Catholic News 2
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HUA HIN, Thailand (AP) -- A wave of coordinated explosions rattled cities and resort towns across southern Thailand, killing at least four people and wounding dozens more. Police said Friday about 10 foreigners were among the injured....
Jalingo, Nigeria, Aug 11, 2016 / 07:08 pm (Aid to the Church in Need).- Bishop Charles Hammawa heads the Diocese of Jalingo, located in the eastern part of the Nigeria's so-called “Middle Belt.” The population of 2.3 million is about equally divided between Muslims and Christians, 450,000 of whom are Catholic, with 10 percent of the people belonging to traditional religions.The bishop expressed to the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need Aug. 9 his concern about what he labeled “suspiciously persistent” attacks by well-armed Muslim Fulani herdsmen on Christian farmers. He also dicussed the growing influx of Muslim settlers taking possession of land taken from these farmers.ACN: Boko Haram appears to be curtailed, and there are fewer attacks by the group. However, you have reported another manifestation of Islamic extremism in the form of these attacks by Fulani herdsmen on Christian farmers.Bishop Hammawa: That is my suspicion – ...
Jalingo, Nigeria, Aug 11, 2016 / 07:08 pm (Aid to the Church in Need).- Bishop Charles Hammawa heads the Diocese of Jalingo, located in the eastern part of the Nigeria's so-called “Middle Belt.” The population of 2.3 million is about equally divided between Muslims and Christians, 450,000 of whom are Catholic, with 10 percent of the people belonging to traditional religions.
The bishop expressed to the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need Aug. 9 his concern about what he labeled “suspiciously persistent” attacks by well-armed Muslim Fulani herdsmen on Christian farmers. He also dicussed the growing influx of Muslim settlers taking possession of land taken from these farmers.
ACN: Boko Haram appears to be curtailed, and there are fewer attacks by the group. However, you have reported another manifestation of Islamic extremism in the form of these attacks by Fulani herdsmen on Christian farmers.
Bishop Hammawa: That is my suspicion – that jihad is taking a new course. It looks like a problem between herdsmen and farmers. In the past, things would settle down after a clash. But I have seen cases of herdsmen not just letting their cattle graze but taking over the land – and Muslim from the north coming in to settle there. It appears to be a strategy to deliberately populate areas with Muslims and, by the sheer weight of superior numbers, influence political decision-making in the region. It is not the extreme violence of Boko Haram, but another way of capturing Nigeria for Islam. And this crisis has been sustained for the past three years in our region. It’s also suspicious that the herdsmen have access to sophisticated weaponry. There appears to be some financing of the Fulani aggression, which has left numerous dead, destroyed many communities and displaced thousands of people.
ACN: Are Muslims and Christians in competition in the “Middle Belt,” where neither religion has the upper hand?
Bishop Hammawa: Both faiths are committed to gaining new followers. The difference lies in the approach. Christianity uses persuasion through preaching. For Islam, it can be the case of a kind of coercion – the understanding that if you want to get anywhere in government, you have to be a Muslim. For example, the office of traditional rulers is presented as belonging only to Muslims, which prompts some Christians eligible to the throne to convert to Islam.
ACN: In this regard, how do you rate the policies of President Muhammadu Buhari – is he being fair to Christians?
Bishop Hammawa: I have some doubts. He is very cautious and a little bit slow in condemning the Fulani crisis, for example. I wish he would be stronger in making firm statements in this matter and take concrete action in combatting Islamic extremism. My worry is that – although Boko Haram members have been killed or are awaiting trial – the organization is laying low, with members hiding out in various places. Violence could readily flare up again.
ACN: What is the solution, in your view, to putting a real stop to Islamic extremism?
Bishop Hammawa: We keep saying that dialogue must be the solution. But the parties do have to come to the table with a sincere willingness to live in peace. Also, it must be acknowledged that many of the rank-and-file of Boko Haram had been neglected by the Muslim elite in the north for a long time. These youth and adults have not been properly educated, because Western education has been rejected; they have been living in the margins of the society, with only a fundamentalist Islamic formation. They are filled with anger and they have nothing to lose. Meanwhile, the Muslim elite send their children to be educated abroad! No wonder, Boko Haram eventually targeted Muslim leaders as well.
ACN: Do you and your priests use your homilies to address these issues?
Bishop Hammawa: We avoid inflaming hostilities; we preach peace and reconciliation; we urge Christian farmers not to retaliate—at most, we encourage them to defend themselves; but we cannot tell them to go and fight—that would violate the spirit of the Gospel. There definitely is a great fear of persecution among Christians, which brings some of them to compromise or hide their faith. Those who remain steadfast deserve our utmost support.
ACN: Are local authorities, such as the police, of any help?
Bishop Hammawa: Unfortunately, corruption and bribery hamper security efforts. Corruption, of course, is rampant all across Nigeria.
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Oklahoma City, Okla., Aug 11, 2016 / 03:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Another planned black mass and an additional satanic ritual in Oklahoma City is timed to mock a Marian feast and desecrate an image of the Virgin Mary. In reaction, the local Catholic archbishop and Christians from all backgrounds will join in prayer.Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City explained the need for prayer and called on Catholics to join the Unity Prayer Service and Walk.“In response to this blasphemous event, and the many other acts of hatred and violence happening in our world in recent weeks, I am encouraging the faithful and people of good will to pray together for healing and peace, and for the Lord to watch over our community and protect us from evil and its many destructive and violent manifestations,” the archbishop said Aug. 10.“I also ask that we pray for the conversion of this man and for all who have not yet come to know the Lord of Life.”The multi-denominational prayer ...
Oklahoma City, Okla., Aug 11, 2016 / 03:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Another planned black mass and an additional satanic ritual in Oklahoma City is timed to mock a Marian feast and desecrate an image of the Virgin Mary. In reaction, the local Catholic archbishop and Christians from all backgrounds will join in prayer.
Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City explained the need for prayer and called on Catholics to join the Unity Prayer Service and Walk.
“In response to this blasphemous event, and the many other acts of hatred and violence happening in our world in recent weeks, I am encouraging the faithful and people of good will to pray together for healing and peace, and for the Lord to watch over our community and protect us from evil and its many destructive and violent manifestations,” the archbishop said Aug. 10.
“I also ask that we pray for the conversion of this man and for all who have not yet come to know the Lord of Life.”
The multi-denominational prayer walk will take place in downtown Oklahoma City Aug. 15 at 6 p.m. It will begin at the Jesus Wept Statue of Saint Joseph’s Old Cathedral and end at the United Methodist First Church for a Christian prayer service.
“As the local government has refused to interfere with this abhorrent blasphemous worship that is being publicly sanctioned in our community, we trust that our government – local, state and federal – will reaffirm its commitment to protect the religious liberty of Christians and other believers as well,” Archbishop Coakley said. “Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother, let us pray together for healing and peace in our country and our world.”
Aug. 15 marks the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, when the Catholic Church marks the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven.
The same day, a group called the Church of Ahriman has scheduled a ticketed event at the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall, which is run by the city government.
The event involves the attempted corruption of a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary using sulfur, menstrual blood, and the ashes of desecrated and burned pages of the Koran. It involves the consumption of a pig’s heart and the “entrapment” of the Virgin Mary in a ritual triangle, in an attempted parody of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The statue will be smashed.
“You’re basically going to have three rituals going on at the same time,” Dastur Adam Daniels, a leader in the group, told the Oklahoma Gazette. “We’re trying to show people how chaotic we are in nature and how chaotic our religion is. It’s all based on chaos.”
Daniels said the abuse of the Virgin Mary statue aims to illustrate black magic and his religion's teachings. He aims to distinguish these teachings from atheistic Satanism, and claims the practices draw from the occult, Zoroastrianism, Tantra, and Hinduism.
Before the ritual, the group will hold a black mass. The black mass, often connected to witchcraft and demonic worship, is a sacrilegious ceremony that invokes Satan and mocks the Mass. It often involves the desecration of the Eucharist, generally by stealing a consecrated host from a Catholic Church and using it in a profane sexual ritual.
Daniels said that the event is legal.
“We’re not doing anything against the law,” Daniels said. “Against canon law, sure. But the United States’ law? No. We’re not doing anything wrong.”
The group previously attempted a black mass using a consecrated Host stolen from a Catholic liturgy. The move caused massive protests, with Archbishop Coakley playing a leading role in criticizing the event. Daniels returned the consecrated Host after a lawsuit sought the return of stolen property. The ritual went forward without the Host in September 2014.
At the same time, thousands of Catholics and others held prayers, Eucharistic processions, and demonstrations outside the city hall as the group held a sparsely attended black mass.
Daniels had attempted to hold a mock exorcism at the civic center’s music hall in 2010 as part of a different Satanist group he had co-founded and led as a “Dark Overlord.” However, the group expelled Daniels after learning he was a sex offender.
Oklahoma City’s News 9, citing court records, in 2010 reported that Daniels was a registered sex offender and was convicted of sexual battery on a person over age 16.
The Aug. 15 event is advertised on the Oklahoma City music hall’s website as a presentation of the group Dakhma of Angra Mainyu. The website says the black mass will be performed “as done in 2014.” The ritual involving the Virgin Mary statue “will educate the public on the practice of Ahrimanism.”
Daniels claimed the Catholic Church was attempting to infringe on his religious liberty by blocking his rituals.
“They’re the one who started this fight; I’m just bringing it to them,” he told the Oklahoma Gazette.
The Family Policy Institute of Oklahoma is among the participants of the prayer walk.
“This year has been a difficult year on many levels for Oklahomans and Americans, but now is the time for the Body of Christ to come together in unity across denominational lines in a Call to Prayer,” Timothy Tardibono, the institute’s director, said Aug. 10. “As Oklahoma’s communities search for answers in these troubling times, Christ’s unified followers in Oklahoma City can provide the peace and hope our neighbors are desperately seeking just as Christ envisioned.”
Dr. Anthony L. Jordan, executive director-treasurer for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said the churches involved continue to recognize their doctrinal differences but also believe it is time to gather together in prayer.
“We believe that only the light of the Gospel can provide the peace and hope our neighbors are desperately seeking amid these troubled times,” he said.
Dr. A.D. Beacham Jr., who heads the International Pentecostal Holiness Church Executive Offices in Bethany, Okla., said he was thankful that “the Body of Jesus Christ in Oklahoma City is gathering to stand for righteousness, hope and reconciliation in our city.”
In 2014 an official with the Oklahoma City music hall told CNA it has a policy of neutrality.
“We do not discriminate against any group based on the content of their message,” she said.
She said the government policy would mean the center would be willing to host a racist or anti-Jewish event “as long as it was not hosting something specifically illegal in nature, or that during the production they were taking part in illegal activities.”
Previous satanic rituals at the music hall were poorly attended, the official said.
