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The Diocese of Hong Kong has launched a new minibus service as another public transport option, as  part of an initiative during the current Jubilee Year of Mercy.  The 20 decorated minibuses run 10 routes on Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories. The buses are for public use and they charge a standard fee.  The minibuses are painted with the images of Mother Teresa, St. John Paul II and Pope Francis.  "In the second half of the jubilee year, we will bring the merciful message to society through these minibuses," Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha Chi-shing of Hong Kong said May 14.  Bishop Ha said the minibuses are a sign that: "We still have to give a helping hand to those who are in need in our daily life and introduce the merciful God to them." (Source: UCAN)

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India is revising its rehabilitation scheme for forced or bonded labourers to include transgender and  other marginalised people, speed up court proceedings, and increase compensation for rescued workers.

Under the new policy, the government will boost the scheme's annual budget to 470 million rupees ($7 million) from 50 million rupees, according to an official statement released on May 17.

The new scheme "aims to address new forms of bondage such as organised begging rings, forced prostitution and child labour, for which females, disabled and transgenders are mercilessly used," Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in the statement.  India abolished bonded labour in 1976, but the country is home to almost half the world's 36 million slaves, according to the Global Slavery Index produced by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation. Many are from poor rural areas and are lured with the promise of good jobs, but end up sold into domestic work, prostitution, or to brick kilns, textile units and farms.  In many cases, they are unpaid or held in debt bondage, forced to work without wages until they pay off loans they have taken to secure their jobs.

Rescued bonded labourers often face delays in receiving compensation, and trials to bring perpetrators to justice can be bogged down by varying laws in different states.  Under the new rules, which are the first revision to the scheme since 1999, rescued male bonded labourers will receive 100,000 rupees each, compared to 20,000 rupees before. Rescued women and child workers will be paid 200,000 rupees, while women, children, and transgender and disabled people who have been trafficked or rescued from brothels will receive 300,000 rupees. The government will also ensure that bonded labour cases are tried and the judgements delivered on the same day, the statement said.

Rights groups welcomed the changes and said they hoped the court requirements would result in more convictions of traffickers. "While we have had thousands of bonded-labour rescues, there have hardly been any prosecutions, which are the main deterrent" for traffickers, said Chandan Kumar, a worker rights expert with the charity ActionAid who has campaigned against bonded labour. "This is a very progressive and ambitious provision, but we have to see how it is implemented, given the manpower

requirements it will need at the district levels."

More than a quarter of a million bonded labourers have been compensated since the earlier scheme was put in place in 1978, according to government data. Between 1978 and 2015, the union and state governments collectively spent nearly 2 billion rupees on rehabilitation assistance.  (Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation‎ )

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New York City, N.Y., May 20, 2016 / 12:02 am (CNA).- Leah Fessler considers herself a feminist.

And the standard feminist narrative is that women can have, and indeed enjoy, casual sex without consequences – physical, emotional, or otherwise.

But when her experience with hookup culture (and that of her friends') in college failed to live up to its empowering promises and left her emotionally empty, Fessler decided to look a little deeper.

In an article written for Quartz, Fessler explains her quest to examine what it was about the prominent hookup culture, and the ill-defined, non-committal “pseudo-relationships,” at her Middlebury college campus that were making her miserable.

“Far more frequent, however, were pseudo-relationships, the mutant children of meaningless sex and loving partnerships. Two students consistently hook up with one another – and typically, only each other – for weeks, months, even years,” Fessler wrote.

“Yet per unspoken social code, neither party is permitted emotional involvement, commitment, or vulnerability. To call them exclusive would be 'clingy,' or even 'crazy.'”

These pseudo-relationships would typically follow the same cycle, she notes. She’d meet a guy she was interested in, they’d start texting, meet up in their dorms late at night to discuss their mutual interests and hobbies and families, and have sex. This would happen off and on over the course of a few months with the same guy, then the relationship of sorts would just fizzle and die. Wash, rinse repeat with the next. Fessler wrote that she experienced this with at least five men by her senior year.

She felt used and desperate for emotional intimacy. At the same time, she felt bad for being unable to reconcile the fact that she couldn’t achieve the carefree, empowering feeling that her feminists beliefs told her was possible.

Fessler decided to devote her senior thesis to this phenomenon that was taking its toll on herself and so many of her friends, who for all other intents and purposes were successful, involved, well-rounded students.

Fessler interviewed 75 male and female students and conducted more than 300 online surveys. She found that 100 percent of female interviewees and three-quarters of female survey respondents stated a clear preference for committed relationships. Only 8 percent of about 25 female respondents, who said they were in pseudo-relationships, reported being “happy” with their situation.

“The women I interviewed were eager to build connections, intimacy and trust with their sexual partners. Instead, almost all of them found themselves going along with hookups that induced overwhelming self-doubt, emotional instability and loneliness,” she wrote.

The male responses were just as complex, she adds. Most men interviewed and surveyed also preferred a committed relationship, but felt pressured to have casual sex with numerous beautiful women in order to discuss these “escapades” with their friends and boost their status in a culture where hookups are the norm.

Perhaps it’s time that casual sex ceases to be the progressive norm, and that women recognize the connection between their need for an emotionally fulfilling relationship and their sex lives, Fessler notes.

“The truth is that, for many women, there’s nothing liberating about emotionless, non-committal sex. The young women I spoke with were taking part in hookup culture because they thought that was what guys wanted, or because they hoped a casual encounter would be a stepping stone to commitment.”

“In doing this, we actually deny ourselves agency and bolster male dominance, all while convincing ourselves we’re acting like progressive feminists. But engaging in hookup culture while wholeheartedly craving love and stability was perhaps the least feminist action I, and hundreds of my peers, could take.”

Fessler’s thesis, “Can She Really ‘Play That Game, Too’?” recently became available for download and is available at her website: http://hookupmiddlebury.weebly.com/about.html

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IMAGE: CNS photo/John Mc Elroy

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DUBLIN (CNS) -- Archbishop Diarmuid Martin confirmed that Pope Francis, or his successor, will visit Ireland in 2018 for the World Meeting of Families.

Archbishop Martin confirmed that when he discussed the issue of visiting Ireland with the pontiff, Pope Francis said: "'I will come', and he said, 'if I don't come, my successor will come.'"

As well as Dublin, the pope would probably visit Northern Ireland to complete the 1979 historic pilgrimage of St John Paul II, when rising tensions in the North made a visit there impossible.

The Irish Catholic said Archbishop Martin made his remarks in an interview with the Irish Independent. The Irish Catholic said that a "well-placed Vatican source" confirmed that "all the indications from Rome are very positive about this."

"It would obviously be the hope that the Holy Father would make a visit to Northern Ireland and, perhaps, some other parts of Ireland, since many Irish Catholics will want to have an opportunity to attend Mass with Pope Francis," the source told The Irish Catholic.

Speculation about a papal visit began in September, after Pope Francis announced in Philadelphia that Dublin would host the 2018 World Meeting of Families. Popes have presided at all but two of the eight meetings held since the first meeting in 1994.

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By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Diocesan bishops must consult with the Vatican before establishing a diocesan religious order, Pope Francis ruled.

The consultation "is to be understood as necessary for the validity of the erection of a diocesan institute of consecrated life," said the rescript or ruling approved by Pope Francis April 4 and published by the Vatican May 20.

The English translation of the Code of Canon Law states: "Diocesan bishops, each in his own territory, can erect institutes of consecrated life by formal decree, provided that the Apostolic See has been consulted."

However, some bishops and canon lawyers had argued the consultation was advised, not required, and that a lack of consultation did not make the order's establishment invalid.

The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life said in a statement that the consultation is necessary because "every new institute of consecrated life, even if it comes into the light and develops within a particular church, is a gift given to the entire church."

The congregation said it is necessary "to avoid new institutes being erected on the diocesan level without sufficient discernment of the originality of the charism," which determines the way the members will live out the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Sister Sharon Holland, a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and a canon lawyer who worked at the congregation, said there had been "much discussion" for years over whether consultation with the Vatican was necessary. With the Vatican involved from the beginning, she told Catholic News Service, when a congregation grows to the point of asking for status as a pontifical -- rather than a diocesan -- institute, the Vatican can be sure the community had "firm foundations from the beginning."

Especially if the founder of a diocesan order, whether a bishop or someone else, is not a member of a religious order, outside consultation can help ensure that the new order nourishes a true sense of consecrated life and provides for the protection of individual members, she said.

Like religious orders in general, most diocesan orders are communities of women and are found all over the world.

The U.S.-based Sisters of Life, founded by the late Cardinal John J. O'Connor of New York in 1991, "is a good example of a group that went through the proper channels in the right way" before being officially approved as a religious institute of diocesan right in 2004, Sister Holland said.

For several years in its annual report in "The Activity of the Holy See," an official yearbook, the congregation for religious has included a line about its "copious correspondence with diocesan bishops in response to requests regarding the task of discernment" of new communities of consecrated life.

In the report for 2013, the congregation said it gave favorable opinions to three bishops -- one each in Italy, Brazil and Mexico -- asking about setting up diocesan orders. It also said it expressed "negative opinions" in three cases, although it did not specify where. The 2014 report said favorable opinions were given regarding a men's and a women's order in South Korea and orders of women in Angola and Mexico. Four negative opinions also were given.

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