Pope Benedict XVI, insisting that the faithful hold firm to Church teaching, has told Catholic politicians they must support the Vatican's nonnegotiable rejection of abortion and gay marriage.
On Tuesday, Benedict also rebuffed calls to let divorced Catholics who remarry receive Communion.
Putting his conservative stamp on his nearly two-year-old papacy, Benedict in a document also said that the Vatican was keeping its requirement that priests in the Roman Catholic Church be celibate, despite shortages of priests in some parts of the world.
A worldwide meeting of bishops, held at the Vatican in 2005, had endorsed the celibacy requirement, and Benedict, with the document, embraced their call.
The 131-page "exhortation," destined for both clergy and rank-and-file faithful among the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, is part of Benedict's vigorous campaign to ensure bishops, priests and their congregations strictly follow Church teaching.
Before becoming pontiff in April 2005, Benedict, a German theologian, led the Vatican's drive to safeguard Church teaching from doctrinal error.
Laced throughout the document are what sounds like nostalgic calls by Benedict for a kind of comeback for Latin and more "sobriety" during Mass.
Russell Shaw, a conservative Catholic writer in the US, described Tuesday's document as "certainly consistent with the pattern of this pontiff to date, a highly intelligent, highly thoughtful document which says nothing surprising but which reaffirms the traditional positions of the Church."
The question of whether Catholic politicians whose politics conflict with Church teaching should be denied Communion grabbed attention during the 2004 US presidential election campaign, when St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke said he would deny the Eucharist to the Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry, a Catholic who supported abortion rights.
Benedict wrote that public witness to one's faith was especially required of politicians who decide matters such as abortion, euthanasia, "the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman ... and the promotion of the common good in all its values."
"These values are not negotiable. Consequently Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature," Benedict wrote.
Benedict indicated he was leaving the matter of wayward Catholic politicians to local bishops.
"Bishops are bound to reaffirm constantly these values as part of their responsibility to the flock entrusted to them," the pope said.
Referring to Benedict's leaving the matter to bishops, Lisa Sowle Cahill, a theologian at Boston College, said liberals might be "grateful he's not more aggressively insisting that pastoral flexibility be curtailed."
The plight of divorced Catholics who remarry is a concern for many faithful in the US, where divorce and remarriage is common among the general population.
While Benedict acknowledged "the painful situations" of those remarried Catholics, he also reiterated the Church's stance that they cannot receive Communion because the Church views such faithful as living in sin if they remarry and consummate their new marriages.
The Church "encourages these members of the faithful to commit themselves to living their relationship ... as friends, as brother and sister," Benedict said.
Benedict sounded rueful about some of the changes in the Mass since the liberalizing reforms in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, including a switch from Mass in Latin to local languages.
The pope wrote that he agreed with bishops at the 2005 meeting that, on international occasions, parts of the Mass should be celebrated in Latin. Faithful can be taught to recite the more common prayers in Latin, Benedict wrote.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese