Magic Statistics

A Roman Catholic church now under construction in Qatar is the first to be built in the Arab emirate since the coming of Islam in the 7th century. Prince Hamad bin Khalifa al-Than, a tolerant emir who assumed office in 1995, decided in 2005 to allow public church buildings for the Christian minority.

Like other countries in the Arabian peninsula, Qatar does not have an indigenous non-Muslim minority, but among the guest-workers that have come there in the past decades are many Christians. The new church will serve no less than a hundred thousand Catholics residing in the tiny emirate, most of whom are from the Philippines, India and Lebanon. A Protestant church is also under construction.

The decision is very controversial among Qatari Muslims.

The building of the church has shocked conservative Muslims of Qatar and has led to heated debates in the local media. Most Qatari Muslims belong to the Wahhabi sect, one of the most conservative currents in Islam and the state-doctrine in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Opponents of the church quote a Tradition attributed to the prophet Mohammed which reads: "There shall be no two religions in the Arabian peninsula." Alluding to this Tradition, articles have appeared in the local press bearing titles such as "No cross shall be raised under the sky of Qatar and no church-bell shall ring!"

Other Islamic clerics say that Islam allows buildings for non-Muslim worship and that the tradition outlawing other religions in the Arabian Peninsula refers only to Mecca and Medina.

The Catholic church will not have a cross on the outside and will not sanction any missionary activity.  It is scheduled to be open in time to celebrate Easter.

In his message this morning on the feast day of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, Pope Benedict XVI reminded his listeners that Christians in many parts of the world today are being persecuted and martyred for their faith.  He said that martyrdom "is exclusively an act of love towards God and all mankind including persecutors".

Speaking to the thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s square, the pontiff recalled that “the deep bond which unites Christ to the first martyr Stephen, is divine Charity: the same love which pushed the Son of God to strip himself and be obedient onto death on the cross (cfr Fil 2,6-8), also pushed the Apostles and martyrs to give their lives for the Gospel”.

A sign of this “love” are prayers offered up for “enemies” and “persecutors”, by the many “sons and daughters of the church down through the centuries”. This sets Christian martyrs apart from those who are victims of self-held ideals.

Benedict XVI then underlined how martyrdom has always accompanied the profession of the faith and still today remains deeply actual: “still today – he said – we receive news from across the world of missionaries, priests, bishops, religious brothers and sisters, and lay faithful who are persecuted, tortured, imprisoned and denied their freedom or stopped from professing their faith because they are disciples of Christ or apostles of the Gospel: often some suffer and even die because of their communion with the universal Church and their loyalty to the Pope”.

The pope did not name any specific countries, but he doesn’t need to.  Just this week, Christians have been killed and churches vandalised in India.  Ten days ago, a Roman Catholic priest was stabbed following Sunday Mass at his church in Izmir, Turkey, in the latest in a series of attacks on Christians in that country.

As well, in recent months, this blog has reported on Christians being persecuted in Nigeria, Pakistan, Belarus, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia.

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A lot of folks have placed a lot of faith in the Kyoto Protocol, despite the blindingly obvious fact that it’s a total failure.  Since it was signed in 1997, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase virtually unabated.  Here’s the situation between 1997 and 2004:

Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

The US, despite refusing to sign, has outperformed Kyoto signatories.  Go figure.

Says Professor Emeritus Phillip Stott,

Here we have, yet again, unequivocal evidence that ‘global warming’ is the ultimate faith without works.

Now the pope is taking on the false prophets of climate change.

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.

Public policy should be based on science instead of dogma?  Hold on a minute: That’s pretty radical.

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Anglican Bishop of Canberra George Browning is shocked—shocked!—at the heresy spouted by Sydney Catholic Archbishop George Pell.

At the national Anglican synod in Canberra yesterday, Bishop Browning attacked the cardinal for saying Jesus said nothing about climate change. "It's almost unbelievable," said Bishop Browning, who is the chairman of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network.

To the best of my recollection, Jesus mentioned weather only once, in St Matthew 16:1-3.

And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.  He answered them, "When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

Is it “almost unbelievable” to think that Jesus gives no hint that climate change is one of those “signs of the times”?

Bp Browning also offered this absurdity, making him the second Anglican cleric this week to be caught begging the question.

"I wrote him a letter saying Jesus had an awful lot to say about the rich taking what belonged to the poor and about the heritage of the children, and as he spoke about both of these things he spoke about climate change."

Cardinal Pell is too smart to fall for such drivel.

Cardinal Pell replied scathingly that church leaders should be allergic to nonsense. "My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes," he said.

Reality . . . What a concept.

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A fascinating and enlightening juxtaposition of book reviews appears in today’s Globe and Mail.  In the featured review, Peter Newman offers his caustic take on Jean Chretien’s blinkered and self-serving “auto-hagiography” of his years as Canada’s thug-in-chief prime minster.

The other review of note concerns a man who is Chretien’s polar opposite.  L’Arche founder Jean Vanier is too humble even to write a conventional memoir or autobiography; the book is a collection of his letters.  As Michael Coren points out, Mr Vanier is driven by convictions that make little sense to most Canadians.

By his works rather than his letters should we know him. In other words, the man's humility prevents him from explaining in these messages to friends and supporters just what he actually does. And what he does is not only to love the most humiliated but also to bathe them, put them on the toilet, clean their filth. Clean their filth precisely because the filth of selfishness and rejection has so infected the mainstream world. Yet if he is reluctant to write of his own achievements, he is jubilantly explicit when explaining why he does it in the first place.

"Pray that I may be faithful; that is the only thing that counts. It is true that we can easily turn away from the truth of Jesus and be seduced by prestige. Pray that I remain poor and never fear doing what Jesus asks of me … pray also for the Church, that the people may be authentic in their commitment to Jesus, that they do not try to escape into a certain piety but remain open to the Holy Spirit and to their wounded brothers and sisters."

He does not look left or right, but looks up: a deliberate defiance of the banality of political labels and stylized solutions to complex problems. Vanier works and lives with the handicapped not in spite of his Roman Catholicism, but because of it, which is key to understanding the man and his work. Yet this is also the most difficult aspect of Vanier for many of his admirers. Canada is comfortable with decency to the point of being drugged with the opiate of good works. But it needs to understand that those good works are provoked in this case and many others by absolute faith in Christ and in the church he founded. Yet while the culture easily embraces Vanier, it tends to reject the institution that made and makes him.

Jean Vanier and L’Arche are living proof of Christ’s words to St Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.

Taliban active in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province have announced that all females in the area are expected to wear burqas.  A local official has told a Catholic-run all-girls public school that its students and female teachers should comply, even though it is unclear whether non-Muslims are included in the edict.

Christians in the Afghan-border region 120 miles north of Peshawar say that extremists from the Taliban movement, which ruled most of Afghanistan from 1995 to 2001, have targeted them in recent months.

Extremists in Swat have conducted a campaign of Islamization in the district against all things deemed un-Islamic since early July, when a government crackdown on militants at the Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad triggered violent reactions nationwide.

"Due to continuous threatening letters from the Taliban directing female staff and students to wear burqas … the Executive District Officer has instructed [them] to comply with the orders," the Daily Mashriq article stated.

The order to cover up under the full-body robe that leaves only the hands and eyes visible may affect Christians at the Catholic-run Public High School in Sangota.

The school was shut for a week earlier this month after Muslim extremists sent a threatening note, accusing teachers of converting Muslim students to Christianity.

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A married man with six children was recently ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria.  Father Dean Henderson is the former rector of St Mary’s Anglican Church, Nanoose Bay, Diocese of British Columbia.

For Father Henderson, complicated has been the best word to describe the process of becoming a married Catholic priest. His application had to go all the way to Rome for evaluation, and in it was a 13-piece dossier of information to demonstrate satisfactory theological and liturgical knowledge, along with a comprehensive psychological assessment.

There are important conditions placed on Father Henderson, the most notable being that he is excluded from "the ordinary care of souls," which he says essentially means that he is "not meant to be a parish pastor."

Fr Henderson will serve as an assistant at St Andrew’s Cathedral and the Pastoral Care Co-ordinator at Mount St. Mary Hospital.  He was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1999 at Christ the King parish, Courtenay.

Whatever the reasons that prompted Fr Henderson to leave Anglican ministry and join the Catholic Church, there are apparently no hard feelings at his former parish of St Mary’s Nanoose Bay.  The latest parish newsletter carries a short article he wrote.

Coincidentally, a new rector is beginning his ministry at St Mary’s Nanoose Bay next week.  He is The Rev Guy Bellerby, former rector of St David’s Prince Albert, who attended St John’s Shaughnessy when the StatWife and I were members of that parish.

h/t: Big Blue Wave

Previous related post: Northern Anglican priest swims the Tiber

That’s the title of a 60-page booklet by historian Mark Noll (at right) published earlier this year by Regent College Publishing.  Dr Noll examines the decline in Canada’s religious conscience and church attachment that has occurred during the past fifty years.  Ted Byfield reports a few statistics from the booklet.

In 1961, only one half of 1% of Canadians told census takers they were not attached to any religious body. The figure rose to 4.3 % in 1971 and 16.2% in 2001.

After the Second World War, 67% of Canadians told Gallup they had been in a church or synagogue over the previous seven days. By 1990 this figure had fallen by nearly two thirds to 23%. Gallup says it's now less than 20%.

Another case in point: The decline of the United Church of Canada, now one of the most liberal denominations in all of Christendom.  Its membership peaked at over one million during the 1960s, but has now fallen to below 600,000.

The United Church, created in the 1920s by the union of the Methodists, Congregationalists and most Presbyterians, sought to combine the socialistic reforms of the social gospel with the spiritual message of evangelicalism. . . .  When the government itself legislated the social gospel, the church was left with no message at all.

“What Happened to Christian Canada?”  can be ordered directly from Regent College Bookstore via this page, where it is listed for C$7.95.  An audio CD of a public lecture by Dr Noll on the same topic can be ordered here for C$9.00.

You almost certainly won’t find these items on the shelves of your local bookstore.

After 27 years at Wheaton College, Mark Noll, one of America’s leading religious historians, joined the history department at Notre Dame University in early 2006.

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Pius Ncube resigned as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo last week amid allegations of adultery, in what is widely believed to be a trap set by Robert Mugabe.

If Mugabe thought he had given his arch-enemy the bum’s rush, he may be in for a shock.  It is now being reported that Ncube will run against Mugabe for the presidency of Zimbabwe.

The disgraced prelate is about to announce that, far from being consigned to oblivion, he plans to head up a sensational new political movement in Zimbabwe, and will be a charismatic, popular candidate in the elections next spring.

According to this report, Ncube has already met with several political groups.  A Pius Ncube Solidarity Coalition has been formed with the support of over 60 community organisations.

SW Radio Africa tried to confirm the report but without success.  A sister at the Bulawayo cathedral said the former archbishop is still working there and that she knew nothing about any political ambitions he may have.  Ncube spent the day in prayer and was unavailable for comment.

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The government of El Salvador says it will ask the Vatican to beatify Archbishop Oscar Romero, yet it continues to deny any responsibility for his 1980 assassination.  Msgr Romero was fatally shot by a former death squad member while celebrating Catholic Mass.  The shooter was arrested and convicted and, as far as the Salvadoran government is concerned, that’s the end of the matter.

"The state can't accept responsibility because there was a clear person responsible for the killing, and that person was tried," [Security and Justice Vice Minister Astor] Escalante said.

A Salvadoran court found former death squad member Alvaro Saravia guilty of fatally shooting Romero in the late 1980s. Saravia was released from prison with a 1993 amnesty after El Salvador's 1992 peace accords.
. . .
David Morales, a church legal representative in El Salvador, said the decision to support the beatification process was just a “smoke screen” to defer criticism of its decision not to lift the 1993 amnesty.

According to a 1993 official UN report, the killing was ordered by Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, political leader and death squad organiser.  D’Aubuisson, who died in 1992, denied any involvement.

Romero is one of ten 20th-century martyrs depicted on the west front of Westminster Abbey.

The policies and personality of Hugo Chavez have so polarised the people of Venezuela that they are in a state of “cold civil war”.  It could go hot at any time.

The whole population has been politicised; it has also been polarised into two ferociously hostile camps, Chavistas and the derogatorily named opposition of "esqualidos" ("squalid people"). The tone of debate is so angry that the situation is often described as a "cold civil war".

With a power-crazed Chávez at the helm, the fear is that it may not remain cold.
. . .
William Ury, a conflict resolution expert at Harvard, identifies three typical symptoms of a country on the brink of civil war. The first is that the population begins to arm itself; the second is that each side begins to dehumanise and impute evil intentions to the other; and the third is the politicisation of the media. Contemporary Venezuela has each of these conditions in abundance.

Earlier this week, El Presidente accused the country’s Roman Catholic bishops of meddling in politics after the Venezuelan Bishops' Conference objected to constitutional reforms being drafted with no public involvement.

Chavez — a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro — lambasted the clergy of "lying" about his plans for the reform, warning Venezuela's Catholic Church leaders they were "sinning" by spreading falsehoods.

El Salvador’s leaders said the same of Oscar Romero in his day.  (I hope Chavez doesn’t view Romero’s assassination as a precedent for dealing with Catholic critics.)

In the near future, Chavez is expected to propose a bill authorising him to remain president indefinitely.  If he does that, he will validate the bishops' objections.

h/t for New Statesman link: Times Online Comment Central

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Even for Hugo Chavez, this is outrageous.  Venezuelans will not be pleased.

In another defiant gesture against the democratic and spiritual sensibilities of the people of Venezuela, its ruler, Lt. Col. Hugo Chávez Frías, has determined that after August 5th, when the government takes over the management of the hospital in Maracaibo, its name will be changed from Hospital Virgen de Coromoto to that of Argentinean guerrilla fighter, Ernesto Che Guevara, who executed hundreds of Cubans in Havana. As everyone knows, Guevara was a fundamental factor in the entrenchment of the fierce Marxist-Leninist tyranny of Fidel Castro.
. . .
Not only will the name of the hospital be changed but also, what is even worse, the venerated statue of the Virgen de Coromoto has been taken away from the entry to that hospital and it will be replaced by a bust of Guevara. That bust could be placed in a house where terrorism and the totalitarian doctrine of Marxism-Leninism are promoted, but never in a hospital and, even less, replacing the Virgen de Coromoto.

The Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to the chief of Venezuela’s Coromoto Indians in 1651.  Our Lady of Coromoto is now the patron saint of Venezuela.

Che Guevara, of course, was a terrorist and mass murderer utterly lacking in human compassion—but he does sell a lot of t-shirts.  More here.

h/t: LifeSite

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