Our weekly guide to relevant info, news & events that underline Christianity in its habitus.

La cinquième réunion des représentants de l’Église orthodoxe russe et de l’Église russe hors frontières
La cinquième réunion de la Commission mixte pour le rapprochement entre l’Église orthodoxe russe et l’Église russe hors frontières s’est tenue à Moscou du 26 au 28 juillet. Elle a été consacrée aux problèmes d’ordre canonique et organisationnel que pose l’éventuel rétablissement de la communion eucharistique entre les deux Églises. Il s’agit du statut des clercs et des structures de l’Église hors frontières qui sont présentes en Russie et des rapports entre l’Église hors frontières et les commnautés schismatiques de Grèce, de Roumanie et de Bulgarie. «Il a été décidé, a souligné le père Nicolas Balachov, membre de la Commission, que toutes ces questions doivent être résolues sur le fondement des canons ecclésiaux et dans l’esprit d’amour». La Commission a abordé également les problèmes pratiques dans les rapports entre les diocèses des deux Églises à l’étranger. Les participants se sont ensuite rendus ensemble dans un pèlerinage à la métochie du monastère moscovite de la Rencontre (Sretenie) dans le diocèse de Riazan.) (...)

Catholic experts urge caution in evolution debate
A recent article by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn in The New York Times, asserting that “unguided, unplanned” evolution is inconsistent with Catholic faith, should be read with caution warn a number of Catholic scientists and theologians, including the head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Most of the experts interviewed said the article can offer a useful alert if taken at a theological level. Evolution, they point out, has sometimes been invoked to justify atheism, as well as immanentism (that God is a vague life force) or deism (that God set the universe in motion and has nothing more to do with it).
To the extent Schönborn’s point is that Christianity cannot accept a universe without an active, personal God, they say, there’s little to dispute. If taken as a scientific statement, on the other hand, these observers warn that Schönborn’s insistence on seeing “purpose and design” in nature could steer the Catholic church towards creationism in the bitter cultural debate, especially prominent in the United States, between evolution and intelligent design. Doing so, they say, risks overstepping the bounds of the church’s competence, as well as reopening a divide between science and the Catholic church that had seemed largely overcome. (...)

Divorced Catholics must be welcomed in parishes, pope tells priests
Divorced and civilly remarried Catholics who suffer because they cannot receive Communion must be welcomed in parishes as Catholics who witness to the importance of the Eucharist, Pope Benedict XVI said.
At the same time, he said, if a priest, acting out of compassion for their suffering, gives them the Eucharist, he risks undermining the dignity and indissolubility of the sacrament of marriage.
"We all know that this is a particularly painful situation," the pope said July 25 during a meeting with about 140 priests, religious and deacons from the Valle d'Aosta region where he was vacationing. (...)

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