Pope sorry for priests' sex abuse

Pope Benedict XVI has told Australians he is deeply sorry for the sexual abuse of children by some Catholic priests.
Speaking at a gathering of bishops during his visit to Australia, the Pope spoke of the "shame we have all felt" and called for abusers to face justice.
He said the deeds of abusive clergymen were a great betrayal of trust, which damaged the Catholic Church.
A campaign group has criticised the speech, saying the Pope should have met some victims to apologise in person.
'Misdeeds'
"I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured," the Pope said, speaking at a cathedral in Sydney.
"These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation," he said.
"Those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice."
But the main support group for victims of church-related sexual abuse, Broken Rites, called the apology shallow.
The group, which says there have been 107 convictions against Catholic clergymen on sex charges in Australia, had wanted the Pope to meet some of the victims in person.
The BBC's Nick Bryant, in Sydney, says victims have complained that the Church in Australia has tried to stall compensation claims and cover up certain cases.
The Pope is visiting Australia to mark World Youth Day, which is drawing Catholics from around the world to the country. (BBC)

Sharp words from another Jeremiah

By John F. Kavanaugh

B y now, Senator Barack Obama’s talk, “A More Perfect Union,” delivered at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center on March 18, has been analyzed to death. For my part, I thought it a politically astute and important speech that merits reading by everyone, even though it will not save Obama’s candidacy. We have become such a soundbite, libelous culture, using snippets of information to attack our political enemies, stoking latent fears and assaulting by innuendo, that the likelihood of the senator’s nomination and election seems slimmer every day.
I have been preoccupied with the preacher whose words necessitated Obama’s speech. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the senator’s pastor for 20 years, has been known as a religious leader in Chicago and nationwide for the last two decades, but a recent spate of video snippets has now made him infamous. I have not been able to track down the full text of the sermons that dealt with AIDS or “The United States of White America.” (If he says that AIDS was targeted against blacks by the U.S. government, he has quite foolishly and incorrectly formed his judgment from street talk and unsupported conspiracy theories. If he calls our country “White America,” I would like to know the context and his point.)
I do know the context of the “chickens come home to roost” video that the networks, especially Fox News, have played hundreds of times. It is a sermon that I have read in its entirety. You should too.
I started rereading the biblical Book of Jeremiah within days of Wright’s talk, maybe because they shared the name. I love the books of the prophets, splendid testimonies that Judaism in its holy Scripture is unafraid to list God’s indictments against itself. Christians, I suspect, have not been as courageous. We tend to look at the indictments uttered by Jesus as directed against the lords and rulers of his time. But if we were willing to look at Scripture as a living word, we would see that what he said applies to us here and now. And believe me, we would resist much of what he says.
Jeremiah was a reluctant prophet and a rejected one. He spoke truth to power, as they say, not only to his own nation but also to his own religious community. “Your own apostasies are rebuking you” (2:19). Isn’t this a bit like chickens coming home to roost? He called his own people a “degenerate plant and bastard vine,” an adulterer and a whore (2:21, 3:9). He did not exactly damn them, but he promised “disaster from the north, an immense calamity” (4:6), “an end of it once and for all” (4:37). In Chapters 5 and 6, the invasion by enemies was justified. Death will seem preferable to this wicked people (Ch. 8). A country and religion that lies, that is corrupt and incapable of repentance, is fated to become a heap of ruins and an uninhabited wasteland (9:4-11).
I could go on, even through the four “dooms” (what might that word mean?) and disaster of Chapter 15, and especially the “doom” for those who have great possessions but no integrity in Chapter 22.All this, of course, does not apply to us, our nation, our church. But be wary, friends. The greatest indictment against Israel was their claim that they were successful and sinless.
If some blacks think the only terrible sinners in their midst are the white or powerful, they are just plain delusional. If some whites think America is sinless in its impact on the world and its treatment of its poor, they too are delusional.
The problem with much preaching in Christian churches is that we apply the prophetic indignation easily to our enemies, but rarely to ourselves, our church, our nation. But if we think Jeremiah and Jesus are not addressing us, we have nothing to learn from either—at our peril.
Was the Reverend Wright speaking in this tradition when he gave his infamous talk after the evils of 9/11? I think so. His sermon was a commentary on revenge and the violence that returns to those who do violence, especially against the innocent. Wright recounted our national history of killing children, from the Sioux to the Japanese. All just causes, one might sincerely think. But all horrific. And this is where the preacher talked about the “chickens coming home to roost.” As Wright continued, he pointed out that violence and hatred beget violence and hatred.
And then the preacher turned to something that possibly no one is aware of from the YouTube clips. Having been in New Jersey on that September day of “unthinkable acts,” Jeremiah Wright was drawn to examine his own relationship to God, his lack of prayer, his honesty. “Is it real or is it fake? Is it forever or is it for show?”
The full story has been willfully ignored by commentators. “I deny that he is a Christian,” Pat Buchanan said on MSNBC. His is a “crackpot church,” a pundit on Fox News pontificated. Well.
Jeremiah Wright is not another Jeremiah the prophet, nor is he another Jesus. But we should remember this: Jesus himself, if we bother to read the Gospel from the Saturday before Palm Sunday, was condemned as a threat to his nation and religion because of the words he spoke. For this he was executed.
If we cast out from our midst any criticism of our way of life, any indictment of our cherished ideologies, we may be casting out not only the prophets, but also the Savior.

John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., is a professor of philosophy at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Mo. (America Magazine)

The Meeting With Abuse Victims

By Father James Martin
I had a prayer answered today.
Since 2002, in my prayers, meditations and discussions about the sex abuse crisis, I’ve often returned to thoughts about the healing power of ritual. Besides the necessary concrete remedies (making financial restitution to the victims, removing and disciplining abusive priests and the bishops who moved around those priests, and setting up guidelines for safer environments for children, for example), I’ve often wondered if symbolic gestures could help encourage the process of healing victims and their families.
Perhaps I am naïve, but I’ve always imagined three actions, undertaken by ministers of the church, which might help to bind up the wounds of those who have been harmed by ministers of the church.
The first would be this: bishops responsible for moving around abusive priests would wash the feet of a group of victims during the Mass at Holy Thursday, the traditional time when priests wash the feet of parishioners, in direct imitation of Jesus at the Last Supper. The second symbolic gesture would be for a bishop to prostrate himself, at the foot of the altar of his cathedral, and publicly ask his diocese for forgiveness.
Of course, without concrete steps (as described above), these rituals would be largely meaningless. But if accompanied by those steps, such gestures might possibly serve as powerful symbols of penitence, by physically embodying the intent of the church.
There is another symbolic gesture that I’ve always dreamed about: the pope himself might come to this country and meet with victims — from Boston, if possible.
That happened this afternoon, meeting with victims of clergy sexual abuse when Pope Benedict XVI met privately with “five or six victims.” “They prayed together,” said Federico Lombardi, S.J., the official Vatican spokesman. “Also, each of them had their own individual time with the Holy Father,” Lombardi said. “Some were in tears.” The encounter took place in the chapel of the office of the Vatican ambassador to the United States, in Washington, shortly after the Papal Mass at Nationals Stadium.
At the meeting, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, ground zero of the clergy abuse crisis, presented the pope with a notebook containing the names of abuse victims. There were over 1,000 names.
I don’t want to overstate anything, or paint this encounter as a panacea. The sex abuse crisis is not over. Many people are still suffering, many parishes are still damaged, and much trust in the church is still lost. It takes more than a single meeting to heal a lifetime of pain. And it was a brief meeting.
But I do want to state something clearly: Pope Benedict XVI has done what many people, including me, have long prayed for. It is not the end of the crisis. It is not the cure for the crisis. But it is a profound symbol, and in the Catholic tradition a symbol is not “just a symbol.” It is something that points to a reality greater than itself, and in pointing to that reality helps to make it real.
I pray that today’s extraordinary meeting might indeed point to something greater for the victims and their families, as well as for the entire church: true and lasting healing, reconciliation and peace.

After Mass, Pope Meets Privately With Abuse Victims

WASHINGTON — Pope Benedict XVI came face to face with a scandal that has left lasting wounds on the American church Thursday, holding a surprise meeting with several victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Boston area.

The handful of victims, now adults, gave the pope a notebook listing some 1,000 boys and girls who were abused in the Boston archdiocese alone going back several decades, a Vatican official said.
The pope himself had requested the meeting, said the official, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, which took place at the papal nuncio’s residence. The pope prayed and spoke personally with each of them, in a meeting that lasted about 25 minutes. Some wept, Father Lombardi said.

“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” the pope said in his homily. “It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention.”

Read More http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/us/nationalspecial2/17cnd-pope.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

The Church’s Shame, and the Priesthood

By Father James Martin
“I am deeply ashamed,” Pope Benedict XVI said this morning, briefly addressing the sexual abuse crisis in the United States. “We will do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future.”
The pope was expressing the same sentiment of every priest I know, not to mention every sister, brother and layperson. American Catholics are ashamed of the crimes of some of their priests — and the actions of too many of their bishops. The reports that began in The Boston Globe in January of 2002 were shaming for the priesthood in particular.
Yet men are still entering seminaries. Why?
Over the last few days I’ve received at least a dozen calls from reporters trying to make sense of that question, and to grasp the parlous state of priestly vocations. In 2007, according to the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate, 3,238 parishes (out of a total of 18,624) went without a “resident priest pastor.” That means over 3,000 “priestless” parishes. Overall, the number of priests stood at 41,449 in 2007, down from 58,632 in 1965. And the number of graduate-level seminarians is down from 8,325 in 1965 to 3,274 last year.
Why would anyone want to be a priest after the abuse crisis? Who would want to join an organization like the Catholic Church, much less represent it publicly? How could someone still hear the “call”? What will the church do without priests? A few observations:
First off, the call has little to do with hearing voices. As long as I’ve been a Jesuit (20 years) and a priest (9 years) I’ve never met anyone who decided to seek ordination because he heard a voice. Or saw a vision. Or seen anything, for that matter.
Second, the call comes from a simple attraction or desire, like any vocation. It’s not all that different from vocations in the life of the layperson. Two people may discover their vocation to the married life by being attracted to one another. A doctor may decide to become a doctor because he finds that life appealing. So in the life of a young man drawn to the priesthood
At the most basic level a “call” manifests itself as a simple attraction. In these ways God, I believe, “calls” people to fulfill their vocations. Those attractions are still operative in the lives of men who see that the vast majority of priests are living healthy and productive lives. Believe me, seminarians, as well as men in religious orders preparing for ordination, are fully aware, and “deeply ashamed” of the clergy abuse scandals. But they are also aware of the great satisfaction that the vast majority of priests report in their working lives.
Third, I’m not as crestfallen as some about “declining vocations.” Sure, I want the Mass to be celebrated in as many places as possible, and for that we need many more priests. (Currently that’s restricted to celibate unmarried men.) But declining seminary rosters may also mean more opportunities for the laity to exercise their roles in leadership, something that the Second Vatican Council championed.
Fourth, there’s not much evidence that the sexual abuse crisis has affected priestly vocations. The number of seminarians is declining, but that decline does not seem to have accelerated much since 2002. Perhaps that will change. But for now God is still “calling” men to seminary life, even after the devastating and deeply shaming sexual abuse crisis. And God will presumably continue to do so, for reasons that are as personal and unique as the men who answer that call.

Benedict Addresses the Bishops on Abuse

“Sometimes very badly handled,” said Pope Benedict XVI to his bishops, referring to the handling of the sexual abuse crisis in this country. In tonight’s landmark speech to the U.S. bishops, following a vespers service at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Benedict offered a lengthy analysis of the clergy abuse crisis that has devastated the Catholic Church. The abuse has caused “deep shame.” Bishops must “attach priority by showing compassion and care to the victims…those so seriously wronged.”
Even veteran Vaticanologists were surprised that Benedict chose to address the problem at such length, and in a public setting — before the assembled bishops and cardinals, and before the television cameras. In essence, before the world. His earlier comments, en route from Rome, indicated that he would address the issue, but few thought he would tackle the question so directly. Or so soon. Or so publicly.
Remember that the pope could easily have chosen two other options: speaking with the bishops privately about the matter, or not at all.
But was it enough?
To answer that question adequately you will have to ask a victim of clergy abuse, or a family member, and many of them will weigh in with their reactions to the pope’s words.
For me, however, his words were a sign that the pope is intent on tackling the subject head on, reminding the bishops not only of the “scale and gravity” of the problem but also of their responsibility to “bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust,” that is, the wounds caused by abusive priests and the bishops who moved them from parish to parish.
Some of Benedict’s message may be vitiated, for some, by his placement of the abuse crisis in a “wider context” of a permissive society. (That is, some may interpret the pope as saying that the abuse was largely the result of a morally lax and sexually permissive society, when most Catholics believe it was more a result of shocking negligence on the part of some bishops.) Some might also believe that tonight’s talk should have focused more on the victims, rather than on the innocent priests (that is, the majority, who were not abusers), who were compared to Christ suffering through his Passion. Whatever innocent priests have suffered pales in comparison to what victims and their families have undergone.
But the pope’s address was notable as much for what it did not say, as for what it said. Think about what he did not say, in contrast to what some officials have said in the past.
He did not blame it on the media, as some have. He did not blame it on homosexuality, as some have. (Earlier, on the plane from Rome he explicitly, and rightly, distinguished between homosexuality and pedophilia.) He did not speak largely in somewhat abstract theological terms, as Pope John Paul II did, who called the crisis a reflection of the mysterium iniquitatis, the mystery of evil. (To be fair, John Paul, who was aged and severely ailing during the crisis, gathered together the American cardinals and spoke out forcefully against keeping abusive priests in ministry.) Finally, Benedict did not simply advert to the crisis in vague terms or speak about the crimes obliquely, but called it by its rightful name: the source of the church’s shame was the “sexual abuse of minors.” In the Gospels, when Jesus exorcised a demon named “Legion,” one of the first things he did was to name the demon. (Father James Martin)

Crowd throngs first papal mass in Washington

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Tens of thousands flocked Thursday for the first Mass by Pope Benedict XVI on his US visit, hours after he chided Americans for a moral breakdown which he said fueled the church's child sex abuse scandal.
Gates opened at Washington's new sports stadium before dawn to allow an expected 48,000 people to trickle through stringent security measures and attend an open-air mass at 10:00 am (1400 GMT).
The pontiff received a rapturous White House welcome Wednesday and met privately with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, before addressing the pedophile priest scandal that has rocked the US church in a speech to US Catholic bishops.
In a speech delivered after evening prayer inside the largest Roman Catholic church in North America, the pontiff berated the bishops for their poor handling of a scandal surrounding sexual abuse of children in the church.
But he urged efforts "to address the sin of abuse within the wider context of sexual mores" as well as a reassessment of "the values underpinning society."
"What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?" the pontiff said on the first full day of his US visit.
"Children deserve to grow up with a healthy understanding of sexuality and its proper place in human relationships. They should be spared the degrading manifestations and the crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today."
Describing clerics who sexually abuse children as "gravely immoral," the octogenarian pope warned that the scourge of pedophilia "is found not only in your dioceses but in every sector of society."
"It calls for a determined, collective response," he said, but did not outline any firm action that the Vatican intended to take to purge the church of pedophile priests.
The US Catholic church plunged into its worst crisis in 200 years in 2002 when the archbishop of Boston confessed he had protected a priest who had sexually abused young members of his church -- opening a floodgate of thousands of similar abuse cases around the country dating back decades.
Benedict angered victim support groups by praising the bishops' efforts to heal the wounds from the scandal.
"Five years ago, US bishops begrudgingly adopted some minimal promises on paper. There's no evidence to suggest they've had any real impact," Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told AFP.
"The pope continues to stand behind his men -- the bishops who conceal clergy sex crimes," said another SNAP member, Joelle Casteix.
"What the pope should be doing is assuring Catholics worldwide that any bishop who shields a predator will lose his job and the priests will be swiftly defrocked," she said.
SNAP planned to protest Thursday by handing out pamphlets as mass-goers leave metro train stations.
They will be asked to "demand action, not just words and gestures, from top church officials (especially concrete steps that will reduce child molestation and cover ups in the future)," the group said in a statement.
Earlier Wednesday, on the first papal visit to the White House in three decades, the Roman Catholic pontiff urged Bush to prefer diplomacy to war as a way of resolving conflicts.
But aside from mentioning the plight of Iraqi Christians, he skirted mention of the Iraq war, on which the Bush administration and Vatican do not see eye to eye.
Benedict and Bush expressed concern for Christians in war-torn Iraq, agreed on the need to create a Palestinian state, and said Lebanon must be free of undue foreign influence, according to a joint statement.
The pope urged the United States to treat immigrants humanely, and called on Americans to spurn materialism and shun secularism.
On the second day of his US trip -- his 81st birthday -- the pope drew raves more befitting a rock star than the head of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.
Under a cloudless sky, Bush welcomed Benedict with a 21-gun salute, a famed soprano singing a soaring "Lord's Prayer," and an earnest "peace be with you."
Some 13,500 people packed the mansion's South Lawn waving little Vatican and US flags, as cries of "viva il Papa!" (long live the pope) mingled with the two national anthems and two choruses of "happy birthday" for the pontiff.
Thursday, after saying mass at Nationals' Stadium, Benedict plans to meet with Jewish representatives after an inter-faith gathering at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington.
That, and a planned stop at a New York synagogue, appear aimed at quelling Jewish unhappiness over the revival for the Latin Rite mass of the 16th century "Prayer for Jews" in which Catholics pray for the conversion of Jews.

Lepchas are the first inhabitants of Darjeeling and Sikkim

The above article appeared in Himalaya darpan of today which talks about the Lepchas as the original inhabitants of Sikkim and Darjeeling. The historical facts and references are given. I will try to translate it into English and will post here in due time. Worth reading the article. For beteer view of the article please click the link given at the right hand side.

EASTER 2008 PHOTOS FROM KALIMPONG

Easter 2008 at Mary Mother of God Church, Kalimpong is a momorable season this year. I was there with my family members (Shira my wife and daughter Michelle). here are some of the glimpses from the Tridem season. I have taken the photos myself.

Pictures (1. Mary Mother of God Church, Relliroad, Kalimpong, Passion street play

BASIC CHRISTIANITY - BOOK REVIEW

Title: BASIC CHRISTIANITY

AUTHOR: JOHN R.W. STOTT
PUBLISHER: OMF LITERATURE INC. PHILLIPINES, 1999
No. of pages: 222

Basic Christianity is a book of facts, which presents the Gospel under the subheadings: 1. Christ’s person, 2. Christ’s work, 3. Man’s need and 4. Man’s response.
The opening line of book is the core premise upon which book is written.
It says, ‘Hostile to the Church, friendly to Jesus Christ.’ These words describe large numbers of people, especially young people, today. The person and teaching of Jesus have not lost their appeal. For one thing, He was Himself an anti-establishment figure, and some of His words had revolutionary overtones. His ideals appear to have been incorruptible. He breathed love and peace where ever He went. And, for another thing, He invariably practiced what He preached.
ゐ But was He true?
ゐ Can we believe that He was also in some sense,’ God’?
ゐ Is not the deity of Jesus a rather picturesque Christian superstition?
ゐ Is there any evidence for the amazing Christian assertion that the carpenter of Nazareth was the unique Son of God?
ゐ Supposing Jesus was the Son of God, is basic Christianity merely an acceptance of this fact?

The answer of these questions is the birth of “Basic Christianity.”
Is basic Christianity the belief that Jesus is the Son of God who came to be the saviour of the World? Author says:
No, it is not even that. To assent to His divine person, to acknowledge man’s need of salvation, and to believe in Christ’s saving work are not enough.
Christianity is not just a creed; it involves action.
Our intellectual belief may be beyond criticism; but we have to translate our beliefs into deeds.

What must we do?

We must commit ourselves, heart and mind, soul and will, home and life, personally and unreservedly to Jesus Christ. We must humble ourselves before Him. We must trust in Him as our Saviour and submit to Him as our Lord; and then go on to take our place as loyal members of the church and responsible citizens in the community.
The book is thought provoking. It is not a collection of pious thoughts but rather historical facts, which proves the historicity of Jesus’ existence. The book will work as a tool for every believing Christian to place Christian fundamental to the non-believers. The book deals on proving various aspects of Christian faiths, which is directly related to Jesus. At this Knowledge worker age our emotion alone is not sufficient in believing but one should be critical about our own belief/ faith. This is what the book envisages for.


Instead of elaborating the ideas from the book I will put main points in systematic order:
ゐ The religion of the Bible is a religion of the initiative of God.
ゐ Before man existed, God acted. Before man stirs himself to seek God, God has sought man.
ゐ God has created. God has spoken. God has acted. These three different spheres form a summary of the religion of the Bible.
ゐ Man comes to know God not through his own wisdom but through God’s word, not through human reason but through divine revelation.
ゐ The Christian good news is not confined to a declaration that God has spoken. It also affirms that God has acted.
ゐ Men needed to be delivered, not from slavery in Egypt or from exile in Babylon, but from the exile and the slavery of sin. It was for this principally that Jesus Christ came. He came as a saviour.
ゐ Christianity is a religion of salvation.
ゐ God has sought us. He is still seeking us. We must seek Him. Indeed, God’s chief quarrel with man is that he does not seek.
ゐ We must seek diligently, honestly, obediently.
ゐ If apathy is a hindrance to some, pride is an even greater and commoner hindrance to others.
ゐ In seeking God we have to be prepared not only to revise our ideas but to reform our lives.
ゐ The Christian message has a moral challenge.
ゐ You cannot fix God at the end of a telescope or a microscope and say ‘How interesting!’ God is not interesting. He is deeply upsetting. The same is true of Jesus Christ. (It is upsetting indeed, where am I?)
ゐ We can know whether Jesus Christ was true or false, whether His teaching was human or divine but it rests on A MORAL condition. We have to be ready not just to believe, but also to obey. We must be prepared to do God’s will when He makes it known.
ゐ We must cast aside apathy, pride, prejudice and sin, and seek God in scorn of the consequences. Of all these hindrances to effective search the last two are the hardest to overcome, INTELLECTUAL PREJUDICE AND MORAL SELF WILL. Both are expressions of fear, and fear is the greatest enemy of Truth. Fear paralysis our search.
ゐ We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and readjustment of our whole manner of life.
ゐ WE DO NOT FIND BECAUSE WE DO NOT SEEK. WE DO NOT SEEK BECAUSE WE DO NOT WANT TO FIND, AND WE KNOW THAT THE WAY TO BE CERTAIN OF NOT FINDING IS NOT TO SEEK. (Have I really accepted Christ?)
ゐ Take Christ from Christianity, and you disembowel it; there is practically nothing left. Christ is the center of Christianity’ all else is circumference.
ゐ He was the Father’s son and that He had come to inaugurate the kingdom. Entry into the kingdom depended on men’s response to Him.
ゐ He did more than issue an invitation; He uttered a command. ‘Come to Me,’ He said, and Follow Me’.
ゐ If to believe in Him was man’s first duty, not to believe in Him was his chief sin.
ゐ He was not just another signpost, but the destination to which the signposts had led.
ゐ Life is an enigma. Whether it is physical life or spiritual, its nature is as baffling as its origin. We can neither define what it is nor state where it comes from. We can only call it a divine gift. It is this gift, which Jesus claimed to bestow.
ゐ We cannot talk of Jesus in comparative, or even superlative terms. To us it is a question not of comparison, but of contrast.
ゐ More the Christian grows in Christlikeness; the more he perceives the vastness of the distance, which still separates him from Christ.
ゐ His birth was natural, but His conception was supernatural. His death was natural, but His resurrection was supernatural. His miraculous conception and resurrection do not prove His deity, but they are congruous with it.
ゐ The Church was founded on resurrection. Disprove the resurrection, and the Church would have collapsed.
ゐ It was the resurrection, which transformed Peter’s fear into courage, and James’ doubt into faith.
ゐ His competence lies in His deity; our need lies in our sins.
ゐ Sin is fundamentally the exaltation of self at the expense of God.
ゐ It is no good approaching to God with our lips if our hearts are far from Him.
ゐ Whenever our behavior is inconsistent with our belief, or our practice contradicts our preaching, we take God’s name in vain.
ゐ The Sabbath is a day of rest and a day of worship.
ゐ The most terrible result of sin is that it cuts us off from God.
ゐ God is not responsible for the cloud. We are.
ゐ Our sins blot out God’s face from us as effectively as the clouds do the sun.
ゐ Sin not only estranges but it enslaves.
ゐ We have high ideals but weak wills. We want to live a good life. But we are chained in the prison of our self-centeredness.
ゐ A lecture will not solve our problem; we need a saviour. The education of the mind is not enough without a change of heart.
ゐ Self-centeredness affects all our behaviour.
ゐ We are always charitable to ourselves and critical of others.
ゐ If only the spirit of self- assertion could be replaced by the spirit of self-sacrifice, our conflicts would cease. And self-sacrifice is what the Bible means by ‘Love’.
ゐ The cross is the symbol of our faith. The Christian faith is ‘the faith of Christ crucified.’
ゐ The inner presence of the Holy Spirit is the spiritual birthright of every Christian. Indeed, if the Holy Spirit has not taken up residence within us, we are not real Christians at all.
ゐ Fundamentally, repentance is a matter neither of emotion nor of speech. It is an inward change of mind and attitude towards sin, which leads to a change of behaviour.
ゐ To make Christ Lord is to bring every department of our public and private lives under His control.
ゐ Which side of the door is Jesus Christ? Is he inside or outside? That is the crucial issue.
ゐ Becoming a Christian is one thing and being a Christian is another.
ゐ The balanced Christian who takes Scripture for his guide will seek to live equally and simultaneously ‘in Christ’ and ‘in World’.

Final note:
The mind has been provoked with the out of the box thoughts/ thinking. The statement that Becoming and being a Christian will make a great difference has challenged me. That Christianity is not a matter of faith alone but our faith in Jesus should be reflected in our actions/ deeds. The book has hit the mind, which I know will surely bring about the change in my attitude and behaviour.