I was raised on The Christian Science Monitor. Or, perhaps more accurately, it took an active role in raising me. For as long as I remember, this newspaper has arrived in our family's mailbox as our primary news source. I remember dinner–table conversations often sprang from Monitor articles, and while in my teens and early twenties, I belonged to an informal group called "The Christian Science Monitor Youth Forum." Once a month, we'd get together to consider particular issues covered in the newspaper and how to pray about them. During my college years I'd trek to the local Monitor bureau to research its archives for my term papers.
Even today the online edition serves as my Internet homepage and my key resource for information regarding global challenges and world events. I find it natural to turn to the Monitor's paper or Web edition for information regarding topics that warrant deeper understanding and, ultimately, prayer. Often I also use these topics as jumping–off places for writing articles for the paper's daily column "A Christian Science Perspective on Daily Life."
One of the columns I wrote grew out of a Monitor series regarding the worldwide problem of child prostitution. This series deeply touched my heart when it revealed how predators abuse, traffic in, and even murder children. The Monitor series dovetailed with the media's disclosure about the ongoing molestation of altar boys and other children by a small sampling of Catholic priests. I realized that as caring and spiritually minded individuals, we all have a responsibility to help the world's children. But, tragically, we simply can't always be in the locale where they most need our help.
