Month: September 2023

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Swiss bishop reprimands clergy after viral video of woman ‘concelebrating’ Mass

September 11, 2023 Catholic News Agency 3
The Swiss bishops’ call for adherence to Catholic “rules” followed an internet controversy over an August 2022 video of a laywoman who seemed to concelebrate Mass with priests. / Credit: Katholisches Medienzentrum YouTube screenshot

Denver, Colo., Sep 11, 2023 / 14:45 pm (CNA).

A viral video showing two priests celebrating Mass with a Swiss laywoman at the altar has resulted in a formal reprimand of the pastors by Bishop Joseph Bonnemain of Chur, Switzerland, but there will not be a canonical proceeding.

“Careful investigation of the matter has shown that there were no serious liturgical violations in this service, the assessment of which would be reserved for the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith,” said a Sept. 8 joint statement whose signatories included Bonnemain. “Therefore, no criminal proceedings are required under canon law.”

“However, important liturgical regulations that are binding for the entire Church were ignored in this service,” the statement added. “The bishop therefore cannot avoid issuing a formal reprimand to the pastors involved in this regard.”

The joint statement came from the Diocese of Chur, St. Martin Catholic Parish, the pastors and clergy involved in the controversy, and Monika Schmid.

The August 2022 Mass in the Diocese of Chur marked the retirement of Schmid, a longtime de facto parish administrator. Video of the Mass depicted Schmid as she appeared to concelebrate the Eucharist with the priests. 

Schmid stood at the altar in ordinary dress with two priests beside her. She extended her arms and pronounced with them the words of the Consecration and an extensively revised version of the Eucharistic Prayer.

The joint statement noted that the farewell service received broad media coverage.

Following controversy over the video, Schmid denied her actions constituted an attempt to concelebrate Mass or to be provocative. She acknowledged that as a woman she can’t validly celebrate the Eucharist as ordained Catholic priests do. 

Canon 907 of the Catholic Church’s canon law bars Catholic deacons and Catholic laity from offering the Eucharistic Prayer and from performing actions “proper to the celebrating priest.”

The joint statement discussed the bishop’s response.

“On Aug. 15, 2023, Bishop Joseph Maria Bonnemain issued the appropriate warning to the five affected people during detailed personal discussions in the expectation that these mistakes will not be repeated in the future,” the statement said.

At the same time, the statement from the diocese said Bonnemain “expressed his confidence in all the pastors involved and thanks them for their committed pastoral work for the good of the people.”

In the wake of the controversial video, Bonnemain joined Bishops Felix Gmür of Basel and Markus Büchel of Sankt Gallen in writing a Jan. 5 letter to people active in pastoral care in their dioceses, as CNA previously reported. 

Only ordained priests may preside at Mass, and the liturgy should not be “a testing ground for personal projects,” said the three bishops, whose dioceses are the predominantly German-speaking dioceses of Switzerland.

The bishops acknowledged people’s desire to participate in the liturgy but said the Catholic liturgy has a universal character, and this especially concerns celebrations of the sacraments. They referred to Pope Francis’ June 2022 apostolic letter Desiderio Desideravi. It insists on the quality of liturgies, the careful attention to every aspect of liturgical celebration, and the observance of every rubric.

“Common witness requires common forms and rules. We bishops regularly receive requests and worried reactions: The faithful have a right to religious services that respect the rules and forms of the Church,” they said.

Schmid, the pastoral worker whose retirement Mass sparked the controversy, was critical of the bishops’ letter upon its release in January. She advocated a liturgical celebration that, in her view, “reaches out to people in their daily lives, in their language, and in their understanding of themselves,” the Swiss Catholic internet news portal Cath.ch reported.

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News Briefs

Statue of Korea’s patron saint to be permanently installed at St. Peter’s Basilica

September 11, 2023 Catholic News Agency 1
A statue of St. Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn at the Jeoldu-san martyrs’ shrine in Seoul, South Korea / Rabanus Flavus|Wikipedia|CC BY-SA 3.0

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 11, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).

The Vatican will dedicate a new statue of the patron saint of Korea, St. Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, in St. Peter’s Basilica this Saturday.

Born in 1821, Tae-gŏn was the first native Korean priest and one of the country’s earliest martyrs.

The statue of the Korean martyr was proposed by Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung-sik, a Korean prelate and prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy, and approved by Pope Francis, according to the Holy See’s news arm, Vatican News.

The pope has pointed to Tae-gŏn’s missionary zeal as a model for all Christians to follow.

“The Christian is by nature a witness of Jesus,” Vatican News reported Francis saying in a May 24 homily. “St. Andrew Kim and the other Korean faithful have demonstrated that the testimony of the Gospel given in times of persecution can bear many fruits for the faith.”

The statue’s dedication will take place on Sept. 16, the anniversary of Tae-gŏn’s beheading by the Korean Joseon Dynasty.

Pope Francis will welcome a delegation of 300 clergy and lay members of the Korean Church who will be coming for the dedication of the statue in a private audience on Saturday.

Cardinal You will then celebrate a Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Korean at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

The 6-ton marble statue of the Korean martyr, which will be permanently installed in a niche in the walls of St. Peter’s Basilica, will then be blessed by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, at 4:30 p.m.

Speaking to Rome’s Agenzia Fides, You said that the statue’s dedication at the Vatican has brought great joy to the Church in Korea.

“We were very happy that Pope Francis wanted to accept our proposal,” You said. “It is a great honor for our Korean Church, which is very linked to the figure of this saint.”

“We believe and hope that he can be increasingly loved and his intercession invoked by the faithful from all over the world,” You added.

After converting to Catholicism at the age of 15, Tae-gŏn trained for the priesthood in Macao and was ordained in 1836 by French Bishop Jean Joseph Jean-Baptiste Ferréol, the first bishop of Seoul.

Despite an ongoing vicious persecution, Tae-gŏn returned to Korea to evangelize his homeland. He was only 25 years old when he was tortured and ultimately beheaded during the persecution by the Joseon Dynasty for the crime of being a Catholic.

Writing to his fellow Christians shortly before his death, Tae-gŏn encouraged them to stay true to the faith. He said: “We have received baptism, entrance into the Church, and the honor of being called Christians. Yet what good will this do us if we are Christians in name only and not in fact?”

In Tae-gŏn’s last words before his execution, according to research by Macao News, he gave a final exhortation for his compatriots to convert to the one true faith.

“This is the last hour of my life,” Tae-gŏn reportedly said. “Listen to me attentively. If I have held communication with foreigners, it has been for my religion and for my God. It is for him that I die. My immortal life is on the point of beginning. Become Christians if you wish to be happy after death, because God has eternal punishments in store for those who have refused to know him.”

Along with 102 other Korean martyrs, whose executions were documented, Tae-gŏn was canonized as a saint on May 6, 1984, by Pope John Paul II during a visit to Korea.

Though most executions were not well documented, it is estimated that approximately 10,000 Korean Christians were martyred for the faith before Christianity became tolerated in 1884.

The more than 12-foot-tall statue depicts Tae-gŏn with his arms outstretched and wearing traditional Korean dopo and a flat hat.

Created by Korean Catholic artist Han Jin-seop, the statue is made entirely of Carrara marble and weighs about 6 tons.

Speaking to a reporter for the Catholic Korean news source Catholic Peace Broadcasting Corporation, Jin-seop said: “More than anything, I sincerely pray that Father Kim Dae-geon’s [Tae-gŏn’s] bold, merciful, benevolent, yet Korean-like image will be expressed well in formative ways, so that his meaning and spirit will be known to the world.”

Asia has been a major focus for the pope recently. Francis just completed a four-day trip to Mongolia after which he said: “I have been to the heart of Asia, and it did me good.”

At the conclusion of this year’s World Youth Day, in Lisbon, Portugal, Francis announced that the next event would take place in Seoul, South Korea, in 2027.

There are currently more than 5 million Catholics in South Korea, making up about 11.3% of the country’s total population, according to Agenzia Fides.

Though widely practiced in the southern portion of the peninsula, Christianity remains brutally repressed in North Korea under the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un.

According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom: “Anyone caught practicing religion or even suspected of harboring religious views in private [in North Korea] is subject to severe punishment, including arrest, torture, imprisonment, and execution.”

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