In accusing Cardinal McElroy of heresy, Bishop Paprocki was aiming higher

The American episcopate’s anti-Francis faction takes it to a new level.

Cardinal Robert McElroy, from left, Pope Francis and Bishop Thomas Paprocki. (AP Photos; Courtesy of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois)

March 9, 2023

By 

Mark Silk

(RNS) — On Feb. 28, the Catholic bishop of Springfield, Illinois, Thomas Paprocki, accused the newest American cardinal, San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, of heresy.

Not that Paprocki made so bold as to call out McElroy by name. In a Feb. 28 essay, “Imagining a Heretical Cardinal,” on the website of the magazine First Things, the bishop began by quoting directly from an article McElroy had published in the Jesuit magazine America a month earlier:

Imagine if a cardinal of the Catholic Church were to publish an article in which he condemned “a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist” and stated that “unworthiness cannot be the prism of accompaniment for disciples of the God of grace and mercy.”

Anyone who plugged the quotes into a search engine did not have to imagine for long.

Newly created Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, bishop of San Diego, attends a reception for relatives and friends in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Aug. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Paprocki then proceeded to a second imaginary: “Or what if a cardinal of the Catholic Church were to state publicly that homosexual acts are not sinful and same-sex unions should be blessed by the Church?”

Public statements along those lines have been made by Luxembourg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, not McElroy — though a reader might think otherwise. In his America article, McElroy concerned himself with the question of whether access to the Eucharist should be permitted to the divorced and remarried and to sexually active LGBT people.

Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki in 2018. Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois

McElroy took the position that members of both groups should be so permitted for the reasons of “eucharistic conherence” that Paprocki quoted in his response. The Springfield bishop pronounced the remarks heretical and proceeded to cite canon law indicating that those holding heretical views are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

But, Paprocki continued, since a cardinal can only be removed from office by the pope, one who is automatically excommunicated (i.e., McElroy) might get to vote for the next pope. “We must pray,” Paprocki piously concluded, “that the Holy Spirit will not let this happen, and will inspire anyone who espouses heretical views to renounce them and seek reconciliation with our Lord and his Church.”

I guess Paprocki figured there’s no way the present pope would himself avert the danger by removing the heretical cardinal in question from office. And with good reason.

After all, in his 2013 apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel), Pope Francis wrote:

The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness. Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.

In his 2016 exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (Love’s Happiness), Francis declared that it “can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.” And that “science needs to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage.” 

And: “At times we find it hard to make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity. We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance.”

Pope Francis speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the Vatican, Jan. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Did I mention that, to the consternation of some conservative prelates and laity, the pope in fact did, in Chapter 8 of “Amoris Laetitia,” give bishops the power to grant divorced and remarried persons access to the Eucharist?

No one should have the slightest doubt that the McElroy remarks condemned as heresy by Paprocki convey precisely Francis’ magisterial teaching — indeed, that the pope’s injunction to “make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity” is clearly mirrored in McElroy’s advocacy of a “radical inclusion” of some people whose sexual activity outside of church-sanctioned marriage violates church doctrine.

If McElroy pushed the envelope, it was by extending the pope’s principles to sexually active LGBTQ persons. But that’s not where Paprocki brought his hammer down. He brought it down on the principles themselves — effectively applying the same automatic excommunication he assigned to McElroy to Francis himself. 

It’s hard to imagine a bishop affronting any other pope in this way with impunity.

Mormonism’s slow shift away from demonizing working mothers

The LDS church used to vilify working mothers. Then it began to quietly tolerate them. Now it has begun to celebrate their achievements.

Photo by Vitolda Klein/Unsplash/Creative Commons

March 1, 2023

By 

Jana Riess

(RNS) — Sometime in the mid-1990s, I went to the ward library after sacrament meeting to obtain materials for teaching a lesson. Also waiting by the library’s tiny window with the Dutch door was a trauma nurse in her 30s, a woman I’d gotten to know through the church’s visiting teaching program. I will call her Anne. 

Anne was angry and hurt, and it showed.

“That was quite a slam on working women, moms in particular,” she said. “I’m glad that works for her.”

Anne was referring to a sacrament talk we had just heard, in which a young pregnant woman in our ward (let’s call her Sarah) announced from the pulpit that, with regret, she had just quit a job she loved, one she had trained for over the course of several years. Fighting tears, Sarah said she’d resigned from the workforce because “the prophet has taught that all mothers need to stay at home with their children.”

Both Anne and I understood that Sarah was doing what she felt was right for her family, and that her comment about the prophet’s standard was not intended to be a personal judgment. But the effect of her talk on Anne, and other working LDS women, was to make the ones who did not stay home with their children feel like they were terrible mothers, and disobedient members of the church.

Anne’s comment that she was glad this reasoning worked for Sarah implied that it manifestly did not work for Anne, who loved her job and had no intention of leaving it even though she also had a young daughter at home. And even though she had a working husband and no great hardship that would necessitate her working for a paycheck.

Anne just liked working, and felt called to her career in nursing.

“Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart,” edited by Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye and Kate Holbrook. Courtesy image

I’ve been thinking about this conversation over the last week as I’ve been reading the new book “Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart,” edited by my friends Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye and the late Kate Holbrook. It’s a collection of gorgeous essays from women in all kinds of different professional careers, and it has just been co-published by the BYU Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book.

Let’s just sit with that for a minute: The book is co-published by Deseret Book, the church’s publishing arm, and proudly displayed in its retail stores.

The essayists are women from many different careers and cultures. There is a university president, a Nigerian chief judge, a botanist, a geneticist, a world-renowned expert on business in China, a clinical psychologist and many more. The women are authors and professors and doctors and mathematicians. Many are also mothers. And all are faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I’ve said before that change happens so glacially in the church that it’s easy to miss the magnitude of it unless you’re either old enough to remember the way things used to be or have intentionally steeped yourself in its history. So, for the record, since many of us are liable to forget how recent it was that LDS mothers were routinely counseled to stay home with their children, let’s not forget what the messaging was in the not-so-distant past. In 1987, then-President Ezra Taft Benson gave a special fireside for parents in which he directed his remarks “to the mothers in Zion.”

Mothering the Lord’s way was not the same as mothering the world’s way, he instructed. LDS couples were to welcome every child the Lord might send, forgoing all that newfangled birth control in favor of supersized families like Benson’s own. So they had better get started young, he advised. In sum, Benson was foreclosing the idea of women ever getting a foothold in the workforce: They weren’t to postpone having kids when they were young or stop having kids even when they thought they’d had enough.

He expressed deep suspicion about women in the workforce at all. “In the beginning, Adam — not Eve — was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow,” he said. All the more so when they were not just women but mothers. “Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother’s calling is in the home, not in the marketplace.”

Benson made some exceptions for sisters who were widowed or divorced, but in cases of a two-parent family, there was simply no excuse for a mother to be in the workforce:

“In a home where there is an able-bodied husband, he is expected to be the breadwinner. Sometimes we hear of husbands who, because of economic conditions, have lost their jobs and expect their wives to go out of the home and work even though the husband is still capable of providing for his family. In these cases, we urge the husband to do all in his power to allow his wife to remain in the home caring for the children while he continues to provide for his family the best he can, even though the job he is able to secure may not be ideal and family budgeting will have to be tighter.”

What was entirely absent from Benson’s talk (which was made part of the 1990 book “Come Listen to a Prophet’s Voice” and is still on the church’s official website as part of the curriculum for the Eternal Marriage Student Manual) is any notion that women might actually want to work. That they, like men, are called to other things in life besides parenthood, and that they deserve the chance to develop their talents and pursue their God-given interests. That the career/motherhood question is not an either-or proposition.

Slowly over the years, I’ve watched the church take its baby steps toward progress. First, in the late 20th century, it stopped demonizing working mothers and naming them as one of the signs of society’s moral decline, which had been a regular fixture of the church’s rhetoric in the 1970s and into the 1980s. Historian Colleen McDannell chronicles in her book “Sister Saints” that male LDS leaders faced a dilemma when the church began expanding around the world.

“When the church begins becoming a global church after 1978, leaders realize that while in the U.S. you might be able to have a line that tells women to stay home with their children, it doesn’t work in Ecuador or Ghana or Mexico,” McDannell said in a 2018 Religion News Service interview. “Women there work in jobs that are dangerous and hard, and they don’t do it because they’re looking for self-fulfillment. They’re feeding their families. They are the financial center of these families. So if you are a leader trying to be in any way realistic in dealing with a church that’s growing in the Southern Hemisphere, you have to pay attention to women who work.”

So the first shift was LDS leaders going quiet about the evils of women in the workplace. Then, in the 21st century, it started quietly hiring more women and eliminating archaic rules, like about women being ineligible to work full time for the church’s educational system if they still had minor children at home. (That policy did not change completely until 2014.)

More recently, the church has actually begun celebrating women’s accomplishments outside the home. That’s the kind of inspiration we’re seeing in “Every Needful Thing.” Finally. 

But it’s percolating elsewhere too. For example, this month two BYU researchers released a 13-year study on the effects of missionary service on female missionaries’ graduation rates, choice of college major and future earnings potential.

We see it in the women who lead the church’s organizations that we’re no longer supposed to call “auxiliaries” (which is in itself an interesting shift). The current Relief Society general presidency is made up of Camille Johnson, an attorney and mother of three; J. Anette Dennis, a stay-at-home mother of four; and Kristin Yee, an artist who has worked for Disney and is single.

The general presidencies of the Primary and Young Women organization likewise feature a mix of women who have had careers and those who stayed home full time.

Which is great. We want a mix of experiences — that diversity is an expression of more women having real choices. What I hope we never, ever return to is the shame that working mothers were often made to feel in the church.

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Related content:

Progress for Mormon women: A historian takes the long view

Younger Mormons far more likely to be troubled by women’s roles in the LDS Church, study shows

Asteroid named after pope behind Gregorian calendar reform

Pope Gregory XIII, the 16th century pontiff responsible for the Gregorian calendar, now has another celestial claim to fame.

FILE - The sun sets behind the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, in Rome, on Feb. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)

March 2, 2023

By 

Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Pope Gregory XIII, the 16th century pontiff responsible for what is today known as the Gregorian calendar, now has another, celestial claim to fame.

A working group of the International Astronomical Union has named an asteroid after him, the Vatican Observatory said Tuesday.

The “560974 Ugoboncompagni” — Gregory’s birth name was Ugo Boncompagni — was announced along with 72 other named asteroids in the Feb. 27 update of the union’s Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature.

Also included in the new group are three Jesuits affiliated with the Vatican Observatory, bringing to more than 30 the number of Jesuit-named asteroids, the Observatory said in a statement.

Gregory, who lived from 1502-1585, along with an Italian astronomer and a Jesuit mathematician corrected the Julian calendar and introduced a new method of calculating leap years that resulted in what is now known as the Gregorian calendar.

The Vatican Observatory traces its 1582 origins to Gregory’s pontificate and the Gregorian calendar reform. Located at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo in the hills south of Rome, the Observatory today houses a dozen priests and brothers who study the universe. It is headed by Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno.

According to a statement from the Observatory, the process to name an asteroid — a relatively small space body in orbit round the sun — involves a provisional designation based on its date of discovery, followed by a permanent number.

“At this point its discoverer is invited to suggest a name for it,” the Observatory said, adding that pet names and commercial names are prohibited, and that 100 years must pass before naming an asteroid after an individual or certain events.

The nomenclature working group, made up of 15 astronomers, then judges the proposed names.

Ukraine war: Does Putin have his eye on the 2024 US presidential election?

OPINION: A pro-Russian president in the White House would shift the outcome of a prolonged war in Putin’s favour

Paul Rogers
4 March 2023,

Putin's choice for US president: Donald Trump or someone like him 
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images


In the past few weeks, Russian forces in Ukraine have been attempting to take territory in intensive combat, but their progress has been minimal. This is adding to the sense that Russia is in difficulty and Ukraine is making progress in winning the war, with considerable support from the United States.

In its determination to consolidate this apparent advantage, Washington is warning forcefully of the actions it will take to counter countries willing to aid Russia. The G7 has also recently announced specific actions against some 200 companies and individuals across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, with part of the aim being to discourage those that have not yet been involved in sanctions-busting but are in a position to do so.

The very fact that Washington is taking this kind of action may be read as a sign that the war in Ukraine is going well, but there are grounds for thinking the situation is actually more complicated. Those analysts predicting a long drawn-out war may be closer to reality, uncomfortable though that may be for many Western governments.

This cautious, if unwelcome, view of the war comes from many quarters and points to specific factors working in Russia’s favour, such as total troop numbers available and the ability to escalate.

Concerning troop numbers, while Ukrainian morale may be high, Russia has demography on its side. It has more than three times the number of available soldiers, and Vladimir Putin has shown that large numbers of convicts can be used to boost numbers.

On the question of escalation, Russia can currently bomb Ukraine in a way that Ukraine cannot bomb Russia. This could change if Biden allows Ukraine the copious supply of longer-range weapons that it seeks, despite the risk of Russian threats of escalation. But Joe Biden is simply not providing these weapons, and we now have confirmation that not even the much-sought-after F-16 aircraft is on the current supply list.

The chair of the joint US chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, recently pointed in the direction of a long war and the probability of a negotiated settlement.

It’s also worth remembering that any predictions about the war’s outcome are complicated by the marked tendency of NATO states to ‘speak strong but act weak’.

This extends even to the US. Historian and writer Adam Tooze put the US commitment into perspective in a recent report in the Financial Times, writing: “Over the past 12 months, the US spent 0.21% of GDP on military support for Ukraine. That is slightly less than it spent in an average year on its ill-fated Afghanistan intervention. In Iraq the spend was three times larger. The Korean War cost the US 13 times as much. Lend-Lease aid for the British Empire in the Second World War ran to 15 times as much in proportional terms.

“To see the Europeans doing more, you only need to go back to 1991,” he added. “To support the American-led operation to oust Saddam Hussein from the oilfields of Kuwait, Germany gave three times as much as it is offering to Ukraine in bilateral aid.”

The outcome of war in Ukraine could well depend on the result of the US presidential election

Interestingly, the most striking exception among European members of NATO is the UK, especially under Boris Johnson’s leadership last year. As well as the widely known supply of anti-tank weapons, anti-ship missiles, drones, Challenger II main battle tanks and copious materiel, the UK is training Ukraine troops in Britain and in Ukraine, and special forces are operating in and around Kyiv, as are UK intelligence personnel.

Furthermore, up to 350 British Royal Marine commandos have been in Ukraine during the past year. While much of their work has been in diplomatic protection, it’s been reported that “the commandos supported other covert operations in an extremely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk”.

The UK’s military contribution has run to £2.3bn so far, second only to the US, an indication of a greater emphasis on keeping very close to Washington in a post-Brexit world. This level of spending will no doubt continue if a Keir Starmer-led Labour Party succeeds in getting a workable majority in next year’s general election.

As to the likely course of the war now, those countries in Europe offering Ukraine Leopard 2 tanks are finding it much more difficult than expected to get them operational, mainly for logistical reasons, and the US Abrams tanks may not get near the battlefields until very late in the year because of delays in the United States. This doesn’t necessarily mean Russia’s position will improve, but it is increasingly likely that the war will continue at least until early in 2024.

If that turns out to be the case, the political significance would be considerable and could favour Putin. In this scenario, the autumn 2024 US presidential election would be taking place just a few months short of the start of the fourth year of the war, and Putin would be keen to see a less hawkish administration in the White House come January 2025.

From Moscow’s perspective, then, Russia continues with a stagnant yet brutal war that can’t be won, while the war planners concentrate on preparing for the next 18 months on that basis. Meanwhile, security and political agencies work hard to steer US electoral politics in the direction of a Trumpian candidate.

If this is how the conflict evolves, the outcome of war in Ukraine could well depend on the result of the election. If Biden or another Democrat wins, then a negotiated settlement on terms highly advantageous to Ukraine is probable, but if a Trumpian candidate gets to the White House then Ukraine will have to concede much more and Putin, in turn, will benefit with huge consequences for Ukraine and also for NATO.

Meanwhile the deaths, injuries, mental, social and economic damage will all mount up, while the world’s arms corporations have a field day selling death.

THE CMP DICTIONARY
Chinese-style Modernization

中国式现代化
MAR 4, 2023 | CMP STAFF

“Chinese-style modernization,” also referred to in English as the “Chinese path to modernization,” is a catchphrase formally introduced by Xi Jinping in early 2021 to encapsulate the political assertion that modernization as pursued by China abides by such principles as the equitable income distribution, peaceful national development, and ecological sustainability that distinguish it from modernization as it unfolded historically in the developed countries of the West. Simultaneously, it makes the political claim that the prerequisite of such modernization is the rule of the CCP.

The idea of modernization in China as a “Chinese style” of modernization dates back to 1979 and the start of economic reforms. Meeting with foreign experts attending a seminar on science and technology policy in Beijing in 1983, Deng Xiaoping reportedly told them: “The modernization we are doing is Chinese-style modernization. The socialism we are building is socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

By this time, the second half of Deng’s statement had already been codified in official CCP discourse as “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色社会主义), perhaps the most important CCP catchphrase of the reform era (included even today Xi Jinping’s personal legacy phrase). In his opening remarks to the 12th National Congress of the CCP in early September 1982, Deng had said that “taking our own path and building socialism with Chinese characteristics” was the way forward for China.

However, the first half of Deng’s statement, “Chinese-style modernization” (中国式的现代化), which he had mentioned in his March 1979 speech on the “Four Basic Principles,” never became a standalone phrase in its own right — not until Xi Jinping appropriated the idea in 2021 to describe a vision of modernization he wished to define as distinct from Deng’s “Four Modernizations” (四个现代化), which focused on the initial economic goals of strengthening agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology as a means of developing the Chinese economy and moving the country toward a “moderately prosperous society.”

While Deng’s idea of “Chinese-style modernization” was broadly about introducing new approaches while accommodating the country’s national circumstances (国情), Xi Jinping’s is much bolder, an assertion of the uniqueness, and even superiority, of China’s approach to development as opposed to that of the West.

Special China, Special Party

The notion of “Chinese-style modernization” first appeared consistently in the CCP discourse beginning in April 2021, when the People’s Daily newspaper launched a series of articles under the theme of “Dissecting Chinese-Style Modernization” (解析中国式现代化), with weekly installments throughout the month, and other Party-run media followed suit.

According to the Editor’s Note for the first installment of the People’s Daily series:

Our modernization has features common to the modernizations of all countries but also has unique Chinese characteristics based on national conditions, a Chinese-style modernization. The modernization we want to achieve is a modernization with a huge population, a modernization with common prosperity for all people, a modernization with the coordination of material and spiritual civilization, a modernization with the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, and a modernization on the road of peaceful development.

This five-point elaboration of “Chinese-style modernization” — which would eventually be codified around the 2022 CCP National Congress as “five characteristics” (五个特征) and “nine basic demands” (九个本质要求) — came several weeks after the 2021 National People’s Congress, where a key theme had been the need for “common prosperity” (共同富裕).

“Common prosperity,” which in the Xi era has become synonymous with efforts to curtail excessive wealth, crack down on monopoly behavior, address income inequality, and promote “people-centered development,” is regarded as a core component of the broader notion of “Chinese-style modernization.”

It is also used — based on the assumption that China’s development takes a people-centered approach to shared welfare — to make the case that “Chinese-style modernization” is fundamentally distinct from developments in the West. As Zhang Zhanbin (张占斌), a scholar from the official Central Party School, wrote in the People’s Daily in October 2021, understanding the role of “common prosperity” in the “Chinese-style modernization” is crucial to “clearly recognizing the major differences between Chinese-style modernization and the Western modernization path.”

At its base, this claim to distinction is a claim to political legitimacy, and it is therefore hardly a surprise that the first of the so-called “nine basic demands” in the current formulation of “Chinese-style modernization” is “adhering to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” (坚持中国共产党领导). As Zhang Zhanbin wrote in 2021, “The leadership of the Party is the unique political advantage of the new path of Chinese-style modernization.”

Historic Implications?

Prior to its inclusion in Xi Jinping’s political report to the 20th National Congress of the CCP in October 2022, where it appeared a total of 11 times, “Chinese-style modernization” was featured most prominently in the resolution on CCP history introduced in November 2021 at the Sixth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the CCP: Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on the Major Achievements and Historical Experiences of the Party’s Hundred-Year Struggle (中共中央关于党的百年奋斗重大成就和历史经验的决议). The document, essentially a grand narrative of a century of CCP history that portrayed Xi Jinping and his deeds as a culmination (See also CMP’s “Writing the Future into History”), defined “Chinese-style modernization” as driving forward the larger goal of the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” (中华民族伟大复兴).

The Sixth Plenum was a prelude to the 20th National Congress of the CCP and Xi Jinping’s eventual third term as general secretary of the Party. At the 20th National Congress, “Chinese-style modernization” was codified as follows, with “five characteristics” and “nine basic demands”:

• FIVE CHARACTERISTICS:
  A huge population size (人口规模巨大)
  Common prosperity for all people (全体人民共同富裕)
  Harmonization of material and spiritual civilization (物质文明和精神文明相协调)
  Coexistence between humankind and nature (人与自然和谐共生)
  A path of peaceful development (走和平发展道路)
• NINE BASIC DEMANDS:
  Adherence to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (坚持中国共产党领导)
  Adherence to socialism with Chinese characteristics (坚持中国特色社会主义)
  Achieving high-quality development (实现高质量发展)
  Developing whole-process people’s democracy (发展全过程人民民主)
  Enriching the spiritual world of the people (丰富人民精神世界)
  Realizing common prosperity for all people (实现全体人民共同富裕)
  Promoting the coexistence of humankind and nature (促进人与自然和谐共生)
  Promoting the building of a community of common destiny for mankind (推动构建人类命运共同体)
  Creating a new form of human civilization (创造人类文明新形态)

By 2023, “Chinese-style modernization” had become a central catchphrase to describe the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping’s program for development. It was featured strongly as the first National People’s Congress of Xi’s third term opened on March 4, 2023.

On the eve of the NPC, the official nightly newscast Xinwen Lianbo (新闻联播) opened with an immediate mention of “Chinese-style modernization,” noting that Xi Jinping had deemed it “an important theoretical innovation emerging from the 20th National Congress of the CCP.”

China promotes world peace, calls for true multilateralism: foreign ministry

(People's Daily App) March 04, 2023

Minister Qin offers three key messages: First, faced with a volatile international situation and rising global challenges, the G20 must rise to the occasion, enhance cooperation and contribute its share to global development and prosperity. Second, we need to practice true multilateralism and follow the principles of dialogue on an equal footing and consensus-building through consultation. No one should engage in power politics or even bloc confrontation. Third, we need to promote the sound development of globalization, reject unilateralism, protectionism and attempts to decouple or sever supply chains, and make global development more inclusive, resilient and beneficial for all. 

Minister Qin also proposed enhanced macro-economic policy coordination, improved global economic governance and bolstered international development cooperation. He said that China would continue to take an active part in the G20 agenda and contribute more to promoting world peace and development, and building a community with a shared future for mankind. 

The Woman Shaking Up Italian Politics (No, Not the New Prime Minister)

Daughter of Italian and Jewish American parents, Elly Schlein wants to remake the center-left opposition to Giorgia Meloni, if only her party can survive it.

Elly Schlein, the new leader of Italy’s center-left Democratic Party, near the House of Deputies on Wednesday.

Credit...Massimo Berruti for The New York Times

By Jason Horowitz
March 4, 2023


ROME — Growing up in Switzerland, Elly Schlein felt a little lost.

“I was the black sheep. Because my brother and sister seemed to be more sure of what they would do,” the politician recalled. She watched Italian neorealist cinema and American comedies, played Philip Glass on the piano, pet her dwarf bunny named after Freddie Mercury, listened to the Cranberries and ultimately got involved in her school’s politics. “It took a lot more time for me to find my way,” she said.

Last weekend, Ms. Schlein, 37, found her way into the center of the debate about the future of the European left when she stunned the liberal establishment and reordered Italy’s political landscape by winning a primary election to become the first woman to lead the country’s center-left Democratic Party. She is promising, she said in her new office headquarters on Wednesday, to “change deeply” a party in the midst of an identity crisis.

It is hard to embody change in Italy more than Ms. Schlein.

A woman in a relationship with a woman, she is the daughter of a Jewish American father; granddaughter of an Italian antifascist partisan; proud native of Lugano, Switzerland; former volunteer for Barack Obama; collaborator on an award-winning documentary about Albanian refugees; fan of “Naked Gun” movies; shredder of Green Day chords on her electric guitar; and fervent progressive eager to make common international cause with “A.O.C.,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.

With her election, Ms. Schlein has catapulted Italy, which long seemed a Country for Old Men, into markedly different territory. A female opposition leader now is pitted against the first female prime minister, the right-wing nationalist Giorgia Meloni.

Ms. Schlein grew up in Lugano, Switzerland, and described herself as the “black sheep” of her family. Credit...Andrea Wyner for The New York Times

“It’s a different scenario now,” said Ms. Schlein, who had the professorial air of her professor parents as she leafed through newspapers. “And an interesting one, because I’ve always said that we don’t need just a female leadership. We need a feminist leadership.”

The two women could hardly be more different. Ms. Meloni, who called Ms. Schlein to congratulate her, was raised by a single mother in a working-class neighborhood of Rome, was a youth activist in post-Fascist parties and came to prominence on an anti-migrant, Italy-first platform. Her battle cry: “I’m Giorgia, I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m a Christian!”

Ms. Schlein — who has Italian, Swiss and American passports — said she didn’t understand how being “a woman, a mother and a Christian helps Italians to pay their bills.” She added: “I am a woman. I love another woman. I am not a mother, but I am not less of a woman for this.”

She argued that Ms. Meloni represented an ideology that viewed women merely for their reproductive and child-rearing roles. Ms. Meloni has “never described herself as an antifascist,” Ms. Schlein said, arguing that she instead threw red meat to her base with “inhuman” and “illegal” policies making it harder to save migrants at sea.

Such liberal red meat is likely to sate the base of progressives and young voters that Ms. Schlein brought into the Democratic Party fold in last Sunday’s primary. But it did little for the left in the election Ms. Meloni won easily in September. Ms. Schlein’s party now has about half the support of Ms. Meloni’s.

Moderate critics within Ms. Schlein’s own deeply divided party fear that she will fold its big tent by forfeiting the political center, driving the party to the far left, gutting it of its reputation for sober competence, and blending it with — or feeding it to — the reinvigorated, populist Five Star Movement.

Supporters of Giorgia Meloni at a rally in September, in Rome. Ms. Schlein has criticized the prime minister for hurling red meat to her base with “inhuman” and “illegal” policies on migrants.Credit...Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

But Ms. Schlein is not convinced that denizens of an Italian middle even exist. “Where are they today?” she asked in her perfect English, noting that “when somebody had tried to represent them with new political options, it never went really well.” Instead, she saw the way forward as making “clear who we want to represent” — struggling Italians.

She said she would spread “environmentalist and feminist” solutions to endemic Italian problems such as female unemployment and inequality in “clearly a patriarchal country.” She would make amends for “the mistakes made in the past,” especially during the leadership of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, which led her to quit the Democratic Party nearly a decade ago.

She would reintroduce labor protections, tax the rich, reconnect with trade unions, invest in a greener economy and push for gay and immigrant rights. This week, she visited the site of a deadly shipwreck of migrants in Calabria and effectively interrogated Ms. Meloni’s interior minister for appearing to blame the victims.

“Rights, civil rights and social rights, for us are strictly interconnected,” she said in the interview, adding, “The left lost in the moment it became shy on these issues.”

One major change on her agenda is to put her party in a position to win elections by making alliances with partners who agreed on critical progressive issues, such as the support of a universal income.

“Five Star, of course,” she said. “They have a lot of support.”

But Giuseppe Conte, the leader of Five Star, which has demonstrated a strong illiberal streak over recent years, was the prime minister who signed off on the crackdown of migrant rescue ships at sea. He has emerged as Italy’s main opponent to Ms. Meloni’s vow to keep sending weapons to Ukraine.


Ms. Schlein with her assistant in her temporary office at the party headquarters in Rome.

Credit...Massimo Berruti for The New York Times

Five Star’s position on Ukraine, Ms. Schlein said, “I don’t agree on.” She described her party as wholly supportive of Ukraine against the “criminal invasion” by Russia and noted it had voted to send arms over the next year, because “it’s necessary now.”

Supporters of Ukraine, however, worry about Ms. Schlein’s ongoing commitment because of her talk of being a “pacifist” and what some consider her naïve argument that Europe somehow needed to convince China to force Russia to end the war.

But she said she feels a personal connection to Ukraine. Her grandfather was from Ukraine, she said, and after he emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Elizabeth, N.J., his family back home was almost certainly wiped out in the Holocaust. Her Italian grandfather, who eventually became a Socialist lawmaker, refused to wear the “black shirts of the Fascists” during his graduation and “was an antifascist lawyer” who, she said, would “defend Jews in trials.”

That family history has made her keenly sensitive to “what nationalism has brought to the European continent,” she said, adding, with a reference to the Russian president, “This war is a nationalist war from Putin.”

Ms. Schlein was herself not raised Jewish, though she called herself “particularly proud” of her Jewish ancestry. In a friendly interview during the campaign, she told an Italian website that her last name and pronounced nose, what she considers her defining physical feature, attracted odious anti-Semitic attacks. But, she noted, the nose was not Jewish, but “typically Etruscan.”

The Colosseum lit up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, in Rome, in February. Ms. Schlein described her party as wholly supportive of Ukraine against the “criminal invasion” by Russia.

Credit...Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse, via Associated Press

Asked about that comment, Ms. Schlein’s verbosity stalled. “I wouldn’t go back to that,” she said. “No, thanks.” When pressed on what an Etruscan nose looked like, she threw her hands up and acknowledged, “They don’t even exist!”

The point, she said, was that she learned that being a “woman,” and “an L.G.B.T.Q.I.+ person” and “very proudly the daughter of a Jewish father” made her a prime target “from the extreme right or also from my extreme left sometimes.” Ms. Schlein declined in the interview to discuss her family or her partner in further detail.

Ms. Schlein said addressing such injustices drew her into politics. A star pupil in her Lugano high school, she said, she wanted to take her talents to Italy, “because I’ve always felt that this country, the country of my mother, has strong potential that only needs to be freed.”

She went to art school in Bologna. Then she dropped film for law and went from campus politics to the real thing — making powerful friends, gaining fluency in social media and doing stints in the European and Italian Parliaments along the way. When she quit the Democratic Party to protest the loss of its liberal way, she supported a movement to “occupy” the party.

Now she occupies the leadership headquarters near the Spanish Steps, and after a short walk toward Ms. Meloni’s palace, Ms. Schlein, the progressive no one saw coming, entertained taking that place over, too.

“Well,” she said. “We’ll see.”


Jason Horowitz is the Rome bureau chief, covering Italy, the Vatican, Greece and other parts of Southern Europe. He previously covered the 2016 presidential campaign, the Obama administration and Congress, with an emphasis on political profiles and features. @jasondhorowitz
A version of this article appears in print on March 4, 2023, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Making History, and Vowing to Remake the Italian Left. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Half of world will be obese by 2035, health organisation predicts

Evan Rosen, Mar 04 2023
STUFF

New Zealand has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in the world but new research has shown it's going down - if only by a small fraction. 

Half the world will be overweight by 2035, a health group warns.

The World Obesity Federation predicts over 4 billion people will be obese if preventive measures are not implemented, BBC News reported Thursday.

The findings show that overweight rates are rising fastest among kids, and that low to middle-income countries in Africa and Asia will undergo the starkest changes.

Those countries, the report explains, have dietary preferences which trend towards more highly-processed foods, in addition to increased levels of sedentary behaviour, weaker policies on food supply and marketing.

Healthcare services are lacking, too.

“Governments and policymakers around the world need to do all they can to avoid passing health, social and economic costs on to the younger generation,” said Professor Louise Baur, president of the World Obesity Federation.

KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/AP

The World Obesity Federation predicts over 4 billion people will be obese if preventive measures are not implemented.

The rises in obesity rates across the globe is also projected to cost roughly US$4 trillion per year by 2035.

The report also acknowledges that the economic impact of obesity “is in no way a reflection of blame on people living with obesity”.

The data published in the report will be presented to the United Nations next week.

READ MORE:
* Artificial sweetener linked to higher heart attack risk, study says
* UN warns of food insecurity amid urbanisation in Pacific and Asia
* An old-fashioned early supper is the key to effortless weight loss
* New weight-loss drug is having remarkable results. Could it also change the way we talk about obesity?

How bills restricting drag could impact high school theatre productions

By Elizabeth Blair

Published March 3, 2023 

• 
  

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

More than a dozen states have proposed similar bills, and that has some high school theater programs concerned, as NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports.

ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Some of the most popular musicals performed by high school students have characters who either cross-dress or perform in drag, like Angel in "Rent."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'LL COVER YOU")

WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA: (As Angel, singing) Live in my house. I'll be your shelter. Just pay me back with 1,000 kisses.

BLAIR: Other times, out of necessity, boys play girls and vice versa. For example, girls often end up playing boys in "Newsies."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KING OF NEW YORK")

NEWSIES ENSEMBLE: (As characters, singing) Look at me. I'm the king of New York.

BLAIR: Nontraditional casting happens routinely. But for teachers, it takes just one parent to make it an issue.

JENNIFER GUFFIN: I had a parent who complained about me a few years ago during "James And The Giant Peach," of all things.

BLAIR: Jennifer Guffin teaches theater at Shades Valley High School in Birmingham, Ala. She says some of the boys in the show played little old ladies.

GUFFIN: And the parent was very upset that I was going to have her son cross-dressing. And she called the board and complained about me, and I had to have multiple meetings about it to explain, like, this is not a drag show. This is - like, I'm putting you in a costume for 30 seconds so that you can sing in a silly little part.

BLAIR: The bills might not be directed at high school theater, but they're having a chilling effect on teachers, says Jennifer Katona, executive director of the Educational Theatre Association.

JENNIFER KATONA: Teachers are really feeling that their classrooms or their theater spaces are true safe havens for our students, particularly our trans students and our LGBQTIA students, yet much of the atmospheres that they're teaching in and working in are not supporting them in those ways.

BLAIR: In choosing what to perform, teachers often look at what shows students already like, and teens have long gravitated towards material that pushes boundaries, like "Ride The Cyclone," a musical that was written years ago but recently became a viral sensation among teens on TikTok.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE BALLAD OF JANE DOE")

EMILY ROHM: (As Jane Doe, singing) And I'm asking, why, Lord, if this is how I die, Lord, why be left with no family and no friends?

BLAIR: "Ride The Cyclone" is a dark comedy in which a group of teens die in a roller coaster accident. Each character takes a turn singing about who they are or how they'd like to be remembered. It's so popular among teens that the creators are in the process of writing a version that high schools could perform. But with the drag show bills, that could be a problem, says co-creator Jacob Richmond.

JACOB RICHMOND: There's a whole drag number that we're trying to figure out how to do in a way that you could do in a high school setting.

BLAIR: That drag number is by a young gay man who works at a Taco Bell. He loves Jean Genet and film noir and fantasizes about being a sex worker.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NOEL'S LAMENT")

KHOLBY WARDELL: (As Noel Gruber, singing) For I sing songs until the break of dawn. I embrace a new man every night. My life's one never-ending carnival.

RICHMOND: It's basically just kind of this is who I am inside as well, like - and the idea that the imagination is just as much a part of us as our daily jobs or what other people define us as.

BLAIR: Richmond says the success of "Ride The Cyclone" on TikTok points out a disconnect in the drag show bills. They might prevent young people from seeing drag performers on stage, but they won't stop teens from finding them online.

Elizabeth Blair, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Elizabeth Blair

Elizabeth Blair is a Peabody Award-winning senior producer/reporter on the Arts Desk of NPR News.

Little Rock Central High students protest alumna Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ legislative agenda

Tess Vrbin, Arkansas Advocate
March 03, 2023

Little Rock Central High School students pack the school’s courtyard during a 20-minute walkout on Friday, March 3, 2023. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)

More than 1,000 Little Rock Central High School students walked out of class Friday afternoon and gathered in front of the school, protesting Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ education agenda and her references to the school while promoting it

Students published an open letter to Sanders on Wednesday, stating that her approach to education policy is “completely antithetical to the values that Central High stands for” and describing how they believe several elements of Senate Bill 294, or the LEARNS Act, would negatively affect the school and its students.

During the 20-minute walkout, students held up signs with slogans, including “Education isn’t indoctrination,” “Public funds should go to public schools” and “Future voters against LEARNS.”

The wide-ranging LEARNS Act would create a new voucher program directing public funds to private schools and other qualifying education expenses, ban “indoctrination” and critical race theory, limit discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in classrooms, increase teacher pay and repeal the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, among other things.

Little Rock Central’s core values are ambition, personality, opportunity and preparation, according to four statues that have overlooked the campus for decades. Sanders’ policy goals threaten her own alma mater’s values, according to the letter.

“By siphoning funds and resources away from public education and into the private sector, the ambition of our disadvantaged students and hardworking faculty will be stifled,” the letter states. “Governor Sanders’ intent to imitate policies similar to those of Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation will suppress the free expression of personality. School choice policies which will favor upper-class families would create unequal opportunities for lower-income students. Reforms that attack school coursework deemed too inappropriate for students will dramatically decrease their preparation to face real-world social issues.”

Sanders invoked the school she once attended and its importance to racial desegregation in both her inaugural address and the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech. She said she remembered watching her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and President Bill Clinton hold open the school’s doors for members of the Little Rock Nine 40 years after they were denied admission to the school.

“As much as she tries to desperately cling to the legacy of our historic institution, we, as students of Central High, unequivocally reject her exploitation of our school’s achievements,” Gryffyn May, a senior and a co-author of the letter, read aloud to the crowd at the walkout.

Friday’s rally was coordinated by the school’s student council, NAACP chapter and Young Leftists chapter. May spoke on behalf of the Young Leftists and the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance.

Seniors Bekah Jackson and Ernest Quirk and junior Addison McCuien co-wrote the letter with May.

More than 1,500 current and former Central High students, parents and employees have co-signed the letter.

If Governor Sanders were actually interested in increasing literacy rates, her bill would focus on ensuring that our children aren’t coming to class on an empty stomach or recovering from a winter night without heat.

– Little Rock Central High School students in an open letter against the LEARNS Act

The LEARNS Act has marched through the Legislature, but it has faced opposition from members of both political parties. It passed the House on Thursday and will return to the Senate for approval of amendments that some legislators requested.

If the Senate Education Committee passes the bill Monday, the full Senate will vote on it Tuesday.

Central High students will hold a rally on the Capitol steps to symbolically deliver the open letter to Sanders on Wednesday, the day she could sign the LEARNS Act into law.

May told the Advocate that the organizers were proud of Friday’s turnout and expect a larger one Wednesday, including parents and elected officials.

Madison Tucker, the NAACP chapter president and senior class president, said she considered the walkout “life-changing.”

She spoke against the concept of “indoctrination” and Sanders’ ban on critical race theory during the rally. Critical race theory is typically not taught in K-12 schools in Arkansas and is reserved mostly for graduate-level college coursework. Sanders signed an executive order prohibiting the teaching of this concept in Arkansas schools on Jan. 10, her first day in office.

Critical race theory acknowledges the ongoing reality of systemic racism in America, Tucker said.

“Restricting teachers being able to discuss race, gender and other controversial issues within our classrooms would promote erasure of America’s history, our history,” she said.

One rally-goer held a sign that said “You can’t spell Central without CRT.”

The students’ letter describes school voucher programs as a form of segregation, disproportionately allowing financially stable white families to fund their children’s private school education with public money and leave poor families and students, many of them non-white, behind.

The letter also criticizes the portion of the LEARNS Act that replaces existing mental health programs for students with “an ambiguous ‘training’ that is left at the discretion of [Sanders’] political appointees at the State Board of Education,” as well as the section allowing third-graders to be held back from fourth grade if they do not meet certain reading standards.

“If Governor Sanders were actually interested in increasing literacy rates, her bill would focus on ensuring that our children aren’t coming to class on an empty stomach or recovering from a winter night without heat,” the Central High students wrote.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on Facebook and Twitter.