FaithWorld

Vatican editor defends himself against U.S. conservatives

Philip Pullella

Jun 18, 2009 10:45 EDT

When Gian Maria Vian took over as editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in late 2007, most observers yawned. No-one really expected much change at the staid newspaper. But within a few months, the paper started to rock and roll — at least as much as a paper like that can.

Slowly but surely, change has come to the 148-year-old mouthpiece of the Vatican, considered by many in the past a bland broadsheet at best and once called the “Catholic Pravda”, a reference to the communist party organ in the former Soviet Union.

It started publishing color pictures and more articles by and about women — not bad for an institution that is still a male bastion. It also began including more international cover, war cover and economic cover. Some of its unorthodox commentaries have also been lighthearted and provocative. To wit: it ran an editorial saying that perhaps the washing machine had done more to liberate women than the pill or the right to work. It post-humusly forgave John Lennon for once boasting that the Beatles were more famous than Christ. And, it finally set the record straight that no, the pope does not wear Prada.

Vian has become a player in his own right, giving interviews on a range of topics from Pius XII (Vian has just written a book defending him) to President Barack Obama. He came under fire from Catholic conservatives in the United States after he stated that Obama was not a “pro-abortion” president. He has now given a very interesting interview to Rome-based religion expert Delia Gallagher in the National Review. The interview, which is very readable and insightful, is worth reading in its entirety.

Gallagher, a Californian with a masters in philosophy and theology from Oxford University, has returned to Rome, where she started her professional career as managing editor of the magazine Inside the Vatican in 1998. She was a Rome-based Vatican analyst for CNN from 2002-2005 and was CNN’s Faith and Values Correspondent from 2005-2009, based in New York.

New on-line forum seeks “common ground” on abortion

Ed Stoddard

Jun 16, 2009 14:46 EDT

A new on-line forum launched on Tuesday seeks to spark discussion among faith and secular leaders and activists about ways to find some elusive common ground on the divisive issue of abortion.

It’s being rolled out by RH Reality Check, which focuses on reproductive health and rights issues, and can be seen here.

The initial posts include contributions from David Gushee of Mercer University, a leading intellectual figure in the emerging “evangelical center movement,” Katie Paris of Faith in Public Life, and Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.

Paris says in her blog that common ground on abortion can surely be found. After all, people from different faith traditions and sides of the political spectrum have come together on issues like climate change and torture.

Waldman says that his “common ground fantasy” would involve “a pro-life leader standing up and declaring, ‘We will be open to looking at family planning efforts, including contraception, to reduce the number of abortions.’  This would be followed by a pro-choicer saying, ’we accept that society would be better if there were fewer abortions.’”

There are already land mines there. The Catholic Church for one is unlikely to drop its opposition to birth control. And some abortion rights supporters don’t want to give any ground that they feel could show they have moral qualms with abortion.

Most influential U.S. rabbis listed

The third annual list of “America’s Most Influential Rabbis” is out, with the top spot going to David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism and co-chair of the Coalition to Preserve Religious liberty.

Saperstein, described in the announcement as a ”Washington insider and political powerbroker,” took the No. 1 ranking away from Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who held that position on last year’s list.

The rankings were made by Jay Sanderson, chief executive officer of JTN Productions (the Jewish Television Network), Michael Lynton, chairman and head of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Gary Ginsberg, executive vice president of News Corp.

There are 50 rabbis on the list, which the executive say they drew up to provoke discussion about the role of religious leaders among Jews and non-Jews. Rounding out the top five were Mark Charendoff, president of the Jewish Funders Network, an international grouping of foundations and philanthropies; Yehuda Krinsky, global leader of the Chabad Lubavich movement; and David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College.

Anyone know if there’s a comparable global ”most influential” rabbi list? Who would be your top choice?

(Photo: Undated handout photo of America’s oldest continuously used synagogue west of the Mississippi/REUTERS STRINGER)

Pope to bishops: check your mail

Philip Pullella

Mar 11, 2009 14:07 EDT

Those of us who thought the pope had said the final word on the Williamson saga will have to think again. It seems to be never-ending.

On Thursday the Vatican officially releases a letter to the world’s bishops in which the pope essentially acknowledges that the Vatican handled the lifting of the excommunications of four ultra-traditionalist bishops very badly and that it hurt him personally that things went awry.

The story started leaking out on Tuesday night in the blog of Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale and a story with partial excerpts was published in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Wednesday.  The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung printed what it said was the full text in German of the pope’s letter. Our story is based on a face-to-face conversation I had with an Italian archbishop who received the letter. We discussed it over a light meal near St Peter’s Square.

If the leaks and the archbishop’s comment are any indication, the letter may be a sort of first — a pope explaining to his bishops why he did something that some of them contested, at times openly. He talks about his pain and also speaks of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), how he felt that he had to bring them back into the fold because there are good people among them. But the pope also acknowledges how some of them are arrogant and think they know better than everyone else.  He says some speak in ways that are discordant with the Church and its teachings. Why do you think the pope felt he had to do this? Was it necessary to write the letter? Will it be interpreted as a sign of weakness or strength?  The entire letter will be  be on the Vatican’s website tomorrow after 1100 gmt.

For those of you who read Italian, here is a link to Andrea Tornielli’s blog. For German speakers, here’s today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung text. Following are some excerpts from the German text translated by Reuters:

“The lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 without a mandate from the Holy See has led, for several reasons, to a dispute inside and outside the Catholic Church more vehement than we have seen in a long time. Many bishops felt helpless in the face of an event that came unempectedly and hardly corresponded to the questions and tasks of today’s Church . While many bishops and believers were ready to view the pope’s will to reconciliation positively, there was on the other hand the question of the appropriateness of such a gesture in view of the really urgent issues for believers in our time. Some groups openly accused the pope of wanting to go back to before the Second Vatican Council. An avalanche of protests began whose bitterness showed hurt that went beyond the present moment. So I felt obliged to write to you, my brothers, to clear some things up and help understand the intentions that I and the responsible organs of the Holy See had in making this step. I hope in this way to contribute to bringing peace into the Church…

“A mishap that was unforseeable for me occured because the Williamson case overshadowed the lifting of the excommunications. The calm gesture of mercy towards four validly but illicitly ordained bishops suddenly seemed to be something completely different: a rejection of Christian-Jewish reconciliation, a withdrawal of what the Council had declared in this matter as the path of the Church. In this way, an invitation to reconciliation with a breakaway Church group turned into its opposite: an apparent retreat behind all steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council. From the start, taking these steps and developing them has been a goal of my theological work. I can only deeply regret that this overlapping of two contrary events has occurred and upset the peace between Christians and Jews and the peace in the Church…

“I hear that attentive tracking of the news available on the Internet could have made it possible to learn about this problem in time. I learn from this that we at the Holy See must pay more attention to this source of news in the future. I was also saddened to see that also Catholics, who actually could have known better, thought they had to lash out at me with ready-to-pounce hostility. I’m all the more thankful to the Jewish friends who helped clear up the misunderstanding quickly and restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust that — as during the time of Pope John Paul — has reigned during the whole time of my pontificate and, thank God, still exists…

“Another mishap that I honestly regret is that the limits and extend of the measure of 21 January 2009 were not clearly presented when the act was announced. Excommunication applies to people, not institutions. Ordaining a bishop without a papal mandate means the danger of a schism, because it challenges the unity of the college of bishops with the pope. The Church must therefore react with the harshest punishment, excommunication, in order to bring the punished ones to regret their act and return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has still not yet been reached … The lifting of the excommunications was a measure in the area of Church discipline: the people involved were freed of the burden on their conscience of having the harshest Church punishment. One must differentiate the doctrinal area from this disciplinary area. That the Society of Saint Pius X has no canonical standing in the Church is actually not based on disciplinary reasons, but on doctrinal reasons … As long as the doctrinal questions have not been cleared up, the Society has no canonical statue in the Church and its leaders, while free of the Church punishment, do not exercise any office legally in the Church…

“Can we be indvifferent to a community that has 491 priests, 215 seminarists, six seminaries, 88 schools, two university institutes, 117 brothers and 164 nuns? Should we simply let them drift away from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know the web of their motivations. But I think they would not have decided to become priests if, along with some lopsided or sick (aspects), there had not been a love for Christ and the will to preach about him and with him the living God.  Should we simply shut them out of the search for reconciliation and unity as representatives of a radical fringe group? What would happen then?

“Of course, for a long time, we have heard occasional dissonant tones from representatives of this community — arrogance and a know-it-all attitude, a fixation on one-sidedness, etc. To be honest, I have to add that I have also received several moving testimonies of thankfulness that showed an opening of the hearts. But shouldn’t the great Church also be able to be magnanimous, knowing the long-term perspective it has and the promise given it?   Shouldn’t we, like good teachers, be able to ignore some bad things and try to move out of this squeeze? And shouldn’t we admit that dissonent tones have also come from Church circles? One sometimes has the impression that our society needs at least one group that it need not show any tolerance to and can lash out at with hatred? And whoever dares touch it — in this case, the pope — loses the right to tolerance and can also be met with hatred without anyone being shy or reserved about it?”

A religion board game – satire or scandal?

How much fun — really — can you make of religion?  A U.S. marketer of board games may find out with ”Playing Gods” which it calls “the world’s first satirical board game of religious warfare.” It had its European premier this week at the London Toy Fair and will make a U.S. debut at the New York Toy Fair in February.

Ben Radford, head of the company that put the game together, said in a news release it is designed for two to five players who act as “gods” and …

“Try try to take over the world and make everyone on Earth worship him or her. As a god, you can try to convert other gods’ followers, promising them things like Afterlife, Prosperity, and Miracles. Or you can kill them off with plagues, locusts, earthquakes, floods, and other Acts of Gods.

“Watch out, though, because bad things can happen to good gods—one of your vicars is caught with a prostitute? Too bad, you lose a sect!

“Players can pit Christians against Muslims and Hindus against Jews, or be the mascot, a machine-gun-toting Buddha. Players may choose to be any god from Jesus to Moses, from Cthulu to Zeus, from the Cult of Oprah to the Almighty Dollar. (And yes, there is a Muslim figure.) Though the theme includes religious battles, it is really a satire with an underlying message of peace, encouraging people to think about the tragedy of killing others just because they have different beliefs.”

It costs about $40, and German, French, Spanish and Portuguese versions are available in preparation for the European launch. Information is available at http://www.PlayingGods.com. Radford says the gods seem to be smiling anyway — he’s selling about 10 games a day.

The pope and the Holocaust: Regensburg redux?

Philip Pullella

Jan 27, 2009 10:46 EST

The uproar over traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson and his denial of the Holocaust highlights an open secret here in Rome: Vatican departments don’t talk to each much, or at least as much as they should. The pope appears to have decided to lift the 1988 excommunication of four schismatic bishops of the SSPX (including Williamson) without the wide consultation that it may have merited. The Christian Unity department, which also oversees relations with Jews, was apparently kept out of the loop. The head of the office, Cardinal Walter Kasper, told The New York Times it was the pope’s decision. Kasper’s office and the Vatican press office, headed by Father Federico Lombardi, were clearly not prepared for the media onslaught that followed the discovery of Williamson’s views denying the Holocaust.

Pope Benedict’s lifting of the ban and Williamson’s comments about the Holocaust are unrelated as far as Church law is concerned. The excommunications lifted last Saturday were imposed because the four were ordained without Vatican permission. As Father Thomas Resse, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, told me: “The Holocaust is a matter of history, not faith. Being a Holocaust denier is stupid but not against the faith. Being anti-Semitic, however, is a sin.” This is an important distinction, but not one the Vatican seems to be able to get across.

It was all very reminiscent of the pope’s Regensburg speech in 2006. Few in the Vatican knew it was coming. The Vatican was overwhelmed by the Muslim reaction and the media interest. This time, it is also not clear how many people in the Vatican even knew about Williamson’s history. Surely, those negotiating with the traditionalists for the lifting of the excommunications should  have known. If they didn’t, why didn’t they? If they did, why did they not tell Kasper’s department? The Holocaust is such a sensitive issue for Jews that this response could have been seen from miles away.

Even if the Vatican felt the rapprochement with the traditionalists was necessary, a clear and severe distancing from Williamson’s views issued simultaneously to the announcement of the lifting of the excommunications certainly would not have hurt.

It is still too early to gauge the public relations fallout within the Jewish community and in the Church itself. In all the years I have been covering Catholic-Jewish relations, this is the biggest blow-up I can recall — bigger than the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, the Good Friday prayer,  the controversy over Pius XII or the late Pope John Paul receiving Arafat.  It will take a long time for this one to heal. Those involved in Catholic-Jewish dialogue say it will go on. It will.

In 2003, several Reuters correspondents — including myself — published a book entitled “Pope John Paul, Reaching Out Across Borders.” One contributor, Alan Elsner, is Jewish and lost relatives in the Belzec death camp in Poland in 1942. He concluded his chapter on Catholic relations with Jews with this paragraph:

“For the Jews, the central question to be put to Christians remains, in the words of Rabbi Michael Signer ‘Can we trust you, can we trust you now?’ For Pope John Paul, the answer was a resounding ‘yes’. It will be for his successor to provide an answer for the future.”

Where is the line between criticism and blasphemy?

Tom Heneghan

Nov 10, 2008 12:16 EST

Where is the dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable criticism of religion? How should the media cover issues that offend certain believers? These issues came up at last week’s Catholic-Muslim Forum in Rome and in the public editor’s column in the Sunday New York Times. In both cases, useful distinctions were made. But I’m not sure how much agreement they will produce the next time someone finds a depiction of a religion, its beliefs or its symbols outrageous.

The Catholic-Muslim Forum, an unprecedented meeting between Vatican and Muslim leaders and scholars, approached the issue as one of the rights of a minority religion, since cases they are concerned about — such as the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad — involved criticism of a minority faith by the local majority. They agreed that “religious minorities are entitled to be respected in their own religious convictions and practices … and their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subject to any form of mockery or ridicule.”

When I asked Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Catholic delegation, whether this meant the Vatican would support moves to limit criticism of religion that some western critics see as censorship, he said: “One must distinguish between a critical spirit, a spirit of criticism, and mockery. Freedom of speech means that we have the right to express opinions about religion, philosophy, philosophers and theologians and founders of religion. That is one thing. But deriding them and mocking them is something else… That impacts the values on which millions of people base their lives. That’s why we talk about mockery. I introduced that term… Mockery is very strong.”

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt took up the issue on Sunday in dissecting his paper’s review of a play portraying Jesus as a sexually active gay man. Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, called it a vile play and said the Times liked it “not for artistic purposes but for its assault on Catholicism.” He urged his members to write to the public editor, and more than 150 did. While Hoyt found some of the protests over the top, he noted that the review was one-sided. It called the play “an earnest and reverent spin on the Jesus story, with some soft-spoken, gay-friendly politics thrown in” but never told readers why Christians might be offended. If the review had mentioned the fact that gay sex and same-sex marriage are against the teachings of the Church, the Times would have done its duty in presenting the pros and cons of this issue, he said.

We’re going to hear more about this issue in the months to come because Muslim countries are campaigning to have the United Nations approve a ban on published material that defames or promotes disrespect for religion. This will be a central issue at the April 2009 conference in Geneva following up on the 2001 Durban World Conference on Racism. Opposition to this has been gathering steam (see here and here and here).

Do you think the United Nations or any government can determine where the line between criticism and blasphemy lies?

Catholic-Muslim Forum ends on upbeat note

Tom Heneghan

Nov 6, 2008 19:58 EST

The Catholic-Muslim Forum ended on Thursday evening on an upbeat note. After two days of closed-door talks and an audience with Pope Benedict, the delegations held their only public session of the conference (right) to present a joint communique and answer some questions.The final declaration (full text here) had a series of interesting points that show progress in the dialogue among the experts involved. They will need some unpacking in the real world before we know how much real progress has been made. Here are some of the points with some quick observations in italics:

• 2. Human life is a most precious gift of God to each person. It should therefore be preserved and honoured in all its stages. (interesting common pro-life slant here. Any joint initiatives coming up here?)
• 3. Human dignity is derived from the fact that every human person is created by a loving God out of love … he or she is entitled to full recognition of his or her identity and freedom by individuals, communities and governments, supported by civil legislation that assures equal rights and full citizenship. (this means support for minorities, whether they’re Christians in Muslim countries or Muslim minorities in the West, on the basis of both faiths and not just secular notions that can be contested as foreign to a certain culture)
• 4. We affirm that God’s creation of humanity has two great aspects: the male and the female human person, and we commit ourselves jointly to ensuring that human dignity and respect are extended on an equal basis to both men and women. (that’s pretty clear)
• 5. Genuine love of neighbour implies respect of the person and her or his choices in matters of conscience and religion. It includes the right of individuals and communities to practice their religion in private and public. (no mention here of conversion in Muslim countries)
• 6. Religious minorities are entitled to be respected in their own religious convictions and practices. They are also entitled to their own places of worship, and their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subject to any form of mockery or ridicule. (this refers in the same sentence to the Catholic concern for churches in Muslim countries and the Muslim concern about caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad. Any linkage there? )
• 8. We affirm that no religion and its followers should be excluded from society. Each should be able to make its indispensable contribution to the good of society, especially in service to the most needy. (this one also cuts both ways, like item 3)
• 10. We are convinced that Catholics and Muslims have the duty to provide a sound education in human, civic, religious and moral values for their respective members and to promote accurate information about each other’s religions. (that education aspect will be important)
• 11. We profess that Catholics and Muslims are called to be instruments of love and harmony among believers, and for humanity as a whole, renouncing any oppression, aggressive violence and terrorism, especially that committed in the name of religion, and upholding the principle of justice for all. (Western critics often say Muslims don’t denounce terrorism enough, even though many do that they don’t notice. Could this boost that visibility?)
• 14. We have agreed to explore the possibility of establishing a permanent Catholic-Muslim committee to coordinate responses to conflicts and other emergency situations and of organizing a second seminar in a Muslim-majority country yet to be determined. (this is the crisis management option I mentioned a few days ago)

The final session was actually quite strained, with testy questions and answers, which led some journalists to ask whether the positive signals we’d been getting did not really reflect the mood in the private talks. Several participants, including senior Muslim delegate Seyyed Hossein Nasr who was in the middle of it all, denied that was the case. As all present could see, the strains emerged when Monsignor Khaled Akasheh, the desk officer for Islam in the Vatican’s interfaith department who was moderating the session, tried to stop Nasr from answering questions put to him. Another curious decision was to let a relatively low-ranking delegate, a lay professor from Paris named Joseph Maila, answer questions for the Catholic delegation rather than delegation head Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran or another senior Vatican official.More on this later…

Look who’s celebrating Reformation Day today

Tom Heneghan

Oct 31, 2008 10:57 EDT

Today is Reformation Day, the anniversary of the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg in eastern Germany and set off the Protestant Reformation. It is a public holiday in the five eastern German states, in Slovenia and — this year for the first time — in Chile.

Chile? Isn’t that traditionally a Catholic country? Even the Catholic parts of Germany don’t celebrate Reformation Day.

Yes, Chile is traditionally Catholic, but now only about 70% so. Like elsewhere in Latin America, Protestant churches — especially evangelicals and Pentecostals — have spread rapidly in recent decades. They now make up just over 15% of the Chilean population, up from 7% in 1970. It’s not a new story, but creating a holiday especially for Protestants is a symbolic step towards recognising the changes in the religious landscape in Latin America.

The holiday is not officially called Reformation Day but Día Nacional de las Iglesias Evangélicas y Protestantes — National Day of the Evangelical and Protestant Churches. President Michelle Bachelet mentioned the Luther link in a speech (here in Spanish) about the new holiday, which she stressed was a sign of equality of faiths in Chile’s secular state. She also called it a form of recognition of the contribution made by the evangelical churches to national progress in all fields, of their preaching of values that enrich our existence and strengthen the culture of tolerance and respect.”

Do you think if other Latin American countries will follow Santiago’s example? Should they?

Apropos Luther, Der Spiegel has an interesting article in English about how Wittenberg — whose population is only 10% Protestant — may be in for a remake to turn it into “a true Protestant Rome” . This is part of the preparations for the 500th anniversary of Reformation Day in 2017. But Calvin Year (“Calvin09″), the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth, is coming up soon and Geneva will certainly play up its claim to that title.

Pace picks up in international interfaith meetings

Tom Heneghan

Oct 31, 2008 06:36 EDT

November will see an upswing on the interfaith dialogue front with two high-level meetings highlighting different approaches to the challenge of fostering better understanding among the world’s major religions.

The first will be the meeting of the Common Word group of Muslim scholars with Pope Benedict and top Roman Catholic experts on Islam next week (Nov. 4-6) at the Vatican. This will be the third conference initiated by the group, following sessions at Yale University in July and the University of Cambridge this month where Muslim and Christian religious leaders and theologians discussed in detail what unites and separates them. Being the supertanker of the Christian world, the Vatican has turned more slowly towards this theological dialogue than the smaller Protestant churches. But it has agreed to institutionalise the dialogue in a Catholic-Muslim Forum and give it a gesture of approval with a papal audience. Let’s see what comes out at the end of the talks next Thursday.

Here is my curtainraiser on the meeting.

The week afterwards, on Nov. 12-13, Saudi King Abdullah will be at the United Nations in New York to promote the interfaith dialogue that he launched in Madrid last July. This effort is much wider — the Madrid meeting had not only Christians and Muslims but also Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and people of other faiths. It seems like more of an official diplomatic offensive, especially with that U.N. connection. Reflecting that, the White House has announced that President George Bush will join Abdullah at the talks. There are reports that Israeli President Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni might attend. One might be tempted to write the whole thing off as another talking shop, but an international body like the United Nations may be the right forum now for Abdullah to continue one pioneering aspect of this effort — his outreach to Jews. Several rabbis attended the Madrid meeting and Abdullah has said he wants to hold an interfaith conference in Saudi Arabia. That would have to include Jews if this whole project is to be taken seriously. Watch that space.

All this focus on better understanding between the world’s two largest religions looks like it is overlooking the third Abrahamic monotheism, but it’s not that simple. The Catholic Church has been talking a lot with Jews lately, most of it over the still open wound of the Pius XII papacy and his stand during the Holocaust. The Vatican was on the defensive on that one and Pope Benedict hinted on Thursday he would freeze the sainthood process for his wartime predecessor. At the same time, he told the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations that “dialogue between cultures and religions must more and more be seen as a sacred duty incumbent upon all those who are committed to building a world worthy of man”. While it wants to keep a sharp focus on Christian-Muslim issues, the Common Word group has also included rabbis in its discussions, especially when dealing with reading scriptures. The Vatican also plans another meeting with the International Jewish Committee in Budapest on Nov. 9-12.