Spiritual Articles

Here you'll find a number of spiritual articles for spiritual growth. Why not stay awhile and take a spiritual journey through our spiritual articles. Please bookmark this page and check back often as we'll be constantly adding new articles as we come across them.

Spiritual Articles

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Free Spiritual Tools Ebook

Now you can quickly download this free spiritual tools ebook. It is filled with links and resources to a variety of the newest tools you can use to grow spiritually. Enliven your spiritual journey with some powerful resources that will keep you positive and motivated and accomplishing what you want in life.

Within this free spiritual ebook you'll also find links to free downloads of software and ebooks. If you have a website feel free to give this ebook away to your visitors.

Download your free copy of the Spiritual Tools Ebook by right clicking here. The ebook is in PDF format so can be enjoyed by both PC and Mac users.

For more spiritual tools you can use for spiritual growth click here. Be sure to bookmark that page as I'll be updating it often with the best spiritual tools you can benefit with.

Free Brandable Motivational E Book 50 Spiritual Movies - How Many Have You Seen?

50 Spiritual Movies is a free spiritual e book freely brandable with your money-making affiliate links. The spiritual book is in PDF format so can be enjoyed by both PC and Mac users.

This ebook reviews spiritual movies, motivational movies and inspirational movies. You may also find reviews on metaphysical movies and even a reincarnation movie review. The ebook also reviews the Spiritual Cinema Circle a unique spiritual movies club that finds the best in spiritual cinema to share with its members.

Started by Stephen Simon, the Spiritual Cinema Circle, is a dvd movie club that is unique in the respect that it highlights films of a spiritual nature. If you've ever seen a Stephen Simon movie (like Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeve or What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams) then you know what to expect. Although the films aren't primarily G-rated fare like you'd get with the very popular Disney Movie Club, they will often tug at your heart like the Disney movies.

There are no movie downloads with this spiritual cinema club. It is better than an ordinary online movie rental club in the respect that you never have to return the movies - they're yours to keep. Each month you'll receive a steady supply of spiritual cinema in the form of foreign films, short films or shorts, independent films, documentaries and feature length spiritual movies.

After joining the club, many have started a spiritual circle where they gather once a month to share these spiritual dvds.

What the online movie rental clubs have is lots of variety. If you are interested in more than just spiritual films try the industry leader Netflix.

The last time I looked the Spiritual Cinema site even had some inspirational and motivational movie clips. Click below to visit:

Spiritual Cinema Site

Now you can combine a fun-time at the movies with an opportunity for spiritual growth and enlightenment. Take a spiritual journey over to the 50 Spiritual Movies site now to check it out or if you need to contact us:

Click Here to go to the Spiritual Movies site.

While there you may want to read some of the great inspirational articles. Out of the hundreds of spiritual articles you'll find at this spiritual site, below are links to some of my favorites.

• Retreat and Surrender...Your Stress
• What two secrets allow you to turn any movie you watch into a spiritual experience? Click here to have the secrets revealed.
• Creating a Prosperity Mindset by Randy Gage. Randy can be "a bit blunt." However it is that tell it like it is quality that has won him many adherents. And, the veracity of his message doesn't hurt either.
• Evaluating Your Associations - Part 1 by Jim Rohn
• Evaluating Your Associations - Part 2 by Jim Rohn

For more great spiritual articles Click here.

Now You Can Make Money and Help Others with Your Own Branded Copy of 50 Spiritual Movies - and it's Free!

Click here to get it now.

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Current News On Beliefnet

Pope to be 'Clear and Decisive' in Irish Letter

VATICAN CITY - A top Vatican official says Pope Benedict XVI will speak with a "clear and decisive voice" when he addresses clerical sex abuses in Ireland in a forthcoming letter.

Benedict is expected to release his letter soon in response to decades of systematic abuse in church-run schools and other institutions in predominantly Roman Catholic Ireland.

The abuse scandal has since spread to other European countries, most significantly Germany, the pope's homeland.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella told an Italian newspaper that the zero-tolerance policy that Benedict wants to implement is a "moral obligation."

Fisichella was quoted as saying Monday that measures introduced in the U.S. church, similarly rocked by an abuse scandal years ago, are making a difference.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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State Dept. Highlights Religious Freedom Violations

(RNS) The State Department issued its annual human rights report Thursday (March 11), noting religious freedom violations in countries ranging from China to Iraq to Saudi Arabia.

The report on 194 countries called 2009 "a year in which ethnic, racial, and religious tensions led to violent conflicts and serious human rights violations."

The State Department said "no genuine freedom of religion" exists in North Korea and Cuban law permits punishment of "any unauthorized assembly of more than three persons, including those for private religious services in private homes."

The report said religious minorities continue to face "escalating discrimination and persecution." In Iraq, for example, despite the government's public calls for tolerance, attacks on places of worship by extremist and insurgent groups limited their ability to practice their faith.

In China, repression of Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs increased, the report said. Non-Muslims are prohibited from expressing their religion publicly in Saudi Arabia.

The department noted that several countries with "generally strong"

human rights records had been home to religious freedom violations in 2009, citing the recent ban on construction of minarets in Switzerland as an example.

"Discrimination against Muslims in Europe has been an increasing concern," the report said.

-- Adelle M. Banks
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

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Pledge Is Constitutional, Federal Court Rules

(RNS) The Pledge of Allegiance, with its inclusion of the words "under God," is constitutional, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday (March 11), reversing a previous ruling.

The 2-1 ruling answers a challenge by California atheist Michael Newdow, who argued that the use of the pledge in a Northern California school district -- where children of atheists had to listen to others recite it-- violated the First Amendment's clause prohibiting the establishment of religion.

The "students are being coerced to participate in a patriotic exercise, not a religious exercise," the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. "The Pledge is not a prayer and its recitation is not a religious exercise."

In 2002, the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the use of the words "under God" in the pledge violated the Constitution. The current court called that decision "erroneous." The Supreme Court later dismissed the earlier Newdow suit, sidestepping the church-state issues by finding he did not have standing to sue.

"The 9th Circuit today failed to uphold the basic principle found within the first ten words of the Bill of Rights ... that the government is required to show equal respect to the lawful religious views of all individuals," Newdow said Thursday.

Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson, founder and president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who argued for the school district, said the court "finally stood up" for the Pledge of Allegiance.

In a scathing and lengthy dissent, Judge Stephen Reinhardt said the words "under God" have an "undeniably religious purpose" and "we have failed in our constitutional duty as a court."

In a separate decision, also issued Thursday, the 9th Circuit dismissed Newdow's challenge to the words "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency.

-- Adelle M. Banks
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

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Abuse Scandal Hits Home for Pope

(RNS) The Catholic Church in Europe's widening sexual abuse scandal hit home for Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, as his former archdiocese admitted to making "serious errors" in the case of a priest suspected of molesting a child.

Benedict discussed the spreading scandal with the head of Germany's Catholic bishops on Friday (March 12), hours before it drew closer than ever to the pontiff himself, as the Archdiocese of Munich, where Benedict was archbishop from 1977-1982, released a statement acknowledging it had reassigned an accused sex abuser in 1980.

Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was archbishop at the time, but Munich's statement said that an underling, former Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, had taken "full responsibility" for the decision.

Six years after his reassignment to a parish, the priest, identified only as H., was convicted of sexually abusing minors in another jurisdiction. He is still an active priest, according Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that broke the story.

An advocate for abuse victims in the U.S. voiced skepticism about the archdiocese's assertion that Benedict had not approved the abuser's reassignment to pastoral work.

"It boggles the mind," said Barbara Blaine, president and founder of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "We can't think of a single case anywhere on the planet where a credibly accused predator priest was put back around kids and no one asked or told the top diocesan official."

Earlier on Friday, Benedict met with Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, president of the German bishops' conference, for a briefing on the state of the church in Germany. While the meeting had been previously scheduled, clearly the most urgent topic in their 45-minute conversation was the growing number of sex abuse allegations.

At least 170 abuse allegations have emerged this year involving children at German Catholic schools, prompting an investigation by prosecutors.

Even before Friday, the growing scandal had already reached the pope's own family. Church officials in Germany confirmed last week that a former member of a boys choir directed for 30 years by the pope's elder brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, had allegedly been sexually abused. Ratzinger, who was not himself accused, said he was unaware of any history of sex abuse and would be willing to testify to prosecutors.

At a Vatican press conference on Friday, Zollitsch said German bishops will examine all cases of alleged abuse, "even those that happened a long time ago."

Zollitsch said trials of accused perpetrators by church tribunals were not intended to supersede or influence criminal trials by civil authorities.

That statement seemed to answer criticism from German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who denounced the church's "wall of silence" around sex abuse. She cited a 2001 letter signed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, reserving preliminary investigation of abuse charges for the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Zollitsch also said the Vatican has been collecting information on the experiences of bishops' conferences in various countries, as a possible basis for global disciplinary norms.

The German scandal comes only months after the release of two government-sponsored reports of widespread clerical sex abuse in Ireland, and amid increasingly numerous charges of abuse in other European countries, including Austria and the Netherlands.

Last month, Benedict met with all 24 serving Irish bishops to discuss his forthcoming pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, which will be Benedict's first major document devoted to clerical sex abuse. The Vatican says the letter will be released before Easter.

The spate of recent revelations has raised expectations that the pope will address the problem of clerical sex abuse in the entire Catholic Church. Germany's Cardinal Walter Kasper suggested that Benedict's letter might offer a "more general analysis, that might even embrace the universal church and not just one nation."

One expert on the abuse scandal in the American church expects a strong and substantive papal document on Ireland.

"I think (the pope) does get it," said Nicholas P. Cafardi, a professor at Duquesne Law School. "Benedict is taking this much more seriously than it was taken before."

Cafardi, who sat on the committee that developed child abuse prevention policies for the U.S. Catholic bishops in 2002, said he hopes the pope will amend church law to make clerical sex abusers ineligible to continue ministering as priests, facilitating their removal even without a criminal conviction.

No less urgent, Cafardi said, is the need for Benedict to take a firm stand against bishops who ignore or conceal sex abuse.

Four present or former auxiliary bishops in Ireland have offered to resign after last November's Murphy Commission Report, which uncovered a three-decade pattern of abuse and cover-up in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

So far, Benedict has accepted only one resignation, of Donal B. Murray of Limerick.

The growing evidence in Europe of what some once dismissed as an American problem has emboldened the church's critics in Europe, the world's most secular continent.

Some European commentators have invoked the scandals to argue against priestly celibacy and an all-male clergy, and their arguments have drawn recognition in some surprising quarters.

In a recent newspaper article calling for "unflinching examination" of the possible causes of pedophilia, Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, a former student of Pope Benedict, referred to priestly celibacy as one of the topics to be addressed -- though he quickly denied through a spokesman that he was raising the possibility of a married priesthood.

This week, the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published an article arguing that placing more women in positions of church authority could rend the "veil of masculine secrecy" that permitted cover-ups of sex abuse.

By FRANCIS X. ROCCA
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

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Dalai Lama: China Aims to Annihilate Buddhism

DHARMSALA, India - The Dalai Lama lashed out at China on Wednesday, accusing it of trying to "annihilate Buddhism" in Tibet and rebuffing all his efforts to reach a compromise over the disputed Himalayan region.

China shot back, accusing the Tibetan spiritual leader of using deceptions and lies to distort its policy in the region. The passionate back-and-forth highlighted the distrust, anger and frustration that separates the two sides and leaves little hope for success in recently resumed talks.

Beijing has demonized the Dalai Lama and accused him of wanting independence for Tibet, which China says is part of its territory. The Dalai Lama says he only wants some form of autonomy for Tibet within China that would allow Tibetan culture, language and religion to thrive.

The Dalai Lama spoke Wednesday in an address marking the anniversaries of two failed uprisings against China, one 51 years ago that sent him into exile in India and the other two years ago that was quashed by a government crackdown that is still continuing.

He accused Chinese authorities of conducting a campaign of "patriotic re-education" in monasteries in Tibet.

"They are putting the monks and nuns in prison-like conditions, depriving them the opportunity to study and practice in peace," he said, accusing Chinese of working to "deliberately annihilate Buddhism."

The Dalai Lama's remarks reflect frequent complaints by Tibetan monks that required political study sessions and visitor demands are depriving them of time for religious study. The numbers of monks attaining higher Buddhist degrees are believed to have fallen drastically since the crushing of the 1959 rebellion that resulted in direct rule from Beijing and the imposition of heavy government control over monasteries.

The Tibetan leader said that "whether the Chinese government acknowledges it or not, there is a serious problem in Tibet," but that attempts to talk to China about granting limited autonomy to the region had gone nowhere.

"Judging by the attitude of the present Chinese leadership, there is little hope that a result will be achieved soon. Nevertheless, our stand to continue with the dialogue remains unchanged," he told thousands of Tibetan exiles gathered at a temple in Dharmsala, India, where the Dalai Lama leads a government-in-exile.

While the Dalai Lama's language was strong and indicated the depth of his concern for the Tibetan clergy, his statement did not appear to indicate a change in strategy with regard to his relations with China, said Kate Saunders, communications director for the International Campaign for Tibet.

China's Foreign Ministry did not have immediate comment, but the official Xinhua News Agency, a government mouthpiece, issued a harsh commentary accusing the Dalai Lama of trafficking in "distorted facts" and "obstinate lies."

It mocked his claims about the oppression of Tibetan Buddhism as ignorant, telling him to "do some basic research and find out some truth about Tibet before pointing his finger."

The police presence in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa has been heavy ever since the uprising and crackdown two years ago, but it was stepped up even more in recent days with rifle-toting police guarding intersections and demanding to see ID cards at checkpoints, hotel workers said.

"Because of the March 14 riot anniversary, police are patrolling in the streets every day, and they are conducting more checks," said Luo Wen, a receptionist at the Lhasa River Hotel.

Despite the tensions, Beijing reopened talks with the Dalai Lama's envoys in January for the first time in 15 months. But China was incensed when he met with President Barack Obama in the U.S. last month.

In Nepal, about 1,000 Tibetan exiles chanted anti-China slogans and waved Tibetan flags at a temple on the outskirts of Katmandu, the capital, as riot police deployed to keep protesters from marching in the streets.

"Stop killings in Tibet. We want a free Tibet," the demonstrators chanted. Police detained seven people at the temple for defying a ban on anti-China protests.

Separately, about 15 protesters who tried to break through heavy police lines and storm the Chinese Embassy visa office were stopped and detained by the police.

Waving Tibetan flags, these protesters ran toward the main entrance of the office located in the heart of Katmandu. They were quickly blocked the police and taken away in police vans to detention centers.

China, which sent communist troops into Tibet in 1950, claims the region has been Chinese territory for centuries. Many Tibetans say they were effectively independent for most of that time.

Associated Press reporters Binaj Gurubacharya in Katmandu, Nepal, and Anita Chang in Beijing contributed to this report.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Lutheran Bishops Prepare to Welcome Gay Clergy

(RNS) Bishops in the nation's largest Lutheran denomination have approved preliminary steps to welcome a group of openly gay and lesbian ministers as official clergy with new liturgical rites.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Conference of Bishops approved a draft proposal on Monday (March 8) for the new rites, which include prayers and the laying on of hands by the local bishop, according to the denomination's news service.

The proposal only applies to 17 pastors who had followed normal ELCA procedures for education and ordination, but remained barred from the denomination's official clergy roster because of their sexuality. The clergy are all members of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a group devoted to gay rights in the ELCA.

Last summer, the ELCA, which has about 4.6 million members, voted to change its longtime policy barring noncelibate gays and lesbians from the pulpit. The church's executive council is expected to vote on the proposed rites at its meeting in Chicago next month, when it is also expected to draw up new rules for other gay and lesbian clergy candidates.

Since the ELCA's decision to allow noncelibate gay and lesbian clergy, 62 congregations have taken the two necessary votes to leave the denomination. An additional 197 have passed one of the votes, according to the ELCA, which has 10,230 congregations in all.

In addition, financial support for the denomination hit an all-time low of about $60 million in 2009, the church announced. ELCA Treasurer Christina Jackson-Skelton said the economic recession and "disagreements within congregations" about the decision on gay clergy had contributed to the decline.

-- Daniel Burke
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

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Pakistani Churches Condemn Killings at World Vision Office

BANGALORE, India (RNS/ENI) Churches in Pakistan have deplored the killing of six World Vision staff members as the international Christian humanitarian organization suspended its operations in the country.

"All of World Vision's operations in the country have been suspended for the time being," agency spokesman Dean Owen said after the attack, adding that the aid group had received "no threatening letters" before the killing.

Owen told Mission Network News that "somewhere between 15 and 20"

militants stormed the compound and "shot up the staff and robbed the staff of jewelry, money, computers, and phones.

"World Vision typically loses one staff member a year to violence; never, ever in our 60-year history have we lost six in one day."

News reports said unidentified gunmen lined up the staff in the small town of Ogi on Wednesday (March 10) and shot them indiscriminately before detonating bombs that damaged the building. The facility was intended to assist those affected by the earthquake that ravaged the area in 2005.

In addition to the six deaths, eight staff members were injured.

"This kind of barbarous act is against the suffering humanity," the National Council of Churches in Pakistan (NCCP) said in a statement.

World Vision had been operating relief centers in the troubled North West Frontier Province after the 2005 earthquake killed an estimated 100,000 people and destroyed local infrastructure.

"All the people who were killed belong to (the) Islamic faith," said the national church council, an umbrella group of four Protestant churches in the Muslim majority nation.

Victor Azariah, the NCCP's general secretary, told Ecumenical News International that the attack seemed to be linked to the "Taliban movement, which is against the American presence in any shape."

World Vision president Rich Stearns, in a statement, said in a statement he mourns "the terrible loss to the World Vision family" in the "brutal and senseless attack."

-- Anto Akkara
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

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