Vatican synod to mull Middle East Christian exodus
With Christianity dwindling in its Middle Eastern birthplace, Pope Benedict has convened Catholic bishops from the region to debate how to save its minority communities and promote harmony with their Muslim neighbours.
For two weeks starting on Sunday, the bishops will discuss problems for the faithful ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and strife in Iraq to radical Islamism, economic crisis and the divisions among the region’s many Christian churches.
They come from local churches affiliated with the Vatican, but the relentless exodus of all Christians — Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants — has prompted them to take a broad look at the challenges facing all followers of Jesus there.
While conditions for Christians vary from country to country, the overall picture is dramatic. Christians made up around 20 percent of the region’s population a century ago, but now account for about five percent and falling.
“If this phenomenon continues, Christianity in the Middle East will disappear,” said Rev. Samir Khalil Samir, a Beirut-based Egyptian Jesuit who helped draw up the working document for the October 10-24 synod at the Vatican.
Read the full analysis here. See also our factbox on Christians in the Middle East.
Christians in Middle East much more than a numbers game
Franciscan Father David Jaeger is one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most authoritative experts on the Middle East. Until a few weeks ago, he was the delegate of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land in Rome. A convert from Judaism who became a Roman Catholic priest in 1986, he is a noted canon lawyer. He was part of the Vatican team that negotiated diplomatic relations with Israel in 1994 and is part of the Vatican team that is still ironing out the final subsidiary details of that accord. He spoke to Reuters and Reuters Television about the upcoming Mideast synod in the atrium of Antonianum University in Rome. Here is a transcript of parts of the conversation.
What do you expect from the synod?
I think it is intended to be a very significant step forward in the development of the witness of the Church in the Middle East. Synods are convened not simply, or not necessarily, in response to a current affairs concerns but as a moment for the Church to grow, in faithfulness and in effectiveness of witness.
The moment in the Middle East is particularly appropriate for this further development. There is hope for new ecumenical relations. There is a growth of the Church itself in the Middle East, in awareness of fundamental values of Vatican II, such as religious freedom and the civic responsibility of Christians. I don’t think people in the West appreciate to what extent the thematics of the synod are totally new to so much of the Church in the Middle East. Religious freedom some decades ago was not even a known concept. It had never been experienced in 13 centuries. It had always been presupposed that it could not be attained, yet now it is being spoken of in the preparatory documents of the synod as a serious subject, not as something already existing of course, but as something realistically to be looked forward to.
The whole discussion of the civic duty of the Christian, the Christian as citizen, the Christian communities as actors in the national lives of the countries where they live, this is totally new for the region as a whole. For 13 centuries, Christians in the Middle East had been made to live strictly in kinds of socio-political ghettos, not a physical ones necessarily, but socio-political and legal ones, and it was a given that general society was something else, in which as Christians they had no part. Maybe individuals did manage to insert themselves into politics in different countries, of course, but that the idea that as a Christian, as a Christian community, you had to participate in the formation of a national culture, in the development of the national political culture too, these are all new insights in that region. These are all (examples) of Vatican II coming finally to fruition in that region too, so it is a very exiting moment for the Church.
There is great concern about a continuing exodus of Christians from the region. What can be done about that?
Let us say two things to that. One thing is that Christians are not an endangered animal species, nor a vegetable one either. Christians are not some ethnic minority like the Yamomani in the Amazon forests of Brazil or something like that. To speak of Christians is not to speak of a given quantity. The Church is a community of faith in a state of mission.
To Genesis or Stan – What is a “working knowledge of the Bible”? Do you mean that in the same sense of the word as an actor or comedian can “work” his audience. Or do you mean it in the sense of a grifter working his con? Are you perhaps thinking of the book as an operating manual? A do it yourself – or your faith club’s – Popular Mechanic’s guide to spiritual what? Perfection?, holiness?, staying on the good side of the great unknown and unknowable?
The only thing I can see in your comment is a very old attitude that a particular mixture (probably an admixture) of genes are necessary for a promise from God. That attitude is why Judaism has remained a very small minority religion. It didn’t “sell” well to the Romans even though many Roman’s admired their way of life: the regularity and ethic of it. Augustus himself wrote of them and wanted the Roman’s to have the same integrity.
You profess a belief in a God who hands out real estate like it was a grace shed from above and all those who occupied the territory prior to God’s grand scheme are expected to disappear or “submit to the will of God”. If the will of God as defined by those “working the word” isn’t enough, ten of thousands of troops, billions in cash and arms, friends in very high places of the very worldly sort, help too.
In case you haven’t noticed, “submission to the will of God” is a basic principle of Islam. It is the professed operating motive of the Taliban. They profess a total submission to their version of the will of God and expect everyone they encounter to do the same. It is a very old attitude and every world power from the times of the Egyptians (they probably invented it, but it was common enough beyond their borders) had used the idea that they were God (or the Gods’) favorites.
What do you suppose the criteria for the winner in a contest of competing interpretations of the will of God might be? Does your working knowledge shed any light on the subject? If you know you might do well to share it but you better work fast because a lot of people I meet think 2012 is the end of the world because somehow “God” loved the Mayans too?
God sounds very like my grandmother, who had a different story for every one of her children about each one of them, didn’t always get her facts straight, knew how to motivate them with rivalry and tended to take the Enquirer as good reading. But she was lovable, strong and ambitious and wanted her children to do better in the new world. She was a daughter of a large immigrant Italian family, but she did not want them to be raised as Italians. With my Grandmother, ethnicity was something she wanted to overcome. She couldn’t do anything about her genes but she did not make a great fuss about her children marrying into other gene pools. Neither did her husband.
A “nice Jewish girl” married one of my Grandmother’s cousins and she was disowned by her family and even given a ritual burial. My Grandmother was able after a decade or so, to bring the families together again.
My Grandmother died confessing that she “always wanted to be a big shot” and she never realized how big a presence she actually was. Go figure?
Constitution, not sharia, is supreme law in Germany – Merkel
Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Muslims must obey the constitution and not sharia law if they want to live in Germany, which is debating the integration of its 4 million-strong Muslim population.
In the furore following a German central banker’s blunt comments about Muslims failing to integrate, moderate leaders including President Christian Wulff have urged Germans to accept that “Islam also belongs in Germany.”
Merkel , the daughter of a Protestant pastor brought up in East Germany who now leads the predominantly Catholic CDU party, said Wulff had emphasised Germany’s “Christian roots and its Jewish roots.”
“Now we obviously also have Muslims in Germany. But it’s important in regard to Islam that the values represented by Islam must correspond with our constitution,” said Merkel on Wednesday. “What applies here is the constitution, not sharia.”
Last month, Merkel said Germans had for too long failed to grasp how immigration was changing their country and would have to get used to the sight of more mosques in their cities.
Dutch prosecutors admit were wrong to drop Catholic abuse cases
Dutch public prosecutors wrongly dropped two clear cases of sexual abuse of minors by two Roman Catholic priests in the 1980s but it was not a cover-up, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors office said on Wednesday.
A new book published earlier in the day reported that both priests had confessed and numerous witnesses had testified for the defence, but prosecutors closed their inquiries after contacts with the Catholic hierarchy.
The book Vrome zondaars (“Pious Sinners”) by journalist Joep Dohmen also accused prosecutors of turning away victims trying to report abuse and working to deflect any discredit from the Church.
“In the two cases from 1980 and 1985 mentioned in the book, there seems to have been a provable case which was dismissed under certain conditions,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “It must be said that these were not correct decisions.”
Dohmen’s NRC Handelsblad newspaper, which published excerpts from the book, quoted a lawyer for abuse victims as saying there was a “cover-up culture” among prosecutors decades ago. “The prosecutors tried above all to keep good relations with the Church,” lawyer Richard Korver said. “Many justice officers were loyal Catholics. That applied to judges as well.”
Rousseff courts Brazil’s faith voters with “for life” comments
Brazil’s ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff is playing up her Roman Catholic background in efforts to win back religious voters, whose doubts about her faith and position on abortion rights may have cost her an outright victory in Sunday’s presidential election.
In a surprise shift, many religious voters who oppose abortion, especially evangelical Christians, abandoned Rousseff’s center-left Workers’ Party to vote for the Green Party’s Marina Silva, who captured an unexpectedly large 19 percent of the vote.
“Personally, I’m from a Catholic family. I am and always was in favor of life,” Rousseff told reporters on Tuesday outside of her campaign headquarters in Brasilia. “I have no problem addressing the religious issue. My project addresses all the religions.”
She did not elaborate. Internet videos in recent weeks showed Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla leader, apparently favoring the decriminalization of abortion, which is illegal in most cases.
Evangelical Christians are growing in influence in Brazil and now make up about 20 percent of the population in the overwhelmingly Catholic country.
Ms President Dilma Rousseff is right about abortion in Brazil. It’s completely hypocritical to hide the truth of the fact that millions of very poor, illiterate, unemployed Brazilian women are undergoing abortion in Brazil every year, in the most chaotic conditions. Of course, being right and aware of reality in our country, Ms. Rousseff is in favour of legalization and provision of concrete health care conditions offered freely by the government to these Brazilian women who cannot afford to raise a child or the abortion procedure itself. Our country is full of beggars who were brought to the world by these needy, resourceless women, who are better off undegoing abortion, and their to be children are also better off not coming to the world to suffer and hunger.
Ms. Rousseff is an intelligent, educated, experienced, realistic woman and knows best what less privileged women in our country needs. These ridiculous so-called religious people do not support the millions of newly-born babies who starve from an early age and have no other choice in life other than become a criminal in their teens. These not aborted children are killing and robbing us from the middle-class all over Brazil. This a horror, sad chain that must be broken with the interruption of pregnancy and / or contraceptive procedure in the first place.
Vatican keeps up attack on Nobel prize for IVF pioneer
The Vatican kept up its attack on the Nobel committee on Tuesday for giving the medicine prize to in-vitro fertilization pioneer Robert Edwards, saying he had led to a culture where embryos are seen as commodities.
For the second straight day, it gave the thumbs down to the choice of Edwards, whose success in fertilizing a human egg outside of the womb led to “test tube babies” and later innovations such as embryonic stem cell research and surrogate motherhood. Several leading Italian newspapers criticized it for its attack on Edwards.
A statement by the Vatican-based International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC), said the group was “dismayed” at the choice. “Although IVF has brought happiness to the many couples who have conceived through this process, it has done so at enormous cost,” the federation said in a statement issued on Vatican letter head.
“Many millions of embryos have been created and discarded during the IVF process,” it said, adding that embryos were being used as “animals destined for destruction.”
“This use has led to a culture where they are regarded as commodities, rather than the precious human individuals which they are.”
IVF spawns host of ethical issues
In vitro fertilization (IVF), the pioneering technique that won Robert Edwards the 2010 Nobel Prize for medicine, opened up a wealth of scientific options and a Pandora’s box of ethical dilemmas.
Edwards’s success in fertilizing a human egg outside of the womb led not only to “test tube babies” but also to innovations such as embryonic stem cell research and surrogate motherhood.
Amid the applause for these medical breakthroughs, ethicists from some Christian churches oppose IVF and techniques related to it because they involve the destruction of human embryos. The bewildering array of options due to the IVF revolution — from the morality of making “designer babies” to exploitation of poor women as surrogate mothers — has created much concern and many debates among secular ethicists as well.
The Roman Catholic Church’s top official for life issues slammed the award to Edwards as “completely misplaced.”
“Without Edwards there would be no market for human eggs; without Edwards there would not be freezers full of embryos waiting to be transferred to a uterus, or, more likely, used for research or left to die, abandoned and forgotten by all,” said Ignazio Carrasco de Paula, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, in what the Vatican described as personal statement.
The combination of IVF and surrogate motherhood has led to previously unimaginable legal and moral complications. In one baffling case in 1997, an infertile California couple hired a surrogate to bear a child from anonymous sperm and egg donations. But the intended parents divorced before the birth, so the surrogate and her husband filed a claim for custody.
When it saw the child potentially had six parents, a state court ruled it had been born with no legal parents at all.
Polish maverick MP launches anti-clerical party
A flamboyant millionaire lawmaker could have an instant impact on Polish politics with a new, anti-clerical party that would legalise abortion on demand, provide free condoms and curb the Catholic Church’s clout.
Janusz Palikot told the founding congress of his Modern Poland (NP) movement late on Saturday that he would quit Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling centre-right Civic Platform (PO) and also resign his parliamentary seat on December 6.
“The Modern Poland movement demands the removal of religious instruction from schools, liquidation of the clergy (pension) fund… and state ceremonies at which we do not have to view the fat bellies of bishops,” Palikot told 4,000 cheering supporters.
Poland remains one of the most devout countries in Europe and its churches are packed on Sundays, but a growing number of Poles, especially among younger urban voters, resent priests’ attempts to shape social policy or to tell them how to vote.
Although Palikot is known for stunts, the group could have an immediate real impact on Poland’s electoral math.
Will the Church in Poland accept as subordinate a role as the French Church was? Will Pope Benedict react as Pius X did in the 1900’s, with repression of religious thought and expression? A lot depends whether young Poles number among themselves enough unafraid of anathema to make Poland a more secular state; the Church has not hesitated in the past to condemn to Hell members who espoused reduction of its extra-religious political power.
President Aquino’s contraception plan angers Philippines Catholic Church
The senior bishop in the Philippines’ powerful Roman Catholic Church denied Friday any suggestion that the church could excommunicate President Benigno Aquino for backing a plan to teach Filipinos about contraception.
“Abortion is a grave crime, excommunication is attached to this,” Bishop Nereo Odchimar, head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), told Radio Veritas on Thursday. He said excommunication was a possibility if condoms were distributed to the poor.
But Friday, he denied the church would consider such action against the president. “While the prevailing sentiment of a number of bishops was that of dismay and frustration over the reported stance of the president regarding artificial contraceptives, imposition of the canonical sanction has not been contemplated by the CBCP,” he said in a statement.
The Church is a major social and political force in the poor Southeast Asian country. Its support has been a key factor in the overthrow of two presidents over 25 years and politicians are careful not to offend it. Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, but condoms and birth control pills are available despite church objections.
Like four out of five Filipinos, Aquino is a Catholic. But he backs a program before Congress on grounds that slowing annual population growth of 2 percent could boost living standards, as one in three residents lives below the poverty line.
i’m stephen ross and 46 yrs old, florida–usa. I met an incredible woman from bacolod, negros occ 4 yrs ago with 3 beautiful kids. she sepperated 7+ yrs and never receive any peso from her husband in that time. I give u short version– long would disgust any person alive about the philippines. Catholicism is way of life there and most are very devout catholics? Most men in phils have many girlfriend on the side–not all but many. look in any barangay (village) so many single moms. divorce is illegal? so we must get what is called anullment? with the corrupt lawyers,judges and catholic church approving all of this–its so un-god-like. they take my usa dollars and promise actions? then of all things? the drunken and womanizing husband wont comply to anullment. we all cant believe this legal? well–you make certain –its legal there. never trust anyone in philippines–they catholic church is most corrupt institution i ever been involved with. a smart girl out of highschool will go to SM city to work and work all day–10 hrs. for 350 peso– 7 usa dollars? sometimes 4 dollars. BTW– if its so forbidden for divorce? why allow anullments? when they see american or foreigner –wow. price goes way up. they are parasites in the community and have the audacity to sit in front row at mass. pathetic. beware catholicism in philippines. Its a big money grab. i have no religious affiliation– thank–god
Russian Orthodox say “no breakthrough” at Catholic-Orthodox talks last week
The Russian Orthodox Church said on Tuesday there was no “breakthrough” at a Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue meeting in Vienna last week that ended with reports of promising progress on the thorny issue of the role of the Catholic pope. The statement may be more interesting for what it doesn’t say than what it does. It’s not clear which reports Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the “foreign minister” of the Moscow Patriarchate, was referring to when he said that “contrary to allegations in the press, the Orthodox-Catholic Commission meeting in Vienna has made no ‘breakthrough’ whatsoever.”
Did any media report a breakthrough? Not that I’ve seen. Is it possible that Hilarion was actually referring to the cautiously upbeat statements given at a final news conference by Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon and Archbishop Kurt Koch, the top Vatican official for Christian unity?
Hilarion was in Vienna last week but did not appear at the news conference. Metropolitan John, who spoke for the Orthodox side, is affiliated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, the spiritual leader of all Orthodox which Moscow seems to compete with for a leadership role. Could this have played a part?
The issue was the role the pope played in the millennium before the Great Schism of 1054. At the 2007 dialogue meeting in Ravenna, the Orthodox confirmed that the pope, as the bishop of Rome, was traditionally the first of the five ancient patriarchs. At the news conference in Vienna, the two delegation heads said that Catholics and Orthodox could eventually come to see themselves as “sister churches” if they could agree to translate that traditional role of the pope into a modern understanding of how the churches related to each other.
In his statement, Hilarion said: “For the Orthodox participants, it is clear that in the first millennium the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome was exercised only in the West, while in the East, the territories were divided between four Patriarchs – those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.”
“The bishop of Rome did not exercise any direct jurisdiction in the East in spite of the fact that in some cases Eastern hierarchs appealed to him as arbiter in theological disputes. These appeals were not systematic and can in no way be interpreted in the sense that the bishop of Rome was seen in the East as the supreme authority in the whole Universal Church. It is hoped that at the next meetings of the Commission, the Catholic side will agree with this position which is confirmed by numerous historical evidence.”
John didn’t elaborate on these points at the news conference, so it’s not clear if he might disagree with Hilarion’s view. Koch said that “unity without the Bishop of Rome is unimaginable. That’s because the issue of the Bishop of Rome is not just an organisational question, but also a theological one. The dialogue about just how this unity should be shaped must be continued intensively.” That means there are still years of discussions ahead of these theologians, but it doesn’t seem to contradict their message that progress was made.
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As an Egyptian Christian, I am drawn to this post as I see the desperate need for visibility of Middle Eastern Christians. Too often I am met with the assumption that I am Islamic due to my ethnicity. This post provides hope for the transformation of the image of the Arab world. I appreciate your acknowledgement of how the political tensions play a significant role on the religious tensions. With an overwhelming number of Muslim leaders in government, little attention is given to the Christian community. There are countless crimes against Christianity in the region that must be mended by officials. With a powerful head such as Pope Benedict leading the synod, the world is finally taking notice to this issue that is constantly ignored. However, I find myself skeptical of the results due to the synod’s brevity. The Catholic National Reporter cited that the logic for the brevity is that due to “the rather complex situation in the Middle East, we do not want to keep the shepherds from their flocks for too long.” I find this to be a weak explanation. In fact, many of the issues that must be attended to can be solved by the continuing effort of the synod.
Although you state the religious goals of the synod in the Middle East, I see the synod doing more for the image of the region above solving religious issues. Western media rarely defies this image of Islamic fanatics. Fortunately, this synod displays the diversity of the region and expels the unfortunate Islamaphobia that plagues the Western world. With the recent numbers displayed in your post, is the disappearance of Christianity a possibility? Is there potential an increase in Christians due to the modernization of the Arab world? Or is this too far-fetched? Overall, I thank you for providing the world with the facts that Christians do in fact exist in the Middle East. I am excited to see what comes out of the synod and will keep up with this blog to provide me insight into a world I am immersed in daily. Thank you.