This is a setback for transgender people who had hoped Pope Francis might be setting the stage for a more welcoming approach from the Catholic Church.

World Religions

Around the world, major religions have diverse approaches to gender identity, and the inclusion or exclusion of transgender people.

Some examples:

Christianity

The Catholic Church's disapproving stance toward gender transition is shared by some other denominations.

For example, the Southern Baptist Convention - the largest Protestant denomination in the United States - adopted a resolution in 2014 stating that "God's design was the creation of two distinct and complementary sexes, male and female."

It asserts that gender identity "is determined by biological sex, not by one's self-perception"

However, numerous mainline Protestant denominations welcome trans people as members and as clergy.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America elected an openly transgender man as a bishop in 2021.

Islam

In Islam, there isn't a single central religious authority and policies can vary in different regions.

Abbas Shouman, secretary-general of Al-Azhar's Council of Senior Scholars in Cairo, said that "for us, … sex conversion is completely rejected.

"It is God who has determined the … sex of the fetus and intervening to change that is a change of God's creation, which is completely rejected," Shouman added.

In Iran, the Shiite theocracy's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a religious decree, or fatwa, decades ago, opening the way for official support for gender transition surgery.

Hinduism

In Hindu society in South Asia, while traditional roles were and are still prescribed for men and women, people of non-binary gender expression have been recognised for millennia and played important roles in holy texts.

Third gender people have been revered throughout South Asian history with many rising to significant positions of power under Hindu and Muslim rulers.

One survey in 2014 estimated that around 3 million third gender people live in India alone.

Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu scriptures, has the vocabulary to describe three genders - masculine, feminine and gender-neutral.

The most common group of third gender people in India are known as the "hijras." While some choose to undergo gender reassignment surgery, others are born intersex. Most consider themselves neither male or female.

Some Hindus believe third gender people have special powers and the ability to bless or curse, which has led to stereotyping causing the community to be feared and marginalised.

Many live in poverty without proper access to healthcare, housing and employment.

In 2014, India, Nepal and Bangladesh, which is a Muslim-majority country, officially recognised third gender people as citizens deserving of equal rights.

The Supreme Court of India stated that "it is the right of every human being to choose their gender," and that recognition of the group "is not a social or medical issue, but a human rights issue."

Buddhism

Buddhism has traditionally adhered to binary gender roles, particularly in its monastic traditions where men and women are segregated and assigned specific roles.

These beliefs remain strong in the Theravada tradition, as seen in the attempt of the Thai Sangha Council, the governing Buddhist body in Thailand, to ban ordinations of transgender people.

More recently, the Theravada tradition has somewhat eased restrictions against gender nonconforming people by ordaining them in their sex recorded at birth.

However, the Mahayana, and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism have allowed more exceptions while the Jodo Shinshu sect has been even more inclusive in ordaining transgender monks both in Japan and North America.

In Tibetan Buddhism, Tashi Choedup, an openly queer monk, was ordained after their teacher refrained from asking about their gender identity as prescribed by Buddhist doctrine.

Many Buddhist denominations, particularly in the West, are intentionally inclusive of transgender people in their sanghas or gatherings.

Judaism

Reform Judaism is accepting of transgender people and allows for the ordination of trans rabbis.

According to David J. Meyer, who served for many years as a rabbi in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Jewish traditional wisdom allowed possibilities of gender identity and expression that differed from those typically associated with the sex assigned at birth.

"Our mystical texts, the Kabbalah, address the notion of transitioning from one gender to another," he wrote on a Reform-affiliated website.

It's different, for the most part, in Orthodox Judaism.

"Most transgender people will find Orthodox communities extremely difficult to navigate," says the Human Rights Campaign, a major U.S. LGBTQ-rights advocacy group.

"Transgender people are further constrained by Orthodox Judaism's emphasis on binary gender and strict separation between men and women," the HRC says.

"For example, a transgender person who has not medically transitioned poses a challenge for a rabbi who must decide whether that person will sit with men or women during worship."

Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel of America, wrote a blog post last year after appearing on an Israeli television panel to discuss transgender-related issues.

"There can be no denying that there are people who are deeply conflicted about their gender identities.

"They deserve to be safe from harm and, facing challenges the rest of us don't, deserve empathy and compassion," Shafran wrote.

"But the Torah and its extension, halacha, or Jewish religious law, are unequivocal about the fact that being born in a male body requires living the life of a man, and being born female entails living as a woman."

"In Judaism, each gender has its particular life-role to play," he added.

"The bodies God gave us are indications of what we are and what we are not, and of how He wants us to live our lives."

• First published in Religion News Service
• David Crary is an author at Religion News Service. Mariam Fam and Deepa Bharath are reporters with The Associated Press' global religion team.

Hai also invites them to attend Christmas parties at his home and enjoys their frequent visits. Many of them are his old fellow inmates.

"We attempt to build up harmonious relationships with one another and heal previous sharp divisions between Catholics and Buddhists," he said.

In 1963, Buddhists in Hue, started to stage protests against the South Vietnam government led by the late Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was assassinated at the end of that year. At first, they struggled for Buddhist activities and later for political goals.

They supported communist forces and fought against the US-backed southern government led by the late Catholic President Nguyen Van Thieu until communist forces seized control of Saigon, the south's capital, in April 1975.

As a result, the conflict aroused deep hostility between Catholics and Buddhists who kept a wary eye on and discriminated against one another for a long time, Hai said.

The 81-year-old, who has five children and 14 grandchildren, said many Catholics and Buddhists, including monks, were sent to jail and re-education camps by the communist government after the country was reunified in 1975.

They had no choice but to share food, tend to one another and live in harmony in the hope that they could survive and return home. Hai, who spent 18 months in a labour camp for having worked as a village official for the former South Vietnamese government, said he and old fellow inmates often hark back to their years in prison to sympathize with one another.

He said he is appreciative of the Buddhist inmates who saved him two times while at the camp. He got lost in a forest while collecting bamboo shoots and spent a night alone there. He could not find his way back to the camp until Buddhist inmates found him.

They also looked after him while he was suffering from malaria.

"Many followers of the two religions became close friends after they experienced hard times in the aftermath of the war," he said, adding that they had put the past behind them, respect their differences and live in peace.

An elderly priest, who used to serve as a chaplain, said countless religious facilities were confiscated and religious activities were restricted by the government.

The septuagenarian priest said many Catholics and Buddhists struggled together for religious freedom and rebuilt good relationships with one another by paying goodwill visits to one another during Christmas, Vesak and the Tet Lunar New Year.

He said since the government started revisionist policies and opened the door to the international community in the late 1980s, foreign NGOs have carried out development projects and followers of the two faiths are given opportunities to work together for the common good.

Sister Consolata Bui Thi Bong of the Daughters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception said Catholic and Buddhist nuns in 2001, for the first time, worked together to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among local communities and care for sufferers in Thua Thien Hue province through Nordic Assistance to Vietnam, a project funded by Norwegian Church Aid.

Sister Bong, head of the Catholic HIV Coordinating Committee, said although the project ended years ago, nuns from the two religions still continue their humanitarian services by caring for HIV/AIDS patients, working with victims of natural disasters, taking care of Covid-19 patients and training people in making herbal medicine.

Thich Nu Bich Chan, a nun from the Buddhist HIV Coordinating Committee, said they work with 200 patients and 112 orphans whose parents died of the disease.

She said Catholic and Buddhist volunteers also hold funerals and pray for the dead according to their creed.

"Active cooperation in giving material and spiritual support to people in need is an effective way to bring followers of different faiths closer together," Sister Bong, a former superior of the congregation, said.

Sister Mary Bui Thi Anh said during the prolonged Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of Catholic and Buddhist volunteers took care of patients at field hospitals, quarantine centres and clinics.

She said they worked harmoniously together and lent patients who were sunk in gloom and depression emotional support and great comfort and consequently many patients recovered and left the health facilities.

Lovers of the Holy Cross Sister Clare Tran Hoang Linh, from a community in Quang Tri province, said they worked with Buddhist nuns to dispense emergency aid to villagers whose crops were washed away during unseasonal floods in April. They offered 10 tonnes of rice and instant noodles to 800 households in Hai Lang and Trieu Phong districts.

"People, most of them Buddhists, were pleasantly surprised to see Catholic and Buddhist nuns together on boats, a moving image they caught after a gap of two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic," she said.

"We visit pagodas and have parties during the Vesak festival while Buddhist nuns also visit and offer us flowers at Christmas. We live in peace, treat one another as close friends and work for people's happiness."

• Thua Thien Hue is a UCANews.com reporter.
• First published in UCANews.com. Republished with permission.

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But Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said it wasn't a punishment.

Pongporn Pramsaneh, who joined the National Office of Buddhism in February, had vowed to reform Thailand's more than 40,000 temples.

He wanted to force them to open their finances to the public. They take billions of dollars in donations every year.

Despite high-profile temple scandals over murder, drugs and sex as well as improper financial dealings, Pongporn's call for change had jarred on some monks.

A group called the Thailand Buddhists Federation submitted a petition to the prime minister's office this month, calling for Pongporn to be removed to "prevent further damage to monks".

"He painted monks as villains in Thai people's eyes," the group's secretary-general, Korn Meedee, said in a statement on Facebook.

In July, another Buddhist group had called for Pongporn's removal, saying he had damaged the Buddhist institution.

The former policeman was appointed amid a standoff between security forces and the influential Dhammakaya temple in February.

Thai security forces besieged the Dhammakaya Temple to try to catch its former abbot, wanted for questioning on money laundering.

They failed to catch him and he is still on the run.

The prime minister said Pongporn had "got some of the jobs done. He came in to solve temple issues."

"I'll now bring him close to me, to help me work on religious reform... This is not a punishment."

But Phra Buddha Issara, a monk who has called for reform of Buddhism, said the junta gave in to pressure too easily given government promises to fight corruption.

Source

• Business Insider
• Image: Bangkok Post

A European bishop was visiting Tokyo, and the then-young priest was assigned to be his tour guide for a day.

In the morning, they went to the Ginza shopping district and spent time exploring department stores.

The bishop was impressed at how up-to-date everything seemed and praised Japan for its embrace of Western modernity.

In the afternoon, they visited Tokyo's oldest Buddhist temple, Senso-ji, which dates back to 645 A.D., though the present buildings are replacements of those that burned down in World War II bombing raids that destroyed most of Tokyo.

The temple, more commonly known as Asakusa Kannon, is one of the most-visited spiritual sites in the world, with some 30 million people coming each year.

Most of them are probably tourists, and when I take visitors there, I get the impression that most of those tourists are Chinese.

The bishop's response to what he saw was critical of the temple, its devotees (few, if any, tourists back then) and what went on there, saying it was all paganism and demon worship.

The priest replied, "This morning, I took you to the temples of Mammon, and you praised them. Now, I've taken you to a place where my people have come for centuries for spiritual reasons, and you call it evil!"

That one sentence epitomizes why the church can be, must be and is engaged in exploring the meaning of religious pluralism for the mission of Christianity today.

Many years later, when I was reassigned to Japan after more than a decade away, I asked a friend, a Japanese layman who had studied theology, if he had any advice for me now that I was back in Japan.

"Yeah. Don't get into religious archeology."

I asked what he meant, and he explained that in response to the new emphasis on interreligious sharing, increasing numbers of Christians in Japan, including foreign missionaries, study Buddhism and engage in Christianized Zen meditation. Continue reading

• Father William Grimm, MM, is publisher of ucanews.com and is based in Tokyo.

Myanmar's semi-civilian government has lifted restrictions on freedom of speech, association and media, but reforms have been accompanied by a rise in Buddhist nationalism.

The main target of the nationalist movement has been Muslims, who make up about 5 percent of Myanmar's 53 million people.

Sectarian violence since June 2012 has killed at least 240 people, most of them Muslims.

Parliament is due to debate laws, including regulations on religious conversions and interfaith marriages, which were initially proposed by a Committee to Protect Race and Religion, one of the main Buddhist nationalist groups associated with Wirathu an anti-Muslim movement in Myanmar

Myanmar's population is about 90% Buddhist, and many influential monks believe the sentence is just.

"If the judge sentenced him to less than he should get, there could be more and more insults to the religion," says U Pamauka, a Buddhist monk.

In an editorial Wellington's DomPost said:

"Buddhism has a deserved reputation as a religion of peace, and Buddhist monks were behind the 2007 Saffron Revolution that helped push Myanmar's military junta towards promising reforms."

"But Buddhism in Myanmar has an oppressive strain that is on the rise. It is showing in the persecution of the country's Muslim minority, the chilling of free speech and the rise of inflammatory religious leaders."

"It seems Blackwood's case connects to all this - such prosecutions have been rare till now, and hardline monks gathered to watch the sentencing. Observers fear more witch hunts."

Blackwood grew up in Wellington and attended Victoria University where he studied engineering.

He had lived in Yangon previously but returned to New Zealand for 12 months last year.

His first child, a daughter named Sasha, was born in Wellington in August.

Blackwood and his partner Noemi Almo returned to Yangon to live last October.

His parents, Brian and Angela live in Tawa, just north of Wellington.

Source

• Huffington Post/Reuters
• TVNZ
• New Zealand Herald
• Image: givealittle.co.nz

Willemijn Vermaat was detained by authorities early last Friday morning but was later released.

Cambodian authorities earlier said there was no direct evidence that Ms Vermaat was responsible for destroying the statue but she confirmed to APNZ today that she had. Continue reading

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This show of generosity has been warmly welcomed by the Church.

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To address this, the Council has started to provide advice to hospitals on how to contact Buddhist clergy in their area when they have a patient in need.

In the future, the Council hopes that every hospital in New Zealand will have access to a Buddhist chaplain trained to work with the sick and dying. Continue reading

Ashin Issariya appears unassuming, but the quiet demeanour quickly changes when he has something to say. In the pre-dawn light of Burma's nascent reform process the Buddhist monk and former Saffron Revolution leader isn't afraid to say what others won't, even if it seems to put him at odds with his own.

Based in the country's commercial capital, Rangoon, Issariya helped lead thousands of monks to challenge the former military regime in 2007, a choice that cost him nearly five years as a political prisoner. Now he heads up a grassroots organisation made up of different religious leaders opposed to the new 969 movement.

‘The real message of the 969 is not to attack other religions, but some monks are using it like a shield,' he said. Many would like to denounce it but hesitate because it is ‘the real teaching of the Buddha'.

The numbers represent the ‘three crown jewels': the nine attributes of Buddha; the six attributes of his teachings; and the nine attributes of the monastic order known as the sangha. Continue reading.

Brennan O'Connor is a Canadian photojournalist who has been documenting the lives of Burma's ethnic nationalities since 2008.

Source: New Internationalist

Image: Ashin Wirathu who has spent time in jail for inciting violence against Muslims, Brennan O'Connor

But any Christian who does apologetics must think about comparative religions because the most popular of all objections against the claims of Christianity today comes from this field. The objection is not that Christianity is not true but that it is not the truth; not that it is a false religion but that it is only a religion. The world is a big place, the objector reasons; "different strokes for different folks". How insufferably narrow-minded to claim that Christianity is the one true religion! God just has to be more open-minded than that.

This is the single most common objection to the Faith today, for "today" worships not God but equality. It fears being right where others are wrong more than it fears being wrong. It worships democracy and resents the fact that God is an absolute monarch. It has changed the meaning of the word honor from being respected because you are superior in some way to being accepted because you are not superior in any way but just like us. The one unanswerable insult, the absolutely worst name you can possibly call a person in today's society, is "fanatic", especially "religious fanatic". If you confess at a fashionable cocktail party that you are plotting to overthrow the government, or that you are a PLO terrorist or a KGB spy, or that you molest porcupines or bite bats' heads off, you will soon attract a buzzing, fascinated, sympathetic circle of listeners. But if you confess that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, you will find yourself suddenly alone, with a distinct chill in the air.

Here are twelve of the commonest forms of this objection, the odium of elitism, with answers to each. Continue reading

Sources

• The Integrated Catholic Life
• Image: Christianity vs Catholicism

The welcome was followed by a discussion on Maori beliefs at the University of Otago Clocktower Building.

On Monday, in Christchurch, the Dalai Lama had a meeting with the New Zealand Youth Representatives of the Council for a Parliament of World Religions. While he gave his support for their work, His Holiness stressed that attaining inter-religious harmony requires us to be active.

"Religion is about cultivating a more peaceful mind, so it's very disappointing if religion becomes a source of conflict," His Holiness told the group.

His Holiness spoke to 12 parliamentarians from different parties, reflecting the diverse 120-person Parliament. The topic of discussion quickly centered on Tibet's relationship with China. His Holiness spoke out against censorship and explained that the judicial system must be raised to international standards.

Source

• TheTibetPost
• Image: TVNZ

Empty handed I entered
The world
Barefoot I leave it
My coming, my going —
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

Seigan paused outside one of the identical doors of the neurological unit, marked only with a number. He mulled over the words of the poem, letting them mingle, listening to their rhythm, refocusing. He was tired but not exhausted, nearing the end of his hospital shift. He straightened his dark scrubs and ran his hand over his clean-shaven head before adjusting his glasses.

As he entered the room he met a scent of flowers. The night lights of the city spilled in through the window and 57-year-old Cleo (as she was named in her hospital transcript), her head heavily bandaged, held out her hand to greet him. Her long, dark hair was streaked with grey and she lay propped up in her hospital bed.

"You're the Buddhist chaplain aren't you? I've been waiting for you," she said. "Please sit down. Do you have some time for me?"

"Of course," Seigan said, taking a seat next to her. "Tell me how you're doing, how you're feeling right now."

Cleo was admitted to the hospital after suffering a major seizure one day while doing her laundry. A brain biopsy a few weeks later revealed a glioblastoma, an aggressive and malignant form of brain cancer. The surgeon laid out the prognosis, cut and dried: she had less than three months to live. He urged her to go ahead with surgery and a chemotherapy follow-up. It would give her perhaps an extra nine months to a year, he said, but ultimately the cancer was terminal. Cleo explained how, despite her initial reaction to let nature take its course, she felt she should go ahead with the surgery for the sake of her 87-year-old mother, who was devastated by the diagnosis.

Seigan listened carefully.

"Can I challenge you for a little bit?" he asked. "What do you really want?" Continue reading

Sources

• The Atlantic
• Image: Sir Tony Baldry

Leonard Cohen's autumnal years have been afflicted, and his writing nuanced, by more than a simple awareness of his own mortality. The Canadian singer-songwriter spent most of the 1990s in a Zen monastery in California, during which time his manager (and former lover) Kelley Lynch siphoned off several million dollars' worth of earnings, mostly from the sale of his publishing company to Sony. Not being particularly astute in such matters, it took Cohen several years to work out what had happened, by which time he was facing a severely diminished bank account and a rather larger tax bill.

The resulting legal squabbles no doubt sapped Cohen's creative powers, and used up even more of his diminished funds. That Lynch was ordered to pay him back was little consolation — she hasn't done so, and is now in prison for harassing him. Yet Cohen was able to cast a ruefully theological spin on events and all the time he was forced to spend in other people's offices. As he put it to one Canadian journalist in 2009: ‘If God wants to bore you to death, I guess that's His business.' Such, we might think, is the wisdom of Cohen. His music has always awakened impulses in his devotees to see him as some sort of mentor for the melancholic. But this impulse took a new twist once Cohen's own fortunes looked bleak: what would, or could, he do in the face of this personal crisis?

The reality, of course, was that Cohen needed to find some cash. His output had never been prolific (he has released a dozen studio albums in a 45-year recording career) and, in any case, his critical acclaim has never been matched in sales figures. Where he had always been able to turn a respectable profit was through live shows, though he hadn't toured since the early 1990s. Through necessity rather than any particular inclination, Cohen went back on the road. Continue reading

Sources

• Tim Footman in Aeon Magazine
• Image: The Telegraph

Ban Jabok-Ban Nong Leg templein the northeatern Surin province is now trying to send a message by making Buddha hold an iPad in their next statue, says The Bangkok Post:

Traditionally, Phra Sivali, a pose of the Buddha, carries a walking stick, an umbrella and a bowl, and is worshipped for those seeking love, luck and prosperity.

But the one to be built by the temple will have one hand carrying the umbrella — and the other one clutches one of the innovative best sellers launched by the late Steve Jobs instead of the stick.

This might seem like an attention grabbing gimmick, and let's face it, it kind of is. But the message the temple wants to send is good and forward-facing: they want to stress that monks need to embrace the technology of the modern world in getting their message across.

"Monks have to catch up with the changes and use those gadgets like the iPad to lure the new generation to the temple. Monks can use them to teach Dhamma to those who live their life with new communication technologies," a spokesman of the temple said.

Source: Bangkok Post

"As Buddhists you pass on to young people the wisdom regarding the need to refrain from harming others and to live lives of generosity and compassion," said Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican's head of inter-religious dialogue.

He said this aspect of Buddhist education was "a precious gift to society".

"Today, in more and more classrooms all over the world, students belonging to various religions and beliefs sit side-by-side," he said.

The cardinal called for "deeper reflection" on the need "to be ready to join hands with those of other religions to resolve conflicts." Read more