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
"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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.”
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.’ ’’
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 – 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 500th
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.
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.
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.
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 16th.
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.
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."
