In the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck, Austria, featuring regional art of the Tyrol, there is a collection of magnificently, and intricately, carved nativity scenes. One of them shows the manger set amidst the mountainous Alps, with medieval towers looking down on the scene. That carving may not be historically accurate, but it is not heresy either. Its lack of historical precision does not undermine the doctrine of the incarnation. On the contrary, the Tyrolean manger exemplifies the doctrine. We Catholics believe that, just as the Son of God took on human flesh, the Christian faith can and must inculturate itself, adapting to the goodness inherent in all human cultures even while purifying any elements that are inherently contrary to the Gospel.
I thought of that manger scene when reading the response of the African bishops to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s decree Fiducia supplicans. The Vatican document said that while not changing the church’s perennial doctrine about marriage, it wanted to commend the practice of giving non-liturgical, spontaneous blessings to couples who are in an irregular union, whether because they are divorced or remarried or because they are in a same-sex relationship.
“We, the African bishops, do not consider it appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual unions or same-sex couples because, in our context, this would cause confusion and would be in direct contradiction to the cultural ethos of African communities,” the statement read. Signed by Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, or SECAM, the statement represented the united voice of the African bishops.
How is that different, then, from the decision by the German Synodal Way in March 2023 to affirm the practice of blessing same-sex couples? The article about the German decision noted, “German bishops face pressure from frustrated grassroots Catholics in a country where Christians are roughly equally divided between Protestants and Catholics.” In Germany, unlike Africa, it seems scandalous to many Catholics that the Catholic Church does not bless same-sex couples.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Va-tican secretary of state, said the debate surrounding the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration on the possibility of blessing gay couples shows that deeper reflection is still needed.
At the same time, he said, the reaction is a normal and healthy part of the Catholic Church learning how to take Gospel values and apply them to new situations.
Speaking to reporters who were attending his speech on the Holy See and peacemaking Jan. 12 at Rome’s Academy of the Lincei, the cardinal was asked if the turmoil surrounding the document on blessings was good or bad.
“It is always good,” the cardinal replied, according to Vatican News. “The important thing is that we always proceed according to what is called ‘progress in continuity.’”
“In the Church there has always been change,” he said. “The Church of today is not the Church of 2,000 years ago. The Church is open to the signs of the times; it is attentive to needs that arise, but it also must be faithful to the Gospel, it must be faithful to tradition, faithful to its heritage.”
“But if this upheaval helps us walk according to the Gospel in responding, then it is welcome,” he said.

On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Card-inal Peter Turkson reflects on the importance of entrepreneurs wor-king to change business practices and goals in order to promote the economic integration of people enduring poverty.
Global leaders need to adopt a transformative approach to economics so that people facing economic hardship may be lifted out of poverty.
As he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Card-inal Peter Turkson, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sci-ence, emphasised this aspect of Pope Francis’ message to global leaders.
Speaking to Vatican News’ Mario Galgano, Cardinal Turkson highlighted the importance of changing the goals of leadership within companies, as well as the imperative for businesses to con-tribute to society beyond their own profit maximization.
The Cardinal stressed that although companies traditionally exist to make profits, they should also align their business objectives with values that benefit society and the common good.
For this reason, the Cardinal proposed a shift from maximizing profit and returns to optimising them, urging businesses to con-sider the broader impact they have on society and human life.
“We want to leverage the obje-ctives of busines–not only profit and monetary gain–but also the transformational value that it bri-ngs to society–making life better, worth living, equitable, and inclu-sive,” said Cardinal Turkson.

Six nuns from the Congrega-tion of the Sisters of Saint Anne were kidnapped Jan. 19 while traveling on a bus in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, according to the Haitian Conference of Religious.
Other passengers on the bus also were taken in the abduction, the conference said in a statement.
“These many kidnappings fill the consecrated people of Haiti with sadness and fear,” said the statement, signed by conference president P. Morachel Bonhomme.
Pope Francis appealed Jan. 21 for the release of all the hostages, while praying for “social harmony” in the country, Vatican News reported. In remarks after the Angelus, he said he had “learned with sorrow the news of the kidnapping” of the sisters and the others. “I call on everyone to stop the violence, which causes so much suffering to that dear population.”
Bonhomme in his statement prayed that “the spirit of strength be given” to the sisters “to find a way out of this terrible situation.” “May the solidarity of the consecrated people of Haiti and the world help them overcome this difficult ordeal,” he added.
In a statement published Jan. 19, Bishop Pierre-André Dumas of Anse-à-Veau et Miragoâne prayed “to help us put an end to this bitter nightmare and this tragic ordeal of our people which has lasted too long.” He also offered himself in exchange for the hostages.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, who also serves as an adjunct secretary of the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, says the Catholic Church has lost “good priests just because they chose marriage.”
Speaking to the Times of Malta, the archbishop said, “Why should we lose a young man who would have made a fine priest, just because he wanted to get married?” Scicluna said priestly celibacy was optional for the first millennium of the Church’s existence, “and it should become optional again.”
Although priestly celibacy is mandated in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, it is allowed in the vast majority of the Eastern Rites, where celibacy is still mandated for bishops. Even in the Western churches, there are some married priests, such as when married protestant clergy convert to Catholicism and are allowed to be ordained priests. Previously married men can also be ordained, if the marriage is annulled or the wife has died.
The Malta archbishop was answering a question from the newspaper about Catholic priests who secretly live in a romantic relationship while they publicly continue to serve their duties as priests.
“A man may mature, engage in relationships, love a woman. As it stands, he must choose between her and priesthood, and some priests cope with that by secretly engaging in sentimental relationships,” he said.
“This is a global reality; it doesn’t just happen in Malta. We know there are priests around the world who also have children, and I think there are ones in Malta who may have too,” Scicluna added.

On a snowy Saturday in January 20, German bishops’ conference chairman Bishop Georg Bätzing joined protesters at a demonstration near his residence in Limburg, in the central state of Hesse.
Bishop Georg Bätzing attends a Jan. 20, 2024, demonstration against racism, fascism, and the AfD in Limburg, Germany. .
Bätzing was one of the more than 100,000 people who took to the streets across Germany Jan. 20 in protest at the surging Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which is commonly described as far-right.
Dressed in a flat cap and wearing warm winter layers, Bätzing was photographed holding a German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) banner that said “Our alternative is called… respect and solidarity.”
Nearby stood a man in a wide-brimmed hat — perhaps a photobomber — with a sign that spelled out “AfD” with the words “Apes Fascists Dummies.”
The Diocese of Limburg said that organizers had expected 300 people to attend the demonstration “against racism, fascism and the Alternative for Germany,” but 3,000 turned up.
“The cold, ice, and snow couldn’t stop us,” said Bätzing. “It is important to be here and set an example for democracy, diversity, and tolerance.”
So what is it, exactly, that prompted the head of Germany’s bishops to demonstrate against one of the country’s political parties?
Bishop Georg Bätzing attends a Jan. 20, 2024, demonstration against racism, fascism, and the AfD in Limburg, Germany. © S.Schnelle/Bistum Limburg.
The Limburg diocese had explained the demonstration’s rationale in a press release issued the day before the rally, which was supported by groups including Germany’s Left Party, Green Youth, and the DGB.
“The background to the protests is the recently revealed secret meeting between leading AfD members and fascists and financiers in Potsdam, in which plans for the mass deportation of people after the AfD came to power were discussed,” the press release said.
A Jan. 20, 2024, demonstration against racism, fascism and the AfD in Limburg, Germany, beside the red and white residence of the Bishop of Limburg.

Pope Francis on the feast of the Epiphany lamented the sharp division among Catholics of differing views, saying believers must imitate the three wise men in putting God at the centre of their lives, rather than their own ideas of the faith.
Speaking to attendees of his Jan. 6 Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope said that as members of the church, “instead of splitting into groups based on our own ideas, we are called to put God back at the center.”
“We need to abandon ecclesial ideologies to find the meaning of holy mother church, the ecclesial attitude. Ecclesial ideologies no, ecclesial vocation yes,” he said, saying, “The Lord, not our own ideas or our own projects,” must be the focus.
“Let us set out anew from God; let us seek from him the courage not to lose heart in the face of difficulties, the strength to surmount all obstacles, the joy to live in harmonious communion,” he said.Focusing on three aspects of the biblical narrative of the Magi, Francis noted that they are described as having their “eyes are raised to the heavens.”

Adaptation of book by Shûsaku Endô, who wrote the source novel for 2016’s Silence, is understood to be set mostly in the present day
Martin Scorsese is to follow up his triumphant true-crime epic Killers of the Flower Moon with an 80-minute film about Jesus designed to “take away the negative[s] … associated with organised religion”.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Scorsese explained the thinking behind the project, an adaptation of A Life of Jesus by writer Shûsaku Endô (a Japanese Catholic whose 1966 novel Silence was previously adapted by Scorsese). Scorsese said he and his writing collaborator Kent Jones had finished the screenplay and were “swimming in inspiration” for a film reportedly set largely in the present day that “focus[es] on Jesus’s core teachings in a way that explores the principles but doesn’t proselytise”.
Scorsese said: “I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organised religion.”
The director, 81, added: “Right now, ‘religion’, you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it’s failed in so many ways. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that the initial impulse was wrong. Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life – even in rejecting it. Don’t dismiss it offhand. That’s all I’m talking about.”
Scorsese said he was preparing to shoot the film in 2024, having been inspired to begin work on it after meeting Pope Francis in 2023 and participating in a conference title The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination, organised by Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica. At the time Scorsese told the press: “I have responded to the pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus.”
Scorsese has a significant track record with films with overt religious themes. His 1988 adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ triggered worldwide controversy and protests for its depiction of an alternative timeline for Jesus’s life, while Silence, released in 2016, portrayed the struggles of Jesuit priests persecuted for their religion in 17th-century Japan. In 1997 Scorsese also released Kundun, a biographical film about the Dalai Lama.

Amid a broad spectrum of reactions unleashed by Fiducia Supplicans, a new Vatican document permitting non-liturgical blessings of same-sex couples, Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church has become the first eastern communion to declare explicitly that the document does not apply outside the Latin Church.
“On the basis of canon. 1492 of the CCCC this Declaration concerns purely the Latin Church and has no legal force for the faithful of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church,” said Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Church, in a Dec. 22 statement.
Shevchuk was referring to a provision of the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, which states: “Laws enacted by the supreme authority of the Church, in which the passive subject is not expressly indicated, affect only the Christian faithful of the Eastern Churches insofar as they treat matters of faith or morals or declarations of divine law, or these Christian faithful are explicitly included in these laws, or they grant a favour which contains nothing contrary to the Eastern rites.”

Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, issued this reflection in support of the Holy Father’s recent remarks to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, which included a specific mention of the harms of surrogacy.
“Pope Francis strongly condemned the practice of surrogacy calling it ‘a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child.’ He emphasized that a child is a gift and as such can ‘never (be) the basis of a commercial contract.’ Surrogacy represents the commodification and instrumentalization of a woman’s body, treating her as a ‘carrier’ rather than a human person. And just as troubling is the fact that the child is reduced to terms of buying and selling as an object of human trafficking.
“The commercialization of women and children in surrogacy is underlined by the belief that there is a right to have a child. The child becomes an object for the fulfillment of one’s desires instead of a person to be cherished. In this way, the genuine right of the child to be conceived through the love of his or her parents is overlooked in favor of ‘the right to have a child by any means necessary.’ We must avoid this way of thinking and answer the call to respect human life, beginning with the unborn child.