The Church should stop arguing over the rights and wrongs of artificial contraception but instead find ways to help people live out the teaching of Pope Paul VI, according to the leader of a commission set up by Pope Francis to study Humanae Vitae.

MgrGilfredo Marengo, who coordinated a research group examining material in the Vatican secret archives on the compiling of Paul VI’s controversial encyclical, said there was an urgent need for pastoral work because “objectively what Humanae Vitae says” is “very distant” to many people.

“Today we have a difficulty in accompanying families pastorally on the path marked out by Humanae Vitae. Perhaps if all those years we had invested more energy on this pastoral path instead of debating, in a strict way, if Humanae Vitae is right or Humanae Vitae is wrong, maybe today we would be in a better place,” Msgr Marengo said.

Today marks exactly half a century since Paul VI released one of the most controversial encyclicals of recent times, reaffirming the Church’s opposition to artificial contraception. Its release was met with fierce criticism from inside the Church and, fifty years on, the evidence suggests it is a teaching largely ignored by Catholic laity.

According to a 2014 poll by Univision 79% of Catholics across the world favour the use of contraception, a figure that rises to more than 90 percent in the Pope’s home continent of Latin America.

At the same time there have been a growing number of voices inside the Church defending the encyclical, in particular where it argues that contraception is “intrinsically wrong” and should be “absolutely excluded” in all cases. Last month 500 priests in England signed a letter stating their full support for Humanae Vitae.

When the Pope asked Msgr Marengo and a commission to look at the Vatican’s secret archives into the compiling of Humanae Vitae, it was met with alarm in traditional Catholic quarters that Francis was trying to covertly undermine – or re-write – Paul VI’s teaching.

But Mgr Marengo and his body conducted a solidly historical analysis of Humanae Vitae which has now been presented in a book “The Birth of an Encyclical,” currently only available in Italian. Then there was a commission of experts, set up by Pope John XXIII, with a majority of them arguing for contraception to be allowed in some circumstances. In 1967, this commission’s report was leaked to and published by The Tablet, The National Catholic Reporter and Le Monde.

Yet it was the divisions within that expert commission – four of its 72 members were opposed to any change in teaching – that led Paul VI to disregard its advice.

Former British Prime Minister David Cameron on July 25 said terrorism should not be seen as a battle between the Christian countries of the West and the Islamic countries in the Middle East. It is all about identifying and wiping out a small section that believes in extremism. Criticizing US President Donald Trump’s view on terrorism, he said it is more of an intellectual battle against those who believe in the “perverted view” of the Islamic religion.

“When at times I listen to President Trump, it seems he thinks of terrorism like a clash of civilizations between the Christian West and the religion of Islam, which I think is completely wrong,” said Cameron, also the former Conservative Party chief.

“What’s happening now-a-days is a civil war in the Islamic states between a vast majority willing to practice their religion peacefully and a very small minority that have taken up a radicalized and perverted view of the religion and turned it into a kind of belief.

“What we have to do is recognize those who are involved in this,” he pointed out while addressing the Annual General Meeting of the Indian Chamber of Commerce here.

Cameron said the terrorist problems have surfaced not just in the Middle East but also in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Britain in recent times, which shows “we are involved in a big intellectual fight.”

He said that in order to discourage the spread of radicalism among people, the success of multi ethnic nations like India and Britain should be celebrated.

“We should try to celebrate the multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic countries like India and Britain. We should also help those countries in wiping out the perverted practice of radicalism in the name of religion,” he said.

Talking about the spread of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, he said such forces need to be fought with fire to eliminate the extremists. “Iraq is a state that has been finding support for the Islamic State that actively sends terrorists to other countries. Sometimes people are trained in Iraq and sent to the European countries while at other times they are just radicalized through social media.

As attacks on Catholic clergy continue and anti-government protesters are besieged by Nicaraguan police and paramilitaries, the bishops said they would pray an exorcism prayer.

The bishops said July 20 would be a day of prayer and fasting “as an act of atonement for the profanation carried out in recent months against God.” On that day, “We will pray the prayer of exorcism to St Michael Arch-angel.” On July 15, the vehicle of Bishop Juan Mata Guevara of Esteli was shot as he traveled to the city of Nindiri, where he had hoped to stop an attack by police and paramilitaries. The bishop escaped unharmed but the vehicle’s tires were shot out and windows broken, said Father Victor Rivas, executive secretary of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference.

An attack on July 14 at the nearby National Autonomous University of Nicaragua campus in Managua left two students dead and injured 15 more. Some of the fleeing protesters sought shelter in Divine Mercy Church, where the injured were being treated, but armed assailants stopped ambulances from reaching the church.

A Catholic analyst in Nicaragua, who preferred not to be named for security reasons, said the dialogue has been interpreted as an attempt by Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, to buy time. The bishops also run the risk of being blamed for the collapse of the talks if they withdraw as mediators, the analyst said.

On 1st January 2018, the population of the European Union (EU) was estimated at 512.6 million, compared with 511.5 million on 1st January 2017. During the year 2017, more deaths than births were recorded in the EU (5.3 million deaths and 5.1 million births), meaning that the natural change of the EU population was negative. The population change (positive, with 1.1 million more inhabitants) was therefore due to net migration.

With 82.9 million residents (or 16.2% of the total EU population on 1st January 2018), Germany is the most populated EU Member State, ahead of France (67.2 million, or 13.1%), the United Kingdom (66.2 million, or 12.9%), Italy (60.5 million, or 11.8%), Spain (46.7 million, or 9.1%) and Poland (38.0 million, or 7.4%). For the remaining Member States, nine have a share of between 1.5% and 4% of the EU population and thirteen a share below 1.5%.

We need to face the facts. The significant number of Christians who are leaving the church to join new communities is a sign that Christians are tired of what we Catholics have offered them. So they are looking for something new that the classical parish pastoral framework is unfortunately no longer able to provide.

In fact, the Catholic Church’s classical parish pastoral program in Ivory Coast is currently trapped in a bureaucratic system that kills the prophetic spirit of pastoral ministry. This has led to a spiritual vacuum among Catholics. Weighed down with the burden of endless socio-political suffering, they are desperately looking elsewhere for a new experience of God.

As the Psalmist wrote: “It is your face that I seek, Lord.” Genuinely thirsty for the Holy Spirit, thousands of Christians have ended up deserting the bureaucratic classical parish pastoral framework in order to “descend into deep waters.” As a result, they are joining the framework offered by many new communities, which seems to quench their spiritual thirst. We therefore need to recognize that at this time in our history, we have failed as pastors.

After closing more than 700 churches and some mosques in March, Rwandan government officials have moved to institute guidelines for how faith groups operate in the majority-Christian East African country.

Rwanda’s minister in the office of the president has brought to Parliament a draft law that would require Christian and Muslim clerics to attain university education before preaching in churches or mosques. The law would require clerics to have a bachelor’s degree and a valid certificate in religious studies. It would also bar clergy who have been convicted of crimes of genocide, genocidal ideology, discrimination or other sectarian practices.

“I agree with the law. Some of our church groups have been operating in a dangerous manner,” Evalister Mugabo, bishop of the Lutheran Church in Rwanda, told Religion News Service.