Church in Australia should not be tax exempt, former government official says

Melbourne, Australia, Mar 4, 2019 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- A man who says he was sexually assaulted in the 1970s by Australia’s Cardinal George Pell says he will file a lawsuit against the cardinal, after prosecutors scuttled a plan to try Pell for the alleged abuse.

The man, whose name has not been disclosed, claims that Pell touched him inappropriately while playing with him in the swimming pool of a Church-run boys’ home where he resided. The man, referred to by his attorney as “David,” is now 50. He lived at the boys’ home from 1974 to 1978, leaving the home before he was ten years old.  Pell was at that time a priest serving in Ballarat, Australia.

Pell was convicted last year of five counts of sexual abuse, stemming from charges that he sexually assaulted two choir boys in a cathedral in the 1990s, while Pell was Archbishop of Melbourne. He was expected to face a second trial concerning allegations that in the 1970s he sexually assaulted two other boys in the Ballarat swimming pool. Prosecutors dropped that case before trial, citing insufficient evidence.

Charges related to “David’s” claim were dropped weeks before prosecutors decided to scuttle the entire trial.

The cardinal is now incarcerated, awaiting sentencing after a court hearing last week related to his previous trial.

“David” alleges that he was also abused by a nun who staffed the boys’ home. In addition to Pell, he plans to include the nun’s religious order, the Sisters of Nazareth, along with the Australian state of Victoria and the Archdiocese of Melbourne in his lawsuit.

“David’s” attorney told the Guardian that the man “was devastated when the prosecution decided not to proceed with the case.”

Pell is appealing his criminal conviction. Melbourne law professor Jeremy Gans told the Guardian last week that there is a good chance Pell’s appeal will succeed, in large part because there was only one key witness in the prosecution’s case.

While many figures in Australian media have applauded Pell’s conviction, some Australians have called it into question, prompting considerable debate across the country.

Paul Kelly, editor-at large at The Australian, said last week that “the implausibility of the evidence” against Pell “raises serious doubts” that the cardinal had a fair trial.

Other observers have expressed similar sentiments. Well-known Australian crime reporter John Silvester argued in The Age that “if Pell did molest those two teenagers in the busy cathedral, it certainly does not fit the usual pattern of paedophile priests.”

“Pell has become a lightning rod in the worldwide storm of anger at a systemic cover-up of priestly abuses. But that doesn’t make him a child molester,” Silvester said.

When Sky News Australia commentator Andrew Bolt announced that he would defend Pell on his television program Feb. 26, the network pulled all advertising from the broadcast, to ensure that advertisers would not be connected to the discussion.

“Sky News is committed to providing a platform for robust debate and discussion and is not afraid to tackle confronting and controversial issues,” a spokeswoman for the network told the Weekly Beast.

“Sky News recognised that the controversial topic of George Pell’s conviction to be covered by one of its highest-rating commentators may have presented an environment that left advertisers open to campaigns by activists.

“A proactive decision was made to replace advertisements during Tuesday night’s program.”

“David” has not yet filed a lawsuit. Attorneys say that he will seek damages for psychological harm, lost wages, and medical expenses. Attorney also say they will call as witnesses other men who allege Pell sexually assaulted them in a similar fashion.

Pell has denied the accusations.

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Sydney, Australia, Sep 15, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA).- Between the Harambe memes and quick explanations of Catholic doctrine on his Twitter page, Richard Umbers, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney, says that online humor is about more than just the laughs.

In fact, he says, Christian humor online can help to reach out to parts of our modern world that are in the process of secularization. This kind of online engagement – with a wink- plays into a larger need for Christians to engage in society and to promote a vision of Christian life.

Bishop Umbers is quick to note in his Twitter bio that he is indeed an “actual person and a realbishop”, adopting the description given him by Tommy Tighe, the “Catholic Hipster”.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”und” dir=”ltr”><a href=”https://t.co/Dh88ZEjeuy”>pic.twitter.com/Dh88ZEjeuy</a></p>&mdash; Bishop Down Umber (@BishopUmbers) <a href=”https://twitter.com/BishopUmbers/status/906526961983356928″>September 9, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Whether in art, online culture, or political discussion, Christians should be giving an example of how to evangelize and to speak to the challenges society faces today. “You need the contemporary expression of Christian faith,” Bishop Umbers said of what the Church needs from its faithful today.

The writings of Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis’ Laudato si’, can provide such a template for living an “alternative” lifestyle as a Christian, while also speaking to contemporary culture, he indicated.

“You can promote a coherent alternative lifestyle, which is what Catholicism really is in our society.”

Bishop Umbers was born and raised in New Zealand, joining the personal prelature of Opus Dei before moving to Sydney to finish his degrees in economics. After guidance from a mentor, he discerned a call to the priesthood, upon which he travelled to Rome and then to Spain to continue his studies. He was ordained a priest of the prelature in Spain in 2002. Fourteen years later, Umbers was consecrated a bishop, becoming in 2016 the youngest bishop in Australia, at the age of 45.

Five or six years ago, he told CNA, he got his first Twitter account and started to use it regularly. In the past several years, he has used his twitter account to reach out on issues affecting Australian society – as well as to joke about a variety of topics: “You can have fun with memes.”

Part of the reason he’s drawn to memes, Bishop Umbers said, is not only because they match his sense of humor, but because of his own limitations. “I have an artistic vision with zero talent,” he joked.

More seriously, memes do indeed convey a message. Like political cartoons, which have spread powerful ideas and opinions for centuries, memes can also convey earnest information.

The creation of a meme culture in online Catholic spaces, or use of other kinds of social media outreach can help reach out and participate in conversations. In fact, he said, people tend to take notice when a conversation is constructive, rather than a “flame war.” Also, he warned, any conversation can sometimes face the threat of miscommunication, or being “overly ironic.”

Honesty and consideration can add balance to online evangelization. “I tell people all the time: be yourself,” Bishop Umbers said. He also advocated that Catholics online display their convictions, and even make “strong comments” – but also advised them consider what they say before they type.

The bishop also urged that Catholics online have faith and conviction in their beliefs – especially if they dabble in memes or in online discussions. “[It] takes a certain confidence in your own faith,” he said of online participation and discussion. This confidence can even help bring out the humor of the whole situation.

While throughout history “believers have always had a go” during important disagreements, poking fun at topics and laughing about the misunderstandings is “a lasting human tradition.”

It’s this sense of conviction that Bishop Umbers hopes believers can bring to conversations happening not only online, but in the Archdiocese of Sydney.

Australian society is currently experiencing “rapid secularization” and increasing “sectarianism”, he said, as issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia come to the center of Australian political debates.

While more Catholics continue to identify as Catholic, as opposed to the shift to “non-religious” among other Christian groups, some Catholic institutions have remained quiet or even supported positions that fly in the face of Church teaching.

“To stand up for Catholic teaching puts you, once again, on the margins”: Bishop Umbers explained that taking a counter-cultural position is likely to impact funding of Church programs as time goes on.

The marginalization of traditional Christian beliefs, however, does not mean that people do not listen or that people do not take interest in the Church’s arguments. “You’re definitely not irrelevant,” he said of the Christian voice in the public square.

Rather, he said, effective communication and coordination seem to be the major stumbling-block facing the Church in the Sydney area.

“That’s where social media can play a big role,” Bishop Umbers offered.

For example, he pointed to a successful social media campaign started by three young women which protested the expansion of abortion in the Australian state of New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital. The young pro-life advocates started a twitter hashtag that started to change the conversation surrounding abortion, and inspired local communities to get involved.

“Because of them, there was a huge campaign across all the parishes to have people sign a petition.” More than 80,000 signed the petition, which eventually contributed to the bill’s defeat in parliament, the bishop said.

The center of a successful online campaign like the one in New South Wales, or of a meme, or of any mode of evangelization, lies, at its core, in the truth, Bishop Umbers said.

“Really it’s an expression of who you are, and I think that’s where evangelization comes from,” he said of online engagement. “It’s not a campaign. It is truly a sharing of your own convictions and your own thoughtfulness.”

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Lima, Peru, Jan 13, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- After controversial remarks last week, the Archbishop of Lima said Thursday that he did not intend to undermine the importance of prayer in the presence of the Eucharist.

“It is essential for us to maintain a level of entering and contemplating the mystery of the Lord made bread for us, the mystery of the transubstantiation as we call it more technically, which means the real presence of the Lord,” Archbishop Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio said Jan. 7.

Castillo’s remarks came after he told Lima’s synodal assembly Jan. 7 that “no one is converted with the tabernacle.” At that meeting, Castillo said that while Pope Francis has mentioned contemplation of the Eucharist as a source of spiritual growth, “no one is converted with the tabernacle. We are all converted from meeting people who ask us questions and who are human dramas where the possibility of encountering the Lord arises.”

“I can later sit before the tabernacle and pray and all that, and surely; but it is very rare that I have illumination in a passive state…Contemplation is extremely important but to the extent the faith has been transmitted, somebody communicated the faith to me,” Castillo added.

“We are all believers because someone announced the Gospel to us, from our mother who made the sign of the cross, the grandma. the dad, the aunt, classmates at school, the Christian community or the singing group…It’s in human relationships where the Lord is hidden, that his presence appears and we welcome him,” Castillo added.

The archbishop’s remarks, posted on YouTube, became a source of controversy in Peru, where they were seen by some Catholics to downplay the importance of the Eucharist, or the power of prayer.

After his comments were published, Castillo offered a “clarification,” explaining that “some people were a bit surprised by a point I made in the morning. What I said was, let’s say, before the tabernacle you don’t find your vocation, a vocation is found in life. And the tabernacle, as you know, is the place to visit where the permanent presence of the Lord is under the forms of bread and wine, and there the Real Presence.”

“Pope Francis said here in Trujillo that when one has a vocation, the vocation is always received in life,” Castillo added.

Castillo, who was a theology professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, became Lima’s archbishop March 2, 2019.

Castillo’s remarks were intended as a commentary on a Jan. 20, 2018 discourse from Pope Francis to priests and consecrated religious in Trujillo, Peru. In that speech, the pope discussed the importance of prayer before the Eucharist.

“Sit down a while and allow him to look at you and remember those times he looked at you and looks at you. Allow yourselves to receive his gaze. This is the most precious possession of a consecrated person: the Lord’s gaze,” Francis said in his remarks.

The pope added that the Lord finds and heals believers in the difficult circumstances of their own life, and from those circumstances, brings them to contemplate him in the presence of the Eucharist.

That, Castillo claimed Jan. 7 in his clarification, is the point he had been trying to make.

The “first encounter with the vocation and the successive kerygmatic encounters are in life and in often terrible situations and sometimes also very beautiful situations, but they aren’t, let’s say, in a moment where I’m alone and there’s a kind of look from the Host at me and me at the Host.”

The archbishop’s clarification, however, also raised a concern about the role of contemplation in life.

“And we have to take into account something that is very important: all that which are  sacraments are signs the Lord has left to remember life and to live life more deeply, to nourish life, but not to replace it.” 

Nevertheless, Castillo added, “I can’t then say tomorrow we all go to the tabernacle and we only devote ourselves to be before the tabernacle, because that’s the truest part of life. [Because] who’s cooking?  And who’s preparing something to eat? So if we see things that way, with [contemplation] as the greatest thing there is, and the only thing that is, be careful.”

Pope Francis has referred to the importance of praying before the Eucharist.

In September 2018, speaking to the bishops in mission territories, the pope explained that a bishop, being a successor of the apostles, is called by Jesus to remain with him and therefore “before the tabernacle he learns to entrust himself to and to trust in the Lord,” because “there he finds his strength and his confidence.”

On Jan. 31, 2019, the pope recalled Don Bosco, the founder of the Salesians, and said that for the priest to look at reality “with the eyes of a man and with the eyes of God,” he has to spend “ample time before the tabernacle”

At Midnight Mass, Dec. 24, 2019, Pope Francis also spoke of the importance of contemplating Christ in the Eucharist present in the tabernacle.

“Today is the right day to draw near to the tabernacle, the crèche, the manger, and to say thank you. Let us receive the gift that is Jesus, in order then to become gift like Jesus. To become gift is to give meaning to life. And it is the best way to change the world: we change, the Church changes, history changes, once we stop trying to change others but try to change ourselves and to make of our life a gift,” the pontiff said.

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