In the wake of the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church all over the world, more and more people are beginning to suspect that much of the abuse committed by priests and religious can be explained by the demands of mandatory clerical celibacy. Father Michal Lajcha – the parish priest of Klak, Slovakia – doesn’t just suspect the link, however. “It’s a paradox”, he mused in an interview with AP. “The Church demonizes sexuality and keeps it under cover,... Read more
What you notice most when you see Pope Francis: A Man Of His Word is the face of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. You feel as if the highest moral authority on the planet is speaking directly to you. Not really speaking to you, though: challenging you, daring you, provoking you. With his eyes: every time he smiles or frowns. That is why Wim Wenders’ new documentary about the pontiff can be considered a kind of 21st-century Western equivalent of the Orthodox... Read more
“A very bad example” and “a very serious offense”, not to mention a “not positive” answer to the abuse crisis and “an unfair attack”. Not mincing his words, Cardinal Marc Ouellet has condemned the “rebellion” against Pope Francis of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and his ultraconservative co-conspirators. A “serious” issue, according to the cardinal, that must be resolved in a “spiritual” way, not a “political” one. The Canadian prelate, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops in the Vatican, was speaking... Read more
What can and should be done to clean up once and for all the crisis of sex abuse and cover-ups that has exploded in the Catholic Church? The French reform movement Conférence Catholique des Baptisé-e-s Francophones (CCBF) has no doubts at all: the solution must be to rid the Church of the “poison” of clericalism, that “culture of death that abuses the body of others” and perpetuates a “perverse discourse that instrumentalizes the divine, disguises power in ‘service’ and infantilizes... Read more
Embed from Getty Images “Patriotism is good, but nationalism is not Catholic”. The president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, continues to be worried about the wave of populist and xenophobic movements currently infecting Europe, from the United Kingdom to Greece. The Archbishop of Munich and Freising’s latest intervention on the subject came on his recent trip to Gdansk, in Poland, to pay tribute to that country’s ‘Solidarity’ movement, an occasion on which he warned that “nationalism is... Read more
“Intolerable” and “unacceptable”. With these reproaches the Swiss Diocese of St. Gallen has condemned the homophobic words uttered August 22 by the auxiliary bishop of the neighbouring diocese of Chur, Marian Eleganti, linking sexual abuse in the Church with homosexuality. “It would be blind to deny that we do have here a problem in the Church with homosexuality and that homosexuality plays… a role” in the abuse of minors, Eleganti told EWTN Germany from the World Meeting of Families in... Read more
Embed from Getty Images The latest chapter in the tumultuous relationship between the Italian Catholic Church and the xenophobic Government of Premier Giuseppe Conte and his Deputy, Matteo Salvini, came to head late Saturday when the country’s bishops expressed their “availability” to care for one hundred of the refugees trapped on the ship Diciotti. The Church’s unblocking of the “painful and unsustainable situation” that had resulted from Salvini’s refusal to allow the ship to dock in Italy, however, came with... Read more
A 99-year-old Spanish woman is taking credit for having inspired the recent change to the Catechism on the inadmissibility of the death penalty. María Asunción Milá, a great-grandmother from Seville, revealed last week that Pope Francis wrote to her in March 2015 to say he would “take into account” the woman’s petition that the doctrinal cover for capital punishment be suppressed and would “request that the change be studied”. The Pope’s letter to this effect was a reply to a... Read more
The Cardinal Archbishop of Sarajevo, Vinko Puljić, has taken advantage of an interview with the Italian branch of the Vatican-backed international pastoral aid organization Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to warn of the advance of radical Islam and of the need that Europe return to its “Christian” roots in order to combat the phenomenon. “Europe must rediscover its roots, its own Christian identity”, declared Puljić. “Only in this way will it not have anything to fear from Islamic... Read more
Embed from Getty Images The Italian Church has condemned in the strongest possible terms the deaths of 16 migrant seasonal workers, including migrants and refugees, in two separate road accidents in the south of the country. “Justice must be done”, clamored the Archbishop of Perugia-Città della Pieve and President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, in response to the tragedies, adding that it is “necessary” that institutions “intervene promptly” to remedy the “inhuman conditions” in which seasonal laborers... Read more
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