All-community meet to restore peace in Kandhamal On Oct 2

Sister Nirmala’s appeal to Orissa Chief Minister"

Nun gang raped in Public: Police look on

Church in India Under Attack: All-community meet to restore peace in Kandhamal On Oct 2: "

Ente Keralam: Kottayam declared as the first tobacco-free district in the country

Ente Keralam: Kottayam declared as the first tobacco-free district in the country

In India Homosexuality a criminal offence Punishable with life imprisonment

Homosexuality a criminal offence: Govt tells court

Friday, 26 September , 2008, 21:08

New Delhi: The government on Friday told the Delhi High Court that it is not scrapping the present law on homosexuality as it is a "criminal offence" and would "disturb the law and order situation and create unnecessary problems in society." Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra said the government was not in a position to scrap the law at this time. "It (homosexuality) is a criminal offence," he said. “If we scrap section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (that makes homosexuality an offence), then it will disturb the law and order situation and might create unnecessary problems in the society,” Malhotra said before a bench of Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S Muralidhar. The IPC at present holds homosexual acts as an offence and section 377 provides a punishment of up to life imprisonment for indulging in it. ...>more

Pope: Church canno t\recognize "irregular unions"

Church can't recognise divorcees remarrying - pope

Enlarge Photo Pope Benedict XVI speaks at the end of the Marian Procession of Light at the...Slideshow: Day in pictures: September 13 2008

Mon, Sep 15 08:53 AM

By Philip Pullella

LOURDES, France (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Sunday the Church could not recognise "irregular unions" of Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church.

"Initiatives aimed at blessing irregular unions cannot be admitted," he said in an address to French bishops in the shrine city of Lourdes.

Throughout the developed world, the Church has been struggling with how to administer to Catholics who have divorced and remarried without an annulment -- an ecclesiastical declaration that their first union is null and void -- but want to remain fully active in the Church.

The Church does not recognise divorce. It considers the first marriage still valid and teaches that those who divorce and remarry cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sexual relations with their new partner.

While bishops in several countries have been pushing for some opening on the difficult issue, the pope said the Church could not change its teachings on the indissolubility of marriage because it was instituted by Christ.

In other remarks, the pope ordered bishops to make space for traditionalists who use the Latin Mass.

A papal decision last year to allow a much wider use of the old-style mass -- a move which traditionalists demanded for decades but which was opposed by liberals -- has met with resistance in some countries, particularly France.

But the pope was firm in his position.

"Everyone has a place in the Church. Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at home and never rejected," he said of those who preferred the Latin Mass instead of the new liturgy in modern languages introduced after the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965.

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Is Obeying conscience a Crime? Protests agaiinst the policy of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario

Archbishop, Rabbi, Physician Group Condemn Efforts to Curb Ontario Physician Conscience Rights

By Tim Waggoner

OTTAWA, September 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Today marked the deadline for public comment on the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeon's draft policy that seeks to prohibit medical professionals from obeying their consciences. In light of this, several prominent parties have made concerted efforts to condemn the proposed policy that, if put into effect, will force medical professionals to "set aside their personal beliefs" and take part in grievous anti-life practices.

"We are deeply disturbed by the draft policy of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario," said Archbishop Terrence Predergast of Ottawa and Rabbi Dr. Reuven P. Bulka in a joint statement on the proposed policy. "Many doctors have expressed a reasonable fear that if this policy is passed, they might be disciplined, and even lose their licenses, for obeying their conscience. They would no longer be free to refuse to perform or refer for certain medical acts that are contrary to their firmly held beliefs."

Referring to the Canadian Charter and the freedoms it promulgates, they said, "To force anyone to violate their conscience would go against not only the text of these documents, but also against their underlying spirit. Such coercion would be fundamentally and shamefully un-Canadian.

They continued, "Freedom of conscience should never be viewed as the enemy of other human rights. Quite the opposite; without freedom of conscience, other human rights would be much more easily abused. Some people believe that doctors need to be forced to provide all medical services that are legal, because otherwise they might impose their values on others... However, forcing doctors to act against their own faith principles would be a radically unjust and dangerous solution. Forced medicine is never good medicine."

Physicians for Life have also sent a statement to the College, protesting the draft policy. They addressed "the ethical bankruptcy" of a society that coerces its medical professionals to partake in abortions and said the statement compromises the human rights of physicians:

"When physician and patient disagree about whether or not a procedure is a good thing, the OHRC's Chief Commissioner herself, Barbara Hall, apparently expects the CPSO to coerce and punish the physician for failing to agree with the patient, on the grounds that the College should endorse and enforce the patient's views at the serious cost of breaching the human rights of the physician."  ...full story

Science and Religion: Stem cells from Skin row

Teams at Kyoto University and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the United States last year discovered how to use skin to produce stem cells -- which can develop into various organs or nerves.

The finding was hailed by the Vatican and US President George W. Bush because it can circumvent an ethical row over conventional stem cell research using human embryos.  

'End-of-life' debate

LONDON- Forty years after the concept of brain death was established, the Vatican City has reopened the debate over whether the cessation of all brain functions marks the definitive end of life. The Roman Catholic Church had adopted brain death, and not the absence of heart beat, as the "true criterion for death" in 1985 after scientists at the Harvard Medical School published the universally accepted definition in 1968. But, 23 years on, a front-page editorial in official Vatican newspaper, theL'Osservatore Romano , has suggested that life might continue even after the brain dies.  "The assumption of brain death is in contradiction with the concept of the person according to Catholic doctrine, and therefore in contradiction with the Church's directive on persistent comas," British newspaper The Daily Telegraph quoted the editorial as saying.  But the arrival of the Harvard definition enabled the Church to sanction life-support machines being switched off. However, the key beneficiary of the brain-death definition has been organ transplantation, according to the article. Read more

The law of conservation of violence By Edward S. Herman

The law of conservation of the level of violence thus rests on the structure of power and its reflection in politics. If you want to compete in politics in the militarized America of today you can't scrimp on money for "national security" and you need to display a readiness to exercise a "muscular" foreign policy. If you call for reduced forces in one country, you must urge their increase in another. Keep those muscles in shape and bombs dropping.

One of my favorite quotations from the Vietnam War era was: "I think maybe today we create many Vietcong," spoken by a Vietnamese collaborator and helicopter pilot when answering a question by Master Sergeant Donald Duncan while both were on a plane that had just dropped bombs on a Vietnamese target. The Vietnam War was a murderous capital-intensive war, with millions of tons of bombs dropped on villages deemed supportive of the indigenous enemy, along with napalm, phosphorus, and crop-destroying chemicals. (Napalm and rice-killing chemicals were used exclusively in the South, which we were allegedly "saving" from the North's "aggression.") In any case, this murderous behavior killed vast numbers, but also made any Vietnamese previously harboring doubts about the ongoing struggle extremely hostile to the United States and its local puppets. We had mastered the art of creating enemies.


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Is US VP Candidate Sarah Palin a Religious Nut?

Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan." Read more