Breach Of Faith

Hurricane Katrina shredded one of the great cities of the South, and as levees failed and the federal relief effort proved lethally incompetent, a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe. As an editor of New Orleans’ daily newspaper, the Pulitzer Prize—winning Times-Picayune, Jed Horne has had a front-row seat to the unfolding drama of the city’s collapse into chaos and its continuing struggle to survive. As the Big One bore down, New Orleanians rich and poor, black and white, lurched from giddy revelry to mandatory evacuation. The thousands who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave initially congratulated themselves on once again riding out the storm. But then the unimaginable happened: Within a day 80 percent of the city was under water. The rising tides chased horrified men and women into snake-filled attics and onto the roofs of their houses. Heroes in swamp boats and helicopters braved wind and storm surge to bring survivors to dry ground. Mansions and shacks alike were swept away, and then a tidal wave of lawlessness inundated the Big Easy. Screams and gunshots echoed through the blacked-out Superdome. Police threw away their badges and joined in the looting. Corpses drifted in the streets for days, and buildings marinated for weeks in a witches’ brew of toxic chemicals that, when the floodwaters finally were pumped out, had turned vast reaches of the city into a ghost town. Horne takes readers into the private worlds and inner thoughts of storm victims from all walks of life to weave a tapestry as intricate and vivid as the city itself. Politicians, thieves, nurses, urban visionaries, grieving mothers, entrepreneurs with an eye for quick profit at public expense–all of these lives collide in a chronicle that is harrowing, angry, and often slyly ironic. Even before stranded survivors had been plucked from their roofs, government officials embarked on a vicious blame game that further snarled the relief operation and bedeviled scientists striving to understand the massive levee failures and build New Orleans a foolproof flood defense. As Horne makes clear, this shameless politicization set the tone for the ongoing reconstruction effort, which has been haunted by racial and class tensions from the start. Katrina was a catastrophe deeply rooted in the politics and culture of the city that care forgot and of a nation that forgot to care. In Breach of Faith, Jed Horne has created a spellbinding epic of one of the worst disasters of our time.

After giving pre-marriage instructions to a young Baptist woman crushed by the news that her children would have to be raised Catholic, William Overstreet Field saw the pain that some of the Church's policies caused. In his evocative, timely, and heartfelt new book, "Breach of Faith: A Catholic Betrayal," the author presents this and many other instances of the insensitivity and callousness toward human needs which he feels bears little resemblance to the promise of Jesus Christ to refresh those who are heavily burdened. Well-written and highly educational, this volume aims to open a discussion to foster change in the Catholic Church.

Romen Basu One Of India'S Significant Novelists And Poets Has Once Again Written In His Latest Novel Breach Of Faith/L About The Neglect Ot And Injustice Towards, The Poor Street Children Of India. Like His Previous Crusading Novels, He Has Written About Children-Victims Of Class And Caste -Who Have Been Driven To Seek Shelter In Cardboard Boxes On The Streets Or On Platforms In Railway Stations. The Story Revolves Around Two Children Whose Parents' Identity Is Unclear And Who Grew Up In The Delhi Railway Station, Begging For Their Livelihood. Mithu The Protagonist And His Friend Munni Move On To Their Separate Lives After Mithu Was Forced To Escape To Mumbai From The Clutches Of Ratnakar, A Drug Dealer, Who Threatened His Life Unless He Accepted His Offer To Sell Drugs. But His Escape Is By No Means The End Of His Misery. By A Cruel Twist Of Fate He Is Driven To Selling Drugs In Mumbai Sliding Down To Further Degradation. Munni'S Life Takes A Turn For The Better When A Family Gives Her Shelter In Mistaken Belief That She Is A Brahmin. Munni Gets Married Into The Family, Moving To Mumbai And Starts A New Life,Fate Deals Her A Cruel Blow. She Accidentally Runs Into Mithu In Mumbai. Jealous Of Munni'S Good Fortune, Mithu Exposes The Real Munni To Her In-Laws. Driven Out Of A Secure Home Munni Is Forced To Move In With Mithu And To Drugs And Degradation. Both End In Tragedy. Romen Basu Has Written A Moving Account Of Street Children Who Have No Chance To Escape From Their Misery And Deprivation. It Is A Poi~Ant Tale Of Injustice At The Hands Of An Uncaring Society.

What has happened to the news? Over the past decade, there has been a major shift in newspaper coverage. Many newspaper executives, paring costs and badly misreading public appetites, have cut back dramatically on all types of public-affairs reporting. Fewer reporters than ever are assigned to the statehouse or the White House, to city hall or foreign capitals. Too often celebrity gossip and movie tips take the place of serious journalism instead of existing alongside it. Newspapers once operated under a mandate to provide the kinds of news that citizens need to function in a democratic society, but many corporations have changed that mandate. For more than two years, legendary editor Gene Roberts led a group of journalists in an unprecedented study of the newspaper industry for the American Journalism Review. This is the second volume of their findings. The first, Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering, documented the storm of buying, selling, and consolidation that is transforming the American press. This second volume explores the consequences of these changes for ordinary communities and for the nation, arguing that they place democracy itself in peril. Contributors include Peter Arnett, Mary Walton, Charles Layton, John Herbers, James McCartney, Carl Sessions Stepp, Lewis M. Simons, Chip Brown and Winnie Hu.

As a young child of twelve, Lou Ann Soontiens saw school as a place of refuge. When the school's resident priest, Father Charles Sylvestre, took an interest in her, she felt honoured and privileged. She put her complete faith and trust in this charismatic man of God and it resulted in years of sexual abuse, humiliation, and an unwanted pregnancy. This misplaced devotion would lead her to forty years of confusion, guilt, and pain and, ultimately, to her being awarded, by the Diocese of London, Ontario, the largest settlement ( 1.75 million Canadian dollars) ever given to an individual by the Catholic Church in Canadian history. It was not until Lou Ann reached middle-age that she found out that she was not alone in her pain and guilt; at least forty-six other women had experienced the same degradation at the hands of Father Charles Sylvestre. Much to her shock, she discovered that the Catholic Church had known about Father Sylvestre's abusive nature, and, as with hundreds of other priests with the same problem, chose to ignore the dangerous situation and quietly move the offending priest to a new parish where the abuse of young children would once again commence.

This is a study of church involvement in the immigration issue.