Prince of Peace Parish

Vatican News is in Lisbon, where The Imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca and the Patriarch of Constantinople are speaking at an interreligious convention.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 15, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Three Catholic bishops warned of a growing ideological polarization within the Church and the need for civil dialogue among those with disagreements during a livestreamed panel discussion on Tuesday afternoon.

“Politics is almost a religion and sometimes it’s a sport, [but] it’s not supposed to be either,” Bishop Daniel Flores of the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, said during the discussion. 

“It’s supposed to be a civil conversation … to seek what is good and make the priority how to achieve it and how to avoid what is evil,” Flores said. “And I think if we could stay focused on that, we can kind of tone down the caricature and the rhetoric that seeks to dehumanize people.”

The panel discussion included Flores, Cardinal Robert McElroy of the Diocese of San Diego, and Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota. It was moderated by Gloria Purvis, the host of “The Gloria Purvis Podcast” at America Magazine, and co-sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Catholic Charities USA, Glenmary Home Missioners, and the Jesuit Conference.

The panel discussion was part of the USCCB’s “Civilize It” initiative, which is meant to foster civility in important ideological debates. As part of the initiative, the bishops ask Catholics to sign a pledge to affirm the dignity of every human person — including those with different ideological beliefs — and to work with others in pursuit of the common good.

According to the panelists, American society and the Church have grown more polarized when it comes to ideological differences — and debates about those differences have become less civil.

Barron, who founded the Catholic media organization Word on Fire, said disagreements within the Church are nothing new, but the way people approach those disagreements has changed: “What’s broken down is the love that makes real dialogue possible.”

“It’s a tribalism that’s lost the sense of love in dialogue,” Barron said.

The bishop warned that people are more focused on winning arguments and being loyal to an ideological identity than on love. He said these problems are very noticeable in discussions on the internet and encouraged people to ask whether “this comment [is] an act of love” before saying anything. 

“Is it born of love?” Barron said people should ask themselves. “Is it born of a desire to will the good of the other? If it’s not, there’s like a thousand better things to be doing than sending that statement.”

McElroy said too much dialogue today “is meant to be confrontational” to the point at which people “can’t enter into a genuine dialogue.” 

“People are coming toward each other in the life of the Church looking first at that label: What are you? Where do you stand in the war-like culture politics of our country?” the cardinal said.

People focus on this “rather than [on] what unites us: where do we stand in terms of our identity as Catholics and with a Christological outlook,” he added. 

McElroy also built on the concerns Barron highlighted regarding dialogue on the internet.

“When you’re writing the Tweet, imagine Jesus is there with you and when you think through that question ‘should I do this?’” McElroy said. 

Similarly, Flores emphasized the need to remember what Christ would do. 

“He would not be unkind, especially to the poor and especially to those who had no standing in the world,” Flores said. “And also he would never commit an injustice in order to promote justice.”

ACI Prensa Staff, May 15, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

The Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz (Holy Cross) in Austria is the oldest in the world, dating back almost 1,000 years, and currently has more than 100 monks living there. It has never had “interruptions” in its history and is now an oasis of the Catholic Church in Europe, with love for God and others at the center of its work and with the beloved Pope Benedict XVI as an “ally.”

Heiligenkreuz is located about 18 miles from Vienna, the capital of Austria. The monks, explained the Italian newspaper Avvenire, have an average age of 49, which means they are “young” in current Church terms, especially in Europe where there has been a precipitous decline in vocations.

Four or five men each year join the historic abbey, founded in 1135, almost a thousand years ago, making it the oldest Cistercian abbey in the world.

Among the abbey’s current 103 monks, there are 11 with temporary vows and six novices, all led by Abbot Maximilian Heim.

“The most important thing is love for God and others. In a Benedictine monastery [the Cistercians follow the rule of St. Benedict]; this is fulfilled with the triad ‘ora, lege et labora,’ that is, pray, read, and work,” the abbot explained.

For the superior of the abbey, it’s also important to “honor the commandment of Jesus ‘that they may all be one’: unity within the community without egalitarianism and with the necessary freedom for each individual, as well as unity with the Church in practice, which means unity within the order, as well as with the pope and the diocesan bishop.”

Rescuing other monasteries in Europe

On Nov. 21, 2021, the last two Benedictine nuns at the Sabiona monastery in the town of Chiusa in the Italian province of Bolzano left after 335 years of the order’s presence there.

The bishop of Bolzano-Bressanone, Ivo Muser, and Abbess Maria Ancilla Hohenegger lamented what had happened and expressed their wish that the monastery located in the Italian region would continue to be a place of pilgrimage and a center of contemplative life. However, that was only possible some time later, thanks to the Heiligenkreuz Abbey.

After numerous consultations, the conventual chapter of Heiligenkreuz Abbey decided on March 14 to take over the Sabiona monastery with the aim of creating a “spiritual center” on the so-called “holy mountain,” as the place where it is located is known, explained Father Johannes Paul Chavanne to CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.

The monks who will go to the Sabiona monastery will do their pastoral work there but will continue to belong to the Heiligenkreuz Abbey.

Another monastery that received help from Heiligenkreuz Abbey was a Cistercian monastery located in the German Diocese of Görlitzer on the border with Poland.

In 2018, the bishop of Görlitz, Wolfgang Ipolt, asked for help for the Cistercian monastery of Neuzelle and succeeded in getting the Heiligenkreuz Abbey to send six of its monks there in September of that year.

With their presence it was possible to bring back contemplative life to the region after 200 years, as CNA Deutsch reported at the time.

Pope Benedict XVI and Heiligenkreuz Abbey

Next to Heiligenkreuz Abbey is the Benedict XVI School of Theology, which was recognized as a pontifical institution in 2007. Renowned academics such as Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, one of the greatest experts on the work of the theologian Romano Guardini and of St. Edith Stein, and the canonist Alfred Hierold, former rector of the University of Bamberg, teach there.

The school currently has 342 students from 39 countries such as Germany, Austria, India, Italy, Nigeria, the United States, and Vietnam.

Heim, the abbot of Heiligenkreuz and a member of Pope Benedict XVI’s circle of former students, received the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation Prize in 2011.

“In addition to being a monk and theologian, he treats topics concerning faith and theology through conferences and the publication of a series of books: Both initiatives are called ‘Auditorium,’” Cardinal Camillo Ruini explained at the time.

On Sept. 9, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the monks of Heiligenkreuz, reminding them that they lived in “the oldest Cistercian monastery in the world that has continued to be active without interruption. I wanted to come to this place rich in history, to draw attention to the fundamental directive of St. Benedict, according to whose rule the Cistercians also live.”

Benedict XVI’s secretary and Cardinal Koch

In April, a conference titled “Beauty, Demands, and the Crisis of the Priesthood” was held at the abbey, in which Archbishop Georg Gänswein, former secretary of Pope Benedict XVI, participated as well as Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity.

According to CNA Deutsch, the cardinal spoke about the importance of the Eucharist for the Church, also for the first Christians, while Gänswein highlighted the need to promote “a solid theology of the priesthood that can withstand the misunderstandings of the modern world.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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