The rules in Northern Ireland demand councillors complete a 'Declaration of Interest' that could potentially influence their decision-making in chambers.

Declaration of Interest confusing

One councillor says he was confused as to how to complete the Declaration of Interest correctly.

"I noticed when it comes to church membership, it is something that by and large isn't done particularly within or, if you're a member, associated or affiliated in any way with the Catholic Church.

"But it is something that those with membership of a Protestant Church are putting down.

"I just feel that this could be an issue if a matter came before a committee and there is nowhere on a Declaration of Interest, out of 41 members, that anyone has stated if they have any influence or affiliation with that institution.

"An institution that we know has a huge amount of estate in the district, as well as ownership and management of churches.

"So, perhaps if councillors could be given any guidance on what sort of thing we should be declaring."

Conflict of interest in the chamber

Elected members who identify a conflict of interest on a committee agenda item have to leave the council chamber while the matter is being debated. And they may not vote on the matter.

But as one member pointed out, "Within the Catholic Church you're not seen as a member, you are a parishioner who attends Mass if you so wish".

"Potentially, if someone sat on the finance committee of a particular parish, that is seen as a role" he said.

"But if you attend Mass, you may be attending a service, but not contribute anything to the collection.

"So, how do you identify someone that is a member of the Catholic Church? Someone like myself who does go to Mass regularly, am I seen as a member, but I don't sit on any committees within my parish?"

He said as far as he's concerned he doesn't see any need to declare his involvement in the parish as a conflict of interest because he doesn't have a decision-making position within the Catholic Church.

"I think that has always been the guidance that I have always followed" he said.

Now the Council is aware of the confusion and members' different views on what amounts to a conflict of interest, it says its audit committee will be following up and clarifying the declaration requirements for elected members.

Source

• Belfast Live

If elected with Trump on November 5, Vance would be the second Catholic vice president in U.S. history after Biden.

However, he would be the first recent Catholic "convert" to rise to that position, and this says a lot about the theological and political trajectories of the Church in the United States.

1. A recent Catholic convert, part of a movement

More than any other church in the West, U.S. Catholicism has a significant portion of converts, that is, of members who joined the Catholic Church as adults (I am married to one of them).

There are many recent converts among Catholics in the United States who make their faith public. In politics, it's a sea change from the "cradle Catholicism" of older generations like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

It also differs from the young generation of Catholics in the Democratic Party, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who prioritise other aspects of their identities in their platform and politics.

Vance has spoken openly of his Catholicism in the recent past: Trump's campaign between now and November might need some adjustments to that messaging.

By joining the Catholic Church, Vance is part of a larger trend of high-profile conversions.

In recent decades, numerous politicians, journalists, and public intellectuals of conservative persuasion have joined the Catholic Church, viewing it as the "oldest" and most "conservative" Christian tradition.

In contrast to mainline American Protestantism, they see this conversion as a means to save America from decline.

But Vance did it during the Trump years, during his (first) term in office at the White House, in 2019.

Vance's choice to join the Catholic Church did not interfere but rather accompanied his conversion to Trumpism; while he had been very critical of Trump just a few years earlier, he then embraced and became Trump's more presentable face.

It is known that Americans tend to change churches or religious traditions often during the course of their lives, more than other Christians in the West.

Vance was exposed to the Southern Baptist preacher Billy Graham by his grandmother, and to Protestant Pentecostalism as a teenager, in a family that, in his 2016 bestselling memoir (cum policy argument) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis (Harper 2016), he described as deeply dysfunctional.

He wrote it between 2013 and 2015, several years before becoming Catholic, and gives no hint that he had ever considered Catholicism.

Vance mentions the word "Catholic" or "Catholics" only five times in the 264-page book, and he never engages with Catholic teachings in it.

Vance went through a period of atheism, and his efforts to solve the contradictions between faith and science were crucial to his embrace of Christianity and Catholicism.

As he wrote in his autobiographical essay published in 2020 in the Catholic magazine The Lamp, "I read Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, and called myself an atheist."

He was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church in August 2019 at St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio, by the Rev. Henry Stephan, a Dominican friar.

He chose St. Augustine as his patron saint as he said to his friend and "Christianist" ideologue Rod Dreher (author of the 2017 international bestselling manifesto The Benedict Option, who now lives and works at the court of Viktor Orban in Budapest) in an August 2019 interview published in The American Conservative.

Vance is a young and recent Catholic who grew up as a non-denominational Christian and overcame a lot of negative stereotypes about Catholicism typical of American Protestantism (the alleged anti-biblicism and Mariolatry).

In this, there is a certain pride to being Catholic that is counter-cultural and pushes back against the tendency of liberal progressives to blame the Catholic Church for numerous social, cultural, and political ills.

For Vance, Christianity and the Church are not the problem but the solution to the ills of the political-religious project called the United States of America.

He said that the revelations on the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church delayed his conversion but, in the end, did not prevent it. Augustine's ecclesiology of the ecclesia permixta, made of both saints and sinners, surely helps the faithful to overcome the disgust that has led many cradle Catholics, both on the left and the right, to leave the Church.

He is also someone who chose Catholicism as a response to his perception of the limits of American Protestantism, but also of its limited impact on U.S. culture and politics.

He is a proud Catholic, and like many recent converts from Protestantism does not bring clericalism with him: there is a "lay pride" in that kind of Catholicism - which does not imply a progressive theology, but it's part of a certain ecclesiological populism and conservative anger against the perceived corruption of the ecclesiastical system and clerical hierarchies.

2. More Silicon Valley than Catholic Social Doctrine

Vance is a mix of Elon Musk-like technocracy and Charles Maurras's civilisational Catholicism.

He is a protégé of Peter Thiel (the gay billionaire who invented, among other things, PayPal), and his rise has been largely helped by a group of tech titans.

Vance embodies the peculiar alliance in today's GOP between cultural-religious traditionalists (Catholics, in this case) and Silicon Valley.

His is the anti-elitism proclaimed by the new elites, fueling the rage of those who are socially and economically marginalised.

Vance's choice to embrace the faith was a way to express his contempt for secular intellectual elites: as he wrote in The Lamp, "Secularism may not have been a prerequisite to joining the elites, but it sure made things easier".

His is a very American Catholicism, in some sense an "America First Catholicism", at a distance from Vatican and global Catholicism, which has grown complacent with Trump's "Make America Great Again", as well as his gangsterism and violent rhetoric.

Vance's view of the relations between religion and politics is closer to Pat Buchanan's, one of the leading Republican and Catholic ideologues of the "culture wars" since the Nixon era, than to John Paul II's or Benedict XVI's.

Compared to other recent U.S. converts, he has been less polemical against Pope Francis (even though in 2021, he politely disagreed with the restrictions against the pre-Vatican II "Latin Mass").

Vance is a politician and cannot damage his appeal to Roman Catholics, who do not like to see the Pope attacked.

Vance's populism in economic policies could converge with some aspects of Pope Francis' critique of capitalism, but only at a superficial level.

In the interview with Dreher, he said: "I think the Republican Party has been too long a partnership between social conservatives and market libertarians, and I don't think social conservatives have benefited too much from that partnership.

"Part of social conservatism's challenge for viability in the 21st century is that it can't just be about issues like abortion, but it has to have a broader vision of political economy and the common good."

Certainly, there is a sea of difference between Francis' message on the environment and immigration and Vance's denialism, which is typical of today's Republican Party.

His Catholicism is not the 20th-century social Catholicism that presupposed a strong role for government programmes: Vance is supported by Silicon Valley libertarians who know they will benefit from a second Trump presidency.

But in public, Vance has embraced populism as a response against the neo-liberal policies that progressive Catholicism has been indifferent to for too long.

3. Theology and Church: Augustine and Aquinas

Theologically, it is relevant that Vance was baptized and confirmed (and arrived at that decision) through connections and conversations with members of the Dominican Order.

Intellectually, it's a different world from Biden's connection with the Jesuits, the vanguard of American Catholic liberal progressivism, especially on the East and West Coasts.

The choice of his confirmation saint confirms the key importance of the binomial Augustine - Thomas Aquinas (interpreted in ways that often differ from European, continental theology) for conservative, post-liberal, or anti-liberal Catholicism in contemporary USA.

When he talked about Augustine in his article in The Lamp, Vance emphasised not the doctrinal and ecclesiological side but the personal-emotional (The Confessions) and the political-Weltanschauung (The City of God):

"I had been a fan of Augustine since a political theorist in college assigned City of God."

As it happens often these days in American colleges and universities, he was exposed to Catholicism not by a theologian, but a political scientist. He expressed an interest in René Girard thanks (again) to Peter Thiel in 2013, six years before his baptism and confirmation.

He is a politician who has thought for a long time about religion, Christianity, and Catholicism, but without over-intellectualising it.

As he said multiple times, "I like that the Catholic Church is old." He is not a Vatican II Catholic: he is more for ressourcement than aggiornamento in his quest for theological solidity and doctrinal stability.

The Second Vatican Council does not appear in his theological pantheon, nor does it fit his political persona: this is typical of many Catholic converts of political and religious conservative persuasions.

But in his own way, typical of all American Catholics, including those on the conservative side of the spectrum, he is a Catholic who could not do without Vatican II.

His wife, Usha, is the daughter of immigrants from India and she is a Hindu.

When the couple married in 2014, they held two ceremonies, including one where a Hindu pundit blessed them.

When it's about non-Christian religions, Islam is a different matter, as befits Trump's running mate: he claimed that the United Kingdom under the Labour Party might be the first "truly Islamist" country with nuclear weapons.

He is on the opposite side of the Catholic social doctrine shaped by Vatican II.

As Michael Sean Winters put it in 2022, "Vance's fraudulence is discerned in the fact that while he celebrates Catholicism as a vehicle for his sociocultural vision, he departs from the teaching of the Church on a host of issues, from immigration to labor rights to climate change."

In 2021, Vance attended the Napa Institute's annual gathering of right-wing Catholic big donors and influencers, with the participation of some conservative prelates.

In 2022, he participated in a public event at a Franciscan Catholic university where speakers argued in favor of integralism.

Vance has yet to answer questions about his own thoughts regarding Catholic integralism, that is, about the relations between the Church and the State, and his views on the recent surge of integralist thought among U.S. Catholic thinkers in the last decade.

(Recently, Trump disavowed the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," proposals of conservative and right-wing policy to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power if he were to win the 2024 presidential election. But in 2022, he endorsed it, and some of his allies are behind the project.)

He made no mystery in a recent interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat that he condoned what Trump did on January 6, 2021, in his attempt to overthrow the government that led to five deaths and the most serious threat in generations to the stability of the American democratic system of government.

That should give U.S. Catholics (bishops included) who have struggled for at least a century and a half to become part of the project of constitutional democracy in America some pause.

4. A face of the new U.S. Catholicism

Where is Vance's Catholicism going?

What will be its effect on U.S. politics and the Church? In an important difference compared to other prominent Catholic converts, Vance is a politician, and he needs to win in what is now a less religious country, even among conservatives, compared to just ten years ago.

We modern believers are all travelers. Vance has traveled from atheism to Catholicism, from libertarianism to economic populism, from Appalachia to Yale to the Senate in Washington, D.C., via Silicon Valley.

Vance seems to have solved, in his own way, the famous dictum by the great American Catholic writer Walker Percy (another adult convert to Catholicism), who said once that modern man has two choices — Rome or California.

Vance is still traveling and might go much farther, even to the White House. His public Catholicism is subject to more negotiations than for a private person, a journalist, or a pastor.

There was no mention of the Church or Catholicism in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, where religion figured very marginally, following the cues from Trump and a more secular, post-Christian GOP.

He has shifted his position on abortion, leaving pro-life Catholics with a sense of abandonment.

More than moral pragmatism against the cruelty for women of some anti-abortion policies, his shift in position sounds like cynicism in light of the fact that the Supreme Court ruling of 2022 "Dobbs" turned abortion into a political liability for Republicans.

In a campaign fundraising message on July 8, Vance called for mass deportations of immigrants without legal status, a promise also present in the Republican Party platform.

"We need to deport every single person who invaded our country illegally." It is hard to understand how he will reconcile this with Pope Francis' and the US bishops' position on immigration.

Vance is a neo-Catholic millennial in a secularised America that is still the center of the West. Embracing the faith is a form of cultural dissent, a dissent that, while genuine, can get along in an alliance with neo-pagan and anti-religious Silicon Valley technocrats ruling the world.

American Catholicism is no longer just the refuge for conservative ideologues, as it has been between the 1990s and a few years ago.

It's now a brand for sale, and Vance has also come to the national, political, and global stage thanks to the new masters of the universe.

It's not clear how interested he is personally in buying that brand and being identified with it because it depends on the political necessities determined by his master, Donald Trump. But others are buying that brand, people politically close to his party.

Trump's choice marks "the anointing of a youthful vice president and heir apparent," as his friend, New York Times columnist, and fellow Catholic convert Ross Douthat put it.

If elected with Donald Trump, J.D. Vance might not only end up running the country but also contribute from that pulpit to changing the Catholic Church in the United States.

• First published in La Croix
• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.

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.

It's also in second place in terms of financial support for missionary activity.

Such a commitment is obviously to the honor of the Spanish church, which over the centuries has been among the great motor forces of Catholic evangelisation.

The bad news, however, is that the average age of those Spanish missionaries is 75, meaning their ranks are in steady decline as current personnel age and aren't being replaced by younger clergy and religious.

Indeed, if you visit any of the traditional centers of Spanish Catholicism these days, you're likely to find what most observers now call the "reverse mission."

Reverse mission

Places which not so long ago were exporting missionaries are now net importers, increasingly reliant on personnel from former mission territories to keep their own pastoral operations afloat.

Go to a typical parish in, say, Toledo, or Granada, or Burgos, and the odds are good that the priest who says Mass will hail from Peru, or Colombia, or Mexico, or anyplace other than the country in which he's actually working.

It's hardly just Spain.

On June 6, Pope Francis made a surprise visit to St. Bridget of Sweden Church on the northwestern corner of Rome, located in the city's Palmarola neighborhood, a classic working-class district made up almost entirely of native Italians.

Yet the pastor and associate pastor who staff the parish are Congolese and Cameroonian, respectively, both missionary priests who belong to the Spiritan Fathers, formally known as the Congregation of the Holy Spirit.

Like Spain, Italy was once among the great providers of missionaries around the world.

Today, however, the situation is reversed: According to data from the Italian bishops' conference, for every one Italian priest serving abroad, there are five foreign-born priests with assignments in Italy.

The total number of foreign priests in Italy today comes to 2,812, which is almost 10% of all the Catholic priests in the country.

In the small Roman parish where my wife and I worship, our associate pastor, Father Don Alberto, is from Benin, and I can testify from personal experience that without him, it's not at all clear how the community would keep going.

The same pattern holds in the United States, of course.

According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, as many as 38 percent of priests in recent U.S. ordination classes were born outside the U.S.

Even in middle American venues such as the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, nearly 25 percent of the presbyterate comes from India, Kenya, and several Latin American nations.

At one level, this is a great success story:

For centuries missionaries from the cradle of Christendom in the West spread the faith around the world, and today the churches they planted are returning the favor, offering the sometimes aging and moribund churches of the West a new lease on life.

On the other hand, from a strategic planning point of view, this trend of redistributing clergy from the global south to the north is not without controversy.

In fact, there's a powerful case to be made that it's in fact an exploitative pattern, in which affluent churches in the West are poaching clergy from financially strapped churches in the developing world, without regard to where those personnel are most needed.

In Europe, for instance, there's currently one priest for every 1,700 Catholics, but in Africa that ratio is 1 to 5,700, meaning the "priest shortage" in Africa is roughly five times worse.

That contradicts impressions of Africa as booming with vocations, and it's true that seminaries across the continent tend to be full.

Yet when a church is growing, as Africa has throughout the latter half of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st, disparities between faithful and clergy widen, because frankly Catholicism can baptize people much more rapidly than it can ordain them.

In other words, there is no "surplus" of priests in the developing world, and so every one of them who serves in a setting such as Spain, Italy, or the United States, is one fewer priest available to minister to congregations back home.

Two decades ago, Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Nigeria warned of where all this might be heading. Read more

• John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, specializing in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

The topic I had commented on? Having children.

Me, a Catholic mother, seem imminently qualified to speak on such a thing, but still, this faceless follower without a real name attached to their profile decided to cast doubt upon my qualifications to appear on national news to discuss recent comments the Holy Father had made.

A few months later, when Archbishop Cordileone announced he was barring Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion, I found myself back on CNN, providing insight into the role of a bishop to lead his flock and explaining his decision.

It was after that third appearance, as I was visiting with a producer that I finally gave voice to a private concern wedged deep in my heart: why was I being asked to provide these commentaries?

A normal Catholic

This is not a self-deprecating attempt to receive praise, but I have truly wondered what led me to be a public mouthpiece for Catholicism.

Yes, I studied theology, and yes, I've learned decent communication skills over the years.

Still, I've quietly wondered why anyone would want to hear from a small-town Catholic mom on major Catholic issues on TV, radio, or otherwise.

As I voiced these questions, attempting to talk myself out of a job, the producer quickly replied: it's precisely because you're a small-town Catholic mom with decent communication skills that makes you valuable to us.

"You're normal, Katie. And normal is what we need to hear."

That comment, which some might take as an insult but I immediately cataloged as a compliment, has stuck in my head for well over a year.

A world of extremes

"Normal" doesn't seem like high praise, but in a world of extremes and hot-takes to fuel clicks and garner views, perhaps we need a return to normal.

By definition, "normal" is usual or typical, which does not all seem thrilling or exciting.

But "normal" Catholicism is, in fact, quite thrilling.

Catholicism is already so counter-cultural, so extreme in its practice, so challenging to fully accept and enlightening when believed and shared that to go beyond so one can claim to be an "extremist" is to ultimately harm the Catholic project.

The "more Catholic than the Pope" crowd comes across as extremely arrogant and entrenched in ideals of their own personal creation.

The "progressive ideologies or else" crowd come across as equally extreme, attempting to change centuries of teaching and tradition to simply conform to the times.

And so happiest, and healthiest, and perhaps heard most of all is the "normal" Catholic.

That's the person who hangs a rosary from their rear-view mirror, goes to a reverent Sunday Mass with a halfway decent homily and room for the choir's improvement and lives their faith personally and publicly.

At the same time, that person doesn't feel the need to proclaim hot-takes to gain attention or announce their faith has set them apart from everyone else.

A people set apart

Our Catholicism already sets us apart.

We believe ever ancient, ever new things, hold the Eucharist as our source and summit, tell stories of levitating, bi-locating saints, listen to the advice of an elderly man in a white cassock, and are one of the last institutions with hierarchical patriarchy as a leading premise.

We are, if we're being quite honest, extreme enough.

So, to proclaim "normal Catholicism" as a virtue is to ultimately say, "I'm going to let the seemingly weird things I already believe be weird enough for me, and try not to out-weird it."

Not all will agree there is virtue in that project. But I do think it's catching on.

There is healing, perhaps even holiness, to be found in being a "normal" Catholic, who can sit in a room of people who aren't Catholic, where everyone knows you are Catholic, respects you for it, maybe even asks you about it, and listens to the answer.

Being a "normal" Catholic, even among those who consider themselves ideologically set in the extremes of the far right and the far left, is a worthy endeavor.

Why? Because then you can be the voice of reason, sanity, and clarity when the extreme opinions become cloudy and confusing.

Being a "normal" Catholic may not make you famous.

It may not land you massive clout, online virality, or seeming influence. But, it just might regularly get you on CNN.

• First published in La Croix
• Katie Prejean McGrady is an author, speaker, and host of The Katie McGrady Show on Sirius XM's The Catholic Channel and a regular contributor to La Croix International.

The nutshell of the article is this sentence: "Generations of Catholics who embraced the modernizing tide sparked in the 1960s by Vatican II are increasingly giving way to religious conservatives who believe the church has been twisted by change, with the promise of eternal salvation replaced by guitar Masses, parish food pantries and casual indifference to Church doctrine".

This news report is based on a few carefully chosen examples of Catholic parishes, schools, centres, and college campuses — it cannot offer the complete picture of a Church as big and diverse as Catholicism is in the United States.

But it tells a story of what those who work in the American Church today have seen in the last few years: students and colleagues on school campuses, new magazines and academic institutions, to say nothing of social media and various kinds of ministries available on the internet.

The article says that "despite their growing influence, conservative Catholics remain a minority. Yet the changes they have brought are impossible to miss."

Yes, it is hard to deny that we are seeing a slow process to replace a certain kind of "Vatican II Catholicism" (granted the many ways in which this expression can be interpreted) with younger Catholics (lay men and women, clergy, members of religious orders) who privilege different formulations of Catholic theology, spirituality, and mix between action and contemplation.

It is a generational movement of young Americans looking for a sense of identity that they can claim is distinct and different.

This quest is articulated in doctrinal leanings, individual and communitarian lifestyles, and liturgical styles.

But it is not just young people.

It's a moment of rebalancing, a swinging of the pendulum of theological thinking and religious needs that is trying to find a way to deal with a post-20th century material and intellectual world and its uncertainties, and in the United States especially, different from the expectations of the Vatican II period: persisting and heightened social and economic inequalities, the normalisation of war and militarisation of social control, the debate on gender, etc.

Discerning a healthy sense of the Church

This return of conservative Catholicism exists in different ways, not only in the United States.

It is a fact, and the sooner we stop denying it, the better.

The question is how to interpret and relate to it.

One option is to let these different identities develop in separate worlds and let a certain Darwin-like idea of life in the Church have its course.

Coexistence is possible but does not always happen naturally: unity takes work.

Putting this in the hands of "cultural warriors" would be potentially destructive, augmenting polarization and mutual alienation.

It would probably not lead to a formal schism but to a house divided, which, in the long run, cannot stand.

A different option would be to reconstruct spaces and moments for mutual recognition of the Catholicity of others' Catholicism and a process of discernment, in all these different identity camps, of what is conducive to a healthy sense of the Church, of the Catholic tradition, of a Jesus-like life, and what is instead just an ecclesial mirroring of identity politics.

The Synod on synodality is just the beginning of this.

However, we cannot pretend that the Synod will succeed, even in opening spaces for this process, without some acceptance of uncomfortable reality.

Liberal-progressive Catholics today must find a different and alternative way to deal with the past and the tradition of the Church.

They must avoid the "burn it down" blindness and willful ignorance of self-flagellating intellectuals who refuse to see how much is true and good in the Catholic tradition and are incapable of seeing its good use.

An ostracising reading of the past responds to goals that are more political or of academic politics than ecclesial ones.

The other side (and it must be said that there are so many variations of the traditionalist-conservative movement in the Church) needs to find a different and alternative way to a neo-traditionalism which is incapable of criticising and, when necessary, changing the theological and ecclesiastical Catholic traditions on the grounds that "it cannot change because it never changed".

A blanket glorification of the past is just a variation of the ideological fury of the self-righteous who think they are always "on the right side of history", and it's not how the Catholic magisterium deals with the past.

A sense of what the living tradition is

As French theologian Pierre Gisel wrote in a chapter recently published in a book, the central issue is the relationship with the past.

Gisel urges "a structuring relationship with the past [which] occurs in a scenario of differences".

The quest of younger generations for identity is a way of rejecting the slippage from equality based on imago Dei to (self)enforced uniformity.

Dealing with this quest requires leaving behind any fantasy of having direct contact with the truth in real-time immediacy.

This means restoring some trust in the importance of mediations for the faith: mediations that are intellectual, liturgical, and institutional.

It's a task that applies, in different ways, to both the neo-traditionalist and the post-ecclesial, futuristic Catholic imaginations.

For most of my life, as a Catholic born five years after the end of the Council, I found it easy to wear lightly and comfortably my Vatican II theology and spirituality as both a lay member of the Church and an academic.

This has become more complicated lately.

Sometimes, conservative Catholicism claims or attempts to be a return to the "real" Vatican II.

Sometimes, the return of traditionalism is dismissive of the theology of Vatican II or outright anti-conciliarism.

This has dangerous consequences on all levels—the return of antisemitism in some Catholic circles, for example.

The fact is that to respond to the ills of neo-traditionalism, you must have a sense of what the living tradition is, how it has worked in the past, and how it can work in today's world.

And this is where we need to begin.

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much-published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Catholics from the Old Continent must take this into account in a Church that has been, for centuries, led by Europe.

Global shift

In recent months, at least two events have demonstrated the extent of the divide now emerging between the global North and global South of Catholicism.

First was the document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith allowing blessings for homosexual couples (Fiducia supplicans).

That text was very poorly received on the African continent.

Then there was the positioning of Pope Francis himself, in response to Russia's invasion of part of Ukraine.

On this second point, it's an understatement to say that the statements of the Argentine pope, refusing to clearly side with Ukraine and support its military resistance, have shaken European Catholics.

Certainly, this absolute "pacifism" is consistent with the doctrine of the popes.

Benedict XV, who had pleaded for a truce during the First World War of 1914-1918, was criticised by both the French ("the German Pope") and the Germans (vice versa!).

Moreover, Catholic doctrine has continued to evolve, moving from a definition of "just war," i.e., morally acceptable, to a refutation of all war, including armed resistance.

Paul VI had exclaimed before the United Nations: "No more war."

Pope Francis continued, considering that there is no "just war" and that all war is unnecessary.

The center of gravity has shifted

But truly, the pope's viewpoint is also explained because he comes from the global South.

Or more precisely because he is pope of a Church where the global South is now the majority.

He carries a vision in which a majority of Catholics now would find themselves: it's a conflict where the West is very quick to intervene, to defend its vital interests, while it does not show the same resolve in other parts of the globe.

This is the famous accusation of "double standards," a reproach intensified since the terrible bombings of Israel on the population of Gaza.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict appears, for part of the world, as a matter of the West.

We must now reckon with these new balances of Catholicism.

We Europeans, we are minorities, not only as Catholics in the Western world but as Westerners in the Catholic world.

The observation, with the growing influence of Africa and the dynamism of South America, is well-documented.

But are we aware of the profound implications of this fact?

We have been, for centuries, at least since the end of Constantinople, in a very "Roman" Church.

Its impulse came from Western Europe, whether it was for missions, modeled on colonisation policies, for artistic culture, theology, etc.

The center of gravity has shifted.

In 1963, for the election of Pope John XXIII, 68 percent of the cardinal electors came from Europe. For Francis, they were only 38 percent.

The weight of the Church is now in the global South.

It's a new paradigm for European Catholics. They will have to accept being in the minority. After all, Catholics from other countries have been for so long.

They will have to understand the world from the other side, listen to and learn from those Churches, even if they do not think like them.

From this perspective, let's dare to say that Catholicism can be prophetic, if it manages to maintain unity, while being predominantly centered in the southern part of the planet.

• First published in La Croix
• Isabelle de Gaulmyn is a senior editor at La Croix and a former Vatican correspondent.

Cardinals, bishops, priests and lay Catholics, both men and women, are meeting Oct. 4-29, 2023, as part of the Synod on Synodality: an effort Pope Francis launched in 2021 to generate dialogue among Catholics.

More than two weeks into the synod's first global assembly, participants are largely keeping quiet.

Opening the synod, Francis called for a "fasting of the public word," encouraging delegates to focus inward and treat discussions as private.

The goal of the three-year synod process is to consult with everyday Catholics worldwide about their concerns and experiences, guiding leaders' decision-making as the church enters its third millennium amid new challenges.

Controversial issues such as women's roles in ministry and LGBTQ+ people's place in the church dominate synod-related headlines, and are presumably being discussed.

Often overlooked, however, is an even more fundamental issue: what power and authority should look like in the church.

Far-reaching process

The synod began with listening sessions at parishes, Catholic universities and other Catholic settings across the globe.

All dioceses - the geographic regions into which the Catholic Church divides its ministry - were urged to hold such sessions.

In theory, these discussions offered an opportunity for all Catholics to have their voices heard at the highest levels of the church.

Key themes were passed up to local bishops, then synthesised into documents that informed consultations by a national-level assembly, and, in turn, the global assembly.

In some places, however, local leaders have not promoted the synod or have explicitly criticised it.

Clericalism v dialogue

Several topics on the table have garnered public attention, such as some Catholics' hopes to allow married priests or women deacons. Arguably the most important issue, however, is authority.

Conservative factions yearn for "clear teaching" on doctrine and strong centralised authority - even as, ironically, they resist the authority of the current pope, whom they criticise as an undisciplined leader or as too liberal.

Progressive factions, on the other hand, often seem to yearn for more democratic decision-making, akin to the independent authority local congregations have in some Protestant denominations.

In fact, as a scholar of the public role of the Catholic Church, I suspect both groups are likely to be disappointed.

The church strongly supports democracy in the secular world.

Internally, however, Catholicism preserves a deep tradition of governance rooted in apostolic succession: the teaching that bishops' authority descends directly from the Apostles of Jesus Christ.

In other words, the legitimacy of their leadership stems from this lineage, rather than a democratic process.

The synod process aims to move toward a more dialogue-based model for how the authority of priests and bishops should work, within this apostolic understanding of Catholic authority.

Francis v ‘clericalism'

Catholics and many non-Catholics tend to understand the church as a kind of vertically integrated corporation, where unquestioned authority flows from the top.

Waves of clergy sex abuse scandals, in particular, have discredited this model in many people's eyes, and Francis appears to be moving Catholicism away from this style of leadership.

He has repeatedly criticised "clericalism": the tendency to center the faith on priests and obedience to their authority.

"To say "no" to abuse is to say an emphatic "no" to all forms of clericalism," he wrote in a 2018 letter addressed to "the people of God."

Five years later, in a note to priests in Rome, he described clericalism as "a sickness" that leads to authority "without humility but with detached and haughty attitudes."

Instead, Francis is advancing a model in which bishops exercise their authority through continuous dialogue with the faithful, the Catholic intellectual tradition and the wider world.

This model views the church as constantly evolving, even as it forever affirms core truths.

Sociologists call these types of models "participative hierarchy."

One aspect of this more responsive and dynamic model of authority has been prominently on display during the general assembly: Nuns and laypeople, both men and women, are full participants, with voice and vote in all matters coming before the synod.

While this sounds moderate, it challenges the core understanding of authority among clericalist Catholics, who argue that such reforms would go against tradition.

However, Catholicism has used both models of authority in different periods.

Politics and the pope

The controversy surrounding the synod also reflects a simple fact: The Catholic Church in the U.S. is as polarised as secular American society.

A decade ago, at the very start of Francis' papacy, he was seen as a moderate conservative. But he quickly signaled openness to the modern world, in part by criticising two qualities as anathema to Catholic teachings.

First, clericalism, with its tendency to treat clergy as elite or above accountability.

Second, a backward-looking nostalgia for some earlier time when a perfect Catholicism supposedly existed - a stance that Francis sees as undercutting Catholicism here and now.

As of 2021, about four in five U.S. Catholics had a positive opinion of Francis.

Among clergy and Catholic leaders, however, he has some vocal detractors.

While Francis has embraced constructive debate, he has pointedly removed from authority some clergy, including Americans, whom he sees as actively undermining his direction for the church.

More recently, he accused U.S. conservatives of "backwardness" and of replacing spirituality with ideology.

For now, the synod moves forward despite the divides. There will be another synod assembly in Rome in October 2024, after which final recommendations will be made and the pope will decide what to put into action.

Beyond whatever particular changes this synod assembly may or may not recommend, its deeper impact will lie in how Francis' vision of Catholic authority fares.

In the long term, I would argue, this is where the Catholic future will be most shaped. The world's 1.4 billion Catholics will be watching.

• Richard Wood is the President, Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
• First published in The Conversation

That was me at age five realising that my beliefs contradict each other.

Growing up in a Maori Catholic family, I struggled to exist within two worlds. My spirituality has never been here nor there, but a constant blend between both Catholicism and te Ao Maori.

Before primary school, I attended Te Kopae Piripono in Taranaki. At Te Kopae, I was enriched in te Ao Maori.

I always felt loved and protected by God and nga Atua.

But because my family have always been very devout Catholics, instead of attending kura kaupapa, I was sent to a Catholic primary school.

It was a huge culture shock.

When they started teaching about the commandments, I was baffled by the first one: "You shall have no other gods before me".

After that lesson, I stared into space, thinking, "Are Atua gods?

Have I been a bad Catholic?

Does God not love me?

Can I not say karakia anymore?"

In my naive mind, nga Atua and God had all existed in harmony, ensuring all was well in the world, and helping each other out.

I was quickly proved wrong.

At six years old, I watched some girls from class stab pointed sticks into the ground for fun.

In true Kaitiaki nature, I rushed to defend Papatuanuku. I sobbed, "Please stop, you're hurting my Mama!"

They ran away laughing and went to our teacher, supposedly ‘crying'.

Instead of my teacher explaining cultural differences, she yelled at me. I was scolded for spreading lies.

She said that Papatuanuku is just a character from a book—she pointed to the cover of In the Beginning, stating it was just a made-up story.

I was left wondering which creation story was true.

Experiences like this continued throughout the years.

At this point, you would be forgiven for thinking I would relinquish my Catholic faith out of resentment, but spirituality is embedded in me.

My spirituality gives me hope and peace of mind.

Don't get me wrong, I have found great conflict with the Catholic church and the weaponisation of religion—from its role in colonisation to the church's opinion on some topics.

I love my understanding of God, and I'll stand by Him, but my values clash with those of the men that speak on his ‘behalf'.

After years of being told my beliefs are wrong, and embarrassed to be a Maori who is also Catholic, I have come to the decision to bugger everyone who tells me my beliefs are wrong.

I've realised, who knows?

Who are they to tell me what's true and what's false?

At the end of the day, respecting other people's beliefs is all we need to do. We don't all need to believe the exact same thing.

If you're like me, struggling to blend your spirituality smoothie, I can only suggest keeping the blender going. Eventually, it will all smooth out.

• Whakairitaua Rukuwai (Taranaki, Te Atiawa) studies at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University Wellington.
• First published in Salient. Republished with permission of the author.

Except that we're not talking about condemnations emanating from the pope. Instead, the condemnations found in world beacon of the liberal press are often hurled against the pope.

The latest instance was the October 12th column by Ross Douthat titled "How Catholics Became Prisoners of Vatican II".

Published for the 60th anniversary of John XXIII's opening of Second Vatican Council (1962-65), it offered the usual post hoc, propter hocnarrative on Vatican II that is typical of those who identify Catholicism with the trajectories of post-industrial, secularized Western societies and who completely ignore the global Church.

In keeping with his personal style, Douthat also made no effort to give a fair presentation of the Council's theology to readers of one of the most important newspapers in the world.

This particular column elicited very effective responses on social media, especially a sharp rebuttal on Twitter by David Gibson.

But a column published in print and online in the New York Times evidently carries some kind of journalistic infallibility, one that's even less subject to scrutiny than papal infallibility.

And the audience reached is infinitely larger than any twitter thread or blog post.

Due deference to the pope?

I once debated Ross Douthat in public.

It was in 2018 at Fordham University, a very interesting event followed by a cordial dinner together.

Trying to talk about theology with him was frustrating because his real expertise is American politics, culture, and society. And that is the filter through which he interprets anything that happens in the Church and in the Vatican.

But he also commits a fair amount of intellectual malpractice.

His book on Pope Francis (or rather against the pope) listed sources that would not be acceptable in an undergraduate students' term paper.

One of the genuinely humourous things was to see how Douthat characterized Cardinal Walter Kasper as a dangerous liberal whom Pope Francis was using to deviate from orthodox doctrine and break apart the Church through the Synod assemblies of 2014-2015 and the post-synodal exhortation Amoris laetitia.

I suggest Douthat ask German Catholics if Kasper is a dangerous liberal, especially in light of the cardinal's repeatedly stinging criticism of their "Synodal Path".

But Germany is a bit too far out of the way from the Connecticut-New York-Washington D.C. corridor, as we all know.

One of the most memorable moments in Douthat's pronouncements on the Catholic Church was during the television interview he gave to American journalist Charlie Rose in 2009.

When Rose asked him about his relationship with the papacy, Douthat replied that Catholics must have a certain amount of deference towards the pope.

Those were the days of Benedict XVI, of course. Douthat evidently forgot all about such deference when Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to the papacy in 2103.

Indeed, during these last nine-and-a-half years, he has accused Francis of a number of theological heresies and canonical crimes.

In doing so, he has gone far beyond the criticism liberal Catholics levelled against John Paul II and Benedict XVI, popes that were closer to his theo-political views. But don't blame John Paul and Benedict for this.

Douthat's paeans to them should be taken no more seriously than his screeds against Francis.

Fellow travelers in the neo-traditionalist Catholic right in the USA

Here are just a few examples of titles his op-eds in the New York Times: "The Plot to Change Catholicism" (October 17, 2015), "Expect the Inquisition" (September 20, 2017), "Pope Francis Is Beloved. His Papacy Might Be a Disaster" (March 16, 2018), "What Did Pope Francis Know?" (August 28, 2018), "The Slow Road to Catholic Schism" (September 14, 2019).

Douthat's columns are not the only ones that have painted a certain image of Pope Francis and of the Catholic Church to the readers of the Times.

There are also articles by some of Ross Douthat's fellow travellers in the neo-traditionalist Catholic right in the United States.

For instance, there are Michael Brendan Dougherty and Julia Yost who have published, "The Pope Has Put Undue Political Spin on a Spiritual Message" (September 17, 2015), "Pope Francis Is Tearing the Catholic Church Apart" (August 12, 2021), and "New York's Hottest Club Is the Catholic Church" (August 9, 2022). Of course, to be published in the Times works like an ordination to the priesthood for intellectuals in the public square: it elevates the profile, confers authority, and opens other doors.

Pope Francis himself was published in the Times on November 26, 2020.

But that did not change the substance of what I believe is a disservice done to the readers — Catholic and non-Catholic, Christians and non-Christians, religious and secular — by the op-ed page articles on the Church.

Mainstream Catholic intellectuals have not been frequent guests of that opinion page in recent years and the lack of balance is evident (Garry Wills is in a category of his own, but also one more evident of the way the Times covers Catholicism).

I do not know if this is also happening to other Christian denominations and religious traditions, but it's clear that, if one does not know anything about Catholicism and happens upon these columns in the New York Times, they will find a very eccentric and idiosyncratic view of the Francis pontificate and the Church he leads as Bishop of Rome.

A change in the way mainstream media has traditionally covered religion

Now, we must distinguish between the Times' reporting on religion, which is mostly thorough and fair, and its opinion page. Indeed, most of its op-ed pieces on Catholicism illustrate some important things.

The first observation is that journalistic coverage of the Catholic Church has changed in ways that are more profound than the mere fact that the current pope gives frequent interviews to the media (most of the time, secular media).

Mainstream journalism, with its shrinking readership, is more influenced by political agendas and money in our polarized democracies. And the Church is more influenced by journalism, but it no longer has any control over it.

Also gone is the era when religion reporters and columnists in mainstream media were intellectuals with whom one could discuss — and read about in their columns — the great theologians and philosophers.

This made Catholicism intelligible beyond the very narrow parameters of politics.

In the US, one remembers the Times' Peter Steinfels and Newsweek's Kenneth Woodward, whereas in Italy there was Luigi Accattoli, who wrote for Il Corriere della Sera.

We are now in a more global Church, but one that is also more parochial and short-sighted at the same time.

The theological ignorance feeding the negative view of Vatican II

The second observation is the de-theologising of the debates concerning religion.

In the United States, especially Catholic public intellectuals and politicians, as well as the business world and philanthropic circles, are increasingly represented by neo-traditionalist Catholics with a markedly negative or derisive view of Vatican Council II.

This is usually due to minimal knowledge of what the Council was about theologically: Scripture, liturgy, ecumenism, religious liberty, inter-religious dialogue, and missionary activity.

The theological concept of "Catholic tradition" as a living tradition has become subservient to a political concept of tradition as something to take back from the party on the other side of the aisle.

Theologians (like me) are also to blame because we failed to engage these voices, being prisoners of an academic environment where diversity has often become the mission.

The paradoxes of the liberals' emphasis on diversity — a largely de-theologized and big-business-like idea of diversity — has helped skew the Times' view of Catholicism, which then echoes the preferential option for the exotic that is currently found in academia.

Thanks to this appeal to ideological "diversity", anti-Vatican II and anti-liberal Catholic voices have gained access to liberal mainstream media. Ironically, they have found in the New York Times the American liberal equivalent of L'Osservatore Romano — a platform that is denied to those who are identified as mainstream, liberal "Vatican II Catholics".

Catholics reinforcing anti-Catholic bias

The final observation is that this image of a Church in disarray, with a "liberal" pope under assault by neo-traditionalists, fits a certain established image of Catholicism the New York Times has held for a very long time.

In these last twenty years, the tragedy of the sex abuse crisis has reinforced certain stereotypes of a bigoted Church of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and of Pius XII who is portrayed as Hitler's lackey.

The ongoing opinions that are expressed in the daily bible of American liberalism by Catholics who attack the pope are perversely reassuring for a certain kind of Times reader.

They serve less as interpretations of Catholicism than as specimens.

It is like looking through a keyhole and seeing this weird world of Catholicism vie with itself, where devout believers try to take down the pope as if they were students in a graduate seminar trying to impress the professor.

There are Catholic ways for Catholics to disagree with the pope in public. But this is obviously not something they teach in Ivy League universities.

This approach to Pope Francis and Catholicism echoes what Zena Hitz wrote about a certain academic culture in her recent book Lost in Thought. She describes it as a blood sport, a battle of ideas interpreted as gladiatorial contests where celebrity is the currency of success.

It's no wonder that these kind of Catholics, my brothers and sisters in the faith, are so afraid of Francis and the currency in which the Church under his guidance is so clearly trafficking.

It's called the Gospel.

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much-published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

On Thursday, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle said, "We are really concerned, not only for Europe but for all the world, regarding evangelization."

Speaking with reporters during the presentation of World Mission Sunday, the prelate admitted that he's not an "expert" when it comes to the Church in Europe. So, he chose instead to speak more about his home continent.

"Asia is a world of mission, and now they say that Europe is also becoming a mission territory," he said.

"Our experience in Asia is that, though the Holy Spirit is always the major agent in evangelization, we also need living witnesses. Those who through their witness of life, quality of relationship, compassion for the poor, give a living announcement of the Gospel."

Cardinal Tagle's comments have been confirmed in the latest Vatican census that shows Catholicism is growing in Africa, Asia and the America's, but is declining in Europe.

The number of Catholics in the world grew by more than 15 million from 2018 to 2019, according to a census by the Vatican news agency Fides published on 21 Oct.

"The increase applies to all continents, except Europe," which saw the number of Catholic faithful decrease by almost 300,000, the survey found.

The Fides data accounts for all Catholics until 31 Dec, 2019. Given the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent church closures and deaths, experts at a Vatican news conference on Thursday admitted the numbers may have changed substantially during 2020.

The theme chosen for the 2021 celebration of the World Mission Sunday is taken from the Acts of the Apostles: "We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard."

Speaking at the news conference, Cardinal Tagle encouraged the faithful to become "missionaries fueled by compassion and hope."

Mentioning his experience living in Asia, where Catholics represent a minority of the population, the cardinal warned that "if we keep the faith to ourselves, we will become weak. If we keep the faith to a small group, it might become an elite group."

Instead, he continued, Christians and missionaries are called "to reach all the nations, the geographical and existential spaces."

Sources

• Crux
• Religion News
• Agenzia Fides

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.

One covered the Entomological Society of America's decision to stop using the terms gypsy moth and gypsy ant.

The other was about a new movie by the director Paul Verhoeven featuring an affair between two 17th-century nuns. "Forgive them, Father, for they have sinned," the article begins. "Repeatedly! Creatively! And wait until you hear what they did with that Virgin Mary statuette."

"When I read that article in the morning over my yoghurt and cranberry juice, I couldn't believe what I was reading.

"It was just disgusting," Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and writer, told me.

He was talking about the movie, not the moths.

He found it striking that the Times would deferentially cover a language shift meant to show respect for Roma people but would also print a story that relished a film scene in which a holy Catholic object is defiled.

"Anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice," he wrote on Twitter, linking to an article he wrote 20 years ago that explores why some Americans still treat Catholics with suspicion or contempt.

His argument, then and now, is that it's acceptable in secular, liberal, elite circles—such as The New York Times—to make fun of Catholicism, particularly the Church's emphasis on hierarchy, dogma, and canon law and its teachings related to sex.

Martin is well known in the American Catholic world for his relatively progressive approach to issues that have split the Church, including advocating for greater Catholic acceptance of LGBTQ people.

As a result, he's a frequent target of opprobrium from many of the conservative Catholics who tend to protest anti-Catholicism most loudly, which is why I wanted to talk with Martin.

He is deploying arguments similar to those of his critics.

We are living in an era when newsrooms are revising their style guides to be more sensitive about race, gender, and sexuality; flippant comments perceived as bigotry can cost people their job, and entomological societies are scouring their insect rosters for pejorative names.

Yet, some aspects of identity and belief still seem to be fair game for mockery.

Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Emma Green: The New York Times wrote up this new movie called Benedetta and its debut at the Cannes Film Festival. The article—written by a reporter, not a critic—is very taken with the movie's lesbian nun sex. They apparently use a statue of the Virgin Mary to do something that I can't actually say out loud to you because you're a priest. When you read this, why did it strike you as anti-Catholic prejudice?

James Martin: Well, first of all, it's very subjective. One person's critique is another person's anti-Catholicism. Second of all, we have to be careful not to label every single critique of the Church as anti-Catholicism. The Church deserves its critics, especially in the light of the sex-abuse crisis and financial scandals and other things.

What bothered me more than the film was the article. The fact that you had a hard time describing what the article said to me should be an indication of its offensiveness. What if it were directed toward another religion—something holy from Islam or Judaism being used as a sex toy—and that was made fun of in The New York Times? To me, it seemed unnecessarily mocking.

Green: Why do you think it feels more acceptable to some people for The New York Times to write like this about Catholics than about, say, Orthodox Jews?

Martin: I think anti-Catholic tropes get a pass in our culture for a number of reasons, in a way that anti-Semitism, anti-Islam, or even homophobia do not. The tone of the article was: Isn't this funny? Isn't this silly? Isn't Catholicism ridiculous?

Green: Do you think this is because people assume that the Catholic Church is powerful, and many Catholics in America are white and are part of the Christian cultural majority? Is it that making fun of powerful people or institutions doesn't seem out of bounds?

Martin: We've always lived in a largely Protestant culture that has been suspicious of Catholicism—papal infallibility, the Virgin birth, celibate priesthood. And there's a long history in the United States of anti-Catholic tropes. There are many reasons, including distrust of authority, and a misunderstanding of celibacy and chastity.

Green: I'll show my cards, which is that I don't care that much about one movie or the way it's written about in The New York Times. But this sparked my interest because it's arguably an example of the ambient cultural signals that build a sense, especially among some conservative Catholics, that they are culturally on the outs. You're not typically in that camp, grinding the axe around how oppressed Catholics are. In this instance, do you have any sympathy for that point of view?

Martin: Cries of anti-Catholicism are too frequent. Anti-Catholicism is nowhere near as prevalent as racism, homophobia, or anti-Semitism. Not every critique of the Church is an offense against religious liberty. And The New York Times is not anti-Catholic. But from time to time, it's important to remind people that anti-Catholicism is not a myth. Continue reading

Examples of anti-Catholicism in the United States are surprisingly easy to find.

Moreover, Catholics themselves seem to be increasingly aware of the spectre of anti-Catholic bias.

In the past, a largely immigrant church would have quietly borne the sting of prejudice, but today American Catholics seem less willing to tolerate slander and malicious behaviour.

In addition, the question of anti-Catholic bias has recently been brought to the fore by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Emboldened by its public-relations successes, with attacks on television shows like "Nothing Sacred," Broadway offerings like "Corpus Christi" and last year's exhibit "Sensation" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, this organization has made anti-Catholicism a hot political issue.

But this raises a critical question: How prevalent is anti-Catholicism in American culture? Is it, as some have termed it, "the last acceptable prejudice?"

Is it as serious an issue as racism or anti-Semitism or homophobia?

Or are rising complaints about anti-Catholic bias simply an unfortunate overstatement, another manifestation of the current "victim culture," in which every interest group is quick to claim victimhood?

In short, is anti-Catholicism a real problem in the United States?

Historical Roots

It is, of course, impossible to summarize 400 years of history in a few paragraphs. But even a brief overview serves to expose the thread of anti-Catholic bias that runs through American history and to explain why the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. called anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people."

The eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. called anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people."

To understand the roots of American anti-Catholicism one needs to go back to the Reformation, whose ideas about Rome and the papacy travelled to the New World with the earliest settlers.

These settlers were, of course, predominantly Protestant.

For better or worse, a large part of American culture is a legacy of Great Britain, and an enormous part of its religious culture a legacy of the English Reformation.

Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, in his landmark book American Catholicism, first published in 1956, wrote bluntly that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia."

Proscriptions against Catholics were included in colonial charters and laws, and, as Monsignor Ellis noted wryly, nothing could bring together warring Anglican ministers and Puritan divines faster than their common hatred of the church of Rome.

Such antipathy continued throughout the 18th century. Indeed, the virtual penal status of the Catholics in the colonies made even the appointment of bishops unthinkable in the early years of the Republic.

In 1834, lurid tales of sexual slavery and infanticide in convents prompted the burning of an Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Mass., setting off nearly two decades of violence against Catholics. The resulting anti-Catholic riots (which included the burning of churches), were largely centred in the major urban centres of the country and led to the creation of the nativist Know-Nothing Party in 1854, whose platform included a straightforward condemnation of the Catholic Church.

By 1850 Catholics had become the country's largest single religious denomination. And between 1860 and 1890 the population of Catholics in the United States tripled through immigration; by the end of the decade, it would reach seven million.

This influx, largely Irish, which would eventually bring increased political power for the Catholic Church and a greater cultural presence, led at the same time to a growing fear of the Catholic "menace."

The American Protective Association, for example, formed in Iowa in 1887, sponsored popular countrywide tours of supposed ex-priests and "escaped" nuns, who concocted horrific tales of mistreatment and abuse.

By the beginning of the 20th century, fully one-sixth of the population of the United States was Catholic.

Nevertheless, the powerful influence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist organizations were typical of still-potent anti-Catholic sentiments.

In 1928 the presidential candidacy of Al Smith was greeted with a fresh wave of anti-Catholic hysteria that contributed to his defeat. (It was widely rumoured at the time that with the election of Mr Smith the pope would take up residence in the White House and Protestants would find themselves stripped of their citizenship.)

As Charles R. Morris noted in his recent book American Catholic, the real mainstreaming of the church did not occur until the 1950's and 1960's, when educated Catholicssons and daughters of immigrants were finally assimilated into the larger culture.

Still, John F. Kennedy, in his 1960 presidential run, was confronted with old anti-Catholic biases and was eventually compelled to address explicitly concerns of his supposed "allegiance" to the pope. (Many Protestant leaders, such as Norman Vincent Peale, publicly opposed the candidacy because of Kennedy's religion.)

And after the election, survey research by political scientists found that Kennedy had indeed lost votes because of his religion.

The old prejudices had lessened but not disappeared.

Contemporary Prejudices

But why today?

In a "multicultural" society shouldn't anti-Catholicism be a dead issue?

After all, Catholics have been successfully integrated into a social order that places an enormous emphasis on tolerance.

Moreover, the great strides made in dialogue among the Christian denominations should make the kind of rhetoric used in the past outmoded if not politically incorrect.

But besides the lingering influence of our colonial past, and the fact that many Americans disagree with the Catholic hierarchy on political matters, there are a number of other reasons for anti-Catholic sentiments.

Most of these reasons are not overtly theological. (However, as the recent flap at Bob Jones University demonstrated, strong theological opposition to the church still exists among small groups of Baptists and evangelicals in the South.)

Rather, these sentiments stem mainly from the inherent tensions between the nature of the church and the nature of the United States.

First, in any democracy, there is a natural distrust of organizations run along hierarchical lines, as the Catholic Church surely is. The church's model of governance can strike many as almost "anti-American." (Many Americans, for example, view the church's ban on women's ordination largely in terms of democratic principles, or "rights" and "representation.")

Second, the church's emphasis on community, as well as what St. Ignatius Loyola famously called "thinking with the church," is often seen as at odds with the American ideal of rugged individualism.

This attitude manifests itself whenever the institutional church is criticized but personal faith is celebrated.

This is also the philosophy represented in such movies as "Dogma" and "Stigmata." The implicit message is that while organized religion is bad, "spirituality" (especially in a highly personalized form) is good. Similarly, in a pluralistic society, the church's emphasis on the one, eternal truth can strike some as difficult to comprehend.

Third, in a rational, post-Enlightenment society the church's emphasis on the transcendent seems at best old-fashioned, and at worst dangerously superstitious.

The church teaches a transcendent God, embraces mystery, seeks to explain the nature of grace, and believes in the sacramental presence of God.

The rational response: How can an intelligent person believe in such things? Continue reading

The survey, published on Tuesday, found over half the respondents (4 percent) said "the pope," "Pope Francis," or "Pope John Paul II" when asked who they thought of first when they heard the word "Catholic."

Of those, 47 percent just said "the pope," and only five percent said "Pope Francis."

Eighteen percent of respondents named a figure from the Bible when asked what came to mind when they heard the word "Catholic".

Of that percentage, 12 percent said "Jesus," and five percent said the Virgin Mary. Two percent said "God."

Six percent of respondents cited themselves or a Catholic family member as the first person to come to mind.

Thirteen percent either refused to answer or said they could not think of anyone.

Pew also asked people to name the first person who came to mind for other religions.

For evangelical Protestantism, the person who was named the most was televangelist Billy Graham, who was named by 21% of respondents.

Forty-six percent of respondents refused to answer or said they did not know, in relation to this question.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said "Buddha" was the first person who came to mind when they heard the term Buddhism.

Just over a quarter of respondents said "Mohammad" was the first person who came to mind for Islam.

About half the respondents cited a figure from the Bible as the first person they thought of when they thought about Judaism.

Twenty-one percent said "Jesus," followed by 13 percent saying "Moses." Eight percent said "Abraham."

Asked about the term "atheism," the four most cited people were Richard Dawkins, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, physicist Stephen Hawking, and television host Bill Maher.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was one of the founders of American Atheists, and brought several cases to the Supreme Court against prayer in

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: PNG Wave

The CBS star told Father James Martin on his Catholic talk show "Faith in Focus" last Thursday night that there was a time in his life he turned away from God.

However, a moment in 1986, when he was 22 years old, changed his mind while walking down the street in Chicago. Continue reading

For those of a more secular bent, it is simply a terrific show, and hence the Met's current exhibit of Catholic religious garments — and the Met Gala's Catholic-themed fancy-dress ball lampooning them.

Some Catholics complained that the gala costumes were blasphemous, with Rihanna in a miter, Zendaya as Joan of Arc as imagined by Versace (she was not the only one in faux armor), Taylor Hill wearing something that looked like it came in a Halloween-costume box labeled "Slutty Cardinal," and Madonna as . . . something called "Madonna," in a crown and veil. But "blasphemy" isn't quite the right word: What was mocked and caricatured at the Met gala was not God so much as the clergy, and God knows the clergy has it coming.

No less an authority than Pope Francis has from time to time put the holy verbal smackdown on prelates he regards as too ostentatious in their style.

The pope himself is a notably modest dresser, as befits a man who took the name "Francis."

Rather than take offense, Catholics ought to smile a little at the dog-and-pony show at the Met. It is a reminder that the Catholic Church matters in the wider world, far beyond Catholic circles, in a way that most other congregations do not.

There is never going to be a Methodist-themed Met gala, and there are not millions of people around the world watching, rapt with anticipation, every time the Southern Baptist Convention elects a new president.

With all due charity to my Protestant friends, their traditions and their foibles are rarely held up for mockery because no one can be bothered to take the time to do so, give or take the occasional joke at Joel Osteen's expense.

The secular world may not care much for Catholic doctrine, but it remains fascinated by Catholic aesthetics, which permeate our popular culture: About half of the horror movies ever made, heavy-metal music from Black Sabbath forward, highbrow television from "The Borgias" to "The Young Pope," cinema from "The Godfather" to "The Matrix" (If Neo's neo-Jesuit cassock isn't in the Met's exhibit, it should be) and much else.

In the 1990s, Gregorian chant was briefly inescapable after the commercial success of Enigma's "Sadeness Part I," most recently resurrected to comical effect in "Tropic Thunder."

Even Kevin Smith's generally misunderstood "Dogma" is, despite its wild vulgarity, a strangely sincere Catholic movie, a "Garden State of Earthly Delights," as it were.

Why is it that Catholic style retains its power even as Catholic teaching is attenuated in the Catholic homelands? Continue reading

• Image: This Insider

Not since the days of the Jesuits and the Jansenists has the Catholic elite — clerical and lay intellectual — been at daggers drawn as it is now.

Yesterday, the New York Times nicely encapsulated the partisan divide in profiling the two big Irish-American archbishops facing each other across the Hudson — Timothy Dolan of New York and Joseph Tobin of Newark.

Can anyone doubt that by making one of the country's most progressive bishops a cardinal and sending him into its dominant media market Francis wasn't sending a shot across the bow of Benedictine conservatism?

On the other side, Pope Emeritus Benedict delivered a shot of his own Saturday in the form of a eulogy for the cardinal archbishop of Cologne, Joachim Meisner, who retired in 2014.

"We know that it was hard for him, the passionate shepherd and pastor of souls, to leave his office, and this precisely at a time when the Church had a pressing need for shepherds who would oppose the dictatorship of the zeitgeist, fully resolved to act and think from a faith standpoint," Benedict wrote.

"Yet I have been all the more impressed that in this last period of his life he learned to let go, and live increasingly from the conviction that the Lord does not leave his Church, even if at times the ship is almost filled to the point of shipwreck."

Meisner, the leading conservative in the German hierarchy, died the day after Francis announced that he would not be reappointing Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the man Benedict selected to head the Vatican's orthodoxy bureau (the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith).

Can anyone doubt that Benedict didn't intend a criticism of the state of the Church under his successor?

But the most explicit articulation of the divide came last week, by way of an article in La Civiltà Cattolica, the Jesuit bimonthly that has led the way in promoting the Franciscan agenda.

Co-authored by editor Antonio Spadaro, the article takes aim at what it considers the unholy alliance between "Evangelical Fundamentalism" and "Catholic Integralism."

Although, as Michael Sean Winters points out over at the National Catholic Reporter, it is possible to find flaws in Civiltà‘s account of political evangelicalism, there's no doubt that the alliance between conservative evangelicals and Catholics promoted by the late Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel is now a real thing. Continue reading

• Image: Fairfield University

In the past four years he has converted to Catholicism, met and married singer/songwriter Rachel, and had two "sparkling" children — Roman, 17 months, and Felix, five months — whose existence lights him up from the inside like a sky lantern.

For those readers who might confuse fiction for biography, let it be known: Wilson, 50, is not at all like Tom Milde, the drunken protagonist of his just-published novel The Straight Banana, "a middle-aged loser, ex-failed poet, ex-print journalist, a nocturnal habitue who falls into TV in New York City".

But he kind of used to be.

For seven years, Wilson, known to many as "the quirky one" on Seven Sharp, was the American correspondent for TVNZ, establishing a New York "bureau" in his apartment. A Metro magazine staffer, he moved to New York with the aim of writing for the New Yorker, but like Milde found himself working in television almost accidentally, certainly with no ambition other than paying his rent.

He covered Hurricane Katrina, the Global Financial Crisis, the Virginia Tech massacre and many other big stories, contextualising them for Kiwi viewers, as well as celebrating red, white and blue oddballs.

"People think I was flown over there in a golden jumbo jet and installed in palatial splendour in Spanish Harlem, but I was a freelancer and I only got paid when I worked," he says. "My first job for TVNZ, I FTD'd [failed to deliver]. I was at the top of the news doing the second inauguration of George Bush. I did not know what I was doing. I hired friends to help me out, and it was a colossal mess.

"But I had support from Bill Ralston, who was the head of news and current affairs at the time. He was indulgent of me, and I was the only person they knew who had a New Zealand accent who was around. So it's an economy of scarcity." Continue reading

Source and Image

• Stuff article by Eleanor Black

The doctor was forced to leave his job as a locum at a practice run by the local authority in southern Sweden, Region Skåne.

Bosses at the GP surgery reported him after it emerged he had filled his room with religious symbols, music stands and hymn books.

He was also accused of having tried to talk his patients into joining the Catholic Church - denying one antibiotics when the notion was refused.

Continue reading