(Here i republish an article from lorantalk.blogspot.com)
Terrorism has no heart, no feelings but humankind has to live with but we need to make corrections in our way of life.
Every citizen should wake up to patriotic feelings shed away differences of religion, caste, region and vote to bring impartial candidates. Support the law keepers to allow stringent security at any point, inform about suspicious characters and activities, allow a feeling of unity rejecting acts of divisive politics. Any body breaking the law starting from basic traffic crimes should be dealt with severely as to bring about the discipline of a law abiding nation. Even with any sort of security if traitors within our country help these perpetrators we will still end up in such similar sieges.
Have any country been able to stop the sea piracy that still goes even with availability of the latest gadgets onboard? But the enemy also tends to have the advantage of these new found technologies with the type of funding received from such supporting bodies. Hence only with sensible citizen assistances can we eliminate such barbaric activities. Yes, money is an element which could buy cowards who would rob our country of a peaceful state and all our NRI's should remember not to criticize our country but help to build a nation which has 110 crores of peoples of all diversity rather than compare it other nations developed over a longer period with a limited controllable population. In our humble way we need to start addressing problems of enmity, shed differences in communities, win friendship with our show of compassion and love rather with threats of war to endanger more lives with terror sown into young minds.
If we could induce discipline into our society it will in a period of time improve sensible thinking into the public to elect better candidate rather be fooled by false election promises. If Indians own and manage many great MNC's in the world with international standards, an indicator that we possess the best people who can manage our country in good sensible manner provided the public be able to impartially sort the good ones.
At this hour of crisis we must adopt practical thinking with the limited resources within our system. Without wasting time the present existing laws must be enforced in total faith, book all those politicians who think above the law inciting communal feeling. All such fundamental groups inciting/terrorising such passion also should be banned to start putting our house in order. End result the job of the security officers would become easier with freedom to concentrate on security management.
This the People of India should stand up together to make our Land free from such hate crimes.
Donald DCruz, Mundakkal West, Kollam -691001.
We've all heard the allegations. Halloween is a pagan rite dating back to some pre-Christian festival among the Celtic Druids that escaped Church suppression. Even today modern pagans and witches continue to celebrate this ancient festival. If you let your kids go trick-or-treating, they will be worshiping the devil and pagan gods. 
We know these representations as the "Dance Macabre" or "Dance of Death," which was commonly painted on the walls of cemeteries and shows the devil leading a daisy chain of people — popes, kings, ladies, knights, monks, peasants, lepers, etc. — into the tomb. Sometimes the dance was presented on All Souls' Day itself as a living tableau with people dressed up in the garb of various states of life. But the French dressed up on All Souls, not Halloween; and the Irish, who had Halloween, did not dress up. How the two became mingled probably happened first in the British colonies of North America during the 1700s when Irish and French Catholics began to intermarry. The Irish focus on hell gave the French masquerades and even more macabre twist. 
But what about witches? Well, they are one of the last additions. The greeting card industry added them in the late 1800s. Halloween was already "ghoulish," so why not give witches a place on greeting cards? The Halloween card failed (although it has seen a recent resurgence in popularity), but the witches stayed. So, too, in the late 1800s, ill-informed folklorists introduced the jack-o'-lantern. They thought that Halloween was druidic and pagan in origin. Lamps made from turnips (not pumpkins) had been part of ancient Celtic harvest festivals, so they were translated to the American Halloween celebration. 
By Antonio Gaspari
SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Italy, MAY 16, 2008 (Zenit.org).- When the remains of St. Pio da Pietralcina, known as Padre Pio, were displayed recently, something of a confrontation between believers and skeptics ensued.
Nearly 800,000 faithful made reservations to view the remains. Non-believers derided the show of popular piety.
A similar showdown is reflected in two books about the saint.
Historian Sergio Luzzatto wrote a book titled "Padre Pio. Miracoli e politica nell'Italia del Novecento" (Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in 20th-Century Italy), in which he accuses Padre Pio of being an impostor who inflicted the stigmata on himself.
Luzzatto's accusations have been dismantled by Saverio Gaeta and Andrea Tornielli in a book titled "Padre Pio l'ultimo sospetto" (Padre Pio: The Last Suspect).
ZENIT interviewed Tornielli, Il Giornale's Vatican reporter, about the confrontation between believers and skeptics in the case of Padre Pio.
Q: What do you think about the decision to exhume and display Padre Pio's remains?
Tornielli: […] There are many bodies of saints that are on display. Blessed John XXIII is under a crystal case in St. Peter's. I don't recall there being such barbed criticisms when the Pope's remains were displayed.
Q: Why are there so many criticisms? Is it a revolt against the saint or against the Church and people who venerate saints?
Tornielli: One must certainly avoid every kind of fanaticism: The point of the veneration of the saint and the saint's relics is to reinforce our faith in that Jesus whom the saint followed, and to show how the grace of God passes through the fragility of those who are destined to become dust.
Having said this, however, I see a great deal of intellectual conceit on the part of those who feel themselves capable of judging -- of certain "intelligentsias" who view the veneration of saints, popular piety, etc. as expressions of a childish, puerile, uncouth nature. In sum, something to look down upon. It is a shame because it was precisely this simple and powerful faith, through the shrines, that preserved itself even during the post-conciliar tempests. I believe that it is a matter of a critique of people who venerate saints.
Q: Could you explain the main points of your book responding to Luzzatto's accusations?
Tornielli: Luzzatto raised suspicions without getting to the bottom of any of them. He cast the stone and then hid his hand. He read only parts of documents; he made huge mistakes and errors. He cited documents in which it is inferred that Padre Pio asked a pharmacist for carbolic acid and veratrine but he did not explain that on the basis of other documents, it is quite clear what Padre Pio used these things for.
The "historian of the 21st century," as Luzzatto loves to call himself, never bothered to look at a 21st-century medical textbook: He would have discovered there that those acids cannot cause stigmata, nor keep them open and bloody for 50 years. Indeed, the contrary is true: They would have had a cauterizing effect.
In Luzzatto's book, Padre Pio is presented as an icon of clerical fanaticism: an unproven and an indemonstrable thesis, based on nothing, indeed, based on a truly quite grave historical error, given that the "professor" does not know how to read documents and "forgets" to write that during the uprisings in San Giovanni Rotondo in the 1920s a police officer died, assassinated by socialist demonstrators and that this death was the cause of the severe repression. In sum, from the historical point of view, Luzzatto's imaginative presentation completely falls apart.
Q: What is it in the sanctity of Padre Pio and in the proclamation of saints invoked by the people and verified by the Catholic Church that is displeasing to a certain modern culture?
Tornielli: They do not like the physicality, they do not like that one speaks of good and evil, of paradise and hell, they do not like it that there are people who can draw crowds, who can bring many souls to God, to conversion.
They do not like it that there are people who speak of the devil as a person who intervenes in our life and in history, they do not like a simple man of the people -- who does not have degrees or writes for the cultural pages of some newspaper or has academic titles -- clearly showing the beauty and the fascination of the Christian experience and the life of prayer. They do not like the reversal that we see in the Magnificat: "He cast down the mighty from their thrones and raised up the lowly."
Q: After so much study of Padre Pio, what is the idea that you have of this friar who spent the greater part of his life hearing the confessions of people's sins?
Tornielli: His greatest miracle was not the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza Hospital nor the countless graces that he obtained from God for the people who incessantly asked him for these. His greatest miracle was spending his life suffering and praying, and above all drawing souls to God.
The other aspect that really struck me has to do with his obedience: In a world in which any visionary -- or one who presumes such [experiences] -- feels free to do what they want and disobey the authority of the Church, Padre Pio teaches that the true mystic and ascetic always accepts that authority. In this too the friar from Pietralcina is an example and a model of true sanctity.
