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September 30, 2011The Vatican has given diocesan bishops greater latitude for allowing former priests to become actively involved in parish life, the Catholic Herald reports.
Cardinal Ivan Dias, the prefect of the Congregation for Evangelization, has written that he hopes new rules will allow laicized priests to be come active in the life of local churches. The new rules would reportedly allow bishops to approve the pastoral activity of a laicized priest, whereas previously any the Vatican was required to give permission for any such activity.
The Catholic Herald story does not make it clear whether the policies cited by Cardinal Dias apply only to mission territories under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for Evangelization or to the entire Church.
Under current Church law, a priest who has been laicized cannot preach, administer the Eucharist, or teach in a seminary.
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my beloved Father, let us so act that we may see one another in heaven for all eternity, fearing no separation here. Let us have no concern for this world, for it is our exile and separates us from God who is our total good. I say to my dearest sister: do not forget to commend me to God. To all my relatives and friends I send greetings. May the Lord keep you until you reach our heavenly homeland.
POSTED BY ROBERT VERRILL OP AT 5:00 PM 
September 30, 2011Over 50 Christian churches have been shut down or demolished in Indonesia since January 2010, according to the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum. In most cases, the closing of churches has followed protests by Islamic fundamentalists.
3% of the nation's 228.5 million people are Catholics, according to Vatican statistics. 6% are Protestant, and 86% are Muslim.
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September 30, 2011Ryan N.S. Topping, a theology professor at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, writes that the new generation of English-speaking theologians is largely orthodox.
"The majority of young Catholic philosophers and theologians that I have met through my teaching—in England, Canada, and America—are eager to serve the Church, to imbibe her customs, and to perpetuate her faith," he writes. "For the most part, where frustration is felt it is not at being restricted by authority; it is at not being confidently commissioned."
"Being a bishop is not for cowards," he adds. "Failure of episcopal leadership in the post-Vatican II era has typically not been in the clumsy exercise of power, but in their reluctance to support those who defend authentic Catholic teaching. This trend is passing."
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Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Confirmation that "where there is God, there is a future", that God is not a danger to democracy and freedom, and that as religion needs freedom, so too freedom needs religion, sharing "the joy of being Catholic," seeing that "faith in my native Germany has a young face, it is alive, it has a future": this is Benedict XVI summary of his visit to Germany from 22 to 25 of this month, retraced by the same Pope in his address to over 20 thousand people in St. Peter's Square for the general audience.
From a letter to the Philippians by Saint Polycarp, bishop and martyr
Let us run our race in faith and righteousness
I ask you all to respond to the call of righteousness and to practice boundless patience. your own eyes have seen it not only in blessed Ignatius, Zosimus and Rufus, but in others from among you as well, to say nothing of Paul and the other apostles. Be assured that all these men did not run their race in vain. No, they ran it in faith and in righteousness and are now with the Lord in the place that they have earned, even as they were once with him in suffering. Their love was not for this present world; rather, it was for him who died for our sakes and, on account of us, was raised up again by God.
Be steadfast, then, and follow the Lord's example, strong and unshaken in faith, loving the community as you love one another. United in the truth, show the Lord's own gentleness in your dealings with one another, and look down on no one. If you can do good, do not put it off, becausealmsgiving frees one from death. Be subject to one another, and make sure that your behavior among the pagans is beyond reproach. Thus you will be praised for the good you have done, and the Lord will not be blasphemed because of you. But woe to that man on whose account the Lord's name is blasphemed. Therefore, teach everyone to live soberly, just as you live yourselves.
I am greatly saddened on account of Valens who at one time was presbyter among you; he does not understand the position to which he was called. So I urge all of you to be chaste and honest, to avoid avarice and to refrain from every form of evil. If a man cannot control himself in these ways, how can he teach someone else to do so? If he does not avoid greed, he will be defiled by idolatrous practices and will be reckoned as one of the pagans who know nothing of the Lord's judgment. Or, as Paul teaches: Do we not know that the holy ones will judge the world?
However, I have never seen of heard of anything of that sort among you, for whom blessed Paul labored and whom he commends at the beginning of his letter. For he boasted about you in all the churches which at that time were the only ones that had come to know God, we ourselves had not yet come to that knowledge.
Brothers, I am deeply sorry for Valens and for his wife; may the Lord grant them true repentance. As for yourselves, be self-controlled in this respect.Do not look upon such people as enemies, but invite them back as frail members who have gone astray, so that the entire body of which you are a part will be saved. In doing this you are contributing to your own spiritual development.
September 27, 2011An Iranian Protestant pastor, sentenced to death in 2010 for apostasy, has refused to convert back to Islam during two court hearings. The Supreme Court of Iran has ruled that if Yousef Nadarkhani renounces Christianity and returns to Islam, his death sentence will be declared null.
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September 26, 2011Pope Benedict XVI repeatedly called for reform within the Catholic Church—as well as efforts to counteract a secularizing trend in society—during the final hours of his visit to Germany on September 24 and 25.
"We must honestly admit that we have more than enough by way of structure but not enough by way of Spirit," the Pontiff told the Central Committee for German Catholics. "I would add: the real crisis facing the Church in the western world is a crisis of faith."
Celebrating Mass at the airport in Freiburg on Sunday morning, September 25, the Pope remarked that "renewal of the Church will only come about through openness to conversion and through renewed faith." Alluding to the day's Gospel story, of the two sons—one of whom tells the father that he will obey, but does not, and the other who resists the father's order but then follows it—the Pope warned complacent Catholics that "agnostics who are constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart but suffer on account of our sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than believers whose life of faith is 'routine' and who regard the Church merely as an institution, without letting their hearts be touched by faith."
Later on Sunday, in a meeting with representatives of Catholic associations, Pope Benedict expanded on that theme. "The Church," he said, "must constantly rededicate herself to her mission." And to understand that mission, he said, we must recognize that the Church "has nothing of her own to offer to Him Who founded her." He went on:
In the concrete history of the Church, however, a contrary tendency is also manifested, namely that the Church becomes settled in this world, she becomes self-sufficient and adapts herself to the standards of the world. She gives greater weight to organization and institutionalisation than to her vocation to openness.
The rise of secularism, the Pope continued, could actually produce benefits for the Church, because "expropriation of Church goods, or elimination of privileges or the like, have always meant a profound liberation of the Church from forms of worldliness, for in the process she has set aside her worldly wealth and has once again completely embraced her worldly poverty."
The goal, the Pope said, is not "finding a new strategy to relaunch the Church. Rather, it is a question of setting aside mere strategy and seeking total transparency." He concluded with the exhortation: "It is time once again for the Church resolutely to set aside her worldliness."
The Pope made these remarks at he closed a busy 4-day visit to his native land. At the conclusion of a Friday schedule highlighted by ecumenical meetings in Erfurt, he traveled to Etzelsbach, to preside at Vespers in the Wallfahrtskapelle. He remarked during his homily that the inhabitants of this region, in what was once East Germany, had always found refuge at the Marian shrine: "During two godless dictatorships, which sought to deprive the people of their ancestral faith, the inhabitants of Eichsfeld were in no doubt that here in this shrine at Etzelsbach an open door and a place of inner peace was to be found."
On Saturday morning, as he presided at an outdoor Mass at the cathedral plaza in Erfurt, he made a similar point: "Here in Thuringia and in the former German Democratic Republic, you have had to endure first a brown and then a red dictatorship, which acted on the Christian faith like acid rain." However, he challenged the faithful to examine whether the freedoms that had come with the fall of Communism had come at a cost. He urged the people to recapture the spirit of spiritual longing that had prevailed in the first days of freedom, saying that "the political changes that swept through your country in 1989 were motivated not just by the demand for prosperity and freedom of movement, but also decisively by the longing for truthfulness."
From Erfurt the Pope traveled to Freiburg im Breisgau, where he met with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, then with leaders of Germany's Orthodox churches, next with seminarians, then with the Central Committee for German Catholics, before finally ending the day at a prayer rally for young Catholics.
Speaking to the young crowd, the Pope returned to the theme of reform within the Church. He acknowledged the damage that the Church has suffered in recent years, and said that it is not unique. "Again and again in history, keen observers have pointed out that damage to the Church comes not from her opponents, but from uncommitted Christians." The reality of scandal points to the reality of sin, the Pope said, and the antidote is sanctity.
Pope Benedict cautioned the young people not to be misled by popular misconceptions of holiness, which suggest that saints are figures of unattainable virtue. The reality is quite different, he told them:
There is no saint, apart from the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has not also known sin, who has never fallen. Dear friends, Christ is not so much interested in how often in your lives you stumble and fall, as in how often you pick yourselves up again. He does not demand glittering achievements, but He wants His light to shine in you. He does not call you because you are good and perfect, but because He is good and He wants to make you His friends. Yes, you are the light of the world because Jesus is your light.
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Lahore (AsiaNews) – The rape of Christian women in Punjab has become a "common practice" an "outrageous" phenomenon compounded by the fact that "the police protect the guilty" and not the victims. This is the bitter synopsis of Fr Jill John, of the Diocese of Lahore on the last recorded case of sexual violence against a Christian mother. The family calls for justice, but is struggling against a society in which the defenders of the law support the rapists. Even human rights groups like Masihi Life for All Foundation have intervened on the matter, asking government authorities to target the perpetrators of crimes and punish the corrupt and conniving police officers.
