058. Excommunication

In 1954, a young military officer, Alfredo Stroessner, organized a military coup and overthrew Paraguayan President Federico Chávez. A devoted anti-communist, Stroessner declared a state of siege and suspended constitutional freedoms for the entirety of his 35-year rule. Throughout Stroessner’s last two decades in power, indigenous people organized widely to oppose the negative effects that his massive development projects were having on their communities.

Mali, a nation whose citizens are 90% Muslim, maintains laws that adhere to the regulations laid out in the Qur’an. Current law requires women to obey their husband’s commands, sets the legal age for a girl to marry at 12, gives male children priority access to inheritance, and denies women property rights. Mali, like many other countries who limit women’s freedom, has come under criticism from the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations for their curtailment of human rights.

Early Christendom was rife with sectarian conflicts between competing theologians and their interpretations of the life of Jesus.  One of these conflicts was between mainstream (Nicene) Catholicism, which emphasized the Holy Trinity, and Arianism, which asserted that Jesus was inferior to God.  A crucial event in the competition of doctrines occurred in 385-86 C.E., in Milan, modern-day Italy.  Milan at that time was controlled by the Roman Emperor Valentinian II.  Although Valentinian held the title of Emperor and ruled from Milan, the Empire was in the process of fragm