As in Papuan society, so also in churches, there are members who opine that the western part of New Guinea has the right to be an independent state. There are also members who consider this region a province of Indonesia.
But what is the attitude of church leaders? Seen from a theological perspective, it is the duty of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to unify people. That’s why bishops and pastors think they are not allowed to take sides.
Government authorities in central Vietnam offered no gesture of goodwill in dealing with a long-standing land dispute with Benedictines at a meeting between both sides, the monks have said. Twelve Benedictines led by Father Anthony Nguyen Van Duc, superior of Thien An Monastery, met 15 officials of Thua Thien Hue Province at the headquarters of the People’s Committee of the province on July 12.
Also present at the meeting were Fathers Anthony Duong Quynh and George Nguyen Thanh Phuong representing the Hue Archbishop’s House.
“The meeting lasted three and half hours but had no successful result because government officials showed no positive sign of openly having dialogue with us to resolve the dispute,” Father Peter Khoa Cao Duc Loi, who attended the meeting, told ucanews.com.
A Catholic Church building is part of a Chinese island’s inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage list which is being seen by local Catholics as an opportunity for more people to learn about their faith. The former Catholic cathedral of Xiamen Diocese on Gulangyu Island of eastern Fujian province was included by the 41st session of the World Heritage Committee held in Krakow, Poland, on July 8.
The decision in recognizing the Christ the King Church as one of the 51 notable sites on the island comes as the church celebrates its 100th anniversary.
“The renovation of the church has almost come to an end,” Bishop Joseph Cai Bingrui of Xiamen told ucanews.com. “There is a tour guide service to introduce the church. It is a good chance to let more people feel the religious culture on the island,” said the bishop.
The church is located at the centre of the heritage area so “priests and laypeople in the church are very happy and excited,” said Joseph Chen, a full time worker of the church.
The Christ the King Church was built by Spanish Dominican Bishop Mamaunel Prat in 1917.
A Catholic family in Pakistan has fled their home fearing attack by local Islamists after their eldest son was arrested on blasphemy charges on July 13.
“We left the city same evening the clerics captured him,” Shfaaqt Masih told ucanews.com. “I switched off my phone fearing they will trace my family.”
Shfaaqt, whose name Masih is not a surname but identifies him as a Christian male, said that local police station will not tell them where 16-year-old Shahzad is currently being held.
“My relatives even visited the jail but he is not there. We don’t know what to do,” he said.
The father of four has been hiding since Shahzad was taken into custody for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed, a crime that carries a mandatory death sentence in Pakistan.
Shfaaqt, a builder, is liaising with his parish priest in the hope to somehow resolve the situation. “We are poor people and I am out of work now. The clerics did not listen to our please; they will kill my son,” he said.
Shahzad worked as a sweeper in a hospital of Dinga City, Punjab province, where a Muslim shopkeeper accused him of blasphemy. He was later taken to a madrassa by activists from the Islamist party Tehreek-e-Tuhafaz Islam Pakistan and was then arrested by the police.
More than 50 party activists later protested in front of the police station.
Dinga has a population of about 80,000 people of whom 150 are Christians who live in a Christian colony near the city’s railway station.
In response to the allegations, an X-marked photo of Shahzad is now being shared on social media captioned laanat (shame).
Raja Nadeem Ahmad, the main complainant of the blasphemy allegation, said Shahzad said abusive things about the Prophet Mohammed.
“We brought him to my shop and he repeated the same insulting remarks … he has hurt our feelings and tried to disrupt the peace in the area,” stated Ahmad in the first information report made with the police.
Ghazi Saqib Shakeel Jalali, from Tehreek-e-Tuhafaz Islam Pakistan said, “We will not forgive even if the court releases him. We are not cowards.”
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.
Cindy and David had their religious wedding on Saturday, July 22, celebrated by… a woman. The exceptional ceremony took place in a Catholic Church at Lorrainville, 650 km west of Montreal in Canada.
In the rural diocese of Rouyn-Norand in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, the lack of priests is such that the bishop called on the assistance of Sr Pierrette Thiffault of the Sisters of Providence.
Why Sr Pierrette?
“You need to ask my bishop,” she smiles, explaining that in this zone several priests are responsible for up to seven or eight different parishes each.
“I was happy and proud to be able to provide this service for my diocese,” she says.
Although rare, such an event is in fact authorized by canon law.
“Where there is a lack of priests and deacons, the diocesan bishop can delegate lay persons to assist at marriages, with the previous favourable vote of the conference of bishops and after he has obtained the permission of the Holy See,” says Canon 1112.
“A suitable lay person is to be selected, who is capable of giving instruction to those preparing to be married and able to perform the matrimonial liturgy properly.”
Hence, on May 23, Sr Pierrette received the necessary mandate in the form of an authorization from Rome after her name was proposed by the Congregation of Divine Worship and for the Discipline of Sacraments.
A member of the Sisters of Providence the past 55 years, Sr Pierrette is a pastoral worker in the parish of Moffett, which neighbours Lorrainville, where the wedding took place on July 22.
In fact, it was as a catechist that she came to know David, the husband when he was a high school student.
An internet statement claiming to be from a feminist movement says the group was behind July 25 bombing at Mexico’s Catholic Council of Bishops. The homemade device caused little damage.
A statement signed by the “Informal Feminist Command for Anti-Authoritarian Action” was posted on Contra Info. The international website says it is maintained by “anarchists, anti-authoritarians and libertarians.”
The statement says Feminist Command was responsible for the bomb made of “dynamite, LP gas and butane.” It then says: “For every torture and murder in the name of your God! For every child defiled by paedophiles!”
Contra Info has previously published seven stories on Feminist Command actions in Mexico, although The Associated Press could not confirm the existence of the group. Mexican authorities were not immediately available to comment.
