From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2013
Following my postage on Facebook Timeline that the Vatican has asked national bishops’ conferences around the world to conduct a wide-ranging poll of Catholics asking for their opinions on church teachings on contraception, same-sex marriage and divorce, Martin writes via Fecebook: “I do hope some won’t see the Church as a democracy”!
Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops, asked the conferences to distribute the poll “immediately as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received.”
Although Martin could be right that the Roman Catholic Church is not a democracy because the church hierarchy isn’t elected, doesn’t have any checks or balances, and it doesn’t solicit or care about the opinions of ordinary churchgoers as to how things should be run, but remember when Pope Benedict resigned there were speculations that the next pope would bring changes to Catholicism.
Benedict was well-known as an enforcer of orthodoxy, cracking down harshly on nuns, supporters of same-sex marriage and other progressive factions within the church, and the beleaguered liberals in Catholicism are hoping that the next pope will bring a change of direction.
Pope Francis believes that the church is the people and not hierarchy as it were understood previously. The poll, which comes in a questionnaire form, is going to be sent to national bishops’ conferences globally in preparation for a Vatican synod on the family next October.
It is going to be the first time the church’s central hierarchy has asked for such input from grass-roots Catholics since at least the establishment of the synod system following the Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII who was seen as liberal pope. He died before he could see the implementation of the document.
The upcoming synod, which Pope Francis announced earlier this month, is to be held Oct. 5-19, 2014, on the theme “Pastoral Challenges of the family in the context of evangelization.”
While I don’t see many Catholics voting for same sex marriage, divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion and other sacraments, overwhelming majority will vote for the use of contraceptives.
This is given that already majority of Catholics are using them, especially condoms. Recently Cardinal Martini was quoted by press saying that if Jesus would have never written Humanae Vitae.
“He is a Jesus who struggles against injustice. So he also opposes the “lies” and “damage” of the encyclical by Paul VI prohibiting artificial contraception”, writes the former archbishop of Milan in his latest book.
In his latest book-interview, published first in Germany and now also in Italy, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini calls himself not an anti-pope, as he is often depicted by the media, but “an ante-pope, a precursor and preparer for the Holy Father.”
Cardinal Martini puts us in front of Jesus from another perspective. Jesus is the friend of the publican and the sinner. He listens to the questions of young people. He stirs things up. He fights with us against injustice.”
Martini accuses Paul VI of deliberately concealing the truth, leaving it to theologians and pastors to fix things by adapting precepts to practice. The book is entitled: “Due in una carne. Chiesa e sessualità nella storia (Two in one flesh: Church and sexuality in history).”
Contraceptives are mostly used in Western countries where natural methods have continued to be considered not only completely ineffective, but also inconvenient and difficult to apply. The method was introduced by two married Australian doctors from Melbourne – Evelyn and John Billings whose natural birth control took the name.
Evelyn is from Irish Catholic ancestry who converted to Catholicism at their marriage. Together with her husband John Billings they dedicated their lives to this research of Billings methods of birth control which was adopted by Catholic Church as the best method for controlling birth.
For those who remember the campaigns of the feminists for the discovery of the female sexual apparatus – in the 1970’s, they advised women to use a mirror to examine their genitals – the Billings method seems perfect: the woman controls her power of procreation through her own knowledge of herself, without the mediation of doctors and medicine, in perfect autonomy. In reality, the feminists always treated with disdain.
But just as the questionnaires have been sent, German bishops have announced that Catholic hospitals can provide emergency contraceptives to rape victims, as long as the pills prevent the fertilization of an egg and do not stop the implantation of a fertilized egg.
Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula told “Vatican Insider,” the online news supplement to the Italian newspaper La Stampa recently that the German Catholic Episcopal Conference had deemed it necessary to announce that.
The announcement came Thursday at the end of the bishops’ regular plenary meeting in Trier. The action models similar policy established by the archbishop of Cologne previous month, when a controversy erupted when it became public that two Catholic hospitals in Cologne had refused to serve a rape victim.
Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner had apologized for the hospitals’ refusal to serve the victim, who had a doctor’s prescription for a “morning-after pill.” He then announced that emergency contraceptives are acceptable treatment for rape victims in Catholic hospitals.
The announcement follows in 2011 when German pro-life activists sent to Cologne Catholic hospitals — including St. Vincent’s, Holy Spirit and two other hospitals run by the Augustinian nuns known as the Cellitines — a woman who falsely claimed to have been raped and asked doctors for a morning-after pill.
Doctors who complied with the woman’s request were reported to archdiocesan authorities, which resulted in letters of reprimand.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ
UN Disarmament
Conference, 2002