Head of Mormon church Thomas Monson summoned by British Magistrates' Court

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor

(The Telegraph) Thomas S Monson, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ordered to appear before British magistrates' court amid claims that the organisation's teaching amounts to 'fraud'

A British magistrate has issued an extraordinary summons to the worldwide leader of the Mormon church alleging that its teachings about mankind amount to fraud.

Thomas S. Monson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been ordered to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London next month to defend the church’s doctrines including beliefs about Adam and Eve and Native Americans.

A formal summons signed by District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe warns Mr Monson, who is recognised by Mormons as God’s prophet on Earth, that a warrant for his arrest could be issued if he fails to make the journey from Salt Lake City, Utah, for a hearing on March 14.

In one of the most unusual documents ever issued by a British court, it lists seven teachings of the church, including that Native Americans are descended from a family of ancient Israelites as possible evidence of fraud.

It also cites the belief that the Book of Mormon was translated from ancient gold plates revealed to the church’s founder Joseph Smith by angels and that Adam and Eve lived around 6,000 years ago.

LDS/Mormon Christmas 2013 marketing materials suggest that people need to remove the MASS from Christmas to "catch the real meaning of the spirit of Christmas." 

The document suggests that asking members of the church to make contributions while promoting theological doctrines which “might be untrue or misleading” could be a breach of the Fraud Act 2006.

The Church dismissed the summons as containing “bizarre allegations” and signalled that Mr Monson has no plans to attend.

It was issued in response to a private prosecution attempt by Tom Phillips, a disaffected former Mormon who now runs MormonThink a website highly critical of the church.

Under little-used legal procedures, people who say they have evidence that someone has committed a crime can ask a magistrate to issue a summons requiring them to attend a court hearing.

The district judge would then decide whether or not to proceed with a case or dismiss it.

Similar procedures were used by Palestinian activist in 2009 to have an arrest warrant issued against the Israeli justice minister Tzipi Livni, leading to an international diplomatic incident.

Two virtually identical summonses were sent to Mr Monson naming Stephen Bloor, a former Mormon bishop, and Christopher Denis Ralph, another former convert, as victims of the alleged fraud.

It argues that by being persuaded to pay a tithe to the church on the basis of teachings which might not be true, the president could have committed fraud.

Among teachings it singles out as suspect are the assertion that the Book of Mormon was “translated from ancient gold plates by Joseph Smith [and] is the most correct book on Earth and is an ancient historical record” and that the Mormons’ Book of Abraham, was translated from Egyptian papyri by Joseph Smith.

Other beliefs cited include the assertion that “Native Americans are descended from an Israelite family which left Jerusalem in 600 BC” and that “all humans alive today are descended from just two people who lived approximately 6,000 years ago.”

The document then demands that Mr Monson appears in court number six at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Marylebone Road at 10am on March 14 or face arrest.

Malcolm Adcock, the church’s public affairs director for Europe, said: “The Church occasionally receives documents like this that seek to draw attention to an individual’s personal grievance or embarrass church leaders.

“These bizarre allegations fit into that category.”

But Mr Phillips said: “The head of the Mormon Church has been summoned to a court to answer allegations of fraud – I don’t think a judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court would sign off on ‘bizarre allegations’ – I certainly hope they never would.

“This has been a very serious matter that has been looked at in extreme detail.”

Link:

• Head of Mormon church Thomas Monson summoned by British magistrates' court over Adam and Eve teaching

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Local Psychologist A Former Skeptic, Now Trains Priests In Exorcisms

By Andy Sheehan

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — So, exorcism might seem like fiction. But did you know that the Vatican has actually encouraged every Catholic diocese to have a trained exorcist on staff?

A local psychologist is an expert who is traveling around the world to train those priests.

Once he was a skeptic, but he tells KDKA’s Andy Sheehan, after assisting in nearly 100 exorcisms, his experiences have made him a believer.

For the past 10 years Adam Blai has been on the front line.

“Basically, it’s a war between heaven and hell,” says Blai. “That’s been going on since Creation started, and it’s a war over us for the most part.”

Fighting over the bodies and souls of the possessed.

“Their mouth isn’t moving and the sound coming out of them is beyond what a human can produce,” Blai says.

A force that’s taken over.

“I’ve also seen bones dislocate spontaneously, and pop out when something animated the body and put the body into a different shape,” he says.

Blai says he’s needed to summon angels and saints to battle what he calls “the kingdom of darkness.”

Sheehan: “So, it’s a war.”

Blai: “Oh yeah, we’ve seen the demon and possessed call out to its brothers and doors blow off and there’s nothing there, but something has entered the room. That happens all the time.”

Exorcism traces its roots to the New Testament Gospels where Jesus frees the possessed, but even Blai himself was initially skeptical.

“Your mind rebels against really believing that this is really real, even after you’ve seen some things,” he says. “But eventually, the evidence piles up, and the pile becomes so large that you really have to accept it.”

A trained psychologist at Penn state, Blai has studied the most violent criminals, but even in serial killers and rapists, he found at least some humanity – not so with the possessed.

“When you interact with somebody possessed by a demon, their heart is so completely and totally black and devoid of any hesitation or compassion that you know in your heart that they would tear you apart and be smiling the entire time,” Blai said.

Blai: “Holy water is something that’s used in every case.”

Sheehan: “Now, if you sprayed the possessed with holy water, would it burn? That’s something we see in the movies. There will be some reaction.”

Blai: “Oh yeah, they have a violet reactions. It looks as though they’ve been scourged with a whip.”
“It really changes you, and to see a full-blown case like they would make movies about — though Hollywood always exaggerates things a little bit – it really kind of straightens out your spiritually life,” Blai said. “And you have to think very hard about what you’re going to do with that knowledge.”

Link:

• Local Psychologist A Former Skeptic, Now Trains Priests In Exorcisms

Hundreds flock to 'weeping' Mary statue in Israel

JERUSALEM (AP) — Hundreds of people have flocked to a small town in northern Israel to view a statue of the Virgin Mary that residents say "weeps" oil.

Members of a Christian family from Tarshiha, near the Lebanon border, say they have witnessed a miracle in their living room.

Osama Khoury said Tuesday that his wife Amira found the statue "covered with oil" recently. Amira said the statue "spoke to her" and told her not to be afraid. After a neighbor witnessed the oil, word soon spread.

Parts of the statue appear to be slick with moisture, even after it is wiped off.

The family says it is most striking when a "tear" seems to roll down the statue's cheek. It says some 2,000 people have come to see the statue over the last week.

Link:

• Hundreds flock to 'weeping' Mary statue in Israel

Two Quotes to Ponder…

By Ann Barnhardt @ Barnhardt.biz

We are the times: as we are, such are the times.
(Nos sumus tempora: quales sumus, talia sunt tempora.)
- St. Augustine

The times are evil because men are evil.  Men must become good in order for the times to become good.
(Mala sunt tempora, quia mali sunt homines.  Debent homines fieri boni, ut bona fiant et tempora.)
-Pope Pius XII

-*-

As a condition of using and posting these quotes, the source demanded that I also post the following, which he thinks I stand in the mirror and recite to myself every night before going to bed.

He is wrong.  I recite this to myself in the shower, thank you very much.  (Kidding, kidding.)

Link:

• Two Quotes to Ponder…

Reforming the Irreformable?

By Fr. Thomas Kocik 

New Liturgical Movement

IT COULD BE evidence of exemplary patience on the part of NLM editor Jeffrey Tucker that I am still counted among the contributors to this blog. More than two years have passed since I posted anything relative to the ‘reform of the reform’. Although I consider myself a capable writer, I am not a fast one, which impairment makes the demands of parish ministry even less favorable to the task of unpacking my liturgical ruminations for those who might care to know them. But that only partly explains the hiatus.

I have the impression that whatever can be said in general terms about the ‘reform of the reform’—its origin and aims, its scope and methodology, the various proposals advanced in its interest (if not in its name), its proponents and critics—has pretty much already been said.¹ Although the movement is difficult to define (Is it synonymous with the ‘new liturgical movement’ or but one stage of it?),² its overall aim was nicely summed a few years ago by the Ceylonese prelate who stated that the time has come when we must “identify and correct the erroneous orientations and decisions made, appreciate the liturgical tradition of the past courageously, and ensure that the Church is made to rediscover the true roots of its spiritual wealth and grandeur even if that means reforming the reform itself…”³

Long before Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he was critically evaluating the reform of the liturgy following the Second Vatican Council, identifying those aspects of the reform which have little or no justification in the Council’s liturgical Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) and which undermine the true spirit of the liturgy.⁴  As pope it was in his power to remedy the deficiencies—the “erroneous orientations and decisions”—of the reform on a universal scale not only by his teaching and personal liturgical example but also by legislation. He accentuated the liturgy’s beauty, promoted the liturgical and musical treasures of the Western Church (including of course the usus antiquior of the Roman rite), and introduced more tangible continuity with tradition in the manner of papal celebrations (e.g., the ‘Benedictine’ altar arrangement, offering Mass ad orientem in the Sistine and other papal chapels, administering Holy Communion to the faithful on their tongues as they knelt). His successor, Pope Francis, is a different man with a different personality and style, and his priorities clearly lie with other aspects of the Church’s life. I am not holding my breath in anticipation of further official progress along the lines marked out by Pope Benedict, who has deservedly been dubbed the “Father of the new liturgical movement.”⁵

But let us suppose, practically speaking and perhaps per impossibile, that the ‘reform of the reform’ were to receive substantive institutional support. Even so, I doubt the endeavor would be feasible—if we take that term to mean the reform of the present order of liturgy so as to bring it substantially back into line with the slowly developed tradition it widely displaced. It is not sour grapes about last year’s papal abdication that prompts my saying so. Like any movement, the ‘reform of the reform’ stands or falls on its own principles, not on any one pope or partisan. No: the ‘reform of the reform’ is not realizable because the material discontinuity between the two forms of the Roman rite presently in use is much broader and much deeper than I had first imagined. In the decade that has elapsed since the publication of my book, The Reform of the Reform? A Liturgical Debate (Ignatius Press, 2003), which concerns almost exclusively the rite of Mass, a number of important scholarly studies, most notably those of László Dobszay (†2011)⁶ and Lauren Pristas,⁷ have opened my eyes to the hack-job inflicted by Pope Paul VI’s Consilium on the whole liturgical edifice of the Latin Church: the Mass; the Divine Office; the rites of the sacraments, sacramentals, blessings and other services of the Roman Ritual; and so forth.⁸ Whatever else might be said of the reformed liturgy—its pastoral benefits, its legitimacy, its rootedness in theological ressourcement, its hegemonic status, etc.—the fact remains: it does not represent an organic development of the liturgy which Vatican II (and, four centuries earlier, the Council of Trent) inherited... (continued)

Read More at New Liturgical Movement

Link:

• Reforming the Irreformable?

Mass mobs fill pews, lift prayers at NY churches

By CAROLYN THOMPSON

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- You've heard of flash mobs? Behold the Mass mob.

Playing off the idea of using social media to summon crowds for parties or mischief, mobs of Buffalo-area Roman Catholics have been filling pews and lifting spirits at some of the city's original, now often sparsely attended, churches.

It works this way: On a given Sunday, participants attend Mass en masse at a church they've picked in an online vote and promoted through Facebook and Twitter. Visitors experience the architecture, heritage and spirit of the aging houses of worship and the churches once again see the numbers they were built for, along with a helpful bump in donations when the collection baskets are passed.

"I call these churches faith enhancers. You can't help but walk in and feel closer to a higher power," said Christopher Byrd, who hatched the idea in Buffalo last fall and has organized two Mass mobs so far, both of which drew hundreds. He's heard from other cities about starting their own.

The aim, he said, is to reignite interest, support and perhaps even membership in older churches that "kind of fall off the radar screen of people."

One such church is Our Lady of Perpetual Help in a neighborhood settled by Irish immigrants along the Buffalo River. The church once brimmed with 800 families when it was dedicated in 1900. Today, fewer than 50 worshippers typically amble into the Gothic-style sanctuary for Sunday Mass.

It's a familiar story among city churches that were built for waves of Polish, German, Irish and Italian immigrants but whose congregations have dwindled with the city's population decline and suburban sprawl. Buffalo's population is less than half what it was in 1950, when it peaked at 580,000.

"We're still here," said the Rev. Donald Lutz, who welcomed a crowd of more than 300 on a recent Sunday after Our Lady of Perpetual Help, known to locals as "Pets," was selected for the Mass mob.

Organizers sought nominations from the public for churches on the Mass mob website and put the top three up for a vote. Online voting begins this week for the next mob, planned for March 23.

"It's wonderful," said Lutz, who learned his church had been chosen two weeks before. "It just shows that we are not just one parish, that it's the whole family of the diocese. We take care of each other.

"And," he added, "if it helps us pay a few more bills ..."

With every pew occupied, later-arriving worshippers stood against the back wall, reminding 88-year-old parishioner Elizabeth Barrett of the way it used to be in the church she has attended since birth, a block from her lifelong home.

"You had to get here very early when I was young, it was so crowded," she said. "And now there are just a handful. It's hard to accept, but you have to."

During the sign of peace, Lutz spent several minutes breezing up and down aisles, smiling and shaking hands. He invited all to a nearby community center for a pastry and coffee after the service.

Several visitors arrived at the church with cameras, aiming them at brilliant stained-glass windows imported from Austria, the church's pride and joy, and the ornate marble altar, the likes of which are seldom seen in the more modern suburban churches built today.

"It's wonderful to see the old churches. They're beautiful," said Barbara Mocarski, who came from nearby Lackawanna to be part of the mob. While the sanctuary is largely well-preserved, areas of cracking plaster and water stains show a need for costly maintenance.

"Seeing the community together and caring about them, I was really happy to hear about it," Mocarski said.

Karen Huber of the suburb of West Seneca hoped the Mass mob idea would bring more young people back to church so that crowds would again be the rule, not the exception.

The eight-county Diocese of Buffalo, in a restructuring, has closed nearly 100 churches in recent years as attendance and financial support has declined and priests have retired. Days after the Mass mob came an announcement that 10 suburban Catholic schools would close after this school year.

Byrd, 46, plans about six Buffalo Mass mobs a year. Chris Clemens and Luke Myer made the 90-minute trip from Rochester and are already promoting the idea in their city, where they blog about upstate New York's religious and spiritual history and sites.

Byrd, an activist in the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood where he grew up, said there has been interest from other cities, too, and he hopes the flash mob social media hook will resonate with a younger generation for whom the pull of family tradition has relaxed.

Said Byrd, "They may think it's cool."

Link:

• Mass mobs fill pews, lift prayers at NY churches

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

“In ancient Rome, there was a potestas patria or the right of the father to dispose of a child. In our modern day, there is the potesta matria or the right of the mother to dispose of a child. In between pagan Rome and pagan today there was, and still is, a group of God-loving people who will protect those who are incapable of independent existence because they sense in their own frailty the mercy of God and, therefore, resolve to extend it to others."

~ Fulton J. Sheen: Bishop Sheen Writes, (January 25, 1975).

h/t to ChurchMilitant.tv

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Blood of Pope John Paul II stolen in possible 'satanic' theft

By Nick Squires, Rome

(The Telegraph) A religious reliquary containing blood from the late Pope John Paul II has been stolen from a remote mountain church in Italy, with speculation that a Satanic group could be behind the theft.

A team of around 50 Carabinieri police officers with sniffer dogs were on Monday searching for any trace of the reliquary, which was stolen from the Church of St Peter of Ienca in the Abruzzo mountains at the weekend.

The ornate gold object contains a fragment of material, stained with blood, which was purportedly taken from the clothing worn by John Paul II after he was shot during the failed attempt on his life in St Peter’s Square in 1981.

It was donated to the church in May 2011 by Stanislaw Dzuwisz, a Polish cardinal and the Pope’s former personal secretary.

The reliquary is one of just a handful in the world that contains the blood of the Polish pope, who died in 2005 and was succeeded by Benedict XVI.

It was stolen along with a cross from the church, which lies close to Gran Sasso, a 9,550ft- high mountain in the Apennines east of Rome.

The theft was discovered on Saturday by a priest from the religious sanctuary, which is dedicated to the memory of John Paul II.

The Pope was very fond of the region and used to spend holidays there, walking, meditating and skiing at the nearby resort of Campo Imperatore.

It is also famous as the place where Benito Mussolini was interned after Italy swapped sides during the war, and from where he was rescued by a team of German paratroopers in Sept 1943 during a daring airborne raid.

“It’s possible that there could be Satanic sects behind the theft of the reliquary,” said Giovanni Panunzio, the national coordinator of an anti-occult group called Osservatorio Antiplagio.

“This period of the year is important in the Satanic calendar and culminates in the Satanic ‘new year’ on Feb 1. This sort of sacrilege often take place at this time of the year. We hope that the stolen items are recovered as quickly as possible.”

The theft of the reliquary comes as the Vatican prepares to canonise John Paul II, along with another former Pope, John XXIII, at a ceremony on April 27.

At John Paul II’s funeral in 2005, crowds of mourners cried "Santo Subito!" - "Sainthood now" - prompting the Vatican to speed up the Polish pontiff’s path to canonisation.

In Aug 2012, another relic containing a vial of the late Pope’s blood was stolen from a Catholic priest while he was travelling on a train north of Rome.

The relic was in his backpack, which was swiped by thieves but later recovered in a thicket of cane grass by police.

Link:

• Blood of Pope John Paul II stolen in possible 'satanic' theft

Pope Francis Meets Head of Medjugorje Commission Cardinal Camillo Ruini

By Edward Pentin

(National Catholic Register) Pope Francis today met Cardinal Camillo Ruini who chairs the Medjugorje Commission.

Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi wasn't able to disclose the reasons for the meeting, telling the Register that "naturally the contents of a private conversation are not subject to communication."

However, the vicar general emeritus of the Vicariate of Rome will most probably have discussed the commission's findings on Medjugorje which it submitted last week to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. After being examined by the CDF, a proposal will be made to the Holy Father who will have the final say.

The timeline for a decision is not known, although Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo, who is also a member of the commission, said this week that he expected the Pope to rule on the authenticity of the apparitions by the end of this year.

The cardinal also said the commission is "not opposed to Medjugorje as a place of faith where faithful pilgrims gather."

Link:

• Pope Meets Head of Medjugorje Commission

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Top pope ally Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga urges Vatican doctrine chief Archbishop Gerhard Mueller to loosen up

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) - An influential aide to Pope Francis criticized the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog on Monday and urged the conservative prelate to be more flexible about reforms being discussed in the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the head of a "kitchen cabinet" the pope created to draw up reform proposals, said that Archbishop Gerhard Mueller - who has opposed any loosening of Church rules on divorce - was a classic German theology professor who thought too much in rigid black-and-white terms.

"The world isn't like that, my brother," Rodriguez said in a German newspaper interview, rhetorically addressing Mueller in a rare public criticism among senior Church figures.

"You should be a bit flexible when you hear other voices, so you don't just listen and say, 'here is the wall'," Rodriguez said in an interview with the daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.

Rodriguez, archbishop of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, did not cite any possible reforms in particular but said the pope's critics, such as those upset by his attacks on capitalism, were "people who don't understand reality."

Former Pope Benedict picked Mueller in 2012 to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the successor office to the Inquisition. Benedict ran that office as a powerful and feared guardian of Church orthodoxy for 24 years as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, until he was elected pope in 2005.

But its influence has waned under Francis, who soon after his March 2013 election was reported as telling visiting South American priests and nuns not to worry if the CDF wrote to them criticizing what they were doing.

NO TO CHANGING DIVORCE RULE

In an article in the Vatican daily last October, Mueller firmly rejected growing demands for divorced and remarried Catholics to be reinstated as full members of the Church.

Catholics who divorce and remarry in a civil ceremony are excluded from communion because the Church teaches that Jesus declared marriage an indissoluble bond.

With divorce on the rise, more Catholics are asking Rome to show mercy for them. German bishops have been in the forefront of reform thinking and one archdiocese even published guidelines on how to readmit them, which prompted Mueller's article.

The Vatican is due to consider reforming its rules on divorce at a worldwide synod of bishops next October.

Mueller has also strongly defended Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, who reaped stiff criticism from German Catholics and the title "luxury bishop" in the media after it was revealed he spent at least 30 million euros ($40.69 million) on a new residence complex.

Tebartz-van Elst's grand plans were so far from the modest approach favoured by the Argentine-born pontiff that Rome sent an envoy to inspect his diocese and later sent him off to a monastery for a leave of absence pending a final decision.

Rodriguez did not think Tebartz-van Elst would return to Limburg and said Latin Americans like himself and the pope found it hard to understand spending so much money for opulent features such as a 15,000-euro free-standing bath tub.

"For most people, a shower and a toilet are enough," he said. "They're enough for the pope in his three-room apartment too." ($1 = 0.7373 euros)

Link:

• Top pope ally urges Vatican doctrine chief to loosen up

MMA fighter kills armed intruder, 'severely' injures another and scares off two more in home invasion gone wrong

Fighter: Joe Torrez allegedly killed an an intruder and fought off three others in a home invasion gone wrong

• The intruders were known gang members with lengthy criminal records
• The four intruders entered Joe Torrez's house armed with a 'crude shank' 
• One of the intruders was taken to the hospital with 'severe' injuries to his face

 By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

(Mail Online) A mixed martial arts fighter in New Mexico may face charges after authorities say he fended off four home invaders - killing one and severely injuring another - during a an early morning break in on New Year's Day.

According to authorities in Dora Ana County, MMA fighter Joe Torrez fatally beat and stabbed one of the intruders, beat another so badly he needed to be taken from Torrez's home in an ambulance and then convinced the other two to retreat in fear.

Authorities found the body of 25-year-old Sal Garces near Torrez's trailer home in the 600 block of King James Avenue.

Garces, his 19-year-old brother Raymond Garces, 20-year-old Nathan Avalos and 22-year-old Leonard Calvillo forced their way into 27-year-old Torrez's house about 2 a.m. on New Year's day.

Once inside the home, a fight began between the intruders and Torrez - a fight that ended with Garces dead, Avalos being admitted to a hospital with 'severe' facial injuries and the other two fleeing the scene...

One of the men, a witness told police, was armed with a 'crude shank.' Another grabbed a knife after entering the home.

An attorney for Torrez, C.J. McElhinney, says his client was acting in self-defense when he fought off the intruders.

'He was fighting for his life,' said McElhinney...

Authorities haven't ruled out charging Torrez with any crimes. A Facebook page has been setup in support of the MMA fighter.

Link:

• MMA fighter kills armed intruder, 'severely' injures another and scares off two more in home invasion gone wrong

Pope calls for fresh Church approach to children of gay parents

Rome (AFP) - Pope Francis has called for a rethink in the way the Catholic Church deals with the children of gay couples and divorced parents, warning against "administering a vaccine against faith". Related Stories

"On an educational level, gay unions raise challenges for us today which for us are sometimes difficult to understand," Francis said in a speech to the Catholic Union of Superiors General in November, extracts of which were published on Italian media websites on Saturday.

"The number of children in schools whose parents have separated is very high," he said, adding that family make-ups were also changing.

"I remember a case in which a sad little girl confessed to her teacher: 'my mother's girlfriend doesn't love me'," he was quoted as saying.

The pontiff said educational leaders should ask themselves "how can we proclaim Christ to a generation that is changing?"

"We must be careful not to administer a vaccine against faith to them," the 77-year-old added.

Though the Church has often been in conflict with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community over its opposition to same-sex marriage and to homosexuality, Francis has drawn praise for attempts to be inclusive.

In July he reached out to gays, declaring that "if someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?"

And in December, the Advocate magazine -- dedicated to the gay and lesbian community -- chose the head of the Catholic Church as the "single most influential person of 2013 on the lives of LGBT people."

The reform-minded pontiff has also called an extraordinary assembly of the Synod of Bishops next year to discuss the Church's position with regard to the family, which is expected to address among other issues the problem of divorcees remarrying and children of divorced parents.

Link:

• Pope calls for fresh Church approach to children of gay parents

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• It's official: Pope has not abolished sin, says Vatican
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It's official: Pope has not abolished sin, says Vatican

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican felt compelled on Tuesday to deny that Pope Francis had "abolished sin", after a well-known Italian intellectual wrote that he had effectively done so through his words and gestures.

The singular exchange began on Sunday when Eugenio Scalfari, an atheist who writes opinion pieces for the left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper, published an article titled "Francis' Revolution: He has abolished sin".

Scalfari, who held a long private conversation with the pope earlier this year and wrote about it several times, concluded in the complex, treatise-like article that Francis believed sin effectively no longer existed because God's mercy and forgiveness were "eternal".

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio that "this affirmation that the pope has abolished sin" was wrong.

"Those who really follow the pope daily know how many times he has spoken about sin and our (human) condition as sinners," Lombardi said.

It was not the first brush between the Vatican and Scalfari, who founded La Repubblica newspaper in 1976.

Last month the Vatican removed from its website the text of Scalfari's transcript of his conversation with the pope, saying parts of it were not reliable.

Scalfari said he had not used a tape recorder or taken notes when he met the pope but reconstructed the long session from memory afterwards and made additions to help the flow of the article.

Link:

• It's official: Pope has not abolished sin, says Vatican

Related:

• Traditional Catholics Care That Sexual Sins Offend God And Hurt Us

Traditional Catholics Care That Sexual Sins Offend God And Hurt Us

By Father Peter Carota

(Traditional Catholic Priest) Jesus never said; “Love the sinner, hate the sin”, but; “For I have not come to call the just, but sinners”.  Jesus came to call us sinners to repent.  He does not accept sinners so that they can continue to sin.  Sin is a terrible offense against God and offends Him greatly.

“He who saith that he knoweth him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” 1 John 2: 4.

It was St. Augustine who said; “For this reason, the man who lives by God’s standards and not by man’s, must needs be a lover of good, and it follows that he must hate what is evil.  Further, since no one is evil by nature, but anyone who is evil is evil because of a perversion of nature, the man who lives by God’s standards has a duty of perfect hatred towards those who are evil; that is to say, he should not hate the person because of the fault, nor should he love the fault because of the person.  He should hate the fault, but love the man.  And when the fault has been cured there will remain only what he ought to love, nothing that he should hate.”

 

The whole idea of accepting homosexual lust and the adultery of remarried couples living together goes against calling sinners to repentance.  It is pleasing man and offending God.

 

As a priest who councils hundreds of people, I see the horrible consequences of every sin.  An example is what I heard last week.

A 15 year old boy came to me because he was depressed and had no one to talk to.  He was depressed because his 15 year old girlfriend was going to be put in a foster home.  It all began with sin.

She has been living with her uncle and aunt.  Her aunt, behind the back of her uncle, had allowed her to sneak out to be with this young man.  When the uncle found out about the dishonesty, he started the divorce against the aunt. So the girlfriend has to move to a foster home.

She ended up living with her uncle and aunt because her mother had committed adultery and when her dad found out he committed suicide.  Her mother then hooked up with another man who ended up continuously rape his girlfriend.  He is in prison and her mother is in jail.  So she has no place to live other than a foster home because of sin.

How often you and I have to hear, in the Church and outside the Church, that we have to accept sinners life styles.  How often do we have to hear, as long as it is two consenting adults, sin does not hurt anyone (heterosexual or homosexual).

This 15 year old girl will have another opinion.  If her mother had not had the consensual adulterous affair, her father would not have committed suicide.  If her mother had not had a consensual affair with the next man, the girl would never have been raped over and over.

 

By my estimation, step fathers in second marriages, have a very high rate of sexual abuse of their stepdaughters.  I hear of it over and over.

There is another family in this parish where the first father was put in prison for drugs and robbery.  The next man, the mother moved in with, sexually molested her daughter whom I am trying to help get over it.  That man is also in prison for this sin.  The rate is so so much lower where a biological father sexually molests his daughter.

Fathers and mothers married in the Church are whom make a safe home for their children.

So when it comes to accepting homosexual sex and remarried couples, the Church leaders are forgetting that it offends God greatly and that these sins hurt the individual, those around them and society as a whole.

It is, again, the case of misdirected compassion.  We traditional Catholics love the homosexual, the remarried person, but we hate the sin and the consequences it has caused in the lives of those involved.

Where is the compassion for the men and women and children who have been hurt by the divorce?  Where is the compassion for the girls who have been sexually abused by their step fathers?

There is another young woman in our confirmation classes.  She is for homosexual relations because her sister is in one.  But when I talked to her mother, she told me that her daughter is always being beaten up and her cell phone taken away because of the  jealousy of her female lover.  Where is the compassion for all those who are abused in these unnatural relationships?

How many homosexuals would still be alive if they had never had homosexual sex that gave them AIDS.  Yes we love those who have same sex attraction.  For that reason we want them to stay alive and be healthy.  We do not want them dying or suffering from AIDS.

When will the pope, bishops, priests, religious and lay Catholics understand that compassion is teaching people that sin offends God and hurts them and all of society.

We traditional Catholics love sinners.  We are also repented sinners ourselves.  But we also love God above all things and believe with all our hearts that His laws of love are for our good.  When they are loved and obey, there is peace and blessings.  When they are despised and broken, there is interior turmoil and curses.

We are so fortunate to be traditional Catholics and know God’s laws of Love.  We are also so fortunate to have access to His graces through the Holy Sacraments of Our Catholic Church.

Link:

• Traditional Catholics Care That Sexual Sins Offend God And Hurt Us

A&E Welcomes Phil Robertson Back to 'Duck Dynasty'

(The Hollywood Reporter) Phil Robertson, the patriarch of A&E's Duck Dynasty clan who was suspended from his hit reality series on Dec. 18 following some incendiary comments about gay people, won't be put on hiatus after all.

The network and the Robertson family announced Friday that Phil will still be part of the series -- and since he didn't miss any filming, his temporary suspension will have no effect on the upcoming fifth season....  (continued)

Link:

• A&E Welcomes Phil Robertson Back to 'Duck Dynasty'

Related:

• Robertson to be Reinstated? Fearing boycott, Cracker Barrel Reverses Decision.
• Duck Dynasty: A&E are Discriminating Against Them for Their Deeply Seated 'Christian Beliefs'

Christmas Sword

Francis meets Benedict XVI on first Christmas as pope

Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis visited his predecessor Benedict XVI on Monday for an informal Christmas greeting, as the Argentine pontiff prepares to celebrate his first Christmas as leader of the world's Roman Catholics.

Francis met with the 86-year-old Benedict in a former monastery building on a hill inside the Vatican City walls where the pope emeritus has taken up residence following his historic resignation earlier this year.

The two men could be seen praying side by side in a chapel inside the residence and chatting amicably on white sofas with a Christmas garland in front of them in photographs released by the Vatican press service.

Both were dressed in the white cassocks used by popes.

Francis came to "give his best wishes for the Christmas celebrations", the Vatican said in a statement.

The 77-year-old pope earlier on Monday compared the Catholic Church to an expectant mother during a homily at one of his daily masses in the residence where he has been staying since his election by fellow cardinals in March.

"Like the Virgin Mary, the Church this week is expecting a birth," Francis said.

"Is there space for the Lord or is there space only for parties, shopping and making noise?" he asked.

The Christmas festivities begin with the unveiling on St Peter's Square of a traditional Nativity scene named in honour of Latin America's first ever pontiff at 1530 GMT.

Francis is expected to watch the ceremony from the window of the Apostolic Palace overlooking the square and light a candle for peace.

Then from 2030 GMT the Argentine will celebrate the solemn Christmas Vigil mass in St Peter's Basilica.

On Wednesday, Francis delivers the "Urbi et Orbi" ("To the City and the World") blessing at 1130 GMT on St Peter's Square -- where he first appeared after his momentous election by fellow cardinals on March 13.

Popes often use their "Urbi et Orbi" blessings to announce specific prayers, for instance, for the victims of conflicts or for global economic justice.

Link:

• Francis meets Benedict XVI on first Christmas as pope

Robertson to be Reinstated? Fearing boycott, Cracker Barrel Reverses Decision.

By Will Payne In West Monroe, Louisiana

(MailOnline) The Duck Dynasty patriarch led a small Bible study group in his home town church in West Monroe, Louisiana on Sunday, granting MailOnline exclusive access.

And the deeply religious outdoorsman stood by his incendiary statements – which saw him call homosexuality a sin and led to his suspension from the hit reality show by network bosses at A&E.

During Sunday’s speech, he defended himself, saying he was simply quoting from the Bible and even went so far as to say Jesus could save gay people.

‘I love all men and women. I am a lover of humanity, not a hater,’ he added.

The 67-year-old has been slammed by gay rights groups since his interview in January’s issue of GQ magazine was made public last week.

He was quoted as saying: 'It seems like, to me, a vagina - as a man - would be more desirable than a man’s anus.

'That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.'

But despite the criticism Robertson has faced, his family and local community have come to his defense and stood firmly behind him.

Just before Sunday’s Bible study class started, one church-goer actually thanked Robertson for his comments...

Yesterday Entertainment Weekly claimed that despite his suspension, Robertson will be back on the hugely popular show – which regularly pulls in 12 million viewers – when filming recommences in January.

They quoted a source saying: ‘The network also hopes the media and fan furor will cool down over the holidays and that tensions over shooting future episodes can then be resolved. There’s no negotiation to have; we’re doing the show.’

That will come as welcome news to the people of West Monroe and much of the country, who have leaped to Robertson’s defense and said he has the right to speak his mind...

Yesterday it was revealed one company, Cracker Barrel had dropped the Louisiana family. But after threats of a boycott they almost immediately reversed their decision, releasing a statement, saying:

‘You told us we made a mistake. And, you weren’t shy about it. You wrote, you called and you took to social media to express your thoughts and feelings. You flat out told us we were wrong. Today, we are putting all our Duck Dynasty products back in our stores. And, we apologize for offending you...’

Link:

• EXCLUSIVE – Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson breaks his silence: Reality show star says he’s 'a lover not a hater' but REFUSES to back down from anti-gay comments 

Related:

• Duck Dynasty: A & E are Discriminating Against Them for Their Deeply Seated 'Christian Beliefs'

Duck Dynasty: A & E are Discriminating Against Them for Their Deeply Seated 'Christian Beliefs'

By Will Payne

(MailOnline) Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson and his family believe they have been ‘hung out to dry’ by TV network A&E after he was suspended for homophobic comments made in a magazine interview, MailOnline can reveal.

Sources within the close-knit Louisiana clan say they are convinced A&E are manipulating the controversial situation to bring them – and particularly Robertson – back into line after Television executives grew tired of the family pushing their deeply-held, Christian beliefs.

They also think the network could have done something to stop the controversial GQ article being made public, because an A&E representative was present during the interview with patriarch, Roberston, 67.



A source close to the family, who asked not to be named, told MailOnline: ‘You have to ask yourself, why this interview happened and why it ever became public. Someone from A&E was there and was aware of the kind of answers Phil was giving.

‘But despite that, they didn’t ever try to stop it or control it. Instead, they let it hit the headlines and then released a statement condemning it.

‘It is our belief that they knew what was going to happen and then used the situation to exercise control over Phil.

‘It is our understanding that when the TV executives came up with the concept for the show they wanted it to be a case of people laughing at a bunch of backward rednecks.

‘But when it didn’t turn out like that and people actually started identifying with the way the family behaved and were laughing with them, not at them, they became uncomfortable. It did not sit will with the New York TV types.


Family values: The Robertson family feels as though they are being discriminated against for their deeply rooted Christian beliefs

‘We believe they were also uncomfortable with the family’s insistence that there would be a strong religious presence in the show. They knew Phil was the driving force behind this and we think they have used this situation to bring him in line so they could steer the show back down the path they originally intended for it.

‘But they may have underestimated how united the family are and how committed they are to their beliefs. They also didn’t realize how much support Phil would get from the public, so things have backfired on them.’

The controversy began after outrageous extracts from Robertson’s interview for the January edition of GQ were made public. The outdoorsman was quoted as saying: 'It seems like, to me, a vagina -- as a man -- would be more desirable than a man’s anus.

'That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.' When asked what he thought was sinful, Robertson replied: ‘Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.’


The Duck Dynasty trailer sits outside of the Duck Commander Store in West Monroe on Friday

A&E suspended him on Wednesday and released a statement, saying: ‘We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson's comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series 'Duck Dynasty'.

‘His personal views in no way reflect those of A&E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.’

But on Thursday the family issued their own response which suggested they would be prepared to walk away from the highly lucrative reality show, which regularly pulls in more than 12 million viewers.

They said: ‘While some of Phil’s unfiltered comments to the reporter were coarse, his beliefs are grounded in the teachings of the Bible. Phil is a Godly man who follows what the Bible says are the greatest commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Phil would never incite or encourage hate.


A sign supporting A & E Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson sits at the corner of Vernon Drive and Washington Street in West Monroe

‘We are disappointed that Phil has been placed on hiatus for expressing his faith, which is his constitutionally protected right. We have had a successful working relationship with A&E but, as a family, we cannot imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm. We are in discussions with A&E to see what that means for the future of Duck Dynasty.’

The family source added to this, telling MailOnline: ‘We believe in the word of the Bible exactly as it is written and we will call a sin a sin and a sinner a sinner. But we are all sinners, every one of us and we believe in redemption and that opening yourself up to Jesus Christ will save you. ‘That is what Phil believes and that will not change. We are sorry if that has offended anyone, because that was never our intention. We believe in love and truth and that is it.’ Multi-millionaire Robertson’s incendiary comments have been slammed by many, including gay-rights groups.

GLAAD spokesman Wilson Cruz was first to condemn him, saying: ‘Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil's lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe. ‘He clearly knows nothing about gay people or the majority of Louisianans — and Americans — who support legal recognition for loving and committed gay and lesbian couples.’

But Cruz’s views certainly aren’t reflected in the family’s home town of West Monroe. The Robertson’s are absolutely loved and revered in the deeply religious north-western Louisiana city. The family were already wealthy before their reality show, making their money from the Duck Commander business which sells hunting equipment. Phil Robertson lives in a huge gated compound on the edge of town and his son Willie owns a gigantic lakeside property.

They have employed dozens of locals for years and now their empire has grown, they provide even more jobs to the town’s people. That has cemented their popularity and since the homophobia scandal broke, a number of make-shift signs have been constructed offering backing to Robertson. On Friday cars honked their horns in support as they drove passed one erected on the edge of town.


The Whites Ferry Road Church of Christ where the Robertson Family worship

Their presence in West Monroe is inescapable, with billboards and posters celebrating them everywhere. Last weekend, around 30,000 people packed the downtown area for the ‘Duck Commander Christmas Parade’. People travelled from all over the country to celebrate the festive season with the family, filling every hotel room in town.

Phil’s son Willie owns a massive downtown restaurant, which is always packed and there is a huge gift store just down the road, constantly filled with fans, eager to get their hands on Duck Commander merchandise.

The controversy that has engulfed the family this week has done nothing to put a dent in business, if anything it has given it a boost.

The Madrid family drove two hours from Alexandria to show their solidarity and snap up some trademark duck calls for an upcoming hunting trip. Mother-of-two Kimberly said: ‘We are Christians and we completely support Phil.


Images of ducks tatter street lamps in downtown Monroe in support of Robertson

‘This country has a proud history of freedom of speech and I believe Phil is the one who is being persecuted, because he has lost his jobs because of his religious beliefs.

‘The spokesman for GLADD said Phil wasn’t representing the people of Louisiana, but I don’t know one person who is not behind him. We will not be watching A&E again.’

Another customer, Bernard Wolleson said: ‘I think you would have to get out of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama to find anyone who does not support Phil.

‘I am supportive of religious freedom, regardless of the faith and that is what is at issue. They knew he was outspoken when they hired him. What he said may have sounded crude, but I believe his intent was right.’

Just days after the scandal broke, rather than hide away; Phil Robertson went to his local church, White’s Ferry Road church to take part in a prayer meeting.

He is actually a very prominent elder there and his parishioners are completely behind him. On Friday Church secretary Luanne Watts told MailOnline they had been bombarded with calls and emails from American’s showing their support.

She said: ‘What has happened is a blessing. Phil believes in the word of God and he will not shift from that.

‘We have had hundreds of messages from people all over the country and I think out of all of them only one email has been negative.


Kimberly Madrid of Alexandria, La. discusses her support of Duck Dynasty Star Phil Robertson while shopping at the Duck Commander Store with sons Nathaniel, 12, and Matthew, 9

‘I went to school with his boys, so I have known him for years. He is a great man and his faith is the most important thing in his life. He is here every Wednesday and Sunday, to give sermons, or take prayer groups. He will be here this Sunday as well.

‘We are all completely behind him. You will struggle to find anyone in town who does not support him.’ And that view seems to be held by many Americans. On Thursday MailOnline revealed Walmart had sold out of their money-spinning Duck Dynasty range.

The Robertson family has a merchandise empire that is estimated by Forbes to be worth about $400million - and their deal with Walmart makes up around half of this.

The chain sells a huge array of Duck Dynasty merchandise- from T-shirts to camo bedding, posters, watches, toy trucks, camo chairs, clothing, jewellery and even bottle openers.

Walmart announced at their annual shareholders meeting that the best-selling item of apparel for both men and women this year was the reality show's T-shirt, according to Forbes.

Forbes writer Claire O'Connor said: 'When I was down in Arkansas for this Walmart meeting, you really do marvel at the amount of people who are wearing these Duck Dynasty T-shirts and hats.

'There are kid’s pajamas, there is camo bedding and you probably won't be surprised to hear that they sell Duck Dynasty prayer devotionals.'

Aside from their continued commercial success, an online petition called #IstandwithPhil demanding Robertson’s reinstatement has already attracted almost 140,000 signatures.

UPDATE:  Robertson to be Reinstated? Fearing boycott, Cracker Barrel Reverses Decision.

Link:

• EXCLUSIVE - 'Hung out to dry': Duck Dynasty star and family hit out at A&E for letting his controversial interview go public and for suspending him for homophobic comments

Cardinal Burke Out; Cardinal Wuerl In

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Pope Francis Named Time's Person of the Year

With a focus on compassion, the leader of the Catholic Church has become a new voice of conscience. Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs explains why Francis is TIME's choice for Person of the Year 2013

By Nancy Gibbs

(Time) Once there was a boy so meek and modest, he was awarded a Most Humble badge. The next day, It was taken away because he wore it. Here endeth the lesson.

How do you practice humility from the most exalted throne on earth? Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly—young and old, faithful and cynical—as has Pope Francis. In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power.

At a time when the limits of leadership are being tested in so many places, along comes a man with no army or weapons, no kingdom beyond a tight fist of land in the middle of Rome but with the immense wealth and weight of history behind him, to throw down a challenge. The world is getting smaller; individual voices are getting louder; technology is turning virtue viral, so his pulpit is visible to the ends of the earth. When he kisses the face of a disfigured man or washes the feet of a Muslim woman, the image resonates far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church.

The skeptics will point to the obstacles Francis faces in accomplishing much of anything beyond making casual believers feel better about the softer tone coming out of Rome while feeling free to ignore the harder substance. The Catholic Church is one of the oldest, largest and richest institutions on earth, with a following 1.2 billion strong, and change does not come naturally. At its best it inspires and instructs, helps and heals and calls the faithful to heed their better angels. But it has been weakened worldwide by scandal, corruption, a shortage of priests and a challenge, especially across the fertile mission fields of the southern hemisphere, from evangelical and Pentecostal rivals. In some quarters, core teachings on divorce and contraception are widely ignored and orthodoxy derided as obsolete. Vatican bureaucrats and clergy stand accused of infighting, graft, blackmail and an obsession with “small-minded rules,” as Francis puts it, rather than the vast possibilities of grace. Don’t just preach; listen, he says. Don’t scold; heal.

And yet in less than a year, he has done something remarkable: he has not changed the words, but he’s changed the music. Tone and temperament matter in a church built on the substance of symbols—bread and wine, body and blood—so it is a mistake to dismiss any Pope’s symbolic choices­ as gestures empty of the force of law. He released his first exhortation, an attack on “the idolatry of money,” just as Americans were contemplating the day set aside for gratitude and whether to spend it at the mall. This is a man with a sense of timing. He lives not in the papal palace surrounded by courtiers but in a spare hostel surrounded by priests. He prays all the time, even while waiting for the dentist. He has retired the papal Mercedes in favor of a scuffed-up Ford Focus. No red shoes, no gilded cross, just an iron one around his neck. When he rejects the pomp and the privilege, releases information on Vatican finances for the first time, reprimands a profligate German Archbishop, cold-calls strangers in distress, offers to baptize the baby of a divorced woman whose married lover wanted her to abort it, he is doing more than modeling mercy and ­transparency. He is ­embracing complexity and acknowledging the risk that a church obsessed with its own rights and righteousness could inflict more wounds than it heals. Asked why he seems uninterested in waging a culture war, he refers to the battlefield. The church is a field hospital, he says. Our first duty is to tend to the wounded. You don’t ask a bleeding man about his cholesterol level.

This focus on compassion, along with a general aura of merriment not always associated with princes of the church, has made Francis something of a rock star. More than 3 million people turned out to see him on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro last summer, the crowds in St. Peter’s Square are ecstatic, and the souvenirs are selling fast. Francesco is the most popular male baby name in Italy. Churches report a “Francis effect” of lapsed Catholics returning to Mass and confession, though anecdotes are no substitute for hard evidence, and surveys of U.S. Catholics, at least, see little change in practice thus far. But the fascination with Francis even outside his flock gives him an opportunity that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, never had—to magnify the message of the church and its power to do great good.

The giddy embrace of the secular press makes Francis suspect among traditionalists who fear he buys popularity at the price of a watered-down faith. He has deftly leveraged the media’s fascination to draw attention to everything from his prayers for peace in Syria to his pointed attack on trickle-down economics, which inspired Jesse Jackson to compare him to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rush Limbaugh to wonder whether he’s a Marxist. When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak. Why has he not said more about the priest sex-abuse scandal? ask victims’ advocates. (Just this month, he set up a commission to address the abuse of children by priests.) Why does he not talk more about the sanctity of life? ask conservatives, who note that in his exhortation, abortion is mentioned once, mercy 32 times. Francis both affirms traditional teachings on sexuality and warns that the church has become distracted by them. He attacks priests who won’t baptize children born out of wedlock for their “rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism.” He declares that God “has redeemed all of us … not just Catholics. Everyone, even atheists.” He posed with environmental activists holding an antifracking T-shirt and called on politicians and business leaders to be “protectors of creation.”

None of which makes him a liberal—he also says the all-male priesthood is not subject to debate, nor is abortion, nor is the definition of marriage. But his focus on the poor and the fact that the world’s poorest 50% control barely 1% of its wealth unsettles those who defend capitalism as the most successful antipoverty program in history. You could argue that he is Teddy Roosevelt protecting capitalism from its own excesses or he is simply saying what Popes before him have said, that Jesus calls us to care for the least among us—only he’s saying it in a way that people seem to be hearing differently. And that may be especially important coming from the first Pope from the New World. A century ago, two-thirds of Catholics lived in Europe; now fewer than a quarter do, and how he is heard in countries where being gay is a crime and educating women for leadership roles is a heresy may have the power to transform cultures in which Catholicism is a growing, even potentially liberating force.

These days it is bracing to hear a leader say anything that annoys anyone. Now liberals and conservatives alike face a choice as they listen to a new voice of conscience: Which matters more, that this charismatic leader is saying things they think need to be said or that he is also saying things they’d rather not hear?

The heart is a strong muscle; he’s proposing a rigorous exercise plan. And in a very short time, a vast, global, ecumenical audience has shown a hunger to follow him. For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world’s largest church to confronting its deepest needs and for balancing judgment with mercy, Pope Francis is TIME’s 2013 Person of the Year.

Link:

• Pope Francis Named Time's Person of the Year