Is There Room in the Catholic Church for Those Who Don’t Believe Islam Is a Religion of Peace?

JIHAD WATCH: Last Wednesday, I had a lively discussion with Msgr. Stuart Swetland, president of Donnelly College in Kansas City, Kansas, on Relevant Radio’s Drew Mariani Show, on whether or not Islam was a religion of violence. Msgr. Swetland argued not only that Islam was a religion of peace, but that to believe otherwise was to place oneself in opposition to the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Msgr. Swetland has now helpfully supplied me with the remarks below, clarifying his position and supporting it with statements of various Popes and the Second Vatican Council. Msgr. Swetland contends that statements of recent Popes to the effect that Islam is a religion of peace fall into the category of teachings to which Catholics must give “religious assent,” as per the quotation below from the Second Vatican Council document Lumen Gentium. Read on and comment » | Robert Spencer | Saturday, August 13, 2016

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Polish Priest Krysztof Charamsa Comes Out as Gay, Is Sacked by Vatican

THE INDEPENDENT: 'It's time for the Church to open its eyes about gay Catholics and to understand that the solution it proposes to them -- total abstinence from a life of love -- is inhuman'

The Vatican dismissed a priest from his post in a Holy See office on Saturday after he told a newspaper he was gay and urged the Catholic Church to change its stance on homosexuality.

Monsignor Krzystof Charamsa was removed from his position at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's doctrinal arm where he had worked since 2003, a statement said.

Charamsa, 43, and a Polish theologian, announced he was gay and had a partner in a long interview with Italy's Corriere della Sera {English] newspaper on Saturday.

He later held a news conference with his partner, a Spanish man, and gay activists at a Rome restaurant. They had planned a demonstration in front of the Vatican but changed the venue several hours before it was due to have started.

The Vatican said Charamsa's dismissal had nothing to do with his comments on his personal situation, which it said "merit respect". Read on and comment » | Philip Pullella | Saturday, October 3, 2015

Church Condemns Government as Un-Christian over Stance on Drowning Migrants

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Bishop says refusal to support rescue operations in Mediterranean by Europe’s leading naval power is an abdication of moral responsibility

The Roman Catholic Church has condemned the British Government as un-Christian over its rejection of rescue missions for refugees drowning in the Mediterranean.

Bishop Patrick Lynch, who speaks for the Church in England and Wales on migration, said the decision not to support a rescue missions was “a misguided abdication of responsibility” to thousands of desperate people feeling war and persecution in the Middle East and Africa.

He said that as Europe’s “leading naval power” the UK has a moral responsibility to step in to save those risking death attempting to reach Europe.

His remarks came as the Home Office reiterated its stance that search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, where around 3,000 migrants are estimated to have drowned this year alone, were simply acting as a “pull factor for illegal migration”.

It claims that rescuing migrants has led to more deaths. » | John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor | Thursday, October 30, 2014

Pope Francis: 'About 2%' of Catholic Clergy Paedophiles

Earlier this month the Pope begged forgiveness from victims
of child abusers within the Church

BBC: Pope Francis has been quoted as saying that reliable data indicates that "about 2%" of clergy in the Catholic Church are paedophiles.

The Pope said that abuse of children was like "leprosy" infecting the Church, according to the Italian La Repubblica newspaper.

He vowed to "confront it with the severity it demands".

But a Vatican spokesman said the quotes in the newspaper did not correspond to Pope Francis's exact words.

The BBC's David Willey in Rome says there is often a studied ambiguity in Pope Francis' off-the-cuff statements.

He wants to show a more compassionate attitude towards Church teaching than his predecessors, but this can sometimes cause consternation among his media advisers, our correspondent adds. » | Sunday, July 13, 2014

Italian 'Mummy's Boys' Told by Church That 'Mamma' One of the Biggest Risks to Marriage

Italian men are traditionally very close to their mothers

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: The Catholic church has warned that Italian men's adoration of their mothers is harming their marriages

The Italian male deference to their mothers may be seen from afar as an endearing trait – as joyously traditional a part of their heritage as pizza, pasta and Prosecco.

But the Catholic Church has issued a grave warning that "mammismo" – the classic attachment between Italian men and their mothers – is one of the biggest risks to marriage in the country today.

"Marriage has to be an act of free will and awareness," said Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa and president of the country's bishops conference.

"When you rely totally on your parents for every step, a spouse does not know what to do or not to do because he's constantly seeking the consensus of a third person." Read on and comment » | Josephine McKenna, Rome | Sunday, February 16, 2014

New Cardinal Vincent Nichols: Welfare Cuts ‘Frankly a Disgrace’

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the leader of Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, condemns Government's austerity programme as a ‘disgrace’ for leaving poor facing ‘destitution’

Read the Telegraph article here | John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor | Friday, February 14, 2014

German Muslims Outraged at Archbishop's Comments

ABC NEWS: Muslims in Germany have criticized comments by a senior Roman Catholic archbishop that suggested they were worth less than Catholics.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner told members of the conservative Catholic group Neocatechumenal Way that "I always say one of your families replaces three Muslim families."

The lay group, founded in Spain in the 1960s, celebrates unique liturgies and emphasizes missionary evangelization. » | AP | Berlin | Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Pope Francis' New Spanish Cardinal Says 'Homosexuality Can Be Cured'

THE INDEPENDENT: Fernando Sebastián said that homosexuality is a treatable physical ailment like high blood pressure

The Pope’s new Spanish Cardinal has called homosexuality a physical “defect” that can be cured, it has been reported.

Equating homosexuality to his own high blood pressure, Fernando Sebastián told the Spanish newspaper Diario Sur on Monday that: “Homosexuality is a defective manner of expressing sexuality, because [sex] has a structure and a purpose, which is procreation.

"A homosexual who can't achieve this (procreation) is failing," he said.

He continued: "Our bodies have many defects. I have high blood pressure."

He added that calling homosexuality a defect was “not an insult” but is instead helpful because it is “possible to recover and become normal with the right treatment."

The 85-year-old will take up his post in the Vatican as Spain’s newest cardinal in February. » | Kashmira Gander | Monday, January 20, 2014

Vatican Defrocked 400 Priests for Molesting Children

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Nearly 400 priests were defrocked by the Vatican over just two years for molesting children, according to a leaked document.

The statistics for 2011 and 2012 show a dramatic increase over the 171 priests removed in 2008 and 2009, when the Vatican first provided details on the number of priests who have been defrocked. Prior to that, it had only publicly revealed the number of alleged cases of sexual abuse it had received and the number of trials it had authorized[.]

The document was obtained by the Associated Press and was prepared from data the Vatican collected to help the Holy See defend itself before a U.N. committee this week in Geneva.

However, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, referred to just one of the statistics in the course of eight hours of questioning from the U.N. human rights committee.

While it's not clear why the numbers spiked in 2011, it could be because 2010 saw a new explosion in the number of cases reported in the media in Europe and beyond. » | Agencies | Friday, January 17, 2014

'Blasphemous' Lord's Prayer Corrected by France's Catholic Church

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A 'blasphemous' version of the Lord's Prayer has finally been corrected by the French Catholic Church - 50 years after it was introduced.

France's Catholic Church has finally corrected a "blasphemous" error that crept into the Gallic version of The Lord's prayer half a century ago.

After a 17-year debate, theologians and writers concluded that the French equivalent of "And lead us not into temptation" implied that God himself could lead us astray, rather than help us keep on the straight and narrow, and thus had "blasphemous" overtones.

The French line before read: "And don't submit us to temptation". It now reads: "And don't let us enter into temptation".

The change will be incorporated into a new French translation of the Bible validated by the Vatican that will be published next month. » | Henry Samuel, Paris | Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Benedict Emerges from Papal Retirement to Defend Record on Sex Abuse

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has broken his self-imposed silence with a lengthy letter to a prominent atheist in which he defended himself from accusations he did not do enough to bring to justice sexually abusive priests.

The ex-pontiff spoke of his "profound consternation" that "evil" had entered so deeply into the Catholic faith. But he denied that he had, either as pope or previously as head of the Vatican office dealing with abuse cases, tried to "cover up" the scandals that tarnished the Church's reputation around the world.

"That the power of evil penetrated so far into the interior world of the faith is a suffering that we must bear, but at the same time must do everything to prevent it from repeating," he said.

The missive, sent to Piergiorgio Odifreddi, an atheist mathematician, and reprinted on the front page of leading Italian daily La Repubblica, was the first published statement from Benedict since he said on his retirement that he would live out his remaining years "hidden from the world".

The letter, which also discussed topics such as the nature of Catholic belief, the conflict between good and evil, and evolution, came just two weeks after La Repubblica published a similar letter from his successor Pope Francis on atheism and agnosticism. » | Nick Squires, Rome | Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Pope Francis: Catholic Church Could Fall Like a 'House of Cards'

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Pope Francis has declared himself a "sinner" and says the Catholic Church will “fall like a house of cards” unless its leaders are able to strike a “new balance” between their political activities and their spiritual mission.

In an unprecedented 10,000 word interview the Argentinian Pope, who has established a reputation for directness and humility since being elected six months ago, called on his church to reform and alluded that it had become obsessed with issues such as gay marriage, abortion and contraception.

And in another characteristically startling admission he declared himself a sinner.

"This is the most accurate definition,” he said, when asked what sort of a man he was. “It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”

Pope Franics revealed he prays while waiting for a dentist’s appointment and that he decided not to move into the grand apostolic apartments in the Vatican, where his predecessor Benedict XVI lived, because he would have felt trapped and out of touch.

Of the Catholic Church overall, he said: “We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards.” » | Nick Squires, in Rome | Thursday, September 19, 2013

THINKING FAITH: A Big Heart Open to God: The exclusive interview with Pope Francis » | Thursday, September 19, 2013

Pope Tells Brazilian Church to Keep It Simple and Reach Out to the Poor

THE GUARDIAN: Francis implicitly criticises his predecessor and tells bishops the church looks like 'a prisoner of its own rigid formulas'

Pope Francis drew hundreds of thousands of flag-waving faithful to Rio's Copacabana beach on Saturday for the final evening of World Youth Day, hours after he chastised the Brazilian church for failing to stem the "exodus" of Catholics to evangelical congregations.

Francis headed into the final hours of his first international trip riding a remarkable wave of popularity. By the time his open-sided car reached the stage for the vigil service on Saturday night, the back seat was piled high with football jerseys, flags and flowers tossed to him by adoring pilgrims lining the beachfront route.

The vigil capped a busy day for the pope in which he drove home a message he has emphasizsed throughout the week in speeches, homilies and off-the-cuff remarks: the need for Catholics, lay and religious, to shake up the status quo, get out of their stuffy sacristies and reach the faithful on the margins of society or risk losing them to rival churches.

In the longest and most important speech of his four-month pontificate, Francis took a direct swipe at the "intellectual" message of the church that so characterised the pontificate of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Speaking to Brazil's bishops, he said ordinary Catholics didn't understand such lofty ideas and needed to hear the simpler message of love, forgiveness and mercy that he said was at the core of the Catholic faith.

"At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people," he said. "Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery." » | Associated Press in Rio de Janeiro | Sunday, July 28, 2013

Martyred for Christ: 800 Victims of Islamic Violence Who Will Become Saints This Month
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The cathedral of Otranto in southern Italy is decorated with the skulls of 800 Christian townsfolk beheaded by Ottoman soldiers in 1480. A week tomorrow, on Sunday May 12, they will become the skulls of saints, as Pope Francis canonises all of them. In doing so, he will instantly break the record for the pope who has created the most saints.

I wonder how he feels about that. Benedict XVI announced the planned canonisations just minutes before dropping the bombshell of his own resignation. You could view it as a parting gift to his successor. Or a booby trap.

The 800 men of Otranto – whose names are lost, except for that of Antonio Primaldo, an old tailor – were rounded up and killed because they refused to convert to Islam. In 2007, Pope Benedict recognised them as martyrs “killed out of hatred for the faith”. That is no exaggeration. Earlier, the Archbishop of Otranto had been cut to pieces with a scimitar.

Some accounts of the martyrdoms will raise a sceptical eyebrow: Primaldo reportedly remained standing after he was decapitated, a Pythonesque miracle that stretches credulity.

But the murders really happened, and their significance is immense. The Turks had been sent by Mohammed II, who captured the “second Rome” of Constantinople and planned to do the same to the first. His fleet landed in Otranto, Italy’s easternmost city, and laid siege. The citizens held out for two weeks, allowing the King of Naples to muster his forces. Rome did not fall.

“All of this took place because of the indifference of the political leaders of Europe to the Ottoman menace,” wrote the conservative Italian senator Alfredo Mantovano in an article about the martyrdoms in 2007. You can guess where his argument was heading. “In Otranto, no one displayed rainbow pacifist flags, nor invoked international resolutions… Today Europe is under attack, not by an institutionally organised Muslim phalanx but by a patchwork of non-governmental organisations of fundamentalist Muslims.” Read on and comment » | Damian Thompson | Friday, May 03, 2013

RC Church & Gay Marriage: Shift in Tone
THE TABLET: Straws in the wind they may be, but signs are that the election of Pope Francis may have freed some Catholic prelates to depart from the party line on the issue of same-sex relationships. The line was established by Pope Emeritus Benedict when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. With the approval of Pope John Paul II, he had declared that “legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean ... the approval of deviant behaviour”.

Speaking in London this week, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna urged that same-sex relationships should be respected and recognised in law. Meanwhile in Colombia, Cardinal Rubén Salazar said in the context of the gay-marriage debate in that country, “Other unions have the right to exist – no one can ask them not to.” Both cardinals were clear they oppose same-sex marriage, on the grounds that marriage can only exist between a man and a woman. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis is reported to have expressed similar views to those of Cardinal Salazar. » | Editor | Saturday, April 13, 2013

Cardinal Timothy Dolan: Catholic Church’s Nature Means It Will be Out of Touch Sometimes

Watch More News Videos at ABC | Technology News | Celebrity News

Read ABC NEWS article here | Benjamin Bell | Sunday, March 31, 2013

Magdi Cristiano Allam Is leaving the Catholic Church
Reason: The Church is too weak vis-à-vis Islam.

The high-profile Egyptian ex-Muslim convert to Islam, Magdi Cristiano Allam, is leaving the Roman Catholic Church because of what he sees as an inherent weakness in the Church to confront the excesses of Islam and the Church's legitimisation of Islam as a true religion of God, Muhammad as one of His true prophets, the Koran as a sacred text, and mosques as legitimate places of worship. Magdi Allam is convinced that the ideology of Islam is inherently violent, conflicted within and warlike with the outside world. Moreover, Mr. Allam is convinced that Europe will eventually submit to Islam if Europeans do not have the vision and summon up the courage to stand up to it. Islam, he says, is incompatible both with Western civilization and human rights. He says he will continue to believe in Jesus, whom he has always loved and proudly identified with. Christianity, he says, more than any other religion brings man closer to God, who chose to become man. [Source: Corriere della Sera] | Tuesday, March 26, 2013


WIKI: Magdi Cristiano Allam »

Rome and the Margins
Will a non-European pope be able to reach out beyond the Vatican and connect with an increasingly assertive periphery?