Vatican excommunicates pro-govt Chinese Catholic bishop, criticizes Beijing
A Chinese bishop ordained without papal approval has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church, the Vatican has said, bringing relations between the Vatican and Beijing to a new low. In a statement branding Thursday’s ordination illegitimate, the Vatican said Pope Benedict “deplores” the way communist authorities are treating Chinese Catholics who want to remain faithful to Rome instead of to the state-backed Church.
China’s state-sanctioned Catholic Church ordained Joseph Huang Bingzhang as bishop in Shantou city in southern Guangdong province on Thursday despite warnings he would not be recognized because the city has a Vatican-approved bishop.
“Consequently, the Holy See does not recognize him … and he lacks authority to govern the Catholic community of diocese,” the Vatican said on Saturday.
Chinese Catholics, believed to number between 8 million and 12 million, are divided between those who are members of the Church backed by the Communist Party and those loyal to the pope.
In its statement, the Vatican said Beijing authorities had coerced some bishops loyal to the Holy See to attend the ordination service against their will and praised them for trying to resist. A source in China said last week the bishops were accompanied to the event by police.
The Vatican demanded that Catholics in China be given the right to act freely and remain loyal to the pope.
via Vatican excommunicates China bishop, criticizes Beijing | Top News | Reuters. See also these previous Reuters stories:
German Catholic Church opens sexual abuse files, some back to end of WWII
Germany’s Roman Catholic Church will open its files to independent investigators into a sexual abuse crisis, allowing a search as far back as 1945, a bishop announced on Wednesday. Nine German dioceses will open records dating back to the end of World War Two while the 18 others will do so for the period 2000 to 2010, Bishop Stephan Ackermann said in Bonn.
“We want to track down the truth that may be lying undiscovered in the files of previous decades,” said Ackermann, the spokesman on abuse issues for the bishops’ conference. The two studies will provide “not only formal statistics, but also research into the causes (of abuse),” he told journalists, “so we can better understand how this monstrous sexual abuse by clerics and church employees came about.”
The German Church, one of the worst affected in a wave of abuse revelations that swept Europe last year, will use the studies to help hitherto undiscovered victims and improve prevention of future abuse, Ackermann said.
In Ireland, the latest of several government-sponsored reports said on Wednesday the Irish hierarchy continued to conceal cases of child molestation by priests even after it set abuse prevention guidelines in the 1990s.
Christian Pfeiffer of the Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute, which will conduct one study, said the nine dioceses examined back to 1945 should provide an adequate sample to determine if the child molestation cases, which were particularly frequent from the 1950s through the 1970s, had deeper roots.
The second study, conducted by a psychiatric institute at the University of Essen-Duisburg, will analyse the biographies and abusive behaviour of predator priests to identify possible risk factors to consider in prevention efforts.
THIS IS A WORLD WIDE PROBLEM IN EVERY INSTITUTION.
The percentage % of abuses is much higher in public schools,hospitals couples living together with kids from theirs previous relationships,and relatives.
if you have children beware of this places and people.
and with wide spread access to internet pornography the numbers are increasing everywhere.
you don’t believe me investigate government statistics.
Irish Catholic Church concealed child abuse even after new prevention rules in 1990s
A government-sponsored report said on Wednesday the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Ireland continued to conceal the sexual abuse of children by priests even after it introduced rules in the mid-1990s to protect minors.
Revelations of rape and beatings by members of religious orders and the priesthood in the past have shattered the dominant role of the Catholic Church in Ireland. But the latest report into the handling of sex abuse claims in the diocese of Cloyne, in County Cork, shows that senior-ranking clergy were still trying to cover up abuse allegations almost until the present day.
“This is not a catalogue of failure from a different era. This is not about an Ireland of 50 years ago. This is about Ireland now,” Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald told a news conference.
The report, which focuses on 19 priests who allegedly abused children during a period from January 1996 to February 2009, lists how the diocese failed to report all sexual abuse complaints to the police and did not report any complaints to the health authorities between 1996 and 2008. The bishop formerly responsible for the diocese, John Magee, falsely told the authorities that he was reporting all abuse allegations to the police, the report said. He resigned in March last year after a Church investigation said his handling of abuse allegations had exposed children to risk.
The report also criticized the Vatican as “entirely unhelpful” in describing guidelines on how to deal with abuse accusations as “merely a study document.” The government will decide soon whether to summon the papal nuncio, the pope’s representative in Ireland, over the matter, Shatter said.
The report said that the Church’s own guidelines would have protected children had they been implemented. Complainants’ pain was compounded by the fact that their abusers appeared to have suffered no sanctions after the abuse had been revealed. One priest even officiated at the wedding of one of his victims.
This matter shocked the population of Ireland, especially since it was revealed that the Vatican had, in previous times, sent out an ultra-secret letter, written in Latin by Cardinal Ratzinger as he then was, the present Pope Benedict, ordering bishops worldwide to conceal child abuse from the civil authorities, and letting either the Vatican or the local Catholic Archbishops handle the matter. These letters became public, and it was also revealed that worldwide there were so many cases of priests abusing children that the Vatican was swamped in trying to deal with the matter. After the Irish Prime Minister made a strong emotional speech to Parliament on the matter, the Vatican responded by recalling its Ambassador (Papal Nuncio) to Ireland and publicly scolding the Prime Minister. It will be interesting to see what the Irish population will do in response. Will that, as the people of the German State of Bavaria did in response to a similar episode of widespread child abuse by Catholic priests and resign en-Mass from the Catholic Church, and then try to reform it from the outside ((Shades of Martin Luther))…?
C. ALEXANDER BROWN
German court fines SSPX Bishop Williamson for denying Holocaust
Ultra-traditionalist Catholic bishop Richard Williamson was fined 6,500 euros Monday by a German court for publicly denying the Holocaust in 2009, a court spokesman said. British-born Williamson, 71, who belongs to a controversial Catholic splinter group, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), was appealing a 2010 fine of 10,000 euros for telling Swedish TV that no more than 300,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust.
He also denied in the interview the existence of gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps. Holocaust denial is a hate crime in Germany. Consensus among historians is that the Nazis killed six million Jews in the Holocaust.
Williamson’s statements became an embarrassment for the Vatican which readmitted him after a 22-year excommunication only days following the interview. In his 2010 book, Light of the World, Pope Benedict XVI said he would not have lifted the ban on Williamson if he had known of his far-right views, adding that the Vatican’s poor communications in the matter was a “total meltdown.”
German prosecutors demanded increasing the fine to 12,000 euros during the appeals process.
Read the full story by Kalina Oroschakoff here.
.
I wonder if hitler would have readmitted the ghosts of 6 million Jews to life?
Yes sure, ugh
Benedict was born in 1928 and grew up in the nazi era. He learned his lessons well in their hitler youth core, even if he was drafted.
Just note that now that this issue has been exposed, we have all these complicated lies appearing.
The church will do anything to preserve its money and power. Its been reported that Williamson has about 600,000 neo nazi followers.
The church needs the money to pay off the victims of the endless hidden molestation of children.
UK Catholics urged to shun meat on Fridays
Britain’s Catholics have been urged to make more effort to follow religious custom and abstain from eating meat on Fridays, potentially boosting sales of fish.
Church law required Catholics over the centuries to comply with this abstinence as part of Friday penance, the day set aside for special prayer and fasting to mark the day Jesus died. Traditionally Catholics have opted to eat fish instead, though a combination of new church guidance and changing eating habits has eroded this habit.
Now the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales wants to re-establish the practice of Friday penance and its abstinence from eating meat as a symbol of a simple shared act of self-denial.
“I think Catholics will welcome this,” the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, told reporters. “What we have sought to do in this decision is to establish a shared practice, a shared habit, because habits that are carried out together are better learned and are stronger — we give each other mutual support. So that’s why there’s a simple, across-the-board expectation that this will be something that Catholics will do.”
In 1984, the Church broadened its list of things Catholics could do to mark Friday penance in an attempt to attract more people to take part, but it only seemed to dilute adherence to the non-meat rule. The Church hopes the practice will be resumed from September 16 to mark the first anniversary of Pope Benedict’s visit to England and Scotland.
via UK Catholics urged to shun meat on Fridays | Reuters.
.
Vatican boosts pressure on bishops to widen use of traditional Latin mass
The Vatican told Catholic bishops around the world on Friday they had to obey a papal order allowing priests to say the old-style Latin mass for traditionalist Catholics, whether they liked it or not. The Vatican issued an “instruction” to bishops as a follow-up to a 2007 papal decree authorizing the wider adoption of the Latin Mass, which was in universal use before the 1962-1965 Vatican Council introduced masses in local languages.
The re-instatement of the Latin mass was one of the demands of ultra-traditionalists whose leaders were excommunicated in 1988, prompting the first schism in modern times. The pope, in a nod the traditionalists, satisfied many of them in 2007 when he allowed a wider use of the Latin mass, in which the priest faced east with his back to the faithful for most of the service.
But some bishops around the world said privately it was a headache because of the scarcity of priests trained in Latin, and logistical problems inserting Latin mass in their schedule. The five-page instruction from the Vatican’s doctrinal department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, made it clear that the pope wants bishops to follow his orders.
“It is the task of the Diocesan bishop to undertake all necessary measures to ensure respect for the ‘forma extraordinaria’,” the instruction said, using a Latin term for the old liturgy. The return of the mass met with resistance in many places and has been privately opposed by some bishops, who either have dragged their feet in implementing the decree or put it on the back burner, saying they had more pressing issues to deal with.
.
Vatican condemns Canadian ex-bishop over child porn
The Vatican has condemned former Canadian Bishop Raymond Lahey after he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and said it planned to take disciplinary action against him. Lahey, former Bishop of Antigonish in the eastern Canadian province of Nova Scotia, was charged with possession and importation of child pornography in 2009. He pleaded guilty on Wednesday and his sentence is due to be handed down later.
“The Catholic Church condemns sexual exploitation in all its forms, especially when perpetrated against minors,” the Vatican press office said in a statement on Wednesday. “Although the civil process has run its course, the Holy See will continue to follow the canonical procedures in effect for such cases, which will result in the imposition of the appropriate disciplinary or penal measures,” it added.
The case has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, particularly because Lahey oversaw the settlement of long-standing sex abuse allegations against several priests shortly before he was charged in 2009.
The Vatican has toughened up its laws on sexual abuse to tackle the scandal in the ranks of the Church, which entered a new chapter last year as increasing numbers of victims came forward in several countries.
.
Belgium looks to Pope Benedict to help end its clerical sexual abuse crisis
Belgium’s politicians and prelates are looking to Pope Benedict to help end a clerical sexual abuse crisis that is crippling the local Catholic Church and frustrating judicial authorities unable to resolve it.
Calls to punish former Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who shocked Belgium last week by publicly excusing abuse cases that caused his downfall last year, have come from the Belgian prime minister, justice and foreign ministers and several senior politicians. Belgian bishops have denounced Vangheluwe, 74, who quit as bishop of Bruges after admitting to molesting his nephew, and several bishops have made clear they want swift punitive action from the Vatican, which took control of his case this month.
But there is no consensus on what Benedict, who has the final say on Vangheluwe’s fate, should do. He has shied away from stiff punishments for bishops caught in the abuse crisis plaguing the Church in Europe and the United States.
Belgian justice cannot intervene because the abuse cases, which Vangheluwe admits to, all occurred before the 20-year statute of limitations for them. Church law has no provision to defrock a bishop although the Vatican has done it in rare cases.
“The Church … should be much more severe and much more complete than what has been said up until now,” Justice Minister Stefaan De Clerck, a Christian Democrat, said on Friday.
Guy Harpigny, the bishop of Tournai, said: “I hope the Holy See understands that we need its help to clear up this affair – it’s time for it to get to work.”
Vatican warns China bishops over illegal ordination
Bishops in China who are ordained without papal authorisation inflict a “grave wound” on the entire Catholic Church and should not let themselves be manipulated by the government, the Vatican has said. The Vatican issued the warning on Thursday after a meeting of a special commission that studies the situation of Catholics in China, who are not allowed to recognise the pope’s authority but forced to be members of a state-backed Church.
Last November, the Vatican condemned the ordination without papal permission of Reverend Joseph Guo Jincai, a member of the state-backed Church in Chengde. For a period before that, China and the Vatican had reached an agreement that the Vatican would give tacit but not explicit approval to some of the appointments of bishops by the government-backed Church after discreet consultations.
It said at the time various bishops loyal to the pope had come under pressure to attend Guo’s ordination ceremony.
Catholics in China are divided between one Church that recognises the pope and his authority to name bishops and a state-backed “patriotic association” which ordains its own. Priests anywhere in the world who allow themselves to be made bishops without papal approval are usually subjected to automatic excommunication, or a total cutoff from the Church.
But in its statement, the Vatican said “external pressures and constrictions” in China might exempt the new bishops from such drastic punishment.
.
“Vatican warns China…”
This surely makes someone feel better.
Belgium urges Vatican to impose harsh punishment on sex abuse bishop
Belgium’s justice minister urged the Vatican on Friday to impose stiff punishment on a disgraced Catholic bishop who denies being a paedophile despite admitting to sexually abusing two of his own nephews. Stefaan de Clerck spoke out amid a media uproar after former Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe defended himself on television by saying the abuse he committed was only “superficial.”
Vangheluwe, who quit his post and went into hiding a year ago after admitting to molesting a nephew, confessed in the interview on Thursday evening that he had molested a second one. He left Belgium last week under Vatican orders to seek “spiritual and psychological treatment” abroad and Belgian media say he is now in a French monastery. The Vatican has said the final decision on disciplining him lies with Pope Benedict.
“The Church must take up this case and see what sanction it should impose. It should be much more severe and much more complete than what has been said up until now,” De Clerck, a Christian Democrat, told RTL radio. “We expect the Church to punish him,” he said. “They told him to leave the country — that was also to shut him up. Making comments trying to minimise what happened is unacceptable.”
The Vatican has been reluctant to impose stiff punishments on bishops found guilty of covering up sexual abuse of youths by priests under their authority. Three bishops in Ireland and one in Germany have resigned but others accused of mismanagement have held onto their jobs.
.
This statement that a Catholic cannot prosecute a case against the pope is religious bigotry pure and simple.
As Dr. Mc Hugh–a professional blogger of hate against the church can attest–Catholics can be fair minded about their church even hate their own church as she clearly does.
Can you imagine saying that blacks cannot be seated on juries in which black criminal defendants are charged? But here since her bigotry is directed against the Catholic church it is tolerated as anti-Catholicism is the bigotry of the left intelligentsia.
-
Resident FaithWorld Expert
-
