Month: June 2018

Washington D.C., Jun 12, 2018 / 03:58 pm (CNA).- At a highly-anticipated summit on June 12, President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un signed a joint-statement making commitments “to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”

The meeting on Singapore’s Sentosa Island was the first time that an American president met with a North Korean leader.

South Korean Archbishop Kim Hee-Jung of Gwangju called the outcome of the summit “a surprise and a joy,” in a June 12 statement in Korean.

Peaceful negotiation is an ongoing process, the archbishop said, quoting the Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et spes:

“Peace is never attained once and for all, but must be built up ceaselessly.”

The line from Gaudium et Spes continues: “Moreover, since the human will is unsteady and wounded by sin, the achievement of peace requires a constant mastering of passions and the vigilance of lawful authority.”

The South Korean bishops have called for Catholics to pray a novena for North Korea from June 17 – 25 with specific prayer intentions for each day. This includes prayers for the North Korean people, separated families, North Korean refugees, evangelization of the North, and the peaceful reunification of the peninsula.

Trump faced several questions in the press conference following the summit about whether he had addressed North Korea’s human rights abuses in his private discussion with Kim Jong Un. The question of whether to prioritize peace negotiations, security, or human rights concerns has been a frequent point of contention among North Korea experts.

Trump replied that human rights were “discussed relatively briefly compared to denuclearization.” However, he also said that North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens, and the regime’s persecution of Christians were brought up in his conversation with Kim. The roughly 45 minute conversation was unrecorded and through an interpreter.

“Christians, yes. We … brought it up very strongly.  You know, Franklin Graham spent and spends a tremendous amount of time in North Korea.  He’s got it very close to his heart.  It did come up, and things will be happening,” said Trump. Franklin Graham is the son of the late American evangelist Billy Graham and the CEO of the Samaritan’s Purse organization.

After a one-on-one meeting with Kim Jong Un, Trump participated in an expanded bilateral meeting, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, Ambassador Sung Kim, and National Security Council Senior Director for Asia Matt Pottinger joined after for a working lunch.

The outcome of these meetings was a joint-statement signed by both leaders with four specific parts to the agreement.

First, both the U.S. and North Korea agreed to “establish new U.S.-DPRK relations.”

Trump said that he sees himself meeting with Kim again in the future, and told the press, “I also will be inviting Chairman Kim, at the appropriate time, to the White House.”

Second, “the United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”

In part, this seems to include the end of U.S. military exercises with North Korea, which Trump called “war games.” It does not mean a reduction in military capabilities, he clarified.

Third, Kim Jung Un committed to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a reaffirmation of the Panmunjom Declaration, the statement he signed with South Korean President Moon Jae-In on April 27.

As with the Panmunjom Declaration, many scholars critiqued this June 12 joint-statement for lacking concrete details and a timeline to ensure the complete implementation and verification of denuclearization.

Lastly, the two leaders committed to “recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.”

This relatively unexpected outcome came as the result of  “countless calls and letters and tweets” the president said he received from Americans that wanted “the remains of their sons back.” To his suggestion that the remains be repatriated, Trump said that Kim Jung Un replied, “It makes sense.  We will do it.”

The American president seemed confident that the North Korean leader will keep his promises.

“We signed a very, very comprehensive document, and I believe he’s going to live up to that document,” said Trump.

Trump also said that Kim had a “great personality and very smart — good combination.”
Trump attempted to help Kim envision a brighter economic future for North Korea through a short video, which he said he showed the North Korean leader on an iPad toward the end of their meeting.

“The past doesn’t have to be the future. Out of the darkness can come the light, and the light of hope can burn bright,” said a voice in the video over images of the planet, prosperous urban cities, and photos of Trump and Kim.

Trump also claims to have attempted to persuade Kim to see his situation “from a real estate perspective.”

North Korea has “great beaches” said Trump, who continued “You see that whenever they’re exploding their cannons into the ocean, right?  I said, ‘Boy, look at the view.  Wouldn’t that make a great condo behind?’  And I explained, I said, ‘You know, instead of doing that, you could have the best hotels in the world right there.’”

President Trump said that he already has plans to meet next week with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and his “entire team” to begin implementing the negotiated terms.

“The biggest challenge will be developing a robust verification and inspection regime — an endeavor that will test the resilience of the fledgling U.S.-North Korea working partnership,” said John Park, the director of Harvard’s Korea Working Group, in a statement released by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

“A key obstacle ahead will be some actors’ use of the “Sentosa Statement” as a justification to further ease implementation of sanctions without linkage to denuclearization actions to maximize narrow national interests,” Park continued.

In the press conference, Trump said that he would not consider removing the current sanctions on North Korea until “we are sure that the nukes are no longer a factor” and there is “significant improvement” in the human rights situation.

“You can imagine how anxiously the Korean people and the church here in Korea are experiencing this truly historic moment,” Archbishop Alfred Xuereb, apostolic nuncio to South Korea and Mongolia, told Vatican News June 12.

“It marks the beginning of a still long and arduous journey, but we are hopeful because the start has been very positive, very good,” he said.

South Korea’s novena will end June 25, South Korea’s memorial day, and an annual day of prayer in South Korea for reunification of the Korean Peninsula. The day will likely be celebrated with particular urgency this year.  

“Since 1965, the Korean Catholic Church has been praying for the true peace of the two Koreas and the reconciliation of the nation on June 25 every year,” wrote Archbishop Kim following April’s Inter-Korean summit.

In recent months, the country’s bishops have also called for daily rosaries for peace each day at 9pm in South Korea, which are expected to continue after today’s meeting.

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Denver, Colo., Jun 12, 2018 / 12:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Hundreds of people attended at a rally outside Masterpiece Cakeshop last week, showing support for a U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the religious freedom of the shop’s owner.

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Denver, Colo., Jun 11, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- The bishops of the United States will meet in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, this week, less than one mile from A1A-Beachfront Avenue, the Florida road made famous by a 1974 Jimmy Buffett album, and the peerless 1990 Vanilla Ice single “Ice, Ice Baby.”

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops conducts two meeting annually- the fall meeting is held in Baltimore, while the spring meeting rotates through conference centers and hotels across the country.

The spring meeting’s agenda is typically light; in fact the meeting is replaced by a retreat every three years.

There are exceptions to the light spring load – last year’s meeting, for example, featured a fiercely-debated vote on the bishops’ religious liberty advocacy. Most famously, the spring meeting of 2002 served as the launching-point for the US bishops’ response to the Church’s burgeoning sexual abuse crisis.

While most of the expected agenda in Fort Lauderdale is a mix of updates, housekeeping items, or votes unlikely to be contentious, two items up for discussion are worth your careful attention.

First, the housekeeping and updates: the bishops will discuss a forthcoming document regarding the pastoral care of Pacific Islander and Asian Catholics, along with the progress of the V National Encuentro, a process of parish, diocesan, and regional meetings for Hispanic Catholics, which will culminate in September with a national meeting held in Texas, and the upcoming Vatican synod on young people, faith, and vocational discernment. The bishops will also vote on new translations of certain sections of the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayer book prayed daily by priests, deacons, and religious brothers and sisters.

According to several sources, the bishops will vote on the publication of short letters, prayers and videos to accompany Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship– the bishops’ 2007 guide to voting and political life.

Faithful Citizenship has been the subject of criticism in recent years, and some have called for a significant reworking of the text, even though it was last revised only three years ago, in 2015. New revisions would likely involve a working group of bishops and USCCB staff members, consultation with experts from academia and political life, and a process of nearly two years. More important, further revisions would likely require the bishops to engage directly in serious debate about political subjects on which they are divided.

The contentious 2016 debate over the bishops’ religious liberty committee pointed to sharp disagreement over the political issues the USCCB has prioritized, and over an approach to political engagement that some see as excessively partisan. Revising Faithful Citizenship would open a direct, public debate about those issues, which could end in gridlock. Sources close to the USCCB have told CNA that many bishops hope to avoid that debate.

It seems more likely the bishops will approve the publication of short statements and videos on political life, using Faithful Citizenship as a kind-of base text from which to work, at least for the foreseeable future.
 
There are two issues likely to spark some debate in Fort Lauderdale- new installments in long-standing discussions about sexual abuse and Catholic healthcare. The USCCB has announced that the bishops will debate proposed revisions to two documents: the Charter for the Protection of Children andYoung People, the Church’s guiding document on sexual abuse, and the Ethical and Religious Directives, which govern Catholic hospitals and healthcare providers.

The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, first issued in 2002, was revised in 2005 and again in 2011. A new revision process began in 2013. Over the past five years, bishops, consultants, the independent National Review Board, and other interested parties have offered suggestions for the document. Though major edits are not expected, debate over the revised text will be the first time the bishops publicly discuss clerical sexual abuse since controversy erupted over Pope Francis’ handling of a sexual abuse crisis in Chile, and since the #MeToo movement burst into international consciousness.

It should be mentioned that the USCCB’s 2017 report on Charter compliance notes that allegations of clerical sexual abuse “decreased significantly” last year, and that the National Review Board said that “the commitment and efforts of the bishops stands out as a model to be emulated by other institutions” working to address the problem of sexual abuse.

Still, some bishops have told CNA they’re concerned about “audit creep”- a name some use to describe the concern that annual Charter compliance audits have become increasingly invasive in recent years, attempting to expand the scope of audits beyond their original purpose. Others have asked whether the document calls for enough screening and formation of seminarians and diaconal candidates before they are ordained, especially with regard to chaste sexuality.

Discussion about the document, if it raises those issues, could be interesting. Child protection is not an issue of ideological division among the bishops- but each of them has the experience of meeting with victims, overseeing background checks and prevention training, engaging with priests accused of malfeasance, and working with the independent compliance auditors who evaluate diocesan practices. Their perspectives about what’s working- and what’s not- will certainly be worth watching.

On the healthcare front, the bishops are expected to debate revisions to the Ethical and Religious Directives that pertain to institutional collaboration between Catholic and non-Catholic hospitals. One-in-six acute care hospital beds in the United States is in a Catholic hospital. Catholic healthcare systems, through mergers, have become among the largest healthcare providers in the nation, and though they’re overseen by a Vatican congregation and local bishops, they straddle the fence between more typical Catholic apostolates and billion-dollar corporations.

Catholic healthcare is big business in the United States, and overseeing hospitals can be a challenge for bishops, who usually have less money and personnel than the hospitals in their dioceses. Some critics have said that understanding Catholic healthcare systems in the United States, and trying to govern them, has been an even bigger challenge for the Vatican.

As Catholic hospital systems merge with, or acquire, non-Catholic hospitals, ethical questions have become increasingly complicated. New sections of the Ethical and Religious Directives are expected to address those collaborative relationships.

Sources close to the process have told CNA that the document’s revisions aim to clarify the role of bishops and the Vatican in evaluating healthcare partnerships, and to clarify the limitations on partnering with institutions that perform abortions, sterilizations, gender reassignment surgery, etc. At issue will be whether those clarifications offer enough to gain support from bishops concerned about the influence of the “contraceptive mentality” and “gender ideology” in Catholic healthcare, and from those who want to ensure that bishops are empowered to exercise real oversight of the hospitals in their territory.

The past few months have seen the US bishops addressing controversies at the Vatican, vigorous advocacy on immigration and religious liberty issues, and a tenuous and unpredictable relationship with the Trump Administration. Their meeting in Fort Lauderdale will not be without some excitement, but the agenda might also provide them a chance to breathe, take in the sun, and visit the famous- or, if Vanilla Ice is to be believed, infamous- Beachfront Avenue.

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