A Catholic social worker, who has campaigned against substance abuse for three decades, on February 15 received the first “Life Time Achievement award” instituted by a Jain center in Karnataka.
Dharmasthala conferred the award on Thomas Scaria, who heads the Ecolink Institute of Well-being, for his outstanding contributions to prevent and manage substance abuse.
Karnataka Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot gave away the award at a function at Dharmasthala, some 75 km east of Mangaluru, a port town in the southern Indian state. It comprises a citation, memento and a cash award of 25,000 rupees.
Veerendra Heggade, the Dharmadhikari (head) of Dharmasthala who instituted the award, pointed out that Scaria was the first recipient of the award. He congratulated the winner for his contributions to the community management of addiction and capacity building of the work force.
Scaria, who is also a senior journalist, has spent three decades in campaigning against drugs and alcoholism and training hundreds of addiction professionals globally.
The governor, a former federal minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, underlined the need for more committed people to work among drug users and alcohol dependents. “Substance Use Disorder is growing day by day, and only a movement can curb its growth,” he asserted.
Scaria started his mission on drug prevention in 1991 by initiating a students’ movement against addiction called Link Anti Addiction Action Group and later co-founding the Link Rehabilitation Center, where he served as its director for 20 years.
He joined Colombo Plan in 2010 and coordinated several projects in addiction management and capacity building in more than 25 countries for almost 10 years before returning to India.
Currently, he is engaged in training addiction professionals from nearly 20 countries as the approved training provider of the Colombo Plan and as a global trainer under the UNODC.
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Indian archdiocese alleges minorities cut from voter list
Several thousand voters belonging to religious minorities such as Christians and Muslims have been allegedly removed from electoral rolls in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, say Catholic leaders.
The state, where the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) runs the government, is headed for polls in May and Christian leaders suspect deleting minority voters could be a strategy to retain power.
A delegation from Bangalore archdiocese on Feb. 15 submitted a memorandum to the state’s chief electoral officer (CEO) saying a total of 9,195 voters’ names were removed from electoral rolls of the Shivajinagar constituency in the state capital, Bengaluru.
At least Some 8,000 names were of Christians and Muslims, the memorandum said.
“We fear that [voters lists for] many constituencies across Bengaluru city could have tampered with impunity. If such mischief is allowed to carry on unchecked, the confidence of the people in the electoral process will be destroyed beyond measure,” J. A. Kanthraj, public relations officer of the Archdiocese of Bangalore, told UCA News.
Protestant bishop sent to jail in “fake” conversion case
A Protestant bishop was remanded in judicial custody in connection with an alleged case of religious conversion in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
The family members of Auxiliary Bishop Paul Muniya of the Shalom Church in Jhabua district have denied the allegation and asserted that the prelate was charged with a fake conversion case.
A local court remanded Bishop Muniya in judicial custody on February 23 after he surrendered to the police more than a month after the case was registered against him.
He surrendered in compliance with an order from the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the top court in the state.
One Kailash Bhuria, a local resident, on January 11 filed a police complaint alleging that Bishop Muniya and Tita Bhuria, an elderly church member, in September 2022 invited him to a church and sprinkled some water on him and gave him a copy of the Bible and a cross.
When he refused to attend church services subsequently they threatened him. He also sought police protection and action against the bishop and the community member.
Kaleb Muniya, the prelate’s son, said his father was accused of violating the provisions of the state’s stringent anti-conversion law.
The police arrested and sent Tita Bhuria to jail soon after the complaint was filed on January 11.
NE Elections 2023: Christian Leaders Call on Citizens To Vote With Good Conscience
In the wake of State Elections this month in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya, Chri-stian leaders from different parts of Assam and North East region calls on citizens in the region to remain alert on threats to the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of India and safeguards ensured therein to the people.
A meeting was held in Guwahati last on February 17 with a commitment to solidarity with one another and those who are discriminated against.
In the meeting, the leaders took note of incidents against Christians in the country which include hate-speeches, humiliation and violence targeting individuals and groups, destruction and desecration of property and places of worship.
“Brutality and crime like the murder of Graham Staines in Odisha more than 20 years ago, barbaric abuses of human rights against Christian communities in Kandhamal in 2008 and many innumerable more in different parts of the country especially in States where the ruling dispensation remain consensually silent against the perpetrators of these acts,” a press statement reads.
The Christian leaders also claimed that since the last few years atrocities against Christians and Churches have increased in numbers and intensity with many more cases going unreported, and the recent incidents in this region with the “authorised census” targeting Christian individuals, families and groups in Assam.
“In the guise of clearing encroachments on the forests, worship places are destroyed, eviction and displacement of Boro families and communities who are indigenous settlers have taken place and the majority of the members are Christians. Meanwhile, what cannot go unnoticed is that hundreds of acres of tribal land and resources are being handed over to persons and groups alien to the region which is an effort towards the economic exploitation of our region, especially the land and assets of the weaker communities by the dominating groups who are trying to gain control and power in targeted locations. A fear is being expressed about the sinister threat of removing the ST status from Tribal Christians and others which will effectively take away the constitutional rights and status of the indigenous citizen of the land,” the statement added.
Pope Francis planning India, Mongolia trips after Lisbon, Marseille
Pope Francis said on February 5 he is planning to visit India next year and is studying a possible trip to Mongolia later in 2023 in what would be a first for a Pope.
The Pope outlined his upcoming travel schedule during his flight back to Rome from South Sudan, wire agency AP reported.
He confirmed that he would be in Lisbon, Portugal for World Youth Day the first week of August and would participate in a September 23 meeting of Mediterranean bishops in Marseille, France.
He said there was “the possibility” that he would fly from Marseille to Mongolia, which would be a first for a pope.
Looking further ahead, Francis said he thought he would visit India in 2024, after plans for a trip in 2017 fell apart.
Pope Francis spoke to reporters after a six-day visit to Congo and South Sudan, where he was joined in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Rt. Rev. Iain Greenshields.
The Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian leaders made a novel joint visit to push South Sudan’s political leaders to make progress on implementing a stalled 2018 peace accord that ended a civil war following the country’s 2011 independence from Sudan.
No clarity in Cardinal Grech’s view of the Synod
Addressing the European assembly of the Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Mario Grech—the secretary-general of the Synod—has given a strong indication of the Vatican’s plans for the worldwide assembly.
In a homily preached during Mass at Saint Vitus cathedral in Prague on February 8, Cardinal Grech prayed that “our endeavour not become an exercise in exclusive distinction, between those who are in and those who are out.” Yet he also cautioned against a tendency to “blur the distinction between what is within the Catholic tradition and what is outside.”
Some commentators have read Cardinal Grech’s homily as a rebuke to the German bishops, whose “Synodal Path” calls for dramatic changes in Church teaching and discipline. But the cardinal does not call for reject-ion of those proposals. On the contrary he welcomes the tension between the radical proposals of liberal bishops and the conservative calls for clarity. He suggests that the tension will remain when the work of the Synod is done.
The German bishops and their liberal colleagues call for the development of an “inclusive” Church, which would downplay (if not eliminate) moral teachings that offend the sensibilities of the secularized Western world. Tra-dition-minded Catholics respond with a demand to clarify those teachings, to ensure that the Chu-rch does not stray from perenni-al truths. The cardinal, in his homily, nods to both sides of that dispute.
Cardinal Grech sends a reassuring message to conservative Catholics: “The Synod is not there to destroy distinctions, to destroy the Catholic identity.”
European Catholics debate final outcome of Synod on Synodality assembly in Prague
European Catholics debated on February 9 morning the contents of a final document that will influence the discussions of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican in the fall.
On the final day of public speeches in Prague on Feb. 9, the 200 delegates at the European Continental Assembly were asked if the assembly’s final document drafted by a six-member committee was faithful to what was discussed in the previous three days of the assembly.
Ukrainian Bishop Oleksandr Yazlovetskiy, a Latin auxiliary bishop of Kyiv, was one of the first to take the floor, raising an objection to the repeated use of the term LGBTQ on “every other page” in the document, suggesting instead that it would be better to cover the topic within a single paragraph.
Archbishop StanisBaw Gdecki objected to the framing of “conservative and liberal” when describing the Church, suggesting instead to clarify whether given statements agree or disagree with the Gospel.
The Polish prelate added that the document does not communicate the position of the Church in its references to “LGBT” per-sons.
Bishop Georg Bätzing, the president of the German bishops’ conference, said that the Church is not yet in a “new Pentecost” as the document claimed.
Archbishop Felix Gmür of Basel, Switzerland, noted that parts of the text seemed “too vague” and could be more clear, especially in underlining where tensions exist.
Pope Benedict’s Parting Challenge
With all that has been said about the passing of Pope Benedict XVI, most of it neglects the larger historical context—his prediction of the end of our era and his vision for the one to follow it.
One must begin back in the decade following the horrors of World War I in April 1917. By then the Enlightenment Era’s victory for universal peace and prosperity was reckoned so successful as to justify a serious proposal to “outlaw war.” It resulted in a Kellogg-Briand Pact that was signed by all the world powers, including the US and Germany.
Over his lifetime, Ratzinger became a dominant force in the intellectual debate over the influence of progressive liberalism in the West and the world, notably debating with atheist philosophers like Jurgen Habermas with mutual concessions and respect. His life spanned the early optimism and dominance of Wilsonian idealism, Nazi rule and defeat in World War II, the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Soviet Union.
He rejoiced in the Cold War victory but did not see it as The End of History or believe that it produced a new man to populate it. To Ratzinger, 1991 was no more a final victory than it was 1917. Indeed, his magnum opus, a collection of articles written du-ring the 1990s until his papa-cy, Truth and Tolerance, predicted the end of the Enlightenment itself.
By the close of the 20th century, it had become clear to both the religious Ratzinger and secular Habermas that Western reason, science, democracy, and unbounded freedoms were failing. The Nazi and communist alternatives had fallen but the “feeling that democracy is still not the right form of freedom is fairly general” Ratzinger noted. Critics were raising valid questions about its legitimacy.
How free are elections? To what extent is the people’s will manipulated by publicity, that is by capital, by the agency of a few people who dominate public opinion? Is there not a new oligarchy of the people who decide what is modern and progressive, what somebody enlightened has to think? How fearsome this oligarchy is, the way they can publicly execute people, is well enough known. Anyone who gets in their way is an enemy of freedom because he is preventing freedom of expression.
Many Ukrainians are fleeing to the Greek Catholic Church in Lviv, which has a long and complex history in the Orthodox faith
Since its creation in the 16th century, this church has been an important cultural and intellectual resource for Ukrainian id-entity. Most Ukrainians regard themselves as Orthodox, not Catholic. But with anywhere from 4.5 million to 6.5 million members, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is the third-largest church in Ukraine, representing about 10% to 15% of the Ukrainian population.
Despite its relatively small size, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has, in the words of historian Kathryn David, “played an outsized role … in the creation of the Ukrainian nation.”
As a professor of religious studies who has spent three decades exploring the social and political role of religion in Eastern Europe, I am fascinated by the growing influence of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine.
As its name suggests, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has a complex heritage. It is a Ukrainian church consisting of Ukrainian parishioners and headquartered in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
Sacred Hearts Fathers reach out to poor through blood donation
The Damien Social Development Institute managed by Sacred Hearts Fathers in the Odisha capital of Bhubaneswar has held a blood donation camp to help the poor.
“Conducting voluntary blood donation camps on regular basis will increase the stock of blood units in blood banks which will save the lives of poor patients who have no access or means to avail blood in times of emergency,” said Sacred Hearts Father Alexis Nayak, the main organizer of the February 5 camp at Gopabandhu Smruti Sansad in the city.
The camp was organized in partnership with the Odisha unit of the International Human Rights Protection Council (IHRPC). As many as 37 persons volunteered to donate blood.
Father Nayak, who directs the Damien Social Development Institute, said the rich can afford their medical needs, but the poor neither have ways nor means for their lives to be saved.