June 5, 2024Catholic News AgencyThe Dispatch13Print
Rome Newsroom, Jun 5, 2024 / 11:15 am (CNA).
Approximately 20 theologians are in Rome for 10 days of preparatory work preceding the drafting of the guiding document for the next assembly of the Synod on Synodality.
The June 4–13 closed-door gathering of experts in theology, ecclesiology, and canon law is being held at the Jesuit general curia down the street from the Vatican. The Secretariat of the Synod expects to release a document on the June meeting in early July.
This initial text will “prepare the way” for the drafting of the document — dubbed the “Instrumentum Laboris 2” — that will guide the work of the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October, Father Giacomo Costa, SJ, said in a June 5 press release.
Costa, the special secretary for the Synod on Synodality, said the group of theologians is meeting to carry out “an initial analysis” of reports from local communities and to discern on their “questions and theological reflections.”
The October synod assembly is a continuation of the multiyear Synod on Synodality, which began in October 2021 and has included stages of discernment and discussion at various levels of the Church. The first session of the Vatican assembly on synodality took place in October 2023.
Theologians and other Church experts at the June meeting are reading and discussing new reports from local Churches reflecting on the 41-page Synthesis Report released at the end of the October 2023 gathering. Participants are also considering the question “How to be a synodal Church in mission.”
The international experts are also reading and reflecting on material shared by women’s religious orders, university faculties, religious associations, and others, as well as reports from a listening session with 300 parish priests held near Rome in the town of Sacrofano from April 28–May 2.
“The material received often adds real testimonies on how the particular Churches not only understand synodality but also how they are already putting this style into practice,” synod secretary general Cardinal Mario Grech said in a press release.
“We are not leaving anything to chance,” Grech said. “Each document is to be carefully read with the aim that at the end of this meeting, the group will present a text that reflects the work, questions, and insights received from the grassroots.”
The gathering of theologians began with a half-day spiritual retreat and also includes daily Mass and time for personal prayer, the synod office said.
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News Briefs
Hong Kong activist: Proposed law could worsen religious liberty, persecute Catholics
February 13, 2024Catholic News Agency1
Hong Kong.Hong Kong media tycoon and founder of Apple Daily newspaper Jimmy Lai Chee Ying arrives at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court, May 18, 2020. / Credit: Yung Chi Wai Derek/Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 13, 2024 / 16:15 pm (CNA).
A religious freedom advocate from Hong Kong is warning that proposed legislation could further restrict religious liberty and lead to the persecution of the Catholic Church and other Christians.
Frances Hui, a Hong Kong native who has political asylum in the United States, expressed concern about the possible enactment of the controversial proposal Article 23, which would expand a 2020 national security law. She made these comments duringa Hudson Institute panel discussionon “The Repression of Hong Kong and Heroism of Jimmy Lai.”
Lai, a pro-democracy journalist and convert to Catholicism, was arrested on several charges under Hong Kong’s 2020 national security law and could face life in prison. His newspaper, Apple Daily, frequently published material critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Although the Chinese government charged him with colluding with foreign forces, critics of the prosecution claim that he — and hundreds of other political and religious dissidents — were arrested for their activism.
If enacted, Article 23 would expand the law to bolster the government’s crackdown on political dissidents, which has been ongoing for more than three and a half years.
The change would add new offenses, including a prohibition on external interference in Hong Kong, a prohibition on supporting external intelligence organizations, and a prohibition on electronic and computer activities without lawful authority that endangers national security, along with a prohibition on general sabotage activities,according to the Hong Kong Free Press.
Hui, who serves as the policy and advocacy coordinator at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, said during the panel that the legislation would “target foreign organizations [and] their activities in Hong Kong,” which could be used against foreign Christian missionaries and Hong Kong Catholic Church communications with the Vatican.
“A lot of the small- to medium-scale church groups, the Catholic Church, and foreign missionaries would all be affected,” Hui said.
“We don’t know how they’re going to use this law to go against religious groups, but having this law passed and imposed in Hong Kong would be a great threat to religious groups in Hong Kong,” she added. “They are subject to legal prosecution. … The Catholic Church in Hong Kong … might have to stop their communication with the Vatican because it’s a foreign state.”
In such a scenario, Hui warned that the Catholic Church in Hong Kong could be forced to join the Catholic Patriotic Association, which the communist government established in 1957 to exert government control of Catholic churches in mainland China.
“We don’t know how they’re going to use this because it’s another vaguely written law, but … if they don’t like what you’re doing and they have targeted you, they have the law at their disposal to use that to threaten you and put you in jail,” Hui said.
The legislation was first proposed more than 20 years ago in 2002, but the effort was rejected after widespread backlash from the people of Hong Kong, journalist associations, and Western governments. The effort, however, was revived by Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu in 2022. On Jan. 30, Lee began a one-month consultation period on the proposal.
“I think this is something the world and the American government should pay attention to and [should] speak up against it,” Hui said.
Nearly 300 people in Hong Kong, including Lai, have been arrested since the government updated the national security law in 2020. Critics believe this is a crackdown on free speech and political opposition.
“The biggest goal of [the national security law] is to stifle dissidents,” Hui said. “It has destroyed freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press. It’s a very vaguely written law that pretty much applies to the whole civil society.”
The United States Congressional Executive Commission on China has encouraged President Joe Biden’s administrationto issue sanctionsagainst the judges and prosecutors involved in Lai’s case and similar cases.
Member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board William McGurn, who is Lai’s godfather and has known him for decades, said during the panel that he believes Lai would also want people to not forget “the other people locked up that don’t have his name recognition or friendliness with Western reporters and politicians.”
“I think … he stayed in Hong Kong to be with them to choose sides,” McGurn said. “Same with Cardinal [Joseph] Zen … [who] was not prosecuted under the national security charges [but] was on these other charges of organizing a group without official regulatory permission.”
In November 2022, Zenwas convicted on chargesof failing to register a fund that helped pay for the legal fees and medical treatments of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters. He has appealed that conviction.
The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundationpublished a reporton Jan. 30 that found that religious freedom is “deteriorating” in the city amid a “hostile takeover” from the Chinese Communist Party.
According to the report, Catholic and other Christian groups have faced accusations of supporting “violent protests” and colluding with “foreign organizations” under the 2020 national security law.
In addition to persecuting Christians, critics have accused the Chinese Communist Party of persecuting Uyghur Muslims and followers of Falun Gong, a religious and political movement.
[…]
News Briefs
Vatican sanctions two Polish bishops after ‘Vos estis’ investigations
March 29, 2021CNA Daily News0
Rome Newsroom, Mar 29, 2021 / 07:30 am (CNA).- The apostolic nunciature in Poland announced Monday that the Vatican has sanctioned two Polish bishops at the conclusion of canonical inquiries into accusations they were negligent in their handling of sex… […]
News Briefs
Colosseum to be lit red for persecuted Christians
February 7, 2018CNA Daily News0
Rome, Italy, Feb 7, 2018 / 01:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Roman Colosseum will be illuminated by red lights later this month to draw attention to the persecution of Christians around the world, and especially in Syria and Iraq.
On Saturday, Feb. 24, at 6 p.m. the Colosseum will be spotlighted in red, to represent the blood of Christians who have been wounded or lost their lives due to religious persecution.
Simultaneously, in Syria and Iraq, prominent churches will be illuminated with red lights. In Aleppo, the St. Elijah Maronite Cathedral will be lighted, and in Mosul, the Church of St. Paul, where this past Dec. 24, the first Mass was celebrated after the city’s liberation from ISIS.
The event, sponsored by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), follows a similar initiative last year, which lit-up London’s Parliament building in red, as well as the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Paris and the cathedral in Manila, Philippines. In 2016, the famous Trevi Fountain in Rome was lit.
Alessandro Monteduro, director of ACN, told journalists Feb. 7 that the “illumination [of the Colosseum] will have two symbolic figures: Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian condemned to death for blasphemy and whose umpteenth judgment is expected to revoke the sentence; and Rebecca, a girl kidnapped by Boko Haram along with her two children when she was pregnant with a third.”
“One of the children was killed,” he said, “she lost the baby she was carrying, and then became pregnant after one of the many brutalities she was subjected to by her captors.”
Once she was freed and reunited with her husband, she decided she “could not hate those who caused her so much pain,” Monteduro said.
Aid to the Church in Need released a biennial report on anti-Christian persecution Oct. 12, 2017, detailing how Christianity is “the world’s most oppressed faith community,” and how anti-Christian persecution in the worst regions has reached “a new peak.”
The report reviewed 13 countries, and concluded that in all but one, the situation for Christians was worse in overall terms for the period 2015-2017 than during the prior two years.
“The one exception is Saudi Arabia, where the situation was already so bad it could scarcely get any worse,” the report said.
China, Eritrea, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria were ranked “extreme” in the scale of anti-Christian persecution. Egypt, India, and Iran were rated “high to extreme,” while Turkey was rated “moderate to high.”
The Middle East is a major focus for the report.
“Governments in the West and the U.N. failed to offer Christians in countries such as Iraq and Syria the emergency help they needed as genocide got underway,” the report said. “If Christian organizations and other institutions had not filled the gap, the Christian presence could already have disappeared in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East.”
The exodus of Christians from Iraq has been “very severe.” Christians in the country now may number as few as 150,000, a decline from 275,000 in mid-2015. By spring 2017 there were some signs of hope, with the defeat of the Islamic State group and the return of some Christians to their homes on the Nineveh Plains.
The departure of Christians from Syria has also threatened the survival of their communities in the country, including historic Christian centers like Aleppo, ACN said. Syrian Christians there suffer threats of forced conversion and extortion. One Chaldean bishop in the country estimates the Christian population to be at 500,000, down from 1.2 million before the war.
Many Christians in the region fear going to official refugee camps, due to concerns about rape and other violence, according to the report.
ACN also discussed the genocide committed in Syrian and Iraq by the Islamic State and other militants. While ISIS and other groups have lost their major strongholds, ACN said that many Christian groups are threatened with extinction and would likely not survive another attack.
[…]
13 Comments
What’s the point?
Bergoglio regularly issues high-handed edicts that reshape the Church and her teachings.
As far as he’s concerned, it’s synod schnynod. He’s going to do what he wants, regardless.
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It’s a shame but I trust nothing that comes out if the Vatican during these dark days in Rome.
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The Pontiff Francis and his fellow-ideologues are subverted and subversive people, who live as parasites feeding on The Body of Christ.
They are fit to be prayed for and opposed…because they are enemies of Our Lord.
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As coda, I pray for the intercession of St. Charles Lwanga against the “Synod-of-the-Subverted.”
God’s will be done.
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Ah, witness the real Synodaling…
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Admittedly, I am a bit miffed to be excluded. Closed door theology – it’s as if they are trying to hide from the Holy Spirit!
And I remain astounded that no invitation has arrived for the all-inclusive Roman boondoggle called the Synod on Synodaling II. Who wants to bet that bad boy Bishop Stowe gets a golden ticket? It’s not fair…
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About the “secret” meeting of the “expert” study groups, recalling the ten themes disclosed earlier, now from the back bleachers: what about these not-so “rigid, bigoted, and fixistic” questions:
1.About the East, how to restore credibility with the now estranged Eastern Orthodox Churches, kicked out of bed (so to speak) by Fiducia Supplicans—like all of the Church in Africa et al as just another culturally defective “special case”?
2. About the “cry of the poor,” how to excluding those who are impoverished spiritually and culturally (Centesimus Annus, n. 57)? “The Church’s Pastors have the duty to act in conformity with their apostolic mission, insisting that the right of the faithful [italics] to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 113).
3. About the digital environment, how to preserve analogue reality—like the Reality of the incarnate Jesus Christ—over a Nominalist digital cosmos and even amoral/immoral AI (the looming threat of lab-guided human evolution)?
4. About a “missionary perspective,” how to not displace the received/missionary Deposit of Faith with plebiscite sociology?
5. About “ministerial forms,” how to respect the “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium) and not split apart sacramental ordination (as already signaled by ministerial/informal half-blessings under Fiducia Supplicans)? Teeing up the ball for non-ordained female diaconate as a stepping stone toward an Anglican-style (c)hurch—just as civil unions were really a stepping stone toward the oxymoron “gay marriage”…
6. About “ecclesial organizations,” how to not dilute the institutional and personal accountability (both) of each Successor of the Apostles, within/versus multilevel townhall meetings—diocesan, national, continental, and expertly synodal!—a relationship already clarified in Apostolos Suos (May 21, 1998)?
7. On the selection, judicial role and meaning of ad limina visits for bishops, how to transcend zeitgeist intrusions into the particular Churches—not lapsing into an elitist and polyhedral Church devoid of its catholic unity and center?
8. On papal representatives in a missionary synodal perspective, how to conform a missionary “style” (now a “perspective”?) of “listening” to the inborn natural law about which the Church is neither the “author” nor the “arbiter,” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 95)? And specifically, how to avoid a domineering class structure of papal representatives as under Cupich, McElroy, Tobin, Gregory, et al?
9. About theological criteria (etc.), how to outlive the obvious criterion (!) of self-anointed theologians, themselves, apparently intent on severing an actively deadly (c)hurch from the living Magisterium?
10.About the ecumenical journey/ecclesial practices, how to not undefine/mutilate the Mystical Body of Christ, or the “hierarchical communion” gifted in the Holy Spirit (Lumen Gentium)?SUMMARY, if the “backwardists” turned the lights on, would they discover a “forwardist” cult with a secret handshake? …or real Dialogue?
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Okay, let us look at how the popes use commissions (1) to give people hope that meaningful changes will be made to end the church’s behindedness, and (2) to maintain the church’s behindedness.
It is well known that popes stack study commissions in order to obtain a result they desire. A famous example happened with Pope Paul VI and the birth control commission (not its official name). Well along in the commission’s work, commission members were overwhelmingly in favor of removing the church’s prohibition on artificial contraception. At one point, the nineteen theologians on the commission took a separate vote and were 12 to 7 in favor of changing the church’s stance. That caused Paul VI to demote the members of the commission to “advisors,” and he brought in sixteen bishops who would then constitute the commission and issue a final report.
Before the final vote of the new bishops, a decision was made to only issue one report, i.e., to not send any minority report. Of the sixteen people brought in to issue the final report, they voted 9 to 3 to change the church’s stance. There were three abstentions, and one of the sixteen bishops didn’t vote. After the vote, a report which had been prepared in advance by Cardinal Ottaviani and Father Ford was sent along and misrepresented as a minority report from the Commission. However, it was NOT an official minority report; the commission sent only ONE official report. Paul VI later said he could not accept the vote of the commission because it had come to him with a minority report. (Votes on Vatican II’s decrees were not unanimous either, but he did not invalidate those.) In all, Paul VI ignored the recommendations (by their final votes) of nine of twelve bishops, fifteen of nineteen theologians, and thirty of thirty-five nonepiscopal members of the Commission. (Information from Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit, by Garry Wills)
Now, we have a sad chronology on the subject of women deacons that covers more than eight years:
•May 12, 2016 – Francis promises a Women Deacons Commission to some women religious during questioning at an audience. (https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-create-commission-study-female-deacons-catholic-church)
•August 2, 2016 – Francis appoints his first Women Deacons Commission (not its official name). It is of course headed by a male priest. Articles about it emphasize that it has six women members and six men members, suggesting, though it is a non-sequitur, that the even gender split guarantees fairness. The commission has its first meeting in November 2016. A long period of silence follows.
•June 2018 – Nearly two years after appointment and after meeting in Rome four times, the commission sends its report to the pope. No statement is made and the public is left hanging. Eventually people are told that the commission had been unable to come to a consensus and therefore could not make a recommendation. Nearly a year after receiving the report, the pope gave a portion of the report to the UISG leadership at their May 2019 assembly. The report itself still (as of Nov. 29, 2023) has not been published despite many requests for it and despite church officials’ repeated claims to desire more “openness.”
•April 8, 2020 – One year and ten months after receiving the report of the first commission, Francis appoints his second Women Deacons Commission (not its official name). It is of course headed by a male, Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi. It appears stacked with members who are known to oppose having women deacons (https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/several-members-new-vatican-commission-appear-opposed-women-deacons).
•November 29, 2023 – Inquiring people are being told the second Women Deacons Commission has been meeting regularly, and that a report to the pope is expected sometime in 2024. They are given the boilerplate that the commission’s work is proceeding in a spirit of openness and transparency. Yet, as of today, the second commission hasn’t issued any statements. Vatican officials tell us that the commission’s findings will be important in helping to inform the pope’s decision on whether or not to ordain women as deacons.
•Pope Francis says in a CBS interview aired on May 20, 2024, that he is opposed to ordained women deacons and that a little girl growing up Catholic today will never have the opportunity to be a deacon and participate as a clergy member in the church.
We all had been encouraged to believe that Pope Francis was open to the possibility of ordaining women as deacons. Of course, we were also told that he wants to make a decision based on a careful study of the issue. In its efforts to be thorough, as the pope desires, the second women deacons commission, and now also one of the ten commissions from the synod work, are still said to be gathering information and insights from around the world and consulting with experts in theology, church history, and canon law. Why the continued work on it? He has already announced his decision; it is “No” to ordained women deacons.
My Opinion:
I strongly doubt that Pope Francis ever serious about considering a possibility of having women deacons despite his saying otherwise multiple times. I have reasons for thinking this, chief among them being these: (1) his incredibly slow pace on the issue, and (2) his stacking of the second women deacons commission with people known or thought to oppose having women deacons.
In my opinion, here are the only two questions needing to be answered in order to correctly decide whether women should be permitted to become deacons:
1. Are men who feel called permitted to become deacons?
2. Are the men’s exclusively male parts used to perform the functions of a deacon?I think the answers to those two questions are already well known to most folks. All of the above chronology, covering more than eight years, only to “help inform” the pope regarding a question that perhaps a hundred million Catholics, and hundreds of millions of non-Catholics who are not misogynistic, could have decided correctly, i.e., in favor of having women deacons, in about one-tenth of a second.
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Based on what’s been produced so far, at the end of the SoS, the weakest possible tea would be the best possible outcome.
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A secret meeting of 20 handpicked theologians at the Jesuit general curia almost sounds like a kids game we played on the Brooklyn streets. Suddenly the 20 rush out of the Jesuit curia shouting, Bet you can’t guess where we hid the Blessed Sacrament? Or perhaps, the deposit of faith. Only then it was a fun adventure of ingenuity. Now it’s a dreadful game of deceit.
A commentator wrote a very studied analysis of the latest Vatican outrage calmly asserting nothing to be found here as it stands, then at the end paused leaving the question of motivation open. Double entendres evoke feelings of intrigue. More Jesuitry, Fr Costa SJ is the special general secretary for the Synod. If this were the Jesuits of old one could be confident. Although I doubt that there will be any direct annulment of Catholic doctrine. Perhaps a reassurance to the faithful that Francis’ leadership is really benign. Although as has been the pattern we should expect double entendres that suggest the opposite direction and greater anguish.
Faith is now required of us, that trust in Christ that is confident of his love for us during this dark trial. I pray for him not simply because it’s my duty, rather that personally I perceive in him the qualities of what could have been most beneficial for the Body of Christ. A warm hearted, caring old man who has opened his heart to all leading us to greater compassion for the bereft. Instead his pattern has revealed someone whose voice is foreign to what we know interiorly is Christ.Reply
Are these theologians and other experts been named?
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About my #5, above, this isn’t rocket science. Let’s try a thought experiment…Synod 2024 proposes non-ordained deaconesses. Is this the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis?
Thesis: Fiducia Supplicans invents “non-ecclesial, informal, spontaneous” non-blessings of irregular “couples,” as couples.
Antithesis: a divided Church with corrective dissent from continental Africa, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary,
Kazakhstan, Peru, parts of Argentina, France, and Spain, and a distancing by other conferences of bishops.
Synthesis!: the non-blessing of “couples” is off-loaded from the ordained priesthood to non-ordained deaconesses……and private-meeting/photo-op Jeannine Gramick becomes de facto archdeaconess in a parallel church-within-a-Church! Ordination comes later….Maybe not yet a “polyhedral” church, but at least a transitional parallelogram! Ecclesial transgenderism.
This scenario is only hypothetical, of course. Just a non-theologian un-thought experiment, or whatever.
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World-building is a meaningful challenge. Theologians are yet to do justice to their enormous potential in world-building.
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