Catholics in the Heart of the Land of Islam, and Other Surprising Facts of Global Catholicism

John Allen lays out some interesting points in his recent piece, including the following starkly true statement. Excerpts:

...The typical Christian in the world today isn’t a middle-class white male in Dubuque pulling up to church in his Lincoln Continental. She is an impoverished black mother of four in Nigeria, or a Dalit grandmother in India, or an exploited Filipina maid in Saudi Arabia. They often face hardships that are hard for most American Christians, accustomed to material comfort and lacking any real experience of religious persecution, to fathom.

Until you get that, you won’t see the full story of Christianity in this era...

Click and read.

The War on Women

It has claimed many lives, and looks to claim many more.

Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.--Pope Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae: On The Regulation of Birth, July 26, 1968, article 17

The Way to Heaven

The way of the cross.  Excerpts:

...On August 15, the Imperial Rescript which put an end to the fighting was formally promulgated, and the whole world welcomed a day of peace. This day was also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant to reflect that Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her. And we must ask if this convergence of events—the ending of the war and the celebration of her feast—was merely coincidental or if there was here some mysterious providence of God.

I have heard that the second atomic bomb, calculated to deal a deadly blow to the war potential of Japan, was originally destined for another city. But since the sky over that city was covered with clouds, the American pilots found it impossible to aim at their target. Consequently, they suddenly changed their plans and decided to drop the bomb on Nagasaki, the secondary target. However, yet another hitch occurred. As the bomb fell, cloud and wind carried it slightly north of the munitions factories over which it was supposed to explode and it exploded above the cathedral. 

This is what I have heard. If it is true, the American pilots did not aim at Urakami. It was the providence of God that carried the bomb to that destination.

Is there not a profound relationship between the destruction of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Nagasaki, the only holy place in all Japan—was it not chosen as a victim, a pure lamb, to be slaughtered and burned on the altar of sacrifice to expiate the sins committed by humanity in the Second World War?...

The man writing this was a survivor who lost family and friends in the bombing of Nagasaki. The whole piece is shocking and beautiful and redolent with mystery.

The Average Christian: Non-White, Non-Western

A great piece on the true state of contemporary Christianity.  Read the whole thing (and buy Philip Jenkins' books).  Excerpts:

...For some centuries, European and American Christians prayed fervently for the conversion of the wider world, especially in Africa and Asia, and many devoted their lives to achieving this end. And to an astonishing degree, they succeeded. During the 20th century alone, around 40 percent of the population of Africa converted from animism or primal religion to some variety of Christianity. Within a few decades, the African continent could be, in numerical terms, the center of world Christianity. Growth in Asia has also been impressive, while enthusiastic new forms of Christianity have blossomed in Latin America. Many denominations are discovering, to their surprise, that large numbers of their adherents, even majorities, no longer live in those areas that could once be claimed to represent the "Christian world."

Catholic, Liberal and Conservative

Marc Barnes explains.  Excerpts:

...When we look at the desire of the Christ, at his heartfelt cry to his Father before he delievered himself up to die, the silliness of a liberal/conservative split within the Church becomes apparent:

I pray also for those who will believe in me through [the disciple's] message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17)

Christ wants us to be one, truly one. This desire was a desire important enough to be his death prayer. Thus whenever we see a false division in the Church, our impulse, flowing from our love for Christ, should be to make it whole.

Trillion Dollar Forgery: Oddities

Okay, so there's some strange stuff sloshing around the internet about this.

Let's begin with a Bloomberg story.  Excerpts:

...Gombar says his first whiff of the bond con came in 1976, while working in the agency’s Los Angeles office investigating a similar bluff involving Venezuelan government paper.

What Cost an iDevice?

A high cost, indeed.  Excerpts:

...the low prices of our iPhones and iPads — and the super-high profit margins of Apple — are only possible because our iPhones and iPads are made with labor practices that would be illegal in the United States.

...Last week, PRI's "This American Life" did a special on Apple's manufacturing. The show featured (among others) the reporting of Mike Daisey, the man who does the one-man stage show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," and The NYT's Nicholas Kristof, whose wife's family is from China.

You can read a transcript of the whole show here. Here are some details:

Survivors of the Atom Bombs

No, Virginia, humans do not have the power to wipe all life from earth...if God has other plans (as we've already discussed).  Excerpts:

On 6 August 1945, the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ, an American bomber dropped an atomic bomb that detonated 1,900 feet above Hiroshima, Japan. The blinding explosion killed everyone in a one-mile radius from “ground zero”—an estimated 80,000 men, women, and children.

On this date, a miracle occurred of which few have heard. The only survivors within that one mile radius were eight Jesuit priests. These eight men, like the eight that survived the Great Flood, walked away from the atomic blast and lived into old age without radiation poisoning...

The story reminds us Noah’s salvation in the ark, the deliverance of Daniel in the lion’s den, and, most of all, the preservation of Anania, Azaria, and Misael in the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar.

Nagasaki, the home of two-thirds of Japanese Catholics, suffered the second atomic bomb on 9 August 1945. This city which had become the “Japanese capital of Catholicism” was obliterated. However, the Franciscan Friary established by Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe in Nagasaki remained undamaged...

Vatican Diplomacy

I know, I know--sounds strange, right?  Excerpts:

...At a farewell reception in June, Valls Noyes explained why the Vatican is so important for international diplomacy. For one thing, she said, it has one of the largest diplomatic corps in the world.

The Vatican is also a place of confluence for social, political and religious issues like human trafficking, human rights, interfaith cooperation, peace initiatives and health care, she said. In addition to its official diplomatic arm, the Vatican includes innumerable agencies that deal with the ethical and practical aspects of these and other questions.

Rome is also a crossroads of church movements, lay groups and religious orders, many of which are actively engaged in international affairs.

For Valls Noyes and other U.S. embassy officials, one of the most rewarding areas of U.S.-Vatican cooperation has been on the human trafficking issue. The embassy has sponsored major conferences on trafficking and, more generally, on the role of faith communities in development.

"It's been an amazing three years. If there's one lesson I've learned, it's that people of faith and good will can move mountains," she said...

North Korean Martyrs, Pray for Us!

Apparently, there really exists a Christian church of North Korea.  Excerpts:

..."About 40 thousand underground Christians still live in North Korea. Including those, and they are the majority, who have ended up in a labour camp because of their faith", revealed Protestant minister Lim Chang-ho in an interview with the Daily NK. According to the pastor, "given the high level of repression by the regime against Christians, they are preserved in the only way they can: get married to each other and in secret."

In North Korea, people are organized into 51 classes. The first three are based on loyalty to the Kim family and the cult of dictator as the "eternal president" and the "Dear Leader" his son as the only accepted forms of divinity in the country. Obviously, anyone who professes a religion or is in possession of religious material is classified as "hostile" and is effectively banned from public life in the country.

According to the testimonies of those who manage to escape from the clutches of the regime, Christians are subjected to the worst treatment. In this situation, the beleaguered community responds the best way it can: "Christianity is still present only thanks to the very courageous and admirable attitude of the faithful. When neighbours see how a Christian behaves, they want to imitate them: I can not confirm it, but there is even talk of some conversions..."

The Great Japanese (Catholic) Novelist

A good overview.  Excerpts:

The Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo – described by Graham Greene as one of the century's greatest writers – was always wrestling with the relation between Christianity and Japan. In an interview, he said:

"But after all it seems to me that Catholicism is not a solo, but a symphony. It fits, of course, man's sinless side, but unless a religion can find a place for man's sinful side in the ensemble, it is a false religion. If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan's mud swamp, it cannot be a true religion. What exactly this part is – that is what I want to find out" (cited in Emi Mase-Hasegawa, Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo's Literary Works, 72)...

An Appeal for Japan

I doubt that Gerard Nadal will mind my borrowing the following.  Excerpts:

For Christians of all stripes, and especially pro-lifers, I offer the following from Isaiah 58 in light of our brothers and sisters in Japan.

6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Catholic Relief Services is accepting donations and getting set to aid in long term support. 95% of their money goes directly to support services.

Also, the children in my parish are starting a toy drive for the children in Japan, as well as kids’ clothes, etc. We are contacting the bishops in the stricken dioceses and setting up a way to ship to the bishops who will ensure distribution.

For pro-lifers, as we respond let’s remember Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 5:

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

US Ambassador to Vietnam

has trouble getting in to meet with a Catholic priest, as Reuters reports:

...Christian Marchant, a political officer with the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, was roughed up outside a residence where outspoken Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly is being held under house arrest, Radio Free Asia reported.

Police attacked Marchant while barring the American diplomat from meeting with Ly, one of Vietnam's highest-profile human rights advocates, Radio Free Asia said.

"We are aware of and deeply concerned by the incident and have officially registered a strong protest with the Vietnamese government in Hanoi," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

"We plan to raise the issue with Ambassador (Le Cong) Phung in Washington as well," Toner added...

The Catholic Church in Vietnam has been facing a number of challenges for some time now.  Samuel Gregg gives an overview:

...if we ever needed proof that Communist regimes don't change their stripes, one need only look at the little-reported but growing confrontation between the Catholic Church in Vietnam and Vietnam's Communist authorities.

There are about 6 million Catholics in Vietnam today (about 8 percent of the population). They are the biggest religious minority in a nation which has been ruled in its entirety by a Communist government since 1975. Like all Communist regimes, Vietnam had its "re-education" camps. The regime has also long harassed the Catholic Church. There is no greater symbol of this than the late Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, widely regarded as a modern saint. Before exiling him, the regime imprisoned him for 13 years, nine of which were spent in solitary confinement...

These stories are replicated all over Vietnam. In response, thousands of Catholics have mounted peaceful public protests for almost a year. As Amnesty International reports, the state's reply has been intimidation and violence. Lay Catholics have been denounced in typical Marxist terms as "counter-revolutionaries", arrested, and subjected to show-trials. Nuns and priests have been savagely beaten by police and "counter-demonstrators". One woman told Amnesty, "they shout bad words about our mothers and fathers, and say things like 'kill the archbishop' and 'kill the priests.'"

Vietnam is a country where Marxism, aptly described by Kolakowski as "the greatest fantasy of our century," has once again been exposed as nothing more than a useful cover for a corrupt political class to maintain its power and live at everyone else's expense. And, once again, Christians and the cause of religious liberty are paying the price.

Robert Royal recounts the end of one Vietnamese martyr's life here:

...On September 2, 1945, Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the country’s independence. Van fled to Saigon in the South. He took final vows with the Redemptorists and busied himself at various simple tasks. When the country was cut in two after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, masses of people, Catholic and not, fled to the South. But according to Van, “Jesus had insisted” that he was needed where the trouble was greatest. Van immediately flew to the North on Sept. 14, the Feast of the Cross: “I am going so that in the midst of the Communists, there will be someone who loves Our Dear Lord.”

Van was quietly conducting his duties when one day he went out shopping. Hearing some agents provocateurs spreading lies about the South, he blurted out, “I have just come from the South and the government has never done anything like that!” He was taken to Sureté headquarters, where a familiar pattern began. Interrogations went on for several days from seven in the morning until midnight seeking Van’s confession — of what is not clear.

He spent five months in solitary confinement during sweltering summer heat. Then he was transferred to the main Hanoi prison and locked up with other “reactionaries.” Notes he wrote were smuggled out. One to his Superior read: “It would be easy for me to stay alive: all I would have to do is make an accusation against you. Don’t be afraid, I would never do it. . . . I will resist to the death.” The prison officials used brain-washing techniques to break him and prevent his dying a “heroic” death. Near the end, he got out a message, “Today, I am a corpse who can still breathe. . . .I am the victim of Love. Love is my joy, an indestructible joy.”

A show trial, during which he displayed great calm and dignity, ensued, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for spreading propaganda. Other prisoners flocked to him because of the strength he displayed. Perhaps because of this good effect on the others, he was transferred to a new prison: Camp 2 at Yeh Binh. There he endured the worst treatment of all: he was beaten and put in a dark cell for two years and, at the beginning of 1958, chained up for three months with no outside contacts. When he was finally set loose from the special confinement, he had tuberculosis and beri-beri. His body was emaciated. On June 10, 1959, he groaned and quietly passed away, leaving some future Vietnam to absorb the spiritual lessons of his life.

"Buddhist extremists brutally attack Catholic church in Sri Lanka"

Prayer needed for everyone involved:

More than 1,000 Buddhist extremists armed with clubs, swords and stones ferociously attacked a Catholic church in the town of Crooswatta, Sri Lanka on December 6, destroying the altar, statues and pews.

L’Osservatore Romano reported that Father Jude Denzil Lakshman, pastor of Our Lady of the Mystical Rose, said “I still can hear their shouts in my ears, ‘Cut him to pieces, kill him’.”

The attack took place after the 7 p.m., Sunday Mass, leaving several parishioners wounded. “It is obvious that the attack was well-planned and that the mob waited for us to come out after Mass,” Father Lakshman said.

One parishioner told the Archdiocese of Colombo that as the congregation was leaving the evening Mass, they saw a mob coming towards them.


The parishioner added that the mob “set fire to Fr. Lakshman's car and then someone attempted to strike him with a sword,” but a young man heroically pulled him away.

The extremists “then damaged all other motor bikes, ordinary cycles of the poor people including a three-wheeler. Some persons armed with swords and batons went on beating the people. There are six Catholics in the hospital with cuts and injuries."

Mark Shea has a lovely snark about how this would fit a post-colonialist narrative.

Why the Catholic Church Forbids Nuclear War

This is amazing. If you go read the whole thing, be warned--it's not for the weak stomach or the faint heart.

Major "Chuck" Sweeney had an extremely risky takeoff before dawn, loaded as he was with the 4.5-ton A-bomb, "Fat Man". Now they were over their primary target, Kokura. He had made three runs over the hopelessly clouded city when he made a shocking discovery: the auxiliary gasoline pipe was blocked. Unless they dropped the bomb soon, they would never get home. He turned his plane southwest for the secondary target, "Nagasaki, urban area". His B-29 was over Shimabara just before 11 A.M. A radio announcer saw this and excitedly broadcast a warning, and Nagasaki people who heard him ran for their shelters. Moments later, Sweeney and his crew saw Nagasaki right below them through a cloud break, immediately recognizing the Urakami River and the Matsuyama Sports Ground. That put them almost two miles northwest of the planned drop, but time had run out. Bombardier Kermit released the bomb. It was just 11 A.M. when Fat Man went plummeting down onto the city of two hundred thousand souls, of whom more than seventy thousand would die, many without a trace. Inside the Urakami Cathedral, Fathers Nishida and Tamaya were hearing confessions again after the all-clear. The cathedral was only a third of a mile from where Fat Man detonated and was reduced to rubble in an instant. No one would be sure how many perished inside. Less than two miles away from the cathedral, Chimoto-san was working on his rice paddy on Mount Kawabira. He heard a noise, looked up and saw a B-29 emerging from the clouds. It disgorged a huge black bomb, and he threw himself to the ground. He waited a minute. Then came an awful penetrating brightness, followed by eerie stillness. He looked up and gasped at the huge pillar of smoke, swelling grotesquely as it rose. Suddenly he realized that a hurricane was rushing toward him. Houses, buildings, trees were being cut down before his startled eyes as if by some enormous, invisible bulldozer. Then came a deafening roar, and he was hurled like a matchbox into the stone wall sixteen feet behind. Shaken to his very soul, he gaped at the pines, chestnuts and camphor laurels torn from the ground or broken off at the trunks. Even the grass was gone!...