Gunman shot and killed by police at Filipino archbishop’s residence

Canberra, Australia, Sep 1, 2017 / 02:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As a non-binding poll on same-sex marriage in Australia looms, some leading Catholic bishops have again clarified Catholic teaching that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

“I wish to state quite clearly that the Catholic Church, through its official teaching, cannot support proposals for the changing of the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples,” Archbishop Tim Costelloe of Perth wrote an Aug. 17 pastoral letter.

He explained that this position is based on Catholic conviction that marriage is a beautiful union of a man and a woman for life, and the best way to raise children. These convictions rest on the belief that God’s “creative design is written into the nature of creation itself and especially into the nature of humanity.”

“This view presumes that marriage is about more than the mutual love between two people: it is also about the creation of a family,” the archbishop said, while also rejecting unjust discrimination against same-sex couples.

Australia is about to conduct a ballot survey by mail on whether to recognize gay marriage. Ballots will go out Sept. 12, with voters encouraged to return their ballots by Oct. 27. The final deadline for ballots is Nov. 7.

The poll is not legally binding, but if the results show support for legalizing gay marriage, a bill to do so would be introduced in parliament, where members of parliament would not be bound to vote with the public.

In mid-August, Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney told The Australian newspaper that the redefinition of marriage would imperil the free exercise of religion.

“In other parts of the world that have legalized same-sex marriage, those who believe in traditional marriage have been harassed or coerced into complying with the new view of marriage,” he said. “It would be extremely naive to think that won’t happen here.”

Archbishop Fisher said the only explicit religious protections he had seen applied to ministers of religion and civil celebrants.

“What protections will be offered to people who work for church-run institutions such as schools, hospitals and universities?” he said. “Will teachers be free to teach church teaching on marriage or will they be forced to teach a more politically correct curriculum?”

The archbishop asked political leaders to explain whether schoolchildren would be subject to “propaganda in favor of same-sex marriage and gender fluidity” as part of anti-bullying programs, and whether parents and church schools could exempt the children under their charge.

“Will employers of such church agencies be free to choose staff in sympathy with their church’s teachings?” he asked, also wondering whether Catholic welfare agencies would be required to provide marriage preparation or counselling for same-sex couples or face anti-discrimination penalties.

For his part, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne became the subject of media coverage for commenting that Catholic Church employees who contract a same-sex union risk being fired for publicly contradicting Catholic teaching.

Amid the debate, several leaders at prestigious Australian boarding schools have weighed in with statements that appeared to challenge the bishops and Catholic teaching.

Principal Paul Hine of the prestigious Sydney-area St. Ignatius’ College appeared most defiant of the bishops. In an Aug. 25 message to parents, staff and students, he said Archbishop Hart’s comments “have not gone unchallenged.”

Hine portrayed his stand as supportive of all the school’s self-identified LGBTQI employees. People with same-sex orientation “face the onslaught of the press, religious institutions and the social divisions that surround this contentious matter,” he said, adding, “we will continue to support staff in whatever marriage choices they make.”

“This is a courageous statement as it not only questions Church officialdom, but, it goes to the heartland of gospel teaching,” Hine claimed, adding, “One of the features of Jesuit spirituality is its readiness to challenge prevailing culture by supporting those who may be adversely affected by the vortex of public opinion and disparagement.”

The school’s rector, Father Ross Jones, S.J., also criticized Archbishop Hart. The priest asserted that contracting a same-sex marriage was a private matter and would not publicly contradict Saint Ignatius College’s Catholic values.

While Fr. Jones seemed to back Archbishop Fisher’s concerns for religious freedom, he appeared to question Archbishop Costelloe’s pastoral letter, saying there is more than one approach to natural law. He outlined an argument which a married couple might use “in good conscience” to reject Catholic teaching on contraception.

“Presumably, same sex-couples, who make such a commitment to each other in good conscience, do so by reflecting on experience and on what it is to be human, using their God-given reason,” said the priest.

Saint Ignatius’ College alumni include Archbishop Fisher, as well as former Prime Minister Tony Abbot and current deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce. Both oppose the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages.

In Melbourne the rector of Xavier College, Father Chris Middleton, S.J., voiced concerns that opposition to same-sex marriage was being virtually equated with “hate speech,” as well as concerns about offensive posters against gay marriage that were being posted in Melbourne.

“The ‘yes’ campaign, in my reading of the polls, can only lose if a perception of suppressing alternative voices alienates many in the middle, and the ‘no’ campaign can risk all credibility for its proponents in Australian society if they are identified with prejudiced or hateful language,” he said.

Fr. Middleton said the debate over marriage “exposes a real disconnect between the Church’s public opposition to same-sex civil marriage and the attitudes of young people,” given “almost total unanimity amongst the young in favor of same-sex marriage.” He said young people are “driven by a strong emotional commitment to equality, and this is surely something to respect and admire.”

“They are idealistic in the value they ascribe to love, the primary gospel value. Any argument against same-sex-marriage must respectfully address these core values, or they will fail a basic test of credibility with our young.”

Michael Cook, writing of the Australian religious commentary site MercatorNet, reflected on these leaders’ remarks.

“For many Catholics, there must be a deep sadness in this admission of failure of schools to pass on Catholic values to the next generation,” Cook said Aug. 31.

He characterized Fr. Jones’ comments as “muddled and meandering”, and suggested both rectors’ statements reflected a defeatist attitude out-of-step with Pope Francis’ hopefulness.

Cook cited the Pope’s 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, which said defeatism is both among “the more serious temptations which stifles boldness and zeal” and something which “turns us into querulous and disillusioned pessimists, ‘sourpusses’.”

“Nobody can go off to battle unless he is fully convinced of victory beforehand,” the Pope said.

Cook added:

“Christians have the secret of happiness and the key to truth – Jesus Christ. It is undeniable that the many young people have succumbed to a tidal wave of secularization. But – so Catholics believe – the attractiveness of the Gospel message cannot fade. There should be no room for pessimism in advertising the beauty of the Christian vision of marriage.”

[…]

Yinchuan, China, Aug 10, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Officials in an autonomous region of northwest mainland China intended to demolish a mosque on Friday, but were met by hundreds of protesters. The move comes amid a nation-wide effort to clamp down on free religious expression.

Due to the protests, the local government has agreed not to demolish the mosque, but does insist on remodelling it in a more Chinese, and less Arabic, style, according to Nectar Gan of the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong daily.

Officials had said Aug. 3 that the mosque would be demolished, on the grounds that it has not been granted the proper planning and construction permits. Protesters gathered in the mosque Aug. 9-10 to prevent its destruction.

Construction of the mosque had taken two years, and was not stopped by government officials.

The Weizhou Grand Mosque is located in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, more than 100 miles south of Yinchuan. Ningxia is a region set up for the Hui people, a Muslim ethnoreligious group.

The US Commission on International Religion wrote in its 2018 report that last year China “advanced its so-called ‘sinicization’ of religion, a far-reaching strategy to control, govern, and manipulate all aspects of faith into a socialist mold infused with ‘Chinese characteristics.’”

Christians, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners have all been affected.

Earlier this year, widespread rumors suggested that the Vatican and the Chinese government were on the verge of regularizing the status of the Church in China and ending the split between the state-sponsored Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, whose leaders include illicitly-consecrated bishops, and the underground Church.

In Ningxia, sinicization has meant the removal from buildings of Islamic icons and Arabic signs, the South China Morning Post reported, as well as the removal of domes from mosques.

After scrapping the plan to demolish Weizhou mosque, officials first called for its domes to be replaced with pagodas, then for the removal of eight of its nine domes. Both have been rejected by the Hui.

Many mosques in Ningxia had been built in a Chinese style, but were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong. They have increasingly been replaced by more Arabic-looking buildings.

In neighboring Gansu province, local officials in Linxia banned children in January from attending religious events during winter break. Many Hui also live in Gansu.

In July, AFP reported that Communist Party officials in Linxia had banned children under 16 from religious activity or study. They have also restricted the number of students over 16 allowed to study at mosques and the certification process for new imams. Mosques have been instructed to display the Chinese flag and not to transmit calls to prayer.

“They want to secularise Muslims, to cut off Islam at the roots,” an imam told AFP. “These days, children are not allowed to believe in religion: only in Communism and the party.”

The AP reported in May about the existence of re-education camps for Muslims in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The region, which borders Gansu’s west, is home to the Uyghurs, another Muslim ethnoreligious group.

According to the AP, authorities in Xinjiang “have ensnared tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese – and even foreign citizens – in mass internment camps.”

A UN human rights committee heard Aug. 10 that these camps hold more than 1 million Uyghurs.

In August 2014 officials in Karamay, a city of Xinjiang, banned “youths with long beards” and anyone wearing headscarves, veils, burqas, or clothes with the crescent moon and star symbol from using public transit. That May, universities across the region banned fasting during Ramadan.

Chinese president Xi Jinping announced in October 2017 that he wants to tighten Beijing’s strict government controls on religion. At the National Congress of the Communist Party, he said religions not sufficiently conformed to communist ideals pose a threat to the country’s government, and therefore must become more “Chinese-oriented.”

In March 2018 the Chinese Communist Party became directly responsible for government oversight of religion.

Catholics and other Christians have had their church buildings demolished in numerous Chinese provinces in recent years, including Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, and Shaanxi.

On March, Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin, who ministers to the underground Church, loyal to Rome and not the state, was detained for refusing to concelebrate a Chrism Mass with an illicitly consecrated, state-backed bishop. He was then released but forbidden from celebrating his own Chrism Mass.

[…]

Vatican City, Oct 18, 2018 / 09:45 am (CNA).- South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in met with Pope Francis today after praying for peace on the Korean peninsula in St. Peter’s Basilica. The visit marked the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Seoul and the Vatican.

 

“I come to you as president of South Korea, but also as a Catholic. My baptismal name is Matthew,” Moon said as he greeted Pope Francis in the Vatican Apostolic Palace Oct. 18.

 

The Korean president and the pope discussed their common commitment to fostering initiatives to overcome the tensions that still exist in the Korean Peninsula, according to the Holy See Press Office.

 

After the papal meeting, Moon met with Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for the Relations with States, and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

 

The evening before the visit, Moon also participated in a “Mass for Peace” on the Korean peninsula celebrated by Cardinal Parolin in St. Peter’s Basilica.

 

“Peace is built with the choices of every day, with a serious commitment to the service of justice and solidarity, with the promotion of the rights and dignity of the human person, and especially through the care of the weakest,” Cardinal Parolin said in his homily.

 

The chief Vatican diplomat prayed that “even in the Korean Peninsula, after so many years of tensions and division, the word peace can finally resound fully.”

 

President Moon said after the Mass that their prayers in St. Peter’s will “resound as echoes of hope in the hearts of the people of the two Koreas as well as the people of the whole world who desire peace.”

 

“Just as your holiness prayed before the U.S.-North Korea summit, we are paving a desirable way toward assuring a peaceful future for the Korean Peninsula and the world,” Moon said.

 

The pope and the Korean president exchanged gifts, including a medallion of olive branches as a message of peace and a Korean image of the Virgin Mary.

 

When Pope Francis saw Moon’s gift of a sculpture of the face of Jesus by a Korean artist, he remarked that he could see the suffering of the Korean people in Christ’s crown of thorns.

 

Last month, Moon traveled to Pyongyang for the third inter-Korean summit with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. The leaders of the two Koreas pledged to make a joint bid for the 2023 Summer Olympics.

 

During their meeting, Kim Jung Un asked the South Korean leader to extended an invitation to Pope Francis for a papal visit to North Korea. Kim told Moon that he would “greatly welcome” the pope in Pyongyang, according to South Korea’s presidential office.

 

A South Korean bishop attending the 2018 Synod of Bishops said last week that a papal visit to Pyongyang would be “a giant step forward for peace on the Korean peninsula,” but cautioned that there must be “some sort of religious freedom” before such a visit takes place.

 

North Korea has consistently been ranked the worst country for persecution of Christians by Open Doors. Christians within the atheist state have faced arrest, re-education in labor camps, or, in some cases, execution for their faith.

A United Nations investigation in 2014 produced a 372-page report that documented crimes against humanity, including execution, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, forced abortions, and knowingly causing prolonged starvation.

The U.S. State Department estimates that there are currently an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 people in North Korea’s six political prison camps.

 

“Only those who have experienced the inscrutable mystery of the apparent absence of God in the face of suffering, oppression and hatred can fully understand what it means to hear the word peace resound again,” Cardinal Parolin said at the Mass for the Korean peninsula.

 

“I and all my people hold dearly the pope’s message that ‘dialogue is the only solution in every conflict.’ [We] will solemnly walk toward democracy, lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula and an inclusive nation,” Moon wrote in an article published by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano Oct. 17.

 

President Moon expressed hope that “exchange between the Vatican and North Korea will further increase.”

[…]