Furthermore, the Catholic Church has been criticized for not practicing ordination of women to the priesthood, its handling of incidents of sexual abuse, and various inter-faith interactions.
[3] In his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994), Pope John Paul II said the "Priestly ordination, … has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone.
In 1994, the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments formally interpreted the 1983 Code of Canon Law, stating that women could assist at Mass as acolytes or altar servers.
Adversus Judaeos ("against the Jews") are a series of fourth century homilies by John Chrysostom directed to members of the church of Antioch of his time, which continued to observe Jewish feasts and fasts.
According to this interpretation, both the Jews present at Jesus' death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time, have committed the sin of deicide, or God-killing.
Catholic officials replied that their efforts in Russia were not aimed at Eastern Orthodox believers, but were reaching out to the vast majority of Russians who are not churchgoers.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rejected the characterization of "proselytizing" and said that respect towards non-Catholic Christians must not negate the possibility of conversion, if an individual should so choose.
[21] Common factors that played a role during the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation included the rise of nationalism, simony, the appointment of Cardinal-nephews, the sale of indulgences, and other corruption in the Roman Curia and other ecclesiastical hierarchy, as well as the impact of humanism, the new learning of the Renaissance, the epistemological shift between the schola moderna and schola antiqua within scholasticism, and the Western Schism that eroded loyalty to the Papacy.
Protestants hold doctrinal differences with the Catholic Church in a number of areas, including the understanding of the meaning of the word "faith" and how it relates to "good works" in terms of salvation, and a difference of opinion regarding the concept of "justification"; also regarding the Catholic Church's belief in sacred tradition as a source of revelation complementary to sacred scripture.
In his lecture, the Pope, speaking in German, quoted a passage about Islam made at the end of the 14th century by Byzantine (Eastern Roman) emperor Manuel II Palaiologos.
In 1994, Pope John Paul II wrote Crossing the Threshold of Hope, in which he discussed various non-Christian religions, including Buddhism.
[34] The Crusades were a series of military conflicts, with a religious as well as a socio-political character, waged against external and internal threats by much of Christian Europe.
[36] As early as the second century, Justin Martyr addressed his First Apology to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius in order to convince him that Christians could be good citizens.
[39] The initial favorable reception of Jesuits in Japan changed when Toyotomi Hideyoshi became disturbed by the external threats posed by the expansion of European power in East Asia.
Hideyoshi was apprehensive that Portugal and Spain might provide military support to Dom Justo Takayama, a Christian daimyō in western Japan.
The San Felipe incident (1596) involved the Spanish captain of a shipwrecked trading vessel, who, in an attempt to recover his cargo, made the claim that the missionaries (many of whom had arrived with the Portuguese) were there to prepare Japan for conquest.
[40] Hideyoshi was concerned that divided loyalties might lead to dangerous rebels like the Ikkō-ikki Sect of earlier years and issued an edict expelling missionaries.
[44] Nazi breaches of the agreement began almost as soon as it had been signed and intensified afterwards leading to protest from the church including in the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge of Pope Pius XI, followed in 1943 by Mystici corporis Christi of Pope Pius XII which condemned forced conversions, the murder of disabled people, and the exclusion of people on the basis of race or nationality.
[45] In a series of sermons in the summer of 1941, Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Munster, denounced the Nazi regime for its Gestapo tactics and policies, including euthanasia, and attacked the Third Reich for undermining justice.
[46] In the view of SS General Jürgen Stroop, German patriotism "was tainted by Papist ideals, which have been harmful to Germany for centuries.
"[47] "There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it.
In February 2019, the Catholic Church held a worldwide summit of bishops in Rome to discuss the steps that can be taken to prevent the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults.
[51] A January 2003 review by The New York Times counted 1,205 allegedly abusive priests nationwide over five decades, based on court records and media reports.
[53] The commission says that students died due to lack of facilities,[clarification needed] disease, suicide, and abuse at the hands of those operating the schools.