By R Vaidyanathan
21 Jun 2009 11:27:00 PM IST

AT every seminar on financial matters these days, there’s one question that lingers — even during the coffee breaks: will the economy recover, and when? And, it isn’t about the Indian economy but that of the US. I reiterate it will take at least 40 quarters — that’s a decade — for America to recover. I tell this, and am shunned — like a swine flu patient.

Sandhya Jain
12 June 2009
Source: http://www.vijayvaani.com

In the name of a strange religious diplomacy called inter-faith dialogue, Swami Jayendra Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Matham, will today meet Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, and other religious leaders, in Mumbai. The catholic delegation will include native Catholics like Cardinal Oswald Gracias, president of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of India and Bishop Thomas Dabre of Pune.

Janaka Goonetilleke

When two Japanese Buddhist monks Shaku Soen and Shaku Kozen arrived in Galle, Sri Lanka in 1887, little did we realise that these two priests could represent the dilemma that Japan could face in a span of 125 years.

[Yesterday, Pujya Swami Jayendra Saraswati, Sankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Matham, met Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, president of Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, and others, in Mumbai for a Hindu-Catholic dialogue. The meeting was closed door, but informed sources said it was high voltage and shut the door on future dialogue unless all church denominations agree to eschew conversions.

We have it on excellent authority that the inter-faith dialogue did not go as planned (by the Vatican and its Hindu apologists at home). We are told that no one except the religious leaders themselves and one or two persons to assist them in the dialogue were permitted in the hall. Pujya periava spoke as is characterisitc of him, in the softest tone possible, with the unfading smile never slipping from his face, in chaste Hindi. However from the statement that he realeased to the Press and Media after the dialogue, it is obvious that the soft tone and chaste Hindi socked the gathering on the jaw. It is a good thing for Hindus that this time we had a man who knows his dharma and more importantly, like Sri Krishna, understands evil, spoke for this bhumi.

Below is the text of the prepared speech of Pujya Perivaar, which He relied upon when making His presentation.] - Editor

Know your enemy

The Second Vatican Council exhorted the faithful, clergy and laity alike to reach out to non-Christian peoples to engage them in dialogue. This Council made the startling submission that the Catholic Church acknowledged that while all religions had some elements of truth in them, only the Christian faith had all the truth and that the Catholic Church alone was the repository of that truth. The Catholic Church states that the essence of the Christian faith is its salvific quality – the power to ‘save’. It accepts that all religions may have some salvific capacity in them but only the Christian faith is wholly salvific.