Catholic Teens - January 4, 2006

Hey All--
I pray that your Christmas season has been a blessed one! San Diego was
wonderful, spent some time at the ocean and hiking in the mountains(almost
reached the cloud layer!). Nonetheless, it's good to be home. Christmas
without snow isn't quite the same.
As we begin a new year and all the year-end summaries and reviews have been
published, here's one that doesn't get a lot of press. There were 26
Catholic Pastoral Agents killed in 2005. This includes priests, sisters,
one bishop and some lay people, killed while serving the poor or spreading
the Gospel. The complete article is at the end of this email. Let us take
a moment to give thanks for the freedom to practice our faith in the US and
pray for those who suffer, even to the point of death, around the world for
the Faith.
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Question O' the Week:
"Is suicide ever forgiven by God?"
-Good question. I recently heard a statistic that suicide is one of the
leading causes of death among young people today. That's frightening.
First off, suicide is a very bad thing. To purposely hurt yourself in any
way is to sin against God, but harming the beautiful body that He has given
you. A body that God tells us is "a temple of the Holy Spirit." So suicide
is objectively a grave sin.
At the same time, is it "normal" for a person to seek to harm themselves?
No, of course not. Only God knows that state of one's mind, who commits
suicide. Oftentimes, there is great emotional and mental distress. These
are mitigating factors. And so we entrust people who commit suicide to
God's Mercy. If one does not understand fully what one is doing, they
cannot be held fully responsible for their actions. (Recall that in courts
sometimes people will use an "insanity" defense--thereby saying they can't
be held responsible for what they did.)
And so we pray for those who have committed suicide and entrust them to our
loving and merciful God. Similarly, we reach out to others so that no one
else is even tempted to do such a thing.
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Announcements:
The next Youth Group: Generation JPII is scheduled for
Sunday, January 15th at 630PM. Fr. Sotico Florida from St.
Mary's Parish in Custer will spend the evening with us. We'll also have
Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the opportunity for Reconciliation.
God bless you!
Phil Lawson

Code: ZE06010102
Date: 2006-01-01
26 Catholic Pastoral Agents Slain in 2005
Highest Number in the Americas
ROME, JAN. 1, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A bishop, 20 priests, two men religious,
two women religious and a layman were added to the list of pastoral mission
agents who met violent deaths last year.
Those 26 deaths compare with 15 recorded in 2004. The new figure appears in
the "Martyrology of the Contemporary Church," published by the Congregation
for the Evangelization of Peoples.
It refers not only to missionaries in the strict sense of the term, but also
to all the Church personnel who were killed or sacrificed their lives as
part of their witness to the faith.
The highest number of victims was registered in the Americas, with the loss
of eight priests, two women religious and two men religious.
"Colombia, with four priests and one nun killed, is still the nation where
social conflicts are most acute and where the Church pays a heavy price for
its commitment to reconciliation and social justice in the name of the
Gospel," noted the dicastery.
"Two more priests were killed in Mexico," it said. "They had been working in
areas of profound degradation."
U.S.-born Sister Dorothy Stang, 73, of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur,
died on Feb. 12 in Brazil. She has carried out her apostolate for 40 years
in small communities of the interior of the Amazon region.
She was shot in the back at point-blank range by two gunmen in the Esperanca
settlement, in the southwestern state of Para. Less than one week earlier
she had reported death threats by four farmers of the area.
African strife
On Oct. 27 members of the Missionaries of the Poor, a religious congregation
of diocesan right, were killed in Kingston, Jamaica. Suresh Barwa, 31, a
native of India, and Filipino Marco Candelario Lasbuna, 22, fell victims of
a bullet to the head while they were working in the kitchen of a
Missionaries of the Poor house.
The report, moreover, that "Africa was bathed with the blood of a bishop,
six priests and a layman."
The victim were either killed "probably by criminals looking for easy
money," "or deliberately eliminated with bloody ferocity in Kenya, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo- Brazzaville, and Nigeria."
Among those who died in Africa was Father Thomas Richard Heath, 85, a U.S.- born Dominican religious. He died Jan. 13, days after being attacked during
an attempted robbery at a religious house in Kisumu, Kenya.
Added to the list of those killed was Swiss Ursuline Sister Margaret
Branchen, 74, an obstetric nurse, who died Dec. 28. She was attacked at a
clinic where she worked in Ngqeleni, near Mthatha, in South Africa. The
police believe the crime was committed in a robbery attempt. News of her
death was made known Friday, according to the Missionary Service News
Agency.
Four priests lost their lives in Asia because of the Gospel: three in India
and one in Indonesia, the report said.
Belgium was also the scene of the murder of a priest, as was Russia.


"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you
wish." --Mother Teresa