mtsuki’s blog

‘agamani’ or welcoming songs are very popular with oldfashioned bengalis in the durga puja season.
and, with the pujas approaching, and me being a bengali, this is my agamani song for the godess.
                
         agamani
jaago tumi jago..
jago durga, jago dosho prohorono dharini
abhaya shakti, balo prodayini tumi jago
jago, tumi jago…

yes, rise and awake ma durga
return to the land of your birth
return to your home, where we all wait for you
return to the ungrateful earth

return as shakti, as power, as fear
return as kali, as might,
return as parvati,as peace and goodness.
return and show us light.

another year has come and gone
and yet we are no better
with bombs and terrorists, and wars and death,
we have forgotten how to love one another

tai esho maa, come to earth
and wreak upon us your wrath.
so that we may feel, the pain that was felt
in the delhi, surat, ahmedabad, blasts.

perhaps we still will forget the pain,
and feel no loss of the hundred lives.
but in these five days atleast, let our tears be,
for them a sacrifice.

Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences, said after a week-long Lenten seminar for priests that surveys showed 60 per cent of Catholics in Italy no longer went to confession.

He said that priests must take account of "new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation". Whereas sin in the past was thought of as being an invididual matter, it now had "social resonance".

"You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour's wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos," he said.

Bishop Girotti said that mortal sins also included taking or dealing in drugs, and social injustice which caused poverty or "the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few".

He said that two mortal sins which continued to preoccupy the Vatican were abortion, which offended "the dignity and rights of women", and paedophilia, which had even infected the clergy itself and so had exposed the "human and institutional fragility of the Church".

The mass media had "blown up" the issue "to discredit the Church", but the Church itself was taking steps to deal with it.