More from the Greenhouse

 In the last few months We've had plenty of strawberries, raspberries, cherries, peaches, plums, grapes and nectarines from the greenhouse. The pears have been excellent this year: very large and a delicious flavour. 

 Postulant Mr. Janes picks some of our apples for the table. 

 After being barren for several years, the kiwifruit vines have finally fruited. They are not quite ripe yet, but should be soon.

Evviva Maria!

This beautiful hymn

in honour of Our lady

was composed

by St Alphonsus.

It is sung in the old style of popular hymns.

You could imagine the saintly composer

conducting it during a Holy Mission.

Lodiamo cantando
La Figlia, la Sposa,
La Madre amorosa
Di chi la formo

Evviva Maria,
Maria evviva;
Evviva Maria,
E chi la creœ.

Allor che Maria,
Divisa dal Figlio
Tra spine qual giglio,
Fra noi si resto:

Ardendo il suo core
D’unirsi con Dio
Con umil desio
La Morte cercœ.

Chi tanto I’amava,
Il caro suo Sposo
Al pieno riposo
Nel ciel la chiamœ.

La morte aspettava,
Che apriese le porte;
Ma giunta la Morte
Lontan si fermœ.

Sen venne l’Amore
Col dolce suo strale
E ‘l colpo mortale
Sul cor le donœ.

Allora con pace,
Ferita giœ essendo,
D’amore languendo,
Felice spirœ.

La bella Colomba
Il volo poi sciolse;
Il Figlio l’accolse
E al ciel la portœ.

Or mentre nel cielo
O bella Regina,
Gia siedi vicina
A chi t’esaltœ:

Deh! non ti scordare
Di me peccatore,
Fa ch’ ami il mio core
Chi sempre mi amœ.

Subdeacons to be ordained Deacons in November

Ordinations to the Diaconate

I have the joy of announcing to you that 

our Subdeacons

Brother Yousef Marie, F.SS.R. . 

and 

Brother Magdala Maria, F.SS.R. 

will be ordained Deacons 

on 17 November, 2012 

at 

Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, 

Denton, Nebraska.

Please remember them in your prayers.

Fr. Michael Mary, F.SS.R.

Rector Major

The Rape and Murder of Pakistan's Christian Children

Cardinal Turkson

When we posted the clip that Cardinal Turkson had played to the Synod of Bishops
we received some critical comments which we did not publish.

I invite you to read this article carefully and to
check the sources that are linked to this article
(by clicking on the underlined words). 

It is not possible to be indifferent to the sufferings of
these Christians of Pakistan. 

Not all are Catholic.
All are Christian and persecuted. 

The Authorities cited include the
Information Service of the Pontifical Mission Socities "FIDES"

 and the 

Vatican News Agency.



The West sighed in relief when Rimsha Masih, the 14-year-old Christian girl arrested in Pakistan on August 16 for allegedly burning pages of the Quran, was finally released. Yet the West remains clueless concerning the graphic abuses--including rape and murder--Christian children in Pakistan routinely suffer, simply for being Christian. Consider two stories alone, both of which occurred at the same time Rimsha's blasphemy ordeal was making headlines around the world.

Mugadas Kainat, RIP
14 August, 2012

On August 14, another Christian girl, 12-year-old Muqadas Kainat (which means "Holy Universe") was ambushed in a field near her home in Sahawil by five Muslim men who "gang raped and murdered" her. At the time, her father was at a hospital visiting her sick mother. He and other family members began a frantic search, until a tip led them to the field where his daughter's body lay. The postmortem revealed that she had been "gang raped and later strangled to death by five men." Police, as usual, did not arrest anyone. As a Salem News report puts it, "Complicating matters is the fact that several Christian girls in this remote area have been raped and forced to both marry into the Muslim community and abandon their own religion, human rights groups report. … [T]here is a history in this part of Pakistan according to the Christian community, of local authorities failing to investigate cases of rape or other violence against Christians, often for fear of influential Muslims or militants."

Similarly, on August 20, an 11-year-old Christian boy, Samuel Yaqoob, went to the markets of Faisalabad to buy food for his family, never to return. According to Wilson Chowdhry, Chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association, "After extensive searching his body was found near a drain in the Christian colony, bearing marks of horrific torture, with the murder weapon nearby. His nose, lips and belly had been sliced off, and his family could hardly recognize him because the body was so badly burnt. Some 23 wounds by a sharp weapon have been identified in the autopsy. When sending his body for an autopsy, police raised the possibility of sodomy. Parts of Pakistani culture have a strong homosexual pederast culture, and Christian and other minority boys are especially susceptible to rape and abuse because of the powerlessness of their community and their despised status. In one case fairly recently, a Christian boy was kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed by a police officer, his body similarly being dumped in a drain."

These were just some of the stories concerning the sexual abuse and murder of Pakistan's Christian children that occurred last August--even as the world stood in awe at the Rimsha Masih blasphemy case. Here are ten more anecdotes, chosen at random from the many former documented cases:

1. Nisha, a 9-year-old Christian girl, was abducted by Muslims, gang-raped, murdered by repeated blows to her head, and then dumped into a canal (May 2009).

2. Gulfam, another 9-year-old Christian girl, was raped by a Muslim man. Though not killed, she was left "in shock and in the throes of a physical and psychological trauma." During her ordeal, her rapist told her "not to worry because he had done the same service to other young Christian girls" (Dec. 2010).

3. Lubna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, was kidnapped, gang-raped, and murdered by a group of Muslims (Oct. 2010).

4. Kidnapped last Christmas Eve, a 12-year-old Christian girl known as "Anna," was gang raped for eight months, forcibly converted and then "married" to her Muslim attacker. After she escaped, instead of seeing justice done, “the Christian family is in hiding from the rapists and the police" (Oct, 2011).

5. After gang-raping a 13-year-old Christian girl, a band of Muslims came to her house when all male members were away working and "mercilessly" beat her pregnant aunt causing her to lose female twins to miscarriage: “They murdered our children, they raped our daughter. We have nothing left with us,” lamented an older family member. The police went on to accuse the 13-year-old raped girl of "committing adultery with three men" (June 2012).

6. A Muslim man murdered a teenage Christian girl, Amariah, during an attempted rape: he had “grabbed the girl and, under the threat of a gun, tried to drag her away. The young woman resisted, trying to escape the clutches of her attacker, when the man opened fire and killed her instantly, and later tried to conceal the corpse" (Dec. 2011).

Mehek


7. Muslims abducted a 14-year-old Christian girl, Mehek, at gunpoint in broad daylight from her parents' house. One of her abductors declared he would "purify her" by making her "Muslim and my mistress" (Aug. 2011).

8. Shazia, a 12-year-old Christian girl, was enslaved, raped, and murdered by Chaudhry Naeem, a rich Muslim lawyer, who was acquitted. His wife and son had participated in abusing the child (Nov. 2010).

9. Nadia, a Christian girl who was abducted in 2001 when she was 15-years-old and forced to marry a Muslim, only recently returned to her Catholic family (Jan. 2012).

10. A powerful Muslim businessman had two Christian sisters kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam, and "married" to him (May 2011).

In every one of these cases, Pakistani police either failed to act or sided with the rapists and murderers.
The above anecdotes represent a mere sampling of the documented atrocities committed against the children of Pakistan's Christians, who amount for a miniscule 1.5% of the nation's population. Then there are the stories that never make it to any media--stories of silent abuse that only the nameless, faceless victims know.


"2  year old toddler"


For example, it took five years for the story of a 2-year-old toddler who was savagely raped because her Christian father refused to convert to Islam to surface. After undergoing five surgeries, her anatomy remains disfigured and she suffers from several permanent complications. Her family lives in fear and hiding.
How many Christian children in Pakistan are being mauled in silence, with their stories never surfacing?

And what animates this savagery? Discussing the aforementioned rape of 9-year-old Gulfam, local sources in Pakistan put it well: "It is shameful. Such incidents occur frequently. Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the [Muslim] community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war."

Indeed, here is how the late Majid Khadduri, "internationally recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on Islamic law and jurisprudence," explained the idea of human "spoils" in his War and Peace in the Law of Islam:

The term spoil (ghanima) is applied specifically to property acquired by force from non-Muslims. It includes, however, not only property (movable and immovable) but also persons, whether in the capacity of asra (prisoners of war) or sabi (women and children). … If the slave were a woman, the master was permitted to have sexual connection with her as a concubine.

From here, one can begin to understand the rabid fanaticism that possessed Pakistan's Muslims concerning the Rifsha blasphemy case, which resulted in mass riots, Muslim threats to take the law in their own hands, and the dislocation of Christians, some of whom have been forced to live and worship in the wilderness: If infidel Christians, especially their children, are seen as mere "spoils" to be used and disposed of with impunity, certainly it must be intolerable for Muslims if one of these "sub-humans" dares to desecrate Islam's holy book--the same book that ordains their inhuman status.
And herein is the true significance of the Rifsha Masih case: success is measured not in the fact that this one particular Christian child got away from the savageries of Islamic law and culture, but whether her ordeal will begin to open Western eyes to the terrors Pakistan's Christian children routinely face.

By Raymond Ibrahim
Frontpage Magazine



© 2012, Assyrian International News Agency.  
All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use

Cardinal Turkson shows Synod this clip on Muslim Demographics.

Peter Cardinal Turkson

President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace

This is the video clip that the Cardinal showed to the 

Synod of Bishops

on October 13th. 

He naturally sparked a very lively debate.

Thank you Your Eminence!

In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph!
(Our Lady of Fatima)

The Happy Retreat has arrived.

HAPPY RETREAT !

Brothers Yousef Marie and Magdala Maria

are on retreat in preparation for

ordination to the Minor Orders

(Exorcist and Acolyte)

and

Subdiaconate

on the feast of our St Gerard Majella.

The Community joins them for Adoration.

 Jesus,  King of Love

draw all hearts to Thyself!

Moving House

Br. Felix enters the Enclosure.

O Happy day! O Felix dies!

Today,

Feast of the Holy Rosary

of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

in Golgotha Monastery Island, Papa Stronsay

there was the reception of a new novice 

who was clothed in the habit of the Congregation

and received into the Novitiate.

 Dearly beloved Brother, what do you ask for?

Postulant:  

Enlightened by the light of Divine grace, I have knowledge and understanding that all things which the world holds to be great, and which it glorifies, are empty and nothing if not vanity. My soul, firm and decided, has inspired me to cast myself before the infinite mercy of God, renouncing all things which are of this world, so that with a much greater liberty I may serve my most lovable Redeemer, and to do this more ardently and perfectly; and also in the manner in which it is capable of being done, to learn to imitate His most holy life. 

Whence, an intimate persuasion has come to me, that the Divinity has called me to consume all the days of my life which will follow, in this venerable Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer; that, obeying promptly and faithfully the Divine Will, I may assure the salvation of my soul in the harbour of safety. 

I most humbly indeed, and most pressingly, pray and beseech Thy Paternity, that he grant me such a grace, I who am in no way worthy of it, on account of the love of my Saviour Jesus Christ; that He may deign to receive me into this Congregation as its least and most unworthy member. For in this Congregation, with the assistance of God’s grace, I hope to persevere until the end.

He is covered with the funeral pall.

In exitu Israel de Aegypto * 

domus Jacob de populo barbaro. 

   Facta est Judaea sanctificatio ejus * 

Israel potestas ejus. 

Introduces eos, et plantabis in monte haereditatis Tuae * 

firmissimo tabernaculo Tuo, quod operatus es, Domine. 

Educam eos de afflictione Aegypti * 

et introducam in terram fluentem lacte et melle.

Gloria Patri et Filio* 

et Spiritui Sancto.

Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper* 

et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.

When Isræl left the land of Egypt* 

the house of Jacob from a barbarous people.

 Juda was made His sanctuary* 

Isræl His dominion. 

You will lead them and plant them on the mountain of Thy heritage* 

in Thy most firm dwelling which Thou hast worked O Lord. 

You will lead them away from Egypt's afflictions* 

and lead them into the land flowing with milk and honey. 

Glory be to the Father and to the Son,

and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,

world without end. Amen.

He lays aside the Old Man.

Exuat te Dominus veterem hominem cum actibus eius, 

et induat to novum, 

qui secundum Deum creatus est in justitia et sanctitate veritatis. 

May the Lord strip thee of the old man with all his acts 

and clothe thee in the new, 

who is created by God in justice and in the holiness of truth.

R. Amen. 

He is clothed in Christ.

Indue, Filii Dominum Jesum Chrisum, 

semper mortificationem ejus in corpore tuo circumferens.

  Son, put on Our Lord Jesus Christ, 

always surrounding thy body with His mortification.

R. Amen.

 He receives a new name.

In the world and from your Baptism you were known as NN. 

From now as a sign of your new and special title of religious consecration, 

by which you are dedicated to seek the perfection of charity 

in the service of God’s kingdom, 

for the honour of God and the building up of the Church, 

‘thou shalt be called by a new name’ (Is 62:2).

These things saith the First and the Last, who was dead, and is alive: 

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. 

He that shall overcome, shall not be hurt by the second death. 

To him that overcometh, I will give the hidden manna, 

and will give him a white counter, and in the counter, 

a new name written, which no man knoweth, 

but he that receiveth it (Apoc. 2:8-18). 

Henceforth, in this consecrated life 

you shall be called: 

Brother Felix.

O Felix dies!      O happy day! 

Novitiate Community 2012.

Brother Felix with the Novice Master and the other novices.

May Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary 

grant them the grace of perseverance!