Church and World
Lawyer Claims Abuse Claims Exaggerated
Donald H. Steier, a veteran attorney who has been involved in over 100 cases involving Catholic clergy in California, recently penned a ten-page declaration stating that he believes as many as one-half of all allegations are either false or exaggerated: “In several cases my investigation has provided objective information that could not be reconciled with the truthfulness of the subjective allegations. In other words, in many cases objective facts showed that accusations were false.”
The declaration was signed in November and was officially filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court on December 15, 2010. Without denying the real problem, it seems clear that many find these circumstances convenient for winning money. Let us hope Steier’s declaration helps the media take a more honest look at the situation!
Pakistan: Anti-Christian Persecutions
Imprisoned for a year now in a Pakistani jail for “blasphemy against the prophet Mohammed,” Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old Christian, was condemned to death last November 11 by the tribunal of Sheikhupura of the province of Penjab, situated in the east of the country. Although the governor had declared her innocent, the magistrates judged her guilty and even threatened to go on strike if the decision was not applied. But under international pressure, especially that of the Pope, the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, announced last November 21 his intention to pardon and release this mother of four children if the justice of the country would allow it. This justice refused to approve the decision, maintaining that the trial was still underway.
The affair dates back to June 2009. While working in the fields with other women, Asia Bibi was asked to get water to refresh the group. But the other workers, Muslims, refused to drink “impure” water brought by a Christian. The different versions of events all say that Asia Bibi was threatened if she didn’t renounce her faith. Doubtless because she refused, the mullah of the district went to see the police, who immediately made a search and arrested this mother of a family on the strength of Article 295C of the Pakistani penal code. In effect, this “anti-blasphemy” law prescribes prison for life or the death penalty for any “insult” against “the prophet Mohammed.”
Last November 17, in St. Peter’s Plaza, Benedict XVI asked for the release of the accused. “These days, the international community is following with much concern the difficult situation of Christians in Pakistan, who are often victims of violence and discrimination,” recalled the Pope. He also claimed to be there in his thoughts with Asia Bibi and her loved ones threatened with death. Lastly, he asked that “her full liberty be restored as soon as possible.” This call was partially heard, since the president tried to pardon Asia Bibi and she is going to have the right to a new trial to prove her innocence. But even if the accused obtains her liberty, she will probably have to flee Pakistan with her whole family.
As the November 29 online edition of Le Figaro said, even if “most condemnations are rejected when appealed, the guilty are sometimes lynched by the crowd.” An alliance of Sunni Muslims of Pakistan (the Sunni Ittehad Council) has already warned that a pardon granted would lead to an unleashing of anarchy in the country. “Our position is very clear: she cannot escape this punishment,” insisted Sahibzada Fazal Kareem, the leader of the Sunni Ittehad Council on November 26 to the French Press Agency. These past months, the anti-Christian violence committed in the name of the “anti-blasphemy” law has multiplied, particularly in the province of Penjab, the most highly populated province in a country about 3 percent Christian.
The Murderer of Young Shazia Bashir Acquitted
Along the same lines as the Asia Bibi affair, another trial has just taken place in Pakistan. Naeem Chaudhry, a rich Muslim lawyer who raped and killed a 12-year-old Christian girl, Shazia Bashir (see DICI, No. 210), was acquitted on November 30 by the tribunal of Lahore in the province of Punjab. He, his wife and his son, however, were strongly suspected of having compelled the girl to work as a domestic, confining her in their house and raping her before she succumbed to the daily beatings to which they subjected her.
Whereas this affair had caused quite a stir and agitated a good number of organizations and persons within Pakistani civil society, the court nevertheless declared that Shazia “died a natural death because of a skin disease.” According to the news agency Fides, the trial and the evidence were cleverly manipulated so as to exonerate those prominent upper-middle-class Muslims. “For the family of Shazia, justice will not be done,” Nasir Saeed remarked to Fides on November 27. “This is not the first time, in cases of this sort, that the trials leave influential Muslim citizens unpunished, despite the atrocities committed against poor, defenseless Christians,” said Saeed, head of the Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement, which offers free legal aid to Christians in Pakistan and has headquarters in London and Lahore. For Peter Jacob, the executive secretary of the Justice and Peace Committee of the Pakistani Bishops, the verdict is “vile” and “demonstrates that certain persons are above the law.”
This ruling seems all the more unjust, given that human trafficking in minors is behind the case of Shazia Bashir (see DICI, No. 212). The children are snatched from poor, often Christian families, who are led to believe that this will give them access to a life with dignity in bourgeois households. They are then sold, becoming “little slaves,” at the mercy of their owners, deprived of all freedom.
France: The Bishops of France Refuse to “Shut Themselves Up in a Work of Nostalgic Maintenance”
The plenary assembly of the Bishops of France, which took place in Lourdes from November 4-9, renewed the three-year term of the president of the Episcopal Conference of France (CEF), Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, archbishop of Paris. His two vice-presidents, Bishop Hippolyte Simon, archbishop of Clermont, and Bishop Laurent Ulrich, archbishop of Lille, were also re-elected for three years.
“We have pursued our reflections on the future of our Christian communities,” declared Cardinal Vingt-Trois in his closing speech. “The initiatives that we have collected in all the ecclesiastical provinces have brought our attention to what is the proper mission of our Church: to announce Jesus Christ who died and rose again for the life of the world. We are often pressed with the maintenance of structures inherited from the past, but we avoid allowing ourselves to be caught up in a work of nostalgic maintenance, and we turn resolutely to our present and future mission,” continued the Cardinal. Just as the places of social life have moved to the towns and villages that have schools and colleges, shopping centers, and health services, he explained, the faithful learn to come to these cities on Sundays to “participate in a veritable eucharistic assembly which is the occasion to live a parochial communion that surpasses the strict limits of the village or hamlet and to become an authentic feast.” This new parish assembled “can become the center of sacramental life and of catechesis.”
“This future of our Christian communities will be brought about by the practicing minority,” added Bishop Bernard Charrier, bishop of Tulle. Fifty-five “innovative propositions” were produced by this work in Lourdes. Reflection upon the diminishing number of priests made them aware of “an urgent need to return to the roots in the Word of God, that it may become a personal and community experience”; and also that priests, “too, are concerned,” with a “redeployment of their tasks and responsibilities,” and that they are called to a “greater humility in the exercise of authority,” following the example of the first Christian communities described by St. Paul. Bishop Hippolyte Simon followed this same evangelical theme when he invited practicing Catholics to be the “yeast in the dough” for the others. “Upon whom else can I depend besides the four or five percent of practicing Catholics in our country?” he remarked, in a press conference, Bishop Charrier at his side, on November 5, 2010. For the Church’s mission, we must not withdraw. “Re-centered on Christ,” the Church must make herself “dialogue and service.”
Commentary: “Not to let ourselves be caught up in a work of nostalgic maintenance,” “to live a parochial community that surpasses the strict limits of the village or hamlet and to become an authentic feast,” one would think that the bishops of France are discovering, in 2010, the rural exodus begun in the 19th century. These expressions are in reality a cover-up. “A redeployment of [sacerdotal] tasks and responsibilities” clearly signifies: “how do we handle our indigence?” for “on whom else [can they] count if not on the four or five percent of practicing Catholics in our country?”
We Will Not Pray Together in Assisi
During his visit to Paris in 2008, Benedict XVI repeated the expression used by his predecessor at the very beginning of his pontificate: “Be not afraid.” Today, as he announces the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the interreligious meeting in Assisi, some Italian Catholic intellectuals are telling him:
Holy Father, we are afraid that relativism—which you combat elsewhere—will be encouraged by your presence amid representatives of all the religions of the world. We are afraid that the Catholics who today are suffering persecution for their faith in Jesus Christ in Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea, China…might find that their tormentors are comforted by the public recognition and the media spotlight that Catholicism will provide for them by organizing this new interreligious encounter.
During the first interreligious meeting in Assisi in 1986, in an attempt to reassure those who rightly objected that such an assembly of all religions could only increase confusion and encourage syncretism, the organizers resorted to this ridiculous quibble: they were not praying together, they were together to pray. In other words, it was out of the question for believers in Jesus Christ, Allah, Buddha, Shiva… to pray together; but if they were together, it was to pray separately!
Next October we will not pray together in Assisi. We will be with the victims in Iraq, in Pakistan, praying with them and for them.
–Fr. Alain Lorans
Communiqué of the District of Germany on the Beatification of John Paul II
It is official now: Pope Benedict XVI has signed the decree of beatification of John Paul II. His predecessor will be raised to the honor of the altars on May 1, 2011, in Rome.
What are we to think of this rapid beatification? You often hear remarks such as, “He was a great devotee of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” or even “He was very clear on questions concerning the protection of human life”; but are these sufficient to set up his work in its entirety as an example for the Church today?
His pontificate was marred by a pronounced ecumenism. John Paul will thus enter history as the pope of humanism and of fraternity among religions.
He preached a special path of salvation for the people of the Old Testament, kissed the Koran in public, and used expressions that scandalized committed Catholics to the depths of their souls, such as the wish, “May St. John the Baptist protect Islam.”
His gathering in Assisi has become the symbol of the meeting of all religions and introduced in the minds of Christians the “values” of freethinkers, where they are now deeply rooted. One could call that “heresy by image”: All religions lead to God. This is diametrically opposed to the words of Sacred Scripture: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark 16:16).
We must not forget the gigantic concelebrations; nor should we deny the liturgical abuses during pontifical Masses which, to a certain extent, have caused a liturgical collapse hitherto unknown and have propagated in all the local Churches abuses that cry out to Heaven!
Is that a pontificate that deserves a beatification?
To defend the Faith in all circumstances against error and thereby to unify and guide Christ’s flock—that is the Lord’s command to St. Peter, which is still valid today.
Other major figures deserve to be raised to the honor of the altars, for example Pope Pius XII.
Society of Saint Pius X, District of Germany
Stuttgart, January 15, 2011
Society Acquires New Priory in Montreal
In Asia, Diocesan Bishops Collaborate with…the SSPX
A Papal Nuncio Speaks Out on Summorum Pontificum
Even in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio allowing the traditional Roman liturgy to be celebrated without the previous restrictions, many bishops remain reluctant, if not hostile, to priests who wish to take advantage of this permission. Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, an American who is Apostolic Nuncio to the Antilles Island, recently spoke out about this situation:
Jesus condemns hypocrisy and commands those among His listeners for whom the shoe fits to first pull the plank from their own eye before attempting to pull the splinter from their neighbor’s eye. In that regard, I have to say (at the risk of condemning myself by my own judgment) that I have been particularly troubled of late by encounters (both through the media and directly) with the intolerance of any number of prelates within the Church: intolerance not directed toward wicked people, but intolerance toward those who are attempting as best they can to be faithful, especially in matters concerning Divine Worship and the education of children and youth.
Why, even three years after the issuance of Summorum Pontificum (just to name one example), are well-meaning lay folk still treated with such great disdain by no less than bishops, bishops in communion (of heart, soul, mind and strength?) with the Successor of St. Peter when they ask for Mass in Latin? Is this anything other than blind hypocrisy (the plank!)? You tolerate no small amount of bad taste, bad music and caprice, while begrudging some few a port in the storm of liturgical abuse which seems not to want to subside? Can we be after His own Heart and not just claim to be members of Christ’s Body while still acting so at odds with the example set by the Holy One of God, meek and humble of heart? Such prelates are at counter or cross purposes to the sense in which the Church wants to go; they are ignoring what the Spirit is saying to the Churches and doing so with a backhand to some who are branded common and contemptible, but certainly not in the eyes of Christ... Let me say it more clearly! My issue is with the contempt shown for an outstretched hand, contempt such as would not be shown toward someone asking for some other benefit....
Current Issue
