A Declaração do Lago Garda Suplica que Papa Francisco Cumpra suas Funções de Vigário de Cristo.

O Roman Forum é uma organização sem fins lucrativos que se dedica a defesa da Doutrina Católica. Foi fundada pelo grande filósofo católico alemão Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Apesar de eu acompanhar de perto tudo que se refere a Dietrich von Hildebrand, fui alertado hoje pelo meu amigo Nik, comentarista do blog, que o Roman Forum, no seu último simpósio de julho passado, lançou uma declaração, chamada de Declaração do Lago Garda.

Esta Declaração pinta em cores vivas o atual momento da Igreja e tem uma posição bem crítica ao pontificado do Papa Francisco.

A Declaração segue na linha que os bispos e teólogos da África que comentei ontem vão, a Igreja deve resistir a seus inimigos e defender sua Doutrina e não se adaptar ao pecado humano. A Igreja deve mostrar Cristo a todos e não escondê-Lo.

Vejamos esta Declaração disponibilzada no site do Roman Forum, marco em negrito as críticas ao Papa Francisco.

The Lake Garda Statement

On the Ecclesial and Civilizational Crisis

Preamble

Among the Catholic faithful the conviction grows that the ongoing crisis in the Church and the drastic moral decline of our civilization have entered a critical new phase which represents a turning point in the history of the world.

In the Church, a Synod on the Family has devolved into a battle to defend the indissolubility of marriage from an attack within, pitting cardinal against cardinal and bishop against bishop. The Synod has produced a midterm relatio, approved by the Pope himself, which calls for the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion on a “case by case” basis without any renunciation of adulterous relations, contrary to the explicit teaching of Pope John Paul II in line with the perennial discipline of the Church. The same document speaks of “valuing” the “homosexual orientation” while recognizing the “precious support for the life of the partners” supposedly provided by “homosexual unions.” Bishop Athanasius Schneider rightly observes that “[t]his is the first time in Church History that such a heterodox text was actually published as a document of an official meeting of Catholic bishops under the guidance of a pope, even though the text only had a preliminary character.”

In Ireland, a popular referendum has legalized “gay marriage” in that once exemplary Catholic country, while in the United States a bare majority of the Supreme Court has imposed “gay marriage” on all fifty states. Yet the Pope and the Vatican observe a resounding silence. At the same time, the Vatican hosts conferences on climate change with notorious atheists who advocate population control and “sustainable development goals” (SDGs) that would only oppress ordinary people, including the poor, while leaving untouched the hegemony of multinational corporations which, in fact, are working with the United Nations to fashion a worldwide SDG regime. The Vatican itself has endorsed a SDG calling on member nations to “ensure universal sexual and reproductive health and rights.”

As the nations descend ever more rapidly into an abyss of depravity, the Pope has issued a 185-page encyclical on an ecological crisis that diverts attention from the catastrophic collapse of sexual morality in a civilization ridden by divorce, contraception, and abortion. As to abortion, the encyclical speaks of the “human embryo” in the context of “concern for the protection of nature,” while earlier lamenting the extinction of plant and animal species as a loss to our children and a diminution of the glory owed to God.

Echoing the belief of many Catholics, Bishop Schneider has stated that we are in the midst of the “fourth great crisis” in Church History, involving “a tremendous confusion over doctrine and liturgy. We have already been in this for 50 years.” In this context the Roman Forum, founded by the late Dietrich von Hildebrand, has decided to issue this Statement on the ecclesial and civilizational crisis, calling upon the leadership of the Church, above all the Supreme Pontiff, to return to the path from which much of the human element of the Church has strayed since the Second Vatican Council. Because we believe this twin crisis is Christological, not ecological, we call in particular for a recovery of the Church’s traditional teaching on the Social Reign of Christ the King as the only sure remedy for the temporal and spiritual ills that now threaten both the Church and human society.

Introduction

Only eleven years before the commencement of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Pius XII issued a prophetic admonition. Speaking of the long history of the Church’s members “using every endeavor to convert their fellow citizens to the religion of Jesus Christ and to fashion their morals according to its pattern, so as to safeguard both religion and the state from approaching danger,” Pius XII urged a renewal of missionary activity in the face of the rising specter of a civilizational apostasy and its fatal consequences:

Venerable Brethren, you are well aware that almost the whole human race is today allowing itself to be driven into two opposing camps, for Christ or against Christ. The human race is involved today in a supreme crisis, which will issue in its salvation by Christ, or in its dire destruction.

Pius XII’s assessment, in line with that of his predecessors in the Church’s long confrontation with the errors of modernity, was abruptly abandoned after the Council in favor of the now prevailing “conciliar optimism” regarding what Gaudium et spes described as the “current trend of the world.”

Within the Church, moreover, we have witnessed during the post-conciliar epoch what the future Pope Benedict XVI famously described as “a continuing process of decay that has gone on largely on the basis of appeals to the Council, and thus has discredited the Council in the eyes of many people.” An ill-defined ecumenism promotes what Pope Pius XI called “a most grave error, by which the foundations of the Catholic faith are completely destroyed” — meaning the idea that Christian unity no longer requires “the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it” — as if membership in the Catholic Church no longer mattered for the salvation of souls. A perpetual process of “dialogue” replaces the Church’s forthright proclamation of the necessity of conversion to the one true religion for both human flourishing in this life and eternal happiness in the life to come. Along with these developments, an unprecedented liturgical reform devised by a committee has ended with what Cardinal Ratzinger called “the collapse of the liturgy” and later, as Pope Benedict XVI, the “banalization of the liturgy.”

Although the traditional teaching is still to be found in the Church’s official documents, in practice churchmen appear to repudiate her divinely bestowed status as the axis mundi, along which all earthly things are ordered to the glory of God and the transcendent common good of eternal beatitude. This alarming tendency, described as if it were an eminently favorable “opening to the world,” has taken its toll on all aspects of the life of the Church, including the focus of this Statement: Catholic social teaching on the duties of men and nations to Christ the King and the dire consequences of failing to honor those duties in personal, civic, and political life.

The Authentic Social Teaching

The authentic social teaching of the Catholic Church has constantly reminded the faithful of their divinely imposed duty to attend to the needs of the poor according to the universal destination of earthly goods and in obedience to Our Lord’s injunction: “Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” No merely human organization has ever excelled the Church in her care for the poor, even if this is not her primary mission on earth. But nowhere does she enjoin upon the faithful any duty to submit the administration of justice and charity either to an “invisible hand” or to regulatory bureaucracies controlled by men without faith who are more often than not oppressors of the poor under the guise of defending their rights. We see the consequences of such submission, for example, in the grinding poverty of Latin America, where global capitalism has callously exploited labor and “liberation theology” has fomented violent revolution while liberating no one.

Catholic social teaching obliges us to recognize and oppose capitalist individualist materialism as well as socialist collectivist materialism. Both lack the proper sense of Catholic and natural order and both have been brutally disrespectful of Christian morality and God’s earth. Globalist capitalism, enabled by governmental privileges and protections, as well as militant appeals to “American exceptionalism,” has gained much favor in conservative Catholic circles. On the other hand, millenarian socialist programs, involving such elements as “sustainable development goals,” worldwide regulatory regimes, and intrinsically anti-Christian juridical frameworks, including the United Nations, are now regaining favor with the aid of the current pontiff. Both are equally destructive to a proper grasp of how to deal with the real problems of the family, the civic order as a whole, universal peace, and the environment. For both equally neglect the crucial context of man’s destiny as the only creature possessed of an immortal and rational soul in need of grace for redemption, perseverance in the avoidance of gravely evil conduct, and the ultimate attainment of eternal beatitude — the highest good to which all earthly activities should be ordered. Thus, as Pope Leo XIII stressed in his landmark social encyclical Rerum Novarum:

Life on earth, however good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists. It is the soul which is made after the image and likeness of God; it is in the soul that the sovereignty resides in virtue whereof man is commanded to rule the creatures below him and to use all the earth and the ocean for his profit and advantage. “Fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.”

The Church’s True Appeal to Men of Good Will

Respecting society’s observance of the universally applicable moral principles embodied in Catholic social teaching, the popes before the Second Vatican Council never wavered in their insistence that by virtue of her divine founding and universal mission the Church has the unique capacity to establish that brotherhood among men which is otherwise a utopian dream destined to produce dystopian outcomes.

The Church has never ceased to issue an appeal to all men of good will who, by the light of natural reason, seek the good and deplore the evils that assail human society in our time. This appeal, however, ought not to be confused with an indiscriminate collaboration with secular leaders whose plans and sociopolitical and economic structures so often show themselves to be inimical to the eternal values that men of good will naturally recognize. It is, rather, an invitation to enter into the way of the Catholic Church, where seekers of truth will find what they seek in superabundance. This is no mere “triumphalism,” but rather a joyful recognition of the incomparable goods, both natural and supernatural, that God bestows upon humanity through His Church. The Church does not reject the world, but rather seeks its perfection in grace.

As Pope Pius XI declared in Ubi Arcano Dei (1922), his great encyclical on “the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ,” the Holy Catholic Church is “by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ” and “she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state.” Accordingly, it is the Church, and only she, that “is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God…”

As Pope Pius X declared, concerning misguided efforts to entangle the Church in worldly undertakings for the promotion of a universal brotherhood, if “the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead the people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.”

Today, however, the Church’s leaders present her role as merely that of proposing a “contribution” to a vast and quite hopeless neo-Pelagian project in which the United Nations or some other “world political authority” would serve as the juridical framework for a solidaristic world order in which “believers,” regardless of religion, and unbelievers would be co-equal participants. This project is directed, not upward toward Heaven for the salvation of souls, but forward in history toward a godless, hopeless, and painfully trite City of Man falsely lauded as a “civilization of love” or a “renewal of humanity.”

But the truth is that the Catholic Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, is the renewal of humanity, a renewal made possible only by the translation of fallen men into the state of sanctifying grace and the consequent elevation of human society to heights it could never attain by any purely human effort. Thus it is the world that is obliged to contribute to the work of the Church. Yet we witness with amazement a historically sudden inversion of the proper order of things in the Church’s approach to her mission in human society.

Whither the Social Kingship of Christ?

With all of these considerations in view, we must ask: What has happened to the Church’s certitude concerning her exclusive and divinely ordained role in the right ordering of human affairs and the fostering of true brotherhood among men? Have the Church’s leaders forgotten that her founder is God Incarnate? Have they somehow misplaced the divine commission to “make disciples of all nations”? Do they still believe the defined dogma that the Church is the sole ark of salvation? Are they still mindful of Our Lord’s warning: “without me you can do nothing”? Do they no longer have confidence in His promise: “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things will be added unto you”?

If the worldwide breakdown in social order could in any respect be characterized as an ecological crisis, how could it be anything but a manifestation of a deeper Christological crisis—a universal mutiny against Christ and the Law of the Gospel lamented by pope after pope before the emergence of the inexplicable conciliar optimism? In a return to the sober realism of his predecessors, who are now belittled as “prophets of doom,” Pope Benedict warned in an address to the clergy of Rome, less than two years before the abrupt end of his pontificate, that the “fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage” has been lost, the “place of moral reasoning… is taken by an instrumental rationality,” “the most elementary rules of humanity collapse” and with the consequent “eclipse of reason… [t]he very future of the world is at stake.”

The fate of the world in every epoch since the Incarnation has been bound up with the state of the Church. The Church’s power to renew the face of the earth involves not only a restoration of faith, hope and charity in the souls of men, but also the defense of natural reason against the onslaughts of sophists in every age. She alone has upheld the correct synthesis of fides et ratio. The Church’s success in accomplishing this mighty work throughout history has always depended upon her vigor in advancing what she calls the Social Kingship of Christ. But it is precisely Christ’s social reign that the “modern world” has rejected, while churchmen fall silent regarding the claims of Christ the King on men and nations. Today, she not only retreats from any confrontation with “the rulers of the world of this darkness” and “the spirits of wickedness in the high places,” but seeks obsessively to dialogue and collaborate with the very forces that desire nothing more ardently than the Church’s final surrender to the spirit of the age.

And yet the truth remains. As Pius X insisted at the turn of the 20th century: “Society cannot be set up unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO.”

In remarkable contrast, the prevailing mentality that is at the root of the ecclesial crisis considers the conviction of this sainted Pope to be nothing other than an idyllic fantasy—even though it reflects the form and pattern nurturing and guiding our entire Christian civilization. Lost on the exponents of this facile rejection of the Social Kingship doctrine is the irony of their own ideological pursuit of what Pius X called “a mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we shall see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity” and producing, were it ever to be realized, “a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion… more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men [as] brothers and comrades at last in the ‘Kingdom of God’…”

Conclusion

The conversion of nations to Christ and trust in Divine Providence are the twin pillars of any truly just society. Yet, after fifty years of an imaginary ecclesial “renewal,” the generality of the Church’s leaders appear to have repudiated in practice the duty to seek the conversion of nations, as if they believed that social metanoia were now impossible even for God. Behind this loss of militancy is a dimming of the Faith itself. In his masterwork on the post-conciliar crisis, Iota Unum, the great Romano Amerio observed that “Faith in Providence thus proclaims the possibility that the world might rise and be healed by a metanoia which it cannot initiate but which it is capable of accepting once it is offered.” That offer must come from the Church, as it has in every age when the collapse of civilization was reversed in miraculous fashion under her supernatural influence.

The ecclesial crisis and the intimately related civilizational crisis will end only when the Church’s offer of social metanoia is renewed once again. But only the Vicar of Christ can effectively extend that offer to the world. Only he can end what amounts to an unprecedented de facto suspension of the Church’s true mission in the name of a Council whose restless “spirit,” moving far beyond even the problematical conciliar texts, has produced what Benedict XVI, speaking just days before his mysterious abdication of the papacy, described as “so many disasters, so many problems, so much suffering” in the Church.

Therefore, we implore the reigning Roman Pontiff to reverse the Church’s course of the past fifty years, abandoning a disastrous “opening to the world” and an endless “dialogue” and fruitless collaboration with the Church’s implacable opponents. With respect to the Synod, we urgently petition the Pope to put a stop to all further efforts to use the synodal process to undermine the indissolubility of marriage—and thus the entire moral edifice of the Church—by means of a sophistical disjunction between doctrine and practice, making a mockery not only of the words of Our Lord Himself but also of the teaching of John Paul II that “only by the acceptance of the Gospel are the hopes that man legitimately places in marriage and in the family capable of being fulfilled.”

And finally, we beseech the Roman Pontiff to fulfill his duty as Vicar of Christ and Universal Shepherd by leading the way to a restoration of the continuity between the Church’s venerable teaching on the Social Kingship of Christ—never repealed—and the practice of churchmen both high and low. This is in accord with the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, which recalls the sacred obligation of Catholics to evangelize their fellow citizens and work for the transformation of social order in keeping with Christ’s kingship:

By constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward enabling them “to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which [they] live. The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church. Christians are called to be the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies.

For these intentions, we make our own the Lord’s prayer for the first Pope, which surely also applies to every one of his successors, especially in this age of unparalleled diabolical disorientation: “And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.”

Mary, Help of Christians, Pray for Us!

9 July 2015
23rd Annual Summer Symposium of the Roman Forum
Gardone Riviera

John C. Rao, D.Phil. (Oxon)
Director, The Roman Forum

Rev. Richard A. Munkelt, Ph.D.
Board Member, The Roman Forum

Prof. Dr. Thomas Heinrich Stark
Faculty Member, The Roman Forum

Christopher A. Ferrara, Esq.
President, American Catholic Lawyers Association

Michael J. Matt
Editor, The Remnant

John Vennari
Editor, Catholic Family News

Sebastian Morello
Faculty Member, The Roman Forum

---

Rezemos pelo Papa Francisco, para que ele siga Cristo.

Teólogos e Bispos da África Não Querem discutir Agenda Gay ou Divórcio, e sim Terrorismo, Falta do Pai, Pobreza.

Sim, claro, exato, como não, isso mesmo...A Igreja tem de discutir como a Igreja resiste e não como a Igreja se adapta ao mundo. Palmas para os teólogos e bispos da África.

Vejam texto do National Catholic Reporter.

African theologians, bishops cry out for more expansive synod discussions

NAIROBI, KENYA

A number of prominent theologians and bishops from across the African continent have sharply called for more expansive discussions at this fall's global meeting of Catholic bishops on family issues, saying last year's event focused too heavily on subjects mainly of concern to Europeans and North Americans.

Last year's discussions -- which attracted global media coverage scrutinizing bishops' stances on controversial questions like divorce and remarriage and same-sex relationships -- left out a multitude of pressing issues facing millions living throughout Africa, the prelates and academics argued at a groundbreaking conference here July 16-18.

In a reflection of the tone of the event, one theologian-participant made a poignant, echoing plea. The global church, she said, must entirely refocus itself to speak for voiceless Africans who are suffering in many ways.

 "How outraged are we? Who is keeping a tab?" Nontando Hadebe cried out to other participants at the gathering, speaking specifically of the kidnapping of some 300 schoolgirls by the Boko Haram terrorist group in Nigeria in 2014.
"There just needs to be an institution that says no -- no more!" she continued, calling on the church to reorient to become the "guardian, sustainer, protector" of African and black lives.

"We need an institution that is outraged and that sustains that outrage as a prophetic teaching," said the South African, a rising theologian who has focused her work on the struggles of African women.

Hadebe, who teaches at Johannesburg's St. Augustine College, was one of 36 of the continent's most prominent Catholic ethicists gathered for the discussions, the last in a three-year series of such meetings being held at the Jesuit-run Hekima University College since 2013.

Organized as a "Theological Colloquium on Church, Religion, and Society in Africa," this year's event saw the academics and selected prelates discuss a wide range of issues, such as questions of ecological destruction and religious fundamentalism, and how Pope Francis is impacting the shape of Africa's church structures.

But many of the conversations focused most on the October meeting of the Synod of Bishops, the second of two back-to-back bishops' meetings called by Francis for 2014 and 2015 to focus on family life issues.

Among those addressing that subject were three prelates: Rustenburg, South Africa, Bishop Kevin Dowling; Malindi, Kenya, Bishop Emanuel Barbara; and Kibungo, Rwanda, Bishop Antoine Kambanda.

Both Dowling and Barbara bluntly faulted the 2014 meeting for not focusing enough on African issues.

Dowling, a prominent global voice as a co-president of the international Catholic peace group Pax Christi, said he hoped the 2015 event would avoid simply restating doctrines in "predominantly Eurocentric constructs."

More time at the meeting, he said, should be spent on "all the systemic issues which threaten relationships between people in societies and make it so hard for parents today to nourish their relationship with their own children and so bring them up in wholesome and life-giving ways."

Barbara, who has been selected as a substitute to attend the synod should the Kenyan bishops elected to do so not be able, said the first synod was focused "much more on a Europe or a European culture which got converted to Christianity and is now facing big challenges because of the new era."

Africans, Barbara said, face many different challenges than Europeans. Many Africans, he said, are still dealing with issues related to being newer converts to Christianity and in trying to live their faith while respecting their traditional cultures.

The Kenyan bishop called for a new theology of marriage from an African context.

"If we want to have respect to our African Christian families, we need to work seriously on an African Christian theology of marriage," he said. "It's not enough to apply other models that have been there for centuries."

One theologian, Ugandan Emmanuel Katongole, even criticized what he called a "tyranny of pressing moral questions" that immediately reduces problems the church needs to face down to issues of sexuality or authority.

"The overall effect of starting with the 'pressing moral questions' is to make a parody of the African voice," said Katongole, a professor of theology and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute. "It is to obscure what might be more broad, urgent but perhaps less sexy issues affecting millions of Africans."

"One wonders why sexuality is a pressing moral question but the fact that millions of Africans lack basic necessities like water, food and shelter is not," he said. "Why is sexual orientation a basic human right, but not the right to water?"

Call for African organization

In three expansive sessions at the Nairobi gathering focused on "Gospel of Family: From Africa to the World Church," the participants brought up a diverse range of unique family topics they said are facing the church on their continent but had not been adequately discussed at the 2014 synod.

Among the issues, too many to list in full:

• Identity struggles for Africans who feel separated from their traditional cultures after Christian conversion;
• Gender-based violence in households, overwhelmingly against women;
• Missing presence of fathers in family life;
• Large-scale, crippling poverty;
• Lack of "principled, ethical leadership" in both governmental and church spheres.

Several participants at the gathering called for leaders in the African church to work more closely together in order to coordinate in speaking out about such issues at the 2015 synod.

One theologian, Jesuit Fr. Paul Bere, said he felt a "deep lament" that the complexity of issues facing Africans was not discussed at the 2014 event.

"It is so sad that the church of Africa did not make its voice heard and I doubt it will be heard in the upcoming synod," said Bere, a native of Burkina Faso who teaches at the Institut de Théologie de la Compagnie de Jésus in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Bere, who also served from 2009 to 2014 as a consultor to the Synod of Bishops' secretariat office at the Vatican, said African voices were not being heard because the different African churches were not organizing their arguments together.

Maryknoll Fr. Joseph Healey, an American who has lived in Eastern Africa for nearly 40 years, said the African bishops "have not come up with a strategy to clearly and incisively present in Rome [their] priorities."

"Unlike other continents, which plan together and then come with clear priorities, our African interventions are often scattered and not planned together," he said.

Barbara, whose Malindi diocese sits some 300 miles east of Nairobi on the Indian Ocean, focused his remarks on speaking for African Catholics struggling to live in both their traditional and Christian cultures.

The bishop said he constantly hears from Catholics in his diocese who feel "they are not living totally as Africans because they became Christians."

Barbara also identified two specific proposals he said he had asked bishops at October's synod to consider, writing to the Vatican synod office with suggestions: creation of a more gradual form of consent for marriage, and more extensive preparation courses for couples considering marriage.

On the first issue, the Kenyan bishop said traditional African marriages normally involved much more than the simple "Yes, I do" that provides for consent between married couples in Christian marriages. In the past, he said, consent between couples was even made over years -- as the couples lived with one another, and their families came to be gradually meshed together.

"Can we still today speak of a universal form of marriage where the only consent -- 'Yes, I do,' coming from a Latin, German culture -- will be sufficient to sanction a marriage?" Barbara asked.

"In the African context, it used to take stages," he said. "There used to be involved both families before the marriage will come to be something. Is it enough today still to insist in our own culture, in our environment in Africa, that it is enough that you go in front of the priest or the minister and say, 'Yes, I do?' "

The Kenyan bishop also said that church teaching on contraception and fertility focuses too specifically on defining sinful behavior.

"It is too simplistic to speak that our African Christian couples can only be taught about the good or negative effects of contraception, infertility, or fertility under just the category of what is sinful or not," said Barbara. "It is too simplistic for a culture where fertility is one of the most important elements in marriage."

The Ugandan theologian, Katongole, presented seven social challenges he said face African churches and "press for fresh theological imaginations of what the church in Africa need to be, ought to be, and how it can respond to these challenges."

Identifying sub-Saharan Africa as having the fastest-growing population in the world, the Notre Dame professor cited statistics that more than 50 percent of youth there are illiterate and unemployed.

"This will press the church in Africa," said Katongole. "What kind of church will we have? I think in responding to this challenge, the African church will find herself drawing more on the ecclesiological vision of Pope Francis, of the church of the poor for the poor."

'Big man' leadership

But the theologian also said that one of the key problems facing the church in Africa is a tendency to mirror in its structures a type of leadership popular in African governments, where one key figure exercises power as a "big man" or a "boss."

"Church leadership, unfortunately, has by and large both mirrored and radiated the same style of leadership, where the bishop and to lesser extent the priest exercises chief and unquestionable lordship over those they lead," said Katongole. "Accordingly, church institutions are characterized by the same and in some cases even worse forms of corruption and opacity."

The theologian called on bishops "to recover a vision of the church" grounded by Jesus' call to be servants.

Kenyan theologian Philomena Mwaura identified violence against women and lack of stable fathers in African countries as issues the October synod should discuss.

Mwaura, an associate professor at Kenya's public Kenyatta University, said there is a "crisis" in fatherhood on her continent, citing figures that only 3 percent of Africans say they have a good relationship with their fathers.

"The challenge in the modern African family today is the presence of fathers," she said. "Boys do not have mentors; they do not have role models."

The Nairobi event was convened by Hekima University College's principal, Jesuit Fr. Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator. A Nigerian native who recently finished a term as the provincial of his order's East Africa province, Orobator arranged the three years of the theological conferences with distinct themes.

This year's theme was: "An Agenda for Vatican III: Ideas, Issues, and Resources from Africa for the World Church." Besides the family synod, other sessions also focused on ecological issues, religious violence, and the so-called pressing moral issues across the continent.

This year's event was also marked by an unusual amount of open dialogue for a theological conference. Presentations were limited to 10 minutes so that participants could spend time discussing ideas together.

During an opening conversational session July 16, participants roundly praised the three-year cycle, saying it had allowed them to expand their horizons by learning about the diverse range of experiences across their continent.

Kambanda, the Rwandan bishop, mentioned that he was appointed to his ministry two years ago and found his participation in the colloquia timely.

"It was providential for me as a new bishop in the diocese," he said, adding that he had just helped launch the process to create a new pastoral plan for his diocese in southeastern Rwanda.

"Here, I learned practical theology," said Kambanda. "Theology in practice, which inspired me in this pastoral plan."

Dowling, the South African bishop, said he knew that many theologians face difficulties in their work with the leadership in their dioceses.

"You face systemic challenges in the church and I'm very conscious of those," he told the group. "It's very important that you know that some of us in leadership not only love you but fully support you."

"Your role and calling is to push the boundaries, however difficult that may be," Dowling said.

[Joshua J. McElwee is NCR Vatican correspondent. His email address is jmcelwee@ncronline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @joshjmac.]

Papa Francisco Lamenta Plantação de Soja na Argentina

O Papa Francisco diz que "dói na alma" dele ao ver desmatamentos para plantar soja. Porque as plantas levarão milhares de anos para se recuperar.

Realmente, o Papa está se mostrando um ambientalista radical.

Será que a Argentina deveria abandonar sua posição de maior produtor mundial de soja do mundo para deixar que as plantas se recuperem? Será que o mundo não precisa da soja para alimentar tantos?

Bom, alguns costumam dizer que não se deve ouvir papas para questões econômicas ou de guerra, eu discordo completamente disso. Cristo está em todas as funções humanas e os papas deveriam também falar com cuidado e com Cristo sobre qualquer coisa.

Vejam texto da Reuters abaixo:

Pope laments destruction of forests to plant soy

Pope Francis criticized the destruction of forests in order to plant soy in an interview with an Argentine radio station on Saturday, reinforcing his message that the environment should take precedence over financial gain.

"It hurts me in my soul when I see deforestation to plant soy," said the pope in an interview with two priests at Radio Parroquial Virgen del Carmen in Campo Gallo, a tiny parish radio station in the poor northern province of Santiago del Estero in his native Argentina.

"It will take thousands of years to recover. Look after the woods and water."

Argentina is the world's largest supplier of soymeal and soyoil, and much of its vast pampas that were once given over to cattle ranches now grow the plant, used for animal feed and in foodstuffs, with China the leading importer.

In neighboring Brazil, also a major soy supplier, environmentalists claim that its cultivation has led to the destruction of rainforest.

The head of the 1.2 billion member Catholic Church has caused controversy before by weighing into debates on the environment and condemning speculation in food commodities.

He visited South America last month and gave passionate speeches in which he censured capitalism, championed the rights of the poor, and warned of irreversible damage to the planet.

In an encyclical dedicated to the environment in June, Francis, the first pope from a developing nation, advocated a change of lifestyle in rich countries and demanded swift action to save the planet from environmental ruin.

Sobre a Bomba de Hiroshima. Ela foi Decisiva para Acabar a Guerra? Não.

Um dos versos mais polêmicos da música popular brasileira diz: " Uma bomba sobre o Japão fez nascer um Japão da paz". Essa frase da música de Gilberto Gil  é aterrorizante mesmo para alguém como eu que defende a guerra em algumas circunstância, sendo um amante da teoria da guerra justa católica.

Mas a bomba sobre o Japão historicamente não fez nascer um Japão da paz. As bombas nucleares de Hiroshima e Nagasaki não foram capazes nem de acabar a guerra.

Já tinha lido sobre o assunto, mas nesta semana que faz 70 anos das bombas, li ainda mais. Eu geralmente uso a filósofa G.E.M Anscombe para condenar o uso das bombas. Mas os historiadores estão mostrando que elas podem ter sido completamente irrelevantes (infelizmente pelos milhares mortos) para acabar com a guerra.

Recomendo especialmente dois textos. O primeiro é  muito longo, mas bem detalhista, para quem gosta de detalhes. Clique aqui, é muito bom.

O segundo é mais rápido na análise, vai abaixo, de autoria de J. Samuel Walker. Também muito bom.

Em suma, quem acabou com a guerra foi uma combinação de fatores, e as bombas não são as mais decisivas, se é que elas foram importantes para os líderes japoneses da época.

Harry Truman’s Atomic Bomb Decision: After 70 Years We Need to Get Beyond the Myths

by J. Samuel Walker

J. Samuel Walker is the author of Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (University of North Carolina Press, 1997, second edition, 2004). He is now working on a third edition of the book.

President Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan in 1945 is arguably the most contentious issue in all of American history. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have generated an acrimonious debate that has raged with exceptional intensity for five decades. The spectrum of differing views ranges from unequivocal assertions that the atomic attacks were militarily and morally justified to claims that they were unconscionable war crimes. The highly polarized nature of the controversy has obscured the reasons Truman authorized the dropping of the bomb and the historical context in which he acted.

The dispute over the atomic bomb has focused on competing myths that have received wide currency but are seriously flawed. The central question is, “was the bomb necessary to end the war as quickly as possible on terms that were acceptable to the United States and its allies?”

The “traditional” view answers the question with a resounding “Yes.” It maintains that Truman either had to use the bomb or order an invasion of Japan that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American lives, and that he made the only reasonable choice. This interpretation prevailed with little dissent among scholars and the public for the first two decades after the end of World War II. It still wins the support of a majority of Americans. A Pew Research Center poll published in April 2015 showed that 56% of those surveyed, including 70% aged 65 and over, agreed that “using the atomic bomb on Japanese cities in 1945 was justified,” while 34% thought it was unjustified.

The “revisionist” interpretation that rose to prominence after the mid-1960s answers the question about whether the bomb was necessary with an emphatic “No.” Revisionists contend that Japan was seeking to surrender on the sole condition that the emperor, Hirohito, be allowed to remain on his throne. They claim that Truman elected to use the bomb despite his awareness that Japan was in desperate straits and wanted to end the war. Many revisionists argue that the principal motivation was not to defeat Japan but to intimidate the Soviet Union with America’s atomic might in the emerging cold war.

It is now clear that the conflicting interpretations are unsound in their pure forms. Both are based on fallacies that have been exposed by the research of scholars who have moved away from the doctrinaire arguments at the poles of the debate.

                  The traditional insistence that Truman faced a stark choice between the bomb and an invasion is at once the most prevalent myth and the easiest to dismiss. U.S. officials did not regard an invasion of Japan, which was scheduled for November 1, 1945, as inevitable. They were keenly aware of other possible means of achieving a decisive victory without an invasion. Their options included allowing the emperor to remain on the throne with sharply reduced power, continuing the massive conventional bombing and naval blockade that had destroyed many cities and threatened the entire Japanese nation with mass starvation, and waiting for the Soviets to attack Japanese troops in Manchuria. Traditionalists have generally played down the full range of options for ending the war and failed to explain why Truman regarded the bomb as the best alternative.

                  A staple of the traditional interpretation is that an invasion of Japan would have caused hundreds of thousands of American deaths, as Truman and other officials claimed after the war. But it is not supported by contemporaneous evidence. Military chiefs did not provide estimates in the summer of 1945 that approached numbers of that magnitude. When Truman asked high-level administration officials to comment on former president Herbert Hoover’s claim that an invasion would cost 500,000 to 1,000,000 American lives, General Thomas T. Handy, General Marshall’s deputy chief of staff, reported that those estimates were “entirely too high.” Hoover apparently based his projections on an invasion of the entire Japanese mainland, but military planners were convinced that landings on southern Kyushu and perhaps later on Honshu, if they became necessary, would force a Japanese surrender.

                  The revisionist interpretation suffers from even more grievous flaws. Japanese sources opened in the past few years have shown beyond reasonable doubt that Japan had not decided to surrender before Hiroshima. It is also clear from an abundance of evidence that U.S. officials were deeply concerned about how to end the war and how long it would take. The arguments that Japan was seeking to surrender on reasonable terms and that Truman knew it are cornerstones of the revisionist thesis. They have been refuted by recent scholarship, though impressing the Soviets was a secondary incentive for using the bomb.

                  The answer to the question about whether the bomb was necessary is “Yes”. . . and “No.” Yes, it was necessary to end the war at the earliest possible moment, and that was Truman’s primary concern. Without the bomb, the war would have lasted longer than it did. Nobody in a position of authority told Truman that the bomb would save hundreds of thousands of American lives, but saving a far smaller number was ample reason for him to use it. He hoped that the bomb would end the war quickly and in that way reduce American casualties to zero.

                  No, the bomb was not necessary to avoid an invasion of Japan. The war would almost certainly have ended before the scheduled invasion. A combination of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, the effects of conventional bombing and the blockade, the steady deterioration of conditions in Japan, and growing concerns among the emperor’s advisers about domestic unrest would probably have brought about a Japanese surrender before November 1. And no, the bomb was not necessary to save hundreds of thousands of American lives.

                  The controversy over Truman’s decision seems certain to continue. The use of a bomb that killed tens of thousands instantaneously needs to be constantly re-examined and re-evaluated. This process should be carried out on the basis of documentary evidence and not on the basis of myths that have taken hold and dominated the discussion for 70 years.

Acordo com Irã começa a Vazar Muita Água

Wall Street Journal diz hoje que o Irá não permite que inspetores da ONU entrevistem cientistas e militares mais próximos do programa nuclear iraniano.

E  a CNN relata que o Irã tem feito uma limpeza em um local suspeito de produzir bomba nuclear movendo vários equipamentos do local.

O próprio Obama admite que o dinheiro que o Irã vai receber pode ajudar a financiar o terrorismo mundial.

O mundo, incluindo o Vaticano, celeboru o acordo com Irã, que não tem nem um mês de existência. E muitos, incluindo Obama, fizeram chacota de Benjamin Netanyahu, que disse que o acordo foi um desastre.

Importante lembrar disso no dia 6 de agosto, dia dos ataques nucleares a Hiroshima, há 70 anos. Ontem, eu debati este assunto no site The American Catholic.

Enquanto isso, o Japão pede o banimento das armas nucleares:

JAPÃO PEDE MUNDO SEM ARMAS NUCLEARES NO 70º ANIVERSÁRIO DA BOMBA DE HIROSHIMA

Hiroshima, 06/08/2015 - O Japão marcou o 70º aniversário da explosão da bomba atômica em Hiroshima com o prefeito da cidade, Kazumi Matsui, pedindo que os líderes mundiais aumentem os esforços para tornar o mundo livre de armas nucleares. Milhares de pessoas fizeram um minuto de silêncio às 8h15 (local) em uma cerimônia no Parque da Paz de Hiroshima, perto do ponto em que a bomba explodiu em 1945. Dezenas de pombas foram soltas como símbolo de paz.

A bomba lançada pelos EUA, chamada de "Little Boy", a primeira arma nuclear usada em uma guerra, matou 140 mil pessoas. Uma segunda bomba, a "Fat Man", foi lançada em Nagasaki três dias depois, matando mais 70 mil pessoas e levando o Japão a se render na Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Matsui classificou armas nucleares como "o mal absoluto e a inumanidade máxima" e disse que elas precisam ser abolidas. O prefeito de Hiroshima também criticou as potências nucleares por manter as armas como uma ameaça usada em defesa de seus interesses. Segundo ele, o mundo ainda está ameaçado por mais de 15 mil armas nucleares.

Matsui renovou o convite para os líderes mundiais visitarem Hiroshima e Nagasaki durante a cúpula do G-7 que será realizada no Japão no próximo ano. "Presidente [Barack] Obama e outros políticos, por favor venham para as cidades das bombas, ouçam os sobreviventes com seus próprios ouvidos e encontrem a realidade das bombas atômicas", disse. "Com certeza, vocês serão impelidos a começar a discutir uma estrutura legal, incluindo uma convenção sobre armas nucleares", acrescentou.

Os 70 anos da bomba de Hiroshima são completados enquanto o Japão está dividido com relação ao movimento impopular do primeiro-ministro do país, Shinzo Abe, para aprovar uma legislação destinada a expandir o papel do exército japonês internacionalmente. Há um ano o governo de Abe flexibilizou a Constituição de renúncia à guerra ao adotar uma nova interpretação dela.

"Nós precisamos estabelecer uma estrutura de segurança nacional ampla que não dependa do uso da força, mas seja baseada na confiança", disse Matsui. O prefeito pediu que o governo do Japão mantenha "o pacifismo da Constituição japonesa" para liderar o esforço global de não proliferação de armas nucleares.

Abe, que também participou da cerimônia, afirmou que, como o único país que enfrentou um ataque nuclear, o Japão tem o dever de pressionar pela eliminação dessas armas. O premiê prometeu promover a causa em conferências internacionais que serão realizadas em Hiroshima no fim deste mês.

Como a idade média dos sobreviventes do ataque excedeu 80 anos pela primeira vez neste ano, transmitir as histórias deles para as novas gerações é considerado uma tarefa urgente. Durante o último ano, 5.359 sobreviventes morreram. A embaixadora dos EUA no Japão, Caroline Kennedy, e representantes de mais de 100 países, incluindo Reino Unido, França e Rússia, participaram da cerimônia. Fonte: Associated Press.


(Agradeço as informações aos sites Zero Hedge e Weasel Zippers)

Estado Islâmico Obriga Criança de 4 anos a Decapitar a Própria Mãe

O mal já tem 8  milhões de habitantes, segundo a ONU,  A última foi tentar que uma criança de apenas 4 anos decapitasse a própria mãe, por que ela era infiel. É o que conta o site do Chirstian Post, que descreve mais atos inimagináveis de maldade.

Estou começando a achar que o reino de Sauron, descrito por Tolkien em Senhor dos Anéis, era mais humano.

Meu Deus do céu.

ISIS Fighters Force 4-Y-O Boy to Behead His Own Mother With a Sword

The Islamic State terrorist organization has reportedly forced a 4-year-old child to join one of the group's jihadi training camps where the militants indoctrinated him with Shariah law, and gave him a sword and ordered him to kill his own mother with it.

In an interview with the British news organization The Daily Mail, a 35-year-old Yazid mother who is now living as a refuge in Dohuk, Iraq, recounted how she and her four children were taken captive by IS last August near Sinjar Mountain during the period of time when the terror group first conquered large swaths of northern Iraq.

The mother, who is known only by her pseudonym of Bohar, explained that her young son, known by the pseudonym of Hamo, was eventually forced to join an IS training camp where he was trained how to behead and shoot non-Muslims.

Bohar added that the militants attempted to indoctrinate her son into believing that his own Yazidi people deserved to be killed because they were non-believers.

They told him that Yazidis are Kafir, Arabic for non-believers, and told him he had to fight them," Bohar said. "This one time, the IS man gave him a sword and said 'this is to kill your mother.'"

After the family's initial capture, Bohar said the family, along with at least 2,000 other Yazidi captives, were thrown into prisons. The mother explained that she and her kids were transferred from a prison in Tal-Afar to the Badush prison in Mosul as the jihadi leaders decided what to do with them. Eventually Bohar's eldest daughter and 12-year-old son were shipped off to Syria.

"Some friends [later] told me my daughter and son were taken to Raqqa, where I believe they still are," Bohar said.

Although Bohar was separated from two of her children, she was not initially separated from Hamo or her 14-year-old daughter.

Life was not pleasant for Bohar and her children as they lived inside the Tal-Afar prison. She claims that the militants made her and the kids eat and drink unthinkably vile and hazardous things.

"In Tel-Afar prison, IS put urine in the water tank and [served us] food with glass in it," Bohar said. "They wanted to hurt us."

Sometimes when the IS jihadis saw a United States coalition warplane fly above, the militants would retaliate by beating Bohar and her children senseless.

"ISIS fighters there beat us very badly, especially when they saw the U.S. airplanes," she stated.

Eventually, Bohar and her two children were moved out of prison and placed in an abandoned village where they were only fed one meal a day.

The meals, Bohar said, were spiked with morphine so the family would suffer from severe drowsiness, which made it harder for them to escape the caliphate.

Bohar asserted that anyone who attempted to escape was killed. She said she also witnessed IS fighters kill one man who tried to escape. After they killed the man, the militants hauled his slain body around in the streets and inquired if anyone knew him.

After surviving about three months under IS captivity in Iraq, Bohar and her two remaining children were brought to Raqqa and put up for sale in Raqqa's thriving slave market. Bohar was then separated from her 14-year-old daughter when her daughter was sold as a sex slave to an IS fighter.

Upon her arrival in Raqqa, Bohar saw her 12-year-old son, who was forced to join a training camp, being punished because he did not want to learn to read the Quran or participate in IS' jihad.

'I saw him on this military base," Bohar said. "I saw them beat him because he did not accept the rule of IS."

Bohar and Hamo were later sold to the same militant. "He was very bad to us. He did not give anything to us. He never opened the fridge for us," Bohar said. "I wanted him to sell me back to my family, but he refused. ... I asked him if he bring my other daughters and son here, but he [also] refused."

Eventually, Bohar and Hamo were sold once again. This time, they were sold to a Saudi fighter who was also a high-ranking IS commander named Omar Al-Najde.

Al-Najde forced Bohar to work as his servant along with other Yazidi women, while he forced Hamo to join a jihad training center so that he could be indoctrinated.

After Hamo was subjected to the jihadi training for over four months, he, his mother and the other servant girls reportedly escaped from IS' wrath by fleeing across the Syrian border into Turkey.

O Patrono dos Soldados Desprezado

Eu costumo dizer que o santo mais mal interpretado do mundo é o santo mais conhecido, São Francisco de Assis, e o santo mais desprezado é o santo que fundou a maior congregação de padres da Igreja, Santo Inácio de Loyola.

Santo Inácio é o patrono dos soldados. Ele, antes de sua total dedicação à Igreja e ao Papa (seja qual papa fosse), foi um soldado de muita bravura e que gostava de guerra e de duelos.

Conta-se que duelou várias vezes e chegou a duelar com um muçulmano que disse que Cristo não era Deus. Duelou e matou o muçulmano.

Então, foi atingido por uma bala de canhão, quando em guerra contra os franceses, sofreu várias cirurgias (sem anestesia), ficou muito tempo acamado e pediu livros para ler.

Foi convertido pelo livro acima, A Vida de Cristo, de Ludolph of Saxony.

Este livro nos deu um dos maiores santos da Igreja Católica, quanto à Igreja deve a Ludolph? Quanto o Brasil deve a Ludolph? Já que os jesuítas por aqui fundaram cidades, catequizaram (e protegeram) os índios, nos deram o grande padre Antônio Vieira, etc.

O Papa Francisco junta estes dois desprezados santos, pelo nome que escolheu e por ser membro da Companhia de Jesus, fundada por Santo Inácio. 

Hoje, o mundo é muito pacifista e afeminado para o grande Santo Inácio de Loyola.

Eu estudei em escola jesuíta, aprendi a amar Santo Inácio, e fico sempre muito triste ao ver a Companhia de Jesus redobradamente nos fornecer padres tão aversos à luta em defesa do cristianismo. Os jesuítas, em geral, realmente se perderam no mundo. São poucos os que se destacam e olham para Cristo.

Que os jesuítas e todos os cristãos aprendam novamente com Santo Inácio de Loyola.

Abaixo um vídeo da Rome Reports sobre Santo Inácio, com legenda abaixo:

Who was St. Ignatius of Loyola?

2015-07-31

He is mostly known for developing the Spiritual Exercises that Jesuits still follow to this day. But the Spanish theologian didn't always want to be a priest...

It all started after he was wounded in war against the French. As he recovered, he read two books: One was A life of Christ and the other, a book on the Life of Saints. 

He was moved and inspired, and so his spiritual conversion began. 

In 1534, he along with six young men,  including Francis Xavier, professed vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

The Society of Jesus, was officially approved in 1540 by Pope Paul III. It's members became involved in evangelization missions, education, culture and social justice. 

Generations passed and difficult times followed.  The Order was suppressed in 1773 under orders of the Pope. But it was restored by the Vatican 41 years later in 1814. 

With roughly 17,000 Jesuit priests and brothers  worldwide, the Jesuits are the largest male religious order in the Catholic Church. It's most popular member is of course Pope Francis. 

It's an Order that started more than 400 years ago by St. Ignatius of Loyola... a young Spaniard who started reading about Jesus and Catholic Saints. 

KLH

Pesquisa: Apenas Minoria de Cientistas Acredita em Mudança Climática Antropogênica

Pois é, depois da encíclica Laudato Sí, em que o próprio Papa Francisco declarou que havia um "certo consenso" de que o homem seria o culpado pela mudança climática, uma nova pesquisa publicada em abril deste ano (antes da encíclica), mostrou que apenas um minoria de cientistas pensa que o homem seja o principal culpado.

Depois de uma década de propaganda pela mudança climática a tendência tem sido de diminuir o consenso, pois na pesquisa anterior, os cientistas estavam mais certos.

A pesquisa considerou mais de 1800 cientistas de áreas ligadas à análise climática. 43% dizem que estão 95% certos de que o homem é o culpado, enquanto 57% dizem não estão certos ou acham que outros fatores são mais importantes.

A maioria não acredita em mudança climática provocada pelo homem, apenas 43% dizem tem quase 100% de certeza.

O site Fabius Maximus explica como se chega a estes 43%. É simples, comece retirando da amostra aqueles que dizem que não sabem qual a importância do homem para a mudança climática (8,8% dos cientistas pesquisados), depois pergunte aos que dizem que sabem quão certos eles estão sobre isso.

O resultado é que dos 1868 cientistas, 1.222 dizem acreditar que o homem é o principal responsável pela mudança climática do momento, mas apenas 767 dizem que estão 95% certos disso, 43% dos cientistas. 57% dos 1868 ou não acreditam na mudança climática antropogênica ou não têm certeza que o homem é o principal responsável.

Em suma, o debate está na mesa, pelo menos. E também se pode concluir que muitas vezes os cientistas dizem que sabem algo, mas quando se pergunta quão certos eles estão sobre o assunto, a certeza de que eles sabem diminui bastante.

Favor, encaminhar a pesquisa para o Vaticano.