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Christians in Ukraine ask for prayer as tensions with Russia escalate

November 26, 2018 CNA Daily News 2

Kyiv, Ukraine, Nov 26, 2018 / 04:23 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Ukrainian parliament voted to introduce martial law after Russian forces seized three of its naval vessels, Christians in the country are asking for prayer and solidarity to de-escalate the conflict.

Russia captured three Ukrainian vessels together with their 23 crew members Nov. 25 in the Kerch Strait, between Crimea and Russia’s Taman Peninsula. Crimea, a Ukrainian territory, was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Ukraine’s parliament voted Nov. 26 to impose martial law in 10 oblasts, most of them bordering Russia, for 30 days beginning Nov. 28. Martial law allows military rule and the restriction of rights, including the freedoms of assembly and expression.

In response to the situation, the Baptist Union of Ukraine has asked that Christians around the world pray for Ukraine, for its protection and for the protection of ministers who serve in areas of occupation and military conflict.

“We don’t know all the details of what happened,” said Igor Bandura, First Vice President of the Baptist Union of Ukraine, or what are the intentions of Russian president Vladimir Putin. “But the situation is extremely serious. We are asking for your prayer for our situation in Ukraine as we believe in our Christian solidarity.”

Some have noted the religious dimension of Russian actions.

“The Russian Orthodox Church has broken off relations with Constantinople and is ready to defend its ‘canonical territories’ by any means,” said Michael Cherenkov, Mission Eurasia’s Executive Field Director.

“Ukrainian Baptist churches in the occupied territories are outlawed as extremists. And in Russia itself, the persecution of evangelical believers is intensifying. All of this suggests that Russia is preparing for a big war in which the religious factor will have a major role,” Cherenkov observed.

Ukraine called the Nov. 25 incident in the Kerch strait an “act of agression” on the part of Russia.

The three vessels captured were going from Odesa to Mariupol, in the Sea of Azov – a seaport only accessible by the Kerch strait. Russia claimed the boats had illegally entered its territorial waters, and fired on the Ukrainian vessels. Three Ukrainian crewmen have been hospitalized, according to the Kyiv Post.

Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have been fighting government forces since April 2014, shortly after the Russian annexation of Crimea. The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people, and displaced more than 1 million.

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Doctrine remains problem in relations, SSPX affirms after Vatican meeting

November 26, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Solothurn, Switzerland, Nov 26, 2018 / 12:11 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After a meeting between the superior general of the Society of St. Pius X and the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the canonically irregular priestly society said the problem in its relations with the Holy See is fundamentally doctrinal.

Fr. Davide Pagliarani, superior general of the SSPX, met for two hours Nov. 22 with Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, the CDF prefect, at the Vatican.

Cardinal Ladaria was accompanied by Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, and Fr. Pagliarani by Fr. Emmanuel du Chalard.

In a Nov. 23 statement, the Society said Fr. Pagliarani had been invited by Cardinal Ladaria “to meet for the first time and together to take stock of the relations between the Holy See and the Society of Saint Pius X” since Fr. Pagliarani’s July election as superior general.

During the meeting “it was recalled that the fundamental problem is actually doctrinal … Because of this irreducible doctrinal divergence, for the past seven years no attempt to compose a draft of a doctrinal statement acceptable to both parties has succeeded. This is why the doctrinal question remains absolutely essential.”

According to the SSPX, “The Holy See says the same when it solemnly declares that no canonical status can be established for the Society until after the signing of a doctrinal document.”

“Therefore, everything impels the Society to resume theological discussions with the awareness that the Good Lord does not necessarily ask the Society to convince its interlocutors, but rather to bear unconditional witness to the faith in the sight of the Church.”

The priestly society said its future “is in the hands of Providence and the Most Blessed Virgin Mary,” and that its members “want nothing else but to serve the Church and to cooperate effectively in her regeneration … but they can choose neither the manner, nor the terms, nor the moment of what belongs to God alone.”

The SSPX was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 to form priests, as a response to what he described as errors that had crept into the Church after the Second Vatican Council.

Its relations with the Holy See became particularly strained in 1988 when Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer consecrated four bishops without the permission of St. John Paul II.

The illicit episcopal consecrations resulted in the excommunication of the bishops involved. The excommunications of the surviving bishops were lifted in 2009 by Benedict XVI, and since then negotiations “to rediscover full communion with the Church” have continued between the SSPX and the Vatican.

When he remitted the excommunications, Benedict noted that “doctrinal questions obviously remain and until they are clarified the Society has no canonical status in the Church and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry.”

The biggest obstacles for the SSPX’s reconciliation have been the statements on religious liberty in Vatican II’s declaration Dignitatis humanae as well as the declaration Nostra aetate, which it claims contradict previous Catholic teaching.

There were indications in recent years of movement towards regularization of the priestly society, which has some 600 priest-members.

In March 2017, Pope Francis gave diocesan bishops or other local ordinaries the authorization to grant priests of the SSPX the ability to celebrate licitly and validly the marriages of the faithful who follow the Society’s pastoral activity.

Archbishop Pozzo spoke about interactions with the SSPX in an April 2016 interview with La Croix. The archbishop, whose commission is responsible for discussions with the SSPX, said that discussions over the last few years have led to “an important clarification” that the Second Vatican Council “can be adequately understood only in the context of the full Tradition of the Church and her constant Magisterium.”

And in September 2015, the Pope announced that the faithful would be able to validly and licitly receive absolution from priests of the SSPX during the Jubilee Year of Mercy. This ability was later extended indefinitely by Francis in his 2016 apostolic letter Misericordia et misera.

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Duterte: Catholics should pray at home, not pay Church ‘idiots’

November 26, 2018 CNA Daily News 1

Manila, Philippines, Nov 26, 2018 / 10:45 am (CNA).- The president of the Philippines encouraged on Monday Catholics to build their own chapels, rather than attending Catholic churches.

“When someone is baptized, you have to pay…when someone dies, you have to pay,” President Rodrigo Duterte said in a speech Nov. 26.

“Build your own chapel in your own house and pray there. You don’t have to go to church to pay for these idiots,” he added, according to Rappler.

Though president of predominantly Catholic country, Duterte has a record of criticizing the Catholic Church.

On All Saints’ Day, Nov. 1, the president said, apparently joking, the Christians should display his picture on Church altars instead of depictions of “drunkard” saints.

“Who are those stupid saints? They’re just drunkards,” Duterte said, according to The Philippine Star.

“Just stay with me. I’ll give you one patron saint so you can stop searching for one. Get hold of a picture of mine and put it on the altar — Santo Rodrigo,” he said.

In August, Duterte called the Church a “hypocritical institution” and before asking at a meeting of business leaders ““Is there any bishop here? I want to kick your a**.” In June, the president said that God is “stupid,” and a “son of a b-tch.” The president’s spokespersons have frequently mentioned that the context for his statements is the abuse he apparently suffered while a student at a Catholic school.

Duterte has said he was molested by Fr. Mark Falvey, SJ, who has been accused posthumously of serially sexually abusing children. In May 2007, the California province of the Society of Jesus reached a $16 million settlement with at least some of his victims.

Duterte, who is accused of human rights abuses amid a brutal crackdown on drug trafficking in the Philippines, ordered this year that Sr. Patricia Fox, a long time activist in the country, be deported, in response to her criticisms of government tactics. After a legal battle, Fox returned to her native Australia, but says she will appeal her immigration case in the Philippines.

In August Fr. Amado Picardal, a priest who criticized Duterte went into hiding, saying that “death squads” had targeted him for assassination. 

 

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Pope Francis says priests, bishops should keep an open dialogue

November 26, 2018 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Nov 26, 2018 / 10:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a meeting with seminarians Saturday, Pope Francis said it is necessary for priests to maintain an open and filial discussion with their bishop, since he is the unifying figure of the diocese.

“You cannot be a good priest without a filial dialogue with the bishop. This is something non-negotiable,” the pope said in the Vatican’s Consistory Hall.

“As someone likes to say, ‘No, I am an employee of the Church.’ You are wrong,” he continued. “Here there is a bishop, there is not an assembly where the position is negotiated. There is a father who unifies: like Jesus wanted things. A father who unifies.”

Pope Francis set aside his prepared speech during a Nov. 24 meeting with seminarians of the Diocese of Agrigento, in order to, he said, “speak a little spontaneously,” on the relationship between a diocesan priest and his bishop.

The bishop “is not the owner of a company;” he is not “the one who commands” while some obey, others pretend to obey, and still others do nothing, Francis said. “No, the bishop is the father, he is fruitful, he is the one who generates the mission.”

He noted that the term “mission” is a loaded one, signifying the will of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, advising seminarians to “learn to see in the bishop the father who was there to help you grow, to move forward and to accompany you in the moments of your apostolate.”

Whether the bishop is there “in beautiful moments, in bad moments,” he said, “but to accompany you always; in moments of success, in the moments of defeat you always have in life… This is something very, very important.”

The pope said the only way this accompaniment can happen, is if priests have a relationship with their bishop; that he knows them as they are, with their own virtues and faults, personalities, and ways of feeling and thinking.

Since it is the bishop who gives the priests of his diocese their parish or other assignment, Pope Francis emphasized the importance of the bishop knowing his priests, so he can make the right choice in the mission he assigns.

But do not meddle in the bishop’s decision, he warned. “Leave the bishop to sort it out: to organize [things] in the Spirit.”

He emphasized that this is not the same as arranging things into an “organizational chart,” though sometimes the Church may use organizational tools for functionality. “But the Church goes beyond the organizational chart, it is another thing: it is life, life ‘sorted’ in the Holy Spirit.”

The pope also made an analogy between the men in formation for the priesthood and the clay pot, which if not right, the potter can reshape or remake – but only before the clay has been baked.

The seminary is a time of training, he explained, and if they have a disagreement about something or do not understand, they should express it appropriately to the rector. “This is important, to say what you feel,” he advised.

This is so that they each can be truly become “a vessel full of grace,” he said, warning that if they “stay silent and do not talk, do not say your difficulties, do not tell your apostolic anxieties and all you want, a silent man, once ‘baked,’ cannot be changed.”

“And all life is like this,” he continued. “It is true that sometimes it is not pleasant for the potter to intervene decisively, but it is for your own good. Let yourself be trained, let yourself be formed.”

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Features

The Anatomy of Doubt

November 25, 2018 Dale Ahlquist 6

“There is the prevalence of a sort of casual and even conversational skepticism, making even the idle thoughts of an idle fellow busy in the interests of doubt and despair. I mean that a man, […]