ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

Church reveals fine details
of the England-Wales ordinariate
By Anna Arco

11 January 2011

Personal ordinariates for groups of Anglican converts around the world are likely to develop their own missal according to traditional Anglican use, an English Church official has said.

Fr Marcus Stock, the general secretary of the Bishops of England and Wales, said that while an ordinariate in Britain would be likely to follow the Roman Rite, he expected that an Anglican use of the Roman Rite would be developed.

Fr Stock said: “When we are talking about the ordinariate we’re not just talking about England and Wales but for across the world and I’d be surprised if something isn’t developed for use for all the ordinariates. I don’t think they’ll develop particular ones.

“There will be an Anglican Traditional Use, such as there is in the United States who use the book of divine worship, which again they might simply adapt that for use in ordinariates around the world.”

He said that Anglican patrimony and tradition did not only refer to the missal used in Mass, but also to things like Evensong and Morning Prayer “and a slightly different form of the Breviary than the Roman rite would use and additional funeral rites and marriage rites which might reflect a particular tradition in the Anglican communion”.

“So it will probably be more of a sacramentary than a missal, which will have different rites,” Fr Stock said. “That’s a long-term project.”

The ordinariate in England and Wales, which is due to be established by a decree from the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, will have a principal church which is to serve a similar function to a diocesan cathedral.

Fr Stock said: “They will need a place to meet, to have meetings and gather as a group. Not a cathedral as such, but a principal church, it’s called in the constitution, where the members of the ordinariate can gather for the celebration of liturgies and where the ordinary will be based.”

The bishops have been on the look out for a church of sufficient size, capacity and centrality to serve as the principal church for the ordinariate.

Fr Stock said: “Like any diocesan centre, you want somewhere where people can get to easily, so that’s all being looked into at the moment. And that will hopefully not just have the church, but also accommodation for the ordinary and a bit of luck some additional facilities for social meeting and some offices for the ordinariate.”

While the bishops’ conference has pledged £250,000, which is in a restricted fund of the Catholic Trust for England and Wales at the moment until the ordinariate is actually established, Fr Stock said that funding for the ordinariate has also been coming in from other sources. He cited charities, individuals and communities which have pledged “not insubstantial amounts” to assist the establishment of an ordinariate.

He said that financing the ordinariate would clearly be “a major strategic concern for the ordinary when he is appointed and his council when that is constituted”.

Fr Stock said the rapid ordination of the three former Anglican bishops who were received into the Church on the first of January and will be ordained priests on January 15, was a unique situation.

He said “The pastoral arrangements that have been put at the inception of the ordinariate are to recognise the fact that there is a pastoral need for those men who have been ministering to the congregations hitherto need to be making their journey into the Catholic Church and that’s why these provisions have been put into place. Of course those men who are going to have to be prepared for the Catholic priesthood—things to do with canon law and pastoral practice that they need to get used to and need to learn those things. But it is a recognition that fundamentally we need to keep these groups together to meet their spiritual needs.”

When he was asked whether it was a step forward from the pastoral provision which was granted to former Anglican clergymen in the 1990s thanks to the efforts of Cardinal Basil Hume, Fr Stock said: “I think it’s recognised that that may have been a weakness at the time, that there wasn’t a recognition of the need for their pastors to accompany the people, but any priest who has been parish priest will tell you that after a bit time the priest and people get very close. It’s important sometimes for priests to accompany their people.”

The ordinariate represents a completely new canonical structure which is similar to a military diocese, but allows groups of Anglicans who wish to keep their patrimony to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.
Members of the ordinariate will be fully-fledged Catholics of the Roman Rite – this means they are not like the Eastern ritual churches which are in communion with Rome. Ordinariate priests will be able celebrate Mass normally in Catholic churches and Catholics attending ordinariate Masses will be able to receive Communion there.

Fr Stock today issued an extensive guide to the ordinariate on behalf of the Bishops of England and Wales. [I posted the Guide and Archbishop Nichols's announcement of the ordination at Westminster in the BENEDICT thread.]

Among other things, this eye-opening article by Father Samir article blows the myth that Egyptian propaganda has fed the world for several days....


Europe and Islam in the wake
of attacks against Copts in Alexandria
by Samir Khalil Samir, S.J.



ROME, January 12 (AsiaNews) - The attack against the Church of Saints in Alexandria, Egypt, on December 31 last, shows in an increasing harsh light the growth of Christianophobia in the Islamic world (and beyond). It is important to denounce this violence, but also to find practical steps to counter it.

First, the facts: Muslims accuse the Egyptian Coptic Church and Patriarch Shenouda III, of holding two women who converted to Islam captive against their will in convents in Egypt. This accusation, which is completely false, was repeated on the very same day of the attack, on December 31.

In the mosque 200 meters from the church attacked at midnight, following the imam’s sermon, there was a demonstration of Muslims calling for the release of these two women and all others.

This story has been dragging on for four years. It claims that the two women, Wafa 'Constantine and Camelia Shehata, who are married to two priests, had marital problems, that they then converted to Islam, and were kidnapped and hidden by the Church.

It is true that women had marital problems, but it is not true that they converted. In fact the late leader of Al-Azhar, Tantawi, decreed that there is no evidence of their conversion. The two women were then brought to the Church, who for fear of their possible kidnapping by Islamist movements, gave them refuge in convents.

But the story keeps coming back to the surface. Even after the attack on the Syrian Catholic church in Baghdad on October 31 last year, the group that claimed responsibility for the terrorist act, cited the case of these two women, to justify attacks against Christians in Egypt.

All of this is absurd. Yesterday, I participated in an online forum of an Islamic newspaper, al-Mesreyya, discussing the attack on the church in Alexandria. Instead of expressing their condolences for the Christian victims, their horror at the attack, etc.. Everyone - at least 60 comments - said that "it is the Copts fault," and cited the story of the two women; that the attack on the church was organized by Copts themselves "to make us look bad in front of the rest of the world"; or something that was organized by the U.S. and Mossad.

[So my gut reaction was right that there was something not convincing about the official Egyptian propaganda on orthodox Christmas Day about 'massive Muslim solidarity' for Copts[/G} - to the point of offering themselves as 'human shields' during the midnight Masses! Again, while I do not doubt that some Muslims may have been sincere about their solidarity with the Copts, the 'human shield' claim was the safest thing to make because all Egypt was on security alert that night and Christmas Day, and chances were that the 'human shields' would be unnecessary. As they were! So, thanks, but no thanks!]

I posted a short comment, but it was not published. In the few lines I wrote, I asked what right is there to force a conversion? Conversions are stifled in Egypt, that is, conversion to Islam is facilitated, but those from Islam to another religion are strongly hindered.

In this situation the reaction of Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the current Imam of Al-Azhar, is understandable. He paid a visit to the Coptic Patriarch Shenouda III to express his condolences. In Egypt, these visits are a formality every time there is an attack: they imply “we always understand each other”, and "we should not destroy national unity."

Thousands of Christians were demonstrating in front of the patriarchate to ask for more security and protection for Christians. They reacted to al-Tayyeb's visit by shouting slogans and throwing stones at his car.

But we must also take into consideration what Muslims do. Over the past three months, several times a picture of Shenouda was trampled upon and destroyed, and the names of 200 Copts are on a death list, with the patriarch in first place. Among them are 100 Canadian, German, Austrian and European Copts, and "shedding their blood – reads the list - is lawful." In this case too, the obsession with conversions is at the root of the violence.

The Egyptian government says that the attack on the church of Alexandria was carried out by foreigners. And in a way it's true: the Iraqi group linked to Al Qaeda that claimed responsibility for the Church attack in Baghdad on Oct. 31, threatened further violence if the two Egyptian women were not handed over to the Islamic community. Al Qaeda, whose leader is al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, is in fact a widespread terrorist mafia with international branches.

The imam of Al-Azhar has criticized the Pope for asking world governments to defend Christians and claims he does not care about Muslims killed in Iraq.

That a figurehead such as he, considered a very learned and moderate man - he knows several languages and studied in Paris – should say such things against the Pope is unacceptable: he has criticized the pope without really knowing anything, by simply repeating what he has read in the headlines.*

*[Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the imam of Al Azhar, criticized the Pope, claiming that he only appealed for greater protection for Christians in his homily on January 1. "I do not agree - he said - with the position of the Pope and wonder why the Pope did not ask for protection when they were killing Muslims in Iraq."

In fact, the Pope's words were: "Faced with the threatening tensions of the moment, especially in the face of religious discrimination, abuses and intolerance, which today affect Christians in particular, once again I address this urgent appeal not to give in to despair and resignation. I urge everyone to pray that the efforts undertaken by several parties to promote and build peace in the world come to fruition".

It is true however, that many media have published headlines like "Pope calls on governments to protect Christians," with a clear reduction of the message.]

In fact there is nothing to criticise in the Pope's address. Benedict XVI only recalled that violence against man is against the will of God. Of course he asked for help for Christians, seeing that he was referring to recent events. But even if he asked for increased security for Christians, is that really a scandal?

If the governments of the Middle East are not able to defend their Christian minorities, because they do not want to or because they are not capable of doing so, then the world must do something, otherwise what's the UN or other international bodies for?

It is also ridiculous to say - as the imam of A;-Ahzar did - that the Pope has never defended the Muslims of Iraq. Neither John Paul II nor Benedict XVI ever approved of the American intervention of Iraq, nor believe that it was lawful.

It must be said then that Muslims are often targeted and killed by other Muslims. The Pope can condemn violence and say that we must defeat intolerance, and stop justifying violence in the name of God, but the Pope has done this countless times.

Some analysts warn against attempts by the West to exploit all this violence against Christians. In fact, however, in many European countries, Muslims continue to increase their demands, presenting them as their "rights"; they do unusual things and nobody says anything.

For example, in France and Italy, Friday Muslim prayer takes place in public spaces, on the streets, blocking traffic.

Islam in Europe is becoming increasingly more demanding, and governments do not know how to react to it. Some impede integration/ The relationship between European governments and Muslim immigrants is among the most difficult.

Of course, the vast majority of Muslims want peace, want to integrate, but among them there are people who have another project, namely, "We in Europe have the right to have our law, Shariah, and you prevent us from having this".

A few years ago in Milan, the head of the Viale Jenner mosque, responding to a questions about conversions to Christianity in Egypt said “you simply have to apply the law”, which means the death of those who have converted.

And if you condemn the application of the law then you are holding back our freedom of religion. This position is creating problems in France, Italy, Sweden, etc. It is possible that European governments use violence against Christians to block Islamic emigration. Just as is it possible that Israel uses this violence to justify an ever more apparent racism in Israeli society. [???? Fr. Samir has lost me here!]

But violence against Christians is something that happens every day with the aim of ridding the Middle East of the Christian presence. Bombings and killings are a constant reality in Egypt.

For this reason, some European countries are beginning to say "enough". There is the growing realization that something must be done. It is true that other attacks on the religious freedom of Christians in China or Vietnam or in Laos, are condemned, if only, sporadically. The fact is that the Middle East is closely tied to Europe and the problem of coexistence with Islam is a European problem.

I am pleased with the unanimous response of the international community on the attack on the Copts in Egypt. What is striking in this case is the absolute innocence of the Copts: What have they done to deserve such a murderous attack? In other parts - Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon ... - there are acts of war, but there is none of this here in Egypt.

The attacks on the Copts are violent and gratuitous, motivated only by alleged "conversions" - just the Church is asking for freedom of religion everywhere, as the Pope did in his message for World Peace Day and in his address to the diplomatic corps.

The Alexandria church bombing was an act against religious freedom. Yet Muslims, in the name of Shariah, are not able to understand the value of human rights, which must come before all tradition and all laws, even sharia.

It must be said that this violence also involves the West. The Pope, in his speech on 1 January, said that concrete actions are needed and not just words.

We must pay particular attention to the Middle Eastern and Islamic countries, or wherever violence against religious freedom occurs. It is no good putting pressure on these nations, because they see it as interference. The American proposal for collaboration with Islam, made by Barack Obama, does not arouse enthusiasm because the U.S. proposals then lapse into a form of colonialism.

Eelationship with the Muslim countries must not be exclusively economic but also cultural. One of the main points of this dialogue is the need to take seriously the fundamentalists' criticism of Western civilization as atheist. They see that the West promotes an irreligious culture.

In fact, the West is either neutral or indifferent, or even contrary to religion. Whereas for fundamentalists, the priority is to promote Islam, which is both religion and culture.

We have to take the middle road between two extremes: the secularist West, in which there is no room for religion, or Islamic fundamentalism in which religion forcibly penetrates all areas of life: prayer, work, sex, family, etc. ...

In the Angelus of January 1, the Pope said: "Today we are witnessing two opposite trends, both negative, both extremes: on one hand, secularism, which often in a very deceitful way, marginalizes religion to confine it to the private sphere and on the other fundamentalism, which instead wants to impose it by force. "

The Pope is right. We must reject both secularism and fundamentalism.

Because the beatification announcement is still in the headlines, I posted these stories earlier in the BENEDICT thread. I shall post on this thread any subsequent news related to the beatification that does not directly involve Benedict XVI.


Rome scrambles to prepare
for 2 million pilgrims


VATICAN CITY, Jan. 16 (AP) – Crowd control experts were rushing to ready Rome for an estimated 2 million pilgrims for Pope John Paul II's beatification on May 1, when the city will be thronged with Easter week tourists.

No tickets or invitations will be necessary — as many faithful who want to be there to see the Polish-born Pontiff beatified, the last formal step before possible sainthood, can come, a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said Saturday.

"We don't give estimates" of the size of the crowds who will come, said Benedettini. But Italian news reports say authorities in Rome were planning for 2 million pilgrims.

With St. Peter's Square and the boulevard leading from the Tiber to the Vatican able to hold a few hundred thousand people, large video screens are expected to be set up in nearby streets so the spillover crowd can watch the ceremony led by Pope Benedict XVI.

The last turnout so big in Rome was the 3 million mourners for John Paul's funeral and other ceremonies following his death in April 2005 after he struggled for years with Parkinson's disease.

Even the more popular ceremonies in his papacy didn't come near to drawing so many faithful. When an ailing John Paul beatified Mother Teresa in 2003 in St. Peter's Square, 300,000 pilgrims attended. Padre Pio's sainthood ceremony, led by John Paul in June 2002, saw about 200,000 faithful swelter the square in one of the larger turnouts in his 26-year-long papacy.

In 2000, about 700,000 young Catholics streamed into Rome for church World Youth Day events stretched out over several days at locations throughout the city as well as at the Vatican.

La Stampa, an Italian daily, said the national civil protection agency personnel hope to rein in any chaos by meeting pilgrims' buses and channeling the faithful down selected streets to the square.

Easter falls on April 24, meaning Rome's hotels will be brimming with Easter week tourists, when many students are on school break and families pour into Italy, so organizers might look to Romans to open their homes to pilgrims.

May 1 is also national labor day, and traditional May Day concerts near the Basilica of St. John in Lateran usually draw hundreds of thousands of young people from throughout Italy to enjoy the free music.

On Friday, Benedict set the date for beatification after declaring that a French nun's recovery from Parkinson's disease was the miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified. A second miracle, attributed to John Paul's intercession after the beatification ceremony, will be needed for the widely popular Pontiff to be formally honored with sainthood.

Once he is beatified, John Paul will be given the title "blessed" and can be publicly venerated.

Veneration is the word commonly used to refer to that worship given to saints, either directly or through images or relics, which is different in kind from the divine worship given to God only, according to reference work, the Catholic Encyclopaedic Dictionary.

John Paul's entombed remains, currently in the grotto underneath St. Peter's Basilica, will be moved upstairs to a chapel just inside a main entrance for easier access by throngs of admirers.


A cursory and belated wrap-up of Poland's reaction to the news... I have not had the time to look up any English sources in Poland itself.

Polish leaders hail JPII beatification



WARSAW, January 16 (AFP) - Leading Poles including former President Lech Walesa last Friday hailed the Vatican decision to beatify the late Polish-born Pope John Paul II on May 1.

“I am doubly happy. Firstly, because a man who was a living saint will officially become a saint. Our Pope did great things,” anti-communist Solidarity trade union founder Walesa told AFP.

“Without him, there would have been no Solidarity in Poland. It was the Polish Pope and Solidarity that contributed to the disappearance of communism in Europe in the 20th century,” he said.

Historians agree that the 1978 election of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to the papacy inspired the rise of Poland’s 10-million strong anti-communist Solidarity movement in 1980.

By 1989, under Walesa’s leadership, Solidarity negotiated a peaceful end to communism in Poland, making it the first country in the Soviet bloc to eschew the system.

By 1991, the Soviet Union crumbled putting an end to the bipolar world of the Cold War.

“It’s possible that our great friend, once he becomes a saint, will help us from on high to solve our problems in Poland, Europe and the world,” Walesa said last Friday.

In the southern city of Krakow Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the late Pope’s former personal secretary and one of his closest friends for 40 years, said Poland was “overjoyed”.

“Speaking in the name of the diocese, in the name of Krakow and, I think, in the name of all of Poland, I’m overjoyed,” Mgr Dziwisz told reporters in the city where John Paul II served as a cardinal.

“I want to express my great gratitude to the Holy Father for the decree necessary for this beatification,” Mgr Dziwisz said.

John Paul II is to be beatified on May 1 – a key step on the path to sainthood – the Vatican announced last Friday after his successor Pope Benedict XVI signed an official decree.

“Personally, I’m overwhelmed by it, even though I knew him since almost my youth (...) When the news arrived, I felt overwhelmed that John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, will be beatified and canonised.”

“It’s an incredible feeling: I’ve understood how a husband whose wife has been canonised must feel,” Mgr Dziwisz added.

The process of beatification is usually lengthy, but calls for John Paul to be canonised came immediately after his death in April 2005 at the Vatican, at the age of 84.

Pope Benedict himself will conduct the ceremony in St Peter’s Basilica, according to Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.

May 1 falls this year on the first Sunday after Easter, which is the Feast of the Divine Mercy, a devotion promoted by John Paul II.

Italian media had suggested the beatification ceremony would take place on Sunday, April 3, the day after the sixth anniversary of John Paul’s death.

But Lombardi said that the date fell during Lent, traditionally a period of penitence for the Church as it commemorates the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert, and “was not the ideal time” for a “joyous” ceremony.

Works are under way in St Peter’s Basilica to make space for Pope John Paul II’s tomb. As is traditional, the Pope’s remains will be moved up from the crypt to the nave of the basilica after he is beatified.

Preparations are being made in the Chapel of St Sebastian, on the right-hand side of the nave, between the Chapel of Michelangelo’s Pietà and the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament.

The ex-pontiff’s body “will not be displayed, it will be placed in a tomb closed by a simple marble tombstone with the words: Beatus Ioannes Paulus II,” (Blessed John Paul II), Lombardi said.

The beatification follows the announcement last week that the Congregation of the Causes for Saints had approved the Polish Pope’s first miracle. The commission confirmed that French nun Marie Simon-Pierre was miraculously cured of Parkinson’s disease through the intercession of John Paul II.


The following CNS story is dated January 14 but it was not posted until today since CNS does not register any activity at all on weekends...


For many, beatification announcement
confirms long-held sentiment
By Carol Zimmermann


WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (CNS) -- The news of Pope John Paul II's upcoming beatification was welcomed by many as a confirmation of something they already felt from the moment the shouts of "Santo subito!" ("Sainthood now!") reverberated through St. Peter's Square at the Pontiff's funeral.

Many in the crowd were young people who had a special affinity to Pope John Paul, whose pontificate started and ended with a special greeting to young people. During his installation ceremony in 1978, the newly named Pope told young people: "You are the future of the world, you are the hope of the church, you are my hope."

And his last words, reportedly delivered hours before his death, were also to youths, in response to the thousands of young people praying and singing in St. Peter's Square.

"I sought you and now you have come to me. ... I thank you," said the Pontiff, who died April 2, 2005 at age 84.

Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, founder and CEO of Canada's Salt and Light Television, said it was no coincidence that he heard the news of the Pontiff's beatification while attending a meeting in Spain for the upcoming World Youth Day.

"A thunderous, sustained, standing ovation followed the announcement," he said in a Jan. 14 statement.

The priest, national director for World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, said the date for the beatification, May 1, is also no coincidence. Not only is it Divine Mercy Sunday, but it is also the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, known as "May Day" on secular calendars.

"Communists and socialists around the world commemorate May Day with marches, speeches and festivals," he said, adding that it was fitting that "the man who was a unique instrument and messenger in bringing down the Iron Curtain and the deadly reign of communism and godlessness will be declared blessed" that day.

Father Rosica said the announcement is "the formal confirmation of what many of us always knew as we experienced the Holy Father in action throughout his pontificate" particularly among youths, noting that one of the Pope's gifts to the Church was his establishment of World Youth Day.

Tim Massie, the chief public affairs officer and adjunct professor of communication and religious studies at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., called the news of Pope John Paul II's upcoming beatification a "morale boost" especially for Catholics in the United States "where sex abuse scandals, financial crises and disagreements with church hierarchy have dramatically affected parishes, dioceses and the faithful in the pews."

Because of the Pope's extensive travels in the United States, he said, "there are literally millions of people who were touched by his charisma and holiness."

The Pope visited the United States seven times and in each visit urged Catholics to use their freedom responsibly and to preserve the sacredness and value of human life.

In an e-mail to Catholic News Service, Massie said the "general public already considers John Paul II a saint and those who saw him, listened to him, prayed with him, already believed they met a saint -- not a future saint, but someone who, like Mother Teresa, lived out the Gospel message in his everyday life."

Michele Dillon, who chairs the department of sociology at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, said she believes most American Catholics will welcome John Paul II's beatification.

She described him as the "first cosmopolitan pope for a cosmopolitan age, and his warm, energetic, and telegenic personality served him well on his many trips to all parts of the globe."

Dillon remarked that it would "be interesting to see whether his beatification, at this time of uncertain commitment among the faithful, will reignite a new spark of Church engagement especially among the generation who as teenagers turned out in force" for World Youth Day events.

Dennis Doyle, University of Dayton religious studies professor, noted that many U.S. Catholics didn't understand the Pope and wondered how he "could be liberal on social issues but yet so conservative on church issues. He was consistent in a way that was difficult for some people in the U.S. to understand."

"But ultimately, he is being beatified because he was loved throughout the world and is recognized iconically as a holy person," he added.

Tony Melendez, the armless guitarist whose embrace by Pope John Paul electrified an audience during the Pope's 1987 visit to Los Angeles, said he had always considered his encounters with the Pontiff "like I got to meet a living saint."

Melendez, in a phone interview with CNS while en route to his Missouri home, said he got to see Pope John Paul six more times, including a private audience at the Vatican about a year and a half after the 1987 U.S. pastoral visit.

"He remembered me," Melendez remarked. "And he said, 'Oh! My friend from Los Angeles!' without me saying anything. He hugged my head after I was (done) playing a song. ... To me, he was a wonderful man who did great things."

Told of the May 1 beatification date, Melendez said, "If I can be there, I want to go. I'll make some time to go. He was a living saint, in my heart."


Vatican officials and Catholics
on the street talk about John Paul II
By Cindy Wooden



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 14 (CNS) -- Vatican officials, Catholic leaders around the world and ordinary people on the streets and in St. Peter's Square were more pleased than surprised by news that Pope John Paul II will be beatified May 1.

Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, retired prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, said, "finally" more than once during a brief conversation Jan. 14 just minutes after Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree recognizing the miracle needed to beatify Pope John Paul.

"This is what the whole world was waiting for," said Cardinal Saraiva Martins, who was the head of the saints congregation when Pope John Paul died and when his sainthood cause was opened.

"I can't help being happy. This is the crowning moment of a work I began," he said.

The cardinal said the written work of Pope John Paul is so vast and the time before his beatification so short that the best "spiritual preparation" Catholics could make would be to "thank God for Pope John Paul's example of holiness and recommit ourselves to follow his example."

Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, said Pope John Paul's upcoming beatification is a "call to each of us to emulate his personal holiness."

Anderson, who stood in St. Peter's Square on the day of Pope John Paul's funeral as many shouted "Santo subito!" ("Sainthood now!"), said there were many who were ready to have him beatified that very day.

In an e-mail to Catholic News Service, Anderson called the upcoming beatification a great opportunity for the world to focus on the Pope's message of human dignity.

"He led by example, caring for the poor, the intellectually and physically disabled, the unborn, the oppressed. He forgave those who did him harm, and he broke down barriers. He had great respect even for those who differed with him religiously. In short, Pope John Paul is a model the world needs," he said.

Anderson said the beatification is not a recognition of the Pope's "successful papacy or a thank-you for his good work" but a call for each person to "imitate the holiness, the love of God and neighbor that this man exhibited throughout his life."

Jim Nicholson, a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, who also attended Pope John Paul's funeral, said the vast crowd that day was a testament to the Pope's exceptional qualities "of leadership and hope."

In a phone call from his Washington law office, Nicholson told CNS he was "extremely pleased" for the Pontiff, whom he frequently described as a "hope-filled freedom fighter." During his 2001-2005 role as ambassador, he got to know Pope John Paul pontiff personally and said he greatly admired his "adherence to hope, faith and prayer, coupled with courage and clever actions."

Jim Young, a Presbyterian from Ohio, was in St. Peter's Square when the beatification announcement was made. He said his only real reaction was that he'd better make sure he found some Pope John Paul souvenirs because "I'm related to a bunch of Polish Catholics who were already convinced he's a saint."

Giovanni Caponi, one of the souvenir-sellers who has a stand on the boulevard leading to St. Peter's Square, said the news will be good for business.

From a sales point of view, "John Paul is our most popular figure. No one greater exists. He's No. 1," said Caponi, who described himself as a nonbeliever.

Kaitlin Benedict, a 21-year-old Catholic from Eden, N.Y., said she thought the decision to beatify Pope John Paul just over six years after his death "is a little fast. I was surprised. Usually these things take decades and now they're just changing up tradition. But if they feel so strongly ...," she said, her voice trailing off.

Brigida Jones, a 26-year-old Australian from Melbourne, said Pope John Paul "was probably one of our best Popes; he was a people's Pope."

The young woman said, "I think he did so much when he was alive, and you'd just see him on television and get this sense of peace -- obviously he was holy."

Some reflections on Popes
and their personal holiness, etc


Of course, it is a human tendency to focus on John Paul II at this time because he is being beatified. But comments like those given by the prominent Catholics cited in the CNS stories above would give the impression that John Paul II is the only Pope in recent memory to have been recognized as holy in his lifetime, nor for that matter, the only Pope whose human virtues must be emulated.

It would be nice to for some to remind the world for a change that, of the Popes since the mid-19th century, Pius X has been canonized; Pius IX, Pius XI and John XIII have been beatified; and Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul I are being 'processed' for beatification (it has been reported that a 'beatification miracle' is under study for both Pius XXII and John Paul I).

I feel bad about Leo XIII and Benedict XV who appear to have been left off from consideration, but I have no doubt both Popes could well be considered if their respective dioceses took the initiative.

And of course, the most obviously overlooked in all this is the present Pope himself, whose personal holiness is not questioned even by those among his worst critics who are well-informed, and who - I think no one would dispute it - is a living Doctor of the Church. Most importantly, he is the one individual who sets the example of shining Christian witness daily and publicly to the entire world.

I am not arguing that Popes should automatically be considered for sainthood. Popes have not always been inspirational figures, as history tells us abundantly. But the Church does appear to be blessed in the era of the modern papacy with Popes whose election may well have been the action of the Holy Spirit, each of whom was inspirational in his time.

Perhaps the Conclaves that elected each of the modern Popes were enlightened in their choice by the demands of the times when they made their choice, so that each historical period somehow got the right Pope. But certainly no one has characterized any of the modern Popes as rascals.

In fact, even the Popes who have been most anathematized by their detractors for misunderstood episodes - Pius IX with his denunciation of modern errors; Pius X who was such a champion of Tradition that the FSSPX is named after him; Pius XII with respect to the Holocaust; Paul VI and his perceived ambivalences over Vatican II, and Papa Wojtyla himself, whose record is considered by some to be 'clouded' by the shadow of the sex-abuse scandals and his friendship with Father Maciel - are faulted for not being 'perfect', not for being unholy.

Some have argued that Popes should not be considered for sainthood at all because they enjoy an unfair advantage over 'lesser mortals'. That seems so illogical, because by definition, the spiritual leader of the Church - officially the Vicar of Christ on earth - should be more worthy than any other priest to be the Vicar of Christ, and their election would seem to be proof that their peers in the Church thought so, as well. In this light, every Pope should be a candidate for sainthood! And if the individual Pope is indeed a holy man, why should he be discriminated against?

The argument that Popes have an unfair advantage is equally fallacious - there are so few of them as to make a difference. Cardinal Amato says that the Congregation of Saints has about 3,000 causes pending. Of those, we are aware of six modern Popes.

The best argument, of course, is to cite the hundreds of humble folk - priests, religious and laymen - whom the Church has beatified and canonized in the past several decades, to limit ourselves to recent memory. The Church is not responsible for the miracles that lead to the beatification and canonization of candidate saints nor for the timing of these miracles, which for the most part, determine the fate and timing of each individual cause.

The whole Church celebrates, or should, whenever any one candidate for sainthood - whether he was a great Pope as Karol Wojtyla was, or a dying Roman teenager like Chiara Badano who inspired those around her with the luminous strength of her faith - hurdles the formal requirement for a 'certified' miracle, because new blesseds and saints are not just examples of Christian witness as Christ wants each of us to be, but because the miracles associated with them - events that are inexplicably by science - are extraordinary signs of God that are visible and tangible to a world where many people deny the existence of God.

French nun says late Pope
gave her a 'second birth'




AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France. January 18 (Reuters) - The French Catholic nun who credits the late Pope John Paul with curing her of Parkinson's disease said on Monday her sudden recovery came just as she was about to quit working because of her ailment.

Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, 49, said she woke up in June 2005, two months after the Polish-born pope had died, suddenly cured of the disease she had suffered from for four years.

John Paul's successor, Pope Benedict, approved a decree last Friday declaring her healing a miracle and attributing it to the late pontiff, clearing the way for him to be beatified on May 1.

"When I woke up, I felt I was not the same," Sister Marie told a news conference at the bishop's office in this southern French city. "There was no more heaviness in my muscles, I could move normally. For me it was a new birth, a second birth."

Her superior said the nun had told her the previous evening that she could no longer work in their order's maternity clinic because of her worsening health.

"I asked her to take a pencil and write John Paul's name," Mother Marie Thomas told journalists. "I saw the writing was very messy and illegible. I said to myself there was nothing left to do but hope."

Church-appointed doctors concluded that there was no medical explanation for the healing, although last year there were some doubts about the validity of the miracle.

A further miracle occurring after the beatification ceremony -- which confers the title "Blessed" on John Paul -- must be approved before he can be made a saint.

The beatification ceremony in St Peter's Square is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people, harkening back to the funeral of the charismatic pope in 2005. Sister Marie said she hoped she could attend the event.

"Since my healing, many requests for prayers have come in from many countries," the nun said. "To all these ill people, I'd like to say they must not give up. At the end of the tunnel, there is always a little light."

Crowds at John Paul's funeral on April 8, 2005 chanted "Santo subito!" ("Make him a saint right now!"). A month after his death, Benedict put him on the fast track by dispensing with a Church rule for a five-year wait after a candidate's death before the procedure that leads to sainthood can start.

The period between John Paul's death and beatification is believed to be the shortest in modern Church history.


Pope John Paul II's blood
to be a relic in Krakow church


CARCOW, Poland, Jan. 18 (AFP) - A vial containing blood drawn from Pope John Paul II shortly before he died will be installed as a relic in a Polish church soon after his beatification later this year, an official says.

Piotr Sionko, the spokesman for the John Paul II Centre, said the vial will be encased in crystal and built into the altar of a church in the southern city of Krakow that is opening in May.

The exact date of the opening is not yet known, but it should be shortly after John Paul's beatification at the Vatican on May 1.

Sionko said the idea came from Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the archbishop of Krakow and the longtime friend and secretary of the late Polish-born pontiff.

The blood was drawn for medical tests at Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic shortly before John Paul's death on April 2, 2005, and is now in Cardinal Dziwisz's possession, he said.

"It was the cardinal's proposal," Mr Sionko said. "He is of the opinion that this is the most precious relic of John Paul II and should be the focal point of the church."

The church in the Lagiewniki district is part of a centre that will be devoted to cultivating the memory and the teaching of the late pope - who was born Karol Wojtyla in Wadowice, southern Poland, and spent decades in Krakow.

Many Catholics in the world are rejoicing over Pope Benedict XVI's announcement last week that he will beatify John Paul on May 1.

The announcement came after a French nun miraculously recovered from Parkinson's disease.

Marie Simon-Pierre was diagnosed with degenerative Parkinson's disease in 2001.

After the death of John Paul II, who also suffered from Parkinson's, her condition quickly deteriorated, and her community began praying for the late pope's intercession to cure her.

The 49-year old recovered overnight in June 2005, two months after the pope's death, an event that doctors could not explain.

"On June 7 I met with my neurologist and when he saw my way of moving, he asked me if I had doubled my dosage of dopamine. I told him, 'No, I stopped everything,'" Simon-Pierre recalled.

"Why me? It remains a great mystery. There are, without a doubt, people, children, who are more sick than myself. I can't answer you. We are in the hands of life."

One miracle is required for beatification and a second one is needed for sainthood.

The process of validating his second miracle cannot begin before John Paul II is beatified. But speculation over which miracle will be chosen has already begun.

In April 2009, sources in Poland and in the United States spoke of two possibilities, one involving a wheelchair-bound Polish boy who walked after praying at John Paul II's tomb ,and the other an American who recovered from a serious head wound after he was given a rosary blessed by the pope.

The idea of displaying the Pope's relics has met with some reservations, even inside the Catholic Church.

"The tradition of relics comes from medieval practices of teaching the Bible through images and symbols," said the Rev. Krzysztof Madel, a Jesuit priest in Nowy Sacz who has publicly questioned the usefulness of displaying John Paul's blood.

"But in today's rationalised world the message should rather come through teaching about someone's life."

After John Paul's death, some Polish officials said they hoped John Paul's heart would be removed from his body and returned to his homeland for burial.

However, Church officials dismissed any possibility of dismembering the body, saying the age had passed for that practice.

Dziwisz said on Friday that he has always been against dividing of the body, but that "relics have always existed and will always exist".

[I would have imagined that Mons. Dsiwisz at the time would have kept some of the late Pope's hair from haircuts, as the most convenient way to keep a 'body part' of a potential saint. I wonder what Gemelli has done with any untested blood samples of the late Pope - it is standard practice in medical labs to keep frozen aliquots (small portions) of untested blood from specific dates and times even with 'ordinary patients' for a certain period of time, for possible future re-testing such as, for instance, to check out some results.]

At the beginning of the year, AsiaNews reported the visit of the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople (See report on preceding page of this thread) and noted:

---

Arinc's visit assumes special significance because it occurs one month after the legal recognition of the Ecumenical Patriarchate by Turkish authorities with the restitution of the deeds of property of the Buyukada orphanage.

---

The interpretation was wrong, in view of this report from the English edition of a leading Turkish newspaper:

Turkish government: It has not given
legal status to the Ecumenical Patriarchate
but is seeking a 'delicate balance'
on Patriarch Bartholomew's rights
by Emine Kart

19 January 2011

ANKARA - Voicing determination to expand the rights and freedoms of non-Muslim communities in Turkey, including Orthodox Christians, a senior Cabinet minister has made it clear that such willingness does not mean Ankara recognizes the legal personality of the İstanbul-based Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. [If the Turkish government will not grant legal status to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, that means it won't do that for the Catholic Church in Turkey either.]

“The institution represented by Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew does not have a legal personality under current Turkish law. They don't have a legal personality, but they exist,” Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said on Monday, echoing Ankara's argument that Turkey doesn't consider the patriarchate to be ecumenical, in line with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which governs the status of the Greek Orthodox Church in Turkey.

Ankara rejects Patriarch Bartholomew's use of the title “ecumenical,” or universal, arguing instead that the Patriarch is merely the spiritual leader of İstanbul's dwindling Greek Orthodox community.

The Greek Patriarchate in İstanbul dates back to the 1,100-year-old Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453.

“We are seeking an arrangement that recognizes the existence of the Patriarchate but doesn’t offer a legal personality to it, in line with the Lausanne Treaty and our laws,” Arınç said, as he visited the Ankara bureau of Today’s Zaman to join a modest celebration on the fourth anniversary of the establishment of the newspaper.

Arınç underlined that the same was valid for Roman Catholics living in Turkey as well. “For now, it is not possible for us to meet the Vatican’s demands for a legal personality for the Catholic Church in Turkey,” Arınç said. [There we are!]

Turkish authorities say that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the main agreement regulating minorities in Turkey, recognized only Jews, Armenians and Greek Orthodox communities as minorities, meaning many others, including Roman Catholics, Syriacs and Protestants, were left out.

Last year, Pope Benedict XVI said, “The Catholic Church in Turkey is waiting for civil juridical recognition,” noting that this would help the Turkish Catholic community “to enjoy full religious freedom and make an even greater contribution to society.”


Arinc with Patriarch Bartholomew at the Fanar last January 3.
In early January, Arınç became the highest-level Turkish official to visit the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in more than half a century, symbolizing the government’s pledges to address the problems of religious minorities and strengthen the country’s bid for European Union membership.

Turkey for decades has ignored demands from the patriarchate due to mistrust stemming from their rivalry with Greece. But Arınç’s visit coincided with government promises to consider reopening a seminary that trained generations of ecumenical patriarchs and return property that the state confiscated from Christian and Jewish minority foundations. In November, Turkey complied with a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling, returning a 19th-century orphanage to the patriarchate.

“We have to dispose of fears, delusions and prejudices. What matters is that different faith groups in Turkey should be able to live freely and peacefully and that their justified demands should be met. This is the approach and the decision of the AK Party [the ruling Justice and Development Party], even if some politicians find such an approach dangerous,” Arınç said. “We will do whatever is ordered by law. Furthermore, we will make the necessary arrangements if some laws are insufficient for meeting these demands because what matters are rights, and we are very careful about that,” he added.

Arınç also reiterated that the government is trying to overcome legal obstacles that stand in the way of reopening the Halki (Heybeliada) Seminary, which has been closed since 1971.

The Halki Seminary, the only school where the Greek minority in Turkey was able to educate its clergymen, was closed in 1971 during a period of tension with Greece over Cyprus and a crackdown on religious education, which also included Muslim religious schools.

The total number of graduates from the school is 990, and some of them have become clergymen in various places in Turkey and even in Athens. The school has been maintained by the functioning monastery on its premises.

I must admit I was schoked and unprepared for the recent Vatican decision to reject a request made by the Japanese bishops conference to suspend the activities of tne Neocatechumenal Way in Japan for at least five years, even if it was also decided that the Holy Father rwould send a personal delegate to look into the movement's activities and its frictions with the local dicoeses that are hosting their 'missionary work'. The Neocats' history in Japan has already been marked by the closing down of their seminary in Japan a few years back - a step that indicates the seriousness of the problems they have with their local hosts, not just in Japan but in other places.

To upset the Japanese, who are known for their innate courtesy and deference as a people, to the extent that the bishops' conference asked to suspend the Neocats' activities for five years, is quite remarkable! One Japanese bishop has made it clear, however, that the complaining bishops were also told by the Vatican to do as they think best within their respective dioceses. Which I believe is as it should be.

But as this part was not reported in the news that came from the Vatican, it looked very much like the Holy Father himself had taken the side of the Neocats against the Japanese bishops. I personally find the 'privileges' allowed by the Vatican to the Neocats incomprehensible. Why should a movement be allowed to have its own catechism, its own communion ritual and Saturday evening mass instead of Sunday Mass? Allowing them to bring these 'privileges' to their host dioceses around the world cannot be conducive to lcaol Catholic discipline.


Japanese bishop suspends Neocat work
in his diocese until papal envoy
completes his visit


TOKYO, Jan. 20 (UCAN) - Bishop Osamu Mizobe of Takamatsu today issued a New Year pastoral letter titled “The Neocatechumenal Way” that described a visit by Japanese bishops to Rome to discuss problems that have arisen in connection with that movement in Japan.

The bishop announced that, “until we have received the visit of the special Envoy of the Holy Father all activities of the Neocatechumenal Way will be suspended in this diocese.”

Bishop Mizobe says that until now he has tried to deal with the problem of the Neocatechumenal Way in the Church in Japan “as quietly as possible,” hoping for “self-discipline.”

On Dec. 13, Bishop Mizobe was among four Japanese bishops who discussed their concerns about the Way with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. In his message, the bishop says that, contrary to what they had been led to expect, the Japanese bishops found that joining the Pope at the table were Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, five other cardinals, and one archbishop.

The Diocese of Takamatsu has been the focus of Japanese bishops’ problems with the Neocatechumenal Way for decades, especially since a diocesan seminary affiliated with the Way, Redemptoris Mater, was opened in 1990.

Salesian Bishop Mizobe, formerly bishop of Sendai, was installed as bishop of Takamatsu in July 2004. Takamatsu diocese is home to nearly 5,000 Catholics.

Below is the text of Bishop Mizobe’s New Year pastoral letter, in an English translation provided by the bishop:

---

To the Clergy, Religious and Faithful of the Diocese of Takamatsu:

At the beginning of this New Year I send you greetings. I pray that this year you will journey with me, your Bishop, to bring about “Rebirth and Unity” in our diocese.

Last year on December 13, 2010, having received a message from the Vatican Secretariat of State that they wished to have a discussion regarding the Neocatechumenal Way, I went to Rome with three other Bishops from Japan. We presumed that we would meet around a table with the Holy Father, Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, and Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Cardinal Dias.

When we arrived at our hotel, however, we were advised that the place and time of our meeting had been changed and that the Holy Father, five Cardinals and one Archbishop (Undersecretary of the Secretariat of State) would be in attendance. To our surprise Bishop Hirayama was also included in the meeting, which proceeded with the aid of simultaneous translation. I will not go into detail about the contents of the meeting.

In the January 2 and January 16, 2011 editions of the Catholic Newspaper of Japan there is an article regarding the meeting and there is also concrete information in Catholic channels on the internet about the content of the meeting.

At the end of the year and at the beginning of this year many of the clergy and Christian people of the diocese asked for a report of the meeting in Rome. I was asked what the future policy of the Diocese of Takamatsu would be regarding the Neocatechumenal Way.

I also received the painful admonition that maintaining the position of “not knowing, not being told” would not be admissible. On the internet both in Japan and internationally, the fact that the Bishops of Japan were called to Rome has been widely reported.

You can read on the Internet that the Archdiocese of Clifton in England forbade all activities of the “Way” and that the Bishops’ Conference of Palestine has published a document asking the Neocatechumenal Way to practice self-control in their activities.

Recently the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan in the Philippines announced that an inspection of the Neocatechumenal Way in the archdiocese would be carried out. Comments in Italian, Spanish and English regarding articles about the “Way” are readily available on the internet.

What such articles tell us clearly is that problems with the Neocatechumenal Way are not exclusive to the Diocese of Takamatsu and the Church in Japan. The whole world is paying attention to the Church in Japan. Because of the seriousness of this issue, I made the decision to report clearly to you what has taken place and to explain to you the policy of our diocese.

After returning from Rome, the papal nuncio asked to have a meeting with us on December 23. Archbishop Okada of Tokyo and three Bishops attended the meeting. We were told that there was a strong possibility that a special envoy of the Holy Father would be sent to Japan. Until that time, however, with regard to the activities of the “Way”, it was agreed that each Bishop is free to proceed as he sees fit for his diocese.

At the meeting in Rome the four Bishops from Japan emphasized that this problem is concerned with the disciplinary laws of the diocese and as such is under the jurisdiction of the local ordinary. We emphasized that the fact that the Neocatechumenal Way has been approved by Rome does not automatically imply that a local diocese must accept them.

We also emphasized the fact that the person who understands the situation of the local church best is its Bishop and that any decisions made in Rome should begin with a discussion with the local ordinaries. The opinions of the Cardinals in attendance were diverse, and the meeting was simply an expression of the opinion of each person present rather than a discussion.

It was clear that the fact that the Bishops’ Conference of Japan made the decision to suspend the activities of the Neocatechumenal “Way” is a big problem for the Vatican. It was necessary, therefore, to think of a plan of action. In this regard the Holy Father stated that he would think positively about sending a special envoy of the Holy Father to Japan.

The special envoy from the Vatican will surely come to our diocese. If we look at the reverse side of the decision that it is necessary to send a special envoy, we realize how wide the fissure in our diocese is. Besides, this is the second time such an envoy has come. In 2003 Cardinal Kim from Korea was sent as a special envoy to our diocese and after his visit he compiled a detailed report.

In that report he analyzed the situation in the diocese and proposed ways to remedy the situation. Cardinal Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, said that the envoy will be sent to hear the opinions of the Christian people of the diocese.

Until this time I have tried to deal with the problem of the Neocatechumenal Way as quietly as possible and without making public statements. I was waiting for the members of the Neocatechumenal Way to decide for themselves to use self-discipline in their activities. Now that this problem has become a worldwide issue, however, I cannot wait any longer.

After I came back from Rome I realized that I have an obligation to speak to the people of the diocese. If the people of the diocese do not have information about the situation, when the envoy comes, there is a possibility that they would refuse to speak out or end up affecting ignorance because they had not been informed, and the result would be that the envoy would leave the diocese without a true grasp of the situation.

As Bishop of the Diocese of Takamatsu I have come to the following conclusion regarding the issue of the Neocatechumenal Way. This problem is one that concerns the local Church, namely the Diocese of Takamatsu. It is an issue that can only be settled here in the diocese. The Holy Father and the Prefects of the Congregations agree that this is a problem of the local Church and that it is the Bishop who must settle it.

It is not permissible for any organization or movement to use whatever power they can to stop the Bishop from taking action in his diocese. It is important for all of us to earnestly and seriously face the events that have occurred in our diocese for the past 20 years and are still happening.

This is not the time to devote oneself only to the interests of one’s group but rather a time to think of ways that one can be of service to the diocese. In our diocese, gathered around our Bishop. we are standing at an important turning point in the road towards true “Rebirth and Unity”.

The conclusion I have come to is that, until we have received the results of the visit of the special envoy of the Holy Father, I ask you to suspend all activities of the Neocatechumenal Way in the diocese. This decision has been approved by both the Presbytery Council and the Pastoral Council of the diocese. It is not a decision that means that dialogue has ended but rather an opportunity for reflection for all of us.

When a process goes amiss it is said that one should always return to the starting point. I believe that NOW is a good time for us to return to the starting point. This decision does not mean that the members of the Neocatechumenal Way are excluded from the diocese. My wish is that we use this time of reflection to make true dialogue possible.

I respect the members of the Neocatechumenal Way and hope that they will take an active part in the activities of the diocese. I wish also that all the people of the diocese play an active role in the three-year process we have begun in order to revitalize our diocese. There is not one person in the diocese that can be exempted from playing a part in this process.

January 20, 2011

Osamu Mizobe
Bishop of the Diocese of Takamatsu

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Council of Europe calls
for defense of Christians,
recommends monitoring religious
freedom in member states


STRASBOURG, France, JAN. 27, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) today adopted a Recommendation in 17 points on "Violence against Christians in the Middle East."

The Recommendation and its explanatory memorandum were drafted by Italian Member of Parliament Luca Volontè. It was adopted by 125 votes in favor, with nine voting against and 13 abstentions.

The document notes that Christians have been present in the Middle East since Christianity began there, but that for the last century, the communities have been dwindling.

"The situation has become more serious since the beginning of the 21st century and, if it is not properly addressed, it could lead to the disappearance -- in the short term -- of Christian communities from the Middle East, which would entail the loss of a significant part of the religious heritage of the countries concerned," the council document declares.

The Council of Europe specifically condemned two recent episodes of anti-Christian violence: the Oct. 31 attack on a church in Baghdad, Iraq, and the Jan. 1 bombing of a church in Alexandria, Egypt. It further mentions a Christmas episode in Cyprus.

"[T]he Assembly calls on Turkey to clarify fully the circumstances surrounding the interruption of the celebration of Christmas Mass in the villages of Rizokarpaso and Ayia Triada in the northern part of Cyprus on 25 December 2010 and to bring to justice those responsible," the document states. "The Assembly urges Iraq and Egypt to be transparent and determined in their attempts to bring the culprits of the attacks in Baghdad and in Alexandria to justice as rapidly as possible."

The Recommendation also affirms that "freedom of thought, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, including the freedom to change one’s religion, are universal human rights."

A statement from the European Centre for Law and Justice welcoming the vote noted some Members of the Assembly also observed that negating the role of Christianity in European culture is "also a kind of violence" against Christians.

Referring to anti-Christian persecution by communist regimes and by Islamic fundamentalists, the ECLJ statement asserted that "the secularist ideology also discriminates against religions, at a different level."

In this regard, "Europeans should be consistent," it added.

The center hailed a "list of clear and precise political actions" as the "best achievement of this Recommendation."

These include the call to "develop a permanent capacity to monitor the situation of governmental and societal restrictions on religious freedom and related rights in Council of Europe member states and in states in the Middle East, and report periodically to the assembly" and to "pay increased attention to the subject of freedom of religion or belief and to the situation of religious communities, including Christians, in its co-operation with third countries as well as in human rights reports."

The Recommendation also requests a comprehensive policy of asylum based on religion, and promotion of policies to help relocate Christian refugees in their home countries and support communities offering a local refuge to the Christian minorities of the Middle East.

This Recommendation follows the adoption a week ago of a resolution by the European Parliament. It will be further followed by a discussion within the European Council (Brussels) next Monday, at the initiative of the governments of Italy, Hungary and Poland.

A biography that stresses
John Newman's literary imagination.
Book review by David Michael

January 2011

David J. Michael is the editor of Wunderkammer, a web-based journal of cultural criticism. He is currently pursuing a master's degree at Lund University, Sweden.


James Joyce thought he was England's greatest prose writer. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus described his prose as "cloistral silverveined."

His spiritual autobiography is widely considered the best in the genre since Augustine's Confessions, and George Eliot wrote that it "breathed much life into me."

The Victorian critic Richard Holt Hutton called him "not only one of the greatest English writers, but perhaps the very greatest master … of sarcasm in the English Language."

W. H. Auden marked the beginning of the modern age with his conversion to Catholicism. He wrote the treatise in support of liberal education.

He is arguably the most important thinker of the last two hundred and fifty years in both the Anglican and Catholic churches.

One would think that John Henry Newman's reputation as a man of letters would be more than well-established.

But perhaps because of Newman's particular blend of the literary and the theological, he may also be England's greatest unread prose writer, at least among current undergraduates and students of literature. This was not always the case.

Fifty years ago, Martin Svaglic remarked in his introduction to The Idea of a University, "There must be few American collegians, surely, who do not, thanks to their freshman readers or their literature survey books," recognize some of Newman's ideas, however "hazily."

Yet when I asked my peers in my graduate program in literature and cultural studies how many of them had read Newman, none of them answered in the affirmative. In fact, none of them had even heard of him.

It is Newman's reputation as a man of letters that John Cornwell seeks to cement in Newman's Unquiet Grave. Though Newman's beatification in September by Benedict XVI has spawned a small industry of accounts of Newman's holiness, Cornwell's subject is Newman's literary imagination.

He writes that his "overarching purpose is to show that Newman's unrelenting literary obsession was the story of his own life: he was the ultimate, self-absorbed autobiographer."

One of the marks of an active literary imagination is a marked inwardness, bordering on solipsism. Cornwell suggests that Newman was characterized by such inwardness from a young age.

He was raised in a comfortably religious, middle-class family in London in the early 1800s. By fourteen, he had read Paine's Tracts against the Old Testament, Hume, and Voltaire's denial of the immortality of the soul, after the latter of which he recollected "saying something to myself like 'How dreadful, but how plausible!' "

In 1816, under the influence of his schoolmaster, Newman converted to a dogmatic evangelical Christianity. In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, he writes that at this time he rested in the "thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator."

In 1817, Newman set off to Trinity College, Oxford, where he would gradually drop Calvinist evangelicalism in favor of Anglicanism. It was also at Oxford that Newman was to develop his prodigious talents and astounding work ethic. (He recorded having once written for 22 hours straight while working on his Apologia.)

Cornwell dubs Newman a "superabundant literary workaholic." While preparing to take his honors examination, he sometimes read fourteen hours a day. He may have studied too hard for his examinations, failing mathematics and taking a lower second-class honors in classics. But he rebounded in 1822, winning a fellowship at Oriel, at the time Oxford's most intellectually prestigious college.

Newman was constantly sorting his letters, organizing and reorganizing, essentially creating the story of his life. He once wrote, "It has ever been a hobby of mine (unless it be a truism, not a hobby) that a man's life lies in his letters." If this is the case, Newman lived a richer life than most; there are 20,000 extant letters.

As Ian Kerr points out in his hefty biography of Newman, with so much of information the difficulty becomes what to include.

Newman's Unquiet Grave traces Newman's inwardness, developing literary style, and prolific output through the rest of his life. Readers gain an intimate portrait of his years as a tutor, his involvement in the Oxford Movement, his prolonged and tortured conversion to Catholicism in 1845, and his many years as an Oratorian priest, with Cornwell telling the story of Newman's life through his works.

Cornwell nimbly shifts from critiquing Newman's poetry in his chapter on Newman's book-length poem The Dream of Gerontius to introducing the concepts of notional and real assent in a chapter on The Grammar of Assent.

All the while, Cornwell mostly lives up to his goal of writing a "shorter, less academic account" of Newman's life — Ian Kerr's epic Oxford Lives biography runs to more than 700 pages — though it seems inevitable that any book on a theologian's literary imagination will smack of a certain specialization.

Cornwell's project is a worthy one, and as a prize-winning journalist and former Catholic seminarian he has the credentials for the undertaking. But at times, his vision may be too narrow; the biography focuses on Newman's imagination and writing to the neglect of properly framing the intellectual and religious milieu of the age, which would have proven helpful for emphasizing not only how controversial Newman was but also how influential.

Further, the book suffers from intermittent sensationalism. The unfortunate cover seems to have been designed with the customers of airport bookstores in mind. The back of the jacket asks forebodingly, "But was Newman a 'Saint'?" The subtitle of Cornwell's biography — "The Reluctant Saint" — promises a tell-all, nigh-on scandalous biography, and indeed the book opens with an account of the 2008 unearthing of Newman's grave in an attempted search for relics.

No remains were found. Newman had instructed his grave to be filled with compost to expedite his decomposition. But it was brought to the media's attention that Newman was buried in the same grave as his closest friend and fellow friar, Ambrose St. John. Rumors of Newman's homosexuality abounded.

Cornwell handily refutes those allegations, but the amount of time he spends on them and on the subject of Newman's femininity may be overkill. Cornwell's account of the exhumation ends forebodingly: "On the day of the exhumation the graveyard was guarded by members of the local constabulary lest Gay Rights demonstrators should intrude upon the scene to cause an affray. No such insult occurred."

These touches of tabloid style seem rather odd juxtaposed with an explication of Newman's influence on Joyce, giving the book a slightly split personality.

Perhaps Newman was something of a reluctant saint, though. He once wrote, "I have no tendency to be a saint — it is a sad thing to say so. Saints are not literary men."

Cornwell wonders if Newman was being modest, or if he feared the "ossifying travesty" his beatification and likely canonization "would make of his life and contribution."

But Cornwell himself fears Newman's beatification, much more than readers would be led to believe by the last chapter on his legacy and the skeptical but charitable epilogue on the miracle that enabled Newman's beatification.

In early September, Cornwell published a vitriolic article in the Financial Times accusing Benedict of hijacking Newman's identity and remolding it to fit the Pope's conservative agenda: "Addressing the bishops of England and Wales in Rome this February, he declared that Newman was an example to the world of opposition to 'dissent.' It was like saying that Churchill had been a Trotskyite all along."

The concern, for Cornwell, is whether the Church will stifle the dialectical nature of Newman's work — his ability to always see both sides — which has always been "source of inspiration to Catholic liberals." [If so, Cornwell is willfully ignoring Benedict xVI's universally acknowledged trait, as a genuine intellectual, of listening to both sides!]

Debates about Newman's identity are nothing new. Indeed, he penned his Apologia to defend himself against charges of untruthfulness, to maintain that he was not a closeted Catholic while at the helm of the Oxford Movement.

Only time will tell if Newman's beatification will have a stultifying effect on his life and legacy. It is unlikely; the power of Newman's intellect rendered through his beautiful prose style will continue to speak to readers for generations to come.

If nothing else, it seems to this reader that the Catholic Church will ensure the legacy of John Henry Newman more ably than our English departments and literary journalists.

The following is a rather oversimplified layman's account of what's happening in the world's first Ordinariate for converted Anglicans...

Anglicans fear more
'defections' at Lent
by Tadhg Enright

January 30, 2011

Hundreds of disillusioned Anglicans are expected to defect to the Roman Catholic Church in time for Lent.

It follows a campaign by Father Keith Newton to leave the Church of England in protest at its stance on the ordination of women and gay clergy.

Fr Newton has encouraged Anglicans to join the Ordinariate - a special branch of Catholicism established by the Pope - to welcome protestant defectors. He was named the first Ordinary or bishop in charge of the Ordinariate named for our Lady of Walsingham.

The Ordinariate is a special structure established by Pope Benedict to welcome the disillusioned Anglicans.

The efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury have not been enough to stop hundreds of Anglo-Catholics making the split that he had hoped to avoid.

In mid-January it got off the ground with the conversion of three Anglican bishops who are now bringing others on board.

The Church of England says that 1,000 of its 13,000 parishes are opposed to the ordination of women.

At St. Barnabas church in Tunbridge Wells, the parish priest says that a majority of his parishioners want to defect - and he's considering going too.

Father Ed Tomlinson believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.

Yet the priest has been told by the diocese of Rochester that if he and his followers leave they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St Barnabas - a nineteenth-century red-brick church where First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon was baptised.

The firm stance has infuriated Fr Tomlinson, the vicar since 2006. "The whole thing stinks to high heaven," he said.

"The Archdeacon made it abundantly clear that he does not want to entertain the notion of shared worship space and that he would resist my remaining here in any capacity."

The Ordinariate talks of recruiting members in waves with the first beginning training at Lent and they hope many more will follow.

"A little acorn it may have been at the moment, it could grow into a mighty oak," one local church-goer said. "Was this the thing that started to undo the Reformation?"

Crunching the numbers:
There are 2.3 billion Christians today,
including 1.2 billion Catholics,
compared to 1.6 billion Muslims
by George Weigel

Feb 9, 2011

For 27 years, the International Bulletin of Missionary Research has published an annual “Status of Global Mission” report, which attempts to quantify the world Christian reality, comparing Christianity’s circumstances to those of other faiths, and assaying how Christianity’s various expressions are faring when measured against the recent (and not-so-recent) past. The report is unfailingly interesting, sometimes jarring, and occasionally provocative.

The provocation in the 2011 report involves martyrdom. For purposes of research, the report defines “martyrs” as “believers in Christ who have lost their lives, prematurely, in situations of witness, as a result of human hostility.”

The report estimates that there were, on average, 270 new Christian martyrs every 24 hours over the past decade, such that “the number of martyrs [in the period 2000-2010] was approximately 1 million.” Compare this to an estimated 34,000 Christian martyrs in 1900.

As for the interesting, try the aggregate numbers. According to the report, there will be, by mid-2011, 2,306,609,000 Christians of all kinds in the world, representing 33 percent of world population—a slight percentage rise from mid-2000 (32.7 percent), but a slight percentage drop since 1900 (34.5 percent).

Of those 2.3 billion Christians, some 1.5 billion are regular church attendees, who worship in 5,171,000 congregations or “worship centers,” up from 400,000 in 1900 and 3.5 million in 2000.

These 2.3 billion Christians can be divided into six “ecclesiastical megablocks”: 1,160,880,000 Catholics; 426,450,000 Protestants; 271,316,000 Orthodox; 87,520,000 Anglicans; 378,281,000 “Independents” (i.e., those separated from or unaffiliated with historic denominational Christianity); and 35,539,000 “marginal Christians” (i.e., those professing off-brand Trinitarian theology, dubious Christology, or a supplementary written revelation beyond the Bible).

Compared to the world’s 2.3 billion Christians, there are 1.6 billion Muslims, 951 million Hindus, 468 million Buddhists, 458 million Chinese folk-religionists, and 137 million atheists, whose numbers have actually dropped over the past decade, despite the caterwauling of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Co.

One cluster of comparative growth statistics is striking: As of mid-2011, there will be an average of 80,000 new Christians per day (of whom 31,000 will be Catholics) and 79,000 new Muslims per day, but 300 fewer atheists every 24 hours.

Africa has been the most stunning area of Christian growth over the past century. There were 8.7 million African Christians in 1900 (primarily in Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa); there are 475 million African Christians today and their numbers are projected to reach 670 million by 2025.

Another astonishing growth spurt, measured typologically, has been among Pentecostals and charismatics: 981,000 in 1900; 612,472,000 in 2011, with an average of 37,000 new adherents every day — the fastest growth in two millennia of Christian history.

As for the quest for Christian unity: There were 1,600 Christian denominations in 1900; there were 18,800 in 1970; and there are 42,000 today.

Other impressive numbers:
- $545 billion is given to Christian causes annually, which comes out to $1.5 billion per day.
- There are some 600 million computers in Christian use, up from 1,000 in 1970.
- 71,425,000 Bibles will be distributed this year, and some 2 billion people will tune in at least once a month to Christian radio or television.
- 7.1 million books about Christianity will be published this year, compared to 1.8 million in 1970.

The big lesson of the 2011 Status of Global Mission report can be borrowed from Mark Twain’s famous crack about his alleged death: Reports of Christianity’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Christianity may be waning in Western Europe, but it’s on an impressive growth curve in other parts of the world, including that toughest of regions for Christian evangelism, Asia.

Indeed, the continuing growth of Christianity as compared to the decline of atheism (in absolute numbers, and considering atheists as a percentage of total world population) suggests the possibility that the vitriolic character of the New Atheism — displayed in all its crudity prior to Pope Benedict’s September 2010 visit to Great Britain — may have something to do with the shrewder atheists’ fear that they’re losing, and the clock is running.

That’s something you’re unlikely to hear reported in the mainstream media. The numbers are there, however, and the numbers are suggestive.

John Allen reacted to the resignation of Cardinal Lubomyr Husar as Major Archbishop of the Uktrainian Greek Catholic Church with a very informative article which places Husar's career in the context of the complex history of Catholicism in the Uktraine.

End of an era in the Ukraine
by John L Allen Jr

Feb. 10, 2011

Today marks the end of an era for the Eastern Catholic churches in union with Rome, as the best-known Eastern Catholic leader in the West is stepping off the stage.

The Vatican announced this morning that Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, who turns 78 later this month, has resigned as the leader of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine. The church will shortly organize a synod of its bishops to elect a successor.

Technically, the Vatican recognized Husar as the “Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halyč,” but the world's six to ten million Greek Catholics, both in Ukraine and in immigrant communities elsewhere, have regarded him for the last decade as their “Patriarch.”

Born in Ukraine in 1933, Husar fled with his parents to the United States in 1944, during the chaos of the Second World War and the rise of a Soviet regime that would drive the Greek Catholic Church underground and imprison most of its leadership.

He studied at Catholic University and Fordham, and was ordained into the Ukranian Catholic eparchy of the United States. (Husar also became an American citizen, which made him a sort of honorary American cardinal after John Paul II gave him the red hat in February 2001.)

In 1973 Husar joined a Studite Monastery in Italy and became its superior. He was secretly consecrated a bishop in April 1977 in Castelgandolfo by Cardinal Josyf Slipy, his predecessor as head of the Ukranian Greek Catholic Church, but the act was not recognized by Paul VI’s Vatican, anxious not to upset the Russian Orthodox Church or the Soviets.

Husar’s episcopacy would remain a secret for the next nineteen years, until it was formally recognized by John Paul II and the Greek Catholic synod in 1996.

In 2001, Husar was elected archbishop. Though the office is for life, Husar made it clear beginning in 2009 that he intended to step down, in part because of declining health.

Over the years Husar has been easily the most articulate and theologically engaged of the Eastern Catholic prelates. He performed brilliantly during John Paul’s June 23-27, 2001, trip to Ukraine, cementing his reputation as pastorally gifted and politically sophisticated.

He’s also a warm, smiling, slightly chubby prelate, who came off as sort of an Eastern Catholic version of Pope John XXIII. For a brief period, there was a mini-flurry of speculation that Husar could be a candidate to become Pope himself.

One measure of Husar’s impact is that a vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University recently penned a lengthy essay about the transition, the gist of which was to convince Ukrainian Catholics not to freak out.

“He radiates such authentic love and a sense of deep peace, coupled with humility and wisdom and warm and witty humor and he shares all of this with everyone. It is difficult to name anyone in Ukrainian society today who is regarded as a greater moral authority than Lubomyr Husar,” writes Oleh Turiy.

Facing the loss of such a leader, Turiy urges Ukrainian Greek Catholics not to succumb to “a state of panic.”

In fact, Turiy argues, all the changes in leadership in the Greek Catholic Church during the 20th century occurred amid crisis and turmoil, yet they all produced new leaders of unexpected quality.

In a press conference today in Kiev, Husar said that in his retirement he hopes to do some pastoral work with youth and with various professional groups, among other things helping to ensure that “nothing from our Church’s past is lost.”

This is a moment of special anxiety for the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine. After a rebirth in the 1990s, the Church played a key role in Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution.” Today, however, a pro-Russian regime is once again running the show in Kiev, and the Church has been experiencing some not-so-subtle intimidation from the state security service.

The eyes of the Catholic world, therefore, ought to be on Ukraine in coming weeks, both to celebrate the legacy of the one of the most remarkable Catholic personalities of our time, and to signal solidarity with the Church he led.


For an overview of the complicated state of the Orthodox and Catholic churches in the Ukraine, read George Weigel's article for FIRST THINGS
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=85272...

In America's religious marketplace.
the Catholic Church's real problem is new sales

Feb. 11, 2011

Try as we might to remind ourselves that the Catholic church isn't Microsoft and that quantitative measures of success or failure don't always correspond to the logic of the Gospel, most of us take that lesson to heart only selectively.

Some Catholics can't resist touting the huge crowds at World Youth Day as an endorsement of their version of orthodoxy; others cite polling majorities in favor of reform on birth control and other issues as proof of the sensus fidelium. [And they are, even and especially in the face of continuing disaffection by the weak in faith...}

The most powerful recent instance of that temptation has been Catholic reaction to the 2008 "Religious Landscape Survey" from the Pew Forum, which documented a remarkable fluidity in religious affiliation in America -- almost half of American adults have either switched religions or dropped their ties to religion altogether.

For Catholicism, the banner headline was that there are now 22 million ex-Catholics in America, by far the greatest net loss for any religious body. One in three Americans raised Catholic have left the Church.

Were it not for immigration, Catholicism in America would be contracting dramatically: for every one member the church adds, it loses four.

On the other hand, the study also found that the Catholic Church has a higher retention rate than other major Christian denominations, and that 2.6 percent of the adult population is composed of converts to Catholicism, representing a pool of nearly six million new Catholics.

Naturally, critics of various aspects of Catholic life, such as the sexual abuse crisis or what some see as an overly conservative ideological drift, see the defections as proof of malaise. (A prominent American theologian recently claimed the Pew data reveal a "mass exodus" from the Church, which he linked to a preoccupation by some bishops with the culture wars.)

Equally predictably, Catholics content with the status quo play up the good news. [Are any Catholics at all, American or otherwise, content with the status quo? That is a most odd statement to make!]

Given the disparities in interpretation, I turned to the director of the Pew Forum, Luis Lugo, to try to understand what the data really have to say. I spoke to Lugo by phone Thursday morning, and we were joined by Pew senior researcher Greg Smith.

Here's the bottom line: In comparison with other religious groups in America, the Catholic Church's struggles aren't really with pastoral care, but missionary muscle. Overall, Catholicism serves existing members fairly well, as measured by the share that chooses to stick around; what it doesn't do nearly as well is to evangelize.

[What exactly have the bishops of the USA done to evangelize or re=evangelize in the past several decades? The US Church has even failed to come up in the past three decades with someone like Fulton Sheen who could evangelize from the lay pulpit of radio and TV, although one must not minimize the fforts of Mothere Angelica and her band of priests and nuns at EWTN - but they are probablly more influential outside the US than insite it!]

The data do not reflect widespread dissatisfaction in the pews, at least to any greater extent than other religious bodies face. Instead, they reveal a problem with getting people into the pews in the first place.

To put all that into crass capitalistic terms, in America's highly competitive religious marketplace, the real Catholic problem isn't customer service but new sales.

Even if one were to focus just on defections, it's not clear which ideological camp in today's Church could claim vindication. While many former Catholics object to Church teachings on issues such as abortion and homosexuality, one in ten Protestant Evangelicals in America today is also an ex-Catholic, many of whom deserted Catholicism because it wasn't conservative enough.

[It's not about any side vindicating itself. It's about the kind of Christian Catholic witness one presents to the world that makes the faith convincingly attractive to others!]

Finally, there's a clear plug for youth ministry implied in the Pew data: Roughly two-thirds of those who abandon Catholicism do so before they're 23, which means the make-or-break period is adolescence and early adulthood.

The following are excerpts from our conversation with Pew's Lugo and Smith:

What reactions do you get when you discuss these findings with Catholics?
Lugo: People are often a little befuddled when I present the full range of evidence, which puts a different light on things. From headlines, they may have the impression that the Catholic Church is just bleeding members, but that's out of context.

You have to compare it to retention rates of other religious groups, and see it in terms of retention plus recruitment. It's the net relationship between those two factors that's so crucial.

Everybody's losing members in this country, some even more than Catholics. In percentage terms, Catholic losses are not out of line with other groups. It's on the recruitment side that Catholics are not doing as well. Protestants are losing lots of members too, but for every four Americans who are no longer Protestant, there are three who are Protestant today who were not raised that way. Protestantism is declining as a whole, but the recruitment rate is pretty good. Catholics are not replenishing their ranks through conversion in the same way.

There are two other key variables. One is immigration, and the other is higher-than-average fertility rates among Hispanic Catholics. If the only factor driving a religious group's share of the population were conversion, the Catholic Church would be declining.

Smith: One of the things I was struck by, especially with regard to the Catholic church, is the degree to which apparent stability masks enormous change just below the surface. If all you look at is the percentage of the population who told us they're Catholic, it's exactly what we've found for four decades, and you would think nothing much is going on. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In his recent Murray/Bacik Lecture at the University of Toledo, noted Catholic theologian Richard Gaillardetz said the Pew data confirm a "mass exodus from the Church." Is it accurate to talk about a "mass exodus"?
Lugo: In the context of American religion as a whole, it's not really accurate. In fact, Catholic losses are right in line with what we see overall in terms of people changing affiliation in this country.

Look at the fastest-growing religious group in America, the unaffiliated. Even there, half of all people who were raised without an affiliation have since joined a religion!

Or take the group that everybody considers to be the most dynamic, the Jehovah's Witnesses. Those results blew me out of my chair. Two-thirds of those raised as Jehovah's Witnesses say they're no longer members, which is double the losses of the Catholic church in percentage terms.

What really strikes me about the Catholic numbers is on the recruitment side. The Jehovah's Witnesses grow because they recruit even more than they lose, which is not the case for the Catholics.

Smith: It's not fair to say there's a "mass exodus" from Catholicism more than any other faith. You have to bear two things in mind. First, because so many people were raised Catholic, it means that in terms of raw numbers, there are a lot of former Catholics out there. It's not because Catholics do a worse job keeping their members, but because so many were raised Catholic.

Second, if all you looked at is retention, you would probably say that Catholics are doing just as well as other groups, and even better than many of them.

But one of the points of the report is that to understand the dynamics of American religion, you have to see retention and recruitment together. It's the churn, the ratio of leaving to joining, which matters.

It's the recruitment side that sets Catholics apart. Four people leave Catholicism for every one who joins, and there's no other religious group where you see a similar ratio. Baptists, for example, also have more people leaving than joining, but their ratio of 2-1 is twice of what we see for Catholics.

Is the take-away not that Catholics have a problem serving existing members, but that Catholics need to ramp up their missionary efforts?
Lugo: In terms of sheer numbers, that's right. I wouldn't want to say that the Church shouldn't be thinking about pastoral strategies to retain its current members, especially young people. The retention side can't be overlooked, and there are important pastoral implications there.

Yet the bottom line is that if you're a religious group in this country, you're going to lose members in significant numbers. Half of all Americans say they've changed affiliation at least once, so churcn is the name of the game.

Even if the Catholic Vhurch did a markedly better job of retention, if it can't make up a significant share of its membership through recruitment, its ratio will not be very impressive.

I know that all the RCIA people will probably be mad, because they're already over-burdened, but your question nails it: The most striking thing about Catholicism in America isn't that it's losing people, but that it's not recruiting them as successfully as other groups. I should add that when I'm presenting this data, I always say that the 2.6 percent of American adults who are converts to Catholicism is a huge pool of folks, so it's not like nothing is going on.

What do we know about why those 22 million ex-Catholics left the Vhurch?
Lugo: It's very interesting, because we have to break it down between those who have joined the ranks of the unaffiliated and those who have become Protestants.

When you do that, it's by no means clear, from a purely retention point of view, whether the church ought to become more liberal or more conservative!

Bear in mind that among those becoming Protestants, a majority are Evangelicals. One out of ten Evangelicals in America today is a former Catholic, and many of those folks say the Catholic church isn't conservative enough.

Smith: It's impossible to say in broad strokes why people leave, because it depends on where they're headed.

Among former Catholics who are now unaffiliated, 65 percent say they just stopped believing the religion's teachings. A majority also cites unhappiness with specific teachings; 58 percent say they were unhappy with the teaching on things like abortion and homosexuality, and 48 percent or so were unhappy with the teaching on birth control. However, even more say they just gradually drifted away. 71 percent of former Catholics who are now unaffiliated say that.

Lugo: For that group, one gets the sense of gradually, almost imperceptibly, stepping away from the Vhurch. Many were already fairly "secularized" before they stopped identifying as Catholics. It's less for highly principled theological reasons, that they just can't take this Church anymore, and more for the drift factor.

Smith: For those who have become Protestants, 71 percent say their spiritual needs weren't being met in the Catholic Church. The same number, however, say happiness with their new religion was more important than dissatisfaction with the old one.

What's interesting is differences between those former Catholics who have become Evangelicals, and those who have joined one of the mainline Protestant churches. More than half of those who are now Evangelical cite Catholic teaching about the Bible as a factor in their decision, and most say that the Catholic Church does not view the Bible literally enough.

Only 16 percent of former Catholics now in mainline Protestantism cite the Bible, and those who do are about evenly divided between those who say Catholicism takes the Bible too literally and those who say it's not literal enough.

Lugo: We also find that where ex-Catholic Evangelicals tend to cite reasons of belief and theology, those in mainline Protestant churches tend to be influenced more by what we might call "life cycle" factors, such as marrying someone of a different faith, or they didn't like the priest at their parish, and so on.

For those who leave the church, when do they do so?
Smith: In 2008 we did a follow-up survey, and we found that switching is something that usually happens early in life. Most who left Catholicism did so prior to reaching the age of 24.

For those Catholics who are now unaffiliated with any religion, half left Catholicism before they turned 18, and another three in ten left during the college years, between ages 18 and 23.

Among Catholics who are now Protestants, half left before 18 and another third left between 18 and 23. This is something that happens early in the life cycle.

Catholic membership is being replenished largely through Hispanic immigration. Are those Hispanics likely to remain Catholic?
Smith: People often assume that fewer Latinos leave Catholicism as compared to non-Latinos. There's something to that, although the difference is not as large as you might expect.

Among non-Hispanics who were raised Catholic, 66 percent are still Catholic. Among Hispanics raised Catholic, it's 73 percent. That's a statistically significant difference, but we're not talking about night and day.

Among those who have left, it's just like the non-Hispanic Catholics -- roughly half are now unaffiliated and half have become Protestants, mostly Evangelicals.

Lugo: We know there's a generational difference. The conversion rates are lower among first-generation Hispanic immigrants than in the second generation. However, the percentage in the third generation is identical to the second, so there doesn't seem to be an escalating defection rate generationally.

Latino Catholics also have by far the highest fertility rate of any ethnic religious group in the country. Among American Catholics under 40, half are now Latinos.

Even if immigration rates were to ebb, therefore, it's "baked in" demographically that the Latino share of the adult Catholic population will increase.

There's a very good interview with the Miniorities Minister of Pakistan which gives us a much better picture of the situation there with respect fo Asia Bibi and Christian persecution than most media reports so far.

www.christianpost.com/news/qa-pakistans-minister-for-minorities-shahbaz-bhatt...

For now I am only posting the link because I am still surveying news about the Pope this morning....

Photo: Pope Pius XI inaugurated Vatican Radioon Feb. 12, 1931.

I have a few belated posts on the Church and the Vatican, starting with this:

80th anniversary of Vatican Radio:
looking to the future

Vatican Radio celebrated its 80th anniversary Saturday, February 12. Since being set up by the father of radio, Guglielmo Marconi, in 1931, the Radio has been a beacon for transmitting the message of the Church during the rise of Fascism, World War II, and the Cold War.

On Thursday evening, Feb. 10, a special conference on the 80th anniversary was hosted by the Vatican Museums. The keynote address was given by a special representative of the Secretariat of State, Monsignor Peter Bryan Wells.

---

Your Eminence,
Your Excellencies,
Rev. Fr. Director General
Priests, Collaborators and Friends of Vatican Radio, all:

I am honored to be representing the Secretariat of State today at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the founding of Vatican Radio, which began its service as proclaimer of the Word of God, of the teaching of the Holy Father and of the authentic Magisterium of the Church in 1931, by happy coincidence, the year of the 150th anniversary of the birth of L’Osservatore Romano.

I will not hide a certain emotion, even a certain trepidation in speaking with you today – not only because the relationship between Vatican Radio and the Secretariat of State is constitutive, as the Statutes of the station say: “Vatican Radio, for its programming and doctrinal and informative content, answers to the Secretariat of State, which exercises vigilance over the broadcasting Station, which [in turn] is bound to follow with care the directives that are imparted to it” (art. 2.1 of the Statutes of Vatican Radio, 1 Sept. 1995) – but also, as the same Statutes indicate, because the larger public easily attributes an authoritative character to the programming produced by Vatican Radio, and it is therefore necessary to assure that VR content is “fully in tune with the Magisterium and with the activity of the Holy See” (art. 2.2. of the Statutes of Vatican Radio, 1 Sept. 1995).

It is precisely because of this that I am aware of how heady and how demanding has been the work that Vatican Radio has heretofore advanced. The celebrations of the important milestones reached throughout these 80 years are, therefore, undoubtedly worthwhile and joyful.

Allow me to join myself to these by offering a brief reflection focused more on the challenges of the future, challenges which arise out of the success of the past, in order that these last might not only live in our memory, but also be a stimulus on the way that is unfolding before us.

We are all aware that there is a veritable revolution underway today in the world of media. As the Holy Father stressed recently in his Message for the 45th World Day for Social Communications (24 January 2011):

"The new technologies are not only changing the way we communicate, but communication itself, so much so that it could be said that we are living through a period of vast cultural transformation. This means of spreading information and knowledge is giving birth to a new way of learning and thinking, with unprecedented opportunities for establishing relationships and building fellowship".

Technical as much as it is cultural, this upheaval directly involves radio broadcasting both in its technological aspects, and in those concerning content. Classic media, including radio, can no longer ignore the power and pervasiveness of the new media.

Just think: a recent study found that cell phones are habit-forming – they call it “mobile addiction”, and since the advent of smart phones, it can become so severe as to force those who suffer from it to go without food rather than be separated from the device that allows them to send and receive calls and text messages (cfr. www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/top-10-signs-of-cell-phone-addi...

Then consider that Nielsen polling data for Western nations show people under 35 spend many more hours online than they do watching television.

One may also note how the new media have served as the catalysts for phenomena in the public sphere, such as the “Manifestation de la Honte” in Belgium and the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia.

These events indicate that radio broadcasting services cannot fail to take into consideration the emergence of a series of other technological instruments, from the podcast to the iPad, from social networks like Facebook, to micro-blogging platforms like Twitter.

The new means of communication are to be thought of as interlocutors, not as competitors. Radio should look on new media as an opportunity, not as a threat.

Herein lies the spirit of “convergence” among media, to which the Holy Father pointed in his Discourse to Managers and Employees of the Vatican Television Center, 18 December 2008.

Commenting on the way that the boundaries between the various media are fading and how, at the same time, their synergies are increasing, Benedict XVI expressed himself in the following terms:

"Today the Internet requires an ever increasing integration of written, audial and visual communication, and thus is a challenge to broaden and intensify the forms of collaboration between the media which are at the service of the Holy See.

"To succeed in this task, it will be necessary to think outside the box: to see radio, television, internet and newspapers not as free-standing tools with well-defined competences, but rather as circles to intersect and link together".

For Vatican Radio, such a convergence will have a first beneficial effect on the economic level: the use of new technologies, in fact, allows for a maximization of productivity.

I am aware of how difficult it is to speak of these things, and I am also well aware of how much Vatican Radio has been able to do, compared with competitors both public and private.

Certainly, an integrated information process is already underway at Vatican Radio, one that foresees the use of new media and all they have to offer.

The new means of communication, intelligently employed and wisely integrated into existing structures, can be important vehicles for the transmission of the Radio’s message, guaranteeing an extremely wide diffusion at an extremely low cost.

One need only think of how hubs or web streaming permit a much more rapid and certainly more widespread distribution of information, at a much more measured cost.

The principal reason that must push Vatican Radio to embrace new tools and technologies, however, is to be found neither exclusively nor even principally in the economic efficiency that they promise.

The phenomenon of the convergence of classic media with new media – specifically, though not uniquely, the confluence of radio and internet – is to be thought of as the inevitable transformation that will give birth to a new specific role of radio service, in the context of a completely transformed system of information.

We are not talking about taking away radio’s proper function: reaching listeners. Rather we are talking about using new media to render radio capable of meeting the expectations of listeners who are more and more sensitive to information.

I think a new concept of radio is being born. This arises from three considerations. The first is that radio is more flexible than other media, and can find distribution platforms very easily.

The second is that radio is a pervasive, though not intrusive, medium: unlike a picture, the voice surrounds and immerses the listener in an environment of sound, without imposing itself on the listener’s space.

The third is that the radio is an intimate, relational medium, a place for interiority, for responsibility, and not for the externals and appearances that pictures convey.

The convergence of radio and new media will not destroy the essence of radio. Rather, this convergence will strengthen radio communications.

In the specific case of Vatican Radio, the convergence with new media will include two complementary processes. The first process concerns the harmonization of the work of Vatican Radio with other Vatican communications tools. The second process regards the relationship of the Holy See’s radio station to other Catholic radio stations around the world.

The Vatican media outlets have undertaken the first process with determination: the areas of cooperation between the Vatican Television Center, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and Vatican Radio are proof of this.

Nevertheless, these developments are only the first stages of a larger, more broadly encompassing phenomenon able to establish the permanent presence of the Holy See in the world of new media.

The second process is even more specific: Vatican Radio has the role of setting the example, of being a beacon, a guide for all other Catholic radio stations.

The use of new technological tools can then ensure that Vatican Radio be a source of ideas and services to her sister stations – and at the same time a means by which local Catholic radio services can be shared on a global level.

To succeed in this difficult challenge it will be necessary to continue in the direction – long since undertaken – of a new organic relationship between Vatican Radio and other Catholic radio stations throughout the world, a relationship that is now possible precisely thanks to new technologies.

The nature of this new relationship has its roots in the specific role given to Vatican Radio, that of being an integral element among the tools for evangelization available to the Holy See. As the Holy Father explained in his June 20, 2008 Discourse to the International Congress for Catholic Radio Personnel:

"By virtue of its association with words [sic – It. la parola] radio shares in the Church's mission and in its visibility but also creates a new way of living, being and making Church"/

As the Church is by nature universal, so too does Vatican Radio have a universal mission. It resounds in more than forty languages, and presents itself as the instrument par excellence for dialogue with different cultures and religions. Precisely for this reason is it necessary that you, the operators of Vatican Radio, constantly keep yourselves up to date: technically, professionally, culturally.

To just this end, the new tools of communication can be particularly useful, because in them lies the key to the achievement of a truly global reach: I think of the ability to reach millions people with an idea or a news item sent right to their cellular phones, or the ability to guarantee messages in real time to those who live in war zones or under the harshest regimes.

To evangelize means to address the difficulties to which the Church is subject.

Vatican Radio must be the voice of the Church that contests those who say the Church is not capable of inner renewal, showing instead the tireless desire for purification expressed by Her Supreme Pastor.

Vatican Radio needs to be the voice that promotes religious freedom in the world.

Vatican Radio needs to be the voice that calls for dialogue and harmony in a world that turns increasingly to hatred and violence to solve conflicts.

All of us here know that the new media are absolutely essential, if Vatican Radio is to succeed in being such a voice. In this day, newswires, newspaper articles and even talk shows have given way to blogs, to the buzz and to going viral.

Even before reaching the traditional media, a news item is worked over and modified, and new mechanisms shape and influence public opinion from the very beginning, in order either to make the news item important, world-wide, or to let it die and disappear.

It is no longer enough to go on air, to publish, to write. Today one needs to be present in the marketplaces, to update the web pages, in order to reach a world ever hungrier for news.

In other words, not having new technical tools at one’s full disposal, or not knowing about the most current tools, will mean that one’s message will arrive late, will arrive wrong, and might even arrive in vain.

In the aforementioned Message for the 45th World Communications Day, The Holy Father has reminded us how the new media
"[are] contributing to the development of new and more complex intellectual and spiritual horizons, new forms of shared awareness"/

It is therefore essential for Vatican Radio to continue to adapt to these new tools if it wants to be the engine of new forms of consciousness, of awareness: in other words, of a new culture.

Come to think of it, the development of a new culture based on a specific relationality is typical of the Church. Is not the Catholic Church the first global social network?

Long before the new media existed, the Church’s liturgical language, values, and way of thinking about the human person have bound together Catholics from around the world, whatever their culture, language, age, race or economic status. The globalization of the media cannot frighten us, because we were the phenomenon’s first authors.

I conclude my speech to you, who spread the messages of the Holy Father, by repeating – as an expression of hope, as the driving force and core of your mission – the greeting that opens and closes all your services, and that throughout the whole world, like the notes of Christus vincit, identifies your station – our station: Laudetur Iesus Christus.

---

Vatican statistics for 2009 show
overall increase in number of priests

Feb. 11, 2011

VATICAN CITY, Feb. 11 (CNS) -- The number of Catholic priests in the world has increased consistently over the past decade and the "relative superabundance" of priests in Europe and North America has begun to attenuate, the Vatican said.

The "relative superabundance" refers to the percentage of the world's priests who live in Europe and North America compared to the percentage of the world's Catholics who live there.

Anticipating some of the figures that would be released in the Statistical Yearbook of the Church for 2009 later in February, the Vatican newspaper said that in 1999, just more than 15 percent of the world's priests lived and ministered in Central and South America while 42.4 percent of the world's Catholics lived there.

At the end of 2009, the percentage had changed slightly: Latin America had 17.3 percent of the priests and 42.2 percent of the world's Catholics.

L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published its article Feb. 10 with a small selection of statistics from the yearbook reporting worldwide church figures as of Dec. 31, 2009.

The newspaper article focused on the statistics' demonstration of 10 years of steady growth in the number of Catholic priests in the world. A more complete set of statistics was expected to be released when the Vatican had finished printing the yearbook.

The Vatican reported an increase of 809 priests during the 2009 calendar year and an increase of close to 5,600 priests between 1999 and 2009, the newspaper said.

The overall increase came despite the continuing steep decline in the number of religious-order priests, it reported.

Of the 410,593 priests in the world reported at the end of 2009, the Vatican said 275,542 were diocesan priests and 135,051 were members of religious orders. Ten years earlier, there were only 265,012 diocesan priests, but there were 139,997 religious order priests, the Vatican said.

The worldwide increase, however, did not mean the number of priests increased on every continent, the newspaper reported. In North America, the number of diocesan clergy decreased 7 percent and the number of religious clergy fell by 21 percent, it said.

The uneven distribution of priests in the world is still remarkable but is easing a bit, the newspaper said. The ratio is changing not only because more priests are being ordained in Africa, Asia and Latin America, it said, but also because the average age of priests is much younger in those regions than in Europe and North America, so the death rate is lower.


For some reason, the OR did not consider this item 'worthy' to be posted online, so one needs to have the actual paper issue to find out aboutitems that are not posted online.

How about 'Romanorum coetibus'?
Anglicans in Peru welcome
disaffected Catholics
by Father John Zuhlsdorf

Feb. 14, 2011

Remember my proposal that Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, should facilitate the creation of ordinariates for disgruntled Catholics?

Abp. Williams could issue a document responding to Benedict XVI’s Anglicanorum coetibus called, say, Romanorum coetibus, by which he would offer provisions to give a safe-haven to liberals who want to keep their large puppets and pottery, 1960s music and the ordination of women, prayer to the earthmothergoddess, etc… all without the spirit-repressing domination of masculine Rome! And they can use whatever translation they want!

O my prophetic soul. You can’t make up some things fast enough.

In The Church Times we read this, with my emphases and comments [in red] :

---

Peru Anglicans set up
ordinariate for RC priests
by Ed Beavan

AN “Ordinariate of Postulants” has been set up by the Diocese of Peru in the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone to host a growing number of Roman Catholic priests who are keen to join the Anglican Church. [HUZZAY! Did I get that one right?]

In contrast to the situa­tion in England, where three former bishops recently joined the Ordinariate for former Anglicans established by Rome, clerics are making the reverse journey in South America.

The Bishop of Peru, the Rt Revd William God­frey, [There's a Peruvian name.] said that, so far, about ten RC priests had joined the new group to explore the possibility of switching denominations. Some may bring con­gregations with them. [Hasta la vista.]

About half of them are from churches that have become indepen­dent from the RC Church, often because the priests have got married.

Bishop Godfrey said that he had also received requests from RC clergy in Uruguay, Ecuador, and Ar­gentina, to join the Anglican Church.

He said that it was not entirely new for Roman Catholics to make this journey, as “the Anglican Church in Latin America would not exist if it wasn’t for ex-Roman Catholics”, but priests were now leaving on a larger scale.

He said that many of these priests were looking for stability in their ministry, and that the Postulate was “some sort of body where these people can draw close to the An­glican Church and experience its liturgical and pastoral tradition and theology, [You just can't make some things up fast enough.] before taking the final step of being received. It provides a buffer zone [a... "safe-haven"?] in which we can prepare to receive them.”

Bishop Godfrey believes that some priests may have been en­couraged by Pope Benedict XVI’s positive words about Anglicanism when setting up the Or­dinar­iate, when he was “extra­ordinarily pos­itive” about the An­glican tradition. [We win that trade.]

He said that the new body was not meant to be “provocative” towards Roman Catholicism; [I don't sense the Church trembling to its foundations because of these folks.] there was in fact “a lot of respect towards the Pope” in the region.

There is no financial motivation for clerics to move to the An­glican Church, as there is no guarantee of a stipend when they join the diocese of Peru.

The diocese currently has 35 clerics, an increase from just four in the late 1990s. It has two seminaries in Lima and Arequipa. RC orders are recog­nised by Anglicans. [Yes... they would be.]

The diocese is currently working out how it will deal with bishops from indepen­dent RC churches [Ummm... if they are "independent" they aren't "Roman". Did they miss that part? But... wait... could this mean the SSPX bishops? Is Bp. Williamson in the shadows of Romanorum coetibus?] who wish to become Anglicans.

---

.
Spectacular.

I get how you can have Anglicans in Australia. It’s a stretch, but they do use more or less the same language. But, in Peru… are they going to use Spanish? To be in communion with Canterbury? I wonder if they are not attracting people who just like to dress up as bishops and priests.

Meanwhile the Anglicans named a female bishop from Toronto to ARCIC! That’ll help. Catholics, on the other hand, appointed Prof. Janet E. Smith.

If anyone wants out, feel free to contact the Anglican bishop in Peru/

[Or the Episcopalian church in the USA. Or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany. Or any of hundreds of established Protestant denominations - and hundreds more of those that have sprouted like forest fungi in recent decades.

Actually, the reason the Church's greatest dissenters within cannot bear to leave the Catholic Church to join any church or denomination that accomodates all their liberal desires - and almost all the non-Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches do - is the same reason they cannot obey the Church Magisterium - EGO, writ large and bold and flaming for all to see.

#1 Their dissent against the Magisterium - and the more rabid, the better - enables them to 'make a name' for themselves and guarantees them headlines everytime they speak.

And #2 - They may actually believe that each of them will be the next Martin Luther, forgetting that Luther at least had the courage to leave the Church - while they don't - and that Luther's Reformation had to take place outside the Church, not within the Church. (And just as important. that he inspired the Counter-Reformation, one of the most brilliant and spiritual eras in Church history!)

If the dissidents left the Catholic Church for any other religious affiliation, that's the end of their celebrity, however dubious. And that is why they cling on so tenaciously to a Church they really don't believe in anymore, indulging their pipe dreams of a 'Catholic Church' they would create according to their selfish desires.]

I have no doubt some - perhaps even much - of what is recounted in this story is true, especially what people are quoted to have said. But journalists often get into an assignment with prejudices that shape how they cover the story and what they choose to report. That is why news accounts are almost always only partially true, or relatively true, generally subjective and hardly objective . That is very much the case here, where every line and word is weighted to put the Church in the worst possible light. And on this issue, secular media has chosen to be the Church's judge, jury and executioner.


New York Times Magazine says Irish
are turning their back on the Church
because of the sex-abuse scandals
By JAMES O'BRIEN

February 10, 2011, 8:54 PM

This weekend the New York Times Magazine led with a hard hitting article outlining the clerical abuse crisis in Ireland, and the fall-off in religious belief as a result.

It quotes Father Mark Patrick Hederman, the abbot of Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Co. Limerick, as saying the Church is indeed in deep trouble.

Hederman said, “Ireland is a prime example of what the Church is facing, because they made this island into a concentration camp where they could control everything. And the control was really all about sex. They told you if you masturbated, it meant you were impure and had allowed the devil to work on you. Generations of people were crucified with guilt complexes. Now the game is up.” [What a bizarre claim to make - both if it is true, and if it is untrue!]

Between 1974 and 2008 Mass attendance in Ireland was cut in half. The Irish, says the Times, are turning their back on the Church which was once the foundation of their country, its special place enshrined in the constitution.

The article looks at the abuse victims and also the country’s reaction to wave after wave of abuse scandals which emerged within the Irish Catholic Church.

The piece reports that Ireland is the country with the most reported cases of sexual abuse within the church. In second place comes the United States. However, Ireland has approximately one-hundredth of the population of the U.S.

Ireland published two reports, the Murphy and the Ryan reports, which investigated the systematic sexual abuse of children by members of the Church. The reports revealed thousands of cases of rape, sexual molestation and lurid beatings throughout Ireland's independence. ['Systematic' is hardly the right adjective. 'Not uncommon' is more appropriate. as the figures I have looked up will show. Far from the
'thousands' claimed here.]

In the past two months Chapter 19 of the Murphy Report detailed the crimes of “Father Filth,” former priest Tony Walsh. He was shielded by the Church as he continued to abuse.

Also, a letter has been unearthed from the papal nuncio. He told the Irish bishops that the Vatican had "serious reservations" about reporting clerical sexual abuse.

Grainne O'Sullivan, a 32-year-old graphic designer, was one of the many people in their twenties and thirties who have grown up in a mostly secular Ireland, and outraged by the revelations. That is why she, along with a web developer named Cormac Flynn and a civil servant in Cork named Paul Dunbar, set up a website called CountMeOut.ie in 2009.

She told the “Times,” "When I saw the reports, I thought, ‘I can’t even pretend to be part of this club anymore.’” [EEEWWWWW! Sanctimony is the first recourse for the weak of faith!]

They established the website as “a way of protesting, using their own process against them.”

Over several months 12,000 downloaded the “Defectio ab Ecclesia Catholica Actu Formali” from the site.

Last August the Catholic Church changed the Canon Law. It is now impossible for Catholics to leave the church. [IS THIS TRUE? I haven't the time to check this out properly just now.] Since then the website has suspended its service but is still active in the debate on Irish identity.

Nonetheless, Ireland and the church remain intrinsically linked. Ivana Bacik, a senator for the Labor Party, is a leader in the effort to extricate the church from the state. She said, “In no other European nation — with the obvious exception of Vatican City — does the Church have this depth of doctrinal involvement in the affairs of State.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Irish school system. Novelist Colm Toibin attended a Christian Brothers school until he was 15.

He told the Times, “At times it didn’t feel like there was a line between sexual abuse and corporal punishment. Every Friday one of the brothers would take a boy in front of the class, and whichever way he hit you he’d always put his hand on your testicles. We would laugh, but in fact you were in a permanent state of fear.

“I would vomit in the morning before going out to school. They would hit you across the face if you got a sum wrong. I suppose they did teach me to read and write and for that I should be grateful, but I’m not.”

Clerical sex-abuse scandals have been uncovered in the United States, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain, Italy and many other countries, but in Ireland the “stakes for the Vatican are tangible.”

Ninety percent of schools in Ireland are under church patronage. Also, all public hospitals are run by the church which means procedures such as abortions and vasectomies are either illegal or problematic.

The Vatican is now trying to implement damage control in Ireland by sending the Apostolic Visitation, a group of top clergymen from outside of Ireland, to investigate the abuse scandal, the training of priests and the running of parishes.

Fr. Sean McDonagh, a leader of the Association of Irish Priests, has suggested that the Vatican “should begin by scrutinizing Rome’s own handling of sex-abuse allegations.”

Rev. Donald Cozzens, an American priest and respected moderate voice on Catholic issues told the Times, “I’m not aware of any major diocese in the world that has not had a sexual abuse scandal, and I believe part of the problem lies with the very structures of the church. I don’t want to say change would require a different Pope or even a different culture, but it will require radical openness.

“We have to take an honest look at all the things that are in play. Is mandatory celibacy wise or even theologically sound?”

The two reports on abuse published in Ireland run to over 2,500 pages. The Ryan report examined the abuse which took place in institutions, while the Murphy report focused on the abuse that took place in the Diocese of Dublin. The details are graphic, violent and gruesome. [Once again, the obvious failure to describe the actual extent of the abuses. And by the way, every act of sexual abuse is necessarily 'violent and gruesome' because it violates the human being in his/her most intimate, instills terror and horror in the victim, and often becomes physically depraved.]]

The Times article describes that parts of the reports “read like a cross between Charles Dickens and Dan Brown: ‘I was beaten and hospitalized by the head brother and not allowed to go to my father’s funeral in case my bruises were seen’ and ‘I was tied to a cross and raped while others masturbated at the side.””

Pope Benedict’s plan for rebuilding the Catholic Church in Ireland as well as the visitation from outside Ireland includes prayer, fasting and engaging in “Eucharistic adoration.” The Times article asks, “Do the church authorities get it?” [It's the Times that does not get it that the Church uses spiritual as well as practical means to combat and redress evil!]

They illustrate this point through Marie Collins’ case. Collins was abused, during the 1960s, when she was 13-years-old while in hospital.

She said, “I had no idea what he was doing, but I knew it was wrong. He might abuse me one night, then give me communion in the morning.”

Now 64, she spent years dealing with depression, anxiety and agoraphobia. When she finally spoke out about the abuse in her late thirties she was told that “she may have tempted the other priest.”

She eventually wrote to the then Archbishop of Dublin Desmond Connell. She was told not to “ruin his life.”

With help from the police her abuser, a Father McGennis, was imprisoned. The publication of the Murphy Report proved that the church knew about McGennis’ behavior over the years. Collins wanted the church to be held accountable.

Last year it was revealed that Cardinal Sean Brady, the head of the Irish church, participated in the 1975 cover-up of the notorious Fr. Brendan Smyth. He was not forced to resign. Collins said, “That means the church here in Ireland is being led by a man who will not be accountable.”

Referring to Pope Benedict’s Pastoral letter and rebuilding the church she said, “Prayer and adoration of the eucharist is fine…but we have had the Pope on a number of occasions saying how shocked he is by revelations of abuse around the world. It’s hard to take that seriously when we know that as Cardinal Ratzinger, in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he saw the abuse reports.”

She continued, “I don’t practice as a Catholic anymore. It’s so hard to reconcile what the men at the top do with what Jesus preached.”



Here's my little effort for the day, tracking down relevant figures from Wikipedia (which footnotes the facts scrupulously):

---

WHAT THE IRISH GOVERNMENT REPORTS
TELL US ABOUT THE ABUSE SITUATION
IN IRELAND FROM 1962-2004

There were actually three Irish government reports into abuses committed by priests and religious in Ireland.

All three reports 1)gathered information about complaints and the names of the alleged offenders, and 2) documented the response of the dioceses concerned to such abuses.

But investigation and substantiation of the charges was not part of their mandate, so their numbers only records the number of complaints made and the number and names of the accused.


The Ferns Report, 2005

It investigated abuses committed by priests and religious in the Diocese of Ferns. It has a current population of about 100,000, and 120 priests and religious serving the diocese. From 1962-2002 (40 years), 'more than 100 complaints' - which usually means over 100 but less than 110 - were presented against 21 priests, 6 of whom had been dead by the time they were accused.

If we assume that each of the complaints represents a different victim, 100 victims in a population of 100,000 does not seem 'significant', but 21 priests out of 120, if we assume the same number of priests over the 40-year study period, and that all 21 named priests were guilty of at least one offense, that's a pretty high rate of offenders - one-sixth of all priests in the diocese.

But the worst offense in the diocese was the attitude of its earlier bishops who were documented to be more concerned with the reputation of their priests than about the fact that they offended nor about making things right for the victims.

The report does acknowledge that the bishops' attitudes changed over the 40-year period as more information about pedophilia became available.


The Ryan Report, May 2009

This studied the record between 1914-2000 of 200 Catholic schools and reformatories run by Irish religious orders. Obviously because of age considerations (who would still be alive and able to take part), the study focused on the years between 1965-2000, during which these institutions were responsible for 25,000 wards.

1500 complaints were received, with 800 offenders named, but the offenders also included civilian personnel of the schools, not just priests. And of the 1500 complaints, only 800 abusers were named (so each abuser would have had to have offended at least twice).

Of the abuses, 391 were sexual (262 boys, 128 girls), 857 were physical (beatings, corporal punishment), and the rest, psychological abuse or neglect.

Not that other kinds of abuse are any less significant, but since the focus of all the news reports has been sexual abuse, we are left with 391 complaints of sexual abuse in a 35-year period.


The Murphy Report, November 2009

This is the Report that sparked all that outrage in the media. It looked at alleged sexual abuses committed by priests and religious in the Archdiocese of Dublin from the 1940s to 2004, at which time, altogether 2,800 priests and religious served in the archdiocese. During that period, 102 priests/religious were named in complaints received by the Commission.

Again because of age considerations, the investigation focused on the period from 1975 to 2004, during which 320 complaints were presented against 46 priests, of which 11 had confessed or been convicted, 1 was clearly a case of false accusation, and two were merely 'suspected' but not accused.

In a 30-year period, 320 complaints averages to 10.7 annually, committed by 43 priests (excluding the falsely accused one and the merely 'suspect'). out of a total clerical population of 2800 - and we arrive at a 1.5% rate of alleged offenses or accusations that is far lower than what it was in the United States (see below).

If we add together the complaints reported by the three government commissions in Ireland, we get a total of 100 from Ferns + 391 in the schools + 320 in Dublin = 811 complaints, not all of them necessarily true - alleged to have occurred between 1965-2004, over a 40-year period. 811 complaints in 40 years averages to about 20 complaints a year.

In other words, the media has simply been allowed to paint the sex abuse scandal as much much bigger than it actually is, and no one has bothered all these months to point it out. And that is the reason none of the reports ever mentions figures - because the figures show how much they have exaggerated the case against the Church.

The lower numbers do not in any way excuse what the rotten 1.5% of priests and religious have done, but to deliberately give the impression that 'thousands' have been victimized is just wrong and dishonest.DIM]

---

Sure, there should be zero complaints, but humans sin. We should be thankful there haven't been more. pray there will not be more, and not create mass hysteria over a deliberately inflated picture of the situation.

And Irish Catholics, in general - if we go by the alarmism of the New York Times report, and even by Cardinal O'Malley's' reported sense of the crisis - deserve our pity if not enough of them have the sense to look at the figures and not just swallow unquestioningly what their highly anti-Church media tells them.

And just for comparison, here are figures from the United States, which is a much stronger data base because it follows all reported complaints from initial reporting to final disposition in the courts. The study was commissioned by the US bishops in 2002. The figures probably reflect an idea of the extent of the problem in the countries most afflicted by the scourge of priestly pedophiles, with the US for now registering the worst scenario:

---

The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors
by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States -
the study commissioned in 2002 by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops "to provide the first-ever complete accounting, or census, of the number of priests, deacons and religious against whom allegations of child sexual abuse were made and of the incidents alleged to have occurred between 1950-2002."

The study was conducted by the John Jay College of Criminology in New York City. The full report can be found on
usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/

Some general data from the report:

195 dioceses and 140 religious communities were surveyed;
7 of the dioceses and 30 of the communities did not respond to the survey.

From the responses, a total of 4,392 priests, deacons and religious were identified to have been accused of such offenses.

They represented 3-6% of priests in the dioceses and 1-3% in the communities. The overall percentage of accused in terms of all priests and religious in the US was 4%.

75% of the alleged incidents took place between 1960-1984.

A report to the police resulted in an investigation in almost all cases. 384 of the 4,392 were criminally charged. Overall only 8.7% of those accused ended up being charged.

Of the 384 charged, 252 were convicted - a 66% conviction rate. Some of them had more than one conviction on different counts. Those convicted represented only 5.7% of the total that had been accused. [That number is very significant, because it indicates that some 94% of accusations were not actionable. (It tells us that the overwhelming majority of accusations cannot stand up enough to be prosecuted.]

As of 2002 (before all the massive costs since then imposed by subsequent court rulings), the cost to the dioceses and communities between 1950-2002 was estimated at about $573 million - $501 million for victim compensation and treatment, and the rest for priest treatment and legal fees.

Insurance paid about $289 million of the costs for victim compensation and treatment.

---

Here's one story about the Vatican that the Boston Globe approves of - after months of openly criticizing the Vatican for doing nothing to listen to the Massachusetts parishioners concerned!

Vatican overrules bishop's decision
and halts closing of 3 parishes
By Peter Schworm

February 16, 2011

In a rare victory for Catholics challenging parish closings, the Vatican has rejected an effort by the Diocese of Springfield to end worship at three churches in Western Massachusetts.

Church officials in Rome ruled that the Springfield Diocese did not adequately justify its decision to close two churches in Chicopee, St. Patrick and St. George, and a third in Adams, St. Stanislaus Kostka. In Adams, parishioners have held an around-the-clock vigil for more than two years.

The rulings are being closely examined in Greater Boston, where scores of Catholics have been occupying — and continuing to pray in — five closed parishes for as long as six years. The Springfield ruling follows similar Vatican rulings on church closings in Allentown, Pa.

“After seven years, we have scored a major win,’’ said Peter Borre of the Council of Parishes, which has contested church closings in the Boston area. “I believe this is a landmark ruling.’’

Neither church officials nor the aggrieved worshipers in Western Massachusetts were clear yesterday about what would happen next. The Vatican said that Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell of Springfield acted appropriately in deciding to close or merge the parishes as legal units of the diocese, but not in converting the church buildings from religious to secular use.

Supporters of the closed parishes suggested that perhaps they could continue to pray in the church buildings, but the buildings could be overseen by other existing parishes or directly by the diocese.

Mark Dupont, a spokesman for the Springfield Diocese, said canon lawyers are reviewing the Adams decision, but had not received rulings regarding the two Chicopee parishes. He declined to comment on how church officials would proceed, or whether they would contest the decision with a Vatican appeals court.

In Chicopee and Adams, parishioners said they were thrilled by the decision.

“It’s marvelous,’’ said Margaret Page, a parishioner at St. Patrick Parish in Chicopee Falls. “We are all very happy with the decision and hope it leads to our parish reopening.’’

The church, where Page said some 4,000 families worshiped, was closed in November 2009. The appeal was filed last January.

In a press release, parishioners in Adams said the decision “overturns the decree that resulted in the canonical closing of our church,’’ but acknowledged that diocese officials had wide latitude in how to implement it.

“Over 200 parishioners of St. Stan’s have been in a 24/7 peaceful and prayerful vigil since Dec. 26, 2008,’’ said the statement, signed by Laurie Haas of Adams. “We look forward to a respectful dialogue with Bishop McDonnell in an effort to bring our vigil to a conclusion and to reopen St. Stan’s church in a manner that will best serve the interests of the Catholic Community of Adams, as well as the Diocese of Springfield.’’

The Diocese of Springfield has moved to consolidate the number of churches amid declining attendance and financial difficulties. The Vatican concluded that the diocese followed a thorough procedure in consolidating parishes, but did not provide the “necessary grave motivations’’ to close the church.

The ruling was so difficult to interpret that parishioners could not determine whether it had found in their favor until they consulted lawyers.

Rachel Bradford — a parishioner at St George in Chicopee, which closed in November 2009 — said she was thrilled by the decision, yet aware it did not guarantee that the church would return to the way it was.

“We’re very happy,’’ she said. “We’re realistic, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.’’

No matter what the outcome, she said the ruling proved that ordinary worshipers can have a direct say in church policy. “It’s an amazing thing that people’s voices were heard,’’ she said.

Borre said the ruling could influence the standard for future church closings.

“The precedent has been set,’’ he said. “In my view, Rome has spoken with clarity.’’

Consider the statistics reported hre in conjunction with John Allen's blog posted earlier on this page about the problems of the Church in the US in recruiting new members, and how much larger the Catholic bloc could be if there was significant recruitment....


Mainline Protestants decline,
wHile Catholics gain in the US
by Frank Lockwood
BIBLE BELT BLOGGER
biblebeltblogger.com/index.php/religion/mainline-protestants-decline-cathol...
February 16, 2011

The Roman Catholic Church is growing, but most mainline and evangelical Protestant churches are losing members, according to the 2011 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.

The figures, based on 2009 membership, were collected by the National Council of Churches and released Monday.

The United States now has 68.5 million Catholics, a jump of 0.6 percent from 2008.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also saw its membership climb 1.4 percent, to 6.1 million.

Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and two Pentecostal denominations — the Assemblies of God and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) — also saw numerical growth.

All six of these religious groups have enjoyed sustained growth during the past half-century.

Mainline Protestant churches, meanwhile, have being losing members for decades.

That trend continued in 2009 with United Methodists, American Baptists, Evangelical Lutherans, Episcopalians, the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ all reporting membership losses.

But declines weren’t limited to mainline churches. Two leading evangelical denominations, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, also shrunk.

This is the 79th annual edition of the yearbook.

The list of gainers and losers was somewhat predictable. “Churches, which have been increasing in membership in recent years, continue to grow and likewise, those churches which have been declining in recent years continue to decline,” writes Yearbook editor Eileen W. Lindner.

Mary Gautier, who tracks church statistics for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, says she’s not surprised by the American Catholic Church’s success.

“It’s been growing pretty consistently — around 1 percent per year — for the last 25 to 50 years,” said Gautier, a senior research associate.

Earlier in the 20th century, the Church’s annual growth rate in the United States was roughly 2 percent, she said.

Immigration has fueled much of the growth, Gautier said. “Most often, we see it in terms of growth from immigrants from the Spanish-speaking countries, but there’s also Asian Catholics coming from Vietnam, the Philippines, places like that [and] African Catholics coming from mostly French-speaking countries in Africa,” Gautier said.

“The immigrant population tends to be younger and more of child-bearing age” than native-born Americans, she said.

The Church is glad to be expanding. “Growth is always good news, but its also challenging. The church continues to grow but it also continues to get ever more diverse and ever more geographically distributed,” Gautier said.

The Yearbook’s top 10 largest churches are:

1. The Catholic Church 68,503,456
2. The Southern Baptist Convention 16,160,088
3. The United Methodist Church 7,774,931
4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 6,058,907
5. The Church of God in Christ 5,499,875
6. National Baptist Convention 5,000,000
7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 4,542,868
8. National Baptist Convention of America Inc. 3,500,000
9. Assemblies of God 2,914,669
10. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 2,770,730