Miao, India, Oct 25, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- As the Amazon Synod considers the evangelization—and exploitation—of indigenous Amazonian tribes, the conversation reflects as well on what is happening in other parts of the world.
In rural nor… […]
Belfast, Northern Ireland, Oct 25, 2019 / 05:05 pm (CNA).- A priest in Northern Ireland has exhorted pro-choice politicians not to receive Holy Communion, and Catholic voters not to vote for pro-choice candidates or parties, after legislation expanding abortion access in the region took effect this week.
“To be publicly pro choice-abortion is irreconcilable with being a faithful Catholic. Therefore, such persons should not approach the Holy Eucharist. If they do so, they are committing the mortal sin of sacrilege,” Fr. Patrick McCafferty, parish priest at Corpus Christi in Belfast, said in an Oct. 21 Facebook post.
“The Word of God calls everyone to be in the state of grace when they approach the Lord’s Table,” added the priest of the Diocese of Down and Connor.
Northern Ireland’s devolved legislature failed Monday to block a change to the region’s law imposed by the British parliament, which expands access to abortion. Previously, abortion was legally permitted in Northern Ireland only if the mother’s life was at risk or if there was risk of permanent, serious damage to her mental or physical health.
The British parliament passed the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 in July. The act took effect Oct. 22 because the Northern Ireland Assembly, which has been suspended the past two years due to a dispute between the two major governing parties, was not able to do business by Oct. 21.
Pro-life members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, largely comprised of members of the Democratic Unionist Party recalled the assembly Monday for the first time since January 2017 in order to block the relaxed abortion restrictions.
However, in order for the assembly to make any binding changes, the election of a speaker of the assembly with cross-party support was required. This proved impossible when the Social Democratic Labour Party walked out of the Oct. 21 meeting.
Members of the assembly from Sinn Fein, the Green Party, and People Before Profit did not participate in the Oct. 21 session.
“We were betrayed today at Stormont,” Fr. McCafferty wrote in another Facebook post, on Oct. 21. “I implore all faithful Catholics, faithful Christians and all good people who value human life and true (not fake) human rights, to withdraw all support from pro abortion-choice politicians and political parties.”
“For Catholics and nationalists/republicans, in particular, Sinn Fein and the SDLP have betrayed us in a most hideous fashion,” he said.
Sinn Fein supports abortion rights, while the SDLP allows their Members of the Legislative Assembly a conscience vote on the topic. Fr. McCafferty noted that “Sinn Fein is avowedly pro abortion,” and charged that “The SDLP is infected with influential pro abortionists.”
And Fr. McCafferty wrote Oct. 22 on Facebook that “We have been failed miserably by politicians – all of them.”
He noted that the Northern Ireland Assembly collapsed because of the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, saying some of the politicians and officials of the DUP “are at the heart of this scandal.”
“The collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly, due to the RHI Scandal, has left the door wide open for a phalanx of determined and fanatical pro abortion MPs in Westminster, led by Stella Creasy – unelected by the people of Northern Ireland – but aided and abetted by pro abortion-choice politicians in Sinn Fein, the SDLP, Alliance, PBP and the Green Party – to railroad through, at Midnight last night, one of the most extreme abortion regimes in the world,” the priest lamented.
Fr. McCafferty wrote that “The SDLP, once a party that Catholics could trust and vote for with confidence, is no longer such a party. There are now a significant and influential number of SDLP MLAs and councillors, who are pro abortion-choice. Catholics voting in the future, for SDLP candidates, need to carefully determine their stance on abortion before giving that candidate their vote.”
Dolores Kelly, an MLA from the SDLP who told the Belfast Telegraph she is “a pro-life politician”, said that “many people who are pro-life and practising Catholics will also be very alarmed and angry about Fr McCafferty’s comments” regarding not approaching Holy Communion.
“I don’t know much about canon law, but I know that such a decision would have to come from Rome,” Kelly stated.
Canon 916 of the Code of Canon Law states that “anyone who is conscious of grave sin may not celebrate Mass or receive the Body of the Lord without previously having been to sacramental confession”; and the previous canon notes that those “who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
Fr. McCafferty noted, “I have the utmost regard and respect for those persons who, knowing they are living in an irregular situation, present themselves at Mass, during Holy Communion, for a blessing,” saying that “such persons are real men and women of Faith.”
He reiterated that pro-choise politicians “should not receive Holy Communion … until they sincerely repent, seek reconciliation with the Lord and renounce their pro abortion-choice positions.”
Quebec City, Canada, Oct 25, 2019 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- The Cathedral Basilica of Notre Dame de Quebec in Quebec City is working to replace relics of Canadian saints that were stolen after a break-in last month.
Monsignor Denis Bélanger told CNA t… […]
The Synod of Bishops for the Special Assembly for the Pan-Amazon Region draws to a close in Rome this weekend. The gathering isn’t without dramatic tension. A working “blueprint” document, the Instrumentum Laboris, drew critical […]
Vatican City, Oct 25, 2019 / 10:43 am (CNA).- After controversial statues were thrown into Rome’s Tiber River, Pope Francis has issued an apology during Friday’s afternoon session of the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops on […]
Toledo, Ohio, Oct 25, 2019 / 10:54 am (CNA).- An Ohio teen is speaking out after being disqualified from an Oct. 19 cross-country meet because she was wearing a hijab.
Noor Alexandria Abukaram is a 16-year-old student at a private Islamic school. She … […]
Vatican City, Oct 25, 2019 / 10:20 am (CNA).- A Brazilian bishop has called for the ordination of women to the diaconate for service in the Amazon region. The bishop said that 2009 revisions to canon law could allow for the ordination of women deacons, but a leading canon lawyer in the Vatican has disputed that idea.
Bishop Evaristo Pascoal Spengler, OFM leads the territorial prelature of Marajó in Brazil and is participating as a member of the Synod on the Pan-Amazonian region in Rome.
During a press conference on Oct. 25, Spengler said that “there is a path that is open for the ordination of women,” citing a 2009 document from Pope Benedict XVI.
While referencing the role of women leaders, saints, and teachers in the history of the Church in making, Spengler did not account for the theological and sacramental impediments to such a development.
“We know that in the history of the Church there are women deacons. A role that should be expanded on.”
Spengler said a canonical possibility for the ordination of women was created by Pope Benedict in 2009.
“In 2009 the pope made a change in canon law according to which the bishop, the priest and the deacon receive their mission and the faculty to act in the name of Christ. But this was changed by Pope Benedict, who changed this paragraph [which] said that, from that moment onward, that deacons were no longer linked to Christ but be able to serve the people of God in the diaconate in the liturgy of the word and in charity,” Spengler said.
“So, we realize that there is a path that is open for the ordination of women.”
The bishop was referencing Benedict’s 2009 motu proprio Omnium in mentem, which revised canons 1008 and 1009 of the Code of Canon Law.
Benedict’s document noted that some language in canon law did not fully reflect the teaching of Vatican Council II on the nature of the diaconate, and that Pope John Paul II had already updated the Catechism of the Catholic Church to address the same issue. Benedict’s document revised the law to emphasize the distinction between diaconal and priestly ministry.
“Those who are constituted in the order of the episcopate or the presbyterate receive the mission and capacity to act in the person of Christ the Head, whereas deacons are empowered to serve the People of God in the ministries of the liturgy, the word and charity,” the revised canon 1009 says.
While the new wording reflects that deacons do not act in the person of Christ through the celebration of Mass, Benedict left intact canonical wording which reflects the unity of the sacrament of orders at all three grades of deacon, priest and bishop.
Canon 1008 states that “By divine institution, some of the Christian faithful are marked with an indelible character and constituted as sacred ministers by the sacrament of holy orders. They are thus consecrated and deputed so that, each according to his own grade, they may serve the People of God by a new and specific title.”
Benedict’s reforms left intact the essential provision of canon 1024, which states that “A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly.”
Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta Ochoa, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, told CNA that Benedict made revisions to canon law to “better distinguish the ministry of priests and deacons.”
“The canon was changed to reflect the Catechism,” he added.
“Nothing is said or mentioned regarding women,” Arietta said.
Arrieta mentioned that Pope Francis established in 2016 a commission to study the female diaconate which has thus far reached no definitive conclusion Earlier this year, the pope said that while there is no consensus on questions related to the issue, the matter will continue to be studied.
Spengler also said that “we know that in the history of the Church there are women deacons. A role that should be expanded on – deaconess – and how to include this in the Church.”
In May, the pope said that the deaconesses described by St. Paul in the New Testament, and referenced by Spengler on Friday, can not be understood as equivalent to the modern sacramental notion of the diaconate.
A 2002 document published by the International Theological Commission concluded that female deacons in the early Church did not have the same functions as male deacons, and had “no liturgical function,” nor a sacramental one. It also said that even in the fourth century “the way of life of deaconesses was very similar to that of nuns.”
“The formulas of female deacons’ ‘ordination’ found until now, according to the commission, are not the same for the ordination of a male deacon and are more similar to what today would be the abbatial blessing of an abbess,” Francis said May 7 during an in-flight press conference returning from North Macedonia and Bulgaria.
“For the female diaconate, there is a way to imagine it with a different view from the male diaconate,” said the pope while insisting that the issue needed further study.
Bishop Spengler did not mention either Pope Francis or the commission for the study of women deacons on Friday.
During the press conference, several journalists groaned when Spengler was asked about the Church’s sacramental theology and its restriction of ordination to men alone.
Earlier in the session, applause broke out among some journalists after Paulo Ruffini, Prefect for the Vatican Dicastery of Communications, intervened to correct a question from veteran Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister.
Magister had made reference to an earlier event held in the Vatican gardens, during which a group of participants knelt in a circle around several carved items arranged around a controversial statue, variously identified as an earth mother figure or fertility symbol.
Ruffini insisted that the event was not an “official” synod event, and that questions about such events did not have to be answered. He also said that “there was no ritual” and “no prostration,” to applause from several journalists present at the press conference.
Dr. Keith Lemna is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Benedictine-run Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Southern Indiana, where he has taught for nearly a decade, having previously taught at The […]
New York City, N.Y., Oct 25, 2019 / 03:01 am (CNA).- While Christians in Iraq and Syria suffer in the aftermath of Islamic State genocide, a new “hot spot” of persecution has emerged in South and East Asia, a recent report finds.
“The situation for Christians has deteriorated most in South and East Asia: this is now the regional hot spot for persecution, taking over that dubious honour from the Middle East,” stated a report on global Christian persecution by the group Aid to the Church in Need, a pontifical foundation that provides relief to Christians in 140 countries.
ACN released its biennial study of the global persecution of Christians Oct. 23. The 2019 report “Persecuted and Forgotten?” compiled information on acts of harassment, violence, and discrimination committed against Christians over the span of 25 months from July 2017 through July 2019; details on the persecution were gathered by ACN on fact-finding trips.
One of the report’s chief conclusions was that of all persecuted Christians, “Christian women suffer the most, with reports of abductions, forced conversions and sex attacks.”
The report focused on 12 countries where Christian persecution was most severe: Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Sudan, India, Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, China, the Philippines, and North Korea.
“The words of Jesus to his disciples are there to remind us what His followers should expect: ‘If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you,’” stated Cardinal Joseph Coutts of Karachi in the report’s introduction.
“We unite our sufferings with those who suffer more than us and find inspiration in the words of the Apostle Paul: ‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body,’” the archbishop said.
While the Islamic State genocide against Christians in Iraq and Syria, beginning in 2014, drew international condemnation in recent years, the killings, beatings, and harassment of Christians in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma – along with ongoing persecution of Christians in China and North Korea – have created a regional problem that is now the worst in the world, ACN has warned.
After Sri Lanka’s civil war ended ten years ago, minority Christians and Muslims have suffered attacks by Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists, but the scope of the violence changed dramatically on Easter Sunday.
A series of coordinated bombings, for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility, targeted churches and hotels during the Paschal Triduum, and killed 258 people while injuring around 500.
In the wake of the attacks, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo alleged that the government could have done more to prevent the bombings and told ACN that “five training camps for jihadists have been found.”
“The attack signaled that, while the Islamists had switched strategy away from territorial gain to guerrilla warfare, attacking Christians was still a primary objective,” ACN reported of the Sri Lanka bombings.
In India, Christian leaders have been warning of a rise in Hindu nationalism that threatens to marginalize minority religions through violence and intimidation.
There were reported attacks against Christians in 24 of the 29 states in India between July 2017 and July 2019, with one estimate counting over 440 anti-Christian incidents in 2017, more than 470 in 2018, and 117 attacks in the first quarter of 2019.
Some of the attacks were horrific, including the gang-rape of five female workers at a Christian NGO in the northeastern state of Jharkhand.
In one case in September 2018, an elderly Christian woman was beaten in Veppur village on the date of a Hindu festival for walking on the road and thus defiling it; rocks were thrown at Christians who tried to help her.
In another case in February, a church in Karkeli village was attacked by a mob, and as CNA reported in September, a Jesuit-run mission school in Jharkhand was attacked by a violent mob of Hindu extremists where students and staff were beaten, in some cases severely.
Yet attacks like these continue with “impunity” because of an apparent reluctance by the government to investigate and prosecute, ACN says.
In the spring of 2019, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won a second term in office, sparking concerns by Christian leaders of a worsening persecution.
In East Asia, authoritarian governments in China and North Korea continue to inflict horrific abuses on Christians.
North Korea has long been recognized as “the worst place in the world to be a Christian,” ACN says, with “upwards of 70,000 Christians” detained in harsh labor camps with reports of “extra-judicial killings, forced labor, torture, persecution, starvation, rape, forced abortion and sexual violence.”
China reportedly arrested underground Catholic Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou and detained him for seven months just after an agreement had been reached with the Vatican on the selection of bishops. The government also banned the online sale of Bibles in April 2018 in order to promote “a new version compatible with Sinicization and socialism.”
In the Philippines, bombings during Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo killed 20 people and injured more than 100 in January.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Christians are still suffering the “full impact” of the Islamic State genocide even though the territorial caliphate of the Islamic State is no more, ACN says.
Christian communities which have existed for centuries have long been dwindling in Iraq and Syria due to the ongoing Syrian civil war, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the Islamic State genocide. Current estimates of Christians in Iraq range from “well below” 150,000 to below even 120,000, a mere fraction of the 1.5 million who lived there in 2003.
According to local priest Father Amanuel Kloo, the Christian population in Mosul has all but disappeared; there were 35,000 Christians in the city in 2003, at least 6,000 in 2014, and now just 40 Christians remain.
In Aleppo, “once one of the most significant centres for the Church in the whole of the Middle East,” the Christian population has dropped by more than 80 percent in eight years, the report said. Young men are fleeing military service, and others cannot bear the economic hardship or the increasing marginalization of Christians in society.
The suffering of Middle Eastern Christians, however, “reached its zenith” in the last two years, ACN says.
Although the Islamic State caliphate no longer exists, many of the group’s militants are still present in the region and “extreme poverty” remains a serious concern to the future of Christians in Syria. Some Iraqi Christians have still not been able to return to their homes, while others who have are facing harassment by local militias.
In Egypt, Copts have suffered a slew of violent attacks albeit with decreasing scope and severity over time. Nevertheless, Christians especially in rural areas face regular attacks, harassment, and discrimination, and while the state authorized 340 churches to be built in 2018, 3,740 churches have yet to be approved, revealing one challenge to the growth of the Church in the Muslim-majority country.
Nigeria has continued to be a hotbed of Christian persecution, with the continuation of attacks by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram in the country’s northeast, and the rise of atrocities committed by Fulani herdsmen, most of whom are Muslim, in the country’s Middle Belt region.
Mexico City, Mexico, Oct 25, 2019 / 12:38 am (CNA).- As violence continues to plague parts of Mexico, one priest in the country stressed the importance of strong families in overcoming the drug trade and establishing peace.
“If you think about it, the family may be one of the most attacked institutions in recent years. And it’s in the family where values arise, where citizens are formed,” said Fr. Omar Sotelo, director of the Catholic Multimedia Center, which tracks violence in Mexico.
He called for “a process of re-civilization,” adding that “the best school for re-civilizing society, without any doubt, is the family – there’s no other more powerful factor, no other more dependable institution.”
“The fundamental weapon for counteracting the violence we are going through is in the family,” he insisted.
Sotelo spoke to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, about the increase in violence in Mexico. According to government figures, there have been more than 23,000 murders in the country so far this year. The El Universal newspaper estimated that the first half of the year was the most violent in the history of Mexico.
The priest said that drug trafficking has so deeply infiltrated Mexican society that “we have to speak about ‘narcoviolence,’ ‘narcopolitics,’ ‘narcoeconomy,’ ‘narcosecurity’.”
“If we look at a map of the Republic, we are surrounded by cartels and they are imposing the rules for the survival of a country,” he warned.
Those who enter organized crime, Sotelo said, have gradually lost a sense of respect and love for others. Many times, they are pushed into drug trafficking out of desperation, when they could not find any other work to support themselves, he said.
“Drug trafficking feeds on men and women whose course in life has been curtailed or perhaps trampled on.”
He warned that “today we have complete generations of drug traffickers, from small children to adults…We have one or two generations of drug traffickers in Mexico and so it’s going to be extremely hard to eradicate it.”
Fighting the drug trade, he said, “is like kicking a hornet’s nest,” and it’s easy to grow discouraged after years of effort with little success.
Still, the priest maintained, “the vast majority in Mexico can still reverse this deplorable evil.”
Solving the problem will take more than words, and will take cooperation from all sectors of society, he said. “It’s not just the problem of a president, of a government, of a political party, of an NGO. It’s everyone’s problem.”
But while the challenge may seem daunting, failure to act would be come at a high price.
“If we remain silent, things will continue like this,” he said. “If we don’t do something, those who are children right now…in 5,6,8,10 years may be the next drug traffickers, the actors of organized crime in our country.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
© Catholic World Report