Pope tells missionary group to respect culture

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Pope tells missionary group to respect culture
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press | February 1, 2014

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis told members of a missionary movement Saturday they must respect local customs and bishops' guidance while globally spreading the faith, saying the Catholic Church's overall unity is more important than the details of their own practices.

Francis held an audience with several thousand members of the Neocatechumenal Way, a community founded in Spain in the 1960s that seeks to train Catholic adults in their faith and is known for sending teams of large families out as missionaries around the globe.

The group, whose growing membership is reported at around 1 million, is one of the so-called new religious movements in the church, emboldened by the Vatican's call for renewed evangelizing, but also criticized for divisive practices and alleged liturgical abuses that greatly concerned Pope Benedict XVI.

Francis is less a liturgical purist than his predecessor, and has said he wants a missionary church that goes out to the peripheries of the world to spread the faith. But in his audience with the Neocatechumenals, Francis made clear the community still had issues that needed addressing.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Pope-tells-missionary-group-to-respect-culture-5195861.php

[AtheistCrusader]

1. Well, that makes it all better.

[roguevalley]

2. no but its a start.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. And local Bishops' guidance is about exorcism and anti gay rhetoric. Do you support ENDA?

Illinois Bishop compares anti-gay exorcism to punishing disobedient children.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bishop-paprocki-hopes-anti-gay-exorcism-will-show-gay-people-he-loves-them

Antigay Bishop Says He Was Just Following Pope's Orders
http://www.advocate.com/politics/religion/2013/12/30/antigay-bishop-says-he-was-just-following-popes-orders

The U.S. bishops' lobbying arm, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter to Congress opposing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). They fear that the law would hinder religious liberty, protect "extramarital sexual conduct," and reject "the biological basis of gender by defining 'gender identity' as something people may choose at variance with their biological sex." But Freedom to Work, an advocacy group pushing the law, disagrees, saying, "ENDA exempts churches, religious organizations and religious schools."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-oloughlin/anti-gay-bishops_b_4414016.html

[trusty elf]

4. How about not presuming that people need what you're peddling?