Catholic bishops in Kerala have cautioned people against rising occult practices in the wake of reported cases of human sacrifices in the southern Indian state.
“No civilized society can image such ghastly murders. We are shocked,” Father Jacob G Palakkappilly, the spokesperson of Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC), told Matters India on October 13, two days after the gruesome murders came to light following investigation into the missing complaint of one of the women.
According to the police, two middle aged women were sacrificed for prosperity and wealth in the past four months in Pathanamthitta district.
“Nothing but shocked. It has happened in Kerala,” said Sister Jessy Kurian, a Supreme Court lawyer, reacting to the reports of human sacrifices in a state that boasts of the highest literacy rate and a model women empowerment in India.
Daily Archives: October 28, 2022
Religious polarization in India seeping into US diaspora
In Edison, New Jersey, a bulldozer, which has become a symbol of oppression of India’s Muslim minority, rolled down the street during a parade mark-ing that country’s Independence Day. At an event in Anaheim, California, a shouting match eru-pted between people celebrating the holiday and those who show-ed up to protest violence against Muslims in India.
Indian Americans from di-verse faith backgrounds have peacefully co-existed stateside for several decades. But these recent events in the U.S. — and violent confrontations between some Hindus and Muslims last month in Leicester, England — have heightened concerns that stark political and religious polariza-tion in India is seeping into dias-pora communities.
In India, Hindu nationalism has surged under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, which rose to power in 2014 and won a landslide ele-ction in 2019. The ruling party has faced fierce criticism over rising attacks against Muslims in recent years, from the Muslim community and other religious minorities as well as some Hindus who say Modi’s silence embold-ens right-wing groups and threat-ens national unity.
Hindu nationalism has split the Indian expatriate community just as Donald Trump’s presid-ency polarized the U.S., said Varun Soni, dean of religious life at the University of Southern California. It has about 2,000 students from India, among the highest in the country.
Soni has not seen these ten-sions surface yet on campus. But he said USC received blowback for being one of more than 50 U.S. universities that co-sponsor-ed an online conference called “Dismantling Global Hindutva.”
The 2021 event aimed to spread awareness of Hindutva, Sanskrit for the essence of being Hindu, a political ideology that claims India as a predominantly Hindu nation plus some minority faiths with roots in the country such as Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism. Critics say that exclu-des other minority religious groups such as Muslims and Christians.
Northeast India’s indigenous congregation completes 80 years
The Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians (MS-MHC), the first indigenous con-gregation of northeastern India, has marked its 80th foundation anniversary.
“In the glorious mission history of Northeast India, one cannot deny the impact of the multifaceted missionary enter-prises launched by the MSMHC, be it in the local church or various aspects of life in the society,” said Salesian Father V C Joseph, the main celebrant of the jubilee Mass on October 22.
The priest, who is the rector and principal of Don Bosco Sch-ool Siliguri, West Bengal, stress-ed the congregation’s hall mark saying, “Quality education for the poor and downtrodden with a spirit of service and compassion uniquely characterizes the Si-sters’ educative mission with a vision to reduce social and econo-mic disparities.”
The congregation was found-ed on October 24, 1942, during the Second World War by Sale-sian Bishop Venerable Stephen Ferrando of Shillong.
Spread out in 13 regions in India and abroad, some 1,500 members of the congregation are now engaged in services ranging from faith formation, education and social work. They serve all 15 dioceses of northeastern India.
The congregation today runs 54 educational institutions, 115 parish schools, with 140 hostels both in rural and urban areas.
Today the Sisters render ser-vices to children in difficult circu-mstances, express solidarity with the domestic workers, and care for women victims of drug and alcohol abuse.
Odisha Christians’ Diwali contribution builds up solidarity, brotherhood
Christians in Odisha say they contribute generously to the celebration of festival of their Hindu brethren as a gesture to foster solidarity and brotherhood.
“I gladly gave 2,000 rupees, the amount decided by the Hindu Diwali committee for a Christian family,” said Lazarus Bage, a Catholic catechist, hailing from Sundargargh, now settled in Cuttack for the past 46 years.
He told Matters India on October 23, the eve of Diwali festival, that he saw an opportunity to cooperate and collaborate with the majority Hindus in their major festival of Diwali in the city of Cuttack.
The Samal Street Bidyadharpur Cuttack city committee had decided to collect 300 rupees from local inhabitants, 500 rupees from those staying in rented houses and 2,000 from outsiders settled in Cuttack for the Diwali celebrations.
Bage is among some 50 Catholic families, all settlers, under St. Antony of Padua Parish, Bidyadharpur, Nayabajar, Cuttack. Another parish in the city, Our Lady of Most Holy Rosary Cathedral Parish, has 300 Catholic families, most of them settlers. The amount for each family varies from street to street, town to town and city to city.
A Christian family living in Cuttack after the 2006 Kandhamal communal violence also donated to the Diwali committee.
Indian Hindu outfit targets Dalits adopting Christianity
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu Council has urged the Indian government to withdraw the benefits of its affirmative action program to Hindus who convert to Christianity.
Vijay Shankar Tiwari, the national VHP spokesman while addressing a press conference in Jaipur city in northwestern Rajasthan state on Oct. 19, alleged those converting to Christianity continue to use their Hindu names and credentials in official documents and draw benefits from the government’s reservation policy for Dalits and tribal people.
“The central government should make a plan and do a survey to ensure that those people who are from the SC [Scheduled Caste, the official name for Dalits] and ST [Scheduled Tribes] communities and adopted Christianity don’t get the reservation benefits,” he demanded.
Tiwari further accused Christian missionaries and Muslim clerics of acting as pressure groups to pass on the benefits of education and employment reservations in government institutions under India’s affirmative action program to those converted to their religions.
“Since these religious groups claim their religions do not have any caste system and that every individual is equal, they do not come under the reservation schemes,” said Tiwari.
He said even India’s founding fathers including its constitution maker Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar had rejected the idea of providing reservations to converts as it would destroy the purpose of uplifting socially weak Hindu communities.
“Why the step-motherly treatment to Christians and Muslims?”
“These religious groups continue to raise the demand despite it being rejected by the apex court, too,” Tiwari added while announcing the VHP will soon undertake an awareness campaign on the issue.
The Push for Women’s Rights in Iran Is a Push for Religious Freedom Too
Growing up in a home with a Muslim father and a Christian mother, Iranian American Shirin Taber had a special appreciation for being able to choose what she believed. When she told her dad that she wished everyone back in Iran could have the same freedom, he—knowing the harsh reality of the regime—said it would never happen.
The political pushback, Taber says, correlates with a growing disillusionment with Islam itself, too. Iranians are spiritually hungry and looking for answers; even with government restrictions on religion, the church continues to grow through Christian teaching coming into the Islamic nation over satellite TV. “It’s not just about a hijab, we want systematic change. We want to topple the regime. We no longer want to live in a one-state religion. We no longer want the state to dictate to us what our faith should look like, how we practice it, how we live it. We want separation of church and state. We want separation of Islam and the state.”
Vatican II was ‘necessary,’ retired pope writes to U.S. conference
The Second Vatican Council was “not only meaningful, but necessary,” retired Pope Benedict XVI said in a letter to a conference about his theological work at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
A theological understanding of the world’s different religions, the relationship between faith and reason and, especially, the nature and mission of the church in the modern world were challenges the Catholic Church needed to face, the retired pope wrote in the message read Oct. 20.
The Vatican-based Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation sponsored the conference Oct. 20-21 on “Joseph Ratzinger’s Vision of the Church and Its Relevance for Contemporary Challenges.”
In his letter to conference participants, the retired pope said he hoped their discussions and an understanding of his theological work before, during and after Vatican II would “be helpful in the struggle for a right understanding of the church and the world in our time.”
As a priest and theologian, Father Ratzinger attended all four sessions of the council as a theological adviser — a “peritus” — to the archbishop of Cologne, Germany.
St. John XXIII’s decision to call the council, he said in the letter, was a surprise to everyone and many people initially thought it would “unsettle and shake the church more than to give her a new clarity for her mission.”
But “the need to reformulate the question of the nature and mission of the church has gradually become apparent. In this way, the positive power of the council is also slowly emerging,” he wrote.
Cardinal Becciu offered to reimburse Vatican for payments to ‘spy’
Cardinal Angelo Becciu off-ered to personally reimburse the Holy See for funds paid to Cecelia Marogna, the Vatican City court heard on October 13.
In testimony from the card-inal, and from a senior Vatican police officer, judges in the Va-tican’s sprawling financial crimes trial heard that Becciu made the offer after he was informed Inter-pol had flagged payments to Mar-gona, the self-styled international security consultant and private spy, which had been authorized by the cardinal.
According to Stefano De Santis, a senior officer in the Va-tican City’s corps of gendarmes, he and Vatican police chief Gian-luca Broccoletti visited Becciu at his Vatican apartments in early October of 2020, at the cardinal’s request, to update him on their findings regarding Marogna.
De Santis told the court that he and Broccoletti informed the cardinal that Interpol had flagged a series of payments totalling some 575,000 euros to Marog-na’s Slovenian-registered comp-any, which had been spent prima-rily on luxury goods and hotels.
According to the police inve-stigator, Becciu offered to repay the funds from his personal account at the IOR, a Vatican bank, and asked them to keep the matter confidential because it would cause “serious harm” to the cardinal and his family.
Marogna, who is charged with embezzlement during the current Vatican trial, has not presented herself in court and successfully fought against extra-dition to the Vatican in 2021.
Cardinal Pell Forewarns of ‘Suicidal’ Synod
Cardinal George Pell is warning of catastrophic consequences for the Catholic Church if Pope Francis does not correct “serious heresies” being promoted by the German Synodal Way.
“The synodal process has begun disastrously in Germany,” the Australian prelate laments, “and matters will become worse unless we soon have effective papal corrections on, for instance, Christian sexual morality, women priests, etc.”
The former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, who was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of sexual abuse and later acquitted, underscores the words of “some faithful German Catholics [who] are already talking, not of the synodal way but the suicidal way.”
Referring to Pope Francis’ invitation to lapsed Catholics, Protestants and even atheists to participate in the Synod on Synodality, Pell insists that “every synod has to be a Catholic synod, bound by the apostolic Tradition, just as Councils are so bound.”
“There can be no pluralism of important doctrines of faith or morals,” Pell categorically states. “Our unity is not like that of a loose Anglican federation or that of the many national Orthodox Churches.”
“Serious heresies” in the synodal process are “undermining and damaging the unity of the One, True Church,” in a manner contrary to “Gaudium et Spes’ call for engagement with the modern world in ‘the light of the Gospel,’” he observes.
US priests are ‘flourishing’ – but they don’t trust their bishops
Priests and bishops in the United States report overwhelmingly that they are “flou-rishing” in ministry, despite pressures caused by two decades of clerical abuse scandals and Church responses.
But while U.S. priests report high levels of personal well-being, they also have a widespread lack of confidence and trust in their bishops, according to a study releas-ed Wednesday by The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
Priests reported that they are less likely to seek personal support from their bishop than they are from any other source, and said they believe bishops regard priests as “liabilities” and “expendable.”
Bishops have had mixed initial reactions to the survey’s findings.
One bishop told The Pillar he is grateful for the report, and praised the work of priests in American dioceses.
Another called the survey results an “examination of conscience” for bishops.
The survey report, “Well-being, Trust, and Policy in a Time of Crisis: Highlights from the National Study of Catholic Priests,” was published October 19 by The Catholic University of America’s department of so-ciology, in conjunction with The Catholic Project, a university institute founded to facilitate collaboration between the Church’s hierarchy and laity, in the wake of the McCarrick sexual abuse scandal.
The survey compiled data from 3,500 priests across 191 U.S. dioceses, and survey-ed bishops, achieving a 67 percent response rate among the American episcopate.
Despite declining numbers of practicing Catholics, diocesan plans to consolidate parishes, and fewer numbers of priests in active ministry, the survey found that the vast majority of American priests say they are “flourishing.”
Participants were asked a series of questions aimed at assessing their personal well-being according to the Harvard Flou-rishing Index, which measures life satis-faction, mental and physical health, sense of purpose, and quality of relationships.
Across the survey results, more than three-quarters of respondents reported themselves to be flourishing.