Spiritual worldliness is one of the most dangerous temptations facing priests and the Church because it “reduces spirituality to appearance” while disconnecting it from the Gospel, Pope Francis warned in a recently released letter to the priests of Rome.
“[Spiritual worldliness] leads us to be ‘workers of the spirit,’ men clad of sacred forms that actually continue to think and act according to the fashions of the world,” the pope wrote.
The pope’s message was communicated in a lengthy letter released by the Vatican on August 7 but which was dated Aug. 5, the memorial of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. The pope is the bishop of Rome and wrote the letter to provide what he described as the comfort of a “fraternal encounter.”
In his comments on spiritual worldliness, the pope drew heavily from the reflections of 20th-century theologian and cardinal Henri de Lubac, who wrote that the invasion of spiritual worldliness into the life of the Church would be “infinitely more disastrous than any simple moral worldliness” because spiritual worldliness “corrupts [the Church] by undermining her very principle.”
Pope Francis wrote that spiritual worldliness begins to take hold in the lives of priests not only through temptations to mediocrity, power and influence, and vainglory but also “from doctrinal intransigence and liturgical aestheticism,” which have the appearance of religiosity and even loving the Church but instead seek human glory and personal well-being.
Faith leaders warn Kenya is on ‘downward spiral into the abyss’
Faith leaders in Kenya are warning against continued violent demonstrations, saying they could lead the country on the path to self-destruction.
Demonstrations this week against the high cost of living have left at least 23 people dead, according to a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, Jeremy Laurence.
“The UN Human Rights Office is very concerned by the widespread violence, and allegations of unnecessary or disproportionate use of force, including the use of firearms, by police during protests in Kenya. Reports say up to 23 people have been killed and dozens injured in the demonstrations in the past week,” Laurence said in a statement July 14.
More than 300 people have been arrested in connection with the protests.
Opposition leader Raila Omolo Odinga, who called for the protests, has promised more demonstrations next week, and that forecast has caught the attention of Church leaders in the East African country.
In a collective statement July 14, a cross-section of religious leaders, including representatives of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB), the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), and the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM), cautioned President William Ruto against allowing the country to descend on the path of an insurrection.
“The suffering individual Kenyans are experiencing is pushing them into hopelessness that can easily inspire insurrection,” said the religious leaders, in the statement signed by the Chairman of KCCB, Archbishop Martin Kivuva Musonde, NCCK Chairman Archbishop Timothy Ndambuki, and SUPKEM chairman Al Hajj Hassan Ole Naado,
African bishops oppose military intervention to end coup in Niger
Following the July 26 coup in Niger, Catholic Bishops of the Burkina-Niger Episcopal Conference have expressed concern that a military intervention in the African nation could unravel the fragile security situation in the Sahel, leading to a further spread in jihadism.
In an August 4 release signed by the President of the Episcopal Conference, Bishop Laurent Birfuoré Dabiré of Dori in Burkina Faso, the bishops expressed concern that an attack on Niger in attempts to restore constitutional order would lead to “a second Libya.”
The reference was to a 2011 NATO-led intervention in Libya that resulted in the overthrow of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, which many analysts blame for plunging the nation and surrounding region into chaos.
On July 26, Niger’s democratically-elected President, Mohamed Bazoum, was overthrown, and the commander of the presidential guard declared himself to be in charge in a televised address.
General Abdourahmane Tchiani declared: “We have decided to intervene and seize our responsibilities” in order to assert authority over the nation.
That announcement met with jubilation across the streets of Niger, with citizens chanting anti-French rhetoric and tearing down French flags, reflecting popular impressions that the ousted leader was a French stooge.
In response, the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, threatened that it would take military action if Bazoum wasn’t reinstated within a week. The chair of the regional body, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, said that its members “shall not waiver or flinch in our resolve to defend and preserve constitutional order.”
Don’t be afraid to change the world, pope tells youths at WYD closing Mass
To end “Catholic Woodstock” – as World Youth Day has been called by the Portuguese press – Pope Francis told 1.5 million weary-eyed and sleep-deprived young people in Lisbon not to let their “great dreams” of changing the world be “stopped by fear.”
In his homily for the closing Mass of World Youth Day Aug. 6, the pope asked for “a bit of silence” from the pilgrims who, after staying overnight in Lisbon’s Tejo Park following the previous night’s vigil, at 6 a.m. were already dancing to techno music mixed by a DJ priest before the pope’s arrival. “Let’s all repeat this phrase in our hearts: ‘Don’t be afraid,’” he told the hushed crowd. “Jesus knows the hearts of each one of you, the successes and the failures, he knows your hearts,” Pope Francis said. “And today he tells you, here in Lisbon for this World Youth Day: ‘Don’t be afraid.’”
As dawn broke over the riverside park, pilgrims emerged from tents, tarps and sleeping bags to prepare for Mass. Violeta Marovic, 19, from Chicago, told Catholic News Service that the pilgrims spent the 10 hours between the previous night’s vigil and the papal Mass “sleeping very little,” dancing, playing games and exchanging gifts with other young people from around the world; she was wearing bracelets given to her by pilgrims from Italy and Poland. A theology major at the University of Dallas, Marovic said she normally gets “nervous” when she tells people what she studies, but she has been comforted by seeing the huge amount of people so passionate about their faith, noting that young Catholics often “feel alone” when practicing their religion in the United States. At the front of the crowd, which extended across both banks of Lisbon’s Trancão River, 30 cardinals, 700 bishops and 10,000 priests concelebrated the Mass with Pope Francis. Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was seated in the front row.
Hindu nationals demand arrest of Catholic priest in India for saying king was not a god
A Catholic priest in the Indian state of Goa was granted “anticipatory bail” Aug. 8 after police registered a criminal case against him for allegedly “hurting Hindu sentiments” in remarks he made about a Hindu king during a Sunday Mass in July.
Hindu groups had staged demonstrations in front of the police station calling for criminal charges to be brought against Father Bolmax Pereira, parish priest of St. Francis Xavier Church in Chicalim in the Archdiocese of Goa.
Pereira was quoted in the Mass posted on YouTube saying that 17th-century Hindu king Chatrapati Shivaji “was a national hero but not a god.”
“There are a few people for whom Shivaji has become a god … Yes, he is a national hero. We have to honor and respect him. What he has done, the battles he fought to protect his people … for all that he deserves respect. He is a hero, but not a god. … We have to have a dialogue with our Hindu brethren and ask them ‘Is Shivaji your God? Or a national hero?’ If he is a national hero, let it be at that. Don’t make him a god. We need to understand their perspective. If we live in fear, we will not be able to rise again,” the Indian Express quoted Pereira’s homily Aug. 5 after police filed a criminal case against him.
Hindu nationalist groups had shared the Catholic priest’s remarks on social media and carried out demonstrations demanding his arrest for offending their “religious sentiments.”
The police submitted in the trial court on Aug. 8 that “Father Bolmax Pereira is not required in custody in connection with the [case] registered against him in the Shivaji Maharaj [great king] row.”
Following this police response, the court accepted the priest’s plea for “anticipatory bail” in the case against him. As many as four cases related to the same incident have been registered against Pereira in four different police stations in Goa.
Goa, the tiny former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India, was evangelized by St. Francis Xavier, whose mortal remains are preserved in the Bom Jesus Cathedral. The number of Christians — most of whom are Catholic — has been steadily declining and now comprise a quarter of the state’s 1.6 million population. The state has been ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for more than a decade.
“Anticipatory bail” in the Indian legal system allows the accused to be released from police custody even if arrested for an alleged crime. In Pereira’s case, the court ruled that in the event he is arrested for the crime, he is to be released on a bond of 20,000 rupees ($240) and a surety.
Indian pastor attacked for alleged religious conversion
A Protestant pastor in a northern Indian state has been attacked for allegedly conducting religious conversions.
Pastor Shyju Joseph was conducting Sunday worship on Aug. 6 at his place in Bihar state’s Nawada district. Members of the Bajrang Dal (brigade of Lord Hanuman), a Hindu nationalist organisation, disrupted the service after accusing him of converting people to Christianity.
“They asked him to accompany them and made him sit on a motorcycle. Later, he was beaten up badly,” Christian activist Minakshi Singh told UCA News on Aug. 7.
Singh, general secretary of Unity in Compassion, a charity based in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state, said, “As of now, no complaint has been filed.”
We have contacted our people in Bihar to help the victim register a police complaint, Singh added.
Police took him to Sharif Sadar Hospital in Nawada district where he was undergoing treatment for his injuries, she added.
“Pastor Joseph’s condition is serious but he is stable now,” the Christian lay leader said.
A member of Persecution Relief, an inter-denominational organization in India, criticized the state government for not filing a case against the pastor’s attackers.
“Are the attackers above the law of the land?” the member, who did not want to be named, said.
He said he has urged the state government to take tough action against the attackers.
Rahul Gandhi’s reinstatement restores faith in judiciary: Christians
The return of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to the Indian Parliament 135 days after his disqualification has reassured people’s faith in the Indian judiciary, say some Christian intellectuals.
Gandhi, who represented Kerala’s Wayanad constituency in the Lok Sabha, was reinstated August 7 after the Supreme Court stayed his conviction in a criminal defamation case.
Gandhi was disqualified as a Lok Sabha member on March 24, a day after a Gujarat court convicted him and sentenced him to two years in jail.
A punishment of two years or more automatically disqualifies a lawmaker.
While Jesuit social scientist Father Cedric Prakash says Gandhi’s reinstatement “is a step in the right direction,” his confrere Father Stanislaus Alla, a moral theology professor in Delhi, says the apex court’s action reassures that the Indian judiciary is willing to uphold the laws instead of succumbing to pressures.
Father Alla says people become sad, frustrated and angry when they see justice denied, helping falsehood to prevail.
“However, our sacred books, including the Bible and the Upanishads declare that ‘Truth’ alone should prevail and not falsehood,” he explains.
Father Cedric says Gandhi’s conviction by various courts in Gujarat, his expulsion from parliament and subsequent stay by the Supreme Court “throw up many important lessons which could have an important bearing on the future of democracy in India.”
Vatican delegate faces rejection in Indian Church
Catholics, including priests, in an archdiocese in southern India say they will not cooperate with a Pontifical Delegate who arrived to help find a solution to the decades-old liturgy dispute in their eastern rite Syro-Malabar Church.
A five-member delegation of some 400 priests in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese on Aug. 8 met Pontifical Delegate Archbishop Cyril Vasil of Slovakia to communicate their decision.
“We have informed our difficulty to engage with him any further,” said Father Jose Edassery, who was among the five-member delegation.
The prelate, a former secretary of the Office for Eastern Churches and head of the Greek Catholic diocese of Kosice in Slovakia, arrived on Aug. 4 at the Church’s base in southern Kerala state.
Vasil in an Aug. 5 pastoral exhortation asked Catholics in the archdiocese to pray for the success of his mission. It said the pope appointed him to implement the “synodal decision on the uniform mode of celebration.”
A memorandum the priests handed over to Vasil, a copy of which was made available to UCA News, said they cannot cooperate with him for such a mission.
“We hereby reiterate our loyalty to the Holy Father Pope Francis. But, we have reservations to put into practice the exhortation regarding the uniform mode of celebration of Mass,” the memorandum stated.
The priests and laity in the archdiocese have rejected the order of the Mass approved by the Church’s synod, saying they cannot agree to its archaic demands to turn to the altar during Eucharistic prayer. They want to continue to celebrate Mass facing the people throughout, as they have been doing for the past five decades.
The memorandum said the Jesuit archbishop is adamant about implementing synod approved mode of Mass in the archdiocese without having any dialogue with those opposing it.
“You have categorically stated that there is no room for dialogue and that you have no mandate to report our requests and concerns to the Holy Father. It is felt that your language and approach are at times of threatening rather than of dialogue,” the priests said in the memorandum.
“By doing so, we feel that your mission has become ineffective even before it took off.”
Belief in God, the devil falls to new low: Gallup
• Americans’ belief in God, angels, heaven, hell and the devil fell to the lowest point in more than two decades.
• Belief in all five spiritual entities has decreased 3 to 5 points since 2016.
• Americans who regularly attend religious services, Protestants and Republicans were all more likely to believe in such spiritual entities.
Americans’ belief in God, the devil and other spiritual entities has fallen to a new low, according to a Gallup poll released on Thursday.
Seventy-four percent of Americans said they believe in God, while 69 percent said they believe in angels and 67 percent said they believe in heaven, the poll found. Slightly smaller shares — 59 percent and 58 percent — said they believe in hell and the devil.
Belief in all five spiritual entities has fallen between 3-5 points since 2016, the last time that Gallup polled Americans on the topic.
Since the pollster first began collecting survey data on the subject more than two decades ago, belief in God and heaven has dropped 16 points, while belief in hell has fallen 12 points and belief in the devil and angels has decreased by 10 points.
Experts speculate on why marriage is declining – and what to do about it
Support for marriage and marriage rates themselves have sharply declined among young people in recent years, leading experts to offer various explanations for the troubling trends as well as potential solutions to reverse them.
Data has long pointed toward a sustained drop in marriage rates for every age cohort following the “Silent Generation,” the group of Americans born roughly between the two World Wars. A recent Pew survey found that just 30% of marriage-age Millennials live with a spouse and a child, compared with 70% of those from the Silent Generation.
A survey in June from the Thriving Center of Psychology, meanwhile, found that about 40% of Millennials and GenZers believe marriage is an “outdated tradition,” with 85% responding that marriage “is [not] necessary to have a fulfilled and committed relationship.”
Speaking on the statistics, W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, said bluntly: “It’s bad.”
Wilcox, who for years has been ringing alarm bells about the decline of marriage rates in the U.S, said collapsing marriage numbers are worrisome in no small part because of the economic fallout that can result.
“Marriage is a wealth-generating institution,” he told CNA. “Having kids outside of marriage puts you at risk of family instability and accumulating kids with more than one partner. That starts you up for men, for child support; for women, single parenthood. Both of which are financially exceedingly difficult to navigate.”
“But I’m more concerned about the social and emotional side to all of this,” he continued. “And what we see in the data are that Americans today who are not married are markedly more likely to report that they’re lonely, adrift in terms of meaning, and about half as likely to be very happy with their lives compared [with] their fellow [married] citizens.”
Wilcox said when he began his research into marriage and family stability, his largest concern was for children affected by the changing family demographics.
“As I see the marriage rate tick lower and lower and lower, I’ve become more concerned about adults,” he said. “A lot of adults, more than one-third of young adults today in their 20s, will never marry. This is record demographic territory we’re heading into.”
Mary-Rose Verret, who with her husband, Ryan, founded the marriage renewal and preparation initiative Witness to Love, told CNA that the problem is nearly as acute among Catholics as it is among non-Catholics.