Basically, it means you risk losing your faith when you go to the Eternal City.

It's certainly a phrase that was bantered about during the 16th century when Martin Luther (an Augustinian friar from Germany), John Calvin (a theologian from France), and John Knox (a priest from Scotland) - Roman Catholics one and all - became leaders of various movements to reform a Church they saw as corrupt and worldly, one that had drifted far away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Of course, the senior hierarchs in the papal court at that time saw things somewhat differently and these "Catholic reformers" ended up breaking with Rome (actually the pope excommunicated them), cementing what has since been known as the Reformation - the Protestant Reformation.

The deep divisions - and religious wars - that followed, fractured Western Christianity to the point that Roman Catholicism and the new Reform Church communities became entrenched in a sectarian mentality over time.

Rome and the "restoration" of Church unity

The pontificate of John XXIII (1959-63), and the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) that he convoked, brought to fruition the efforts that some Church leaders and theologians, both from Catholicism and the Reform tradition, had been working on during the previous decades to promote unity in the one Church of Jesus Christ.

The Vatican, and the rest of Roman Catholicism, suddenly became committed to the ecumenical movement in a way that the Bishop of Rome and those in communion with him had never been before.

Despite Vatican II, which is considered the most monumental event in the Christian Church since the 16th century Reformation, the ecclesial community in Rome has been cautious in how it promotes the "restoration" of the Church's unity, as the Vatican II decree on ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio, called it.

The unfunny joke often repeated during the pontificate of John Paul II was that the Vatican's form of ecumenism was "you-come-in-ism".

In other words, the other Christian denominations should just "return" to Rome and submit to the leadership of the Roman Pontiff.

Pope Francis has changed that, but - ironically - without undertaking any major ecumenical initiatives, at least at the institutional level.

It is difficult to call to mind any groundbreaking events or projects the Dicastery (formerly Pontifical Council) for Promoting Christian Unity has sponsored to help hasten the "restoration" of Church unity.

Its officials continue to participate in the dialogues with other parts of the fractured Church that were established decades ago, but their Vatican office has not done much else.

A focus on the "peripheries"

Francis, on the other hand, has often met individually with leaders of other parts of the Church not in communion with Rome.

He even went to Sweden in 2016 to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in a gesture of friendship and show of at least partial Church unity with Christians of what can now rightly be called the Reform tradition.

And the Jesuit pope's concerted effort to focus on the Church in the "peripheries" has played a role in helping Catholics (and others) to begin taking a healthy distance from Rome and the unhealthy obsession with all things Vatican.

Another irony, however, is that this has somewhat increased the (also) unhealthy idolisation (or at least idealisation) of the Roman pope!

The Synod

Hopefully, the upcoming two-pronged assembly of the Synod of Bishops will, despite its being held at the Vatican, further help Catholics and Christians of other denominations see that a balance can be struck vis-à-vis the role that Rome and its bishop play within the one, though still divided Church.

The first of the assembly's two sessions (the second is twelve or so months from now) gets underway on October 4th.

It will be prefaced a few days earlier with a large ecumenical prayer vigil in St. Peter's Square, followed by a three-day retreat for the 400-some participants of the month-long Synod gathering.

The aim of this assembly, which was carefully prepared over the past two years through consultations with Catholics all over the world in all walks of life, is to prayerfully discern where the Holy Spirit is calling the Church today.

It is crucial that those who will be at the assembly are aware that there is no future for a divided Christianity.

If the focus is only on the Roman Church (and just those Christian communities in communion with it), this will be another waste of time, because Rome and the Vatican are no longer the center of the Christian or even more narrowly defined "Catholic Church" universe.

It should be clear by now that this is one of the major things that has shifted in the Church during the ten-year pontificate of Pope Francis.

• Robert Mickens is La Croix International's Editor in Chief. He had lived ed, studied and worked in Rome for 30 years.
• First published in La Croix International. Republished with permission.

I have always been a rule follower: I liked wearing uniforms at my all-girls Catholic schools, and I get annoyed when the priest goes off-book saying some of the prayers during Mass.

I even enjoy the Latin Mass, at least during the few times I have attended.

So this realisation, which I had soon after I started working at America, surprised me: The church needs (more) women in the hierarchy of the Vatican and its decision-making processes.

Again, I usually do not call for big changes or support radical ideas.

If the church has worked this way for 2,000 years, I used to think, who are we to change it now?

But then I ended up working in an organisation that is mostly male, and I realised that for the first time, I was a minority. (America Media has more women and lay staff than it did a decade ago. But there are still more men than women.)

Up until a few months ago, every religious space I had ever been in was mostly or all female.

The religious authorities I knew (outside of my parish priest) were all women, and from what I saw, they never felt the need to have their decisions validated by men.

I went to a small all-girls Catholic school from fourth to eighth grade, then I attended a slightly larger all-girls Catholic high school.

My university's student body skewed mostly female (nearly 60 percent), and the Catholic studies program I was in had an even more pronounced majority of women.

Thus, almost every religious conversation I had with leaders or peers or family, was initiated by women who were not afraid to speak their minds on church teaching or anything else.

I never really considered the role of women at the Vatican.

In my mind, the authority that Sister Mary Thomas, or my lay teachers, had behind school gates extended to the wider church. Who would dare to tell Sister Mary Thomas that her opinion is not welcome on church governance?

Now as a woman, I am part of a minority at America, and yet I am working in a religious space that is otherwise familiar to me. I find it strange, though it is probably normal for working women in the rest of the world, to have life experiences that are different than, and perhaps not fully understood by, my male colleagues.

Some examples: I would avoid going to the halal cart outside my apartment alone after about 9 p.m. (the man who works there is a little too friendly with the women in my building).

I would not think to go on a walk when it's dark out, nor would I be comfortable sending a friend home late at night by herself. Some of these could be attributed to my self-ascribed status as "mom friend": the person who acts in a quintessential "mom" way, slightly overprotective and responsible for others.

But the fact is that as a woman, I react to personal safety issues in a different way than men do.

What does this have to do with running the church? Continue reading

Moneyval arrived at the Vatican on Sept. 30 for the next phase of a regular multi-year evaluation of the institution's compliance with European financial regulations.

Meetings with the Moneyval committee were "held in a constructive and cooperative atmosphere," the Vatican said Oct. 13, calling the inspection "a further important step of the evaluation process."

The purpose of this stage of the inspection was to judge the effectiveness of the Vatican and Holy See's legislation and procedures for combating money laundering and terrorism financing. A big part of that effectiveness comes down to how successful the Vatican has been at prosecuting these crimes in court.

Read More

Helping these people is not a form of socialism, it's Church teaching.

Zampini says the Church's advocacy for the poor has resulted in some people accusing it of being socialists.

"Our answer is": ‘So, some companies are asking for help, and that's not socialism, but if poor people or informal workers need help, that's socialism?'

"This is not about ideology. This is not about socialism or capitalism."

"All the structures of society are being challenged at the moment. What we are trying to implement is the preferential option for the poor. That's one of the basic principles, and it is an ethical imperative according to Laudato Si," Zampini says.

Zampini, who is an adjunct secretary in the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, says while all proposals have complications, including providing a universal basic income, "we need to do something."

"We cannot remain indifferent, and these people cannot be invisible for society."

He pointed out that at present "millions of people" are losing their jobs.

While some people's needs are covered by the market and others receive unemployment insurance from the state, "what happens to those millions of people who aren't covered by either the market or the state?"

They are being forced by the pandemic to stay at home.

Zampini says one person told him that if he stayed home without working, his family risked dying of hunger, but going out meant he could also be infected or that he could infect someone else.

"We cannot force them to stay at home…without any support," Zampini says.

He echoes Pope Francis's call for a universal basic income.

"It has its pros and cons, but if you weigh these pros and cons today, there's no doubt we should do something, at least if we want to promote health for everyone.

"We need to sustain those who are doing something for society such as staying home."

The Vatican's coronavirus taskforce is charged with handling the challenges resulting from the pandemic.

Led by Cardinal Peter Turkson of the Vatican's development department, five working groups are looking at different aspects of the pandemic fallout, including unemployment and research.

Tying the Church's response to the pandemic fallout to the papal encyclical, Laudato Si', Turkson says "We listen to the cry of creation and the cry of the poor."

Zampini also points out that the world is facing a severe food shortage, which could cause violent conflicts to arise due to insecurity, creating an even larger class of those living in poverty.

"The value of society is determined by how it treats its most vulnerable members," he says.

Helping poor and jobless people affected by COVID-19 is, "an opportunity to change, both in production and consumption patterns and in private and public actions."

Source

• Crux
• Image:SBS