Meeting of the Millennium: Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill

Pope Francis (L) addresses the audience after signing agreements with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in Havana, February 12, 2016. (REUTERS/Alejandro Ernesto/Pool)

Unity call as Pope Francis holds historic talks with Russian Orthodox Patriarch

• 13 February 2016
   
• From the sectionLatin America & Caribbean
 

Image copyrightAP

Image captionThe two leaders exchange a joint declaration on religious unity at Marti International airport in Havana

Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill have called for restored Christian unity between the two churches at historic talks in Cuba.

The meeting was the first between a Pope and a Russian Church head since the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity split in the 11th Century.

In a joint declaration, they also urged the world to protect Christians from persecution in the Middle East.

The Pope has now arrived in Mexico for a five-day visit.

A crowd of 300,000 braved the cold in Mexico City to welcome him to the country which has the world's second largest Catholic population.

The Pope was greeted at the airport by President Enrique Pena Nieto.

'Churches ravaged'

The two-hour talks on Friday between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill were held at Havana airport.

Patriarch Kirill goes on to Brazil and Paraguay.

The pair embraced and kissed each other at the start of their talks.

"I'm happy to greet you, dear brother," the Russian Church leader said.

"Finally," the pontiff said.

At a news conference after the meeting, Kirill said the discussions were "open" and "brotherly", while Francis described them as "very sincere".

"We hope our meeting contributes to the re-establishment of this unity wished for by God," their joint declaration said.

The document called on the world community to defend Christians, saying that "in many countries of the Middle East and North Africa whole families, villages and cities of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being completely exterminated."

"Their churches are being barbarously ravaged and looted, their sacred objects profaned, their monuments destroyed."

---

At the scene: BBC's Oleg Boldyrev

In the swirl of Vatican officials and security dressed in black, Pope Francis was a lone figure in white on the heated tarmac of Havana airport as he arrived to do his part in healing one of the longest religious disputes.

Russian Patriarch Kirill had arrived shortly before. The venue was a compromise - it would be impossible to have the first such meeting in the Vatican or Moscow, and Catholic Cuba is still in the Russian sphere of influence.

Back home the Patriarch has to overcome the anger of conservatives who still consider Catholicism a deviation from true Christianity. Clearly, this is a criticism he feels safe to ignore now.

Minutes later, the Pope and the black-robed Patriarch were holding each other by the shoulders and smiling warmly. Then the leaders of Catholics and Russian Orthodox Christians sat down. It was almost business as usual.

---

Russian state TV described the talks between the two men as the "meeting of the millennium".

In purely symbolic terms, this is an extraordinary moment, but it is perhaps even more significant in terms of Church diplomacy, the BBC's Will Grant in Havana says.

Patriarch Kirill has been the head of the Russian Orthodox Church since February 2009, while Pope Francis took up his role in March 2013.

The Roman Catholic Church has more than a billion members worldwide, while the Russian Orthodox Church numbers about 165 million.

The Russian Church is the largest and most powerful in the Orthodox faith, which is made up of a number of separate churches.

The encounter in Havana is not expected to lead to any immediate rapprochement between the Eastern and Western Churches.

Ahead of the meeting, the foreign policy chief of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Illarion, said there were still differences between the two churches, in particular on western Ukraine.

One particular issue is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which follows eastern church rites but answers to the Holy See.

The Russian Orthodox Church has considered western Ukraine its traditional territory, resenting papal influence there.

---

Image copyrightAP

Uneasy relations

Key dates:

• 1054 - Mutual excommunications by Western Church leader in Rome, Pope Leo IX, and Eastern Church leader in Constantinople, Patriarch Cerularius, lead to Great Schism
• 1274 and 1439 - Attempts to re-unite the two Churches at Councils of Lyon and Florence fail
• 1997 - Planned meeting between Pope John Paul II and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II cancelled

Why Cuba?

• Reportedly chosen because it is far from Rome, Istanbul and Moscow with all their historical baggage of schism
• Two leaders can focus on main issue: how to protect Christians - both Catholic and Orthodox - in Middle East and North Africa from persecution

Thorny issue

• Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in western Ukraine, which follows Eastern Church rites but answers to Vatican
• Russian Orthodox Church sees western Ukraine as its traditional territory, resenting papal influence

....

Taken from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35565085

Why Meeting Between Pope, Russian Patriarch Is a Game Changer

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill.

Pope Francis has a new approach to Ecumenism that downplays the claim of the Catholic Church for leadership of world Christians

Francesco Sisci

(Asia Times)

Mon, Feb 8, 2016 |

BEIJING–The Vatican rocked the world Friday with news that Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow will meet in Havana, Cuba on Feb. 12 in a historic exchange loaded with symbolism.
Kirill is the spiritual leader of over 150 million Russian Orthodox faithful who represent about half of the 300 million estimated adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church worldwide. Kirill is a religious force behind Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose political views are often at loggerheads with western countries.
The Roman Catholic Pope, on the other hand, is the leader of the largest unitary religion of the world with some 1.2 billion people. He represents a spiritual office that played a key role in the Cold War against the atheistic and anti-religious front of the communist bloc. Yet the Cold War is long over, and the global world view has changed completely.
The Catholic Church, at this juncture, hasn’t ranged itself against any single world leader and appears to be a force willing to lead anyone that will follow her, Moreover, it is busy designing a specific approach to “geopolitics,” says Antonio Spadaro writing in the the Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica on Feb. 13 (La diplomazia di Francesco. La misericordia come processo politico). His viewpoint offers a critical window on papal thinking notes Italian Vatican expert Gianni Valente, since the Jesuit publication is reviewed by the Vatican Secretariat of State.
The Russian Orthodox Church has been separated from Rome for centuries, following a rift between the Vatican and Constantinople over an obscure and complex theological issue in the 12^th century. For its part, Moscow has always styled itself as the third Rome, an heir of the Byzantine Empire, which fell to the Muslim Turks in 1453. By Russian lights, Rome has traditionally been considered tricky and invasive after a very uneasy collaboration during the Crusades that ended with the sack of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204.
What’s more, behind the theology there has always been the issue of Christian politics. Who should lead world Christianity? Should it be the pope in Rome, fully independent, or Constantinople with the patriarch and Byzantine emperor over him?
Ties between the two churches improved greatly in the last century after Russia fell to communism in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Rome threw its support behind the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet era. But with the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s, such support became fragmented. Polish Catholics became involved in Russian Orthodox matters, while the new non-communist leaders in Moscow leaders looked to its indigenous church for political support.
There were insensitivities on both sides. Russians perceived a spiritual and political invasion on the Polish side in their religious affairs. This tore apart a bond with Rome that had been carefully sewn during decades of tight, underground collaboration.
This is why a meeting in Cuba later this month between the Pope and the Patriarch is fraught with religious and political significance. It signals that the two churches want religious reconciliation. This reconciliation ignores old Cold War political boundaries. Cuba is Catholic. But the island nation is still officially communist, with good ties with Russia and political pledges with officially communist China. The Pope has also played a pivotal role in improving relations between Havana and Washington. The meeting between Francis and Kirill, therefore, is intended as a religious and political signal for peace that’s not directed against any side or person.

The move resembles the occasion in late January when the Pope met Iran’s political and spiritual leader Hassan Rouhani in Rome, or when he gave an interview on China to this columnist who works for the Hong Kong-based website Asia Times.

The Pope clearly wants to change the old game of geopolitics that bloodied the last century with the two ideological wars — against fascism and communism. He rejects the so-called Yalta logic at the end of World War II, as he defined it in our interview, of carving up the world as if it were a cake, in different slices. He desires a world that is “a cake that grows bigger for everybody to share.” This must be based on respect (with capital “R,” as he said) for different civilizations and cultures, where “the Church has great potential to receive culture.”
It is also here that all criticisms of the Pope for pursuing a normalization of diplomatic ties with China or failing to raise issues of religious freedom in China or Iran, misses a larger point. Pope Francis seems to want something much more far reaching: To change the logic of geopolitics that dominated the world in the 20^thcentury.
No more blocs pitted against the other. No more ideologies — masked at times as religions — in which one confronts the other. In its place he favors a constant search for a common ground based on dialogue, mercy for one another, respect for different cultures and civilizations,  and human empathy for others’ sufferings. He thus ignores boundaries of religion and wants to reach out to all people Christians, Muslims, and through his recent interview, the Chinese.
The Pope seeks to do this by lowering the political status of Rome, as “headquarters” of the Catholic Church. But his spiritual outreach to the world confers a new centrality to the Bishop of Rome as the driver of a new global equilibrium. Here the Pope no longer follows say, the Holy Roman Emperor, as in the Middle Ages. Rather, he appears to be reaching out for a new catalyst role, as in the case of some popes during the Renaissance.
In those days, the Roman Church was bounded by Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. It was locked in a centuries-old conflict between Christianity and Islam. But the religious landscape has changed radically. It is now a world where half of its people are not heirs of the Biblical religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). On the fringes are the new millennial Satanists who disguise themselves as Muslims or extremists of different stripes. There are, for example, the pseudo-Hindus who lynch Muslims or Christians in India. There are the pseudo-Buddhists lynching Muslims in Burma.
At the same time, the current century has eased some institutional pressures. The church no longer carries the burden of the so-called Pontiff State which for centuries had confused Rome’s spiritual and political ambitions. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Pontiff State ensured Rome’s independence against the Byzantine emperor.
In 2016, the balance of power in the world and the tiny Vatican state are sufficient enough to guarantee the religious independence of the Roman Church, which has no invasive political ambitions and wants to play a positive role for peace in the world. The Obama administration, along with the Cuban government, has already recognized the Pope’s role. Moscow also appears to be a willing partner with the scheduled meeting between Kirill and the Pope in Havana later this month. There are similar signals in the Muslim world with the Pope’s meeting with Rouhani, and in China, where the Pope’s Asia Times interview enjoyed unprecedented coverage in the local press.
The pontiff is filling a political and spiritual vacuum in a world that has far deeper divisions than the long-dead triumphalist mercantile rhetoric of the past cared to see. He is facing reality, and the reality is very strong. This Pope is a realist, who knows that reality must first be taken for what it is before any effort can be made to change it. The strength of his approach should be measured by the almost effortless success he has enjoyed in pursuing his aims after only two years in the pontificate.
This is a game changer and those who fail to see it might as well be steamrolled by it.


...


Taken from: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/why-meeting-between-pope-russian-patriarch-game-changer/ri12702

Armenian Genocide Centennial: Pope Francis Divine Mercy Sunday Mass To Mark Historic Killings

By Lora Moftah @LoraMoftah l.moftah@ibtimes.com on April 09 2015 3:08 PM EDT

Pope Francis will hold a mass commemorating the centennial  of the Armenian genocide this Sunday, in what will be one of the most high-profile recent acknowledgments of the historic atrocity by a major world leader. Ahead of the mass, Francis lamented the lack of consensus on recognizing the early 20th century mass killings during a meeting Thursday with Armenian bishops.

The Sunday mass will be held 12 days before the official commemoration of the genocide’s centennial on April 24. Francis expressed his hopes that the occasion would help “to hasten concrete gestures of reconciliation and peace among the nations that have not yet reached a consensus on the reading of such sorrowful events,” in a statement reported by Vatican Radio.

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians died after Turks, during the Ottoman Empire, began forcibly evacuating ethnic minorities in what is present-day Turkey in 1915. The evacuation campaign is thought to have wiped out more than half of the Armenian population at the time and is widely acknowledged as the first genocide of the 20th century. The Turkish government has strongly rejected this view, arguing that the number of deaths was inflated and the result of unrest, disease and famine rather than a deliberate campaign of annihilation.

Acknowledgment of the historic tragedy by public figures around the world has always been a sensitive undertaking, as they are invariably met by vocal objections from the Turkish government. As a result, only a handful of countries officially recognize the atrocity as a genocide, a word most world leaders steer clear of when discussing the issue. Ahead of his election to office, President Barack Obama notably vowed to use the word when describing the killings but has yet to live up to the campaign promise. Turkey is a NATO member and an important ally straddling Europe and the Middle East.

Francis himself is no stranger to the controversy, but unlike most other world leaders, the pontiff has not shied away from publicly characterizing the killings as a genocide. As a cardinal in Argentina, Francis led a service of remembrance in Buenos Aires on the 91st anniversary of the genocide in 2006, during which he called the killings the “gravest crime of Ottoman Turkey.” Francis’ homeland of Argentina has significant Armenian and Greek minorities, whose ancestors migrated from the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I.

In 2013, the newly elected pope provoked a diplomatic rebuke from Ankara after he told a visiting delegation of Armenian Christians that the massacre of Armenians by the Ottomans was “the first genocide of the 20th century.” The comments were welcomed by prominent Armenians around the world, with the director of the Armenian National Committee of South America, Alfonso Tabakian, calling them a “very important” step, as the first such statement from the Catholic leader since his elevation to the papacy, and a sign that “more states, parliaments and international organizations are adopting this position against the denial of history perpetrated by the Turkish State.”

The pope’s April 12 commemoration is just as likely to produce the same polarized dynamic among the Turkish government, Armenians and other supporters of genocide recognition. The ecumenical ceremony, which falls on the Catholic observance of Divine Mercy Sunday,  will include representatives of Armenia’s various Christian communities as well as Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian. The vast majority of Armenian Christians follow the country’s Eastern Orthodox Apostolic Church, although more than 350,000 are members of the Armenian Catholic Church.

....

Taken from: http://www.ibtimes.com/armenian-genocide-centennial-pope-francis-divine-mercy-sunday-mass-mark-historic-1876272

Pope Francis set to rile Turkey by recalling the Armenian genocide

  

By Inés San Martín

Vatican correspondent March 30, 2015
                       

ROME — One week after Easter Sunday, Pope Francis is scheduled to celebrate a service in the Armenian Catholic rite to commemorate the 100th anniversary of a mass killing of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century that the pontiff defined two years ago as the “first genocide of the modern era.”

In a time of mounting anti-Christian violence in various corners of the Middle East, the pope’s act is likely to take on more than merely historical interest.

The April 12 papal liturgy is part of a broader campaign by Armenians to keep the memory of their suffering alive, which will feature the ringing of bells in Armenian churches around the world on April 23 at 19:15 (7:15 p.m.), the hour chosen to symbolically recall the year 1915. Bells will sound everywhere but Turkey, where the small number of churches still in operation will remain silent.

Francis has long been aware of the calamity that befell Turkey’s Armenian minority, having led an ecumenical service of remembrance in Buenos Aires in 2006.

“Today we come to pray for this people to whom human rights still don’t apply,” then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio said on that occasion. He called for “the end of the empire’s silence,” referring to the Ottomans and their successors in today’s Turkey, saying that acknowledging what had happened would “bring peace to the Armenian people.”

Scholars believe that 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians died as a result of efforts to drive Armenians and other minorities from their homelands in present-day Turkey after World War I. It’s often acknowledged as the first genocide of the 20th century, and a forerunner to later atrocities such as those committed by Nazi Germany and Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.

....

Taken from: http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/03/30/pope-francis-set-to-rile-turkey-by-recalling-the-armenian-genocide/

Abortion: The Real Terrorism



....

This has been on my heart lately, and an anonymous phone call I received this morning helped solidify my thoughts.

When Archbishop Amato called abortion "terrorism with a human face" in April 2007 he caused me to think: How is abortion terrorism?

Terrorism in the modern sense is 1.) violence or 2.) other harmful acts committed (or threatened) against civilians 3.) for political or other ideological goals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism).

All of those elements are present in abortion:

1. Violence: Abortion is violent.

A healthy, growing human being is killed and forcibly removed from her mother's womb. This has happened more than 48,000,000 times in America since 1973, more than four times the death toll from the Nazi Holocaust and 39 times the number of American casualties (combat and non-combat) from all of the wars we have ever fought as a nation.

Abortion kills women. Hundreds of women have died while going through a so-called "safe, legal" abortion (visit the "Blackmun Wall" to see the stories of 347 women who died during an abortion: http://www.lifedynamics.com/Pro-life_Group/Botched_Abortion/)).

Abortion kills motherhood. It makes the womb a terrorist war zone. No longer is the womb the most sacred, safe place. Gone is the nurturing love of a mother for her child. Now the woman suffers from emotional and psychological trauma. The mother who would normally give her life to save her child has given her child's life to "save" herself.

Abortion kills manhood. Every act of abortion involves a man. When the father of the child should be there, supporting and protecting the child and her mother, he either abandons them or, even worse, forces the mother to kill their innocent child. Abortion kills a man's conscience and turns him into a sexual predator.

Abortion kills relationships. It destroys marriages, not only when spouses choose to abort their children, but also in future marriages because it kills respect for one another and wounds so deeply.

Abortion kills humanity. When children, women, womanhood, manhood, and relationships are destroyed, there is nothing left for humanity. Abortion leaves us morally bankrupt. It tears apart the fabric of society. As Pope John Paul II once said with a voice quivering with emotion, "A nation which kills its own children is a nation without hope."

2. Harmful Acts are Threatened: Women in crisis pregnancies are often threatened to have an abortion. Lawmakers and the general public are threatened that if they do not allow abortion all kinds of bad things will happen.

In most cases of statutory rape or incest where a child is conceived, a woman is severely threatened by the perpetrator to get an abortion and is given no choice. She is literally terrorized by the male aggressor and often continues to be victimized by him long after an abortion is committed.

Women are also threatened by today's media. They send her messages like:

+ "You're too young to have a baby; your life will be ruined."
+ "How are you going to finish school? What will this do to your career?"
+ "You're dirty for getting pregnant, no one will like you any more."
+ "You'll never be able to afford having a child."
+ "You'll never find someone to marry you if you're taking care of a child."
+ "What's in your womb is your property to dispose of as you wish."

Lawmakers and the general public are threatened by those pushing the abortion agenda. They are told that if they outlaw abortion, crime and poverty will rise, more people will be starving and homeless, the environment will be destroyed, disease and pestilence will be more prevalent, and on and on. They are also threatened that if they infringe upon the "right" of a woman to have an abortion, all of our rights will be trampled.

3. For political or other ideological goals: It was stated by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood (the nation's largest abortion provider and lobbying organization), that "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923). She also referred to immigrants and poor people as "...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization.

It is clear that the secular humanists are using abortion as a terror tactic to advance their own agenda and ideological goals. The Humanist Manifesto II calls abortion a right that allows people to express sexual behavior between consenting adults. Without abortion, their "sexual rights" are repressed, so they work tirelessly to make abortion legal everywhere and at any time. It is interesting to note that Betty Frieden, founder of the National Organization of Women, and Alan Guttmacher, former president of Planned Parenthood, were signatories to the Humanist Manifesto II.

As a nation, we must declare war against the terrorism of abortion and eradicate it, just as slavery was eradicated in the 19th century. To do less will result in the collapse of our nation.

....

Taken from: http://defendlife.blogspot.com.au/2007/09/abortion-real-terrorism.html

The inconvenient truth is we’ve been sold a PUP on China which is ‘a totalitarian regime’

• by: Claire Harvey 
• From: The Sunday Telegraph
• August 31, 2014 12:00AM

 

Claire Harvey Source: Supplied

         

China — what a great place. Fabulous. We love it. Solid friend to Australia. Won’t hear a bad word about the joint.

That, apparently, is the only ­acceptable opinion nowadays on the great nation to our north.

And when anyone raises even a murmur to the contrary, they’re a moron. A loose cannon. A threat to the balance of trade. Unrepresentative swill. If they have any sense, they’ll apologise quick-smart.

Just to be clear, this is not a ­defence of Clive Palmer.

It’s just a little note of puzzlement at the way his remarks about the ­People’s Republic have been almost universally interpreted by people with public voices — from politicians to journalists and academics.

Everyone in the public domain has been rushing to agree with one ­another in revulsion at the sentiments expressed by Clive and his PUP senator Jacqui Lambie.

Two weeks ago Clive Palmer said the Chinese were “mongrels” and “bastards”, that they operated a totalitarian regime, that they wanted to take Australia’s mineral resources without paying, and that they shot their own people. Palmer subsequently issued a grovelling apology to the Chinese ambassador.

Lambie followed her leader by warning “China is controlled by an aggressive, anti-democratic, totalitarian government. We need to ­double the size and capacity of our military right now”.

Well, smite me with a bolt of lightning for this heresy — but they’re right, aren’t they? At least half-right?

OK, so both went way too far, and Palmer certainly is hypocritical: he was a big China fan until his mining joint-venture with a state-owned ­Chinese company turned into an ­expensive, litigious disaster.

Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer. Source: News Corp Australia

And it’s very easy to make fun of Lambie, with her scraped-up hair and wacky scarves, her fluency in Hansonese and bossy, exasperated string of non-sequiturs. But why can’t the rest of our politicians momentarily teleport themselves out of whatever Canberra wine bar they’re slurping viognier in, and hear her words as the rest of Australia hears them?

For all Lambie’s flaws, she delivers a line better than Bill Shorten: punchier, snappier, with more cut-through.

Lambie and Palmer’s China rhetoric may sound hysterical to those of us accustomed to more measured mumbling about human rights cough-cough-less-than-ideal-ahem.

But how do they sound to low-wage Australians worried about Chinese workers on 457 visas, or about Chinese investors driving the price of new apartments through the roof?

The truth, no matter how inconvenient, is that China is a totalitarian regime — a repressive place where ­arbitrary detention, forced relocation, land seizures, official corruption, police and military brutality, religious repression and interference with civil liberties go on every single day.

The Chinese national flag: Picture: Vincent Yu, AP Photo Source: AP

As Palmer said, they do shoot their own people — in an estimated 4000 executions every year — and in the public square. I’m not talking about 1989 and Tiananmen Square.

I’m talking about the five protesters in Tibet shot dead just last week when they dared object to the arbitrary detention of a respected local elder; just a taste of how Beijing ­reacts to dissent.

So why has it become taboo to admit China’s glaring faults?

Well, we rely on them to buy our exports, to visit our tourist ­attractions, to fill our universities.

We need their cheap labour to make our $10 ­­T-shirts.

But the bigger, scarier truth is it suits Australia — and the rest of the Western world — for China to continue to oppress its people. Totalitarian regimes may represent evil in its most distilled form, but at least they are stable.

In the Middle East, we’ve seen in the past three years what happens when dictatorships fall.

We all loved the Arab Spring when it was Twitter and dancing in Tahrir Square — finally, a hint of freedom for the millions living under crazed dictatorships.

But the chaos that has followed is a bitter winter. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s depravity has been replaced by barbarians without faces, beheading men on their knees.

The truth, no matter how inconvenient, is that China is a totalitarian regime — a repressive place where ­arbitrary detention, forced relocation, land seizures, official corruption, police and military brutality, religious repression and gross interference with civil liberties go on every single day.

In Libya, the wicked 42-year reign of Muammar Gaddafi has been ­replaced by bearded Islamist maniacs dancing on top of burnt-out jumbo jets, declaring themselves the new government. Egypt today is even more of a global beacon for torture and oppression than it was under the dictator Hosni Mubarak.

As for Syria, the monstrous Islamic State controls everything east of Aleppo and is advancing on Damascus, with the likely encouragement of president Bashar al-Assad.

So China, controlled without dissent by the hard old men of the Politburo Standing Committee, is working in Australia’s most cynical interests.

No trade unions — that means our T-shirts are cheaper than ever. No ­regional independence movements — that means no possible disruptions to two-way trade. No rebel groups turning terrorist.

Australia’s leaders quietly hope China will take baby-steps towards something at least distantly related to democracy, just as long as nobody freaks them out by speaking the truth. Is this really the best we can do in our beautiful haven of free speech?

• Increase Text Size
• Decrease Text Size
• Print
• Email
• Share
  • Add to Digg
  • Add to del.icio.us
  • Add to Facebook
  • Add to Kwoff
  • Add to Myspace
  • Add to Newsvine
  • What are these?

....

Taken from: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/the-inconvenient-truth-is-weve-been-sold-a-pup-on-china-which-is-a-totalitarian-regime/story-fni0cwl5-1227041564788

Pope Francis’s envoy warns of ‘horrible consequences’ of Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill



Pope Francis will back you, Papal representative tells opponents of change in   law, warning it would be a ‘Pandora’s Box’

 

 

By John Bingham, and Nick Squires

8:30PM BST 08 May 2014
 

Legalising assisted suicide in the UK would open a “Pandora’s box” with    “horrible consequences” for the frail, elderly and sick, Pope Francis’s   personal representative has insisted.

In a rare public intervention into a domestic political matter, the Apostolic   Nuncio to Great Britain, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, condemned moves led by   Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, to relax the euthanasia laws as   an attack on “human life as a gift from God”.

He urged opponents to expose what he called the “reality” of Lord Falconer’s    “nice, politically correct and compassionate” term “assisted dying” to mean   a form of euthanasia.

And he singled out the issue as a litmus test of whether Britain remains, in  the words of David Cameron, a “Christian country”.

His remarks, in a private address to the Roman Catholic bishops of England and   Wales, echo those of Pope Francis, who has attacked moves towards assisted   suicide as an attempt to “eliminate” sick and disabled people.

The new Nuncio with Archbishop Nichols
 

Related Articles

• Assisted suicide moves closer as Government allows free vote08 Mar 2014
• GPs could decide on assisted suicide15 May 2013

And he pointedly offered them the personal support of the Pope on the issue,   setting the Church on course for another battle with politicians in the wake   of the bruising encounters over issues such as gay marriage.
Last night supporters of a change in the law claimed that the Pope’s   representative was “on the wrong side of British public opinion”.
Members of the House of Lords are preparing to debate proposals, tabled by   Lord Falconer, to allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to   terminally-ill patients in the next few months.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg, who both personally oppose the change, have   nevertheless promised MPs and peers a free vote and some ministers have   signalled their support.
Under the 1961 Suicide Act, it is a crime punishable by 14 years in jail, to   help someone to take their own life but prosecution guidelines now make   clear that many who do so will escape charges.
Supporters of Lord Falconer say a change in the law is urgently needed but   opponents claim that safeguards written into the bill could be swept away.
They point to the extension of assisted suicide in Belgium to children as   proof that it would be a “slippery slope”.
Archbishop Mennini spoke about the recent debate about whether the UK is a    “Christian country, arguing that although Britain had been “profoundly   formed by Christian values”, the influence of the faith had undoubtedly   declined.
“In this regard, I cannot fail to express concern about the Assisted Dying   Bill which will be discussed in the next few months in the House of Lords,”    he said.
“This is a very sensitive issue, which required a serious commitment from us   to protect and defend human life as a gift from God.”
Praising those who had highlighted “sense and nonsense” on the issue, he   added: “May I encourage … you to announce the gospel of life among our   people, as well as in society in general, presenting the reality which hides   behind the ‘nice’, ‘politically correct’ and ‘compassionate’ expression    ‘assisted dying’.”
He added: “Unfortunately we know from experience how easily public opinion can   be manipulated, especially using ‘emotional’ arguments that try to move   compassionate sentiments.
“But once we open this Pandora’s box we know as well the horrible consequences   that follow.”
“We have seen that even here, among us, regarding abortion, and the last news   about ‘selective abortion’.
“But also elsewhere, in other European countries which recently have made   change in their laws moving from a limited concept of euthanasia” to a wider   spectre, also including children, as in Belgium.”
He pointedly added: “Please be assured of our support, as well as that of the   Holy Father, regarding this important issue.”
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of the campaign group Dignity in Dying, which   supports Lord Falconer’s bill, said: “Everyone’s opinion on assisted dying   must be respected and if Archbishop Antonio Mennini does not want the choice   to control the manner of his death then that is his decision.
“However, it is not acceptable for the Archbishop to impose his views, based   on principle, on others who do not share them and by doing so cause   unnecessary suffering for the small but significant number of people who   want the option of an assisted death when palliative care is not enough.
“The Archbishop is on the wrong side of British public opinion not because it   has been manipulated but because people listen to those who are terminally   ill and their call for a right to choose when they die.”

....

Taken from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10817765/Pope-Franciss-envoy-warns-of-horrible-consequences-of-Lord-Falconers-Assisted-Dying-Bill.html

Fears for China's churches as Christianity rises

Demolition of state-sanctioned church in eastern China stokes fears Communist Party will unleash nationwide campaign against fast-growing Christian community

By Tom Phillips, Wenzhou

11:46AM BST 30 Apr 2014

It is impossible to visit Wenzhou, a bustling port city known as the Jerusalem of the East, without noticing the crosses.

Bright red and in some cases taller than houses, they thrust into the sky from roof tops, domes and spires – a constant reminder of Christianity’s rapid spread in this officially atheist nation.

Recently, however, the crosses appear to have become too visible for Beijing’s liking.

On Monday night excavators laid waste to one of the city’s largest places of worship, the state-sanctioned Sanjiang church, amid accusations that the Communist Party was preparing to launch a nationwide assault against Christianity.

At least 10 churches here in Zhejiang province have been ordered to remove their eye-catching red crosses or are facing partial or total demolition, activists claim. Already this month two churches, one Catholic, one Protestant, have been razed.

On Monday night excavators laid waste to one of the city’s largest places of worship, the state-sanctioned Sanjiang church
 

Related Articles

• China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years
  19 Apr 2014
• Chinese protesters ambush anti-corruption team at luxury hotel
  14 Apr 2014
• 'Fake' government toppled by Chinese police
  24 Apr 2014

Communist Party officials insist the demolitions are a matter of planning permission not religious persecution.
Yet whatever the truth, the highly symbolic destruction of Sanjiang, a state-approved congregation, has underlined escalating tensions between an increasing large and assertive Church and a Communist Party that appears less and less tolerant of those groups it sees as a threat to its power.
Exactly 25 years ago, hawks and doves within the Party leadership debated how to deal with mass protests that had broken out in Tiananmen Square and hundreds of other Chinese cities.
Some, like Zhao Ziyang, China's reform-minded General Secretary, advocated a conciliatory approach, noting that the students’ calls for an end to corruption were in line with the party's own pledges. Others pushed for an iron-fisted response, claiming the protests had been whipped up by hostile foreign forces intent on toppling the Party.
“This clearly is a planned, organised conspiracy,” said Li Ximing, Beijing's conservative mayor, according to leaked documents published in the Tiananmen papers.
A quarter of a century on from those debates - eventually and fatefully won by the hardliners - the Party appears similarly split over religion and Christianity in particular.
Some leaders are said to share Prime Minister David Cameron's newfound enthusiasm for the faith as a weapon against spiritual and moral collapse. But as with the 1989 protests, many others view Christianity as a “hostile” and “foreign” danger that needs to be stamped out.

_{Church members told The Telegraph authorities had attempted to silence the congregation}

Foreign missionaries were forced from China following the Communist takeover in 1949 and the Party’s deep suspicion of proselytising outsiders appears to have changed little since then. 
A high-level government directive, leaked in late 2012, ordered universities chiefs to guard against a gang of “US-led Western countries” which were "infiltrating" Chinese campuses and “using religion to carry out their political plot to westernise and divide China”.
China's Protestant and Catholic communities – now thought to number anywhere between 25 and 100 million people - enjoy incomparably more freedom than during the three decades that followed Chairman Mao’s 1949 Revolution.

^{Church members accused Communist leaders in Zhejiang province of ordering an anti-church crackdown}

But the bar was set very low by years of destruction and persecution in which pastors and priests were routinely beaten, thrown into jail and even tortured as their places of worship were closed or ransacked. 
Even today, the only legal way to worship legally is inside state-controlled churches run by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TPSM) or the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA). Chinese citizens are forbidden from attending foreign-run churches where overseas priests might preach inconvenient sections of the Bible.
Thaddeus Ma Daqin, a Catholic bishop in Shanghai, has effectively been under house arrest since he spoke out against the Party’s stranglehold on religion in 2012. Earlier this month a government official accused the bishop of acting “under the influence of foreigners”. 
The significance of this week’s church demolition remains unclear, with observers divided on whether it was the result of a regional grudge against Christianity or a direct order from Beijing.
However, some within the Christian community fear Beijing is gearing up for a nationwide anti-church campaign designed to halt the advance of what they view as troublesome “foreign” movement.
Young Chinese often saw Christianity as "very fresh, modern and attractive” but many senior Communists regarded it as “a sickness” that posed a potentially fatal threat to the Party's health, said one underground “house church” leader.
As congregations swell - a leading expert recently predicted China would become the world's biggest Christian congregation by 2030 - and the profile and influence of churchgoers changes with the conversion of younger, more educated urban believers, so too do these fears.
Fenggang Yang, the head of Purdue University’s Centre on Religion and Chinese Society, said Chinese Christians would face growing pressure from Beijing in the coming decade, likening the situation to the Roman Empire's Great Persecution of Christians in the 10 years leading up to the AD313 Edict of Milan.
That may be putting it too strongly, but the destruction of Sanjiang church has done nothing to improve the Communist Party’s long-strained relations with the Church.
There was now an urgent need for greater dialogue between churches and the government, the underground leader argued. “We have to build up trust. The mistrust is a very, very big issue.”
At Wenzhou’s Sanjiang church any trust was obliterated this week as government demolition teams took just hours to level a place of worship that had taken years of work and millions of pounds to build.
After being spied on and harassed by local officials and police who had sought to hide the demolition from the public eye, congregants woke up on Tuesday morning to find their church reduced to a heap of rubble.
“They should respect our faith,” said one congregant. “Politics is so complicated, especially in China. We can saying nothing more.”

....

Taken from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10798007/Fears-for-Chinas-churches-as-Christianity-rises.html