Reflections/Catholic Social Teaching

Australian bishops urge overcoming online hatred, division, and exploitation

Australia’s Catholic bishops have released a statement in view of their Social Justice Sunday, 29 September, urging for a genuine human encounter in the digital world. 

Australia’s Catholic bishops on Tuesday launched a major statement on digital communications, calling on all levels of society to overcome the hatred, division and exploitation that occurs online.  The statement was released in view of Australia’s Catholic Church’s Social Justice Sunday that will be observed on September 29, 2019..

Entitled, “Making it Real: Genuine human encounter in our digital world”, the Social Justice Statement was launched in Sydney by Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen OFM Conv, chairman of the Bishops Commission for Social Justice – Mission and Service.

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Repent, convert, pray, give up fossil fuels, Pope says

"Now is the time to abandon our dependence on fossil fuels and move, quickly and decisively, toward forms of clean energy," Pope Francis said as he marked the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

"We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own," the pope said in his message for the Sept. 1, 2019, ecumenical day of prayer.

Creation is God’s precious gift

Pope Francis urged Catholics to find a naturally beautiful place and think about how God created the universe and declared it good; then he created human beings and gave them creation "as a precious gift" to safeguard.

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First Nations Canadians Celebrate St. Kateri as a Bridge Between Cultures

St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be canonized a saint, was celebrated by First Nations people throughout Canada on her July feast day as an important cultural bridge between Catholicism and First Nations people.

A Simple, Holy Life

Kateri was orphaned at the age of 4, after her family died of smallpox. She was raised by her uncle and by the age of 11 vowed to pledge her virginity to Christ after hearing about him from some Jesuit missionaries.

Like many First Nations people of Canada today, Kateri sometimes faced tension between her two identities as a Christian and a Native American—she felt Christ calling her to virginity, but her family wanted to marry her off. She loved her people, but was forced to move to a Christian mission when violence in the tribe escalated and threatened her safety and virginity.

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U.S. shootings stir gun control debate in other countries

Global Catholic leaders have raised their voices over the deaths of more than 30 people in mass shootings over the past few months in the United States, with several in both Mexico and Italy condemning racism and calling for stricter gun policies.

On Aug. 3 a mass shooting at a Walmart Supercenter in El Paso, Texas left some 22 people dead, most of whom were of Mexican decent. A separate shooting took place in Dayton, Ohio just a few hours later at a popular downtown area, leaving 9 people dead, including the shooter. Patrick Crusius, 21, who was arrested as the alleged shooter in the El Paso massacre, reportedly told authorities that he tried to shoot as many Hispanics as possible, prompting many to decry the gruesome act as a racist hate crime.

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Catholic Leaders Condemn American Federal Government's Move to Execute Inmates

Attorney General William Barr’s announcement that the federal government would resume executing death row inmates after a nearly two decade hiatus is coming under fire from national Catholic leaders.

Our Need for a Culture of Life

Bishop Frank Dewane, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, said he is “deeply concerned” by the move and urged the Trump administration to reconsider.

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The European Union and Religious Liberty – Progress or Indifference?

Despite European Union guidelines and the work of a special envoy for religious freedom and belief, the state of religious freedom inside and outside of Europe at times seems to be worsening, not improving.

The flag of the European Union. Credit: Bohumil Petrik/CNA.The commentator Martin Kugler has said there is a need for a cultural shift. According to Kugler, who is president of the Vienna-based Observatory on Religious Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, a cultural shift is needed to correct false assumptions about persecution against Christians.
There is an assumption that “Christians have always been perpetrators and never victims.”

This belief seems to be “a dogma that prevents our elites from acknowledging the dramatic increase of both persecution against Christians outside Europe and hate crimes like vandalism against Churches in European countries.” That means that “as long we do not address this anti-Christian narrative, secularist lobbying plays an easy game to marginalize Christian actors and religious impact in public (life),” he said.

Religious Freedom in European Union at risk

There are worrisome hints that religious freedom is at risk on the continent. Europe has experienced a surge of terrorist attacks with religious motivation in Europe, but also an increase in ultra-nationalism, which chooses a single religion as part of the national heritage and persecutes all the other minorities, Aid to the Church In Need said in its 2018 report on global religious freedom.

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Amid Tensions in China, Vatican tells Clergy to Follow their Conscience

The Vatican has told bishops and priests in China that they must follow their own consciences in deciding whether to register with the government, and it urged Catholics in the country not to judge them for the choices they make.

A priest celebrates Mass in a makeshift chapel in a village near Beijing in 2012.The problem, the Vatican said, is that registration almost always requires the bishop or priest to accept "the principle of independence, autonomy and self-administration of the church in China," which could be read as a denial of one's bonds with the pope and the universal church.

Releasing the "pastoral guidelines of the Holy See concerning the civil registration of clergy in China" June 28, the Vatican acknowledged that acceptance of the independence of the church in China comes despite "the commitment assumed by the Chinese authorities," in an agreement with the Vatican in September, to respect Catholic doctrine.

Deciding whether to register with the government, which is the only way to be able to minister openly, is a choice that is "far from simple," the guidelines said.

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Redeeming Our Stewardship of the Earth

Pope Francis visits the Pontifical Academy of Sciences for discussion of sustainable developmentsClimate change demands radical and compassionate solutions from everyone. It’s not an easy topic to address given the vastness of its’ causes and effects. It will take a collective effort to accomplish the great task set before us: to care for Creation and be stewards of the Earth. As Catholics, as missionaries, as human beings, we must meet this challenge as a community of saints spread throughout the world.

Pope Francis clearly identifies climate change – often confused with global warming – as a primary concern in Laudato Si’, his encyclical published in 2015. “The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change,” he asserts.

According to NASA, scientists “have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come, largely due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes more than 1,300 scientists from the United States and other countries, forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.” This is significant because “small changes in temperature correspond to enormous changes in the environment.”

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The Tree C’s – Cult, Culture and Cultivation

“Color me green,” an old environmentalist friend used to say whenever we at Annunciation House of Worcester in Massachusetts were undertaking an initiative that met with his approval. It was a nice but also very apropos way for him to signal agreement, especially when what we were doing had to do with urban gardening, solar energy projects and the like — with the greening and the regreening of our own little patch of the wide world!

Greening our own little corner of the world

It was also great to know we were pleasing someone “in the know” about these things even if our efforts seemed to us quite modest considering the great needs of a planet in peril.

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