Category Archives: Analysis

When the devil sends text messages

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Despite its immense good, social media also opens doorways to demonic possession

To make a killing at the box office, film producers are known to stretch the truth and sensationalise facts about real persons. This is especially true of The Pope’s Exorcist in which Russell Crow plays the lead character, Fr Gabriele Amorth.

While key elements of the world-renowned exorcist’s work are there, filmmakers took licence to paint him as a swashbuckling hero in scenes that belong to movie genres like those in the Marvel Universe.

But demonic attacks on people are not fiction and if any film comes close to depicting the reality of this, it is the 1973 original film, The Exorcist, which Fr Amorth apparently gave the thumbs up.

It showed scenes of a girl levitating, spinning her head 360 degrees and speaking in a foreign language in the voice of the Devil. Such phenomena, exorcists say, are what they often encounter in demonic possession cases. Dark spiritual forces harassing and oppressing people, and taking over homes, things and even animals are also not uncommon.

The devil and evil spirits, it seems, have kept up with technological advances and are now using devices such as the mobile phone to deceive their unsuspecting prey.

This may be incredulous to many of us, but last week a religious sister pointed me to a 2017 story about the devil sending text messages while an Exorcist in the Philippines was speaking with a possessed woman.

The Devil uses technology to lure victims

The recipient of the demonic messages was the woman’s companion who was in the room at the time and the demon told him to not believe what the Exorcist, Fr Jose Francisco Syquia, was telling her. Syquia, who studied and trained under Fr Amorth, heads the 170-strong Philippine Association of Catholic Exorcists, the largest in Asia.

The incident involving Syquia piqued my interest because this is the first time I’ve come across a story of the Devil manifesting on an electronic communication device.

The mobile phone is our primary means of instantly connecting with family, relatives and friends all over the world today and this episode is significant as it shows the dark flip side to the immense good digital technology offers us.

This fact has not gone unnoticed in the ongoing Synod in Rome and is one of the topics under discussion. The introduction to Module B2 of the Instrumentum Laboris on the Church’s digital mission notes:

The digital environment is a culture, a “place” where people – all of us – spend a significant part of our lives. As Pope Francis says in Christus Vivit, it “has had a profound impact on ideas of time and space, on our self-understanding, our understanding of others and the world, and our ability to communicate, learn, be informed and enter into relationship with others” (CV 86).

The Instrumentum Laboris, though, also cautions that:

We are also aware of many things in that environment that are not of God. We are not naïve. In “Toward a Full Presence”, this May’s Pastoral Reflection by the Dicastery for Communication on interaction on Social Networks, the algorithms that condition and filter the networks for economic gain are well analysed. Like all missionaries, we need to know where the pitfalls and deceptions lie.

American Exorcist Fr Gary Thomas first raised the alarm of demonic activity in the digital environment as far back as 2011. Then, he warned, the Internet had and still has dangerous doorways that lead to the demonic harassment, oppression and, worse, possession of people. He highlighted that websites dedicated to the occult, witchcraft, Tarot cards, psychics and séances were increasingly exposing young people to demonic influences.

Fr Thomas went on to say that pornography, and drug and alcohol abuse were the common footholds for the devil to ensnare victims. Other exorcists such as Amorth, Syquia and Chad Ripperger have also said the same, especially those who habitually engage in acts of mortal sin.

Fr Thomas lists 9 demonic openings and 4 spiritual weapons to keep them at bay.

Cracks in moral and spiritual life invite demonic infestation

An immoral and impure spiritual lifestyle such as syncretism – incorporating Catholic practices with pagan or occult ones like Feng Shui and the wearing of amulets – provide the Devil with openings to begin harassing a person that ultimately leads to possession (Must watch: Exorcist Fr Daniel Estacio’s video below).

When Fr Thomas warned about the presence of evil in the Internet, social media had yet to have a dominant presence it has today, as it only flourished and festered during Pope Francis’ pontificate. As he was on the receiving end of some of the vilest fake and misinformed accusations up til today, the Holy Father is well placed to authoritatively speak about the impact of its dark side.

Speaking to the International Catholic Legislators network two months ago, Christ’s Vicar says that while the goal of social media networks is to “connect people” and much good takes place in them, they also breed destructive attitudes.

We also need to be vigilant, for sadly many “dehumanizing” trends resulting from technocracy are found on these media, such as the deliberate spread of false information about people – fake news, the promotion of hatred and division – “partisan” propaganda, and the reduction of human relationships to mere algorithms, not to mention a false sense of belonging, especially among young people, that can lead to isolation and loneliness.

This misuse of virtual encounter can only be overcome by the culture of authentic encounter, which involves a radical call to respect and to listen to one another, including those with whom we may strongly disagree.

Pope Francis

Pope Francis zooms in on an important point that many netizens have experienced all too often. How many times have we met people in person and find them amiable, only to find them morphing into the complete opposite on Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media networks?

In their interaction with others on digital networks these good-natured friends become abusive and aggressive bullies. How many times have others said the same of us? How often have we been the authors of falsehood and calumny, especially against the Pope, Magisterium and Church?

The reality is that the computer hides us behind a screen and takes away the personal element of interaction with its innate safety mechanisms to temper uncharitable behaviour. Interacting in the virtual world can trigger our basest human inclinations to sin, such as the “deliberate spread of false information about people” and to dehumanise our neighbour, as Pope Francis points out.

These harmful attitudes, if not reined it or goes unchecked, can present footholds for demons to latched on and enter our lives.

The young are especially vulnerable. Citing a study done in 2000, Fr Syquia says it found that children aged 10-17 had only one-third of face-to-face encounters with other people compared to similar age groups from past generations.

When a person gets isolated, the devil starts to work on the mind. The young start to have all these thoughts that make them feel depressed and alone. Only 30-percent human contact? That’s what the devil desires. The internet has no morality and a child would tend to search for what titillates his senses. So, he jumps from one [medium] to another, trying to sustain a high similar to a dopamine hit.

Exorcist Fr Jose Francisco Syquia

He says spending much time surfing the web can put a young mind in a hypnotic trance and they become open to diabolical influences and auto-suggestion.

Adults are not spared these dangers because the Devil does not make exceptions. How, then, can we overcome demonic influences lurking in the digital space to ensnare us? The online universe is irreversibly entrenched in our daily lives and we cannot win this Spiritual Battle on our own.

We need God’s help because only He can provide us protection against the enemy. We need to first ask for His Grace of humility, gentleness and charity in interacting with other users on social media.

Filipino Exorcist Fr Daniel Estacio details the openings for demons to enter our lives.

To avoid the digital universe is to close the door to a new way of evangelising. Catholics need to have a presence there or it would be a big opportunity missed.

As the Synod wisely acknowledges on this new path:

It is said that we are in a moment of transformation in the Church, that the inherited model no longer works for speaking to the digital age. It is suggested that, in this transitional era, the Church should be built from the peripheries, there in the Galilee of non-believers and the wounded, where those yearning for God do not know how to call upon Him. Our experience is that the digital culture holds much of this “new Galilee”, and that the Lord is there, ahead of us, taking the lead, as Pope Francis says.

Fr Thomas recommends four important elements must be present in our lives to protect us from demonic infiltration.

1) Relationship with Jesus Christ

2) A life of faith in prayer, adhering to the teachings of the Church and studying Scriptures

3) The Sacraments to anchor our life of faith

4) Mary’s presence in our lives through prayer to invoke her help, and calling on St Michael, the angels and saints to defend us in Spiritual Warfare.

I’d add that on waking up to each new day our prayers to God must also include invoking Our Lady’s powerful protection for us and our families, and for St Michael, our Guardian Angels and the saints to defend us against Satan and all evil spirits.

Prayer to St Michael the Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

The three Synods, but only one matters

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Listen and follow the Holy Spirit, not those sowing confusion in the Church

At Wednesday’s (Oct 11) Synod press briefing, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea’s Grace Wrackia (main photo, in red) stood out because what she said encapsulates the essence of what is taking place at the Vatican: Listening.

The first Christian missionaries to arrive in her homeland on the northern tip of Australia in 1845 were Marists from the Society of Mary. Since then, she tells us, the country of over eight million today has grown to 20 Dioceses in Papua New Guinea, with another three in the Solomon Islands (Population: 707, 8510). Both have a combined total of 23 Bishops.

About 25% and 20% of their respective population are Catholic. How this happened in Papua New Guinea, a country of a thousand tribes speaking 840 languages – which is the most diverse in the world – is nothing short of a miracle.

Before Christianity arrived, Wrackia says spirituality of four elements dominated the Melanisian community, as the Papua people are collectively known. These elements are community living, an integrated worldview, harmonious relationships with the cosmos and spiritual and physical beings, and religious rituals.

These elements enabled my ancestors to embraced Christianity, especially Catholicism. That way of life continues to live today in my generation, but it is a struggle to keep these elements together because of so many influences we have had – from the period of colonisation to currently globalisation and secularisation. This has affected the integrity of community living.

Grace Wrackia of Papua New Guinea

Still, Wrackia, adds that despite these developments, community living is very much alive in her country. They continue to live in communion with one another, and this, she points out, resonates with the three pillars of Synodality – communion, participation, and mission – where they see each other as family. For the Melanisians, their view of family and relationship extends beyond bloodlines, ethnicity and geography.

Giving a heartfelt nod to Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality, Wrackia, says, “For so many years we have been listening. Now we’d like to speak and we’d like you to listen. We have something to give to the world. And what we give is from our heart is our way of living, living in communion, living together and building relationships.”

Listening and changing how we think

It is listening to such witnesses as Wrackia, that moved Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix, Archbishop of Québec (Canada), who was also present at the press briefing, to share his experience of “enrichment” during the Synod at the Vatican’s Paul VI hall.

“The methodology we are using is directed towards listening to the Lord, His Word, His presence in every baptized person, and this allows us to be open to the other and to the others. We can find nuances, change what we think, and that is how we see that God is working and is working in all people.” He adds that living all this on a personal level “leads me to adjust, to refine, to change my thinking a little”.

The Canadian Cardinal’s words resonate with what Pope Francis said about the Synod – that the Holy Spirit, and no one else, is its Protagonist, not only during the assembly at the Vatican, but in the mystical Body of Christ in the entire world right from the start.

So why has there been resistance, and even opposition, to this event that Pope Francis launched in the autumn of 2021, a negativity that continues to this day?

I woke up this morning to a message from a friend, who posted a defiant meme he saw from a prominent Catholic theologian, who has a large following. The theologian used the Synod’s official image and changed the actual tagline of “Walking Together” to “Falling Together.”

If the Holy Spirit is the One moving everything in the Synod, such antagonistic behaviour, including the recent dubias of five Cardinals, can only be described as contrary to this Divine movement.

But before we conclude their actions are the work of the Devil, please stop there.

God endowed men and women with free will, and the good or evil choices we make are entirely ours and not Satan’s. Baptism cleanses us of original sin, but it does not free us from finding sin attractive.

This defect, called concupiscence, is part of our fallen human condition that responds to the allure of sin. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2515) teaches: “Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man’s moral faculties and, without being in itself an offence, inclines man to commit sins”.   

So, leave the poor devil alone and don’t blame him as the cause for all the wrong choices we make. It does not mean, though, he will not exploit our concupiscence and tempt us to choose sin instead of the Grace of Christ. After all, if he had the audacity to tempt Our Lord in the desert, we are chicken feed to him.

But Christ has shown us the way, which is to keep our eyes focused on Him because without Him, we can do nothing that is pleasing to God. As St Paul entreats us in Ephesians 6:10, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” 

Our goal, therefore, must be to shut out all the disruptive noises directed against Pope Francis and the Synod. The Holy Father started the Synod to prompt the Church to find a better way of moving forward to listening to our brothers and sisters, no matter who they are, where they come from and the state they are in.

The ‘three’ Synods

It seems at this point in time, though, there are three Synods going on simultaneously: the synod of mainstream Catholic and non-Catholic media, the social media synod and the actual Synod in Rome.

The first two, full of false and biased opinions not based on facts, are disproportionately weighed against Pope Francis and the Synod. Unfortunately because of the powerful influence they yield, they have been able to sway many well-meaning Catholics, including not a few prelates, clergy and theologians, to their point of views. What those who have read or viewed the misleading content have done is to only repeat all the misinformation they’ve consumed without, I suspect, doing any due diligence to verify the actual facts.

Fortunately, there are honest Catholics who have done this work and thanks to them, we can get a complete picture of what is going on.

One of these is Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton, who across the Atlantic Ocean in Canada, gives a good analysis of the so-called three synods, which all Catholics of goodwill ought to listen to. He speaks on the programme, Synod Anxiety: Archbishop Speaks Out on the Synod, Changes in Doctrine, and Dubia Questions, which was released earlier this week. Watch the video below.

Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton on the so-called three Synods.

Another podcast worth watching and listening to is that of well-known theologian Michael Lofton Faith and Reason’s programme, Will the Dubia Cardinals Stop This Chaos?, on his Youtube Channel.

Michael Loton questions the intentions of five Cardinals and their dubias.

Perhaps, newly created Polish Cardinal Gregorz Ryś, 59, best sums up the opposition to Pope Francis and the Synod in an interview he gave earlier this month. The following is the full quote from His Eminence.

I don’t want to defend the pope. I want to follow him and to obey his teaching. He’s Peter; not me. When I am asked about all this (opposition to Pope Francis), I usually answer that we behave completely unjustly toward the pope because the opposition to him is always based on one or two phrases taken out of context. I always ask [the pope’s critics]: Have you read ‘Evangelii Gaudium’? What do you think of it? ‘Evangelii Gaudium’, not the one or two sentences that he said to the journalists on the plane, is the program for Francis’ pontificate and for the church.

Cardinal Gregorz Ryś

Adds the Cardinal, “I noticed only one week ago when he was in Marseille, Francis gave a speech that in my view is one of the most important speeches he has given as pope, and I looked in the Polish newspapers and blog sites for at least a summary of it, but there was nothing. Nothing!

“On the other hand, there was much criticism of the pope after his speech to young Russian Catholics in St. Petersburg. But nobody speaks about his real speech to them. He gave a long speech; he spoke half an hour, and he offered them all his teaching from the World Youth Day in Lisbon, knowing that they couldn’t go to Lisbon. It was a wonderful speech again, but they only look at one sentence that he added on at the end. This is unjust. It is completely unjust how we treat Francis in our discussions [in Poland].”

We need to ask a question of ourselves: How many of us are among the unjust when it comes to Pope Francis and his Synod?

Our worldview is shaped by what we choose to read. A follow-up question is: Are we being honest when we selective read, watch or view content because they affirm our preconceived views? If we are, and propagate this, then, we risk misleading Catholics who look up to us for our opinions.

Don’t be the one who leads innocent sheep astray.

Synod not primed to finding solutions to issues

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Assembly is about new way of doing Church, approaching problems: Card Ambongo

When a child falls by the wayside, is disobedient, rebellious and frequently returns home late, the first thing loving and concerned parents usually do is to find the reasons behind the errant behaviour.

Few, if any, ground children for misdeeds or use the “spare the rod and spoil the child” tool, although some parents still swear by this.

Instead, the preferred option is to ponder questions not only of their son or daughter but if there are negative external factors influencing their children. Or, if they, as parents, have somehow made missteps along the way.

To discover the reasons requires listening to the child speak and understanding the root cause of his errant behaviour. It could reveal he feels unloved. Perhaps his parents have not been attending to his problems and needs. Once they are able to identify the causes, the next step is to how to address them in the right way that doesn’t compromise his or their own good.

A doctor can only prescribe the right medication if he accurately diagnoses his patient.

This is exactly the steps the ongoing Synod in Rome is taking. It consists of the first two steps: listening and identifying the most pressing issues the Church faces today. The third step on how to address them is likely to take place after the second of the final phase of the Synod is completed in Rome next October.

Synod is about new way to approach problems

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa, Congo, emphasises this point that the Synod is not geared to “resolve particular problems” in the Church, but to explore ways to discuss and address such issues. “There are a lot of people who believe that this Synod will bring solutions to all problems,” he adds during a news conference on Saturday (7 Oct 2023) at the Vatican at the end of the first week of the Synod.

“But the Synod will define the new way of ‘doing’ Church, the new way of approaching problems, what the problem is but also how in the spirit of synodality we will approach that problem.”

Ambongo is not saying anything new. In fact, when the official Synod handbook was issued on 7 Sept 2021, it spelt out the way the assembly of all Catholics will be conducted and its objective from the parish and diocesan levels to the continental and universal phases.

The objective of this Synodal Process is not to provide a temporary or one-time experience of synodality, but rather to provide an opportunity for the entire People of God to discern together how to move forward on the path towards being a more synodal Church in the long-term.

Thus, the teaching authority of the Pope and the bishops is in dialogue with the sensus fidelium, the living voice of the People of God (cf. Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church, 74). The path of synodality seeks to make pastoral decisions that reflect the will of God as closely as possible, grounding them in the living voice of the People of God (ICT, Syn., 68).

Chapter 1.3 (Handbook) What is the aim of this Synod? Objectives of the Synodal Process

On knowing the Will of God, Ambongo says, “People cannot easily say, ‘I know the will of God,’ that would be truly pretentious. That is why the Synod rightly chose the method of discerning.”

This, he adds, entails seeking together “that which seems today and right now the best solution” to a given issue.

The Synod, therefore, opens a path to listening to the “living voice of the People of God”. Only then, the teaching authority of the Pope and the bishops will proceed in seeking to make pastoral decisions that “reflect the will of God”.

So, why were there questions raised that the Synod will do otherwise, especially in the five dubias five cardinals submitted to Pope Francis “if synodality can be the supreme regulatory criterion of the permanent governance of the Church?” This was posed on the backdrop of contentious issues regarding the blessing of same-sex unions and women’s ordination.

Cardinal Ambongo says the Synod will explore ways to address issues

If any person of goodwill had carefully read the handbook, these questions would not have been raised at all because it is clear the Synod will not be making any pastoral decisions, let alone doctrinal ones.

At the Saturday press conference, Cardinal Fridolin reemphasises this point, “We are here for a synod on synodality. Synodality does not mean expressing personal opinions, but walking together. On the LGBT question, the Lord himself will show us the way through collective discernment.”

One wonders how many who gave weight to the dubias and repeated them actually read the Handbook? It would be good and charitable if they did.

Why not only bishops can vote at Synod

Another issue that sparked heated debate was about Synod voting rights given to not only bishops, but to other clergy, and male and female religious and lay persons.

As we have already established, the Synod will not be making or is in a position to make any decision that will bind the Church. We were given a clearer picture just before the start of the synod what the votes were tied to.

During the month-long Synod cardinals, bishops, priests, religious, lay women and men will be broken up into 35 working groups. Each will have between 10 and 12 people, including 14 groups working in English, eight in Italian, seven in Spanish, five in French and one in Portuguese.

Dr Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication and president of the assembly’s Commission for Information, added that each group will be asked to draft a short report on their conversation. They will then vote on whether it accurately reflects the discussion and then choose someone to read it to the whole assembly.

After a discussion of all the reports in the full assembly, each group will then decide whether or how to amend their reports before turning them into the synod secretariat for inclusion in a summary report on that section of the synod’s work.

The votes, therefore, has nothing to do with any pastoral or doctrinal matters that the Church must abide with but rather about if the reports accurately reflect their respective discussions.

As we continue to seek information on the progress of the Synod, we must tab on trusted and accurate news outlets, one of which is certainly from the press conferences that Dr Ruffini’s team puts together each week.

Seeking views from suspect outside sources, Catholic or otherwise, that tell a different story skewed towards their opinions or even agendas are unhelpful to ordinary Catholics and can mislead them and create divisions in the Church.

Benedict XVI: Reconciling diversity

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The pope who started to reach the peripheries outside of Rome

It has been three months since Pope Emeritus Benedict died in Rome. There are three things, in my opinion, that characterises his life as Pope.

The first, as many have pointed out, is his Christology and the theology associated with it. The influence of his theology has been felt not only in the Catholic Church, but even among adherents of the Orthodox Church and Protestants. Just before his last birthday, a group of Protestant theologians published an anthology of essays discussing his theology. They appear to be thoughtful appraisals.

The second is his resignation which shocked the world and will mark his papacy far into the distant future. He was the fifth pope to abdicate and the first in 600 years, and like Celestine V did so voluntarily without the force of extenuating circumstances. Of course, there has been speculation this was not the case. This, despite Benedict XVI giving his reasons for stepping down: “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

The third, is that he was placed between two Popes whose reigns involve major events within and without the Church. Pope John Paul II is noted for standing up against European communism that eventually fell. Pope Francis is overseeing a structural reform of the Church.

Compared to that Pope Benedict XVI is what the College of Cardinals had hoped for in the 1950s when they elected John XXIII as Pope. Benedict XVI, before and during his papacy, was noted as a shy and reserved man who practised a quiet piety to the status quo. As Joseph Ratzinger and head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith previously, he was a safe choice against an increasingly radical world.

This third is his contribution to the conceptual remodelling of the Church. There are two reasons why this element will be neglected for some time. The first is the reason above and second is that there is an obsessive focus in the secular media on the part Nazism played in the early life of Joseph Ratzinger.

And the energy Church apologists paid to counter this Nazi Pope narrative prevents them from looking at the other interesting aspect of Germany. The country was the homeland to the Reformation in the 1500s, and since the end of the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 to 1648, has had an almost even balance of Protestants and Catholics. Unlike England, which had granted Catholics emancipation, or France, which was stridently secular, Catholics and Protestants in Germany had been interacting with each other regularly by the time Ratzinger was born in 1927.

No Longer Heretics

Protestant and Catholic scholars alike have recognised that Benedict’s theology was very much influenced by the Tubingen School of Protestant theology, even though it was loyal to the concept of papal authority.

Beyond those understandable influences, though, there was also his personal sentiment. As early as 1960, he published his book titled The Meaning of the Christian Brotherhood, where he made this stunning claim:

There is no appropriate category in Catholic thought for the phenomenon of Protestantism today (one could say the same of the relationship to the separated churches of the East). It is obvious that the old category of ‘heresy’ is no longer of any value. Heresy, for Scripture and the early Church, includes the idea of a personal decision against the unity of the Church, and heresy’s characteristic is pertinacia, the obstinacy of him who persists in his own private way. This, however, cannot be regarded as an appropriate description of the spiritual situation of the Protestant Christian.

In the course of a now centuries-old history, Protestantism has made an important contribution to the realisation of Christian faith, fulfilling a positive function in the development of the Christian message and, above all, often giving rise to a sincere and profound faith in the individual non-Catholic Christian, whose separation from the Catholic affirmation has nothing to do with the pertinacia characteristic of heresy. Perhaps we may here invert a saying of St. Augustine’s: that an old schism becomes a heresy. The very passage of time alters the character of a division, so that an old division is something essentially different from a new one.

Something that was once rightly condemned as heresy cannot later simply become true, but it can gradually develop its own positive ecclesial nature, with which the individual is presented as his church and in which he lives as a believer, not as a heretic. This organization of one group, however, ultimately has an effect on the whole. The conclusion is inescapable, then: Protestantism today is something different from heresy in the traditional sense, a phenomenon whose true theological place has not yet been determined.

Pope Benedict XVI

This entire paragraph can be summed up in one line: Protestants today are not heretics because they are not actively working against the unity of the Church. In fact, in the early 1910s and 20s, Protestants had worked towards the unity of the Church, but in a way that the papal administrations of Pius X and Pius XI failed to perceive.

However, the most important phrase in this paragraph is the “positive ecclesial nature”. It would haunt Ratzinger four decades later. In 2000, a mini-controversy erupted over the decision in Dominus Iesus to refer to Protestant churches as “ecclesial communities”. When the German press questioned him about this, he was puzzled that Protestants reacted so vehemently to a simple academic categorisation.

Their response is easily attributable to the Protestants believing that Ratzinger the academic was making a socio-political categorisation. Certainly, his supporters as well as his opponents in the secular media were quick to exploit this misconception. To Ratzinger, however, his was a technical categorisation to recognise that Protestants do not consider a specific hierarchical structure as an essential component of the faith, even as they recognise the presence of biblical offices such as pastor and prophet, and even apostle.

It is a testament to Ratzinger’s sharpness that he distinguished a rejection of fixed hierarchy from the tendency to anarchy. Because of this order, therefore, Protestants can be said to live within their ecclesial communities as bona fide Christian believers.

It is clear that between 1960 and 2000, and in fact up to 2007 when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a clarification on Dominus Iesus, his opinion of Protestants didn’t change, nor did his opinion on how “cramped” the thinking in the Holy See was before Vatican II.

His attitude on Protestants was no doubt also influenced by the effect of the Nazi regime. With many Germans, he shared the horror of Nazism, but concurrently he also experienced the heroism of Protestants as well. Catholic lay and clergy were not the only ones who resisted the Nazi regime.

This presumably allowed him to empathise with later Popes’ concept of the “Ecumenism of Blood”.

No Longer Roman

During his papacy, Benedict performed one action that probably barely registered on the radar of the Catholic press, but irritated the Orthodox Church. That act was dropping the title of “Patriarch of the West”. The Russian Patriarch issued an official complaint to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity that the Pope was breaking olive branches with Eastern Orthodox Church for failing to acknowledge his historical jurisdiction.

Benedict didn’t respond, as he did not over this issue of “ecclesial communities”.

There was a very logical reason to drop the title: the West no longer exists. At least, it does not exist in the sense of the Church as it refers to the long-defunct Western Roman Empire. In the logical mind of an academic like Ratzinger, the terms “Western Church” and “Eastern Church” are anachronisms.

There is also a more sociological reason to drop the title. The Orthodox protested because they operate from the milieu where the Roman people and Roman Church were joined at the head, since that is how the Orthodox Churches perceive themselves. Russian Orthodox, for instance, sees itself as the Church for Russians and by Russians. So, when the Russians or other Orthodox adherents look at the Catholic Church around the world, they see some sort of Church outside of Rome, rather than a local Church in communion with Rome. In the Russian Orthodox world, there is actually an institution called the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR).

The Catholic milieu is different because of the Lateran Treaty that was signed in 1929. Prior to this, the Holy See held that the Pope was head of state of the Papal States, which included Rome. In that scenario, the Roman people were joined with the Roman Church at the head, which was the Pope. With the advent of the Lateran Treaty, the Pope was placed outside the boundaries of Italy, and the Roman people were now headed by the King of Italy instead of the Pope.

Ratzinger hence came of age in this setup where the Pope was now in Rome, but not head of the city. As the title “Patriarch of the West” reflects this national link, the title has become irrelevant.

Benedict is the Pope who marks the end of the transition from the old throne-altar milieu into the new pastoral milieu.

This provided him with a vantage point from which to build his signature concept of reconciled diversity. He demonstrated this in practice with his establishment of the Anglican ordinariate, as well as his participation in many ecumenical endeavours.

By freeing the Papacy from Roman chains, this milieu enabled Benedict XVI to conceive the Papacy anew as an exchange terminus for different ways of living as a Christian under the same Truth of Christ. Pope Francis has developed this further into the concept of the Church as a polyhedron that he has written into some of his encyclicals.

This brings us back to “De-Hellenisation”. In warning against it, Benedict was cautioning against excluding the old Aristotelian patrimony entirely from this new diversity. He wasn’t asserting that it should have returned to its previous privilege that it had possessed since the beginning of the Counter-Reformation.

Rome Off-Centre

The final position of Benedict XVI on the Church can be clearly seen in a response to Cardinal Walter Kasper that he wrote in the America Magazine when he accused Ratzinger and Pope Saint John Paul II of turning back the clock on Vatican II by covertly endorsing Roman centralism in Dominus Iesus.

Ratzinger’s response was unequivocal: neither John Paul II nor he wished to overturn Vatican II’s recognition that the Roman Church is not identical to the Universal Church. And as Pope, he was the bishop of the Universal Church, not the Roman Church.

And now, it would seem that Pope Francis has paid the best possible kudos to his predecessor by reaching to the peripheries outside of Rome.

No wonder both of them were on such good terms after Benedict’s resignation!

Eating from the Tree yet Not Knowing Good from Evil

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Long ago, twin brothers Rhian and Rafal founded the School for Good and Evil, created to groom fairy tale heroes (called “Evers”) and villains (called “Nevers”). Dissatisfied with evil’s constant submission to good, Rafal attacks Rhian using blood magic. There is a twist at the end (and I won’t spoil it for you) but this premise forms the foundation for Netflix’s latest production – The School for Good and Evil 

Despite enduring mixed reviews from professional critics, the movie is rich with narrative subtext and for those with Judeo-Christian upbringing, an immediate allegory for brothers Rhian and Rafal mirroring the Bible’s Book of Genesis- Cain and Abel. And if one extends this analogy further, a microcosm for the metaphysical realities of good versus evil.

Centuries later, this motif of duality repeats itself in the village of Gavaldon where best friends Sophie and Agatha learn about the legendary school from a bookshop owner. Sophie has spent her formative years “training” to be an “Ever”, she’s portrayed as your stereotypical Disney princess in the beginning while Agatha has no such lofty aspirations, longing to live an ordinary life. One night, a magical creature uproots them from their homes and to their joint dismay, Sophie is delivered to the School for Evil to her chagrin while Agatha, despite having no such calling (or ignorant of it) is dropped at the School for Good. Needless to say, both struggle in their respective classes, Sophie having trained all her life to be good, is ill prepared in the ways of evil; Agatha, having lived a life of simplicity, is flummoxed by the strict rules (Torah observant Jews will recognise the symbology of the 613 Laws in this) and both are outcast by their peers. This is where it gets interesting because the movie is a fantastic pop-cultural study on “the simple nature of right and wrong”.

A moral choice is not a choice between good and bad. A moral choice is a moral quandary between bad and worse and having the wisdom to choose the more righteous path.

– Jonathan

As Bruce Wayne discovers in Batman Begins, “Is it morally right to steal food to feed oneself or one’s family in a time of extreme poverty?” or are we complicit in their actions for not obeying Luke 3:11 – “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry”? How is it that our ancestors having partaken of the tree of good and evil and sending us into exile, we are still so inept at making good moral choices?

If Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, why are we are so crap at knowing the difference (and choosing good)?

“And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

Genesis 2:9

Now in the Garden of Eden there were two trees standing in the midst of it. One was the Tree Of Life, the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man was to live by the Tree Of Life; but he was not to touch the other tree or he would die. But man did partake of the other tree, and when he did, death entered into him by his sin, and he became separated from God.

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

Genesis 3:6

The Hebrew wording in Genesis 2:15 and 17 is important here. “Then Yahweh God took the human, put him into the garden of Eden to avad or (work) it and to shamar or (keep) it.” The avad and shamar are job descriptions mirroring one other place in the Bible – Levites working in the temple. Therefore, Adam and Eve are royal priests working in the Holy of Holies, with God present.

What did God actually command about the eating from the trees?

In verse 16, “Yahweh God commanded the human saying, ‘From all the trees of the garden you may surely eat but from the tree of knowing good and bad you shall not eat because in the day you eat from that tree you will surely die” – in the Hebrew, there’s a double emphasis on eat aka “eat eat” – because it is His will that we have life and multiply. The first command doesn’t place the tree of life off-limits, and it is when you obey this command, that you get the tree of life. However, eating from the tree of knowing good and bad will result in forfeiting the eternal life that was already yours. In the Hebrew, there’s also a double emphasis on die aka “die die”. This isn’t a warning as many misunderstand, that “if you eat from the trees of knowing good and bad God will kill you.”

The wage of death comes not from God but rather from a human who’s taken the knowledge of good and bad into their own hands. God exiles them from the garden so that they can’t eat from the tree of life which means that they’ll eventually die and it’s a consequence of our disobedience for taking without being given (remember Abraham because he will become relevant later in this read). And it’s the taking that leads us to the situation that Cain and Abel encounter resulting in the first death – a murder. Cain obviously knows murder is evil, when he attempts to hide the fact from God with “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

God knew, and Cain also knew that God knew, yet chose to lie and the rhetoric was not just an instrument to expose Cain’s guilt but also a chance for Cain to confess and seek forgiveness but having knowledge of good and evil still did not give Cain the necessary wisdom to know how to choose righteously or morally.

Adam and Eve lived in a state of moral immaturity. We can infer from the Lord’s command that humanity was in an infant state and that growing wise was not something to be grasped and known just by eating of the fruit but rather, something to be learned. God wants to shelter and protect Adam and Eve from good and bad until they can learn wisdom from Him to become wise rulers over the garden. And so the question is, how are you going to get wisdom?

And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

2 Corinthians 11:14

“Good becomes evil, evil becomes good”

Good and evil: A mirror for our reality

God gives us the gift of life and then when we start ruling the world as stewards, we start introducing new variables into the world: how do you quantify and reward contribution? how do you equitably apportion time off work? What is fair? Who arbitrates? Every good thing in our lives is also matched by an equal or greater number of opportunities to ruin it by taking our own knowledge of good and bad because we start to see the world through our own perspectives rather than the Father’s.

Slippery slopes and the “simple” nature of right and wrong

How many of you are familiar with this feeling? “I work harder than my rivals, I deserve more money, I deserve more time off.” Sooner or later, we start making justifications for decisions that seem good in our eyes. Through these justifications, we start redefining evil as good, neglecting our perceived competitor’s wellbeing as much as we care about our’s. Suddenly, we are eating from the wrong tree and it seems like the right thing to do.

What is the right thing or wrong thing to do?

In the Bible, the serpent is described in Hebrew as “more arum than any beast of the field” or “more shrewd”. In the book of Proverbs, to be arum is a positive trait of the righteous: It’s the ability to consider all the factors involved, find the solution and be able to creatively use wisdom to move forward in righteousness.

Living by the Torah, the Pharisees were often quite wise and were very holy people but what Jesus did not appreciate was how the Word of God was weaponised by some Pharisees who used knowledge of the Laws to oppress those they viewed as “less holy” than they were. In Matthew 12:12, Pharisees attempted to trick Jesus. They ask if it’s lawful to heal on the Sabbath, since healing is “work,” and the Law supposedly forbids it. In other words, One can be wise to good ends or ill.

What can go wrong if we look at superficialities and decide on what is good or evil for ourselves

“Once upon a time good was real and true. Now we are in an age of self-centred perfectionism!”

Professor Clarissa Dovey, School of Good and Evil

Jesus however, bearing the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, turns it back on them: “Who would not lift one of their sheep from a pit if it fell in on the Sabbath?” Jesus’ question assumes that most everyone would choose to show mercy to the sheep instead of woodenly following the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of it – Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Contrary to common perception, Jesus is not teaching that observing the Sabbath is wrong. Nor is He suggesting that the literal meaning of any law is unimportant but rather that the Sabbath was one of God’s gifts to Israel. The requirement not to work was intended to bring God’s people rest – just like God Himself rested on the 7th day – not to add to their burden. Jesus is objecting to how the Pharisees have twisted God’s commands. Jesus shows that the Pharisees don’t understand that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 12:7). It is a fundamental example of “knowing good and evil” still does not equip you with functional wisdom to know the difference and choose/act accordingly.

Indeed, in this age of “wokism” represented with self-centred perfectionism, we have become obsessed with virtue signalling and turned “good” into a weapon of attack.

“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good but God“

Luke 18:19

Like the Father, Our Lord continues to prompt us to consider who deserves to be called “good.” The Lord’s fundamental lesson here is that goodness flows not from simply following a rule book and doing good deeds, but rather from God Himself. Jesus invites us to carry our cross (fundamental to us not redefining good and evil in our own eyes because when we take on our shoulder despite what we perceive to be “unfair”, we are in essence trusting God to do right by us) and to follow Him, the only means of doing good by God’s benchmark standard. 

“The humans become like one of us knowing good and bad because they took from that tree. So Let’s send them out so they don’t take from the tree of life and eat and live forever.”

Genesis 3:22

God wants His people to have the knowledge of good and evil, but it has to be matched with the ability to listen to God’s voice first: Proverbs 1:7 – The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The serpent weaponises his wisdom through lies between truths “you will be like Elohim” (and indeed we became like Him but without His understanding), manipulated Adam and Eve to “take” wisdom on their own terms. When that happened, God had to cast us out for our own eventual salvation and safety. Else, we would be like the morningstar, knowing good and evil, and damned for eternity for rebellion.

Stewardship can go very wrong when one is ill equipped without wisdom

The human condition: Are we currently equipped with wisdom to properly steward the garden?

The Bible shows a repeated narrative of humans failing their tests and then learning wisdom through faith and trust in God. If, Abraham did nothing to gain a son for himself but just trusted God, there would be no Ishmael only Isaac (and not to mention none of the sin and evil for casting Hagar and her baby out into the desert). More importantly, Abraham took responsibility in contrast to Adam’s “Eve gave it to me to eat” and Eve’s “the serpent made me do it”. That in itself was the beginning of wisdom.

Abraham’s repeated pattern of obedience from honouring all the requirements that God made, including male circumcision,  to obeying God’s call to leave Mesopotamia, and to travel to the land of Canaan with Sarah, his nephew Lot, and their entire possessions, proved that he was worthy of becoming the “father of many nations”. By Genesis 22, Abraham’s first great failure in the taking of a son instead of waiting for the one God promised is mirrored in a great test of obedience when he was prepared to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command.

Our time here in exile, like our fathers, is indeed our own graduate course in the School of Good and Evil. We are being groomed to rule beside our Lord in the garden and we need God’s Holy Spirit for wisdom, it is not something we can merely take for ourselves.

Ora et Labora, my brothers and sisters.

Desiderio Desideravi: Christ’s passion for all humanity

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In Apostolic Letter, Pope Francis takes us to the heart of the Eucharist in the Mass

If you translate the title of Pope Francis’ latest Apostolic Letter, Desiderio Desideravi, it reads “With desire I have desired”. The significance of a repetitive word may not be apparent to the English reader.

But in Latin, as in some Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese and even Malay-Indonesian, it captures the essence of what it means. Desiderio Desideravi is taken from the Church’s Latin Vulgate of Luke 22:15, “et ait illis desiderio desideravi hoc pascha manducare vobiscum antequam patiar.” In English it is, “And he said to them: With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you, before I suffer”.

To emphasise its meaning, the bibles of most Catholic dioceses around the world translate it as “I have ardently longed” (New Jerusalem Bible) or “I have eagerly desired” (New American Bible).

So, “With desire I have desired” can also be understood as a “passionate desire”.

It recalls the overwhelmingly successful movie, “Passion of the Christ”. Yup, that Mel Gibson movie. Not that he is a big fan of Pope Francis, as he has been stirring up discontent against the Holy Father’s motu proprio, Traditionis Custodes, that restricts celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Since it was released in July 2021, there has been much unhappiness among TLM followers. They accused the Pope of being a heretic for tampering with the “Mass of the Ages”, among other things. This is the underlying reason why the Holy Father wrote Desiderio Desideravi, which is addressed to all Catholics — clergy, religious and lay.

Rubrics’ purpose in the Mass

With his usual depth, the Pope sees the outroar over the TLM as not just about the Latin language or Mass. It goes far deeper than that. In his Apostolic Letter, Pope Francis takes us back to the heart of what the Eucharist is about, beneath all the rubrics.

In essence, the Holy Father points to Christ’s two great commandments: The first and greatest is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. And the second, “Love your neighbour as yourself”.

Both were not meant to supplant or justify the 10 Commandments (or ten thousand, as the Pharisees would have it), but to indicate what the entire Law was supposed to achieve. Christ did that because the Pharisees had reduced the Law to burdensome, hard-to-follow rules.

Rubrics guarantee the beauty of the Eucharistic celebration. Image: Unsplash, Josh Applegate

This is exactly what Traditionis Custodes’ opponents have done. They are obsessed with rubrics to the point of forgetting why they are there. In Desiderio Desideravi, Pope Francis reminds us of the role they perform in the primary reason why the Eucharist exists.

The rubrics guarantee the beauty of the Lord’s Last Supper in the Mass: that it performs all its purposes. This is because the Eucharist is full of symbolic language, as it is based on the Passover, which is replete with symbolism.

When Christ said, “Do this in memory of me”, the “this” didn’t simply refer to the acts of breaking bread and sharing wine. It refers to the entire Passover celebration. This is why we call Christ the “Passover Lamb”.

In Desiderio Desideravi, Pope Francis explains how Christ coopted the Passover symbolism for Himself.

The first element is a celebration of God delivering the Jews from Egypt. In the Last Supper, Christ elevates the symbolism to God delivering all of mankind from the clutches of the Devil. Pope Francis highlights that the Eucharist is meant to be for “every man from every tribe, every nation” (Rev 5:9, cited in Desiderio Desideravi, Para 4).

In the original Passover, the Matzah bread is broken to denote the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus. As Pope Francis narrates, the Eucharist has replaced this with the breaking of Christ’s Body and Blood on the cross in cavalry.

And all of this is connected by the desire of Christ to be God-with-Us. As the Pope explains, the core of the Good News is that Christ desires to share this Last Supper with every person in the world due to the intensity of God’s love for us. In this sense, the Eucharistic celebration is the embodiment and the manifestation of Christ, “more than just a representation” (DD, Para 9).

The Old and New Creation link

The Church, as an assembly, is part of this ongoing Supper until Christ’s Second Coming. Our participation in this unfolding of God’s love begins when we are baptised and inducted into the Body of Christ. Pope Francis shares that water in the baptismal rite is a symbol of life and rejuvenation all the way from Genesis, where the Spirit of God hovered over the waters of formless creation.

And since Jesus is also the Water of Life, the baptismal font is the Christian’s first experience of the same Paschal Mystery of the Last Supper. At the Eucharist, we are plunged into the depths of God’s love just as we are plunged into water at baptism. What is common to both is the experience of being totally immersed in something. Because since God gave his full passion and dedication to us, we are obliged to return the same.

In the event of the Passion, the Church bursts forth from Christ’s side on the Cross, just as Eve bursts forth from the side of Adam in Genesis. Here, Pope Francis applies the famous metaphor of the Church as bride of Christ in a fresh way. Although, as Christians, we are nominally familiar with regards to Eve as Adam’s bride, but we don’t quite automatically make that link on the lance that pierced Christ’s Body.

There were no bridal salons in Eden, after all! Nonetheless, Pope Francis use of this reminds us of the eschatological link between the old creation in Genesis and the New Creation made by Jesus in the Gospel.

The liturgy is an event where God is with Us as Jesus was with His disciples at the Last Supper.

With this understanding at the core, we can approach the Eucharist from a proper perspective. The Eucharist must demonstrate the transcendent beauty of the Last Supper and provide for the participation of all members of Christ’s Mystical Body.

Although the Real Presence is real, the other elements of the ritual are also symbolic, bearing the transformed symbolism explained earlier in this article. Even the bread and wine are, in a certain sense, symbols. Although they are the true Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, they are also symbols of the entire Body of Christ, the Church.

Liturgy is where God is with us

Returning to the Apostolic Letter, the focus is on Christ, not on any individual Christian. The Liturgy, as an Event, is a free gift from Christ. It comes from God to man. It is not a performance of man for God. At the same time, it is a gathering. The physical bread that is broken as the Body of Christ is united again in the Mystical Body of Christ, which is that all believers are gathered to worship Him as one Body.

Pope Francis emphasises to us that the Liturgy is about the group, and not about individuals. If we forget this, then we fall into a Gnostic subjectivism, which is one of the results of secular post-modernism, with its focus on subjective feeling. Or else, we fall into a salvation-by-works neo-Pelagianism, where we believe a specific form of prayer achieves salvation.

In a sense, then, the Liturgy is neither made-for-us or made-for-God, but is an event where God is with Us as Jesus was with His disciples at the Last Supper.

The latter is the core problem with the opponents of Traditiones Custodes. They have focused too excessively on specific rubrics, such as the priest facing the altar instead of the people. In doing so, they have missed the spirit of the rubrics. Although Pope Francis does not make any allusions here, this is precisely the spirit of the Pharisees who chastised Christ for healing people on the Sabbath. It was for such that Christ provided the Two Great Commandments.

The key part of the Pope’s reflection is found in paragraph 31, where he comments that the point of the liturgical reform at the Second Vatican Council was to enable the Liturgy to allow Christians to “better grow in our capacity to fully live the liturgical action”.

With this in mind, the Church can consider how to help priests to properly understand what the Liturgy entails, which attains its perfection when it fully reveals the glory of God to all present. The rubrics are there to ensure perfection, so they cannot be improvised. And yet they are not totally irreformable, because liturgy is an art with its own intrinsic beauty. There is flow and pattern in the liturgy and all its various ritual gestures. This is the Art of Celebration, or Ars Celebrandi.

The rubrics are there to provide norms, just as when a professional artist trains his protégé in drawing forms and filling in colour.

This finally brings us to the position of the celebrant, who takes on Persona Christi at the liturgical celebration. The presiding role of the celebrant is itself a symbol of Christ’s presence at the Last Supper. And the rubrics are there to guide the priest on embodying this presence in the celebration, since this presence is the “highest norm” (DD, Para 57).

What we get ultimately is a unique channel of grace directly from Heaven to the entire body of Christ, where the celebrant – priest or bishop – is not the mediator of Lord Jesus, but His instrument or sign instead. And, in particular, he is the sign of God’s fathomless love for us.

Main Image: Unsplash, Ashwin Vaswani

38 million unborn babies aborted each year in Asia

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Why countries outside the US must not be too obsessed with Roe vs Wade ruling

When the United States Supreme Court reversed the decades-old Roe vs Wade case that recognised women’s constitutional right to have abortions, it received prominent news coverage around the world.

There is a sense of widespread relief among pro-life supporters. Why is this so? The latest ruling is not about abortion rights as it is about an interpretation of the US Constitution.

What the US justices ruled is that the Court’s previous decision in 1973 that the 14th Amendment protected abortion rights was “an abuse of judicial authority” and relied on “egregiously wrong” reasoning.

They returned to the 50 states the responsibility of deciding whether abortion should be allowed in their respective territories. At the time of writing, it is still legal in many states. Depending on which party is in power, who is to say Roe v Wade won’t make a comeback?

But this latest ruling has no bearing outside the United States. And Roe vs Wade should not be of any concern to Asia.

Why? Because of this grim statistic from the US-based Guttmacher Institute: The lives of 38 million unborn children killed in their mothers’ wombs each year in Asia. This includes almost six million in Southeast Asia from 2015 to 2019, which is an increase of 21% from the 1990-1994 period.

For the sake of comparison and depending on whether it’s the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or Guttmacher’s statistics are used, between 630,000 and a million mothers opt for abortions each year in the United States.

The problem as the numbers show is that this crisis is about 38 times more acute in Asia. In Southeast Asia only Brunei, Laos and the Philippines prohibit abortion outright.

In Singapore from a peak of 23,512 abortions in 1985 the numbers have steadily dropped to 4,029 (Ministry of Health) in 2020. Across the Causeway, the Federation of Reproductive Health Associations Malaysia estimates that about 90,000 pregnancies are aborted annually. The figure in Indonesia was 1.7 million in 2018, and 437,000 in Thailand during 2015–2019, according to Gettmacher’s data.

There are no official statistics for Vietnam, but the country’s news outlet, VN Express, reported in 2016 that 40% of all pregnancies in the country were terminated. This would put the number of abortions at about a million in that year which had 1.49 million live births.

Unplanned pregnancies have led many, especially impoverished women, to opt for unsafe abortion.
Pexels, Nicole Ganze

What it takes to stop the killing of unborn babies in Asia?

The answer to this is about changing hearts and minds. For Catholics, non-Catholic Christians and people of goodwill, this is the only sure-fire way to protect the lives of the unborn.

But the obstacle towards this goal is massive because not all cultures and religions believe that life begins at conception. Compounding it, legislation to provide “safe” access to abortion has been around since 1948, with Japan the first to legalise it in Asia, to curb the “population bomb” in the world’s biggest continent.

Adding to this problem, many secular governments are quick to rebuff religious teachings, especially the Catholic Church’s, as not being in touch with the times.

This point was underlined in passing the Singapore Abortion Bill in 1969 against the backdrop of too many women “resorting to dangerous do-it-yourself home procedures” or “to back-street and illegal abortionists, usually with tragic results”.

The then-Minister of Health Chua Sian Chin highlighted three main objections to the Bill, the first of which was religious:

Briefly the basis of objection is that abortions destroy the life of a foetus. Since the foetus is the beginning of human life, induction of abortion is equivalent to murder. This is a matter of viewpoint. Learned men, medical or otherwise, for centuries have not been able to agree on whether the foetus is human life.

In my view abortion is not murder. The destruction of the early conceptus differs in no essential way from destruction of the sperm cell or egg cell before the act of fertilization. No one mourns for a sperm killed by a spermatoxic contraceptive cream or an ovum permitted to die twelve hours after ovulation, because the woman from whose ovary it came knew how to prevent its survival by practising the rhythm technique of birth control.

After 53 years, is this the prevailing view today? I have no doubt it is with the growing secularism among Asians, even among not a few Catholics and in unlikely places such as in the Philippines. The Catholic majority country is under pressure from advocacy groups such as the Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network to pass abortion laws. Rogue priests often aid their cause.

What must Christians do?

It is one thing to teach that abortion is the killing of an unborn human life and a grave sin. It is another thing not to address the underlying causes that lead women to end their children’s lives.

As cited in Singapore’s passing of the Abortion Bill in 1969, the causes are the same everywhere: unplanned pregnancies have led many, especially impoverished women, to opt for unsafe abortion. They have nowhere and no one to turn to for comfort and advice. The fear that they are bringing a baby into dire poverty is often the trigger to kill their babies before birth.

At the height of abortion cases in Singapore in 1985, Redemptorist Father Edmund Dunne started the Family Life Society (now known as Catholic Family Life) to offer pregnancy crisis counselling and help to all women, regardless of religious background. Two years later he started Pregnancy Crisis & Support, a hotline for those in dire need of a friendly listening ear. It was the first of its kind in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Fr Dunne’s efforts led to other non-Catholic groups reaching out to women facing a pregnancy crisis. Did all this good work lead to a decline in abortions over the decades? I have no doubt it did.

But this isn’t enough. Catholics cannot twiddle their thumbs and leave the heavy lifting to those like the late Fr Dunne. It takes a village to transform hearts and minds, and if we are to achieve this, every Catholic must get on board.

It begins with catechising our fellow Catholics, especially our young, on the sanctity of life and why sex outside of marriage can only lead to knots such as unplanned pregnancies. Abortion has never been and never can be a human right. Pope Benedict XVI emphasised this point in Vienna in 2007 in his address to diplomats and representatives of international organisations:

It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right. It is the very opposite, it is a deep wound in society.

Pope Benedict XVI

Read: EU Bishops say ‘No such thing as a right to abortion’

The Jesus way to changing hearts

Faced with crisis, Catholics are often in the habit of asking, “What would Jesus do?”. That’s the wrong question because Christ left us a template on what to do. So, the question should be, “What did Jesus do?”.

Christ never forced His listeners to follow Him or do what He did. Instead, He invited people to listen to His Gospel, the Good News of Salvation. Christ spoke with love for the people who heard Him and the numbers who followed Him grew because they could not get enough of what He was teaching them. His following swelled to such an extent that it frightened the Jewish leaders into plotting to crucify Him on the Cross.

This is why activism in any form, for or against causes, never convinces anyone. Instead, it creates animosity, hatred and division.

Beyond catechising every Catholic first and creating disciples to spread this truth about the evil of abortion, we must evangelise the unbelieving world. And we must use every scientific evidence at our disposal and rope in such scientists to help us enlighten the sceptics of the world.

Read: Science on when human life begins

Only when we can speak of the Catholic truth about the beginning of life, we will have the vaccine to protect the unborn from the increasing abortion legislation to execute them before they are given a chance to live from womb to tomb.

When people realise this is what is actually written in their hearts about the reality of life and murder, then, our efforts to stop the killing of millions of babies in their mothers’ wombs in Asia and beyond can make real headway.

What a Cardinal William Goh means

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Singapore Church Shepherd set to be in largest Asian bloc to elect future Popes

  • What it means for the Asian and Singapore Churches
  • What it means to be Cardinal William Goh
  • Brief History of Cardinals
  • Electing a Pope and how Conclaves came about

At the College of Cardinals meeting Pope Francis has called for on 27 August, the Singapore Catholic Church will receive its first Cardinal. Archbishop William Goh is among 21, including five other Asians, the Pope will elevate to this rank at the Consistory.

This order of bishops, who don red hats, is only second in the Church hierarchy after the Vicar of Christ. As head of the Singapore Catholic Church, Abp William, 64, will be Cardinal Priest and the sole ethnic Chinese in the College who is also the only one who speaks Mandarin. He will join the group of Electors of future popes.

What it means for the Asian Church

His rise in rank, as well as those of other Asians, should be seen in the light of the work of European Catholic missionaries who arrived in Asia in the 16th century (the region eastwards of the Middle East). Their toil to spread the Gospel has been bearing great fruits for quite some time now.

Pope Pius XII gave due recognition to the work of these European missionaries In a 1946 Consistory when he created Asia’s first cardinal, Bishop Thomas Tien-ken-sin, Vicar Apostolic of Qingdao in China. Seven years later in 1953, he gave the Red Hat to the second Asian – Archbishop Valerian Gracias, head of the Bombay (Mumbai) Archdiocese in India.

Following in the footsteps of Pius XII, John XXIII also created two, Paul VI, 11, John Paul II, 20, and Benedict XVI, 8. But it is Pope Francis who, within nine years in the Chair of St Peter, went full throttle with 20, including those in the coming August Consistory.

Francis’ reach went into Asian countries that have never had Cardinals and touched those such as Bangladesh Archbishop of Dhaka Patrick D’Rozario in 2016.

Out of the 25 Asians currently in the College, he created 12 of them. Except for one, all were from Southeast Asia, including for the first time from the episcopal sees of Laos and Myanmar. Malaysian (2016) and Bruneian (2020) bishops were among this cohort but they have since died.

From end of August this will be total number of Cardinals in the College:

ContinentElectorsNon-ElectorsTotal
Europe8067147
North America23932
Latin America381856
Africa241539
Asia321446
Oceania422
Total201125326

This is a significant jump in Asian pope electors compared to the four previous conclaves when five were in the Sistine Chapel from which Paul VI emerged as Pope. Nine were there when John Paul I and II were chosen, and 10 were at both Benedict XVI and Francis’ elections. To put this in perspective, from the end of August Asian cardinals will have a far bigger say in who will be the next Pope. Whether he will emerge from among their numbers we do not know.

But their enlarged presence in the College will give the Asian Church’s voice more attention to evangelise a continent of 4.7 billion people that is still under 11 percent Catholic (excluding China, where statistics are difficult to compile).

What it means for the Singapore Church

A Cardinal William Goh will not change the nature of his office as Archbishop of Singapore. His episcopal see remains at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd. It will be business as usual for the Singapore Church, but how Catholics address him will change. Currently, the style for Archbishop or Bishop is inherited from the British colonial days, which is “Your and His Grace” in greeting and writing. Outside of most Commonwealth countries, the norm is “His and Your Excellency”.

The British style for Cardinals is “His and Your Lordship”.

This is unlikely to be the case with Card William. After Abp Anthony Soter Fernandez was created Cardinal in 2016, a precedent was set as even the Catholic Bishops Conference of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei styled him as “His Eminence”. This was also adopted for Brunei’s Apostolate Vicar Cornelius Sim in 2020. Both have since died in 2020 and 2021.

Vestments’ colour will also change. From amaranth red (similar to purple) for bishops, Card William will switch to scarlet.

What it means to be Cardinal William Goh

After he was consecrated and installed as the fourth Archbishop of Singapore on 18 May 2013, he told the Archdiocese Catholic News, “I am still the same old Fr William Goh, with the same passion and love for Christ and His Church.

“The office does not change me but I hope I can change the office. I will still be that Shepherd of Christ that I am called to be, to seek the lost, console the hopeless, heal the wounded, give sight to the blind, reconcile those estranged and build bridges and communion in the Church and with the rest of humanity.”

Abp William said his vision “is to work with my brother priests to renew the faithful and together with the laity, to build a vibrant and evangelical Church so that we will be the face of Christ in a world that is bereft of hope and love”.

He has done a lot since then. Setting up the Office of the New Evangelisation or ONE, is his signature centrepiece. His work in building up the Church will continue with more vibrancy and not regress as Cardinal. At heart, he is still Fr William, but some things will have to change and these are spelt out in Chapter III, The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, of the Code of Canon Law 349-359.

A few things stand out.

While the primary duty of Cardinals is to elect Popes, they are also required to assist the Holy Father collegially to deal with questions of major importance.

They may also be called as individuals to help him in matters they are familiar with or have a history of expertise. These include those living in their respective dioceses overseas. This means Card William will have to go to Rome whenever the Pope calls him if he is needed. These are instances that are outside his mission as Archbishop of Singapore.

Finally, although Card William will not live in Rome, the Pope will assign him a titular church in the city, as a symbol of his closeness to the Holy Father in assisting him in Church affairs.

Brief History of Cardinals

The custom of a group of select clergy assisting the Pope in the governance of the Church can be traced back to the 1st century when the third successor of St Peter, Pope St. Cletus or Anacletus (76–88), ordained 25 presbyters (early Church priesthood) for the city of Rome. They helped him, as Bishop of the city, to celebrate the Eucharist and administer the Sacraments in his place.

Towards the end of the 1st century, Pope St. Evaristus (97–105) divided the city’s Church’s titles or properties (today’s equivalent to dioceses) among the 25. This practice of assisting the Bishop of Rome developed in the 5th century during Pope St. Simplicius’ reign (468–483).

He arranged for some successor bishops of the original 25 to assist him at his major basilicas of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Lawrence. In time they evolved to become his confidants in the governance of the Church and matters of doctrine. The “dioceses” of these chosen bishops are known today as ‘‘suburbicarian sees”.  In later centuries they were conferred with the rank of Cardinal Bishops.

The term “cardinal” first appeared during the pontificate of Stephen III. In the Roman Synod of 769, it was decided that Popes should be elected from among deacons and cardinal priests. At the time, the 18 deacons were charged with providing for the needy in Rome. By the 12th century, each of their deaconries had a cardinal leading their work.

The role of Cardinals and their College can change as the Pope sees fit because it was his predecessors who created them. And they have changed over the centuries and recently, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II made substantial modifications.

Pope Francis is doing the same now.

So, how Popes are elected and the role of Cardinals can change. It is the prerogative of the Holy Father to select who should be in the College of Cardinals and no one else, as he is the Vicar of Christ and the Supreme Lawgiver for the Church.

More information: Why cardinals have ranks, and how Pope Francis changed them

CNS photo/Paul Haring

Electing a Pope and how Conclaves came about

Excerpt from the 2002 edition of the Catholic Encyclopaedia

Until the 4th century the method of electing the Bishop of Rome did not differ considerably from that used in other bishoprics. The neighbouring bishops, the Roman clergy, and the laity of Rome each participated in the election.

Since the role of these various classes of electors was somewhat unclear and the office was one of extreme importance, the procedure was open to abuse.

Consequently, with the advent of the Christian Roman emperors (4th century) the imperial influence was brought to bear on papal elections.

The first important step in the attempt to reform papal elections was taken by Pope Nicholas II on 13 April, 1059, at the Council of Rome. The decree, which he published, declared that the papal electors were henceforth to be only the higher clergy of Rome (i.e., the Cardinals) with the rest of the clergy and the laity permitted merely to give approbation to the election. The emperor was likewise to be informed of the results of the election and allowed to confirm the choice that had already been made, although it was made clear that this was only a concession granted to him by the Holy See.

Provisions were made also for holding the election outside the city of Rome, if conditions warranted.

At the Lateran Council of 1179 Pope Alexander III, in the Apostolic Constitution Licet de vitanda discordia, further stipulated that all Cardinals were to be considered equal, and that a two-thirds majority of the votes was necessary for a valid election. With the passage of time, it became apparent that the College of Cardinals was on occasion prone to delay its selection of a pope and, as a result, to inflict upon the Church the harmful effects of a long interregnum.

To remedy this situation, Gregory X, by means of his bull Ubi periculum (1274), instituted the conclave system of strict seclusion to secure a more rapid papal succession. Further modifications were added in 1562 by Pope Pius IV who issued regulations regarding the method of voting in the conclave through his bull In eligendis.

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