In an interview with conservative US Catholic newspaper the National Catholic Register, Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said: “I am confident there will be no change in doctrine.”

Schönborn added that there is “deep continuity” in the teaching of recent popes on marriage, particularly Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. He said media reports tend to give people an impression that differences are wider than they in fact are.

Schönborn, whose own parents divorced when he was young, said “the first victims of divorce are always the children”, and this suffering should be addressed before one addresses the suffering of parents.

Theme for 2016 World Day of Peace

‘Overcome indifference and win peace’ is the theme of the 49th World Day of Peace to be celebrated on January 1. This was announced in a statement issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The council said “indifference in regard to the scourges of our time is one of the fundamental causes of the lack of peace”. It added that indifference is linked to one kind or other of individualism, which causes, among other things, isolation, ignorance and selfishness.

Among the problems that afflict our time the council mentioned “fundamentalism, intolerance and massacres, persecutions on account of faith and ethnicity, disregard for freedom and the destruction of the rights of entire peoples, the exploitation of human beings submitted even to the different forms of slavery, corruption and organised crime, war and the plight of refugees and forcibly displaced persons”.

Some rabbis help as one rabbi threatens

While some rabbis are raising funds for a Catholic church, another one has taken a public stand in favour of burning churches.

In fact, the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land has filed a complaint with police against Rabbi Ben-Zion Gopstein, head of extremist organization Lehava, after he expressed support for the burning of churches during a panel discussion.

The comments were inflammatory as they came after an act of vandalism against the church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish in Israel.

The bishops described these words as unacceptable and called on the police “to ensure real protection for Christian citizens of this country and their places of worship”.

Meanwhile, an Israeli interfaith institute has raised funds to restore the vandalised church. Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute, said that condemning such acts is not enough and that is why they are reaching in their pockets to help.

The Speaker of the Israel Parliament and 17 Orthodox rabbis endorsed the project.

‘Sorrow, repentance’ over nuclear weapons

Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, New Mexico, US, expressed sorrow that his fellow countrymen are no longer pursuing the elimination of nuclear weapons. The bishop made the comments while he was visiting Hiroshima on the 70th anniversary of the city’s devastation by an atomic bomb.

“The return to a serious discussion of nuclear disarmament may seem like an outdated exercise,” the bishop said. “Sadly, it is not.”

Cantu said he came to Hiro­shima in “sorrow and repentance”.

He chairs the US bishops’ committee on international justice and peace.

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)

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