Christmas Celebratory Again In Holy Land Amid Ongoing War; Patriarch Urges Pilgrims To Return
Vatican: Former Choir Director, Manager Convicted Of Embezzlement, Abuse Of Office
Christians in Aleppo feel an uneasy calm amid rebel takeover of Syrian city
Kathmandu synodality forum: Indigenous people, ‘not the periphery but at the heart of the Church’
Indian Cardinal opposes anti-conversion law in poll-bound state
12,000 gather as Goa starts exposition of St. Francis Xavier relics
Father Kung, the Indian theologian says, was one of the representatives of the progressive wing in the Church in the area of theology. “He has contributed much to Post-Vatican II theology.” “He has done his good work and has gone to the Lord. He can continue to support those who are busy with reforming the Church. Pope Francis gives us hope. We can only thank God for the gift of Hans Kung to the Church in the Post Vatican period for challenging all of us by his reflections,” added Father Amaladoss, who now resides at the Institute of Dialogue with Cultures and Religions, attached to Chennai’s Loyola College.-Michael Amaladoss
Two international reports recently have left Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in India grieving and complaining that global organizations probably have an agenda against it. The complaining started after reputed agencies doubted if India is indeed a democracy.V-Dem Institute in Sweden has downgraded India’s status from a ‘democracy’ to ‘an electoral autocracy,’ while another NGO, US-based Freedom House said “India’s status declined from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’ as a nation due to a multiyear pattern in which the Hindu nationalist government and its allies have presided over rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting the Muslim population.”The Freedom House report made caustic and vitriolic comments on the status of Muslims in India under Modi, whose government led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is wedded to pro-Hindu political ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism.Subscribe to your daily free newsletter from UCA News“The political rights of India’s Muslims continue to be threatened,” it said and referred to Indian government and parliament enacting a new law, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which grants ‘special access to Indian citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants and refugees from neighboring Muslim-majority countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.It also said Muslim candidates notably won 27 of 545 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha
The recent harassment of Christian nuns from Kerala in Jhansi by Bajrang Dal goons, and also the police, must be unequivocally condemned as a disgrace to our country.Nuns are women who render great service to society in the fields of education and health care. The best girls schools in India are run by the convent ‘sisters’, and everyone wants his/her daughters or other female relatives to be admitted to these schools. The hospitals they run are also excellent.The nuns give their whole lives in service to society, wanting nothing in return for themselves. They live a life of sacrifice, depriving themselves of the pleasures and happiness that most women have, of a family life with a husband and children.And yet many people level all kinds of false allegations against them, some of them being unmentionable. The allegation that they do forcible conversion is palpably false.When I was a lawyer, and later a justice in Allahabad High Court, the nuns of St Mary’s Convent, Allahabad, who run the best girls school in the town, would often come to me for help, which I always gave pro bono.Their worst harassment would begin a month or two before school admissions in the month of March (the school session started in April). Often, they were harassed by the authorities, who wanted their daughters or other female relatives to be admitted in the school.Now, seats are limited, and for every seat, there would
Babasaheb Ambedkar and the prime minister of the day, Jawaharlal Nehru, had in the newly independent country’s constitution sought to make amends to a historic ethnic wrong done over three millennia to this group of citizens. Article 341 therefore gave them a special place, and social rights which invaded political representation, and reservations of up to 15 percent in educational institutions and government employment. Ambedkar would later leave the cabinet, and in 1956 leave the Hindu religion to join, with half a million others, the Buddhist faith. His followers would be called Ambedkarite in time, and today they are an important part of national politics and civil society. So, what forced the very secular Nehru and the chair of the constitution-writing committee to renege on their own written promise? Article 341 was not diluted but emasculated by the Presidential Order of 1950 under the irresistible pressure of the most powerful segments of not just the opposition parties but also of the ruling Congress, especially its members from what is now Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. This said that the constitutional guarantees of affirmative action would be limited only to those who remained Hindu. In effect, people would not be entitled to reservations and the umbrella of the untouchability-ending laws if they left the Hindu fold. This, in effect, is the world’s most extensive, most pow
During the unpleasantness surrounding the arrest of 22-year-old activist Disha Ravi, the most unsavory of the many disagreeable elements in the controversy was the attempt of Hindutva social media warriors to disparage her by claiming she is Christian. She is not, but what if she were? In the BJP’s “New India,” is merely being Christian enough to qualify for the epithet “anti-national”? The irony is that Christians have long been among the builders of modern India, and many are the BJP leaders who, like L.K. Advani, had their intellect first shaped by Christian education. My first substantial interaction with Christian teachers took place when, as a rather nervous young boy, not yet six years old, I was admitted to the Montfort Boys’ Boarding School in Yercaud, Tamil Nadu. A year later I joined the prestigious Campion School, Bombay, where a majority of the teaching staff was Christian, and finished high school at the St Xavier’s Collegiate School in Calcutta, where I encountered a few more teachers of that persuasion. I should mention that the three schools I went to from ages six to 16 had an interesting detail in common: they were all Catholic schools, two of them Jesuit. It is remarkable how much this one order has done to educate and train millions of Indian children to make successes in their lives. A number of the priests at these schools were remarkably well-trained. At St Xavier’s I remember s
