According to the country's Immigration Services Agency, more than three million aliens were living in Japan at the end of 2022.

In fact, the agency's count of 3,075,213 is lower than the actual number because there are undocumented aliens in the country in addition to those who have been processed and recorded officially.

It has been projected that in half a century, nearly 11 percent of the population will be non-Japanese while the overall population will drop from 126 million to 87 million.

The largest groups of foreign residents are from China, Vietnam and South Korea.

Others from the Philippines, Brazil and other countries of Latin America are reshaping the Catholic Church as they have become the majority of Japan's Catholics.

For decades, Japan has resisted welcoming immigrants.

Almost all the three million are in the country as students, trainees or specialists of one kind or other. However, many of them are in fact immigrants in all but name and legal status. They will remain legally or illegally in Japan, and increasingly are starting families there, sometimes with Japanese partners.

Japan's population is declining and the country desperately needs more people to maintain its economy and, as the population ages, the national health insurance system.

Speaking at a press conference, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, "Time is running out to procreate."

"Japanese society is not yet ready to welcome newcomers as potentially a part of a new Japanese people".

In fact, the number of births in 2022 dropped below 800,000 for the first time, eight years earlier than had been projected. Each year, about 50 schools are closed because of a shortage of children.

The number of residents aged 65 and over is expected to increase from 28.6 percent to 38.7 percent of the population by 2070.

Even with an unlikely increase in procreation Japan still needs millions of other people, immigrants. An "imported" three million is nowhere near the number the country needs.

However, even though it needs them Japanese society is not yet ready to welcome newcomers as potentially a part of a new Japanese people, one with a variety of ancestries and races.

The shortage of people is affecting all parts of Japanese society.

Besides recording a record number of foreign residents, 2022 saw a record decline in the number of yakuza, organised crime gang members.

According to the Japan Times, "The number of members and associate members investigated by police in 2022 fell below 10,000 for the first time since Japan enacted the anti-organized crime law in 1991."

Overall, the number of gangsters was 22,400 — a drop of 1,700 from the previous year.

Like the yakuza, Japanese members of the Catholic Church in their country are more and more becoming fewer and fewer.

In fact, the majority of Japan's Catholics are not Japanese.

And given the decline in the Japanese population, the ageing of congregations and disaffiliation from the Church by the shrinking pool of Japanese young people, the Catholic Church in Japan will remain a community of immigrants at least until the country finds some way to accept outsiders as a real part of Japanese society and culture.

How are those responsible for the management of the Catholic Church responding to this inevitability?

They are not, at least not in any way that indicates a creative long-term response.

"The formation of Japanese clergy does not include training in the languages and cultures of immigrants"

In the past, foreign missionaries were sought after and welcomed as agents for the evangelization of Japanese society. Linguistic and cultural training were essential prerequisites for engaging in that.

Today, bishops recruit clergy and religious from overseas to provide pastoral service to immigrant groups.

They are not expected to acquire linguistic or other skills that would advance the integration of non-Japanese Catholics — either themselves or their congregations — as an evangelising presence in Japanese society.

On the other side, the formation of Japanese clergy does not include training in the languages and cultures of immigrants for the provision of pastoral care and an introduction to evangelising membership in Japanese society.

With some local exceptions, the result is the presence of parallel Catholic Churches in Japan.

One is a fading community of mostly aged Japanese and the other is a growing community of generally young immigrants who live their faith without reference to the evangelisation of Japan.

The pastoral agents in neither Church are able to bridge the linguistic and cultural differences because neither the imported agents nor the native clergy is expected or trained to do so.

This delays the integration of newcomers into the Japanese Church and the revivification of that Church.

As is the case in many Asian societies, the Catholic Church in Japan is frequently viewed as an alien presence and shall in fact become one.

Instead, the Church could be a model of the sort of transition that Japanese society as a whole must make. Japan can become a nation with global ancestry like Australia, Canada, the United States, and other post-ethnic nations.

The Church in Japan could show the benefits of mutual integration and a way to achieve it.

To do so, however, will require much more effort, creativity and openness than it presently musters.

• William Grimm is a missioner and presbyter in Tokyo and is the publisher of the UCANews.com.
• First published in UCANews.com. Republished with permission.

Preparation for the Great Jubilee began on Nov. 10, 1994, when Pope John Paul II issued his apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (As the Third Millennium Approaches).

With the exception of businesses in Rome that expected an increase in tourism, the chief response at the time seemed to be among bishops.

During the years leading up to the celebration, every time a bishop or bishops' conference issued a statement, no matter how unimportant or what the matter, the final words were invariably a reference to the approaching Great Jubilee. Then, when the first year of the new millennium arrived (12 months early, in fact) all such statements expressed joy at the blessing.

And then it was over.

In fact, however, at the time people were more attentive to the Y2K threat that computer programs using only the final two digits of dates would be unable to distinguish between the 20th and 21st centuries and would thus wreak havoc on infrastructure, economies and businesses.

Happily, Y2K had no more impact than the Great Jubilee.

Even pastors and preachers seldom advertise papal or episcopal statements

Such is the usual fate of papal or episcopal documents, projects and exhortations. They become closing paragraphs of other documents, projects and exhortations until a new set comes along.

That probably does not disturb their authors; there is little evidence that they expect their proclamations to be read, let alone become guides for action.

Were it otherwise, they would write in words that people can understand. They would write succinctly. And they would do all in their power to ensure the dissemination of their message. They do none of those things, apparently thinking that publication is sufficient fulfilment of their ministry.

Even pastors and preachers seldom advertise papal or episcopal statements. In most cases, that is probably just as well, since the People of God have more important tasks than poring over turgid and irrelevant tomes.

Unfortunately, the result is that when a truly important document is published, there is no audience waiting for it, nor is there a system in place to disseminate it.

Such has been the case with the pronouncements of Pope Francis, starting with his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium in 2013.

Perhaps the worst case of this, bordering on the tragic, has been the 2015 encyclical Laudato si'.

Seven years ago, Pope Francis tried to bring the faith and hope of the Church to bear on the ecological crisis being endured by the Earth and every creature on it, including ourselves. He spoke of this planet as "our common home" and called for a deeper communion among us that cares for the world that is God's, not ours.

At the time, there was a flutter of response, but for the most part, the encyclical and its message have been relegated to the "final paragraph" category.

By now, we should be doing a better job of communication

Japan's bishops have tried to keep alive a commitment to the message, but the age-old lack of vehicles for effective dissemination even after translation has made Laudato si' little more than a motto.

I am not aware, for example, of sermons or educational programs meant to turn the Catholics of Japan into activists for the protection and restoration of the environment.

The Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development sponsors the Laudato Si' Action Platform, "a space for institutions, communities and families to learn and grow together as we journey towards full sustainability in the holistic spirit of integral ecology."

Have you joined it? Have you even heard of it?

The sole reason the Church exists is to communicate the Good News of God's forgiving love incarnate in Jesus Christ. By now, we should be doing a better job of communication.

But that is not the case with the Gospel nor even with messages intended to express Gospel faith today.

The world is probably already beyond crisis where the environment is concerned. Wildfires, floods, ice melt, deforestation, air and water pollution, sea rise, extinction, uglification, poverty — we have passed the crisis stage into disaster.

Making the message of Laudato si' the basis for a Christian response to the disaster is essential to maintaining the Church as a voice that can offer words of hope.

As the situation worsens — and it shall — the world will need that voice more and more. But, unless we get the message of Laudato si' spread throughout the Church, that voice will grow ever fainter.

The ecological crisis is the greatest crisis facing humanity today.

Responding to it is not simply an optional activity for activists: it is the new vocation of the entire Church. If we simply make Laudato si' a couple of words at the end of picayune pronouncements, the Church will have failed one of the greatest tests in our history.

In that case, we will deserve to be rejected by the world — and even God.

• William Grimm is a missioner and presbyter in Tokyo and is the publisher of the UCANews.com.

Sometimes the differences are insignificant, a matter of wording.

In other cases, the versions radically differ from one another.

In yet other cases, the evidence is strong that a saying is not what scholars call ipsissima verba, the very words of Jesus, but a later invention or version produced by the Church.

That is not unique to Jesus.

I recently read quotes attributed to Albert Einstein. They do not always agree with each other; there are different versions of the same idea. Sometimes the differences are insignificant.

In other cases, a saying may not be ipsissima verba.

In any case, three quotes attributed to Einstein, whether actually his words or not, provide useful commentary on the situation of the Church in Asia today.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

The Church is in decline in much of the world. The Church of which I am a member, the Catholic Church in Japan, is in many ways a miniature version of that phenomenon.

Congregations are ageing and shrinking.

The children and grandchildren of white-haired parishioners have nothing to do with the Church except when they come to funerals.

Local clergy are so scarce that for the first time in nearly a century foreigners are being appointed as bishops.

The situation 75 years ago was different. At the end of World War 2, Japan had nothing. Bombing had destroyed most cities. Food and medicine were scarce. War orphans turned to crime to survive.

Less visible was the moral and emotional devastation of people who realized that they had given their hearts, souls, and bodies to an ideology that made them both perpetrators and victims of death, destruction and injustice.

The impossible had happened: Japan lost.

An influx of foreign clergy and religious helped rebuild education, health care and social welfare. More importantly, they and the small Japanese Christian community offered what was most needed: hope.

Explosive growth of the Catholic Church in Japan followed, led by youth for whom the Church answered their and society's needs. Many of those young men and women became clergy and religious.

Now, three-quarters of a century has passed and those young Christians have passed from the graying through the whiting to the dying stage of life.

Congregations are shrinking.

Seminaries and novitiates contain more dust than aspirants.

Crippled by the lack of wisdom that the social sciences could offer What happened? Or, rather, what did not happen?

The simple answer is that the Catholic Church in Japan is trapped in the 1940s.

Institutions and activities that answered real needs then continue to exist even though no longer needed. We do the same things over and over, hoping to draw new blood to the geriatric Church.

That insanity is not specifically Japanese.

The Catholic Church throughout Asia is insane, propping up institutions and systems that serve no useful or effective function for the Church's mission in the second millennium.

That brings us to the second quote attributed to Einstein: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

After World War 2, the problems were obvious.

Today once again the needs are obvious to those willing to look: climate change, disease, the wealth gap, authoritarian regimes, anti-intellectualism, refugees, war, societal polarization and more.

However, our commitments to answering long-past needs override a response.

Though the problems are obvious, it is not so clear who we, the People of God called to bring the Good News to confront, overcome and heal the bad news of our time, are.

Who are the Catholics entrusted with the vocation to evangelize the world of the 2020s? We know our hair is whitening, but what is under it? What are our attitudes, our aptitudes, our hopes, our fears? We do not know.

Why do we continue in the Church? What is in the minds and hearts of those who have left or never approached the Church? We do not know.

There is a way to start understanding our situation in Asia: the social sciences.

We rightly look to Scripture, theology, history, and tradition to know the Church. However, we are crippled by the lack of a whole realm of wisdom that the social sciences, especially sociology and psychology, could offer.

The Church in Asia needs professional research on every aspect of our life as a community and as individual believers.

We cannot rely upon anecdotal "insights" from amateurs with limited experience, unexamined prejudices, and fear that the social sciences may uncover things we would rather not see, things that might challenge our self-understanding or force us to rethink cherished prejudices and projects.

Asian Churches must call upon the expertise of social scientists to help us better understand who we are and what we can and must do.

What Einstein said (or may have said) of scientists is true of the Church, too: "For a scientist, altering your doctrines when the facts change is not a sign of weakness."

We must be strong enough to get the facts.

• William Grimm is a missioner and presbyter in Tokyo and is the publisher of the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News).

My first reaction was gut-hurting laughter.

When I caught my breath, I said to the priest who had been sent to present the proposal, "Look at my face!"

It was, indeed, unprecedented to ask a non-Japanese to run a Japanese-language newspaper.

Later, I met the bishop who was the liaison with the paper and I asked him if I would have the sort of editorial freedom and authority that is usual for a newspaper editor. He replied, "So long as you don't start publishing heresy, you have that freedom. Test us."

I took the job, and shortly afterward we had the first test.

A bishop had been sued in a case that was never mentioned in any Catholic media. The only coverage was in a local secular newspaper and a Buddhist newspaper. Catholics in his diocese who knew the story were mostly cowed into silence.

When the bishop lost the suit, I told my staff that it was news, but since the whole case had been hidden from Catholics, we would have to do an article that explained its background and history.

When the reporters showed hesitancy, I assured them that the only job at risk was mine. The story went on the front page.

The day it was printed, the bishop who had told me to test the bishops happened to be in Tokyo and invited the priests who worked at the bishops' conference to join him for dinner before he headed home to his diocese.

When dessert came out, the bishop called my name. Immediately, every fork and coffee cup went down as the priests waited to hear what would come next.

"Your predecessor [who had come to the newspaper from a magazine put out by his religious order] would not have printed that story."

I replied, "My predecessor was not trying to run a newspaper."

"Yes, but we wanted him to."

Everyone went back to their dessert and coffee.

A couple of days later, a package arrived from the bishop who was the subject of the story. It contained his papers regarding the case along with a note saying that he would not appeal the verdict and that I had free use of the papers if I felt further coverage was necessary.

My mother once complained about a totally different sort of relationship between the Catholic press and a prelate in her diocesan newspaper: "There were nine pictures of the bishop on the first 11 pages!" I assume that none of the pictures illustrated an article about a lawsuit.

Catholic news sources that are objective, professional are rare

Pope Francis recently honored two journalists whose "beat" includes the Vatican. Neither works for a Church-related news agency. During the ceremony, the pope thanked all journalists who point out "what's wrong with the Church."

With few exceptions, it has been news media with no connection to the Church that have performed that service. Sexual abuse by clergy and cover-ups by those in positions of responsibility have been spotlighted by secular media.

There are other stories that will sooner or later be told, but probably not in Church-related media.

When independent Church-related news media have tried to present those stories, they have been attacked by those who claim to be "protecting the Church," though more often than not it is an exercise in self-defense. Non-independent sources print photos of bishops.

Catholic news sources that are objective, professional and, frankly, honest, are rare. Francis praised journalists, but the institution still does not want to see real journalism.

Two thousand years ago when there was as yet no such thing as journalism, Jesus pointed out the hypocrisy of those who exercised power among and against believers. Today, that is part of the vocation of journalism.

If that doesn't happen today, if the Church's communications are just public relations, the Church and its mission suffer.

We all suffer embarrassment when, as is inevitable, corruption and scandal that have been hidden are exposed by others. The shrinking number of those who have high expectations are scandalized.

Idealists who might otherwise choose lives of service in the Church turn away from an institution that values cover-up over truth. Some leave the Church in disgust.

Compared to all that, how can Church managers claim that bad press even (or especially) when true is a problem?

The biggest problem is a loss of credibility for the true message of the Church, the Gospel.

The Church desperately needs honest, objective, professional news sources or it will be useless for the proclamation of the Gospel. Such honesty, while sometimes embarrassing, will also be confirmation to the world that we are committed to the truth and therefore worthy of some trust.

The bishops of Japan knew that presenting the whole picture of the Church is ultimately a service to the People of God and the Gospel. Should not other Church managers learn from them?

• William Grimm is a missioner and presbyter in Tokyo and is the publisher of the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News).
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

The problem appears in the Acts of the Apostles: "Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food" (6:1).

The problem was not table service. There are different aspects of the dilemma in other parts of Acts and in Paul's epistles, and even retroactively introduced into the Gospels.

The problem was, "What do we do with these Greek-speakers?" Christianity was originally a Jewish sect. What were these Hellenists doing in the community?

The challenge the Greek-speakers presented was not one of grammar, syntax or an alphabet. Greek was the common tongue of the Roman Empire.

So, the presence of Greek speakers meant that the larger world was infiltrating the Christian community, and the Church had to respond to that larger world.

One way might be exclusion. The people who enraged Paul by insisting upon circumcision and other Biblical laws for non-Jews joining the Church took this path. To be a Christian, one must give up Greek-ness.

We can see Paul's reaction to this in his letter to the Galatians where he bad-mouths Peter for kowtowing to the circumcisionists and wishes a gruesome fate on them: "I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!" (2:11-14; 5:12).

Apart from the surgery, Paul's position became the norm for the Church. The New Testament is written in Greek.

The Church went beyond merely accepting the language of the wider world. It adapted its ministry and life. Trusting in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Christians created a totally new ministry that evolved into the deaconate.

Those early Christians realized that in order to proclaim the Good News to the whole world, they had to change. And they did, confident that the Spirit would be with them, giving them understanding and guidance. Rather than hold to the past, they invented a future.

Of course, the appearance of Greek-speaking widows was not the last time a new social, cultural and political reality challenged the Church to a radical change.

Perhaps the biggest after the widows was sparked by the beginnings of globalization.

Through the 15th-century journeys of Portuguese mariners around Africa and into Asia, and the realization of two whole continents across the Atlantic Ocean, the Church was forced to face theological challenges.

What is the eternal fate of people who have absolutely no way of hearing the Gospel?

Into this questioning there came a new technology that brought upheaval and new forms for the Church: the printing press.

With that new technology, a whole new culture was born. Literacy became common.

The exploration and exchange of ideas became general. Scripture that had been closed to all who could not read an ancient tongue now became common knowledge to anyone able to read their own language.

Scripture, books and pamphlets enabled people to become latter-day Greek widows. The part of the Church that embraced the new reality came to be called Protestant.

Catholicism took the technology, but rejected the reality it caused, fostered and epitomized.

Latin remained the language of liturgy, and theology and control of the Church remained the province of a caste increasingly out of touch with a world where the exchange of ideas, even if they threatened hallowed forms, was seen as the way to truth.

So, while the world moved toward the Enlightenment with its even-today developing ideas of human dignity, equality and science, that new reality was met with the Index of Forbidden Books that Catholics were not to read, last "updated" in 1948.

It was only in the mid-20th century that the Catholic part of the Church seriously approached the already centuries-old social and religious world in which it was supposedly proclaiming the Gospel.

But, circumcisionists remain. A current example is the question of whether or not the early Church ordained women to deaconal service. Only if the Church did so in the first-century might we do so in the 21st.

In other words, if ancient Christians confidently sought out new ways to embody ministry, only then may modern Christians use their results.

However, are answers to situations two millennia ago valid for situations today?

We face a new reality, a reality in which, for example, women are increasingly taking an equal place in society with men.

It is a globalized reality where communication has moved out of the "Gutenberg Galaxy" of print. Science and too much Church teaching seem to be in parallel universes that never interact. The only unchanging truth today is change.

We live in the presence of the same Holy Spirit who gave those ancient Christians the confidence to imagine new things.

The lesson to take from our forebears is not how they responded to new incursions by the world, but that they did so creatively, confident that the Holy Spirit would be with them.

We should imitate their daring, not their answers.

• William Grimm is a missioner and presbyter in Tokyo and is the publisher of the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News). The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
• Republished with permission.

That is true whether we modern believers are Japanese or not, Catholic Christians or not. The Church within which we live and worship endured persecution so recent that I know a woman whose grandfather died a martyr.

The rest of her family — parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews — was wiped out on Aug. 9, 1945, when the atomic bomb exploded over the Catholic neighbourhood of Nagasaki. She was the only member of the family out of town that day.

During the centuries of persecution, Christians in Japan had no church buildings, no clergy, no religious, no Masses, no religious institutions, no diocesan structures, and no contact with the rest of the Church in the country or outside.

What they did have was each other and a commitment to maintain as well as they could the faith that was passed on to them and to pass it on to the next generations even at the risk of their lives.

They were poor, oppressed and lived in perpetual danger, but they prayed and shared their ability to help one another in need. In many ways, it was the Golden Age of Christianity in Japan.

Those Japanese Christians knew that church is not someplace to go, but something to be, something to do.

The coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity to learn or relearn that today.

We have had to be faithful without much of what we thought essential, symbolized by a building and what goes on inside it.

But God is still with us whether we are in a cross-decorated building or not. The real issue is, are we with God?

Around the world, there are Christians who clamour to have their buildings reopen so that they might exercise their Christianity.

They ignore the fact that confronted with a highly contagious disease, the most Christian thing to do is to protect others by following the advice of disease experts.

Jesus never told his followers to gather in a particular place each week. He did say that our lives will be judged on whether or not we respond to him in our needy sisters and brothers. He did say that when we pray, we should go apart to a private place and pray in secret to the Father who sees what happens in secret.

When he spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus said that places are not important, that what matters is worship "in spirit and truth."

The woman had asked him where proper worship should be done, at the temple on Mt. Gerizim or at the temple in Jerusalem.

His answer was basically, "Neither."

In that case, do we need buildings at all if we can and should pray anywhere and everywhere?

We do not and we do.

Originally, Christians gathered in homes. Besides being persecuted, Christian communities were small enough to not need special buildings and were too poor to erect them.

Eventually, as numbers increased, homes were modified to allow larger gatherings.

The remains of the oldest known one are in Dura-Europos in Syria.

Its frescos, the earliest surviving Christian art, are in a museum at Yale University in the United States.

Over time as Christian communities grew, buildings were adapted or erected for liturgical use.

The three-aisle layout that is so common in churches comes from basilicas (public halls) that were repurposed into churches or were the architectural model for them.

So, we have buildings in which we gather in the name of Jesus so that our discipleship can be confirmed, nurtured, confronted, affirmed and comforted.

But the discipleship is the important thing.

Without that, the gatherings are nearly worthless. And that is the reason this pandemic is an opportunity for each of us. Discipleship does not require a particular kind of building or a particular kind of gathering.

Buildings, Sunday gatherings, public prayers and hymns are the accompaniments of religion, but not the essence of Christianity.

Christianity is not a religion.

It has religious trimmings, but its most basic reality is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The "religious" trappings aid our commitment to and celebration of that relationship but are not the relationship.

Now that the danger of contagion makes the buildings and large gatherings unavailable, we are invited to concentrate on what our faith really is.

It is prayer, service and trust that we celebrate with others when we can, but which we must live regardless of circumstances.

We can gather few by few to break open the Word, break the Bread, and share our faith. We can be church, as were the persecuted Christians of Japan.

• Bill Grimm is a Catholic priest and Maryknoll missioner who lives in Japan.
• First published in UCANews.com. Republished with permission.
• The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of CathNews.

But not this year.

The media are showing the wrestling tournament taking place in an empty venue. Spectators are banned from the arena.

In various parts of the world, bishops have cancelled Sunday Masses and other gatherings as a preventative measure against the spread of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, a potentially fatal infection that seems headed to becoming a pandemic.

It is disappointing, but sadly not too surprising, to see how many Catholics are trying to get around that cancellation, intruding into hitherto small-group Masses at convents and religious houses and thereby forcing those communities to either close to outsiders or cancel their own in-house liturgies.

A nursing facility for sick aged sisters where I celebrate a weekly Mass has had to cancel its Sunday liturgies because of the number of outsiders who have tried to come, seeming to think that their being at Mass is more important than protecting the lives of the elderly sisters who are especially at risk if they are exposed to the virus.

I know of a community of male religious in Tokyo who are hosting all comers, reportedly filling their church with people whose own churches are obeying the diocesan cancellation order.

This abets the disobedient, the thoughtless, the selfish and the stupid while endangering society at large. But it presumably fills the coffers of the religious through augmented collections that will probably not be earmarked for epidemic relief.

Those people show no concern for the rationale behind the cessation of large-group Masses nor obedience to leaders of the Church and civil society. They selfishly feel that their private piety is more important than the health and safety and even the lives of their sisters and brothers.

Some have even disputed the authority of their bishops to issue such cancellation orders.

For the record, bishops have that authority, regardless of what people who seem to consider themselves super-Catholics might think.

In fact, given the present state of the epidemic and the uncertainty about its likely course, to not cancel church gatherings would be irresponsible on the part of bishops in affected areas.

Apart from those who consider themselves exempt, we Catholics in virus-affected areas have in effect been forced to give up Mass for a major and not-yet-clear duration during Lent.

The challenge and opportunity for us is to see how this deprivation might deepen our faith, hope and love in preparation for renewing our baptismal commitment at Easter whether we are able to gather then or not.

Of course, the cancellation of parish liturgies does not prevent our using the time we would usually spend taking part in the Mass to read and reflect on the prayers and readings of the day.

We may find, in fact, that we are able to develop better personal "homilies" than those we may endure in normal circumstances.

We can even have a "collection," putting aside money to be later contributed to our parishes because though Masses have been cancelled most major expenses have not been.

Salaries must still be paid, and at least in Tokyo the electric company has shown no indication that it will cancel charges to churches that are not gathering each Sunday.

Our Lenten fasts and sacrifices are meant in part to increase our awareness of the situation of our brothers and sisters who must do without not by choice, nor for a limited time, but because of enduring poverty, famine, oppression or lack of opportunity.

Might not our "fasting" from Sunday Mass give us a closer communion with our sisters and brothers who must do without Eucharistic celebrations for months or even years at a time because there are no priests available to join their gatherings?

Such is the case, for instance, in the Amazon region of South America, and at their recent synod the bishops of Amazonia declared that ordaining married men should be considered as a means of alleviating that enforced "fast" from the Eucharist. Pope Francis is apparently waiting for one or more of those bishops to say he will take that step.

What is true of Amazonia is going to be true of the rest of the Church as well.

The epidemic of priestlessness will spread. In much of the world, most of the leaders of Eucharistic celebrations are white-haired if they have hair.

That is not a good augury for the future.

Perhaps the temporary Eucharistic fast imposed by the coronavirus will give us all a sense of urgency in preparing to head off Eucharistic poverty.

Then, if we — all of us — search out creative answers to the problem, we may find that just as fasting can improve our physical as well as spiritual health, our giving up Mass for Lent will have improved our Church's health.

• Father Bill Grimm is the publisher of UCA News and is based in Tokyo, Japan.

The topic is important and the eventual implementation of such a move is essential not only to the People of God in Amazonia but throughout the world if we are to be true to the Catholic tradition that the Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life."

Simply put, if the Eucharist is what we say it is, then the right of Catholics anywhere to share the sacrament is absolute and must not be hindered, let alone prevented, by lesser non-dogmatic historically and regionally developed regulations regarding celibacy or models of sacramental service.

And yet, though the issue is of utmost importance, the way the matter is expressed is either comic or insulting or both, depending upon your taste.

In light of the sexual abuse and financial corruption by clergy that have been tearing the Catholic Church apart for at least the past three decades, and the clerical culture that abets it all, it is hard to not give a sardonic smirk or even a loud guffaw at the implicit claim that married men need special supplementary verification that they are of "proven" virtue in order to be ordained.

I have never heard talk of ordaining "celibate men of proven virtue."

Do we only require certifiable virtue of married men?

Are celibate men exempt from that requirement because though they can and should be virtuous, proof of their virtue is not needed either because it can be presumed or because it is not so important as being at least nominally celibate?

Certainly the evidence does not show that celibate priests are greater exemplars of virtue than other men.

At best, we hope and pray that on the whole they are no worse than married men, as is probably the case.

So, the emphasis upon "proven virtue" is ridiculous enough to be mildly amusing to those who, like I, are sarcastically inclined.

However, there is a much less amusing aspect to the emphasis.

The requirement of "proven virtue" carries the implication that somehow or other, men who are married are ipso factonot to be considered virtuous unless proven otherwise.

Why might that be?

What is it about married men that would make vice the presupposition of their state?

Obviously, the basic fact about married men is that their lives involve women.

And not only women but women with whom they have sex.

There is a long history in the Catholic Church, especially perhaps among clerics, of considering sex to be somehow defiling and women to be invitations to sin.

That attitude is one of the reasons (not the sole one nor, one hopes, the chief one) underlying the emphasis upon celibacy.

When after the recent restoration of strict liturgical compliance with older Latin practices, the bishops of Japan wanted to reaffirm their practice of not kissing the altar during Mass, a curia cardinal insisted that they must reintroduce kissing because it is a universal gesture of respect.

He pointed out that when Japanese meet their emperor, they genuflect and kiss his ring. In fact, they bow and do not touch His Majesty at all. And he does not wear a ring.

Those facts made no impression upon His Eminence. He insisted that kissing the altar must be restored.

What finally got him to change his mind was a bishop's pointing out to him that in Japan kissing is solely a sexual gesture.

The word "sex" was enough to get the cardinal to back off and declare that if such were the case, a bow could replace the kiss in Japan.

However, it could not be a "Japanese bow."

No one has yet figured out how bending at the waist differs in Japan from doing so elsewhere.

But, at least for once, the ecclesiastical wariness of sex advanced the cause of common sense.

By all means, let's ordain men, married or not, in order to open access to the Eucharist to all Catholics no matter where they live. (The ordination of women is not in the present state of the question within the realm of realistic possibility and is unlikely to be so for a long time if ever.)

By all means, let's expect those men to be virtuous, as we expect all Christians to be virtuous.

But let's stop acting as if married men are somehow more in need of vetting by the virtue police or vice squad than unmarried men, whether celibate or merely single.

• Fr Bill Grimm MM is based in Tokyo and is publisher of UCA.News

A surprising number of them, usually women, make it a point to tell me with an air of disapproval for what we have on offer that in their home country they only go to Latin Masses.

I have no idea what they expect me to say or do about that.

The one time I asked one such woman if she understood Latin, she said she did not, but used an English-language missal to follow the Mass prayers.

I refrained from pointing out that in that case, she was praying the Mass in English rather than Latin.

The cherry trees in Tokyo will bloom in a couple of weeks, and the tourism season will once again be upon us.

While I look forward to the cherries, when for about two weeks Tokyo may be the most beautiful metropolis in the world as well as the largest, I have some apprehension about the tourists.

My apprehension is due to the fact that they may confront me with a powerful ally.

Cardinal Sarah is the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. In other words, the cardinal is the Vatican prelate in charge of the church's liturgy.

In that role, he has been an enemy of what has been achieved in the church's worship since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

When Pope Francis asked that provision be made for women to be part of the ceremony of washing of feet on Holy Thursday, the cardinal delayed action for more than a year.

He was corrected by the pope for his insistence that Mass be celebrated with the priest facing away from the congregation.

The pope gave him a public dressing down for minimizing the import of papal support for restoring authority over liturgical translations to the bishops, as was mandated by an ecumenical council.

Cardinal Sarah's latest foray has been to attack the reception of communion in the hand as evil, the work of the devil.

How am I or others to respond when, as may well happen, we are confronted by people who say they have the cardinal on their side as they want no part in the majority of the world's Catholics at worship?

I could point out that the appointment of Vatican prefects has nothing to do with their expertise or even interest.

The only qualification they need is a red hat and Cardinal Sarah, who clearly does not know or understand either liturgical history or theology, has that qualification.

The other, and main, qualification is, of course, their appointment by the pope and their ongoing tenure in their position, since they hold it at the pleasure of the pontiff.

If Cardinal Sarah with his uninformed piety remains in office, it means he has the endorsement of the pope.

How can I respond to that?

Pope Francis apparently has his reasons for keeping Cardinal Sarah in his present position at the Vatican, but those reasons do not play well or even make sense where the church really lives.

The pope's rationale for keeping the cardinal as point man for liturgy is of no help or use to those of us outside the Vatican.

It is time for Cardinal Sarah to receive a pink slip. Continue reading

In an opinion piece posted on ucanews.com, Fr William Grimm noted that Pope Francis's recent encyclical Laudato Si' dismissed concerns about overpopulation as a major source of the ecological crisis.

Fr Grimm wrote that: " . . . [E]ven if wisdom, care and generosity were to suddenly break out all over the world, our huge population would still require that a major portion of the world's surface be devoted to food production and the oceans would still have to be heavily harvested to feed us all."

"It would not be impossible," the Tokyo-based Maryknoll priest wrote.

"In fact, some ecologically sound practices combined with a more just distribution of food could feed us all with less damage to the environment than we currently inflict upon it.

"But the fact remains that even reasonable use of our environment by so many billions would continue to have a huge impact upon the whole Earth, including crowding out other creatures and environments with whom we should share it.

"Our educational, social and economic resources are not capable of providing a decent human life for all of us.

"We must reduce our numbers as well as our use and abuse of resources."

Fr Grimm wrote that the Church must play a role in reducing population, because it can present a vision of a decent human life that should then be part of any goals.

"In short, if we can say, ‘This is what the lives of God's children should be', then we can figure out how many people can live those lives on this small planet."

Fr Grimm wrote that abortion and forced sterilisation are immoral, and mandatory birth control measures inflicted by the wealthy on the poor are unjust.

"[But] educating women and liberating the most dismally poor from their plight are two of the most effective methods of population control . . . ."

Sources

• UCA News
• UCA News
• Image: CathNewsUSA

The head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has said the bishops cannot do that because mercy is not a valid principle to use in pastoral care where the sacrament is concerned.

Doctrine? Maybe. Faith? Not so much.

In any case, the bishops are going ahead with their plan. They are affirming what Pope Francis has said, that Roman officials do not "outrank" diocesan bishops, but must serve as aids to the bishops' ministry.

The Germans have recently made another move in defiance of Roman commands that deserves attention and belated emulation.

The First Sunday of Advent, was to be the day on which German-speaking Catholics would begin using a new translation of the liturgy. Like the one that has been used for two years in English-speaking churches, it would be more Latin than local.

The English version uses English words in Latin sentence order, Latinate repetition and vocabulary that comes from Latin rather than English roots; presumably the German is similar.

However, the German bishops recently announced that they would not introduce the new version because of wide opposition to the translation's sins against the German language.

Something that English-speaking bishops were afraid to do in the previous papacy is now being done by Germans apparently emboldened by the pastoral approach of Pope Francis.

The new translation two years on

Sunday was the second anniversary of the imposition of the English version.

How have we fared after two years with it?

Congregations have gotten used to their responses, though children probably sometimes think that the Holy, Holy, Holy prayer is to the Lord God of communion wafers.

But what of those for whom the greatest changes were introduced, the priests?

Surveys have shown that a huge majority of priests are still, after two years, united in their dissatisfaction with the maltranslation.

Many say that trying to use it actually hinders their prayerful leading of the liturgy.

If anything, their discomfort has grown as they have struggled to proclaim prayers whose tortured word order and repetitions are close to gibberish if spoken aloud before a congregation that cannot go back over the words to figure out the grammar.

How does one proclaim a sentence that begins with the object of the verb rather than the subject, something entirely possible in Latin, but which English-speaking priests now know is at least strange in their language?

Rewriting to make sense of it

The answer is that increasingly priests are not trying.

A pastor in the United States said that the only good thing he could say about the new translation is that it forces him to read the prayers on Saturday so that he will know how to revise them for proclamation on Sunday.

The majority of priests in his diocese admit among themselves that they engage in the same editing process, turning the prayers into real English. In other words, many congregations do not hear the new version.

Two years ago I wrote: "Priests who want to help their communities pray will gradually, but increasingly, begin to rework and reword the translation we have been given.

Instead of an authorized new translation from Latin such as was approved by the world's English-speaking bishops in 1998, we will now get an unauthorized plethora of ad hoc translations from Gibberish. I am not saying that should happen, but it shall happen."

Well, it has happened. What's next?

Time to implement the 1998 version, officially or unnofficially

The 1998 translation that was meant to correct the hastily done 1973 translation has already been approved unanimously by all the English-speaking bishops' conferences of the world, but was suppressed by curial officials who were not even English speakers.

So, why should not some conferences declare that translation valid for use in their countries? Failing that, individual bishops might take that initiative on their authority as leaders of worship in their dioceses.

Otherwise, my next prediction will come true.

Priests will increasingly on their own initiative begin using the 1998 translation once they get a copy, available for downloading after only a few minutes' search on the Internet.

Or, they will dig out their 1973 Sacramentaries, even in dioceses like that in which my friend the pastor serves and where the bishop thought he had confiscated them all in order to prevent just that sort of thing.

It is time for English-speaking bishops to learn from their German confreres and take back responsibility for the life and worship of their people.

Fr William Grimm is publisher of ucanews.com based in Tokyo.

Image: ucanews.com