Marriage and Family
(moonie) cf
We need new *zombies* for our Master Moon. You must
have 7 children to qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven.
True Father has 13 children. Surely you can meet the
minumim requirement of 7 in each house hold.
Don't worry about money, or feeding them. Father
will feed them, and put them to work to make money
selling flowers on street corners or trinkets door to door.
http://www.icsahome.com/infoserv_articles/collins_donna_deathofamoonie.htm
cf
(moonie) cf
wealthy ones, or ones with political influence.
Go visit yer local Catholic Church, and offer the priest
a wife, tell him it's OK with (pimp daddy) Father Moon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5176508.stm
cf
(moonie) cf
Austen Ivereigh
The Zambian archbishop who married a Moonie has said his first public
Mass in Rome. The Tablet's executive editor traces Milingo's road
back.
In summer the Pope retires to Castelgandolfo and the Church seems to
close down. It is not a good time for Catholic journalists. But July
and August of 2001 were different: we were treated to a story so
fantastic and colourful we had to keep rubbing our eyes.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) was threatening to
excommunicate a 71-year-old Zambian archbishop, Emmanuel Milingo,
unless he renounced the wife he had married in a mass Moonie ceremony
in New York. Then came the August days of real farce: the
archbishop's Korean bride, Maria Sung, praying in St Peter's Square
for his return; the candlelit dinner with her in which the
ex-Archbishop of Lusaka told her - via interpreters - that he must
separate because the Pope had called him back. And then, in September
2001, the disappearance: Milingo was on retreat somewhere, while
journalists scoured the globe, wanting to pose all the unanswered
questions.
It turned out that the archbishop, famous for his mass healing and
exorcism liturgies, was now in a village in Argentina run by the
Focolare movement. There, earlier this year, the CDF allowed an Italian
journalist, Michele Zanzucchi, to visit him. The result was a book-long
interview, Emmanuel Milingo: il pesce ripesato del fango - "the
fish rescued from the mud".
It turns out to be the story of a very human journey through craters of
the spirit and back. Like many people who go off the rails, Milingo was
in early 2001 a lonely, deraciné man, an African in Rome who felt
unappreciated and unloved. But he also had a strong need to proclaim
the Gospel, to heal the sick and to cast out devils - "that triple
impulse", as he describes it, which had driven him since 1973. But in
Italy he found himself blocked, forbidden to celebrate the open-air
healing and exorcism Masses for which he was renowned. In early 2001 he
was desperate. "If in the Church I could not preach anywhere," he
says, "I had to find a way of developing my mission elsewhere."
Milingo began visiting New York, where he was often seen with the
Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, FFWPU, the latest
name for the followers of the Revd Sun Myung Moon. Some of Milingo's
letters to his friends, in which he had begun expressing admiration for
Moon, had raised the alarm in Roman circles; the bells rang even louder
when they heard that the archbishop had signed up to an induction
course.
Milingo says some disciples of Sun Myung Moon sought him out with
invitations to speak at their conferences. The time he was allotted
gradually grew, as did his audiences; soon he was leading mass healings
in the packed theatres he had so missed.
Milingo confesses to "a serious ignorance" about the Moonies; he
knew only that they were rich and had mass weddings. He saw the FFWPU
as an interreligious organisation - his audiences were made up of
Buddhists, Muslims, as well as Christians. But he knew enough about the
Moonies to know that his links to them would create scandal. He felt
spurned, and wanted to hit back.
Later he would realise he had "fallen into a trap, and the shock was
greater than I had imagined". He found himself involved in "a kind
of catechesis" in which he was told - among many other absurdities
he found unacceptable - that Jesus was the fruit of an adulterous
union. When he tried to object, he was told that the success of the
catechesis depended on no one asking questions until the end of the
programme. So the ex-Archbishop of Lusaka stayed silent as the
catechesis became ever more strange. "I felt that, psychologically, I
was beginning to cave in."
In order to be appointed an official preacher to the Catholics in the
organisation, he was told, he would have to be married in the Moonie
rite to a wife selected by Moon himself. "I agreed because, in my
stupidity, I thought that this way I could do good." He was not
drugged or hypnotised, he says.
One of Moon's objectives - it is well documented - is to have the
FFWPU recognised by the civil and religious societies. Did the Moonies
see their catch as a means of furthering that aim? If so, at the end of
May, they scored what looked like a major success. In one of those
famous mass nuptials, Milingo married a 47-year-old Korean
acupuncturist selected by the Revd Moon.
Milingo insisted he was still a Catholic, but the wedding was the
classic Moonie initiation rite. In a long justification, Milingo
declared in a letter he posted on the internet in February 2001 that he
hoped he would help others "separate from Satan, be purified in
spirit and body, and contribute to clean up and purify the Church".
And he launched an attack on the Catholic hierarchy. "My attempt to
fulfil the mission which God has entrusted to me has been constantly
frustrated, blocked and undermined by some of those invested with
ecclesiastical authority", Milingo declared. And he ended by
declaring the Revd Moon a "man of God" whose Church was "working
towards the tearing down of all the barriers between races, nations and
creeds, and to bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth".
Milingo believed that marriage was a means of evangelisation, that he
could remain a Catholic and pursue his ministry. He was on a high.
The canon lawyers spluttered. The newspapers splashed. The CDF spun
into action. The Pope's spokesman said Milingo "can no longer be
considered a bishop in the Catholic Church" and that "canonical
sanctions" would soon be applied. In July the CDF gave Archbishop
Milingo until 20 August to "make amends for the scandal given" or
face excommunication. The CDF's president, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
set out the conditions for his return: he must separate from Maria Sung
and abandon the Moonies; declare publicly his adherence to the doctrine
and practice of celibacy; and make clear his obedience to the Pope.
Between the wedding on 27 May and Milingo's return to Rome on 6
August, he spent 72 days married to Maria Sung. The language barrier
was high: Milingo spoke no Korean, Sung only a little English and
Italian. For the first 40 days after the wedding, according to the
Moonie rite, the couples live together chastely. After a honeymoon in
Korea, they returned to New York. Later, in an attempt to get Milingo
back, Maria Sung would say she felt she was pregnant. Had they decided
to create a family? On this point Milingo prefers to stay silent.
"What happened will stay only in my memory. I do not wish to speak of
those moments." But he admitted to a frequent feeling of unreality.
"One time, I confess, while I was sitting next to Maria Sung, it was
like waking from a nightmare. 'Who are you?', I said to her. 'My
wife? I cannot marry!' She reacted sweetly, seductively, and let me
think this was a moment of weakness. 'You are my husband, now you are
my husband and you cannot go back', she repeated to me, very
persuasively."
Milingo insists that to him the marriage was the means to an end - to
preach the Gospel. "I was not driven by any passion for a marriage
which I would happily have avoided." Maria Sung, he says, would have
gladly married anyone Moon had chosen for her, and was enthusiastic
about the union - "despite the age difference: she 43, me 71. I was
old enough to be her father."
Meanwhile, the Moonies had plans: to found a well-financed parallel
Catholic Church in Africa, autonomous from Rome, with its own hierarchy
headed by Milingo. "I would not have gone along with the plan,"
says Milingo, who was becoming more and more depressed. "One day, one
of the last I spent with Maria Sung, the situation I found myself in
seemed so absurd that I raised to God a desperate prayer, whose last
words were something like, 'Let me die, Lord, let me die.'"
Enter, at this point, Alba Vitali, a painter from the north of Italy.
She had declared herself to be a disciple of Milingo's almost as soon
as she met him some years before, and had been desperately trying to
track him down. In New York he received a call from her. "She told me
with a sweet and persuasive voice" - Milingo was clearly vulnerable
to dulcet-voiced sirens - "that the Pope had a great desire to see
me." Milingo - and the Moonies - believed her. He flew to Milan
in the company of Maria Sung, a bodyguard and an FFWPU official, the
Revd Oliver. "We were all firmly convinced - all of us, including
the Revd Moon - that the Pope would be waiting for us with open arms,
to put into action that reconciliation which seemed to us so obvious
and necessary".
Just when all the Catholic stories in Rome were shrivelling in the
mid-summer heat, the real dramas began in Milan. Signora Vitali took
advantage of the confusion of the baggage hall to separate Milingo from
his companions. Together with her accomplice, Signor Bisantis, she
bundled him into a car and drove him to the city's domestic airport.
They took a flight to Rome's Fiumicino airport, then a taxi to the
Pope's summer residence at Castelgandolfo. And knocked on the door.
Milingo was disappointed to discover that no meeting had been
scheduled. He was eventually interviewed by Pope John Paul's private
secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz. Milingo explained his sense of rejection
and the endless prohibitions on his Masses. "Remember you are an
archbishop," Dziwisz told him. "You are an apostle. You are an
archbishop for ever. You cannot be happy outside the Catholic
Church."
The ex-Archbishop of Lusaka did not see himself as being outside the
Church. He had continued to celebrate mass each day, to pray the
Breviary and the Rosary. But he realised now that he must make amends.
The next day, he met Pope John Paul in a private audience for the first
time since 1983. He had often requested an audience, but in vain. Now
he was excited. "Finally I can tell him everything, wipe out the lies
which people have told about me," he told himself. He was prepared to
explain himself, to complain, to beg forgiveness. But the Pope had
other plans.
"The Pope did not discuss anything with me, did not accuse me of
anything. I greeted him, he asked me to sit down and then said to me
solemnly: 'In the name of Jesus Christ, come back to the Catholic
Church.' That was it. He said nothing more. Then I spoke to him, I
don't remember what I said; he stayed silent, did not react to my
words. Finally he added: 'Speak to Bishop Bertone. He will tell you
what you have to do."
Milingo kissed his feet. "It was a spontaneous gesture. I had caused
the Pope to suffer, I had tormented him. I had to ask forgiveness now
with a gesture." The archbishop was the prodigal son, the Pope the
expectant father.
Milingo wrote two letters to the Pope, accepting the three conditions
the CDF had listed in its ultimatum. But he still had to deal with the
Congregation. "There had not been cordial relations between the
Congregation and me", Milingo recalls. He believed that the CDF
existed solely to discipline and correct. But over the next weeks he
came to trust Archbishop Bertone, the CDF's Salesian number two who
would take charge of Milingo's "rehabilitation." Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, the CDF's president, sent him two books. "Reading them,
I realised that I must treat him, too, as a person and not according to
his job."
The first stage of Milingo's rehabilitation entailed leaving the
clutches of Signora Vitali and Signor Bisantis in whose apartment
Milingo had been staying. To avoid the press, they drove him to a
crossroads after dark, where a second car was waiting for him. Sgra
Vitali dropped Milingo off, and burst into tears. In the second car,
two women were waiting for him: one was a driver, the other a CDF
employee. Milingo had no idea where he was going. He was later
transferred to a third car, driven by a priest. They took him to a
Focolare house in Castelli Romana, where he made a 30-day retreat and
discovered the joy of community life. "Finally," says Milingo, "I
was treated like a true son of the Catholic Church."
In Castelli Romana his retreat was a time for humility. "I had
thought I was useful to the Church and to humanity because of some
gifts I had. Now I understood it was not Milingo who did these things,
but God." At the end, he was a changed man.
Meanwhile, Maria Sung was on hunger strike, appearing regularly and
tearfully in front of TV cameras to declare her love for the
archbishop. On 12 August she refused to meet various Vatican emissaries
carrying a letter to her from Milingo explaining that his celibate
state did not allow him to be married. She must see him alone, she
said. On 29 August, a meeting was arranged in the Hotel Arcangelo, a
stone's throw from St Peter's. The meeting was hard to arrange,
partly because of fears that the Moonies would try to take back Milingo
by force, partly to avoid the press. There was little chance of the
latter.
Emmanuel Milingo's candlelit dinner with Maria Sung lasted two hours.
They each had translators - Milingo a Korean nun, Sung an Iranian
woman who spoke Korean and was, he says, almost certainly an emissary
of Moon.
Milingo explained to Maria Sung what he had written in the letter.
There were tears, but she accepted his decision, says Milingo, "with
sadness but also with respect".
The final part of the Milingo drama came in early October 2001. The
decision was taken for the archbishop to continue his reflection
elsewhere, far from Rome. He was put on board a night-time Alitalia
flight to South America, climbing onto the plane through the pilot's
entrance and seated in the first row, separated from the rest of the
passengers by a black curtain. In Argentina, he would continue his time
for reflection, composing music and learning the importance of
community life. And praying. For Milingo, prayer "is like the life of
a fish which cannot survive outside water. As a Christian, I cannot
imagine what it is like without prayer. Without prayer I am nothing."
Now, a year later, Archbishop Milingo is back in Rome and at peace. The
Holy See says it has every confidence that he will continue to be
faithful to the Church. But just in case, he has been given a house in
Zagarolo, a village only 30 miles from the Vatican, where a large
hangar has been erected to accommodate the crowds that are expected to
flock to his healing Masses. He will live with two other priests
because, he says, "I want to carry on a life of community." The
story seems to be over, and we can stop rubbing our eyes. Summer just
won't be the same.
(moonie) cf
We can all be proud of him, lI'm sure he will convert many new
*members* to True Fathers will. Mansai..
cf.
====================>
Archbishop Milingo Outlines His New Mission
Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
NEWS
July 24, 2006
Posted to the web July 25, 2006
By John L Allen Jr
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo says he has no intention of launching a new
sect in Africa funded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon as a rival to Roman
Catholicism, and charged that his latest break with the Vatican is the
result of "intolerable restrictions" imposed on him over the last five
years, as well as a deep "lack of appreciation" for his spiritual gifts
as an exorcist.
Now, Milingo says, he wants to help reconcile married priests with the
Catholic Church, as well as to promote better understanding between
Catholicism and Moon's Family Federation for World Peace and
Unification.
Milingo spoke to NCR July 14 in an exclusive interview in a hotel room
in Arlington, Va., just outside of Washington.
Earlier in the day, Milingo took part in a press conference announcing
the formation of a new group, "Married Priests Now!", which will
agitate for the return of roughly 150,000 married priests who have left
the church in recent decades.
Milingo, who was made a bishop by Pope Paul VI in 1969 at the age of
39, has long been a thorn in the side of church authorities because of
his controversial practice of mass exorcism ceremonies.
In 2001, he broke away from the Catholic Church and wed a follower of
Moon, a then-43-year-old Korean acupuncturist named Maria Sung. After a
tempestuous few weeks, including a surprise meeting with Pope John Paul
II at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, Milingo returned to
obedience.
He was allowed to resume a limited form of his healing ministry outside
Rome.
Two weeks ago, however, Milingo disappeared from Italy and reappeared
in the United States at the side of Archbishop George Stallings, leader
of his own breakaway group, the African American Catholic Congregation,
based in Washington, D.C., as well as followers of Moon.
Milingo rejected fears, frequently voiced in Rome, that if he were ever
to fall back under the spell of Moon, the charismatic 76-year-old
Zambian prelate might lead a breakaway congregation in Africa offering
a married priesthood and drawing on traditional African religious
practices, especially healing and the casting out of demons. Such a
movement, some Vatican officials worry, could hobble the Catholic
Church on the continent where its recent growth has been the most
dramatic.
"We have no ambition at all, in any way, to do anything of that kind,"
Milingo said.
Milingo added that he was "very surprised at how the Catholic Church
has spread so much evil against the Rev. Moon," and that he would like
to be an "intermediary" between the two religious bodies.
Milingo claimed that Moon's vision for global peace and the family are
consistent with recent papal teaching. He said he has been fishing
three times with Moon, and was "very, very surprised" at Moon's
"simplicity" and his spirit of "living for others."
"I've seen what he has done," Milingo said.
In a 2002 memoir titled Fished from the Mud, Milingo was quoted as
hinting that Moon's people may have drugged or brainwashed him,
prompting his marriage and eventual break with the church.
In his NCR interview, however, Milingo insisted that he had said no
such thing, and that it was church authorities who insisted that he had
been brainwashed.
"All my problems come from the lack of appreciation [by the authorities
of the Catholic Church] for the spiritual gifts I have," he said.
"It was too much for them to believe that in the modern world, I can
simply say 'let this happen,' and it happens," he said.
Milingo offered several examples of his alleged spiritual prowess,
including a recent phone call from a woman in Modena, Italy, who
complained that 20 days after the birth of her child she could not
produce mother's milk. Milingo said he instructed her to draw a glass
of water, which he blessed over the phone. He instructed the mother to
drink it, and immediately afterwards she began to lactate.
"They can't believe such things are possible," he said, with respect to
Vatican officials and bishops who were reluctant to have him in their
dioceses.
Milingo told NCR that for the time being, he intends to establish a
base of operations in Washington at Stallings' Imani Temple.
Eventually, he said, he will return to Zambia and resume his ministry
of preaching and healing. Milingo said Sung, whom he insists he has
always considered his wife, is with him in Washington and the couple
will make a home together there.
He said that he has written to Benedict XVI to inform the pope of his
whereabouts and his intentions, but that at present he sees "no reason"
for requesting a meeting with the pope, as he did with John Paul.
Milingo had nothing but affection for the late pope, who, he said, had
appealed to Milingo as his elder, with "beautiful words" of
reconciliation. Yet he told an at-times harrowing story of his
subsequent treatment, beginning with what he called his "violent
separation" from Sung after his return to the fold in the summer of
2001.
"The shadow of Maria Sung always hung over me, it was very strong," he
said. "It was dangerous for me to even be talking with any woman at
all."
"I found myself literally surrounded by spies," he said. He said these
"spies" were primarily priests and sisters who claimed to have the
authority of the Vatican, including what he called some "enthusiasts of
Medjugorje," the site of alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the
former Yugoslavia.
At one stage, Milingo alleged, three different groups, whom he declined
to identify, planned to "kidnap" him from his residence in Zagarola
outside Rome, to use him for their own purposes.
Apparently realizing the extraordinary nature of his account, at one
point Milingo exclaimed, "I am not drunk!"
The kidnap plots led him, he said, to "rebel" and to leave Italy for
Zambia in December 2004, not to return until early February in 2005.
Upon his return, he said, the Vatican agreed to get rid of most of the
people around him.
Shortly after the election of Benedict XVI, Milingo said, the new pope
received him and said he was glad they had been able to "take away
these stumbling blocks that are stifling your work."
Yet, Milingo said, he was still required to travel with a Vatican
bodyguard, at his own expense, wherever he went.
Milingo said he decided to make a definitive break now for two reasons.
First, he said, he had lived through five years of "doubts and
difficulties," wondering if he had made the right choice. During all
that time, he said, he thought of himself as married to Sung.
Second, he said, the resistance to his preaching and healing gradually
became more and more intolerable.
"People knew my gift was beyond doubt," he said. "But the dioceses
didn't want me. Some bishops jumped so high at the mention of my name,
it was as if the church had springs."
This led him to ask God, he said, "Why do you have such a structure
that separates itself from humanity?"
In the last two weeks, Milingo said, he gradually planned his escape.
He called a private friend and asked her to make his travel
arrangements, avoiding local travel agencies and well-known carriers.
He said when the morning came, he celebrated Mass, ate lunch, and then
when people in the residence were expecting him to nap, he simply
walked out into a waiting car.
"We had to leave without arousing too much dust," he explained.
He said he left the key to his room on the altar in the chapel.
Those who have watched the ups and downs of the Milingo story over the
years will be hesitant to say that its last chapter has now been
written, or that the mercurial Zambian prelate doesn't have other
surprises in store.