A bishop’s revelations

  Bishop Remigiose Inchananiyil had a special affection and closeness to Mother Mary when he was a kid. He remembers how he was rescued by Mother Mary when he was about to drown in a river. That’s the reason the name Maria was added to his name. He was keen to see Pieta, the great work by Michelangelo. When he got a chance to see Pieta while he was studying in Rome, he was touched at the agony in her face and cried seeing the face of Mother Mary.

Bishop Remigiose

 The Bishop of Syro-Malabar Catholic Diocese of Thamarassery, Kerala, India, says he has a special devotion to Mother Mary and he recites all the 20 mysteries of the rosary every day following her request. He says Mother Mary told him to pray Way of the Cross, too, every day.

 When Angel Gabriel appeared before Mother Mary for annunciation, Mother Mary who was a young woman was too perplexed and mystified. For, Mother Mary thought “Am I really giving birth to the Son of God?” Gabriel had told her that her relative Elizabeth was six months pregnant. In fact this was the sign that these events were from God, he says.    

  Bishop Remigiose says Mother Mary confirmed the veracity of Angel Gabriel’s revelation after seeing the pregnant Elizabeth. Then Mother Mary realized that what the angel told both were true after her visit, he said in a television talk recently.

Afterwards when the Holy Family had to run away to Egypt, Mother Mary had reasons to doubt. If He is the Son of God, why should it happen? The same situation repeated and Mother Mary was in doubt again when Jesus was missing at the Temple for three days when He was 12 years old.

  “The Bible says nobody has seen the face of God. In fact, God told Moses that he would die if he sees God’s face. So Mother Mary was concerned that she and her husband Joseph would die when they see His face,” Bishop Remigiose said.

 The talk by Bishop Remigiose, telecast by Shalom television channel, started with his disclaimer. He says these revelations from Mother Mary were personal in nature and not intended to add to the Catholic teachings.

According to the bishop, many people had called Jesus as a mad man at that time. This also came to the ears of Mother Mary. She thought: “if Jesus is the Son of God why are people calling Him a mad man?” Also when Jesus was tortured to death, Mother Mary thought: how can someone do this to God?

 But when Jesus died and Mother Mary put his body on her lap, she looked at His face. Then Mother Mary could see the real face of God without even an iota of doubt, Mother revealed to the Bishop. So he realized that people will see the face of God during tough and difficult times.

 Bishop Remigiose said he was making these revelations from Mother Mary as just “Remigiose” and not as “Bishop Remigiose”.

 

In search of the right church, faith

Sheena George

  The spiritual journeys of Protestant-turned-Catholics always make fascinating reading. The story of Scott Hahn and wife Kimberly, evangelical Protestants who converted to the Catholic Church and chronicled their journey to Catholicism in the famous book ‘Rome Sweet Home’, is one of the most gracious, moving and convincing spiritual expeditions of recent times. Scott's talks and books have been effective in helping thousands of Protestants and fallen away Catholics to come back to the Catholic faith.
  A similar inspiring story emerged in Sweden last year when Ulf Ekman announced he and his wife, Birgitta, are converting to Roman Catholicism. Ekman was the founder of Word of Life, a megachurch in Uppsala, Sweden. “A process of many years of prayer and reflection led to this decision,” Word of Life Ministry said in a report on its website. Ekman has an India connection. He met and married Birgitta, daughter of a Methodist pastor and his wife and raised in India where her parents were missionaries.
  Recently, I came across the writings of Paul Whitcomb, a Protestant for the first 32 years of his life who later became a diehard Roman Catholic. Confession of a Roman Catholic by Whitcomb is simply a graphic recounting of a rather extraordinary spiritual odyssey, a journey which had its finale in the Catholic Church. What was the driving force behind this odyssey? It's nothing else but faith.
  For Whitcomb, the transformation is much more than an intimate glimpse of one man's soul. It's the testimonial of one man's faith.
Whitcomb was a through and through Protestant. He was born of Protestant parents -- an Episcopalian father and a Methodist mother. He was baptized a Protestant-Episcopal because his brother before him was baptized a Methodist. He was reared a Protestant and sent regularly to Episcopal, Methodist, Congregational, and Baptist Sunday schools, and enlisted in various Protestant youth movements. His parents were staunch "liberal" Protestants: they believed that one church is as good as another -- so long as it is Christian and Protestant.
 He was an avid student of the Bible as he believed that the Bible is the sole Christian rule of faith. “But, as Divine Providence would have it, the more I studied the Bible, and the more I made it my rule of faith, the more I realized that my faith was not wholly what God had ordered. I discovered voids in my religious fabric, voids which had to be filled if I were to know real peace of soul,” he writes.
According to Whitcomb, this feeling of spiritual insecurity led him inexorably to a study of comparative religion; and, again, as Divine Providence would have it, the more he studied comparative religion the more he came to realise that the Catholic faith was the one faith that could fill the voids in his religious life, the one faith that could give him the real peace of soul he longed for.
  What was his first discovery? The church – Roman Catholic Church – he had been most opposed to was the church most united in Christ. The spectacle of 825 million Catholics, three-fifths of all professed Christians, perfectly, indomitably united in belief, in organization, and in worship – the historical fact that Catholics, consistently the largest body of Christians in the world, have always been thus perfectly united – was evidence he could not ignore, he says.
  Whitcomb says in his booklet, “it was quite obvious that Christ did not give this teaching authority to all and sundry, that is, to the whole Church, but only to His duly appointed Apostles, those who were to be the administrative body of the Church.” Had He meant that this teaching authority was to be exercised by all of the faithful He would have addressed His words to all of the faithful, or he would have instructed the Apostles to so advise all of the faithful - neither of which He did.

  Searching the Scriptures further, he learnt exactly how Christ intended to give His Flesh and Blood for the faithful to eat and drink.. “I found the full explanation contained in the account of the Last Supper,” he says. And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this." (cf. Matt. 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20).

  The bread and wine of Holy Communion, that was it. “The bread and wine of Holy Communion were not mere symbols, or representations, of Christ's Body, as I had been led to believe, but were in very truth bread and wine miraculously transformed by the power of God into Christ's true and living Flesh and Blood, only the appearance of bread and wine remaining,” he says.
  Once Whitcomb made up his mind, it did not take him long to make the transition from Protestantism to Catholicism. “And what a glorious adventure it was, too, to become a Catholic, to receive those several weeks of instruction in true Apostolic theology, to make that solemn profession of faith, to receive a Catholic Baptism, to cleanse my soul in the Sacrament of Penance, and then, finally, to receive the living and true Christ in Holy Communion,” he says.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen of the US, whose cause for canonization as a saint officially opened in 2002, once said that there are not 100 people in the US who hate the Catholic Church, although there might be millions of people who hate what they mistakenly believe the Catholic Church to be and to teach. “Thankfully I discovered I fell into the second category. Because for years I opposed the Catholic Church, and I worked hard to get Catholics to leave the Church. But I came to see through a lot of study and considerable prayer that the Roman Catholic Church is based in Scripture,” Scott Hahn wrote after becoming a Catholic.

  Whitcomb's study of the doctrines and practices of the various Christian churches revealed most clearly that only one, the Catholic Church, exercises the same kind of teaching authority that was exercised by the church of the Apostles and primitive Church Fathers. “Only the Catholic Church functions for her members as an unerring interpreter of God's revealed truth. Only the Catholic Church dares proclaim to the world that when she teaches the truths of Christian doctrine, it is Jesus Christ, who can neither deceive or be deceived, teaching through her,” he says.

 “I had to make a change. In conscience I had to become a Catholic,” Whitcomb writes.

  Ulf Ekman wrote in a blog, “the Charismatic life, with its emphasis of the power and the leading of the Holy Spirit is necessary, and it is an amazing gift. But it cannot be lived out in its fullness in a schismatic and overly individualistic environment.” Understanding this opened Ekman and others to the realisation of the necessity of the Church in its fullness, with its rich sacramental life.

Predicament of a Christian judge in India

 For a Christian, Good Friday, Easter and Christmas are three important days in a year. Please read the following front page report carried by The Indian Express on Saturday's edition.
 The story is self-explanatory. There's no need to interpret it further. After Ghar Wapasi (reconversion), attacks on churches and bid to saffronise education and culture, this is the latest in the series in India. Justice Kurian, a member of Roman Catholic Church, is in the forefront of church-related activities.
LINK:  http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/two-supreme-court-judges-told-chief-dont-call-conference-on-good-friday/

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Two Supreme Court judges told CJI: Don’t call conference on Good Friday

Written by Utkarsh Anand , Shaju Philip | New Delhi/thiruvananthapuram | Updated: April 4, 2015
Two judges of the Supreme Court opposed the decision of Chief Justice of India H L Dattu to call a conference of judges on Good Friday and one of them, Justice Kurian Joseph, said “I am deeply hurt… shocked by the tenor” of the response from the CJI rejecting his suggestion while raising questions of “individual interest”.
Justice Joseph was not the only judge opposed to holding such a conference on a public holiday, including Holi, Diwali and Eid. His colleague Justice Vikramjit Sen also raised the matter with the CJI who did not yield — the meeting began Friday.
Sources said the CJI told Justice Sen that the conference was being organised in the first week of April because the CJI and his two most senior colleagues and chief justices of high courts would be free from regular court work and be able to contribute to the cause of judiciary.
Justice Joseph wrote to the CJI on March 18 and questioned the timing of the conference and subsequent functions, saying he would be away in Kerala “committed on account of the holy days when we have religious ceremonies and family get together as well”. Such events, he wrote, were not held during Diwali, Dussehra, Holi or Eid.
The CJI, according to a report in The Times of India, wrote back saying “institutional interest should be given preference to individual interest” and highlighted the need to strike a balance between needs of the institution and family commitments.
Speaking to The Indian Express over phone from Kochi, Justice Joseph said: “I am deeply hurt. It is not about, and should never be about, individuals, judges or otherwise. It was not about me or the other judges. When I wrote that letter to the CJI, I raised concerns only in the interest of the secular nature of this country and its social fabric, which we all are obligated to maintain as our constitutional duties.”
Justice Joseph said nobody could doubt his institutional interest and it was exclusively in the interest of the judiciary that the conference should have been held with a different itinerary.
“When the world is looking at India and its judiciary, it is the duty of this institution to send the right signal. We have taken the oath to uphold the majesty of this institution and to protect the interest of the citizens.I shall do it as a judge. I feel duty-bound to raise concerns when the institution seems to be acting in manner that could raise questions over its integrity and secular nature. I still maintain such conferences should not be held on any public holiday,” he said.
He said he was invited by the Prime Minister’s Office to the joint conference of judges and chief ministers to be held Sunday but he had expressed his inability to attend. He also brought it to the notice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that such events should be avoided on a day of religious observance. These events, he said, are of immense significance for people of the country in terms of belief, faith and propagation of religion which is recognised under the Constitution.
A member of the Kerala-based Syro-Malabar Roman Catholic Church, Justice Joseph is a regular at church functions, mainly as a representative of the Catholic laity. In 2012, he was one of the resource persons for an annual conference of the Canon Law Society of India. Its office-bears and members are generally bishops and priests —canon law is the system of laws legal principles enforced by the Pope.
Last year, when the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India held a conference on church and media, Justice Joseph was one of the speakers.
On May 27, 2012, when the Faridabad archbishop was consecrated, Justice Joseph, then Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh, did the first reading during mass.
While serving as a high court judge, Justice Joseph preached Bible on Christian TV channel Shalom TV. Then, he would religiously read a passage from the Bible and interpret the verses. This weekly programme was held every Saturday evening.