The stereotype is that he or she is a sort of reactionary simpleton, a bit mean, a bit senile, obsessing over abstruse texts, preferring Mass to sleeping in on Sundays, and insisting on obeying an antiquated sect whose main activity is covering up sexual abuse.

This pious person has only three obsessions: to forbid women from doing as they please with their bodies, to prevent LGBT individuals from living their lives, and to force the sick to suffer for as long as possible.

This kind of Catholic is logically the last of its kind, with a perspective that's outdated and irrelevant.

To top it all off, this clueless person has yet to realise that Jesus never existed, as people like the prolific French philosopher Michel Onfray assert.

If this kind of figure does not appeal to you, it doesn't for me, either.

And it certainly isn't what motivated 7,000 adults to officially become Catholics this past Easter here in France.

This large number of adults who were baptized during the Easter Vigil is an unprecedented leap for the Church in this country.

For several months now, Catholic observers have sensed that something is happening, which escapes the official discourse of French society. In some dioceses, such as Montpellier in the south, the catechumens were twice as numerous this year compared to last year.

Conversion is possible for anyone

It's shocking! How could we have foreseen it?

How can these people want to jump into holy water when everything in modern society attempts to dissuade them, and when they don't even know what a holy water font is anymore?

Do these new Catholics that have emerged from nowhere ignore the image of the Church that is conveyed by the media and social networks?

Did they ask for permission from the rulers of secularized society? Are they misinformed? Manipulated? After all the efforts made to repel them, how can they show up in good faith?

No one knows if this springtime of faith will last.

Sometimes there can be late frosts that ruin a beautiful bloom, and then - poof! - there goes the harvest we were dreaming of.

But meanwhile, God laughs at our shock, as it is written in the second Psalm:

"Why do the nations protest and the peoples conspire in vain?

Kings on earth rise up and princes plot together against the LORD and against his anointed one:

"Let us break their shackles and cast off their chains from us!

"The one enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord derides them."

The mischievous Creator probably makes fun of our pastoral plans that aim for quantifiable results.

God finds Catholics in myriad ways, even in places where we don't go.

Le Pèlerin, one of La Croix's sister publications, once recounted the humble testimony of a young parliamentary assistant whom the Messiah came to fetch when he was 12-years-old.

The young man secretly bought a Bible with his pocket money, and the damage was done.

Reading it, he became a Christian.

He is not the only one to whom such a mishap has occurred, and conversion is possible for anyone, whether they be on the political left or political right.

God finds a way to draw people to himself

With all this in mind, however, the Gospel tells us that the disciples scatter when the situation turns dark. 1

In the Passion narrative according to St. Mark, only two outsiders confess, by their action or by words, the messianic status of Christ.

A woman breaks a jar of expensive perfume over Jesus' head, and when everything is finished in the most astounding of apparent failures, a Roman centurion - not even a lifelong Catholic — proclaims the crucified one as the "Son of God".

Even if they weren't the greatest theologians, these new Christians who knew nothing at all grasped an important truth - it's at the lowest point that the Most High lets himself be touched.

When the Church is flat on the ground and we lukewarm disciples wander around dazed in the messiness of our modern culture, God finds a way to draw people to himself.

This springtime of faith might indeed be a new beginning.

• First published in La Croix. Republished with permission
• Jean-Pierre Denis, a veteran journalist and editor, is the publisher of La Croix

Powerful, pandemic experiences and images have stimulated new respect for first responders who work selflessly to save others from harm, even at personal risk.

They have also shown the crucial need for research into the nature and causes of the harm so that prevention and treatment can be safe and effective.

These pandemic insights were vividly present to me as I participated in a panel called "National and International Experts Respond to Jean-Marc Sauvé".

The panel was part of a symposium titled "Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: Listening to the Voices of Survivors".

It was organised by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace,and World Affairs at Georgetown University and led by Father Gerard McGlone, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse.

The goal of our panel was to review international experience in order to discern imperatives and challenges in healing, reform and renewal.

Jean-Marc Sauvé, of course, was the man the Catholic bishops and leaders of religious orders in France asked to lead the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) in their country.

Its final report — "Sexual Violence in the Catholic Church: France 1950-2020" — focused on the experience of victim-survivors and intensive research into the staggering prevalence of such violence. The statistical analysis was complemented by identification of theological and ecclesial beliefs and practice fostering the abusive culture, particularly abuse of power, silence and secrecy.

The report was a media bombshell. While it was lauded by victims, members of the conservative Catholic Academy of France viciously criticised the report for making the numbers public and identifying fundamental theological and ecclesial issues.

Members of the CIASE were scheduled to meet Pope Francis and present the report to him. But the meeting was postponed, which only added to the controversy.

More recently a similar report was issued concerning clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich, which implicated Benedict XVI for mishandling certain cases when he headed the German archdiocese from 1977-1982.

This has only confirmed the urgency of addressing this ongoing crisis in the Catholic Church.

Old News, not the "Good News"

Tragically, for all those committed to healing and renewal in the Church, this horrific contradiction to Jesus's love and care for vulnerable children was old news.

Despite differences in the timing and authority of the reviews and reports, the methodology, focus and priority of addressing underlying issues are all part of the same very old story.

A study commissioned some years ago by the German Bishops' Conference looked at the frequency of child sexual abuse by priests and religious. It identified structures and dynamics that might foster abuse. And it placed abuse at the heart of their Synodal Way.

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the Roman Catholic Church explored the longstanding issue and elements of the Church's structures and its unique culture with particular attention to the role of secrecy and cover-up.

There is an entire library of reports on clergy sex abuse in the United States, including national and diocesan reviews that have been issued since 1992 when the US Bishops' Conference (USCCB) issued its Five Principles for responding to allegations.

Among the most extensive are the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Report for the USCCB, the National Review Board reports and highly publicised studies in places such as Boston and Philadelphia.

There is no national registry of clergy sexual abuse in Canada. As early as 1990, the St John's Newfoundland Archdiocesan Report on Clergy Sexual Abuse of Minors by Clergy identified underlying factors fostering abuse that needed urgent study: "power, education (of clergy and laity), sexuality, support of priests, management, and avoidance of scandal" (p16).

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) further refined these issues in From Pain to Hope (1992) and Protecting Minors from Sexual Abuse: A Call to the Catholic Faithful in Canada for Healing, Reconciliation, and Transformation (2018).

Participants on the Berkley Center panel represented a small number of national experiences.

The Holy See Press Office has a twenty-six page "Timeline of the Church's Response both at the Local and Universal Level" covering 1984-2019. It covers reports from Ireland and Chile to Belarus and Kerala.

The similarity of responses in each and every place demonstrates an ecclesial culture that transcends national differences and is, in medical terms, endemic pathology. Distinct from a pandemic, endemic pathology is pervasive and intergenerational.

Affected communities have no real experience of health and believe their situation is normal. Help from outside the culture is necessary to reveal the pathology.

All studies and reports raise serious issues underlying the clergy abuse crisis and cry out for reform and renewal.

My reflections on the Berkley Center conference are dominated by my experience as a paediatrician who has cared for abused children and youth since the 1970s. My clear and compelling duty in the face of a credible risk of harm is action to prevent and protect.

The longstanding issue of sexual abuse by Church personnel (including priests and religious) has been handled internally in canon law.

The Church did not acknowledge clergy sexual abuse of minors because of ecclesial examination of conscience. Rather, it was forced to do so by civil and criminal cases and investigative journalism.

Reports have gradually recognised the profound physical, emotional and spiritual harm done to victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse. Responses have focused on necessary but not sufficient policies and protocols responding to allegations and safeguarding practices rather than personal and ecclesial conversion of mind and heart.

Recent reports have re-affirmed the role of the abuse of power, position and conscience, secrecy, silence and denial, avoidance of scandal, education of laity and clergy, the renewed morality of virtue and conscience, and the theology of sexuality.

Focusing obsessively on numbers can divert attention from the real issues. How much more do we need to know? How many children need to be harmed?

Challenges

We have a major challenge in restoring trust in Church leadership. There is a pervasive sense of futility in trying to bring about change because those in power are most affected by denial.

There are also deep divisions in interpreting the underlying pathology.

Everything that has fostered abuse of power against the most vulnerable must die so that conversion of mind and heart to "the mind of Christ" can occur.

We need to pray for resurrection and hope in new life where children are cherished and protected.

• Nuala Kenny is a Sister of Charity in Halifax, Nova Scotia and a pediatrician. An officer of the Order of Canada since 1999, she has published several books, including Healing the Church (Novalis, 2012) and Rediscovering the Art of Dying (2017). She is co-author of Still Unhealed: Treating the Pathology in the Clergy Sexual Abuse Crisis (Novalis and Twenty-Third Publications, 2019). She has just published, A Post-Pandemic Church: Prophetic Possibilities (Novalis and Twenty-Third Publications, 2021).
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Different people and different reform groups, have their own take on what, or who, needs reform the most urgently.

I must admit the recent article by Antonio Spadaro on Pope Francis has prompted me to think more about it.[1]

I would like to share some of those thoughts with you.

On a personal level, reform in the church touches both the mind and the heart. On the institutional level, it concerns a very wide range of aspects like doctrinal, moral, spiritual, liturgical, structural and attitudinal.

Much of the effort of reform groups worldwide in recent times has been directed at the pope, bishops, and "the Vatican" since they are the decision-makers.

That is the politics of the issue.

And we can now, after the sexual abuse scandals, include priests in that list.

Let us stand back for a moment, and take a look at the demographics underlying the whole question of church and reform.

I have to speak to my own experience, conscious that others from different age groups, different cultures and different countries will have their own specific take on it.

The percentage of those involved in reform groups in Australia (and NZ?) is, at a guess, about 5% or less.

In the church the hierarchy is less than 1%.

That leaves about 90% of the church to think about.

An unspecified percentage of these are older pre-Vatican thinking and acting people who have no interest in changing themselves and no interest in the topic of changes in the church.

And in their case, change might be impossible, so they will probably go to their graves with their current beliefs and practices.

The rest, perhaps 40-45% might change how they think and what they do, if they were given good reasons to do so.

There are many influences that have brought this about. One obvious one is that they have been neglected since Vatican II, because of the lacuna of adult "growth in faith" programs, and perhaps too, neglected in our current focus of reform.

Antonio Spadaro's illuminating essay on the pontificate of Pope Francis is helpful in many ways.

It is a great help in understanding Francis' approach to change or conversion.

Francis sees conversion applying to everyone in the church. He is reluctant to move forward in synodality until there has been time for discernment.

This explains why when he became pope he did not call for the resignation of those who opposed him but wanted to give all a time to discern.

The analogy that Francis used referring to his method, which caught my eye, was that of litmus paper in a liquid.

When the liquid is acid/alkaline throughout, the colour of the litmus paper will change either red or blue depending on its acidity or alkalinity.

To artificially change the litmus paper is pointless. One has to wait for the whole liquid to change.

To change to married pastors, to ordain women, to welcome LGBTIQ persons into the church, will of itself not bring reform to the church.

Change has to permeate the whole church.

So it is with the Church. Francis wants the church to change.

He rejects cutting off heads and making dictatorial changes because this will be superficial.

Simply ordaining married men and women or making other structural changes will not, of itself, bring conversion.

So with synodality, we have to be patient.

But as the church is a human organization it will always fall short of the ideal.

History shows that sometimes those who cannot change or who disagree with authority will form their own church. Two classic historical examples are: The Old Catholic Church, formed after Vatican I and the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) founded by Marcel Lebebvre in 1970, after Vatican II.

Yet the ideal that we wait until all aboard remains attractive, even if humanly unattainable.

My point is that any reform group should turn some significant attention to the 40-45% of parishioners who might change if things were explained to them.

Perhaps reform groups have focused too narrowly on the hierarchy and neglected the laity.

I have always felt that changing the hierarchy is going to be a huge challenge, but an even greater challenge might well be changing the passivity of the laity.

The image of trying to quickly turn an aircraft carrier around comes to mind.

The laity, after all, have been told for centuries that their job is to "pray, pay and obey".

Or, as someone else has expressed it: the laity has been "parked" for centuries.

My gut feeling is that we have neglected them.

By our words and actions, we could try to re-orient the parish to what is essential. This would be a conversion from the ground up.

There is little to stop us doing this now, not waiting for the Plenary Council or other events.

Francis has given us all the information on that score: Return to the gospels and modify structures that block a return to the gospels (Evangelii Gaudium).

• Take time to prepare liturgies,
• introduce bible studies,
• form book clubs on spiritual reading,
• form meditation groups,
• form groups that visit the sick, and imprisoned,
• invite people to discussion groups on burning issues and current church issues,
• take action regarding refugees and other social justice issues.
• let qualified lay people look after the financial aspect of a parish.
• Reject clericalism in what we say and do, and call no one "Father".

These are all things that could be done locally with or without the pastor. This will turn the litmus paper.

The problem is that today we tend to sit back and wait for others (bishops) to take actions because that is the clerical way we have been brought up. While certainly not giving up on approaching our bishops we must become proactive in things we can do at the parish or diocesan levels.

Having said that, we are impatient beings. We live in a world where change is happening more quickly than in other eras. We are reluctant to wait endlessly for bishops to act.

There is episcopal inertia that infuriates all. We all know examples of this.

We can appreciate that a synod is not a political parliament and that discernment is necessary. For each person to make a speech promoting his/her point of view can mean that neither side is listening to the other.

I think this is what Francis meant when he said there was no discernment at the synod on the Amazon regarding the ordination of married men.

In short, we must keep the pressure on the hierarchy but simultaneously attend to our own conversion and that of the laity around us.

Reform is more than politics, it is inclusive conversion.

• Gideon Goosen is a Sydney-based theologian and author. His latest book is Clericalism: Stories from the Pew.
• First published in Pearls and Irritations

[1] Antonio Spadaro,S.J., ". Francis' Government: What is the driving force of his pontificate?", La Civilta Cattolica, laciviltacattolica.com September 2020. accessed 16.9.2020

"There's been a gnawing pain in my heart and soul about what is the meaning of life. What's my role in it?" Bill Hayden says.

Hayden has often been cited as one of Australia's most prominent atheists. According to the priest who baptised him, Hayden had a change of heart several months ago.

"I think Bill's been spending a lot of time in the service of people in government and in the general community, and he took a while to discover there's a context for all of that," Fr Peter Dillon says.

"I think he's been living a very Christian life. He's got a name for what he's been doing all along."

Dillon says he felt a "real closeness" with Hayden as he baptised him.

"It was a big thing for him … an act of submission to the fact that there was no denying for him that God is real and he had come to discover that," he said.

Despite being wheelchair-bound and suffering health setbacks including a stroke and a recently broken shoulder, Hayden wants to do volunteer work with St Vincent de Paul.

"This is a man who is totally dedicated to the service of the community and now he's doing that from a platform of the Christian faith," Dillon says.

"Most of us learn about God from somebody whom we admire and respect and I think that's going to be the case for a lot of people when it comes to Bill Hayden."

Hayden credits his conversion in part to his Catholic mother and the Ursuline Sisters who taught him at primary school and stressed the principles of humanity, social commitment and service to others.

However, he admits the pivotal moment came during a hospital visit to see 93-year-old Sister Angela Mary Doyle, whom he had admired for years.

"I have always felt embraced and loved by her Christian example," he says.

"The next morning I woke with the strong sense that I had been in the presence of a holy woman, so after dwelling on those things I found my way back to the core of those beliefs — the church."

Hayden hopes his new-found faith might encourage others as the Church passes through difficult times.

"This took too long, and now I am going to be devoted. From this day forward I'm going to vouch for God."

Source

• ABC NEWS
• Catholic Leader
• Image: ABC

In 2016, Fr Joseph Enkh Baatar was ordained in St Peter and Paul Cathedral in Ulaanbaatar.

Like so many buildings in Mongolia's capital, the cathedral is modeled after the yurt - a round tent made of animal skin in which the peoples of the steppe have dwelled for millennia.

Fr Baatar is the country's first native priest.

There are fewer than 2,000 Catholics in Mongolia since missionary work began in earnest about 25 years ago, but their numbers are growing - albeit slowly.

And the seedling Church in Mongolia isn't alone.

As pews empty in traditionally Catholic nations, conversions are flourishing in unlikely corners of the world.

Sweden

The Lutheran state Church, like the Church of England, was established in the 16th century by royal decree.

The Catholic Church was subsequently outlawed and virtually wiped out.

And, although Sweden is heavily secularised (fewer than 30 per cent of Swedes describe themselves as religious), the Reformation's legacy continues to cause difficulties for the Church.

"The general level of knowledge about Catholicism is very low in Sweden, with a lot of bias and prejudice," Kristina Hellner, the Diocese of Stockholm's communications officer, told me.

Yet Catholicism is among the fastest-growing religions in the country.

There are 116,000 Catholics in Sweden, with 4,000 more registering each year and about 100 adult conversions.

In fact, Church officials believe the number may actually be twice as large: it doesn't take into account many immigrants, refugees and catechumens.

In any event, Sweden is one of only a handful of European countries where the Church is growing.

Recognising the Church's astonishing progress in Sweden, Pope Francis named Anders Arborelius the first Swedish cardinal last June.

Since then, he's become something of a celebrity.

"Cardinal Arborelius is very popular among journalists and has been interviewed literally everywhere," says Hellner. Fokus, the country's largest news magazine, named him "Swede of the Year" in 2017.

Arborelius was raised Lutheran and converted in his 20s, which is common for ethnically Swedish Catholics.

"Many of the most traditional and conservative Catholics in our parishes have converted from the Swedish Lutheran Church," says Hellner, adding that "they are also often the ones that are most active and ‘loud' on social media."

It's a reality that British and American Catholics know all too well.

According to the diocese, 70 catechumens will be received into the Church this Easter.

United Arab Emirates

Catholic immigrants are making their home in a very different country: the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

As Arab migrants and refugees pour over Europe's borders, Filipino, Indian, Syrian, Lebanese, Nigerian and French Catholics are moving to the Gulf States in search of work in the booming oil industry.

And the Emirates are perhaps the most liberal in allowing foreign workers to practise their faith.

Catholicism has grown rapidly in the UAE in recent decades.

In 1965, the Emirates granted the Church permission to build one parish and one school in Dubai to serve the needs of its faithful.

Today there are upwards of 700,000 Catholics, 40 priests and 10 parishes there.

Dubai alone claims 300,000, making it the largest parish in the world. Continue reading

• Image: Catholic Herald

One night, an almost-21-year-old Donnie was spending a quiet night at home in his room. Without the distraction of music or the noises of a party, his thoughts soon turned dark - to panic and suicide.

Looking for a diversion, he grabbed a random book from his parent's bookshelf, which happened to be about Marian apparitions. Continue reading

In an article in the UK Daily Mail, Williams admitted to having to fit his Islamic diet and prayer around an intensive rugby schedule.

"When I'm most happy is when I'm doing my prayers," he said.

"When you travel you can compensate by joining the two afternoon prayers and the two evening prayers together, which is pretty sweet."

"How can you not spare 25 minutes of your day to give thanks?

"I look at where I came from and feel blessed."

Williams recounted how he grew up in a humble two bedroom house in Mt Albert in Auckland, which he shared with three siblings and his parents.

He admitted to being "a bit of a scallywag" in his early sports career

"I did a lot of bad things and went off course, but Allah was with me."

In his current professional sports career, Williams sticks to his Islamic dietary regime.

"The chefs provide halal food. I get kind of embarrassed when they make a big deal out of it.

"I just want to fit in and be one of the boys, but at the same time faith is where everything comes from.

"If there's no halal meat, I can eat seafood. If there's no seafood, I'll just have a shake or something. There are people worse off than I am."

Williams visited Syrian refugees in Lebanon last year, as a guest of UNICEF.

He said more sports-people should use their profile to raise awareness of injustice.

The dual international said he used to be a Christian, but converting to Islam "has given me contentment and happiness that I don't know how to explain".

"I used to be a stress head, annoyed if I dropped a ball in training. . . . Islam is a way of life.

"Before, if I went out drinking or partying, I would be searching for something the next day with a hangover, getting eaten up inside."

Sources

• New Zealand Herald (Daily Mail)
• Image: Stuff.co.nz

Cardinal Kurt Koch, who leads ecumenical relations for the Vatican, made the comments at an interfaith meeting in the United Kingdom, the Catholic Herald reported.

Cardinal Koch also said that Christians should not try and convert Jews and should view Judaism as a "mother".

"We have a mission to convert all non-Christian religions' people [except] Judaism," he said.

He reportedly added that this extended to jihadis responsible for persecuting Christians in the Middle East.

The cardinal said Christianity and Judaism shared a special relationship.

"It is very clear that we can speak about three Abrahamic religions, but we cannot deny that the view of Abraham in Jewish and the Christian tradition and the Islamic tradition is not the same," he said.

"In this sense we have only with Jewish people this unique relationship that we do not have with Islam."

On Monday, Pope Francis held a 25-minute meeting with Ahmad el-Tayeb, the grand imam of al-Azhar University in Cairo.

This was the first meeting between a Pontiff and the grand imam since the university suspended formal dialogue in 2011.

The university took exception to what it called Pope Benedict XVI's focus on Christian suffering in the Middle East when many Muslims were suffering too.

This was on top of Benedict's 2006 Regensburg speech which many saw as linking Islam with violence.

On Monday, Pope Francis sat to the side of his desk facing the grand imam rather than behind his desk as he customarily does when meeting with a visiting head of state.

Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, said the conversation between the two included a discussion about "the great significance of this new encounter within the scope of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam".

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Express
• The Tablet
• Image: Catholic Herald

In my defence, if there is bad news, then it's much better that the Church knows about it. For instance, the fact that - as I've reported previously - for every one British Catholic convert there are ten cradle Catholics who no longer even tick the "Catholic" box on surveys is, it seems to me, something eminently worth our being aware of.

That said, a recent Catholic Herald leader, commenting on statistics showing the growth of the Church worldwide, warned against unremitting "declinism" - that is, on focusing exclusively on the negatives. Duly chastened, it therefore gives me great pleasure to alert you to some very cheering research that I came across just yesterday.

For several years now, I have been hearing a "fact" stated with the utmost confidence: that a large proportion of adults entering the Church through the RCIA end up lapsing within the space of a year or two. I have even heard some depressingly precise figures quoted - 50 per cent, 75 per cent, even 90 per cent - along with authoritative, albeit non-specific, appeals to "a study from the United States".

You have probably heard something similar yourself. Perhaps it flashed through your mind recently, briefly souring the joyful moment as you clapped those white-clad, beaming-faced "world's newest Catholics" at your parish's Easter Vigil.

Well, let me tell something. This week I was in Washington DC, among other things visiting the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). This is Georgetown University's crack team of social scientists, who have been providing empirically rigorous yet pastorally useful answers to all manner of Catholic questions for over 50 years. (They have also partly inspired the creation of at least one other research centre, likewise based at a leading Catholic University in a major capital city.) Continue reading

• Stephen Bullivant is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at St Mary's University, Twickenham. This opinion piece is from The Catholic Herald.

Speaking at the "Charity will never end" conference organized by the Vatican's Pontifical Council Cor Unum, an umbrella office to coordinate the Church's charitable works, Cardinal Antonio Tagle of the Philippines said charity should not be practiced as a way of achieving other ends, "especially proselytism or imposing, even in subtle ways, the Church's faith on others."

According to the cardinal, using charitable acts for conversions is "manipulation," but that doesn't mean that God should be completely left out of the Church's missionary work.

"The Christian truth is beautiful," Tagle said. "And beautiful things attract. So proselytism is imposing, but this good news, beautiful in itself, will attract people without imposing."

His view was echoed by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who defined proselytism as "a manipulation of the conscience."

Referring to the ongoing migrant and refugee crisis in Europe, Müller said Christians should be charitable "without hidden intentions."

Continue reading

Marking 50 years of Catholic-Jewish dialogue since Vatican II, the Pontifical Council for Religious Relations with Jews has published "The Gifts and Calling of God are Irrevocable".

The document states that Catholics are called to witness to their faith in Jesus before all people, including Jews.

But Christianity and Judaism are intertwined and God never annulled his covenant with the Jewish people, stated the document.

"The Church is therefore obliged to view evangelisation to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views," it said.

"In concrete terms this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews."

The document explicitly states that it is not a "doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church", but a reflection.

Dr David Kessler, director of the Woolf Institute for the study of inter-religious relations in Cambridge, said it was the first time a repudiation of active conversion of Jews had been so clearly stated in a Vatican document.

How God will save the Jews if they do not explicitly believe in Christ is "an unfathomable divine mystery", the document states.

The new document states "there can only be one single covenant history of God with humanity".

At the same time, however, the document says God's covenant with humanity developed over time: it was first forged with Abraham, then the law was given to Moses, then new promises were given to Noah.

"Each of these covenants incorporates the previous covenant and interprets it in a new way," the document states

"That is also true for the New Covenant, which for Christians is the final eternal covenant and, therefore, the definitive interpretation of what was promised by the prophets."

Sources

• The Guardian
• The Tablet
• Image: UptoJerusalem.com

In an article to be published in the journal First Things next month, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia criticised pastoral approaches that ignore the call to conversion.

He wrote about divorced and civilly remarried people receiving Communion when they continue to live together, have sexual relations and haven't received an annulment.

Archbishop Chaput wrote that the Church doesn't want to punish such people and doesn't in fact exclude them.

The divorced and civilly remarried remain welcome members of the believing community, he stated.

But the Church cannot be merciful without being truthful, the archbishop wrote.

"And the truth is, we are called to conversion.

"A pastoral approach that ignores this truth out of a thinly veiled pastoral despair and accommodationism will result in less faith, not more."

Archbishop Chaput cited Henri de Lubac's saying "The one who wants to adapt himself too much risks letting himself be dragged along".

"Indeed, this is what we see happening in Europe," Archbishop Chaput continued, "in those churches where the pastoral practice regarding divorce, remarriage, and reception of the sacraments has departed from authentic Catholic teaching."

"What ensues from an untruthful teaching about and practice of the sacraments is not a more zealous evangelical life but its collapse."

The Philadelphia archbishop wrote "authentic mercy is evangelical".

"It proceeds from the belief that God's grace has the power to transform us.

"Ironically, a pastoral strategy that minimises sin in the name of mercy cannot be merciful, because it is dishonest."

Archbishop Chaput wrote that: "The moral law guides us toward choices that are life-giving, and true mercy is always intimately linked to truth.

"Indulging our own or another's flawed choices in the supposed service of mercy defeats mercy's true goal."

Archbishop Chaput is a member of the council preparing for the next synod of bishops.

Sources

• First Things
• LifeSiteNews
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: IB Times

Father-of-six Nissar Hussain from Bradford was left needing surgery after the group broke his kneecap and hand on Wednesday.

A pickaxe handle was used by one of the assailants.

Mr Hussain, 49, is recovering in hospital after the attacks.

This is the latest in a long line of incidents following his family's conversion to Christianity over a decade ago.

Mr Hussain has said that he and his family are virtual prisoners in their home as a consequence.

He said he had "three cars written off" and "regular drive-by bricks thrown through the window. Kids couldn't play in the back garden for five years".

Police, he said, told him: "Stop trying to be crusader and move out of your area."

He told the Bradford Argus: "We are under the cosh and classed as blasphemers."

"The Muslim community are largely decent people but because of the taboo of converting to Christianity we are classed by them as scum and second-class citizens."

He said most of the Muslim community has turned a blind eye to his family's suffering.

Before the attacks, Mr Hussain said that despite his persecution he had received little help from police or churches.

Bradford police are treating the latest attack as a religious hate crime.

Mr Hussain, his wife Kubra and their six children converted to Anglicanism over a decade ago and have suffered a campaign of intimidation ever since.

The harassment and intimidation intensified after 2008 when they appeared in a television documentary about the mistreatment of Muslim converts.

Mr Hussain, who had to give up his job as a nurse because of the stress of the campaign, has said the family will have to move to a white English area to escape the intimidation.

Wilson Chowdhry from the British Pakistani Christian Association told the Catholic Herald that "apostasy crime" - committed against Muslims who convert to Christianity - needed to be more widely recognised in Britain.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Telegraph and Argus
• Image: Catholic Herald

At an event at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr Gore said he thinks Francis is "quite an inspiring figure, really".

"I've been startled with the clarity of the moral force that he embodies," Mr Gore said.

"Well I've said publicly in the last year, I was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, I could become a Catholic because of this Pope," he added.

"He is that inspiring to me. And I know the vast majority of my Catholic friends are just thrilled to the marrow of their bones that he is providing this kind of spiritual leadership."

The Pope is expected to issue an encyclical on the environment in the next few weeks.

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Not because we care about celebrity status or bad-boy behavior, but because we are deeply concerned about souls and spheres of influence.

You might roll your eyes at this topic choice, dismissing Bieber altogether.

Or you might be questioning Bieber's faithful sincerity because of his horrifying decision making that includes prostitutes, DUIs, drag-racing, and racial slurs. Despite all his past blunders, don't react to Bieber's church-going too harshly.

For if Evangelicals disregard Bieber wholly, then we miss an incredible opportunity for youth ministry.

One involved his being mugged by a hitchhiker to whom he had offered a ride. I think my mom related this tale as a warning against good-natured but borderline foolish benevolence.

The second dealt with him calling my mother his favorite granddaughter named Sheila.

The third was that he converted to Catholicism. I cannot remember the religion from which he shifted.

For some reason, I always saw stories one and two as byproducts of story three, as though his changing religions somehow informed the way he went about all other activities in life.

My mom liked to say her grandfather had the faith of a convert.

She also used this expression to describe my paternal grandfather, who converted from the Baptist faith to the Lutheran church.

The implication was that there was something richer, even holier, about a convert's spirituality, whatever that spirituality may be.

I was always intrigued by this idea of a convert's religious ideology being definably distinct from someone else's. Continue reading.

Brian Harper is a writer, musician and community outreach coordinator for a small business. He has lived and worked in Peru, South Africa, Italy, and the United States.

Source: National Catholic Reporter

Image: Brian Harper Music

Ekman called his conversion a "personal journey" and said it was not his agenda to unite Word of Life with the Catholic Church.

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26. Paul VI invited us to deepen the call to renewal and to make it clear that renewal does not only concern individuals but the entire Church. Let us return to a memorable text which continues to challenge us. "The Church must look with penetrating eyes within herself, ponder the mystery of her own being... This vivid and lively self-awareness inevitably leads to a comparison between the ideal image of the Church as Christ envisaged her and loved her as his holy and spotless bride (cf. Eph 5:27), and the actual image which the Church presents to the world today... This is the source of the Church's heroic and impatient struggle for renewal: the struggle to correct those flaws introduced by her members which her own self-examination, mirroring her exemplar, Christ, points out to her and condemns". The Second Vatican Council presented ecclesial conversion as openness to a constant self-renewal born of fidelity to Jesus Christ: "Every renewal of the Church essentially consists in an increase of fidelity to her own calling... Christ summons the Church as she goes her pilgrim way... to that continual reformation of which she always has need, in so far as she is a human institution here on earth".

There are ecclesial structures which can hamper efforts at evangelization, yet even good.

An ecclesial renewal which cannot be deferred

27. I dream of a "missionary option", that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church's customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today's world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself. As John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania:

"All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion".

28. The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community. While certainly not the only institution which evangelizes, if the parish proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be "the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters". This presumes that it really is in contact with the homes and the lives of its people, and does not become a useless structure out of touch with people or a self-absorbed group made up of a chosen few. The parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God's word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration.. In all its activities the parish encourages and trains its members to be evangelizers. It is a community of communities, a sanctuary where the thirsty come to drink in the midst of their journey, and a centre of constant missionary outreach. We must admit, though, that the call to review and renew our parishes has not yet sufficed to bring them nearer to people, to make them environments of living communion and participation, and to make them completely mission-oriented.

29. Other Church institutions, basic communities and small communities, movements, and forms of association are a source of enrichment for the Church, raised up by the Spirit for evangelizing different areas and sectors. Frequently they bring a new evangelizing fervour and a new capacity for dialogue with the world whereby the Church is renewed. But it will prove beneficial for them not to lose contact with the rich reality of the local parish and to participate readily in the overall pastoral activity of the particular Church.. This kind of integration will prevent them from concentrating only on part of the Gospel or the Church, or becoming nomads without roots.

30. Each particular Church, as a portion of the Catholic Church under the leadership of its bishop, is likewise called to missionary conversion. It is the primary subject of evangelization, since it is the concrete manifestation of the one Church in one specific place, and in it "the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and operative".31 It is the Church incarnate in a certain place, equipped with all the means of salvation bestowed by Christ, but with local features. Its joy in communicating Jesus Christ is expressed both by a concern to preach him to areas in greater need and in constantly going forth to the outskirts of its own territory or towards new sociocultural settings. Wherever the need for the light and the life of the Risen Christ is greatest, it will want to be there. To make this missionary impulse ever more focused, generous and fruitful, I encourage each particular Church to undertake a resolute process of discernment, purification and reform.

31. The bishop must always foster this missionary communion in his diocesan Church, following the ideal of the first Christian communities, in which the believers were of one heart and one soul (cf. Acts 4:32). To do so, he will sometimes go before his people, pointing the way and keeping their hope vibrant. At other times, he will simply be in their midst with his unassuming and merciful presence. At yet other times, he will have to walk after them, helping those who lag behind and above all allowing the flock to strike out on new paths. In his mission of fostering a dynamic, open and missionary communion, he will have to encourage and develop the means of participation proposed in the Code of Canon Law, and other forms of pastoral dialogue, out of a desire to listen to everyone and not simply to those who would tell him what he would like to hear. Yet the principal aim of these participatory processes should not be ecclesiastical organization but rather the missionary aspiration of reaching everyone.

32. Since I am called to put into practice what I ask of others, I too must think about a conversion of the papacy. It is my duty, as the Bishop of Rome, to be open to suggestions which can help make the exercise of my ministry more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelization. Pope John Paul II asked for help in finding "a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation". We have made little progress in this regard. The papacy and the central structures of the universal Church also need to hear the call to pastoral conversion. The Second Vatican Council stated that, like the ancient patriarchal Churches, episcopal conferences are in a position "to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit". Yet this desire has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church's life and her missionary outreach.

33. Pastoral ministry in a missionary key seeks to abandon the complacent attitude that says: "We have always done it this way". I invite everyone to be bold and creative in this task of rethinking the goals, structures, style and methods of evangelization in their respective communities. A proposal of goals without an adequate communal search for the means of achieving them will inevitably prove illusory. I encourage everyone to apply the guidelines found in this document generously and courageously, without inhibitions or fear. The important thing is to not walk alone, but to rely on each other as brothers and sisters, and especially under the leadership of the bishops, in a wise and realistic pastoral discernment.

- Evangelii Gaudium "The Joy of the Gospel" is an apostolic exhortation written by Pope Francis.

CathNews is publishing Evangelii Gaudium in ‘bite-size' chunks, inviting people to read it reflectively, and use it for prayer.

Attempting to condemn bad proselytism, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism spoke against conversions and changing from one religion to another.

His position was seen as support for the policies of the radical Hindu groups and the anti-conversion laws that exist in some Indian states. Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the archbishop of Bombay, took issue with him.

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On Sunday — with Lewis wearing lay clothing and sitting with St. Luke's parishioners inside the Crypt Church at Washington's Basilica of the National Shine of the Immaculate Conception — most of the parish from Bladensburg converted to Catholicism.

In doing so, St. Luke's became the first Episcopal church in the United States to convert under new Vatican rules meant to attract disaffected Protestants.

"This truly is a historic moment," said Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, who led Sunday's conversion Mass, which he called "a joyful moment of completion."

Fifty-eight of St. Luke's roughly 100 parishioners were confirmed at the applause-filled Mass, during which they were anointed by Wuerl — one by one, old and young, white and black.

Osita Okafor, a 56-year-old Nigerian immigrant, found himself first in line before Wuerl for the rite of reception. His reaction? "Oh, my God, I must be blessed."

Like many members of St. Luke's, Okafor is an immigrant from Africa — in his case, Nigeria. Many others are from the Caribbean.

Lewis, the former pastor, was anointed last in an act of symbolism. "A good shepherd must be sure his flock gets through the gate," Lewis said.

Ten other St. Luke's parishioners were welcomed back as Catholics after long ago drifting from the church. Three received their first Communion.

At least 10 other St. Luke's parishioners intend to be received by the Catholic Church later.

Full Article: Washington Post

Image: Washington Post