Catholic Church

Richard D'Souza and Eric Bell of the University of Michigan recently grabbed headlines for their discovery: The Milky Way once had a ‘sibling,’ which was devoured by the neighboring galaxy of Andromeda about 2 billion years ago. Their study, published in the Nature Astronomy journal last month, has its implications on the understanding of how galaxies evolve over time. D'Souza, the lead author of the study, hails from the Indian state of Goa and interestingly, he is also a staff member of the Vatican Observatory, an astronomical research institute supported by the Roman Catholic Church.

Standing just a few feet away from where many Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared in 1879 to a dozen denizens of this bucolic corner of western Ireland at the height of a famine, on Sunday morning Pope Francis begged God’s forgiveness for the abuse of countless innocents by priests and other members of the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis has responded today to recent reports of clerical sexual abuse and ecclesial cover-up through a letter titled “Letter to the People of God.” This letter comes on the heels of a 884-page reportdocumenting clerical abuse in Pennsylvania and ahead of the World Meeting of Families taking place Aug. 21-26 in Dublin, Ireland, where Pope Francis is scheduled to speak later in the week.

The Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, withdrew on Saturday from next week's World Meeting of Families in Dublin, the second senior cleric to pull out of the Roman Catholic event amid clerical sexual abuse scandals in the United States.

Outraged Pennsylvania child welfare experts, parents, and advocates say that if the Catholic Church doesn’t change its self-protective stance and behaviors, the church remains guilty of privileging predators over victims, and imperils its own credibility as a religious institution.

She later remarked, “It just struck me as ridiculous….How could they be talking about marriage and birth control of all things without a lot more input from the persons involved?” Crowley testified before the commission, telling them that, besides being unreliable, rhythm was psychologically harmful, did not foster married love or unity and, moreover, was unnatural.

Chilean police and prosecutors on Wednesday launched separate and unexpected raids on Roman Catholic Church offices to seize documents relating to mounting claims of sexual abuse and cover-up.

“JUST WAR IS KILLING US! There is no just war.”

That proclamation by a Catholic sister from Iraq, and others like it, resounded at a Vatican gathering this spring and fell on surprisingly receptive ears.

Sister Nazik Matty, an Iraqi Dominican, joined others from around the world in Rome in April to wrestle with how the Catholic Church could “recommit to the centrality of gospel nonviolence.” She has watched members of her religious community die for lack of medical care during war.

“Which of the wars we have been in is a just war?” asked Sister Matty, who was driven from her home in Mosul by ISIS, also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh. “In my country, there was no just war. War is the mother of ignorance, isolation, and poverty. Please tell the world there is no such thing as a just war. I say this as a daughter of war.”

The Rome gathering on Nonviolence and Just Peace was unprecedented, bringing together members of the church hierarchy with social scientists, theologians, practitioners of nonviolence, diplomats, and unarmed civilian peacekeepers to discuss Catholic nonviolence and whether in the contemporary world armed force can ever be justified.

Of course, with such diverse participants, there was not a common mind on whether just war theory, a doctrine of military ethics used by Catholic theologians, has outlived its usefulness as church teaching.

Some of the academics and diplomats—particularly from the United States and Western Europe—maintained that just war criteria, when properly applied, are useful when working within halls of power, from the Pentagon to the United Nations, for restraining excessive use of military force by a state. One participant cautioned against “broad condemnations of just war tradition, if it means closing off dialogue with our allies.” Another questioned how diplomacy could continue without the just war framework as its common language.

But Catholics who came to Rome from conflict zones—Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Colombia, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Uganda—brought a different perspective.

It would be presumptuous, from my position of reserve, to make sweeping declarations about what Christianity needs. But I've come to realize what I need from Christianity — a call to action, not permission to engage in the quasi-gnostic pursuit of personal fulfillment.