Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia wrote in his weekly diocesan column that President Barack Obama’s administration was “the most stubbornly unfriendly to religious believers” in generations.
Chaput wrote that the Democratic Party felt that Catholic “bishops were dumb enough to be used as tools” four years ago during President Obama’s re-election campaign and that little has changed this time round, as evidenced by the “contemptuously anti-Catholic e-mails exchanged among members of the Clinton Democratic presidential campaign team”.
Last month, during the Tocqueville Lecture on Religious Liberty at the University of Notre Dame, he described Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as “very bad news for our country”. He said Clinton was “in the view of a lot of people... a criminal liar, uniquely rich in stale ideas and bad priorities” and that Trump, the Republican candidate, was a “belligerent demagogue with an impulse-control problem”. He added that since he began voting in 1966 “the major parties have never, at the same time, offered two such deeply flawed candidates”.
Pope for pro-family policies
During his Angelus address last Sunday, a day before the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Pope Francis said: “Let us join our moral and economic forces to fight together against poverty that degrades, offends and kills so many of our brothers and sisters, by giving life to serious policies in support of families and employment.”
Diverse interpretation of policy on Communion
Catholics who are divorced and remarried cannot receive Communion, except in cases when they agree to live as brother and sister. This directive was given to priests working in the archdiocese of Florence, Italy, for implementing Amoris Laetitia in the city. The directives were approved by Florence’s Archbishiop, Cardinal Giuseppe Betori.
On the other hand, in the guideline for the diocese of Rome, unlike that of Florence, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope’s vicar for the city, said that in unusual cases a confessor may authorise divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion if living in sexual continence would be “difficult to practice for the stability of the couple”.
Pope questions wisdom of genetically-modified crops
in his message to the head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Pope Francis said: “Genetic selection of a quality of plant may produce impressive results in terms of yield, but have we considered the terrain that loses its productive capacity, farmers who no longer have pasture for their livestock, and water resources that become unusable? And above all, do we ask if and to what extent we contribute to altering the climate?
“Not precaution, then, but wisdom: what peasants, fisherman and farmers conserve in memory handed down through the generations and which is now derided and forgotten by a model of production that is entirely to the advantage of a limited group and a tiny portion of the world population.
“Let us remember that it is a model which, despite all its science, allows around 800 million people to continue to go hungry.”
King of Bahrain gives land for Christian church
The building of a Coptic Orthodox Church in Bahrain has been made possible after a land donation by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
The church, to be built in the capital city of Manama, will serve the estimated 1,500 Coptic families living in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. This will be the second Christian church built in Bahrain. In 2013 the king gave land to the Catholic Church for the construction of a cathedral in Awali.
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)