Quotes and news

Archbishop Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, recently said: “The politics we have today in Europe and North America without ethical foundations, without a reference to God, cannot resolve our problems, even those of the market and money.

“Faith and reason are like two people who love each other deeply, who cannot live without each other, and who were intimately made for one another, so much so that they cannot be considered separate from one another and cannot reach their goals separately.

“It is precisely man’s forgetfulness of God, and his failure to give Him glory, which gives rise to violence. Indeed, once we no longer make reference to an objective and transcendent truth, how is it possible to achieve an authentic dialogue?”

Minister raps bishops

The German bishops’ recent decision to stop supporting an independent inquiry into sex-abuse complaints has been criticised by Germany’s Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. She described the decision as shameful as it gives the impression that the Church did not want everything to be independently studied.

In 2011, the German bishops agreed to commission a study by Prof. Christian Pfeiffer of the Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute. A spokesperson for the bishops said the professor “saw things one way one morning and then had totally different ideas the next day”. The spokesperson added that Pfeiffer’s attitude was “exhausting on such a project”.

Egyptian Catholics are urged to stand firm

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, the prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, told Church leaders in Egypt that Christians have a right to be able to profess their religion.

While acknowledging the “very difficult present situation” facing the Church in Egypt, Cardinal Sandri encouraged Catholics to be mindful of Egypt’s proud traditions. He said the heights of religiousness and culture that Egypt has known shows that the country’s culture was ever open to the revelation of God.

Three Bibles for Barack Obama’s inaugurations

This year President Barack Obama will take the oath of office two times.

The first ceremony will take place privately today, the day the Constitution sets for the swearing-in ceremony.

Being a Sunday, the public and official ceremony will be held tomorrow.

During the private ceremony, the President will take the oath of office by placing his hand on his wife’s family Bible.

During the public ceremony at the Capitol, Obama will place his hand on two Bibles, stacked together – one that was owned by Abraham Lincoln and one by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

US bishop on changing politicians’ priorities

Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, the US, wrote in The Washington Post: “Imagine the debate over the ‘fiscal cliff’, which found Democrats and Republicans obsessing over whose tax rates – people earning more than $250,000 (€188,422) and $400,000 (€301,363) – might go up, and how different if the same attention had gone to the other end of the income spectrum.

“What if our leaders had focused on the lives of the millions who live in poverty on the brink of despair? What if they had talked about the working poor and the tax credits vital to lift millions out of poverty? What if saving children from the abortion cliff had been top of their agenda?”

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)