NCR Today

Here's the problem with being around for 2,000 years: you tend to learn a few things. So as much as I get impatient sometimes with the glacial pace of change within the church, there are moments when I'm reminded that the institution has gleaned more than a few verities over the past couple of millennia.

For instance, greed -- and its modern-day significant other, consumerism. The financial collapse that marks its first anniversary today is one large "told you so" for a church that has often been a lonely voice against the American ethos summed up on the bumper sticker: "The one who dies with the most toys wins."

Sunday's Los Angeles Times presented a bracing look at how we have changed in the past 12 months. The report explores the possibility that Southern Californians may soon turn their back on ever-bigger houses that sit at the end of ever-longer drives from where we work.

Jean Stokan, Director of the Justice Team for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, provides a graphic description of gross human rights abuses in Honduras in her appearance on "Interfaith Voices" this week. She describes government forces trying to snuff out the protests of those who oppose the recent coup. Teachers, lawyers and campesinos were attacked in multiple and bloody ways as they demonstrated to restore the elected leader of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and the constitutional order of the country.

Jean was part of a delegation of religious people who visited Honduras in August on a trip sponsored by both the Quixote Center and the Sisters of Mercy.

To hear the interview, go to: www.interfaithradio.org

Before this interview, you can hear the tale of Kevin Roose, a student who went undercover at Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) to investigate evangelical culture. And after Jean’s interview, you can hear about the great sounds of an interfaith choir called Mosaic/Harmony.