SWEDEN BECAME THE 7TH COUNTRY TO ALLOW SAME SEX MARRIAGE;PRAY AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Sweden has adopted a law that legalizes same-sex marriage, making it the seventh country in the world to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed in either a religious or civil ceremony.

After hours of debate, the Swedish parliament voted 261 to 22, with 66 abstaining or absent, on Wednesday to approve a gender-neutral law on marriage.
Christian Democrats opposed the legislation.
The new legislation repeals a 1987 law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Sweden now joins the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa and Norway in allowing same-sex marriage. In the United States, homosexual marriage is legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The new law takes effect May 1 and allows individual pastors the freedom to opt out of marrying same-sex couples.
The Lutheran Church of Sweden has already expressed support for the new law, according to Agence France-Presse.
Since 2007, the Church – which 74 percent of Swedes are members of – has blessed civil unions for gay and lesbian couples but stopped short of blessing gay marriages.
The Lutheran Church synod is scheduled to decide in October whether or not to perform same-sex marriages, according to AFP.
Polls indicate that a majority of Swedes approve of homosexual marriage. The northern European country has recognized civil unions for homosexual couples since 1995.

A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST GETS 50 YEARS IN PRISON FOR RAPE OF A CHILD IN NORTH TEXAS

EASTLAND — Jurors have sentenced a Roman Catholic priest convicted of child sex abuse to 50 years in prison, a term double the original sentence he received during his first trial for the crime.
The Rev. Thomas Teczar had been sentenced to 25 years by a judge in 2007 for raping and molesting an 11-year-old boy. But his convictions on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child were overturned on appeal last fall because of testimony from a witness.
During his retrial, an Eastland County jury took less than an hour to find Teczar guilty of the same charges. On Friday, his 68th birthday, jurors settled on his sentence.
Authorities say the abuse happened in the early 1990s in Ranger, where Teczar was a parish priest.
Teczar took the stand during the punishment phase Friday and testified he was innocent and didn’t even know the accuser. But he also admitted to being sexually attracted to teenage boys.
Teczar is in the process of being defrocked at the request of the Fort Worth Roman Catholic Diocese, where he served as a priest from 1988-93 in several parishes.
The diocese has settled with six of Teczar’s accusers, including two in 2005 who received $4.15 million.
Teczar was a priest in the Worcester, Mass., diocese until he was kicked out in 1986 for misconduct with boys. He returned to Massachusetts after the abuse allegations surfaced in Texas, diocese officials have said

IN AN EXTREME CASE OF RELIGIOUS REVERANCE A DEVOTEE OFFERS TONGUE TO GODDESS DURGA; PRAY SO THAT THESE BLIND FAITH'S CAN BE ERASED FROM OUR COUNTRY

BAHRAICH: In an extreme case of religious reverence, a devotee offered his tongue to Goddess Durga in a temple here on Thursday.

Ramroop, a resident of Adharipurwa village under Risia police station, first offered prayers to the Goddess Durga in the temple of Samai Mata located in Chakia gram and then cut off his tongue with a knife and placed it at the feet of the Goddess. It was said that Ramroop did the crazy act stating that the Goddess had fulfilled a wish of his. Later, he was admitted to a primary health centre in an unconscious state. There is huge rush of devotees in the temples of Goddess Durga these days because of Navratri.

KOSUKE KOYAMA , 79, AN ECUMENICAL THEOLOGIAN, DIES

The Rev. Dr. Kosuke Koyama, a theologian internationally known for using arresting metaphors drawn from his experience as a missionary to convey an influential vision of Christianity as compatible with Asian traditions, died on last Wednesday, in Springfield, Mass. He was 79.

The immediate cause was pneumonia, said his son Mark, who added that his father had had esophageal cancer.
Dr. Koyama, who taught at the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, strove to make the teachings of Christ culturally meaningful to Asians, without sacrificing the essential Gospel message. His 1974 book, “Water Buffalo Theology,” was “one of the first books truly to do theology out of the setting of Asian villages,” Donald Shriver, president emeritus of Union, said in an interview on Tuesday.
In an online review, Herb Swanson, historian for the Church of Christ in Thailand, called the book “one of the classic works of contemporary Asian theology.”
Directed at the concerns of peasants, the book points out that Christianity and Buddhism do not communicate; rather, Christians and Buddhists do. Dr. Koyama advocated seeing God “in the faces of people” to achieve good neighborliness among religions. He spoke of trying to “season” the Aristotelian roots of Western theology with Buddhist “salt.”
The book favored communicating about Jesus in culturally comforting words but urged missionaries to criticize and reform a given culture if it was found to be against Christian values.
Dr. Koyama made the book’s case in poetic, not academic, language. As a missionary in northern Thailand, he said, he was inspired to write it as he listened to the “fugue of the bullfrogs” while watching farmers working with buffaloes in the rice fields.
“The water buffaloes tell me that I must preach to these farmers in the simplest sentence structure,” he wrote. “They remind me to discard all the abstract ideas and to use exclusively objects that are immediately tangible. ‘Sticky rice,’ ‘banana,’ ‘pepper,’ ‘dog,’ ‘cat,’ ‘bicycle,’ ‘rainy season,’ ‘leaking house,’ ‘fishing,’ ‘cockfighting,’ ‘lottery,’ ‘stomachache’ — these are meaningful words for them.”
Dr. Koyama’s 13 books also included “Mount Fuji and Mount Sinai: A Pilgrimage in Theology” (1984) and “Three Mile an Hour God” (1980), which reflects Dr. Koyama’s thought that God moves at walking speed through the countryside.
Dr. Koyama became an influential voice for ecumenism, speaking at conferences around the world and teaching classes on Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism at Union.
“I feel a mission to teach about different religious traditions,” he said in an interview with the Religion News Service in 1995. “I think it’s the Christian thing to do.”
Dr. Koyama was born on Dec. 10, 1929, in Tokyo. In 1945, as American bombs rained down on Tokyo, he was baptized as a Christian at the age of 15. He was struck by the courageous words of the presiding pastor, who told him that God called on him to love everybody, “even the Americans.”
Dr. Koyama graduated from Tokyo Union Theological Seminary in 1952 and earned a bachelor’s degree from Drew University in 1954 and a doctorate from the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1959.
He was then sent by the United Church of Christ in Japan to be a missionary in Thailand. In 1968, he moved to Singapore to become dean of the South East Asia Graduate School of Theology and editor of The South East Asia Journal of Theology.
From 1974 to 1978, he lectured at the University of Otago in New Zealand. In 1980, he joined Union. Before he arrived, someone noticed that his “Water Buffalo” book had just landed on the discard pile outside the library door, Dr. Shriver said. Apparently, a librarian had concluded that the prestigious school had no program for teaching theology to water buffaloes. The book quickly and quietly returned to the shelves.
Dr. Koyama was the first holder of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Chair in Ecumenics and World Christianity. He retired in 1996.
In addition to his son Mark, Dr. Koyama is survived by his wife of 50 years, Lois; another son, James; his daughter, Elizabeth; and five grandchildren.
Once, in discussing death, Dr. Koyama recalled the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. He said Jesus would be with others the same way:
“Looking into our eyes and heart, Jesus will say: ‘You’ve had a difficult journey. You must be tired, and dirty. Let me wash your feet. The banquet’s ready.’ ”