Month: June 2019

Washington D.C., Jun 11, 2019 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- Islamic countries should be more vocal in criticizing China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnoreligious group, the US ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom said Monday.

“I have been disappointed that more Islamic countries have not spoken out. I know the Chinese have been threatening them and but you don’t back down to somebody that does that. That just encourages more actions,” Ambassador Sam Brownback said in an interview with The Guardian published June 10.

Brownback welcomed Turkey and “a number of western countries that have spoken out aggressively on this.”

Some 1 million Uyghurs have been detained in re-education camps for Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Inside the camps they are reportedly subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination. Outside the camps, Uyghurs are monitored by pervasive police forces and facial recognition technology.

“If China is not stopped from doing this they’re going to replicate and push this system out in their own country and to other authoritarian regimes,” Brownback commented.

He suggested that some Islamic countries “are concerned about their own human rights record and then they’re saying look: we don’t want people criticizing us [so] we’re not going to criticize somebody else.”

US diplomats have increasingly focused on China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in recent months.

The US was among the co-sponsors last week of a United Nations resolution proclaiming a day to commemorate victims of violence based on religion. While speaking at the UN June 4, Austin Smith, the US representative to the organization, called China’s treatment of the Uyghurs “one of the world’s most horrific denials of freedom of religion.”

“Chinese authorities are restricting religious freedom by labeling peaceful religious practices as manifestations of ‘religious extremism and terrorism,” he said. “The Chinese Communist Party has exhibited extreme hostility to all religious faiths since its founding. This repression has intensified under the current policy of ‘Sinicizing’ religion.”

China’s representative responded that Smith’s statements were an unfounded accusation, and reiterated China’s position that it is combatting extremism. He called the camps for Uyghurs learning centers, and stressed their vocational and educational nature.

In April, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s annual report focused in its introduction on the abuse of Uyghurs.

During a March 8 speech in Hong Kong critical of the Vatican-China deal on the appointment of bishops, Brownback also addressed the detainment of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China.

He rejected Chinese government claims that the camps are vocational training centers, charging that they are “internment camps created to wipe out the cultural and religious identity of minority communities.” Internment is often based on cultural or religious identity. Detention is indefinite, and internees are subjected to “physical and psychological torture, intense political indoctrination, and forced labor,” he stated.

Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, said earlier this year that “China has the right to take anti-terrorism and de-extremism measures to safeguard national security,” and that “Saudi Arabia respects and supports it and is willing to strengthen cooperation with China.”

Pakistan is among the few Mustlim-majority countries to have warned against the escalating persecution of the Uyghurs.

In September 2018 Noorul Haq Qadri, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Religious Affairs and Inter-faith Harmony, advised Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing that Beijing’s crackdowns on Uyghur activity would only fuel extremism, rather than mitigate it.

Along with its treatment of Muslims, China has been criticized for its persecution of a variety of religious groups: Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners.

USCIRF has noted that while the Vatican reached a provisional agreement with China on the appointment of bishops in September, “nevertheless, repression of the underground Catholic Church increased during the latter half” of 2018.

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Baltimore, Md., Jun 11, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- On Tuesday, the USCCB General Assembly in Baltimore gave over much of its morning session to hearing questions from the floor asking for clarity on proposals to increase transparency and accountability am… […]

Baltimore, Md., Jun 11, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- The Church needs to be present to migrants and refugees in the U.S. who are facing detention or deportation, and cannot be “invisible,” U.S. bishops said on the first day of their annual sprin… […]

Los Angeles, Calif., Jun 11, 2019 / 02:12 pm (CNA).- After a story in the New York Post sparked new interest in the drama of a years-long legal dispute involving Katy Perry and the sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles… […]

Baltimore, Md., Jun 11, 2019 / 11:35 am (CNA).- On the morning of the first day of the USCCB’s General Assembly in Baltimore, discussion began on three proposals to improve episcopal accountability.
 
As the discussion developed June 11, muc… […]

Baltimore, Md., Jun 11, 2019 / 10:54 am (CNA).- The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 2019 Spring General Assembly kicked off in Baltimore Tuesday with a brief address from USCCB President Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and a message from Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, explaining the rationale for the Vatican’s cancelation of votes last November.

Pierre was unable to attend the meeting in Baltimore as he was in Rome with a meeting with his fellow Apostolic Nuncios, and his remarks were delivered June 11 by Msgr. Walter Erbi, chargé d’affaires of the Vatican nunciature in Washington.

Both Pierre and DiNardo spoke on the progress that has been made in tackling the sexual abuse crisis in the Church in America since last November’s general assembly, particularly the importance of careful discernment. In November, the Vatican intervened and canceled planned votes on various measures designed to increase accountability among bishops, much to the displeasure and confusion of nearly every bishop present.

“Through the mercy of Christ, we will make progress, and may our discernment lead us to God’s will,” said DiNardo.

According to Pierre, this delay was meant to ensure that careful prudence was taken in response to the crisis.

“I would say that among the reasons the Holy Father asked for a delay was his belief that the whole Church needed to walk together – to act in a synodal way, and that this ‘walking together’ of the whole Church, following the guidance of the Holy Spirit, would make the path forward clearer,” he said.

Since that time, the U.S. bishops have gone on a weeklong retreat, and the world’s bishops’ conference presidents met in Rome for the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church. After that meeting Pope Francis issued the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, which outlined new strategies to for the Church hold sexual abusers accountable for their actions.

“It seems to me that Pope Francis’ emphasis on synodality and walking together is a manifestation of the four principles articulated in Evangelii gaudium,” said Pierre, referring to Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world. These principles are: “time is greater than space,” “unity prevails over conflict,” “realities are more important than ideas,” and “the whole is greater than the part.”

It was this first principle, Pierre explained, that resulted in November’s delayed votes. Pierre wrote that Pope Francis believed that additional prayer and time were needed in order to address the abuse crisis as a worldwide Church.

“Technology and social media condition us to desire an immediate response to practically everything,” he said, particularly in the United States. “The idea that time is greater than space is a useful remedy. In an ecclesial context, faster responses do not always produce the best results.”

Pierre’s speech also emphasized the importance of Church unity and “walking together” to combat the abuse crisis, particularly at the meeting in Rome. The contributions of the episcopal heads from around the country proved valuable, he said.

Guided by the Holy Spirit and each other, “together, the whole Church was able to take steps – to walk together – to address the problem and concrete actions could begin – without one group running ahead of the others and another lagging too far behind,” he said.

This, plus the “concrete ideas” offered by Pope Francis at the summit and in his motu proprio, could only be accomplished with the additional time gained by delaying the vote, Pierre wrote.

“The Holy Father calls the whole Church to walk together in this moment of crisis,” he said, and there can be “no hesitation in responding vigorously as a matter of justice.”

“We must meet our people in their concrete situations, proposing the life-giving Word to them as a sure guide for understanding their experiences and for guiding their moral and spiritual lives,” added Pierre. If this is not done, the bishops run the risk of being disconnected and ineffective in dealing with their flock.

“In the process of walking together, we also have the opportunity to hear from different members of the group,” wrote Pierre, emphasizing the need to include the laity in these discussions.

“With Christ, together we can walk and face the realities of the Church today, and together discern the path forward.”

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Baltimore, Md., Jun 11, 2019 / 10:24 am (CNA).- Advisory bodies to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called Tuesday for the bishops to urge the Holy See to make public all documentation related to the misconduct of Theodore McCarrick, in accord w… […]