The Rev. Martin Lintner was selected by its faculty to become dean of the prestigious Theological University of Bressanone, located in the traditionally German-speaking region near the Austrian border.

The appointment of Lintner, a professor of moral and spiritual theology at the seminary, was also met with approval by the local bishop.

But the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education refused to issue the permission required for Lintner to take on the role, the university announced on June 26.

The Congregation released no explanation for its decision and has not replied to a request by Religion News Service for comment.

Confused and dismayed

Theologians and academics around the world responded with confusion and dismay at the Vatican's decision to prevent the appointment of the theologian.

The local bishop, Ivo Muser, said he was informed that the Vatican had denied the appointment due to Lintner's previous "publications on questions relating to the sexual morality of the church."

In a recent statement, Muser said the current dean, Professor Alexander Notdurfter, will keep his position until August 2024. "This time will allow for the calm necessary to further reflect together on the issues that arose and that involved other Vatican departments," Muser said.

Lintner has spoken in support of reconsidering the Catholic Church's controversial ban on artificial birth control enshrined in the 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae" by Pope Paul VI.

Lintner has also written in support of blessing same-sex couples, a position promoted by members of the synodal path in Germany despite the Vatican's veto on the subject.

Lintner upheld the dignity of same-sex relationships in an article published in 2020 on the website of Catholic LBGTQ+ advocacy group New Ways Ministry and has offered reflections in favor of ceremonies to bless same-sex couples.

Who decided?

While the decision is officially up to the Congregation for Education, some believe it was the Vatican Department overseeing doctrine that made the ruling on Lintner.

The Congregation for Education and Culture was born from the union of two other departments under the leadership of Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, who is considered a close friend of Pope Francis. Francis' involvement in halting Lintner's appointment remains unclear.

The decision regarding Lintner's appointment highlights the tensions between the Vatican and the synodal path in Germany and elsewhere.

Meant to promote a vision for a less hierarchical church and to empower lay Catholics, the multiyear synodality process has resulted in appeals from many Catholic faithful and clergy around the world for female ordination, LGBTQ+ inclusion and clergy accountability.

Lintner's rejection underlines Pope Francis' struggles in enacting the synodal vision and the reform of the Vatican Curia.

"The Vatican's decision regarding me didn't just cause surprise but also frustration among many faithful," Lintner wrote in a statement published on the university's website on Monday (July 3). "It raises doubts on the good outcome of synodality," he added.

Upcoming synod

Bishops and lay individuals will gather in Rome in October for the Synod on Synodality, where they are poised to discuss the major questions facing Catholicism today, from the role of women to power structures in the church.

The synod is Pope Francis' brainchild and born from a three-year consultation of Catholics at the parish, diocesan, national and continental levels.

It aims to revolutionize the way decisions are made in the church and to create a more open and inclusive way of communicating and engaging with the faithful.

According to the Catholic Theological Faculty Association, the decision on Lintner "contradicts the synodal spirit invoked by Pope Francis" but also shows how Catholic academics remain under the yoke of the Vatican offices and departments known as the Vatican Curia.

"It runs counter to the concern for academic freedom and undermines the self-government of Catholic faculties and Catholic universities," the group said in a June 27 statement in support of Lintner.

Lintner also spoke of an "institutional problem" with regard to the imposition by the Vatican departments for doctrine and education over universities and theologians.

"I hope and desire that my case will contribute to creating a constructive relationship of trust and dialogue between the Magisterium and academic theologians, among dicasteries and theological associations, faculties and theological studies," he said.

"It's very important that there be dialogue" between the Vatican and theologians, said theologian Dawn Eden Goldstein in an interview with RNS on Thursday. He added "there have been many cases in the past where people claimed there had not been dialogue and they had not been heard."

This Vatican imposition has been interpreted as a power play, especially by some members of the German church, who have experienced their fair share of Vatican interference.

The International Society for the Study of Moral Theology in Germany called out the Congregation for Education's decision for being "inadequate and unjustified," while criticizing the lack of transparency as a "demonstration of curial power."

German synodal way

The church in Germany, with its credibility undermined by sexual abuse scandals, began its own synodal path in 2019.

The series of conferences aired a desire by faithful in the country for a church that reflected the values of society today to foster inclusivity and accountability.

As the church became more vocal with its call for modernization, Pope Francis sent a letter urging caution and discernment.

When German priests began to bless same-sex couples, the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, or DDF, answered with a resounding no, stating the church "cannot bless sin."

Vatican experts at the time were told Pope Francis had not been happy with the decision by the doctrinal department and were promised the pope would soon take action.

Reform

On Saturday, Pope Francis completed his reform of the DDF by appointing a close collaborator to head its theological section, Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández.

According to Goldstein, Fernández's appointment is "good timing because it does indicate something hopeful: that there is now someone in leadership who does favor dialogue."

In a recently published interview, Fernández said he intends to lead "in my own way."

He said he is open to discussion regarding the ordination of women or the blessing of same-sex couples "given the pope's call for synodality."

But the decision to appoint Fernández can also be interpreted as a warning signal to papal opposers in the Vatican Curia.

In a 2016 interview with Italian Vatican journalist Massimo Franco, Fernández said the "Roman curia is not an essential structure" of the church and the pope could just as well lead the church with only the college of bishops at the service of the people of God.

"Fernandez might not find it easy to change entrenched attitudes," Goldstein said, "but thankfully the pope has his back."

• Claire Giangravé is an author at Religion News Service.
• First published in Religion News Service. Republished with permission.

Since that time, the positions I presented have received both substantial support and significant opposition.

The majority of those criticizing my article focused on its treatment of the exclusion of those who are divorced and remarried and members of the L.G.B.T. communities from the Eucharist.

Criticisms included the assertion that my article challenged an ancient teaching of the church, failed to give due attention to the call to holiness, abandoned any sense of sin in the sexual realm and failed to highlight the essential nature of conversion.

Perhaps most consistently, the criticism stated that exclusion from the Eucharist is essentially a doctrinal rather than a pastoral question.

I seek in this article to wrestle with some of these criticisms so that I might contribute to the ongoing dialogue on this sensitive question—which will no doubt continue to be discussed throughout the synodal process.

Specifically, I seek here to develop more fully than I did in my initial article some important related questions, namely on the nature of conversion in the moral life of the disciple, the call to holiness, the role of sin, the sacrament of penance, the history of the categorical doctrine of exclusion for sexual sins and the relationship between moral doctrine and pastoral theology.

The report of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the synodal dialogues held in our nation last year pointed to the profound sadness of many, if not most of the people of God about the broad exclusion from the Eucharist of so many striving Catholics who are barred from Communion because they are divorced and remarried or L.G.B.T.

In January, I proposed that three foundational principles of Catholic teaching invited a re-examination of the church's practice in this area.

The first is Pope Francis' image of the church as a field hospital, which points to the reality that we are all wounded by sin and all equally in need of God's grace and healing.

The second is the role of conscience in Catholic thought.

For every member of the church, it is conscience to which we have the ultimate responsibility and by which we will be judged.

For that reason, while Catholic teaching has an essential role in moral decision-making, it is conscience that has the privileged place.

As Pope Francis has stated, the church's role is to form consciences, not replace them. Categorical exclusions of the divorced and remarried and L.G.B.T. persons from the Eucharist do not give due respect to the inner conversations of conscience that people have with their God in discerning moral choice in complex circumstances.

Finally, I proposed that the Eucharist is given to us as a profound grace in our conversion to discipleship.

As Pope Francis reminds us, the Eucharist is "not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."

To bar disciples from that grace blocks one of the principal pathways Christ has given to them to reform their lives and accept the Gospel ever more fully.

For all of these reasons, I proposed that divorced and remarried or L.G.B.T. Catholics who are ardently seeking the grace of God in their lives should not be categorically barred from the Eucharist.

In the weeks since my article was published, some readers have objected that the church cannot accept such a notion of inclusion because the exclusion of remarried women and men or L.G.B.T. persons from the Eucharist flows from the moral tradition in the church that all sexual sins are grave matter.

This means that all sexual sins are so gravely evil that they constitute objectively an action that can sever a believer's relationship with God.

I have attempted to face this objection head-on by drawing attention to both the history and the unique reasoning of the principle that all sexual sins are objectively mortal sins.

For most of the history of the church, various gradations of objective wrong in the evaluation of sexual sins were present in the life of the church.

But in the 17th century, with the inclusion in Catholic teaching of the declaration that for all sexual sins there is no parvity of matter (i.e., no circumstances can mitigate the grave evil of a sexual sin), we relegated the sins of sexuality to an ambit in which no other broad type of sin is so absolutely categorized.

In principle, all sexual sins are objective mortal sins within the Catholic moral tradition.

This means that all sins that violate the sixth and the ninth commandments are categorically objective mortal sins.

There is no such comprehensive classification of mortal sin for any of the other commandments.

In understanding the application of this principle to the reception of Communion, it is vital to recognize that it is the level of objective sinfulness that forms the foundation for the present categorical exclusion of sexually active divorced and remarried or L.G.B.T. Catholics from the Eucharist.

So, it is precisely this change in Catholic doctrine—made in the 17th century—that is the foundation for categorically barring L.G.B.T. and divorced/remarried Catholics from the Eucharist.

• Does the tradition that all sexual sins are objectively mortal make sense within the universe of Catholic moral teaching?
• It is automatically an objective mortal sin for a husband and wife to engage in a single act of sexual intercourse utilizing artificial contraception. This means the level of evil present in such an act is objectively sufficient to sever one's relationship with God.
• It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to physically or psychologically abuse your spouse.
• It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to exploit your employees.
• It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to discriminate against a person because of her gender or ethnicity or religion.
• It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to abandon your children.

The moral tradition that all sexual sins are grave matter springs from an abstract, deductivist and truncated notion of the Christian moral life that yields a definition of sin jarringly inconsistent with the larger universe of Catholic moral teaching.

This is because it proceeds from the intellect alone.

The great French philosopher Henri Bergson pointed to the inadequacy of any such approach to the richness of Catholic faith: "We see that the intellect, so skilful in dealing with the inert, is awkward the moment it touches the living.

Whether it wants to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigour, the stiffness and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use…. Intuition, on the contrary, is moulded on the very form of life."

The call to holiness requires both a conceptual and an intuitive approach leading to an understanding of what discipleship in Jesus Christ means.

Discipleship means striving to deepen our faith and our relationship to God, to enflesh the Beatitudes, to build up the kingdom in God's grace, to be the good Samaritan.

The call to holiness is all-encompassing in our lives, embracing our efforts to come closer to God, our sexual lives, our familial lives and our societal lives.

It also entails recognising sin where it lurks in our lives and seeking to root it out.

And it means recognizing that each of us in our lives commits profound sins of omission or commission.

At such moments we should seek the grace of the sacrament of penance. But such failures should not be the basis for categorical ongoing exclusion from the Eucharist.

It is important to note that the criticisms of my article did not seek to demonstrate that the tradition classifying all sexual sins as objective mortal sin is in fact correct, or that it yields a moral teaching that is consonant with the wider universe of Catholic moral teaching.

Instead, critics focused upon the repeated assertion that the exclusion of divorced/remarried and L.G.B.T. Catholics from the Eucharist is a doctrinal, not a pastoral question.

I would answer that Pope Francis is precisely calling us to appreciate the vital interplay between the pastoral and doctrinal aspects of church teaching on questions just such as these. Continue reading

In his 'First Things' magazine article, conservative prelate and canon lawyer Thomas Paprocki (pictured) cites an unnamed cardinal's views on how the Church should minister to LGBTQ people and divorced and remarried Catholics.

While he doesn't name Cardinal Robert McElroy, Paprocki quotes directly from a 24 January article the cardinal wrote for America magazine.

In it, McElroy called for a Church that favours "radical inclusion" of everyone, regardless of circumstances and conformance with Church doctrine.

To back his views, Paprocki's essay cites several passages in the Code of Canon Law and draws on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and St Pope John Paul II's Ad Tuendam Fidem ("To Protect the Faith").

Pointing to these, he said anyone who denies "settled Catholic teaching" on issues like homosexuality and "embraces heresy" is automatically excommunicated from the Church.

The pope has the authority and the obligation to remove a heretical cardinal from office, or dismiss outright from the clerical state, Paprocki wrote.

Referencing McElroy's critique of "a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist," Paprocki claimed: "Unfortunately, it is not uncommon today to hear Catholic leaders affirm unorthodox views that, not too long ago, would have been espoused only by heretics."

Although McElroy and Paprocki were both available for comment, in a 28 February interview Paprocki said he did not intend to single out a particular cardinal for criticism. Rather, he "intended the discussion to be more rhetorical.

"I think the reason I did this is because this debate has become so public at this point that it seems to have passed beyond the point of just some private conversations between bishops."

The bishop's explanation struck some observers as disingenuous.

Jesuit Fr Tom Reese, a journalist who has covered the US bishops for decades, says Paprocki's essay reflects deep divisions in the US Catholic hierarchy, plus a level of public animosity, open disagreement and strident rhetoric among bishops.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI would not have tolerated it, he says.

"On the other hand, there wouldn't have been this kind of discussion under John Paul II because the Vatican would have shut it down.

"Francis has opened the Church up for discussion again and [conservative bishops] just don't like it. They're trying to shut it down by using this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, even against cardinals," Reese said.

Cathleen Kaveny, a law and theology professor, says Paprocki "should know better as a canon lawyer" than to accuse someone of heresy - which is a formal charge.

Paprocki is running together statements and teachings of different levels of authority in the Church and claiming any disagreement amounts to heresy. "And that's just false," Kaveny says.

"The underlying question ... is whether development in church doctrine can take place.

"I would recommend people read John Henry Newman on that, and look at the history of the church's teaching on usury while they're at it."

Source

• NCR Online

It was an era of civil unrest, race riots, anti-war protests, and the sexual revolution.

One of the popular bumper stickers at the time stated: Question Everything.

These societal events coincided with the sessions of the Second Vatican Council and its early implementation.

The council brought beautiful and much-needed renewal to many aspects of Catholic life.

Sadly, there was also a serious misinterpretation of the council that fostered moral confusion. The poisonous ideas of the sexual revolution crept into the Church.

A great cultural myth was propagated that one could not be happy or fulfilled unless you were sexually active.

The rate of divorce rose dramatically within society and the Church.

Traditional sexual morals were considered antiquated.

The virtue of chastity was mocked. Influential voices within the Church sought to use the "spirit of the council" to change Catholic sexual moral teaching and practice.

With the availability and cultural embrace of oral contraceptives, Pope Paul VI warned that sexual intimacy outside of the marriage covenant would become commonplace, and the harm inflicted on children, women, men, and society would be catastrophic.

The Holy Father was prophetic.

• Out-of-wedlock births, abortion, and pornography became common.
• Sexually transmitted diseases reached epidemic levels.
• Contrary to the predictions of advocates for contraception and abortion, child abuse and child trafficking hit record levels.
• The unparalleled happiness that proponents of so-called sexual freedom promised never materialized.
• Instead, we find among young adults alarmingly high levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.
• Pornography and other forms of sexual addiction have become rampant and enslave many at a young age.

The unravelling of sexual morals has continued for decades.

Among the cultural fallacies is a prevalent notion that homosexual activity is healthy and normal, just another lifestyle choice.

In recent years, our cultural confusion has now spawned gender ideology, asserting that human beings can deny their biological gender.

Tragically, many young people have been pressured to undergo gender-transitioning hormonal regimens and to mutilate their bodies by "gender reassignment" surgeries.

Gratefully, St. John Paul II, with his landmark teaching on the theology of the body, gave us new language to articulate the beauty of human sexuality and to help restore moral sanity.

Pope Benedict also provided clear teaching in these important areas.

Pope Francis has spoken plainly and strongly about the evil of abortion and the danger of gender theory.

I have been saddened that in the preparation for the Synod on Synodality, there has been a renewed effort by some in Church leadership to resuscitate moral confusion on human sexuality.

The German Synodal Way is a striking example.

The leadership of the German bishops' conference has rejected correction from Pope Francis.

Most troubling has been statements by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, who asserts that Church teaching related to homosexuality is false because he believes the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct.

Cardinal Hollerich's statements are particularly concerning because of the leadership role that he has been assigned as relator general for the Synod on Synodality.

Most recently, Cardinal Robert McElroy's article in the Jesuit journal America Magazine has charged that the Catholic Church "contains structures and cultures of exclusion that alienate all too many from the Church or make their journey in the Catholic faith tremendously burdensome."

Cardinal McElroy champions what he terms radical inclusion that embraces everyone into full communion with the Church on their terms.

The mandate of Jesus given to the apostles to make disciples of all nations is construed to mean to enlarge the tent of the Church by accommodating behaviours contrary to Our Lord's own teaching.

Cardinal McElroy appears to believe that the Church for 2,000 years has exaggerated the importance of her sexual moral teaching and that radical inclusion supersedes doctrinal fidelity, especially in the area of the Church's moral teaching regarding human sexuality.

In my opinion, this is a most serious and dangerous error.

Our understanding of sexual morals significantly impacts marriage and family life.

The importance of marriage and family to society, culture, the nation, and the Church cannot be overestimated.

Proponents of radical inclusion cite Our Lord's association with sinners.

In the face of harsh criticism of religious leaders, it is true that Jesus manifested great concern, compassion, and mercy to sinners. Continue reading

• Joseph F. Naumann is Archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas
• He is writing in response to recent statements by Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego

Many moral theologians in the country agree with that assessment.

One of them said that re-formulating Church teaching on human sexuality is one of the most "urgent" and one of the most "difficult" challenges facing contemporary Catholicism.

The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), which recently published a shocking report on abuse cases in France over the past 70 years, agrees.

One of the recommendations it made in that report is to carefully examine "how the paradoxical excess of Catholic morality's fixation on sexual matters may have a counter-productive value in the fight against sexual abuse".

The CIASE report notes that the Church's persistent strictness on sexual issues has led to a paradoxical situation by which some Catholics, especially priests, have committed serious transgressions according to the idea that "if you don't respect all the law, then you don't respect anything at all".

Not all sins are equally serious

Added to this is confusion about the various "sins against the flesh", which Catholic tradition has grouped together under the umbrella of the sixth commandment: "Thou shall not commit adultery."

"The enumeration of acts without gradation of their seriousness is highly problematic because, for example, one cannot put masturbation and rape on the same level," deplored Marie-Jo Thiel, an award-winning Catholic ethicist who teaches theology at the University of Strasbourg.

Like others, she considers rape to be "a crime that kills another", which is actually a violation of the fifth commandment, rather than the fifth.

"Even today, anything that goes outside the framework promoted by the Church would be 'wrong'," says Dominican Sister Véronique Margron, president of the Conference of Men and Women Religious of France (Corref).

"We thus maintain confusion between wrong and failure, which all human beings encounter at one time or another in their emotional and sexual life. As a result, we don't know how to recognize what is really wrong, such as sexual violence, or perceiving the other person as an object," she said.

"Catholic sexual ethics remain very normative"

Catholicism's focus on sexuality and procreation has intensified since the 19th Century in proportion to its loss of socio-political influence. But that focus actually goes back to the beginnings of Christianity.

The contribution of Saint Augustine of Hippo is particularly "weighty" in this matter, according to Alain Thomasset SJ, professor at the Centre Sèvres, the Jesuit school of theology in Paris.

"For Saint Augustine, sexual desire remained an effect of original sin. It is only saved by the act of procreation within marriage," he said.

The Second Vatican Council certainly opened up sexuality to purposes other than procreation, such as communion between spouses.

But Thomasset believes there is still much work to be done to transcend the culture of merely "what's allowed and what's forbidden" and to broaden our view.

"Catholic sexual ethics remain very normative," the Jesuit pointed out.

"It is much more normative than the Church's social doctrine, which takes into account relationships, circumstances, intentions, the complexity of reality, etc. Relational anthropology, already present in social doctrine, would be welcome in sexual ethics," he argued.

A Church people are no longer listening to?

The 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, with its prohibition of artificial contraception, did much to discredit the Church's discourse on sexuality.

Then the 2019 book, In the Closet of the Vatican, which alleged the widespread existence of homosexuality (and pedocriminality) among priests and bishops in Rome, seemed to further weaken the Church's voice on this issue.

Some Catholics regret this. They believe the Church is right to insist that our bodies are a gift of God that should not to abused or that sexual intimacy should not be trivialised at a time when pornography has never been so easily accessible.

So, is it conceivable that there can be an evolution Church teaching on human sexuality?

"First of all, we must keep in mind that a good part of the French episcopate remains marked by the heritage of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who defended a sexual morality with clear norms, in the name of human nature," emphasized Francine Charoy, a moral theologian who taught for twenty years at the Institut Catholique in Paris.

Moving beyond a "confrontation between two blocks"

Pope Francis has taken a different approach by encouraging more discernment in complex situations. But he has not changed Church doctrine on the substance of the matter.

This has left some theologians "disappointed".

They believe that the pope could make changes to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (which, among other things, calls homosexual acts "intrinsically disordered"), as he did in 2018 concerning the death penalty.

Charoy, meanwhile, wants to see the Church move beyond a "confrontation between two blocs", progressive and conservative.

"We need to work in synodality among different theologians, to analyze together the denial regarding pedocriminality in which the institution has remained for so long," she argued.

The theologian said it would be a way to start dismantling the "culture of silence" highlighted by the CIASE report.

• Mélinée le Priol is a journalist for LA CROIX France. She has a particular interest in topics related to the Middle-East but also more widely religious news.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

"One dimension of clericalism is the exclusive moral fixation on the sixth commandment [Thou shalt not commit adultery]," he says.

"We focus on sex and then we do not give weight to social injustice, slander, gossip and lies. The Church today needs a profound conversion in this area.

"Once a Jesuit, a great Jesuit, told me to be careful in giving absolution, because the most serious sins are those that are more angelical: pride, arrogance, dominion…

"And the least serious are those that are less angelical, such as greed and lust."

Francis says he sees clericalism as having a direct consequence in rigidity.

Young priests "all stiff in black cassocks and hats in the shape of the planet Saturn on their heads" are an outward sign of rigid clericalism, he says.

"Behind all the rigid clericalism there are serious problems."

The difficulties caused by clericalism have caused Francis to have to intervene in three dioceses recently.

He says the "problems that expressed themselves in these forms of rigidity ... concealed moral problems and imbalances.

Where "great shepherds give people a lot of freedom. The good shepherd knows how to lead his flock without enslaving it to rules that deaden people."

The good shepherd "will go in front of the flock to show the way, stay in the middle of the flock to see what happens within, and also be at the rear of the flock to make sure that no one is left behind," he says.

"Clericalism, on the other hand, demands that the shepherd always stays ahead, sets a course, and punishes with excommunication those who stray from the flock."

It is "essentially hypocritical," he says.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic Outlook

Vaticanista Sandro Magister, writing for the Italian L'Espresso magazine, said in the first two summers of his pontificate, Francis "gave space and visibility to the men and movements in favour of a reform of the pastoral care of the family and of sexual morality".

But during the extraordinary synod last October, Francis saw that resistance among the bishops to this reform was much wider and stronger than had been foreseen.

Since then, Francis has said "not a single word in support of the innovators", Magister wrote.

Indeed, Francis has spoken out on questions like abortion, divorce, homosexuality, and contraception 40 times since then, the commentator added.

And in doing so, the Pope has spoken "without swerving a millimetre from the strict teaching of his predecessors Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI".

Francis has also hit out "above all" against "gender ideology" and its "ambitions to colonise the world", Magister added.

The article in L'Espresso also noted that Francis has toughened up on divorce.

According to Magister, Francis recently said of the idea of giving Communion to the divorced and remarried that "it doesn't solve anything".

But the Pope knows that expectations are very high in this matter "and he knows that he himself has fostered them".

"But he has distanced himself from them. ‘Overblown expectations', he now calls them, knowing he cannot satisfy them," Magister continued.

"Because after all the proclamations of a more collegial government of the Church, of the Pope and the bishops together, it is a given that Francis will side with the will of the bishops, the great majority of them conservative, and give up on imposing a reform that will be rejected by most."

Sources

• L'Espresso
• Image: Crux

On March 21, Sr Jane Dominic Laurel, a Nashville Dominican sister, told students at Charlotte Catholic High School that studies have shown that gays and lesbians are not born with same-sex attractions.

She also reportedly said that children in single-parent homes have a greater chance of becoming homosexual.

The sister also suggested there were correlations between masturbation and homosexuality, according to students who were at her talk at the North Carolina school.

The president of Aquinas College, where Sr Jane Dominic teaches, said in a statement that her fellow Dominican went too far in parts of her talk.

Sr Mary Sarah wrote that Sr Jane Dominic "spoke clearly on matters of faith and morals", and called her qualified to do so as a theologian trained at a Pontifical University - a school established or approved by the Vatican.

But, the president wrote, "her deviation into realms of sociology and anthropology was beyond the scope of her expertise".

Sr Mary Sarah acknowledged the harm the remarks had caused.

Sr Jane Dominic's remarks led some students to launch a petition that denounced her address as "offensive".

That prompted a counter-petition defending the Dominican as a faithful presenter of Catholic teaching.

On April 2, the school and the diocese held a meeting that drew nearly 1000 parents.

Most who rose to speak objected to Sr Jane Dominic's comments or to the school's failure to warn them in advance that she would lecture students on such sensitive topics.

Charlotte Catholic promised to better scrutinise future speakers and better communicate with parents ahead of time, said a diocesan spokesman.

But he said in a statement to Lifesitenews that nothing in the sister's talk opposed Catholic teaching and she would be welcome to speak in the diocese in future.

The school's chaplain said he invited Sr Jane Dominic to give an address because he felt students at Charlotte Catholic had been poorly catechised and were suffering from spiritual darkness, particularly around the issue of sexuality.

Sources

• Charlotte Observer
• Huffington Post
• Lifesitenews
• Image: Bizpac Review

Feedback from Dublin and Tuam archdioceses reveals a distinct gap between Church teaching and practice.

Continue reading

"Well personally, I don't think they [the State] should. However, it's a matter of almost no significance because it just doesn't happen."

Whyte said that this was his are his views, not ACT views and not policies.

Asked by the New Zealand Herald to comment Whyte said he was "very opposed" to incest.

"I find it very distasteful I don't know why anybody would do it but it's a question of principle about whether or not people ought to interfere with actions that do no harm to third parties just because they personally wouldn't do it."

"I don't think the state should intervene in consensual adult sex or marriage, but there are two very important elements here - consensual and adult".

"I wonder who does believe the state should intervene in consensual adult acts?"

On Thursday, speaking on RadioLive Mr Whyte admitted he had regretted the comments published in an article on The Ruminator Website, because he had "let the Party down."

Source

• The Ruminator
• The New Zealand Herald
• The New Zealand Herald
• Image: 3News

AAP reports that deleting two proteins essential for sperm transport has been found to make male mice temporarily infertile .

"Our technique is good because it's not hormonal, so males won't be afraid to take it," Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences senior lecturer Dr Sab Ventura told the Herald Sun. Continue reading

"I was just catatonic," she said.

The shock turned into depression, as she began to mourn what she had lost. "I was a daddy's girl. I had a great childhood, and was the apple of my non-biological dad's eye. [I] adored my dad," said Blessing, a homeschooling mother of five, who lives in Tennessee.

"It really hurt to find out [my dad] wasn't mine in the way I thought he was," she said. "I grew up hearing about his dad being a cowboy. Everybody on dad's side of the family could tool leather like nobody…my grandmother, who is about to turn 100…they aren't mine anymore," she said.

Then, she began to mourn the loss of her biological father. "As much as my dad adored me, it hurts to know that the man who helped create me chose to have nothing to do with my life," said Blessing. "People are deceiving themselves if they think they can love somebody enough to make up for the person who isn't there."

She had never suffered from depression before, and her husband, an evangelical pastor, had no experience in dealing with an issue quite like this one.

Blessing was finally told her conception story due to concerns she had over her dad's failing health from progressive supranuclear palsy, a condition similar to Parkinson's disease. Once in robust health, her father was having an array of physical and cognitive problems, and his health appeared to decline more with each visit. Was Blessing genetically disposed to this disease? Would her husband have to take care of her the same way her mother now had to take care of her father? Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: examiner.com

He believes NCC wasn't asked about the matter because those involved feared what the answer would be.

News about the condoms reached him via a reporter who telephoned from Australia.

Ono has asked NCC chairman Kasiano Leaupepe for the issue to be discussed so that a joint statement can be issued on the matter.

NCC membership consists of the mainstream churches.

Source

• Talamuaonline
• Image: Talamuaonline

The documents were launched in Suva last Thursday by the President of Fiji, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau.

Both documents recommend openness and willingness to speak out on these sensitive issues.

Faith based organisations have welcomed the two documents as a guide for them to use in responding to HIV in their communities and congregations.

The chairman of Interfaith Search Fiji, Jalal Ud Dean, said there were common interests in their collective meetings on the church to take a leading role in combating HIV and AIDS.

"When this initiative was taken up, Interfaith was very much part of it from the beginning," he said.

The use of condoms is widely accepted by churches in Fiji for preventing the spread of the diseases says Dean.

"Even though some faith groups discouraged the use of artificial contraceptives but in terms of the sickness it is a different story."

Dean say "We found that 19 faith groups have commonality as they share the same platform in terms of not encouraging sexual activities out of wedlock."

"Even though some faith groups discouraged the use of artificial contraceptives but in terms of the sickness it is a different story."

He said this was a debatable topic in their monthly meetings as it was a very sensitive issue.

Interfaith Search is an organisation comprising 16 different religious groups that aims to find commonalities for the national good.

Source

• The Fiji Times
• The Fiji Times
• Image: Stop HIV