Christian Woman in Darfur, Sudan Arrested for Evangelizing

Sudanese National Security Intelligence and Security Service agents have arrested a Christian woman in a Darfur camp for displaced people, accusing her of converting Muslims to Christianity, said sources who fear she is being tortured.

At the same time, in Khartoum a Christian mother of a 2-month-old baby is wounded and destitute because she and her husband left Islam for Christianity.

In Darfur Region in northwestern Sudan, Hawa Abdalla Muhammad Saleh was arrested on May 9 in the Abu Shouk camp for Internally Displaced Persons in Al-Fashir, capital of North Darfur state, sources said.

Abdalla has yet to be officially charged, but authorities have accused her of possessing and distributing Bibles to others in the camp, including children. Sources said she could also be tried for apostasy, which carries the death sentence in Sudan.

Abdalla has been transferred to an unknown location in Khartoum, sources said, adding that they fear she could be tortured as she was detained and tortured for six days in 2009. Intelligence agents, they said, have been monitoring her movements for some time.

“There is no guarantee of her safety,” said one source in Darfur.

The U.S. Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report 2010 notes that while Sudan’s Interim National Constitution provides for freedom of religion throughout the country, it establishes sharia (Islamic law) as a source of legislation in the north.

The arrest comes as northern Christians become more vulnerable to official and societal pressure with South Sudan set to split from the predominantly Muslim north on July 9. Adding to tensions was the north’s weekend military attack on Abyei Town, located in a disputed, oil-rich region to which both South Sudan and the north lay claim.

Knife Attacks
In Khartoum, the Christian couple with the newborn said they have come under attack for converting from Islam to Christianity.

Omar Hassan and Amouna Ahamdi, both 27, said they fled Nyala, 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of El-Fashir, for Khartoum in June 2010, but knife-wielding, masked assailants on May 4 attacked the couple after relatives learned that they had converted from Islam to Christianity. Hassan told Compass that he and his wife were renting a house from her uncle in Khartoum, but he ordered them to leave after learning they had left Islam.

His wife was injured trying to protect him during the May 4 attack, he told Compass.

“I have been in Khartoum for six months, with no job to support my sick wife,” Hassan said. “Muslims invaded our house and, in an attempt to kill me, they knifed my wife in the hand.”

The knife pierced the palm of Ahamdi, who said her brother had stabbed her three times in the stomach nine months ago, seriously injuring her spleen, after she told him she had become a Christian.

“I feel pain, but my husband is alive, and we are praying that we get money for treatment for both my hand and the spleen,” she said.

In the violent outburst, her brother also broke her left leg. She was rushed to a local hospital, where personnel were reluctant to treat her because of her conversion, sources told Compass. Ultimately she was hospitalized in Nyala Teaching Hospital for three weeks – where she met Hassan, a recent convert who had also suffered for his faith who visited her after hearing how her family hurt her.

He said he found no one caring for her even though she was in agony. He called an Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) pastor to help her, and she was discharged after partial recovery – to the hostile home where she had been attacked.

“You don’t deserve to be a member of my family,” her angry father shouted at her, she said.

Her family locked her in a room, shackled to a wooden chair, and severely beat her for a month.

“I was badly mistreated – they shaved all my hair and my father whipped my head,” Ahamdi said. “But neighbors used to sneak in secretly and provided me food and water.”

After freeing her from the chair, they restricted her movement to the property, she said.

“I found a chance to escape to the ECS church, where I got married to Hassan,” she said. “My health continued deteriorating, and the doctors recommended that I be transferred to Khartoum for specialized treatment for my ailing spleen. With a small amount of money, we managed to reach Khartoum by train, where my uncle hosted us not knowing that we were Christians.”

In Khartoum, they were unable to afford the medicine prescribed for her spleen.

“There is only one pharmaceutical shop in Khartoum that deals with spleen-related problems,” Ahamdi said. “The shop has to order the drug from Cairo after making a deposit amounting to US$300 before the drug is ordered. But we are not able to raise the needed amount since we are jobless.”

Hassan and Ahamdi depend on friends to provide them occasional food, she said. They sometimes go without eating for two days, she said.

“We cannot deny Christ – this is a big challenge to us, because we do not have a place to go,” she said, through tears. “We have no food, and we are jobless. I am still in pain, besides having a 2-month-old baby boy to care for.”

Path of Faith
Born in Shendi, north of Khartoum, Hassan was raised in Nyala, son of an imam belonging to the Ansar Al-Sunna, a sect of Sunni Muslims. He said he started questioning the Quran while accompanying his father on a preaching mission in Omdarfu, an area bordering Darfur and the Central African Republic.

A high-profile Muslim from Europe happened to be in the area, and young Hassan asked him questions about Muhammad and Jesus, he said. He found no immediate answers.

The following day, the European Muslim told his father that Hassan should be warned that soon he could become an infidel or kafir. Hassan denied it when his father summoned him, but the family grew uneasy with him and took his job away. He said he felt he was wasting his time in spreading Islam, and people began suspecting that he had converted to Christianity even though he had not yet done so.

He said he decided to be without faith, and his father denied him all basic needs. After obtaining work as a security guard with a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), he began comparing Christianity and Islam with his workmate. His friend invited him to visit a church, and Hassan also began attending a Bible study.

Hassan said he began having dreams and visions and heard a voice saying, “This is the way.” He told this to church pastor, who told him it referred to Jesus saying it of Himself in John 14:6.

“A desire for attending church grew in me, and thereafter I got baptized,” Hassan said. “The pastor encouraged me to keep on praying. One morning, when I was on my knees praying, my father entered into the room and found me.”

Furious, his father called out to him, but Hassan did not reply.

“He then hit me with a big stick on the back of my neck,” he said. “He closed the door, invited seven relatives plus my elder brother, who started beating me with sticks and broke my shoulder. I almost lost my sight. My elder brother helped me escape to the pastor’s house, where I was hospitalized for 13 days.”

After recovering, he returned to the pastor’s house, where he continued working with the NGO on a temporary basis. Early in 2007, he said, he met his uncle in the market, who tricked him into returning home, where his father beat him. His mother helped him escape, and a Christian from South Sudan took him to a hospital.

His pastor sent him to Khartoum, but he ended up working for another NGO in Juba, where he joined the ECS church. With his faith strengthened, he returned to Nyala when the contract ended in 2007. When he reached home, his father realized that he remained a Christian and ordered him to leave and never return.

He returned to the ESC congregation in Nyala, and in 2008 the church sent him to Shokaya Bible Institute for six months. Upon completion he returned to the church and married Ahamdi in June 2010.

They soon fled persecution to Khartoum, where their trials have continued.

“We have been given notice to vacate the house,” Hassan said. “Life is becoming unbearable for us here in Khartoum.”

Two Christian girls kidnapped and converted to Islam in Pakistan

The violence on Christian girls in central Punjab has caused two other victims

- which deals with the protection of Christians in Pakistan - two Christian girls were kidnapped by a group of Muslims and forced to convert to Islam and get married. Rebbecca Masih and Saima Masih were kidnapped in Jhung the district of Faisalabad.

As explained by the two sisters` father, Rehmat Masih, a few days ago a wealthy local businessman, Muhammad Waseem, had previously warned that he wanted to marry the two girls, then threatened to kidnap them and convert them by force. Rehmat went to the police to file a complaint, but they did not take action. On Tuesday, May 24 the two girls were stopped while returning from the market, and some men kidnapped and threw them in a car owned by Waseem.

Rehmat rushed back to the police. The officers, after completing the investigation, said that "there are false accusations against Waseem," and that Rehmat, often gets drunk and starts assaulting his daughters, so they might have ran away unable to bear the torture. Other witnesses and neighbors instead swear that Rehmat is a respectable man and has never harmed his daughters.

On May 25, Muhammad Waseem forcefully married Saima Masih, in the presence of the leader Muhammad Zubair Qasim, an active member of the banned extremist group "Sip-e-Sahaba", often known for organizing kidnappings and forced conversions of Christian girls and Hindus. During the final interview, the police said to Rehmat to "forget his daughters."

Haroon Barkat Masih, Director of the Masihi Foundation, who is dealing with the case of Asia Bibi, condemns the incident and says to Fides: "Kidnapping Christian girls, conversion and forced marriages have become common practice in Punjab. The police have been bought, instead of serving the Punjab government they are servants of extremist groups. Punjab is becoming heaven for these groups: Muslim leaders openly call for violence in their sermons, without shame. Hundreds of cases like that of the Masih sisters do not come into existence. We have repeatedly appealed to the Punjab government, without receiving an answer: the government supports these groups. "

A Catholic nun in Faisalabad - who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons - is responsible to regain and hide the Christian girls who manage to flee the violence. The nun explains to Fides: "There are countless similar cases every year, that the Church of Pakistan has denounced many times, asking for respect for basic rights. The Masih sisters is a common fate of many girls and young Christian women in a society that tolerates discrimination on religious minorities, especially on women. " In her pastoral work, the nun "seeks to promote the social status of girls who, for reasons of caste or religion, are living in conditions of subordination and poverty, especially through education and professional training."

Islamists Target Egypt’s Christians

Egypt’s Arab Spring has become a nightmare for the nation’s 2,000-year-old Coptic Christian community, now the terror target of choice for Islamist radicals. Christians’ “personal security has gotten much worse” since the February ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, says Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute, who monitors the situation of religious minorities in the Muslim world.

Christian homes, businesses and churches have come under increasing attack from militant Islamists, with many of the assaults coming shortly after angry sermons given at Friday prayers. The sermons inciting the violence often come from Salafist imams subsidized by the Egyptian government.

Since February, violent Islamists have exploited an atmosphere of “lawlessness” to assert that they are in control, said Coptic American activist Michael Meunier. Meunier, who is currently visiting Egypt, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism that the government’s refusal to challenge anti-Christian violence has “provided a way out to criminals and encouraged violent attacks.”

Prominent examples of violence directed against Egyptian Christians include:

• On May 7, a Salafi Muslim mob, angered by a false rumor that Christians had abducted a Muslim woman, attacked Christian churches and homes in Cairo’s Imbaba district. At least 12 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in the attack and ensuing street battles between the Salafis and Copts.

The Copts requested help from the Egyptian Army, but soldiers didn’t arrive until four and a half hours later. Watch video here.

• On May 14, Islamist mobs attacked Christian demonstrators holding a sit-in in downtown Cairo to protest the May 7 attacks in Imbaba. Attackers threw rocks, tossed gasoline bombs, burned cars and charged at the demonstrators. Christians said more than 100 people were injured in the attack and ensuing street brawls that erupted. Riot police initially stood by while the violence took place.
• A church in Soul, Egypt was destroyed by hammer-wielding Islamists in March. The attackers were angry about a relationship between a Muslim woman and a Christian man.
• That same month, witnesses said 500 Christians in Cairo were surrounded by several thousand Muslims. Young men set nearby apartment buildings and a factory on fire. Christians who witnessed the incident said soldiers stood by for hours while the violence occurred.
• In the southern Egyptian city of Qena, a Christian accused of having a relationship with a Muslim woman had his ear cut off. The victim, Ayman Mitry, blamed Salafis. He said they called him a “kafir” (infidel) and tried to spit on a cross tattooed on his wrist. The military tried to mediate reconciliation between the perpetrators and the victim.
• The Egyptian Army has reportedly attacked Christians and their churches. Christian activists say that in February, soldiers assaulted a Coptic Orthodox monastery in al-Natroun, 68 miles north of Cairo, with small arms, heavy machine guns and armored personnel carriers in order to bulldoze a wall. A monk and six church workers were shot and wounded in the attack. The Army said the monastery had failed to obtain the proper permits.
• Also in February, the Army attacked another monastery in Al Fayoum, 80 miles southwest of Cairo, to destroy a security wall built to keep out criminals. The military claimed the wall had been built on land set aside for a nature preserve.

Since Mubarak’s fall, the Egyptian government has repeatedly failed to take action against Muslim militants involved in anti-Christian violence including the destruction of churches, Muenier said. Instead of sending the Egyptian Army in to protect Christians, the government forces Christians to negotiate rebuilding issues with “fanatical” Muslim clerics who are not acting in good faith.

Shea sees the violence as part of a larger pattern of marginalization of Egyptian Christians that has gone hand-in-hand with the growing power of the Muslim Brotherhood and more militant Salafist groups. If current patterns continue, “I expect Egypt to become more and more like Iran,” she said.

The result is going to be “an Islamic awakening” in which the state “uses its coercive powers” to induce conformity with Shariah law, Shea told the IPT. The major victims will be Christians and non-Islamist Muslims who don’t want to conform to the rigid religious ideology of the Brotherhood and the Salafists.

Islamists have taken some steps to soften their public image. These include the announcement that the Freedom and Justice Party, formed by the Brotherhood, had chosen a Christian to be vice-president. Meunier termed the move “window-dressing” and expressed skepticism that the Brotherhood would permit non-Muslims to gain a position of genuine influence in the party.

Coptic Christians and their supporters say the government’s response to violence and coercion has worsened their plight. In Egypt, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) found “serious, widespread and long-standing human rights violations against religious minorities,” said Shea, a USCIRF commissioner.

For years, Egypt’s response to the violence has been to conduct “reconciliation” sessions between Muslims and Christians. In its 2009 human rights report, the State Department found that those sessions “prevented the prosecution of perpetrators of crimes against Copts and precluded their recourse to the judicial system for restitution.” This situation “contributed to a climate of impunity that encouraged further assaults.”

The Egyptian government “goes through the motions of taking action,” Shea said. The policy consists of getting “the Christians to shake hands with the people who attack them.”

But the reconciliation panels remain a part of the Egypt’s response to Muslim-on-Christian violence. For example, after the axe-wielding mob destroyed the church in Soul to avenge a relationship between a Christian man and a Muslim woman, Coptic and Muslim families held a reconciliation meeting. They decided that the Christian (whose house had been torched by the mob) would have to leave town.

The problems are further exacerbated by discriminatory Egyptian laws that make it very difficult for Christians to rebuild churches and bar teaching the Coptic language in Egyptian schools.

Shea warned it is a mistake to think that the effects of continued marginalization of Coptic Christians will be confined to Egypt. An Egyptian society unwilling to tolerate the Copts likely will be hostile to a Jewish state in the region, and that could have troubling consequences for Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. With that in mind, Shea urged that Washington speak out more forcefully on behalf of embattled minorities like the Copts.

Muslim Brotherhood, Salafis Join Forces

More ominous still is the news that the Muslim Brotherhood has formed a political alliance with radical Salafis.

Brotherhood representatives joined representatives of Gama’a al-Islamiya in announcing they would form a coalition in September’s parliamentary elections in order to combat secular forces in Egypt. “God’s words must rule and Islam must be in the hearts of the citizens,” said Osama Hafez, a spokesman for the group.

Gama’a representatives have called have called for the establishment of a medieval-style virtue police “to arrest those who commit immoral acts.”

Gama’a al-Islamiya says it has renounced violence, but the organization’s long history of jihad makes many skeptical.

Members of the group were involved in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In the 1990s, its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, merged his faction of Gama’a with al-Qaida. Its spiritual leader is Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, currently serving a life sentence in the United States for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to blow up other New York-area landmarks including the United Nations building and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels; the George Washington Bridge; and the New York office of the FBI.

Between January 1996 and November 1997, Gama’a carried out multiple terrorist attacks targeting Christians and foreign tourists in Egypt, killing more than 100 people. The most deadly of these occurred on November 18, 1997, when it massacred at least 58 people, most of them tourists, in Luxor.

Following the Luxor massacre, President Hosni Mubarak’s government launched a harsh crackdown against the group, killing or jailing many of its members. That forced the group to split into factions, one of which was Zawahiri’s armed wing that joined al-Qaida. Another faction consisted of ex-terrorists who renounced violence.

But the “moderate” faction of Gama’a apparently regards bin Laden as a victim of American perfidy. At a conference earlier this month, Gama’a representative, Abbud al-Zumar, suggested that Christians and Muslims were both to blame for the Imbaba violence and said bin Laden is a victim of his U.S. enemies. Zumar warned Arabs about U.S. arrogance in dealing with Arab Islamic nations.

Meunier expressed skepticism about recent efforts by Islamists to cast themselves as supporters of nonviolence and moderation. Salafist “leaders and clerics” can be found “all over YouTube with videos encouraging their followers to attack churches and Christians,” he said. Although the videos have been turned over to the Egyptian military, “there seems to be no will at this stage to arrest” the individuals behind the attacks, Meunier said.

The military’s unwillingness to act against Islamists does not come as a total surprise given its connections with organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. Writing in Middle East Quarterly, Egyptian activist Cynthia Farahat points to numerous actions the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces since Mubarak’s ouster that have been favorable to Islamists and discriminatory against minority Christians.

According to Farahat, the council has made decisions to arrest a secular liberal blogger and sentence him to three years in prison; at the same time, it freed Col. Aboud al-Zomor, described as the “mastermind” of Sadat’s assassination. It issued a declaration making sharia “the principal source of legislation” and has failed to prosecute “Muslims responsible for hate crimes against Christians.”

This pattern isn’t accidental. Farahat marshals arguments to show that for close to 60 years, the Muslim Brotherhood has exercised a surprising degree of power by working with the Egyptian military. She argues that in the short run, the real question “is not whether the Muslim Brotherhood will seize power, but whether it will continue to hold it, either directly or by proxy.”

Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood “don’t want to take responsibility for the results of the ideology of hatred” that they are advocating, Shea said. If the Egyptian government and military are unwilling to confront this reality, Islamism will continue gaining in strength, with dark consequences for Egypt.

News collected from : global-security-news.com

Suicide bomber kills 8 tribesmen in Pakistan

A suicide bomber targeted pro-government tribal elders in Pakistan's northwestern frontier Saturday, killing eight men, officials said, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a visit here implored Pakistanis to take decisive steps to fight terrorism.

Ten people were also were wounded when a bomb ripped through a restaurant at a market in the troubled Bajur tribal region, near the Afghan border, officials said.

A government administrator, Shad Khan, said a man on foot carried out the suicide attack. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.

The attack came a day after Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a seven-hour trip to Pakistan in a bid to repair ties damaged by the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which Pakistanis say was an attack on its sovereignty.

On Saturday, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tahmina Janjua said Clinton's visit had helped clear up misunderstandings and that the two sides would cooperate on raids against terror suspects.

Clinton referred Friday to joint operations coming soon, and U.S. officials said the U.S. and Pakistan agreed to take some specific measures together.

In one sign of a slight warming trend, CIA and Pakistani intelligence officials completed a joint search of the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad Friday, a Pakistani official said.

Saturday's attack, in the village of Salarzai, underscored the militants' ability to strike at the tribesmen, who have often sided with government troops in efforts to rout insurgents.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Ahsanullah Ahsan, claimed responsibility, saying the elders were targeted because they were helping the security forces.

Bajur is considered a militant stronghold and violence has persisted there since last year, when the military claimed that it had defeated Taliban and al-Qaida militants after more than a year of fighting.

On Thursday, a Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber detonated a pickup truck loaded with explosives near several government offices in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 32 people.

Thursday's blast was the latest in a series of attacks to hit the country since the bin Laden raid, including an 18-hour siege of a naval base in Pakistan's south.

News collected from USATODAY.COM

Egypt reopens border with Gaza

In a highly symbolic break with previous policy, Egypt reopened its border crossing into Gaza on Saturday, opening the door for Palestinians to the outside world and raising fears among some Israelis that militant attacks will increase.

"Procedures were excellent," said Younes Ahmed, who described his travel into Egypt as the first such visit in his life. "I hope there will be peace between our people and I want to thank the Egyptian people and the Egyptian government ... we always hope for easier ways for Palestinians because our people suffered enough."

Crossing officials said more than 600 Palestinians passed Saturday through the Rafah border, which had been subject to frequent closures by Egypt after Hamas, an Islamic militant group, took control of Gaza in June 2007.

The closure of the border had been part of an embargo policy by Egypt and Israel aimed at cutting off Hamas, though it simultaneously created an economic hardship in Gaza by limiting shipments of goods in and out of the country.

Egypt opted to reopen the border to offer relief to the people of Gaza, said Ambassador Menha Bakhoum of the country's foreign ministry.

"Today, we are facing a new stage, a new stage were this blockade is defeated," said a Hamas representative at the crossing. "This step is to support the resistance of the Palestinian people to face the Zionist blockade."

"This is a Palestinian-Egyptian frontier and it's not the business of the invaders," said Salam Baraka, general director of border police. "This border does not submit but to the Egyptian-Palestinian rule."

Palestinian Authority adviser and negotiator Nabil Shaath heralded the move by the government in Cairo, calling it a "brave and bold decision" that demonstrated "the new Egypt stands by the Palestinian people." It was seen as a victory by many in the Hamas government of Gaza, which staged a celebration rally Saturday near the crossing.

Some in Israel's security establishment have privately expressed concerns that the increased traffic at Rafah could serve to allow more militants and weapons to cross in and out of Gaza and that it could ultimately serve to bolster the position of Hamas, which Israel and the United States consider a terrorist organization, but the Israeli government has said little publicly.

Neither the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor the foreign ministry would publicly comment due to the sensitive nature of relations with Egypt.

Sari Bashi, who serves as director of Gisha, an Israeli organization that advocates for Palestinian freedom of movement, welcomed the changes at the crossing and said Israel need not be overly concerned.

"It continues to prevent goods from traveling via Rafah and it also continues to limit travel to those listed in the Israeli-approved Palestinian population registry," Bashi said of the new Egyptian policy. "Egypt is allowing an incremental and welcome change, but it is still expressing its willingness to engage Israel and engage Israeli security concerns."

The Rafah crossing was open sporadically between June and January, when Egypt ordered it opened to those in need of medical care, students, and foreign passport and residency card holders. Among those people allowed to cross were those wounded during an Israeli assault aboard a flotilla of ships headed to Gaza last year.

Rafah is one of two crossings through which Palestinians can exit Gaza; the other is controlled by Israel and bars passage by most Palestinians save for those with emergency medical conditions.

Since the flotilla raid, Israel has allowed a greater amount of goods to enter Gaza, but it still maintains a complete blockade of the airspace and territorial waters and has limited most exports.

After Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced from office, the interim government promised to reopen the border.

Catholic Church only true church, Vatican says

The Vatican issued a document Tuesday restating its belief that the Catholic Church is the only true church of Jesus Christ.

The 16-page document was prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a doctrinal watchdog that Pope Benedict used to head.

Pope Benedict XVI was elected Pope in April 2005.

(Plinio Lepri/Associated Press)

Formulated as five questions and answers, the document is titled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church."

It says although Orthodox churches are true churches, they are defective because they do not recognize the primacy of the Pope.

"It follows that these separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation," it said.

The document adds that Protestant denominations — called Christian Communities born out of the Reformation — are not true churches, but ecclesial communities.

"These ecclesial communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood … cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called 'churches' in the proper sense," it said.

The document is similar to one written in 2000 by the Pope — who was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the time — that sparked an angry reaction from Protestant groups.

"I suspect there will be some reactions that are rather passionate," said Raphaela Schmid, director of the Becket Institute, a group that advocates religious freedom. "I hope they will not be angry because we all try to understand about each other."

The document is issued by Benedict's successor in doctrinal matters, Cardinal William Levada, and endorsed by the Pope, said Reuters.

The decree comes days after liberal Catholic and Jewish groups spoke out against the Pope's move to authorize the wider use of a traditional Latin mass.

The Tridentine mass includes a prayer for the conversion of Jews. Its use was restricted following the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965.

Pope Benedict issued a decree last week authorizing its broader use in an effort to reconcile with followers of an ultratraditional excommunicated bishop.

The Jewish Anti-Defamation League in New York called it a "body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations."



Source : CBCnews

What Divides Catholics and Protestants?

As Pope Benedict XVI continues with his highly publicized visit to the United States, some may wonder what the major differences are between Catholicism and Protestantism – the two main Christian bodies in the world.

(Photo: AP Images / Gerald Herbert)

President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI walk down the Colonnade of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 16, 2008, following an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn.

Perhaps the biggest difference is their views on the sufficiency and authority of Scripture. Traditionally, Protestants believe that the Bible alone is sufficient in teaching man all that is necessary for salvation from sin, and contains the standard in which Christians should measure their behavior.

Catholics, however, do not believe that the Bible alone is enough, and instead hold that the Bible and sacred Roman Catholic traditions are equal in authority, as noted by Got Questions Ministries, which provides biblically-based answers on spiritually-related questions in its Web site, GotQuestions.org.

Roman Catholic doctrines, such as purgatory, praying to the saints, veneration of Mary, have little or no basis in the Scripture, but are based on Roman Catholic traditions.

Another major difference is the office and authority of the pope. There is no equivalent position to the pope in Protestantism because of the belief that no human being is infallible and that Christ alone is the head of the church. Protestants believe that the spiritual authority of the church is based on the Word rather than apostolic succession, and that all believers through the Holy Spirit can understand the Word.

For Roman Catholics, on the other hand, the pope is the “Vicar of Christ,” and stands in the place of Jesus as the visible head of the Church. Therefore, his teachings are considered infallible and effective over all Christians.

Pentecost or Holy Spirit

Pentecost (Ancient Greek: Πεντηκοστή [ἡμέρα], Pentēkostē [hēmera], "the Fiftieth [day]") is one of the prominent feasts in the Christian liturgical year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection.^[1] The feast is also called Whitsunday especially in the United Kingdom. Pentecost is celebrated seven weeks (50 days) after Easter Sunday, hence its name.^[2] Pentecost falls on the tenth day after Ascension Thursday.

Pentecost is historically and symbolically related to the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot, which commemorates God giving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai fifty days after the Exodus. Among Christians, Pentecost commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus as described in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles 2:1-31.^[3] For this reason, Pentecost is sometimes described as the "Birthday of the Church".

Child abuse tests how the church relates to the secular world

The Catholic church doesn't help itself by encouraging the idea that the laity and the priestly caste are separate and different

The question: Is the Catholic abuse crisis over?

The John Jay report into sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clerics, commissioned by the US church itself, is one of the most comprehensive documents that the church has published anywhere in the world on the sexual scandal that has caused it so much embarrassment and its victims so much grief. The portrait it paints of the abusers themselves are of isolated, vulnerable individuals who had difficulties in bonding with others in normal relationships, who led stressful lives and were likely to have been abused themselves. And as the report itself says:

"Priest-abusers are similar to sex offenders in the general population. They had motivation to commit the abuse (for example, emotional congruence to adolescents), exhibited techniques of neutralization to excuse and justify their behaviour, took advantage of opportunities to abuse (for example, through socialization with the family), and used grooming techniques to gain compliance from potential victims."

So why has there been quite so much outrage about sexual abuse of minors by priests, more than, say, of sexual abuse of minors by scout masters, or doctors, or teachers? Andrew Brown in Comment is free last week put paid to the notion that there are more abusers among the Catholic priesthood than among other groups. So it's not the frequency of occurrence that is the problem. The disgust, I would suggest, is rightly felt in one way because the exploitation and abuse of children is so terrible a deed.

But we also feel that disgust so intensely because we all – not just Catholics, but society at large – expect Catholic priests to be different, to not be so reprehensible in their behaviour. And a major reason for that is that we have all bought into the problem: we have accepted the view that priests are different, that they are in an elevated position from the rest of us, that they are somehow holier. And if they are holier, they are above the usual human frailties. Too many of us assumed that priests would not be capable of such actions, that they should be treated specially and differently from anybody else accused of heinous crimes.

Faith is essential to religion, but this was blind faith. The institution of the Catholic church for years promoted clericalism with this view of the elevated priest above the laity, and it was barely questioned.

In his 2010 letter to the Catholics of Ireland about the abuse scandal, the pope did go some way to acknowledge the situation, speaking of the shame and remorse that he feels. This was also the man who spoke of "the filth in the church" just before he was elected pope. But Benedict's letter also showed the inherent weaknesses of the church's position, suggesting that the solution was greater spiritual devotion of the faithful. While he did acknowledge the role of clericalism, at least in the Irish context, he also shifted blame for the crisis on to secular culture as well.

For the Irish Catholics who love the church – and indeed those elsewhere who love the church – the idea that the clerical abuse crisis might be down to their lack of devotion is deeply depressing. As to the idea that the secular culture might be the cause – a view also promoted by the John Jay report – it is hard to understand why the church would come to this conclusion. For while the report concludes that the rise in abuse cases mirrors changes in American society in the 1960s and the 1970s – the "Woodstock era" of increased sexual permissiveness – it also reveals that 70% of abusers were ordained before the 1970s, that more abusers were educated in the seminaries in the 1940s and 1950s than any other era, and that abuse cases have tailed off. So an external permissive culture seems unlikely to be a cause.

The sex abuse crisis is a test of the church's relationship with the secular world. Blaming the outside for its internal ills won't help. Nor will encouraging the idea that the laity and the priestly caste are separate and different. The laity helped blow the whistle on what the church was keeping secret. When Catholics hear sermons about Doubting Thomas, who wouldn't believe until he saw the evidence of the risen Christ with his own eyes, he is not usually described as a man to be admired. But the sex abuse crisis shows us that Doubting Thomases, if they demand the evidence others keep hidden, are our heroes.