Many U.S. Catholics have independent streak – survey
A majority of American Roman Catholics feel strongly about the sacraments and traditional church values such as caring for the poor, but they may not agree with the church teachings on topics such as abortion, same-sex marriage and maintaining a celibate, male clergy, a survey has found.
The “Catholics in America” survey of Roman Catholics published by the National Catholic Reporter found 86 percent said Catholics can disagree with aspects of church teaching and still remain loyal to the church.
“Stated in simplest terms, Catholics in the past 25 years have become more autonomous when making decisions about important moral issues; less reliant on official teaching in reaching those decisions; and less deferential to the authority of the Vatican and individual bishops,” according to the study led by William D’Antonio, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America.
The weeklong survey was conducted online with a representative sample of 1,442 Catholic adults beginning on April 24 (Easter Sunday), and had a 3.5 percentage point margin of error.
“It is noteworthy that helping the poor is almost as core to Catholics’ identity as their belief in Jesus’ resurrection, with 67 percent rating this dimension of Catholicism as very important,” the survey said.
Seventy-three percent said belief in Jesus’ resurrection was very important to them personally.
By contrast, 40 percent said the church’s teachings opposing abortion are very important to them, and even fewer said church teachings opposing same-sex marriage and the death penalty were very important to them.
China criticizes Vatican for excommunicating bishops
China said on Monday the Vatican’s recent excommunication of two Chinese bishops who were ordained without papal approval was “unreasonable” and “rude,” in a sign of escalating tensions between the Vatican and Beijing.
In the government’s first response to the Vatican’s recent denunciations of the ordinations by China’s state-sanctioned Catholic church, the State Bureau of Religious Affairs said it was “greatly concerned” about the excommunication of Joseph Huang Bingzhang and Lei Shiyin.
The “threats of excommunication” are “extremely unreasonable and rude, which has severely hurt the feelings of Chinese Catholics and made its members feel sad,” state news agency Xinhua quoted a spokesman for the bureau as saying.
Huang was ordained without papal approval as bishop in Shantou City in southern Guangdong province in mid-July, and Lei was named as bishop of the city of Leshan on June 29.
Photo credit: REUTERS/Giampiero Sposito (Pope Benedict XVI conducts the holy mass of Pentecost Sunday in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, June 12, 2011)
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Malaysia sets up Vatican ties in gesture to Christian minority
Malaysia and the Vatican agreed on Monday to establish diplomatic ties, a move seen by analysts as a bid by the Malaysian government to appease minority Christians in the mainly Muslim Southeast Asian country. Prime Minister Najib Razak is trying to mend the government’s relations with Christians who make up about 9 percent of the country’s 28 million after a rise in religious tensions ahead of general elections widely expected next year.
Religious tensions have risen in Malaysia following general elections in 2008 when the government recorded its worst performance after mainly Chinese and Indian non-Muslim minorities abandoned Najib’s ruling coalition, complaining of marginalization.
Unhappiness among the Christian minority has since been deepened by an ongoing row over the use of the word “Allah” by Christians to describe God, which led to attacks on houses of worship including several churches last year. “This will be seen as an effort towards reconciliation with Malaysia’s Christian community but will only work to ease the unhappiness of some… because some of the issues have yet to be resolved,” said James Chin, political analyst at Monash University campus in Kuala Lumpur.
Najib has tried to ease the anger by reaching out to Christian groups by providing assurances on their right to practice their religion. But some in his United Malay National Organization or UMNO, the linchpin of the ruling coalition, have cast this approach aside in a bid to woo Malay Muslims, a key vote bank who make up 55 percent of the country’s population. Malaysia’s general election is not due until mid-2013 but many expect Najib to call one as early as next year to profit from continued economic growth in the country.
For more on relations between Kuala Lumpur and its Christian minority, see these previous FaithWorld posts:
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:
Police send “holy” Roman robber to Queen of Heaven jail
Italian police have found a fitting temporary home for an accused jewellery robber whose priestly disguise failed to help him slip past their dragnet.
Police said they tracked down and arrested the 37-year-old male suspect by reviewing closed circuit television footage around Via del Corso and Via Condotti, the swanky shopping district near the Spanish Steps, after a July 4th hold-up at one of Rome’s most prestigious jewellery shops.
Video footage released by Italian police showed a man dressed in the floor-length black cassock and round, wide brimmed black hat commonly worn by priests of the Roman Catholic Church until the 1960s and still favoured by traditionalists.
The footage showed the man was carrying a shopping bag and moving confidently through a crowd of shoppers after the heist, in which two employees were locked in a bathroom.
Police have detained the suspect in the Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) jail on the Tiber River not far from the pope’s Vatican headquarters.
via Police send holy Roman robber to Queen of Heaven | Oddly Enough | Reuters.
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Ireland attacks confessional secrecy after Catholic sex abuse scandal
Ireland’s prime minister has said Catholic clerics would be prosecuted if they failed to tell the authorities about crimes disclosed during confession, the latest blow to the prestige of the once-dominant Church. A report this week found that the Church concealed from the authorities the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, and that clerics appeared to follow Church law rather than Irish guidelines to protect minors.
“The law of the land should not be stopped by a crozier or a collar,” Prime Minister Enda Kenny told journalists on Thursday, referring to the hooked staff held by Catholic bishops during religious services. Kenny said his government would submit legislation to parliament that could jail clerics for up to five years if they failed to report to authorities information about the abuse of children.
The law will override the confessional privilege in Church law that prevents clerics from sharing information, he said. A series of 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.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore on Thursday summoned the Pope’s representative, the papal nuncio, after the report said that the Vatican had undermined Irish guidelines on reporting sex abuse by referring to them as “study guidelines.”
“We consider it absolutely unacceptable that the Vatican intervened here in a way which had the effect of undermining the efforts to deal adequately with the issue of child sexual abuse,” Gilmore said. “We want a response from the Vatican.”
The report on the diocese of Cloyne in county Cork 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, who had previously served as private secretary to three popes, falsely told the authorities that he was reporting all abuse allegations to the police, the report said.
via Ireland attacks confessional privilege after scandal | Reuters.
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
from Photographers Blog:
The trouble with Northern Ireland
Tradition is something that is celebrated, enjoyed and handed down to the next generation, but in the small corner of western Europe where I was born, it has led to shootings and bombings and the loss of thousands of lives.
For 16 years I’ve worked as a photographer covering ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and in this time I’ve come to realize that what one side of the political and religious divide sees as celebration, the other sees as triumphalism.
The Twelfth of July parades are one such tradition that sparked disturbances on the streets of Belfast this week with rioters throwing petrol bombs and police responding with plastic bullets as Catholics and Protestants once again clashed.
Catholic area riots after Protestant marches in Northern Ireland
Police fired plastic bullets and water cannon at Catholic youths in Northern Ireland’s provincial capital Belfast on Tuesday after rioting erupted when a Protestant parade passed their estate. Sporadic violence erupted across the British-ruled province on the culmination of a season of parades by pro-British Protestants to mark a 17th-century military victory, a tradition many Catholics say is provocative.
Around 200 people threw bottles, slates and petrol bombs in the mainly Catholic Ardoyne area of Belfast after police moved in to prevent them confronting the passing Orange Order parade. Two cars were set on fire and dozens of rounds of plastic bullets were fired. Police said a number of officers were injured.
Most of the 500 or so parades across the province passed peacefully, but police reported rioting in Londonderry, Newry and Armagh as well as the Markets area in central Belfast.
Three decades of fighting between mostly Protestant loyalists who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom and Irish nationalists, mainly Catholics, who want it to be part of a united Ireland tore the province apart during a three-decade period known as the “Troubles.”
A 1998 peace agreement paved the way for a power-sharing government of loyalists and nationalists. Violence has subsided, but police say the threat from dissident groups opposed to the peace deal is higher than it has ever been since it was signed.
Marchers were marking King William of Orange’s victory over the Roman Catholic King James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, which helped to secure Protestant supremacy in Ireland.
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.
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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.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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Catholics may think that they can be pro-choice, use contraception,
support same-sex ,and use in vitro fertilization and be a good catholic.
You are in a big danger to lose your soul, you have never read the teachings(catechism)of the Catholic Church.
The church is a 2000 year old wise mother., and only wants to protect you.
For more information you “catholics”. please visit this w e b site CATHOLICANSWERS.