‘Faith is a conviction… theoretical knowledge is not enough’

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INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP MAR THOMAS ELAVANAL By Sheena George & Nelson C. J.  Soft-spoken and affable Mar Thomas Elavanal, Bishop of Kalyan Diocese, never minces words while talking about various issues related to the faithful and the diocese. In an interview, Mar Elavanal spoke about vocation, maintaining a personal relationship with God, Catholic teachings and ways to tackle inroads by Protestants, sustaining faith and the need to maintain a watch over children while using new technologies like internet and smart phone. Excerpts:  As we celebrate the year of consecrated life, how can we, as parents, encourage our children to take up this as their vocation? Vocation is a call from God. First of all what we need is prayer from the part of parents. Second, set a good example to the children. Everyday my parents used to go to church and in the morning they used to pray Rosary for us. So I was always attached to the church… and as an altar boy I used to recite the prayers in Syriac language. I still remember how my parents used to talk about priests. With at most respect they used to talk about them, like they are men of God. If a priest visited our home, my mother would go and kneel before him and kiss his hands. If she cooked something special at home, we children were entrusted to take a share of it  to the parish priests. Actually my parents never asked me whether I wanted to become a priest. My two sisters are nuns and my brother is a priest. Some of the examples of priests also motivated me to become a priest.  At home, if the parents talk negatively about priests, children will never get an idea to become a priest or nun. To conclude, I would say that the vocation to priesthood is a gift of God and I got this gift of God, the vocation, through my parents. So the parents should take up the responsibility to make the children understand that it’s a sublime vocation. Your Excellency, do you think Sunday catechism and family unit meetings are enough for children, or even adults, to get into a personal relationship with Jesus? If not, what else is necessary?   Sunday school is helping the children and youth to grow in faith. Theoretical knowledge about faith can be given through Sunday school. There also, children need good examples to get a conviction about what they learn in Sunday school. In school or college, or to become a good engineer, theoretical knowledge is sufficient. But faith is a conviction. That’s why after teaching the disciples for 3 years Jesus asked them: "who do you say I am?" This He asked to know whether they got the conviction "who He is". So whenever I talk to Catechism teachers I tell them to give the children living examples and conviction about what they learn.   Last week, when we priests were attending a retreat conducted by Fr Dominic Valanmanal, he spoke about his life experience of living in faith. That motivated me very much. Maybe I have learned the same or even more about faith theoretically but his life example inspired me. Good relationship with Jesus will give a good relationship with the church also. A good relationship with Jesus will always reflect in the relationship with our brethren and with the church. So children will never go away from the church when they become youth if they have good relationship with Jesus. How can we prevent ourselves from getting into the trap of protestant teachings?  First of all, this happens because of our lack of knowledge about our faith. We don’t know how to answer their questions or express the correct knowledge about our faith... hence we can get easily influenced by them. That’s why faith formation must be a continued process. So we must have a platform to discuss our doubts. In Catholic Church, we have three fortresses to protect our faith: 1. Word of God; 2. The Magisterium or the official teaching of the church and 3. The Sacred tradition or the teachings of the Fathers of the church. In Catholic Church, the deposit of faith is never the teaching or interpretation of one person, it’s the collective teaching. Unlike protestant teachings, Catholic Church gives importance to the Sacred traditions as a source of faith. it's never a thought or interpretation of one person. It must always fall in line with or in the light of the tradition of the church. It’s a teaching of 2,000 years. So in order not to get influenced by wrong teachings, we must have platforms to discuss and clear our doubts. Hence an ongoing adult faith formation is a must. I know about one such platform. Parents’ (who are waiting in the church to take their children back home from Catechism classes) get together on Sundays and a resource person to guide them. Whenever we get doubts about venerating Mother Mary or about matters of faith like purgatory etc., we must have such platforms for discussion to clarify our doubts. But somebody must be guiding the discussion. As inter-caste marriages are on the rise in the diocese, what can be done about the situation? What's your assessment?  Why do we discourage inter-caste marriages? In marriage, God is bringing together two persons, making them one in body, mind and spirit. They have to be one in faith to be one in spirit. If faith is not one, they can never become one in spirit. Actually speaking, they cannot pray together. Even ideologically, they can be one. But the foundation is not stable. If the one partner, who is not in Christian faith, is willing to change his/ her faith then you can say it’s a little better than keeping their different faith and getting married. In that case, you can say it's 75 per cent solved. Because there are cases of conversion and there are people who faithfully keep it.  So if somebody does that (conversion), it should not be as a mask just to enter into marriage. When the partners keep their different faith and get married, what about their children? I say this inter-caste marriage is a crime against their children. Which faith should they follow? Who will teach them? They are confusing their children. The Bible teaches no marriage is allowed with non-believers because you will lose your faith. But unfortunately many a time we have to give the consent letter. You know why? Some parents who are living in good faith find their children adamant in marrying someone from different faith.  Seeing these parents' tears and fearing that if they're not allowed to marry in the church we may lose both, we give the consent. So to keep at least one in the Church we give dispensation. But that (inter-caste marriage) is not considered as a sacrament. To receive the sacrament of matrimony, both the partners must be Catholics. I take classes for the youth and when they understand the teaching even they say this kind of marriage must not be allowed in the Church.  What are the challenges before the diocese at present and in the coming years? Has the diocese been able to take the message of Jesus to interior regions of Maharashtra?  We have four missions. I can say, to a great extend, we are able to take the message of Christ. Sangli mission is the topmost. There we have social and charitable activities -- Christ witnessing events. There was one priest in one of the villages. Every morning he used to pray before the Holy Eucharist in the church. He told the villagers if they have any prayer intentions they can give it to him so that he can pray to God about it. One day, villagers asked whether they can join the prayers. The priest agreed and together they started praying. It so happened that the villagers found their intentions answered and the number of people increased like 25-30.  One day, when I visited this place they were praying. All of them were Hindus but they were praying around the Holy Eucharist. All came to greet me touching my feet. The end result was that a whole village received our faith and we have a parish there just for Marathi people. There was nobody to oppose as the whole villagers took  the decision together and not one person. It’s a small village comprising only 35 people.  We don’t have any challenges at present or even recent times for our diocese. In most of the places, there is an understanding between us and other communities. The advantage they see is that we work for the poor out of love for our Lord and as per His commandment. We had crisis situation before but not at present. We have 185 priests in the diocese including the mission areas.  How can we prevent the young generation from endangering themselves by modern technology? For example, smart phones and internet etc...   A conscientisation must be given to the youth about this through classes. We must keep a watchful eye on them. Only parents can give that. Even in seminaries, our brothers are not allowed to use personal cell phones. The use of computer by our children must be given even more vigilant attention. Even though modern technologies have made our life easier, it has many adverse effects as well. Distraction from their studies is one of them. An enticing or tempting world has been created by the digital world. So we have to be all the more watchful or else there is every chance that our children will go wayward.  How can we encourage our youth to get involved in religious work?  What I suggest is give them various responsibilities, guiding them from behind and correcting them whenever necessary. That will make them more responsible and confident. When I visited Kalewadi parish, Pune, I saw the second trustee was a young person -- from the youth section. I was surprised. Children born and brought up in Kerala are prompted to do things more responsibly than their counterparts in Mumbai. Here in Mumbai, they are provided with whatever they need. So they are not that self responsible. So it is better to train them, giving responsibilities at a young age itself. Then they will do church work without any reluctance. Entrusting them with responsibilities, having confidence in them and giving proper guidance and correction are necessary to make them responsible. How can we the parishioners help you in your ministry?  What I feel is that members of Kalyan Diocese are a group of people who love the church and the diocese. It's not me alone... but also the priests who have visited here feel the same. People are more co-operative here than in Kerala. It's not because here it is a small number, but here we are responsible to build everything for us. In Kerala, everything is provided. Here we can have a church only if we personally contribute.    Each person plays an important role. Major Archbishop visited various churches in our diocese. After visiting these churches, the Major Archbishop asked me, how were you able to build these beautiful churches? I had to tell him, here in our diocese, we have people who are generously supportive and who collaborate with the church. It's because of the people of God we are able to build. Here we feel a sense of belongingness.  Your Excellency has turned 67 years, the diocese is 27 years old and this is your 18th year as Bishop. What do you feel when you look back all these years?  I have satisfaction and joy. When I say joy, I didn’t have any crisis situation at all. Satisfaction because Lord has done many things for our diocese like helping us build churches, buying places etc. We needed a minor seminary and a pastoral centre. All these we got by His grace. That’s why this satisfaction. Another thing is we don’t have any tension like big financial crisis or problems in relationship between priests and the bishop or with the people.

Many of us Christians behave like mummies in a museum

 How serious are Christians in their faith? Many of the Christians -- Catholics included -- are not taking their faith seriously. I would rather say many of us are also-ran and behave like mummies in a museum. We are not seeking Jesus Our Lord; He is not considered as our Saviour and Redeemer.

  For many of us Christians, Church is some kind of a club to climb the social ladder or get business deals. Many of us treat Church as a place to be seen and manage things. And so the biggest threat of all gradually takes shape: “the gray pragmatism of the daily life of the Church, in which all appears to proceed normally, while in reality faith is wearing down and degenerating into small-mindedness”.

 As Evangelii Gaudium says, a “tomb psychology” thus develops and slowly transforms Christians into mummies in a museum. Disillusioned with reality, with the Church and with themselves, they experience a constant temptation to cling to a faint melancholy, lacking in hope, which seizes the heart like “the most precious of the devil’s potions”.

  Called to radiate light and communicate life, in the end they are caught up in things that generate only darkness and inner weariness, and slowly consume all zeal for the apostolate.

  Most of us are like the crowd that followed Jesus when he went to the house of Jairus to see his sick daughter. (Please read Mark 5:21-43). A big crowd was milling around Jesus. They didn’t know know who Jesus really is. They just followed him and saw His miracles. “Many of us are like the crowd that followed Jesus. We don’t know him. We go for Holy Mass and sit in the church as if some drama or cinema is going on there,” says Rev Fr Biju Kollamkunnel.


 This mentality was displayed by the crowd  around Jesus who was on the way to Jairus’ house.
  That said, there are some people who have deep faith and belief in Jesus like that woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. ^“When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”  Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering,” Bible says.
 The small group of people like the sick woman seeks Jesus and trust in Him. And miracles happen in their life. This small group gets healed.

 Mark 5:35 says, “while Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?” The people who said this don’t know Jesus. They didn’t know He was the son of God. If they had known that they wouldn’t have said this.  
 The Bible continues, “He went in and said to them, ’Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.’ But they laughed at him.” The Bible says “they laughed at him”. They thought Jesus arrived late and the daughter of Jairus has already died. So what can Jesus do now? The crowd underestimated Jesus. Later we read that Jesus brought her back to life.

 Yes, we are also part of this crowd. We don’t know Jesus. We also behave like the way this crowd behaved. We attend the Holy Mass or praise and worship without knowing Him. We sit in the Church or prayer hall as if we are in a cinema hall or a theatre. And then, we call ourselves Christians.  

 Pope Francis uses harsh words to lambast such people. He says spiritual worldliness lurks behind a fascination with social and political gain, or pride in their ability to manage practical affairs, or an obsession with programmes of self-help and self-realization. It can also translate into a concern to be seen, into a social life full of appearances, meetings, dinners and receptions. It can also lead to a business mentality, caught up with management, statistics, plans and evaluations whose principal beneficiary is not God’s people but the Church as an institution.

 This leads us to display a “tomb psychology” and slowly transforms Christians into mummies in a museum. Jesus doesn’t want us to be mummies.

  

  

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Sanctify your secret life… Mene, mene, tekel, parsin, God warns

‘Do we have a secret life? Yes, most of us have a bad and evil secret side. We don’t disclose this evil life to anyone. Not even to priests or pastors. But Bible says very clearly that we need to sanctify our secret life. We need to confess our sins, repent our sins and reconcile with God.      

 Mene, mene, tekel, parsin’: This is God’s warning to everyone, not to King Belshazzar alone.

 We indulge in lot of things that God doesn’t want us to do. This can be an adulterous life, addiction to porn, living a sinful life without a sense of sin, violation of God’s commandments and refusal to repent the sins, murder, character assassination etc. etc. Then we keep away from people and society. We hide somewhere. We remain lonely, like Elijah in a cave. 

  We must come out of that dark cave to the sunlight. We must sanctify our secret life. Yes, sanctification through confession, repentance and reconciliation. Sadly, we live like modern-day Cains.

  God asked Cain: “where’s your brother Abel?” God is not questioning Cain alone – He’s asking us also. Where’s the baby that I had given life in your wife’s womb? You must ask yourself about the aborted child. It can be your aborted child or your own father whom you despise or your neighbour with whom you have an enmity. Your Abel may be your father, neighbour, brother or your own kids.

 Rev Fr Nelson Job OCD, one of my favourite charismatic preachers, vividly explained this recently on a television programme. Fr Nelson quoted some good examples from Bible to drive home the importance and necessity for sanctification of our secret life.

1.  When you read King David’s story, you come across an incident. When David was ruling as a “Mr Clean”, Prophet Nathan came to his palace and told him a story. “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

 “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.” David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! ⁶ He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man.” Then King David repented. He had earlier despised the word of the Lord by doing what was evil in his eyes. David struck down Uriah, his army chief, with the sword and took his wife to be his own. David had violated commandments 9, 6 and 5 and ruled as a “Mr Clean”. King David had a secret life which Nathan pointed out to him and he repented.  

2. Let’s move to Daniel 5:25: "This is the inscription that was written: mene, mene, tekel, parsin.”  

 These words were written by a mysterious hand on the wall of Belshazzar's palace, and interpreted by Daniel as predicting the doom of the king and his dynasty. 

  Holy Bible says: Once when King Belshazzar was giving a banquet to his lords and drinking wine from the golden vessels of the Temple of Yhwh, a man's hand was seen writing on the wall certain mysterious words. The king got frightened by the apparition and ordered his astrologers to explain the inscription; but they were unable to read it. Daniel was then summoned to the royal palace; and the king promised him costly presents if he would decipher the inscription. 

 Daniel read it "Mene, mene, tekel, parsin" and explained it to mean that God had "numbered" the kingdom of Belshazzar and brought it to an end; that the king had been weighed and found wanting; and that his kingdom was divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

 Yes, these words -- Mene, mene, tekel, parsin – are supposed to sanctify our secret life. These are warning words against your evil secret life. 

3.  Come to 2 Kings 20:1: Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, "This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover." Hezekiah then knew that God had come to know about his secret life. He repented and prayed. Amoz then came back and said God had extended his life by another 15 years.

 When he was able to sanctify his life, God extended his life span.  

4.    Fr Nelson narrated an incident. Once a lady, with foul-smelling wounds came for a charismatic prayer retreat. After the retreat, she was admitted to the hospital from where she requested him to come and pray for her. When he went there, he understood her physical condition was very weak and struggled to sit in the room because of the intense bad odour from her festering wounds. She gave a long confession that lasted for 20 minutes. She told the priest about many secret deeds that she committed over several years --- things she had never disclosed so far. She repented. The he got a message from Jesus that she is being healed. After around 20 days, all her wounds were healed and she regained normal health.

  The message is simple: sanctify your secret life and God will shower His blessings. But you have committed several sins and still living with these sins. 

5. Lets turn to John 4:16: “Jesus told her (Samaritan woman), “Go, call your husband and come back.”  “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

 When Jesus revealed her secret life, she confessed. Jesus gave her a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

 Jesus makes it clear: Sanctify your secret life.

6. John 8:7 says: “When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” People who were about to throw stones at a prostitute were taken aback. Their hands went down, stones fell.

 Jesus revealed their secret life. They were all big-time sinners. The woman – Mary Magdalene – repented and turned to God. She became a new creation after the sanctification of her secret life.  

 In short, sanctification is a key process to achieve eternal life. We need to realize it before it’s too late.

       

Stand up, raise your hands and pray... we don't have faith

 When Rev Fr Lijo Brahmakulam started his bike on a Monday morning to rush for an urgent meeting, a man came running to him. “Father, please bless this rosary for me,” he told the father. “Can you come later? I’m urgently going somewhere… please come some other time,” Fr Lijo told that man.

 However, as the guy, a Hindu, was persistent, Fr Lijo got curious and sought an explanation. The story is something like this: his daughter couldn’t sleep in the night and she used to stay awake and cry. Almost a year ago, a priest gave him a blessed rosary for his daughter. Lo and behold, his daughter started sleeping well after wearing the rosary. However, two days ago, she lost this rosary and she was back to square one. She couldn’t sleep at night for two days. So an anxious father came running to the priest to get a rosary blessed for her.

 The bottom line is that a non-Christian believed in the power of a blessed rosary. A Hindu by religion, he had faith in the power of Jesus Christ. His faith worked a miracle for him. The power of Lord’s protection surrounded his daughter. When she lost the rosary, his daughter was bereft of this power.

 We Christians don’t have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. I have heard priests and pastors saying that non-Christians getting blessings and grace abundantly from Jesus. Christians attend numerous prayer meetings, worships, adoration, Holy Mass and wear rosary, but we hardly have any faith. There's no change in us. The result is that we don’t get blessings and grace from our Lord. There will be at least ten rosaries in a Catholic family. However, there’s no blessing and grace of Lord in that family. Why?

 Please read Luke 17:6:  Jesus replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.” We have little faith in Jesus. We don't take His presence seriously. That's the reason for sons and daughters going wayward and going out of the protective cover of Jesus Christ. They get into the trap laid by devil.

 Rev Fr Dominic Valanmanal, Director of Marian Retreat Centre, Anakkara, India, says, “it's time that we stand up and raise our hands, pray and seek His blessings. We don't do that. When we pray, we don't pray with faith." Both Fr Dominic and Fr Lijo ask faithful to raise their hands, day and night, and pray. You may be in a depressed state or facing a nervous breakdown. You may be unhappy over lot of things. Your children are going out of control. You are on the verge of losing your job... Whatever it's.  "You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book, says Psalms 56:8.

 God is listening. Not a drop of your tear will go waste. When the appropriate moment or situation comes, your prayers will be answered. You must have that faith and conviction. "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours," says  Mark 11:24.  Again, lets go James 1:6, "but when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."

 However, our problem is that we pray without any faith. Sometimes, our prayers are mechanical. For example, the family prayer in many Christian homes has become mechanical or as some kind of routine like brushing the teeth or taking bath. It's of no use. When you pray, pray seriously, stand up and raise your hands to heaven. No doubt, heaven will open up and you will get abundant blessings.  The answer to your prayer will be instant if you follow what Jesus tells us in Bible. God won't listen to your prayer if have enmity, revenge or jealousy to anybody. Leave all that aside, and make peace with your enemy.

 In Bible, we read about a religious leader named Jairus. His daughter was lying on her deathbed and so Jairus goes to Jesus and tells him about his situation. As soon as Jairus spoke his faith, Jesus was attracted by that faith and went with him. That's faith.
If you pray intensely and with faith, God will answer your prayers. In Mathew chapter 17, Bible tells us disciples were unable perform a miracle. "When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.” “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” says Mathew 17:14-19. Jesus then made the mustard seed comment.

 The fact is that if you have faith as much as the mustard seed, even you will be able to perform miracles that Jesus did. But we pray with several "ifs and buts". We do it mechanically as some kind of ritual. Pray with passion and devotion. Pray during day and night. Pray when everyone is asleep. It's also a way of walking with Jesus. It will help us in keeping devil at bay.
    
 

What about you? Are you ready for the mission?

 Every Christian man and woman has received a mission to help build up the Church. 
 What about you? It’s nobody else but Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church, who asked this question.
  

Pope, who is on a US visit, said fulfilling that responsibility will require "creativity in adapting to changed situations" and called for "a much more active engagement on the part of the laity."  The Pope’s words came during his homily at Mass celebrated with Bishops, Clergy and Religious in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.
 The city is the final leg of his 6-day pastoral visit to the US and the venue for the Church’s World Meeting of Families.
  “This morning I learned something about the history of this beautiful Cathedral: the story behind its high walls and windows.  I would like to think, though, that the history of the Church in this city and state is really a story not about building walls, but about breaking them down,” Pope Francis said.  It is a story about generation after generation of committed Catholics going out to the peripheries, and building communities of worship, education, charity and service to the larger society.
   That story is seen in the many shrines which dot this city, and the many parish churches whose towers and steeples speak of God’s presence in the midst of our communities.  It is seen in the efforts of all those dedicated priests, religious and laity who for over two centuries have ministered to the spiritual needs of the poor, the immigrant, the sick and those in prison. “And it is seen in the hundreds of schools where religious brothers and sisters trained children to read and write, to love God and neighbor, and to contribute as good citizens to the life of American society.  All of this is a great legacy which you have received, and which you have been called to enrich and pass on,” Pope Francis said.
  He spoke about the story of Saint Katharine Drexel, one of the great saints raised up by the local Church. 
  When she spoke to Pope Leo XIII of the needs of the missions, the Pope – he was a very wise Pope! – asked her pointedly: “What about you?  What are you going to do?”  Those words changed Katharine’s life, because they reminded her that, in the end, every Christian man and woman, by virtue of baptism, has received a mission.  Each one of us has to respond, as best we can, to the Lord’s call to build up his Body, the Church, he said. 
 What about you? “I would like to dwell on two aspects of these words in the context of our particular mission to transmit the joy of the Gospel and to build up the Church, whether as priests, deacons, or members of institutes of consecrated life,” Pope said. 
  First, those words (What about you?) were addressed to a young person, a young woman with high ideals, and they changed her life. They made her think of the immense work that had to be done, and to realize that she was being called to do her part.  How many young people in our parishes and schools have the same high ideals, generosity of spirit, and love for Christ and the Church!  Do we challenge them?  Do we make space for them and help them to do their part? ... to find ways of sharing their enthusiasm and gifts with communities, above all in works of mercy and concern for others?  Do we share our own joy and enthusiasm in serving the Lord?” Pope Francis said.
   One of the great challenges facing the Church in this generation is to foster in all the faithful a sense of personal responsibility for the Church’s mission, and to enable them to fulfill that responsibility as missionary disciples, as a leaven of the Gospel in our world, he said. This will require creativity in adapting to changed situations, carrying forward the legacy of the past not primarily by maintaining our structures and institutions, which have served us well, but above all by being open to the possibilities which the Spirit opens up to us and communicating the joy of the Gospel, daily and in every season of our life, Pope said.
  “What about you?” It is significant that those words of the elderly Pope were also addressed to a lay woman. “We know that the future of the Church in a rapidly changing society will call, and even now calls, for a much more active engagement on the part of the laity.  The Church in the United States has always devoted immense effort to the work of catechesis and education. Our challenge today is to build on those solid foundations and to foster a sense of collaboration and shared responsibility in planning for the future of our parishes and institutions,” he said.
  This does not mean relinquishing the spiritual authority with which we have been entrusted; rather, it means discerning and employing wisely the manifold gifts which the Spirit pours out upon the Church.  In a particular way, it means valuing the immense contribution which women, lay and religious, have made and continue to make, to the life of our communities. 
 Pope thanked everyone for the way in which they answered Jesus’ question which inspired their own vocation: “What about you?” “I encourage you to be renewed in the joy of that first encounter with Jesus and to draw from that joy renewed fidelity and strength. I look forward to being with you in these days and I ask you to bring my affectionate greetings to those who could not be with us, especially the many elderly priests and religious who join us in spirit,” he said.
  “During these days of the World Meeting of Families, I would ask you in a particular way to reflect on our ministry to families, to couples preparing for marriage, and to our young people.  I know how much is being done in your local Churches to respond to the needs of families and to support them in their journey of faith. I ask you to pray fervently for them, and for the deliberations of the forthcoming Synod on the Family,” Pope said.

Pope Francis in the United States

Pope Francis greets Sister Marie Mathilde, 102 years old, at the Jeanne Jugan Residence in Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2015. Photo courtesy of the Little Sisters of the Poor

Pope Francis on Thursday (24th September) made history by becoming the first Pope ever to address a joint session of the United States Congress

Pope gives impromptu greeting to crowds in Washington Mall

U.S. President Barack Obama and Pope Francis walk through the colonnade prior to an Oval Office meeting on September 23, 2015

Get out of that pigsty, repent and return to the house

 "Its better if my son dies," said a parent. He thinks that his wayward son is a burden to the family and society. 

 Even brothers and sisters also talk among themselves: "it's better if he/she dies.  Why should he/she live in this manner?" Why do they say this? He or she is living in the same way as the prodigal son (Bible parable) lived in the pigsty. They don't want to see him or her living in such miserable and sinful environment. 

 Yes, we human beings talk in this manner, but our God doesn't say anything like this about a person. God doesn't want a person to be destroyed or trapped by Devil. God waits. He has lot of patience. He's waiting for the lost son to come back. He led a sinful life, but God waits patiently to see the return of the prodigal son. True, he left my house, but God is waiting for his return.

 People who keep away from God are the ones who lost their wisdom. God is eager that people should get the wisdom back. These thoughts are from Rev Fr Mathew Peruvelil.  
   
 God loves everyone. When we come to the parable of the prodigal son, we know that the prodigal son did a stupid thing. He took his share of wealth from the father and left for a distant place. He secured his entire share from the father and there was nothing left out. When we read the Bible we know that what he did was a folly. The prodigal son thought he can live a good life without any control. There was no one to caution or warn him against doing anything wrong or sinful. He destroyed his wealth slowly and steadily. When he was losing wealth, he didn't care to think how he would survive when he becomes totally bankrupt.

 This prodigal son left a prosperous house -- a house which did not face shortage. He slowly slipped into a troubled state of living once he stepped out of his father's prosperous house. He didn't know what was happening to him. Actually this prodigal son was throwing away all the good things that God had given him. He faced only failures, unhappiness and losses when he left his father's house. Finally he lost everything that his father had given as his share. Then there was a big famine in the region and he found it tough to survive the famine. He approached another man for a job and he was given the task of looking after pigs. The prodigal son wasn't told or given any assurance about the food. Hungry without any food, he desired to have the food which was given to pigs. His impecunious state then reached its peak.

 Then he told himself: I will go back to may father's house. His father's servants were living a good life with good food. The waste in his father's house is thrown into the pigsty. There's no shortage in his father's house.

 The wisdom about going back to his father's dawned on him quite late. When he fell into bad times, the Holy Spirit gave him the idea of going back to his father's house. When we sin and turn away from God, we leave all the blessings and grace showered by God in our lives like the way the prodigal son left his father's prosperous house and eventually lost everything. "When we wallow in sin, we plunge to new depths of sorrows, unhappiness and a miserable life. This is the state of a man who sins. When he sins, he loses all blessings, grace and all the fruits of Holy Spirit and become like the prodigal son. When he sins again and again, his sinful life leads him to new lows of misery and spiritual poverty," Rev Fr Peruvelil said in a television talk.

 When we sin again and again, the Spirit of God may give us a thought: like the prodigal son got the late wisdom, in our father's house everyone is prosperous and happy. There's no shortage there. God is calling out to come back to His house and regain the blessings that we lost by sinning repeatedly. "The house that I left, in my father's house, there's blessing and grace. That's a life of happiness and without any complaints. A life of prosperity. I had left that prosperous house once. I got stuck like a lamb in the thorns. The thorn of sins gives me wounds. Many of these wounds become bigger and bigger and it becomes more painful," he said.

  "We must go back to our father's house. This return to the father's house is very important. After leading a sinful life, we must think about our father's good house... that I was born in a good house... I want to return to my father's house. It was a bad decision to leave my father's house. I lost all the blessings and grace," he said. When we return, we might think that we are not eligible to live in that house and we should ask our father to allow us as one of the servants. I have no right to go back and live in the house as I had left that home once with my share. I managed to lose everything once and I have no right to ask for more. My father never abuses or mistreats any servant in his house. I request my father to admit me as one of the servants.  

 Read Sirach 6:2-4:  "Do not let your passions carry you away; this can tear your soul to pieces like a bull. You will be left like a dead tree without any leaves or fruit. Evil desire will destroy you and make you a joke to your enemies." Yes, passions can leave you like a dead tree without any fruit or leaves. This is what happened to the prodigal son. This will happen to us when we get into a sinful life. Passions can tear your soul to pieces like a bull. When we violate the commandments of our Lord and sin against Him, our soul is being torn to pieces like a bull. So we should remain in the father's house. Once you go out of the father's house, the bull will tear your soul to pieces.

 Look at Sirach 17:24-26: "Yet to those who repent he grants a return, and he encourages those whose endurance is failing. Turn to the Lord and forsake your sins; pray in his presence and lessen your offenses. Return to the Most High and turn away from iniquity, and hate abominations intensely." We must return to our father's house. We can lead a prosperous and happy life in our father's house. When we confess our sins and reconcile with the father, he will welcome us with open arms. In fact, God is calling us back. He loves us. "He's waiting for us to return. As we read in the parable of prodigal son, the father will run to us and embrace us. He will ask his servants to give us food, ring, clothes and a good bath. He will bring us to the original position -- the position before we left him, abandoned him. Actually we go back to the father seeking a servant's job, but the father gives more. He will reinstate us to the original position. He will raise us back to the position of his son," Rev Fr Peruvelil said. 

 This happened because the father is a loving person. It's not because the prodigal son deserved or wanted it.
 Isaiah 1:18 says: "Come now, let us settle the matter," says the Lord. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."
Our life was very bad. We led a sinful life. Come back to Lord. Then Lord will make you as white as snow though your sins are like scarlet. Are you in a mess created by sins? Don't worry. We will settle the matter, says the Lord. 

 Get rid of your old lifestyle, a life covered by sins. Get out of pigsty. When Israelites went wayward, God still loved them. God doesn't want to lose a single person. He doesn't forsake any sinner. God never wants anyone to go away from Him. There will be big happiness in heaven when a sinner repents. 
 

Why are you mistreating your father and mother?

 How do we treat our mothers, especially in their old ages? Are we treating our parents with love, care and affection when they grow old and frail? Well, if you visit some of the old-age homes, it’s crystal clear that many of us mistreat our parents and show a lack of respect and consideration for the elderly and their dignity. 
 This is abominable and a mortal sin. It's also a crime in many countries. 
 Even then, when it comes to mistreatment of parents, developed and developing countries are all in the same boat. In developing countries like India, sons and daughters dump their parents in some old age home. This mostly happens after the sons and daughters get a good job, house and a decent bank balance. They consider old and sick parents as liabilities. In developed nations like the US and Europe, elders are abandoned by their kids, forcing them to fend for themselves. Children don’t show love, care and affection to their parents. Beware, hell is waiting for such sons who mistreat their parents.
 When we think about our father and mother, Mother Mary’s image flashes through one’s mind. On September 8, Christians (especially Syrian, Coptic an Ethiopian Orthodox churches) celebrate the Nativity of Mary, or Birth of the Virgin Mary. Just hours before His death on the cross in Calvary, Jesus called John and entrusted Mother Mary to his care, saying “this is your mother.”  
  Our Lord didn't abandon His mother. Jesus then told Mother Mary: "this is your son." There's a message here. 
 The Church says it's a mortal sin to abandon the parents. “It’s is a mortal sin to discard our elderly. If we do not learn to look after and to respect our elderly, we will be treated in the same way. A society where the elderly are discarded carries within it the virus of death,” Pope Francis recently said. The biblical commandment that requires us to honour our parents, understood broadly, reminds us of the honour we must show to all elderly people. God associates a double promise with this commandment: “that you may have a long life” (Ex 20:12) and, the other, “that you might prosper” (Dt 5:16). In short, if you respect your parents and take care of them, you will live for a longer time. That’s a promise from God.
 Pope Francis says the Bible reserves a severe warning for those who neglect or mistreat their parents (cf. Ex 21:17; Lv 20:9). The same judgement applies today when parents, having become older and less useful, are marginalized to the point of abandonment. And there are so many examples. “Even educated people from wealthy families abandon their elderly parents. This happens even in Christian families,” says Rev Fr Biju Kollamkunnel, a Mumbai-based priest.
 If you pay a visit to the old age homes in your country, you will see many elderly people from well-to-do families. It’s not that they don’t have children and houses. They have been dumped in old-age homes by their own children. The Church says this is a mortal sin. A person who commits a mortal sin is one who knows that their sin is wrong, but still deliberately commits the sin anyway. This means that mortal sins are "premeditated" by the sinner and thus are truly a rejection of God’s law and love. He’s then willfully cutting off God’s grace.
  This is like playing into the hands of devil. One day you will also grow old. Then the same fate may start haunting you. Your own children will then abandon you. History will repeat. So act wisely. Take care of your parents and elderly people. And assure a place in heaven... not hell.

The photo that shocked the world

 'I was only hoping to provide a better life for my children,’ father of drowned migrant boy says

Mark MacKinnon

LONDON — The Globe and Mail

Last updated Friday, Sep. 04, 2015 1:09AM EDT

 Had the rubber dinghy carrying Alan Kurdi and his family made it to their destination – the Greek island of Kos – they would have just been four more faces in the tide of humanity that has crossed the frontiers of Europe and the West this year.

 Perhaps they would have been interviewed as they staggered ashore, or melted into the streams of migrants arriving by land and sea, fleeing the wars of the Middle East and central Asia. Even if their arrivals had been noted, the names of the Kurdi family would have been forgotten by now.

 But the rubber dinghy carrying the Kurdis never made it to Kos, instead capsizing in the rough seas just off the coast of Turkey. And now everyone knows the name of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old boy in the red T-shirt whose dead body washed up at a beach resort, captured in a photograph that somehow, finally, made the world wonder and worry about the rest of those desperately trying to reach the West.

 In the picture, little Alan looks somehow unscathed, as if he were just taking a nap in the pristine beaches of Bodrum. But his journey was anything but peaceful.

 His father, Abdullah Kurdi, told Syria’s opposition Radio Rozana that his wife and two sons died one by one in his arms on Wednesday as they clung to an overturned dinghy in waves just off the Turkish coast. He said he had paid €4,000 ($5,860) for four spaces on the five-metre-long rubber craft, which was crammed with 12 passengers for the journey to Kos, just four kilometres away. It was supposed to be a 30-minute trip.

“When we were away from the Turkish coast, oh my God the waves, we died. The Turk [smuggler] jumped into the sea, then a wave came and flipped us over. I grabbed my sons and wife and we held onto the boat,” Mr. Kurdi said, speaking slowly in Arabic and struggling at times for words.

“We stayed like that for an hour, then the first [son] died and I left him so I could help the other, then the second died, so I left him as well to help his mom and I found her dead. … what do I do. … I spent three hours waiting for the coast guard to come. The life jackets we were wearing were all fake.”

Soon afterward, Kurdi collapsed into sobs, bringing the interview to an end. “My wife is my world and I have nothing, by God. I don’t even think of getting married again or having more kids. … I am choking, I cannot breathe. They died in my arms.”

 Tiny Alan and his five-year-old brother Ghalib – who also died in the water on Wednesday – would have only known war and flight during their short lives. The family lived in Damascus, where Mr. Kurdi worked as a barber, before the 2011 outbreak of Syria’s civil war.

 As the violence closed in, they moved first to Aleppo, a city in northern Syria that quickly became one of the war’s most contested battlegrounds. So they moved again to Kobani, a Kurdish enclave near the Turkish border. Then the family fled into Turkey after Kobani was captured by Islamic State (IS) – also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh – late last year.

 Kobani is now under the control of Kurdish militias, who recaptured it with help of a U.S.-led bombing campaign. However, much of the city was reduced to rubble in the fighting, and Kobani remains the scene of regular clashes between Kurdish forces and IS.

“Daesh has taken everything from us. We came to the Turkish government and they were useless,” Mr. Kurdi said in the radio interview. “I couldn’t provide anything to my children, and my parents were helping us with the essentials even though I had a small salary.”

  Kurdi’s brother Mohammad and his four children reportedly applied for refugee status in Canada, where the family has relatives who sponsored the application, but were rejected in June. Relatives claimed that rejection helped spur Abdullah Kurdi to make the “bad” decision to attempt to reach Kos.

Two dinghies capsized in the water off the Turkish coast on Wednesday, leaving a total of 12 people dead. Their deaths were just the latest in a year that has seen more than 2,500 people – many of them from war-torn places such as Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Afghanistan – die trying to reach Europe.

In the apparent start of a crackdown on the people-smuggling rings that have profited from those risky journeys, Turkish media reported that police had arrested four men on Thursday, all Syrian nationals. They were charged with “causing the death of more than one person,” as well as “trafficking migrants.”

 The bodies of Kurdi’s wife and children were at a morgue in southern Turkey on Thursday, waiting to be transferred back to Kobani for burial.

  Kurdi told a Turkish reporter that after burying his family he intended to take up arms to fight against Islamic State.

 He also claimed that the Canadian government had contacted him to offer citizenship in the wake of the much-publicized tragedy, but that he had declined. Citizenship and Immigration Canada denied Thursday that any such offer had been made.

 “I will return to Kobani to fight against Daesh,” he said. “I have nothing to live for. I will not go to Canada despite the invitation, nor to Europe. I’m not crazy about living in those places. I was only hoping to provide a better life for my children. I have nothing now, no family, no life. But I am now speaking for other refugees so that perhaps they will be saved.”

 But what awaits him in Kobani is likely more misery. Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the YPG Kurdish militia poised near the front lines of Kobani, said a “state of vigilance” had taken hold for now in the town, which has been a battleground for Kurdish fighters and the Islamic State since September, 2014.

 For the moment, fighting is “sporadic,” and includes sniper fire and bombardment, Xelil said in a telephone interview. “We are not fully engaged [in the battlefield], but we expect Daesh to make an attack,” he said.

 He said the fighters knew little of the day-to-day lives of civilians in the town, who were able to return to their homes after U.S.-led air strikes allowed Kurdish fighters to regain control of the town in 2015. The story of little Alan Kurdi and his family had touched the fighters too.

 “Surely this represents a silent tragedy suffered by Kurds in particular, and Syrians in general,” Xelil said.

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.