Catholic News 2

The Holy Father, Pope Francis has appointed Fr. Alexis Mitsuru Shirahama, the new Bishop for the vacant Diocese of Hiroshima. Currently Fr. Alexis Shirhama  was serving as  the rector of the National Catholic Seminary of Fukuoka.   

He was born on May 20, 1962  in Kamigoto, Archdiocese of Nagasaki. In 1986 he obtained a Bachelor’s  degree  in Philosophy at the Keio University in Tokyo, and in 1990 a Bachelor’s degree  in Theology at the Seminary of St.  Suplice Fukuoka. He later studied at the Catholic Institute of Paris, obtaining a Licentiate in Liturgy with specialization in Sacramental Theology.

He was ordained a priest on March 19, 1990 at Urakami, Archdiocese of Nagasaki, and incardinated in the same city. In 1993 he joined the Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice.

After his ordination he was the professor  in St. Sulpice Seminary of Fukuoka (1995-2008); since 1995,  he  was the member of the Liturgical Commission of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan and professor of Liturgy and Sacramental Theology, since 2012 he served as the  Rector of the Catholic Seminary of Japan.

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Sacramento, Calif., Jun 28, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A bill that strips longstanding legal protections for religious colleges and universities is underway in the California legislature – and some say it will imperil Catholic education unless changes are made.

“It’s a way of harassing and making it more difficult for those of us who are people of faith who want to live and express our ways in society,” said California Catholic Conference executive director Edward Dolejsi.

“We’re being painted into a corner and constricted,” he told CNA.

Dolejsi voiced concern about proposed legislation that could narrow the definition of a religious organization and compromise the ability of a school to express its identity in its curriculum, policies and faith.

The California legislature is considering S.B. 1146, which would limit religious exemptions for institutions of higher education. It would bar colleges that receive state funding from making employment, student housing, admission and other decisions on the basis of gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation. It also bars discrimination on the basis of religion.

Students who believe they are discriminated against may sue.

The legislation has passed the Senate and is headed to the Assembly Judiciary Committee, after passing out of the Higher Education Committee.

Quincy Masteller, general counsel of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., said the bill “in essence eliminates the religious exemption that has been in the Calif. education code for many years.”

“In many ways it’s an existential threat to religious colleges that want to live according to the principles of their faith in their community,” he told CNA. The long history of religious institutions of higher education could be lost.

“That’s the stakes we’re looking at,” Masteller said.

Dolejsi said the bill’s consequences are still unclear, given federal rules and other religious liberty protections. The bill could also be amended.

For his part, Masteller thought passage of the bill in its current form was likely.

Observers of the bill are waiting to see what the bill’s final language will be after next Tuesday’s hearing in the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

“Certainly no one wants anyone to be discriminated against, but at the same time those who infuse faith into their particular education curriculum and expect certain behaviors should have the right to operate that way,” Dolejsi commented.

The Catholic conference’s concerns include the bill’s redefinition of a faith-based organization. The conference opposes the bill unless there are amendments “to clarify it in a way that allows faith-based organizations and institutions to operate in a way consistent with who they are,” Dolejsi continued.

He suggested the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-San Francisco) has a narrower view of faith-based institutions than what the Catholic community would find acceptable.

The senator has indicated that faith-based colleges and universities may have their policies, procedures, and statements of faith, but Dolejsi questioned whether he was willing to let the schools live by them. If someone felt these schools are discriminatory and took legal action, they would have to spend “a significant amount” of resources in court, according to Dolejsi.

“California has established strong protections for the LGBTQ community and private universities should not be able to use faith as an excuse to discriminate and avoid complying with state laws,” Sen. Lara said. “No university should have a license to discriminate.”

Backers of the Senate bill include Equality California, the Los Angeles LGBT Center and the Transgender Law Center.

Masteller said Thomas Aquinas College was guided by Catholic teaching, including the teaching that God created man male and female.

“There’s implications to that in how we live,” he said.

“The college has no discriminatory intent towards any person,” he explained. “What we do discriminate against is conduct or activity that violates our Catholic character.”

For instance, he said, the college would not allow a transgender male to live in the dorms of the opposite sex, nor would it allow a same-sex marriage ceremony in its Catholic chapel.

“We’re not going to sacrifice our Catholic character at all,” Masteller said.

“This is really a religious liberty issue. The exemption has been in the statute for so long. It’s nothing more than a reflection of the reality of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, that every citizen has the right to free exercise of religion,” he said. “That means a religious community has a right to be able to live according to their religious principles and regulate their own community that way.”

The bill’s text exempts only religious-controlled educational institutions that prepare students to become ministers or theological teachers.

For institutions that seek a religious exemption provided Title IX of federal law, the bill would require disclosure of this exemption to current and prospective students, faculty and employees.

Dolejsi said the Catholic conference agreed with the bill’s provisions regarding full disclosure to students about the kind of school they have chosen and the school’s expectations.

“The rules should be applied equally, and these rules can extend to behaviors,” he said. “Whether you want to be gay or straight, you will behave appropriately in such a way that that particular faith group wants. If you violate that, don’t go to school there.”

“It’s a struggle for trying to deal with people compassionately and responsibly, and (with) political ideology that some people would have everyone genuflect to,” he said.

For his part, Masteller thought the provision could be intrusive but said it only required disclosing what was already a matter of public record.

Sen. Lara, the Senate bill sponsor, had previously sponsored a resolution to remove a statue of St. Junipero Serra that represented California in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection.

Dr. Derry Connolly, president of John Paul the Great Catholic College in Escondido, Calif., said the bill is dangerous. He told the Cardinal Newman Society the bill is “a direct and blatant attack on the religious freedom of Catholic and Christian citizens of California.”

The legislature has considered other bills that would have affected Catholic education.

Assembly Bill 1888, failed to pass in committee. The legislation would have denied California state grants, known as CalGrants, to schools whose policies do not include gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation as special classes protected from discrimination.

Dolejsi said that bill’s sponsor “wanted basically to use CalGrants for lower income students as a bludgeon, if you will, to beat faith-based colleges into accepting behaviors that they didn’t want to accept.”

The state of California has already sided against Catholic colleges that sought to implement health care plans that did not cover elective abortions. The Obama administration on June 21 ruled that federal protections for objectors to abortion did not apply to churches and other organizations that had challenged a state rule requiring health plans to cover abortions.

The action means many California employers, including churches, have no access to abortion-free health plans.

Dolejsi objected that the federal review process took 22 months to determine a question of legal standing. He said it engaged in an unprecedented and “tortured interpretation” of a federal amendment intended to protect objectors to abortion.

He said the state rule will again be challenged on procedural grounds by groups like the Guadalupanas Sisters.

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(Vatican Radio)  On Wednesday Pope Francis presides at a Mass in St Peter’s Basilica to mark the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, patron saints of the city of Rome. During the Mass the Pope will also bless the distinctive pallium, or woolen band which is placed around the shoulders of all the new Metropolitan Archbishops who’ve been appointed over the past year.

The feast day of Saints Peter and Paul is also an important ecumenical occasion as an Orthodox delegation representing the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul travels to Rome to take part in the celebration.

In recent years, the Mass for this feast day has also been enriched by the participation of choirs from other Christian Churches singing together with the Vatican’s own Sistine Chapel Choir. This year, a Lutheran choir from Germany and an Anglican choir from Oxford will be performing at the Mass and at a concert inside the Sistine Chapel itself on Tuesday evening.

To find out more about these musical ecumenical endeavours, Philippa Hitchen spoke to Mark Spyropoulos, the first Englishman to sing full time with the Sistine Chapel Choir.

Listen to the full interview:

Mark says it's the first time that two choirs from other Churches will be singing together with their hosts for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. They are the Anglican choir of New College, Oxford, and the Lutheran Windsbacher Knabenchor from Dresden who are coming to the Vatican for the first time. 

Mark describes the arts and music in particular as "an extremely useful tool for ecumenism" because it is "us at our very best". Invariably when we sing, he says, we can encourage empathy in others so it represents a way of reaching beyond words.

The Sistine Chapel Choir has always been here in the Vatican to sing for the pope, he notes, but now the Pope is "telling us to go out and spread our message" through our music....

Mark talks about a recent concert that the choir performed in Wittenburg, in Germany, in the church where Martin Luther preached during the beginnings of the Reformation 500 years ago. He describes it as an extremely moving encounter, with many members of the audience in tears as they prayed the Our Father together at the end of the concert...

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Miami, Fla., Jun 28, 2016 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of the Orlando mass shooting, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami has countered another bishop’s claim that religion, including Catholicism, often “breeds contempt” for gays, lesbians and transgendered people.

“Christians who support traditional marriage did not kill 49 people. Omar Mateen did,” Archbishop Wenski said in a June 19 homily.

“In our confusion and in our anger, we must be careful lest we make truth another casualty in the aftermath of this lone-wolf terrorist attack. And to blame a particular religion or religion in general for this atrocity would do just that.”

The archbishop spoke at the Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables, Florida for the local launch of the Fortnight for Freedom, the U.S. bishops' annual initative supporting religious liberty leading up to the Fourth of July.

He was reflecting on the June 12 attack at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, in which 49 people were killed and more than 50 injured. The club has a predominantly gay clientele.

“Religion and freedom of religion did not enable the killing and the maiming that we witnessed last Sunday,” the archbishop stated. “An evil ideology which is a corruption of Islam did.”

The shooter, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State during the attack. He was later killed in an exchange of gunfire with police.  

FBI investigators could not substantiate claims that the gunman himself pursued same-sex relationships, CBS News reports. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has said she does not want to rule out any particular motive.

Archbishop Wenski cited several reactions to the Orlando shooting. CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper rejected Florida Attorney General Pam Biondi’s expression of sympathy because she did not support recognizing same-sex unions as marriages. The New York Times' editors claimed that the Orlando victims were “casualties of a society where hate has deep roots,” meaning the United States.

“And one bishop who should know better even opined, and I quote: 'It is religion, including our own which targets…and often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgendered people.'”

The Archbishop of Miami rejected this idea.

“Where in our faith, where in our teachings – I ask you – do we target and breed contempt for any group of people?” he asked in his homily. He cited the second reading at Mass from St. Paul:  “Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. There is neither Jew nor Greek… there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Archbishop Wenski commented: “Our faith, our religion gives no comfort, no sanction to a racist, or a misogynist, or a homophobe.”

The unnamed bishop whose remarks Archbishop Wenski criticized was Bishop Robert Lynch of Saint Petersburg, who celebrated his 75th birthday last month. Bishop Lynch, whose diocese is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Miami, had written a blog post June 13 reflecting on the Orlando shooting which was re-printed in the Washington Post.

Bishop Lynch had written, “sadly it is religion, including our own, that targets, mostly verbally, and often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people. Attacks today on LGBT men and women often plant the seed of contempt, then hatred, which can ultimately lead to violence.”

Archbishop Thomas Wenski’s June 19 homily was at the Mass launching the Fortnight for Freedom in the Archdiocese of Miami. The event hosted relics of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, who held to the Catholic faith rather than recognize Henry VIII as supreme head of the Church in England.

The archbishop said the two saints rejected the pressure of their time to go along with the king.

“At first cajoled and tempted with bribes, then imprisoned and tortured, they refused to break away from the Church founded by Jesus Christ on the rock of Peter,” he said.

The archbishop noted the religious persecution facing the estimated 150,000 Christians now dying for their faith every year around the world.

Archbishop Wenski found cause for concern in trends in the United States and other liberal democracies, where “people of faith are being increasingly subjected to a soft despotism in which ridicule, ostracism, and denial of employment opportunities for advancement are being used to marginalize us.”

“We see this when butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers are being put into the legal dock for refusing to renounce their religious beliefs,” he added.

A “new religious intolerance is being established in our country,” in which Christian pastors face stalking and threats, academics are expelled from universities for their findings, and charitable organizations and religious schools face harassment if they take their religious morals seriously and require their employees to support their mission, the archbishop said.

He said Catholics must continue to give witness in spite of growing intolerance.

Archbishop Wenski cited Pope Francis’ words for the 2015 observance of the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul: “Authentic witness… is one that does not contradict, by behavior or lifestyle, what is preached with the word and taught to others.”

“If we honor the memories of Thomas More and John Fisher, if we invoke their intercession today, it is because they would not contradict, by behavior or lifestyle, what they preached and what they believed,” the archbishop said.

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