NY Chapter Of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Hazed A Black Man To Death By now, everyone knows about the Oklahoma University chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon that was shut down after it’s racist chants about how “n-words” aren’t welcome in their fraternity. But recent racist headlines surrounding the frat are shining a new light on another salacious story about the organization from a few years ago. Cornell University in Ithica, NY was forced to shut down it’s own chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon after the tragic death of one of its members. Haitian-born Georges Desdunes, a member of the fraternity during a hazing ritual that was carried out by some of his established bothers and at least one new pledge. Via Inquisitr : Georges Desdunes, a 19-year-old aspiring pre-med student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was found dead in the early morning hours of February 25, 2011, The New York Times reported. Earlier that night, as part of a fraternity initiation ritual, Desdunes — the only son of a widowed Haitian immigrant mother from Brooklyn — was kidnapped by Sigma Alpha Epsilon members, who bound him hand and foot with zip ties and poured large amounts of alcoholic drinks down his throat. They then left him unconscious on a couch in the common area of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house, where a member of the cleaning staff later found him dead. Unsurprisingly Georges’ was left for dead by his “brothers,” who were all were nowhere in site when he was found, nor when authorities came to give him medical assistance. Via The New York Times : When the police and firefighters arrived, they found an unresponsive male. He was not breathing, had no pulse and was cold to the touch. They laid him on the floor, cut off his sweatshirt, suctioned his throat and applied CPR. He was put on a stretcher and taken to a hospital in an ambulance. The rescue workers remarked later that there was not a single fraternity brother in sight, just the cleaners, who told the police what they knew, then went downstairs to finish the kitchen. Even though Georges died as a result of the ritual, three frat brothers were acquitted of misdemeanor hazing charges. His mother filed a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit. This entire organization seems to be a huge mess. SMH.
He died defending his daughter from some low life. So sad. Man Dies Defending Daughter’s Honor Against Racial Slurs We hope the racist scumbag who did this gets hard time. According to Chicago Tribune: Every weekday, Masharah Tingling says her dad would walk her to her school and be waiting for her when classes finished up. But on Wednesday afternoon, their ritual went terribly wrong when the two were confronted by a man with a lengthy criminal record on a Rogers Park street, according to Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors. When the man hurled a racial epithet at them, Michael Tingling pulled his 15-year-old daughter behind him, authorities said. The man then struck her father in the chest, he tried to defend himself but moments later he collapsed in a nearby business and was rushed to the hospital in full cardiac arrest, according to prosecutors. Michael Tingling, 59, was pronounced dead at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston less than a hour. According to the mother, Firek “stared at them, looked at her up and down, and her dad grabbed her, put her behind him and he told him, ‘You need to walk away.’“The guy was just standing there grinning,” she said. In court, prosecutors said Tingling had pulled his daughter behind him after Firek had stopped in their path and asked, “What (N-word)?” Authorities said Tingling is black and Firek is white. Assistant State’s Attorney Rita Infelise said Firek punched Tingling in the upper chest. Tingling pushed him, and Firek punched him again in the chest, she said. A judge ordered Joseph Firek, 59, who is on parole for a residential burglary conviction, held on $250,000 bail Friday on charges of first-degree murder and a hate crime. It’s a shame people can’t even pick up their daughter from school without experiencing such hate.
The Cabin in the Woods is mind-blowing, daring and revelatory – unless you’re a nerdy girl who grew up watching Joss Whedon’s television series. Then it’s just kind of nostalgic and occasionally tiresome, like talking to an ex at a high school reunion. Yes, the movie’s a lot of fun, especially if you didn’t start watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer from its low-budget beginnings. But if, like me, you’re intimately familiar with Whedon’s works and regular crutches, you’re going to see a lot of things you recognize in Cabin , which he co-wrote with longtime collaborator and director Drew Goddard. My Whedon bona fides: I introduced all of my high school friends to Buffy and liked much of it, more of Angel , lost interest in the problematic Dollhouse before it supposedly got good , loathed Firefly but liked Serenity , and found Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog terribly sour. Haven’t paid any attention to the comics, and I’m sure I’ll see Avengers along with the rest of humanity . On that basis, I offer six tired tropes that Whedon overuses in Cabin in the Woods . If you’ve seen some or all of those previous works, you might already know what you’re getting in for with Cabin , but for the rest of you, spoilers ahead. Serious, serious, Village Voice -style spoilers . 1. The Banality of Evil Cabin in the Woods starts with two office drones, hitting the vending machines and alternating complaints about their wives with complaints about office politics. So of course they’re flunkies engineering murderous ritual sacrifices on behalf of vengeful gods, right? By the time the office drones (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins) started taking bets on how exactly the five sacrificial college students were going to die, I had really, really gotten the message: corporations are evil, and evil is often mundane. Whedon has made a career out of juxtaposing the horrific and the ordinary: there’s the evil mayor in Buffy , worried about personal hygiene while plotting world domination, or the demonic law firm controlling the Angel characters’ lives, or the high-tech, rapist corporation running the Dollhouse . Firefly and Serenity even made “big damn heroes” out of the space equivalent of Confederate soldiers, fighting the good fight against the ominously bland central government that won a civil war. We get it: those of us in jobs with benefits have probably sold our souls to get them. 2. The Have-Your-Cake-And-Eat-It-Too Attempts at Feminism “Women’s issues.” That’s one of the first lines in Cabin in the Woods , a sly nod to some of the coming plot twists but also a succinct summary of a lot of what the movie gets wrong. There are some particularly lascivious camera shots up the long legs of one character, whose blonde hair dye literally turns her into a sex-crazed “whore.” (Yep, the two main women in the movie are slotted into the ritual-sacrifice roles and horror-movie tropes of “virgin” and “whore.”) Having one character snark in a corner about how sexist or gross something is does not absolve you of writing those sexist or gross jokes. Having your bad guys beg an invisible cameraman to show the “whore’s” breasts – and then showing us, the audience, those breasts – doesn’t make you any less complicit in exploiting that actor’s body, however much you want us to think that you’re intellectually mocking horror movies’ tendencies to do so. Whedon’s written some good women characters, but for someone who calls himself a feminist, he’s wildly inconsistent . Yes, he gave us the powerful blonde cheerleader vampire slayer, but he also gave us the rape fantasy of Dollhouse , not to mention the regular slut-shaming of Firefly . (Prostitution is honorable in this futuristic society – but you should still be ashamed of your profession!) Cabin ’s definitely another step backwards: the central character is a “virgin” who spends the movie reacting to things rather than demonstrating any agency. Her one potential hard decision is taken away from her by the diffident slacker boy who’s really the moral compass of the movie. Which brings me to… 3. The Lovable Slacker Hero Or, Xander Harris saves the day. Can I blame Whedon and his Xander and Wesley and Wash and Topher for helping beget the era of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen? Yes, boys: Sometimes girls will find you attractive if you’re awkward and funny and nerdy and into comic books. And sometimes your crippling lack of self-confidence and ambition is neither funny nor sweet, but please feel free to keep on telling us how very special you are and how you’re the only one worthy of saving the day (as your bong hits allow). Of course the moral compass of Cabin in the Woods would be the friends’ lovable-loser pothead – the “fool” in the parlance of the movie’s ancient gods – who sees more clearly than any of them. And of course smoking pot, through some fantastical plot device, actually become the smartest defense mechanism any character could have in the movie. Of course. 4. What Lies Beneath? The Big Bads The gradual revelation that the ultimate villains are underground, ancient gods was probably Cabin ’s least surprising twist for me. It’s not your usual horror movie reveal – unless you’ve watched the very same thing over twelve cumulative seasons of Buffy and Angel . Once Whitford and Jenkins reacted to the first student’s death with a prayer, it became obvious that this whole thing hinged on some sort of ritual sacrifice to serve the old gods. I know I’m supposed to think this is inventive, but it really just made me wonder where Buffy Summers was on vacation and why they couldn’t call her in. She would have found a way to kill the old gods, plug the Hellmouth, sass Sigourney Weaver and walk away in five minutes, flat. 5. The Humor in the Face of Horror Some of this works, some doesn’t. I enjoyed watching wave after wave of nightmare creature gleefully wipe out pretty much every character in Cabin ’s last thirty minutes — it was like a wacky Pitch Black . And of course Whitford’s character, who’s been rooting all movie for a Merman to kill the sacrificial college students, meets his own demise at the hands (or mouth) of the Merman. Which was funny. But then Whitford reacts to the sight of his impending doom with… a quip. I mean, seriously? You see a demon coming to attack you as your friends die all around you, and you spend your remaining seconds of life on sarcasm? Whedon’s TV shows have always been adept at marrying the humorous with the horrific, but that moment pulled me out of the movie more than anything else. 6. The Dark Ending To end on a laudatory note – I loved Cabin ’s ending, and it was one of the more surprising aspects of the movie. Our heroes failed to die as planned, thus dooming the rest of the world; the last shot shows an angry god’s hand, deprived of its ritual sacrifice, reaching up to destroy all of humanity. Although I shouldn’t have been that surprised — Whedon is good at these unexpectedly dark endings. Angel still has one of the best, most memorable finales on television, leaving its ragged band of heroes in a dark alley as they prepare to fight the mustered forces of darkness. I also loved Buffy ’s first network ending, in which she sacrificed herself to save her family and friends. (She then switched networks, got resurrected, and put on a musical, but I still remember that fifth-season finale much more than the series finale two years later.) Some of Whedon’s dark endings haven’t felt as earned – my eyes are still rolling from the predictable, woman-in-refrigerator plot of Dr. Horrible – but for Cabin , it worked. Even if it did prove that the main characters were horribly self-centered little twerps. I can’t wait till Whedon kills off all of the Avengers! Maria Aspan is a writer living in New York whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Reuters and American Banker. She Tweets and Tumbls . [Photo: Getty Images]
Based on a true story out of World War II-era Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), In Darkness seeks to distinguish itself from the painfully distended genre of Holocaust movies with relentless “you are there” realism. It’s not quite Smell-o-vision, but the idea seems to be to try and make the experience of the 12 Polish Jews who hid in a sewer for 14 months as uncomfortable for the audience as it was for them. It seems significant that even a movie like The Reader paused in the midst of its “I was deflowered by a war criminal” melodrama to acknowledge that there is nothing to be learned from the Holocaust. Because its stories of annihilation and survival have taken on the ritual interplay of genre, often they have as much to tell us about current narrative appetites as they do about history. In Darkness , currently nominated for a Best Foreign-Language Feature Oscar, is foremost a Holocaust movie that asks to be measured against all the others; its primarily lessons are directed toward the genre itself. Not all of the victims, for instance, are noble or even particularly nice. Director Agnieszka Holland ( Europa, Europa ) seems so enamored with her own resolution on this account that little more is offered in the way of characterization. But making the victims “human” does not necessarily make them complicated, or well drawn; in fact it leaves them vulnerable to cliché. So here we have the upper-class couple (Maria Schrader and Herbert Knaup) and their two small children, the resourceful hero (Benno Furmann), the rogue (Marcin Bosak), the pretty sister (Agnieszka Groshowska), the wanton redhead (Julia Kijowska), and a few others who never really emerge from the sewer’s shadows. Crammed together into a miserable crevice of the Lvov underground after a pogrom destroys the city’s Jewish ghetto, they all behave badly some point. There are fights over food, space, noise — and though bitter religious recrimination occasionally erupts, it feels more like a requirement of the genre than a reflection of deteroriating inner lives. In Darkness is based on the story told in a 1991 book called In the Sewers of Lvov , by Robert Marshall (adapted here by David F. Shannon). Its central figure is also one we have come to recognize on film: the benevolent gentile. Leopold Socha was a Catholic Pole and prolific thief when the war broke out; he also worked in the sewer system, and offered to help hide the group of Jews in exchange for payment. Robert Wieckiewicz, an enigmatic performer with a tough potato face, plays Socha as a Polish Tony Soprano by way of Graham Greene, with all the charisma, martyr issues and ambivalence about his own better nature that suggests. In Darkness is most successful when it follows Socha through a city where life goes on despite the nightmares unfolding in plain view and underfoot. The opening scenes use an effective contrast to set up the question: What kind of times are these? Socha and his sidekick (Krzysztof Skonieczny) shake down a couple of teenagers in what appears to be a middle-class family home; during their getaway they cross paths with a group of naked women racing through a forest, pursued to their death by nattily uniformed gunmen. From there Holland continues to effectively exploit the tension between Lvov’s ominous sense of suspended reality and the denial human beings are capable of when not directly threatened themselves. Socha and his wife (Kinga Preis) speak about the massacres that take place in their streets like they have just read a report about a country halfway around the world. Though the tensions are not addressed in depth, the fact that German, Yiddish, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian are spoken more or less interchangeably evokes the clashing ethnic currents that made Poland the Holocaust’s crucible, a better host than most of the region for genocide. Absolutely everyone is on the take, and the sudden perishability of human life has only heightened the instinct for self-preservation. That that instinct is more acutely felt in the character of Socha and his life above ground suggests the overriding misery emanating from the film’s depiction of life in the sewer. With a few exceptions — including cinematographer Jolanta Dylewska’s bravura depiction of a flash flood that threatens to drown the stowaways — Holland cannot make the group’s determination felt because she’s so intent on making us feel the mortification of their suffering. The squeaking and scampering of rats becomes a motif over two and a half hours — it ends almost every scene with one last dash of disgust — and the seemingly high incidence of sewer sex gets lingering attention as well. Rather than beginning with the assumption that there is no possibility of our coming to know that kind of suffering exactly and using imagination and insight to truly take us inside the Lvov Jews’ plight, Holland makes the base conditions of their confinement a narrative as well as aesthetic priority. And frankly it’s boring as shit. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
10 Things Everyone Should Know About Free-range Turkeys posted by: Angel Flinn 1 day ago Care2.com Over 280 million turkeys are slaughtered annually for human consumption in the United States, despite the fact that such consumption is unnecessary for humans and absolutely horrifying for turkeys. 45 million of those deaths occur for the ritual of Thanksgiving alone. Increasingly, as consumers are becoming more aware of the extreme cruelty of animal farming, free-range, organic and ‘natural’ animal products are gaining popularity. What many people don’t realize, however, is that animals raised under these labels frequently suffer through much of the same torment as those in standard factory farming operations. 1) According to the USDA, the terms “free range” and “free roaming” can be used to describe animals that “are allowed access to the outside for 51% of their lives”. There are no other requirements, including the amount of time spent outdoors or the quality and size of the outdoor area. For this reason, contrary to popular belief, “free-range” facilities are generally no more than large sheds in which tens of thousands of turkeys are crammed together on filthy, disease-ridden floors, living in their own waste. The conditions are often so poor that many turkeys die simply from the stress of living in such an environment. 2) Lighting is often kept dim to discourage aggression, since birds can engage in feather plucking and even cannibalism when they become highly stressed. Low lighting can cause reduced activity levels and result in abnormalities in growth, such as in the eyes and legs. 3) When raised for food, turkeys (even those described as free-range) are genetically modified to grow abnormally large — often twice their normal size — for producer profits. This genetic modification causes severe health problems, but since turkeys are generally slaughtered five months into their natural life span of 10 years, most are killed prior to the heart attacks or organ failure that would otherwise occur after six months. (This becomes apparent when genetically modified turkeys are rescued and allowed to live out the rest of their lives in sanctuary situations.) 4) “Natural”, “free range,” and “organic” turkeys are routinely subjected to debeaking, which is intended to prevent overcrowded birds from pecking at each other. Debeaking involves slicing off about one-third of a bird’s beak with a red hot blade when the turkey is around 5 days old (or often even younger). 5) To prevent cannibalism due to stressful conditions, turkeys sold under the above labels are just as likely to be subjected to detoeing. Detoeing is a very painful procedure which involves cutting off or microwaving the ends of the toes of male turkeys within the first three days of life. 6) Free-range, organic and natural operations are also allowed to practice desnooding, which consists of the cutting off of the snood (the fleshy appendage above the beak). Desnooding is an acutely painful procedure, and is often done with scissors, or using methods that are too brutal to describe here. 7) By the time the birds are sent to slaughter, as much as 80 per cent of the litter on the floor of the shed is their own feces. This results in a buildup of ammonia, causing turkeys to develop ulcerated feet and painful burns on their legs and bodies. 8) When they reach market weight, free-range turkeys generally undergo the same horrifying conditions on their way to slaughter as does any factory-farmed animal. Workers gather these birds up to four at a time, carrying them upside down by their legs and then throwing them into crates on multi-tiered trucks. During transport, they are at the mercy of the elements, sometimes enduring extreme cold, and are denied access to food or water. 9) After transportation, free-range turkeys arrive at the same slaughterhouses as turkeys from any other facility. In these places, workers often torture the turkeys – kicking them, throwing them into walls, and breaking their necks and bones. 10) Even when turkeys are not intentionally tortured during transportation or at the slaughterhouse, the killing process itself would certainly be considered torture if done to a human being. The birds are hung upside down by the legs, and dipped in an electrical bath that is supposed to “stun” them, but often only causes convulsions and terror. If they miss the stunning bath, their throats are slit while they’re still conscious. Sometimes, because they are flailing around, they miss both the bath and the blade, and end up alive in a scalding tank designed to remove feathers. As anyone familiar with animal sanctuary operations will tell you, turkeys are intelligent, social beings who nurture and protect their young and thrive in their natural habitat. Even when they are stressed and confined in “free-range” concentration camps, they have an amazing will to live, as do all sentient beings. In the extremely rare cases where turkeys are raised gently in someone’s backyard, slaughter by any method is intentional killing of the innocent and clearly unnecessary for humans, and is therefore wrong and logically indistinguishable from murder. Instead of practicing the primitive ritual of making the sacrifice of a turkey the focus of Thanksgiving dinner, consider giving thanks for all life by having a vegan thanksgiving. Being vegan inspires a new sense of self-esteem which comes from not contributing to the unnecessary and heartless killing of those who simply want to live their lives, as you do. with Dan Cudahy added by: EthicalVegan
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PART ONE… http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/21/america.female.genital.cutting/index.html Pressure for female genital cutting lingers in the U.S. By Stephanie Chen, CNN Photo: Despite cultural pressures, Fatima Mohamed, a Somali living in the U.S., refuses to allow her 11-year-old daughter to be cut. (CNN) — Fatima Mohamed, a 45-year-old Somali immigrant living in America, was faced with a question most parents will never worry about: Should my daughter be circumcised? The United States has outlawed female genital cutting, but cultural and religious pressures to circumcise girls linger among some African and Muslim immigrant families. Mohamed says the decision was an easy one for her to make after going through the painful experience herself in Africa as a child. She strongly opposes the idea of cutting her 11-year-old daughter, an American-born Somali with long curly hair, who plays soccer and likes watching “American Idol.” But not every family in her African community in Massachusetts feels that way. Nor can they they swiftly make the decision to reject circumcising their daughters, because it's a cultural ritual integral a woman's identity, she says. “They say they don't want to hear it,” Mohamed says. “Some think I'm disrespecting my own culture. Some will say, 'You act like an American now. You forgot about who you are.' ” Women at risk of FGC States with the highest estimated number of women who've been circumcised or are at risk for genital cutting: California: 38,353 New York: 25,949 New Jersey: 18,584 Virginia: 17,980 Maryland: 16,264 Minnesota: 13,196 Texas: 13,100 Georgia: 9,531 Washington: 7,292 Pennsylvania: 6,508 (Courtesy of Brigham and Women's Hospital) Female genital cutting is often a coming-of-age ritual practiced in various parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, but the procedure isn't just invoking concerns in the developing world. Religious and cultural beliefs fueling female circumcision often follow immigrants and refugees who move to America. Rarely have cases of female genital cutting been documented in the U.S., but much more likely, cutting has moved underground in the U.S. and overseas, advocacy groups and doctors say. In the U.S., an estimated 228,000 women have been cut — or are at risk of being cut — because they come from an ethnic community that practices female genital cutting, according an analysis of 2000 Census data conducted by the African Women's Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The Census reports there are roughly 150 million women living in the United States. The World Health Organization estimates up to 140 million women and children worldwide have been affected by female genital cutting. The WHO defines female genital cutting as a process that alters or injures female genital organs for nonmedical purposes. There are several types of female circumcision. The most severe types require the inner or outer labia to be sewn together, a procedure performed in parts of Somalia and Egypt. Other forms include excising the entire clitoris or part of the clitoris. Genital cutting dates back at least 5,000 years, says Marianne Sarkis, a professor of international development at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Some women desire the procedure because they believe they are dirty or unmarriageable if they are not cut, she said. There are cultures that begin cutting women as early as infancy, while some wait until adolescence. Communities divided Not all families in communities where female genital cutting is commonplace will want to participate. In Mohamed's immigrant community in Massachusetts, families are divided, she says. Some refuse to allow the procedure, as she does. Others say they want it, and many remain silent. Some will say, 'You act like an American now. You forgot about who you are.' –Fatima Mohamed, Somali immigrant in the U.S. Occurrences of the practice have been documented in the U.S. In March, a Georgia mother was charged with female genital mutilation after the father noticed an infant's genitals “appeared to be have been circumcised,” according to the Troup County Sheriff's Office. Officers wouldn't comment further on the family. Several advocacy workers say the more common scenario involves sending girls back to their home country to have the ritual performed. Over the past few years, Taina Bien-Aim
An annual religious ritual disapproved by church leaders in the predominantly Roman Catholic country, Filipino devotees had themselves nailed to crosses on Good Friday to remember Jesus Christ’s suffering and death. In San Fernando City, at least 23 people were nailed to crosses in three villages to mark Good Friday.Foreigners were not allowed in participating this year except as spectators, Ching Pangilinan stated, a city tourism officer and one of the organizers. The ban was imposed after some foreigners took part in previous years just to make a film or make fun of the rites. “We don’t want them to just make a mockery out of the tradition of the people here,” Pangilinan said. The event drew more than 10,000 Philippine and foreign spectators. Devotees dressed in robes and tin crowns walked to a dusty mound carrying wooden crosses on their backs. At the mound, men crucified their hands and feet. Ruben Enaje, a 49-year-old sign painter devotee who was nailed to a cross for the 24th time as his way of thanking God for his survival after falling from a building. Mary Jane Mamangon, a 34-year-old rice cake vendor, was the lone female devotee to be nailed to a cross this year in San Juan village. It was her 14th time. According to Mamangon, she started this ritual when she was 18 and has taken part in the annual rites on and off to seek God’s help in saving her ill grandmother and now her younger sister, who is suffering from cancer. “I do it because I have seen that it works,” she told The Associated Press. “I saw how my grandmother recovered from her illness.” Mamangon said she has faith that God will take care of her and her family. Similar rites took place in nearby Bulacan province, while in other parts of the country, half-dressed, barefooted penitents walked the streets, whipping their bloody backs with pieces of wood dangling from ropes as a way to atone for sins. Church leaders disapprove of such practices. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) stated that the real expression of Christian faith during Lent is through repentance and self-renewal, not flagellation or crucifixion. Bishop Rolando Tirona of the Prelature of Infanta said flagellation and cross nailings are expressions of superstitious beliefs, and are usually done out of need for money or to encourage tourism, which make them wrong. About 80 percent of the Philippine population of more than 90 million are Roman Catholic. An annual religious ritual disapproved by church leaders in the predominantly Roman Catholic country, Filipino devotees had themselves nailed to crosses on Good Friday to remember Jesus Christ’s suffering and death. In San Fernando City, at least 23 people were nailed to crosses in three villages to mark Good Friday.Foreigners were not allowed in participating this year except as spectators, Ching Pangilinan stated, a city tourism officer and one of the organizers. The ban was imposed after some foreigners took part in previous years just to make a film or make fun of the rites. “We don’t want them to just make a mockery out of the tradition of the people here,” Pangilinan said. The event drew more than 10,000 Philippine and foreign spectators. Devotees dressed in robes and tin crowns walked to a dusty mound carrying wooden crosses on their backs. At the mound, men crucified their hands and feet. Ruben Enaje, a 49-year-old sign painter devotee who was nailed to a cross for the 24th time as his way of thanking God for his survival after falling from a building. Mary Jane Mamangon, a 34-year-old rice cake vendor, was the lone female devotee to be nailed to a cross this year in San Juan village. It was her 14th time. According to Mamangon, she started this ritual when she was 18 and has taken part in the annual rites on and off to seek God’s help in saving her ill grandmother and now her younger sister, who is suffering from cancer. “I do it because I have seen that it works,” she told The Associated Press. “I saw how my grandmother recovered from her illness.”Mamangon said she has faith that God will take care of her and her family. Similar rites took place in nearby Bulacan province, while in other parts of the country, half-dressed, barefooted penitents walked the streets, whipping their bloody backs with pieces of wood dangling from ropes as a way to atone for sins. Church leaders disapprove of such practices. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) stated that the real expression of Christian faith during Lent is through repentance and self-renewal, not flagellation or crucifixion. Bishop Rolando Tirona of the Prelature of Infanta said flagellation and cross nailings are expressions of superstitious beliefs, and are usually done out of need for money or to encourage tourism, which make them wrong. About 80 percent of the Philippine population of more than 90 million are Roman Catholic. Filipinos Crucified As Atonement Of Sins On Good Friday is a post from: Daily World Buzz Continue reading →
