The Dialog

By Catholic News Service

TORONTO — As Chinese and U.S. diplomats sought a resolution to the diplomatic crisis surrounding Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, many Chinese-Americans turned their attention to the nature of Chen’s dissent.

Without challenging any fundamental tenet of China’s constitution or its 1949 revolution, Chen has focused attention to the country’s forced abortion and sterilization practices, leading to a crackdown by the government on his movement and prohibitions on contact with foreigners and the media.

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By Francis X Rocca

Catholic News Service

SOTTO IL MONTE GIOVANNI XXIII, Italy — When the freshly named patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo G. Roncalli, chose 37-year old Father Loris F. Capovilla as his personal secretary in 1953, a skeptical adviser told the cardinal that the priest looked too sickly to bear the strain of his new job.

“Then he’ll die as my secretary,” replied the future pope, now known as Blessed John XXIII.

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By Sarah MacDonald

Catholic News Service

DUBLIN — A series of censures has brought to the fore the divisions within the Irish church between those who seek a leaner and smaller church that adheres more strictly to the magisterium and those who seek space to discuss church issues.

Up to 250 nuns, priests and laypeople held a silent protest outside the Vatican Embassy April 29 to protest the doctrinal congregation’s censure of five Irish priests over their stance on issues such as the ordination of women, the ban on artificial birth control, mandatory clerical celibacy and homosexuality.

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By Catholic News Service

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The March visit to Cuba by Pope Benedict XVI has helped reawaken people’s interest in the Catholic Church, according to two Cuban bishops visiting the United States.

But it also has stirred criticism of the church’s efforts to work with the government more and may be connected to a fire of suspicious origin that gutted a travel agency that organizes charter flights from Florida to Cuba.

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By Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Lay Catholics in China have been scandalized by priests who are ordained bishops without papal approval and by the participation of Vatican-recognized bishops in those ordinations, said the Vatican Commission for the Catholic Church in China.

The very identity of the Catholic Church as apostolic, guided by the faith handed down from the apostles through bishops in communion with the pope, “has been obfuscated by those clerics” who have been ordained bishops without papal recognition, said the statement released April 26 after a three-day meeting at the Vatican.

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By Catholic News Service

DUBLIN — Ireland’s parliament rejected legislation that would have allowed a controversial 1992 Supreme Court ruling permitting abortion in limited circumstances to take effect.

The Socialist Party motion was defeated 111-20 April 19.

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By Catholic News Service

SYDNEY — Cardinal George Pell of Sydney apologized for comments he made about ancient Jews and German suffering during World War II in a televised debate with author and acknowledged atheist Richard Dawkins.

The cardinal said in a statement April 11 to J-Wire, a Jewish online news service, that his comments during the Australian Broadcasting Corp. program “Q & A” April 9 “did not come out as I would have preferred in the course of the discussion.”

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By Lisa Alves

Catholic News Service

SAO PAULO — Supreme Court justices in Brazil voted to legalize the abortion of fetuses without brains or those with malformed brains, despite an effort that saw thousands of Brazilians praying outside of the court, urging the justices to protect the life of unborn children.

The voting session, which ended late April 12, showed that the majority of the justices — 8 of 10 — were in favor of allowing women to interrupt a pregnancy if the fetus is found to have a malformed brain.

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By Michael Kelly

Catholic News Service

DUBLIN — Three out of four Irish who identified themselves as Catholics find the church’s teaching on sexuality “irrelevant,” according to new research published by the Association of Catholic Priests.

The survey, conducted by the research association Amarach, also showed that almost 90 percent of those surveyed believe that divorced or separated Catholics in a stable second relationship ought to be able to receive Communion at Mass. Under church law, divorced and remarried Catholics who have received an annulment may receive Communion.

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By Michael Kelly

Catholic News Service

DUBLIN — The Irish Association of Catholic Priests said it is “disturbed” that the group’s founder, Redemptorist Father Tony Flannery, is under investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In an April 9 statement, the priests’ association — which represents about 20 percent of Ireland’s 4,000 priests — affirmed “in the strongest possible terms our confidence in and solidarity with Father Flannery, and we wish to make clear our profound view that this intervention is unfair, unwarranted and unwise.”

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