All posts tagged: Catholics

Pope Leo calls on Catholics to ‘move beyond’ just war theory in new encyclical

Pope Leo calls on Catholics to ‘move beyond’ just war theory in new encyclical

(RNS) — While Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical mostly focuses on AI, it also includes language that suggests that Catholics move past their longstanding reliance on just war theory, offering an assessment of armed conflict likely to spark debate among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The Catholic tradition has long drawn on saints like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to teach that war is permissible in a very narrow set of circumstances — where war is justified as a last resort to respond to damage that must be “lasting, grave and certain.” Per church teaching of just war theory, the war must also be likely to be successful and create less harm than the harm eliminated. Since becoming pope last year, Leo has been clear he intended to take a firm stand against war. His first words greeting the world after his election were, “Peace be with you all!” in a speech that went on to call for peace that is “unarmed and disarming.” More recently, in his Palm Sunday homily in March, Leo said, “This is …

Vatican sending new signals of openness but limitations in outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics

Vatican sending new signals of openness but limitations in outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is sending new signals about how it intends to minister to LGBTQ+ Catholics in the Pope Leo XIV era, with signs of openness and limitations after Pope Francis ushered in a notable welcome during his 12-year pontificate. Catholic LGBTQ+ advocates cheered this week when a Vatican working group released a report featuring the testimony of two gay, married Catholics who spoke openly about their sexuality, faith and how the Catholic Church’s negative teaching on homosexuality had hurt them. Additionally, Leo made clear during a recent airborne news conference that he believed the church’s teachings on social justice, equality and freedom were far more important than its teaching on sexual morality, suggesting he doesn’t intend to prioritize the issue. At that same news conference, though, Leo indicated he will go no further than Francis on the contentious matter of same-sex blessings. The Vatican has recently renewed its opposition to any local efforts to deviate from the Holy See stance. For the Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit who has spearheaded …

Attending multiple places of worship is the norm for many Americans

Attending multiple places of worship is the norm for many Americans

(The Conversation) — Most U.S. adults who attend religious services attend multiple congregations, at least occasionally, according to our new research. As sociologists who research congregational life in the United States, we fielded a nationally representative survey in 2023. We asked over 2,000 adults across many religious affiliations, and those with no religion, a variety of questions about their religious beliefs and activities. Our analysis, which was published in the Review of Religious Research, found that roughly 12% of all adults who attend services go to multiple congregations “regularly” and 45% attend multiple congregations “occasionally.” Of those who attend multiple congregations, 73% attend two congregations and 27% attend three or more, at least occasionally. Adults who attend multiple congregations are more likely to be politically liberal, whereas political conservatives are more likely to always attend one congregation. We also found that evangelical Protestants are less likely to attend multiple places of worship than Catholics. About 17% of those attending a single place of worship identified as evangelical Protestant, versus only 10% of people who attended …

Southern Baptists have become what they once feared Catholics would be

Southern Baptists have become what they once feared Catholics would be

“There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the U.S. Constitution,” the leader of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission recently declared. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who sometimes preaches at Houston’s Second Baptist Church, made headlines when he made this pronouncement. It was a striking statement from a Baptist, given that Baptists have made a point of defending the fabled wall of separation since the earliest days of the American republic. In fact, in 1960, when Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy was running for president, he delivered a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, reassuring the assembled Protestant clergy, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”   Why is defense of this wall, once obligatory for a Catholic politician, now abandoned by a Baptist? Within the larger story of the rise of the Religious right, this reversal highlights remarkably different political strategies deployed by large religious minorities. Catholics, viewed with suspicion by American Protestants, presented themselves as able to blend in to the American …

Catholics warn of serious juncture as Trump targets Pope Leo XIV

Catholics warn of serious juncture as Trump targets Pope Leo XIV

President Donald Trump, whose war with Israel against Iran has drawn criticism from Pope Leo XIV, called the pontiff “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” in a lengthy Sunday night post to his website Truth Social. Amid growing concerns of Catholic leaders, relations between the president and the head of the Catholic Church hit an all-time low on Monday, with the pontiff saying he has “no fear” of Trump’s scathing remarks, while the president drew intense ire for posting an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump wrote, nor does he want “a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States.” “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” the president wrote with his typical flair for capitalization. Leo XIV denied that he had been speaking out against Trump, but rather against the “delusion of omnipotence” …

An Ohio archbishop called Catholics to talk their way to consensus

An Ohio archbishop called Catholics to talk their way to consensus

(RNS) — In January, Cincinnati’s Catholic Archbishop Robert G. Casey announced his plans to hold an archdiocesan synod next year, asking southwest Ohio’s Catholics to prepare for “a time of prayer, a time of listening to the Holy Spirit and to one another in order to discern God’s will for our local church in the years ahead.” When I spoke to the archbishop recently, I noticed how often he spoke in terms of “we” rather than “I.” When any leader speaks that way, we have good reasons for hope. Cincinnati’s synod is an important way the Catholic Church is embracing synodality, Pope Francis’ signature vision that he called the whole Roman Catholic Church to in 2021 as a next step in the living-out of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Leo XIV has made clear that synodality will continue under his leadership. Synodality literally means “walking together,” and it is a way of thinking about church governance that dates to the earliest moments of Christianity. Synodality invites the members of the church to full participation in …

Judge orders ICE to allow Catholics access to Chicago-area detention center

Judge orders ICE to allow Catholics access to Chicago-area detention center

(RNS) — Cardinal Blase Cupich will celebrate an outdoor Ash Wednesday Mass and procession in solidarity with immigrant families hosted by the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, according to an announcement by the group Friday (Feb. 13). A day earlier, a judge ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to grant the Christian advocacy group access to the Broadview detention center near Chicago to minister to detainees on Ash Wednesday, which begins the Christian season of Lent. Yesenia Rivera, a spokesperson for the group, told RNS that the group could not confirm whether Cupich would be present for its Ash Wednesday ministry inside Broadview. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman wrote in his preliminary injunction, “The court finds that the government has substantially burdened plaintiffs’ exercise of religion.” The Rev. Dan Hartnett, a Jesuit priest who is part of the coalition’s clergy council and who was a plaintiff on the legal complaint, said in a statement, “As Lent begins, we pray this ruling restores religious freedom for those detained and moves our country …

Pope Leo XIV faces crisis as a traditionalist group plans bishop consecrations without consent

Pope Leo XIV faces crisis as a traditionalist group plans bishop consecrations without consent

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is facing his first major crisis with traditionalist Catholics: A breakaway group attached to the traditional Latin Mass announced plans to consecrate new bishops without papal consent in a threatened revival of schism. The Swiss-based Society of St. Pius X, which has schools, chapels and seminaries around the world, has been a thorn in the side of the Holy See for four decades, founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council. In 1988, the group’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without papal consent, arguing that it was necessary for the survival of the church’s tradition. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the Catholic Church. But in the decades since that original break with Rome, the group has continued to grow, with branches of priests, nuns and lay Catholics who are attached to the pre-Vatican II traditional Latin Mass. For the Vatican, papal consent for the consecration of …

New archbishop serves Indigenous Catholics

New archbishop serves Indigenous Catholics

As a teenager in southern India, Susai Jesu led 4:30 a.m. prayer services in his small Catholic village before the farmers went into the fields. He directed the choir, helped at Mass and soon began training for the priesthood. Little did he know that this dedication would take him halfway around the world on a vast cross-cultural journey — ministering among Canada’s Indigenous Catholics, learning their language, culture and historical traumas. He hosted Pope Francis at his Edmonton parish when the late pontiff visited Canada in 2022 to apologize for the Catholic Church’s collaboration with the “catastrophic” system of Indigenous residential schools. And as of Jan. 26, Jesu is now an archbishop for northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. He’ll oversee ministry to about 49,000 Catholics, mostly Indigenous, dispersed across a region larger than Texas. In a ceremony punctuated by traditional drumming — as well as songs and prayers in an unusual combination of Cree, Dene, English, French, Oji-Cree and his native Tamil — Jesu was consecrated archbishop of Keewatin-Le Pas. Jesu’s first order of business is …