USCIRF Commissioner David Curry (pictured) says "USCIRF is disappointed that the Vatican had decided to renew the provisional agreement with the Chinese government on Catholic bishop appointments".

He and other commissioners think things have become worse for Catholics and other Christians and religious minorities in China since the deal was first brokered in 2018.

The secretive provisional deal between the Vatican and China was first agreed to in September 2018. It was renewed for another two years in October 2020 and again last month.

"USCIRF has observed significant deterioration in religious freedom conditions for all religious minorities, including Protestant Christians and Catholics, during the 10-year rule of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping," Curry says.

Rather than improvements in religious freedom for Catholics in China, Curry says it's likely the deal has been used by the Chinese government to justify its crackdown on underground Catholics who refuse to join the state-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

The Vatican announced the renewal of the "Provisional Agreement regarding the appointment of Bishops" on 22 October.

"The Vatican Party is committed to continuing a respectful and constructive dialogue with the Chinese Party for a productive implementation of the Accord and further development of bilateral relations, with a view to fostering the mission of the Catholic Church and the good of the Chinese people," the Vatican said when announcing the renewal.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, is defending the deal.

"Pope Francis — with determination and patient foresight — has decided to continue along this path not under the illusion of finding perfection in human rules, but in the concrete hope of being able to assure Chinese Catholic communities, even in such a complex context, of the guidance of pastors who are worthy and suitable for the task entrusted to them," Parolin says.

However, the USCIRF's 2022 annual report assessed that "despite the Vatican-China agreement on bishop appointments, authorities continued to harass and detain underground Catholic priests who refuse to join the state-controlled Catholic association".

It added Beijing "also intensified persecution of Protestants by harassing, detaining, arresting and physically abusing leaders of Protestant house churches who refuse to join the state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement.

"Authorities throughout China routinely raided churches, detained Christians and confiscated religious materials.

"The government also continued to demolish church buildings and crosses ... under its ‘sinicisation of religion' campaign."

The USCIRF made similar warnings in 2021.

It said "Chinese authorities continued to harass, detain and torture underground Catholic bishops" despite the Vatican deal.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said last month "the two sides will continue to maintain close communication and consultation, work for the sound implementation of the provisional agreement, and continuously advance the process of improving relations".

A Ministry official also claimed in late September: the Vatican-China deal "has been successfully implemented thanks to the efforts of both sides".

Source

• Washington Examiner

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.

Now there's a new addition to that corpus: the British rock star Sting.

Evyatar Marienberg, a historian of religion at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, has written a book about Sting's Catholic imagination and how it fueled his creativity.

Before bursting onto the international rock scene as the principal songwriter and lead singer for the Police, Sting (born Gordon Sumner in 1951) grew up in the northeastern town of Wallsend attending Catholic schools.

He was confirmed at 14 and married his first wife in the Catholic Church at age 25.

Though Sting no longer identifies as a Catholic, much of his solo singer/songwriter career is steeped in Catholic imagery, symbols, stories and hymns that he absorbed growing up in his working-class Catholic parish.

Marienberg's book, "Sting and Religion: The Catholic-Shaped Imagination of a Rock Icon," takes a close look at the performer's religious journey and its themes of loneliness, love and distance from God.

Marienberg travelled to Wallsend, interviewed Sting's peers and numerous priests and finally met Sting himself, once in New York City and another time in Germany.

Along the way, Marienberg explains how Catholicism changed in the 1950s and 1960s, during the years Sting was growing up.

While he was a teen, the Second Vatican Council opened the door of the church to the wider world and instituted a raft of reforms.

The church also saw a sharp decline in its attendance.

Marienberg, who grew up in Israel in an Orthodox Jewish home, began listening to Sting with his 1987 solo album, "Nothing Like the Sun."

It was still a vinyl record and its back cover had a photo of Sting standing beside a statue of the Virgin Mary. Marienberg chose the photo for the cover of his book.

Although Sting considers himself an agnostic, he still believes in some ultimate reality beyond the physical world. And he's a fan of Pope Francis.

In 2018, Sting was invited to compose a musical piece for an audiovisual show about the Sistine Chapel. He picked a Latin hymn, "Dies Irae," or "Day of Wrath," for the choral piece.

"I've chosen to live my life without the ‘certainties' of faith, but I do maintain a great reverence for the mystery and wonder of our existence, and my agnosticism is a tolerant cousin to my curiosity," Sting wrote in 1983.

Like Sting, Marienberg left his religious upbringing.

He now teaches classes on contemporary Catholicism and the social history of Jews and Christians in medieval Europe. His students, he said, have never heard of Sting.

Religion News Service spoke to Marienberg about his interest in Sting and how a religion like Catholicism can leave such a long imprint on people's lives. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

How did you get interested in Sting?

I read a review of his album and I bought it and liked it.

This was in the mid-'80s.

I was impressed and curious about the lyrics. I was always interested in religion.

I grew up Orthodox and religion was very central.

In "Nothing Like the Sun," there's a picture of him standing near a statue of the Virgin Mary and a song about Noah and the flood ("Rock Steady").

I went to several concerts of his.

Then one day I said, when I retire I'll write an article about Sting and religion.

Someone told me, "Write it now. Don't wait until you retire."

Describe the period when Sting grew up and how Catholicism changed.

There's a difference between the '50s and '60s.

I spoke to his peers and they told me on Sunday there was nothing to do.

So you went to the church.

In the '60s, cinemas opened and people bought cars and took trips.

There were other ways to spend time.

With the Vatican II, the church opened a Pandora's box. The church became more open, and when you become more open, you lose people.

There was more integration. People became less isolated. They were able to have non-Catholic friends. When the horizons opened, you could see farther.

Sting left the church but he never developed a hostility to it. He didn't become an atheist. Describe his attitude to the church.

Yes, he didn't slam the door. It was gradual.

He says in several places that the corporal punishment pushed him out.

I spoke with several of his friends and they said he was hit often, not because he was a bad student. He was actually a very good student. But he came dressed in the wrong suit, or he came late.

The corporal punishment for the boys was pretty serious.

It created in him a real disgust for the church.

He attended a little less, but in his early 20s, in his first marriage, he's still in the church. He was still connected in some ways. He would still say the rosary occasionally.

Later he rethought his convictions. But the idea of the transcendental never left him.

He believes there is something out there. He refuses to accept a dogmatic definition of what it is. But there is something there. And that never left him.

He's a believer in some other reality.

You interviewed Sting. How did you find him?

Initially, I didn't think I would contact him. But when I started to write about the micro-history of his parish and school, I wanted to know what happened in his home.

Did they say blessings before meals?

For that, I need to get to him or his siblings.

Through a series of contacts with a colleague of mine that knew a professor of theology in New York who went to school with Sting, I was able to contact him.

We met twice.

We were supposed to meet a third time but didn't because of COVID.

I may see him in November when he performs in Greensboro (North Carolina). I'm in email contact with him. He's very responsive.

Why is it important to excavate Sting's Catholicism?

Millions of people are raised in a religious context that is all-encompassing.

These images, these philosophical concepts, these stories are there.

They shape us even when we try to avoid them.

Many people would hesitate to say they're culturally Catholic or culturally Muslim. But these things shape you for decades.

A priest told me that when he goes to homes for the elderly and he wants to find Catholics, he would start to quote from the catechism and he would see on people's faces if they know what he's talking about.

Some people who can't speak at all will respond.

That shows how deep these things are in our brain and why it's hard to avoid them.

For some artists, it's reflected in their art, like in Sting's.

• Yonat Shimron is an RNS National Reporter and Senior Editor.
• First published in RNS, republished with permission.

Many of us grew up in an era of "We are right and the others are wrong."

Christian churches seemed to have high fences around them, and religions that were not Christian were often labelled "Heathen" or "Pagan."

These divisions were puzzling when we were young.

Children tend to see God in everything.

I love the way Pope Francis strengthens the Catholic faith with a wider understanding of world religions.

Belief is largely cultural.

Our history, environment and traditions, make a receptacle for the Spiritual Presence that we know but can't directly describe.

Each religion values the rituals that lead to the heart space.

Each cherishes forms of prayer.

Each has a knowledge of God.

And we discover that the more we appreciate other religions, the deeper we come into our own faith.

It is the way God works.

My love of the Catholic Church has some connection with Judaism and Islam, the other two Abrahamic religions.

Let's put it this way:

God planted a treeing Israel and it grew, a strong Jewish tree sending out two solid branches, one Christian and the other Islamic.

The branches were of a different shape, but they had the same roots and the life of God running through them.

So what do I gain from this tree of Abraham?

There are Jewish teachings that are very close to my Catholic faith. Here are two:

We are born with two instincts, Yetzah Hatov, unselfishness, and Yetzah Hara, selfishness. The more we practice unselfishness, the more the selfish instinct will change.

The soul comes from God and the soul is always pure. But the soul wears three gardens: thought, word and deed, and these get soiled and need cleansing. When the garments are clean, the soul can see the light.

What gifts have come from Islam?

Hospitality to the stranger, and prayer throughout the day. There is also more about Jesus' mother in the Qu'ran than there is in the New Testament of the Bible.

I think God has undone most of the fear-based prejudice of my ancestors, but I still have a long way to go.

Thanks to the leadership of Pope Francis, I make the journey of discovery, with love.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

A spokesperson for the Network of Survivors of Abuse in Faith-Based Institutions, Liz Tonks, told RNZ that "victim-survivors were not hopeful because their experiences of churches is they have not been able to trust them in the past."

"They've known for a long time, they have never taken action.

"Survivors have been negotiating with them and telling them they need redress for decades and decades and they know the age of some of the survivors and they are likely to die without it if it's not given to them, so they have had plenty of chance to stand up and take action," she said.

Tonks told RNZ that the churches have not changed and suggests they are not likely to.

"It's irrefutable now. They say they are listening, they say they are learning. We think there is enough evidence that suggests they should have learnt by now."

Similarly, the newly formed survivor group in New Zealand, SNAP, is calling on churches to ‘own the truth'.

Spokesperson Christopher Longhurst, also a professional church theologian, accuses churches of a lack of action and is calling on the Royal Commission not to take church witnesses at face value.

"We hope that for example in assessing church protocols and church documents submitted to the hearing that the commission looks for signs of concrete action has (sic) taken place. For the application of what has been promised because we know from our experience that what the churches are promising, has promised, has not been delivered."

"Despite what the church are (sic) saying about listening to us and being compassionate, constantly time and time again members of our network have evidence to show the contrary, so we simply hope the Royal Commission will not take what these witnesses will present at face value", Longhurst told RNZ.

This week the Abuse in Care Royal Commission began the second part of a two week hearing into faith-based redress.

It follows, in late 2020, the Commission receiving shared personal testimonies and survivor experiences of being abused while in church care.

During this two week hearing, a select group of leaders from the Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian Churches and the Salvation Army, will appear in front of the Commission.

According to David Cohen writing on RNZ, the $78 million Royal Commission is the most expensive royal commission in New Zealand's history.

"To date, it (the $78 million) has mainly been a cash cow for the policy analysts, the consultants, the career-enhancing secondees and others among its 197 employees, rather than for anybody who actually suffered abuse in any of these old places between 1950 and 1999", writes Cohen.

Sources

• RNZ
• RNZ
• Tekupenga

Sometimes, that hasn't been enough. People have wanted detail, a comprehensive answer to their "why?"

The explanation can be long and tedious. Do they want a personal journey?

Or something about Catholic teaching?

It is one thing to talk about structure and ethos, but almost impossible to describe the fulness of mystery in the Catholic Faith.

You have to be on the inside to experience that.

I have borrowed from the gospels. "Jesus spoke all things in parables and" and I've said,

"If you compare the Catholic Church with a system of education, you will have a journey from kindergarten to Ph.D and beyond."

"The eternal tutor is the Sacred Presence that is recognised by all religions." "

"In the Catholic Church, we describe it as the trinity of Father, Son and Hoy Spirit. These are not proper nouns as we usually understand names.

Rather, they are verbs and adjectives, indicators of the ways the Sacred Presence works with us."

"The beyond mentioned in the education system is a place of spiritual fulness. It is a connection with the Sacred Presence that cannot be adequately described in words."

"But it often feels like deep expansive love."

So that's it, an explanation I've used when someone without a religious background, has wanted to know why I became a Catholic.

But that kind of answer is limited.

A parable or metaphor is like a torchlight on a dark wall. It has a specific illustration.

Recently, after I had used the education image to describe spiritual growth, I reflected on the role of the priest.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to stand up in front of a hundred or more parishioners, ranging from primary school to university.

Each person has a unique life story, each one is God's favourite, and each has the expectation of what she or he will receive from the priest's homily.

The image was daunting.

How did it all come together?

I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question.

Eucharist, of course! That's when it came together!

That's when the doors of beyond open and everyone is in the same place.

There is no separation.

After Holy Communion, we file back to our seats. There is mystery on faces and a stillness that holds us together.

Have we been changed?

Or is this who we truly are.?

We don't know, and not knowing doesn't matter.

The beyond is a place of isness

It is a holy place, and we are in it.

In consuming, we have been consumed.

We come back to words with the farewell hymn, church notices, and then it's a cup of tea and catch up.

We'll be back next Sunday.

That's the way it is.

So how should I answer the ‘why' question?

I think I'll let go of the education analogy.

I'll stop trying to explain.

When someone asks me why I'm a Catholic, I'll stay with the first response.

"Because it works."

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Former Arsenal manager, Arsen Wenger, told BBC Radio 4, "Desert Island Discs" that he was driven to succeed in the high-pressure world of football because of his family's deep Catholic faith and a legendary work ethic.

‘I think the impact for me was that you're never completely happy because you never do well enough,' he says.

‘The religion makes you feel always a bit guilty because the Catholic religion is like that.'

Wenger, who as a child attended Mass every day, says he was so desperate to please that he began to invent sins for his weekly confession.

"We had to confess every week and sometimes I learned to lie as well because I didn't always remember what I did wrong," he says.

"You came out fresh, you always felt, 'Ok I have confessed now. God forgive me - I can start my life again.' "

Wenger is still a practicing Catholic and describes himself as an optimist, and that optimism allows him to believe.

In 2013, he spoke in London's Jewish Museum, and said belief is important in life.

"I am forever grateful for the values my religion has given, and basically if you analyse it, all the religions spread good values and positive values," Wenger explained at the time.

"I prayed a lot when I was a kid because I was educated in a Catholic area," he added.

"Religion was very strong to us, to ask the priest if I can play on Sunday afternoon … now I am a bit less [religious] because when you are under pressure you only think of our game. How can I win the next game? And you try to be a bit more pragmatic."

"Belief is important, and I am forever grateful for the values my religion has given," he said.

"And basically if you analyze it, all the religions spread good values and positive values, and that is important that you find that in our sport."

Wenger, however, has some regrets about the family's work ethic.

Wenger worked beside his parents, Alphonse and Louise, in their bistro, La Croix d'Or, and described how the demands of running a restaurant took their toll on family life.

"I wouldn't advise anybody to open a bistro and have children. At the time there was no family life," he says.

‘The bistro was open every day of the year. It closed only one day, from four o'clock in the afternoon until midnight. That was on Christmas Day because the village was dominated by religion. So that was no holiday."

Sources

• BBC 4
• NZ Herald
• Daily Mail
• Listen to interview with Arsene Wenger

According to a Catholic News Service account of the encounter, the pope shooed away Vatican aides several times when they attempted to interrupt the 45-minute conversation.

After waving them out of the room, John Paul pulled his chair out from behind his desk to sit closer to Biden.

The pontiff ribbed the senator about his age as the two discussed everything from the politics of Eastern Europe to the spread of communism in Latin America. Biden, a Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania coal country with an interest in foreign policy, listened intently.

But despite the thrill of meeting John Paul, there was one thing Biden refused to do: kiss the pope's ring, a customary greeting when meeting an esteemed cleric.

It was later revealed that it was Biden's mother who insisted he refrain, telling her son, "Don't you kiss his ring."

His refusal has become a hallmark of how Biden manages his faith, a throwback to a brand of mid-20th-century political Catholicism that eschews obsessive obedience to the Holy See on matters of policy.

An Irish Catholic educated by nuns in parochial schools, Biden is quick to invoke the church's social teaching on the stump.

But where Catholic morality rubs up against welfare or justice issues such as abortion and gay rights, Biden's understanding of his duty as a politician and a Catholic is clear: Decisions are to be informed by the faith he learned from nuns of his youth, not dictated by it.

"I'm as much a cultural Catholic as I am a theological Catholic," Biden wrote in his book "Promises to Keep: On Life in Politics."

"My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. It's not so much the Bible, the beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. It's the culture."

It's a form of faith that experts describe as profoundly Catholic in ways that resonate with millions of American believers: It offers solace in moments of anxiety or grief, can be rocked by long periods of spiritual wrestling and is more likely to be influenced by the quiet counsel of women in habits or one's own conscience than the edicts of men in mitres.

Biden's complicated relationship with the Catholic hierarchy is a slight reimagining of the Catholicism modelled by John F. Kennedy, the United States' first and only Catholic president who, like Biden, declined to kiss a pontiff's ring when he met Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in 1963.

Kennedy's faith became a point of contention when, as a presidential candidate in 1960, he faced resistance and outright anti-Catholic bigotry from Protestant pastors concerned that a Kennedy administration could be manipulated from Rome.

During the campaign, the Rev. Billy Graham and the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale met with others in Switzerland to discuss how "Protestants in America must be aroused in some way, or the solid block Catholic voting, plus money, will take this election."

A month after their meeting, Kennedy travelled to Houston to deliver a speech to a group of pastors in which he declared: "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope."

Biden, like many Catholic politicians, was inspired by Kennedy's religious rules of engagement.

"When John Kennedy ran for president, I remember being so proud that he was Catholic," Biden told The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware in 2005. "But he had to prove that he wasn't ruled by his beliefs. I'm with John Kennedy on the role religion ought to play in politics."

While serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1982, he faced a decision on whether to forward to the full Senate a constitutional amendment that would allow states to pass new abortion restrictions and effectively overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion.

Biden voted for the resolution, but insisted in an impassioned speech that while he personally opposed abortion on religious grounds — "I'm probably a victim, or a product, however you want to phrase it, of my background," he explained — he remained unsure if he had "a right to impose" his religious beliefs on others.

"His separating of the secular sphere and the sacred sphere, not in his personal life but in his approach to governing, is straight out of that Kennedy lineage," Natalia Imperatori, a professor at Manhattan College who studies Catholic ecclesiology, said of Biden.

But in the years that followed, the line between public policy and private beliefs seemed to fluctuate.

Biden voted against the anti-abortion amendment when it once again appeared before the Judiciary Committee in 1983, but in 1984, he backed an amendment praising the so-called Mexico City policy, which banned the use of federal money for foreign groups that provide abortion counselling or referrals.

By 1987, advocates for abortion rights were already describing his voting record on the issue as "erratic."

Biden's compartmentalization of faith and policy has become harder to maintain in recent years, especially after conservative church leaders and lay Catholics became more vocal under John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI.

In January, Biden was reportedly denied Communion at a South Carolina Catholic church due to his abortion stance.

Shortly after Biden announced Kamala Harris, a Baptist, as his running mate, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island tweeted: "First time in a while that the Democratic ticket hasn't had a Catholic on it. Sad."

"In 1960, Americans needed reassurance that Rome wouldn't control the Catholic candidate's conscience, and would allow Kennedy to govern in the nation's interest," Imperatori said. "This year, it seems that some bishops will accept nothing less than full control of Catholic consciences, be they the candidate's, or the voters'."

The criticism has weighed on Biden.

Sister Simone Campbell, head of the Catholic social justice lobby Network, recounted a solemn moment at the signing ceremony for the Affordable Care Act in 2010 when she encountered the vice president along a rope line of dignitaries.

Biden was initially elated, enthusiastically shouting, "Barack! Here's my nun!" before his tone turned somber.

"He puts his forehead against my forehead and begins to talk about how faith matters to him and how painful it's been for him to be excluded by some within the church," Campbell recalled, noting that Biden and the Obama administration had faced fierce pushback from some Catholics over the ACA — including from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "There were hundreds of people there and we had this intimate pastoral visit."

Biden, for his part, has occasionally shown a willingness to return the clerics' barbs.

When he met with Benedict in 2011, Biden reportedly chastised the pontiff for cracking down on nuns like Campbell who had backed the ACA in defiance of the bishops.

"You are being entirely too hard on the American nuns," Biden told the pope, according to The New York Times. "Lighten up."

Meanwhile, Biden's personal connection to the faith remains a highly visible part of his political persona.

He carries a rosary at all times, fingering it during moments of anxiety or crisis. When facing brain surgery after his short-lived presidential campaign in 1988, he reportedly asked his doctors if he could keep the beads under his pillow. Earlier this year, rival Pete Buttigieg noticed Biden holding a rosary backstage before a primary debate.

And in a now-famous photo taken in the White House Situation Room as U.S. Navy Seals raided the compound of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, Biden's hands can be seen tucked beneath the table, reportedly thumbing his prayer beads.

"In order to pray your rosary in the Situation Room," said John Carr, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, "you have to have a rosary in your pocket. That's every day — not just when you're going after bin Laden."

These days, Biden's rosary is also a symbol of the role faith plays in grief: He carries one that once belonged to his son Beau, who died of a brain tumour in 2015.

Biden suggested to a group of Catholics he invited to his home in 2015 that the emotional toll of Beau's death made it unlikely he would run for president in 2016. He explained that his wife had noticed a change in his posture because his "body was in mourning."

"At that point, he pulls out his rosary beads as he often does," said Campbell, who was at the meeting. "(There was) comfort for him in knowing the promise of Jesus, in the gospel, and in what we believe."

Biden, who also lost his first wife and a child in an automobile accident shortly after being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, talked about Beau's death with Francis when the pontiff met with Biden's extended family at the end of his 2015 U.S. visit.

Biden later said the meeting with the pope "provided us with more comfort that even he, I think, will understand."

When the two met again privately in St. Peter's Basilica a year later during a Vatican conference on cancer, Ken Hackett, then ambassador to the Vatican, caught snippets of Francis offering "moving prayers and concerns about the vice president's loss of a child."

"Your religion is complicated, but your faith is something that really motivates and moves you every day — and gives you the strength to carry on," Hackett said.

But it's the nuns and rank-and-file Catholics, not popes, whom Biden most often relies on for religious counsel, once telling Campbell that it is "nuns and Jesuits who keep me Catholic."

It's a preference shared by many of his fellow faithful: In opinion polls, U.S. Catholics show significantly higher support for nuns than for bishops.

Catholics are also more likely to side with Biden on issues of abortion and sexuality than with the church hierarchy.

According to a recent RealClear Opinion Research poll, 53% of Catholics don't agree with the church that abortion is "intrinsically evil," and 51% say it should be legal in all or most cases. A 2019 Pew Research poll found that a sizable majority of Catholics — 61% — approve of same-sex marriage.

There is also broad agreement where Biden's beliefs and church teachings overlap.

Recent surveys show that most Catholics oppose President Donald Trump's border wall and believe climate change is not only caused by humans but is one of the major issues facing the world.

The real question come November may be whether Biden can win over white Catholics like himself, who skew more conservative than Latino Catholics.

Abortion remains a thorny issue for the group (Carr, for instance, made clear that he was "disappointed" with Biden's current abortion stance), and a Pew Research survey conducted in late July found that 59% of white Catholics currently either support or lean toward Trump — 1 percentage point lower than the president's 2016 share.

By contrast, only 40% of white Catholics said they support or are leaning toward voting for Biden — far from a majority, but roughly the same percentage Obama secured when he won reelection in 2012.

It's a divided Catholic vote that has changed quite a bit since 1960, when Kennedy claimed somewhere between 70% and 83% of the group.

Things have changed a bit in the church, too.

For one thing, ring-kissing has largely gone out of style, with Francis sometimes recoiling from parishioners who attempt the ritual.

Yet Biden and his campaign appear to be betting that his emotive, localized faith will prove more durable among American churchgoers.

In a recent video released by the Democratic National Committee showcasing Biden's 2016 meeting with Francis, the editors didn't focus on the grandeur of mingling with the bishop of Rome. Instead, they focused on a group of habited nuns that Biden bumped into when exiting St. Peter's Basilica.

Speaking over images of the smiling nuns, Biden comments that Catholicism calls on believers to be "our brother's keeper."

"Being raised Catholic and being educated by the nuns — that's what those lovely women I'm talking to symbolize to me," he said.

• Jack Jenkins
• First published in RNS. Reproduced with permission.
• The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of CathNews.

Like many Filipinos, I was raised in a devoutly Catholic home and went to an all-boys school run by priests most of my life.

My family, teachers, and friends never talked about homosexuality, all I knew was that I should avoid it.

In reality, I began to fear that I might be gay when I was six years old.

I did not understand it yet then, but I knew I was different and that scared me. What if someone found out?

There was a long period of repression. I wanted to believe that my homosexuality was temporary, telling myself that when I found a girl to love, I would become straight.

I didn't go to gay bars nor hang out with gay people.

Then, at 35 years old and after becoming a lawyer, I entered the Jesuit Novitiate to become a priest.

I was there for over a year before I was kicked out for having sex with another man.

That was when I finally came around to accepting the truth about myself.

It's ironic that this happened as I was supposed to be preparing for a celibate religious life, but I have come to see it as a blessing.

I think the Catholic Church is misguided in its teachings on sexuality but, ultimately, I choose to stay because this is the Church I grew up in and I have found a personal connection with a loving God here.

Inside the Church, there are sacraments that make me feel God's presence more intensely.

As Catholics, we believe that God is most present in the Eucharist, so when I go to Mass, I know that God is there.

The Church gives us an experience that is lived and enfleshed in our being. It turns something spiritual into something tangible.

I often find myself bursting into tears during Mass because I would get overwhelmed by a feeling of God's personal love for me. It's a connection I still look for, especially during a pandemic that has me locked up in a room.

I have cried during online masses too, but for me, going to church is important because it underscores this sense of community.

I did not always feel this way.

After leaving the novitiate and coming out to my family and friends, I stopped going to church regularly for eight years because I no longer felt welcome there.

But I never stopped examining my beliefs.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field," Rumi wrote. But finally, I returned to the Church of my childhood in a proverbial field while living in Cambodia, where I worked as a refugee lawyer for 10 years.

Living in a non-Christian country freed from the pressure of tradition and judgment, I found that it was the Catholic Church that gave me a sense of home.

While living there, my nun friend helped me realise that God has been misrepresented as a taskmaster, someone with a list of Ten Commandments that one has to follow — you have to go to church, you have to dress this way, you have to behave like this, you have to avoid offending people. But the bottom line is that God is love. And a loving God would not create something evil.

I had to leave my country before I could come full circle and come back home. Continue reading

He then went further, expressing his desire for full communion between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Following a long-standing custom, the Holy See sent a delegation to Istanbul to celebrate the feast of Saint Andrew, the patron saint of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, on November 30th.

The delegation was led by Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

"It is with great spiritual joy and in profound communion of faith and charity that I join the prayer of the Church of Constantinople in celebrating the feast of its holy patron, the Apostle Andrew, the first-called and brother of the Apostle Peter," the pope said in his letter.

"I convey the assurance of the unwavering intention of the Catholic Church, as well as my own, to continue in our commitment to working towards the re-establishment of full communion among the Christians of the East and the West," Pope Francis said.

Francis noted it has been 40 years since the establishment of a Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

"The search for the re-establishment of full communion among Catholics and Orthodox is certainly not confined to theological dialogue, but is also accomplished through other channels of ecclesial life," the pope continued.

"Our relations are nourished above all through authentic gestures of mutual respect and esteem," he said. "Such actions show a shared fidelity to the word of our one Lord Jesus Christ, and the will to remain together in his love."

The pope pointed out that Catholics and Orthodox share a common Baptism, but that joint initiatives take it further.

"The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church," he said, "have already embarked upon this promising journey, as testified by our joint initiatives."

And he urged Catholics and Orthodox faithful to strengthen "the daily dialogue of love and life" by praying and working together in harmony.

Source

• CNA

The easiest answer is realism.

We tell ourselves that some sexual predators are drawn to seminaries, just as paedophiles seek out institutions that work with children, regardless of whether they're religious or not.

Public schools, choirs, scouts: the cancer grows everywhere.

And yet this argument just isn't good enough, because when a sexual crime occurs in the Church it is 10 times worse.

The betrayal is even deeper.

Every offence committed by a cleric is a stain not just on the Church's reputation, with which we can be inordinately obsessed, but the very soul of the institution.

The Church asks its followers to confess their sins, but it seems far too slow to admit and atone for its own, and that hypocrisy has driven away thousands, possibly millions.

So, to repeat, why do so many of us remain?

I've been thinking about this a lot in the wake of reports regarding Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, an American cleric accused of grooming and abusing young men.

My instinct when reading this story was to say: "Thank God I'm a convert."

Some of my cradle friends joke that I'm not a proper Catholic because I wasn't born into the faith, and they may have a point - I lack their foundation and sense of identity, and sometimes in church I find I simply don't know what to do.

My Latin is rusty.

The hymns are unfamiliar.

I have nothing to say when the subject of Ireland comes up.

On the other hand, I have been spared from clericalism.

I like and respect priests; some of my best friends are priests.

But I didn't meet a Catholic cleric until I was in my 20s, and they don't quite have the aura of authority for me that I sense they have for those who were born into the Catholic family.

I simply cannot imagine the world that McCarrick was reported to have lived in, in which "Uncle Teddy" would accompany the kids camping and even take one of them to a restaurant in San Francisco, where he put vodka in the drinks - a world in which McCarrick's word was gospel and any questions raised about his behaviour could be shot down on the grounds, to quote the New York Times, that he was: "so beloved… and considered so holy, that the idea was unfathomable."

Likewise, I am amazed, in my innocence, of the authority wielded by so many fallible, sometimes corrupt bishops.

To me, there's no magic to them at all - they're just men in a big hat.

I'm not saying I'm right or wrong about this, it's just that when I signed up to be a Catholic, I joined a faith, not a congregation.

Of course, I quickly discovered that isn't sustainable.

The faith and the institution are inseparable: you'll often hear ex-Catholics say they love one but not the other, and yet if you want the sacraments, you need the priest.

If you want the priests, you need the bishops.

If you want to fulfil the Church's commandments to love your fellow man, you absolutely need the congregation, too.

And so, after years of telling myself that I don't want anything to do with the political or social life of the Church, I've found myself inexorably drawn into both.

It's actually impossible not to hold a view on Humanae Vitae or the Irish referendum; it's impossible not to care that Fr O'Reilly has come down with a cold.

And far from this picture being drawn in the media of clerics as complete disaster zones, I'm happy to report how many of them turn out to be kind, intelligent, thoroughly human people bearing incredible witness in a society that either disregards them or hates them.

And as for the few flawed clerics rotting in the barrel, we have to deal with them as honestly as possible.

I might like to imagine that McCarrick and I have nothing in common, but the reality is we belong to the same Church, and this has consequences for both of us.

I have to confront the Church as it is, not as I wish it to be, kept at arms length.

I joined for the faith, I discovered humanity, and now the next step, I suspect, is to recommit myself to the faith. How? Continue reading

• Tim Stanley is a journalist, historian and a Catholic Herald contributing editor.
• Image: Libertygb

They mean this in both the best and the worst possible ways: There are the predictable losses (lost sleep, lost money, lost time) as well as the wholly unexpected gains of loving a child beyond reason, beyond yourself.

What people do not tell you is that your children are bound to make unexpected and sometimes bewildering choices—and those choices have the power to change you.

Children will shake your sense of identity, challenge your beliefs and fundamentally alter who you are.

Anyone who has tried to pass on their religious faith to their children knows this to be true: You can be a good Catholic and raise a passel of atheists.

You can be a strident ex-Catholic and raise a priest—like I did.

My son would tell you that I have had a big influence on him.

He dives into the world in the same way I do, with the firm intention of changing it.

He works out his thoughts by writing them down.

He believes in the healing properties of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on a rainy day.

But when it came to making the biggest choice of his life—to convert to Catholicism and become a Jesuit priest—I was left to wonder what influence I had had on him or whether I had wielded any influence at all.

Many of the good Catholic mothers I have talked to are just as bewildered.

They did everything in their power to raise children in their faith only to see them adopt other religions or reject God altogether.

Some say they were defeated by a culture that increasingly values the material over the spiritual, or they point to the rigidity of doctrine, failures of individual priests, sexual abuse scandals, boring services and bad music.

Many blame themselves, although they struggle to say where exactly they went wrong.

Those whose children remain practicing Catholics have some ideas about why that may be the case, but they, too, are well aware that things could easily have turned out differently.

In a recent survey of more than 1,500 U.S. Catholic women, commissioned by America and conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 73 percent of women who are mothers said their children remain in the church.

Fifteen percent indicated that none of their children are now Catholic.

The remaining 12 percent reported a mixed result: Some of their children are Catholic and some are not.

Those results closely mirror an informal poll of America readers for this article conducted by social media.

Just over 25 percent of the more than 500 respondents said their children have left the church—a number that trends suggest will increase as the young children of many respondents grow up.

Nationally, nearly half of all children leave the faith of their parents once they reach adolescence. Continue reading

• Image: America

Although several news sources say Francis has already rejected a draft plan to allow non-Catholics who are married to Catholics to receive Communion in certain circumstances, it seems this is not the case.

German Bishops' Conference president, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, says he has "welcomed the request of Pope Francis who proposed a discussion in Rome" about the draft plan.

Marx says the draft was adopted by a three-quarters majority of the German Bishops' Conference after an "intense debate" on 22 February.

However, on 22 March, seven bishops wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity seeking their "assistance" and "clarification."

They questioned whether the draft plan was outside the competence of an episcopal conference.

In particular, they asked if it was of a pastoral nature, as Marx had suggested, or of a doctrinal nature.

If it is doctrinal, unanimous adoption and Roman approval are both required.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, says "Neither the Pope nor we bishops can redefine the sacraments as a means of alleviating mental distress and satisfying spiritual needs.

"They are effective signs of the grace of God."

The Code of Canon Law already provides that in the danger of death or if "some other grave necessity urges it," Catholic ministers licitly administer penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick to Protestants.

This can only be in cases where the person "cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed."

Source

• La Croix
• Catholic Herald
• Catholic News Agency
• Crux Now
• Image: LifeSiteNews

The Lutheran Church of Sweden has offered the cathedral as a temporary place of worship to the Catholic parish of St Thomas.

St Thomas's will be closed for major renovation for several months. Read more

The ceremony presided over by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington and the director of the Board of Trustees of the Shrine, symbolically marked the completion of the largest Catholic Church in America, construction of which begun in 1920.

Nearly a century in the making, the National Shrine was fittingly completed on the patronal feast of the American Catholic Church, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

The "Trinity Dome," as it is called, is the central and largest dome of the basilica.

Now, only two years away from the centenary year commemorating the founding of this glorious basilica, pilgrims can behold with awe, 180 feet in the air, the amazing site of the completed mosaic on its interior.

Made in Italy, the mosaic consists of 14 million tesserae (pieces of Venetian glass) across 18,000 square feet, making it one of the largest mosaics of its kind in the world.

It depicts the Most Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception, and a procession of saints associated with the United States and the National Shrine.

In 1789, the same year that George Washington was inaugurated the first president of the United States, the Catholic hierarchy was established in this country.

The first diocese in the American missionary territory was erected in Baltimore on November 6, 1789 with John Carroll as its first bishop.

Seeking aid from heaven to assist the fledgling mission territory entrusted to his pastoral care, Bishop Carroll consecrated the United States to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception, making her the patroness of the new country.

As years passed, the Catholics of America yearned for a visible sign of their nation's consecration to Our Lady, the Immaculate Conception.

In 1846, an excerpt from a Massachusetts newspaper told of "a magnificent Catholic church [to] be built at Washington, DC after the manner of the great cathedrals of the Old World from subscriptions of every Catholic parish in America."

From this initial desire, American Catholics worked to build a National Shrine through the late-19th, into the 20th and now the 21st century. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report article by Father Seán Connolly, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York.
• Image: The Catholic Sun

It is demoralizing to know that thousands of women have endured shame and great pain in silence for years.

In no way do I want to downplay the impact of their experience, nor to minimize the importance of this ongoing conversation men and women now are having.

But it's Thanksgiving. And even a Catholic feminist has to take a breath, during this month of shocking news, to take stock and give thanks.

I'm thankful for Pope Francis. Nope, he's not the pope of my dreams.

He has demonstrated, more than once, that he does not truly understand women, and he's stuck on the "women as mother" role model. He also has closed the door on the ordination of women in the priesthood, really an unforgivable lapse in judgement and even common sense.

But at least this pope calls us to help the poor, relieve income inequality and care for the earth. It's nice to see social justice trump sexual mores, at least as far as the Vatican is concerned.

I'm also grateful that the pope recently reaffirmed the primacy of individual conscience in making moral decisions, something Vatican II proclaimed quite clearly more than half a century ago.

In recent remarks responding to ecclesiastical critiques of his encyclical on marriage and the family, the pope said there was an important difference between informing the faithful and dictating what they should do.

He reminded them that they should support couples as they strive to make the decisions for their families, but he made clear that priests' dicta cannot "substitute" for what their hearts tell them is the right thing to do.

And he's been good at taking the clergy down a peg or two. He's spoken out on the evils of clericalism.

He's chastised priests who "feel they are superior," who "are far from the people" and unable to respond to their needs. Continue reading

• Celia Wexler is a journalist, feminist and nonfiction author

Alcohol abuse is no laughing matter, but is it sinful to drink and make merry, moderately and responsibly, during a holy season or at any other time?

As a historical theologian, I researched the role that pious Christians played in developing and producing alcohol.

What I discovered was an astonishing history.

Religious orders and wine-making
Wine was invented 6,000 years before the birth of Christ, but it was monks who largely preserved viniculture in Europe. Religious orders such as the Benedictines and Jesuits became expert winemakers.

They stopped only because their lands were confiscated in the 18th and 19th centuries by anti-Catholic governments such as the French Revolution's Constituent Assembly and Germany's Second Reich.

In order to celebrate the Eucharist, which requires the use of bread and wine, Catholic missionaries brought their knowledge of vine-growing with them to the New World.

Wine grapes were first introduced to Alta California in 1779 by Saint Junipero Serra and his Franciscan brethren, laying the foundation for the California wine industry.

A similar pattern emerged in Argentina, Chile and Australia.

Godly men not only preserved and promulgated oenology, or the study of wines; they also advanced it.

One of the pioneers in the "méthode champenoise," or the "traditional method" of making sparkling wine, was a Benedictine monk whose name now adorns one of the world's finest champagnes: Dom Pérignon.

According to a later legend, when he sampled his first batch in 1715, Pérignon cried out to his fellow monks: "Brothers, come quickly. I am drinking stars!"

Monks and priests also found new uses for the grape.

The Jesuits are credited with improving the process for making grappa in Italy and piscoin South America, both of which are grape brandies. Continue reading

• Michael Foley is Associate Professor of Patristics, Baylor University, Texas

The US$500 million museum's aim is to entertain and educate visitors about the Bible's history and significance.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and the museum's co-founder, evangelical businessman Steve Green, were at the opening.

Wuerl spoke on behalf of Pope Francis.

Through Wuerl, Francis sent his "fervent hope that ... through its extensive collections and exhibits [the museum] will promote a better understanding ... of the rich and complex history of the biblical text".

He hoped the "enduring power of the museum's message" would "inspire and shape the lives of individuals and peoples of every time and place."

Francis also said he hoped that through engaging with scholars of various traditions the museum would help advance inter-religious understanding and cooperation.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also sent a message.

He said "the Jewish people are known as the people of the book because of the centrality of the Hebrew Bible in our faith, our history, and our lives.

"Our roots in the land of Israel as described in the holy scriptures stretch back nearly 4,000 years, but it was only 70 years ago after millennia of exile that we were finally able to reconstitute our nation and home at the Holy land..."

"...By featuring Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and other faith traditions, the museum highlights our shared values and beliefs as well as the history and development of the Judeo-Christian culture over the centuries."

The Israeli Association for Antiquities sent a number of artifacts including a large stone from the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Visitors are encouraged to touch the stone.

A whole floor includes an interactive exhibit featuring "The World of Jesus of Nazareth".

It includes replicas of homes and what food in Nazareth might have looked like in the time of Jesus.

Although the museum is supposed to be non-sectarian, there are few Arabic script exhibits apart from temporary items on loan from Jerusalem.

One of the permanent features in Arabic is a translation of a psalm engraved on a window.

It is set alongside 15 other panels in various languages in the entrance's main atrium.

There are also a couple of texts in Judeo-Arabic, varieties of Arabic spoken by Jews and written in the Hebrew script.

Arabic's absence elsewhere - including the 10-language digital guide - has raised questions about the museum's goals and target audience.

Source

• Town Hall
• The Atlantic
• Aljazeera
• Catholic News Service
• Image: Our Community Now at DC

Many are aware of this trend as an abstract fact, but we are scarcely coming to terms with the implications for Church life, for the composition of Church leadership, and for its future policies.

A southward-looking Church may be a vibrant and flourishing body, but it might pose some challenges for Catholics of the older Euro-American world.

The fact of that geographical shift is clear enough. A century ago, the European continent accounted for almost two thirds of the world's Catholics.

By 2050, that proportion will fall to perhaps a sixth. In that not-too-far future year, the Church's greatest bastions will be in Latin America (perhaps 40 per cent), in Africa (25 per cent) and Asia (12 per cent).

Actually, those numbers understate the southern predominance, because a sizeable number of Catholics living in Europe or North America will themselves be of migrant stock - Nigerians or Congolese in Europe, Mexicans in the United States.

A Church born long ago on the soil of Asia and Africa is returning home.

Looking at a near-future list of the world's largest Catholic nations reinforces that point about the relative decline of the Euro-American presence in the Church.

In 1900, the three nations with the largest Catholic populations were France, Italy and Germany. By 2050, the leading countries will be Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines.

France and Italy will comprise the only European entrants among the top 10 Catholic populations, which otherwise will include three African nations (Nigeria, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and the United States.

With around a hundred million Catholics, the Democratic Republic of the Congo will enjoy rough parity with the United States and the Philippines.

Those specific numbers are projections, and of course they may over- or under-estimate particular regions. But the general directions of change are not in doubt. The Catholic future lies in the South. Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic Herald article by Philip Jenkins
• Image: Catholic World Report