Baltimore, Md., Jun 12, 2019 / 05:04 pm (CNA).- The US bishops voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to authorize a national third-party system for victims confidentially to report cases of abuse by bishops in violation of Vos estis lux mundi.
“I think… […]
Denver, Colo., Jun 12, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- Jack Phillips, a Christian cake baker based in Colorado, is being sued for a third time for declining to make a cake that expresses messages contrary to his religious beliefs.
Phillips is the owner of Mas… […]
Baltimore, Md., Jun 12, 2019 / 03:48 pm (CNA).- At the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ biannual assemblies, new members of the US episcopate are announced, to much applause. CNA spoke to the newest members of the USCCB to find out what it’s like to be the new kid on the block.
Two of this year’s newcomers, Bishops William Muhm and Joseph Coffey have much in common. They have both served in the Navy, both as chaplains and prior to entering seminary; both were announced as the auxiliary bishops of the Archdiocese for the Military Services Jan. 22; and both were consecrated March 25. Neither expected to be bishops.
This is the first time either of them have attended a USCCB general assembly, and they told CNA they were a little bit intimidated at first by some of their brother bishops.
Bishop Coffey said that he did not anticipate speaking up much during this assembly, and that “as a new guy, I’m going to do a lot of observing.” Coffey was chosen to be one of the tellers of the assembly, an administrative duty that means he will be verifying the vote totals of the elections. He told CNA that he suspects he was chosen for this role because he is a brand new bishop.
Mild episcopal hazing aside, Coffey said that “it’s pretty darn exciting” to be at the general assembly and to be sitting next to the men he has read about and admired for years. He said he felt as though he has joined an “incredibly warm and friendly and welcoming community of brothers.”
Coffey said that as a bishop, he has been given the chance to represent Archbishop Timothy Broglio at events, and has traveled around the country with the permission of the military. As he is still active duty in the Navy, he said he will be seeking retirement or entering the reserves in order to work full-time as a bishop.
The whole experience, said Coffey, has been surreal.
“I was not expecting this at all, and so, it has only been a couple of months, so I’m still getting used to God’s providence and how it’s really changed my life, but it’s exciting, to say ‘yes’ and see what happens,” he said.
Bishop Muhm likened the feeling to the first day of school, but said that “everyone’s been really welcoming.” He relished the chance to get to know the other bishops and to develop fraternal bonds, which he said was “one of the most important reasons to be here.”
Like Coffey, Muhm also said he planned on “doing a lot more listening than talking”, and that he was adjusting to the nuances associated with the bishops’ conference. With his primary priestly experience as a military chaplain, and only about six weeks administering a parish prior to being appointed a bishop, Muhm’s ecclesiastical career has been very different from most of his brother bishops.
“It’s been a little bit overwhelming, with the level of detail that’s being discussed,” said Muhm. “I don’t have a background in many of these things that they’re talking about, and I hadn’t seen the documents until recently.”
Muhm told CNA that he has been enjoying his time at the general assembly nevertheless, and is excited to move forward with his duties as bishop, which will involve tending to the needs of Catholics in the military serving in Asia and Europe.
Bishop Alex Aclan, an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was driving when he received a call from the nuncio Feb. 17. Aclan, who was on a sabbatical at the time, said that he was “pretty calm” when he found out his new role, and that he had “really no strong emotions.”
As the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is home to about 11.6 million people, with about 4.3 million Catholics, the auxiliary bishops are assigned to regions. Aclan is assigned to the San Fernando region, which includes 55 parishes, 13 high schools, and three hospitals. He said he has had a chance to visit a little less than half of the parishes so far, and that he has been very busy.
Aclan told CNA that he has been warmly received by the other bishops, who are “very welcoming” and “very hospitable, you know, when they see that you look lost.”
“They walk up to you and they’re talking to you, so they’re very really nice,” he said with a laugh.
While Aclan may be new to the USCCB, his prior role as the Vicar for Clergy for Losg Angeles archdiocese meant that he was already familiar with some of the bishops, and was not entirely alone at his first general assembly.
“Some of the bishops actually attended the conferences that we had (for other Vicars for Clergy), and some of those Vicars for Clergy now have also become bishops themselves,” he said.
While Bishops Aclan, Coffey, and Muhm are all newly consecrated, Archbishop Borys Gudziak was consecrated nearly seven years ago. Gudziak was installed June 4 as head of the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Philadelphia. Prior to that, he was Bishop of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Saint Vladimir the Great of Paris, and thus a member of the French bishops’ conference. The spring meeting marked the first time he has attended a USCCB general assembly.
Gudziak said that transitioning from a European eparchy to an American archeparchy was an adjustment, and that the Ukrainian Catholic population in the United States is substantially different than that of Europe. His past eparchy included five western European countries, and the war in Ukraine has resulted in an influx of very poor, often undocumented, Ukrainian emigrants moving to the European Union.
For Gudziak, his time in Paris “wasn’t a place or position or a job, it really became a family.” So when he when he was asked to come to America, it was “mixed emotions.”
He said he felt “sadness of leaving family members whom we went through thin and thin, I would say, not thin and thick. But great joy at coming back home,” he said. Gudziak was born and raised in the United States.
Comparatively, the Ukrainian Catholics in the United States have “about 70 years more history” than their western European counterparts, as well as “much more infrastructure.”
“The number of churches, schools, facilities, that are archeparchy here I would say has 50-70 times as much as we had in France,” said Gudziak.
Despite this, Gudziak said that his new parishioners face many of the same issues as his older ones, particularly among young people.
“With the young generation, there’s a need for coming down as Jesus came down and meeting people heart to heart,” he said. “Or as one young person had told me, ‘I need to be met at my broken heart.’”
The Ukrainian Catholic Church is one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches. And although he is not a Latin rite bishop like the majority of the bishops in the USCCB, Gudziak said that his new brother bishops have been “particularly friendly, knowledgeable, and embracing.”
And while he declined, citing his relative newness, specifically to say how he planned on using his unique experience to help the USCCB, Gudziak told CNA that he thinks he can play a role in improving relations between the Church in the US and Churches around the world.
“One thing that I would like to witness to is the universality of the Church,” said Gudziak. He said that due to the lack of American priests and seminarians who study in other countries, “it’s becoming more difficult to keep a knowledgeable, friendly relationship with other episcopal conferences and other bishops.”
“And I hope that I can contribute to a friendship between the Church in the U.S. and the Church in Western and Eastern Europe,” said Gudziak, “since I lived in both parts of that continent for many years.”
St. Louis, Mo., Jun 11, 2019 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- Judge Michael F. Stelzer of Missouri Circuit Court in St. Louis granted the city’s Planned Parenthood clinic a preliminary injunction Monday, allowing the state’s only abortion clinic to remai… […]
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.
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.”
© Catholic World Report