Month: October 2022

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore said President Joe Biden’s was “gravely wrong” in his recent comments pledging to make it a top priority to codify a national right to abortion.

The archbishop, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said the president’s remarks, given during an Oct. 18 speech hosted by the Democratic National Committee, demonstrated how he continues “to seek every possible avenue to facilitate abortion, instead of using his power to increase support and care to mothers in challenging situations.”

“This single-minded extremism must end,” Archbishop Lori said in an Oct. 25 statement, adding that the U.S. bishops “implore President Biden to recognize the humanity in preborn children and the genuine life-giving care needed by women in this country.”

He also said that as pastors, the bishops know that “abortion is a violent act which ends the life of preborn children and wounds untold numbers of women.”

The archbishop pointed out that Catholic Church leaders want to continue in their work with government leaders “to protect the right to life of every human being and to ensure that pregnant and parenting mothers are fully supported in the care of their children before and after birth.”

Biden, in his remarks, promised that if more Democratic senators are elected and his party keeps the House in the upcoming midterm elections, the first legislation he would send would preserve abortion rights protections.

He also said he would aim to sign the bill into law close to Jan. 22, 2023 – the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Feelings of desolation and sadness are not signs of trials that may discourage Christians, they can be indispensable signs that point to dangers along the path toward happiness, Pope Francis said.

Although many consider sadness “an ill to avoid at all costs,” Christians should see it as “an indispensable alarm bell for life, inviting us to explore richer and more fertile landscapes that transience and escapism do not permit,” the pope said Oct. 26 during his weekly general audience.

Sadness “is indispensable for our health,” he said. “It protects us from harming ourselves and others. It would be far more serious and dangerous if we did not feel this.”

The pope continued his series of audience talks on spiritual discernment, reflecting on desolation and the role it plays in Christian life.

Recalling the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Pope Francis defined desolation as the “darkness of the soul” and the “unquiet of different agitations and temptations” that lead one to becoming “lazy, tepid, sad, as if separated from his or her creator and Lord.”

“No one wants to be desolate, sad,” he said. “We would all like a life that is always joyful, cheerful and fulfilled. Yet this, besides not being possible, would not be good for us either. Indeed, the change from a life oriented toward vice can start from a situation of sadness, of remorse for what one has done.”

“Sometimes sadness is a traffic light: ‘Stop. Stop. It’s red. Stop,'” the pope said.

However, for men and women who seek to do good, desolation also can be an obstacle “with which the tempter (the devil) tries to discourage us” and can lead to abandoning “work, study, prayer” or other commitments.

“Unfortunately, some people decide to abandon the life of prayer, or the choice they have made — marriage or religious life — driven by desolation, without first pausing to consider this state of mind, and especially without the help of a guide,” he said.

But a “wise rule” of discernment, he said, is “do not make changes where you are in desolation,” but wait until the acute sadness has passed.

While moments of sadness are “an experience common to spiritual life,” the pope said the path of goodness “is narrow and uphill” and encouraged Christians, especially those who “want to serve the Lord, not to be led astray by desolation.”

“If we know how to traverse loneliness and desolation with openness and awareness, we can emerge strengthened in human and spiritual terms,” Pope Francis said. “No trial is beyond our reach.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – After telling a funny story about receiving a cellphone decades ago that was “as big as a shoe,” Pope Francis went on to encourage young priests and seminarians to use technology and social media, but to avoid pornography at all costs.

Responding Oct. 24 to questions from priests and seminarians studying in Rome, Pope Francis said he wanted to speak plainly about a danger technology has put in everyone’s reach: digital pornography.

“I am not going to say, ‘Raise your hand if you have had at least one experience of this,'” the pope said. But “it is a vice that so many people have, so many laymen, so many laywomen, and even priests and nuns. The devil enters from there.”

Pope Francis said he was not talking only about “criminal” forms of porn like child pornography, but of “the somewhat ‘normal’ pornography. Dear brothers, be careful of this. The pure heart, the heart that receives Jesus every day, cannot receive this pornographic information.”

According to a transcript released Oct. 26 by the Vatican press office, the pope told the priests and seminarians that if their phones and computers would allow them to block all access to porn, they should set that up, and if not, they should be on guard.

“I tell you, it weakens the soul. It weakens the soul,” the pope said. “The devil enters from there: It weakens the priestly heart.”

At the beginning of the audience, Pope Francis said the students had submitted 205 questions and that he would try to get to 10 of them, which he did. The questions ranged from advice about finding a spiritual director to a Ukrainian priest asking what the role of the church should be in a time of war.

“The holy mother church is a mother, a mother of all peoples,” the pope responded. And the church suffers when there is war because “wars bring the destruction of her children.”

The church must pray for peace, he said, and be close to and assist all those who are suffering the effects of the fighting.

And while it is difficult to see how the church can have a role in negotiating peace between Russia and Ukraine, the pope said, it does have a role to play in educating Catholics to pray for their enemies.

“You suffer so much, your people, I know, I am close,” the pope told the Ukrainian priest. “But pray for the attackers, because they are victims like you. You can’t see the wounds in their souls, but pray, pray that the Lord will convert them and give them the desire for peace to come. This is important.”

On the question of spiritual directors, Pope Francis said they should follow the advice of St. Ignatius of Loyola and have a priest as confessor and another person as their spiritual guide.

While the sacrament of reconciliation requires a priest, he told them, their spiritual directors could be a priest, a religious woman or a layperson. “Spiritual direction is not a clerical charism, it’s a baptismal charism. Priests who do spiritual direction do not have the charism because they are priests, but because they are baptized.”

Another young man asked Pope Francis how the priests and seminarians studying in Rome can keep “the smell of the sheep” when they are so far from home and from their regular ministry.

“Whether you who are studying or working in the Curia or have some other commitment, it is not a good thing for your spiritual health not to have contact, priestly contact, with God’s holy people,” the pope responded. Without regular contact, a priest could be a good theologian or philosopher or curial official, but all of that would be only theoretical.

“It is important — I would say necessary, in fact, mandatory — for each of you to have a weekly pastoral experience, at least,” the pope said.

Another seminarian, who mentioned trying to find “balance” between knowing he was a sinner shown mercy by God and striving to be holy, set the pope off on a speech about how it is best to leave finding balance in life to tightrope walkers in the circus.

“Life is a constant imbalance, because life is journeying and finding — finding difficulties, finding good things that take you forward, and these unbalance you, always,” the pope said. “The Christian life is a continuous walking, falling down and getting up.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis is set to make a four-day visit to Bahrain, a journey that will make him the first pope to visit the Arab kingdom just off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf.

The visit Nov. 3-6 has two main goals: to speak at the Bahrain Forum for Dialogue: East and West for Human Coexistence and to encourage the predominantly expatriate Catholic and Christian communities who live and work in the Muslim-majority region.

Underlining the theme of the visit, “Peace on Earth to people of goodwill,” the pope is expected to be a “messenger of peace,” appealing to all people and nations to come together, free from prejudice and open to seeing each other as brothers and sisters.

It will be the 13th Muslim-majority nation he has visited in his almost 10 years as pope.

Pope Francis is going to Bahrain to further promote interfaith cooperation because “there is a common interest among the monotheistic religions,” Bishop Paul Hinder, administrator of the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia, told reporters by video call from Abu Dhabi Oct. 24.

The common desire is to help “care for creation … knowing that if there is a conflict between Christian- and Muslim-majority nations, it is a problem for the whole world, not just for one or two countries,” said the 80-year-old Swiss bishop, who was first appointed auxiliary bishop of Arabia in 2003, and now oversees Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and, formally, Saudi Arabia.

The intention of the pope, he said, is “to make us understand that it is absolutely necessary” to find a place where there can be strong mutual respect and cooperation.

The pope will have a chance to underline the role governments, diplomats and members of civil society need to play when he meets with them Nov. 3 at Sakhir Palace. The pope also will meet with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who invited the pope and is sponsoring the Forum for Dialogue event.

Bahrain, a prosperous archipelago nation of about 30 islands, is the smallest country in the Middle East, with about 1.5 million people, about half of whom are foreign workers. About 74% of the residents are Muslim and 9% are Christian. People of the Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish faiths are among the other communities present.

Bishop Hinder said there are no official statistics for the number of Christians, but the church estimates there are about 80,000 Catholics in Bahrain, about 1,000 of whom are citizens of the kingdom.

Catholics in Bahrain hail mainly from the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka. South Americans, Europeans and Arabs from the Levant region account for the rest of the island’s Christian population.

Bishop Hinder said Catholics are overjoyed that the pope is coming to encourage them in the faith.

They are “a small flock with little or practically no power,” he said. The papal visit makes them “feel recognized. ‘We exist!'” and it will boost their morale.

The expatriate workers do not have an easy life, he said, not because they live in a Muslim country, but because it is a life filled with uncertainty as many try to figure out their next move: to stay, return home or seek employment in the West.

Freedom of religion is generally well-respected in Bahrain, “even if it isn’t completely ideal,” the bishop said. For example, there are no official legal obstacles to religious conversion, he said, but there can be huge pressure from society and especially from one’s family against conversion.

Bahrain was the first country in the Persian Gulf to build a Catholic church — the Sacred Heart Church, which was inaugurated in 1939 on Christmas Eve. On his last day in Bahrain, the pope will hold a prayer meeting there with bishops, priests, religious, seminarians and pastoral workers.

The country is now also home to the largest cathedral in the Persian Gulf region; Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral was consecrated in December in Awali, which is 16 miles south of the capital Manama. It was built to better serve the growing Catholic population — estimated at 2.5 million — throughout the Gulf region.

The pope will hold an ecumenical meeting and prayer for peace in the cathedral Nov. 4, right after he meets with Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque and university, and with members of the Muslim Council of Elders — an international group of Islamic scholars and experts — at the mosque of Sakhir Palace.

Pope Francis will celebrate Mass at Bahrain National Stadium in Awali Nov. 5, and Bishop Hinder said organizers have set aside reserved seating for Catholics from nearby nations, especially from Saudi Arabia, which does not allow Christians to practice their faith openly.

The pope’s visit will send “a strong signal” to Saudi Arabia, which will surely be watching, but is moving more slowly than some other nations in the region when it comes to greater respect for religious freedom and the dignity of all people, Bishop Hinder said.

“I am confident that going to a small state that does not have a lot of power in the game of Middle East politics” is perhaps “a good place for sending a signal” to the surrounding region, the bishop said.

While there have been some political reforms, Human Rights Watch has flagged several concerns, especially with the work visa sponsorship system, which gives employers excessive power over their foreign employees, and with the use of the death penalty and long prison sentences for pro-democracy activists.

Bishop Hinder said he would not expect the pope to raise those concerns publicly because, in his experience, more can be done “behind the scenes.”

Countries in the West are used to being able to openly criticize others, he said. Bahrain, however, has an “affirmative culture,” which emphasizes praise and encouragement, and discourages open criticism, which would be considered disrespectful.

What has been more effective in his discussions with leaders, he said, is to confide honestly and privately in a way that “opens the mind” to what the problems are.

“I expect some problematic things will also be on the agenda,” he said, but handled in a more discreet manner, out of the limelight.

Such “symbolic visits by a pope will have effects that we may not be able to foresee today,” he said. “I think his courageous steps will open doors. We don’t know where, but I hope they will also contribute to solutions for the conflicts in the area and perhaps also globally.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The importance of the family for the Catholic Church and for society means that theological reflection on family life and pastoral responses to the joys and problems of families must focus on more than the relationship between a husband and wife, Pope Francis said.

“Theology itself is called to elaborate a Christian vision of parenthood, filiality, fraternity – therefore, not only of the conjugal bond – that corresponds to the family experience within the horizon of the entire human community,” the pope told staff and students of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and Family.

The audience Oct. 24 marked the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ refoundation of the institute established by St. John Paul II in 1982 after the 1980 Synod of Bishops on the family called for the creation of centers devoted to the study of the church’s teaching on marriage and family life.

The expansion of the institute’s focus was criticized by some groups as lessening a focus on traditional Catholic teaching about the sacrament of marriage and marital relations.

Pope Francis acknowledged those criticisms at the audience but said, “it would be gravely mistaken” for anyone to read the institute’s expanded focus “in terms of opposition to the mission it received with its original institution.”

“In reality,” he said, “the seed is growing and generating flowers and fruit. If a seed does not grow, it stays there like a piece in the museum, but it does not grow.”

As a pontifical institute, he said, the center is called to help the whole church look “without naïveté” at the transformations taking place in people’s understanding about “the relationships between man and woman, between love and generation, between family and community.”

“The mission of the church today urgently calls for the integration of the theology of the marital bond with a more concrete theology of the condition of the family,” he said. “The unprecedented turbulence, which is testing all family bonds at this time, calls for careful discernment to note the signs of God’s wisdom and mercy.”

“We are not prophets of doom, but of hope,” Pope Francis insisted. So, even when looking at crises impacting families, the church also must see and share “the consoling, often moving signs of the capacities family ties continue to show on behalf of the faith community, civil society and human coexistence. We have all seen how valuable, in times of vulnerability and duress, the tenacity, the resilience and the cooperation of family ties are.”

No one benefits from an attitude that says the church will encourage and care for the vocations only of perfect families, the pope said, because “marriage and family life will always have imperfections until we are in heaven.”

Pope Francis warned the students and staff to “be careful of ideologies that meddle to explain the family from an ideological point of view. The family is not an ideology, it is a reality.”

To understand and assist “a family that has this grace of a man and a woman who love each other and create, and to understand the family, we always must go to the concrete, not ideologies. Ideologies ruin, ideologies meddle to make a path of destruction. Be careful of ideologies!”

WASHINGTON (CNS) – A study of U.S. priests released Oct. 19 details clerics’ “crisis of trust” toward their bishops as well as fear that if they were falsely accused of abuse, prelates would immediately throw them “under the bus” and not help them clear their name.

The study “Well-being, Trust and Policy in a Time of Crisis” by The Catholic Project, written by Brandon Vaidyanathan, Christopher Jacobi and Chelsea Rae Kelly, of The Catholic University of America, paints a portrait of a majority of priests who feel abandoned by the men they are supposed to trust at the helm of their dioceses.

And while the study says priests overwhelmingly support measures to combat sex abuse and enhance child safety, the majority, 82%, also said they regularly fear being falsely accused. Were that to happen, they feel they would face a “de facto policy” of guilty until proven innocent.

The study, unveiled at The Catholic University of America in Washington, documents the environment between priests and their bishops in light of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” instituted in 2002 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Commonly referred to as the Dallas Charter, it sets in place policy about how to proceed when allegations of sexual abuse of children by clergy or church personnel come to light.

“Indeed, many priests feel that the policies introduced since the Dallas Charter have depersonalized their relationship with their bishops; they see bishops more as CEOs, bureaucrats, and legalistic guardians of diocesan finances than as fathers and brothers,” the study points out and quotes a diocesan priest saying: “Our archbishop is a remote figure. Not at all personable. Not approachable. He appears to be a busy CEO and religious functionary.”

The document reveals that 40% of the priests who responded said they see the zero-tolerance policy as “too harsh” or “harsher than necessary,” adding that it’s too easy to lodge false claims of abuse against them. They feel bishops would not support a priest in the period necessary to prove his innocence.

“There’s this sense … that the bishops are against a priest who’s been accused, rather than doing what the bishop must do but still supporting the priest,” said one of the 100 priests that researchers interviewed in-depth.

“Most priests agree with the church’s response to the abuse crisis, but also fear that their bishops wouldn’t have their backs if they were falsely accused,” said Vaidyanathan, one of the study’s authors.

Of the 10,000 diocesan and religious priests surveyed, just 24% said they had confidence in U.S. bishops in general. Instead, priests in the study said they predominantly see the prelates as social climbers, careerists and administrators who barely know priests in their diocese by name.

“I don’t really trust most of the bishops, to be honest with you. I’ll show them all a great amount of respect. And if I was in their diocese, I would really serve them and try,” a priest told researchers. “But just looking across the United States and looking across a lot of bishops … I would say I have an overall negative opinion of bishops in the United States.

“They’re really not leaders or they’re just kind of chameleons … looking to climb up the ladder.”

The study says 131 bishops also participated in the study, which analyzed attitudes about priests’ well-being, trust and the policy related to the sex abuse crisis.

In response to the study, the USCCB’s Public Affairs Office released a statement by Bishop James F. Checchio of Metuchen, New Jersey, chairman of the organization’s Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations.

“I am grateful for the insight provided by this study which will assist the bishops in our ministry to our priests. While not surprised, I am heartened that the results report priests have such a high level of vocational fulfilment and that they remain positive about their priestly ministry,” Bishop Checchio said in the Oct. 19 statement.

The bishop referred to a figure in the document that showed that 77% of the priests in the study could be categorized as “flourishing” — saying they felt fulfilled and had a sense of meaning and purpose — and 4% reporting that they were thinking of leaving the priesthood.

“Our priests are generous and committed,” Bishop Checchio continued. “While acknowledging that circumstances will vary from diocese to diocese, the findings of this study are overall valuable in that they remind us of the importance of being always attentive to the care of our priests with the ever-growing stressors they experience in ministry, while we strive to address any issues that have damaged the unique relationship we enjoy.”

The study says that the “erosion of trust between a priest and his bishop” affects the level of well-being of a priest, and those with more trust fare better than others.

It also points out a great disparity of perception between the two groups, with bishops overwhelmingly seeing their role as more supportive of clerics. The majority of bishops surveyed said that they felt their role was akin to a brother, a father, a shepherd, a co-worker, when it came to dealing with priests.

Priests said strengthening relationships with bishops, having more social interaction with them, have the prelates know their names, communication, transparency about processes, as well accountability on prelates’ part would help alleviate the existing erosion of trust.

“The hope is that if we were to do the same survey five years from now, things would look different,” Stephen White, of The Catholic Project, said in a statement released before the presentation.

“Priests are happy in their vocations, but we also want them to feel less anxious and more supported. I know the bishops want that too. Hopefully this data can help in that regard,” he said.

Priests in the study also said they felt like cogs in the wheel, seen by bishops as liabilities. Some of the attitudes varied between diocesan priests and those who belong to a religious community, with those who were part of a religious order reporting more support.

The study also said that “at least some” of the mistrust comes from the way priests see “the application of policies created in the wake of the abuse crisis,” even as some bishops helped cover up abuses or were accused of being abusers themselves.

“Perhaps some bishops see themselves through rose-colored glasses,” a summary of the study said. “Or perhaps priests, in a beleaguered and prolonged state of stress and uncertainty, unfairly characterize their bishops through a lens of cynicism and fear. Or perhaps there is some truth to both perspectives.”