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Can we make sense of Haiti?

How to even begin processing the extent of the damage and deaths borne by Haiti this week?

This morning, death toll estimates ranged from 50,000 to 100,000 to half a million. At First Things, Elizabeth Scalia rounds up blog posts, news articles, media and more on Haiti – the most gripping being the videos and pictures, such as this slideshow from the Boston Globe.

Blogger Rocco Palmo reminds us that in Haiti – the poorest country in the western hemisphere – 80% of the population is Catholic. Among the lives lost was that of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince, whose body was recovered yesterday morning under the rubble of the archbishops’ residence.

The Holy See’s apostolic nuncio to Haiti, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, was quoted in the Vatican news agency Fides as saying, “The cathedral and the archbishop’s residence, all the big churches, all the seminaries are reduced to rubble. ... I found priests and nuns on the street, who no longer have homes.” (Earlier reports suggested that 100 seminarians were also killed by the collapsing buildings; Catholic News Service reports that this was not true. On a related note, here’s some before and after images of Port-au-Prince’s Catholic cathedral).

Pope Benedict has activated the Church’s global network of charities to help immediately with the relief effort. At his general audience yesterday, he offered his prayers and solidarity for the people of Haiti, “imploring from God consolation and relief of their suffering.”

As with all tragedies, the question of faith and the meaning of suffering lingers as the rest of the world, feeling helpless, watches Haiti reel from the devastation.

The Gift of the Vietnamese Church

Today, Vietnamese Bishop-elect Fr. Vincent Nguyen will be ordained Canada’s first non-white and youngest bishop for the Archdiocese of Toronto. The ceremony that will be held at St. Michael’s cathedral in Toronto is being hailed "a landmark moment" for the Canadian church. The news is also of great relevance to the United States, where the Vietnamese Catholic population has provided a shining example of devotion to their faith and commitment to fostering religious vocations.

A demographic report that appeared in yesterday’s Globe and Mail quoted Fr. Vincent saying,"The Catholic Church in Canada is growing through Asian people."

"The fact that I'm an Asia-born bishop will bring my experience into the conference of bishops and maybe I can contribute to the issues the church is discussing," Fr. Vincent continued. "The church is very mindful of issues of immigration."

The report included reactions from members of the Vietnamese Canadian Catholic community across the country:

Thuy Truong of Saskatoon said: "We are in awe. ... We feel that we have somebody to represent us to the Holy See."

Nguyen Thai Trung, also from Saskatoon said: “Father Nguyen's becoming a bishop embodies a "coming-of-age" for Canada's Vietnamese community.” It means that we’ve become “well established” and are “playing an important role in Canadian society.”

For the past three decades, the Vietnamese community in Canada has continued to steadily grow and mature while maintaining its roots. The same can also be said of Vietnamese communities in the U.S. Presently, over 500,000 Vietnamese Catholics live in the U.S., with Orange County, Calif. counting the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.

Though still small in number, their overall impact on the North American Church is hard to miss. A NYT article that ran in April of 2000 reported a significant rise in the establishment of Vietnamese parishes and missions across the U.S. It also took note of the community’s disproportionately high number of young men and women studying to become priests and nuns -- “in a time when religious vocations are in short supply among American-born Catholics.”

An astonishing example of this appeared in a December 2006 article in New America Media on the Divine Word College, a small Catholic missionary school outside of Dubuque, Iowa where 43 of its 67 students are Vietnamese. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the number of priests in the United States has dropped 27 percent in the last 4 decades. And though Asian Americans comprise just over 1 percent of the Catholic Church in the United States, they account for 12 percent of all Catholic seminary students nationwide -- the majority being Vietnamese. Looking again to Orange County, the NAM article specified that almost 15 percent of the district’s Catholic priests are Vietnamese. In 2002, that very community produced the first Vietnamese bishop of the United States (the Most Rev. Dominic Luong), sparking a series of celebrations among Vietnamese communities around the globe.

In search of why the Vietnamese population of the U.S. was producing so many vocations, New America Media interviewed Nichol Weber, a woman who, like many of her compatriots, fled from her communist homeland when she was just a girl: “We embrace Catholicism because of our shared history of struggle…hardships strengthen faith… I have pride in my faith, first of all. But I also take pride in seeing more and more Vietnamese enter the priesthood.” In NAM’s December article, a young graduate of Divine Word College added: To Vietnamese Catholic families, having a son who is a priest "is a kind of honor that elevates the family's standing in the community, especially poor families."

To mark the importance of the growing Vietnamese diaspora, Jean-Baptiste Cardinal Pham Minh Man of Ho Chi Minh made a pastoral visit to the U.S. in the summer of 2008 to encourage Vietnamese Americans in their faith. During his stay in Washington, he spoke with CNS about the role of Vietnamese Catholics in North America and in the church of Vietnam. He explained how he came to encourage Vietnamese Catholics abroad to adapt to their local church communities while always remembering Vietnam. He said: “In Vietnam, we have to live our faith in a different way. In this sense, Vietnamese Americans have a unique opportunity to share their knowledge and experiences with the faith community in their homeland.” He added, “In Vietnam, we live our faith by hope. We need prayer and to be patient."

Hope, prayers and patience have certainly paid off. Not only have Vietnamese Canadians been gifted with a Vietnamese bishop to help them adapt to their local church, but just last month, Vietnam's President Nguyen Minh Triet vowed to boost relations with the Vatican during his encounter with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. The latter was undoubtedly set in motion as a result of the meetings held in Hanoi in the summer of 2008 between a group of Holy See representatives and Vietnamese authorities. Following the visit, Asianews published a statement by the Vatican delegation saying that “in a frank and cordial atmosphere,” the discussions centered on Episcopal appointments, religious freedom, the gradual restitution of nationalized property to Church use and the contribution of the Catholic community in spreading a culture of solidarity. Lofty goals indeed, but ones that now possess the hope of coming to fruition.

Today, the Vietnamese community receives another medal of honor for the faith and perseverance of her people as Fr. Vincent Nguyen is elevated to the Church’s episcopal ranks. No longer can this small minority, who is reshaping the demographic contours of the church in North America, go unnoticed.

-Michèle Nuzzo-Naglieri

The U.S. Bishops point out the failure to protect conscience rights in House and Senate health bills.

Once again, the U.S. bishops have issued a bulletin insert to be distributed to 19,000 parishes in the United States urging Catholics to express their moral concerns over health care reform.

The Knights of Columbus as well are encouraging members to become active in voicing their concerns to their elected representatives. In his latest column on the abortion issue, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson observed:

... It is doubly ironic that a law that would force millions to violate their conscience by paying their taxes and would entangle thousands of Catholic physicians, nurses, hospitals and charities in the evil of abortion is being considered at precisely a time when the majority of Americans “in greater and greater numbers” are increasingly becoming more pro-life.

The USCCB bulletin insert, one of many issued by the bishops over the past months, is noteworthy for pointing to what may be a foregone conclusion: that neither the Senate version, nor the House version of health care reform, is morally acceptable at this point, and any reconciliation bill is unlikely to remedy serious deficiencies.

The USCCB release, dated January 7th, makes several key points. The Senate version is the most egregious in its explicit funding of abortion. But what has has gone under the radar to a certain degree is that both the Senate version, and the House version containing the Stupak Amendment, are inadequate in terms of conscience protection for medical providers.

The release states this position clearly: 

Outside the abortion context, neither bill has adequate conscience protection for health care providers, plans or employers. These two bills must now be combined into one bill that both the House and Senate will vote on in final form. Provisions against abortion funding and in favor of conscience protection, affordability, and immigrants’ access to health care must be part of a fair and just health care reform bill, or the final bill must be opposed.

Most of the final health care negotiations seem to be revolving around provisions relevant to the concerns of organized labor. The president met with union leaders on Monday, who are opposed to the "Cadillac tax" on high-cost insurance plans. This is believed to be one of the key points of disagreement between House and Senate Democratic leadership that is slowing passage of the bill. It is unclear when, and if, members of the pro-life community or representatives from the USCCB will have an opportunity to voice their own concerns with the bills.

Unfortunately, conscience protection seems far off the radar at this point, thus threatening the 624 Catholic hospitals in the U.S. and the 85 million people they serve annually.

In his speech to Notre Dame, following his discussion of common ground on issues of abortion and social policy, President Obama said the following:

Let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions, let's reduce unintended pregnancies. Let's make adoption more available. Let's provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women. Those are things we can do.

Indeed, these things can be done, and the president is in an excellent position to demand those changes. His explicit commitment to “honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion” and his endorsement of a conscience protection clause were praised in good faith  by U.S. Catholic leaders, including Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. bishops conference. Yet those pledges are still unfulfilled. Catholics should demand that words be matched to deeds.

The U.S. bishops are struggling mightily to both support in principle authentic health reform yet also prevent a permanent, structural setback for the culture of life. Political leaders must be reminded of the commitments they have made to their constituents, as well as the growing pro-life consensus in America. Every Catholic has their role to play. 

Paul Ciarcia

A busy weekend at the Vatican

If we wish to build true peace, how can we separate or even set at odds the protection of the environment and the protection of human life, including the life of the unborn?

There’s the quote of the day for you, spoken by Pope Benedict XVI today in an address to world diplomats to the Holy See.

Around the World, Religious Freedom at Stake

Yesterday, David’s news wrap touched on the Vatican’s recent Fides report on missionary deaths in 2009, as well as the seeming paradox of hope springing forth from martyrdom.

On a related note, religious freedom is all over the headlines today: from Muslim-Coptic Christian riots in Egypt to anti-Christian protests increasing in violence in Malaysia; from the Vatican’s call for greater religious liberties in Turkey, to a “Clash of Civilizations” (again, Christianity and Islam) in Nigeria – birthplace of the latest would-be terrorist against the United States.

Stepping back from the Islam-Christianity conflict, Canada’s National Post ran an article yesterday on a study that claims the U.S. has failed to aid persecuted Christians in China – what study author Carl Moeller, head of Open Doors USA, called akin to “selling our birthright.”

“Our nation was founded by people fleeing Europe to seek the very religious freedom being denied people in these countries,” Moeller said. “In the case of China, the chance to use influence is now gone. The American economy has become enslaved to the Chinese banks.”

“Religious freedom? For five billion people, it’s a forbidden dream,” Italian journalist Sandro Magister wrote on his blog Chiesa today, summarizing a recent Pew Forum report on the state of religious liberties around the globe.

It’s a grim picture. Pew scoured data from 198 countries – leaving out North Korea, due to a dearth of statistics from the Communist country – and discovered that 70% of the 6.8 billion people in the world live under severe or extremely severe restrictions on religious freedom.

The report also illustrated which countries have become hotspots of both high government restrictions on religious expression, as well as social hostilities toward a particular religion. Aside from India, where Christians face persecution from Hindu radicals, the “hottest” trouble spots are countries clearly roiled with fomenting Islamic extremism.

It makes the Vatican’s case for greater religious liberties in Turkey – a call directed toward the nation’s new ambassador to the Holy See – all the more significant.

Pew gave Turkey a relatively high ranking in terms of both social and government hostility in terms of religious freedom. While technically a secular state, the government’s bias against religious minorities – including Orthodox and Catholic Christians – is well known.

Yet the nation, as Pope Benedict noted, is the “bridge between Islam and the West.”

After visiting the country in 2006, Pope Benedict observed that Turkey is:

...Emblematic of the great challenge at stake today across the globe: on the one hand, we must rediscover the reality of God and the public importance of religious faith; and on the other, we must ensure that people can freely express this faith, that it is not debased by forms of fundamentalism and that they are able to firmly reject every form of violence.

Three months prior to President Obama’s much-heralded Cairo address to the Muslim world, Pope Benedict was in a Jordanian mosque, delivering a similar speech to Muslim leaders, though one with a distinctively theological bent. He said:

Muslims and Christians, precisely because of the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding, must today strive to be known and recognized as worshippers of God faithful to prayer, eager to uphold and live by the Almighty’s decrees, merciful and compassionate, consistent in bearing witness to all that is true and good, and ever mindful of the common origin and dignity of all human persons, who remain at the apex of God’s creative design for the world and for history.

When Christian and Muslims embrace the unity of faith and reason, Pope Benedict said, they are “impelled to seek all that is just and right.”

“We are reminded that because it is our common human dignity which gives rise to universal human rights,” he continued, “they hold equally for every man and woman, irrespective of his or her religious, social or ethnic group.”

In terms of Christian-Muslim relations, the pope offers a challenge: asserting the right to religious freedom, while extending his hand in faith toward a greater understanding between Islam and the Church. In a world where the freedom to worship is a “forbidden dream” to so many, his vision is badly needed – as are our prayers.

Elizabeth Hansen - Editor

Understanding martyrdom in 2010

As Tertullian famously observed, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

In 2009 that historic reality proved true once again. The Vatican’s Fides agency has recently published a list of all missionaries and pastoral workers who were killed in 2009. The number of priests, nuns and religious who faced violent deaths last year is nearly double the 2008 total. The report serves as a timely reminder that while the Coliseum and Gulags may have disappeared, service to Christ can still call for the ultimate sacrifice.

An Emerging Faith Amidst Church Debris

On Monday, the New York Times published a heart wrenching article detailing the increase in demolitions of 19th century Gothic churches throughout France. Faced with the dangers of structural deterioration, expensive restorations and dwindling congregations, many villages across the country face the same dilemma. The choice to demolish comes as no surprise when taking into consideration France’s changing demographics, shift in values and growing secularism.

In the article, Beatrice de Andia - founder and president of the Religious Heritage Observatory- argues that of the 17,000 government protected church buildings in France, 10% are in perilous condition due to a loss of "the sense of the sacred." For a nation dubbed the “eldest daughter of the Church,” the sight of rubble where a beautiful sanctuary once stood is a tragedy.

Across the ocean, a similar trend has developed in Quebec, a historic bastion of ardent Catholicism. Prior to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, the influence of the Catholic Church in the province of Quebec was unprecedented. As an example, the percentage of Quebecois who attended Easter Mass by the end of the 19th century was an astounding 98.5%. Today, fewer than 10% of the province’s Catholics attend religious services on a regular basis, the result of a population that is believed to have completely turned its back on organized religion.

A February 2009 article in the Toronto Star outlined the devastating fate of a growing number of Quebec parishes unable to sustain their operating costs. Forced to go on the market, well more than 100 of the province’s churches have been sold. Thus far, the primary buyers have been municipalities which have transformed many of these sanctuaries into community centers, libraries, social housing projects, condos, factories and even (brace yourself) rock-climbing gyms and skate boarding domes. Presently, parishes in financial dire straits are facing the prospect of having no interested buyers and are being increasingly abandoned, barricaded and demolished. Furthermore, the Star article made mention of a National Assembly committee that, in 2006, called on the Liberal government to halt the sale of churches due to “the concern that the province’s religious history was in great peril.” Nonetheless, the selling of churches continues.

Yet in the ongoing spirit of finding glimmers of hope in situations that appear to offer none, one need not look far to notice a slow yet steady revival of the faith in both French quarters.
Prior to Pope Benedict’s pastoral visit to France in September 2008, the Italian bishops' paper L’Avvenire published an interview with Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. In the interview, the cardinal spoke of the small yet significant increase in the country’s religious vocations as well as the influx of young pilgrims to Lourdes on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the apparitions. He called it “a truly moving witness of faith, which even the mass media noticed and treated with curiosity and respect, rather than with the usual tones of superiority and facile irony.”

Perhaps this change in attitude could be attributed, at least in part, to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s historic December 2007 address on the occasion of his induction as an Honorary Canon of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. During his speech, which has been cited as a turning point in French attitudes towards the public role of religion, he said:

Along with Benedict XVI, I believe that a nation which ignores the ethical, spiritual and religious inheritance of its history commits a crime against its own culture... To take away those roots means to lose meaning, to weaken the cement of national identity and to further fray social relationships that need symbols of memory… a person who believes is a person who hopes, and it’s in the interests of the Republic that there be many women and men who nourish hope. The progressive decline of the rural parishes, the spiritual deserts of the urban peripheries, the disappearance of patronages and the shortage of priests have not made the French happier…It’s for this reason that I profoundly wish for the emergence of a healthy laïcité, meaning a laïcité that, while protecting freedom of thought, the freedom to believe or not, does not consider religions a danger but rather something positive.

Interestingly, just a few months prior to the president’s address in Rome, these same words were being   declared in Quebec, though not from the province’s political pulpit. In an interjection at the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Primate of Canada, argued that to understand Quebec in entirely secular terms would be a rupture with the past, and a betrayal of Quebec’s history.
Not even one year later -- as though to underscore the point that Quebec’s heritage must contribute to Quebec’s identity in the present -- the events of the 49th International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City were held in direct conjunction with the city’s 400th anniversary.

In a June 2008 National Post op-ed, Father Raymond de Souza wrote that the week-long congress “was a manifestation of Quebec’s Catholic culture not seen here in more than a few generations.” On Thursday evening of that same week, 20,000 pilgrims filled the streets of the Old City in a Eucharistic procession. Father de Souza commented on the procession saying: “The Church in Quebec proclaimed her faith with serenity and confidence, unapologetic about taking her place in the culture that she did so much to shape…The exuberance of the congress, especially with young people from across Quebec and Canada as key participants, hinted that something new was on the horizon in Quebec.” With 50,000 present at the closing mass in the Plains of Abraham and the ordination of 12 young priests during the week’s events, one cannot but agree.

Though alarmists are eager to quote the experts who say that Quebec stands to lose half of its 2,000 churches by 2016, or that France’s secular Iron Curtain cannot be averted, the visible signs of hope point to a different kind of future.  After all, it’s no simple coincidence that the re-emergence of faith in both cultures is taking place against the backdrop of national debates on issues of identity and culture.

Michèle Nuzzo-Naglieri

Images Courtesy of Catholic News Service

Faith under fire

Going to Mass and receiving the Eucharist each Sunday is a privilege one can almost take for granted in the U.S.

Our biggest problems at Mass are the trivial type -- sitting behind the kids spilling cheerios all over the pew, not finding a parking space, or getting in too late to Midnight Mass on Christmas, where all the seats are occupied by the once-a-year Mass on Holidays crowd.

For men and women of the armed forces, the Mass is truly a rare privilege. If there are truly no atheists in fox holes, priests must be in high demand. And they are. For the approximately 115,000 troops deployed in Iraq, there are only 10 chaplains in the country to provide religious services, endlessly traveling from base to base under high risk conditions to minister to far-flung soldiers. If the soldiers cannot make it to Mass, as often occurs, it is more likely to be on account of a deadly combat mission than a football game.  

Logistical hurdles and bad weather sometimes prevent chaplains from reaching certain bases, meaning Mass or any religious service may not even be available for months at a time.

The News Tribune of Tacoma, Washington has a story following a day in the life of Major Gary DeRouchey, a Catholic chaplain in Iraq. The story gives an idea of the humble yet faithful work of the military chaplain:

Hope after the holidays

From the Senate’s Christmas Eve vote on health care reform, to the Christmas Day bombing scare over Detroit and subsequent terrorism concerns that ushered in the New Year, the past week and a half of holiday celebrations have been anything but quiet.

Even the Vatican’s Midnight Mass was rudely interrupted when a young woman, believed to have mental health problems, rushed the Holy Father’s procession and pulled him violently to the ground – taking out an elderly French cardinal’s hip in the process.

If you’re anything like me, the prospect of scanning a series of terror and war-related headlines, along with articles on beleaguered charities, debate over a $174 billion jobs creation bill, and struggling families’ dependence on food stamps, hardly makes for a happy return from the Christmas season.