Pope Francis appeals for countries to silence their weapons and seek peaceful solutions in Nagorno Karabakh, as tensions flare in the South Caucasus region.
By Deborah Castellano Lubov
Pope Francis has appealed for arms to fall silent and for nations to seek peaceful solutions in Nagorno Karabakh.
In his remarks to Italian-speaking pilgrims at his Wednesday General Audience, the Pope expressed his concern for the humanitarian crisis in the Southern Caucasus region.
“Yesterday, I heard the disturbing news from Nagorno Karabakh, in the Southern Caucasus, where the already critical humanitarian situation is now aggravated by additional armed clashes,” said the Pope.
He urged involved parties to cease hostilities and seek peaceful solutions to the crisis.
“I address my appeal again to all the parties involved and to the International Community,” said Pope Francis, “so that they may stop using weapons and make every effort to find peaceful solutions for the good of the people and respect for human dignity.”
Azerbaijan began a military operation in Nagorno Karabakh on Tuesday.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence announced the military operation, describing it as an “anti-terrorist” action against the ongoing attacks by Armenian forces and after a number of Azerbaijani civilians and policemen had died in a mine explosion in recent days.
According to various media, the Azerbaijani army has already bombed Stepanakert, the main city which is under Armenian control, and other Armenian positions.
Armenian authorities reported two civilian casualties, including a child, and 23 wounded. Azerbaijani authorities reported the death of a citizen in Shusha, an important city in the region, following an artillery attack.
Speaking at his General Audience, Pope Francis also recalled “martyred Ukraine”, and expressed his prayers for former President of the Italian Republic, President Giorgio Napolitano, who is seriously ill.
Bad Faith and Lacking Witness – “Ivereigh’s identification of ‘proselytism’ and ‘converting others to the Catholic Church’ is just plain ridiculous.” When Did “Conversion” Become a Dirty Word? (The Boston Pilot)
Emptying Libraries – “Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Those are all examples of books Reina Takata says she can no longer find in her public high school library in Mississauga, Ont.” ‘Empty shelves with absolutely no books’: Students, parents question school board’s library weeding process (CBC)
Politically Divisive – “Four new factors combine to make our times more perilous than most past flareups of disunion.” Is Civic Decline an Existential Threat? (Law & Liberty)
Meaning and Wisdom – “Oddly enough for an ‘information age’ that prides itself on having all knowledge at our fingertips, our weakness is itself intellectual: our ability to come to any sane conclusions about political reality or the human condition seems to have evaporated.” The World Needs Faith and Reason to Soar Again (AMAC)
A Puzzling Claim – “Archbishop Victor Fernández’s claim about a ‘doctrine of the Holy Father’ runs the risk of collapsing all distinction between the magisterium and its normative sources, such as Scripture and Tradition.” Solum Magisterium? (Crisis)
Doctrinal Change – “Archbishop (soon to be Cardinal) Victor Manuel Fernandez, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, proclaims that no Catholic bishop can judge ‘the doctrine of the Holy Father.’” Is Anyone Listening? (Catholic Culture)
Child of God – “The former striker Ronaldo Nazario shared his delight at finally joining the Catholic Church.” One of the world’s greatest soccer players, Ronaldo, baptized at 46 (Aleteia)
False Narrative – “‘The narrative of police genocide of African Americans turned out … to be complete nonsense,’ said Wilfred Reilly.” Academic Whose Work Was Cited As Proof Of ‘Systemic Racism’ Is Fired For Falsifying Research (The Federalist)
A Big Deal – “Holiness is not an optional feature of the Christian life; failing to grow in righteousness will leave us outside the Promised Land.” The Consequences of Not Taking Sin Seriously (American Babylon Substack)
Story of a Revolution – “It’s time for a change, and I’m looking forward to it. For now, here is a summary of what turned out to be an ambitious and at times exhausting project.” The Tale of the Machine: A user’s guide to my essay series (Paul Kings North Substack)
Never Authorized – “The Archbishop of Berlin, Heiner Koch, recently authorized priests in his archdiocese to confer ceremonial blessings upon homosexual couples.” Outing the Liberal Catholic Project (The Catholic Thing)
AI-Generated Text – “Many students may not appreciate the importance of applying themselves rather than using AI, but we must encourage those who do.” Artificial Mediocrity: The Hazard of AI in Education (Public Discourse)
Dramatic Drop-off – “[T]hat religious practice is down now does not mean it will stay that way, especially in a nation with as much religious history as the United States.” Gen-X church attendance dropped dramatically after Covid. What happened? (America)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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Pope Francis’ reimagined process for the Synod of Bishops is much like a living body, involving a “breathing in and breathing out” by the members of the church, said Sr. Maria Cimperman, one of some 40 women religious participating in the Oct. 4-29 assembly in Rome.
Cimperman, a theologian from the U.S. and member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, deconstructed the synod process for members of Rome-based umbrella groups of men and women religious around the world in a Sept. 14 briefing.
The event was livestreamed for members of the women’s International Union of Superiors General (UISG) and the men’s Union of Superiors General (USG), and was the first of three planned online meetings.
The initial presentation gave participants a bird’s-eye view of the novelties of the synod, a type of gathering where voting was previously reserved for bishops, but was opened up this time by Pope Francis to include laity, clergy, as well as women and men religious. Some bishops have described synods of the past as collegial ways of governing as a church. And the present one may have the same aim but with a slightly wider involvement of church members.
For the first time, church members who are not bishops, including women, will be allowed to vote in what the pope has described, Cimperman said, as a “walking together,” even if prelates still hold the majority of votes. Figures the synod office presented in July show that among the assembly’s 378 participants, 85 are women. Cimperman is one of almost 40 women religious who will participate. But in her role as an expert and facilitator, she is not among those who can vote.
However, the process still paves a path of continuation of the renewal ushered in by the Second Vatican Council, Cimperman said, calling on the entire church to participate with the gifts that each member has received from the Holy Spirit and that Pope Francis is urging.
“He’s trying to help us see synodality as the church’s ordinary way of proceeding rather than simply reserved for large decisions in the church’s body,” Cimperman said. “The pope is trying to help the church experience a way of walking together and in which the people listen and are heard.”
It will require pastoral and missionary conversion that will involve “renewing mentalities, attitudes, practices and structures” so that the church can “be more faithful to her vocation,” Cimperman said.
It’s a path that has garnered its share of criticism with some like retired U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, who said in a foreword to a book published in August that it has caused confusion, error and division.
But confusion also is arising from what synod detractors are saying, said Sr. Maria Elena Romero, a Capuchin Poor Clare in Wilmington, Delaware, who says she’s been praying for the pope, and for those who will be participating in person, that they’ll listen to the process inspired by the Holy Spirit without the noise from outside. As a contemplative sister without a way to access news, it’s hard to sift through what people are saying the synod is and isn’t and what’s being decided, Romero said. Even living in a cloistered community, you still hear the chatter, she said.
‘He’s trying to help us see synodality as the church’s ordinary way of proceeding.’
—Sr. Maria Cimperman
Sr. Patricia Murray, UISG’s executive secretary, said in her introduction to the virtual gathering that the process is “like all journeys,” encountering periods of smooth walking and occasional obstacles.
“You begin with a certain trepidation wondering what’s ahead,” said Murray, a member of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin, also known as the Loreto Sisters.
But the two international unions of women and men religious — UISG and USG respectively — have taken “this commitment very seriously,” she said and will embark on a process of their own to live out the pope’s call to walk together.
Cimperman explained that since this synod’s beginnings, which started in 2021, there has been a back and forth, a breathing in and out, in the form of asking questions and receiving answers between Vatican officials and the people of God throughout the world, including Catholics who are no longer practicing the faith.
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Some of those answers have come from the places you’d expect, such as parishes, and also contemplative communities such as the one where Romero lives. But they’ve also come from places and people on the “peripheries,” as Pope Francis likes to say, and include border communities, refugee camps and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“What you’re seeing, again, is something unique,” Cimperman said, with the Vatican asking questions taken to small, then large communities, followed by a listening process of those answers and prayer at the Vatican, then larger continental meetings taking place that yielded other answers that “a group of experts read, reflected, prayed and discerned together” and now have resulted in the larger assembly, Cimperman said.
The process is a natural one for religious communities, which often use “communal discernment” when making decisions affecting the larger group, Cimperman said.
“Going forward, you have much to offer … in your churches and ministries by sharing some of our practices and yet much to gain by the experiences of others,” she added.
Those who participate in the presentations for religious communities — with additional virtual gatherings scheduled Sept. 25 and 29 — are asked to reflect on key concepts that make up the theme of the upcoming synod, “Towards a Synodal Church: communion, participation and mission.”
The Sept. 14 presentation focused on communion, and Sr. Hermelinda Carbajal, a Mater Misericordae missionary from Mexico now living in Madrid, said it made her think about her role in supporting other religious congregations. Communities often get wrapped up in the world around them, their charisms but there’s a need to reach out to other religious brothers and sisters, including those facing tough situations, she said, during a small group breakout session of Spanish speakers from various countries and congregations.
“More and more, we’re getting older, we have much work that needs our attention but there are others who need help and that has resonated with me,” added Sr. Nilka Cerezo, of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate in Colombia. “We have to open ourselves to those of other charisms, including those from congregations that are disappearing.”
But they also mentioned the need to open themselves up to others in their midst, saying some sisters had been educated in certain ways and perhaps that’s why they didn’t think of reaching out to some of the folks on the margins that the pope talks about, including LGBT people going through difficult moments.
Whether members of religious communities participate in person in Rome, at local events or online, Cimperman said that for the synod to work, it needs to be buoyed by prayer.
“Without prayer, all is lost,” she said. “So, we ask you, all of you, our family, friends, co-workers, for prayers. We pray for this work.”
Romero said that while contemplative sisters like her may not be able to attend in person, they plan to be part of the walking together with the “silent strength” of prayer.
“Even though people won’t see us, there is great strength in prayer and we’ll be there,” she said.
Monday, I started my review of Jesuit Fr. David Collins’ wonderful new book, The Jesuits in the United States: A Concise History. Today, we will pick up where we left off, in the early 19th century, as the suppression of the Society of Jesus is about to come to an end.
With the abdication and exile of Napoleon, Pope Pius VII, so long the emperor’s prisoner, emerged triumphant and he was quick to restore the Society of Jesus throughout the world. Alas, many European monarchs were still hostile to the order, and they found ways to harass and persecute them.
Europe’s loss was America’s gain, and Collins looks at the influx of Belgian, Italian, German and French Jesuits who came to this country in the 19th century. The numbers tell the tale. Between 1611 and 1773, fewer than 200 Jesuits had toiled in upper North America. By the end of the 19th century, there were 2,600 Jesuits serving in the United States.
Collins acknowledges the prejudices they faced. “I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits,” John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1816. “Shall we not have swarms of them here, in as many shapes and disguises as ever a king of Gypsies.” He continued that if “any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth or in hell … it is this company of Loyola.”
Nonetheless, the religious liberty in the young republic that the Unitarian Adams and deist Jefferson helped found was better than what the Jesuits left behind.
Collins traces the different developments. The Belgians, at the invitation of Bishop Louis DuBourg of Louisiana and the Two Floridas, came to St. Louis and founded a school. From there, they spread north along the Mississippi River and out into the northwest. They founded schools that would become Xavier University in Cincinnati, Loyola University in Chicago, Marquette University in Milwaukee and Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Italian Jesuits at first bolstered the ranks of the Maryland Province, with Neapolitan Jesuits founding the legendary Woodstock College. They were exceedingly conservative and here Collins can only hint at the contradictions around which they needed to skate.
“When [Pope] Leo [XIII] condemned Americanism, a set of largely stylized ideas supportive of the separation of church and state and the freedom of individual conscience in matters of religion, the theologians at Woodstock rallied in his support,” Collins observes. “At the same time, the US Jesuits gave little sign of abandoning their alliance with the liberal ideals that had welcomed them in the colonial period and propped open the Republic’s doors to Catholics, however reluctantly, as the European variety of liberalism persecuted them.”
Collins, too, is skating a bit here. Other Jesuits headed West, founding what would become Santa Clara University and the University of San Francisco in California, and Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.
An influx of French Jesuits followed the 1830 revolution in the mother country. Bishop John Hughes’ desire to strengthen the college he had begun in New York City coincided with the desire of the Jesuit visitor Clement Boulanger to extract the order from a failing mission in Kentucky: Hughes deeded St. John’s College, later Fordham University, to the order.
In Maine, Jesuit Johannes Bapst was tarred and feathered in 1854 for opposing the use of the King James Bible with Catholic students in the public schools, or as the local Protestant elite said, “reducing the free-born Americans to Rome’s galling yoke.” A disagreement with the bishop of Portland led the Jesuits to leave the state and Bapst moved to Boston and became the first president of Boston College.
The German Jesuit mission “was distinctive from the others by being least worried about working within a clearly defined geographical area.” Collins notes that the famous Spanish Jesuit missionary in Sonora, Eusebio Kino, was actually born in the German empire and that “Kino” was the Spanish version of his family name, Kuhn. He studied at Freiburg, Ingolstadt and Landsberg before heading to Mexico.
In the mid-19th century, German Jesuits were deployed in many areas, as bishops sought help meeting the pastoral needs of German-speaking immigrants. So, for example, arriving in Buffalo, New York, they helped the local bishop staff parishes, but also founded Canisius College.
This record of growth and success throughout the 19th century was followed by what Collins terms a “coming of age” for the U.S. Jesuits in the early 20th century.
In 1915, the Jesuit provinces organized themselves into assistancies, “a group of provinces that work together on common projects and that the superior general handles as a unit in many matters.” This echoed the earlier removal of the church in the United States from the jurisdiction of the Roman dicastery for mission territories, the Propaganda Fide.
As the church and the society became more robustly engaged with the ambient culture, leaders needed strategies for the “careful navigation between the often-incompatible expectations of Roman authorities, the dominant American Protestant elite, and the diverse American Catholic population itself,” Collins writes.
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By the middle of the century, the number of provinces in the U.S. had increased to 10 and three houses of study had been added to the one at Woodstock. Collins notes that all three were in rural areas, not because of any lasting influence of the Maryland plantation tradition but, instead, reflecting “the notion held more broadly in the Church that the training of priests ought to be at some remove from the seeming decadence and distractions of the city.”
The Jesuits continued to mount missions to Indigenous peoples, but their primary focus was always education. Collins ably discusses the pressure to abandon the classical Ratio Studiorum in favor of more modern pedagogical methods, a debate that was somewhat forced on the order because of changes in non-Catholic higher education.
In 1893, Harvard University Law School issued a list of 102 schools whose graduates were assumed to have the qualifications for admissions, but not a single Catholic school was on the list. Five years later, a survey revealed that most Catholic students attended non-Catholic colleges, another wake-up call for reform.
Collins traces the ways the Jesuits expanded their pastoral outreach with both parish missions and lay retreats. I was delighted to find mention of Fr. Terence Shealy, an early labor priest whose retreats addressed pressing issues through the means of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. Eventually, 17 Jesuit retreat houses were offering 500 retreats attended by 13,000 participants each year.
It is sad to think of how many Jesuit institutions in our own day seem indifferent or sometimes hostile to labor rights. Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative is a happy exception to the rule.
Consideration of the “social question” and the “race question” close out the chapter, and, as in the rest of the book, Collins sums up a complicated, but fascinating, history very well, and points the reader to additional materials should they want to learn more. The bibliographies at the end of each chapter are a great resource for everyone.
Readers of this column will especially enjoy Collins’ discussion of Msgr. John A. Ryan’s A Catechism of the Social Question and of Jesuit Fr. John LaFarge‘s pioneering work combating racism and antisemitism.
The final chapter spans the years 1960-2000. It is ably done but suffers from proximity to our own time.
For example, Collins writes of the ongoing changes in higher education and specifically of the 1967 Land O’Lakes statement, which asserted the independence of scholarship from hierarchic interference: “Land O’Lakes’ ambitious vision created the springboard from which Catholic research universities, including several Jesuit ones, emerged in the last quarter of the century.”
That is true, and the challenges it was meant to address remain “vexing” as Collins writes. It is too soon to assess the long-term ramifications of that statement’s influence.
Still, Collins offers a concise account of the decline in vocations, the changes in internal formation and organization adopted by the society, and its renewed involvement in ecumenical and social justice concerns. And the great historian John O’Malley gets a shout-out for his book The First Jesuits, which is a must-read for anyone interested in the Catholic Reformation.
This book is an excellent resource for someone wanting to know more about the Jesuits. For some, this concise version will suffice. For others, Collins’ bibliographies at the end of each chapter are a priceless gift, making further study easy and accessible.
The whole is well written and Collins assesses and assigns the correct values to events and the personages he surveys. This kind of concise history is like gymnastics: It is a lot harder than it looks. To continue the metaphor, Collins masters every skill and he nails the landing.
Editor’s note: According to a 2008 Pew Research study, one of 10 U.S. adults is a former Catholic. Some have moved on to other denominations, others have no church affiliation at all, still others have formed their own communities of former Catholics. In this five-part series, former NCR editor Tom Roberts examines the choices many former Catholics have made as they decided to move away from the institutional church. Read Part 1 here.
If “demography is destiny,” then a certain narrative is baked into the data describing the Catholic Church in the United States. Change is the primary theme, the constant reality over decades.
In today’s parlance, the church is often said to be at “an inflection point.” Such points certainly seem ubiquitous during the Francis papacy. Change has been at the core since Pope Francis appeared post-election on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica having left behind most of the ornaments of the office.
His use of the synodal process seems designed to gather in all of the changes that are altering the landscape of the church and causing, at least in some circumstances, an exodus from usual Catholic practice.
From the global to the local, things are changing. In the United States, this is no longer your mother’s or grandmother’s church, but one that is increasingly multicultural and non-European, with fewer ordained priests every year. Those are trends that are beyond hierarchical control.
Changes in the institutional structure, brought on again by demographic forces beyond the control of any authority figures, are also inevitable: The numbers simply no longer exist to sustain the parochial structures of yesteryear.
Unclear is exactly what form those inevitable changes will take. Ever larger congregations to accommodate decreasing numbers of priests? More responsibility for permanent deacons, another layer of all-male ordained clergy? Greater roles for women, perhaps even as deacons? Maybe something entirely new?
Dramatic jolts to local communities such as closings or new authoritarian pastors, combined with the sustained effects of the sex abuse scandal and cover-up, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, all probably have contributed to the growth of the diaspora. However, the exodus began long before those events; it parallels the diminishment of Catholic institutional life in the United States that has been underway for decades and, in some categories, for more than half a century.
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The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), affiliated with Georgetown University, has a page on its website of frequently sought statistics on major trends in the Catholic world.
It is largely a tale, in numbers, of ongoing and massive institutional change. It could be viewed, at least in part, as a story of insistent, decadeslong, decline. For instance, what once was referred to as a priest shortage, suggesting it was a temporary supply problem to be remedied by ramped-up recruiting and revved-up vocation offices, has become a permanent reality. But the data show that the numbers just represent a return to what once was normal after an unusual period of vocational growth.
The year 1965 is the first on the CARA chart and the highest point shown for Catholic clergy in the United States, with 59,426 total priests, including diocesan and members of religious orders. In 2022, the number was 34,344. The data, according to CARA, covers dioceses and eparchies in the United States and in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In 1965, the number of diocesan priests, those most likely to be involved in parish work, stood at 36,467. Today, that number is 24,110. In 1965, 95% of diocesan priests were active in ministry. Today, only 66% are active. The others are mostly retired or too ill to serve. Consequently, only 15,912 priests are actively involved in ministry.
Several factors make that last figure significant. The first is that the number of parishes in need of priests, given the laws requiring priests for certain sacraments, totals 16,429. The second is that priests are not evenly spread out across the country, so what appears on paper to be a nearly one-to-one match isn’t the case in reality. Third, the priesthood is aging.
Other foundational elements of the institution as we’ve known it have undergone similar downsizing. The number of religious sisters has plummeted from 178,740 in 1965 to 36,321 last year. Over that same period, the number of religious brothers went from 12,096 to 3,516.
From shortage to normal
Mark Gray, who edits the Nineteen Sixty-four blog for CARA, noted in a 2013 entry that what we in the United States have considered a priest shortage in recent decades is really nothing new. Prior to 1950, the ratio of priests to parishes was similar to the ratio that exists today.
“The late 1950s into the 1970s represent an exceptional period in American history when there were significantly more active diocesan priests available than there were parishes,” he writes. “Age and mortality has and continues to diminish the size of the diocesan clergy population. Although ordinations have remained stable for decades, these are not sufficient to make up for the number of priests lost each year to retirement or death.”
Nothing of significance has changed to alter those trends in the 10 years since he posted that observation.
That’s a quick portrait of the decline of the institutional infrastructure that supported the rigorous presence of Catholics in parochial settings, particularly in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. The image that took hold in popular culture, including Hollywood, and accepted as immutable Catholic reality — convents and rectories stuffed with priests and sisters — was a short-lived phenomenon. The post-World War II spike in men’s and women’s religious vocations lasted roughly into the late 1960s or early 1970s, when a massive exodus of men and women from ordained and vowed religious life took place.
By all measures, that period of abundance was an anomaly. Such numbers were a one-time occurrence.
For the Catholic priesthood in the United States, the immediate postwar era was a time of “booming enrollments” in U.S. seminaries, writes historian Leslie Woodcock Tentler in her book American Catholics: A History. “American seminaries were filled to bursting in the postwar years, when new seminaries were opened and existing ones being expanded at a rate never previously equaled.”
The men of that era underwent a formation “premised on a high cultic vision of priesthood,” according to Tentler. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, however, the support for that vision crumbled under a combination of forces that raised questions about the essential nature of priesthood. What followed was “an unprecedented wave of resignations from the active priesthood … and an abrupt decline in seminary enrollments.”
Another part of the U.S. Catholic puzzle that comes clear the further we move from that anomalous period is how vital immigration has been in propping up the church’s bottom line in terms of membership.
Arguably, the church has always been sustained by waves of immigration. It is unlikely, however, that in the past immigrants were making up for those who were leaving the church, as is the case today when one in 10 in the United States is a former Catholic.
Today, the growth areas of the global church are primarily in Asia, Africa and Latin America. While the raw data would include the church in the United States as an area of growth, defying all of the trends one sees in much of the developed world, a deeper look quickly reveals what might be termed another anomaly.
According to CARA, the Catholic population in the United States peaked in 2005 at 81.2 million. Since then, it has steadily declined to 73.5 million last year.
During that same period, the number of foreign-born Catholics in the U.S. also peaked in 2005 at 17.6 million. Since then, their numbers dropped to just more than 13 million through 2015 and rose again to 15.6 million in 2020 and 15 million last year. Their numbers help the church maintain a robust bottom line.
If the number of immigrant Catholics are subtracted from the total, the number of Catholics in the United States would stand at 58.5 million, or roughly the same number who self-identified as Catholics in 1985.
Synodality and change
In many aspects, the synodal process appears a kind of gathering-in of difficult questions that have persisted, changing the shape of the church, even though in the past such topics as women in the church, acceptance of LGBTQ Catholics, divorced and remarried Catholics, and married clergy were deemed out of bounds for discussion at the highest levels of church governance.
Francis, however, has opened the discussion in unprecedented ways.
Among the points outlined in the instrumentum laboris, or working document, for the synod beginning in October are a questioning of the very nature of authority; a realization that “institutions and structures alone are not enough to make the church synodal”; and a need for new language in the church’s “liturgy, preaching, catechesis, sacred art, as well as in all forms of communication.”
The document also emphasizes a need for new formation of clergy.
Unknown, of course, is the consequence of all those fundamental questions as the synod discussions play out over two global gatherings this year and next.
But in the United States, at least, demographics will continue to be the uncontrollable element in any future. And many of the measures indicate a continuing decline.
For instance, according to CARA data, infant baptisms reached a high point of 986,306 in 1990. Last year, they were fewer than half that number, 437,942. Likewise, confirmations dropped from a high of 630,465 in 2000 to 497,661 last year. The trend lines of consistent decline are similar for other sacraments and for such things as Mass attendance and regular prayer.
Some of that decline has to do, again, with simple demographics. Explained Gray in an email: “We are living in one of the most extraordinary periods in history where the human population will peak and then fall,” he said.
Two primary factors are at play to create a population peak — lower infant and maternal mortality and longer life spans.
“At the same time,” he explained, “births began to decline in 2000 when we hit ‘peak child’ and have continued to dip. Eventually, these two trends will catch up to each other and the global population will decline year over year as it already is in Italy, Japan, etc. … Our population pyramid will begin to invert and you will have many more people over 65 than under 25.”
Catholic by choice
Theologian Thomas Groome, director of the Church in the 21st Century project at Boston College, sees a significantly transformed model of church in the future, one based on choice.
“Nobody’s going to be Catholic just because they’re scared, or because their mother was Catholic,” he said.
Imagining a place for the church in a postmodern world, Groome, referencing sociologist Charles Taylor said, “We’ve boiled down postmodern society to a clear choice: Either a purely imminent way of living our life — eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, but go to an art gallery occasionally or listen to good music to take care of the aesthetic and the spiritual for yourself … or we have a transcendent perspective, a God view of life, what [theologian Karl] Rahner calls a transcendent horizon.”
In the latter case, Groome still sees a place for parish as a focal point for people in various stages of attachment. He asks, “Can we help people who lead a graced life in the world and make a living and have a life but also live their life into this transcendent horizon that Christians believe is God and Jesus, revealed as God of unconditional love for all of us?”
He holds one stipulation as essential to the church of the future — ordination of women and giving women greater authority in the church.
“It’s imperative, it’s imperative,” he said. “We’re ridiculous without that. We’re dysfunctional without that. And sinful. It’s sinful; it’s discriminatory. It’s a mortal sin, to use good old language of the institution.”
In 30 years of teaching undergraduate students, said Groome, author most recently of What Makes Education Catholic: Spiritual Foundations, he has seen young adults relatively unfamiliar with Catholic tradition “come to love it, and they could embrace it with great enthusiasm, they could make a choice for it.”
He thinks the church can still make a persuasive argument for that tradition. “I think we still have something to render and something to offer in this postmodern world that nobody else does nearly as well.”
Parts 3, 4 and 5, coming soon, will profile three communities that, facing closure or a complete revamping by a bishop or new pastor, decided to stay together but worship in a different space.
During his weekly General Audience, Pope Francis continues his catechesis series dedicated to apostolic zeal, and applauds St. Daniel Comboni’s great zeal and love for Africa, saying he was fuelled by the joy of the Gospel.
By Deborah Castellano Lubov
St. Daniel Comboni was an apostle of Africa and a prophet of mission, whose zeal came from the joy of the Gospel, witnessed the Good Shepherd’s love, and made others’ suffering his own.
Pope Francis offered this reminder as he reflected on the Italian-born saint during his Wednesday General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, as he continued his catechesis series on figures in the Church who embodied apostolic zeal.
St. Comboni, an Italian Bishop who served in the missions in Africa, was beatified in Saint Peter’s Basilica in 1996 and canonized in 2003.
According to its website, the ‘Comboni Family’ is now made up of 3,000 missionaries. It includes the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus, founded in 1867 by St. Comboni; the Comboni Missionary Sisters, which founded in 1872; the Comboni Secular Missionaries, added in the second half of the 20th century, and other lay groups, including the Comboni Lay Missionaries, who draw inspiration from the same charism and are spread in many countries.
St. Daniel Comboni
In his catechesis, the Pope praised St. Comboni’s zeal for Africa which has left an important legacy, noting, “Saint Daniel testifies to the love of the Good Shepherd who goes in search of the one who is lost and gives his life for the flock.”
The Pope described the St. Daniel Comboni’s zeal as energetic and prophetic, opposed to indifference and exclusion, highlighting that in his letters, the missionary saint “earnestly called out his beloved Church who had forgotten Africa for too long.”
The witness of Saint Daniel Comboni, this apostle filled with zeal for Africa, was so great, that the Pope recalled his writing about the people of the African continent.
“They have taken possession of my heart that lives for them alone,” he said. “I shall die with Africa on my lips” (Writings, 1441). He also had written to them, that “the happiest of my days will be when I may give my life for you.”
“They have taken possession of my heart that lives for them alone… I shall die with Africa on my lips”
This, the Pope said, is the expression of someone who “is in love with God” and “with the brothers and sisters he was serving in mission.”
In this context, the Pope recalled that St. Comboni witnessed the “horror” of slavery, and recognized it as an evil.
Slavery, the Pope condemned, “objectifies” the human being, “whose value is reduced to being useful to someone or something.”
St. Comboni, the Pope added, “understood that social slavery is rooted in an even deeper slavery, that of the heart, that of sin, from which the Lord frees us.”
“As Christians, therefore, we are called to fight every form of slavery,” the Pope said, while lamenting that, “unfortunately, however, slavery, like colonialism, is not something from the past.”
The Pope decried the conflicts across “the Africa that Comboni loved so much,” and denounced all “political exploitation” and “economic colonialism.” The Pope deplored that the world often “closes its eyes, ears and mouth” to this tragedy.
“I therefore renew my appeal: “Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” he said.
The Pope went on to recall the challenges that St. Comboni, and other missionaries to Africa faced, and their great faith and perseverance.
“Though others abandoned Africa, Comboni did not do so,” Pope Francis said.
“Though others abandoned Africa, Comboni did not do so.”
The Pope recalled that after a period of discernment, Saint Daniel felt the Lord was inspiring him along a new path of evangelization, which he summed up in these words: “Save Africa with Africa.”
“This was a powerful insight,” the Holy Father stressed, “that helped renew his missionary outreach: the people who had been evangelized were not only ‘objects’, but ‘subjects’ of mission.”
Since Saint Daniel wanted to make all Christians participants in the evangelizing enterprise, the Pope said he involved in his efforts, the local clergy, and promoted the lay service of catechist. “Catechists,” the Pope added, “are a treaure to the Church.”
He also cultivated the arts and professions, fostering the role of the family and of women in the transformation of culture and society.
“How important it is, even today, to make the faith and human development progress within the context of mission,” the Pope said, “rather than transplant external models or limit them to sterile welfarism!”
The Pope went on to say that St. Comboni’s great missionary passion, however, was not primarily the fruit of human efforts, but Christ-driven strength.
“His zeal,” Pope Francis said, “came from the joy of the Gospel, drawn from Christ’s love which then led to Christ’s love!”
“His zeal came from the joy of the Gospel, drawn from Christ’s love which then led to Christ’s love!””
The Holy Father praised St. Daniel Comboni’s missionary ability being inspired by charity and by his having made the sufferings of others his own.
The Pope asked those present to think of those who are “crucified today, with injustice,” and invited us to pray for them. He also urged faithful to remember the poor. “Do not forget the poor,” he said, “because they will open the door of Heaven for us.”
After the statement from the Rome vicariate on Monday announcing a clean bill of health for the Centro Aletti, the only question is: What do you call a whitewash that is also a coverup that is also a snow job?
The Centro Aletti is the art institute founded by the disgraced Marko Rupnik—the olim Jesuit expelled from the order earlier this year, who is intolerably still a priest in good standing—and currently under the juridical umbrella of the same Rome vicariate that investigated and found there “a healthy community life free of particular critical issues.”
Rupnik, in case you’re having a hard time placing his name, is accused of serial sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse of more than two dozen women—and at least one man—over three decades, much of which he spent in Rome.
Rupnik isn’t accused of plain vanilla exploitation, either.
Credible accounts from his accusers detail literally diabolical perversion including “threesomes with another sister of the community, because sexuality had to be, in [Rupnik’s] opinion, free from possession, in the image of the Trinity where, [Rupnik] said, ‘the third person would welcome the relationship between the two’.”
Rome’s Vicar General, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, claimed in late December of last year—heading into the Christmas holiday weekend, as a matter of fact—that the Diocese of Rome only learned about the accusations against Rupnik “in very recent times,” even though one of De Donatis’s very own auxiliaries, Bishop Daniele Libanori SJ, had brought a raft of abuse allegations against Rupnik to Rome in 2019, from the Loyola Community of women religious that Rupnik had helped start in the 1980s.
Libanori also encouraged Rupnik’s accusers to file complaints with the disciplinary section of the office then styled the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—i.e., the Vatican department responsible for investigating and sometimes prosecuting sex crimes—and several accusers apparently did just that, though the CDF declined to prosecute for … reasons.
Even if Libanori’s report on the Loyola visit stayed under Pontifical Secret, a mind-boggling level of official dysfunction would have been required in order to keep everyone from Pope Francis to the porter in the CDF from making so much as a phone call to say that the guy is a creep who needs to be kept under close watch and his shop probably shut down posthaste.
The Jesuits themselves restricted Rupnik’s ministry several times—on paper, at least—between 2019 and Christmas 2022, but no one thought to tell the Rome vicariate, apparently. Rupnik kept his priestly faculties at the time De Donatis issued his Christmas weekend statement, as well as his place on several works and committees of the Rome vicariate.
Though it was phrased very carefully, in the exquisitely guttural jargon of the Roman curia, the short of De Donatis’s long was that Pope Francis had decided to leave Rupnik in place and was basically calling the shots in Rupnik’s case. Shortly after De Donatis delivered his early Christmas present, the cardinal vicar found himself mostly stripped of his powers.
Among the other findings of De Donatis’s investigation—conducted by a canon law professor from the Pontifical Urban University, Giacomo Incitti—were “gravely anomalous procedures” surrounding the one tiny bit of medicinal discipline to which Rupnik had been secretly subjected and from which he had been quickly rehabilitated, namely an excommunication for the grave crime of having absolved one of his “accomplices” in a “sin against the Sixth Commandment”—Church-speak for sexual misbehavior—though the excommunication was lifted almost immediately.
The statement from the Rome vicariate said examination of “copious documentary material” related to Rupnik’s case “also generated well-founded doubts about the request for excommunication itself,” which De Donatis dutifully “presented the report to the competent authorities,” presumably the same doctrinal dicastery that declined to prosecute Rupnik. It’s a safe bet a copy made it to Pope Francis’s desk, too.
So, to sum up: A Jesuit auxiliary of the Rome diocese investigated the House that Rupnik Built in his native Slovenia and discovered disgusting things, but official Rome dragged its feet and eventually the Jesuit pope refused to lift the statute of limitations so the Jesuit-led CDF declined to prosecute, then the Jesuits investigated Rupnik and decided that there are credible accusations but Rupnik refused to cooperate so they couldn’t do anything except kick him out, only Rupnik wanted to leave anyway, and then the Rome vicariate investigated its own Centro Aletti—the one Rupnik founded in Rome—and found that everything is awesome and everyone there is completely not guilty of … something, and also they decided that some action taken against Rupnik himself was dodgy somehow but they’re not saying how but they’ve sent it up the ladder to someone but they haven’t said exactly or really at all to whom.
Did I mention that the current director of the Centro Aletti, Maria Campatelli, Rupnik’s longtime associate, was in for a visit with Pope Francis last week?
A few months ago, Campatelli had issued a statement through the Centro Aletti calling the accusations against her old pal “unproven and defamatory”—though not false—and claiming that “[O]ther Jesuits of the Centro Aletti,” have lost faith in the leadership of their Jesuit superiors and “have also applied for permission to leave the Society and are awaiting the conclusion of the relative procedure, to be able to continue the exercise of their priestly ministry.”
The Aletti business looks for all the world like some sort of mutiny or defection triggered by pushback from some Jesuits in senior leadership after their efforts to rein in Rupnik proved too little, too late. Rupnik operated too long without oversight, indeed under the aegis of other superiors, and has perhaps a merry band of ultras around him.
De Donatis cannot possibly expect anyone to credit either his investigation or his report, for which there is only one word in English, a quotidian term, the technical scientific designation for which is excrementum bovinum.
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Rome Newsroom, Sep 19, 2023 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
Victims of Father Marko Rupnik’s alleged spiritual and sexual abuse on Tuesday expressed “bewilderment” with the Diocese of Rome’s recent statement praising the art and theology center founded by the former Jesuit artist, saying that it “ridicules victims’ pain” and shows little care for those seeking justice.
In an open letter published on Sept. 19, former members of the Slovenian religious community Rupnik is accused of abusing said they were “left speechless” by the diocese’s concluding report on its canonical investigation of the Aletti Center, an art and theology school in Rome where Rupnik lived and served as the director from 1995 to 2020.
The diocese described the Aletti Center — where Rupnik has been accused of engaging in sex acts with consecrated women — as currently having “a healthy community life … that is free of particular serious issues” and added that the investigation raised “doubts” about the procedures that led to Rupnik’s excommunication.
“This report …. which exonerates Rupnik of any responsibility, ridicules the pain of the victims, but also of the whole Church, mortally wounded by such blatant hubris,” the open letter said.
The letter was signed by Fabrizia Raguso and other former sisters of the Loyola Community, a Slovenian community co-founded by Rupnik and Sister Ivanka Hosta. The letter was posted to the website Italy Church Too, an online platform for victims of clerical abuse.
The women said that Pope Francis’ recent meeting with Maria Campatelli, the current director of the Aletti Center and a close collaborator of Rupnik, further caused them pain because the pope never responded to letters from members and former members of the Loyola Community.
“That meeting granted by the pope to Campatelli in such a friendly atmosphere was thrown in the faces of the victims (these and all victims of abuse); a meeting that the pope denied them,” the open letter said.
“The victims are left with a voiceless cry of new abuse,” it added.
Rupnik was dismissed by the Jesuits in June after having been accused of spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse spanning more than three decades.
The Diocese of Rome announced on Sept. 18 that a canonical investigation into the Aletti Center conducted by Monsignor Giacomo Incitti, a professor of canon law at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome, had concluded and cleared the community of having any serious problems.
Last year, a woman claimed in an interview with the Italian newspaper Domani that Rupnik had previously abused her in his room at the Aletti Center in Rome when she was a religious sister.
The statement released by the diocese said that the visitation was “able to ascertain that the members of the Aletti Center, although saddened by the accusations received and the ways in which they were handled, chose to maintain silence — despite the vehemence of the media — to guard their hearts and not claim some blamelessness with which to stand as judge of others.”
It said that the investigation also had examined the main accusations against Rupnik and the procedures behind his excommunication.
Rupnik previously received an automatic, or “latae sententiae,” excommunication for hearing the confession and then attempting to grant absolution to a woman with whom he had sexual relations. The Jesuits’ internal investigation confirmed Rupnik’s excommunication in January 2020, which was lifted in May 2020 after Rupnik repented of the canonical crime.
According to the Diocese of Rome, the visitation identified “gravely irregular procedures” that “generated well-founded doubts about even the request for excommunication itself.”
In light of these “doubts,” Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, the vicar of the Diocese of Rome, submitted the report to Church authorities.
The announcement from the Rome Diocese came days after Pope Francis met with Campatelli, the director of the Aletti Center, who published a letter in June defending Rupnik against “a media campaign based on defamatory and unproven accusations” and claiming the Jesuits had withheld documents “which would demonstrate a truth different from that which was being published.”
In the letter posted to the Aletti Center website on June 17, two days after the public announcement of Rupnik’s expulsion from the Society of Jesus, Campatelli accused the Jesuit order of withholding information from the media, including documents “which would demonstrate a truth different from that which was being published.”
She said that Rupnik had in January requested to leave the Jesuits after losing trust in his superiors for favoring “a media campaign based on defamatory and unproven accusations (which exposed the person of Father Rupnik and the Aletti Center to forms of lynching).” She also said other Jesuits who are part of the Aletti Center had put in requests to leave the religious order.
The canonical visitation of the Aletti Center took place between Jan.16 and June 23, and included community meetings and interviews with members of the center.
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ACI Prensa Staff, Sep 19, 2023 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
With the motto “We make our journey for dignity,” the Day of Prayer and Reflection against Human Trafficking was held in Argentina on Sept. 17.
The No to Trafficking Team of the National Justice and Peace Commission of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference invited the faithful to join in prayer, especially interceding for the victims of this scourge and their families.
One of the prayer intentions that was emphasized was the importance of each person from his station in life contributing to eradicate this “aberrant crime.”
The invitation to prayer, quoting Pope Francis, calls for each member of the faithful to “feel committed to being a spokesperson for these brothers and sisters of ours, whose dignity is humiliated.”
The president of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Oscar Ojea, pointed out in a video posted on the conference website that “Human trafficking does serious, very serious injury to the dignity of the human person. The person is treated as a useful and disposable object, generally in the hands of a powerful person.”
“Here machismo makes its appearance vividly, and the weakness of women and girls who, out of desperation, vulnerability, fleeing from tragedies … look for a place, and for looking for a place they are so poorly welcomed that this very serious crime takes place,” he warned.
“The exploitation of people, sexual exploitation, labor exploitation, the human organ business… the issue of human trafficking encompasses a number of aspects that transforms the person into a thing,” the bishop lamented.
To address the situation, Ojea proposed “reflecting and praying to create networks, networks that do good, that call for the profound conversion of society to be able to recognize these tragedies, and not turn our backs on them or not live with them as if they were natural things.”
Inviting participation in the Day of Prayer and Reflection, the president of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference called on the faithful to pray to the Lord that this profound injury to the dignity of the person “can truly be reversed by us in order to build together a more fraternal, more just, and more human society.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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CNA Staff, Sep 19, 2023 / 17:20 pm (CNA).
The fight for the unborn continues, even from jail, Jonathan Darnel, one of the three pro-life activists who was convicted in federal court last Friday under the controversial Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act), told CNA.
Darnel, 41, who was charged with a felony conspiracy against rights and a FACE Act offense, now faces up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $350,000 maximum fine along with Jean Marshall, 73, of Kingston, Massachusetts; and Joan Bell, 74, of Montague, New Jersey.
The FACE Act prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.”
Passed in 1993, the FACE Act was written to prosecute crimes at both abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy facilities. Despite its broad areas of protection, it has been used almost exclusively against pro-life activists.
The three protesters, along with five others who were convicted for the same offenses in August, participated in a “conspiracy to create a blockade at the reproductive health care clinic to prevent the clinic from providing, and patients from receiving, reproductive health services,” according to the DOJ’s press release on the convictions.
Two clinic doors were blocked by the protesters, who used their bodies, furniture, chains, and ropes, the DOJ said.
Darnel, an evangelical Christian, filmed the protest.
In the more than one-hour, 30-minute video of the protest, some of those who sat inside the clinic blocking doors can be seen praying the rosary and singing hymns to the Blessed Virgin Mary while refusing to leave.
“Pro-life rescuers are entering the doors of an abortion clinic and saving babies from death. This is very risky for the rescuers, but it’s about time we got serious about ending abortion again,” a description of the video reads.
Speaking to CNA on the eve of his conviction in a phone interview, Darnel said he was there that day to save lives. He told CNA that it’s estimated that the abortion clinic, which advertises killing of a child up to “27-plus weeks of pregnancy,” was inoperable for about four hours during the sit-in protest.
It also appeared as if some women were turned away from the clinic that day and a staff member at the clinic said that several appointments needed to be rescheduled, according to Darnel.
“So we hope that some of those children were saved, but I can’t confirm that for sure,” he added.
Darnel, Marshall, and Bell are currently incarcerated awaiting sentencing along with five others who were convicted in a separate trial for violating the FACE Act.
Paulette Harlow of Kingston, Massachusetts, a woman in her mid-70s, is set to be tried on Oct. 23 on similar charges.
Darnel said he doesn’t believe he violated the FACE Act and is “frustrated” that the government brought charges against him.
“FACE is a crime, but it shouldn’t be a crime because abortion shouldn’t be tolerated,” he said, adding that “it’s an honor to be taken like so many others.”
Darnel, who has engaged in pro-life work “quasi-full time” since 2009, said: “Except for the unjust execution of Christ, abortion is the worst thing that’s ever happened in the history of the world.”
“I live in a nation that murders kids,” he added.
“How can I say I love Christ and not respond with extreme zeal, extreme action, and drastic measures to this holocaust?”
Darnel said he filmed the protest that day because he wanted to inspire people to “get more serious about abortion,” adding that a “rescue” is one way to do that.
Asked if one can continue pro-life ministry in prison, Darnel said: “You certainly can.”
“I know the females who get incarcerated say they’re constantly meeting women who are abortion-minded and having opportunities to talk them out of it, show them a better way, or post-abortive women who need some kind of repentance and healing from that,” he said.
As far as men go, Darnel said he is positive he is going to meet other inmates who have instigated or paid for abortion.
“They’re probably less likely to talk about it than the women might be, but hopefully I can still be a good witness to them in one way or another,” he said. He added that his witness could help men recognize that involvement in abortion is wrong and inspire them to make amends for it.
Before his conviction, Darnel created a website dedicated to repealing the FACE Act, which says the federal law “was designed to protect the criminal abortion industry by cruelly punishing anti-abortion rescuers.”
Despite Darnel’s incarceration, others are taking up the fight against the FACE Act. Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy called for the repeal of the FACE Act in newly proposed legislation on Tuesday.
Darnel told CNA on Thursday night that “there might be something happening soon on that front,” referencing the repeal of the FACE Act.
In Roy’s press release Tuesday, he said: “Free Americans should never live in fear of their government targeting them because of their beliefs. Yet, Biden’s Department of Justice has brazenly weaponized the FACE Act against normal, everyday Americans across the political spectrum, simply because they are pro-life.”
The announcement also said that Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah will introduce companion legislation in the Senate.
“Who knows? This case may be putting the plight of the preborn and the injustice of abortion and all those who would stand up for them on the map,” Darnel told CNA.
“And I hope that maybe, just maybe, if our case is appealed to the Supreme Court, FACE might get struck down, and that might have big implications nationally,” he said.
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CNA Staff, Sep 19, 2023 / 16:50 pm (CNA).
The Holy See is investigating a former Australian bishop after receiving a 200-page report alleging the bishop sexually assaulted four indigenous youths and may have used hundreds of thousands of dollars in Church and charity funds in attempts to groom 67 others.
Former bishop Christopher Saunders of the Diocese of Broome, who is the subject of the investigation, stepped down from his role in 2020 amid sexual abuse allegations. The Vatican, which commissioned the independent report, received the findings in April but did not release them to the public. The report was leaked to 7NEWS in Australia, which published excerpts of the findings.
According to the excerpts, the report found that “the bishop has been variously described by witnesses as … a sexual predator that seeks to prey upon vulnerable Aboriginal men and boys” and “during the investigation, four victims of sexual (delictual) acts were identified.”
The report added that 67 “additional Aboriginal boys and men were also identified as persons that may have been subjected to delictual acts or grooming behaviors by Bishop Saunders.”
According to 7NEWS, the report found that allegations against Saunders date back to just shortly after he was ordained a priest in Sydney, about 50 years ago, and that he developed a method of grooming Indigenous males by giving gifts of alcohol, cash, phones, phone credit, hotels, and air and bus travel.
The report found, according to 7NEWS, that Saunders spent about $4,000 per month on alcohol for the youths. The report discovered that he had five bank accounts, which held about $3 million at one point and purchased a $70,000 boat and several cars.
Police launched an investigation into Saunders in 2018 after a man came forward with sexual abuse allegations, but after a two-year investigation, the prosecutors did not find enough evidence against the bishop and declined to bring charges. The Holy See’s investigation began in 2022 and is being led by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The dicastery’s investigation is still ongoing.
The president of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth, said in a statement that the Holy See will make a determination “in due time” and “it is hoped that this will not be unduly delayed.” He said the Church’s investigation could not begin until the police finished its inquiry into the allegations.
“We will respect the enduring confidential nature of this process by not commenting on specific allegations that have been raised,” Costelloe said. “Bishop Saunders, who has maintained his innocence, is able to respond to the report by communicating directly with the Holy See.”
Costelloe added that the allegations “are very serious and deeply distressing, especially for those making the allegations” and that “it is right and proper for them to be thoroughly investigated.”
“After what has been a long and painful process for so many, it is important that a just and authoritative finding be made,” Costelloe said. “Only then can the process of rebuilding the Church community in Broome, begun under the leadership of Bishop Michael Morrissey, the apostolic administrator of the diocese, continue to make progress and bring healing.”
The Holy See’s investigation was “entrusted to an experienced and independent specialist investigations organization,” according to Costelloe. It was overseen by Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge.
There were 102 witnesses identified in the report, 30 of whom were formally interviewed, according to 7NEWS.
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ACI Africa, Sep 19, 2023 / 16:20 pm (CNA).
Prayers are being sought for the safe release of Father Marcellinus Obioma Okide, who was reportedly abducted from Nigeria’s Enugu Diocese on Sept. 17.
In a Sept. 19 statement obtained by ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, the diocese’s chancellor provided details about the abduction. Okide, who serves as a parish priest at St. Mary Amofia-Agu Affa Parish, was on his way back to the parish in the late afternoon when he was kidnapped along the road.
“The diocese requests your prayers for the quick and wholesome release of Father Okide and for a change of heart on the part of the kidnappers,” Father Wilfred Chidi Agubuchie said.
“It is quite disheartening that this evil scheme is still plaguing our people,” Agubuchie continued. “May the Lord who came to set captives free (Lk 4:18) deliver our brother from the hands of our enemies and save our country Nigeria.”
Nigeria has experienced insecurity since 2009 when Boko Haram insurgency began with the aim of turning the country into an Islamic state.
Since then, the group, one of largest Islamist groups in Africa, has been orchestrating indiscriminate terrorist attacks on various targets, including religious and political groups as well as civilians.
The situation in the country has further been complicated by the involvement of the predominantly Muslim Fulani herdsmen, also referred to as the Fulani Militia.
The Sept. 17 abduction of Okide is the latest of a series of kidnappings of members of the clergy in Africa’s most populous nation.
On Aug. 2, a priest and seminarian were abducted from the Diocese of Minna. Father Paul Sanogo from Mali and seminarian Melchior Mahinini from Tanzania were released on Aug. 23 after three weeks in captivity.
This story was first published by ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa, and has been adapted by CNA.
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Much has been written about the decline of marriage in our time and from many perspectives. Some studies have noted the destructive effect on children and young people, others the effects on crime and the economic condition of society. John Lacken, author of The Traditional Catholic Family, is principally concerned with the effect that the decline of marriage and family has upon the Catholic Church and the faith of individual Catholics. If we can restore the Catholic family, he argues, then the restoration of our civilization will follow.
Lacken begins by chronicling the dramatic decline of marriage in his native Ireland. In the Ireland in which Lacken grew up, over 90% of the population went to Sunday Mass, many shops closed on Sundays and Holy Days, divorce was not legal, and shops did not sell pornography. All this changed in the 1990s. Today, 41% of Irish children are born outside marriage as compared with a mere 1.80% in 1962. There has also been a great increase in the age at which people get married and have children. As of 2021, the average age for a first-time mother in Ireland was 31. Such statistics are, of course, reflected across much of the Western world. For example, in the United States in 1960, 72% of 24-year-olds were married compared with only 9% today.
Having highlighted the West’s predicament, Lacken then moves on to prescribing the remedy: the restoration of the traditional Catholic family. Lacken cites the late Jesuit Fr. John Hardon, who noted that the strength of the family is the strength of the Church:
Where the Christian family… is strong, the Catholic Church is strong. Where the family is weak, the Church is weak. Where the family is struggling for survival, the Church is struggling for survival. Where the Catholic family is dying, the Catholic Church in those cultures and countries is dying. And once the Catholic family, as instituted by Christ disappears, the Church of Jesus Christ has been removed from that nation and people.
He highlights more explicitly how a range of wrongs can be put right if we ‘get the Catholic family right’:
If we get the Catholic family right, we will…restore the Catholic Church to its rightful place as the moral leader of the societies of the world…there will be an increase in the vocations to priestly and religious life…abortion will be conquered and come to an end…divorce and family breakdown will be drastically reduced…we will reduce the suicide rate…the number of people afflicted with same-sex attraction will decline…
Lacken gives a succinct summary of the church’s teaching on marriage. There are eight essential marks of marriage: it must be between one man and one woman, the primary end is the procreation and education of children, marriage is indissoluble, it must be open to life, the couple must be free to marry and there must be no coercion, consent to marriage must be freely given. Finally, marriage is a union for life. If any of these elements is missing, no marriage can be contracted. Catholics need to remember that marriage is a sacrament and therefore a source of sanctifying grace and it is only this sanctifying grace which allows us to live our lives in conformity with the will of God. Helping your spouse in getting to heaven is a key part of marriage for a Catholic.
But Lacken does not exclusively focus on marriage, but also highlights the important role played by holy virginity and celibacy. The Church teaches that the celibate religious life is a higher calling than marriage, but this does not undermine marriage. The starting point for defending marriage and family life is to defend the exalted position of virginity. Lacken states:
It is only by defending the greater good of virginity that we can protect and defend the ‘lesser’ good of marriage…Those of us who are married should not be dismayed on account of virginity being a higher state than the married state. We should rather rejoice in our Godly state of life and we should realise that the higher state of virginity enhances our own vocation.
The church’s teaching in this area has been ignored for 50 years, argues Lacken. This, he says, has led to an increase in marital breakdown, large decline in the number of religious vocations, an increase in cohabitation before marriage, acceptance of same-sex relationships and a big decrease in the numbers of young people choosing to save sex for marriage. Lacken states:
If the virginal state is not an exalted state, why would anyone choose to remain a virgin? If losing one’s virginity is no big deal, why wait until marriage for sexual intimacy or why reserve physical intimacy for marriage? If physical intimacy does not need to be reserved for marriage because there is nothing special about virginity, then why reserve physical intimacy to persons of the opposite sex?
Lacken continues:
If being a virgin does not matter, then it follows that marriage does not really matter either…If virginity does not matter than we as persons do not matter, and our sexual nature becomes a utility…to be used as and when we please and purely for the purpose of pleasure…Virginity is sacred because human beings are sacred…The virgin is a unique, complete, and whole person who, when consecrated to God, reflects the image and likeness of God from their soul in a way that is radiantly and dazzlingly pure…The beauty and importance of virginity must be communicated to our young people so that they will protect this treasure.
Lacken does not ignore or gloss over the fact that many marriages are difficult. Two chapters focus on the experiences of Blessed Elizabeth Canori Mora and Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur, two women who heroically persevered through marriages with unbelieving or unfaithful husbands. Yet their holy example converted both their husbands, both of whom became priests following the death of their wives.
However, Lacken explains that ‘When we look at the lives of the saints, we are called to imitate their virtues but not necessarily their actions’. Catholics cannot divorce but in certain circumstances couples can legitimately separate. This can become a duty in cases of danger to one’s life or the health and well-being of children.
There are four aspects of traditional marriage that are under fierce attack in modern Western societies: marriage as a procreative union, the union of one man and one woman, the concept of male and female, and the indissolubility of marriage.
Lacken sees contraception as the most significant attack on the primary end of marriage and chronicles the history of how its use began to become accepted among Christians, starting with the 1930 Anglican Lambeth Conference. Contraceptive use among Catholics is now at an all-time high. The acceptance of contraception has ultimately led to widespread promiscuity and abortion.
Lacken also describes the long decline of modesty in dress, the rise of ever more permissive sex education and the deconstruction of male and female, which he sees as having begun as early as the 1950s with the undermining of distinctly male and female dress codes and ending in the transgender madness we see today.
This book is an immensely useful guide to defending marriage in our time, full of invaluable practical and spiritual advice on building a healthy Catholic family. It works both as an apologetic work for Catholic moral teaching and as an inspiring call for the reform of Catholic family life.
The Traditional Catholic Family: Bedrock of the Catholic Church, Bedrock of Society and Culture—A Handbook for Matrimony
By John Lacken
Legio Sanctae Familiae, 2023
Paperback, 146 pages
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Denver, Colo., Sep 19, 2023 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
In the United States, there are no federal policies that guarantee maternity leave for new mothers. The time and pay a woman receives varies by state and organization. FemCatholic, a media company dedicated to having honest conversations about Catholic women, published a report in 2022 showing that very few dioceses in the United States provide comprehensive maternity leave.
Samantha Povlock, founder of FemCatholic, and Renee Roden, a journalist who worked on the report, joined “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” on Aug. 24 to discuss their findings and why they believe Catholic organizations should be leading the way in pro-family policies.
“I wish I were surprised that the number of dioceses that offered a full 12 weeks of paid leave was so low,” Roden expressed.
The report was done in March 2022 and at the time only four dioceses offered a full 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. These were the Archdioceses of New York, Chicago, Omaha, and the Diocese of Raleigh. Since then, one additional archdiocese has begun to offer paid maternity leave — the Archdiocese of Denver.
“Two things were surprising: One is it should be surprising that Catholic dioceses, so few of them, are offering women the 12 weeks of fully paid leave,” she said. “I think another thing that’s surprising is that 1 in 4 women go back to work two weeks after giving birth.”
Roden explained that in the report they also discussed the “medical realities of childbirth” and how essential those 12 weeks after giving birth, which are starting to be called the “fourth trimester,” are not only for the mother but also for the child.
Povlock, a mother of four, added: “Those early days are just so vital in building mom and baby’s connection and I think it really is the way we’re designed as people, so giving families that time is really important.”
Many of the dioceses who were not providing paid maternity leave were concerned about the cost, Roden shared.
“Studies show that 55% to 69% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, so it’s just unrealistic for them to take that 12 weeks off without pay,” she explained. “So it puts a burden on the company and dioceses feel like they may not be able to afford that.”
However, the FemCatholic report found that not all of the four dioceses offering paid maternity leave were among the richest.
Roden pointed out that the Diocese of Raleigh and Archdiocese of Omaha “don’t have as big of assets as these other two archdioceses.”
She added: “So, I think it showed us that obviously we understand when people say they think finances are a barrier to doing that but it showed us that finances aren’t prohibitive of companies or dioceses being able to offer these policies.”
Both Roden and Povlock shared that after their report was published several dioceses — including Tucson, Orange, and Arlington — have taken steps in the right direction to improve their maternity leave policies.
“They’re doing what they can and it’s a step in the right direction, and I think all those baby steps in the right direction are really encouraging to see,” Roden said.
Povlock added: “I want to call on business people and leaders in our Church to help advance these types of business policies for women.”
Ascension, the media company responsible for the popular “Bible in a Year” podcast with Father Mike Schmitz, recently unveiled its parental leave policy, which expands new moms’ fully paid maternity leave from one week to 12 weeks. It also includes six weeks for paternity leave and extended leave time for new parents to adopt, as well as leave for those who experience a miscarriage.
Jonathan Strate, CEO of Ascension, told “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” that Catholics “have an opportunity to lead the way” in terms of setting the bar when it comes to maternity leave policies.
“These are the kind of policies that do help build a culture of life. To really send the message that you can be a working parent and you can raise a family and the work should be able to support the family,” he said.
Strate explained that while creating their new leave policies, they did not see many templates available from other companies to draw from. Due to this, they decided to make theirs available for other companies who may want to implement similar pro-family policies for their employees.
He invited viewers to visit ascensionpress.com/familyleave to see its policies.
“Hopefully that helps some other organizations to adopt these a little bit quicker,” he said.
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CNA Staff, Sep 19, 2023 / 14:20 pm (CNA).
Azerbaijan unleashed military strikes against an enclave of about 120,000 Armenian Christians in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region on Tuesday, shelling buildings and firing on Armenian military and civilian positions.
The Azeri government on Tuesday called their strikes “anti-terror measures” against “illegal Armenian military formations.” Azerbaijan said the attacks will not stop until the ethnic Armenians’ total surrender.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh since 1988. Today the region is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, though it is made up almost entirely of Armenian Christians. The ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh deny Azeri control of the region and claim self-sovereignty under the auspices of the “Republic of Artsakh.”
The breakaway state’s “Artsakh Defense Forces” have been reporting Azeri small-arms attacks on ethnic Armenian military and civilians for months.
The attacks appeared to escalate on Tuesday with the Azeri military unleashing artillery and mortar strikes on both military and civilian positions.
Shelling continued through Tuesday, resulting in 23 civilian injuries and two deaths, including one child, according to the Artsakh Defense Forces.
Artsakh foreign minister Sergey Ghazaryan decried Azerbaijan’s advances, saying in a Tuesday X statement: “We are witnessing how Azerbaijan, in order to implement its policy of genocide, is moving towards the physical destruction of the civilian population and the destruction of civilian objects of Artsakh.”
Eastern European news source Visegrád 24 reported on Tuesday that “large-scale fighting has just started in Nagorno-Karabakh” and that “artillery and suicide drones are in action by both sides.”
According to Visegrád 24, it is “possible that another war between Azerbaijan and Armenia is starting in front of our eyes.”
Though some see the conflict as strictly over borders, experts have emphasized that religion also plays a central part in the war between Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan.
According to Sam Brownback, former U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Armenia wants to retain its influence in Artsakh, while Azerbaijan wants to expel the Armenian Christian population to solidify its hold on the region.
In 2020, with the backing of Turkey, Azerbaijan reignited the long-simmering conflict by invading Nagorno-Karabakh. A six-week conflict ended in Azerbaijan seizing control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The war killed 6,800 combatants, displaced 90,000 people, and left approximately 120,000 Armenian Christians cut off from the rest of Armenia. A narrow road less than four miles long, called the Lachin Corridor, connects Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and is the only way to get food and supplies to the Armenians living there.
In December 2022 pro-government Azerbaijanis, ostensibly protesting Armenian environmental violations, began blockading the Lachin Corridor, cutting off all access to aid. In April, the protests ended after Azerbaijani troops, defying warnings from the international community, established a military checkpoint on the road, continuing the blockade.
Since December the Christian Armenians have been trapped, without food or medicine, behind the Lachin Corridor blockade.
This week’s escalation shows the first indications of large-scale outright military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh since 2020.
According to multiple sources on the ground, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital city of Stepanekert has taken heavy shelling.
The Artsakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported on Tuesday: “Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive against the Republic of Artsakh. At this moment the capital Stepanakert and other cities and villages are under heavy shelling.”
Robert Nicholson, president of the human rights group the Philos Project, said on Tuesday that “Azerbaijan has finally launched the war intended to erase Armenians from #NagornoKarabakh — and with Russian and Turkish permission.”
Brownback said: “I denounce in the strongest possible terms this unprovoked attack by Azerbaijan on the peaceful Armenian Christians of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh)! This is wrong. It is an attack on civilians and it must cease immediately.”
For its part, Azerbaijan has denied targeting civilians and has labeled its activity in Nagorno-Karabakh “anti-terrorist operations.”
In a Tuesday press release, the Azerbaijan Ministry of Defense said: “Local anti-terrorist activities carried out by the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan are ongoing.”
“As part of the activities,” the release went on, “only legitimate military installations and infrastructure are targeted and incapacitated using high-precision weapons.”
Azerbaijan accused Armenia of deploying armed forces to help ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and warned civilians to not interfere.
“Considering the deployment of firepower by Armenia’s armed forces formations near residential areas, we urge the civilian population to stay away from military facilities and not support the formations of Armenia’s armed forces,” the Azeri release said.
The Azeri Defense Ministry also said that it is encouraging Nagorno-Karabakh residents to evacuate danger zones and relocate to “reception stations” they have established in the Lachin Corridor.
“Humanitarian corridors and reception stations have been created on the Lachin road and in other directions to ensure the evacuation of the population from the danger zone,” the release said.
Christian Solidarity International (CSI), a humanitarian aid group, called this a tactic to cleanse Nagorno-Karabakh of Armenian Christians.
“As it bombs civilian areas,” CSI said, “Azerbaijan is texting people in Nagorno-Karabakh, telling them to leave through the Lachin Corridor. The same road they’ve been blocking for nine months to starve the population, they’ve now opened for people to leave through. The goal is the same: to empty Karabakh of Armenians.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has denied Armenian military involvement and despite the ongoing Azeri attacks has refused to respond militarily.
Open Caucasus Media (OC Media), reported Pashinyan saying on Tuesday: “I want to go on record that the Republic of Armenia is not involved in military operations, and I want to go on the record once again that the Republic of Armenia does not have an army in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
“At this moment, we should not carry out any unplanned, drastic action, any adventurous action,” Pashinyan added, according to OC Media.
The Armenian prime minister’s refusal to become involved has caused significant unrest among the Armenian populace.
Video taken outside Armenia’s capitol building shows outraged Armenian citizens attempting to storm the capitol building.
ARMENIA 🇦🇲 There are reports of citizens calling for a coup as protesters are gathered outside government offices in Yerevan calling Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a traitor. The protests come just hours after Azerbaijan launched a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.📌 pic.twitter.com/JFDIoIWx1Y
— ♪メღ Debra Whyte ♪メღ (@debrawhyte) September 19, 2023
Pashinyan reportedly had a phone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday.
According to OC Media, Macron informed Pashinyan that France called for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the military escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a statement on X that said: “Azerbaijan’s brazen assault on Nagorno-Karabakh further proves [Azeri President Ilham] Aliyev’s malicious intention to wipe out the Armenian population there. The U.S. and international community must act.”
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 19, 2023 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
The United States Catholic bishops are calling on the faithful to embrace “radical solidarity” with mothers who are facing difficult or challenging pregnancies this October, which the Church in the United States has observed as “Respect Life Month” since 1973.
Arlington Bishop Michael Burbidge, the chairman of the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, echoed St. John Paul II’s call for “radical solidarity,” which means, according to the bishop, “putting our love for them into action and putting their needs before our own.”
“This new mindset requires that we come alongside vulnerable mothers in profound friendship, compassion, and support for both them and their preborn children,” Burbidge wrote in a statement to Catholics for the 50th anniversary of Respect Life Month.
“It means addressing the fundamental challenges that lead an expectant mother to believe she is unable to welcome the child God has entrusted to her,” Burbidge continued. “This includes collective efforts within our dioceses, parishes, schools, and local communities; engagement in the public square; and pursuit of policies that help support both women and their preborn babies. It all the more so requires our individual, personal commitment to helping mothers in our own communities secure material, emotional, and spiritual support for embracing the gift of life.”
“Radical solidarity,” the bishop said, “means moving beyond the status quo and out of our comfort zones.”
The statement cites Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, which says solidarity “presumes the creation of a new mindset” and does not simply refer to “a few sporadic acts of generosity.”
Burbidge added that although “ending legalized abortion remains our preeminent priority,” it is not enough. Rather, he stressed that “the most immediate way to save babies and mothers from abortion is to thoroughly surround mothers in need with lifegiving support and personal accompaniment.”
The statement encourages Catholics to ask themselves whether they know of efforts in their area to help women who are pregnant or parenting in difficult circumstances, what their gifts and talents are, and how they can adjust their schedule or budget to help mothers in need and their children. It references the “Walking with Moms in Need” parish-based initiatives, which help parishes become welcoming places for mothers facing difficulties, as a possible option to get involved.
“Radical solidarity can be lived out in countless ways, including volunteering at your local pregnancy center; helping an expectant mother find stable housing; babysitting so a mom can work or take classes; providing encouragement and a listening ear to a mom without a support system; or speaking to your pastor about beginning Walking with Moms in Need at your parish,” Burbidge said.
The statement emphasizes that “the transformation of our culture also requires continual conversion of our own hearts, so that we can recognize in every person the face of Christ and place their needs before our own” and that this must be a focus, in addition to promoting pro-life laws and policies.
“This October, I invite all Catholics to think about building a culture of life in terms of radical solidarity,” Burbidge said. “We are the Church. Our prayers, witness, sacrifices, advocacy, and good works are needed now more than ever. We are the hands and feet of Christ in the world today and we each have a personal responsibility to care for one another.”
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Firebrand Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland, who has been subject to a Vatican investigation over his leadership style and right-wing comments on social media, has vowed in recent days not to resign or “voluntarily abandon” his diocese, even if Pope Francis asks him to do so.
But the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law leaves Strickland little to no room to resist if the pontiff demands his resignation, several prominent canon lawyers told NCR.
Canon law makes it clear that the pope has “supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power” in the Catholic Church, and that any final decree he issues is binding and cannot be appealed. That authority applies in cases where the pontiff decides to remove a sitting diocesan bishop, said the canonists.
“If you look at the canons on the authority of the pope, the pope has full supreme power over the church. He also has the authority to act within dioceses. The Roman pontiff has power over all particular churches,” Nicholas Cafardi, a civil and canon lawyer, told NCR.
Strickland, himself a canon lawyer who leads the Tyler Diocese, told Religion News Service on Sept. 12 that he would not willingly give up his diocesan post if Francis demands his resignation, which has been the subject of recent rumors in Texas and Rome.
Francis held a meeting on Sept. 9 with Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States, and Archbishop Robert Francis Prevost, the prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery of the Bishops, at which they may have discussed Strickland’s case.
Strickland told RNS that the Vatican had not asked him to resign, but he also signaled that he would resist any such request by declaring that “as a basic principle,” he could not surrender the “mandate given” to him by Pope Benedict XVI. The late pope appointed Strickland the bishop of Tyler in 2012.
“Of course that mandate can be rescinded by Pope Francis, but I cannot voluntarily abandon the flock that I have been given charge of as a successor of the apostles,” Strickland told RNS.
In Catholic theological and canonical matters, a bishop is indeed understood as one “succeeding to the place of the Apostles,” who possesses teaching and governing authority in his own right. Bishops, Cafardi said, are not akin to midlevel corporate branch managers.
“Bishops are successors of the apostles. That can’t be taken away from them,” said Cafardi, who suggested that Strickland appeared to be making more of a theological statement than staking out a canonical position in his comments to RNS.
While articulating a bishop’s exalted status in the Catholic Church, canon law also stipulates that a bishop’s authority to exercise his ministry and govern “can only be exercised in hierarchical communion with the head and members of the college” of bishops.
Canons 330-330 emphasize the pope’s primacy in all ecclesial matters, including over local churches. The pope’s primacy, canon law says, “strengthens and protects the proper, ordinary, and immediate power which bishops possess in the particular churches entrusted to their care.”
In addition, Francis issued a two-page decree in November 2014 pertaining to situations where bishops and Vatican officials renounce their offices. Article 5 in that decree stipulates that “in some circumstances, the competent Authority can decide that it is necessary to ask a bishop to present his resignation from pastoral office.”
In such a situation, the decree says that the bishop is to be informed of the reasons for the request and that his concerns be listened to “attentively,” in “a fraternal dialogue.”
“We’ve certainly seen bishops who raise questions, but they tend to be cautious and prudent. This kind of grandstanding with Bishop Strickland, this is something new,” said Charles Reid Jr., a canon lawyer and law professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In recent years, Strickland has strained his ties with Francis and other bishops. Posting on X (formerly known as Twitter), Strickland has accused the present pope of “undermining the Deposit of Faith,” and has shared several videos and essays attacking Francis.
Strickland has publicly defended priests disciplined by other bishops. He has also insinuated on X that certain Vatican officials have left the Catholic faith, specifically naming Cardinal Arthur Roche, the prefect for the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, the new prefect for the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith.
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Strickland’s leadership of his East Texas diocese is currently the subject of a Vatican investigation, known formally as an apostolic visitation. As part of that investigation, two bishops interviewed several witnesses over the course of several days in June.
A priest in the Tyler Diocese who was interviewed for the visitation told NCR that the bishops focused their inquiry on Strickland’s management of the diocese, including one question on what he believed Strickland understood “Deposit of Faith” to mean. The priest spoke to NCR on the condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution.
Said Cafardi: “You don’t ask someone to resign after an apostolic visitation unless something comes up.”
Strickland’s removal would not be without recent precedent. Since becoming pope in March 2013, Francis has removed other bishops, including at least two who refused to resign when they were asked to do so.
In March 2022, Francis “relieved” Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres from the pastoral care of the Diocese of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Fernández’s ouster followed a period where he publicly clashed with other Puerto Rican bishops on matters pertaining to COVID-19 vaccines and his opposition to a bill that would have banned so-called conversion therapy for LGBTQ people.
Fernández said he refused a Vatican request for his resignation, and said in a statement posted on the diocesan website that he felt “blessed to suffer persecution and slander for proclaiming the truth.”
In September 2013, Francis removed Paraguayan bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano due to what the Vatican called “serious pastoral concerns” in an effort to preserve “the unity of both the bishops and the faithful.”
Livieres also refused the Vatican’s request to resign, and claimed in a posted statement that he had been a victim of ideological persecution by more liberal Catholics, The New York Times reported when Livieres died in 2015. Livieres later sought to reconcile by expressing his “full communion” with Rome.
“The pope has full authority to remove a bishop. That’s just a fact,” said Robert Flummerfelt, a Las Vegas-based canon lawyer who told NCR that it is a “very extreme action to defy the Holy Father.”
“At the end of the day,” Flummerfelt said, “I think [Strickland] should operate as a bishop of the Catholic Church in full communion with its visible head, its visible source of unity, the Holy Father, and should honor the Holy Father’s request in this regard or try to find some way to resolve this.”
Rome Newsroom, Sep 19, 2023 / 11:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of two auxiliary bishops of the Archdiocese of Chicago: Andrew P. Wypych and Joseph N. Perry.
Bishop Perry turned 75 in April. At age 75, Catholic bishops are required by canon law to submit their resignation to the pope, who chooses whether and when to accept it.
The reason for 68-year-old Wypych’s early resignation was not given. The Polish-born priest moved to Chicago in 1983 to be close to his mother, who had immigrated to the United States nine years prior after the death of Wypych’s father.
In a 2011 interview with Catholic New World, Wypych said the first years of his priesthood he couldn’t speak with his mother except by letter “because telephone connections between Poland and the United States were prohibited by the communist government.”
Born in Kazimierza Wielka, Poland, Wypych grew up as an only child after the death of his younger brother, Robert, in infancy.
He was incardinated in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1989 to help minister to the Polish Catholic community in the city.
Wypych had been ordained a deacon by Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow just before the latter became Pope John Paul II. He was ordained a priest in 1979.
In 2011, Wypych was named an auxiliary bishop of Chicago. He served as episcopal vicar for the archdiocese’s Vicariate V. He was also national executive director of the Catholic League for Religious Assistance to Poland and Polonia since 2011.
Perry, episcopal vicar of Chicago’s Vicariate VI, was appointed an auxiliary bishop of Chicago in 1998.
Born in Chicago, he was ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in 1975.
Perry has a licentiate in canon law from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. From 2004, he was vice president of the board of the Black Catholic Congress and chairman of the USCCB committee on African American Catholics.
The Archdiocese of Chicago serves approximately 2.2 million Catholics. It is led by Cardinal Blase Cupich assisted by six auxiliary bishops.
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Radio personality Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate on the losing end of Democrat Adams’s landslide mayoral victory in 2021, has played the role of outside agitator at multiple rallies in the neighborhood, trying to stoke fears that the migrants will be terrorists.
In one rally outside Floyd Bennett Field, he recalled the 1993 and 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. “We seem to forget and now we are allowing terrorists to cross our border,” he continued. “Their number one location to strike and try to clear the table for a third time is New York City. And we have made it so easy for them.” All the terrorists have to do is to “cross over the Rio Grande…. Who meets them on the American side?” he asked.
“Eric Adams?” someone shouted.
“Nope,” Sliwa replied. “Catholic Charities, which is a racket.” Sliwa, who spent several of his high-school years at a prestigious Jesuit school, Brooklyn Prep, castigated the church agency for carrying out its mission of welcoming the stranger.
Local Democratic elected officials in Brooklyn have shared the stage with Sliwa. My Assembly representative, Jaime Williams, was especially enthusiastic. “Our mayor said it will destroy our city!” she shouted at a rally. Williams, herself an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago and a former project director at Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens with a master’s in social work from Fordham, declared herself “sick and fed up,” then led the crowd in a chant of “Close our borders.”
One of the most telling comments I’ve heard about the controversy came from Anne Williams-Isom, deputy mayor for health and human services and a Fordham alumna who held a chair in child-welfare studies at the university. In one of her periodic briefings, she noted that resources had to be set aside to provide mental-health services, not only for asylum seekers traumatized by their journey, but for the employees who experienced secondary trauma while trying to counsel them to find jobs and housing.
In observing the immigration courts, I’ve noticed that so many of the people who work in this terrible system are coping with some degree of trauma. It comes from hearing asylum seekers set out their stories, in harrowing and often credible detail. I think of the case of a Guatemalan woman who I saw cry through most of a two-hour hearing as she described how a failed relationship with a man who had political influence led to years of threats and beatings, and then escalated into blackmail threats aimed at her children, which prompted her to flee. I don’t think anyone disbelieved her, but her sufferings didn’t fit easily into the legal categories for asylum. Her petition was denied.
Defense and government lawyers, judges, court staff, caseworkers: many seem burnt out. And now the same is happening to some of the city workers who are trying, person-to-person, to undo the knots of the U.S. immigration system. It’s a system that, over time, shocks the conscience.
As for Mayor Adams, he would lead us to believe his conscience is clear. “When I’m talking about making sure that we handle the asylum-seekers crisis, that’s based on my faith,” he said in an interview with WINS Radio’s Susan Richards. “And so instead of saying, ‘He’s making these tough decisions because he’s inhumane,’ no, I’m making them because I’m compassionate, because I care about people, because that’s how I was raised: to care about people.”
A religious order priest serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has been arrested and charged with possessing hundreds of images of child pornography.
Fr. Rodolfo Martinez-Guevara, 38, a member of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, was taken into custody Sept. 13 in Long Beach, California, by members of the Ventura County Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force.
Martinez-Guevara is currently held in Ventura County’s main jail, with bail set at $750,000. He has been charged with felony possession of more than 600 images and videos of child pornography — including material depicting minors under the age of 12 — the depicted victims being mostly boys. The priest’s arraignment was scheduled for Sept. 15.
Search warrants also were served at the order’s formation house in Long Beach, where the priest resides, by the task force with the assistance of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. The formation house is adjacent to St. Maria Goretti Church and the parish school. The church and school are named for a 20th-century 11-year-old Italian girl who was brutally murdered in the course of an attempted sexual assault by an adult male. Considered a martyr by the Catholic Church, St. Maria is considered a patron saint for victims of rape and other crimes.
Investigators believe there could be additional victims and are urging anyone with information regarding the priest to contact their local police department to make a report.
In a Sept. 14 statement, Missionaries of the Holy Spirit provincial superior Fr. Pedro Arteaga announced that he had removed Martinez-Guevara from ministry and withdrawn the priest’s faculties.
In a statement emailed to OSV News Sept. 18, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles said that Martinez-Guevara “is not a priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles” but of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit order who until now had “faculties to minister in the Archdiocese.”
The statement confirmed the priest “has been removed from ministry by the Archdiocese and his order.”
“The Archdiocese stands against any sexual misconduct and is resolute in our support for victim-survivors of any misconduct. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to ensuring that parishes, schools and ministries are safe places for everyone in our community,” the archdiocese said in its statement.
The archdiocese also noted in its statement that Martinez-Guevara had served “as a transitional deacon and newly ordained priest” at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Oxnard from July 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022.
OSV News also asked the archdiocese Sept. 18 if it received any complaints about the priest during his time at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Oxnard but did not receive an immediate response.
Arteaga said in his statement the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, which received safe environment accreditation from Praesidium, had “notified all the corresponding authorities and begun an internal investigation” that “includes transparent work with our Independent Review Board.”
According to Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko, Martinez-Guevara became the focus of an investigation after several reports were made to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In April 2023, the Ventura County task force launched its own investigation.
OSV News has reached out to Nasarenko’s office for additional details on Martinez-Guevara’s arrest but did not receive an immediate response.
In a message sent to participants in a Vatican conference on the 60th anniversary of “Pacem in Terris”, Pope Francis renews his calls for nations to eliminate nuclear weapons and use ‘conventional’ arms only in self-defense.
By Sr. Nina Benedikta Krapić, VMZ
Pope Francis sent a message on Tuesday to participants in an International Conference organized by the Academy of Social Sciences and the Peace Research Institute Oslo to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Pacem in Terris, the landmark encyclical of Pope St. John XXIII.
In his message addressed to Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Chancellor of the Academy, the Pope said the conference is taking place “as our world continues to be in the grip of a third world war fought piecemeal, and, in the tragic case of the conflict in Ukraine, not without the threat of recourse to nuclear weapons.”
He compared the present moment with the one that proceeded the publication of Pacem in Terris, when in October 1962, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction.
Pope Francis encouraged the Conference to devote its reflections to those parts of Pacem in Terris that discuss disarmament and the pathways to lasting peace.
He urged participants to analyze current military and technology-based threats to peace, as well as disciplined ethical reflection “on the grave risks associated with the continuing possession of nuclear weapons, the urgent need for renewed progress in disarmament, and the development of peace-building initiatives.”
The Pope repeated his statement from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in 2019, when he said that “the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral,” adding that “a world free of nuclear arms is possible and necessary.”
At the same time, Pope Francis noted that the world must not let the threat of nuclear warfare overshadow the use of so-called “conventional” weapons in modern warfare.
Even conventional arms, he said, “should be used for defensive purposes only and not directed to civilian targets.”
“It is my hope that sustained reflection on this issue will lead to a consensus that such weapons, with their immense destructive power, will not be employed in a way that foreseeably causes ‘superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering’, to use the words of the St. Petersburg Declaration,” said Pope Francis.
In conclusion, the Pope recalled the words of his predecessor, St. John XXIII, at the conclusion of Pacem in Terris, as he prayed that, “by God’s power and inspiration, all peoples may embrace each other as brothers and sisters, and that the peace for which they long may ever flourish and reign among them.”
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In a new statement the Bishops’ Conference of Haiti (CEH) urges for immediate action to stop the rampant criminal violence in the Caribbean island facing one of the worst crises in its history.
By Lisa Zengarini
As gang violence continues to grip Haiti, the Catholic bishops of the island nation have launched yet another appeal calling for action from Haitian authorities and the international community to stop what they describe as a “genocide” against “defenceless” people.
“We, the bishops of the Catholic Church of Haiti, echo the ‘cry of an entire people faced with abandonment’ and experience with bitterness and pain the suffering of our people caused by the blind violence of heavily armed bandits”, reads a strongly worded statement which calls into question “the cynicism and the indifference of political leaders, and the hesitation of the international community.”
One of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti has faced rampant criminal violence for years. It has also suffered from periodic natural disasters and a long-standing political deadlock made worse by the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
The statement recalls that for at least four years Haiti has been going through “one of the longest and most lethal socio-political and security crises in its history”, with armed gangs taking control of many areas of the country.
Gangs have grown more powerful since President Moïse’s assassination, and they are estimated to control up to 80% of the capital Port-au-Prince.
Killings, turf wars, extortions and kidnappings, also targeting priests and religious happen on a daily basis. According to recent UN statistics, gang-related violence this year has claimed more than 2,500 lives, with over 1,000 injured, while nearly 1,000 Haitians have been kidnapped.
Gangs are also involved in horrifying cases of sexual violence, including collective rape and mutilation, perpetrated to spread fear, punish rivals, and target women and girls under their territorial control.
The latest wave of violence has also resulted in the forced displacement of over 10,000 people who have sought refuge in makeshift camps and host families.
“A defenceless population” is held hostage by “the ruthless violence of the gangs and their allies, and blocked by the inaction and complicit silence of the Government” the bishops decry in their statement, recalling that these crimes are accompanied, among other things, by attacks on churches and places of worship of various religions, which can no longer be used.
“A low-intensity war against peaceful and unarmed people is raging across the country.”
Frustrated by lack of security and functioning government, some Haitian citizens have decided to take justice in their hands by organizing “self-defence groups” targeting suspected gang members. More than 350 people have been brutally killed or lynched since the uprising began the UN has recently reported.
According to the Haitian bishops, in the face the barbarism that is taking hold in the country, “the solution is not to remain passive.” They therefore call on all the people of God and ecclesial institutions to react, and invite priests, religious and laypeople to organize a novena of prayer on the occasion of the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, to free the country from gang violence : “Wherever we are our solidarity, our closeness, our prayers, our exhortations as citizens and as a people can contribute to this”.
The bishops also express their “hopeful support” to all efforts towards a peaceful solution of the crisis, reiterating to the world that “this genocide must be stopped”.
To this end the call upon those currently in power “to take strong and concrete steps towards true reconciliation here and now in Haiti” and urge public authorities and other sectors of Haitian society “to put an end to their complicity” with armed gangs, and to contribute to building political and social dialogue “on the basis of the real needs of the population.”
In October 2022, the Haitian government requested the immediate deployment of a foreign armed force to stem gang violence. So far only Kenya has offered to lead the multinational force, with the support of the UN and the US, and in August a delegation of Kenyan top officials visited Haiti as part of a reconnaissance mission.
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The Holy See Press Office presents the official schedule for Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Marseille, a city “enriched” by a vast array of cultures.
By Joseph Tulloch
Matteo Bruni, Director of the Holy See Press Office, on Tuesday presented the official schedule for Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Marseille.
The Pope will be in the southern French city from Friday to Saturday of this week, and will attend the concluding session of the Mediterranean Meetings, a church-led initiative aiming to build community amongst the region’s various peoples, religions, and cultures.
According to the official schedule, released on Tuesday, Pope Francis will depart from Rome’s Fiumicino airport at 14:35 on Friday afternoon, arriving at 16:15 in Marseille.
After an official welcome from the France’s Prime Minister, he will head to Marseille’s Basilica of Notre Dame de-la-Garde, where he will pray first with the clergy of the local diocese, and then with a group of professionals from various organisations – Stella Maris, Caritas Gap- Briançon, and the Association de secours en mer – dedicated to the pastoral care of seafarers, migrants, and refugees.
The following day, Saturday, 23 September, he will participate in the final session of the Mediterranean Meetings, which bring together bishops and young people from North Africa, the Middle East, and southern Europe. He will then meet privately with French President Emmanuel Macron
After lunch, Pope Francis will travel to Marseille’s Vélodrome stadium, where he will celebrate Mass for the general public. He will then depart, arriving in Rome at 20:50.
Presenting the Pope’s schedule to journalists in the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, the Pope’s official spokesperson, noted that this would be the Holy Father’s 44th Apostolic Journey abroad.
Bruni stressed that the trip ought not to be understood as a visit to France, but rather as a visit to the city of Marseille. The same, he noted, was true of the Pope’s visit to the city Strasbourg in 2014, where he visited the European Parliament – both visits, he said, have an “international” character.
Marseilles, Bruni went on, is particularly notable in this regard, since it has been “enriched” over the course of its long history by a huge variety cultures. Founded as a Greek colony around the year 600 BC, over the years it fell into the hands of Romans, Ligures, barbarians, Arabs, and Saracens, and in recent years gone on to become a melting pot of different cultures, and one of France’s most ethnically diverse cities.
The Vatican urged the international community to press for a “special statute” to guarantee religious freedom in the city of Jerusalem in any agreements regarding a peace deal between Israel and Palestine.
Addressing a ministerial-level meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York Sept. 18, Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, Vatican foreign minister, called for an internationally guaranteed statute on Jerusalem to ensure “the equal rights and duties of the faithful of the three monotheistic religions (Christians, Jews and Muslims), the absolute guarantee of freedom of religion and of access to and worship in the holy places, and respect for the status quo regime, where it applies.”
“To this end, the specific multireligious character, spiritual dimension and the unique identity and cultural heritage of Jerusalem must be preserved and promoted,” he told a group of foreign ministers from some 50 nations.
The meeting launched working groups from the European Union, the League of Arab States and Jordan to create incentives for Israel and Palestine to strike a peace deal. A joint statement released by participants after the meeting urged contributors to the “peace supporting package” to work toward “ensuring the historic status quo of Jerusalem’s holy sites” which includes the role of Jordan in managing Islamic and Christian holy sites in the city.
Gallagher said that establishing guidelines for the administration of Jerusalem is a “central point of contention that needs to be addressed in order to achieve a stable and lasting peace” between Israel and Palestine, and he lamented the “acts of intolerance” in the city “recently perpetrated by some Jewish extremists against Christians.”
“Any such actions must be clearly condemned by all governments, first and foremost the Israeli government, as well as prosecuted by the law and prevented in the future through education in fraternity,” he said.
In July, Israeli President Isaac Herzog denounced increasing violence against Christians throughout the country and particularly in Jerusalem, calling attacks against Christians “a true disgrace.”
“The Holy See,” Gallagher said during his address, “sees Jerusalem not as a place of confrontation and division, but as one of encounter where Christians, Jews and Muslims can live together with respect and mutual goodwill.”
The archbishop recalled that Pope Francis “has repeatedly called on Israelis and Palestinians to engage in direct dialogue,” and that the Israeli and Palestinian presidents met at the Vatican in 2014 to pray for peace together and planted a symbolic olive tree in the Vatican gardens.
“It seems to me that there have not been any more similar high-level meetings,” he noted. “Nevertheless, we continue to water that olive tree, waiting for the presidents of both states, accompanied by their governments, to come again to reap the fruits of peace.”
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