A view of a Pride flag hanging from Peterborough Cathedral in 2019 / Shutterstock
Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2023 / 15:45 pm (CNA).
As Church of England leaders meet in a contentious synod over whether to bless same-sex unions, tensions escalated when a diocese reported a lay synod member to police for “hate speech.”
The Diocese of Coventry announced reported synod member Sam Margrave to the police after he reportedly posted his beliefs that same-sex relationships are sinful. The diocese is part of the Anglican communion and not in communion with the Catholic Church.
Margarve has been a vocal critic of Anglican Church leaders who want to bless homosexual unions and those who want to go further and perform marriages for homosexual couples.
Bishop Christopher Cocksworth of the Diocese of Coventry informed Margrave that they had reported him to the police, according to a news release from the United Kingdom-based Christian advocacy group Christian Concern.
“The diocesan secretary has had no option, in view of a number of complaints received, [but] to report your offending tweets to the West Midlands Police and is in continuing conversation with them,” the correspondence read.
“[The police] have advised her that they have been able to speak to you but that you continue to deny you have done anything wrong.”
When contacted by CNA, the diocese forwarded its statement condemning Margrave but refused to comment further on its decision to report him to the police.
In its statement, the diocese wrote that “everyone has the right to feel safe when interacting online” and encouraged people to read an information sheet that includes information about how to receive mental health support and report supposed hate speech to social media companies and local police.
“We are extremely sorry when an individual makes comments that fall short of the social media guidelines published by the Church of England and fails to behave in a way fitting of their office as a member of Synod,” the statement read.
“We continue to take all the appropriate action available to us, including reporting the matter to external agencies, and are working to introduce a Code of Conduct with sanctions for non-compliance to our own Synod. We have not taken these actions lightly and have only done so in view of the sheer number of complaints received from third parties, and only after other avenues have been exhausted, including repeated offers of support to the individual concerned.”
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Sacred Heart Cathedral in Mandalay, Burma. / maodoltee/Shutterstock.
Mandalay, Burma, Apr 8, 2022 / 13:45 pm (CNA).
Approximately 40 Burmese soldiers forcibly took control of a Catholic cathedral in Mandalay prior to a Lenten prayer service on … […]
Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort. Credit: Diocèse de Reims.
Rome Newsroom, Jun 30, 2021 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
A Catholic archbishop said Wednesday that a new law passed by France’s National Assembly has “erased” the foundation of French bioethics… […]
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 2, 2023 / 05:15 am (CNA).
On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis said Jesus voluntarily took on the pain and abandonment of his Passion and Crucifixion so that he could be with us in whatever sorrow or difficulty we might be experiencing.
Jesus “experienced abandonment in order not to leave us prey to despair, in order to stay at our side forever,” the pope said during Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square April 2.
“He did this for me, for you,” he said, “because whenever you or I or anyone else seems pinned to the wall — and we have seen someone pinned to the wall — you see someone lost in a blind alley, plunged into the abyss of abandonment, sucked into a whirlwind of ‘whys’ without answer, there can still be some hope…”
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Pope Francis presided over the Palm Sunday Mass one day after being discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
The pope was admitted to the hospital for three days beginning March 29 for treatment for a bronchitis infection, the Vatican said.
An estimated 60,000 people were at the papal Mass, according to the Vatican Gendarmes.
In his homily, Francis spoke in a soft voice as he emphasized that whatever situation of abandonment we find ourselves in, Jesus is at our side.
The pope also said that we will find Jesus in those who are abandoned, recalling the death in November last year of a homeless man from Germany, who was found under the colonnade of St. Peter‘s Square.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Jesus “wants us to care for our brothers and sisters who resemble him most, those experiencing extreme suffering and solitude,” he said. “Today, brothers and sisters, there are entire peoples who are exploited and abandoned; the poor live on our streets and we look the other way, we turn around; there are migrants who are no longer faces but numbers; prisoners are disowned; people written off as problems.”
Pope Francis said these people are “Christs” for us: “People who are abandoned, invisible, hidden, discarded with white gloves,” such as the unborn, the isolated elderly, the forgotten sick, the abandoned disabled, and the lonely young.
“Jesus, in his abandonment, asks us to open our eyes and hearts to all who find themselves abandoned,” he said.
Pope Francis entered St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile April 2. He was driven to the central obelisk for the blessing of the palms and the proclamation of a reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew and the singing of Psalm 23.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
The blessing followed the procession of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, and laypeople carrying palm fronds, olive branches, and the large weaved palms called “parmureli” to commemorate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Pope Francis has not led the procession since 2019.
For the start of Mass, the pope was again driven in the popemobile from the obelisk to the altar in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Palm Sunday, also called Passion Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week, which will lead in to the sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, and concludes with the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection beginning at the Easter Vigil.
On Palm Sunday, the Mass includes the reading of the Lord’s Passion from the Gospel of St. Matthew.
In his homily on April 2, Pope Francis focused on a line from the Gospel and repeated in the Psalm — Jesus’ cry of abandonment to the Father — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
“‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ In the Bible, the word ‘forsake’ is powerful,” the pope said.
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis’ Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
He noted how one might feel forsaken “at moments of extreme pain: love that fails, or is rejected or betrayed; children who are rejected and aborted; situations of repudiation, the lot of widows and orphans; broken marriages, forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression; the solitude of sickness.”
“In a word, in the drastic severing of the bonds that unite us to others,” he said. “There [Jesus] tells us this word: abandonment. Christ brought all of this to the cross; upon his shoulders, he bore the sins of the world. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only begotten, beloved Son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: the abandonment, the distance of God.”
“But, why did it have to come to this? For us. There is no other answer: Us,” Francis underlined. “He became one of us to the very end, in order to be completely and definitively one with us.”
At the end of his homily, Pope Francis remained in silence for over two and a half minutes before the singing of the Creed.
Jesus, the pope said, “has endured the distance of abandonment in order to take up into his love every possible distance that we can feel. So that each of us might say: in my failings — each of you has fallen many times — and I can say in my failings, in my desolation, whenever I feel betrayed or I have betrayed someone, when I feel cast aside or I have cast aside others, or when I feel forsaken or have forsaken others, we can think that Jesus was abandoned, betrayed, cast aside.”
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis’ Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
In our failures, we can remember that Jesus is at our side, Pope Francis said. “When I feel lost and confused, when I feel that I can’t go on, he is with me, he is there. In the thousand fits of ‘why…?’ and with many ‘whys’ unanswered, he is there.”
At the conclusion of Mass, Pope Francis led the Angelus, a traditional prayer honoring Mary.
In a brief message before the prayer, he invited Catholics to live Holy Week “as the tradition of God’s holy faithful people teaches us, that is, accompanying the Lord Jesus with faith and love.”
“Let us learn from our Mother, the Virgin Mary,” he said. “She followed her Son with the closeness of her heart; she was one soul with him and, although she did not understand everything, together with him she surrendered herself fully to the will of God the Father.”
“May Our Lady help us to be close to Jesus present in the suffering, discarded, abandoned people. May Our Lady take us by the hand to Jesus present in these people,” he said. “To all, happy journey toward Easter.”
From the popemobile, Pope Francis greeted those gathered in the square and in the adjoining thoroughfare after the Mass.
The full text of Pope Francis’ homily for Palm Sunday 2023 can be read here.
In a comment only yesterday on CWR’s “what to do about politics?”, even non-entity/yours truly volunteered that friendship must not be morphed into being misconstrued as concurrence or complicity (the case of Jacques Maritain’s friendship with Saul Alinsky). https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/02/05/what-to-do-with-politics/
Will the serendipity papal photo-op with Welby now be exploited in the British “hate-speech” case against their own synodalist Sam Margrave, i.e., REAL “hate-speech” being the institutionalized criminalization of binary speech?
Now that Fr. Benedict has passed, is the appearance of stocks like Welby and Greenshields, going to become a feature to suit the topics? Will it be “inside synodality” or “only inside synodality”? Outside? Fr. Benedict is no longer there to attest to anything but their agreement with Pope Francis will authenticate the recognizing and imparting of Fr. Benedict’s discretions? Says Welby, “Our pilgrimage together is a sign for the world.”
What this is showing to Pope Francis and to us, is that the temptations that beset him as Fr. Bergoglio before the papal election, have decidedly overtaken him in the Papal office and now he himself is actively pursuing them and using the office to spread them.
There is also a breakdown in transparency that I will not elaborate here. Consequences flow for all these and from all these; and they should be kept distinct for the sake of a fidelity.
Lamentably, things have gotten unhinged. It may not be trenchant but that can’t make evil good, or untruth, truth Meantime each will continue to provoke the other ones and produce more deranging outcrops.
There is a third layer and it does not amelorioate the problems, rather makes it worse. There is a piling up of misrepresentations going on that can be very diverting that at same time multiply the gravity of the situation, increase the guilt they incur and deepen the complexes, tending to confirm it all.
Can anyone explain what the significant difference is between modernist/materialist/politically correct Anglicanism and the German brand of synodality? Both use the same worldly and false ad hominem, and strawman arguments to deny or to denigrate the infinite wisdom of the Word of God, divinely inspired dogma, and the unchanging, (read: unchangeable) teaching of the Church? To paraphrase the English poet, Wordsworth: It seems that
“The world is too much with us…
We lay waste our powers…
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
Or to quote the bard on such foolish “worldly” self-impressed, love affairs: “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”
When one compromises religion with politics, especially the lame and limping form of politics that we see today, you get lame and limping religion. Absurdum Infinitum
Unfortunate optics!
Wondering whether the papal choreographers knew where the Anglican ecclesial communion was heading so recently in its own permanent synod, when the recent airline interview by Pope Francis was conducted? Will Pope Francis now be propped up falsely, in England, as synodally in step with the Anglican version of German synodality, and its Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/02/05/pope-francis-in-flight-press-conference-god-accompanies-people-with-same-sex-attraction/
In a comment only yesterday on CWR’s “what to do about politics?”, even non-entity/yours truly volunteered that friendship must not be morphed into being misconstrued as concurrence or complicity (the case of Jacques Maritain’s friendship with Saul Alinsky). https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/02/05/what-to-do-with-politics/
Will the serendipity papal photo-op with Welby now be exploited in the British “hate-speech” case against their own synodalist Sam Margrave, i.e., REAL “hate-speech” being the institutionalized criminalization of binary speech?
But, who are we to judge?
Now that Fr. Benedict has passed, is the appearance of stocks like Welby and Greenshields, going to become a feature to suit the topics? Will it be “inside synodality” or “only inside synodality”? Outside? Fr. Benedict is no longer there to attest to anything but their agreement with Pope Francis will authenticate the recognizing and imparting of Fr. Benedict’s discretions? Says Welby, “Our pilgrimage together is a sign for the world.”
What this is showing to Pope Francis and to us, is that the temptations that beset him as Fr. Bergoglio before the papal election, have decidedly overtaken him in the Papal office and now he himself is actively pursuing them and using the office to spread them.
There is also a breakdown in transparency that I will not elaborate here. Consequences flow for all these and from all these; and they should be kept distinct for the sake of a fidelity.
Lamentably, things have gotten unhinged. It may not be trenchant but that can’t make evil good, or untruth, truth Meantime each will continue to provoke the other ones and produce more deranging outcrops.
There is a third layer and it does not amelorioate the problems, rather makes it worse. There is a piling up of misrepresentations going on that can be very diverting that at same time multiply the gravity of the situation, increase the guilt they incur and deepen the complexes, tending to confirm it all.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2023-02/pope-francis-south-sudan-interview-justin-welby.html
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/01/the-church-of-england-takes-a-third-way-on-gay-marriage
Can anyone explain what the significant difference is between modernist/materialist/politically correct Anglicanism and the German brand of synodality? Both use the same worldly and false ad hominem, and strawman arguments to deny or to denigrate the infinite wisdom of the Word of God, divinely inspired dogma, and the unchanging, (read: unchangeable) teaching of the Church? To paraphrase the English poet, Wordsworth: It seems that
“The world is too much with us…
We lay waste our powers…
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
Or to quote the bard on such foolish “worldly” self-impressed, love affairs: “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”
When one compromises religion with politics, especially the lame and limping form of politics that we see today, you get lame and limping religion. Absurdum Infinitum