News and Media Releases

From 'Another Voice'

Professor Hans Küng — now 85 like his former professorial colleague Joseph Ratzinger — offers some reflections about church reform and Francis the new Bishop of Rome.

“What is to be done if our expectations of reform are dashed? The time is past when Pope and bishops could rely on the obedience of the faithful. A certain mysticism of obedience was also introduced by the eleventh-century Gregorian Reform: obeying God means obeying the Church and that means obeying the Pope and vice versa.

“Since that time, it has been drummed into Catholics that the obedience of all Christians to the Pope is a cardinal virtue; commanding and enforcing obedience – by whatever means – has become the Roman style. But the medieval equation of ‘obedience to God = to the Church = to the Pope’ patently contradicts the word of Peter and the other apostles before the High Council in Jerusalem: ‘a person must obey God rather than any human authority.’

“We should then in no way fall into resigned acceptance. Instead, faced with a lack of impulse towards reform from the hierarchy, we must take the offensive, pressing for reform from the bottom up.

“If Pope Francis tackles reforms, he will find he has the wide approval of people far beyond the Catholic Church.

“However, if he allows things to continue as they are, without clearing the log-jam of reforms now in progress, such as that of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, then the call of ‘Time for outrage! Indignez-vous!’ will ring out more and more in the Catholic Church, provoking reforms from the bottom up.

“These would be implemented without the approval of the hierarchy and frequently even in spite of the hierarchy’s attempts at circumvention. In the worst case – as I wrote before the recent papal election – the Catholic Church will experience a new Ice Age instead of a spring and will run the risk of dwindling into a barely relevant large sect.”

More information here:

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/164164

Australian Bishops - Geoffrey Robinson, Bill Morris and Pat Power call on the new Pope to seize the opportunity of his appointment to not only sweep the Church clean but to put His /God’s house in order for all time.

Press Release Munich / Erfurt, 27 April 2013

We are Church on

The Federal Labour Court judgment "Termination for leaving the church"

[German]

The church reform movement We Are Church opines that for the sake of the credibility of the Roman Catholic Church a review the right of self-determination of religious communities, which was taken over from the Weimar Constitution, is urgently required. The Catholic reform movement calls on all political parties and their Members of Parliament to finally undertake a review of Article 140 of the German Fundamental Law,  given the recent judgment by the Federal Labour Court.

Article 140 of the Fundamental Law which was taken from the Weimar Constitution (Article 137 WRV) guarantees each religious community the right to arrange and manage their affairs independently, but within the limits of the law that is valid for all. For modern legal understanding this regulation leads to increasingly frequent conflicts between fundamental rights of the individual and the rights of an institutional religious community. So it is no longer acceptable that the churches and their associated charities may invoke at terminations of employees that they are facilities based on ideology (philosophy?), even in the cases when no religious content is taught. This is especially true given the fact that these facilities are state-funded in their totality or to a very large extent.

A primeros de marzo, días antes del cónclave, la revista de información social y religiosa Alandar lanzó en Internet una petición llamada Renueva la Iglesia que tuvo un eco inmediato. La elección del papa Francisco, y su primera declaración ("quiero una Iglesia pobre y de los pobres"), hizo decaer levemente el entusiasmo de los firmantes, como si la frase diera respuesta a muchas de las tribulaciones —y esperanzas y demandas— de los millones de católicos que forman la Iglesia de base.

Lo cuenta Cristina Ruiz Fernández, directora de Alandar, que ha rebautizado la campaña como Francisco, te pedimos que renueves la Iglesia. "Nadie podía imaginar su opción por los pobres. Eso, y otros gestos, son muy esperanzadores. Es una ocasión única para actualizar la institución y hacerla útil a las personas", explica Ruiz Fernández.

seguir leyendo

Thank you to Dr Paul Collins for permission to reproduce this article.

At first all we had to go on were the signs. The first sign was when Pope Bergoglio defined himself by taking the name Francis after the rich man from Assisi who repudiated his wealth to live like Christ, the poor man who had nowhere to lay his head. Then we saw a pope who 'dressed down' without the ermine lined, red mozzetta (the short cape worn over the shoulders) and the metres of lace that had characterised the previous papacy. Francis has rejected the trappings of 'royalty' moving out of the papal palazzo and into the quite modest, motel-like and accessible Casa Sancta Marta in the Vatican grounds. All the signs pointed not only to a different style but to a substantial change in direction.

Five weeks into his papacy Francis has moved-on from signs and now squarely faces tackling the hard issues. So far (21 April 2013) he has only appointed eleven bishops and seven of these would have been in the appointment system well before he was elected. But Francis has personally appointed two: Mario Aurelio Poli, 65, to replace him in Buenos Aires and Jose Rodriguez Carballo, OFM, 59, former minister general of the Franciscans and President of the International Union of Superiors General, who has been appointed Secretary to the Vatican congregation that oversees religious orders. What are these men like?