Category: Hope & Change

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Liberal Bishop David O’Connell, shot dead in Los Angeles, supported same-sex parents and ordination of women

— Contribution by Bishop O’Connell which endorsed non-traditional families was cut from World Meeting of Families video in 2018

Bishop David O’Connell, who was shot dead at his home in Los Angeles on Saturday

By Patsy McGarry

A video expressing support for same-sex parents and other non-traditional families by Bishop David O’Connell (69), who was shot dead in a Los Angeles suburb last Saturday, was cut from the World Meeting of Families promotional material.

In March 2018, six months before the World Meeting of Families took place in Dublin, it emerged words of his were cut from a video prepared to promote that event.

These words included: “Pope Francis, he gets it. He gets it that our society has changed so much in the last couple of generations. We have all sorts of configurations of families now, whether it’s just the traditional family of mum and dad together, or it’s now mum on her own or dad on his own, or a gay couple raising children, or people in second marriages. No matter what the configuration of the family is, the call is still to adults to think about how to provide the best, most loving, faithful environment for children possible.”

At the time a spokeswoman for the World Meeting of Families said: “The wrong version of the video for Parish Session 1 was inadvertently uploaded for a short time but the correct version is now in place.”

From Glanmire in Cork, Bishop O’Connell served in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles after his ordination in 1979 at Dublin’s All Hallows College. After many years ministry in some of the more disadvantaged parishes of south Los Angeles, he was named an Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese in 2015.

The original Bishop O’Connell video attracted the attention of the US-based fundamentalist Catholic Church Militant website which said it “promotes the sin of homosexuality” in an article headed `Sodomy Supporters Hijack World Meeting of Families’.

Bishop O’Connell did not attend the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in 2018, although he and a group of 45 people from the Los Angeles Archdiocese had been on pilgrimage in Ireland days before the event began in Dublin on August 25th that year.

Interviewed at the time, he did not comment on the censoring of his video, but did say Pope Francis faced “an impossible task” on his visit to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families because of the shadow cast by clerical child sex abuse scandals.

Reflecting on the visit to Ireland of Pope John Paul II in 1979, Bishop O’Connell said “we thought this would be a revival of the Catholic Church in Ireland, which even at that time we needed.

“Even though the faith and practice were very strong, among many of my peers, my generation was already turning away from the Catholic faith even in the 1970s. We were hoping for a revival, and we thought that there would be.”

He continued: “But then of course, there was scandal and the trust broke, and now we’ve had stories coming out for a whole generation. It’s given everybody who didn’t want to go to church anymore a reason to say, ‘I’m over with all that. It’s all hypocrisy, there’s too much child abuse, abuse of people’.”

For Pope Francis “to be able to deal with all these issues in 32 hours? Obviously, he can’t,” he said.

Fluent in Spanish, prior to becoming an auxiliary bishop he attracted much positive attention for his work with African Americans and Hispanic communities in addressing immigration, unemployment, and south Los Angeles’s history of gang violence.

At a At a press conference following his announcement as auxiliary bishop he said: “I can walk around the streets of South LA and have done so for many years, where there’s violence and shootings, and I don’t feel the slightest bit of anxiety. But I come in here today and I’m shaking in my boots.”

He was also a liberal in Catholic Church terms as far back as 2002 when in a Los Angles Times profile he said “women should be ordained and clergy should be able to marry.” On the issue of clerical abuse and its cover-up he said that “if there had been some parents in there running things, none of this would have ever happened”.

At the time of the 1992 Los Angeles riots in which over 60 people died following the brutal beating of Rodney King by police, then Fr O’Connell was in Washington DC giving evidence about violence in urban America to a committee of Congress. He returned to Los Angles to find widespread destruction in his parish. He and other local faith leaders held meetings with sheriffs and members of the LAPD in people’s homes to build trust. Violent deaths began to decrease.

In recent years he had been chairman of the Church’s Southern Californian Immigration Task Force which helped coordinate a response to the influx of migrants from Central America. He was also chair of chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Pope intervenes again to restrict celebration of Latin Mass

— Pope Francis has intervened for the third time to crack down on the celebration of the old Latin Mass, a sign of continued friction with Catholic traditionalists.

Cardinal Arthur Roche walks after receiving the red three-cornered biretta hat from Pope Francis during a consistory inside St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, on Aug. 27, 2022. Pope Francis approved a new decree published Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023, repeating that the Holy See must sign off on bishops’ decisions to designate new parish churches for the Latin Mass or to let newly ordained priests celebrate the old rite. The decree states that the Vatican’s liturgy office, headed by British Cardinal Arthur Roche, is responsible for granting such approvals.

By NICOLE WINFIELD

Francis reasserted in a new legal decree published Tuesday that the Holy See must approve new celebrations of the old rite by signing off on bishops’ decisions to designate additional parish churches for the Latin Mass or to let newly ordained priests celebrate it.

The decree states that the Vatican’s liturgy office, headed by British Cardinal Arthur Roche, is responsible for evaluating such requests on behalf of the Holy See and that all requests from bishops must go there.

For weeks, Catholic traditionalist blogs and websites have reported a further crackdown on the old Latin Mass was in the works, following Francis’ remarkable decision in 2021 to reimpose restrictions on its celebration that were relaxed in 2007 by then-Pope Benedict XVI.

Francis said at the time that he was acting to preserve church unity, saying the spread of the Tridentine Mass had become a source of division and been exploited by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church and its liturgy.

Roche’s office followed up a few months later to double down on the Vatican’s position with a series of questions and answers that made clear that celebrating some sacraments according to the old rite was forbidden.

The new decree doesn’t restrict the celebration further but merely repeats what was previously declared. Its insistence on Roche’s authority in the process appeared aimed primarily at quashing traditionalist claims that the cardinal had exceeded his mandate. Francis signed off on the decree Monday during a private audience with Roche.

Francis’ crackdown on the old Mass outraged his conservative and traditionalist critics, many of whom have also attacked him for his focus on the environment, social justice and migrants.

Francis says he preaches the Gospel and what Jesus taught, and has defended the restrictions by saying they actually reflect Benedict’s original goal while curbing the way his 2007 concession was exploited for ideological ends.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Pope Francis faces ‘civil war’ at heart of church

— From his reforms to his foreign relations, criticism of Pope Francis has intensified since the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI, revealing a climate of “civil war” at a time when the Catholic Church is engaged in a global conversation about its future.

Pope Francis told reporters on his plane back from South Sudan last Sunday that his critics have “exploited” Benedict’s death to further their cause

Benedict, a conservative German theologian who was pope for eight years before resigning in 2013, died on December 31 at the age of 95.

Within days of his death, his closest aide, Georg Gaenswein, revealed Benedict’s concerns at some of the changes made by his successor Pope Francis, notably his decision to restrict the use of the Latin mass.

The criticism was not new. Many in the conservative wing of the Roman Curia, which governs the Church, have long complained the Argentine pontiff is authoritarian and too focused on pastoral matters at the expense of theological rigour.

But it was followed by the death of Australian cardinal George Pell, and the subsequent revelation that he had authored an anonymous note published last year that directly attacked Francis.

The note had described the current papacy as a “catastrophe”, and among others criticised “heavy failures” of Vatican diplomacy under his watch.

Pell, a former close adviser to Francis, was jailed for child sexual abuse before being acquitted in 2020.

Then, at the end of the month, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller published a book adding fuel to the fire.

The former head of the Vatican’s powerful congregation for the doctrine of the faith denounced Francis’ “doctrinal confusion” and criticised the influence of a “magic circle” around him.

– Civil war –

Mueller’s book caused consternation among some inside the Vatican.

“When you accept a cardinal’s cap, you agree to support and help the pope. Criticisms are made in private, not in public,” said one senior official in the Secretariat of State.

Pope Francis himself told reporters on his plane back from South Sudan last Sunday that his critics have “exploited” Benedict’s death to further their cause.

“And those who exploit such a good person, such a man of God… well I would say they are unethical people, they are people belonging to a party, not to the Church,” he said.

Italian Vatican expert Marco Politi said Mueller’s book “is a new stage in the unstoppable escalation by the pope’s adversaries”.

“There is a civil war in the heart of the church which will continue until the last day of the papacy,” he told AFP.

– Global consultations –

The tensions come as the Catholic Church conducts a vast global consultation on its future, the “Synod on Synodality” launched by Pope Francis in 2021.

Designed to decentralise the governance of the church, it has revealed key differences, with the German Catholic Church, for example, showing distinctly more appetite for reform than Rome.

Discussions include everything from the place of women in the church to how to handle the scandal of child sex abuse, from whether priests should marry to how the Church welcomes LGBTQ believers.

With the synod, which is due to conclude in 2024, “we will see the weight of the different currents within the Church”, Politi said.

He said critics of Pope Francis are already converging into a “current of thought capable of influencing the next conclave”, and by extension the next papacy.

A conclave, a global gathering of cardinals, would be called if Francis died or resigned.

The pope has said he would be willing to follow Benedict’s example and resign if his health stopped him doing his job.

But despite knee problems that have seen him use a wheelchair in recent months, he remains active and in charge — and extremely popular all over the world, as the crowds during his recent trip to Africa showed.

“This knee is annoying, but I go on, slowly, and we’ll see,” the 86-year-old said on Sunday, quipping: “You know that the bad weed never dies!”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Church of England allows blessings for same-sex couples


The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, left and The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, gather at the General Synod of the Church of England, at Church House to consider a motion which reviews the church’s failure “to be welcoming to LGBTQI+ people” and the harm they have faced and still experience, in London, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023.

by DANICA KIRKA

The Church of England’s national assembly on Thursday voted to let priests bless same-sex marriages and civil partnerships, while continuing to ban church weddings for the same couples.

Bishops proposed the compromise measure after five years of discussions about the church’s position on sexuality. It was approved by the church’s General Synod, which is made up of bishops, clergy and lay people from around the country, following eight hours of debate over two days at a meeting in London.

The measure included an apology for the church’s failure welcome LGBTQ people. But it also endorsed the doctrine that marriage is between one man and one woman, meaning priests are still barred from marrying same-sex couples.

“I know that what we have proposed as a way forward does not go nearly far enough for many but too far for others,” the Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, said in a statement. “It is my prayer that what has been agreed today will represent a step forward for all of us within the Church — including LGBTQI+ people — as we remain committed to walking together.”

Jayne Ozanne, a gay rights campaigner and member of the synod, said she was “deeply disappointed” that conservatives had stifled the church’s debate on sexuality. The synod earlier this week rejected an amendment proposed by Ozanne that would have put the issue of marriage equality back on the agenda later this year.

“By continuing to tell LGB people that they cannot hope to get married any time soon in their church or that their desire for sexual intimacy is sinful, we send a message to the nation that few will understand,” Ozanne said on Twitter. “More importantly, it is a message that will continue to cause great harm to the LGBT community and put young LGBT+ lives at risk.”

Same-sex marriage has been legal in England and Wales since 2013, but the church didn’t alter its teaching on marriage when the law changed.

Public opinion surveys consistently show that a majority of people in England support same-sex marriage. But the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said the church continues to have “deep divisions” on the issue.

The measure approved Thursday endorses a proposal from the church’s bishops to allow clergy to bless the unions of same-sex couples after they marry or have a partnership recognized by civil authorities. But clergy members won’t be required to perform such blessings if they disagree with them.

The blessings are expected to begin later this year after the bishops refine their guidance and issue prayers for the clergy to use.

Welby said last month that he wouldn’t personally bless any same-sex couples because it’s his job to unify the 85 million members of the Anglican Communion around the world. Welby is the spiritual leader of both the Church of England and the global Anglican church of which it is a member.

Still, he celebrated Thursday’s decision.

“It has been a long road to get us to this point,” Welby said in a statement issued jointly with the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell. “For the first time, the Church of England will publicly, unreservedly and joyfully welcome same-sex couples in church.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Gay people are ‘children of God’, says Francis

— “To criminalise people with homosexual tendencies is an injustice.”

Pope Francis speaks to journalist during his customary in-flight press conference on the papal plane.

By Christopher Lamb , Michael Sean Winters

Pope Francis has reiterated his call for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, stating that to condemn gay people as some clergy do is a sin.

Speaking on the flight from Juba to Rome after his ecumenical pilgrimage to South Sudan, the Pope said that gay people “are children of God, and God loves them, he accompanies them”.

“To criminalise people with homosexual tendencies is an injustice,” said Francis.

“I am not talking about groups, but people. You can say ‘they make groups, etc’, but they are people. Lobbies are another thing, but they are people.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who was also on the papal flight, said that he would “quote the Holy Father” at the Church of England’s general synod this week during debates on the blessing of same-sex marriages.

The Pope was responding to questions about his widely-publicised remarks in an AP interview last month, in which he called for the decriminalisation of homosexuality but seemed to suggest it was still a sin.

In the US, following the interview, the priest Fr Jim Martin SJ, who leads an apostolate to the LGBT community, published a note from Francis clarifying those comments.

“When I said [homosexuality] is a sin, I was simply referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin,” the Pope wrote.

“Of course, one must also consider the circumstances, which may decrease or eliminate fault. As you can see, I was repeating something in general. I should have said ‘It is a sin, as is any sexual act outside of marriage.’

“This is to speak of ‘the matter’ of sin, but we know well that Catholic morality not only takes into consideration the matter, but also evaluates freedom and intention; and this, for every kind of sin.”

The debate over the Pope’s remarks has accompanied controversy surrounding comments by San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy in an article for America magazine.

McElroy stated his conviction that not all sexual sins were grave enough to warrant abstaining from communion.

He also questioned the pastoral consequences of the traditional distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual acts.

The Archbishop of Denver, Samuel Aquila, responded to McElroy in the Denver Catholic.

“The Church recognises that someone who lives a particular way, whether it be in willing violation of natural law or some other moral category, is not in communion with the Church,” Aquila wrote.

“As Pope Francis said so simply during an in-flight interview September 15, 2021: ‘This is not a penalty: you are outside. Communion is to unite the community.’

“This is not to condemn the person but to recognise the truth of their situation and call their immortal soul to something greater.”

Aquila added: “I must admit that if I thought the way some of my brothers think I would have left the Church long ago and joined another Christian community.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!