This is not theology of rape... it's Devil's theory of destruction. The story of these children can move you to tears

 This New York Times story moved me to tears. I cried after reading this story. No doubt, Devil is working overtime in Middle East. When I think of those poor children, I'm unable to fathom: God why this is happening? My daughter is of the same age -- barely 13 years.

 The perpetrators of such crimes are misinterpreting the religious book to commit heinous crimes like abuse of children and slavery. I strongly believe this "theology of rape" is nothing but Devil's theory. They are possessed by Devil.  

 When I see the face of my daughter, my eyes become moist; children of my daughter's age are being abused, raped and sacrificed in some other part of the world... and I am unable to do anything to prevent it. I think the conscience of the world must wake up... God save those children.    

LINK: (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html?_r=0).

  NEW YORK TIMES STORY 

ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape

Claiming the Quran’s support, the Islamic State codifies sex slavery in conquered regions of Iraq and Syria and uses the practice as a recruiting tool.

Written by RUKMINI CALLIMACHI 

AUGUST 13, 2015

 QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.

He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.

When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.

“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.

The trade in Yazidi women and girls has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them.

A total of 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year, and at least 3,144 are still being held, according to community leaders. To handle them, the Islamic State has developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery, including sales contracts notarized by the ISIS-run Islamic courts. And the practice has become an established recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden.

A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month. Repeatedly, the ISIS leadership has emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Quran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.

“Every time that he came to rape me, he would pray,” said F, a 15-year-old girl who was captured on the shoulder of Mount Sinjar one year ago and was sold to an Iraqi fighter in his 20s. Like some others interviewed by The New York Times, she wanted to be identified only by her first initial because of the shame associated with rape.

“He kept telling me this is ibadah,” she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship.

“He said that raping me is his prayer to God. I said to him, ‘What you’re doing to me is wrong, and it will not bring you closer to God.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s allowed. It’s halal,’ ” said the teenager, who escaped in April with the help of smugglers after being enslaved for nearly nine months.

Calculated Conquest

The Islamic State’s formal introduction of systematic sexual slavery dates to Aug. 3, 2014, when its fighters invaded the villages on the southern flank of Mount Sinjar, a craggy massif of dun-colored rock in northern Iraq.

Its valleys and ravines are home to the Yazidis, a tiny religious minority who represent less than 1.5 percent of Iraq’s estimated population of 34 million.

The offensive on the mountain came just two months after the fall of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. At first, it appeared that the subsequent advance on the mountain was just another attempt to extend the territory controlled by Islamic State fighters.

Almost immediately, there were signs that their aim this time was different.

Survivors say that men and women were separated within the first hour of their capture. Adolescent boys were told to lift up their shirts, and if they had armpit hair, they were directed to join their older brothers and fathers. In village after village, the men and older boys were driven or marched to nearby fields, where they were forced to lie down in the dirt and sprayed with automatic fire.

The women, girls and children, however, were hauled off in open-bed trucks.

“The offensive on the mountain was as much a sexual conquest as it was for territorial gain,” said Matthew Barber, a University of Chicago expert on the Yazidi minority. He was in Dohuk, near Mount Sinjar, when the onslaught began last summer and helped create a foundation that provides psychological support for the escapees, who number more than 2,000, according to community activists.

Fifteen-year-old F says her family of nine was trying to escape, speeding up mountain switchbacks, when their aging Opel overheated. She, her mother, and her sisters — 14, 7, and 4 years old — were helplessly standing by their stalled car when a convoy of heavily armed Islamic State fighters encircled them.

“Right away, the fighters separated the men from the women,” she said. She, her mother and sisters were first taken in trucks to the nearest town on Mount Sinjar. “There, they separated me from my mom. The young, unmarried girls were forced to get into buses.”

The buses were white, with a painted stripe next to the word “Hajj,” suggesting that the Islamic State had commandeered Iraqi government buses used to transport pilgrims for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. So many Yazidi women and girls were loaded inside F’s bus that they were forced to sit on each other’s laps, she said.

Once the bus headed out, they noticed that the windows were blocked with curtains, an accouterment that appeared to have been added because the fighters planned to transport large numbers of women who were not covered in burqas or head scarves.

F’s account, including the physical description of the bus, the placement of the curtains and the manner in which the women were transported, is echoed by a dozen other female victims interviewed for this article. They described a similar set of circumstances even though they were kidnapped on different days and in locations miles apart.

 F says she was driven to the Iraqi city of Mosul some six hours away, where they herded them into the Galaxy Wedding Hall. Other groups of women and girls were taken to a palace from the Saddam Hussein era, the Badoosh prison compound and the Directory of Youth building in Mosul, recent escapees said. And in addition to Mosul, women were herded into elementary schools and municipal buildings in the Iraqi towns of Tal Afar, Solah, Ba’aj and Sinjar City.

They would be held in confinement, some for days, some for months. Then, inevitably, they were loaded into the same fleet of buses again before being sent in smaller groups to Syria or to other locations inside Iraq, where they were bought and sold for sex.

“It was 100 percent preplanned,” said Khider Domle, a Yazidi community activist who maintains a detailed database of the victims. “I spoke by telephone to the first family who arrived at the Directory of Youth in Mosul, and the hall was already prepared for them. They had mattresses, plates and utensils, food and water for hundreds of people.”

 Detailed reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reach the same conclusion about the organized nature of the sex trade.

 In each location, survivors say Islamic State fighters first conducted a census of their female captives.

Inside the voluminous Galaxy banquet hall, F sat on the marble floor, squeezed between other adolescent girls. In all she estimates there were over 1,300 Yazidi girls sitting, crouching, splayed out and leaning against the walls of the ballroom, a number that is confirmed by several other women held in the same location.

They each described how three Islamic State fighters walked in, holding a register. They told the girls to stand. Each one was instructed to state her first, middle and last name, her age, her hometown, whether she was married, and if she had children.

For two months, F was held inside the Galaxy hall. Then one day, they came and began removing young women. Those who refused were dragged out by their hair, she said.

In the parking lot the same fleet of Hajj buses was waiting to take them to their next destination, said F. Along with 24 other girls and young women, the 15-year-old was driven to an army base in Iraq. It was there in the parking lot that she heard the word “sabaya” for the first time.

“They laughed and jeered at us, saying ‘You are our sabaya.’ I didn’t know what that word meant,” she said. Later on, the local Islamic State leader explained it meant slave.

“He told us that Taus Malik” — one of seven angels to whom the Yazidis pray — “is not God. He said that Taus Malik is the devil and that because you worship the devil, you belong to us. We can sell you and use you as we see fit.”

The Islamic State’s sex trade appears to be based solely on enslaving women and girls from the Yazidi minority. As yet, there has been no widespread campaign aimed at enslaving women from other religious minorities, said Samer Muscati, the author of the recent Human Rights Watch report. That assertion was echoed by community leaders, government officials and other human rights workers.

 Mr. Barber, of the University of Chicago, said that the focus on Yazidis was likely because they are seen as polytheists, with an oral tradition rather than a written scripture. In the Islamic State’s eyes that puts them on the fringe of despised unbelievers, even more than Christians and Jews, who are considered to have some limited protections under the Quran as “People of the Book.”

In Kojo, one of the southernmost villages on Mount Sinjar and among the farthest away from escape, residents decided to stay, believing they would be treated as the Christians of Mosul had months earlier. On Aug. 15, 2014, the Islamic State ordered the residents to report to a school in the center of town.

When she got there, 40-year-old Aishan Ali Saleh found a community elder negotiating with the Islamic State, asking if they could be allowed to hand over their money and gold in return for safe passage.

The fighters initially agreed and laid out a blanket, where Ms. Saleh placed her heart-shaped pendant and her gold rings, while the men left crumpled bills.

Instead of letting them go, the fighters began shoving the men outside, bound for death.

Sometime later, a fleet of cars arrived and the women, girls and children were driven away.

The Market

Months later, the Islamic State made clear in their online magazine that their campaign of enslaving Yazidi women and girls had been extensively preplanned.

“Prior to the taking of Sinjar, Shariah students in the Islamic State were tasked to research the Yazidis,” said the English-language article, headlined “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour,” which appeared in the October issue of Dabiq.

The article made clear that for the Yazidis, there was no chance to pay a tax known as jizya to be set free, “unlike the Jews and Christians.”

“After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided” as sIn much the same way as specific Bible passages were used centuries later to support the slave trade in the United States, the Islamic State cites specific verses or stories in the Quran or else in the Sunna, the traditions based on the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, to justify their human trafficking, experts say.

Scholars of Islamic theology disagree, however, on the proper interpretation of these verses, and on the divisive question of whether Islam actually sanctions slavery.

Many argue that slavery figures in Islamic scripture in much the same way that it figures in the Bible — as a reflection of the period in antiquity in which the religion was born.

“In the milieu in which the Quran arose, there was a widespread practice of men having sexual relationships with unfree women,” said Kecia Ali, an associate professor of religion at Boston University and the author of a book on slavery in early Islam. “It wasn’t a particular religious institution. It was just how people did things.”

Cole Bunzel, a scholar of Islamic theology at Princeton University, disagrees, pointing to the numerous references to the phrase “Those your right hand possesses” in the Quran, which for centuries has been interpreted to mean female slaves. He also points to the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence, which continues into the modern era and which he says includes detailed rules for the treatment of slaves.

“There is a great deal of scripture that sanctions slavery,” said Mr. Bunzel, the author of a research paper published by the Brookings Institution on the ideology of the Islamic State. “You can argue that it is no longer relevant and has fallen into abeyance. ISIS would argue that these institutions need to be revived, because that is what the Prophet and his companions did.”

The youngest, prettiest women and girls were bought in the first weeks after their capture. Others — especially older, married women — described how they were transported from location to location, spending months in the equivalent of human holding pens, until a prospective buyer bid on them.

Their captors appeared to have a system in place, replete with its own methodology of inventorying the women, as well as their own lexicon. Women and girls were referred to as “Sabaya,” followed by their name. Some were bought by wholesalers, who photographed and gave them numbers, to advertise them to potential buyers.

Osman Hassan Ali, a Yazidi businessman who has successfully smuggled out numerous Yazidi women, said he posed as a buyer in order to be sent the photographs. He shared a dozen images, each one showing a Yazidi woman sitting in a bare room on a couch, facing the camera with a blank, unsmiling expression. On the edge of the photograph is written in Arabic, “Sabaya No. 1,” “Sabaya No. 2,” and so on.

Buildings where the women were collected and held sometimes included a viewing room.

“When they put us in the building, they said we had arrived at the ‘Sabaya Market,’” said one 19-year-old victim, whose first initial is I. “I understood we were now in a slave market.”

She estimated there were at least 500 other unmarried women and girls in the multistory building, with the youngest among them being 11. When the buyers arrived, the girls were taken one by one into a separate room.

“The emirs sat against the wall and called us by name. We had to sit in a chair facing them. You had to look at them, and before you went in, they took away our scarves and anything we could have used to cover ourselves,” she said.

“When it was my turn, they made me stand four times. They made me turn around.”

The captives were also forced to answer intimate questions, including reporting the exact date of their last menstrual cycle. They realized that the fighters were trying to determine whether they were pregnant, in keeping with a Shariah rule stating that a man cannot have intercourse with his slave if she is pregnant.

Property of ISIS

The use of sex slavery by the Islamic State initially surprised even the group’s most ardent supporters, many of whom sparred with journalists online after the first reports of systematic rape.

The Islamic State’s leadership has repeatedly sought to justify the practice to its internal audience.

After the initial article in Dabiq in October, the issue came up in the publication again this year, in an editorial in May that expressed the writer’s hurt and dismay at the fact that some of the group’s own sympathizers had questioned the institution of slavery.

“What really alarmed me was that some of the Islamic State’s supporters started denying the matter as if the soldiers of the Khilafah had committed a mistake or evil,” the author wrote. “I write this while the letters drip of pride,’’ he said. “We have indeed raided and captured the kafirahwomen and drove them like sheep by the edge of the sword.” Kafirah refers to infidels.

In a pamphlet published online in December, the Research and Fatwa Department of the Islamic State detailed best practices, including explaining that slaves belong to the estate of the fighter who bought them and therefore can be willed to another man and disposed of just like any other property after his death.

Recent escapees describe an intricate bureaucracy surrounding their captivity, with their status as a slave registered in a contract. When their owner would sell them to another buyer, a new contract would be drafted, like transferring a property deed. At the same time, slaves can also be set free, and fighters are promised a heavenly reward for doing so.

Though rare, this has created one avenue of escape for victims.

A 25-year-old victim who escaped last month, identified by her first initial, A, described how one day her Libyan master handed her a laminated piece of paper. He explained that he had finished his training as a suicide bomber and was planning to blow himself up, and was thereLabeled a “Certificate of Emancipation,” the document was signed by the judge of the western province of the Islamic State. The Yazidi woman presented it at security checkpoints as she left Syria to return to Iraq, where she rejoined her family in July.

The Islamic State recently made it clear that sex with Christian and Jewish women captured in battle is also permissible, according to a new 34-page manual issued this summer by the terror group’s Research and Fatwa Department.

Just about the only prohibition is having sex with a pregnant slave, and the manual describes how an owner must wait for a female captive to have her menstruating cycle, in order to “make sure there is nothing in her womb,” before having intercourse with her. Of the 21 women and girls interviewed for this article, among the only ones who had not been raped were the women who were already pregnant at the moment of their capture, as well as those who were past menopause.

Beyond that, there appears to be no bounds to what is sexually permissible. Child rape is explicitly condoned: “It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty, if she is fit for intercourse,” according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute of a pamphlet published on Twitter last December.

 One 34-year-old Yazidi woman, who was bought and repeatedly raped by a Saudi fighter in the Syrian city of Shadadi, described how she fared better than the second slave in the household — a 12-year-old girl who was raped for days on end despite heavy bleeding.

“He destroyed her body. She was badly infected. The fighter kept coming and asking me, ‘Why does she smell so bad?’ And I said, she has an infection on the inside, you need to take care of her,” the woman said.

Unmoved, he ignored the girl’s agony, continuing the ritual of praying before and after raping the child.

“I said to him, ‘She’s just a little girl,’ ” the older woman recalled. “And he answered: ‘No. She’s not a little girl. She’s a slave. And she knows exactly how to have sex.’ ’’

“And having sex with her pleases God,” he said.

You’re sick because of your sinful life... sinners become slaves of devil

 Sin is not a small, simplistic thing. It’s not something normal. The result of a sin lies within the sin. That’s a fact. Sin is capable of destroying itself. Sin is self-destructive.

 “This is what the psalmist tells us. Psalmist says it very beautifully. Sin is not something that will destroy one’s soul only. It’s not something that will affect our heavenly or eternal life. Sin is something that will affect one’s physical body, material life on earth, health and everything, says the psalmist. This is what Holy Bible says,” says well-known Catholic theologian Rev Dr Joseph Pamplani. We read from the Holy Bible about the misfortunes of a sinner. Adam and Eve sinned. Sinners become the slaves of devil. What’s waiting for them? Total destruction.

  “People who have sinned keep away from God. The Word of God tells us about the impact of sin on the lives of sinners. First of all, you become the slave of devil after sinning. You lose control of yourself. When you interact with devil with your sinful ways, your body gets weakened. You get dried up like the way summer heat destroy things. You (sinner) become a broken man,’ Rev Dr Pamplani says.

 Psalms 38:3 clearly tells us how sin can play havoc with our lives. “Because of your anger, my whole body is sick; my health is broken because of my sins,” the Bible says. Pslams 22:15 also talks about the impact of sin: “My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.”

  “Sin destroys man. A sinner can lead a counterfeit life for some time, but not ever; for the aftereffect of sin will catch up with him. There’s a format for living a spotless life – as a husband, wife, family, son, daughter or father and mother. When you lead a life according to the will of God, that’s a sinless life,” he says. When you cross the boundary of this format which is based on God’s will, that becomes a problem. In short, sin means straying away from the goal towards God.

  “A sinner sometimes leads a double life. After leading a sinful life, he or she shows a different face to the people, or in other words, leads a fake or counterfeit life,” Rev Dr Pamplani says. For example, a husband who cheats on his wife and leads a promiscuous life. He pretends that he’s a honest husband and fakes love to his innocent wife in the family. He is cheating not only his wife, but also his conscience and God. This kind of sin leads to what you call tragedies of sin. His body gets weakened.

  So a sinless state means a state of not cheating himself or herself. It also means not cheating others. It also means not cheating God, he says.

 The tragedies or disasters created by sin are not that something that God gives us as punishment. God’s only plan is how to regain the man who has fallen into sin. The belief that God punishes a sinner is a wrong notion as God’s plan is to salvage man from sin. “The result of sin, or the aftereffect of sin, remains within the sinful act. It’s like a person who feels thirsty after eating salt or gets burnt with acid. Or like a person who dies after drinking poison. The result of any sin is within that sinful act,” Rev Dr Jospeh Pamplani says.

  God is trying to salvage the man from the tragedy of sin. God always wants the salvation of man. God is waiting for the repentance of a sinner. The big plan devised by God for this salvation is confession of sin. This confession and repentance will salvage the sinner from the tragedy of sin and lead to salvation and the sustained flow of grace, he says.

 After sinning, if a person sits quietly as if nothing has happened, God is angry about this situation. God will safeguard the person who comes out of sin through confession and repentance.

 For example, King David committed several sins, but God salvaged David after he confessed his sins and repented. God then showered blessings on David.

 According to him, we must confess our sins. This is what the Church is doing through the sacrament of confession and repentance. This is not to be considered as the discovery of some churches with the apostolic tradition. This is also the perception from the Old Testament. “We are confessing our sins in front of the representatives of God like King David confessed his sins to Prophet Nathan,” Rev Dr Pamplani says.    

  When we follow the Ten Commandments, we should also keep in mind the parable of the rich man and Lazar in the Bible. The sin of this rich man was his providing for himself only. He failed to notice the sick beggar out on the street. In short, we must go out and seek such Lazars. In other words, just leading a good life and leading a sinless life is not enough. We must be able to identify the Lazars of this world.

      

  

Catholics and Pentecostals: Miles to go to bridge the divide

   Catholics and Pentecostals – commonly known as Protestants – recently concluded the sixth phase of their international dialogue, aimed at promoting better relations between the two communities started over four decades ago. Are we anywhere close to unity? The answer is no, but everyone agrees that a continuous dialogue is necessary to achieve unification in the not-so-distant future.

  The theme of this sixth phase, held in July, focused on "Charisms in the Church: Their Spiritual Significance, Discernment, and Pastoral Implications" with sessions dedicated to common ground, discernment, healing and prophesy. The final session, which took place in Rome from July 10-17, was dedicated to drafting a final report, due for publication early next year. Daily prayer services, led alternately by Catholics and Pentecostals, have been an important feature of the meeting and participants on Sunday attended Mass at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.
  The two co-chairs of the dialogue were Bishop Michael Burbidge, head of the US diocese of Raleigh in North Carolina and Rev Cecil (Mel) Robeck representing the Assemblies of God, a professor of Church history and ecumenics at Fuller Theological Seminary in California.

 Christians in general are curious about the impact of the first Latin American pope on relations between the two communities.

  Historically, Christianity is divided into three broad categories – Roman Catholic, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church is an ancient community with many things in common with Roman Catholics except that there’s no Pope in the community. Protestant denominations – they number around 30,000 -- reject the notion of papal supremacy over the Church universal and generally deny the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and a host of other things, but they disagree among themselves regarding Christ's presence in the Eucharist.

  In another two years, 2017 will mark the 500^th anniversary since Martin Luther published ‘The ninety-five theses’ and started opposing the Catholic Church teachings which eventually led to the formation of Protestant churches.

  That said, the goal of the latest Dialogue, started in 1972, is to promote mutual respect and understanding in matters of faith and practice, says a press statement issued by Vatican. Genuine exchange and frank discussion concerning the positions and practices of the two traditions have been guiding principles of these conversations.

 According to Bishop Burbidge, through the scholarly papers that were presented, honest and respectful discussion throughout the Dialogue, and our prayer time together we grew to a deeper understanding of areas of agreement as related to charisms, healing, prophecy, and discernment, as well as points of divergence. “We also identified together pastoral challenges and opportunities as we go forth to invite others to a deeper reliance on the gifts of the Spirit who is always at work within us,” he said.
 Pentacostals say that on most issues they are in agreement.

 Rev Robeck said, "this current round of dialogue has revealed that the teaching of Pentecostals and Catholics on the charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit have many points of agreement. Both traditions recognize that every believer has been given one or more gifts by the Holy Spirit to be used to build up the Church and to minister to the world. These gifts have been present in the Church since the time of the New Testament.”

  “Given the problems posed by society in the current culture, we acknowledge that we face common challenges in which our people must rely upon the help of the Holy Spirit to exercise these charisms in thoughtful and creative ways as they seek to extend the message of love and forgiveness that Jesus Christ brought to the world,” Rev Robeck said.
  The first major difference between Catholics and Protestants is the issue of the sufficiency and authority of Scripture. Protestants say that the Bible alone is the source of God’s special revelation to mankind and teaches us all that is necessary for our salvation from sin. Catholics reject the doctrine of sola scriptura and believe that both the Bible and sacred Roman Catholic tradition are equally binding upon the Christians. Roman Catholics believe in purgatory, praying to the saints and veneration of Mother Mary.

 Apart from transubstantiation, the major bone of contention, another disagreement between Catholicism and Protestantism is over the office and authority of the Pope. Further, Catholics teach that the Christian must rely on faith and seven Sacraments --  baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders and matrimony – for salvation. Protestants believe that, on the basis of faith in Christ alone, believers are justified by God, and all their sins are paid for by Christ on the cross and His righteousness is imputed to them.

 As a Christian, this writer hopes that Catholics and Protestants will thrash out all contentious issues and come together in the not so foreseeable future. If this happens, Jesus will be the happiest person.

Authoritarianism in Church: When is the next major reform coming?

  Can you hold on to a position of power indefinitely in the Church? No you can’t. That’s a dangerous proposition and the idea of clinging on to the chair comes from the devil.
  Pope Francis has amply made it clear that Church doesn’t favour and want dictators  “The only one who is indispensable is the Holy Spirit, and no one is Lord, except Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis said to a group of 30,000 people at an inter-denominational rally of charismatic Christians in St. Peter’s Square. Why is Pope reminding Church members about indispensability and authoritarianism. Is it time for the next major reform in the Church?
  It's a clear indication from Pope Francis -- it’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t favour clergy or laity to rule for a long time like dictators. In fact, in some countries this is happening. There’s no retirement age for top church leaders and religious. Pope Francis has been on a mission to reform the Vatican curia and introduced several changes. Much more remains to be done. Pope Francis established the Council of Cardinals just a month into his pontificate to help him reform the Curia and govern the universal church.
 His statement against indispensability and authoritarianism could be an indicator of long-awaited reforms in the Church. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the revised Code of Canon Law (1983) were two major occasions when Catholic Church witnessed major reforms. While the first led Pope Paul VI to reform the Roman Curia, the second step was initiated by Pope John Paul II. When is the third major reform coming?

 When a person gets a position of power, he enjoys it, but slowly and steadily starts making mistakes one after another. He develops vested interests, acts as per his whims and fancies and like a drunk man, power goes to his head. He gets the feeling of indispensability. What follows is dictatorship and chaos.   
In other words, Pope is saying that Church doesn’t want people occupying the same position ad infinitum. “It is appropriate that all services in the Church have a time limit,” he said. Leaders for life happen in countries under a dictatorship. We have many such countries in this world. History tells us that dictators who ruled such countries had a violent end.   
  Dictatorships can create problems in the church as well. “Believing yourself to be indispensable is a great temptation for leaders, and it comes from the devil,” said Pope Francis. “Authoritarianism and personalism easily enter in when leaders desire to hold onto their position forever” and “one slides from being a servant to being a master,” he said.
  Is the statement of Pope directed at church leaders who have been holding powerful positions for a long time? Is he hinting that Church leaders should make way for new generations and leaders or an indication of a major reform in the Church? The 78-year-old Pontiff has said on other occasions that he would be prepared to resign instead of ruling for life if he felt he could not continue running the 1.2 billion-member Church for health or other reasons.
 Pope Francis said Pope Benedict’s retirement decision “should not be considered an exception, but an institution.” “Nowadays an emeritus pope is not a strange thing, but it opened the door for this to exist,” he said. Pope also said, however, that he did not like the idea of an automatic retirement age for popes, for example at age 80.
 

70 per cent of Indians live in villages, most are poor

 Why is a democratic country which got independence in 1947 is still poor? Successive governments poured billions of dollars into social welfare schemes, but majority of people remain poor.
  New data released on Friday showed that that more than 70 percent of people in India live in villages, with the majority extremely poor and dependent on manual labour. The data from India's socio-economic and caste census was collected between 2011 and 2013. It's the first time India has studied caste data since 1932.
 One doesn’t have to look far for reasons for this sorry state of affairs. The country lacks strong, upright and efficient political leaders. They simply failed in uplifting the people and giving them good living standards. They enriched themselves through corruption and scandals. They tightly controlled the economy and refused to open up the country for development. In 1947, the situation in S Korea was worse than India. Now they are far ahead of India.The Church needs to look into these aspects.
 When you go deep inside interior regions in states like UP, Bihar, Orissa, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra and  W Bengal, the abysmal living conditions are really appalling. There’s no electricity, no transport, no proper houses, no drinking water and no facilities for education and healthcare. Then where’s the budgetary allocations going?
On the other hand, rich people are getting richer. The number of billionaires is expanding. If you analyse the net worth of most members of parliament or state assemblies, they are filthy rich. There’s no real concern for the poor.   
 Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the data was provisional and the final data would be updated over the next few months to help the government to properly channel its welfare spending to benefit those who needed help the most. It’s not that the conclusion will show any improvement when the final data comes in later.
  India conducts a national census every 10 years and that document delves into the wealth, living conditions and other personal details of the country's 1.2 billion people. The previous government initiated a separate process of studying caste and analyzing socio-economic progress based on those divisions.

  Caste, the Hindu custom that for millennia has divided people in a strict social hierarchy based on their family's traditional livelihood and ethnicity, is deeply sensitive in India. The practice was outlawed when India gained freedom from Britain in 1947, but is still pervasive. Studies show low-caste Indians and dalits face daily challenges for decent schools, medical care and jobs.  While the data shows how low-caste Indians fare overall on various economic indicators, the government has said that the final data would not show specific caste details.

 The data released Friday revealed that of India's nearly 244 million households, more than 179 million are rural. At least 56 percent of those rural households do not own any land and depend on manual labor. Among the lowest castes in rural India the number of landless was as high as 70 percent. Nearly 107 million rural households are what the government terms as "deprived", meaning they either live in a single room made of mud and straw, have no earning adult male, or no literate adult member.

US court order on same-sex marriage: Church says a clear and emphatic "No"

  The “tragic error” in the United States shocked the Christian community across the world – Catholics and Protestants alike – last week.

 The US Supreme Court decision on June 26 interpreting the US Constitution to require all states to license and recognize same-sex “marriage” came as a bolt from the blue for the entire Catholic Church which says the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered” and homosexual practices are “sins gravely contrary to chastity”.

“It’s a tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us,” said Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The Catholic Church was vehemently opposing the same-sex marriage all these years.

 Vatican’s instructions are unambiguous.  

 There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. “Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved,” said Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect, Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, in a report.

 Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts “as a serious depravity... (cf. Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10). This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”. This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition, says Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict 16^th.

  The unique meaning of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is inscribed in our bodies as male and female. The protection of this meaning is a critical dimension of the “integral ecology” that Pope Francis has called us to promote. “Mandating marriage redefinition across the country is a tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us, especially children. The law has a duty to support every child’s basic right to be raised, where possible, by his or her married mother and father in a stable home,” Archbishop Kurtz said in his statement after the court decision.

  US Catholic bishops encouraged Catholics to move forward with faith, hope, and love: faith in the unchanging truth about marriage, rooted in the immutable nature of the human person and confirmed by divine revelation; hope that these truths will once again prevail in our society, not only by their logic, but by their great beauty and manifest service to the common good; and love for all our neighbors, even those who hate us or would punish us for our faith and moral convictions.

 However, Vatican is clear about one thing. According to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided”. They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity.
 According to Vatican, in situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. “One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection,” says Cardinal Ratzinger.
  Cardinal Ratziner’s report, approved by Pope John Paul II, says legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.

Pope Francis: 'Revolution' needed to combat climate change

By Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

 As a former teacher, Pope Francis knows how to deliver a stern lecture. On Thursday, he gave one for the ages.
 While slamming a slew of modern trends -- the heedless worship of technology, our addiction to fossil fuels and compulsive consumerism -- the Pope said humanity's "reckless" behavior has pushed the planet to a perilous "breaking point."
 "Doomsday predictions," the Pope warned, "can no longer be met with irony or disdain."
 Citing the scientific consensus that global warming is disturbingly real, Francis left little doubt about who to blame.
 Big businesses, energy companies, short-sighted politicians, scurrilous scientists, laissez faire economists, indifferent individuals, callous Christians and myopic media professionals. Scarcely any area of society escaped his withering criticism.
 "The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth," Francis said. "In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish."
Francis' bracing manifesto came Thursday in the form of an encyclical, a letter traditionally addressed from St. Peter's Square to the more than 1 billion Catholics across the globe. Derived from the Greek word for "circle," an encyclical is among the church's most authoritative teaching documents.
 But Francis has set his sights far beyond the circle of his church. With an eye toward several key climate change summits scheduled for later this year, the Pope said his letter is addressed to "every person living on this planet."
 "I would like to enter a dialogue with all people about our common home," Francis said.

Critique of modern life

 The humble invitation belies the damning analysis of modern life contained in the 184-page encyclical, entitled "Laudato Si." The archaic Italian phrase, which means "Praised Be To You," appears in the "Canticle of the Sun," a song penned by St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology.
 Subtitled, "On Care for Our Common Home," the encyclical was published Thursday in at least five languages during a news conference at the Vatican. The document was more than a year in the making, church officials say, and draws on the work of dozens of scientists, theologians, scholars from various fields and previous popes.
 "We have a situation here," said Janos Pasztor, the U.N.'s assistant secretary-general for climate change, "in which science and religion are totally aligned." Pasztor was part of a team that convened with church officials at the Vatican this April.
 With his penchant for crowd-pleasing and spontaneous acts of compassion, Pope Francis has earned high praise from fellow Catholics and others since he replaced Pope Benedict XVI in March 2013. Click through to see moments from his papacy.
 The Pope's highly anticipated encyclical recycles some of the now-familiar themes of his papacy: an abiding concern for the poor, a scorching critique of the idolatry of money and a facility for using evocative language to describe complex conundrums.
 As the first Pope from the developing world, Francis brings a moral vision shaped not in the seminaries of Europe but in the slums of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
 With language ranging from the majestic (lyrical poetry in praise of nature) to the mundane (take the bus!), the Pope put his signature stamp on a controversial topic and his moral clout on the line.
 "Laudato si" is long on laments and short on specific solutions, though the Pope repeatedly urges deep thinking and dialogue to address the complex symptoms now plaguing the planet. In broad strokes, Francis calls for a drastic change in "lifestyle, production and consumption" from unsustainable habits to more mindful means of caring for "our common home."
 "What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?" Francis asks. "The question not only concerns the environment in isolation; the issue cannot be approached piecemeal."
 And while the Pope calls for practical steps like recycling and improving public transportation, he said structural injustices require more political will and sacrifices than most societies seem willing to bear.
Nothing short of a "bold cultural revolution" could save humanity from spiraling into self-destruction, the Pope warned.
 Though it ends with a prayer, many parts of Francis' encyclical seem profoundly pessimistic, particularly from a spiritual leader known for his hopeful messages of mercy and openness. People no longer seem to believe that happy days lie ahead, the Pope lamented
 Our care for the environment is intimately connected to our care for each other, he argues, and we are failing miserably at both.
 "We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social," Francis writes, "but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental."
 The rich and powerful shut themselves up within self-enclosed enclaves, Francis argues, compulsively consuming the latest goods to feed the emptiness within their hearts, while ignoring the plight of the poor.
 The poor, meanwhile, find themselves on the run from natural disasters and degraded habitats, shunted to the bottom of the world's pile of problems with decreasing access to its natural resources.
 Francis saves his most challenging questions for modern consumers, arguing that humanity has become enamored of another apple -- and this time no Eve or serpent are around to take the fall. The temptation may have shifted from a forbidden fruit to cutting edge technology, but the sin remains the same: hubris.
 "We are not God," the Pope warns, "The Earth was here before us and has been given to us."

'Bottom of the pile'

 Though Popes since Paul VI in 1971 have addressed environmental degradation, "Laudato Si" is the first encyclical to focus primarily on creation care, the Christian idea that God gave humans the earth to cultivate, not conquer.
 Even months before its publication, the encyclical drew criticism from conservatives and climate change skeptics, who urged the Pope not to put his moral weight behind the controversial issue of global warming.
Many Catholics and environmentalists, meanwhile, eagerly awaited the encyclical. The Washington-based Catholic Climate Covenant, for example, plans to send homily hints to the 17,000 Catholic parishes in the United States for priests to use during sermons this summer. The group is also planning media events with bishops in Iowa, California, New Mexico and elsewhere.
 In the weeks before the encyclical's release, Protestant pastors and at least 300 rabbis in the United States also said they were willing and eager to embrace Pope's call for environmental justice.
 A Brazilian group made even made a tongue-in-cheek trailer ahead of Francis' encyclical, portraying the pontiff of a spiritual superhero gearing for battle against the forces of evil -- energy executives.
 In another sign of the anticipation awaiting the encyclical, the news that an Italian magazine had published a leaked draft of the document online on Monday made the front pages of several American newspapers.
From the first days of his papacy, Francis has preached about the importance of the environment, not only as a scientific concern but also a moral one. In his first homily as pontiff, Francis called six times during the short sermon for humans to protect creation.
 The encyclical published on Thursday goes well beyond any sermons, delving into fields familiar to any Catholic, such as Scripture and theology, but also wandering into sociology, politics, urban planning, economics, globalization, biology and other areas of scientific research.
 The pope has said he hopes his encyclical on the environment will reach a wide audience.
 Broken into six chapters, "Laudato Si" begins by cataloguing a host of ills wracking the planet: dirty air, polluted water, industrial fumes, toxic waste, rising sea levels and extreme weather.
 The problem is "aggravated," the Pope said, "by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels."
 If present trends continue, Francis argued, the changing climate will have grave implications for poor communities who lack the resources to adapt or protect themselves from natural disasters.
 Many will be forced to leave their homes, while the economically and politically powerful "mask" the problems or respond with indifference, the Pope said.
 The poor may get a passing mention at global economic conferences, Francis says, but their problems seem to be merely added to agendas as an afterthought.
 "Indeed, when all is said and done," the Pope said of the poor, "they frequently remain on the bottom of the pile."

Technology takes over

 Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh called Francis a Marxist after he released another statement, called an apostolic exhortation, in 2013. In the statement, the Pope called trickle-down economics "crude" and "naive."
 Limbaugh renewed the criticism on Wednesday, accusing Francis of adopting "communist way of doing things: Controlling mankind through ... governments backed by police or military power."
Apparently undeterred, the Pope doubles down on his critique of modern capitalism -- especially aspects of the free market -- in "Laudato Si."
 "We need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals," he said.
 What's more, the Pope called the idea that the "invisible forces of the market" can adequately regulate the economy the "same kind of thinking" that leads to the "exploitation of children and abandonment of the elderly who no longer serve our interests."
 In one particularly searing section, Francis compared laissez faire economists to mobsters, drug lords, illegal organ harvesters and human traffickers. All are part of a "throwaway culture," the Pope argues, that treats human beings as just another commodity to exploit.
 The Pope's attack on the "myth of progress" is more surprising. But he connected his critique to a "worshipping of earthly powers," where humans have usurped the role of God, imposing our own laws and interests on reality with little thought to the long-term consequences.
 In particular, he argued that our "cult of human power" and blind adoption of technology has been a Faustian bargain, offering a wealth of benefits, but at the risk of losing our souls.
 "Life gradually becomes a surrender to situations conditioned by technology," he said, "itself viewed as the principle key to the meaning of existence."
 "It has become countercultural," Francis continued, "to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology."
 The omnipresent digital media feeds our "information overload" and "mental pollution," the Pope said. Those, in turn, lead to an excessive self-centeredness that tends to "shield us from direct contact with the pain, the fears and the joys of others and the complexity of their personal experience."
 "Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age," he continued, "but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way."
 Despite his bleak view of our present situation, the Pope offered glimmers of hope near the end of his "joyful and troubling" reflection.
 "Yet all is not lost," Francis said. "Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start, despite their mental and social conditioning."

Getting business 'on board'

 Opposition to the Pope's encyclical began several months before it was released.
 In April, the Heartland Institute, a conservative group skeptical of climate change, mounted a campaign to convince Pope Francis that global warming "is not a crisis."
 "The Pope is putting his moral authority behind the radical environmental agenda of the United Nations -- and he's doing it after being told only part of the climate story," Jim Lakely, a Heartland spokesman, said in an email interview on Tuesday.
 Lakely said Heartland will contact "hundreds of thousands of Catholics" in the United States through mail and email countering the Pope's message and "giving them the truth about climate change."
 That may be a difficult task.
 More Americans trust Francis almost any other world or U.S. leader as a source of information on global warming, according to a survey conducted by Yale University and George Mason University. Still, the same poll showed that less than 10% of Americans view climate change as a moral issue.
 According to a Pew Research Center study released on Tuesday, American Catholics are divided along partisan lines over climate change. More than 7 in 10 believe the planet is getting warmer, and nearly half attribute global warming to human causes. A similar number (48%) view it as a very serious problem, according to Pew.
 But while more than 80% of Catholic Democrats say there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming, just half of Catholic Republicans agree. And less than a quarter of Catholic Republicans believe that global warming is a man-made or poses a very serious problem.
 Christiana Peppard, a professor of ethics at Fordham University, said she is not surprised that more  Catholics are unconvinced that climate change presents a moral imperative.
 "There's an idea that science exists in a realm separate from the way we live our lives," said Peppard, author of the book "Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis."
 But the Catholic Church has long taught that scientific facts, while reliable, don't answer deeper questions about human meaning and morality. "For that, ethical reasoning and contemplation are important," Peppard said.
 On the 2016 campaign trail, though, the Pope's eco-encylical seemed to be a tough sell.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who is Catholic, said the Pope should "leave science to the scientists."
 At a town hall in New Hampshire this week, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Catholic convert, said, "I don't get economic policies from my bishops or my cardinals or my Pope. I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting into the political realm."
 Other Catholics, though, were eagerly awaiting the Pope's encyclical.
 In addition to Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, the Vatican panel presenting "Laudato Si" included  Metropolitan John of Pergamon, an Eastern Orthodox priest; John Schellenuber, founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Carolyn Wo, the Chinese-American director of Catholic Relief Services; and Valeria Martano, an Italian historian and member of the Rome-based lay Catholic Community of Sant'Egidio.
 Woo said her assignment is to connect the encyclical's concerns to the business world.
 Over the past 20 years, said Woo, former dean of the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, some corporations have adopted more ethical approaches, and she expects a wave of letters from business leaders this week praising the Pope's initiative.
 "The bottom line is that we need business, not just some, but all, to do more," Woo said. "They are the ones on the front lines. We need them on board."
 The Pope will also need world leaders to buy into his moral message, which will be key before a U.N.-sponsored climate summit in December, said Pasztor of the U.N.
 At the meeting, nations are expected to submit their plans for reducing greenhouse gases, and the Pope will likely repeat the encyclical's entreaties when he speaks at the U.N. General Assembly this September.
 "Having such an important person as the Pope talking about this issue will reach a lot of people," Pazstor said, "and at a crucial time."

Many feared killed in US church shooting

 Nine people were shot, some fatally, inside one of Charleston’s oldest and most well known black churches in South Carolina, US. A bomb threat complicated the investigation and prompted police to ask nearby residents to evacuate.

 Reporters and other onlookers huddled at the scene awaiting details on what could prove to be one of the worst mass shootings in South Carolina history.

Authorities said the shooting took place at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church downtown at approximately 9 p.m. local time. Calhoun St. Police were seen exiting the 19th century church, and their presence extended blocks beyond the site.

 Mayor Joe Riley confirmed there were fatalities.

“We’re still gathering information so it’s not the time yet for details,” he said. “I will say that this is an unspeakable and heartbreaking tragedy in this most historic church, an evil and hateful person took the lives of citizens who had come to worship and pray together.”

Riley said city police were being assisted by sheriff’s deputies, the State Law Enforcement Division and the FBI.

 Police and emergency vehicles swarmed several blocks surrounding Henrietta and Calhoun streets, just east of Marion Square. Barricades blocked off several streets to traffic, and police asked nearby residents to leave their homes.

Police were still looking for the gunman late Wednesday, and helicopters are hovering above. Police spokesman Charles Francis described the suspect as a 21-year-old white male in a gray sweatshirt/hoodie and jeans with Timberland boots. He has a slender build.

There are victims involved, but police have not said how many. No deaths have yet been reported. A chaplain is on the scene.

State Sen. Marlon Kimpson, D-Charleston, said he has been talking with Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon and said, “It’s my understanding that there are some very serious injuries and possibly deaths.”

Kimpson is the Democratic colleague of Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who is the church’s pastor and was believed to be inside during the shooting. Kimpson said he is praying for Pinckney and for “our Mother Emanuel AME church,” as it’s affectionately called by many parishioners. It is the South’s oldest black congregation south of Baltimore.

Police in South Carolina say that a gunman is still at large after a shooting at a church in Charleston. 
Police described the suspect as a white man of approximately 21 years of age with a small or slender build. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt with blue jeans and Timberland boots, and was clean shaven.
The Post and Courier reported that a man matching the suspect's description was briefly detained near the shooting scene, but was later let go by police. The man, identified as 21-year-old David Corrie, said he was walking out of the station's store when police forced him to get down on the ground and handcuffed him.
 The pastor of the church is Clementa Pinckney, a member of the South Carolina state Senate. It was not immediately clear if he was in the church at the time of the shooting. The church is a historic African-American church that traces its roots to 1816, when several churches split from Charleston's Methodist Episcopal church. One of its founders, Denmark Vesey, tried to organize a slave revolt in 1822. He was caught, and white landowners had his church burned in revenge. Parishioners worshipped underground until after the Civil War.
-- Agencies

Why not a night shelter for homeless people in every church?

A night shelter for homeless people. This is indeed a good idea.

Vatican is planning to set up a shelter for homeless people around the area. Why only in Vatican? This could be an idea which can be implemented by thousands of Christian churches across the world.

Vatican Radio says, “among the services that homeless people around the Vatican are receiving from the charity of Pope ‎Francis, will be added another one – a place to sleep.” After a place for shower, a barber’s service in the ‎Vatican and a hot meal at Rome’s Terminus station, the homeless will soon have a dormitory near the ‎Vatican, said the Pope’s Almoner or official alms-giver, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski. If all the churches under Vatican follow this example, you can easily bring down the miseries of homeless people.

“We are ‎preparing something,” the Polish archbishop told Italian news agency Ansa. The site on Via dei ‎Penitenzieri close to the Vatican, is currently being renovated. The 30-bed facility will be used only as ‎night shelter and will be managed by volunteers. The date for the start of the service has not been fixed ‎as yet. As Archbishop Krajewski has always said, these services are meant to give dignity to the person.‎

Most churches in different countries own real estate and buildings. Many of them can emulate the example set by Pope Francis and set up night shelters. This will prove to be a boon to millions of homeless people and the least a Christian community can provide to poor people.

Many of the churches in Brazil, Argentina, S Korea, India, Italy, France, Germany and so on are in big complexes. The parish community can easily set up a night shelter in those complexes which will provide a safe place to sleep, breakfast and toilet facilities. To begin with, such homes can easily be set up in metropolitan cities which face acute shortage of housing.

Remember the Bible words. "And the King will say, 'I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me,” says Mathew 25:40.

Don't throw stones... this church (Edappally) is a place to worship God

  

 

 

 

 

   When you build a house, you will try to do it in the best possible way. Right? You will try to use the best of materials and designs and make it as chic as possible. Why don't you then build the best for Jesus?  

 It's a magnificent church, an imposing and sublime architectural wonder. The awe-inspiring place of worship is also a subject matter of a raging controversy.
 Yes, we're talking about the new church built at Edappally, Kochi, India. Estimated to have cost around Rs 30 crore (US dollar 46,87,000), it took nearly 15 years to complete the construction of the church, which incidentally is in the name of St George, a 3rd century Christian martyr. For the uninitiated populace, there're more outsiders, that too from all the religions, than insiders or parish members, coming here to pray for their special needs every day. More than that, church is a place where you can experience the tangible presence of God. 
 Sadly, the new church is in the firing line of a section of people within the Roman Catholic Church who made a public display of their opposition to the construction of this beautiful church. I can only say that this diatribe against the construction of a church is abominable and deplorable. This particular church is one of the most popular in Kerala and hundreds of faithful come there daily.
 I happened to read a letter sent by a person to Cardinal George Alencherry, which said, “this (church) represents a low point in the annals of the church... It's obvious that the Syro-Malabar church is trying to impress on everyone, Rome not excluded, that it's the most powerful, wealthy and influential church in Kerala.” I read another Facebook message which comments about bishops and priests in the most inappropriate and undesirable manner. "Priests and bishops are in race for power, race to show strength....," this FB post said. Such letters and messages show the moral and spiritual turpitude of people. Sir, it’s a place to worship our Almighty God. You want the church to be in a dilapidated condition?
 Most of the people who sang Hosannas against the church construction are living in palatial houses worth crores of rupees. They have no qualms about spending huge amounts on such ”palaces” where not more than two or three people live. Do we really need huge palatial houses for us in Kerala? Take a tour from North to South Kerala. You can see thousands of such villas dotting the Kerala landscape. This really is  a vulgar display of wealth and power. Instead of going around criticizing and castigating church and its authorities, try to come closer to God. We are playing into the hands of devil with such fib in the name of a church. I believe this particular church is for the posterity, for the next 10 or 15 generations.
 If you scan the social media and newspapers from the region, you will see hundreds of messages, mails and reports castigating the church authorities for constructing this beautiful church in Edappally. Instead of trying to run down the church, we must follow the Bible, and never stoop down to the lowest level by hurling scorn and contempt at church officials, including the head of Syro-Malabar Catholic church Cardinal Alencherry who consecrated the church recently.
 Close to 75 per cent of Christains in Kerala belong to the middle class segment. They are wealthy, as mostly work outside the state or in Middle East, the US, Europe and Australia. They own tony villas and plots across the state, but it's another matter that most of these villas are either locked or their old parents live in loneliness. A villa costs not less than Rs one crore (US dollar 156,250) in the state. Some of these are palatial bungalows with half-a-dozen bedrooms and match with villas in any European country or the US for sheer opulence and grandeur. If some people have a problem with this "opulent" church, they should think about their own palatial houses instead of complaining in Facebook and Twitter that church authorities should build more orphanages and old age homes.
 Studies reveal that Kerala tops in per head liquor consumption in India with 8.3 litres per person. Liquor sales shoot up on important Christian days like Christmas and Easter. People in Kerala set a record in alcohol consumption. Why is it so? Why can't they (people against building church) try to stop this alcoholism and give away that money to old age and children homes?
 Though I don't live in Kerala, I know one thing. Syro-Malabar church runs 211 old age homes, 185 children homes, 230 orphanages and 54 specialised healthcare and leprosy care centres in Kerala. Besides, there're hundreds of hospitals and other institutions. We need more such institutions to take care of poor people.
That said, I'm not advocating that all churches in Kerala should be like Edappilly. Use wisdom and intelligence. Spend money wisely on such things without getting into a competition with each other. But lets give the best to Jesus. Like Abel did. We shouldn't end up like a Cain.