Religious freedom is about human dignity, pope says in Morocco

Hannah Brockhaus/CNA

31 March, 2019       

Pope Francis (2nd-L) is received by Morocco's King Mohammed VI (2nd-R), his son Crown Prince Moulay Hassan (R), and brother Moulay Rachid (L), upon his arrival in the capital Rabat (Getty)

Francis emphasises religious freedom at start of two-day trip

During his first meeting in Rabat Saturday, Pope Francis underlined the importance of religious liberty and its connection to the dignity and rights owed to every person, regardless of their religion.

“We believe that God created human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity, and he calls them to live as brothers and sisters and to spread the values of goodness, love and peace,” the pope said March 30 in the Moroccan capital.

“That is why freedom of conscience and religious freedom – which is not limited to freedom of worship alone, but allows all to live in accordance with their religious convictions – are inseparably linked to human dignity.”

Authentic dialogue brings awareness of the importance of religion “for building bridges between people”, he continued, adding that it is faith in God which leads people “to acknowledge the eminent dignity of each human being, as well as his or her inalienable rights.”

This requires moving beyond tolerance “to respect and esteem for others,” he said. “Understood in this way, creating bridges between people – from the point of view of interreligious dialogue – calls for a spirit of mutual regard, friendship and indeed fraternity.”

Pope Francis spoke during the first stop of a March 30-31 visit to Morocco. He is visiting the country to promote peace, dialogue between Christians and Muslims, and care for migrants.

“This visit is for me an occasion of joy and gratitude,” he said to Moroccans, including members of the country’s civil society, diplomatic corps, and authorities. “It allows me to see at first hand the richness of your land, your people and your traditions.”

The pope’s visits to two Muslim-majority countries, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco, fall exactly 800 years after the historic meeting of St. Francis of Assisi and Al-Kamil, Sultan of Egypt.

Commemorating this meeting, Pope Francis said he is grateful his visit “offers a significant opportunity for advancing interreligious dialogue and mutual understanding among the followers of our two religions.”

“That prophetic event shows that the courage to encounter one another and extend a hand of friendship is a pathway of peace and harmony for humanity, whereas extremism and hatred cause division and destruction,” he said.

“It is my hope that our mutual esteem, respect and cooperation will help strengthen the bonds of sincere friendship,” he continued, “and enable our communities to prepare a better future for coming generations.”

In his speech, the pope praised the 2016 International Conference on the rights of religious minorities in Muslim countries, held in Marrakesh, which condemned exploitation of religion for discrimination and encouraged the participation of minorities in society through full citizenship.

He also commended the Al Mowafaqa Ecumenical Institute in Rabat, an initiative of Catholics and other Christians which also promotes dialogue with culture and Islam.

“All these are ways to halt the misuse of religion to incite hatred, violence, extremism and blind fanaticism, and the invocation of the name of God to justify acts of murder, exile, terrorism and oppression,” he said, referencing the peace declaration he signed with Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of al-Azhar, in Abu Dhabi in February.

Christians, though a small minority in Morocco at less than one percent of the population, are appreciative of the place they hold in Moroccan society, he said, and “wish to do their part in building a fraternal and prosperous nation, out of concern for the common good of its people.”

He noted the “significant work of the Catholic Church” in the country, which has provided social services and education, to students of every background.

“In thanking God for all that has been accomplished, allow me to encourage Catholics and all Christians to be servants, promoters and defenders of human fraternity here in Morocco,” he said.

Under pressure, UK to reconsider asylum application of Iranian Christian

Catholic News Agency

26 March, 2019
 

(Getty)

A Home Office official cited the bible to claim that Christianity is not a peaceful religion

The British Home Office has agreed to reconsider the asylum claim of an Iranian Christian, after it was shown on Twitter that the department had denied the application on the grounds that Christianity is not a peaceful religion.

“The Home Office have agreed to withdraw their refusal and to reconsider our client’s asylum application, offering us a chance to submit further representations. A good start, but more change is needed”, the Iranian’s caseworker, Nathan Stevens, tweeted March 22.

Stevens added that he hopes “there will be real change though as it isn’t all about this one case; there’s a much wider problem to be addressed here.”

The immigration caseworker had tweeted photos March 19 of the Home Office’s letter explaining its reason for refusing the convert’s asylum claim, commenting: “I’ve seen a lot over the years, but even I was genuinely shocked to read this unbelievably offensive diatribe being used to justify a refusal of asylum.”

The asylum seeker had noted in his 2016 application that among his reasons for converting was that Christianity talks of “peace, forgiveness and kindness” while “in Islam there is violence rage and revenge.”

The refusal letter cited biblical passages, from Leviticus, Matthew, Exodus, and Revelation, which it said contradicted the asylum seeker’s claims: “These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion,” the denial letter stated.

Stevens said: “Whatever your views on faith, how can a government official arbitrarily pick bits out of a holy book and then use them to trash someone’s heartfelt reason for coming to a personal decision to follow another faith?”

The Home Office, the British government department responsible for immigration, drugs policy, crime, fire, counter-terrorism, and policing, has said that the refusal letter is “not in accordance with our policy approach to claims based on religious persecution.” It added that “we continue to work closely with key partners … to improve our policy guidance and training provided to asylum decision-makers.”

Sarah Teather, director of Jesuit Refugee Service UK, said March 21 that the refusal letter “is a particularly outrageous example of the reckless and facetious approach of the Home Office to determining life and death asylum cases – they appear willing to distort any aspect of reality in order to turn down a claim.”

“This case demonstrates the shocking illiteracy of Christianity within the Home Office … Here at JRS, we routinely encounter cases where asylum has been refused on spurious grounds.”

She added that “as this instance gains public attention, we need to remember it reflects a systematic problem and a deeper mindset of disbelief within the Home Office, and is not just an anomaly that can be explained away.”

Stephen Evans, CEO of the National Secular Society, commented on Twitter that it was “totally inappropriate” for the Home Office “to play theologian.” He added that “Decisions on the merits of an asylum appeal should be based on an assessment of the facts at hand – and not on the state’s interpretation of any given religion.”

Paul Butler, the Anglican Bishop of Durham, expressed “extreme concern” that the Home Office “could determine the future of another human being based on such a profound misunderstanding of the texts and practices of faith communities … that these comments were made at all suggests that the problem goes deeper than a lack of religious literacy among individual civil servants and indicates that the management structures and ethos of the Home Office, when dealing with cases with a religious dimension, need serious overhaul.”

Stevens has also noted that the refusal letter was part of a larger problem. He quoted in a March 20 tweet from another refusal that stated: “You affirmed in your AIR that Jesus is your saviour, but then claimed that He would not be able to save you from the Iranian regime. It is therefore considered that you have no conviction in your faith and your belief in Jesus is half-hearted.”

Shia Islam is the state religion of Iran, though several religious minorities are recognized and granted freedom of worship. However, conversion from Islam is strictly prohibited.

Open Doors UK said that 114 Christians were arrested in Iran in December 2018. Many of them were reportedly converts from Islam.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom wrote in its 2018 report that “in the past year, religious freedom in Iran continued to deteriorate … with the government targeting Baha’is and Christian converts in particular.” It said that “Christian converts and house church leaders faced increasingly harsh sentencing: many were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for their religious activities.”

Vintage-style procession photo a snapshot of renewal in Detroit, priest says      

Mary Rezac/CNA

26 March, 2019

(Archdiocese of Detroit)

Photos of the traditional religious procession in Detroit were widely shared on social media

Maybe it was the classic sunglasses, the skinny jeans or the flocculent mustache. Maybe it was the vintage-style religious art, the men in embellished uniforms, or what looks like incense rising from the streets.

Whatever it was, a photo of a religious procession with a circa-1940’s aesthetic recently fascinated Catholics, who shared it on social media and other places around the internet.

Except the photo of a St. Joseph’s procession on the streets of Detroit wasn’t taken in 1945. It was taken last week.

“I guess what really makes it ‘epic’ in today’s terms is the steam from the city that…looks like holy incense,” said Canon Michael Stein, ICRSS, rector of St. Joseph’s Oratory in Detroit, which sponsored the procession.

“We dubbed it ‘city incense,’” he said of steam that can be seen rising up from the street in the already-iconic photo.

Canon Stein is a member of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, a Roman Catholic society of apostolic life with an emphasis on the traditional Latin Mass. The Institute was invited to St. Joseph’s Church in Detroit in 2016 to revive what was then a struggling Church community.

(What is a “canon,” you ask? “In layman’s terms, if you take a monk on the one hand, and a diocesan priest on the other, and smoosh them together, you get a canon,” Canon Stein said.)

“When there was every material reason to shut it down (not enough funds, not enough faithful, a crumbling building), we’re very grateful that Archbishop Vigneron had a much grander vision (for the parish),” Stein told CNA.

“He created a win-win situation by unmerging St. Joseph’s (from a cluster of three parishes), making it its own parish within the archdiocese, and then inviting the Institute of Christ the King to come live here and breathe daily parish life back into it from scratch, and that’s exactly what we’ve done for the past two years,” he said.

One very visible sign of that new life in the parish is the beautiful St. Joseph’s procession, which the Institute has organized since 2017.

The appeal of the photo, and of the procession (which this year included 500 people), goes deeper than aesthetics, Stein said.

“I think it’s safe to say there’s a profound theological and spiritual reason why that photo resonates so much with our hearts,” he said.

“We are the religion of the Incarnation. God became man, the invisible God became visible, he sanctified the material world and elevated these visible, tangible signs to communicate invisible graces and to convey eternal truths.”

“This is my parish; this is what we do,” said Daniel Egan told The Detroit Catholicabout the procession.

“This is a perennial St. Joseph Day tradition. St. Joseph Parish has been here for almost 150 years, so this isn’t new to this area. Maybe it fell out of practice for the last 30, 40 years, but we are showing we are Catholic, as we are called to,” he said.

“As Catholics, we’re told to live our faith in season and out of season, in the public square and in private, and that includes the city streets. If we’re not Catholic out there, we are truly failing to be authentically Christian.”

The photo of the procession includes the Knights of St. John in full uniform (a Catholic charitable organization with a very long history), as well as parish vicar Canon Adrian Sequeira, ICRSS, leading the procession in full choir habit, which is used when the order chants the Liturgy of the Hours together. The spots of blue throughout the photo symbolize the order’s total consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Stein said.

St. Joseph speaks to the hearts of today as a gentle and loving man and father and worker, Stein told CNA.

Part of the homily from the feast day, he said, explained that God sends saints for the times – either holy people of the time who are witnessing to the Gospel, or saints of old who are re-presented and raised up as intercessors for the times.

“It only takes a quick glance around the world to see a fatherless society, and to see either a slothful or workaholic society, or a lack of an appropriate understanding of manliness,” Stein said.

“It’s neither brute nor effeminate, it’s faithful, it’s steadfast, it’s courageous and gentle. And we find all those things in St. Joseph, so I think that’s another part of the power of that picture.”

The procession, which traveled for less than a mile, stopped rush-hour traffic in the city, with the collaboration of Detroit police. It travelled to the Eastern Market, an iconic makers market in Detroit that has remained in the city since the 1800s, where workers can sell their wares and fathers can support their families – two things of which St. Joseph is the patron, Stein noted.

“So all the workers got to see their patron processing through the streets, whether they knew it or not,” he said.

The procession was part of numerous events celebrating St. Joseph that took place in both St. Joseph’s parish and throughout the archdiocese. In addition to the procession, St. Joseph’s parish had three Masses, an Italian dinner, and a running litany of other activities and devotions throughout the day.

Other Detroit parishes had St. Joseph’s Masses and dinners, including San Francesco Parish, which held a Mass, Italian dinner and St. Joseph’s play, and Holy Family Parish, which held an Italian-language Mass.

Beyond being a photogenic opportunity, Stein noted, the procession and all of the festivities on the feast of St. Joseph are the fruit of a lively spiritual and liturgical life.

“It shows that we’re alive,” Stein said. “These things are the fruit of a daily sacramental life, these things are the fruit of a reverent liturgy, and the fruit of a solid catechesis. They’re the fruit of our young adults being committed…Detroit as a city is coming back, and a lot of millennials are staying after college to get their first career jobs here.”

To fill the needs of an increasing number of young people, St. Joseph’s offers teenage catechesis and young adult groups, Stein said. The parish also has daily Mass and confession, a schola choir, and active volunteer groups, among other ministries.   Within just two years, it’s become a hub for millennials in the Archdiocese, he noted.

“We are predominantly young,” Stein said, and young people are hungry for an incarnational faith.

“We are body and soul, all these spiritual truths are meant to be communicated through our senses. We get to see our faith, hear our faith, taste our faith, etc., and that just appeals to us so much,” he said.

“Truth needs to shine in beauty…we’re not angels, we’re not just pure intelligences, we need to see, touch, hear; and that’s something the traditional liturgy has always done. That’s something that a reverent Mass or procession can do, these visible signs that the Church has used throughout her history to excite devotion and promote devotion.”

Catholic beliefs on abortion and gay marriage ‘could become hate crimes’

David V Barrett

25 March, 2019 

(Getty)

A 'climate of heightened sensitivity' could severely restrict freedom of speech, the Scottish Church has said

Expressing Catholic beliefs on sexuality could become a hate crime, a Catholic spokesman in Scotland has warned.

“In a climate of heightened sensitivity there is a very real danger that expressing or even holding individual or collective opinions or beliefs will become a hate crime,” said Catholic Parliamentary Office Director Anthony Horan last week.

“We must guard against this and ensure freedom of expression, thought, conscience and religion are protected.

“Some people might suggest that expressing the Catholic Church’s position on marriage or human sexuality could be an attempt to stir up hatred.

“This would obviously be wrong, but without room for robust debate and exchange of views we risk becoming an intolerant, illiberal society.”

Mr Horan was speaking in the context of the Scottish Government carrying out a consultation exercise on hate crime.

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “We agree that the law as it stands is already robust, but we want to ensure that all such offences are properly prosecuted which is why we are currently analysing the responses and will consider them in shaping our Hate Crime Bill.

“All contributions to the consultation will be fully considered before decisions are taken.”

The Catholic Church itself has increasingly become the victim of hate crimes in recent months. Last month a man was jailed for 10 months for spitting on a Catholic priest as an Orange march passed by his church.