The Anglican Church in Uganda is leading a rift with the global co-mmunion over LGBT rights. There are deep divisions over the largely pro-LGBT Western churches and hardline anti-gay Anglican chur-ches in Africa and the Global South, reports PinkNews.

While the Canadian, Scottish and American churches have embraced gay bishops and same-sex unions, many African archbishops have shunned equality rights for the LGBT community.

Stanley Ntagali, the Arch-bishop of Uganda, has disclosed that he will not attend the next meeting of Anglican leaders citing the gradual acceptance of same-sex marriage by the church.

The 62-year-old who also doubles as Bishop of the Ugandan capital, Kampa-la, in an interview with the BBC said he was not prepared to engage with people who took ‘an unbiblical view of marriage.’ He made the comments after joining the global leader of the church, Justin Welby – Archbishop of Canterbury – to visit refugee camps in the country’s north. Welby is on an African tour that saw him visit Sudan where he declared the 39th province of the church in Khartoum.

A prominent Jesuit publication’s essay on American religion and politics continues to provoke responses from critics concerned its two authors fundamentally misunderstand the situation of Catholics in the United States.

“Their essay is bad but important,” said New York Times columnist Ross Douthat Aug. 2, saying its apparent intention is to warn about Catholic support for “the darker tendencies in Trumpism” like xenophobia, stigmatization of enemies, the “prosperity-gospel inflected worship of success,” and a “crude view of Islam.”

For Douthat, however, the authors’ understanding of American religion “seems to start and end with Google searches and anti-evangelical tracts.” In his view, secularization and political polarization have made the place of Catholics in the U.S. “more difficult and perplexing.” Both Catholic support for Trump and more radical Catholic critiques “are not the culmination of the Catholic-evangelical alliance but rather a reaction to its political and cultural failures — and the failures of liberal religious politics as well.”

On July 13 the Jesuit-run journal La Civilta Cattolica published an analysis piece co-authored by its editor, Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J., and Marcelo Figueroa, a Presbyterian pastor who is editor-in-chief of the Argentine edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of Vatican City.

The piece, titled “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A Surprising Ecumenism” made a number of claims, alleging that many conservative Christians have united to promote an “ecumenism of hate” in policies that contradict Pope Francis’ message of mercy. They claimed that, that “Evangelical fundamentalists” and “Catholic Integralists” are being brought together in a “surprising ecumenism” by a shared desire for religious influence in politics.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge believes the latest census data showing a drop in religious affiliation suggests “the young are more interested in unorganised spirituality than organised religion, and that they aren’t as interested in denominations as their forebears were.”

Catholicism remains by far the most dominant religion in Australia with more than 5.2 million followers, however the 2016 census data shows a decline in religious affiliation, particularly amongst the young.

In 2016, 22.6% of Australia’s 23.4 million population listed Catholicism under religious affiliation, compared to 25.3% in 2011. However the 2016 census shows that the number of people who listed “no religion” had risen to about 30%, almost double the figure in the 2001 census.

About 13% of Aus-tralians listed “Angli-can” as their religious affiliation (second behi-nd the Catholic Church), com-pared to 17.1% in 2011. For Archbishop Coleridge, who is leading the plans for a plenary council to discuss the future of the Church, the census data is nothing new.

Archbishop Coleridge said the Church should consider the advice of a famous psychologist and consider the facts as “friendly.”

The census shows that 44.7% of families were couples with children, while 37.8% were couples without children. Another 15.8% were one parent families, and 1.7% were listed as “other family types.” This data has barely changed since 2011.

New research claims the Shroud of Turin is stained with the blood of a torture victim, supporting the theory that it was used to bury Jesus. The Shroud of Turin in a linen cloth, three meters in length, that bears an image of a man some believe to be Jesus Christ. The cloth is thought by many to have been used to wrap Christ’s body after His crucifixion.

The new research, carried out by various institutions under Italy’s National Research Council and published in the US scientific journal Plos One, contradicts the theory that Jesus’ face was painted onto the cloth by forgers in medieval times.

Elvio Carlino, who led the research at the Institute of Crystallography in Bari, Italy, says the cloth contains nanoparticles of creatinine bounded with small nanoparticles of iron oxide, which indicate severe trauma rather than paint.

The “main obstacle” Pope Francis faces in implementing his agenda for the Church comes from “closure, if not hostility” from “a good part of the clergy, at levels both high and low,” stated an article in the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on the weekend of the end July.

Giulio Cirignano, an Italian priest and Scripture scholar at the Theological Faculty of Central Italy, accused all levels of clergy — priests, bishops, and cardinals — of opposing the Pope’s agenda because of being attached to traditional ways of thinking and practices.

“The main obstacle that stands in the way of the conversion that Pope Francis wants to bring to the Church is constituted, in some measure, by the attitude of a good part of the clergy, at levels high and low … an attitude, at times, of closure if not hostility,” he said.

Cirignano argued that average pew-sitters, not the clergy, are the ones who are recognizing that now is the “favourable moment” for the “conversion” of the Church championed by Pope Francis.
“Most of the faithful have understood, despite everything, the favourable moment, the Kairos, which the Lord is giving to His community. For the most part, they’re celebrating,” he said.

“Despite that, the portion [of the community] closest to little-illuminated pastors is maintained behind an old horizon, the horizon of habitual practices, of language out of fashion, of repetitive thinking without vitality,” he said.

Cirignano outlined several factors that he said explains why much of the clergy is not behind the Pope’s agenda for the Church. This includes, he said, many having a “modest culture level,” an unacceptable image of what it means to be a priest, and theological confusion when it comes to God and religion.

Many clergy who oppose Pope Francis, he said, operate from an old theology, associated with the Counter-Reformation. Such a theology, he said, is “without a soul.” It is responsible for transforming the “impassioned and mysterious adventure of believing” into “religion” that does not reach the level of a real “faith.”

162,093 Catholics left the Church in Germany during 2016—down from 181,925 in 2015, according to statistics released by the bishops’ conference on July 21. 28.5% of Germans are Catholic and the Catholic population stands at 23,582,000, down from 27,533,000 in 1996.

537 parishes closed in 2016. Over the past two decades, over 3,000 parishes have closed, with the number declining from 13,329 to 10,280.

There are now 13,856 priests in Germany, down from 14,087 the previous year. The Sunday Mass attendance rate was 10.2% in 2016, down from 10.4% in 2015.

Some other statistics:
The number of baptisms declined from 259,313 in 1996 to 171,531 in 2016. However, the number of baptisms has risen for two consecutive years.

The number of adult converts fell from 3,860 in 1996 to 2,574 in 2016, and the number of adults who returned to the Church fell from 6,981 to 6,461.

First Communions declined by over 100,000, from 291,317 in 1996 to 176,297 in 2016.

Catholic weddings fell from 79,453 to 43,610. The number of Catholic funerals declined from 286,772 to 243,323.