In today’s weekly round up, we cover the news we missed from the 8th to the 14th November 2021
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Nov 8, 2021 – Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French bishops’ conference, said Nov. 8 that the bishops had decided to “initiate a path of recognition and reparation opening for the victims the possibility of mediation and compensation. All of the resolutions that we have voted on constitute a vast program of renewal of our governance practices at the level of the dioceses and at the level of the Church in France,” the archbishop of Reims said in an address broadcast live on French television.
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Nov 8, 2021 – The Vatican’s liturgy top figure has said that the Traditional Latin Mass was “abrogated by Pope Saint Paul VI.” Archbishop Arthur Roche made the comment in a letter dated Aug. 4 to the English Cardinal Vincent Nichols. The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments was replying to a letter from the cardinal dated July 28, regarding the application of Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis custodes in England and Wales.
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Nov 9, 2021 – Slovakia’s parliament is debating a bill aiming to increase assistance to pregnant women and reduce the number of abortions in the country. This is the fourth attempt to pass pro-life measures in as many years in the central European country where abortion is legal on request up to 12 weeks and later if a mother’s life is deemed to be in danger. The draft law on assistance to pregnant women, introduced at the National Council of the Slovak Republic on Aug. 31, would extend the mandatory waiting period before an abortion, ban abortion advertising, and offer more financial support to new mothers.
The law, debated on Nov. 5, was introduced by members of parliament from the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) movement, led by Anna Záborská.
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Nov 9, 2021 An influential Catholic theologian has said that the German Synodal Way’s “original sin” was setting aside Pope Francis’ call to focus on evangelization. Cardinal Walter Kasper has repeatedly expressed concern about the multi-year process bringing together Germany’s bishops and laypeople to discuss the way power is exercised in the Church, sexual morality, the priesthood, and the role of women.
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Nov 10, 2021 – The Diocese of Cartago, Costa Rica, has ordered the canonical closure of the San José Benedictine Monastery, a diocesan foundation that had functioned ad experimentum for some years. “This decision of ecclesiastical closure is carried out as a result of an internal administrative process of the Church, which originated in a pastoral visit to the Monastery; this being done in accordance with the powers conferred by the Code of Canon Law, whose result and conclusions were endorsed by the Congregation for the Institutes of Religious Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in Rome,” the diocese stated Nov. 7.
“The final decision was made known but not the reasons, since there are elements of secrecy in the matter and they cannot be exposed to public opinion due to the nature of the entrusted secret, in order not to damage the conscience of the faithful and to avoid incorrect interpretations by the faithful,” the Father Jorge David Arley Campos, press officer for the Diocese of Cartago, said.
- Nov 10, 2021 – An English cardinal and London’s police chief have agreed to create a joint group reviewing Catholic priests’ access to crime scenes to administer the last rites.Cardinal Vincent Nichols and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick took the step after reports that police turned away a Catholic priest seeking to anoint Sir David Amess after the lawmaker was stabbed during a meeting with constituents in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, on Oct. 15.
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Nov 10, 2021 – Father Robert McWilliams was sentenced to life in prison on convictions of sex trafficking of youths under 18, child pornography, and sexual exploitation of children. The verdict was handed down in the U.S. District Court in Akron, Ohio.
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Nov 11, 2021 – A Catholic cathedral in the Diocese of Phekhone in Burma’s Shan state was among several structures that were reportedly hit by military artillery fire on Nov. 9 amid continuing armed clashes between government and rebel forces. An unnamed source quoted by the news site Radio Veritas Asia said that at least five artillery shells “fell on the church,” which was identified in the report as the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.
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Nov 11, 2021 – The Archbishop of Sydney has urged the faithful to speak out against euthanasia as New South Wales considers legalizing the practice. The New South Wales parliament is expected to begin debate on the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2021 on Nov. 12, less than a month after it was introduced by member Alex Greenwich. “I strongly oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide because we shouldn’t be telling sick people by our laws that we think they would be better off dead or that we would be better off if they were dead,” said Archbishop Anthony Fisher, O.P. in a Nov. 8 letter to his archdiocese.
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Nov 12, 2021 – Austria’s Catholic bishops said on Thursday that a draft law on assisted suicide “contains shortcomings that are unacceptable.” In a statement issued at the end of their plenary meeting in Vienna on Nov. 11, the bishops lamented the omission of a 12-week waiting period for people seeking assisted suicide.
Austria’s constitutional court ruled in December 2020 that the country’s criminal code was unconstitutional because its ban on assisted suicide violated the right to self-determination. It ordered the government to lift the ban in 2021.
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Nov 13, 2021 – Benedict XVI met with four recipients of the Ratzinger Prize at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican on Saturday. The meeting lasted one hour and allowed each of the academics to discuss their work with the pope emeritus, according to a statement from the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation. Before parting ways, the group prayed a Hail Mary together. Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, a specialist on the German philosopher Edith Stein, and Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, an Old Testament theologian from Germany, were presented with the 2021 Ratzinger Prize by Pope Francis in an award ceremony at the Vatican on Nov. 13. The 2020 Ratzinger Prize winners, Australian professor Tracey Rowland and French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion, were also present to receive the award due to the fact that the 2020 prize ceremony was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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