Godbeat

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Historic Ukrainian church, once again, seeks help from global Orthodox leaders

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Historic Ukrainian church, once again, seeks help from global Orthodox leaders

Close observers of Eastern Orthodox Christianity were not surprised when the recent World Russian People's Council bluntly rejected "abortion propaganda," efforts to promote LGBTQ+ rights and this age of "sexual licentiousness and debauchery."

It wasn't surprising when that Moscow conference urged the defense of traditional families, "strong with many children," during an era when birth rates are falling.

Then there was this proclamation -- both theological and political -- about the war in Ukraine: "From a spiritual and moral point of view, the special military operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, defending the single spiritual space of Holy Rus, fulfill the mission of Restrainer, protecting the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism."

In response, a World Council of Churches statement noted that Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, only a year ago, stressed that his controversial "Holy War" references were about the "metaphysical realm," not to warfare in Ukraine. WCC General Secretary Jerry Pillay claimed that the Moscow patriarch agreed that armed warfare cannot be "holy."

But the most striking rejection of the "Russian World" document came from the Department for External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which for centuries had been linked to the Russian Orthodox Church.

"The Church should care about the proper preaching of the Gospel, which Christ commanded her to do, and not of the formation of geopolitical and geo-spiritual concepts," said its public statement. The "Russian World" text ignored the reality that "Ukraine has her own history, and Ukrainians have the right to their national identity and independence, which we are ready to keep defending. …

"Instead of providing ideological support and justification for Russia's military aggression and intervention in Ukraine, we believe that the Orthodox Church in Russia should have raised her voice against this war. … Calls for the destruction of Ukraine and the justification of a military aggression are inconsistent with the Gospel teaching."

Quoting its leader, Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv, the statement stressed: "We do not build any Russian world, we build God's world."

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Into year 36: When it comes to religion news, many journalists are in a class of their own

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Into year 36: When it comes to religion news, many journalists are in a class of their own

After studying relevant police reports, Americans Against Antisemitism issued a 2023 document noting the obvious -- that rising numbers of Orthodox Jews were being assaulted in New York City.

The Orthodox, especially Hasidic Jews, were victims in 94% of the 194 antisemitic assaults between 2018-2022 reported to the city's Hate Crimes Task Force. Most of these crimes occurred in Jewish neighborhoods and some were captured on video. Only two of the criminal cases led to convictions.

Assaults on Orthodox men and women "ranged from spitting, to punching, to someone being hit in the face with a brick," noted Batya Ungar-Sargon of Newsweek, in her book "Bad News." The crime wave produced few news reports until a 2019 mass shooting at a Kosher supermarket in Jersey City and a machete attack on a Hannukah party in Monsey, north of New York City.

Then came COVID-19 and Orthodox Jews, along with others in close-knit ethnic and immigrant communities, were hit hard.

"Because the national news media saw that they could cast the Jews as the villains of the virus instead of its victims, they suddenly couldn't get enough of them," wrote Ungar-Sargon, an Orthodox Jew. "Every outlet began running pieces … blaming Orthodox recalcitrance to social distancing or mask wearing for spreading the virus, not just among their own communities but to their neighbors, too."

Many of these pandemic-driven stories were valid -- but packed with errors about Orthodox beliefs and traditions. Ungar-Sargon asked: Why did journalists jump into "hyperdrive" in this case, after downplaying all those antisemitic attacks? Why do many journalists see Americans they consider "less intelligent and uneducated" as "beyond salvation, irredeemable and filled with hate"? She has continued her work in a new book, "Second Class."

In the late 1970s, researchers began asking why journalists often struggle when covering religion stories or avoid religious news altogether. I wrote my 1982 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign graduate project on this topic and some of that work was published by Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists.

This week marks the start of my 36th year writing this "On Religion" column. I also spent 20 years leading the GetReligion.org project, which closed in February, but its archive remains online for those studying religion and the press.

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Another Cardinal 'Demos' letter fuels debate about Catholicism after Pope Francis

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Another Cardinal 'Demos' letter fuels debate about Catholicism after Pope Francis

Catholic cyberspace melted down during Lent in 2022 as cardinals circulated a letter from "Demos" -- Greek for "people" -- an anonymous scribe claiming that "this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe."

The author turned out to be the late Cardinal George Pell of Australia, who served Pope Francis as leader of the Vatican's Secretariat of the Economy.

Now, there is a "Demos II" epistle from another anonymous cardinal -- criticizing Pope Francis and describing seven tasks facing the next pontiff.

"It is clear that the strength of Pope Francis' pontificate is the added emphasis he has given to compassion toward the weak, outreach to the poor and marginalized, concern for the dignity of creation and the environmental issues that flow from it, and efforts to accompany the suffering and alienated in their burdens," noted Demos II, at the Daily Compass website in Italy.

"Its shortcomings are equally obvious: an autocratic, at times seemingly vindictive, style of governance; a carelessness in matters of law; an intolerance for even respectful disagreement; and -- most seriously -- a pattern of ambiguity in matters of faith and morals causing confusion among the faithful. … The result today is a Church more fractured than at any time in her recent history."

An American Jesuit, one who has influenced journalists for decades, responded in an equally blunt manner.

"In truth, Demos II is a fraud who mourns a church of the past and his own loss of power in it," noted Father Thomas J. Reese, currently a Religion News Service columnist. "Make no mistake about it, this document is about power and influence in the church."

Another critic of the cardinals circulating Demos II noted that it was released while Pope Francis was hospitalized with a respiratory infection.

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Catholics, Evangelicals face hard questions about immigration and an open border

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Catholics, Evangelicals face hard questions about immigration and an open border

Year after year, the World Day of Migrants and Refugees includes a Vatican sermon with the pope quoting the words of Jesus, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me," or similar messages from scripture.

 "We are called to show maximum respect for the dignity of each migrant; this entails accompanying and managing waves of migration as best we can," said Pope Francis in 2023. "In whatever place we decide to build our future, in the country of our birth or elsewhere, the important thing is that there always be a community ready to welcome, protect, promote and integrate everyone, without distinctions and without excluding anyone."

That's half of the Catholic equation on this hot-button issue in North America and around the world. But there is also an authoritative doctrinal word of caution.

The Catholic Catechism teaches: "The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country. … Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions. … Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens."

There is no way to eliminate this tension, noted David P. Deavel, who leads the theology department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

"There is no formula in Catholic social principles for how this is supposed to get done, in terms of politics or public life," he said, reached by telephone. In Catholic doctrine, there is "certainly an obligation to allow immigration and to help immigrants. But there is no obligation to take in everyone under every circumstance."

It's significant that similar tensions surface in a new Lifeway Research study of American Evangelical views on immigration, including questions raised by Office of Homeland Security claims that there have been 6.3 million migrant encounters along the U.S. southern border during President Joe Biden's administration. Officials believe 2.4 million migrants have entered the country during this time, while critics insist the number is closer to 10 million.

The bottom line: Evangelicals want Congress "to act this year to improve laws around immigration."

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'Hate crimes' or just old news? Attacks on churches continued to surge in 2023

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'Hate crimes' or just old news? Attacks on churches continued to surge in 2023

Security cameras at St. Columba Catholic Church in Brooklyn showed five people, in the dead of night, trying to force their way inside.

When they failed, the suspects settled for breaking a stained-glass window and attacking a nearby cross. Police noted that this January 27 crime was the latest of many New York City attacks on churches, synagogues, sacred symbols and religious schools, medical facilities and offices. Authorities referred this case to the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force.

Headlines of this kind have become old news, according to the 2024 religious-liberty report from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. What has changed, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, is that anti-Christian vandalism often includes spray-painted slogans such as, "If abortion isn't safe, then neither are you," swastikas and nasty graffiti.

“The general failure … of the federal government to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators of such attacks, in contrast with the numerous charges brought against pro-life protestors outside abortion clinics, received significant attention in Congress," noted the report. "In hearings in both the House and the Senate, Republicans accused the Department of Justice and the FBI of bias against Catholics and Christians."

Political activists seeking additional evidence that this issue has become politically charged will be able to quote former President Donald Trump's February 22 speech to the National Religious Broadcasters.

After promising to defend religious freedom, he claimed that "radical left" activists are determined to "tear down crosses where they can. … But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you that will never happen."

Meanwhile, the Family Research Council released its latest "Hostility Against Churches" report (.pdf here) during the NRB convention, a 183-page document built on direct references to online news reports and public-source documents. It included 436 hostile incidents from 2023, more than double the number from 2022. This 2023 total was eight times higher than in 2018, when the conservative think tank began tracking reports.

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A hard truth: Most American Catholics no longer worry about saving souls

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A hard truth: Most American Catholics no longer worry about saving souls

As a rule, evangelists from Texas don't go shopping for bourbon before a speech.

But that's what Marcel LeJeune and some friends did when the Catholic Missionary Disciples leader spoke at a Franciscan University conference last summer in Steubenville, Ohio. Things turned serious, while chatting with a saleswoman, when he asked how she was doing and she bluntly replied, "I wish I wasn't on this earth."

There was no easy response. The woman was angry, LeJeune said, "because something was hurting." He offered to pray, and she fired back, "Oh, don't do that. You're talking to a rabid atheist, and I don't want your prayers."

LeJeune returned to discussing bourbon options and, as he left, the woman smiled and laughed when he said, "Look, I'm going to pray for you, but you just pretend I'm not. OK?"

That's really all that could happen in that setting, stressed LeJeune, a veteran of years of campus ministry near Texas A&M University. The saleswoman was candid, and he tried to show sincere concern.

Truth is, the woman he met "when I was buying bourbon was … easier to evangelize than the people who go to my parish who don't know Jesus Christ."

Catholic leaders need to understand that, a decade ago, Pew Research Center numbers were already warning that 13% of American adults are ex-Catholics, with 6.5 former Catholics for every Catholic convert. Waves of "nones," the religiously unaffiliated, cannot be ignored.

Meanwhile, LeJeune has stressed another sobering reality -- that nearly half of church-going Millennials think it's morally wrong to seek converts. Among Catholics, many assume that "evangelism" is a Protestant concept and the same thing as "proselytism" that pressures people to convert.

The reality is that more and more churchgoers are, at the practical level, "universalists" who assume people go to heaven, no matter what, he noted.

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Pope Francis thanks mainstream journalists for their silence about certain scandals

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Pope Francis thanks mainstream journalists for their silence about certain scandals

The hellish relationship began with a kiss -- a strange exchange between a teen-ager preparing to become a Loyola sister and the Slovenian Jesuit who was already her confessor.

"The first time he kissed me on the mouth telling me that this was how he kissed the altar where he celebrated the Eucharist, because with me he could experience sex as an expression of God's love," said "Anna," in an interview with the Italian news agency Domini.

The young priest was Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, who was already an artist on the rise. His artistic skills brought him to the Vatican in the late 1990s, and his sacred art has been celebrated around the world. However, he has been accused of sexual and spiritual abuse of Slovenian nuns, such as "Anna," in the 1980s and '90s.

It was hard, said "Anna," to grasp the meaning of lingering hugs after confession, studies of erotic Kama Sutra art or Rupnik's request that she pose for paintings, including strategic manipulations of her clothing. This was the Jesuit guiding her spiritual life. He demanded absolute obedience, while absolving her sins.

What followed was years of abuse so bizarre that the Catholic news website The Pillar offered this warning above an English translation of the "Anna" transcript: "Graphic and disturbing content. Reader's discretion advised."

While the Catholic press has entered this minefield, "coverage of the Rupnik scandal in the mainstream media has been negligent to an astonishing degree," said Phil Lawler, who has spent more than three decades in diocesan and independent conservative Catholic publications.

"The fact that Rupnik remains a priest in good standing calls out for explanation, for which the mainstream media aren't asking," he added, reached by email.

The big question: Is the Rupnik case one of the scandals that "vaticanista" journalists have handled with a "delicacy" that was recently praised by Pope Francis?

In a first-ever group meeting with Vatican-accredited reporters, on January 22, Pope Francis praised them for avoiding "profane" and "political" molds in their work.

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Can Christian colleges 'keep the faith' or is avoiding compromise impossible?

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Can Christian colleges 'keep the faith' or is avoiding compromise impossible?

As America's second-oldest Lutheran college, Roanoke College in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley proclaims that it is "never sectarian" in outlook, while maintaining that "critical thinking and spiritual growth" are essential.

The online spiritual-life page also offers this advice: "We encourage you to follow your own personal spiritual path while here at Roanoke." The collage "honors its Christian heritage" and its affiliation with the progressive Evangelical Lutheran Church in America by stressing "dialogue between faith and reason," according to its "Mission & Vision" statement. "Diversity, inclusion and belonging" are strategic goals.

These commitments are "so informal that it's hard to call them doctrinal commitments at all," said Robert Benne, a retired Roanoke College professor who founded its Benne Center for Church and Society. "This is what you see in many Christian colleges. … These vague commitments go along with efforts to embrace whatever is happening in modern culture."

This isn't unusual, he stressed, after studying trends in Christian higher education for decades. In the post-pandemic marketplace, an increasing number of small private schools -- religious and secular -- face economic and enrollment challenges that threaten their futures.

Leaders of many Christian colleges and universities face a painful question as they try to stay alive: When seeking students and donors, should administrators strengthen ties to denominations or movements that built their schools or weaken the ties that bind in order to reach outsiders and even secular students?

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Fiducia Supplicans puzzle: Europe is in decline, but still seems to steer Catholicism?

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Fiducia Supplicans puzzle: Europe is in decline, but still seems to steer Catholicism?

Bishop Martin Mtumbuka pulled no punches when passing judgement on the Vatican's stunning declaration that Catholic clergy could bless couples living in "irregular relationships," such as same-sex unions.

This "looks to us like a heresy, it reads like a heresy, and it affects heresy," he said. "We cannot allow such an offensive and apparently blasphemous declaration to be implemented in our dioceses" in southeast Africa.

The Fiducia Supplicans ("Supplicating Trust") document triggered debates around the world, but negative reactions have been especially strong in Africa, with strong protests from bishops' conferences in Malawi, Zambia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Angola and other nations.

"The Church of Africa is the voice of the poor, the simple and the small," wrote Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, the former head of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. "It has the task of announcing the Word of God in front of Western Christians who, because they are rich, equipped with multiple skills in philosophy, theological, biblical and canonical sciences, believe they are evolved, modern and wise in the wisdom of the world."

Cardinal Sarah endorsed the declarations from African bishops and added: "We must encourage other national or regional bishops' conferences and every bishop to do the same. By doing so, we are not opposing Pope Francis, but we are firmly and radically opposing a heresy that seriously undermines the Church, the Body of Christ, because it is contrary to the Catholic faith and Tradition."

These tensions resemble doctrinal fault lines seen during the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family, noted historian Philip Jenkins, the author of "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" and "Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions" and many other books.

"Religious faith and fertility are linked and it's easy to see that around the world," said Jenkins, reached by Zoom.