POPE FRANCIS RESPONSE TO MARRIED PRIEST.

 While addressing the priests of the Diocese of Rome on Thursday, Pope Francis also responded to a question about married priests, underscoring that the Church has great concern for priests who leave ministry to get married and later want to return, but that on the other hand he does not know if the Church can find a way for this to happen.

SULI BREAKS TALKS ON LEADERSHIP: FOLLOW THE LEADER

He quoted Socrates saying "leadership is the challenge to be something more than the average.
But in school we were thought to always follow a certain method or rule.
Follow the leader
Follow the System
Follow the Religion or Tradition
But in his own opinion the world do not need new leaders.
the world need new ideas.

The Good Fight: Battles of the Flesh

BY KATHLEEN BECKMAN

Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses (1 Timothy 6:12).

It is heartbreaking to hear the countless stories of family wreckages due to sins of the flesh. It is tragic to see the wounds of young men and women who first experienced pornographic material and/or sexual abuse in their own homes.

A PRESIDENTS DAY REMINDER:  LINK BETWEEN GOD AND HUMAN RIGHTS.

Past presidents have seen God and religion as an inherent part of Americans’ rights and freedoms, according to a Presidents Day commercial from the Knights of Columbus.

“The idea that our rights come from God and that religion has a role to play in our nation’s public life is not partisan or sectarian, it is quintessentially American,” Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, said Feb. 16.

“Presidents Day is an excellent opportunity to remind Americans that God is – and has always been – foundational to this country and to our system of ordered liberty.”

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal society with over 1.8 million members worldwide, originally released the commercial in 2012.

The ad includes comments from several presidents regarding the link between God and human rights.
“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” Abraham Lincoln said his Gettysburg Address.

Thomas Jefferson’s words from his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” as abbreviated on the Jefferson Memorial, are also cited. The second U.S. president asked rhetorically: “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are of the gift of God?”

John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address of 1961, declared, “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

The quotations also include George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796, in which the first president said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

The source of rights has become controversial in recent decades.

Chris Cuomo, the co-host of the CNN show “New Day,” recently denied that the rights recognized by the United States come from God.

“Our rights do not come from God. That’s your faith. That’s my faith, but not our country. Our laws come from the collective agreement and compromise,” he told interviewee Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore during a Feb. 12 conversation about a federal ruling on “gay marriage.”

“It’s not a matter of faith, sir,” Moore replied, citing the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of rights endowed by God.

“The government starts taking those rights away from us, then it’s not securing and it is defiling the whole purpose of government,” Moore said.

Other presidents cited in the Knights of Columbus ad include Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

The ad closes with the phrase from the Pledge of Allegiance: “One nation, under God, indivisible.”

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Pope: God is not found in computers or encyclopedias, but restless hearts, We should seek the face of God, a face we will one day see.

In his homily Tuesday, Pope Francis said that Christians must have a certain “restlessness” if they want to know God, who is not found by staring at a computer, but rather by going outside of oneself.

“Sedentary Christians, lethargic Christians will not know the face of God: They do not know Him,” the Pope told attendees of his Feb. 10 daily Mass, which took place in the chapel of the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse.

“You need a certain restlessness to set out on this path, the same restlessness that God placed in each of our hearts and that brings us forward in search of Him.”

Pope Francis launched his reflections by turning to the day’s first reading from Genesis, which recounts God’s creation of Adam and Eve, whom he made in his image and likeness.

The Pope spoke of the right and wrong paths that Christians can take when searching for the origins of their own identity. When looking, it is important to note that the image of God cannot be found “on a computer, or in encyclopedias,” he said.

Rather, the only way to find the image of God and understand one’s own identity is to “set out on a journey,” Francis said.

Of course beginning this journey and allowing God to test us will always involve risks, he said, but pointed out that this is what all the major biblical figures, such as Elijah, Jeremiah and Job, did by allowing themselves to face difficulties and feel defeated.

The Pope contrasted the witness of these biblical figures with those in the Gospel who are stationary and falsify their search for God.

The Pharisees, who confront Jesus and ask why his disciples eat without performing the normal purification rituals, “are afraid to set out on the path (in search of their identity),” he said.

Instead of searching for God, the Pharisees are content “with a caricature of God. It is a fake ID. These lethargic people have silenced the restlessness of their heart, they depict God with commandments and forget God.”

By telling Jesus’ disciples that they are neglecting God’s law and are therefore following the tradition of man, the Pharisees themselves turn away from God and when they are insecure, “they invent or make up another commandment,” Pope Francis said.

He then turned to the day’s liturgy, saying that the day’s readings provide two “identity cards” that every Christian has.

The first is a card that tells us to go out in search of God, and that by doing so, “you will discover your identity, because you are the image of God.” 

“Get up and seek God,” he said, noting that the second identity card the readings provide is that of fulfilling the commandments, because they show us the face of God.

The Pope concluded his homily by praying that the Lord give all “the grace of courage to always set out on the path, to seek the Lord's face, the face that one day we will see, but which we must seek here on Earth.”

CHRISTIANS IN INDIA WHO WERE PARTICIPATING IN A PEACEFUL PROTESTS WAS ARRESTED BY POLICE OFFICERS.

Christians in India were arrested on Thursday 5th of February during a peaceful protests demanding that government should take action following a series of attack on Churches in New Delhi India national Capital.

Government and the world leaders who preach of human right, freedom of worship and equal right and justice should all come together and tackle the religious crisis in the whole world before it gets out of hand.

To my fellow Christians let us always be in prayer for all our suffering brother who are been drag to prison or been pursue out of there homes by force. PEACE.   

If you are finding it difficult in making a choice of career or thinking that you can't be who you want to be due to some circumstances around you, please watch this Video; Create the future by

 Suli Breaks 

Old ideas saved it, Current ideas sustained it. But it''s the crazy ideas that changed it.
If you don't change you don't grow, if you don't grow. You aren't leaving.

Support abortion restrictions? Americans Protest.

Americans continue to show strong support for abortion restrictions, according to a new survey that finds even self-described “pro-choice” Americans reject permissive abortion laws. “Four decades after Roe v. Wade, the American people remain unhappy with its legacy,” Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus, said Jan. 21. “The survey makes clear that the American people understand that abortion is far too common, and causes great harm.”

Jan. 22 marks the 42^nd anniversary of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which mandated legal abortion nationwide.

While current constitutional law and other major political forces often prevent abortion restrictions from being enacted, a Marist Institute poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus found that 84 percent of Americans want significant restrictions on abortion and would limit it to the first three months of pregnancy, at most.

Their numbers include about 69 percent of self-described “pro-choice” respondents.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said abortion is morally wrong, while only 38 percent said it was not. Another 60 percent said that abortion does more harm to a woman than good in the long run.

Pope Francis' talk's tough against horrors of human trafficking.

We all need to put hands together in fight against human trafficking.

Pope Francis marked the Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking by calling on governments to remove this “shameful wound” which has no place in “civil society.” 

“Each one of us feels committed to being the voice of these, our brothers and sisters, humiliated in their dignity,” the Holy Father said to the crowds gathered in Saint Peter's Square, moments after the recitation of the Angelus.

The Feb. 8 the Day of Prayer coincides with the feast of Saint Josephine Bakhita, the 19th century Sudanese nun who as a child had been a victim of slavery, the Pope noted. 

Pope Francis offered his encouragement to those working to end the trafficking of “men, women, and children” who are “enslaved, exploited, abused as instruments of work or pleasure, and often tortured and humiliated.” 

He then called governments to action in “removing the cause of this shameful wound... a wound unworthy in a civil society.”

The United Nations estimates that as many as 2.5 million people are living as victims of human trafficking at any given time

The two Polish priests martyred in Peru?

They where both killed the same day.

Two Polish priest killed by a Communist group in Peru were among those recognized as martyrs by Pope Francis on Feb. 3.

Father Michele Tomaszek and Father Zbigneo Strzalkowski of the Conventual Friars Minor, were killed Aug. 9, 1991, by the “Shining Path” terrorist group in Peru. At the time of their death, they were 31 and 33 years old, respectively.

Both Franciscan priests worked in the town of Pariacoto in the Peruvian Andes, where they lived for 11 years. At the time, the region was struggling to climb out of an economic slump, while terrorists from the Shining Path killed thousands of civilians and local government leaders in an effort to bring a Communist regime to power.

The work carried out by the two Polish priests to help the poor in Pariacoto was considered a threat by the terrorists, who saw their efforts to recruit new members thwarted.

The priests were undaunted by the continuous threats against them and continued their work. On Aug. 9, 1991, members of the terrorist group covered the walls of Pariacoto's central square with graffiti and later that evening kidnapped the mayor.

At the same time, Fr. Strzalkowski exposed the Blessed Sacrament at their parish while awaiting his brother priest for the celebration of the Eucharist. Once Mass ended, they closed the church. Shortly after, a few men wearing ski masks knocked on the door and demanded to speak with the priests.

When the two priests came to the door, the masked men bound their hands and threw them into a pickup truck. Along with the mayor, they were taken to the nearby town of Pueblo Viejo. Along the way, they subjected the priests to an interrogation and accused them of “deceiving the people” and “infecting people by distributing food from the imperialist Caritas.” They also accused the priests of thwarting their revolution by preaching peace. Upon arriving at the local cemetery, the three men were executed.

The Peruvian Bishops' Conference denounced the killing of the two missionaries saying, “Once again committed to the creation of the Civilization of Love in our nation, the Church strongly condemns this bloody disgrace that leads to no way out of the critical situation Peru is facing.”

Upon learning of the news, Pope John Paul II called the friars “the new martyrs of Peru.” 

The Conventual Franciscans of Spain in a blog post noted the words of a nun who worked with the Polish priests. A few days after the murder, she said the whole experience felt like a dream.

“I am amazed once again by Fr. Michele and Fr. Zbigniew's fidelity to the Lord and to this Andean town, their will to live what they preached. I remember their enthusiasm for their Franciscan and missionary vocation and their willingness to serve, despite being tired so often,” she said.

“They stayed there until the end. This is not something you improvise; it's a gift,” the nun reflected. “I saw Fr. Zbigniew a few days before his martyrdom, and I asked him if they were being threatened, he smiled and said, 'We cannot abandon the people. One never knows, but if they kill us, bury us here'.”

“I saw Fr. Michele one month before, he was living as if there was nothing wrong, as always abandoned to God. Both men of God perhaps lived thinking their time had not yet come. However, it was God's time,” she said.

The martyrdom of the two Polish priests was recognized this Tuesday by Pope Francis, along with the martyrdom of Italian priest Father Alessandro Dordi, who was killed by the Shining Path 16 days later, and Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot while saying Mass in San Salvador in 1980.

Jordan's Christians pray for religious harmony,

After pilot's heinous execution.

This is a call for Prayers 

Christians in Jordan have responded to the Islamic State's gruesome execution of a captured Jordanian pilot with sorrow, calling for prayer and religious and national unity. 

Father Rifat Bader, general director of the Jordan-based Catholic Center for Studies and Media, said the Christian churches of Jordan conveyed their “deep sorrow and sadness” over Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh’s execution, which Fr. Bader characterized as a “martyrdom” and a “heinous crime against humanity.”

He said the churches called for all their bells to be rung at noon on Wednesday, and for special Masses and prayers at 6 p.m.

“The churches will hold prayers as well in the first week of February for harmony among religions, so that religions will constitute a factor conducive for peace, harmony and unity among the people rather than a factor leading to division, killing, oppression and dispute,” the priest said in a Feb. 4 statement.

British Lawmakers Voted to allow Embryos with three parents? The risks are yet to come, critics warn.

Despite warnings from religious leaders and scientists, British lawmakers have voted to allow a version of in-vitro fertilization that uses the DNA of three different people to conceive a baby.

“Since this is uncharted territory and the children born from this technology would have heritable genetic changes, there are also significant unknown risks to future generations,” Dr. Paul Knoepfler, an associate professor at the University of California-Davis, told the British newspaper The Telegraph.

He said the move to legalize two procedures could be an “historic mistake” that poses “serious medical risks” to the people conceived in the procedures. These risks could include developmental defects or increased rates of aging and cancer, he warned.

On Tuesday the House of Commons voted 382-128 to approve a bill allowing the embryo-modification techniques.

One focus of the techniques is mitochondrial disease, in which a woman’s eggs have faulty mitochondria, which normally convert food into energy that the body can use. Diseased mitochondria can lead to brain damage, muscle wasting, heart failure and blindness, BBC News reports.
 
The techniques are intended to replace the mother’s mitochondria with those from a donor.

The regulations allow two techniques: pronuclear transfer, in which two human embryos are destroyed in the process of creating a modified embryo with donor mitochondria; and an “egg repair” method called maternal spindle transfer in which the mother’s genetic material is inserted into a donor egg with good mitochondria, after which the egg is fertilized in vitro. 

Ahead of the Feb. 3 vote, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales said there are “serious ethical objections” to the procedures, noting that one technique involves “the destruction of embryos as part of the process.”

“The human embryo is a new human life, and it should be respected and protected from the moment of conception,” said Bishop John Sherrington of the bishops’ conference Department for Christian Responsibility and Citizenship.

“This is a further step in commodification of the human embryo and a failure to respect new individual human lives,” the Bishops of England and Wales said.

The bill now faces a vote in the House of Lords. Member of Parliament Fiona Bruce was among those who voted against the procedure. She cited concerns about the genetic modification of human beings, saying “the implications of this simply cannot be predicted.”

“But one thing is for sure, once this alteration has taken place, as someone has said, once the gene is out of the bottle, once these procedures that we're asked to authorize today go ahead, there will be no going back for society.”

U.K. Public Health Minister Jane Ellison supported the bill, saying it is “a considered and informed step.”

“This is world leading science within a highly respected regulatory regime,” she said, according to the BBC. “And for the many families affected, this is light at the end of a very dark tunnel.” 

The Catholic bishops noted that there have been no clinical trials of the techniques proposed for approval. A clinical trial of the technique could be legally problematic under the European Commission’s 2001 directive barring clinical trials of gene therapy that modifies a subject’s “germ line,” that is, their sex cells which pass on inheritable genetic characteristics.

Dr. Trevor Stammers, Program Director in Bioethics and Medical Law at St. Mary's University, said that even if babies conceived through the technique are born, “they will have to be monitored all their lives, and their children will have to be as well.”

“We do not yet know the interaction between the mitochondria and nuclear DNA. To say that it is the same as changing a battery is facile. It’s an extremely complex thing,” he said, according to The Telegraph.

Rev. Brendan McCarthy, national adviser on medical ethics for the Church of England, said that changing the human germline “represents an ethical watershed” and proposals about the techniques deserve caution and “comprehensive debate and degree of consensus.”

In a Jan. 30 statement, he said the Church of England’s position is that the law should not be changed without further scientific study and debate about the techniques’ efficacy and safety.

Indian Church prepares youth to be tomorrow's leaders; St Don Bosco Inspired.

St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesians, was born Aug. 16, 1815, and his feast day is celebrated Jan. 31. He dedicated himself to the betterment of the youth in Turin, and there founded the Salesian order to educate the young poor and to prepare them for an occupation.

Celebrating the feast of St. Don Bosco on Saturday, the Diocese of Miao held pilgrimages, a Bible quiz, and a variety of cultural events.

Fr. Felix Anthony said that they are continuing in St. John Bosco's legacy of educating impoverished youth and preparing them for leadership, for it is the youth of a nation that can bring a transformation and social change in the nation. 

Is religion to blame for war and violence?

 Karen Armstrong’s book, Fields of Blood, is an ambitious project that looks closely at the interrelationship of religion and violence. In it she seeks to challenge the scapegoating of religion as the cause of all war and violence, a simplistic assumption she seems to hear all too frequently from the mouths of politicians, academics and taxi drivers.

With what is happening round the whole world, you can judge from your own point of view (the killings of ISIS, BOKO Haram,etc).

  

WCC CONDEMNS ATTACKS ON CHURCHES INNIGER

The World Council of Churches (WCC), condemns the attacks on Churches in Niger resulting in the destruction of more than 70 churches and killing of an undetermined number of peoples.

These events have come as repercussions following the Charlie Hebdo attack and the “Je suis Charlie” campaign in support of the controversial French weekly publication.

An official WCC statement issued on 22 January reads, “The WCC is grateful for the strong condemnation by the government of Niger of these attacks. President Mahamadou Issoufou denounced the anti-Christian violence, addressing his fellow citizens in these words, ‘What have the Christians of Niger done to deserve this? Where have they wronged you?’”

The statement also notes that Niger is a “predominantly Muslim country but one with a reputation of relative tolerance towards its Christian minority”.

When will all this killings stop. Please let us all Christians round the world put them in our prayers  

NO EDUCATION IS NEUTRAL, SAYS CHURCH OF ENGLAND'S CHIEF EDUCATION OFFICER.

The chief Education officer, Rev. Nigel Genders delivered a speech in the " commission on Religion and Belief public life" weekend seminar on Religion and Belief in Education and Training. Saying that "there is no such thing as a neutral education, every school's values and underpinning assumptions will be implicit or explicit, but they will always be there.

COULD ITALY'S NEW PRESIDENT;SERGIO MATTARALLA TURN THE SPOTLIGHT ON CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING?

The role of Italy's president is largely ceremonial, though he does appoint the prime minister. Mattarella, 73, is an independent and has most recently served as a constitutional court judge. He was nominated by prime minister Matteo Renzi, and was elected by Italy's parliament on Jan. 31; he will take office Feb. 3.

Mattarella's elder brother, Piersanti, was governor of Sicily and was killed by the Mafia in 1980. Mattarella entered politics among the ranks of Christian Democracy.

Christian Democracy was founded in 1943, and inherited the legacy of the Italian People's Party, which was founded by Fr. Luigi Sturzo – the party offered a solid Catholic point of reference, and attracted those formed in Catholic associations. 

The party came to an end in 1994 with the Tangentopoli scandal, an investigation of nationwide investigation into political corruption.

Catholics are now said to be increasingly irrelevant in the Italian political landscape, but the election of a Catholic president shows that the Catholic experience in policy may still have an impact.

A former editor of the Italian Jesuit-run magazine “Aggiornamenti Sociali,” Fr. Sorge stressed that “Pope Francis’ exhortation Evangelii Gaudium dedicates 10 paragraphs to good politics, which have not been taken into much consideration.”

Fr. Sorge commented that “almost unaware of it, Pope Francis makes current again Fr. Sturzo's intuition. Like Fr. Sturzo, the Pope does not address only Catholics, but both believers and non- believers, and tells them which are the foundations of the good politics, which is the foundation of Fr. Sturzo’s thought, reviewed and updated.”

This is why “the election of Mattarella awards Fr. Sturzo's intuition of a strong lay commitment to Christian values in politics.”

As Christian Democracy was composed of a huge platform, it was generally divided in wings, and Mattarella was part of the leftist wing of the party