CNA Staff, Jun 3, 2020 / 04:45 am (CNA).- The Northern Ireland Assembly voted Tuesday in favor of a motion rejecting the “imposition” of abortion legislation by the Westminster parliament.
The motion was non-binding, meaning that it … […]
Rome Newsroom, Jun 2, 2020 / 09:15 am (CNA).- Bishops in Northern Ireland have strongly backed a call by a campaigner with Down syndrome to reject a law permitting abortion up to birth on grounds of disability.
The bishops spoke out ahead of a J… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 2, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Catholic publishers in the United Kingdom are turning to social media and online sales in an effort to survive the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on their businesses.
Pierpaolo Finaldi, CEO of the Ca… […]
CNA Staff, May 30, 2020 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- An English cardinal will ask Sunday why the government has failed to set a date for churches to reopen when it is lifting lockdown restrictions on car showrooms.
In a homily May 31, Cardinal Vincent Nichols will question why plans to ease lockdown measures from June 1 do not include places of worship.
Preaching at a Pentecost Sunday Mass in Westminster Cathedral, the cardinal will say that the Catholic Church accepted the government’s decision in March to close churches “because the protection of life required it.”
“But this week’s announcements by the Prime Minister that some indoor sales premises can open tomorrow and that most shops can open on June 15, questions directly the reasons why our churches remain closed,” the Archbishop of Westminster will say, according to a press release issued May 30.
“We are told that these openings, which are to be carefully managed, are based on the need to encourage key activities to start up again. Why are churches excluded from this decision?”
Public liturgies were suspended in England March 20 and churches closed a few days later. Bishops in the country have faced mounting calls from Catholics to reopen churches and allow congregations at Masses while respecting social distancing rules.
A video by lay Catholics appealing for churches to be reopened has been viewed more than 10,000 times since it was posted April 22.
Cardinal Nichols, who has been involved in discussions between the government and religious communities during the lockdown, is expected to say that the pandemic has underlined how important faith is to many people.
“The role of faith in our society has been made even clearer in these last weeks: as a motivation for the selfless care of the sick and dying; as providing crucial comfort in bereavement; as a source of immense and effective provision for those in sharp and pressing need; as underpinning a vision of the dignity of the every person, a dignity that has to be at the heart of the rebuilding of our society,” he will say.
“The opening of our churches, even if just for individual prayer, helps to nurture this vital contribution to our common good.”
The cardinal, who is the president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, will also say that the bishops are confident they can reopen churches safely.
“We are ready to follow the Government’s guidelines as soon as they are finalized. What is the risk to a person who sits quietly in a church which is being thoroughly cleaned, properly supervised and in which social distancing is maintained? The benefits of being able to access places of prayer is profound, on individual and family stability and, significantly, on their willingness to help others in their need,” he will say.
“It is now time to move to the phased opening of our churches.”
The island of Guernsey will permit what are thought to be the first public Masses in the British Isles since the coronavirus lockdown from June 1.
The island, located in the English Channel, is a self-governing British crown dependency and not part of the U.K. It is therefore able to set its own rules.
The U.K. is among the countries worst affected by the coronavirus pandemic. With a population of 67 million, the U.K has had more than 274,000 documented coronavirus cases and 38,450 deaths as of May 30, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
CNA Staff, May 29, 2020 / 05:30 am (CNA).- When it is working at full capacity, the altar bread department at St. Cecilia’s Abbey produces millions of hosts a year, bringing revenue to the community of Benedictine nuns on the Isle of Wight, an is… […]
CNA Staff, May 28, 2020 / 04:32 pm (CNA).- An auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Cologne has announced he is no longer participating in the “Synodal Forum” on sexuality that is part of the “Synodal Path” underway in Germany.
Bishop Dominikus Schwaderlapp told the newspaper Die Tagespost on May 28 that the forum was trying to cast into doubt fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church on sexual morality by referring to sexuality as “polyvalent.”
The forum’s final working paper was operating on the assumption that the teachings of the Church on sexual morality required “further development,” the bishop said, adding that such an approach did not do justice to the Catholic view of the “divine gift of sexuality.”
Schwaderlapp told CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language partner agency, that whilst he was withdrawing from the Synodal Forum, officially titled “Life in Successful Relationships,” he still would be a participant in the “Synodal Process.”
“Over the last 50 years in particular, the magisterium of the Church has produced precise statements on questions of sexual morality. In doing so it has deepened and developed the teaching of the Church.”
“’Further development’ can never mean destroying what is there, rather it should build on it. In particular, the Holy Popes Paul VI and John Paul II made a binding statement that sexuality, from the point of view of creation, comprises two meanings that are inseparably linked: the transmission of life and the communication of love,” Schwaderlapp told CNA Deutsch.
Members of the Synodal Forum had been expected to accept the basic premise of a “polyvalent sexuality”, the bishop said, which would predicate a change in the Church’s teaching. No general debate of the presented paper been provided for, Schaderlapp said, which led to his decision to renounce his membership in the forum.
Speaking to CNA Deutsch, the bishop reflected on the papal documents Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio.
“These texts are not ‘food for thought’ but magisterially binding documents,” he said.
The bishop expressed concern that the approaches of the “Synodal Way” are missing the real concerns of Catholic people. He asked whether the “existential questions of the people” were really being dealt with in the process.
“Which of these questions are still relevant when we lie on our deathbed and prepare for the encounter with the heavenly judge – hopefully we will do that then? It seems to me that quite different questions are relevant then, for example, ‘How hard have I tried in my life – day after day – to love God and my neighbour?'”
It was not the alleged “clinging to tradition,” he said, that has alienated people from the Church, “but because we [the Church] are too concerned with ourselves and do not give answers to the existential questions of humankind.”
The bishop stressed that it is precisely in questions of morality and identity that the Church “really has something to say.”
Schwaderlapp also offered the view that “the widening gap between the Church’s teaching and the life of the faithful also tells us that the challenging understanding of sexuality as a gift from God has – at least in Germany – in recent years been criminally neglected. This must change, and urgently so.”
Rome, Italy, May 28, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Walking toward St. Peter’s Square, one sees sign after sign posted on the closed doors of religious gift shops and other local businesses with large red letters stating: “Without help from the go… […]
CNA Staff, May 28, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- The island of Guernsey will permit what may be the first public Masses in the British Isles since the coronavirus lockdown Monday.
While churches remain closed across the United Kingdom, autho… […]
CNA Staff, May 28, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican has ordered the prominent Italian Catholic layman Enzo Bianchi to leave the monastery he founded in 1965.
The Holy See made the ruling in a decree dated May 13, signed by Vatican Secretary of Stat… […]
CNA Staff, May 26, 2020 / 11:02 am (CNA).- A book considering how homosexual couples might receive a formal, liturgical blessing of their union in the Catholic Church was written in response to a request from the liturgical committee of the Austrian bishops’ conference, according to the book’s principal author.
The work includes contributions by a number of German speaking theologians and a liturgical section, including a suggestion for how such a Church blessing of homosexual unions might be “celebrated” in Catholic churches.
The official title of the book is “The Benediction of Same-Sex Partnerships.” One of its principal authors and editors is Father Ewald Volgger, director of the Institute for Liturgical Studies and Sacramental Theology at the Catholic Private University of Linz.
Speaking to an Austrian diocesan paper, Father Volgger asserted he would like to see an introduction of an official benediction for homosexual couples “as soon as possible”, but conceded that “according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, homosexual acts are in no way to be condoned and homosexual people are called to chastity”.
The 58-year-old priest added that “there has been movement on the subject,” and asserted that a rewrite of the Catechism of the Catholic Church might be in order to facilitate “an official liturgy” that would be “based on Church doctrine.”
As to why the Catholic Church would change her teachings on sexual morality, Father Volgger pointed to a shift in public perceptions, saying “the doctrine on homosexuality has been discussed throughout Europe in such a way that an opening up is not only debatable but can also be demanded.”
The priest added, “there are also a considerable number of bishops who would like to see a rethinking of sexual morality for the evaluation of same-sex partnerships”.
Furthermore, Volgger argued, such a change might make the teachings of the Church more acceptable and relevant.
The diocesan paper pointed out that same-sex couples are apparently already blessed by a Catholic priest in Vienna’s St. Stephen Cathedral on occasion, and that one such couple was recently interviewed about the ceremony on Austrian TV.
Father Volgger said this was not the type of official benediction he had in mind.
“No, because that is probably the blessing of same-sex couples on Valentine’s Day. These are already widespread and in practice.”
“But a benediction, as it is proposed from a liturgical-theological point of view, would also have an official character, through which the Church expresses the obligation of fidelity and the exclusiveness of the relationship. By the way, it is a very beautiful message that in St. Stephen’s Cathedral everyone has a place and is blessed”.
Among the other authors of the book are several German theologians. In recent years, German bishops in particular have been increasingly outspoken in demanding “discussions about an opening” towards acceptance of practiced homosexuality and the blessing of homosexual unions in the Church.
Following consultations in Berlin in late 2019, the chairman of the Marriage and Family Commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the German bishops agreed that homosexuality is a “normal form” of human sexual identity.
The topic also plays a central role in one of four forums that constitute the controversial “Synodal Process” under way in Germany.
Several members of the “Central Committee of German Catholics” (ZDK), in charge of running the process in tandem with the bishops’ conference, are members of parliament who have personally voted for the re-definition of marriage to include homosexual unions in a vote that legalized such partnerships as “marriages” in Germany in 2017, as CNA Deutsch reported.
Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, vice-president of the German bishops’ conference has also previously called for a “debate” on the blessing of homosexual couples and a change of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality.
Speaking in an interview in January 2018, Bode said: “We need to reflect on how to evaluate a relationship between two people of the same sex in a differentiated way.” He also asked: “Isn’t there so much that is positive, good and right [about a homosexual relationship] that we need to do it more justice?”
The Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, at Christmas 2019 expressed the view that homosexual couples can receive a Church blessing “in the sense of a pastoral accompaniment” in the Catholic Church.
In the same month, Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin stated that both hetero- and homosexuality are “normal forms of sexual predisposition, which cannot or should be be changed with the help of a specific socialization.”
Koch went on to say that “developments” were made possible by Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis’ exhortation of marriage and the family. The Berlin archbishop attended the Vatican Synod on the Family together with Marx and is Chairman of the Marriage and Family Commission of the German bishops’ conference.
He spoke publicly after the German bishops asserted they were committed to “newly assessing” the universal Church’s teaching on homosexuality – and sexual morality in general – during the two-year “synodal process.”
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