World

The Holy Father in pain and horror over the barbaric murder of a priest in France

26, July 2016

The Holy Father in pain and horror over the barbaric murder of a priest in France 0

Pope Francis expressed his “pain and horror” Tuesday after two knife-wielding men in northern France took a number of people hostage at a church and killed a priest.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the leader of the Roman Catholic Church had been particularly appalled by the “barbaric killing” that happened in a sacred place.

“The pope… participates in the pain and horror of this absurd violence,” media outlets quoted Lombardi as saying, adding that the attack created “immense pain and worry.”

The Tuesday attack hits particularly hard “because this horrific violence took place in a church, a sacred place in which the love of God is announced, and the barbaric murder of a priest and the involvement of the faithful,” the Vatican spokesman stated.

Lombardi described the attack “more terrible news that adds to a series of violence in these days that have left us upset, creating immense pain and worry.”

Presstv

Nigeria: An appeals court rules against a ban on Nigerian Muslims girls to wear headscarf

24, July 2016

Nigeria: An appeals court rules against a ban on Nigerian Muslims girls to wear headscarf 0

An appeals court in Nigeria has ruled against a ban on Nigerian Muslim girls to wear the headscarf to schools in the southwestern state of Lagos. The appeals court in Lagos overturned an earlier ruling in 2013 that had banned the right to hijab in government schools in the state. The new ruling “has restored hope in the judiciary,” said Ishaq Akintola, the director of the Muslim Rights Concern group. Also, in the southwestern state of Osun, the High Court ruled last month that any harassment of girls exercising their choice of hijab constituted an infringement on their rights.

Nigeria has an estimated population of about 170 million people and is almost equally divided between a mainly-Muslim north and a predominantly-Christian south. Secretary-General Ishaq Oloyede of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria has suggested that the anti-hijab campaign in some parts of the country’s Christian-dominated areas is an effort by religious extremists to force Muslim girls into an unacceptable choice between schooling and religion.

 

Presstv

Chaldean Catholic Priest charged with gambling away refugee funds

16, July 2016

Chaldean Catholic Priest charged with gambling away refugee funds 0

A Catholic priest in Canada has been legally charged with theft and gambling away more than 500,000 Canadian dollars (US$380,000) in donations for the resettlement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees arriving in the country.

The 51-year-old clergyman of the Iraq-based Chaldean Catholic church, identified as Amer Saka, had allegedly collected the funds from over 20 donors under the pretext of providing support for the refugees, Canadian police authorities said.

“This investigation spanned throughout the province of Ontario, the United States and other countries where refugees were attempting to come to Canada,” police in London, Ontario, said in a statement.

This is while the head of Canada’s Chaldean Catholic church Bishop Emanuel Shaleta told the local London Free Press that Saka had contacted him to confess he had indeed gambled and lost all of the collected funds.

According to the report, the Catholic priest had been involved in a sponsorship program for refugees for a number of years. He was reportedly sacked by the diocese of Hamilton, Ontario, after local police launched a probe into the case back in February.

Presstv

The Holy Father Pope Francis accepts resignation of Brazilian Bishop

8, July 2016

The Holy Father Pope Francis accepts resignation of Brazilian Bishop 0

The archbishop of Paraiba, Monsignor Aldo di Cillo Pagotto, 66, resigned under the article of canon law that allows bishops to retire early for “grave” reasons that make them unfit for office. Francis appointed an administrator to run the archdiocese until a permanent replacement is found. In a farewell letter, Monsignor Pagotto admitted he had made mistakes and that he had accepted into the archdioceses priests and seminarians who had committed “serious errors.”

He blamed his own “merciful ingenuousness” and said he did so because he wanted to give them a second chance. The pope recently issued new procedures to expel bishops who shield paedophiles, amid an outcry from victims’ groups that bishops have long escaped punishment for moving abusers around rather than reporting them to police.

The new procedures do not go into effect until September, meaning Monsignor Pagotto was forced out under existing procedures in place at the Vatican’s office for bishops. Italian news agency Ansa said that in 2015 the Vatican sent an envoy to Paraiba to investigate. As a preliminary sanction, Monsignor Pagotto was prohibited from ordaining priests and deacons or welcoming in any priests or seminarians expelled from other dioceses.

At the time of the Vatican intervention, Brazilian media reported on a letter from a parishioner alleging Monsignor Pagotto had had sexual relations with an 18-year-old man, the Zenit Catholic news agency reported. Zenit said he successfully had the news reports deleted from internet searches. In his farewell letter, Monsignor Pagotto blasted what he called defamatory news reports that, he said, had distorted and divided the church.

He was one of the arch-conservative authors of a question-and-answer booklet released during the 2014-2015 Vatican meeting on the family that insisted on church doctrine on such hot-button issues as homosexuality, marriage and divorce. In a 2015 report on the book, Ansa cited the authors’ response to the issue of homosexuality by saying that gay unions were sinful and “against nature” and telling gays to refrain from sex.

AP

Muslims celebrate end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan

6, July 2016

Muslims celebrate end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan 0

Muslims from across the world, including in Iran, are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Shortly after sunrise on Wednesday, Iranian people turned out en masse throughout the country to take part in Eid al-Fitr mass prayers. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei led the Eid al-Fitr prayers at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Grand Prayer Grounds (Mossalla).

In his sermons after the prayers, the Leader referred to the International Quds Day rallies, which were held last Friday, and noted that Iranians took part in the demonstrations en masse despite scorching heat in some areas to assert that they continue to be devoted to the Palestinian cause. Ayatollah Khamenei said people from all ranks of the society engaged in self-sacrifice during the holy month of Ramadan, offering Iftar to the needy in various neighborhoods across cities.

The Leader said the auspicious occasion of Eid al-Fitr was turned into a time of mourning in some cities in the world, including in the Iraqi city of Baghdad and the Turkish city of Istanbul, as terrorist attacks killed large numbers of people. Ayatollah Khamenei said the conflicts in certain Muslim countries, including Yemen and Syria, were a result of meddling by super powers in the affairs of the countries.

The Leader noted that enemies seek to get Muslim countries busy with internal issues so the Palestinian cause is forgotten and the atrocities of the Israeli regime go unnoticed. Referring to the issue of high payments to certain executives in Iranian institutions, Ayatollah Khamenei said such disbursements constitute a “sin.”

The Leader said while certain shortcomings have occurred in the past resulting in the issue of salaries, the matter must now be seriously followed on. Ayatollah Khamenei said the president is fortunately involved in probing the issue. The Leader said returning the money that has illegally been taken from the state coffers should be put on the agenda of the administration so people’s trust is maintained.

Eid al-Fitr marks the new lunar month of Shawwal and the end of Ramadan — the ninth month on the Islamic calendar — when Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and indulging in anything that is in excess or ill-natured from dawn to dusk. Muslims believe Ramadan to be an auspicious month for the revelations of God to humankind, given the belief that it was in Ramadan when the first verses of the Holy Qur’an were revealed to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Eid al-Fitr was designated by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) after his migration from Mecca to Medina. Muslims all over the world celebrate Eid al-Fitr by paying Zakat al-Fitr and saying the Eid prayer in a congregation.

 

Presstv

 

Cardinal Sarah says Poverty is a Christian value

2, July 2016

Cardinal Sarah says Poverty is a Christian value 0

His Eminence Cardinal Sarah recently opined that Poverty is a Christian value. In his book God or Nothing, the Cardinal stressed that ambiguities on doctrine can lead to dangerous opinions. The book as reviewed by Lifesitenews contains excellent teachings for our times. It is indeed a MUST READ!!

Clearly Cardinal Sarah’s comments here address the very misguided, heavily politicized and ideological efforts of many Catholic international aid agencies as well as government and other agencies that tend to emphasis elimination of the poor through contraception and destroying family cultures.

He says:

p.140 I remember being disgusted when I heard the advertising slogan of a Catholic charitable organization, which was almost insulting to the poor: ”Let us fight for zero poverty” .… not one saint – and God alone knows the tremendous number of saints of charity the church has brought forth in two thousand years – ever dared to speak that way about poverty and poor people.

– Jesus himself had no pretension of the sort. The slogan respects neither the gospel nor Christ. Ever since the Old Testament, God has been with the poor; and Sacred Scripture unceasingly claims “the poor of Yahweh”. A poor person feels dependent on God; this bond is the foundation of spirituality.

– Yes, poverty is a Christian value. The poor person is someone who knows that, by himself, he cannot live. He needs God and other people in order to be, flourish, and grow. On the contrary, rich people expect nothing of anyone. They can provide for their needs without calling either on their neighbors or on God. In this sense, wealth can lead to great sadness and true human loneliness or just terrible spiritual poverty. If in order to eat and care for himself, a man must turn to someone else, this necessarily results in a great enlargement of his heart. This is why the poor are closest to God and live great solidarity with one another;

p.141 The church must not fight against poverty but, rather, wage a battle against destitution, especially material and spiritual destitution. It is critical to make a commitment so that all men might have the minimum they require in order to live. “The spirit of poverty and charity is the glory and witness of the Church of Christ”

– But we do not have the right to confuse destitution and poverty, because in doing so we would seriously be going against the gospel. Recall what Christ told us: “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me” (Jn 12:8) Those who want to eradicate poverty make the son of God a liar. They are mistaken and lying.

p.142 The language of the UN and of its agencies, who want to suppress poverty, which they confuse with destitution, is not that of the church of Christ. The Son of God did not come to speak to the poor in ideological slogans! The Church must banish these slogans from our language. For they stupefied and destroyed peoples who were trying to remain free in conscience

Truth is charity

Below he addresses the many influential or small-minded critics who insist that we must just pray and remain silent about the damaging programs and statements we see and hear and not speak out in order to protect life, family, faith and truth.

p.143 It is a lack of charity to shut one’s eyes. It is a lack of charity to remain silent in the face of confusing words and slogans!

The atheistic West is endangering the whole world

Cardinal Sarah is aware of the great dangers to the entire world of today’s situation in especially the European Union, the United States and Canada.

p.146 I think that the immense economic, military, technological, and media influence of a godless West could be a disaster for the world. If the West does not convert to Christ, it could end up making the whole world pagan; the philosophy of unbelief feverishly seeks followers in new parts of the globe. In this sense, we are facing an atheism that is proselytizing more and more. The pagan culture is determined to extend the domain of its struggle against God. In order to bring about their rebirth, the former countries of the old Christian tradition need to re-energize by embarking on a new evangelization.

P.148 Following Benedict XVI, I am convinced that one of the most important tasks of the church is to make the West rediscover the radiant face of Jesus. If the Old Continent cuts itself off from its roots definitively, I fear that it will cause a major crisis for all mankind, and I see some beginnings of it here and there.


The absolute need to defend the traditions and doctrines of Catholicism

p.147 we have an urgent obligation, says St. Athanasius, to study “the ancient tradition, teaching and faith of the Catholic Church, which was revealed by the Lord, proclaimed by the apostles, and guarded by the Fathers. For upon this faith the church is built, and if anyone were to lapse from it, he would no longer be a Christian either in fact or name.”

Prayer is the tool to reform the world

p.150 Prayer is the greatest need of the contemporary world; it remains the tool with which to reform the world.

p.153 The start of the reform must concentrate on Catholic schools and seminaries.

 

3, June 2016

Anti-Catholicism in our time: Myth or Reality 0

There is in our time a certain wave of anti-Catholicism that seeks to drown the Holy Roman Catholic Church in a sea of guilt for its past mistakes and moral failing. It does not seem to matter how often the Roman Catholic Church at all levels may show its repentance, there never seems to be any recognition of this in the constant and mounting wave of criticism that much of the time rises to a form of snide vilification beyond justification. It does no good to remind people that though the Roman Catholic Church on earth is divinely instituted, it is at the time humanly constituted and will always carry with it traces of the evil it tries to counter. A characteristic of this wave of anti-Catholicism is that it so often attributes to the Roman Catholic Church beliefs or stances it does not hold. It has become so politically correct in some quarters to knock the Roman Catholic Church that accuracy, truth and justice seem to go out the window. An example of this phenomenon is the way the Roman Catholic Church is often attacked for its position on the family.

When the Roman Catholic Church affirms the notion of family as that of the stable relationship between two parents-man and woman and their children, the response is often a vicious attack on two fronts. The first front makes it seem that this notion is in some way the creation of the Roman Catholic Church and not to be taken too seriously, somehow out of date. This is common with many prominent members in the Parish Councils in Cameroon who are polygamists. And who are aware the Roman Catholic Church needs their money to function and can only refuse them Holy Communion in return. This completely ignores the fact that the Roman Catholic did not invent marriage or the family. These two institutions are natural to human beings and are deeply imbedded in human experience. These two institutions are the basic elements of human society. The contribution of the Roman Catholic Church is to endeavor to refine and uphold what is an essential feature of human existence. The family is the natural basic unit of any society. If you break this down anywhere in the world, the consequences will be a break down of that society no matter what religious beliefs are in place. What this writer is saying is simply that the stable family unit of parents and children was not invented by the Roman Catholic Church or Cardinal Tumi but by nature.

The second front on which the Roman Catholic Church has been attacked in this family matter is that the Holy Roman Catholic Church is lacking in compassion for the single parent family. The Roman Catholic Church on earth remains the only establishment that cherishes and supports single parent family. The Roman Catholic Church support for single parent family is matchless, without qualification, without strings and above all and in the words of Archbishop Cornelius Esua, without judgment. I learnt from my own mother that single parent family nurture their families with no less dedication and success than two parents families will achieve. She demonstrated to me that the struggle of the good single parent family will be harder than the struggle of the good two parent family.

My time in Mamfe, the chief town in Manyu Division in Cameroon tells me that being a two parent family is no guarantee of success and dysfunctional families are of all sorts and also, problem children are of many backgrounds. But when all that is said and without being judgmental or critical of anyone, the best chance for all in the world, is the norm of the stable two parent family-father, mother and children. It is a curious feature of our time that when there is failure to conform to the norm, whether it is in the area of marriage or celibacy or chastity, then the cry goes out to do away with the norm. When a principle becomes too difficult to sustain or is widely ignored, then the cry goes out————do away with the principle. I remember with passion the story of my mother who gave all her time on earth to the Roman Catholic Church as a teacher but was given a disgraceful and forceful retirement by a heartless priest call Father Charles Leke. I attempted to use the pages of the The Herald newspaper at the time in Yaounde, Cameroon to put up a fight against this outrageous man call Father Charles Leke and my mum prevented it.

The same Charles Leke escaped to the USA on lame and ridiculous reasons that the followers of Rev. Father Ettiene Khumbah wanted to kill him. In the USA, he has been a prominent and successful failure and a complete disgrace to the Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon and his American Bishop has expelled him from his Parish. This is an example of ——do away with the principle!! When we continue to do away with the principle, we should all remember that we are heading towards the road to chaos!!

When God decided to enter into our humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, that humanity was nurtured in the arena of the family. In the stability of the relationship of a man and a woman and a child, we are told in scripture, he grew in age and wisdom. We Roman Catholics celebrate that in the feast of the Holy Family. To celebrate this is in no way to diminish the value or dignity of any person. To celebrate this is simply to say that the norm should not be diminished or downgraded either, and it certainly should not be abandoned. The Roman Catholic Church did not invent marriage and the family. The Roman Catholic Church along with many other institutions affirms and supports what nature and human experience selected as the norm.

2, June 2016

The 2014 Synod of Bishops: The Anatomy of a crisis 0

The October 2014 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops dedicated to the theme of the Pastoral Care of the Family in the context of the New Evangelization was truly extraordinary, and in many ways! For the records, it set out to present the beauty of the Christian family amidst present-day threats to family life across the globe, but more acute in the Western world. It almost ended up saying too little, too late, about what this Christian family means and how we as a Church could support those families that are heroically living out the Christian model of family life.  Catholicism suddenly found itself in an unanticipated doctrinal storm: was the Catholic Church, the only surviving institution that had rejected the ethos of the sexual revolution unleashed in Europe in the 1960s, finally conceding that the post-modern Freudians were right, after all, and the Barque of Peter wrong?

To think about this whole cloudy October of 2014 is quite frankly, irritating. How did Peter’s barque found itself in a situation in which the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, et cetera, quickly intercepted their programs to read a new headline: Catholic Church Changes Teachings on Gays and Divorce? I disagree with those who want to blame the secular media. We gave them the headlines! I think the media was far serious about what they wanted to report to the world as coming from the Synod. Watching Cardinal Erdo and his team present the mid-term report and listening to the questions posed by the journalists present left any objective onlooker with the feeling that the media men and women sitting in that Vatican Press Office genuinely wanted to know whether Rome meant what the words in the Synod document meant!

To compound matters, the Vatican had imposed a blackout on the individual interventions of the bishops at the Synod. That left the media with only the filtering lens of Fr. Lombardi and Cardinal Erdo’s Secretariat. The media was therefore under-starved by the Synodal process. Come to think of the fact that these are men and women paying hotel bills to live in Rome! They wanted information to convince their editors that they deserved their paychecks for being in Rome for two weeks. Consequently, the so-called mid-term report – Relatio post Disceptationem, was the first real, substantial encounter that the media had with the Synod world. Who will blame them for the excitement that finally, Catholicism had caved-in into the dreams of the hostile secularists and often times, atheistic media halls? Who will blame the media for celebrating the triumph of the Eiffel ToweroverNotre Dame? Their moment had come, but only for a while! I pray and hope so!

How did we get to this position? It all started February 20th2014, when, at the behest of Pope Francis, Cardinal Kasper delivered a lengthy two-hour lecture to the Consistory of the College of Cardinals on the question of the pastoral care of the family. The most outstanding novelty of the lecture was Kasper’s proposal that couples that are divorced and civilly remarried could, after a period of penitence, be allowed to receive the Eucharist without an ecclesiastical annulment. From the post-consistory news bits, it would seem Kasper’s proposal was not warmly received by many of the Cardinals present. It is on record that Kasper got angry by the many Cardinals who spoke after his presentation, raising objections to such a proposal that clearly had no foundation in Tradition and Scripture. However, Pope Francis publicly praised Kasper, calling the lecture a “profound” theology, a theology done on one’s knees, a theology done with the feeling of the Church – sentire cum ecclesia!

Thereafter, Kasper seemed to have been let loose! It would seem his moment had arrived! He had not only delivered a lifetime lecture to the most elitist club of Roman Catholicism, but had won the public approval and endorsement of the Pope! What more could be desired? The press crowned him “the Pope’s Theologian.” Not even the profound theological objections raised by his brother Cardinals amounted to anything to Kasper. Kasper went on to produce his address to the Cardinals in a book entitled The Gospel of the Family.In fact, when he came to Boston College for one of his post-consistory numerous global lectures and interviews, he made a side-comment to a professor of Boston College that those Cardinals who objected to his proposal did not understood him, implying their arguments were of a straw-man nature! His brother Cardinals showed Kasper that they understood his arguments, and that he was wrong!

Shortly before the Synod, three publications emerged, all championed by members of the College of Cardinals: The Hope of the Family by Gerhard Cardinal MULLER, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; The Gospel of the Family– as if to challenge Kasper’s book with the same title,led by George Cardinal Pell, Secretary of the Secretariat of the Economy of the Vatican; and the most expansive, Remaining in the Truth of Christ, by Walter Cardinal BRANDMULLER, Raymond Cardinal BURKE, Carlo Cardinal CAFFARRA, Velasio Cardinal DE PAOLIS, and others. (I will encourage the bishops of the Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province to subsidize these three books for all major seminarians and priests of our province). In a word, these books bring alive the rich patrimony on marriage that Catholicism could offer the world. One gets the feeling that the Catholic teaching on marriage is our “best-kept secret”!

The current debates on marriage seem to fall within the milieu of moral theology. A closer examination from these books reveals a broad Catholic base:dogmatic theology considers marriage from the point of view of sacramentality and attendant qualities: indissolubility, monogamy, fruitfulness and education of children in the faith; moral theology is about the anthropology of human sexuality and parenthood; canon law views marriage from legitimacy and its pathologies; the role of pastoral theology is to promote the plan of marriage and how to live out this vision in a pluralistic and complex world; finally, spiritual theology is about the Christian life of witnessing, marriage as the domestic church, lived out in prayer, worship, sin and grace, falling and rising in our marital commitment, et cetera.

With such a rich patrimony, the mid-term report could not have been more shocking, even to the secular media world. As the head of the Polish Bishop’s Conference, ArchbishopStanislaw Gądecki told Vatican Radio on October 13th 2014, the Relatio Post Disceptationem was a marked departure from our patrimony, especially the magisterium of St. John Paul II! To Cardinal Burke, the Relatio had little or no foundation in Scripture and Tradition.

I have already written about how this infamous Relatio came to be and its eventual demolition in the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Needless repeating myself here. The Final Report– RelatioSynodi, was a marked improvement of the mid-term report, in the minds of many, thanks to bishops standing up for orthodoxy. Where do we go from here? How do we prepare for the 2015 Ordinary Synod? What lessons have we learnt as Church worth keeping in mind as we prepare for 2015? Two suggestions from a simple and young mind:

Firstly, bishops, priests and the laity should foster a rediscovery of the Catholic teaching of the grammar of sexuality that is built into our experience and understanding of creation. The problematic paragraphs of the mid-term report showed that Catholicism was throwing away its understanding of the sexual language of Creation Theology, an understanding that is accessible to both faith and reason: What does creation, male and female, teach Catholicism and the world about the sexual act? What does the female and male anatomy teach Catholicism and the world about the sexual act? Does reason have a place in the sexual act, or is the sexual act an exclusive domain of feelings and emotions? If we follow emotions alone, where do we draw the line? What happens when a mother says, as we heard recently in the news in the US, that she and her daughter have sexual feelings for each other and have decided to “marry”? More pointedly, and this is what Catholic bishops must ask themselves in all honesty: does God have a place in the sexual act? Can God still speak to humans, created male and female, about sex? Should revelation as contained in Scripture be allowed into the sexual act? In the final analysis, the crisis about sexuality is a crisis about God. Is sex an area that is exclusively human, or can God say a word? Should God be allowed to?

Put differently, the greatest omission of the 2014 Extraordinary Synod was the total snubbing of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body! Bishops should encourage formative seminars on the Theology of the Body. May be the bishops themselves need lessons on the Theology of the Body, urgent ones, to spare Catholicism the kind of embarrassment we faced from the mid-term report, which was a work that came from a meeting of bishops! Sexuality and Creation are the big themes for 2015. A friend of mine chided me for still believing in bishops to hand on the orthodox faith! Do we have any other option? I am sure, hope and pray, that Athanasius, Cyprian, Augustine, Ignatius, Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, Borromeo, will still inspire their successors in 2015!

Secondly, why should Catholicism care about marriage and the family? How can we rediscover and represent our Catholic goods of marriage in 2015: the good of exclusive, reciprocal fidelity (bonumfidei); the good of fruitfulness and education of children (bonumprolis); and the good of the indissolubility symbolized in the indissoluble bond between Christ and his Church (bonumsacramenti), are Catholic goods worth rediscovering and presenting to the world, come October 2015. What does allowing Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried without an annulment say about the Catholic teaching of the reception of Eucharist by those in objective state of grave sin, which adultery clearly is? What is the difference between simultaneous polygamy, a man having many wives at once, and subsequent polygamy, a man or woman divorcing and remarrying, first marriage, second marriage, and even third, without an annulment? If the latter could be allowed to receive the Eucharist, why not the former?

The drama continues!

 

2, June 2016

The Triumph of Orthodoxy 2014 Synod of Bishops on Family 0

Church Historians and Vatican watchers are telling us that a confrontation like that had never been seen before, perhaps not even at the Second Vatican Council. Soon after nine on Thursday, October 16, 2014, the General Secretary to the Synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, took to the floor and announced that the relationes of the circuliminores would not be made public, a reverse course from what had always happened in the past and that was affirmed in the previous days.

In other words, only the Relatio post disceptationem, which Cardinal Peter Erdo signed and which Archbishop Bruno Forte wrote, would have been fed to the press. Cardinal George Pell rose up strongly against Cardinal Baldisseri’s novelty. After him, a long line of Fathers, from the Archbishop of Brussels, Abp. Léonard, to that of Durban, Cardinal Napier, asked that the matter be at least put to a vote. Even the Secretary of State took the floor. At the end, as Cardinal ChristophSchönborn said at a press conference some hours later that, “the decision to render public the relationes of the circuli was taken by a large majority.” The texts are clear, and go in an opposite direction as the one upheld by Cardinal Walter Kasper.The Major Archbishop of Kiev, SviatoslavShevchuk, spoke directly of the need of “sending a clear message to the faithful and to the Pope” on the fact that “the family is the stable, faithful, and sacramental union between a man and a woman.”

The most controversial and delicate points, from the question of the approaching of remarried divorcees to the Eucharist, to the overture to homosexual unions, were dismantled almost unanimously because many Synod Father said very little had been said of same sex unions – not more than three interventions in the assembly -yet Monday’s Relatio spoke about it ad abundantiam.

A clear consequence of Cardinal Baldisseri’s miss-steps and Kasper’s anti-African interview to Edward Pentin, led to the addition of one African, Cardinal Napier, and also an Australian, Abp. Dennis Hart of Melbourne, to the original six-man papal drafting committee. Cardinal Kasper has since denied the interview he gave to Edward Pentin, who responded by pasting the recorded interview online. Cardinal Kasper has now been publicly revealed, thanks to the Pentin interview and his denial as a man filled with incomprehensible anti-Christian racial superiority. On a trip to US that took him to Boston College and Fordham University, New York and other cities, Kasper even made sarcastic side comments about the liturgical reforms of Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI. His criticisms did not stop there. The eventual target was Humanae Vitae of Blessed Paul VI, a magisterial document that has turned out to be very prophetic in many ways.

Take number 17 for example: “Let men and women first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. (Humane Vitae, 17).

Why Cardinal Kasper cannot see that changing Church discipline cannot ignore a change in Church doctrine remains a puzzle. If the second marriage is not “in the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:39), then the words of Christ to the Samaritan woman is applicable: “You are right in saying ‘I have no husband, for you have five husbands, and he whom you now have in not your husband; this you said truly” (John 4:17-18). In this case, not only will the Church be ignoring the clear and stern admonition of Our Lord on divorce and remarriage as constituting adultery (Mathew 19:9; Mark 10:10-12); but the will be guilty of facilitating the situation described by St. Paul: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27). Cardinal George Pell said it all: “On the question of divorce and remarriage, I am sticking with Jesus!” Kasper has to be reminded that the solution to the empty pews in the German Church is not a dilution of Christ’s teaching! The Lutherans already did that and the pews became emptier. The Church of England did that and more Muslims go to the Mosques on Fridays than Anglicans go to the Church on Sundays in England! A crisis of faith is met by a robust re-proposal of the joy of the gospel, to cite Pope Francis.

At a time when the world is confused about the very meaning of marriage and the family, Catholicism owes the future of civilization the duty of offering to the world, once more, the beauty of marriage, “in the Lord,” – a union of one man and one woman, exclusive and open to the gift of life, forever – symbolizing the “forever” love of Christ for the Church (Ephesians 5:32-33). This is not the time for heterodoxy hidden under a false sense of “mercy” to dominate a synod of bishops. Catholicism cannot afford to speak from both sides of the mouth on the issue of marriage and the family. Fortunately, we have a rich magisterium to draw from: CastiConnubi, Gaudium et Spes, Humanae Vitae, FamiliarisConsortio, Evangelium Vitae, Deus Caritas Est, Evangelii Gaudium, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and above all, the Sacred Scriptures, not leaving out the teaching of Fathers of the Church.

We thank God that the 2014 sausage-making Synod is over. We thank God for the bishops who stood for the faith of our fathers and mothers. Now is the time to journey deeply into the timeless teachings of our Holy Mother, the Church. Now is the time for Kasper to retire to a monastery and pray for the Church! Benedict XVI showed a beautiful and wonderful example of the apostolate of prayer worth emulating, when he abdicated the throne of Peter to take up the new position “at the foot of the cross” – in his own words, to pray for the Church!

 

2, June 2016

Africa and the Economy of Exclusion-Prespectives and New Horizons from The Joy of the Gospel of Pope Francis 0

The tragedy that has befallen the African continent for centuries directs attention to the asymmetry evident in Africa’s paradox of plenty – a continent abundant in valuable natural resources but lacking the wherewithal to turn these resources into wealth for the people. Virtually all the resources for the world’s technological development abound on the African continent. Africa harbors 42% of the world’s bauxite, 38% of the world’s uranium, 42% of its gold, 73% of its platinum, 88% of its diamond and 10% of its oil. If Africa is this resource rich, why is it so backward and economically poor?

As one of the privileged Africans who have had the benefit of education and close and sustained interaction with Europe and America, I lay the main blame on my own African people. First, the blame on my African ancestors who, for a little inducement of gunpowder, money, and materials, sold our young and vibrant Africans into slavery and colonialism, and now, for money, wealth, and power, continue to sell the conscience of the continent to the ideas, philosophies, and inducements of the West—to the extent that the whole of the African continent today owes the West and its finance capitalists. It has accumulated debts that are almost thrice the gross domestic wealth of the continent. Africa has reached the present lackluster morass because its leaders have always been blind followers of the West, which is why I have called Africa the “continent of followers.”

At the height of the international slave trade, African leaders readily embraced slavery as a vehicle to wealth and power. When colonialism replaced slavery, African leaders readily pawned their kingdoms, dukedoms, and empires to the colonizing powers. When colonialism became discredited and communism, socialism and capitalism became the dominant competing ideologies in the West, African leaders readily embraced one variant or the other of communism, socialism, or capitalism. Now that communism and socialism have been virtually exterminated by the West, especially by the U.S.A., and have been replaced by free trade, liberalization, deregulation, privatization, globalization, and other capitalist shibboleths, African leaders and governments have followed these as the main path to economic development, political resorgimento, and resurgence.When the West extended the carrot of loan capital to the African leaders and governments, they followed readily, and ended up in the web of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Paris Club, and the London Club of Creditors who now virtually run the African governments, with ready acquiescence by the African leaders. All these movements have left Africa poor and underdeveloped, with a culture of hopelessness, criminality and lack of any meaningful economic vision for the future. What has God to do with all this? A lot, and with good reason.

To begin with, the continent of Africa is notoriously religious. It is difficult or near impossible to find a self-declared atheist in Africa! There is no need to prove the existence of God to an African. The various African cultures are so loaded with religious imagery and language that faith in God is connatural with life. Furthermore, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, have experienced exponential growth in the African continent. At the start of the 20th century, the number of Catholics in Africa numbered slightly over a million people. As the number of regular churchgoers drops in Europe and the United States, the number of faithful in Africa has risen dramatically, greater here thananywhere else in 50 years. In Africa, between 1978 and 2007, the number of Catholics grew from 55 million to 146 million, according to the Vatican. A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows the continent’s Catholic population at more than 175 million.It is projected that by 2030, there will be over 230 million Catholics in Africa, that is, over 21% of the global Catholic population.

If demography is destiny, then Catholicism stands a great chance to turn the economic tide for Africa, given its ubiquitous influence. A strong reason for Catholicism’s popularity has been its explicit support for the poor. The Catholic Church has tens of thousands of schoolsthat provideeducation and religious instruction. In several African nations, half of the population is Catholic and the church is perhaps the biggest non-government aid agency. Continent-wide, the church runs 55,000 schools and over 40 universities that provide degrees for hundreds of thousands of Africans who would have little chance at an education otherwise. With such an active presence in the public domain, can Catholicism translate charity into a political and economic advocacy for systemic change? Based on this conviction, the Joy of the Gospel of Pope Francis offers new hopes that Africa could not only escape this malaise of economic exclusion and isolation, but also transform itself into a continent of active market partners.

For a religious experience that began as a minority movement in a religiously complex Roman empire, singling out Christianity’s unique approach to the social question is no mean task.  To think of the fact that Christians have always had this mind-set of resident aliens, being here and not here at the same time, further compounds the possible responses one might get. A Christian who is not otherworldly might be a contradiction in terms, since Jesus famously said that his kingdom was not of this world (Jn. 18:36). Down the ages, Christians have made heroic sacrifices influenced by this conception of the transitory nature of the Christian vocation, such as the embrace of religious martyrdom. After all, “we have no lasting city in this life, but we look for the one that is eternal” (Hb. 13:14).

Be that as it may, Christians do not live in a separate planet of their own. They share in the social and economic questions of the world in which they find themselves. The Christian involvement in the social question could be encapsulated in one text of Scripture: “For God so loved the world, that He sent his only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes in Him, might not perish, but might have everlasting life,” (Jn. 3:16). The Christian is involved in this world, not with a slavish attitude to the world, not by living a life that worships the worldly systems that could easily become totalitarian, as we have seen in Nazism, Communism, unbridled Capitalism, Apartheid, et cetera. The Christian is bothered by the social question because the Christian loves this world and knows that this world is so precious to God to have necessitated God sending God’s only Son to save the world from the path of self-destruction, at the root of which is human greed and the idolatry of the human ego. To love God as Christians is to love the world that God loves, and to share in God’s ongoing salvific work in the world.

In other words, the theological basis for Catholic Social Teaching is God’s revelation in Christ Jesus. The early Christians captured this all-encompassing experience with the brief faith profession, Jesus is Lord – Dominus Iesus, (2 Cor. 4:5). Catholic social teaching is therefore Christological and Ecclesiological: it is Christological because it is based on the conviction that God has offered a new pattern for right living, right social relationships in Jesus of Nazareth, who is Lord. It is Ecclesiological because it is convinced that to say Jesus is Lord is to say it with the community that says it, the Church. I cannot say Jesus is Lordin a kind of spiritual nirvana. It is always with the faith of others, past and present, a being with every tongue that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11). The Second Vatican Council, when talking about the Church’s relationship to the world, remarks that the Church is called to be a leaven and, as it were, the soul of human society in its renewal by Christ (Gaudium et Spes, 40).

This often demands an ambivalent attitude on the part of the Church, in the sense that social action is understood not just in the context of this-worldly amelioration, but in the context of salvation, of directing men and women to their ultimate end, in Christ and Our God. Paradoxically, the Christian lives out this commitment to social action with the ultimate certitude of being a resident alien, as described in the great 2nd Century Letter to Diognetus. Christian social action is therefore inherently paradoxical. The inability to recognize this paradoxical element of Christian involvement has often led to charges of politicization being levied against the Church, by either the so-called political left or right, especially in the Western world. How did Catholicism construct a social doctrine on these Christological, Ecclesiological and Eschatological foundation, recently enriched by the Joy of the Gospel of Pope Francis?

To be Continued

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