The funeral was a cause of scandal and great controversy for several reasons.

First, Gentili was a publicly professed atheist.

Her stand-up comedy acts included jokes about blasphemous sex acts far too vulgar to put in print.

Second, Gentili spent a great number of years lobbying in favour of laws that the Church opposed. These included at the time of Gentili's death — the full legalisation of prostitution and solicitation.

Third, one of the many eulogies at the funeral proclaimed Gentili (in Spanish and English) to be "this whore, this great whore, Saint Cecilia, mother of all whores,".

This was met by rapturous applause and a standing ovation from the congregation.

During the same eulogy, two male speakers engaged in a kiss while still on the sanctuary.

Fourth, and I want to say least importantly in terms of scandal, Gentili was a biological man who had, for many years, identified as a woman.

Sacrilege and deceit

In the days following Gentili's funeral, the cathedral dean, Fr Enrique Salvo, issued a statement saying that the cathedral:

"only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral Mass for a Catholic, and had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way."

He also confirmed a Mass of reparation had been offered.

Some have suggested the cathedral staff either must have known of Gentili's notoriety and did not think it a problem. or were completely negligent in doing basic preparation for a funeral.

This would have involved meeting with the family and asking about the life and faith of the deceased.

What's more, an obituary published in the New York Times three days before the funeral would have given the cathedral enough information about the deceased.

Those organising the funeral insist they were not deceptive, and simply wanted to hold the funeral for an icon in an iconic venue.

Culture wars

I imagine the truth of the situation lies somewhere in the middle.

But rather than focusing what happened in this particular case, I think Gentili's funeral should be an invitation to the church.

It could more broadly consider whether it is time to come up with some specific protocols and procedures in the event more funerals are used as the next frontier in the culture wars.

Even if a priest does his due diligence prior to a funeral, there is no guarantee that he isn't going to show up on the day to a church full of activists who are there not in prayer, but protest.

Like Gentili's funeral, it could be about transgender rights and sex work.

Given the state of end-of-life laws here in Australia, it could be used as an event to reject church teaching on euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Liturgy or Mass?

The priest celebrating Gentili's funeral realised something was amiss prior to the funeral commencing and made the decision that there would be no funeral Mass, just a simple funeral liturgy.

It was prudent thinking on his part.

But perhaps bishops should also speak with their priests about strategies they might use in such situations and give them the confidence that they will have his support if they need to use them.

Perhaps, like in Gentili's case, a short liturgy might be used. This would not prevent a private Mass for the repose of the soul of the deceased being offered later.

Maybe Mass might still be celebrated but Holy Communion not distributed if things seem amiss or go awry — if such a thing is allowed under liturgical and canonical norms.

Maybe, when a funeral is requested and the deceased or their family is not known to the parish, some additional questions might be asked, or eulogies omitted, minimised or pre-submitted.

This might especially be necessary for funerals requested at the diocesan cathedral or other places of significance.

This isn't about denying people the graces of a funeral Mass.

I think the church should be generous with funerals because we are all sinners in need of God's mercy.

But this generosity shouldn't extend to those who reject the existence of God and who instead want to use our churches and clergy as props in a narcissistic pantomime, nor for those who want to co-opt our liturgies as weapons in the culture wars.

• Monica Doumit is the Director, Public Affairs and Engagement for the Archdiocese of Sydney and a columnist with The Catholic Weekly.
• First published in The Catholic Weekly Republished with permission.

Meanwhile, a protester yelled into his megaphone from the edge of the parking lot. "Has anyone checked the weather today? Cause it might rain fire and brimstone on this church and burn every homo inside!"

Columnist Karen Attiah thinks "places of worship are important centres of resistance. They are political, legal and spiritual testing grounds where people can and likely will confront one another over the spiritual direction of this country. Read more

Warsaw's network suffers from a blind spot - an inability to transcend conservative American Catholicism's myopic views. "Fake news" cannot be associated with only one side of culture wars - it's a form of fake news in itself.

A culturally conditioned understanding of what counts as "true" is always in flux. People ignore the best scientific evidence about climate change if they are invested in fossil fuels. Still, they certainly want scientific advances in treating heart disease if they fall ill. Read more

Dozens of bishops, several in historically significant archdioceses, will be required by canon law to submit resignation letters upon turning 75.

At least 13 archdioceses and 21 dioceses could have new episcopal appointments by February 2025.

In addition, two dioceses — Fairbanks, Alaska, and Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana — operate without bishops.

The number of episcopal openings could increase because of deaths or resignations.

If he names new bishops to all those local churches, Francis will have appointed 64 percent of the U.S. episcopate since becoming pope in March 2013.

Forty-six percent of current U.S. bishops are Francis appointees, said Catherine Hoegeman, a Missouri State University sociology professor who tracks U.S. episcopal appointments.

"Over the next two years, it looks like Francis is going from [having appointed] a little less than half of active bishops to a little less than two-thirds. I think that's a notable shift," said Hoegeman.

Since 1969, she said, popes have made an average of 15 episcopal appointments every year in the United States.

She also told NCR that the likely openings in the next two years represent an unusually high potential turnover among archbishops.

"Out of 34 total retirements in the next couple of years, a third of them are going to be in the archdioceses. That seems to be a little skewed with a higher percentage of archdiocesan retirements," Hoegeman said.

By February 2025, the archbishops of New York, Hartford, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Omaha, Houston, Mobile and New Orleans will have turned 75.

Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington turned 75 in December 2022.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston turns 79, four years beyond the traditional retirement age, in June.

Meanwhile, seven sitting bishops have already turned 75 and another 14 will hit the retirement age over the next two years in dioceses across the country — from Honolulu and Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Palm Beach, Florida and Portland, Maine.

Although Catholic bishops must send resignation letters to the pope upon reaching age 75, Francis can decide to let a bishop remain in position up to age 80.

Whether all the potential new bishop appointments translate into a U.S. Catholic hierarchy that more closely reflects Francis' priorities is unknown.

Church historians and other scholars told NCR that the "talent pool" of potential bishops was primarily formed in the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both of whom inspired conservative-leaning men to enter seminaries with visions of fighting "the culture of death" and the "dictatorship of relativism."

"To have great bishops, you need great seminaries.

"You need vibrant engagement with the intellectual life of the church, and I just don't see that happening," said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chair of religious studies at Manhattan College in the Bronx, New York.

Imperatori-Lee told NCR that she believes the pope will have a difficult time finding enough "Francis-type bishops" in the United States to change the church's path from an institution engaged in the culture wars to one that more faithfully models Francis' "culture of encounter."

"I am hopeful the men who Francis appoints will be in the style that he has done, men who are pastors first, and bureaucrats second, who are not careerist climbers," she said.

"But I don't know that the pool of potential bishops and cardinals is of the caliber where we would really get revolutionary change in the U.S. hierarchy."

No 'perfect' bishop candidates

In an interview with NCR, retired Cardinal Justin Rigali, who as a former member of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops helped advise the pope on which priests to select as bishops, described the process by which those candidates are identified and chosen.

In the United States, Rigali said that every few years bishops in different regions of the country meet to discuss potential bishop candidates, and send their names to the Vatican's nunciature, or embassy, in the U.S.

From there, the ambassador, known as an apostolic nuncio, seeks information from priests, deacons and lay people who know the candidates.

He said when he served at the Congregation for Bishops — now the Dicastery for Bishops — the office would present the pope with a list of three names for a diocese, sometimes with the congregation's recommendation for a particular candidate.

Rigali, a former archbishop of St Louis and Philadelphia, said no candidates are "perfect in every category," but that they reflect the sitting pope's priorities for a bishop.

"There's definitely a common thread; the life of the church in a particular time, and what is deemed appropriate and necessary in the choice of a pastor," Rigali said.

"Like anything else, there are going to be some differences of opinion, but we go by what the church teaches and what the Second Vatican Council says about bishops."

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One of them, for instance, was the "Chinese rites" controversy in the 17thand 18thcenturies. This would influence the way the Church approached Chinese traditions and cultures, as well religious pluralism, right up until at least the dawn of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

We are at a similar juncture in ecclesiology — i.e. the way we conceive of the Catholic Church.

Catholic politicians and abortion

Take the recent controversy surrounding Catholic politicians in the United States and the reception of the Eucharist. It has pitted a "party" within the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) against President Joe Biden and has again revealed that the USCCB is out of step with the pastoral approach of Pope Francis.

This situation is worrying for more than just those who are directly involved because the way this issue is played out will have consequences on the future of the Church and its self-understanding.

Many US bishops have been urging the USCCB to release a document that would bar — or at least intimidate — Catholic politicians who favour the current laws that legalize abortion from receiving Holy Communion at Mass.

This is something that has already affected the liturgical habits of some prominent Catholic politicians, as a US senator revealed in a recent interview with the Jesuit-run magazine, America.

At the USCCB summer gathering last June, some 73% of the bishops voted in favour of drafting such a document.

The proposal was backed by 168 of the 273 prelates eligible to vote. Only 55 opposed the plan, while another six abstained. (The 160 retired bishops in the conference cannot cast a ballot.)

A document on the Eucharist

After the vote in June, a special commission got busy drafting a document on the Eucharist, which the bishops will vote on this week as they gather in Baltimore for the USCCB's annual "fall meeting".

The document does not mention the issue of politicians and Communion. But the character of the discussion that takes place this week and in its aftermath will have an impact on the Church, no matter what the text's final version or whether it is approved by the necessary two-thirds majority.

The bishops have never threatened to deny Communion to conservative politicians who approve of other laws that are in clear contrast with the Church, such as the death penalty.

William Barr, a Catholic who actively promoted capital punishment as attorney general under Donald Trump, was never subjected to the sort of treatment the bishops are displaying towards Biden and other Democrats.

Still, there is no question that the way the United States has gone about legalising abortion, very differently from the approach most countries in Europe have taken, is highly problematic for Catholic teaching, to say the least.

And, certainly, the Church's pastors have a duty to teach on the subject.

The sacraments and the "culture wars"

But the problem is that the entire effort to penalize politicians of one political party is not just an accident. It is a feature of contemporary Catholicism's "culture wars", which began in the United States in 1980s and continued to spread in the 1990s.

The decade that began with the fall of Communism was marked by a search for a new identity and meaning, a separate new symbolic universe. Then in 2001 the 9/11 attacks sparked the globalization of these American culture wars.

The tension that currently exists between the Vatican and the contingent of US bishops over the issue of Biden and the Eucharist signals a further escalation of the Catholic culture wars, which have now invaded the field of the Church's sacraments.

This is a new phenomenon.

While in the past century some in the Church have politicized certain popular devotions (e.g. to the Virgin Mary or the Sacred Heart), the sacraments were never politicized per se.

Indeed, the Holy Office did excommunicate Communists in 1949, during the pontificate of Pius XII. But this is not a fitting example, because it is the story of a failure.

When the then-Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli's private secretary told him that some overzealous Catholics had complained about seeing Communists receive Holy Communion during a Mass at his Sotto il Monte birthplace, the future John XXIII explained:

A person comes to the confessional, not the party or an ideology. This person is entrusted to our catechesis, our love, and our pastoral inventiveness.

It is necessary to proceed on a case-by-case basis, with extreme caution. If you force something on them drastically, they will not understand you, or they will understand backwards; if you reject them, they will go away and never come back.

What's happening to Catholicism in the United States?

Pope Francis and his Vatican aides are trying to protect Joe Biden's access to the sacraments.

This was made especially clear in a letter that Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, send to the USCCB president last May.

The pope's concern is not so much about Biden, but about what is happening to Catholicism in the United States.

What is at stake here is the catholicity of the Catholic Church — in the sense of non-sectarian and non-partisan.

This is not only a problem of the Church's credibility, but also of its self-understanding as a sacrament of salvation, as stated in the first chapter of Lumen Gentium, the Vatican II constitution on the Church.

The Catholic Church is currently living a moment that is the closest we can get to the time of the Council.

John XXIII called Vatican II in 1959 and published his most important encyclical, Pacem in Terris, in April 1963, a few months after the Cuban missile crisis.

The context was the Cold War, and the pope's intention was not just to contribute to world peace, but also to protect the Church from the all-absorbing ideological clash between Communism and the "free world".

A battlefield for the culture wars

In a similar way, Pope Francis has reintroduced a synodal culture in the Church and has opened a worldwide "synodal process" in the context of the culture wars.

He is trying to rescue the Church's capability by rebuffing the constant calls to align with a single "us vs. them" civilizational and political identity - calls that are especially loud within US Catholicism.

A clear example of what the pope is up against was manifest recently by Archbishops José Gomez, the USCCB president, while delivering a deeply divisive address via video to a conference in Spain. Gomez shocked many Catholics by attacking movements of "social justice", "wokeness", "identity politics", "intersectionality" and "successor ideology", calling them pseudo-religions.

This blatant case of the USCCB's politicization comes at a time when the Church can least afford it.

As Archbishop Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Bishops' Conference, tweeted on November 12, "If the Eucharist is made a marker of difference (hence exclusion) rather than a sacrament of communion (hence inclusion), we have the second rather than the first."

The whole question is whether we see the Church as "a field hospital", as Francis defined it in his September 2013 interview with Antonio Spadaro SJ, or whether we see it as a battlefield for the culture wars.

The battlefield is all about separating those who are friends from those who are the enemies.

Paraphrasing Carl von Clausewitz's famous dictum about politics and war, it could be said that in the Catholic Church the extension of the battlefield mentality to the sacraments is the continuation of the culture wars by other means.

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much-published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Why did some U.S. Catholic leaders rush to issue warnings about this vaccine even though the Vatican has already said that it can be morally acceptable to receive it?

Most importantly, why did these statements not start, as would be entirely compatible with Catholic moral teaching and the Vatican guidance, with a summary that said:

"All of these vaccines are safe, effective and morally acceptable under present circumstances, even if not perfect. Solidarity, especially with those at increased risk from Covid-19, calls us to cooperate in getting as many people vaccinated as soon as we can"?

Caveats, of course, must follow immediately: The actual statements were more nuanced than the headlines; the statements in question were issued by individual dioceses and chairs of committees at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and other bishops and dioceses have not universally adopted this approach; and the statements, properly understood, only counsel avoidance of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine relative to other options.

Nonetheless, the headlines these statements drew make the risk and cost of such statements clear:

• "Covid-19 Vaccines Draw Warnings From Some Catholic Bishops";
• "Catholic Archdiocese Bans COVID Vaccine Over Tenuous Link to Abortion";
• "U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says to avoid Johnson & Johnson vaccine if possible."

Compare the impression those headlines give with the Vatican guidance on this issue: "When ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available...it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process" (emphasis in original).

Recent statements from some U.S. bishops, properly understood, only counsel avoidance of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine relative to other options.

If you have been following these issues closely and are carefully focused on the caveats, then you already know how to explain the nuance that is missing from most of the headlines. (The corollary, of course, is that if—like most Catholics—you are not thoroughly well-versed on the technicalities of these issues, you are more likely to just be confused.)

There is a moral difference between the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which only used cell lines derived decades ago from abortions for tests during their development process, and the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which uses such cell lines as part of its production.

That difference means that the new vaccine is less remotely connected to the evil of abortion than other currently approved vaccines—though, as the Vatican guidance makes clear, still morally acceptable when "ethically irreproachable" vaccines are not available.

There is no fundamental disagreement between the Vatican's guidance and the recent statements within the U.S. church on the underlying moral teaching, and certainly no formal theological error in any of them.

Instead, the confusion around this recent vaccine guidance arises from differing priorities given to the various parts of the moral calculus outlined in the Vatican's guidance, combined with what seems to be a pastorally irresponsible failure to plan for the predictable ways a Catholic recommendation to "avoid the Johnson & Johnson vaccine" would be covered and communicated in the secular press. Continue reading

A Black Lives Matter t-shirt sparked a fistfight on the steps of a small-town New Zealand church.

John Whyte and his wife Jess wore Black Lives Matter T-shirts to church that Sunday in December 2019.

"Why are you wearing such an offensive T-shirt to mass you fool!" comes the demand. Read more

Separately, parliament is considering a bill that would decriminalise abortion.

Simultaneously tackling all three could "foster an already growing culture war in New Zealand," said Bryce Edwards, a political commentator and lecturer at Victoria University in Wellington.

The New York times quote Edwards in an article that points out New Zealand appears to be going in the opposite direction to most other nation.

"While conservative populism is now ascendant in some of the world's leading democracies, New Zealand is rushing in the opposite direction, taking on several liberal social issues all at once," writes Charlotte Graham-McLay.

She thinks this "burst of democratic action" could push a generally conflict-averse New Zealand into uncomfortable territory.

"And it could overwhelm an election next year that will determine whether Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern remains in office."

In the article, Edwards also says next year's election could end up being one revolving less around economic issues and more about social and moral issues.

"That would be a shift in New Zealand, where election campaigns have long ceased being the province of personal morality debates."

The government's concerns about the quality of the looming public debate are evident.

Andrew Little, the minister of justice, has plans in place to combat misinformation and manipulation in any campaigns leading up to the referenda.

That includes a specialised team within the ministry of justice to direct people to information aimed to be as accurate and neutral as possible and to be on the look-out for any attempts to deliberately mislead the public.

Little said the Electoral Commission would look after the nuts and bolts of running the referendums.

The justice team would manage public information, websites, and respond to general queries.

Source

• nytimes.com
• rnz.co.nz
• Image: vjmpublishing.nz

Their statement is based on a hand-written record of a meeting they had with Viganò.

Lombardi is the former director of the Holy See Press Office and Rodica his English-language assistant.

Viganò claims Francis knew well who Kim Davis was, and that the Vatican hierarchy approved in advance the controversial meeting Francis had with her on 24 September 2015 during the papal visit to the United States.

He also claimed that, when summoned to Rome urgently after news of the meeting leaked, the pope had nothing but praise for his efforts in organising the trip.

Rosica transcribed what he said were handwritten notes from a meeting he and Lombardi had with Viganò the evening after Viganò's meeting with Francis.

He quoted verbatim the former nuncio as telling them: "The Holy Father in his paternal benevolence thanked me for his visit to the USA but also said that I had deceived him [in] bringing that woman to the nunciature."

Viganò added, "The pope told me: ‘You never told me that she had four husbands.'"

Father Lombardi confirmed Rosica's record of the meeting as "reliable."

According to their statement, Lombardi and Rosica showed Viganò what the media had reported, and Rosica informed Viganò that "a journalist has a tape recording of you or one of the monsignors at the nunciature who phoned Davis at her hotel the evening before her meeting with the pope."

Viganò was shocked at this and even more so when Rosica played the recording of a person at the nunciature telling Davis: "A vehicle will pick you and your lawyer up at the hotel tomorrow morning and bring you to the nunciature.

"Change your hairstyle so people will not recognize you so quickly."

Rosica said no Holy See officials were involved in the drafting of the statement with Lombardi, but that he shared a copy of it with the Vatican secretary of state and foreign minister.

Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, had been briefly jailed for refusing to sign the marriage licences of homosexual couples seeking to register their marriages in the midst of a national debate in the United States about same-sex marriages.

The encounter created a media frenzy in the United States that threatened to overshadow the pope's historic visit in September

Source

• americamagazine.org
• kansascity.com
• usnews.com
• Image: catholicdialogue.com

Last week, his administration rescinded former guidelines allowing transgender students to use the public school bathrooms of their choice.

And evangelical leaders report having direct access to the Oval Office. For all his clear foibles, Trump seems to be heeding concerns that drew much white evangelical and Catholic support during the 2016 election.

So it's an interesting time for conservative Christians — traditional Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Protestants — to consider withdrawing from American public life.

And yet in the coming weeks and months, expect to hear a lot about the Benedict Option. It's a provocative vision for Christians outlined in a new book by Rod Dreher, who has explored it for the past decade on his lively American Conservative blog.

To Dreher, Trump's presidency has only given conservative Christians "a bit more time to prepare for the inevitable."

He predicts for traditional Christians loss of jobs, influence, First Amendment protections and goodwill among neighbors and co-workers. Even under Trump, says Dreher, the future is very dark.

The Benedict Option derives its name from a 6th-century monk who left the crumbling Roman Empire to form a separate community of prayer and worship. Benedict of Nursia founded monasteries and a well-known "Rule" to govern Christian life together.

By many accounts, Benedictine monasteries seeded the growth of a new civilization to blossom throughout Western Europe after Rome's fall.

In his book for a mainstream publisher (Penguin's Sentinel), Dreher insists that conservative Christians today should likewise withdraw from the crumbling American empire to preserve the faith, lest it be choked out by secularism, individualism and LGBT activism. Continue reading

• Katelyn Beaty is editor at large at Christianity Today magazine and author of "A Woman's Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World" (Simon & Schuster).

Speaking in Ireland, the cardinal said the so-called culture wars "are entering a new phase of political struggle which can only be fought by laypeople".

He urged young people to get involved in political life.

"We don't need watered down and uncertain priests, and we don't need lay faithful who seem determined to fill the gap," he said.

The cardinal predicted future battles over the Church's right to teach its doctrine in those of its schools which receive public funding.

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