The Apostolic Administrator of the Vicariate of Northern Arabia which includes Qatar, Bishop Paul Hinder, has cautioned against openly criticising Qatar, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. In an interview for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung NZZ on 17 November, Hinder, a bishop on the Arabian peninsula for over 18 years, said that for diplomatic reasons great discretion was called for when publicly criticising the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Qatar. “Even if a bishop in these parts is still seen as a moral authority, his social-political position is weak. Public criticism is frowned upon and as good as taboo”, he pointed out. Public criticism of the government could harm the faithful by depriving them of pastors. It was not wise to “saw off the bough that one is sitting on”. “We know that awarding the World Cup to Qatar was not flawless but that also applies to former World Cups”, Hinder told KNA. Qatar’s exploitation of foreign workers was common knowledge “but not peculiar solely to Qatar”, he noted.
The Paris appeals court has ruled that Catholic teaching against gay marriage does not constitute under French law a call to discriminate against LGBT people. Three associations defending the rights of non-heterosexuals had brought a suit against the conservative website Renaissance Catholique for reprinting an article by Catholic prelates against gay marriage. The signatories, led by Cardinal Raymond Burke, said such unions “encouraged grave sin” and would be a “grave scandal” for others. A lower court ruled against the LGBT groups last year and the appeals court upheld that verdict. “These words only express the opinion of the Catholic Church,” the court said in its ruling. “These words are protected by the freedom of expression and opinion because they do not contain any exhortation to discriminatory acts.” A defence attorney said the decision set a precedent that doctrine is protected by freedom of expression.
An earthquake on the main Indonesian island of Java has killed at least 162 people and injured hundreds, regional governor Ridwan Kamil said on Monday. The 5.6 magnitude quake struck Cianjur town in West Java, a densely populated area prone to landslides, with poorly built houses reduced to rubble in many areas. Mr Kamil said the numbers of injuries and fatalities were likely to increase because there were "a lot of people" still trapped at the scene.
Professor David Schindler, the first editor of the North American edition of Communio magazine, died from complications associated with Alzheimer’s disease on 16 November. He was 79 years old. In addition to his work at Communio, Schindler became Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in 2000 and served until 2010. A large, bear of a man, Schindler’s warm personality and profound critique of liberalism earned him many devoted students. His book Heart of the World, Center of the Church, offered a Balthasarian critique of the neoliberalism of Richard John Neuhaus, George Weigel and Michael Novak.
Catholic bishops of Democratic Republic of Congo are urging prayer, fasting, and support for a peace march on 4 December, to urge improved security as violence across the country has displaced around 400,000 people. They condemned, “the complacency” of the international community toward corporations and nations they accused of being “predators of our natural resources” and fuelling unrest. Caritas Congo reports that more than 2,600 refugees from western DR Congo, including many children, recently fled to neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville and are living without adequate food or safe sanitation.
Opposition to a planned biblical reading about marriage at a girls' school graduation mass last month shows society is becoming "increasingly hostile to Christian beliefs", according to Tasmania's Catholic archbishop. Archbishop Julian Porteous of Hobart changed the reading after complaints from parents, teachers and pupils at the Catholic school but then used a Sunday homily to criticise those who had opposed the so-called “submission” reading. Concerns were raised at Hobart’s St Mary's College about Ephesians 5: 21-24 which includes, "as the Church is subject to Christ, so should wives be to their husbands, in everything.” Archbishop Porteous felt it was, "not unusual for the teaching of sacred scripture to be at variance with the attitudes and ethos of our age".
The Association of Superiors of Korean Catholic Women’s Congregations organised an environmental campaign on 11-14 November at Sejong City to urge a halt to airport expansion and a reduction in coal use to protect the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Superiors from 17 religious orders participated, accompanied by Fr Kang Seung-soo, head of the Ecological Environment Committee in Daejeon Diocese. A public Mass at the Sejong City Environment Ministry criticised government policies that focus on economic development over environmental protection.
In their Advent message, Nicaragua’s Bishops have expressed concern, “for the thousands of people who are migrating because of the crisis in the country”. Around 200,000 people have fled persecution and human rights violations at the hands of the government. Most have gone to neighbouring Costa Rica, whose president, Rodrigo Chaves, recently announced measures to stop the arrival of more Nicaraguans. A new edition of the report, “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?”, produced by lawyer and researcher Martha Patricia Molina, documents nearly 400 attacks against Catholics under the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, since 2018. It records desecrations, sacrileges, attacks, robberies, threats, and hate speech.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has given his support to a move to synchronise the Eastern and Western liturgical calendars so that Christians celebrate Easter on the same date. The spiritual leader of the world’s Eastern Orthodox Christians confirmed last week that conversations are under way between Church representatives to come to an agreement. According to Vatican News, the patriarch supports the common date to start in 2025, which will mark the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea. Today, Orthodox Christians use the Julian calendar to calculate the Easter date instead of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced in 1582 and is used by most of the world. Unusually both calendars mark Easter Sunday on the same day, 20 April, in 2025.
Bolivia’s Catholic bishops have expressed concern about conflict, "exacerbated by excessive violence, motivated by oppositional political ends." Their 14 November statement called for a "culture of encounter" and urged respect for those who disagree “with the vision of those who govern us,”. Police forces were asked, “to act according to their mission of protecting the population as a whole." Bolivia has seen unrest and strikes for a month over demands that the government carry out the population census in 2023 instead of 2024. The bishops seem to support those protesting that the delay is detrimental to their region.
The Bishop of Maroua-Mokolo has described people in Cameroon’s northernmost region as experiencing a “reign of terror”. Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need International, Bishop Bruno Ateba said last week that his diocese, located in the border region with Nigeria, is the scene of recurring attacks by Boko Haram Islamists. “Not a day goes by when we do not hear of new attacks by terrorists from the Cameroonian-Nigerian border,” he said. According to the UN there are more than 760,000 internally displaced people in Cameroon due to the socio-political crisis in the English-speaking regions of the northwest and southwest of the country, which has been ongoing since 2016. (ACN report see page xxx)
Loading ...
