It is with great sadness and sorrow that we have learnt from sections of the National Press of an unfortunate incident in which members of a sect calling themselves Christians, have burnt images of Hindu deities and our Indian National Flag in Lunglie District of Mizoram. We have been in touch with the local Catholic Bishop of Aizawl, Bishop Stephen Rotluanga, who is upset about the happenings. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India strongly and unequivocally denounces this deplorable act. We want to state very clearly that we stand firmly against any sort of fundamentalism, wherever it may come from. Any attempt to cause division and sow hatred is against the principles of Christianity and against humanity.
MYANMAR CARDINAL DEFENDS COUNTRY’S EMBATTLED LEADER
Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon, Myanmar, has defended his country’s leader in the face of global criticism over the alleged ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority. Cardinal Bo said Aung San Suu Kyi, state counsellor, still represented the best hope that Myanmar would emerge from a military dictatorship into a democracy.
He suggested that she did not have the power to stop the expulsion of the primarily Muslim Rohingya from the Buddhist-majority nation.
“As we know, her role has come under scorching criticism,” he said in a message to the 24th World Congress of the Apost-leship of the Sea, which took place in Taiwan 2-6 October.
“Her status is not official under the constitution,” he said, adding, “As long as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi continues, we have hope. She is a strong woman with strong principles.
“Despite the piercing criticisms of the international community, Myan-mar depends on her for many compassionate responses,” he said.
“Our perception is that she is trying to stabilize the fragile democracy,” the cardinal continued. “Democracy is hard won and it took 60 years to reach where the country is.”
Excerpts of the cardinal’s message were released on 6 October by the United Kingdom branch of Aid to the Church in Need.
Defending the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Cardinal Bo said: “The army, like the Thai army, has no patience with democracy and grabbed power from democracy thrice already in Myanmar.
“I think Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has an agenda to pull the country from the grips of the army which controls 25 percent of the parliamentary – and also the important – ministries.
The betrayal of Vietnam’s forgotten Christians
Exasperated after violent interrogations and round-the-clock intimidation at the hands of the Vietnamese government, Y-Man Eban escaped into the forests of eastern Cambodia on July 7, 2015.
“The reason I ran away from my country was that the Vietnamese police interrogated me four or five times and put me in jail for a week. They beat me a lot,” Eban, 30, a Montagnard Christian, said from Dak Lak province.
Asked why he was arrested, Eban said it was because he sought “the freedom and independence for Dega people.”
Eban was one of more than 300 Montagnard Christians, the indigenous peoples of the Vietnamese Central Highlands, also known as Dega, who started fleeing into Cambodia three years ago. They there told of oppression at the hands of the Hanoi government.
The latest exodus is the first in about a decade when thousands fled amid crackdowns on protests in 2001 and 2004. Persecuted for decades due to reasons such as their support for America in the Vietnam War and their faith, there have been widespread accusations of human rights abuses and land grabs in the rolling hills of the Montagnards’ homeland. “Since I came back to Vietnam, the authorities have viewed me as a criminal,” Eban said.
After Party Congress, no respite for religions in China
China will convene its 19th Party Congress on Oct. 18, a key meeting held every five years where President Xi Jinping is expected to receive a second term as the ruling Communist Party’s top leader.
For China’s religious minorities, to say that it has been a difficult year would be an understatement. The government is quickly transforming the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region into a police state while new laws now mostly restrict the Tibetan region from access to the world outside of China.
But following the 19th Party Congress beginning this month — where Chinese President Xi Jinping will reshuffle his government, selecting the core leadership on the Politburo — human rights monitors fear that, given the current trajectory of the Chinese government, the situation for the country’s religious minorities may become even more tumultuous.
Australian bishops gather in Vatican discuss ‘restoration of trust’
A delegation of Catholic Bishops from Australia has gathered in the Vatican to discuss “restoration of trust” as the country’s most senior Catholic faces allegations of sexual abuse.
The Vatican disclosed the meeting in a statement released on October 7th. The delegation included Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisban, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, and Justice Neville Owen of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council.
That council is coordinating the church’s response to an Australian government inquiry into child sex abuse in various institutions.
The bishops’ delegation discussed “the relationship between the church and society at large, the restoration of trust, and greater participation of the laity in decision-making roles in the church,” the statement said.
Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s economy minister, attended a pre-trial court hearing in Melbourne on October 6th over allegations of historical sex offenses.
No details of the allegations have been made public. Cardinal Pell faces a committal hearing in March which will determine whether the case goes to trial.
Philippines Archbishop offers sanctuary to officers willing to testify on drug war killings
Police officers in the Philippines wishing to expose the full extent of the government’s anti-drug killing spree have approached the Church for protection, according to the outgoing president of the country’s bishops’ conference.
“Law enforcers have come forward confidentially to us, their spiritual leaders, to seek sanctuary, succor and protection,” said Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan.
“They have expressed their desire to come out in the open about their participation in extrajudicial killings and summary executions.”
Indonesians on remote Philippine island embrace Catholic faith
Her parents’ religion did not prevent Evangeline Musaling-Pacinabo to embrace the Catholic faith and help spread the Good News on a remote island in the southern Philippines.
Evangeline’s Muslim parents migrated from Indonesia to the small island of Balut in the southern province of Davao Occidental in the 1940s, during the height of World War II.
As years passed, some of the migrants and their children became Catholics with the blessing of their non-Catholic parents. “A catechist was instrumental in my embracing the faith,” said Evan-geline, who later married a Filipino, and became a catechist.
For the past 22 years, Evangeline has been going around the remote municipality and its nearby islets to share her experience with people and teach them about the faith.
Balut is the sleepy centre of the Sarangani island group that can only be reached after a nine-hour boat ride from General Santos City, the nearest urban centre in Mindanao. The 24,000 population of the island comprises of Muslims and members of the B’laan tribe who mostly rely on fishing and coconut farming to survive.
It is around the fringes of this municipality that Evangeline shares the teachings she learned from seminars and workshops she attended in the parish church.
Are we on the verge of another Reformation – 500 years later?
October 31 marks the quincentenary of a certain Augustinian monk nailing his ninety-five theses to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany – a perfect moment to consider having a repeat.
Pundits often claim that Islam needs its own Reformation. But maybe all of us Christian and non-Christian, believer and non-believer – would benefit from a New Reformation, one that changes our sense of what the word “religion” means. Present conditions indicate that we might be on the verge of another Reformation anyhow.
In some ways, Martin Luther’s world was not so different from ours. In 1517, old certainties were failing, and politics was in turmoil. New discoveries transformed understanding, and poisonous nationalisms emerged. Media technology altered how people received information.
And most crucially, a crisis of faith marked his world. We suffer from a similar malady, one that, ironically, was in part precipitated by that brave monk himself.
Depending on whom you ask, Luther is either to thank for liberal modernity or to blame for the doctrinaire, literalist form much of Christianity now takes. Scholars debate the details of the Reformation, concerning both timeline and implications, but maybe it’s still too early to know what Luther’s full influence will be.
Pope Francis reportedly against the division of Spain
Pope Francis is against the secession of the Spanish region known as Catalonia that is threatening to declare its independence. This claim comes from the Spanish ambassador to the Vatican, who had a private meeting with the pontiff on October 2.
Ambassador Gerardo Bugallo, who was recently appointed to the position, was having his first official meeting with Francis, a day after a controversial independence referendum in Catalonia.
Before it took place, the national government and the federal courts declared the voting illegal, claiming it violated the constitution, and have since refused to acknowledge it.
According to the weekly Catholic magazine Vida Nueva, the Pope spoke to Bugallo about the “Holy See’s position against every self-determination process that is not justified by a process of decolonization.”
The piece was signed by Antonio Pelayo, the magazine’s correspondent in Rome, and ecclesial councilor of the embassy. He also wrote that the Pope “manifested the rejection by the Church to every attitude that is not rooted in respect to the constituted legality.”
POPE FRANCIS REAPPOINTS CARDINAL BURKE TO VATICAN’S TOP COURT
Pope Francis has named Cardinal Raymond Burke as a member of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s supreme court which the cardinal used to lead. The appointment came as a surprise given the cardinal has been a prominent critic of Francis who is threatening to issue the Pope with a “fraternal correction” over the papal family life document, “Amoris Laetitia.”
The Pope’s decision to give the cardinal a seat on the board of the Church’s top justice body will be read as a peace offering, and comes after the Holy See’s most senior diplomat, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, called for more dialogue in the Church.
It also has the effect of drawing Cardinal Burke closer into the Francis administration and therefore upping the stakes should the cardinal issue a correction. A correction by Burke would be divisive, yet the Pope’s move today signals the papacy wants reconciliation.