Looking at them from a distance, not as an active participant, but knowing personally or professionally many of the speakers, has been an instructive experience which says a lot about the very different trajectories that two important churches in global Catholicism are taking.

The Italian gathering

On July 3-7, the Italian northeastern port city of Trieste hosted the "Social Weeks of Italian Catholics."

The first edition took place in Pistoia (Tuscany) in 1907, one of the landmark events in the history of the Catholic social movement, which responded to the call of Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891) to engage in social and economic questions created by modernity as well as capitalism and Communism.

They were organised by lay Catholics in collaboration with the bishops under the Vatican's watch and celebrated every few years in the last century, with two long suspensions.

These were during the Fascist regime and in the 1970s-1980s before they resumed in 1991, also thanks to the impulse given by St. John Paul II for a renewed energetic engagement of the institutional church in the public square.

At the heart of democracy

This year's meeting was titled "At the heart of democracy" ("Al cuore della democrazia") and presented a series of talks, seminars, and workshops on the role and responsibilities of Catholics in the present crisis of our democratic systems.

The president of the Italian bishops' conference, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, Italian President Sergio Mattarella, and Pope Francis were all in Trieste and spoke on the value of democracy, constitutionalism, and the Catholic view of migrants and refugees.

Public sessions were held by recognized experts in ecology, education, the justice system, artificial Intelligence, poverty, and the welfare state.

But there were also biblical lectures, and every day started with the celebration of Mass.

The congress concluded July 7 with a Eucharistic concelebration in the city's main square in the Pope's presence. The event kept Francis' emphasis on social Catholicism very much in mind.

Earlier in the day, the Pope delivered a powerful speech on the relationship between the church in Italy and democracy, in which he said:

"In Italy, the democratic system matured after World War II, also thanks to the decisive contribution of Catholics. You can be proud of this history."

Francis also reminded Italian Catholics of the political nature of their faith:

"As Catholics, we cannot be satisfied with a marginal or private faith. This means not so much being listened to but, above all, having the courage to make proposals for justice and peace in the public debate.

"We have something to say but not to defend privileges. No. We must be a voice; a voice that denounces and proposes in an often voiceless society where too many have no voice."

The US gathering

A different kind of Catholicism is on display at the July 17-21 National Eucharistic Congress organised by the US bishops' conference in Indianapolis.

As part of the "Eucharistic Revival" that started in 2022, it is also a response to the reported crisis of faith in the "real presence," but also a follow-up to the failed attempt (thwarted by the Vatican in 2021) by some hardline US bishops to politicise the Eucharist.

The Indianapolis congress represents a very different style of ecclesial event: not only because of the exorbitant costs to participate in a series of sessions that include professionally staged business-like performances.

The programme is a different kind of Catholic show that includes exhibits on the National Shroud of Turin and Eucharistic miracles, prayers for healing, worship with a Christian singer and songwriter in a rock-concert-like gathering, and Eucharistic adoration.

It concludes on the last day with "Family Rosary Across America" and a closing liturgy with the papal delegate, to whom Francis sent a letter in Latin praising the event.

A church open to modernity

Both these two national Catholic events speak about the culture and spirituality of many church members, myself included.

Born in an environment influenced by Vatican II Catholicism that tended to be allergic to traditional devotions, I rediscovered Eucharistic spirituality during my years as an extraordinary Eucharistic minister while serving as a youth minister.

In each and every local church, one finds a lot of both Trieste and Indianapolis in different mixtures: social and devotional Catholicism.

However, these two events also testify to the different directions that institutional Catholicism is taking in two important countries to shape the global church.

Trieste connects the roots of the Church's social doctrine of the late 19th century with 21st-century challenges: democratic backsliding, new forms of work and social relations, the environmental crisis, and AI.

It's a Church open to modernity, in a cultural posture that benefits from both Catholic tradition and the Enlightenment, proud of its contribution to the post-war reconstruction of Europe, and still optimistic about the collaboration with non-Catholic and non-religious fellow human beings.

It tries to feed and serve the souls and bodies of Catholics through the mind.

Indianapolis is more about the heart

It's a mix between traditional Catholic devotionalism and the present mix between dominance of emotions and the media (both old and new).

It's part of the "clash of emotions," a further stage, now at the intra-American level, of what political scientist Samuel Huntington called 30 years ago "the clash of civilizations" in the post-Cold War world.

But it's also another stage in the Americanisation of US Catholicism, a later borrowing phase from American Protestant Evangelicalism's focus on the heart and sense of re-enchantment for those alienated by modernity.

It encourages experience over reflective thought, the movements of the heart over the life of the mind.

In Indianapolis, the liturgical and devotional emphasis is much stronger, not only because of the very nature of the event, a Eucharistic congress.

It's a mix of ultra- or post-modern and anti-modern ritual culture, mixing Christian rock and the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass (diplomatically called in the programme "Mass According to the 1962 Missal").

It's deeply political by staying away from political issues that divide U.S. Catholics concerning the common good.

Its devotionalism reflects an anti-intellectualism that feeds on the estrangement between devotional Catholicism and the academic elites (including Catholic theologians).

It magnifies the divorce between high culture and organised religion, which has become increasingly attracted to and changed by the media and social media.

It is also an event in which the U.S. bishops invested a lot (not just money) as leaders of a Church that is less affected by Europe because of a lack of clerical and religious vocations.

It is by no means untouched by secularisation.

Still, U.S. Catholicism can count on a spiritual thirst and religious anxiety that is more difficult to find in Europe — at least in the Catholic Church.

It is difficult in the United States to talk about the Eucharistic Revival and the National Eucharistic Congress.

That's because any criticism is seen as criticism of the Eucharist or of Jesus himself — almost by wrapping into the Body of Christ a "culture war" issue such as access to the sacrament of Catholic Democrats such as President Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. But this discussion is for another time.

The big question for Catholicism at both the universal and local levels is how to make them learn the best that each has to offer and collaborate in mission and evangelisation.

What is worth pointing out at this moment, a crossroads both for global Catholicism (the second assembly of the Synod on synodality of October 2024) and the United States (the presidential election of November 5, 2024, where Catholics play an important role), is how different two key churches in the Catholic communion can be.

Both are part of the European-Western world; both have inherited the social and liturgical tradition developed by papal and episcopal teaching; both have been active in the reception and implementation of the Second Vatican Council.

But looking at Trieste and Indianapolis, the impression is of two different churches going in different directions.

It's more than two different ecclesiastical-institutional systems, different clerical cultures, and different bishops' conferences.

Trieste and Indianapolis represent the ideal types of two different ecclesial DNAs, reacting differently to the signs of the times.

The big question for Catholics at both the universal and local levels is how to make them learn the best each has to offer and collaborate in mission and evangelisation.

• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and a columnist for La Croix International.

Here are seven facts about American Catholics and their church. Continue reading

Older catholics will remember that Pierre served as the secretary at the Nunciature in New Zealand.

He came to New Zealand in 1977. It was his first appointment after he joined the Vatican's diplomatic service.

A polyglot, he speaks English and Spanish fluently. He is "a pastor", known for his "humility and simplicity" and is "excellent on all fronts", a source who knows him well confided.

A fellow nuncio described him as "a thoughtful, hardworking man", and "good listener" with "a great sense of fairness and balanced judgment."

Gifted with a good sense of humor and a deep voice, the new nuncio can captivate an audience.

According to The Vision, Uganda's leading daily, he is a man who goes among the people, is ready to help anyone regardless of status.

Born in Rennes, France on January 30, 1946, he spent the greater part of his childhood and early education in Africa, mainly in Madagascar, with some years in Malawi, Zimbabwe and one in Morocco.

He entered the seminary of Saint-Yves in Rennes at the age of 17, but interrupted his studies to do his two-years of military service (1965-'66).

Source

• lastampa.it
  
• Image:4.bp.blogspot.com

But according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. Catholics and others, an additional one-in-ten American adults (9%) consider themselves Catholic or partially Catholic in other ways, even though they do not self-identify as Catholic on the basis of religion.

Who are these "cultural Catholics"?

Often, they think of themselves as Catholic in one way or another even though many belong to another faith tradition (such as Protestantism). Others are religiously unaffiliated, identifying as atheist, agnostic or simply "nothing in particular."

Most of these cultural Catholics (62%) say that for them personally, being Catholic is mainly a matter of ancestry and/or culture (rather than religion).

But majorities also point to religious beliefs and teachings as key parts of their Catholic identity. For example, 60% of cultural Catholics say that having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is essential to what being Catholic means to them. Likewise, 57% say the same about believing in Jesus' resurrection.

A similar share (59%) say that working to help the poor and needy is essential to their Catholicism.

Sizable minorities of cultural Catholics also participate in some of the church's rituals.

For instance, about a third of cultural Catholics (32%) say they attend Mass at least once a year, and roughly a quarter (26%) say they receive Holy Communion at least sometimes when they attend Mass.

A third (33%) say they gave something up or did something extra for Lent this year, and about four-in-ten (41%) say it would be important to them to receive the sacrament of the anointing of the sick (sometimes part of "last rites") if they were seriously ill.

Roughly two-thirds of cultural Catholics (65%) were raised Catholic or had at least one Catholic parent.

And about six-in-ten (62%) of these cultural Catholics who have immediate family connections to Catholicism say that this family background is the reason for their link to the Catholic faith. Continue reading

Sources

• Pew Research Center, from an article by David Masci, a senior writer/editor at Pew Research Center, where he is the in-house expert on church-state issues, culture war issues, and religion and science.
• Image: The Atlantic

Today, when the Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, for example, insists that Muslim immigrants ‘want to use our freedoms to undermine… freedom', it can be easy to forget that for most of US history, Catholicism, not Islam, was the bogeyman against which Americans defined themselves as a free, noble and (some have said) ‘chosen' people.

It was a desire to get away from what the English Puritan Samuel Mather in 1672 called ‘the manifold Apostasies, Heresies, and Schisms of the Church of Rome' that drove the Puritans to Massachusetts in the 1620s and '30s.

They believed that the Church of England was tainted by the remnants of Catholic theology, and they thought these ‘popish relics' destroyed the freedom people needed in order to accept salvation from God.

Because Americans held onto this Puritan understanding of Catholicism for centuries, the idea that the founding of Massachusetts had been a bold bid for ‘freedom' became an almost religious truth.

Even though people were actually executed and banished in colonial Massachusetts because they held ideas about religion that were considered ‘newe & dangerous', schoolchildren still learn this myth in US classrooms.

In 1774, John Adams felt sorry for the Catholics he observed at a mass in Philadelphia. The ‘poor wretches,' the future US president told his wife, were ‘fingering their beads [and] chanting in Latin, not a word of which they understood'.

A century later, the cartoonist Thomas Nast was less sympathetic on the pages of Harper's Weekly. Nast's Catholics in the 1860s and '70s were violent and drunk ‘Paddys' and ‘Bridgets' too ignorant to think for themselves and dominated by priests who worked to obliterate the separation between church and state. Continue reading

Sources

• Aeon
• Image: The Skibbereen Eagle

That's what New York magazine writer Lisa Miller wrote of Archbishop Cupich, who has, she said, a "heart for the poor".

"People who know Cupich say he has a particular genius for bridging gaps between rich and poor," Miller wrote.

He could also "model ways to address the agonising national problem of income inequality".

Archbishop-elect Cupich's fans say his brilliance comes from a deep understanding of Catholicism as a unifying force, and not a splintering one.

As Bishop of Spokane, he took off his collar once a week to work anonymously in a soup kitchen.

He is said to know the names of hundreds of the homeless men and women who live in and around Spokane.

He also celebrated Mass with hundreds of undocumented migrant workers in the wake of the wildfires there last summer.

"He drove three hours, and said an outdoor Mass at a camp. Then he stayed for hours afterward," a Spokane diocese spokesman said.

But he was also able to get alongside wealthy Catholics, who might not have agreed with all his actions, and convince them to make substantial contributions to good causes.

In Spokane, he also reduced the diocese's debt from US$4million, when he arrived in 2010, to US$150,000.

He played his part by living on a seminary campus and owning no furniture.

In 2012, Chicago archdiocese ran a deficit of more than US$70 million.

In Spokane, he also encouraged local Catholic Charities to sign up as many poor people as possible to the Obamacare health coverage plan.

He said he was chosen for Chicago "to serve the needs of the people", and characterised his role more as "pastor" than as "messenger".

Pope Francis made similar points in a message this month to US Catholic Charities that "No one is to be a ‘leftover' [and] no one is to be ‘excluded' from God's love and from our care".

Pope Francis said that like the Good Samaritan and Innkeeper in the Bible, "we are called to be in the ‘streets' inviting and serving those who have been left out".

The Pope concluded: "We are called to be a Church, a people of and for the poor".

Sources

• Fortune
• Vatican Radio
• Image: National Catholic Reporter