The head of the Roman Catholic Church made the remarks on Saturday in an address to the Association of Italian Catholic Doctors. Francis added that it is a “false sense of compassion” to consider euthanasia as an act of dignity. “This is playing with life,” said Pope Francis, adding, “Beware, because this is a sin against the creator, against God the creator.” According to the Pope, euthanasia movement is a symptom of today’s “throw-away” culture, which considers the sick and elderly as useless drains on society. Pope Francis also voiced his opposition to other controversial medical practices such as abortion, in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research. This comes as an Italian campaign group is calling on the government to introduce a right-to-die law in the country. The Euthanasia Law campaign submitted a petition, with some 70,000 signatures, to the Italian parliament in September. The act of euthanasia, when a third party, such as a doctor, intentionally causes the death of a patient, is legal in the European countries of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Last December, the Belgian Senate also made euthanasia legal for terminally-ill children under certain circumstances.A number of other countries, including Australia, Canada, Switzerland, the US and the UK allow the practice of physician-assisted suicides.

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

16.Nov.2014

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 Robin Beck

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Ngwa Bertrand

14.Nov.2014

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Although Argentine-born Pope Francis is largely popular in Latin America, the number of adults in the region who describe themselves as Catholic is falling, says a study published Thursday. In a study of 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as the US territory of Puerto Rico, the Pew Research Center said the Roman Catholic church is losing adherents to Protestant faiths or seeing them abandon organized religion altogether. The study said that historical data suggest that from 1900 through the 1960s at least 90 percent of Latin America?s population was Catholic. But today 69 percent of adults polled identified themselves as Catholic, the study said. Latin America has more than 425 million Catholics, who account for nearly 40 percent of the world's Catholic population, the center said. But the number of people switching to other religions, mainly Protestant churches, is on the rise. According to the report, 84 percent of today's Latin American adults say they were raised as Catholics. That is 15 percentage points more than those who still call themselves Catholic.

At the same time, membership of Protestant churches and people who say they are not affiliated with any church are increasing. Nine percent of Latin Americans say they were raised as Protestants, but almost one in five now call themselves Protestants. "In nearly every country surveyed, the Catholic Church has experienced net losses from religious switching, as many Latin Americans have joined evangelical Protestant churches or rejected organized religion altogether," the study said. As to why Catholics are leaving the church, Pew said that of eight answers available in the poll, the most frequently chosen was that people were "seeking a more personal connection with God." The study said that in general Latin America has embraced the former Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit who was elected pope in March 2013 and took the name Francis. In his native country, 91 percent of those polled have a favorable view of the pontiff. But that support is uneven across the region. "Among former Catholics, relatively few give the pope a positive rating, with many saying it is too soon to rate him," the study said. "Similarly, while majorities of Catholics in most countries describe the election of Francis as representing a major change for the Catholic Church, this view is held by much smaller shares of former Catholics," it added.

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Ngwa Bertrand

13.Nov.2014

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The world woke up to the news of the death of Dr Myles Munroe who was travelling in a private jet that struck a construction crane while landing.

Who was Pastor Myles Munroe?

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Ngwa Bertrand

11.Nov.2014

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Cardinal Burke’s transfer from being the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura to be patron of the Knights of Malta is a startling move which will almost certainly prove to be disastrous for Pope Francis. Whether he likes it or not, Cardinal Burke has emerged from the recent synod on the family as the figurehead for the conservative resistance to Pope Francis. Burke rejects the charge that he is anything but loyal to the Holy Father in this interview at Aleteia, but this is not the perception which either the media pundits on either the progressive or conservative sides are seeing. Burke has said the church seems to be “rudderless”. He has emerged as the most outspoken critic of the Kasperite modernizers and both Michael Sean Winters here and Fr Z. here agree that Cardinal Burke’s new, largely ceremonial role, rather than silencing him, actually frees Burke from real responsibility thus giving him the freedom to become the voice of resistance to what many perceive as an increasingly progressive agenda within the Vatican.

Burke will probably continue to criticize the “Kasperites” like Cardinal Baldisseri–the Secretary of the synod on the Family and the progressive Archbishop Bruno Forte, and his apparent demotion will give him the global megaphone and status as a media figure. The media loves a conflict and they love figureheads and personalities who represent a particular stance. Whether he likes it or not, and whether it is true or not, by transferring Burke in this way Pope Francis has created a media megaphone for his increasingly disillusioned conservative opponents. Damian Thompson has written a particularly acerbic piece this week saying Watch Out Pope Francis the Catholic Civil War Has Begun while New York Times columnist Ross Douthat reports here on the chaos that took place in the synod and hints of rebellion in the ranks and a looming schism. All of this is disastrous for the church’s mission, and by seeming to demote Cardinal Burke Pope Francis has not only given the conservatives a clear leader, but he has made Burke a cause celebre and a kind of martyr. Many conservatives who already see emeritus Pope Benedict as their “real pope” will rally around Cardinal Burke. There is nothing that unites a faction more than the sense of being persecuted, and there is little that rallies those who feel marginalized more than the idea that they are being persecuted by a cabal of shadowy figures behind the scenes who are conspiring against them. If it is a Vatican insider circle all the more tantalizing. Whether this is what is actually happening or not is beside the point. Whether Cardinal Burke sees himself as a latter day Archbishop Lefevbre or not is beside the point. Whether Pope Francis and a gang of cronies really are secret progressives intent on destroying the Catholic Church from within or not–all this is irrelevant.

Burke’s transfer first from the Congregation of Bishops and now from the Apostolic Signatura will appear to be not only a demotion, but one which is very personal in nature. No one has suggested that he has done either job badly and there is no whiff of scandal or impropriety. Therefore people will conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Pope Francis didn’t like the guy so he fired him. Whether this is true or not, does not matter. What matters is that this is how many conservative  Catholics will perceive what is happening, and it is this perception that will drive their reactions and future events in the Catholic Church. Furthermore, this is also how the progressives will interpret the transfer. They will rejoice at Burke’s departure, and their chortles of triumph will add to the division in the church causing conservatives to circle the wagons and load their muskets. In practical terms the actual effect of moving Cardinal Burke from the Apostolic Signatura may be insignificant. However, the symbolic impact will be huge, and it is difficult to see how it can be anything but a disaster for both Pope Francis’ papacy, the reforms he wishes to introduce, and the church at large. I may be wrong, and I do not profess to be any kind of expert in Vatican goings on, but if a good number of conservative Catholics do read the events in this way, then as Ross Douthat has observed, Pope Francis may find himself trying to shepherd not a flock of submissive sheep, but a herd of stubborn oxen–not just dumb oxen, but angry bulls with heads down, pawing the ground and ready to charge.

 

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

11.Nov.2014

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‘At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder,’ said a prominent Catholic conservative last week. No big deal, you might think. Opponents of Pope Francis have been casting doubt on his leadership abilities for months — and especially since October’s Vatican Synod on the Family, at which liberal cardinals pre-emptively announced a softening of the church’s line on homosexuality and second marriages, only to have their proposals torn up by their colleagues. But it is a big deal. The ‘rudderless’ comment came not from a mischievous traditionalist blogger but from Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signatura — that is, president of the Vatican’s supreme court. As it happens, Pope Francis intends to sack Burke, whose habit of dressing up like a Christmas tree at Latin Masses infuriates him. But he hasn’t got round to it yet. And thus we have the most senior American cardinal in Rome publicly questioning the stewardship of the Holy Father — possibly with the tacit approval of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Nothing like this has happened since the backstabbing behind the scenes at the Second Vatican Council 50 years ago. It raises the question: is the Catholic church in the early stages of a civil war between liberals and conservatives, fought not over liturgical niceties (the source of relatively harmless squabbles under John Paul II and Benedict XVI) but fundamental issues of sexual morality? The October synod was a disaster for Pope Francis. Before it started, he had successfully tweaked the Catholic mood music relating to divorcees and gay people. The line ‘Who am I to judge?’, delivered with an affable shrug on the papal plane, generated friendly headlines without committing the church to doctrinal change. Conservatives were alarmed but had to acknowledge Francis’s cunning. ‘Remember that he’s a Jesuit,’ they said. Then Francis did something not very cunning. Opening the synod, which would normally be a fairly routine affair, he encouraged cardinals and bishops to ‘speak boldly’. Which they did, but not in the way he intended.

 The Pope’s first mistake was to invite Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s 81-year-old retired head of ecumenism, to set the agenda for the synod by addressing the world’s cardinals back in February. Kasper told them that the church should consider giving Holy Communion to remarried Catholics. Even if Francis supports this notion — and nobody knows — his choice of Kasper was a blunder because the cardinal, in addition to being a genial and distinguished scholar, is leader of a German-led faction that represents, in Catholic terms, the far left of the theological spectrum. In 1993 Kasper, then Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, co-signed a letter by German bishops demanding that Catholics living ‘in a canonically invalid union’ should be allowed to decide for themselves whether to receive the Eucharist. The German church is a law unto itself: although its services are empty, it is rich, thanks to the country’s church tax, and arrogant. To cut a long story short, this faction — which had ruthlessly undermined Benedict XVI’s authority when he was pope –  tried to hijack the synod. They messed it up. The synod’s ‘special secretary’, the Italian archbishop Bruno Forte, wrote a mid-synod report suggesting that the participants wanted to recognise the virtuous aspects of gay unions. In doing so, Forte — an even more radical figure — overplayed his hand. Most synod fathers wanted no such thing. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal George Pell, head of the Vatican’s finances, were horrified. They ensured that the final report kicked Communion for divorcees into the long grass and did not even mention homosexual relationships. ‘Synod rebuffs Francis on gays,’ reported the media — the last thing the Pope wanted to read. To make matters worse, Kasper gave an interview in which he said that anti-gay African Catholics ‘should not tell us too much what we have to do’. At which point Cardinal Burke called him a racist. Kasper reacted furiously and is telling anyone who will listen that the church will soon drastically change its rules on access to Communion. This is wishful thinking.

And now another voice is being heard. The last pope is neither dead nor senile nor as silent as we thought he was going to be. In the last month Benedict XVI has written to the ex-Anglicans of the Ordinariate expressing delight that they now worship in the former Bavarian chapel in Warwick Street, London; to Rome’s Pontifical Urban University about the dangers of relativism; and, most significantly, to supporters of the old liturgy. ‘I am very glad that the usus antiquior [the traditional Latin Mass] now lives in full peace within the church, also among the young, supported and celebrated by great cardinals,’ he said. In fact, very few cardinals celebrate in the old rite. But one who does is Raymond Burke. ‘Benedict is well aware of that,’ says a Ratzinger loyalist. ‘He’s not under the illusion that he’s still pope, but he was appalled by the sight of Kasper trashing his legacy and he is making his displeasure clear.’ Where does this leave Francis? Looking a bit like ‘the Hamlet Pope’, Paul VI, whom he has beatified. He supports some sort of reform, but uncertainty is breaking the church into factions reminiscent of the Anglican Communion. Old enemies of Benedict XVI reckon they can persuade Francis to stack the college of cardinals in their favour. Meanwhile, Burke has emerged as leader of the hardline traditionalists. ‘He did not want this role but perhaps he sees himself as a St John Fisher figure,’ says one Vatican source, a comparison that casts the successor of Peter in the role of Henry VIII. What should worry Francis is that moderate conservative Catholics are losing confidence in him. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who is no one’s idea of an extremist, believes that ‘this pope may be preserved from error only if the church itself resists him’. Cristina Odone, former editor of theCatholic Herald, says that ‘Francis achieved miracles with his compassionate, off-the-cuff comments that detoxified the Catholic brand. He personifies optimism — but when he tries to turn this into policy he isn’t in command of the procedures or the details. The result is confusion.’

All of which suggests a far closer analogy than with Henry VIII. There is another world leader, elected amid huge excitement, who has surprised and disappointed the faithful by appearing disengaged and even helpless in moments of crisis. This is an awful thing to say, but we could be watching Jorge Bergoglio turn into Barack Obama.

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

10.Nov.2014

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