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Francis Has a Hatred of Proselytism. But That’s How the Faith Was Propagated Among Chinese Women of the Seventeenth CenturyIn the deluge of interviews that accompanied his tenth anniversary as pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio went back to execrating “proselytism,” as he had done a thousand times before.For him, evangelizing is simply bearing witness. In his support he cites Benedict XVI, who in Aparecida in 2007 said that the Church “does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by attraction.” Or he refers to the apostolic exhortation “Evangelii nuntiandi” of Paul VI, who, it is true, also assigned a “capital importance”...

[Catholic Caucus] North American Martyrs and the Importance of Baptism The religious impact of the discovery of the New World in the late 15th century cannot be overestimated. Although Catholic Europeans were aware of areas of the world that were not Christian (they had been involved in centuries of crusades against the Muslims), the assumption of most Catholics was that the Gospel had reached the ends of the earth, even if some vast areas had still not accepted it.However, with the discovery of the New World, the Church realized that even 1,500 years after the Incarnation there was still a...

Vatican cardinal exhorts faithful to channel St. Francis (not Pope Francis), convert others Cardinal Angelo Comastri has been a beautiful encouragement and witness to the Faith during these months of trial. May 29, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Angelo Comastri, the pope’s vicar for Vatican City, stated on May 28 that we need to recover the “courage” of Saint Francis of Assisi, who, in 1219, went to the Sultan of Egypt inviting him to believe in Jesus.” We should all have that courage and become missionaries, even unto death, the elderly cardinal added. Today, the last day of his daily Angelus...

Pope Silent on Captive Italian’s Proselytism Aid worker Silvia Romano's conversion to Islam sparks furor ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - Pope Francis remains tight-lipped on the capture and conversion of an Italian aid worker to Islam despite his repeated rebukes against proselytism, even as a public outcry has erupted in Italy against the victim's "forced" conversion. Silvia Romano, now 24, and a baptized Catholic, was serving as a volunteer in an orphanage in a village in Kenya when gunmen from Somalia's al-Shabaab Islamic terrorist organization abducted her in Nov. 2018 and held her captive for 18 months.  Silvia Romano returns to Rome in Islamic garb   The aid worker,...

Famed eighth century missionary Saint Boniface appeared at the Vatican yesterday for the kickoff of the Amazonian Synod. Reading from the working document, the moderator was saying, For the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin, the good life comes from living in communion with other people, with the world, with the creatures of their environment, and with the Creator. Indigenous peoples, in fact, live within the home that God created and gave them as a gift: the Earth. Their diverse spiritualities and beliefs motivate them to live in communion with the soil, water, trees, animals, and with day and...

Proselytism, triumphalism, and more! June 5 is the feast of St. Boniface Winfrid in the Roman calendar, an eighth-century Englishman who evangelized the Germanic peoples with such zeal and success that he is commonly known as the Apostle of Germany. Today the so-called Catholic News Agency sent a tweet with a link to its biographical page about this great bishop and martyr, which notes: St. Boniface was very bold in his faith, and was well known for being very good at using the local customs and culture of the day to bring people to Christ. He was born in Devonshire,...

FaithlessTHE EDITOR "Do we believe the doctrine of the Church, or not?" - Bishop Strickland (Baltimore, 13/11/18)  Last month we reprinted a most offensive episcopal letter. The offending prelate was Bishop Joseph Strickland of East Texas, who, in October 2018 by way of a full-page advertisement in the local newspaper, beseeched non-Catholics to join the Church.Oh. Dear. Sooo first millennium. Well, at least in the eyes of episcopal ecumaniacs the world over. These prideful souls have evolved beyond 'triumphal' notions of Absolute Truth and its protection, explication and transmission by One True Church divinely commissioned to teach and convert all nations...

[Catholic Caucus] Proselytism, the Phantasm of Pope Francis In entitling (see above) the speech given on May 20 by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, “Vatican News,” the official digital news bulletin of the Holy See, emphasized his umpteenth inevitable broadside against “proselytism.”The text that Francis was reading did not mention it, but the pope could not resist making this addition off the cuff:“There is a danger that is popping up again - it seems overcome, but it pops up again: confusing evangelization with proselytism. No. Evangelization is testimony to Jesus Christ, dead and risen. It...

On Saturday, Francis made the return flight from Bangladesh to Rome, and as is his custom, he answered questions from a number of journalists while en route. As Bergoglian in-flight press conferences go, this one isn’t especially noteworthy overall, but it does contain at least one exchange that merits our attention.A reporter named Etienne from France, asked:What is the priority: to evangelize or to dialogue for peace? Because to evangelize means to arouse conversions, that provokes tensions and at times conflicts among believers. So, what is your priority: to evangelize or to dialogue?Here we have the quintessential pitch tossed directly over...

In a recent article, Fr. James Schall, S.J. argues that “The only real way to eliminate the historic aggressiveness of Islam is to convert its believers.” Yet if you had to bet, “the conversion of the world to Islam is, in the long run, more likely than its conversion to Christianity.” From a purely human perspective, the conversion of Muslims is a tall order. It’s not just that Islam is a tough nut to crack, it’s also that some today – usually Catholics – have an aversion to conversion. (Even the pope had denounced “proselytism.”) In good multicultural fashion, they...

"Proselytism among Christians, therefore, in itself, is a grave sin,” said Pope Francis. The journalist then asked, “Why?” “Because it contradicts the very dynamic of how to become and to remain Christian,” he said. “The Church is not a soccer team that goes around seeking fans.” It would be hard to conceive of a more superficial, more puerile, remark on relations with other Christian denominations. How much lower can the papacy sink - in terms of both cheap jibes that demean and dishonor the supreme office of Christ's Vicar on earth (lambasting an opposing position with a crude straw-man caricature...

Trust me, I know that it is hard to write accurate, easy-to-read articles about complicated Vatican theological documents. This is especially true when dealing with materials focusing on very nuanced issues that continue to cause behind-the-scenes debates among Catholics. It's even harder to write informative, catchy and, yes, accurate headlines for these kinds of stories. This brings me to a recent New York Times report that ran with this headline: "Vatican Says Catholics Should Not Try to Convert Jews." The problem with that headline is that it is simplistic to the point of being inaccurate -- that is, if the...

“Wake Up!”: Muslim Persecution of Christians Abetted by the West Mideast Christians beg Western governments to stop aiding the slaughter. September 23, 2015 Raymond Ibrahim    Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Not only is the Islamic State (IS) persecuting Christians but so are the U.S.-supported “rebel” forces, which the Obama administration assures are “moderate.”  According to a recent NPR report, “With backing from U.S. allies, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, this [U.S. supported] rebel coalition fights both the Syrian regime and the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS....

Got Zeal? An excellent collection of quotes on the utter necessity for zeal for the salvation of souls. Remember these quotes when you hear anyone say that proselytism is “solemn nonsense”, or that they have no desire to convert a person or persons to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is no salvation. St. James the Apostle: “He must know that he who causeth a sinner to be converted from the error of his way will save his own soul from death and shall cover a multitude of sins” (St. James 5, 19-20). St. John...

In the aftermath of yesterday’s blog post, it has become evident that Fairytale Fever has reached near epidemic proportions among the Catholic population. With the well-deserved criticism of Interviewgate 2 making its rounds, in particular as it relates to the pope’s insistence that “proselytism is solemn nonsense,” the papal apologizers set out on an archaeological dig in search of evidence that Francis’ remarks are the stuff of papal precedent. Well, they didn’t have to dig very deep. They couldn’t, for the simple reason that the Holy Roman Catholic Church’s distaste for her God-given mission is a post-conciliar phenomenon. Sure, they...

It might be useful to expand a bit on a couple of the controversial statements of the Bishop of Rome in the recent interview: those concerning the “proselytism is nonsense” stunt. . As the headlines, even when true, only report the actual words, the context can help us to better see what the situation was and was Francis was doing. In addition, we can use this to observe the way communication works, and apply it to all the other pieces of nonsense the Bishop of Rome continues to regale us with, and which are too numerous for a blogger who...

If you look up the verb “proselytism” in most dictionaries, you’ll find it defined as any effort to persuade a person to give up one point of view in favor of another. The word is sometimes used in a political sense, but most often it is used religiously. The most common synonym for “proselytize” is “convert”. This will come as a surprise to Catholics, and it requires clarification. For Catholics, who have a highly developed spiritual vocabulary, the standard definition is not adequate. In the Church's lexicon, proselytism typically refers to conversion efforts that fail to respect the prospective convert’s...

A medical resident--we called her "Dr. Death"--at the Intensive Care Unit at Long Island's North Shore Hospital chased us down the hallway. "Your husband wants to die," she told my mother, again. Just minutes before I had asked her to leave us alone. "He can't even talk," I reminded her. ...My father, 85, ... was not in a "persistent vegetative state" (itself a phrase subject to broad interpretation), that magic point at which family members are required to pull the plug--or risk the accusation that they are right-wing Christians. ..Then a light bulb went off in my head. We could...

But Metropolitan Kyrill Says Ecumenism Is at a Dead End AACHEN, Germany, SEPT. 9, 2003 (Zenit.org).- A representative of the Moscow Patriarchate said that the time has come for a change in the relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. On Monday, Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad addressed the meeting "Men and Religions," organized in Aachen by the Community of Sant'Egidio in collaboration with the local archdiocese. The three-day event, which ended today, attracted 500 religious leaders. The head of the Foreign Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate spoke during a discussion entitled "Catholics and...