"Christmas story of 3 Wise men a legend"

The Archbishop of Canterbury has stated that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a 'legend'.
Read entire article in Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/20/nwise120.xml

"Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings.

there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable".

"He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was "very unlikely"."

"In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: "Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.""

4 year old Sikh to convert to Roman Catholic for school admission

Sikh girl will convert for a place at Catholic school

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=476449&in_page_id=1770
By PAUL SIMS - The parents of a Sikh girl want to convert her to Roman Catholicism to win a place at the school of their choice.

Baljit and Bal Singh say they will change their four-year-old daughter's religion if it means she can attend their favoured school next month.

Maya Kaur's Sikh parents are considering changing her religion in the hope she may be allowed into the Catholic school

Maya Kaur has been attending a nursery at St Paul's Roman Catholic School in Wolviston, Cleveland, for the past two years.

But her parents have been told there is no place available for her when she starts full-time education in a few weeks.

After losing an appeal, the couple say they are seriously considering changing her religion in the hope she may be allowed into the school, which gives priority to Catholic children.

Mr Singh said: "We think Sikhism is similar to Roman Catholicism so we put her in that school. She's been there for two years, she goes to church with them, she says a prayer before she eats her dinner.

"I'll baptise her as Roman Catholic so she can go to the school."

St Paul's admissions policy gives priority to children who have been baptised Roman Catholic, have been formally received into the Catholic church and live in the catchment area, or who have a sibling at the school. Priority then goes to other Christian denominations before children of other faiths.

The Singhs' extraordinary proposal is likely to be frowned upon within the Sikh religion, which takes some of its identity from ancestors who were persecuted and martyred for refusing to convert to other faiths.

Among the stories taught within the faith is that of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth of the founding gurus of Sikhism who was beheaded in 1675 by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for refusing to convert to Islam.

The Singhs insisted that they were doing nothing wrong in trying to get the best for their daughter.

"Two years ago when they took her into the nursery why didn't they say she wouldn't get a place straight away in the primary school?" said Mr Singh.

"I would have got her baptised then - or I'd have put her in another school."

Maya has been offered a place at William Cassidi School, a nearby Church of England school. But her parents claim she is upset and wants to remain with her friends.

Catherine Connelly, head at St Paul's, said the school had received 34 applications this year, compared to the norm of 24. The class size had also been expanded to the legal limit of 30.

"We are proud of our school's inclusive nature and we have children of several different faiths and ethnic groups," she said.

"We allocated the places according to our published admissions criteria which all parents had access to."

Pope claims Catholicism the only true Christianity

source: http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/article/20070711/NEWS/707110402/-1/State

By Nicole Winfield,
Associated Press

Lorenzago Di Cadore, Italy | Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.

The statement brought swift criticism from Protestant leaders. "It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity," said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a fellowship of 75 million Protestants in more than 100 countries.

"It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogues with the reformed family and other families of the church," the group said in a letter charging that the document took ecumenical dialogue back to the era before the Second Vatican Council.

It was the second time in a week that Benedict has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-1965 meetings that modernized the church. On Saturday, Benedict revived the old Latin Mass - a move cheered by Catholic traditionalists but criticized by more liberal ones as a step backward from Vatican II. Among the council's key developments were its ecumenical outreach and the development of the New Mass in the vernacular, which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers its erroneous interpretation by liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of church tradition.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Benedict headed before becoming pope, said it was issuing the new document Tuesday because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had prompted confusion and doubt.

The new document restates key sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."

The commentary repeated church teaching that says the Catholic Church "has the fullness of the means of salvation."

Norwegian Princes can communicate with angels

source: http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1904559.ece

Princess draws more flak

Princess Märtha Louise's latest business venture, which she says can teach people how to communicate with angels, has sparked anything but purely angelic reaction.
Officials ranging from the state director of health, to a top politician to religious figures are blasting the princess for alleged offenses ranging from exploiting her position to misusing her physiotherapy training.

Health Director Lars E Hanssen told newspaper Aftenposten Wednesday that the princess needs to be "very careful" about how she uses her physiotherapy authorization in marketing her courses in healing, reading and alternative therapy.

"When you're an authorized health professional, like Märtha Louise is, there are certain demands," Hanssen said. "The more she advertises that she's a physiotherapist, the more careful she needs to be.

"If these angels will only help course participants, that's not treatment and there's no problem," he added. "But if the angels and the course are part of the treatment, that's a problem."

Dr Bernt Rognlien, one of Norway's leading figures within alternative medicine, thinks the princess' course is more religious in nature than health-related.

"The way I read her web site, this is a spiritual and religious offer, not something that can heal the sick," he said, adding that he's not sure the princess realizes that she can appear to be proselytizing when she uses religious terminology about angels and goddesses.

Inge Lønning, a former head of the University of Oslo and top politician for the Conservative Party, said the princess' course involving angels is on a collision course with Christianity.

Lønning, a professor of theology, said her web site resembles the type of religion that existed in Norway before Christianity was introduced, "that being faith in your own powers. In my opinion that can't be combined with Christian faith."

As a member of Norway's Royal Family, the princess is expected to uphold the tenets of the state Evangelical Lutheran church. Calls were made immediately for her resignation from the church, or even her excommunication.

A religious historian at Norway's technical university NTNU, Asbjørn Dyrendal, said he thinks the princess' venture is embarrassing.

"I think this must be embarrassing for the royal couple (Martha Louise's parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja) because they belong to a generation where this type of religion was viewed as eccentric," Dyrendal said. "But this is, of course, a family that's used to eccentric relatives within European royalty, so they may think it's normal for their daughter to charge fees to make contact with angels."

There's been no comment on Princess Märtha Louise's venture, nor the debate surrounding it, from either the king or the queen, both of whom are said to be on holiday.

A survey conducted by newspaper VG, meanwhile, suggests that four out of 10 Norwegians agree with the princess that humans can have supernatural powers, and that it's possible to communicate with angels.

Fervour and naivete lead 'missionaries' into harm's way

sourcehttp://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=b88562b5-320a-4bae-8819-379baca41122

Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun

Published: Friday, July 27, 2007

Christianity is a fiercely competitive business in South Korea, with evangelists vying to attract followers by demonstrating ever more outlandish feats of holiness.

Sending missionaries in large numbers to the world's most violent trouble spots is seen as a surefire way of filling the churches with admiring disciples.

These days, dispatching missionaries to Afghanistan and Iraq, into the jaws of militant Islam, is the ultimate demonstration of Christian fervour.

And the larger the army of followers, of course, the larger the spiritual and financial rewards.

It is a tried and true promotional technique that has produced a surge in popularity for Christianity since the Second World War. A recent survey by the Pew organization found 26.3 per cent of South Koreans say they are Christians, a proportion second only to the Philippines in Asia.

Most belong to fundamentalist protestant or evangelical Christian churches where the passion for missionary zeal has always been strong.

There are nearly 13,000 South Korean missionaries operating in about 160 countries.

In some popular missionary destinations, such as Africa, there are sometimes hundreds of South Korean missionaries in the same town. There are even reports that the competition among evangelists sometimes becomes so intense there have been fistfights over territory.

Only the United States with 46,000 missionaries abroad has a larger army of faith, but as a proportion of population the South Korean missionary force is much larger.

However, to call these people missionaries is not always accurate. Most are not bent on making converts, but are more like aid agency workers.

Indeed, the South Korean missionary operations are more like those Japanese television game shows where the prize goes to the contestant who takes the greatest humiliation and still comes up grinning.

The missionaries are frequently naive young people driven by an unfocused desire to do good, just like most of the 23 South Korean hostages taken by the Taliban on the road from Kabul to Kandahar in Afghanistan last week.

The group is made up mostly of young women who were not off to try to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity, but to provide medical and child-care services for needy people.

They were led by pastor Bae Hyung-kyum from their Saemmul Presbyterian Church, just outside the South Korean capital Seoul. The Taliban demanded that some of their people being held by the Afghan government be released, but there seems also to have been a ransom demand.

It is not yet clear whether the negotiations stumbled over the refusal of the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to release Taliban prisoners -- though it did so in March to get the freedom of a kidnapped Italian journalist -- or the Kabul government's obstruction of the Koreans' efforts to pay a ransom.

At any rate, the Taliban became agitated, shot Bae a dozen times and dumped his body by the highway.

This is not the first time South Korean missionary operations have come to grief in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.

In April 2004, terrorists in Iraq kidnapped and beheaded an aspiring South Korean missionary, Kim Sun-il. Earlier this year a South Korean pastor was killed in Kenya and hundreds of South Korean missionaries are believed to be in prison in China after trying to convert people in refugee camps for North Koreans.

In August last year a potentially highly dangerous event was narrowly avoided when the Kabul and Seoul governments managed to stop 1,300 South Korean evangelicals from travelling to Afghanistan to hold a public peace rally.

The giggly group of young Saemmul Church missionaries even posed with raised clenched fists for a photograph before their July departure from Seoul's international airport in front of a government notice advising Koreans not to travel to Afghanistan.

But avoiding government barriers and disapproval in both Seoul and Kabul is one of the joys of competition in these missionary contests. Overcoming bureaucratic hurdles brings bragging rights and more followers.

The death of Bae and the uncertain fate of the remaining 22 young hostages has had a sobering effect on South Korean public opinion. There is now much questioning of the habit of sending neophyte young people to these dangerous places without even the most basic training in the type of cultural quagmires they will face.

Sun International Affairs Columnist

jmanthorpe@png.canwest.com

Two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan convert to Islam - paper

KABUL (Reuters) - Two American soldiers have converted to Islam and married in Afghanistan, a state newspaper said on Thursday.

A U.S. military spokesman said he was checking the reports and pointed out that freedom of religion was enshrined in the U.S. constitution.

The Hewad Daily reported the pair served as soldiers in the U.S. army at Bagram air base which is the hub of U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan and lies to the north of the capital Kabul.

Several dozen Westerners visiting Afghanistan have become Muslims since the Taliban were toppled in 2001, but it was the first time any U.S. soldiers were reported to have converted to Islam.

A religious cleric welcomed their conversion. "If any body embraces Islam, ..., his sins committed in this world will be forgiven and Allah praises him and his family, and will bless him in the coming world too," Hamidullah said.

Pope's aide warns of 'threat by Islam'

source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/27/wislam127.xml

The Pope's private secretary has given warning of the Islamisation of Europe and stressed the need for the continent's Christian roots not to be ignored, in comments released yesterday.

"Attempts to Islamise the West cannot be denied," Monsignor Georg Gaenswein was quoted as saying in an advance copy of the weekly Sueddeutsche Magazin to be published today.

"The danger for the identity of Europe that is connected with it should not be ignored out of a wrongly understood respectfulness," the magazine quoted him as saying.

He also defended a speech that the Pope gave last year that linked Islam and violence, saying it had been an attempt by the pontiff to "act against a certain naivety".

In the speech during a visit to Germany in September, the Pope appeared to endorse a view, contested by most Muslims, that Islam's followers spread their religion in its early days by violence.

The Pope quoted Manuel II Paleologus, the 14th-century Byzantine emperor, who said: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Muslims around the world protested against the speech.
Churches were set ablaze in the West Bank and a hard-line Iranian cleric said that the Pope was united with President George W Bush to "repeat the Crusades".

When an Italian nun was shot in a Somali hospital where she worked, the Vatican expressed concern that the attack was a reaction to the Pope's remarks.

Recently, Joachim Meisner, the influential archbishop of Cologne, said in a radio interview that the "immigration of Muslims has created a breach in our German, European culture".