{"id":2385,"date":"2007-03-23T13:24:47","date_gmt":"2007-03-23T13:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/face-time.html"},"modified":"2007-03-23T13:24:47","modified_gmt":"2007-03-23T13:24:47","slug":"face-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/face-time.html","title":{"rendered":"Face Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of the Catholic Peace Fellowship <\/a>traveled to Rome recently. John Thavis of CNS reports:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The group was heartened last fall when Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the new Vatican secretary of state, gave his inaugural address to the diplomatic corps and specifically included conscientious objection as one of the "paths to peace" supported by the Vatican.<\/p>\n

The three activists dropped off a thank-you letter for Cardinal Bertone in a meeting with a Secretariat of State official, who expressed interest in their campaign. The official made it clear, however, that while the Vatican might address conscientious objection in a general way at the diplomatic level, it’s primarily up to local or national bishops to deal with it as a pastoral issue.<\/p>\n

Another request raised by Deacon Cornell, Griffin and Casteel was that the Vatican take a new look at the language of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on war and conscientious objection.<\/p>\n

The catechism notes that public authorities should provide for alternative service for those who refuse to bear arms for reasons of conscience. But it says the main responsibility for evaluating the conditions of a just war "belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good."<\/p>\n

Griffin said that wording seems to imply that public authorities will be deciding a war’s morality. It gives too little weight to an individual’s responsibility to evaluate the legitimacy of war in his or her own conscience, he said.<\/p>\n

The delegation discussed this with U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, who heads a Vatican office that deals with matters of conscience. They also talked about "selective conscientious objection," which the fellowship considers crucial for Catholics.<\/p>\n

At present, the United States grants conscientious objector status only to someone who refuses to participate in any war. But selective conscientious objection, in which a soldier judges the morality of a particular war, is actually a better application of the "discernment of conscience" required of Catholics, Griffin said.<\/p>\n

The group also met with members of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the papal preacher. In general, Griffin said, they found the Vatican highly sympathetic to the call of conscience in matters of war, but wary about church leaders telling Catholics not to participate in a war.<\/p>\n

The issue of civil disobedience by those who cannot in conscience follow orders of government or military leaders at times sparked lively debate, Griffin said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Archbishop ready to lead resistance to Mugabe:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo says he is ready to lead a national campaign of peaceful resistance to force President Robert Mugabe to step down.<\/p>\n

At a news conference yesterday, the archbishop urged Zimbabweans to take to the streets over the rights abuses of Mugabe’s government, reported Reuters. Mugabe\u2019s policies also disrupted the agriculture-based economy, leading to acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline, medicines and other essential imports.<\/p>\n

"Human rights are God-given. No one has a right to just trample over them," the archbishop was quoted as saying. \u201cPeople are justified to practice non-violent civil disobedience.\u201d<\/p>\n

"Starvation stalks our land and government does nothing to correct our situation,\u201d he reportedly continued. <\/p>\n

The archbishop, who has long been a critic of Mugabe, said one of the biggest problems is the cowardice of the Zimbabwean people. "If only Zimbabweans are prepared to stand, so am I prepared to stand … we are not going to be bullied,\u201d he was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs for me,\u201d the archbishop proclaimed, \u201cI am ready to stand in front, even of blazing guns!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of the Catholic Peace Fellowship traveled to Rome recently. John Thavis of CNS reports: The group was heartened last fall when Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the new Vatican secretary of state, gave his inaugural address to the diplomatic corps and specifically included conscientious objection as one of the "paths to peace" supported by the Vatican.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFace Time - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/face-time.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Face Time - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Members of the Catholic Peace Fellowship traveled to Rome recently. John Thavis of CNS reports: The group was heartened last fall when Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the new Vatican secretary of state, gave his inaugural address to the diplomatic corps and specifically included conscientious objection as one of the "paths to peace" supported by the Vatican.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/face-time.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-03-23T13:24:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Face Time - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/face-time.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Face Time - Via Media","og_description":"Members of the Catholic Peace Fellowship traveled to Rome recently. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}