1. Efforts being made to create conditions for papal visit to N. Korea, By Elise Ann Allen, Crux, November 4, 2021
After South Korean President Moon Jae-in invited Pope Francis to visit North Korea last week, a prominent archbishop indicated that the Vatican is working to foster conditions in which a papal visit to the Asian nation is possible.
Archbishop Lazarus You Heung-sik, prefect for the Vatican Congregation for Clergy and who is originally from Daejeon, South Korea, told reporters that “as with the [South Korean] government, the Vatican also makes efforts to foster conditions for the pope to visit North Korea through various channels.”
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2021/11/efforts-being-made-to-create-conditions-for-papal-visit-to-n-korea/
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2. Chicago cardinal says ‘liturgical reform’ means leaving behind old forms of Mass, By John Lavenburg, Crux, November 4, 2021
Pope Francis’s decision to restrict celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass in July, says Cardinal Blase Cupich, was grounded in uniting the global church around a “single and identical prayer” that is the contemporary Mass.
Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago and one of Pope Francis’s closest U.S. allies, made the comments in a Nov. 1 post to the Pray Tell blog titled “The Gift of Traditionis Custodes,” where he goes in depth about his support for and importance of Pope Francis’s decision.
Embedded in the reason for unity, Cupich makes the case against any use of the pre-Vatican II Traditional Latin Mass after the Vatican II reforms because “the word ‘reform’ means … that we leave behind a former way of celebrating the sacraments and adopt a new form.”
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2021/11/chicago-cardinal-says-liturgical-reform-means-leaving-behind-old-forms-of-mass/
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3. Cardinal Pell: ‘Resistance’ in the Secretariat of State cost Vatican money in London deal, By Hannah Brockhaus, Catholic News Agency, November 4, 2021, 5:30 AM
Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s former economy czar, has said that if his office had been able to intervene sooner, it could have saved some of the money lost in the Secretariat of State’s controversial London property deal.
The Australian cardinal told the Italian newspapers La Stampa and Corriere della Sera in an interview published Nov. 4: “There was resistance in the Secretariat of State. But if the auditor, or we from the Secretariat for the Economy, had been able to intervene earlier, we would have saved a lot, a lot of money destined for the London building and also in other places.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/249490/cardinal-pell-resistance-in-the-secretariat-of-state-cost-vatican-money-in-london-deal
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4. Texans vote in favor of prohibiting governments from limiting religious services, By Alejandra Molina, Religion News Service, November 3, 2021, 5:14 PM
Texas voters on Tuesday (Nov. 2) overwhelmingly supported a measure barring governments from taking any kind of action that limits religious services, such as the public health orders that shut down houses of worship and businesses earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Proposition 3, which will add a clause to the Texas Constitution forbidding state or local authorities from prohibiting or limiting religious services, garnered 62.4% of votes, according to unofficial results from the Texas secretary of state.
The measure had the support of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and some other — but not all — religious groups.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/texans-vote-in-favor-of-prohibiting-governments-from-limiting-religious-services/2021/11/03/f9978e48-3cea-11ec-bd6f-da376f47304e_story.html
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5. Texas judge rules religious businesses exempt from LGBTQ bias claims, By Kathryn Post, Religion News Service, November 3, 2021, 5:04 PM
For-profit businesses with sincerely held religious beliefs are exempt from LGBTQ discrimination liability under a decision this week by a federal judge in Texas. The ruling Sunday (Oct. 31) came in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 landmark ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which held that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Bostock ruling left open the question of whether and how the anti-discrimination provisions applied to religious entities. “But how these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases too,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in the 2020 majority opinion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/texas-judge-rules-religious-businesses-exempt-from-lgbtq-bias-claims/2021/11/03/92265bb4-3ce9-11ec-bd6f-da376f47304e_story.html
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6. Lawsuit challenges USCCB role in Christian foster care, By The Pillar, November 3, 2021
How’s this for a complicated bit of ecumenism: The federal government is facing a lawsuit because a Protestant foster care and adoption agency says it is bound by Catholic policies on foster care placement, as part of the terms of a federal grant allocation administered through the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court last month by Tennessee resident Kelly Easter, who says she was rejected as a foster parent by a local branch of Bethany Christian Services because of her sexual orientation; Easter identifies as a lesbian.
The suit implicitly challenges the USCCB’s ability to administer federal grants while upholding its own religious policies. It could define the extent to which religious institutions receiving or administering federal grants maintain religious exemptions to federal anti-discrimination policies.
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In the Supreme Court’s narrow ruling in June on the Philadelphia case, the justices found that the city had discriminated against Catholic Social Services by de-certifying them as a foster care provider but did not make a clear broader ruling on the right of religious organizations to offer such services with religious exemptions from anti-discrimination laws.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/lawsuit-challenges-usccb-role-in
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7. New report details experience of Christians detained in North Korea, By Courtney Mares, Catholic News Agency, November 3, 2021
A prisoner held in a cell in North Korea for two months noticed a distinctive pattern of behavior among some of the fellow detainees who called themselves Christians.
They “would pray in the corner of the cell that was hidden from the CCTV camera … They would escape a beating if their prayers went undetected by the correctional officers, but they would be beaten if they were caught,” the former prisoner testified.
“On one occasion when they were caught praying, they were beaten every morning for 20 consecutive days,” the witness said.
This is one of many eyewitness accounts of Christian practice and persecution in the “hermit kingdom” of North Korea documented in a new report published on Oct. 27.
The report by Korea Future is the result of interviews with North Korean defectors conducted between November 2019 and August 2021.
It offers details on the detention and torture of North Korean Christians in the past decade, including documented human rights violations that occurred as recently as 2019.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/249479/new-report-details-experience-of-christians-detained-in-north-korea
___________________________________________________________TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association.
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