Islam overtakes Catholicism

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people.

This does, of course, only work if you regard "Islam" as one cohesive religion, rather than subdividing it in Sunni, Shi'a, etc etc.

Europe Whinge....

An interesting fact highlighted here.


Why has the EU laid down rules regarding the operation of our domestic arrangements for rail travel? I could almost see the point of such regulations on mainland Europe, were it not for the fact that 19th Century engineers managed to get on quite well enough without them, building railways lines from Paris to Istanbul, Berlin, Moscow, etc etc etc...

(For the record: We will pay £4.1 billion net to the EU in the period 2007-8, £6.1 billion net in 2008-09, and £6.4 billion in 2009-10.)

Termcarding

Made a start on the Union termcard, putting together design ideas (ie, the fun bit before sitting around and waiting for useless members of the Committee to write blurbs, find photos, etc etc etc).

Read another 50 pages of Trollope last night - starting to get more interesting. Was particularly struck by this section. It comes from George Vavasor's critique of people who do healthy things like climb up mountains...

I believe that most of them simply walk up the mountain and down again. But if they did, that avoids the question also. The poetry and mystery of the mountains are lost to those who make themselves familiar with their details, not the less because such familiarity may have useful results. In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares. Look in there, through that valley, where you just see the distant little peak at the end. Are you not dreaming of the unknown beautiful world that exists up there; - beautiful, as heaven is beautiful, because you know nothing of the reality? If you make your way up there and back tomorrow, and find out all about it, do you mean to say that it will be as beautiful to you when you come back?

Interesting how Trollope - who I don't think of as a "Romantic" novelist - employs the technique of characterisation that one might normally more associate with Bronte, with the mystery of nature standing in for a wild spirit. It also, in employing apophatic language, catches hold of a theological viewpoint not that widely expressed in contemporary religious writings. Ho hum, off to a party now...

In medias res

Frustrating day. Mostly spent pottering between the Rad Cam and the Upper Reading Room (both bits of the Bodleian Library) trying to find out something about Jean Belmain, the French Calvinist who appears from nowhere to teach Edward VI French. All of the books about Edward record this as fact, but never cite a source. Harrumph.

Anyway, nice hour-long tea break with M., discussing much about nothing.

Currently reading: Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope. Nothing much to report as of page 50...