502 years ago today, the history of the church, of Europe, and of the western world were forever changed in the town of Wittenberg Germany. Martin Luther wrote his 95 theses, a list of grievances against corrupt and unbiblical practices within the Catholic Church. The impact of this event continues to ripple throughout the Christian world.
Luther was not the first person to call for reform in the church. (more…)
The sexual abuse scandal is the never ending story.
This week, authorities in Houston raided the offices of Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who’s the archbishop of the Houston-Galveston Catholic Dioceses. Being the archbishop of the fourth largest city in America is pretty significant, but DiNardo is also the President of the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The raid was related to the Houston diocese handling of sexual assault allegations against a local priest named Manuel La Rosa-Lopez.
It’s been a rough few months for the Catholic Church in America, largely because of self-inflicted wounds. In July, the New York Times ran a cover story alleging sexual abuse of a Catholic seminarian perpetrated by Theodore McCarrick, a Catholic Cardinal, who had retired as the archbishop of Washington D.C. in 2006. Shortly after the Times story was released, McCarrick resigned as a cardinal. He’s the highest ranking American Catholic to have been accused of abuse. But there were also Catholic leaders who say that they had heard of these allegations and reported them up the chain, prior to the July story.
In August, Carlo Vigano, who had served as the archbishop nuncio to the United States (basically the Vatican ambassador to America) wrote that he had previously reported on McCarrick, as had Vigano’s predecessor. The abuses were swept under the rug.
There were several stories about Vigano this summer. Vigano is a pretty credible person to be making those claims. Vatican gave smoke and mirrors. Pope Francis asked people to pray for the Catholic Church in these “attacks from the devil.”
Chicago archbishop Blasé Cupich brushed off Vigano saying: “The pope knows we have a bigger agenda. We have to speak about the environment, about the poor, we have to reach out to people who are marginalized in society. We cannot be distracted at this moment,”
The hits kept coming.
In August, a Grand Jury Report came out in Pennsylvania, investigating eight of Pennsylvania’ diocese. They found evidence spanning decades of hundreds of priests allegedly sexually assaulting over a thousand children.
When that report was released, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro talked about a “sophisticated cover up,” and claimed they even had evidence that the Vatican was aware of the cover up.
Pennsylvania had been the former stomping grounds of Cardinal Donal Wuerl, who had succeeded McCarrick as the archbishop of Washington D.C. Wuerl had previously been archbishop of Pittsburgh and was one of the names named by Vigano. Wuerl resigned in October.
And now we come to Houston. It’s possible that DiNardo knew nothing of the current allegations within his diocese. But it doesn’t look good that it’s a question that even has to be asked of the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops when there’s already a major scandal.
What has been seen is that higher ups have known about abuses and covered up abuses. Which gets at a major crux of the problem: then who is going to actually work to fix the problems?
Because the Catholic Church continues to fail at fixing the problem. And some (not all) Catholics are apologists and want to talk about all of the steps that are being taken. Grand conspiracies to cover up child sexual abuse is an abomination. In America, it’s taking grand juries and local law enforcement to get to the truth, because the Catholic Church is failing.
Next February, the Vatican is hosting a summit on these clerical abuses. This week, Blase Cupich (Mr. Environment) was tapped as one of the organizers for the summit. I was immediately skeptical of this selection. In addition to talking about how the Pope had to focus on the environment (something he doesn’t’ control) rather than being troubled with an imploding sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church (something he does control), said they weren’t “going to go down a rabbit hole” on Vigano’s credible allegations.
It all seems reactionary and slow to come. And my concern is that it still won’t fix the problems. People can try to dismiss these issues as being things that happened a long time ago, but when many of the higher ups within the church are being shown to have had knowledge (or in McCarrick’s case, to be the perpetrator), it remains a major crisis.
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Pope Francis is reversing the teachings of the Catholic Church in saying that capital punishment is inadmissible.
One of the significant differences between Catholics and Protestants is the approach to scripture and tradition. Tradition is weighted more heavily in Catholic than Protestant theology. Tradition is significant to dogma and interpreting the Bible.
However this reversal of Catholic teaching by Pope Francis is not in line with scripture OR tradition.
There have been 266 Popes, and none of them ever publicly opposed capital punishment, categorically. Pope Francis’ interpretation runs counter to almost 2,000 years of Catholic teaching.
But more importantly, it runs contrary to the Bible.
Pope Francis says that the death penalty attacks the inherent dignity of all persons.
It attacks the inherent dignity of persons?! The Bible permits it!
There can be disagreement about whether or not the practice should be permitted outside of an Old Testament context (I believe that it is permitted), but given the numerable texts which allow for capital punishment in the Bible, it clearly is not seen as being something that is universally impermissible. And people in older times had just as much dignity as we do today.
I’m never a fan of the argument against the death penalty that “it undermines their dignity.”
It’s just as logical to order that the death penalty affirms the dignity of the victim.
For generations, faithful Catholics would have been in step with the teachings of the Catholic Church to favor the death penalty, at least in certain situations. But now, the head of their church has decreed something new.
A few weeks ago, one view was fine. And now, that same view contradicts the Church.
This could have ramifications on republican Catholics in congress, among state legislatures, and on the courts. Undoubtedly, opponents of capital punishment will utilize this new teaching as a club to bash proponents of capital punishment with.
Even before the Law was given to Moses, the Bible warranted capital punishment for murder: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6).
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
Alfie Evans is a British baby who is fighting for his life with a rare medical condition.
There is a hospital in Italy that will treat the child. Italy has arranged to transport the child from Britain.
But British courts are disallowing this. Instead, they’re scaling back treatment on Alfie which will result in his death.
I heard a chilling argument today. The logic of it was that the parents are biased (after all, it’s their kid) and that they’re not really in a position to objectively evaluate this decision.
The problem with that argument is that it’s assuming that if they were in a position to be more levelheaded, they would see what makes sense and just let their son die. But that goes against the instincts of any good parent. Furthermore, it’s not as if most sets of parents who aren’t in this situation look at it and think “Of course they should let him die.” For most parents, they would fight for their child to get treatment, as a moral absolute.
The other part of the argument that I found disturbing was that it argued that since the parents wouldn’t be good judges of what was best to do in this situation, courts and panels would be better equipped. After all, they have educated professionals who are able to evaluate the case.
But groups of educated professional people have concocted some of the most egregious evils in history.
This shouldn’t even be a debate. This literally costs the United Kingdom nothing. Another country is paying and willing to transport Alfie.
A civilized and free country should not interfere with this. It’s evil.
Pray for Alfie and his parents.
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
Alfie Evans is a 23 month old British baby who has a rare neurological condition. He is in a semi-vegetative state. Machines have been keeping the baby alive. Courts have ruled that the treatment must be discontinued, even though there is an Italian hospital which has offered to attempt treatments for him. Alfie has been granted Italian citizenship.
There has been a long legal battle. Yesterday, Alfie was taken off of life support.
His parents are continuing to appeal.
They are actually giving the child mouth-to-mouth, literally breathing life into him in shifts to keep him alive in hopes of getting a new appeal.
What a tragedy.
What love from his parents. They’re fighting tooth and nail to keep him alive.
How sickening it is that the British government and courts have this type of power. Alfie is not the court’s son. A court should have nothing to do with this case. His parents want to take their son to Italy for treatment. Let them go.
Unfortunately, this is not the first such case we have seen from the United Kingdom.
Last summer, another British baby, Charlie Gard died in a similarly tyrannical case. Gard has an extremely rare mitochondrial DNA disease. There was an experimental treatment tat Gard could have received in the United States. Funds were raised. But the British courts would not allow the family to take their own son to the US.
Courts should not be able to judge if a baby lives or dies. In both cases, foreign governments were allowing these two babies to receive treatment on their soil, so it’s not like either would have been taking resources from the United Kingdom.
Certainly, in both situations, the odds of successful treatment were and are highly uncertain and unlikely. But it’s still worth trying.
Unfortunately, this story seems to be very underplayed in the States. I’ve done searches on some popular news sites like CNN and MSNBC and there is no mention of Alfie Evans on either site.
But we’re not all that different from the British. We have similar sensibilities. And it’s chilling that the courts are ruling against the life of a child for the second time this year.
We must have a value in the sanctity of human life.
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
