

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry's survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people."

“We should be delivering [the request] by the end of today to our congressmen and [Secretary of the Treasury Henry] Paulson asking for this $5 billion dollar bailout,” he told CNN Wednesday.

Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger â€" DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow.

But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. "People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said in the statement. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex."

"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It's time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly."

So far, there has been no congressional reaction to the request.

â€"CNN’s Chloe Melas contributed to this report