VOLUME 1, ISSUE 8  •  FEBRUARY 21, 2015

Table of Contents

Copyright Notice

VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis’ call to new cardinals: be captivated by truth

Take the red hat, but leave the ‘spiritual box’ behind, Pope tells cardinals

Pope: Jesus has no ‘proxy’ – he touches our wounds with his hands

Pope condemns beheading of Egyptian Christians, says blood ‘cries out to be heard’

Unexpected friendships bloom as Vatican rolls out haircuts for homeless

Pope offers Mass for murdered Coptic Christians, hails them as ‘martyrs’

Is there an end in sight to centuries-old sectarian divisions in Scotland?

New cardinals speak out on perils, potential of a globalized society

Siblings help you keep your eyes off yourself, Pope says

This Lent, ask God for the ‘gift of tears,’ Pope says

Vatican Secretary of State urges ‘quick response’ to crisis in Libya

Pope Francis’ daily challenge: Who will you follow – God or the world?

Not endorsement, but understanding – Pope Francis and married priests

VIP treatment for LGBT group at the Vatican? Not really.

Using God as a cover for injustice is no trifling matter, Pope says

Archbishop Romero had no interest in liberation theology, says secretary

WORLD NEWS

How Benedict XVI and his ‘scandalous’ hero speak to the modern crisis

What are the challenges facing family catechesis in India?

Chinese New Year bumps Ash Wednesday fasting for Asia’s Catholics

Meet the Christians in Syria who want to stay, despite the war

Three year-old Brazilian boy with cancer ‘celebrates Mass,’ wants to be Pope

Amid string of break-ins, Bishop of Ars removes Blessed Sacrament from parishes

Near Bethlehem, Israeli barrier threatens Christians’ future

Australians welcome appointment of new apostolic nuncio

Why this bishop is staying in Libya after the ISIS massacre

Communion for divorced and remarried? Africa’s bishops have other concerns, cardinal says

Rise of racism, exclusion in Europe prompts call for action

Coptic Catholics consecrate first church in Sinai, against backdrop of martyrdom

Ukrainian bishop meets with Pope Francis as country’s crisis rages on

U.S. NEWS

Archbishop Chaput applauds Penn. governor for halt to death penalty

A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a website

In sight of the nation’s capitol, a massive Bible museum underway

A Presidents Day reminder: rights are a gift from God

Federalism, same-sex marriage, and what a bishop has to say about it

Why the Religious Freedom Restoration Act matters to you

How Catholics, Lent, and bowls of rice are changing the world

Would you die for your ashes? Cardinal reflects on modern Christian martyrs

Cardinal Dolan: ISIS threatens whole civilization – no one can be silent

Metal coils and furious women: The stunning controversy behind an FDA-approved birth control

As storm brews, San Fran archbishop strikes back at school guideline critics

Grandmother, florist may lose her business and home for declining gay wedding

FEATURES

Lent in the age of excess

Margin for error

‘The Picture of Dorian Gray:’ A Parable for Lent

Why everybody loses when we sugarcoat NFP

How priests and deacons should not give homilies

Coptic Christians and the White House

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Sunday • February 22, 2015

Monday • February 23, 2015

Tuesday • February 24, 2015

Wednesday • February 25, 2015

Thursday • February 26, 2015

Friday • February 27, 2015

Saturday • February 28, 2015

The Catholic Digital News

The Free Weekly Newsmagazine for the Church of the 21st Century

Volume 1, Issue 8 • February 21, 2015

Copyright © 2015 by LGC Publishing. All rights reserved.

News articles and images originating from the Catholic News Agency and other media outlets have been reproduced with the full permission of their respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

Scripture readings for Daily Mass have been reproduced from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition. Copyright © 1989, 1993 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission through the Gratis Use Policy of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.

Content editing, cover image design, and digital book creation by P. C. Weber

The Catholic Digital News

Website: catholicdigitalnews.com

New issues of The Catholic Digital News are published every Saturday as free e-book downloads that are released exclusively through this website. Although these files are provided gratis to the public, they remain fully protected under copyright law. Consequently, users should be aware that certain actions are expressly forbidden once an issue of The Catholic Digital News has been downloaded onto a device. These include reproduction or distribution of the file at other websites, over the Internet, or through other media; utilization of the file for commercial use or other unauthorized purposes; disassembly of the file or alteration of its internal code or content; modification of the file to create derivate works; or violation of third-party copyrights on text and images contained within the file. For full compliance, please download issues of The Catholic Digital News for personal use only and refer others to this website instead of sharing downloaded copies.

VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis’ call to new cardinals: be captivated by truth

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • February 14, 2015

Francis and cardinals at the consistory Feb. 14, 2015. (Petrik Bohumil/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis welcomed the Catholic Church’s newest cardinals on Saturday, encouraging them to center themselves in Jesus Christ as they lead the faithful in patience, justice, and docility to the Holy Spirit.

“The man of God is someone captivated by truth, one who encounters it fully in the word and flesh of Jesus Christ, the inexhaustible source of our joy,” the Pope said in Saint Peter’s Basilica at a ceremony creating the 20 newest members of the College of Cardinals.

The Pope stressed the importance of charity, noting that “those who abide in charity are not self-centered” and concerned with their own interests. Rather, charity draws us away from self-centeredness “in order to set ourselves in the real center, which is Christ alone,” whereby we can “be persons who are respectful and attentive to the good of others.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who personally knows many of those being received into the college, attended the consistory. Many family members of the new cardinals were in attendance.

Pope Francis described the cardinalate as an “honor,” but one which “is not honorific.” The word “cardinal” originates from the Latin word for hinge, “cardo,” and the Pope’s remarks played on this origin.

The Pope, quoting Lumen Gentium, said to the cardinals: “You are ‘hinges’ and are ‘incardinated’ in the Church of Rome, which ‘presides over the entire assembly of charity’.”

Three of the newest members to the college of cardinals hail from countries which have never before been represented by a cardinal: Archbishop Charles Bo of Yangon (Burma); Bishop Soane Mafi of Tonga; and Bishop Arlindo Gomes Furtado of Santiago de Cabo Verde.

Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, recently-appointed prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, also received his red hat on Saturday. Speaking near the beginning of the ceremony on behalf of all the new cardinals, he expressed “gratitude” to Pope Francis, assuring him of their “loyal and sincere collaboration” in support of his mission of guiding the Church, according to Vatican Radio’s translation.

Out of the new cardinals, 15 are currently eligible to vote in the next papal election. Newly-created Cardinal José de Jesús Pimiento Rodriguez of Colombia, 96, was unable to attend, citing age.

The Pope’s address to the cardinals drew its guiding theme from the reading from Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The Pope stressed the importance of presiding over the Church “in charity.”

Pope Francis began by invoking the Virgin Mary’s intercession to “help us to listen” to God’s word and “assist us by her humility and maternal tenderness, because charity, as God’s gift, grows wherever humility and tenderness are found.”

Taking the congregation step-by-step through St. Paul’s “hymn to charity,” the Pope explained that patience “is in some sense synonymous with catholicity.” This means “to love without limits,” he said, including that which “is great without neglecting what is small,” and knowing “how to love through acts of kindness,” including “those unfriendly to us.”

Reflecting on St. Paul’s words that charity “is not jealous or boastful,” nor “puffed up with pride,” Pope Francis observed that persons at “every stage” of life are susceptible to this temptation, including “Church dignitaries.” However, it is for this reason that “the divine power of love, which transforms hearts, can be all the more evident in us, so that it is no longer you who live, but rather Christ who lives in you.”

The Holy Father said charity is neither “irritable” nor “resentful,” but rather “frees us from the risk of reacting impulsively,” as well as “from the mortal danger of pent-up anger, of that smoldering anger which makes us brood over wrongs we have received.” Such sentiment “is unacceptable in a man of the Church.”

Charity, moreover, “does not rejoice at the wrong, but rejoices in the right.” Pope Francis stressed the importance of “a strong sense of justice” on the those in Church governance, who must also “rejoice in the right.”

Finally, St. Paul’s description of love as that which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” offers “a spiritual and pastoral program of life,” the Pope said.

Playing once again on the word “cardinal,” Pope Francis concluded by saying that “the more we are “incardinated” in the Church of Rome, the more we should become docile to the Spirit, so that charity can give form and meaning to all that we are and all that we do.”

After the close of the consistory, Pope Francis announced the canonizations of three new saints: Maria of the Crucified Jesus, a professed religious of the discalced Carmelites; Maria Alfonsina Danil Ghattas, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Rosary; and Giovanna Emilia de Villeneuve, the French founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception.

The three will be canonized on May 13.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Take the red hat, but leave the ‘spiritual box’ behind, Pope tells cardinals

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 15, 2015

Pope Francis celebrates Mass with new cardinals Feb. 15, 2015. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — After elevating 20 new cardinals, Pope Francis reminded them that true honor is found in service, and urged them to follow Jesus in breaking rigid ways of thinking and touching society’s marginalized.

“Jesus is not afraid of scandal! He does not think of the closed-minded who are scandalized even by a work of healing, scandalized before any kind of openness, by any action outside of their mental and spiritual boxes,” the Pope said Feb. 15.

Rather than seeking to conform to the norms of others or adhere to a ritualistic purity, Jesus seeks to “reinstate the outcast, to save those outside the camp.”

The logic of Jesus and therefore of the Church is “not only to welcome and reinstate with evangelical courage all those who knock at our door, but to go out and to seek, fearlessly and without prejudice, those who are distant,” he said.

“Total openness to serving others is our hallmark, it alone is our title of honor … Truly the Gospel of the marginalized is where our credibility is found and revealed!”

Pope Francis addressed his words to the 20 new cardinals created in yesterday’s Feb. 14 consistory, which followed a two-day meeting in which cardinals from around the world gathered with the Pope to discuss the reform of the Roman Curia.

They celebrated Mass with the Roman Pontiff Feb. 15 to wrap-up the consistory events.

In his homily, Francis focused on the compassion of Jesus in the Gospel, taken from Mark, in which he heals a leper who approaches him and asks to be “made clean.”

After doing this Jesus could no longer go about the town freely, and had to remain on the outskirts, since lepers were considered unclean and were therefore ostracized, the Pope noted.

By healing the leper, Jesus not only shows the man compassion, but seeks to reinstate him into society, and identifies with the man’s shame and suffering by becoming marginalized himself, Francis said.

Although Moses’ law confined lepers to the outskirts of society in order to “safeguard the healthy,” Jesus fulfills that law by showing that welcoming and healing the leper not only kept the healthy safe, but also gave them a new brother.

“Jesus revolutionizes and upsets that fearful, narrow and prejudiced mentality. He does not abolish the law of Moses, but rather brings it to fulfillment,” the Pope said.

By answering the leper’s plea without thinking of the potential consequences, Jesus shows that what is most important is “reaching out to save those far off,” and he is not afraid to scandalize the closed-minded who are stuck inside the rigid confines of the law.

Pope Francis noted that there are two ways of approaching the faith in this regard, saying that the first is to think like the doctors of the law, who fear losing those who are already saved, and therefore cast out the diseased.

The second approach, he said, is to think like God, who embraces and welcomes the diseased man with mercy, and seeks to turn evil into good by reinstating him into society.

The path of the Church, the Pope observed, is not to “condemn anyone for eternity, (but) to leave her four walls behind and to go out in search of those who are distant, those on the ‘outskirts’ of life.”

“It is to adopt fully God’s own approach, to follow the Master who said: ‘Those who are well have no need of the physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call, not the righteous but sinners to repentance.’”

Jesus, by healing the leper, does not harm the healthy but rather frees them from fear, Francis explained. Jesus does not devalue the law, but rather places greater value on those for whom it was given.

Charity, the Pope said, “cannot be neutral, indifferent, lukewarm or impartial! Charity is infectious, it excites, it risks and it engages! For true charity is always unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous!”

He noted that charity must always be creative in finding the right ways of approaching those considered to be “untouchable,” adding that “contact is the true language of communication.”

“How many healings can we perform if only we learn this language! The leper, once cured, became a messenger of God’s love,” Francis said, and encouraged the cardinals to turn to Mary in learning how to embrace the poor and those cast-off from society.

Pope Francis urged them to be true servants of the Church to the extent that all Christians would be inspired to turn to Jesus as well as the outcast, and therefore resist the temptation of becoming “a closed caste with nothing authentically ecclesial about it.”

He told them to seek the face of the Crucified Jesus in each marginalized and excluded person they meet, whether they are prisoners, sick, persecuted, unemployed or those who have turned away from the faith.

“We will not find the Lord unless we truly accept the marginalized!” the Pope said, and prayed that all would remember the example of St. Francis of Assisi, “who was unafraid to embrace the leper and to accept every kind of outcast.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Pope: Jesus has no ‘proxy’ – he touches our wounds with his hands

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 15, 2015

Pope Francis greets pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during the Wednesday General Audience, May 21, 2014. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — In his Sunday Angelus address Pope Francis focused on mercy, noting how Jesus heals not by giving lectures, but by going close to those who suffer and curing the “leprosy” of our sin.

“The hand of Jesus touched the leper. He isn’t placed at a distance and he doesn’t act through a proxy, but is exposed directly to the contagion of our evil; so our own evil becomes the place of contact,” the Pope told pilgrims in his Feb. 15 Angelus address.

“He, Jesus, takes from us our sick humanity and we take from him his healthy and healed humanity.”

Pope Francis spoke to those gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the recitation of the traditional Marian prayer. He pointed to the day’s Gospel reading from Mark, in which Jesus heals a man from leprosy.

He said the episode has three distinct moments: the plea of the leper, Jesus’ response and the result of the miraculous healing.

“The leper begged Jesus ‘on his knees’ and said ‘If you will it, you can make me clean’,” the Pope observed, recalling how Jesus responds to the humble prayer with a deep attitude of compassion, which he noted means to “suffer with” someone.

In this moment Jesus’ heart manifests the paternal compassion that God has for man, he said, explaining that the fact Jesus went close to the man and touched him is significant due to the cultural stigma surrounding lepers at the time.

As leprosy was a contagious and “merciless” disease that was considered a sign of impurity, those infected with it were ostracized and forced to live outside of the city, and had to signal their presence to passersby.

Lepers were marginalized from both civil and religious communities, Francis said, noting that their life was like that of “a walking dead man.”

By reaching out to touch the infected man who begged him for healing, Jesus show us that God’s mercy is able to overcome all barriers, Francis said. Rather than remaining far away, Jesus goes close and restores the man to health.

“This happens every time we receive a sacrament with faith,” the Pope observed, pointing specifically to the sacrament of Reconciliation, “which cures us from the leprosy of sin.”

What the Gospel passage shows us, the Pope said, is that God doesn’t confront evil by giving “a lecture on pain” or by eliminating suffering and death from the world, but instead takes this weight upon himself and carries it “to the end.”

“This is how Christ combats the evil and suffering of the world: becoming the load and overcoming it with the power of God’s mercy.”

Pope Francis concluded by saying that if we want to be true disciples of Christ, we are called to unite ourselves to him and become “instruments of his merciful love, overcoming every type of marginalization.”

“To be ‘imitators of Christ’ in front of a poor or sick person, we don’t have to be afraid of looking him in the eye and drawing close with tenderness and compassion,” Francis said.

He explained that if evil is contagious, then so is good, so we need to allow whatever is good to grow inside of us. “Let us be infected by good and let us infect others with it!”

After leading pilgrims in the Angelus prayer, the Pope took a moment to greet various groups present, and gave his well-wishes to those preparing to celebrate the Lunar New Year, also referred to as the Chinese New Year, Feb. 19.

He prayed that the celebrations surrounding the event would be a “happy occasion of rediscovering fraternity and of living in in an intense way, as it the precious bond of family life and the basis of social life.”

Francis also greeted those pilgrims who came for the occasion of yesterday’s consistory of cardinals, during which he elevated 20 bishops to the rank of the cardinalate, 15 of whom are under 80 and are therefore eligible to vote in the next conclave.

He thanked the pilgrims for “accompanying” the cardinals, and expressed his gratitude to the countries who came with an official delegation.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Pope condemns beheading of Egyptian Christians, says blood ‘cries out to be heard’

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • February 16, 2015

Francis prays with journalists on the papal flight en route to South Korea, August 14, 2014. (Alan Holdren/CNA)

Vatican City — On Sunday Pope Francis mourned the 21 Egyptian Christians beheaded by the Islamic State, calling them martyrs that “belong to all Christians.”

“The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard,” the Pope said. “Their only words were: ‘Jesus, help me!’”

Pope Francis made these off-the-cuff remarks in his native Spanish on Monday, one day after the release of a video from the self-proclaimed Islamic State purporting to show the grisly beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt.

“It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants”, the pontiff continued. “They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ.”

They were killed “only because they confessed Christ,” the Pope said. “I ask that we encourage each another to go forward with this ecumenism which is giving us strength, the ecumenism of blood. The martyrs belong to all Christians.”

Pope Francis telephoned Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II, on Monday afternoon to show his deep participation in the sufferings of the Coptic Church following the executions. He assured him of his prayers, and said that tomorrow, the day celebrating the funerals of the victims, he will unite himself spiritually to the prayers and sufferings of the Coptic Church during the morning Eucharistic celebration.

On Monday, Egypt’s military launched airstrikes against Libya in retaliation for the deaths of the Egyptian Christians, according to the New York Times.

The beheadings occurred weeks after some 20 Coptic Christians had gone missing near the coastal city of Surt, also known as Sirte, the report continues.

Many Egyptians, including Copts, travel to Libya seeking employment opportunities.

This is not the first time Egyptian Christians have been targeted in Libya. Last month, an Egyptian Christian teen and her parents were found dead in Surt.

Libyan authorities discovered the bodies of seven Egyptian Christians last February near militant-held parts of Benghazi.

Rev. John Chalmers, moderator for the Church of Scotland, was present for Pope Francis’ comments Sunday. In an interview with CNA shortly after his audience with the Pope, Rev. Chalmers said Pope Francis is a man of humility and prayer who “is feeling for those Coptic Christians who have been martyred.”

“In reflecting on that, it is clear that whatever denomination that Christians come from they are one,” he said.

Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis has frequently condemned violence against Christians in the Middle East. During his Urbi et Orbi address on Christmas Day, 2014, he called for peace in Libya, as well as in Nigeria, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Unexpected friendships bloom as Vatican rolls out haircuts for homeless

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • February 17, 2015

Volunteers embrace Polish homeless man Gregorio after he visits the Vatican’s new shower and barbershop facilities. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — As homeless men and women line up under the massive arms of Saint Peter’s colonnade waiting to take advantage of the Vatican’s newly-christened showers and barbershop, volunteers who assist them say they are deeply moved by their encounter with a population often rejected by society.

“Initially when they offered me this (job) I thought I would find myself confronted with grouchy, perhaps mean people,” said volunteer barber Danielle Mancuso.

“Instead, I discovered a truly tremendous humanity.”

“You see these poor people out in the middle of the street, discarded. Then, you speak to them, and they’re human,” he said, recounting his first day.

Officially inaugurated on Feb. 16, the facilities provide the opportunity for homeless individuals to have their hair cut each Monday – a day when barber shops in Italy are traditionally closed – by volunteer barbers. Meanwhile, the shower services will be offered daily, with the exception of Wednesday due to the large crowds which attend the weekly general audience.

“I cut my hair, took a shower, beard, everything. It’s wonderful!” 51-year-old Gregorio from Poland, who’s been living in Rome for 13 years, told CNA.

Construction began in November on new showers and bathrooms under the colonnades of St. Peter’s Square.

Many barbers have volunteered with enthusiasm, including two barbers from the national Italian organization that transports the sick to Lourdes, France and other international shrines (UNITALSI). Other volunteers are finishing their final year in barber school.

“It’s been a great lesson for me,” said Andrea Valeriano, an UNITALSI volunteer. “Everyone has waited (their turn) calmly. And I’ve seen a lot solidarity among them.”

Papal almoner Archbishop Konrad Krajewski spearheaded the reconstruction of St. Peter’s square bathrooms to include the shower and barbershop facilities, which have witnessed a substantial response since their opening.

The Polish bishop is charged with the dual responsibility of carrying out acts of charity for the poor and raising the money to fund them. When the archbishop was appointed, Pope Francis urged him not to stay at his desk but rather to be an active worker for the benefit of the poor.

Vatican Insider reported that Archbishop Krajewski received his inspiration for the showers after taking a homeless man to dinner in order to celebrate his birthday. The man, who turned 50, told the archbishop that finding food in the city is easy, but staying clean was not.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Pope offers Mass for murdered Coptic Christians, hails them as ‘martyrs’

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 17, 2015

Pope Francis praying. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis offered his Tuesday morning Mass for the repose of the souls of the 21 Egyptian Christians killed by ISIS militants, praying that man learn to reject his evil temptations, and choose what is good.

The Pope Feb. 17 prayed for “our brother Copts, whose throats were slit for the sole reason of being Christian, that the Lord welcome them as martyrs, for their families, (and) for my brother Tawadros, who is suffering greatly.”

His comments came after the Islamic state released a video Sunday purporting to show the grisly beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt. Yesterday Francis called Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria Tawadros II to offer his condolences and solidarity.

Pope Francis’ morning liturgy is a sign of union with the Coptic Church, who is holding funeral celebrations for the victims today.

His personal secretary, Abuna Yoannis Lahzi Gaid, is also a Coptic Catholic, and was present for the Pope’s Mass in the chapel of the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse.

Francis initiated his reflections by turning to the Bible passage in Genesis that speaks of God’s wrath in the face of man’s wickedness before the great flood. He lamented that man often seems more powerful than God due to his capacity to destroy what God has created.

The Bible itself provides examples, such as Sodom and Gomorrah and the Tower of Babel, which prove there is “an evil that lurks in the depths of the heart.”

Although saying this might seem a bit negative, the Pope stressed that “this is the truth,” and referred to how Cain killed his brother Abel, thus destroying fraternity.

“This is where wars begin. Jealousy, envy, so much greed for power. Yes, this sounds negative, but it is realistic,” he said, noting one only needs to pick up a newspaper to see the evidence, since “more than 90 percent of the news is of destruction.”

Jesus, the Pope said, reminds us that there is evil in the human heart, and that man has the tendency to think he can do whatever he wants.

“We are capable of destruction, that’s the problem,” Francis said, and spoke of the arms trade, noting that there are countries who sell weapons, wage war and continue to sell to the country they are warring with, so the fighting continues.

While some might claim they are just doing business, the Pope asked that if this is the case, is their business one “of death?”

The evil we see around us doesn’t come from outside, but from inside of ourselves, he said, and warned that gossip and slander are also forms of evil aimed at destroying another.

However, despite man’s capacity to do evil and to destroy, he has the Holy Spirit to help him choose what is good in the little things, Francis noted.

Mother Theresa is a modern example of man’s ability to do good, he said, explaining that we all are capable of choosing either good or evil within our own families and parish communities.

Because families are even capable of destroying their own children and can often prevent them from maturing or growing in freedom, the Pope stressed the need to meditate, pray and discuss things with one another, so as not to fall into “this evil that destroys everything.”

Jesus gives us the strength to do this, he said, explaining that the Lord today wants to tell us “Remember. Remember Me, I shed my blood for you; remember Me, I have saved you, I have saved you all.”

“I have the strength to accompany you on the journey of life, not on the path of evil, but on the path of goodness, of doing good to others; not the path of destruction, but the path that builds,” the Pope said, noting that these are Jesus’ words to us.

He concluded his homily by praying that before beginning the liturgical season of Lent, which begins tomorrow on Ash Wednesday, the Lord give us the grace to always choose the “right path,” and help us not to be misled by temptations to destroy.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Is there an end in sight to centuries-old sectarian divisions in Scotland?

by CNA/EWTN News • February 17, 2015

Scottish Highlands. (Antonio Cinotti via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Vatican City — Following an ecumenical meeting with Pope Francis on Monday, the moderator of the Church of Scotland said the gathering was significant, and could signal the end of its tensions with the Catholic Church.

The Church of Scotland is an ecclesial community in the Calvinist and Presbyterian tradition. As its moderator, John Chalmers serves as the ecclesial community’s official representative.

“Scotland too has suffered in the past from a sectarian divide. Meetings like today marking our two churches and talking to each other on a very significant level means almost the end of that sectarian divide,” Chalmers told CNA Feb. 16, following his meeting with the Pope.

Chalmers said that his visit with the Pope was “very significant” in terms of ecumenical relations between the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church.

“The fact that Pope Francis was able to meet with me this morning and we were able to share the sense of our concern for all people of faith in Scotland” was “very important,” he added.

He added that “the Catholic community in Scotland have been through a difficult journey in the last few years and the Church of Scotland shares a real pastoral concern for the people of the Catholic community in Scotland.”

In 2013, Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned from his post as Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, the most prominent see in Scotland, amid allegations that he made inappropriate sexual advances toward three priests in the 1980s. The cardinal later admitted the allegations to be true.

Despite this challenge to Christians in Scotland, Chalmers said that “I think what we need to see going into the future, is we need to embrace those things over which we are in total agreement. And there are big things: the radicalization of people’s minds, the need for finding peace across the world, especially in the middle East, and climate change – huge issue for all of our churches. And I hope we will be able to unite across religious bodies in some common purpose facing some of our common foes.”

During his address at the meeting, Pope Francis had said the present state of ecumenism in Scotland is encouraging and that “in many cases we are able to speak with one voice on issues which deeply affect the lives of all Christians. In our globalized and often confused world, a common Christian witness is a necessary requisite for the effectiveness of our efforts to evangelize.”

While in a 2011 census 37 percent of Scots identified as non-religious, the Church of Scotland, at 32 percent, is the largest religious community in the country. Catholics, meanwhile, account for 16 percent of Scots.

Chalmers noted that between the Catholic Church and the Church of Scotland, “ecumenical relations at the local level have improved beyond recognition. There’s not very much appetite for ecumenical dialogue at an institutional level. And I think we’ve got over our pursuit of the top-down processes. Now we’re working from the bottom-up, from the ground up.”

“So, ministers and priests are getting to know one another better. They’re telling their stories to one another and they’re sharing their faith. And that’s informing what we do at the level of the institution. And I’ve seen that change over the last 20 years.”

Chalmers added that “I’d love this to become an annual event” – a meeting between the Bishop of Rome and the moderator of the Church of Scotland.

That sentiment was echoed the following day by a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, who told CNA that the archdiocese is “delighted” the meeting “was such a success.”

“We now hope that the visit of the Moderator of the Church of Scotland becomes an annual fixture in the Papal calendar so as to better foster the unity of all Christians in our country,” the spokesman added.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

New cardinals speak out on perils, potential of a globalized society

by CNA/EWTN News • February 18, 2015

Pope Francis celebrates Mass with new Cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica on Feb. 15, 2015. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis’ newly elevated cardinals reflected on their roles as shepherds within a vast, multicultural Church – and the many challenges and opportunities of service the modern world poses to their peripheral dioceses.

Cardinal Soane Patita Paini Mafi of Tonga said being named a cardinal is a “really big thing” for the small Pacific island nation, which has never had a cardinal before. He told CNA Feb. 14 that Pope Francis’ choice reflected a vision of a Church that is “inclusive of the ‘little ones.’”

Cardinal Mafi said the people of Tonga who traveled to Rome “come with pride, with a sense of belonging to the Church.” He said he hopes and prays that their faith “will be deepened, deepened by this new call and responsibility to me.”

Pope Francis created 20 new cardinals at the Feb. 14 consistory. Cardinal Mafi explained that Tonga’s pastoral challenges include the response to a “globalized world.”

“We are no longer isolated in a way, because communication now will bring us together closer,” he said. “It brings good things, and also challenging aspects, and there can be some challenge to the faith, like secularism, materialism, individualism.”

“We people are very much communal, we still live together as families, very much a big value for us. So I think there is a big challenge for us, for the faith, (in) that the people have more opportunities now economically and so forth.”

Other new cardinals also reflected on the consistory and the state of their home countries.

Cardinal John Atcherley Dew of Wellington, New Zealand said he received an “incredible welcome” from the cardinals that has reinforced for him “that we belong to the universal Church, and that we’re not just a little place isolated on our own.”

Cardinal Dew said among the pastoral challenges in New Zealand is the “multicultural nature of the Church.”

“We’ve always had people from other countries, like a lot of European people after the war, in the 1950s and 1960s,” he said. There have also been major waves of migration from Polynesian people.

Lately there have been many migrants from various Asian countries.

“Involving them, and including them in the life of the Church, is a very big challenge,” he said.

He noted the “wonderful work” of refugee support and family reunification going on in New Zealand, though this work is not necessarily being done by the Church. Some Pacific Islanders are being forced to leave home because of global warming and rising sea levels, he said.

Another of the new cardinals hails from Thailand.

Cardinal Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovithavanit of Bangkok reflected on Pope Francis’ statement that becoming a cardinal “is not something that is given for your honor” but rather for “service and love.”

The cardinal said his Buddhist friend who came for the ceremony repeated these words to him. The cardinal added: “this is the way of a Christian, is a way of a priest or bishop, and also a cardinal.”

Cardinal Kovithavanij said that secularism is a “really strong” challenge not only in Thailand, but “everywhere in the world.”

“Not only for the Christian Catholics, (but) also for all men and women of religion. They need to collaborate together,” he said.

He said he wants to bring back to Thailand his experience as a Christian who “wants to live the gospel, and also give this good news to everyone.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Siblings help you keep your eyes off yourself, Pope says

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 18, 2015

Pope Francis greets children during his General Audience June 25, 2014. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — In this week’s general audience, Pope Francis spoke on the role of siblings in family life, saying the fraternity we learn from them teaches us how to overcome barriers and leads to greater freedom.

“With Jesus, this bond of brotherhood expands to overcome any difference of nation, language, culture or religion,” the Pope told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square Feb. 18.

There is no greater compliment than to say of another “he is like a brother to me, or she is like a sister,” he said, explaining that without the value of fraternity, “the freedom and equality achieved by many people become full of individualism and conformity and personal interest too.”

Pope Francis offered his reflections as part of his ongoing catechesis on the family. After spending the past three weeks looking at the role of both mothers and fathers, he turned his gaze to the importance of brothers and sisters.

To grow up in a family alongside other children is a “profound human experience” that reaches its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who became our brother and made us all children of God the Father, he said.

Fraternity was an essential value for the People of God, Francis noted, and pointed to how this brotherhood is even praised in Scripture when the author of Psalm 132 says, “How good and how pleasant it is, when brothers dwell together as one!”

However the rupture in fraternity which takes place when Cain murders his brother Abel “opens a deep chasm in man,” the Pope said, and God’s question to Cain, “Where is your brother?” has not ceased to resonate throughout history.

Contrary to Cain’s response, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Francis explained that we are indeed our brother’s keeper within the human family, and God’s question proves it.

He said that it is within the family that we first learn how to open ourselves to others and become good brothers and sisters. What we learn from them then goes on to benefit society as a whole.

As the first place we learn to live a fraternal coexistence, our relationship with our siblings serves as “an ideal for any relationship within society and between peoples,” the Pope said, noting that this bond reaches its fulfillment with Jesus.

Francis explained that it is Jesus who gives us the grace to see each person as a brother or sister and to reconcile differences and divisions. Jesus, he said, also offers to us the promise of true freedom and equality, which are maintained by this brotherhood.

The virtue of brotherhood shines even brighter “when the family has a weaker, sick or disabled brother or sister, and the others care for them with such affection,” the Pope observed.

He said that “having a brother, a sister, who loves you is a powerful, priceless, irreplaceable experience,” and explained that the Christian community is also called to care for the poor and needy in society with the same tenderness and affection.

Francis closed his address by praying that our “often impersonal societies” learn how to foster this spirit of fraternity, and asked that families around the world would come to appreciate “the great blessing of God found in our young” who both love and are loved as brothers and sisters.

Before concluding, the Pope asked that all of the faithful present pause for a moment of silence to remember their own brothers and sisters.

“With this prayer we have brought all of our brothers and sisters here in our hearts to this square for a blessing,” he said, and went on to greet pilgrims present from various countries around the world.

Pope Francis also asked for special prayers for the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians who were beheaded by ISIS militants over the weekend, “for the mere fact of being Christians.”

He prayed for all who have died or been wounded in various conflicts, especially refugees, and offered particular prayers for peace in the Middle East, North Africa and the Ukraine.

In addition, the Pope called on the international community to work together in finding peaceful solutions to the current crisis in Libya.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

This Lent, ask God for the ‘gift of tears,’ Pope says

by CNA/EWTN News • February 18, 2015

Ashes. (Sarah (Rosenau) Korf via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Vatican City — In his Ash Wednesday homily, Pope Francis said the time of Lent is a call to leave hypocrisy behind and reconcile with God through fasting, charity and prayerful tears before our merciful Father.

“I ask you a question: do I cry? Does the Pope cry? Do cardinals cry? Do bishops cry? Do consecrated men and women cry? Do priests cry?” the Pope said during his Feb. 18 Ash Wednesday Mass.

Pope Francis focused during the Mass on the idea of “weeping in prayer.”

In keeping with papal tradition for Ash Wednesday, Pope Francis began the Lenten liturgy with a procession, during which he walked from Rome’s Sant’Anselmo church to the church of Santa Sabina on Aventine Hill.

He immediately turned to the words of the prophet Joel, who calls the people to penance and conversion due to a locus invasion plaguing the land.

Joel tells the people to beg the Lord for deliverance with prayer, fasting and the confession of their sins, since God is the only one who can save them from the “scourge.”

The prophet’s call to “return to me with all your heart” is an invitation to an interior conversion that is not “superficial or transient,” but rather signals a journey involving the most intimate part of ourselves, the Pope said.

In his prophesy, Joel focuses largely on the prayer of priests, saying it should be “accompanied by tears,” Francis noted, and encouraged faithful to pray for the gift of tears during Lent “so as to make our prayer and journey of conversion ever more authentic and without hypocrisy.”

Francis turned to the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, in which the apostle recounts Jesus’ reinterpretation of the traditional works of piety put forth in the Mosaic law: prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Over the course of time, “these requirements have been eroded by the rust of external formalism, or were even changed into a sign of social superiority,” the Pope said.

However, in the Gospel, Jesus warns his disciples against common temptations surrounding these pious works when he tells them to “perform righteous deeds” in secret rather than in front of others, and not to “blow a trumpet” when the give alms.

Jesus also cautions his disciples not to pray in front of others so as to attract attention, and tells them not to “look gloomy” when they fast, lest they be like the hypocrites.

Hypocrites, Francis said, “don’t know how to cry. They have forgotten how to cry. They don’t ask for the gift of tears.”

Pope Francis noted that when we perform a good work, there is often an almost “instinctive” reaction to look for respect and admiration for it. Jesus’ invitation during Lent is instead to let go of our desire for satisfaction when performing good works, and trust in the reward we will receive in heaven.

“Dear brothers and sisters, the Lord does not ever tire of having mercy on us, and wants to offer us his forgiveness still one more time, inviting us to return to him with a new heart, purified from evil, so as to take part in his joy,” the Pope said.

But welcoming this invitation to conversion takes more than just our human effort, he said, explaining that reconciliation with God can only be achieved thanks to the mercy and love of the Father.

Only in Christ, who died for our sins even though he himself was sinless, can we ourselves become just, Francis said, asking those present, “Please, let’s stop. Let’s pause a little and let ourselves be reconciled with God.”

Pope Francis closed his homily by noting that as Lent begins, the phrases “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” and “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel” are said along with the distribution of the ashes.

Both of these lines are a reminder that as human beings, we are limited and are sinners always in need of penance and conversion, Francis noted.

The call to conversion, he said, “is therefore a push to return, as did the son of the parable, to the arms of God and to cry in those arms, to trust him and to trust in him.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Vatican Secretary of State urges ‘quick response’ to crisis in Libya

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • February 18, 2015

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, at the North American College, Jan. 6, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — After a meeting with Italian officials on Tuesday, Cardinal Pietro Parolin told reporters that swift action is needed in Libya, where continual conflict since a 2011 revolution has resulted in rival governments and a foothold for Islamists.

Amid the chaos in the north African nation, Islamic State affiliates beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians over the weekend.

Cardinal Parolin said Feb. 17 the incident was “terrifying,” but the men’s fidelity to Christ “provides a wonderful testimony of Christian martyrdom … May God give us the grace to die in the same way.”

“We are usually today led to underline the aspect of cruelty – and it is an unspeakable cruelty – and it is unbelievable that there can be incidents like this during our time,” he said. “But, we look to the other part, the part of the testimony these martyrs gave. It has always been like this, in the history of the Church.”

Libya has been unstable since a 2011 revolution which ousted longtime president Muammar Gaddafi, and a civil war began in earnest in May 2014. The internationally recognized government is based in Tobruk and controls much of eastern Libya, while a rival Islamist government was established in Tripoli in August, and controls much of the west.

In response to the Libyan crisis, Cardinal Parolin stressed that “a quick response” is needed because the “situation is grave,” yet added that “any armed intervention must be carried forward under the framework of international law” and “under the umbrella of the United Nations.”

The day after Cardinal Parolin’s meeting with Italian officials, Italy’s foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni told parliament that the “deterioration of the situation on the ground forces the international community to move more quickly before it’s too late,” highlighting a “clear risk” of alliances between Islamic State and Libyan Islamists.

The Libyan issued overshadowed the Vatican-Italian meeting, which was held to celebrate the anniversary of the 1929 Lateran Treaty, which established Vatican City State and which governs relations between the two states.

The 40-minute meeting took place at the Italian embassy to the Holy See, and marked the first time newly-elected Italian president Sergio Mattarella took part.

Cardinal Parolin was joined by several officials at the Secretariat of State as well as the president and secretary of the Italian bishops conference; the Italian delegation included the president, prime minister, and several government ministers and parliamentarians.

Topics of discussion included care for immigrants – which the Libyan crisis has exacerbated – freedom of education, and security. According to Cardinal Parolin, the talks were not about the same-sex unions bill to be soon discussed in Italy’s parliament.

The cardinal emphasized that the Church fosters the welcoming of immigrants, and that while “there is a duty of charity, above all there is a duty of justice.”

“For the Italian authorities there are international conventions to which they are obligated,” he said. “We as a Church principally underline the charitable aspects.”

During the talks, the Italian government acknowledged the importance of the contribution given by Catholic schools to the Italian school system. Regarding civil unions, both delegations issued a generic appeal about the importance of family, but no specific mention was made of the civil union bill that member of parliament will soon discuss.

With respect to security, Cardinal Parolin stated that terrorists have made “no specific threats against the Vatican,” and that “this does not mean we should not be attentive and vigilant, but without falling into alarmism.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis’ daily challenge: Who will you follow – God or the world?

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 19, 2015

Pope Francis greets pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during his Feb. 18, 2015 general audience. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Rome, Italy — In his homily Thursday Pope Francis said that every day we are faced with choices between good and evil, and stressed that God is always there to help us when the right decision is hard to make.

“The choice is between God and other gods who do not have the power to give us anything other than trivial, pithy little things that pass,” the Pope told Mass attendees Feb. 19.

He recognized that “it is not easy” to make the right choice, and encouraged those present to stop and ask themselves “What is my lifestyle like? Which path am I on?”

Francis launched his reflection by referencing God’s words to Moses in the first reading, taken from Deuteronomy, in which God says “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. Obey the commandments of the Lord, Your God, which I enjoin on you today.”

It is the same choice that each person is faced with on a daily basis, he said, noting that it is often easier to follow false gods.

“We always have this habit of following the herd, like everyone else. Everyone and no one,” he said, however in today’s liturgy the Church gives us the good advice to “stop and choose!”

He encouraged attendees to ask themselves whether or not they are following the Lord or if they are on another path. Alongside this question, he said, are deeper ones surrounding our relationship with God and our families, including our parents, siblings, children and spouses.

Pope Francis then turned to Luke’s Gospel, in which Jesus tells his disciples that there is no profit in gaining the world, but losing one’s soul at the same time.

“The search for personal success, for possessions, without a thought for the Lord, for one’s family is always the wrong path to choose,” he observed, and said that the two questions which constantly need to be asked regard the status of our relationship with God and with our family.

A person can work hard to gain everything and yet still fail, Francis said, explaining that even if monuments of the person are built and their portrait painted, they are “a failure” because they “did not choose well between life and death.”

The Pope also questioned those present as to what pace they live their lives at, and whether or not they allow time to reflect on the things they do.

A “little bit of courage” is needed every time we make decisions, he said, and pointed to Psalm 1’s exhortation to put our hope in the Lord as a piece of a good advice on the matter.

“When the Lord gives us this advice – ‘Stop! Choose today, choose’ – he doesn’t abandon us. He is with us and wants to help us. But we have to trust Him; we have to have faith in Him,” Francis said.

He concluded his homily by telling those present to stop and think about the decisions they make, and to remember that the Lord is always there beside us, offering his help.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Not endorsement, but understanding – Pope Francis and married priests

by Catholic News Agency’s Vatican Observer, Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • February 19, 2015

Priests concelebrate Mass with Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica, Jan. 6, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — While addressing the priests of the Diocese of Rome on Thursday, Pope Francis also responded to a question about married priests, underscoring that the Church has great concern for priests who leave ministry to get married and later want to return, but that on the other hand he does not know if the Church can find a way for this to happen.

The Bishop of Rome traditionally meets with the priests of his diocese during Lent, and the Feb. 19 encounter took place at the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.

The Holy See press office delivered eight minutes of audio from the two-hour meeting, but has yet to release an official summary or transcription: thus the only source of information is the testimony of priests who took part.

The theme this year was homiletics – the art of preaching – and to prepare for it, Pope Francis had the text of his 2005 address to the Congregation for Divine Worship sent to the priests.

The text – Pope Francis revealed – was a bit criticized by Cardinal Meisner and by Cardinal Ratzinger. “Ratzinger told me that the text lacked one thing on the homily, a sense of being before God. He was right: I did not speak about that.”

The Pope’s address was followed by a series of questions from the priests.

According to L’Avvenire, the Pope also addressed the issued of married priests, following a question posed by Fr. Giovanni Cereti.

L’Avvenire wrote that Fr. Cereti mentioned how in the Eastern Catholic Churches, married men may be ordained priests, unlike the typical situation in the Latin rite.

Fr. Julio Lavin de Tezanos Pinto, deputy parish priest of the Roman parish of San Romano Martyr , told CNA that in fact “the conversation dealt with some specific cases … they were talking about priests who were dispensed from priesthood in order to get married: they actually got married, and they now wish to come back.”

Fr. Lavin then recounted that the Pope “responded that the question touched a wound, that he welcomed the question and that he touched this plague, and that he was not going to archive such a question … which meant that he wanted to express an understanding of the problem … probably, the phrase ‘I would not store this question in an archive’ was misinterpreted as ‘it is part of my agenda.’”

Fr. Walter Insero, spokesman of the Diocese of Rome, told CNA “the Pope said this is a plague of the Church, and he intended to say that the issue of the possibility of marriage for priests may cause pain to the people involved.”

“When the Pope said the issue was not going to be stored in an archive, he wanted to say that he will take the issue into account … but he also added that he does not know if the Church will be able to find a way for these people.”

Pope Francis also revealed that Feb. 10 he said Mass in the Domus Sanctae Marthae chapel together with seven priests who were celebrating the 50th anniversary of their priesthood, and that five priests who had left ministry to marry attended the Mass.

Fr. Insero added, “there many other important issues the Pope addressed during his meeting with the Roman clergy.”

“Pope Francis said it is important that a priest begs for the gift of tears because, he said, if the priest has not the ability to cry anymore, he cannot be on the side of people, to bear their sufferings, to accompany them in their life,” recounted Fr. Insero.

The spokesman of the Rome diocese said Pope Francis reflection “started from his 2005 address to the Congregation for Divine Worship … he focused on the importance of preaching … he stressed that the false prophet may be recognized by the fact that he speaks his own words, while the true prophet speaks God’s words … and so he explained that it is important to make space for the Word of God.”

“Pope Francis also highlighted that preparing a homily is a path. He said that you can’t prepare a homily in one hour, the very same day you give the homily … you should bear the homily with prayer, so that your point of view becomes what the Spirit tells people.”

A priest also asked the Pope about how to help people to discover the beauty of liturgy, and the Pope, Fr. Insero said, praised Benedict XVI’s commitment to liturgy.

“He said Benedict XVI had liberalized the extraordinary rite, and that he did this because he is a man of communion, and wanted to keep the door open for everyone. But he also added that the Church remains in the ordinary rite, and that we have to foster that rite, to explain its beauty to people,” said Fr. Insero.

Pope Francis also recommended two books for priests to read: “Proclaiming God’s Message: A study in the theology of preaching,” a 1963 volume by Fr. Domenico Grasso, S.J.; and “A Theology of Proclamation,” a 1958 work of Fr. Hugo Rahner, S.J.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

VIP treatment for LGBT group at the Vatican? Not really.

by Catholic News Agency’s Vatican Observer, Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • February 19, 2015

Pope Francis greets pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during the General Audience, Nov. 19, 2014. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — Vatican sources have cast doubt on reports of VIP treatment for New Ways Ministry, an American LGBT activist group that rejects Catholic teaching, at Pope Francis’ most recent general audience.

A source in the Prefecture for the Pontifical Household told CNA that “no requests are rejected” for the general audience seating in the so-called “reparto speciale,” which has a capacity of about 500 people.

While media reports said the group sat in a front section with dignitaries and special Catholic groups, this portrayal is questionable. The “reparto speciale” section of St. Peter’s Square is not considered part of VIP treatment. The seats are available on a “first come, first served basis,” and no chairs are specially reserved for a group of pilgrims.

Another Vatican source underscored that the press office knew nothing about the presence of the group at the general audience. He pointed out that “the group was treated as any other group of faithful in the square.”

The New Ways Ministry group of about 50 people were among the many people gathered for the Feb. 18 general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

The group’s leaders were Francis DeBernardo and Sister Jeannine Gramick, S.L., respectively the executive director and co-founder of the organization. New Ways Ministry promotes LGBT activism in the Catholic Church. Its ministry to homosexuals has been rejected as theologically unsound by Church authorities, but DeBernardo and Sr. Gramick often have sympathetic ears in the news media.

Both the Associated Press and Reuters claimed the group had “VIP seats” at the audience and portrayed the group’s attendance as unprecedented, though they did not cite Vatican officials saying so. David Gibson of Religion News Service told the New York Daily News the group’s attendance was a “substantial change of direction for the Catholic Church” and “not just a symbolic move.”

DeBernardo and Sr. Gramick claimed that Wednesday marked the first time the group was welcomed at a papal general audience, while previous requests had been ignored during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

According to CNA’s source in the Pontifical Household “this declaration is simply misleading, as any of the faithful can access general audiences: they can simply ask the prefecture for the tickets, which are free.”

“If a Catholic nun asks for a series of tickets in the ‘reparto speciale’, it is likely that she is given the tickets,” the source in the Pontifical Household stressed.

The source also emphasized that the procedure would be different for the “baciamano” custom in which people are able to greet the Pope personally for a short time and kiss his hand. In such cases, the prefecture decides whether to grant a request to attend.

A list of the groups that take part in the general audience is customarily read at the audience’s conclusion and published in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The official list for Wednesday names the group accompanied by Sr. Gramick only as “a group of lay people accompanied by a Sister of Loretto,” not mentioning New Ways Ministry by name.

“If a group simply asks to be mentioned in the list of groups, the procedure is more informal,” CNA’s source in the Pontifical Household explained.

The Vatican source said that “when a group makes a request (to be included in the list) usually the name is included in the list of pilgrim groups present. It’s not clear if she presented herself as written or in another way.”

Media reports also said that the request was forwarded by the apostolic nuncio in the U.S. and by the Archbishop of San Francisco. The Archdiocese of San Francisco did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

In a July 2014 interview, DiBernardo discussed New Ways Ministry’s February journey to Rome to take part in a general audience and to try to meet with Pope Francis.

The interview was published on the website of the “Ways of Love” conference, which was held in Rome in October 2014 at the start of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family. The conference featured several speakers who rejected Catholic teaching. It was sponsored by the European Forum of LGBT Christian Groups with the financial support of the government of the Netherlands.

The conference organizers included DeBernardo and Marianne Duddy-Burke of the U.S.-based group Dignity USA.

New Ways Ministry and Dignity USA are part of the Equally Blessed Coalition, a group that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the U.S.-based Arcus Foundation, which spends millions to support LGBT activism every year. In 2014 the foundation gave Dignity USA a $200,000 grant to support the Equally Blessed Coalition’s work to “influence and counter the narrative of the Catholic Church and its ultra-conservative affiliates.”

“The effort will build advocacy and visibility in connection with two special events, the Synod of the Family and World Youth Day,” the foundation said in the grant listing on its website.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Using God as a cover for injustice is no trifling matter, Pope says

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 20, 2015

Pope Francis celebrates Mass with new cardinals on Feb. 15, 2015. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — In his homily Friday, Pope Francis said that love of God and of neighbor are inseparable, and castigated the actions of those who give to the Church, but at the same time exploit and mistreat others.

Although many claim to practice charity because they write a check to the Church every month, “at your home, within your own Church, are you generous and are you fair with those who are your dependents – be they your children, your grandparents, your employees?” the Pope asked Feb. 20.

He used the example of those who go to Mass every Sunday and receive communion, but questioned whether, when these people go home, they pay their employees in cash under the table, giving them a salary lower than the going rate and without making the necessary social security contributions.

“You cannot make offerings to the Church on the shoulders of the injustice that you practice towards your dependents. This is a very serious sin: using God as a cover for injustice.”

Pope Francis made his comments to attendees of his Feb. 20 daily Mass, held in the chapel of the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse.

Lent is a time when Christians are provided the opportunity to go beyond mere outward signs of piety, and reach out to those in need, he said, adding that love of God and neighbor go hand-in-hand.

Within the Ten Commandments there are laws regarding God and those regarding our neighbor, Francis observed, saying that “both of these go together … if you don’t follow one, you can’t follow the other and if you follow one you must follow the other.”

“Love of God and love of our neighbor is one and the same thing and if you want to show genuine and not just formal penance, you must show it before God and also towards your brothers.”

This charity, Francis said, ought to be practiced at home within one’s family, at work with one’s employees and colleagues, as well as with the needy.

He said that Lent is the optimal time for Christians to reach out to the less fortunate, whether they be children, prisoners or elderly who have no health insurance and are faced with long waits while trying to see a doctor.

Francis gave particular emphasis to prisoners, asking those present if they had room in their hearts for those who have made mistakes, and are now in jail.

To say that you don’t associate with “those type of people” is wrong, the Pope said, noting that if you yourself are not in prison, “it’s because our Lord has helped you not to sin.”

“Do you pray for (prisoners) so that the Lord can help them to change their life?” he asked, and prayed that the Lord be close to each person during Lent, “so that our external observance becomes a profound renewal of the Spirit.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

VATICAN NEWS

Archbishop Romero had no interest in liberation theology, says secretary

by Alvaro de Juana (CNA/EWTN News) • February 21, 2015

Mons. Jesus Delgado, late San Salvador Archbishop Romero’s secretary, speaks to reporters at the Vatican Press Office, Feb. 4, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — Although liberation theology proponents visited Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero and left him their books, he was never swayed by their ideas, says the late archbishop’s personal secretary.

In statements to CNA, Msgr. Jesus Delgado, former secretary of Archbishop Romero, said that the archbishop’s murder on March 24, 1980, “was in opposition to what he preached, which is what the Church asks of all: conversion to Jesus, a personal encounter with Jesus.”

Archbishop Romero, “like the Second Vatican Council, called for a personal encounter with Christ Jesus, which implied a preferential option for the poor, because Jesus opted for the poor to save us all.”

Oscar Romero y Galdamez was Archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 until March 24, 1980, when he was shot while saying Mass. He was a vocal critic of the human rights abuses of the repressive Salvadoran government, and he spoke out on behalf of the poor and the victims of the government.

No one has been prosecuted for his assassination, but right-wing death squads are suspected.

On Feb. 3, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of a decree recognizing the martyrdom of Archbishop Romero, paving the way for his beatification.

The theologians of the congregation for saints had unanimously recognized Archbishop Romero’s 1980 assassination as a martyrdom on Jan. 8. The Pope’s approval was the last step needed before Archbishop Romero could be beatified.

At the same time, the Pope also recognized the martyrdoms of three priests killed in Peru by the Shining Path, a Communist guerilla group.

Msgr. Delgado responded to years of allegations that there was a connection between Archbishop Romero and liberation theology, a controversial school of thought that developed in Latin America in the 1950s, which has been criticized as a Marxist interpretation of the Gospel.

“When I wrote his life story, I looked over his library. Obviously, the liberation theology proponents always visited him and left him their books,” Msgr. Delgado said.

“I saw them, and they were like brand new, he never even opened them. He never read them, he never looked at them. On the other hand, all the books of the fathers of the Church were worn and were the source of his inspiration.”

Archbishop Romero “knew nothing about Liberation Theology, he did not want to know about it. He adhered faithfully to the Catholic Church and to above all to the teachings of the Popes.”

His theology was focused on the presence of God among the poor, “which we could describe like this: ‘God present and living with the poor and walking with the poor’,” Msgr. Delgado said.

“This was the point that his rich friends did not understand, and it’s not that they didn’t want to understand, but at that time we were immersed in the struggle been the Soviet Union and the United States.”

Archbishop Romero “was pulled by one side and the other, and he wanted to remain and always did remain on the same path: preaching the word of God and calling us all to conversion to Christ and with Christ to the poorest people.”

Those on the left that relied on Archbishop Romero did so for their own objectives, he added. “They threatened to kill him because, they said, he blessed the coup d’etat and the agricultural reform proposed by the 1979 coup d’etat.” For this reason, “they labeled him a supporter of the reform and not of the revolution and they sentenced him to death,” Msgr. Delgado stated.

“He lived Christmas of 1979 in fear of the flames that were threatening him from the right and the left.”

“He was killed on March 24 and I always say that either side could have killed him, both the left and the right. They hated him for one reason or another. Afterwards, the Truth Commission proved that it was the right that killed him,” Msgr. Delgado said.

The problem, he continued, is that Archbishop Romero was manipulated and used by proponents of both the left and right, inaccurately held up as a “battle flag” for ideologies with which he did not agree.

Asked why the Vatican received negative reports for years about Romero, Msgr. Delgado said, “The news that came in was negative and the Popes did not have a good understanding of the situation in Latin America. They were very prudent in response.”

“Thank God a Pope has come along who knows this situation in Latin America well and who unblocked everything, opening the path to justice and truth,” Msgr. Delgado stated.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

How Benedict XVI and his ‘scandalous’ hero speak to the modern crisis

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 15, 2015

Pope Benedict XVI, May 11, 2010. (Mazur/thepapalvisit.org.uk CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Rome, Italy — Theological giants Benedict XVI and one of his heroes – the controversial Cardinal Jean Danielou – have been hailed for illuminating through their respective works the ever-relevant answer to a modern world in crisis: Jesus Christ.

“If you want to be modern, you have to look at Jesus,” Rome-based theology professor Father Giulio Masparo told CNA Feb. 13.

And through the writings of the late French cardinal in particular, he noted, the Christian claim in today’s world is infinitely superior “than what you can find by thinking that everything is relative.”

Fr. Masparo, a professor in Dogmatic Theology at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce in Rome, helped to organize a Feb. 12-13 conference titled: “Study days: Danielou-Ratzinger before the Mystery of History.”

Held at the University of Santa Croce, the conference explored the great continuity between Cardinal Danielou and Benedict XVI, who are both known for placing a historical frame around their theological writings.

Originally from Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, Cardinal Danielou was a Jesuit, and is considered one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. He is known for his clarity in explaining profound concepts in a comprehensible way for the unlearned reader.

Danielou was highly criticized following the Second Vatican Council, a false interpretation of which he faulted for the crisis in religious life and the increase in secularization which ensued.

In a controversial interview with Vatican Radio in 1972, the cardinal stressed that “Vatican II declared that human values must be taken seriously. It never said that we should enter into a secularized world in the sense that the religious dimension would no longer be present in society.”

“It is in the name of a false secularization that men and women are renouncing their habits, abandoning their works in order to take their places in secular institutions, substituting social and political activities for the worship of God,” he said.

Cardinal Danielou also faulted “a false conception of freedom” that devalued religious constitutions and “an erroneous conception of the changing of man and the Church” for many of the crisis that unfolded after the Vatican council.

However, despite the criticism directed at the French cardinal, then-Bishop Josef Ratzinger was an avid supporter of Danielou, and placed great value on his stance and writings.

The two maintain numerous similarities in their theological writings, beginning with their historical gaze at theology, their emphasis on scripture and turning to the Church Fathers.

Danielou and now-retired pope Benedict XVI, or “Father Benedict” as he wishes to be called, also place a great emphasis on the liturgy and, perhaps most importantly, the idea of mission.

“In one word I can say that for them the meaning of our world is Christ,” Fr. Masparo said.

For them, “if you read the Gospel, if you pray, if you go to church and receive the sacraments, your sight changes and you are able to see that below the surface there is the presence of God, of Jesus Christ not only in the time we are living but also within the matter we are living with,” the priest said.

Because of the emphasis that both place on the relationship between being and history, they are “very modern” in the sense that they address one of the key concerns in contemporary society.

In the midst of a world in crisis where man is searching and can’t seem to find what he is looking for, Danielou and Benedict XVI step into the middle of “this puzzle” with the answers provided by scripture, which are enlightened by the Church Fathers.

“What they wrote is wonderful and I think it can show a way out of this crisis situation that we are living in now,” Fr. Masparo said, noting how both dug into the past with the goal of finding meaning for their present time.

One contemporary issue the theologians can shed light on is that of homosexuality, the priest said, pointing specifically to Cardinal Daneilou – whose brother, Alain, was a prominent Buddhist and gay author.

“This is the typical point where we can see the crisis of our time because we are not able to manage differences. We have tried to find a solution saying ‘ok, we have no differences,’ but you always have differences,” Fr. Masparo explained.

“If you have homosexuality, you have to manage the difference between homosexual and heterosexual. You cannot erase all the differences.”

Both of the theologians found the solution to the problem of differences by looking to the way Jesus dealt with them in the Gospels, the priest noted, saying that before doing anything else Christ accepted the people who came to him.

Cardinal Danielou embodied this in the way that he encountered his brother. After finding out that Alain was same-sex attracted, his shocked family threw him out, and they went through a lot of suffering, the priest observed.

However, Cardinal Danielou had the opposite reaction and dedicated his life to praying for his brother, and accepted his different ideas while remaining open to him. Alain, Fr. Masparo said, “recognized this love of his brother.”

“We are living in the world where everybody has the perception that they must change in order to be ‘right,’ (but) Jesus’ answer is that you are right just as you are, because you are mine, because I created you,” the priest explained.

Jesus Christ, he said, “told us to love everybody, so I think it’s a big problem now when we are talking about Catholicism that the topics of homosexuality (and) abortion are just moral topics.”

Although we are all sinners, we are all “right” by nature because we have been created in the image of God, he noted, and stressed that because of this a homosexual person can never be considered a problem.

In the priest’s view, the problem lies with today’s gay rights movement at large, as he believes it reduces the individual to a definition. “Life is more complex.”

“We have to learn from each other and at the same time to keep our ideas,” Fr. Masparo said, adding that we have been given the freedom to maintain different beliefs, which must be accepted with respect for the other person.

Each person has the freedom to believe there is a wrong way of doing things and to promote a different method, he said, stressing that the Church, in her teachings, “is not imposing a behavior on anybody.”

People, the priest said, should believe what they want, but emphasized that “there is a truth,” and history will tell who was right and who was wrong.

One of the reasons why Cardinal Jean Denielou is so little known outside the French Catholic circles is because he died suddenly, of a heart attack, while visiting the house of a prostitute. The fact was used by the French secular press to imply the “hypocrisy” of the Jesuit’s moral life.

Alain, as famous an author in the Agnostic circles as his brother was in the Catholic one, wrote after the death of the French Cardinal:

“His death and the scandal provoked by it, when he had become one of the leading figures of the Church, was a sort of posthumous vendetta, one of those favors that the gods bestow on those whom they love. If he had died just a little while sooner or later, or if he had been visiting a lady of the sixteenth arrondissement (an expensive neighborhood in Paris) under the pretext of works of charity, instead of bringing the revenue of his theological writings to a poor and needy woman, there would have been no scandal.”

“Jean had always dedicated himself to disregarded people. For a certain period he had celebrated a Mass for the sake of homosexuals. He tried to help prisoners, criminals, troubled young people, prostitutes. I deeply admired this ending of life similar to that of the martyrs, whose fragrance rises to heaven amid the opprobrium and sarcasm of the crowd.”

According to Vatican analyst Sandro Magister, since 2012, when the first conference on Jean Danielou was held in Rome, “the quarantine has ended for this Cardinal.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

What are the challenges facing family catechesis in India?

by Antonio Anup Gonsalves (CNA/EWTN News) • February 16, 2015

Participants at the Indian Catechetical Association’s general meeting, Shillong, India, Feb. 11-13, 2015. (Fr. Gilbert Choondal, SDB)

Shillong, India — The Indian Catechetical Association held its ninth annual convention last week to evaluate the central challenges to both the evangelization and catechesis of families on the subcontinent.

“The family, this basic cell of society and the Church, is going through a social and ecclesiastical evolution,” said Fr. Gilbert Choondal, S.D.B., president of the Indian Catechetical Association.

“It is our task to reflect, review, renew and respond together to the challenges of family from a catechetical perspective,” Fr. Choondal told CNA Feb. 16.

The convention was held Feb. 11-13 in Shillong, the capital of India’s Meghalaya state.

Meghalaya, which is bordered on its south by Bangladesh, is one of only three Indian states with a Christian majority.

More than 75 catechists, including priests, religious, and laity from across India met at the Bethel center of the Missionary Sisters of Mary, Help oof Christians.

The convention explored the “Challenges and Concerns of Family Catechesis,” in the context of realities facing the new evangelization.

Archbishop Emeritus Thomas Menamparampil of Guwahati, in his presentation, insisted that “we need to seek more to understand the families, than to be understood, in this era of varieties of difficulties facing families.”

The particular situation facing families in India, they noted, are migration and couples living apart; intercultural and interfaith families; suicide; divorce; multiple relationships; alcoholism; abandonment of the elderly; domestic violence; and human trafficking.

“Communicating faith to these families would primarily mean seeking to understand them and enabling them to build bridges,” the participants stated.

The participants adopted a final statement noting that the family has taken the “center stage of the world’s concerns.”

They acknowledged that “the Church is concerned about the situation, namely the loss of sacredness of marriage and family, the erosion of Christian values, tendencies toward individualism, consumerism and relativism, and ignorance and negligence of faith matters.”

They emphasized that the challenge is in helping “parents to take responsibility as primary agents in the transmission of faith and bringing up children rooted in spiritual riches and moral and ethical values.”

However, stressing the crucial role of the parents’ personal faith life and the “parish-parent partnership,” they appreciated the efforts made by families despite challenges that the parents face in responding to the imminent questions of the new generation. In light of this, the convention urged that clergy learn the “art of accompaniment.”

The participants also underlined the importance of the Bible and of the Christian initiation of children in the family, which need to be given extra emphasis to bring about a deep renewal of Christian communities.

The event’s analysis suggested a roadmap of proposals to address blindspots and to encourage inculturation of the faith.

The Indian Catechetical Association’s next plenary meeting will be held Feb. 3-5, 2016 in Bangalore, on the theme “Catechesis toward a healthy social life.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Chinese New Year bumps Ash Wednesday fasting for Asia’s Catholics

by Antonio Anup Gonsalves (CNA/EWTN News) • February 17, 2015

A Shopping mall in Thailand decked out for welcoming Lunar New Year 2015. (Antonio Gonsalves/CNA.)

Bangkok, Thailand — Since Ash Wednesday coincides this year with Chinese New Year – also known as Lunar New Year – many bishops in East Asia are granting dispensations from the fasting and abstinence normally required on the day which begins the season of Lent.

This year, Ash Wednesday falls on Feb. 18, which is the eve of the day which begins the Year of the Goat in the Chinese calendar.

“In view of the celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, its cultural and spiritual importance and the traditional practices associated with it, we therefore grant dispensation from the obligation of fasting and abstinence to our Chinese-Filipino and Chinese Catholics in the Archdiocese of Manila from the afternoon of February 18, 2015 until midnight,” Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila wrote in a circular letter to his archdiocese on Feb. 6.

“Those availing of the dispensation must engage in some other forms of penance, acts of mercy and charity, especially to the poor and those who suffer, in keeping with the penitential spirit of the season of Lent,” he continued.

“May our celebration of the start of a new year and the Lenten Season bring us to the path of renewal and conversion towards God’s Kingdom! Have a meaningful Lenten season and a Happy Lunar New Year!”

Similarly, the bishops conferences of Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei and Southeast Asia have also said that the fasting and abstinence of Ash Wednesday can take place either on the day itself, or on another day, to be decided on by the individual. Masses with the imposition of ashes will still be said on Ash Wednesday.

Outside of East Asia, dioceses with significant communities with roots in China or its neighbors have granted similar dispensations.

Archbishop J. Michael Miller of Vancouver wrote Jan. 21 that “the 2015 Lunar Year for Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian and other ethnic groups, coincides with Ash Wednesday. Therefore, I dispense … those of the faithful who are present in the Archdiocese of Vancouver and who are subjects of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, wherever they may be, who will celebrate the Lunar New Year on Ash Wednesday, February 18, 2015, the dispensation from the laws on abstinence and fasting.”

He continued, however, that since “Lent is a penitential time of preparation for the liturgical celebration of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, I am obliging all who make use of this dispensation to observe a day of fast and abstinence on one other day at the beginning of Lent, such as Wednesday, February 25, 2015 or Friday, February 27, 2015.”

“Please note that this relaxation of the rule for such a significant day in the Church’s liturgical year is a one-time dispensation only and is not valid for future years,” Archbishop Miller concluded.

Lunar New Year, also called the Spring Festival, falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice; it will be celebrated until the Lantern Festival, observed March 5.

The event is celebrated culturally, and Catholics observe it with Masses of thanksgiving, blessings of cemeteries, “agape” meals, and sharing charitable gifts.

The festivities unite families in offering thanksgiving and in praying for their predecessors’ souls.

Fasting and abstinence are obligatory for Roman Catholics from the ages of 14-60 on both Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, unless their bishop allows a substitution of other forms of penance.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Meet the Christians in Syria who want to stay, despite the war

by Oliver Maksan (Aid to the Church in Need) • February 17, 2015

Refugees waiting for distribution of food aid by a local Church in Syria. (Aid to the Church in Need)

Homs, Syria —”Fortunately, the battles are over for now. There was fierce fighting in Al Nabek all through Advent. No one was able to flee. The people were trapped. Peace was then finally restored in the week before Christmas. But you never know.”

Sister Houda Fadoul sounds relieved. The Syrian Catholic nun presides over a congregation of women religious near Al Nabek, a city of around 50,000 inhabitants, located 50 miles south of Homs, halfway to Damascus.

The local flock is comprised of just 120 families, for a total Catholic population of 500, which is served by two parishes: one Syrian Catholic, the other Melkite.

It is now mid-winter and the town — which has by and large remained under government control since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011 — is enjoying a lull in the clashes between the government and Islamist extremists.

However, the threat of fresh fighting is always looming.

“The jihadists are not far away,” Sr. Fadoul told Aid to the Church in Need. “We Christians are scared of them. But so are the Muslims of Al Nabek.”

“After all, the jihadists also kill Muslims. No one wants them here. In Al Nabek, the Christians and Muslims are like family.”

Some 90 Christian houses were destroyed or damaged during the battles late last year.

“The jihadists thought that the government would spare them if they attacked in the Christian district,” Sr. Fadoul said. “But that was not the case. There was fierce fighting here. However, the Christian district lies unprotected on a hill. And so the Christian houses were hit especially hard. The people hid for weeks in cellars.”

Sr. Foudal’s priority is trying to do something about the acute housing shortage.

“Many families either don’t have a flat at all anymore, or the ones they have are uninhabitable. We must help these people. The Christians of Al Nabek don’t want to leave. They want to stay at home. However, to make this possible, their houses need to be rebuilt,” she said.

Some only have broken panes of glass or damaged power lines. Other houses, on the other hand, have been gutted.

“These people are now living in emergency housing. They have lost everything. They urgently need mattresses, gas stoves, blankets and a host of household items,” the sister added.

Life in Al Nabek has not been easy for a long time, even before the recent round of clashes.

“We often don’t have any electricity. The people sit in the dark. There is also a shortage of heating fuel. Neither diesel nor wood is available. And the winter gets cold. The people suffer,” reported Sr. Fadoul, adding that the price of food, when it is even available, has gone sky high.

The state of medical care is very poor, a situation worsened by a chronic shortage of medicine.

“However, the biggest problem here is that there is no work. Many factories have closed or have been destroyed. The young men are unemployed. We have to take care of them,” said Sr. Fadoul, part of whose mission is to find ways to supply small local businesses with raw materials.

“I am thinking of carpenters. We could supply them with wood. And we could also help small stores that sell batteries or torches by providing them with goods,” she said.

However, despite all the hardship, Sr. Fadoul insists that the people’s faith has not suffered.

“The Christians here are very brave. They celebrated a large Mass of Thanksgiving after the most recent battles. The destroyed houses are one thing. They don’t consider that so important.”

“Instead, they thanked God for the fact that they are still alive. We have to help the people regain their hope and faith that they can have a future in Syria. If not, we will lose them.”

Aid to the Church in Need is an international Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy See, providing assistance to the suffering and persecuted Church in more than 140 countries. Websites: churchinneed.org (USA); acnuk.org (UK); aidtochurch.org (AUS); acnireland.org (IRL); acn-aed-ca.org (CAN); acnmalta.org (Malta)

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Three year-old Brazilian boy with cancer ‘celebrates Mass,’ wants to be Pope

by CNA/EWTN News • February 17, 2015

(YouTube)

Sao Paulo, Brazil — Rafael Freitas is a three-year-old boy in Brazil who loves to pretend to celebrate Mass. He says he wants to be Pope someday.

He also has an aggressive form of cancer.

“At the facility where he receives his care there is a common area and little Rafael invites all the patients to come there to attend his ‘Mass,’” said the boy’s father, Randersson Freitas.

He said his son has had a long devotion to the Mass.

“When he started walking just after he turned one year old, Rafael started imitating the priest every time we went to Mass. When the priest raised up the chalice, he would raise up his little cup,” Randersson told CNA.

In 2014, doctors told Rafael’s parents that the little boy was suffering from a stage 4 form of childhood cancer that affects the nervous system and the bones.

In March 2014, Rafael received chemotherapy at Children’s Hospital in the city of Barretos, but doctors said there was no hope he would recover. Despite being placed in the wing for terminal patients, Rafael began to improve thanks to the intense treatments and the prayers of his family and many friends. Doctors now say he has a chance to survive the cancer.

Once at the hospital chapel where Rafael attends Mass with his parents, the boy asked the chaplain for a peculiar gift: a paten, the small golden plate used at Mass to hold the Host. The priest gave him one and also gave him a small tunic and stole made just to fit him.

“The priest thought Rafael’s request was so beautiful that he gave him a whole set of unused liturgical objects. The day he received them he must have celebrated 300 hundred Masses,” his father joked. “He was still ‘celebrating’ Mass at 11 o’clock that night.”

His father said it was “the best gift” his son could have received. Thousands of people have watched a video of the boy’s pretend Mass that his parents posted to Facebook. Rafael’s father suggested the boy was imitating his parents.

“We are extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist and we strive to attend Mass every day,” Randersson said.

Rafael’s parents say the little boy’s health is still at risk.

“We are in a crucial week when new tests will be done to figure out what needs to be done still. Perhaps he will need a bone marrow transplant,” Randersson said.

“We ask prayers from all bishops, priests, religious, laity and families. Pray for Rafael. Let us form a prayer chain. We know that Rafael’s healing is in God’s hands and we hope that this miracle will take place.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Amid string of break-ins, Bishop of Ars removes Blessed Sacrament from parishes

by CNA/EWTN News • February 18, 2015

Eucharistic Adoration. (Elisa Pires via JMJ Rio 2013/Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Paris, France — Bishop Pascal Roland of Belley-Ars in France has ordered that the Blessed Sacrament be removed from all chapels and churches in the diocese following a wave of sacrileges that have taken place in recent days.

After numerous tabernacles were profaned and consecrated hosts were stolen, Bishop Roland issued an ordinance instructing that “the Blessed Sacrament shall be removed from the tabernacles of all the churches and parish chapels and be reserved in a safe place.”

“The doors of the tabernacle shall remain completely open,” the bishop ordered. For purposes of public or private prayer, “The Blessed Sacrament may be returned temporarily to the tabernacle on the condition that a sufficient presence of the faithful is ensured.” The bishop’s order went into effect Feb. 10 and will remain in force until further notice.

Bishop Roland said he hopes the measures will convey to all the gravity of these acts and will help prevent them from occurring again.

The diocese has experienced a string of sacrileges and profanations over the past several months, with statues and other sacred objects stolen from several parishes. Police are currently collecting photos of the stolen items to prevent them from being sold in auctions and at arts shows.

On Feb. 6, parishioners in the towns of Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne and Ambronay discovered that the tabernacles at their churches had been broken into and the consecrated hosts had been removed. Consecrated hosts were also removed from the tabernacle the following day at a parish in the town of Vonnas.

The wave of sacrileges continued on Feb. 7 in the town of Montluel, where hosts were also taken out of the tabernacle and stolen.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Near Bethlehem, Israeli barrier threatens Christians’ future

by CNA/EWTN News • February 18, 2015

Cross atop the seminary in Beit Jala, one of the Palestinina communities threatened by the Israeli security barrier. (Aid to the Church in Need)

Jerusalem, Israel — Palestinian Christians, a monastery, a convent and a Catholic school near Bethlehem are all at risk from the Israeli government’s planned security barrier in the West Bank’s Cremisan Valley, the U.S. bishops have told members of Congress.

“The proposed routes of the separation barrier would effectively confiscate the Palestinian agricultural and recreational lands of over 50 Christian families. This threatens the livelihoods of the remaining Christian community of Bethlehem, pressuring even more to leave the Holy Land,” Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces told leaders of Congress in a Feb. 11 letter on behalf of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace.

The Cremisan Valley is near Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, and Bethlehem, in the West Bank territory of Palestine.

Bishop Cantu, who visited the valley in January, said the barrier would have “devastating consequences” for the local community.

“The situation in the Cremisan Valley is a microcosm of a protracted pattern that seriously jeopardizes the Israeli-Palestinian peace process,” he added.

The bishop asked leaders of the Senate and House committees on foreign relations and foreign affairs to intervene with the Israeli government to stop the barrier.

If the barrier is constructed as planned, it would cut off a Salesian monastery from a nearby convent and isolate their ministries from “critical resources and contacts with the local population,” Bishop Cantu said.

“In one case, the proposed route would surround a Salesian school for 450 students on three sides with a militarized barrier,” the bishop warned.

He cited a December 2014 statement from the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land which said the wall “alienates the most basic rights and freedom of the Christian community of Beit Jala.”

The assembly warned that the barrier’s construction would result in continued emigration for the mostly Christian community in the Cremisan Valley.

Among the Palestinian population, more than 12 percent were Christian in 2000; emigration has reduced that figure to less than two percent.

Bishop Cantu reaffirmed the U.S. bishops’ long support for “a secure and recognized Israel living in peace alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state.”

He said the Israeli barrier’s further constriction of more West Bank communities lessens the possibility of a future resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and puts “both Palestinians and Israeli citizens at risk.”

The construction of the barrier is believed to be linked to the protection of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank; some 500,000 Jews currently live in more than 100 West Bank settlements, according to the BBC. Under international law, the settlements are considered illegal, though Israel disputes this.

Moreover, the planned route of the Israeli barrier departs significantly from the internationally-recognized “Green Line” demarcating Israel from the West Bank: over 75 percent of the proposed route falls outside this line, and inside Palestinian land.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Australians welcome appointment of new apostolic nuncio

by CNA/EWTN News • February 19, 2015

Sydney Opera House. (Michele M via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Canberra, Australia — Australia’s Catholics have received with joy the news that Pope Francis on Tuesday appointed Archbishop Adolfo Yllana, a Filipino native, as their apostolic nuncio.

“For the bishops, priests, religious and people of our country, I am deeply grateful to Pope Francis for his nomination of Archbishop Adolfo Yllana as Apostolic Nuncio to Australia, to succeed Archbishop Paul Gallagher,” Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne stated Feb. 17.

“It is an indication of the Holy Father’s love and concern for us all,” added the archbishop, who serves as president of the Australian bishops conference.

“Archbishop Yllana brings wide and diverse experience, great faith and priestly gifts,” Archbishop Hart continued. “We assure him of a warm and enthusiastic welcome upon his arrival and service here in Australia.”

Archbishop Yllana was born in Naga City in the Philippines in 1948, and in 1972 was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Caceres.

He was consecrated a bishop in 2002, and appointed apostolic nuncio to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, serving there until 2006. He was apostolic nuncio to Pakistan from 2006 to 2010, and apostolic nuncio to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2010 until his transfer to Australia.

Archbishop Yllana received a doctorate in both canon and civil law from the Pontifical Lateran University, and then did postgraduate studies in international diplomacy at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. He speaks Tagalog, English, Spanish, Italian, and French.

The archbishop succeeds Archbishop Paul Gallagher, who was appointed secretary for relations with states at the Vatican State Secretariat in November, as nuncio to Australia.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Why this bishop is staying in Libya after the ISIS massacre

by CNA/EWTN News • February 19, 2015

(W H via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0)

Tripoli, Italy —”I should stay! How can I leave the Christians alone?”

These are the words of Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, in response to the Islamic State’s threats that it plans to take over the country and continue beheading Christians, as it did this past weekend, killing 21 Coptic Christians.

In statements to Vatican Radio, Bishop Martinelli said, “We could go, it’s true. Probably at some point (the jihadists) will take us and say: ‘You are against Islam’ … and that will be the end. We are in an ambiguous situation. This is because of a lack of dialogue: there has been a lack of dialogue for so long that now we need to recover time.”

While acknowledging that Christians in the area are scared, he emphasized that they are there to bear witness “to that which Jesus asks us to do.”

Asked about whether he himself is afraid, Bishop Martinelli said, “I don’t think so. If it weren’t for the faith, we would not be here.”

Not only are Christians suffering, he added, but also “the Libyans themselves who love us, and want what’s good for us, who are doing everything to bring back more normal relationship.”

For this reason, he exhorted the international community to be willing to “launch a dialogue with this country that is divided” and to “strive to be instruments of unity” rather than only seeking after one’s own interests.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Communion for divorced and remarried? Africa’s bishops have other concerns, cardinal says

by CNA/EWTN News • February 19, 2015

Communion Wafers. (Episcopal Diocese via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Rome, Italy — A leading African cardinal says the continent’s bishops want the upcoming Vatican synod to zero-in on strengthening the Church with good families – before getting sidetracked on other issues such as the contentious debate over allowing Communion for divorced and remarried couples.

Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban was in Rome last week for a meeting of African bishops – known as the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, or SECAM – with Pope Francis.

In a Feb. 13 interview, he told CNA that he’d gotten together with a group of cardinals the previous evening to discuss what issues they should bring to the table come October when the Synod on the Family meets in Rome.

“And the first thing we said was, we have to emphasize that we have good marriages, we have good families; let’s be positive first and foremost,” he said.

“Secondly, how can we ensure that the next generation is also going to have good families and good marriages? So the preparation and the accompaniment are two things that we really have concentrated on.”

Cardinal’s Napier’s comments emphasizing good families – and the preparation of good families in the future – were his answer to a question about a fellow African bishop’s supposed openness to admitting the divorced and remarried to Communion.

Crux’s John Allen wrote Feb. 11 that Ghanaian Archbishop Gabriel Palmer-Buckle of Accra said “he’s open to allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion, belying impressions of a uniformly hostile African stance toward change on such matters.”

Allen did not quote Archbishop Palmer-Buckle, but wrote that the prelate says he is disposed to “vote yes” on the “Kasper proposal.”

The term hearkens back to retired German cardinal Walter Kasper, who has suggested that Communion might be given in certain cases,to those who have divorced and subsequently remarried, without having obtained a decree of nullity of their first marriage.

After discussing the need for strengthening families now and in the future, Cardinal Napier turned directly to the issue of the Ghanaian archbishop’s comments:

“… one of the cardinals had the presence of mind to call the man concerned (Archbishop Palmer-Buckle), and he said, ‘Look, I was talking in a very general way, and yes it did come up, and my answer was (that) in cases like this, you have to look at it on a case by case basis, you can’t make a general statement that you can give Communion to people who are (divorced and) remarried, and so on.’”

“So it was one of the things we looked at as an issue that has to be faced,” Cardinal Napier said.

“I’m sure it’s going to come up again, but we would like, as a group of African Church leaders, not to get sidetracked onto issues, problems, without first looking at the good things that are there, and how can we strengthen the Church through good marriages and good families.”

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle has been elected by the Ghanaian bishops conference to be its delegate at the 2015 Synod on the Family, which is to build upon the foundation of last year’s family synod.

The same bishops conference adopted a statement on Nov. 15, at the conclusion of its plenary assembly, which drew attention to “the Church’s perennial and unchanging teaching on the family” and that “God determined marriage to be indissoluble as Jesus affirmed, ‘What therefore God has put together, let no man put asunder’.”

In the same communique the Ghanaian bishops – including Archbishop Palmer-Buckle – stated that “the Church will also continue to teach that divorce from a living and lawful spouse is not permitted by the Church because it separates what God has joined together.”

“She suffers with those who are not admitted to communion due to their marital status and will continue to journey with them in the faith to encourage them not to despair.”

After Ghana’s bishops’ statement on marriage last fall, bishops from the whole continent now look ahead to October’s gathering in Rome.

When asked about the African bishops’ preparation for the upcoming synod, Cardinal Napier said the bishops conferences have already examined a questionnaire prepared by the Synod of the Bishops.

“Following my advice, the bishops decided they would simplify the questionnaire and focus it around five areas which come out in the final document.”

The first of these is “the key question of preparation and accompaniment of marriage.”

Alluding to “Familiaris consortio,” St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation concluding the 1980 Synod on the Family, the cardinal said “we are not just talking about preparation for the wedding day, but the whole catechetical program from the time of Confirmation, through til marriage.”

“And accompaniment then for the first four or five years: having couples in the parish accompanying the newly married couple.”

The second area of questions the African bishops will ask involve ministry “when a marriage breaks down,” and the third concern is cohabitation, the cardinal noted. “Many couples are living together before they come forward. What is it that is making them do that? What difference does getting married make to them? All these kind of questions, we’ve got to find out what the cause of it is.”

“The fourth one is the question of when a marriage breaks down, how accessible are the tribunals for getting that marriage investigated, and declared null and void if that was the case?

The fifth area “is the extraordinary situations that some families have to live in” such as single parents and child-headed households.

Cardinal Napier also said it is “absolutely” of importance that the faithful pray for the synod and for the bishops participating in it.

He mentioned in particular a novena of Eucharistic adoration organized by Christine McCarthy and Diane Montagna of the Eucharistic Adoration Society. When the organizers told him of their initiative, he presented it to SECAM “and immediately it got into the standing committee meeting, and I know the Archbishop of Accra, in Ghana, said this is going straight into my diocese.”

Cardinal Napier reflected that prayer for the synod fathers really will matter: “I never had such an experience of prayer being a support you could feel, as when we had that program running before the last conclave called Adopt a Cardinal; oh, it was fantastic, (to) get an SMS or tweet from somebody saying ‘I’ve been given your name, and I’m praying for you, I want you to know that.’ I could certainly feel that we were supported by those prayers.

“And I think for this synod, especially because it’s on a vital thing like the family and marriage, we need as many prayers as we can get: so this idea of Eucharistic Adoration is one of the best, I think.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Rise of racism, exclusion in Europe prompts call for action

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 20, 2015

(DennisAycicek via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Rome, Italy — Church representatives across Europe cautioned Wednesday against a rise in xenophobic attitudes toward minorities and urged political leaders to stop pinning blame, and start promoting human values.

“Simple slogans and cheap propaganda at the expense of immigrants and against the EU may have their impact on some people who are worried about their future; however, they are not a response to the complex challenge of our times,” Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg said Feb. 18.

The archbishop made his comments at the launch of the European Justice and Peace Commissions’ 2015 Concerted Action.

Founded in 1971 by bishops conferences, the European Justice and Peace Commissions are a network of 31 committees mandated to work for the promotion of justice, peace, and respect for human dignity. They work in close relation with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in promoting Catholic social doctrine in European societies and institutions.

Each year the commissions jointly issue a “concerted action” point, which is agreed upon and then implemented by the national commissions at the national level.

With this year’s concerted action titled “The nationalism of exclusion,” the commissions hone in on the growing phenomenon of racism and xenophobia across Europe – as evidenced by the rise of the UK Independence Party, a British anti-immigration political party skeptical of the EU which made strides in 2013 elections; the October 2014 formation of Pegida, a German political organization that demonstrates against “Islamization of the West”; and anti-Semitic attacks in France which led 7,000 French Jews to emigrate to Israel last year.

The commission’s document opens with a call-out to political parties which advocate for “narrow national interests” at election times, rather than a concern for universal human values and international obligations.

Calling the phenomenon a “matter of serious concern,” the commissions asked political leaders at every level “to join ranks in developing a robust response to growing racism and xenophobia in Europe, in order to ensure respect for the rights of every individual.”

The pursuit of autonomy or a specific state for a particular nation or ethnic group within an already existing European state is a valid political goal, according to the commissions, so long as it is achieved by democratic and non-violent means.

Commission members also affirmed the right of minorities living in foreign countries to maintain a strong attachment to their place of birth and mother tongue. The Church’s social teaching, which holds that all human beings are equal in dignity, protects this right.

What is worrisome, they said, is the increased search for popularity and power through “simplistic political programs and slogans” founded on the idea that national prosperity and security can only be achieved “by unilateral measures, if necessary to the detriment of other peoples.”

Often finding their way into mainstream media, these measures frequently fuel nationalistic political agendas expressed in a racist or xenophobic way reminiscent of the “belligerent and ultra-nationalist politics which preceded both World Wars,” commission members observed.

The promotion of a specific nation or nationality by party leaders as the solution to contemporary challenges, rather than solving any problems, makes matters worse and often leads to exclusion, they noted.

What they termed the “nationalism of exclusion” runs contrary to human dignity and “denies justice because it denies fundamental rights on the basis of national, racial or religious origin.”

Commission members condemned the actions of certain “populist nationalist politicians” in playing on peoples’ fears in order to obtain power.

Simplistic solutions based on injustice and the marginalization of certain members of society, they said, will never allow for the blossoming of a peaceful and progressive community.

Migration, the document read, “is one very pertinent example to illustrate a tendency to ignore realities” since historic causes of migration often include political and religious conflict, and now climate change.

A rapid shortage of labor in Europe was also mentioned as a growing concern. In this light the complete closure of borders, the commissions said, “is both unrealistic and inhumane.”

“Other solutions should be developed at European and international levels,” members said, explaining that without immigration, Europe will also lose its ability to maintain high levels of social care for the sick and elderly, in addition to other social services.

Another example of the temptation to disregard reality is that of seeking to pin individual blame on the European Union for social inequalities as well as the current economic and unemployment crises.

While some nations advocate that leaving the EU is the best solution to continental problems, commission members observed that these same nations become far less explicit “when asked to explain how they see the future of their country” within framework of production, distribution, and consumption.

Although the EU is far from perfect, it continues to serve as a means of maintaining peace and assists in resolving conflicts on the European continent, the document continued.

To attack the European Union or any other country “has to be recognized for what it is – a smokescreen.”

Solutions countering the “nationalism of exclusion” are the responsibility of everyone, commission members noted, saying that respect for human values must be at the core of any and all resolutions.

“Racist and xenophobic violence in word or deed is unacceptable from a moral and legal point of view. It must be condemned and penalized,” they said, recognizing that the courage to do this is found within a deep love for common values.

Christians, the document read, must seek “to take an active part in public life, and to work for the benefit of the whole human race, as well as for (our) own political communities.”

The document closed with an appeal for politicians to work toward developing migration policies that contain shared responsibilities and measures to counter various forms of forced migration.

Leaders were encouraged to promote European integration through both positive praise and constructive criticism. They were also cautioned to avoid the temptation “to scapegoat the European Union for domestically generated problems.”

Citizens at the civil and ecclesial levels were also asked to speak out against both public and private expressions of nationalist rhetoric, and promote the deepening of democracy, solidarity and respect for human dignity.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Coptic Catholics consecrate first church in Sinai, against backdrop of martyrdom

by Oliver Maksan (Aid to the Church in Need) • February 20, 2015

Liturgy for the dedication of Our Lady of Peace, the first Coptic Catholic church on the Sinai peninsula, Feb. 15, 2015. (Aid to the Church in Need)

Ismailia, Egypt —”The Church in Egypt has been strengthened by the murder of our brothers in Libya.” Such was the reaction of Coptic Catholic Bishop Youssef Aboul-Kheir of Sohag to the beheading of 21 Orthodox Coptic men in Libya by Islamic State affiliates.

The guest workers in Libya “suffered a holy death with prayers on their lips. They went to their deaths just like the early Christians,” the bishop told international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.

As fate would have it, Islamic State released gruesome video of the executions on the very day, Feb. 15, that Egypt’s Coptic Catholic Church celebrated the consecration of its first-ever church in Sinai, in the community of Sharm El-Sheikh.

The church is known as Our Lady of Peace: a name chosen by Suzanne Mubarak, wife of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Suzanne, who was educated by Catholic nuns, ensured that construction of the church could proceed after years of delay and opposition by local political leadership. Our Lady of Peace’s construction was also made possible through the financial support of Aid to the Church in Need.

“This is a great day of joy for Catholics in Egypt,” the local ordinary, Coptic Catholic Bishop Makarios Tewfik of Ismailia, said at the consecration ceremony.

“We have a number of places of worship in Sinai” – a famous tourist destination where hundreds of hotels line the coast known for its spectacular coral reef – “but these are chapels or even just rooms in normal houses,” he said. “The church of Our Lady of Peace is the first proper church building that was built for the sole purpose of worshiping God.”

Father Bolos Garas, the local pastor, will celebrate three services in the church every Sunday.

“I am a Coptic Catholic priest. However, there are very few Coptic Catholics here: just a handful of families. Most of our faithful are tourists or foreign workers. For this reason I not only celebrate Sunday Mass according to my Church’s rites, but also according to the Roman rites, in both Italian and English,” he said.

The English-language service will primarily cater to Filipinos, guest workers in the local hotel industry, while a sizeable community of Italian retirees who spend winters in Sharm El-Sheikh will hear Mass in their own language.

Patriarch Ibrahim I Sidrak, head of the 200,000-member strong Coptic Catholic Church, presided over the consecration ceremony.

Meanwhile, the brutal killing of the 21 men hangs like a cloud over Egypt’s Christian community, which already faces home-grown Islamic extremism.

“I am afraid of the Salafists in the country,” said Bishop Aboul-Kheir, who added, “they speak with forked tongues. The Muslim Brotherhood is opposed to society anyway. So there exists an internal danger in Egypt itself.”

Egypt’s Christian leaders are concerned that extremists may be voted into power during upcoming parliamentary elections.

The new parliament should ensure that “Christians will finally be able to live as equal citizens,” the bishop said, stressing that among other rights, religious liberty for all should guarantee the freedom to construct new churches.

Bishop Aboul-Kheir called on the country’s Muslim community to choose moderation.

Its highest theological and intellectual forum, he said, “the Al-Azhar University, is regarded as a moderate force.” However, he continued, “there are many aspects of the institution’s teachings and programs that are anything but moderate. For example, the use of force in cases that are considered apostasy by Muslims” – including their conversion to Christianity – “is justified. This contradicts moderate views.”

Aid to the Church in Need is an international Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy See, providing assistance to the suffering and persecuted Church in more than 140 countries. Websites: churchinneed.org (USA); acnuk.org (UK); aidtochurch.org (AUS); acnireland.org (IRL); acn-aed-ca.org (CAN); acnmalta.org (Malta)

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

WORLD NEWS

Ukrainian bishop meets with Pope Francis as country’s crisis rages on

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 20, 2015

Ukrainian soldiers drive tanks along the road leading out of Debaltseve Feb. 19, 2015 in Artemivsk, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images News/Getty Images)

Rome, Italy — After meeting with Pope Francis during their ad limina visit to Rome, one of Ukraine’s bishops said the country faces a humanitarian crisis in conflict areas and called for dialogue and prayers for peace.

“We need support … we now have this conflict, but I think we will have (a) humanitarian catastrophe, because people at that place don’t have enough to eat or drink and we need help,” Venedykt Aleksiychuk, Auxiliary Bishop of Lviv, told CNA Feb. 20.

Although his diocese lies roughly 600 miles from Donetsk and Luhansk, the areas affected by fighting, the bishop called on Western countries to step in and offer support.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, who helped to negotiate the latest cease-fire agreement between Ukrainian government forces and Pro-Russian separatists, is set to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican tomorrow.

“It’s so difficult in this difficult situation to find the best solution. I think we need to speak, discuss and meet together,” Bishop Aleksiychuk said. He pointed out, however, that the willingness to do so must come from all sides.

“We need to pray and meet together and we will find this solution,” he said.

The Ukrainian bishops’ ad limina, during which residential diocesan bishops and certain prelates with territorial jurisdiction meet with the Pope and report on the state of their dioceses or prelature, falls during a fragile cease-fire agreement between Ukrainian and pro-Russian troops.

On Feb. 12 officials from Ukraine, Germany, France, and Russia gathered in Minsk to negotiate an indefinite cease-fire in Ukraine, which was set to begin at midnight Feb. 15.

However, shelling in the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk has continued, with a recent bombardment forcing some 2,500 government troops to retreat from Debaltseve Wednesday, with others surrendering, BBC News reported.

In the written address handed to the bishops during their Feb. 20 audience with him this morning, Pope Francis recognized that Ukraine is in the midst of a “grave conflict,” and assured the bishops of his closeness.

He prayed that all parties involved would “apply the agreements reached by mutual accord and might be respectful toward the principle of international legality; in particular, that the recently signed truce might be observed.”

Bishop Aleksiychuk referred to a Feb. 19 prayer vigil held last night in the Roman Basilica of St. Mary Major, during which Ukrainian bishops of the Latin and Eastern rites joined together to pray for peace.

“Ukraine needs this peace, because when we have peace in our lives everything goes in a good way. When we don’t have peace in our life we have problems,” he said.

In the bishop’s view, the problem is not so much one of territory as of fear. Russia, he said, “doesn’t need our territory, it’s big, it’s the biggest country, but Russia, especially the Russian government, they are afraid of this change that has happened in Ukraine.”

“They think this change is coming to Russia, (so) they are afraid of this situation and they have that aggression now … we need to pray and we need this peace for Ukraine and for Russia too.”

Exactly one year ago Ukraine’s former president was ousted following months of violent protest, which resulted in the death of nearly 100 civilians in Kiev’s Maiden Square.

A new government was then appointed. In March, Ukraine’s eastern peninsula of Crimea was annexed by Russia and pro-Russian separatist rebels have since taken control of eastern portions of Ukraine, around Donetsk and Luhansk, where fighting has continued to claim lives.

The death toll in Ukraine now exceeds 5,400 people, plus more than 12,900 others who have been wounded since fighting broke out in April. More than 970,000 have been internally displaced.

In the free discussion that took place between the Pope and the bishops during their morning encounter, Pope Francis was attentive to the situation and displayed a paternal concern for each one present and their particular challenges, Bishop Aleksiychuk said.

“He spoke to us, he asked about our situation in the Ukraine. He’s like a father with his children.”

It has become custom for Pope Francis in ad limina visits, rather than reading his prepared text, to hand it to the bishops to read on their own and to speak freely with them – giving each the opportunity to voice questions or concerns that are close to them and their dioceses.

Bishop Aleksiychuk recalled how he first met the Pope two years ago, but that today’s brief personal encounter felt “like I met him yesterday or a few days ago. He was open and friendly to everybody. It’s very important for the Pope and for us too.”

In the written remarks handed out to the bishops, Francis assured them of the Holy See’s support even within international forums to ensure that their rights, concerns and “just evangelical values” are clearly understood.

He called to mind the country’s ecclesial diversity, and encouraged the bishops of the various Catholic rites to strengthen their relationship as “brothers in the episcopate.”

“Unity of the episcopate, as well as giving good witness to the People of God, renders an inestimable service to the Nation, both on the cultural and social plane and, above all, on the spiritual plane,” he said.

“Both as Greek-Catholics and as Latins you are sons of the Catholic Church, which in your land too was for a long time subject to martyrdom,” Francis added. Greek Catholics especially faced severe persecution while the Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.

“The blood of your witnesses, who intercede for you from heaven, is a further motive that urges you to true communion of hearts,” the Pope said, encouraging bishops to unite in support of one another.

Pope Francis’ written address closed with both a plea not to forget the poor, and a prayer entrusting the Ukrainian people to the intercession of Mary and the martyrs.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

Archbishop Chaput applauds Penn. governor for halt to death penalty

by CNA/EWTN News • February 14, 2015

(Debora Cartagena/CDC)

Philadelphia, PA — Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has welcomed Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf’s decision on Friday to effectively establish a moratorium on the death penalty in the state due to the flawed nature of the system.

The moratorium “will remain in effect until the governor has received and reviewed the forthcoming report of the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Commission on Capital Punishment,” Wolf’s office announced Feb. 13.

“This decision is based on a flawed system that has been proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust, and expensive,” Wolf stated. “Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 150 people have been exonerated from death row nationwide, including six men in Pennsylvania.”

Archbishop Chaput praised Wolf for his decision, saying, “I’m very grateful to Governor Wolf for choosing to take a deeper look into these studies and I pray we can find a better way to punish those who are guilty of these crimes.”

“Turning away from capital punishment does not diminish our support for the families of murder victims. They bear a terrible burden of grief and they rightly demand justice,” Archbishop Chaput continued.

“But killing the guilty does not honor the dead nor does it ennoble the living. When we take a guilty person’s life we only add to the violence in an already violent culture and we demean our own dignity in the process.”

The advisory commission will study the effectiveness of capital punishment, and Wolf said the moratorium would be in place until “all concerns are addressed satisfactorily.”

Wolf, a Democrat, took office on Jan. 20. This morning he granted a temporary reprieve to Terrance Williams, who was to have been executed March 4.

As each death row inmate’s execution is scheduled, Wolf will grant a reprieve, but not a commutation, his office stated. More than 180 persons are on the state’s death row.

“Today’s action comes after significant consideration and reflection,” said Wolf. “This moratorium is in no way an expression of sympathy for the guilty on death row, all of whom have been convicted of committing heinous crimes.”

Archbishop Chaput had also praised a Philadelphia judge in 2012, when he stayed Williams’ scheduled execution, sending the case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In his Sept. 10, 2012 column, the archbishop noted that even convicted murderers “retain their God-given dignity as human beings” and that “we don’t need to kill people to protect society or punish the guilty.” He added that “we need to end the death penalty now” saying it does not heal or redress wounds, “because only forgiveness can do that.”

Several US states have moved away from capital punishment in recent years. In total, 18 states have abolished capital punishment.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a website

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • February 15, 2015

(Deily.org)

Austin, TX — It is hard to ignore the fact that religious intolerance has reached a boiling point the world over in the past year or so.

The radical-Islamic groups ISIS and Boko Haram have become notorious for killing and persecuting Christians and other minorities in the Middle East and Africa respectively. Anti-Semitism in parts of Europe is at its highest point since World War II, with violent incidents against Jews doubling in countries like France and the United Kingdom in the last year.

Just this past week, an incident in which an atheist American shot his three Muslim neighbors is being investigated as a hate crime.

In the midst of this increasingly polarized world, Shawn Bose and Justin Halloran are hoping their new website, Deily.org, can help make a difference.

“It’s obvious that the world is being separated unfortunately into a lot of ‘us’ versus ‘them’,” founder Shawn Bosse told CNA, “and it’s our belief that one of the best things the internet can do is … share more information with more people.”

“We really believe that not only will it be a great tool for people to understand their own faith more deeply, but hopefully a tool to broaden their horizons and broaden their understandings of their neighbors.”

In what can be described as a part-Reddit, part-Wikipedia platform, the website covers information on all the major world religions, either uploaded by community users or sought-out experts such as clergy and professors. Content includes everything from passages in sacred texts to videos, religious art and music, and sermons or religious lectures. Users can either “praise” content they like, or “flag” something as inappropriate. An advisory board spanning all major religions is being assembled to ensure the information for each religion is accurate.

Bosse and Halloran have been colleagues in the past, working with online marketplaces such as Ebay and Homeaway, and they both share an interest in religion. Bosse studied religion as an undergrad, and Halloran’s family has a history of pastoral care- his dad went to a Catholic seminary at one point, and one of his grandfathers was a pastor. They saw a hole in the religious experience that wasn’t being filled yet – an online space to learn about the world’s major religions.

“We looked at what was available as a primary source, or a first-consideration site for all the religious content online, we were very amazed almost to find that it didn’t really exist,” Bosse said. “There wasn’t one platform, one site on which all of the content had been aggregated, made easily searchable, indexed, and also presented in a consistent way.”

Deily.org was born, a play on the Latin ‘Dei’ for God and the idea that religion should be a daily life experience not just confined to a church or temple or mosque one day a week.

“That’s something we’ve heard a lot from the clergy that we’ve met with,” Bosse said, “What tools do we have to keep people engaged in the community?”

“We’re trying to build tools and services that they need to connect with their congregation to reach more people,” he said.

There is space on Deily.org for individual churches to create their own pages and add content, where members can ask questions and share understandings. The idea of an online platform could be the first step for curious people who might be intimidated to walk into an actual building and start asking questions, Bosse explained.

“Someone who grew up in the Muslim tradition might not walk into a church, to try to understand Christianity,” he said. “But in the privacy of their own homes, going online and trying to understand more about Christianity might be something that they would do, because it’s a safe venue in which to begin that journey of understanding one another.”

The motivation for such a website became personal to Bosse when his son came home, confused about a new friend he’d made who was Muslim.

“He said I have a friend and he’s a Muslim, I don’t know what that means but when I see the news I hear all these negative things,” Bosse said.

“Having a resource where we can go on as parents and watch a video about the basic beliefs of Islam, and so that (my son) can have a broader and deeper understanding of it, that he might see more than the tidbits he sees on the news, I think that’s an important thing.”

Bosse hopes that as more individuals and congregations begin using the site, some of the polarization people are feeling in today’s world will start to dissipate.

“I think the large majority of people of faith, no matter what their faith is, they are people trying to live good lives, trying to teach their family good traditions,” he said.

“And what we really hope through the explanation tool is that people will discover that a lot of the teaching of their own religion are very similar to the teachings of other religions, that we’re not so different.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

In sight of the nation’s capitol, a massive Bible museum underway

by Matthew Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • February 16, 2015

(Le Vent le Cri via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — A vast Bible museum is currently under construction in Washington, D.C. and has had strong support since its beginning phases from the Vatican, officials for the project revealed last week.

“When we introduced the Museum of the Bible, the first place we introduced it was at the (Vatican) Embassy here in Washington, D.C., for a private gathering,” the president of the museum Cary Summers told reporters at the official beginning of construction on the museum on Feb. 12.

“We have a very strong working relationship with the Vatican Museum and the Vatican (Apostolic) Library.”

Summers spoke at the official beginning of construction on the planned 430,000 square foot museum in Washington, D.C. It is planned to open in 2017 to educate visitors about the Bible.

“We would like to invite all people to come and learn about the book that’s impacted our world,” the museum’s chairman of the board Steve Green stated. “It’s not as much a looking at it as a position of faith as it is an educational look at this book, a scholarly look at this book.”

Green has amassed one of the largest private collections of Biblical items and parts of the exhibit have toured the world including stops in Jerusalem and Vatican City. The exhibit features over 44,000 items from Dead Sea Scroll fragments to parts of the Gutenberg Bible.

Some highlights include ancient New Testament fragments that had not yet been published, the largest private collection of Torah scrolls, first editions of the Douay Rheims Bible, and the Lunar Bible, the first Bible to be carried to another celestial body.

Pope Benedict praised the exhibit in his 2012 visit to Cuba and expressed his wishes that the same exhibit he saw at the Vatican could be transported to Havana.

“That’s why we got to Cuba, because the Pope had suggested maybe we do that,” Summers said.

Both the Vatican Museum and the Apostolic Library have loaned items to the exhibit that haven’t been loaned anywhere else, he revealed.

“It’s been a great, great relationship with the Vatican,” he said. “We’re really in line with what their main mission is and what our main mission is.”

Much of the museum’s architecture will be a nod to history and to Scripture.

The site is an old refrigeration warehouse from the 1920s. The museum will keep a red brick exterior in homage to the historic building and the entryway will be the same that train cars used to transport materials into the refrigeration building.

The brick facade will also reflect Scriptural tones, with bricks stacked to resemble stacked manuscripts.

The entry will be a “signature piece of artwork” with massive bronze panels etched to resemble ancient manuscripts. The top of the building features a vista overlooking Capitol Hill and the National Mall, and will include a “Biblical garden” with many plants from the Holy Land as well as a theater and a ballroom.

The museum’s chairman of the board Steve Green is a practicing Christian who runs his business, Hobby Lobby, according to his religious beliefs.

He said the museum is simply to educate attendees about the Bible from more of a scholarly perspective, but when asked if he hopes they would consider Christianity he responded “we would hope people would consider what the book has to say, and that’s a choice that they’d make.

The president Cary Summers said that there was no one “coalition” of Christian groups involved.

“We have as many Jewish groups involved and Catholic and Protestant groups. They’re all mixed in, so it’s a very non-sectarian approach,” he said.

Green’s craft chain Hobby Lobby won a Supreme Court case last summer when it challenged the Obama administration’s birth control mandate. The family argued that since it had to cover drugs they considered abortifacients in their employees’ health plans, this violated their religious beliefs.

The Court ruled that as a closely-held for-profit business, Hobby Lobby was protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act from the “substantial burden” placed on its religious freedom by the government’s mandate.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

A Presidents Day reminder: rights are a gift from God

by CNA/EWTN News • February 16, 2015

John Trumbull’s painting, “Declaration of Independence.” (CNA)

Washington, D.C. — Past presidents have seen God and religion as an inherent part of Americans’ rights and freedoms, according to a Presidents Day commercial from the Knights of Columbus.

“The idea that our rights come from God and that religion has a role to play in our nation’s public life is not partisan or sectarian, it is quintessentially American,” Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, said Feb. 16.

“Presidents Day is an excellent opportunity to remind Americans that God is – and has always been – foundational to this country and to our system of ordered liberty.”

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal society with over 1.8 million members worldwide, originally released the commercial in 2012.

The ad includes comments from several presidents regarding the link between God and human rights.

“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” Abraham Lincoln said his Gettysburg Address.

Thomas Jefferson’s words from his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” as abbreviated on the Jefferson Memorial, are also cited. The second U.S. president asked rhetorically: “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are of the gift of God?”

John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address of 1961, declared, “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

The quotations also include George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796, in which the first president said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

The source of rights has become controversial in recent decades.

Chris Cuomo, the co-host of the CNN show “New Day,” recently denied that the rights recognized by the United States come from God.

“Our rights do not come from God. That’s your faith. That’s my faith, but not our country. Our laws come from the collective agreement and compromise,” he told interviewee Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore during a Feb. 12 conversation about a federal ruling on “gay marriage.”

“It’s not a matter of faith, sir,” Moore replied, citing the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of rights endowed by God.

“The government starts taking those rights away from us, then it’s not securing and it is defiling the whole purpose of government,” Moore said.

Other presidents cited in the Knights of Columbus ad include Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

The ad closes with the phrase from the Pledge of Allegiance: “One nation, under God, indivisible.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

Federalism, same-sex marriage, and what a bishop has to say about it

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • February 16, 2015

(scribbletaylor via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — The head of the U.S. bishops’ marriage committee is backing new legislation that thwarts the federal government from bypassing state marriage laws.

“Various agencies of the Executive Branch” are effectively, if not intentionally, trying “to circumvent state laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” wrote Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco in a letter to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rep. Randy Weber (R-Tex.), sponsors of a new bill that would prevent such circumvention.

Cruz and Weber have introduced the State Marriage Defense Act of 2015 in the Senate and House, respectively. The bill would recognize a couple’s marriage in the state where they currently reside, not the state they were married in, to determine their federal marriage benefits.

The federal government was using language to bypass state laws upholding traditional marriage, instead giving benefits to a couple based on the state in which they received their marriage license.

Thus under this policy, if a same-sex couple was living in a state that upheld traditional marriage, they would still receive the federal marriage benefits and privileges.

Supporters of the new bill invoked the Supreme Court’s 2013 Windsor decision that struck down the federal law upholding traditional marriage – the Defense of Marriage Act – but, they argued, also affirmed the right of states to define marriage.

Windsor “reaffirmed the states’ longstanding authority to define marriage,” Cruz stated.

“The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in United States v. Windsor, however, requires the federal government to defer to state marriage law, not disregard it.” wrote Archbishop Cordileone.

The archbishop praised the State Marriage Defense Act for upholding traditional marriage.

“Marriage needs to be preserved and strengthened, not redefined,” he said, thanking the members of Congress for bringing up “this needed bill.”

The bill was introduced last year in the Democrat-controlled Senate and GOP-controlled House, but was never brought up for a vote.

The states have the authority to define marriage and that must be recognized by Congress, the bill begins: “Congress affirms the States’ legitimate and proper public policy interests in regulating domestic relations and in defining marriage for the residents of their States.”

“I support traditional marriage,” Cruz stated, adding that his bill “helps safeguard the ability of states to preserve traditional marriage for their citizens.”

The bill has 11 co-sponsors – all of them Republican – in the Senate, according to Congress.gov, and the House version has 26 co-sponsors, all Republicans.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

Why the Religious Freedom Restoration Act matters to you

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • February 17, 2015

U.S. Capitol building. (Shawn Clover CC BY-NC 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — For the sake of religious liberity, it is vital that the religious rights of corporations – and not just individuals and churches – be upheld under federal law, a legal scholar has said.

“Most Americans, faithful Americans, they bring their religious commitment into all aspects of their life, including the workplace,” Gregory Baylor, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, told CNA after a Feb. 13 congressional hearing on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

“We have Christian families, other folks, who own businesses and they want to operate their businesses in accordance with their religious principles,” he added.

“And the position of the government in these cases, and in today’s hearing, at least with respect to some of these representatives, is that your faith life is sort of within the four walls of the church, and that’s where it needs to stay.”

Baylor testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 13 about “oversight of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

The act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, was a reaction to a Supreme Court ruling that the government did not have to prove a compelling interest in substantially burdening one’s exercise of religion.

The act established that if a law places a “substantial burden” on a person’s exercise of religion, the burden of proof falls on the government to prove a “compelling interest” for the law, and that it is using the “least restrictive means” of action to pursue its interest.

The act certainly upholds the religious freedom of “entities like Catholic Charities, and Catholic University of America, and K-12 parochial schools,” Baylor said, adding that most, if not all, of those entities are “incorporated.”

“So you can’t say that corporations don’t have rights,” he continued.

At hand is the argument – exemplified in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell – of whether a business or organization must cover items in employee health plans against its religious or ethical beliefs.

The Supreme Court ruled that as a family-run closely-held corporation, craft chain Hobby Lobby met the religious exemption under RFRA and did not have to cover items it considered abortifacients in employee health plans. The court said that the government did not employ the “least restrictive means” of forcing Hobby Lobby to do so.

Professor Nelson Tebbe of Brooklyn Law School said that Congress should amend RFRA. When a religious exemption for a business such as Hobby Lobby places significant costs on a third party – in this case, the employees who must pay for their own birth control and abortion-inducing drugs – the business must meet that need.

“These thousands of people have suffered harm that may well be irreparable,” Tebbe said of employees who have gone without coverage for their birth control.

When Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) asked Tebbe if this argument applied to religiously-affiliated organizations such as Catholic Charities having to cover late-term abortions, Tebbe said he was “reluctant” to answer that but that, using another example, Catholic Charities should have to provide adoption services to all couples, including same-sex couples.

Baylor said that argument meant that an organization with a religious mission, such as EWTN, would have to cover late-term abortions for its employees.

“It’s commercial, but clearly they [EWTN] have a religious mission at its core. Would that analysis mean that EWTN would have to provide late-term abortion coverage, which is obviously something that people participating running that organization very much would disagree with?” DeSantis asked Baylor.

“I think it does, and that’s very disturbing about some of these arguments that are being made about Hobby Lobby,” Baylor answered, “is that we tend to think it’s about contraceptives and actually the objection that was made by Hobby Lobby … is that they don’t want to facilitate access to abortion.”

Such a case is a reality and “not hypothetical,” he continued, pointing to laws in Washington, D.C. and California mandating that all employers – even Catholic schools and dioceses – cover elective abortions for employees.

The Reproductive Non-Discrimination Act of 2014 passed the D.C. city council and was signed into law by Mayor Muriel Bowser in January. It mandated that employers could not hire or fire employees based on their reproductive health decisions, even if those decisions flatly contradicted the mission of the organization – such as a Catholic or pro-life organization.

Critics also said the bill forced employers to cover birth control and abortions in employee health plans. To clarify that it did not, Bowser introduced legislation after she signed the bill saying it did not apply to insurance plans but just employment decisions.

RFRA was understood from the beginning to apply to corporations and not just individuals, Baylor argued.

“It was understood at the time RFRA was passed, that it included not just non-profit religious corporations, but it included all corporations. This was non-controversial,” Baylor told CNA.

Cases where a massive corporation would invoke religious freedom protections are so rare they’re almost hypothetical, he added.

“To be sure, for-profit, publicly-traded big companies, many of them, all of them I would hope, try to behave ethically. But I think it’s fairly rare for a corporation on the scale of IBM or General Motors to try to bring specific religious principles into the operation of their businesses.”

Despite the congressional threat to religious rights of corporations – for instance, the Senate’s attempt last summer to overturn the religious exemption for employers like Hobby Lobby in cases about coverage of birth control – threats from the judiciary are far greater, Baylor explained.

“We’ve seen that in some of the bad outcomes in HHS mandate cases that have been brought by religious non-profits where judges are denying that these entities are substantially burdened when the government makes them facilitate access to drugs and devices and services in violation of their religious consciences.”

Though critics might argue that interpretations of RFRA can restrain the civil liberties of employees, Baylor added that it protects the greatest civil liberty – the free exercise of religion.

“I think for example when a religious employer, a religiously-motivated family business refuses to provide abortion pills and pay for abortion pills to its employees, it’s not violating anybody’s civil liberties. It’s just not the case that people have a fundamental, inherent, human right to get free abortion pills paid for by their employer,” he explained.

However, the law doesn’t always uphold the religious rights of organizations, he added.

“RFRA doesn’t dictate outcomes, it doesn’t say that religion always wins and other interests can be ignored. RFRA specifically orders the courts to assess whether the government is pursuing an important interest. And one of those interests might be a civil liberty of a third party. And courts are already empowered to take those interests into account when they make their decisions.”

“That’s why these calls to amend RFRA are perplexing, because RFRA already contemplates that interests will be balanced against each other,” he continued.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

How Catholics, Lent, and bowls of rice are changing the world

by CNA/EWTN News • February 18, 2015

(Steven Depolo via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Baltimore, MD — Catholic Relief Services’ Rice Bowl program aims to continue its forty-year Lenten tradition of supporting hunger relief – and one of its past beneficiaries is now a spokesman for the project.

“Many years ago when I was a hungry boy in Ghana and living without parents or family, the smell of food lured me to the village school. There I was nourished and lifted off the path of likely death,” Thomas Awiapo said Jan. 16.

“That school food program existed because of the little box we call rice bowl.”

Awiapo was orphaned in his home country of Ghana before he was 10 years old. He credits a Catholic Relief Services-supported lunch program he discovered at age 12 with changing his life, and the lives of his children.

“You can call me the poster child for CRS Rice Bowl, but we’d be closer to the truth if you called my children your poster children,” he said.

“They have never experienced hunger in their lifetime, and today they attend university, high school and secondary schools without missing a beat.”

Awiapo now works for Catholic Relief Services and trains community leaders throughout Ghana and is presently touring the U.S. to speak about the rice bowl program.

The mainstay of the program is a small cardboard box. Families and individuals, as well as parishes and schools, put in a small amount of money each day of Lent to help hunger relief around the world.

At present there are an unprecedented number of hunger emergencies in Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic, and South Sudan, where war has caused interruptions to food supplies, unemployment, and homelessness, forcing millions to live as refugees. Another food emergency is in West Africa, where the Ebola outbreak has been a major disruption to normal life.

Since its creation in 1975, CRS Rice Bowl has raised $250 million to fight hunger, the relief agency reports.

“CRS Rice Bowl offers families, schools and faith communities an opportunity to put their faith into action while learning about the lives and struggles of our brothers and sisters around the world,” said Beth Martin, the program’s director. “We’re encouraging people to reflect on what 40 years of CRS Rice Bowl has accomplished and challenging them to put one dollar for every day of Lent in their rice bowl.”

Last year the program added a new app to help people track their donations. The Rice Bowl app, available in English and Spanish, now has new Lenten reflections, integrated Twitter support, and improved tracking for Lenten sacrifices.

Other new material for 2015’s rice bowl includes the “What is Lent?” video series. It will provide viewers with Lenten reflections from Catholics such as Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, and CRS president Carolyn Woo.

The CRS Rice Bowl Global Kitchen Video Series will feature television personality and cook Father Leo Patalinghug teaching how to cook five meatless recipes from the five countries in focus this year: Tanzania, Nicaragua, Niger, Lebanon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Catholic Relief Services has also prepared solidarity reflections to provide prayers and activities, for youth groups, high school classes, and young adults.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

Would you die for your ashes? Cardinal reflects on modern Christian martyrs

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • February 18, 2015

Ash Wednesday. (Matt Millard via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — Catholics owe solidarity, prayer and a voice against injustice to their fellow Christians being martyred and persecuted around the world, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., stressed on Ash Wednesday.

“(W)e can go out those doors with ashes on our forehead” as a public display of faith, the cardinal said. However, “(t)here are parts of the world where that will just as well be a death certificate.”

Cardinal Wuerl spoke at the end of his Ash Wednesday Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent which culminates in the Easter Triduum – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday – followed by the celebration of Easter Sunday and the ensuing Easter Season.

On Ash Wednesday, Mass attendees may receive ashes on their forehead in the sign of a cross, to signify penance and the remembrance of human morality.

Focusing on the reality of Christian persecution in many parts of the world. Cardinal Wuerl pointed to Nigeria, India, Syria, Iraq and the Holy Land as particular areas of concern.

“There are parts of the world,” the cardinal said, “where Christians are regularly martyred. Where their churches are destroyed, their homes burned, their children sold into slavery.”

“The first thing we owe our brothers and sisters is a sense of solidarity with them. If they suffer, we should feel that suffering. And we owe them our prayerful support, but we also owe them our voice.”

Cardinal Wuerl decried the “silence” that enables the martyrdom of Christians in these areas, and cited Pope Francis to exhort his audience to action.

“It has gone on for the longest time, because of the silence. The silence of the world community, the silence of all of us in the face of this extraordinary violence against the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.

The prayer and outcry against such persecution cannot just “be a passing one-day story that is forgotten the next day,” he insisted.

“As Pope Francis tells us, we have an obligation to one another, we have an obligation to anybody of any faith who has to forfeit their life simply because they believe.”

Over the past weekend, the Islamist terror group ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Christians in Libya. Pope Francis offered a Mass for the slain Christians and hailed them as “martyrs.” He also lifted up in his prayers the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros.

In his Ash Wednesday homily, Cardinal Wuerl exhorted those in attendance to look beyond “the immediacy of today” to see God.

“This season is a time to renew our desire, our commitment to be converted all over again to that very holiness of God to which we are called,” he said.

The practices of Lent – prayer, penance, and almsgiving – exist “simply to remind ourselves there is so much more beyond the immediacy of today.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

Cardinal Dolan: ISIS threatens whole civilization – no one can be silent

by CNA/EWTN News • February 19, 2015

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. (Archdiocese of Boston via Flickr)

New York City, N.Y. — With ISIS threatening all of human civilization, no one of any background or religion can remain silent, said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.

The ISIS militants who are perpetrating these acts of violence in the name of Islam “threaten civilization, everything that is decent and noble about humanity,” Cardinal Dolan warned, saying that their vicious acts are creating a worldwide crisis that cannot – and must not – be ignored.

“These aren’t sporadic attacks. This is part of an orchestrated fanaticism, and ideology that sees Christianity, Judaism, and any religion of peace as the enemy,” he said Feb. 17 in the New York Post.

The cardinal responded to a graphic video that was released on Feb. 15 showing the execution of 21 Coptic Christians at the hands of ISIS militants in Libya.

“How much worse can it get?” the cardinal said, explaining that he was “deeply saddened to learn of the latest violence by fanatics who see anybody who disagrees with them as their enemy.”

Voicing distress at the recent acts of violence perpetrated by ISIS militants, Cardinal Dolan said he was moved to tears and prayer because the Coptic Christians were killed for “nothing less than their religious convictions.”

In addition to killing Christians and other religious minorities, the cardinal also believes that the Islamic State is orchestrating “a phobia of Christianity” throughout the world in an effort to stifle religious freedom until it is completed wiped out.

He pointed to “a coordinated effort on behalf of fanatics to see that true religion which stands for friendship, peace, and the dignity of the human person and the sacredness of human life, is stamped out.”

“We need Islamic religious leaders to stand up and say, ‘This is not Islam. This is a perversion of our faith,’” he continued.

Pointing to the civil unrest within Ireland over 40 years ago, Cardinal Dolan highlighted the Catholic bishops who stood up against the car bombings and violence committed by the Irish Republican Army, which “perversely identified itself as ‘Catholic.’”

These bishops should be seen as role models for the majority Islamic leaders who don’t identify with the Islamic State, Cardinal Dolan said, calling them to stand up against the extremist group and condemn their acts of terror.

“Fanatics want to take over, and we can’t let that happen,” he stressed.

Though many Christians have a price on their heads for their religious beliefs, Cardinal Dolan urged “men and women of all true creeds – Jewish, Christian and Islamic” to stand together and oppose the disordered system of the Islamic State.

“Simply because these Christians make the sign of the cross, there is a price on their head,” he observed, adding that “we cannot ignore their cries and cannot let their blood be spilled without moving us to tears and saying, ‘this must stop.’”

Lent, he continued, is a season of deep prayer, penance, and solidarity with the oppressed and suffering, offering people everywhere an opportunity to unite with the persecuted Christians around the world.

“This massacre leaves us not only with ashes on our foreheads, but with tears in our eyes, a lump in our throat and a burning in our heart.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

Metal coils and furious women: The stunning controversy behind an FDA-approved birth control

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • February 20, 2015

(Bryan Birdwell via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

Denver, CO — Perforated organs, metal coils lodged in colons, fetal disfigurement due to nickel poisoning. Chronic pain, exhaustion, bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts.

It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. But these are real symptoms that are being blamed on a real medical device, one that is being protected by the FDA. The device, Essure, is a permanent type of birth control in the form of tiny metal coils inserted into women’s fallopian tubes.

But while it’s been on the market since 2002 and has been touted as safe and effective, thousands of people are starting to come forward and question the device, including doctors very familiar with it.

It started out as a standard procedure for Dr. Shawn Tassone, Ob/Gyn. He was inserting Essure coils into a patient. The 10 minute, in-office procedure was supposed to be quick, simple and painless, and it was one he had performed many times before.

“I remember … I put the Essure in, exactly like how you were supposed to, and then as I sat there the tube started to spasm, and it pulled the Essure in,” he told CNA. “It disappeared, it coiled right into the tube.”

Unsure of how to proceed, he looked at the product manufacturer’s representative, who was in the room with him. The representative told him to just put another coil in the same tube, but Dr. Tassone knew that was against the product’s instructions.

“I told (the representative) that, and he was like, ‘Nah, that’s not necessarily true’,” Dr. Tassone said. “And you’re just being told this stuff by these reps who are college graduates, and I’m sure their hearts are in the right place, but they also want you to do the procedure because they get reimbursed more.”

It was through personal experiences with patients, as well as hearing other women’s stories, that Dr. Tassone eventually stopped doing a procedure he’d once been so sure was safe and effective. He said that while he’s not a conspiracy theorist, he does believe there are a large number of women with severe complications from Essure that are not being acknowledged by the medical community at large.

A Facebook group 14,000 strong

A lot of these women can be found on the Facebook group, Essure Problems. Of the 14,000-plus members, the majority are women who share a strange kind of sisterly bond – almost all of them have had Essure, and almost all of them bitterly regret it.

When the Essure coils are implanted, they are supposed to stay in the fallopian tubes, where they create a chronic infection that will cause scar tissue to form around the coils, effectively closing the tubes and rendering the woman sterile. The device was first manufactured by the group Conceptus and pre-approved by the FDA before hitting the markets in 2002. In June 2014, Conceptus was bought by Bayer, which has continued to manufacture and distribute Essure.

Some possible side effects after the Essure insertion procedure are listed on the product’s website and include: “mild to moderate pain and/or cramping, vaginal bleeding, and pelvic or back discomfort for a few days. Some women experienced nausea and/or vomiting or fainting. In rare instances, an Essure insert may be expelled from the body.”

Angela Desa-Lynch, an administrator for the Essure Problems group, said the women in the group have experienced these problems to the extreme.

“Whatever they’ve put on the label, multiply it by 200,” she said. “They say chronic pain, or they say mild cramping or abdomen pain, but they don’t tell you that it’s debilitating. They don’t tell you that it’s ‘I can’t get out of bed and take care of my kids’ kind of pain.”

When Desa-Lynch had her Essure coils in, she said she felt like she had the flu constantly. She was 28 years old, and her youngest son was just three months old.

“My little son … he had no idea the real parent I could be, because I was going through all these health problems,” she said. Desa-Lynch had to have a total hysterectomy to remove the coils, but she said the recovery process didn’t end with the removal.

“You’re mad,” she said. “This is not what I signed up for. I just wanted a birth control, I didn’t want a life time of health issues, and to remove my woman parts, that’s not ok.”

Watching the posts on the page can be an emotional rollercoaster, Desa-Lynch said. She hears from women who’ve become depressed, suicidal, divorced, bankrupt, or a combination of those things after having complications from Essure.

Moving coils and the difficulty of removal

One of the most horrific complications is device migration, where the coil leaves the tube and becomes lodged in other parts of the body, usually the colon or somewhere in the pelvis. This can cause a blocked colon or other complications.

It can be extremely difficult for women who want to have their Essure coils removed. Many doctors will deny that the Essure is the root of women’s problems, because the clinical trials they’ve seen from the FDA claim the risks of such complications are so low.

Additionally, Medicare and most insurance companies classify Essure removal as “cosmetic,” which further disincentivizes doctors to remove the coils and often puts women who require the removal into personal debt.

“One woman had a coil in her colon, she went from a business owner to bankruptcy” after four surgeries to remove it, Desa-Lynch said.

Physical removal of the coils can also be difficult because they are fragile and may break.

“You have fragments now in your body, and we’ve had women where they come back after removal and they have these masses growing in their abdomen,” Desa-Lynch said. “Your body’s going to try to encapsulate whatever foreign object is there, and now you have all these little cysts growing everywhere.”

Both she and Dr. Tassone said that from what they’ve seen, the only completely safe and secure way to make sure all of Essure is removed is a total hysterectomy.

What happens if you get pregnant with Essure?

Then there are the women who become pregnant while using Essure. No sterilization method is guaranteed to work 100 percent of the time, save for a total hysterectomy with removal of the fallopian tubes. According to Essure’s website, the device is 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, but that is with so-called perfect use.

In the real world, doctors may misplace coils or a woman’s tubes can heal or push Essure out. Furthermore, women given Essure are told to use an alternative form of contraception for the first three months following the procedure until a second appointment which checks for proper coil placement – but many women fail to follow through on this step.

Given these margins for error, a recent Yale School of Medicine study estimated 96 of every 1,000 women who undergo hysteroscopic sterilization, or Essure, would get pregnant within 10 years. For laparoscopic tubal ligations (known as ‘having your tubes tied’), the pregnancy risks were significantly lower: 24 to 30 pregnancies per 1,000 women.

In an e-mail interview, FDA representative Eric Pahon told CNA that clinical trials of women who became pregnant with Essure showed “no increased risk of neonatal or pregnancy complications, as long as the pregnancy is in the uterus. The FDA will continue to monitor the safety of Essure to make certain.”

What the women of Essure Problems have found is that doctors will not remove the coils even if a woman becomes pregnant. Most will automatically recommend abortion, because they don’t know what to do.

“They don’t know what can happen, because there is nickel in Essure and it can leach, and the device can move and perforate the sack and has done it, so because the doctors don’t know how to treat you, that’s the first thing they ask you to do is to terminate,” Desa-Lynch said.

Should a woman with Essure choose to continue the pregnancy – and many of them do – she risks nickel poisoning and device migration to her baby, and a 55 percent chance of miscarriage, according to the numbers from the Facebook group.

“Your baby isn’t growing”

One Essure pregnancy story stood out to Desa-Lynch as particularly jarring. A young woman in the Facebook group, born and raised as a devout Catholic, became pregnant despite being on Essure. At 24 weeks of pregnancy, the doctors told her: “Your baby is not growing.”

Her baby had gotten nickel poisoning, so the brain wasn’t developing and the limbs weren’t growing properly. The young woman was told her baby at best would be severely deformed at birth, if not completely brain dead.

“When you’re Catholic, abortion is not something that crosses your mind, you just think ‘ok, well, we’ll deal with this’,” Desa-Lynch said.

However, after the grim diagnosis, the young woman chose abortion. Desa-Lynch said the woman doesn’t even comment on the Facebook page because she is so haunted by her experience, but she’s there, and she watches the comments.

“I can’t imagine being in her position,” Desa-Lynch said. “It puts you in a hard spot. Here you think you’re doing what’s right for you, what’s right for your family, and what’s right for your health, and now you’re facing these situations that you don’t even know how to handle and neither does your doctor, and you have to go against all of your morals and values … I don’t know what I would do.”

“It goes against a lot of women’s morals,” she added, “and women get severely depressed. Someone posted just yesterday that one of her good friend’s daughters had (Essure) put in and she killed herself, because they go to a doctor and they don’t listen to you.”

When the suicidal posts started popping up more frequently, the group administrators decided to set up a buddy system of sorts. They connected women in the group with other women who were close by, so that they’d always have someone they could go to who understood their situation. The administrators watch posts closely and alert the smaller state groups of concerning posts.

“We work collectively and united,” Desa-Lynch said. “It’s amazing to see women pull together the way that they have and fight for each other.”

False data and bad numbers

As a medical device, Essure had a questionable start at best. When it was pre-approved by the FDA in 2002, the FDA used clinical trials from the device manufacturer, the company which would profit from the approval and sales of the device, to determine whether or not it was safe for women.

When asked if this process created a conflict of interest, the FDA responded: “Although the manufacturer may submit any form of evidence to the FDA in an attempt to substantiate the safety and effectiveness of a device, the FDA relies upon only valid scientific evidence to determine whether there is reasonable assurance that the device is safe and effective.”

Desa-Lynch and the administrators of Essure Problems have three full sets of records from the clinical trials that show complaints of abdomen pain in women in the trial being marked off as “unrelated.”

Dr. Tassone has seen the clinical trials, and said there are times when the ages of women with complaints or complications are crossed off and altered in order to better fit the picture the manufacturer wanted to portray.

“The clinical trials that they were basing their information on were falsified, and we’ve brought this to the FDA,” Desa-Lynch said. “They (the FDA) just say, ‘upon their investigation they find everything to be safe, they find the benefits to outweigh the risks’.”

In addition, it is basically impossible to track exactly what percentage of women with Essure have experienced severe complications. Although Bayer and the FDA know that 750,000 kits have been sold, there’s no one keeping track of how many women have had the procedure.

Further complicating the numbers is the fact that multiple kits can be used for a single procedure. Dr. Tassone said he’s used up to three kits on a single woman, which happens if coils break before or during insertion.

“We have over 200 women who’ve had two kits used on them,” said Desa-Lynch of the Essure Problems group, “So it’s kind of hard to give a percentage on bad numbers.”

Protected status and incentives

But despite the thousands of complaints, Essure is classified as a Class III medical device, a category reserved for devices with PMA (premarket approval). These devices are pre-empted, which means people injured by the product cannot collect damages from the manufacturer.

Typically, Class III medical devices are live-saving devices such as heart stints. The idea behind preemption is that by protecting companies from having to pay damages, it encourages them to continue creating better devices that are necessary for saving and sustaining lives.

The only Class III, protected medical devices that do not save or sustain life? Essure coils and breast implants.

“This is part of the problem,” Dr. Tassone explained. “When you are having studies being done by companies who are falling apart (Conceptus was bought out by Bayer), you have an inherent bias. If the (product) is revoked, then this multi-million dollar project was flawed somehow and they lose money.”

“And you see that with other devices, there is a lot of money involved, and the FDA is not doing due diligence, because sometimes the FDA has people on it who are not necessarily getting paid, but who are affiliated with some of the big companies.”

Doctors, too, receive incentives for using Essure. If they meet a certain implantation quota, the manufacturer gives them a $20,000 scope that can be used to perform multiple procedures. Doctors also are often paid to attend Essure trainings and conferences.

But Dr. Tassone said he believes that most doctors originally implanted Essure because they were told, and truly believed, it was a safe and effective procedure.

“We were told in the beginning that it doesn’t cause any pain and the initial studies that came out said that,” he said. “It makes it look like the doctors are getting greedy by putting Essure in because we get more money, but in reality, 99 percent of us actually believed it was a good procedure and was safer for the patients and it worked.”

He said the procedure itself is still considered less risky than a tubal ligation, which is an involved surgery rather than an in-office procedure. Still, Dr. Tassone stopped implanting Essure about a year and a half ago, and he said it usually doesn’t take much to convince his patients to opt for a different procedure.

“The way I counsel my patients now, I send them to what the Facebook group says,” he explained. “Usually I tell them Essure is a foreign body and it’s permanent - most women don’t want that, when you explain it that way.”

Lawsuits and Erin Brockovich

There are only a few pending lawsuits involving Essure at the moment, Desa-Lynch said, because the PMA act goes all the way up to Congress.

But the Essure Problems Facebook group intends to fight until Essure is off the market and the PMA act is changed. And they just might win, because of a certain famous lawyer that has joined their fight.

“It kind of started as a joke on the form, like, ‘Let’s e-mail Erin Brockovich, haha’,” Desa-Lynch said. But they did, “and she listened!”

The lawyer, made famous from a 2000 film about her life as a single mother and environmental lawyer, has created a website, essureprocedure.net, where women who’ve had Essure can share their stories and where she posts the latest news about the fight against the device.

“That right there kicked off the empowerment, that kicked off the movement of ‘Ok, we can do this’,” Desa-Lynch said.

Dr. Tassone said he’d like to see more acknowledgement from the medical community of the pain and suffering Essure is causing some women, as well as more transparency from the manufacturers.

“Acknowledgement is the first step,” he said. “Like the company saying, ‘Yeah, this is a foreign body and okay, let’s take a look at this.’ That would go a million miles for some of these people, that maybe, it’s not all just in their head.”

He also wonders whether a device that caused similar reactions in men would even be on the market.

“If you have a coil and you said you were going to use it in men for vasectomies and you were going to insert it in to block the testicle from having sperm come out, would we be doing that or not? Because they could feel that implant,” he said.

“But with tubes, and in women’s health – because everything is on the inside - I think it’s out of sight, out of mind.”

Until the Essure Problems group can get their case pushed through in court, Desa-Lynch said it’s enough for them to keep informing women and to prevent them from getting Essure.

“We’ve saved over 600!” Desa-Lynch said proudly. “We keep track of them. That right there is enough to know that this is the right thing to do.”

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

As storm brews, San Fran archbishop strikes back at school guideline critics

by Kevin J. Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • February 20, 2015

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, at the US bishops’ meeting, Nov. 13, 2012. (Michelle Bauman/CNA)

San Francisco, CA — Politicians have targeted San Francisco Catholic schools’ teacher standards, but Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone says they are a matter of Catholic mission and common sense.

“Would you hire a campaign manager who advocates policies contrary to those that you stand for, and who shows disrespect toward you and the Democratic Party in general?” he wrote in his reply to eight state legislators who had criticized Catholic standards for school employees.

The archbishop suggested a hypothetical situation in which Democratic politicians employ a “brilliant campaign manager,” though a Republican, who is willing to work for them and not speak or act contrary to his employers or his employers’ political party.

“Now let’s say that this campaign manager you hired, despite promises to the contrary, starts speaking critically of your party and favorably of your running opponent, and so you decide to fire the person,” the archbishop continued in a Feb. 19 letter. He suggested this firing would be done not for hatred of Republicans but because the employee “violated the trust given to you and acted contrary to your mission.”

The Archdiocese of San Francisco on Feb. 3 announced additions and clarifications to the faculty and staff handbooks for the archdiocese’s four high schools, as well as proposed new morals clauses for teacher contracts that would define teachers as having a ministerial role. The archdiocese said the changes to the handbook and contract do not contain anything new but are intended to “clarify existing expectations that Catholic teachers in their professional and public lives uphold Catholic teaching.”

The changes focus on sexual morality and religious practice due to prevalent confusion about the Church’s stance, Archbishop Cordileone said in early February.

But political protests and threats – not confusion – greeted the changes.

“What is happening is a direct challenge to the teaching authority of the Church and its right to teach its doctrine by public authorities in direct conflict with the First Amendment,” Bill May, president of the California-based Catholics for the Common Good, told CNA Feb. 19.

Eight California state legislators, in a Feb. 17 letter to Archbishop Cordileone, called on him to withdraw the morality clauses. Although they acknowledged he has “discretion over working conditions” at the schools, they claimed the standard for high school staff and faculty “infringes on the personal freedoms of their employees” and “sends an alarming message of intolerance to youth.”

The legislators claimed the standards “conflict with settled areas of law” and “foment a discriminatory environment” in the community. They suggested that religious freedom exemptions in federal law are being used as “a tool for discrimination.”

Archbishop Cordileone’s response stressed the need for accurate and complete information. He said there was “a lot of misinformation” being circulated about the contract. It was a falsehood to say the morality clauses apply to teachers’ private lives, he added.

He said he would respect politicians who employ or do not employ “whomever you wish to advance your mission.”

“I simply ask the same respect from you.”

But political power, not respect, could be on full display soon.

The San Franciso Chronicle reports that California Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco, one of the legislators who signed the letter, said in an e-mail that “any novel legal maneuvers to impose injustice must be stopped.”

San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell told the Chronicle that city officials are looking into legal options to prevent what he considers to be discriminatory employment practices. Farrell said he planned to introduce a Board of Supervisors resolution that will “express the concern and disappointment” of Catholics opposed to the standards.

May rejected the threats of political action against the Church.

“Unlike politicians, the Church does not set it standards based on popular opinion,” he said. “She would be a fraud if She did.”

He contended that the legislators’ letter is “an arrogant attempt by politicians to challenge the authority of the archbishop to set standards on who is authorized to teach Catholic doctrine to children.”

He defended the standards, saying it is reasonable for parents who send their children to Catholic high schools to be sure that their children will learn “authentic Catholic teaching, without conflicting commentary or examples by people in authority.”

The handbook additions state that individual teachers are not required to believe each stated item of Catholic doctrine. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said this recognizes that some Catholic teachers and non-Catholic teachers might not agree with everything the Church teaches.

Objectors have particularly focused on expectations that teachers not undermine sexual morality in their personal behavior or engage in public advocacy of positions contrary to Catholicism, such as support for abortion or “gay marriage.”

Opposition to the archdiocese’s actions has some popularity in a city known for left-leaning political activism and permissive, even celebratory attitudes towards sexual vice.

LGBT activist groups such as the Human Rights Campaign have rallied national opposition and fanned hostile media coverage of the archdiocese.

Locally, several hundred people, including some Catholic high school teachers, students, and students’ parents, gathered outside San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Cathedral on Ash Wednesday to protest.

One student protester told CBS affiliate KPIX 5 that the archbishop’s actions are in line with Catholic teaching, but worried that if the standards are applied, “a lot of our teachers might leave.”

“We don’t want our teachers to leave and maybe even leave the faith,” the student said. “We just think that maybe the Catholic Church should become as progressive as the Episcopal Church.”

Some teachers critical of the changes do not object to the morality clauses specifically, but object to being considered as “ministers,” worrying it will undermine their collective bargaining power as part of the teacher’s union.

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has previously opposed Catholic teaching.

In 2006, the board condemned a Vatican instruction telling the archdiocese’s Catholic Charities affiliate to stop placing adoptive children with same-sex couples. The resolution referred to the Vatican as a “foreign country” that interferes in San Francisco affairs and claimed the Church’s teaching on homosexuality is “hateful” and “insulting to all San Franciscans.”

The Archdiocese of San Francisco challenged the resolution as an unconstitutional use of government power against religion, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the challenge in 2011.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

U.S. NEWS

Grandmother, florist may lose her business and home for declining gay wedding

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • February 20, 2015

Barronnelle Stutzman, whose business and home are threatened after she declined to arrange flowers for a same-sex wedding. (Alliance Defending Freedom)

Yakima, WA — If you walk into Barronelle Stutzman’s floral business, you’re probably going to get a hug. She puts her heart into her work, from making beautiful arrangements to making customers feel like family.

“The joy of being here for so long is you get to know people personally,” she said in a recent interview with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). “I don’t consider the people that walk in the door customers, they’re just people who want something to please someone else and that’s my job.”

But that all might soon be taken away from her.

The 70 year-old grandmother and sole owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts in Richland, Wash. found herself the target of two lawsuits after she declined to make floral arrangements for the same-sex wedding of one of her long-time customers, Robert Ingersoll. He and his partner, Curt Freed, took the case to court. The state of Washington soon followed, filing a suit after hearing about the story in the media.

It’s been a difficult road. A state judge ruled Feb. 18 that Stutzman must provide full support for same-sex weddings, even though they are contrary to her Christian faith. According to the court, Stutzman’s referral of a long-time customer to other businesses for floral arrangements for a same-sex ceremony violated Washington law. Both the state and the couple are seeking damages from Stutzman which would ruin her personally and professionally.

ADF attorneys will appeal the rulings – rulings which contradict the views of most Americans on the subject, according to a new AP-GfK poll.

Stutzman didn’t think it would come to this. She considers Rob a friend – he’s been patronizing her business for nine years, and they clicked over their shared creativity.

“He has a very creative mind and so we just sort of hit it off,” Stutzman told ADF. She has even provided flower arrangements for Rob’s partner in the past. But when he approached her about his upcoming wedding, she paused because of her beliefs.

“That was a real struggle to decide what to do with that,” she said. “My husband and I talked it over and you know, as much as I love Rob, I just couldn’t be a part of that.”

“It wasn’t something that I just flippantly said, ‘Oh I’m not going to do Rob’s wedding because he’s gay.’”

ADF seniour counsel Kristen Waggoner, who argued before the court in December, said the men in the case had plenty of other options when it came to floral arrangements. Once the story broke, they even had offers for free flowers pouring in for their wedding. But that wasn’t good enough for the couple, or for the state.

“Laws that are supposed to prohibit discrimination might sound good, but the government has begun to use these laws to hurt people – to force them to conform and to silence and punish them if they don’t violate their religious beliefs on marriage,” Waggoner said.

Stutzman is not a bigot, Waggoner added, as evidenced by the aforementioned flowers provided for other aspects of the couple’s relationship. This case is about marriage and free expression, and Stutzman considers her designs to be an extension of herself.

“I think most artistic people, especially painters, they put their heart into their arrangements, it’s part of them, it’s part of who they are,” Stutzman said. “And I think it’s the same way for a florist.”

“A government that tells you what you can’t say is bad enough, but a government that tells you what you must say is terrifying,” Waggoner explained.

“The lesson from the court’s decisions is that you put your home, your family business, and your life savings at risk by daring to defy a government mandate that forces you to promote views you believe are wrong.”

There have been blessings and curses from the battle. There’s been a lot of hate mail. But there’s also been encouraging notes from total strangers, and a big lesson in following Christ.

“I have to have faith that he’s going to protect me and to give me the courage and the knowledge and the wisdom to stand firm on this,” Stutzman said.

“And also to help me understand what obedience is,” she said, fighting tears, “and what following Christ is. You can’t sit on the fence. Like he says, you can’t be lukewarm.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is a non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith. Attorney Alicia M. Berry of Liebler, Connor, Berry & St. Hilaire is assisting with the case and is one of more than 2,500 private attorneys allied with ADF.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

FEATURES

Lent in the age of excess

by Jenny Uebbing • February 15, 2015

As much as I loathe the trend of turning the penitential season into a social media campaign, and as obnoxious as hashtags can be, I still find myself 2 days out from Ash Wednesday wondering if maybe a little virtual peer pressure might be just what I need this year.

I have a decidedly first world problem, and it’s mostly to do with food, but also to do with leisure time and belongings and disposable income and wifi connectivity. The unifying theme? I have too much of it. All of it.

Food, in particular, is my Achilles heel. In varying ages and stages past, I’ve struggled by turns to rule my appetite and, having failed in the struggle, I’ve allowed it to rule me.

In adolescence I would have sworn up and down that it was I who called the shots, but in the throes of an eating disorder that stretched well into the college years, I was blind to the harder truth that I was, in reality, every bit a captive to the rigid rules and cravings and triggers that dictated my daily life.

When I got pregnant with my first child the month after my wedding, no sooner had the test turned up positive then I was happily filling the freezer with ice cream, delighted both by the impending glory of motherhood and the freedom to eat carbs again. I gained an ungodly amount of weight that, surprisingly, did not simply melt away under the efficient assault of non-stop nursing and never sleeping ever again. So odd. So … disappointing.

So realistic.

I tried between each pregnancy to regain some semblance of my “normal” body, but around the time my old jeans start fitting, that pink line shows up again.

Which is a huge blessing! Don’t get me wrong. But, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that pregnancy, for me, is not a temporary blip on the radar screen of real life. The kids are going to keep coming, so long as we discern we are in a position to welcome them, (or, more to the point, so long as we discern the absence of a grave reason which would prevent their coming) and so I need to adjust my lifestyle to better reflect reality.

And the reality is, if I put away pints and pints of the finest gelato American dollars can buy, I’m going to be enormous at 40 weeks. And after three repeat performances, I can confidently report that those lb’s don’t actually melt away once one exits hotel hospital.

There’s something else though, and it’s not just about excess weight gain and late night visits to the freezer section: when I remove any semblance of discipline from the dietary realm, I stumble and atrophy in other areas of my life.

It’s hard to say no to oneself, which is, in part, a large reason for the existence of Lent. It’s an annual dose of concupiscence-be-gone; a chance to recalibrate, to dissolve unhealthy attachments and form better practices, to hone more heavenly habits.

So while it’s terribly cliche to give up entire food groups and call it one’s penance (I’m looking at you, Eastern Church), I’m going to go ahead and push the reset button on this pregnancy, here on the precipice of 15 weeks, and hope that by making better choices in the kitchen, I might be strengthened to grow and stretch in other areas of my life, too.

Plus, I’m straight up exhausted from all the carbs and sugar.

So thus begins the countdown to Lent:Whole40.

Terrible, right? I know it is … and yet I have such hope that eating in a way that is so utterly penitential and unappealing to me, particularly when I’m in a family way, will open up spaces in my day and in my mind for Him. And that while I’m saying not my will over and over again, all day long, from the moment my feet hit the floor and I start dreaming about depressing the lever on the toaster till the moment I collapse onto the couch after bedtime stories, jonesing for Ben and Jerry, I’ll be gaining some sorely needed self mastery, if not a more reasonable number on the scale come delivery day.

I could have chosen other vices to exorcise this season, believe me. God knows I could spend less time on social media, that I could be more committed to daily mental prayer and staying on top of the laundry than I am to answering text messages and emails. But this feels most fundamental, and most essential to bringing order in the rest of my life as a result.

I’m pretty much counting on it. Because there’s a laundry list of a dozen other character flaws, shortcomings and patterns of sin to examine, but I’m too lethargic from the half tub of Trader Joe’s chocolate cat cookies (that aren’t even good, by the way) consumed during tonight’s viewing of Downton Abbey to commit them all to paper. And wise enough to know that at Lent, sometimes less is more.

Happiest, fattest Tuesday to you all this week, and may your sacrifice choose you this year, and may you know it when you see it.

Jenny Uebbing is the content director of our marriage and family life channel, where her blog Mama Needs Coffee will be permanently hosted. She lives in Denver, CO with her family, where she writes and speaks on Church teachings on marriage, contraception, NFP and bioethics.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

FEATURES

Margin for error

by Jenny Uebbing • February 17, 2015

This morning my babysitter texted me at 7:43 am “I woke up with a sore throat but I feel fine, still want me to come?”

My heart raced as my fingers flew over the keypad, tapping out a rapid fire yes yes YES, come if you can, unless you’d feel better curled up in bed. I’ll extract an oath of angelic obedience from the kiddos, and here’s a bag of homeopathic cough drops if you find yourself hoarse.

She came, they behaved, and I fled the house for a few hours of solitude in a coffee shop where I wrote nothing but emails and accomplished very little in the grand scheme of things.

I did, however, come to the realization that I’ve overcommitted myself in almost every area of my life, and that I’m so relived that Lent is upon us.

I have no margin in my day-to-day right now. I can feel it in the frantic, rising panic that sets in if the kids wake up 20 minutes too soon for the day, if the library’s children’s section is under construction and I’ve lugged all three kids into the building though the snowy parking lot for naught, if dinner burns, if somebody falls and something starts bleeding.

There’s no room for any of these inevitabilities which are, after all, no more than the reality of life with small children. Each of them feel, by turns, like emergencies. None of them actually are. (Well, the library situation was acutely felt by my 4-year-old, but he was placated by a lone rolling cart stocked with wooden puzzles. Because we go to the library for the toys.)

I can’t sustain this level of intensity. I nearly wept on the phone with a dear friend this afternoon, my voice rising as I explained all the things I’d said yes to and all the reasons why, and how very necessary each item seemed, in isolation, but how the larger list was crushing me.

Sometimes I think I wrap my motherhood in layers and layers of busyness and “important external commitments” so that I won’t have to look to closely at my performance in my primary occupation.

I’m not so sure I want to see the results of that evaluation. Not at this particular moment in my mothering career, at least.

It’s very, very tempting for me to rationalize away the frantic pace of life right now because the kids are little, they won’t remember much, we’re getting out of debt/getting established in our careers/treading water as babies keep getting tossed our direction … but every one of those excuses falls flat when I test it aloud.

The truth is, my days aren’t all that full. There are a handful of commitments each week set in stone, and some daily metrics I need to hit, but for the most part, I’m the thing keeping me from fitting it all in.

And that’s because I have largely failed to identify what “it” is, exactly.

Even though I read and immediately implemented (and gushed obnoxiously about) “A Mother’s Rule of Life,” truth be told, I haven’t found my daily rhythm, and I’ve yet to set and follow a schedule for more than a week at a time. Because the stomach flu. Morning sickness. Nightmares and wet sheets and cars that need a trip to the shop and, well, life.

If the stars don’t align and I don’t log 8 hours of sleep, I pretty much throw my hands up and let my day happen to me rather than moving through it intentionally and with purpose.

And that means there’s just no room for anything to go wrong, because there isn’t all that much going right to begin with.

I don’t wake up before my kids, unless the current resident-on-board forces me into the bathroom in the semi dark morning hours. We don’t really have a morning routine, unless the blessed babysitter comes and then, well, I flee the premises. But not before stuffing 3 loads of laundry into the machine, setting the crockpot, and frantically washing all the mirrors in all the rooms and … you get the idea.

So Lent. It’s here. I’m here, in this place of utter chaos, and along comes this liturgical season, practically begging me to fall to my knees and don a sackcloth and get my priorities in order. And I know that the one thing I can do that could make this all better is to set, and follow through on, a daily prayer time.

And yet it’s the first thing to give when the day starts out on the wrong foot, when there’s someone literally getting up on the wrong side of my bed and waving a used Pull Up under my nose, demanding inspection. And it’s the last thing I want to do when I retreat onto the couch at nap time, or in the evening after the dishes are done and the lights are dimmed. There’s always something more apparently productive I could be doing, something more leisurely, something more concrete.

Meanwhile, time marches on, life speeds by, and I collapse at the end of the day, stunned by the ferocity of its demands and the unchangingness of my competency level. Shouldn’t I be better at this by now?

I think I would be, if I weren’t constantly trying to do it all under my own power. And I don’t just mean better at motherhood, but at life.

I think I’d be better at life if I made more intentional room for Him, if I had continual recourse to His plans for the day and not my own.

I mean, I know this is true. But closing the computer, declining the invitation, turning down the project, turning off my phone … those are all the thousand little places I struggle, frittering away my days and my weeks until the quarterly meltdown, the back-up-against-the-wall why-do-we-do-so-much conversations, either with my husband or my best friend. And then a deep breath and a foolhardy dive back into the madness, none the wiser or more peaceful.

Enough.

Can this Lent be different? Can I leave some margin in these 40 days, opening up my calendar to His discriminating gaze, and asking not “Can I?” or “Am I able?” but “Should I?” and “Is this what You want for us?”

I’m going to try, anyway.

Jenny Uebbing is the content director of our marriage and family life channel, where her blog Mama Needs Coffee will be permanently hosted. She lives in Denver, CO with her family, where she writes and speaks on Church teachings on marriage, contraception, NFP and bioethics.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

FEATURES

‘The Picture of Dorian Gray:’ A Parable for Lent

by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. • February 18, 2015

The Lenten spring has come as planting and dying give way to rising and harvest. If we have been buried with Christ, we shall rise with him (Rom 6:4; Col 2:12). The power of Lord’s death and Resurrection makes us new creations.

Lent is that time in the liturgical year when Christians journey together, as the Body of Christ, toward Calvary and the empty tomb. It is as individuals however that we take stock of our relationship with God and with others probing it earnestly and sincerely. This Lent, what do I want? What do I really want?

In the Christian East

In the Byzantine Church, Great Lent, beginning on the Monday before Ash Wednesday, is a time of strict fast, of hastening to tame the flesh through fast and abstinence. St. John Chrysostom (d 407) writes in a homily: “When a pagan asks you why you fast, you do not answer that it is because of our Lord’s passion or for the cross, but for our sins, because we are to approach the holy mysteries. The passion is not a reason for fasting or mourning, but one for joy and exultation: we mourn not because of that, but because of our sins, and for this we fast.”

The Maronite Church puts it concisely: ‘During Lent, we fast from the world.”

A Modern-Day Parable for Lent

In 1890-91, Oscar Wilde published his only novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” In it, the Irish wit and esthete treats beauty as ars gratia artis, as art for the sake of art. Beauty is detached from truth and goodness, and for that matter, from love.

The Parable Unfolds … The Beginning

This novel is a stinging, biting, moral thriller, brilliant and beautifully written. It concerns one man’s desire for eternal youth, pleasure, and beauty, and his obsession about clinging to them at all costs. Like the Greek god Adonis who worships beauty, desire, and pleasure, Dorian will do anything to retain his handsome figure. Like Faust, he is willing to sell his soul to the devil. And he does.

Dorian is a wealthy, cultivated, and incredibly handsome young man who yields to the seductions of sin with disastrous results. Not a thought about using his natural gifts, status, or position to help others. His view of life excludes noblesse oblige.

When Dorian’s artist-friend Basil paints his portrait, Dorian reasons in this way: ‘Even if I flaunt the acceptable standards of morality, this portrait can never change. It will retain its pristine beauty.’ Dorian locks the picture away in his childhood play room in a remote part of his palatial home. The picture will soon take on a mystery of its own.

Advancing the Parable

Dorian embarks on a life of sin. A young actress Sibyl falls in love with him and is devoted to him. But after he spurns her love, she commits suicide. Dorian begins to check the picture, his soul and visual diary. As one evil act follows the other, so the painting records his sinfulness. In fact, the picture begins to sneer.

For the next eighteen years, Dorian sinks more deeply into a furtive and dissolute life experimenting with every imaginable vice. Rumors abound concerning his relationships. Why do they end fatally — in suicide? Then one night, before leaving for Paris on another escapade, Dorian is confronted by Basil, his artist-friend. Dorian shows him the portrait. Basil is startled by his own creation which has become disfigured as though from within. He sees in it not Dorian’s beauty but a moral leprosy eating away at its own flesh.

Basil speaks of the rumors. Hadn’t Dorian heard? He admonishes him to prayer. He pleads with him to repent. Pointing to the picture, he blurts out: ‘So this is what you’ve become; this is what you’ve done with your life! Come to your senses!’

‘It’s too late; it has destroyed me. It’s no use!’ replies Dorian in a panic. Then in a fit of rage, he stabs Basil with a knife.

On examining the picture, he sees that it is dripping blood. The symbiotic relationship between him and the picture defies belief.

To cap off Basil’s murder, Dorian blackmails his chemist-friend Alan into destroying Basil’s body by nitric acid so that it will completely disappear. Shortly afterward, Alan commits suicide. Dorian goes to the picture, its eyes, bulging out of their sockets, staring in shock.

Next, Dorian hunts down Sibyl’s brother James who has accused him of causing his sister’s suicide years before. Dorian shoots him in a dark alley and returns home.

Gladys, an attractive young noblewoman, loves him unconditionally and has expressed her desire to marry him. She proposes. His response is a mere velleity, and he remains cold and aloof. Though she is puzzled by his behavior, her love for him remains steadfast. Unwilling to break her heart, Dorian accepts her marriage proposal. After all, he still cuts a handsome figure. And she doesn’t know …

Finally …

At this point, the picture reeks with depravity. Bloodshot eyes, large red facial blotches, loose skin, swollen lips, parched and blood-curdled — the horror is too much for him. He is on the verge of suicidal remorse and despair, the sin of Judas! “I cannot change; I’m too far gone,” he cries out.

Taking the knife that killed Basil, Dorian drives it into the picture. But something extraordinary happens. He is thrown to the ground, the one who has been stabbed. As he succumbs to death, uttering, “Forgive me, I have sinned, through my fault, through my fault,” his face assumes all the horror of the picture. The wages of sin are now made visible on his face. But amazingly, the picture reverts to its pristine beauty just as Basil had painted it.

The last words Dorian utters are from Omar Khayyam, the medieval Persian polymath:

“And by and by, my soul returned to me

And answered, I myself am heaven and hell.”

Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Brentwood, NY, holds degrees in philosophy (Ph.L), musicology (Ph.D.), theology (M.A.), and liturgical studies (Ph.D). She has taught at all levels of Catholic education and writes with a particular focus on a theology of beauty and the sacred arts. Her e-mail address is jroccasalvo@optonline.net.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

FEATURES

Why everybody loses when we sugarcoat NFP

by Jenny Uebbing • February 19, 2015

There’s a common thread that runs through so many of the conversations I’ve had about NFP lately (and, as this belly pops out more and more, I’m guessing those opportunities are just going to start rolling in gangbusters at Costco and the like) and it’s the very simple and very often understated reality that it’s difficult.

Did you catch that?

It.is.hard.

There is nothing easy about it, whichever method you practice and however charismatic your instructor and however earnest the smiling couple with 5 mewling children careening about their feet who run you through your introductory session as an idealistic (or perhaps incredibly bored) newly engaged may be.

It’s not easy.

It’s not easy to choose this alternative lifestyle, to live the practical nitty gritty of the Church’s strange and beautiful and salvific teaching on sex and love and human life.

It just isn’t.

I doubt it was easy 200 years ago when less was understood about the female reproductive system, and more was left up to a prayer and a chance.

And it’s not easy today, for we who are often steeped in and strangled by technology, terrified at turns by our ability to procreate and our inability to control, ultimately, this mysterious force at the center of human existence.

It’s heavy stuff we’re dealing with, and it deserves a more serious and frank conversation, at every level of engagement.

On the one hand, yes, we ought to be encouraging and enthusiastic in our presentation of the Church’s beautiful teachings on sex and marriage, but we ought not do so at the expense of reality.

Nobody has ever pointed to a crucifix and said “look how pretty, look how effortless.”

Is it beautiful? Peerlessly.

Is it staggeringly difficult? An incomprehensible level of suffering?

Yes, also that.

There is nothing to be gained from hiding the beauty and the difficulty of living this countercultural reality from those who come to us with questions, comments, or even ridicule.

And there is surely nothing to be gained in failing to advise young engaged and newly married couples, enthusiastic in their love and devotion and early in experience, that the road they are going to walk down is not paved entirely in roses, or rather, that there are thorns, too.

Spouses who practice NFP are less vulnerable to divorce, yes, but not because of NFP alone. There is room in their marriages for charity, for generosity, for communication … but it’s an opportunity that must be actualized by hard work and hard choices and constant death to self. It’s not a guarantee.

And please, for the love, pastors, well-meaning friends, family members … if a couple is drowning in plain sight, overwhelmed by their present circumstances, or just plain exhausted by the physical and emotional strain of parenthood, do the truly loving thing and lift them up. Offer them babysitting help. Take a meal over. Drop off a gift card. Pray for a multiplication of sleep and energy. But don’t lean in in a conspiratorial tone and ask them if they’ve thought about doing something about all those bouncing babies that keep coming their way.

Yes, they’ve thought about it.

And they’ve either discerned that now was indeed a good time for another new life to come on the scene or they’re struggling with understanding their fertility or they just plain made a miscalculation, or God one-up’d them.

Whatever the case may be, they’re not morons who’ve never watched tv, and your suggestions are less than helpful; they’re deadly destructive.

I can’t tell you how many women I’ve talked to who have been counseled by pastors/friends/in-laws, well-intentioned Catholics and less-than-well-intentioned Catholics, that contraception was the obvious and only answer to their problems.

When somebody is drowning in plain sight, you don’t chastise them for getting in the water in the first place. You throw them a life preserver and wrap them in a warm blanket and hold them until the shivering subsides.

To suggest that living the fullness of the truth of the Catholic Church’s teachings on family life is only beneficial up to a point, up to the part where it gets really hard and excruciatingly challenging, empties the authority of those teachings to nothing.

Either it’s life giving and soul saving, or to hell with it.

Tell me that from the pulpit and I’ll sit up and give you my full attention. Anything less is a waste of my time and an insult to my intellect.

Let’s do a better job of talking about NFP. Let’s be bold in our conversations with our Catholic friends who are unconvinced. Let’s be transparent with our curious (bemused?) family members. And let’s be charitable with our incredulous neighbors.

Because there are a whole lot of people searching for real love, and for the meaning of life, and for answers to lots of big questions. Shame on us if we’re not willing to offer some answers, or at least start the conversation with an explanation.

Finally, let’s encourage our priests and our seminarians to dig deep in their study of these difficult, beautiful truths. There is vast room for improvement, on both sides of the altar.

We live in a society steeped in sexuality and yet utterly illiterate in matters of the heart. People are breaking their bodies and their hearts for want of a little love, and we hardly hear a word about it from the pulpit.

I live in a city populated by some of the finest clergy in the world, and I am richly blessed. Our seminary is peerless, and our parishes are full.

But many are not so fortunate. And even in familiar territory, we cannot assume that everyone is on the same page, that everyone is in agreement and has had the same level of catechesis and instruction.

There is so much room for improvement. And, thankfully, so many opportunities to let Him in, to extend grace and mercy and His beautiful, difficult, life-giving truth.

Let’s get to work.

Jenny Uebbing is the content director of our marriage and family life channel, where her blog Mama Needs Coffee will be permanently hosted. She lives in Denver, CO with her family, where she writes and speaks on Church teachings on marriage, contraception, NFP and bioethics.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

FEATURES

How priests and deacons should not give homilies

by Msgr. M. Francis Mannion • February 19, 2015

Fr. John. J. Conley, S. J., a professor of theology and philosophy at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, recently penned an article for the Jesuit periodical America entitled, “How Not to Preach.”

Fr. Conley identifies himself “as a veteran of 60 years in the pews and 30 years in the pulpit.” His description of Catholic preaching is both amusing and disturbing. He sets out three dangers that homilists need to avoid.

1. The homily is all about you, the priest. “Keep the sermon strictly autobiographical. Your congregation is dying to know all about your last vacation. There’s no need to deal with that pesky reading about Abraham and Isaac and the knife.”

Fr. Conley describes a homily he recently heard about the priest’s socks! “Father explained how difficult it is to keep pairs of socks together. He noted his preferred detergent for washing socks and the advantages of using a clothesline over a dryer, He said there was a controversy over whether priests should wear all-black socks or whether they could add stripes”— which was news to Fr. Conley.

“We kept waiting for the spiritual punch line. Was the lost sock like the lost sheep in the parable of the Good Shepherd? It remained a mystery. The sermon concluded with the revelation that [the homilist] found doing the laundry difficult at times.”

Fr. Conley continues: “On a darker note, I once heard a sermon in which the preacher discussed the problem of resentment. The theme matched the Gospel, which featured the apostles’ jealous squabbling among themselves. Warming to his subject, the preacher described his own resentment against his brother (the prize-winning athlete), his sixth-grade teacher (too critical) and then his dear mother (too distant). As we cringed into our missalettes, I wondered if Doctor Phil would rush from the sacristy to take over the bathos in the sanctuary.”

Fr. Conley states: “You were not ordained to tell your own story. You were ordained to tell someone else’s.”

2. Rely on the Holy Spirit. There’s no need to prepare. “One of the popular homiletic genres these days is the Magellan sermon. In the space of 20 minutes, the congregation is treated to a tour of the world as the preacher unloads a catalogue of random, unrelated thoughts. In one recent Magellan improvisation, we learned that Samuel heard a noise like a whisper, that we should be patient with the hearing-impaired, that the turnout for the Christmas bazaar was just great (applause), that recent events in the Middle East are disturbing and that we should be careful about what we post on Facebook. And, oh, there’s a mistake in the bulletin. The second collection will be taken up today for our music ministry, not for scholarships for the grade school.”

3. Keep the sermon light. “Always prefer the sentimental to the doctrinal. Don’t bother the congregation with such complications as the Atonement. Keep it beige and soothing.”

Fr. Conley desecribes an Easter homily in a packed church. “The preacher began by telling us that Christian hope means ‘Tomorrow will always be more beautiful than today.’ We waited for the theological development. The resurrection of the body? Immortality? The last judgment? We received only more of the same magical thinking, closer to Hallmark Cards than to the Gospel according to St. Luke we had just heard.”

Can readers relate to this? How true a picture is it? Have you heard homilies like these? Is Fr. Conley exaggerating, or over-generalizing?

Just asking … !

Msgr. Mannion is pastor emeritus of St. Vincent de Paul parish in Salt Lake City. He holds a Ph.D in sacramental theology from The Catholic University of America. He was founding president of The Society for Catholic Liturgy in 1995 and the founding editor of the Societys journal, Antiphon. At the invitation of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago he founded the Mundelein Liturgical Institute in 2000.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

FEATURES

Coptic Christians and the White House

by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. • February 19, 2015

Pope Francis has called them martyrs, the twenty-one Coptic Christians executed in Libya. “Jesus, help me,” were the last words of one of the Egyptian migrant workers, all of whom were trying to eke out a living for their families. This mass butchery was carried out by Isis describing its victims as “crusaders.” In the act, Islamists cursed the cross. Rome would be their next target. So they warned.

The White House described the slaughtered victims simply as Egyptian citizens.

The Egyptian military took action against the Libyan government.

Last month, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, announced that what had happened in Paris was an attack on Parisian shops. He misspoke. In fact, it was a pogrom on Parisian Jews. This week, instead of the White House accurately describing the massacre in Libya as an attack on Coptic Christians, it diluted the language once again.

Imagine the reverse situation. Had twenty-one Muslims been executed by Christians, would the White House have called the victims citizens?

Reluctance to Define Words

Is there reluctance at the White House for saying the word Christian? The White House has a handpicked, educated staff, presumably canny, articulate, and capable of parsing words. Every word is carefully weighed before it is announced publicly.

What was so difficult about using the well-defined words, Coptic and Christian, words that needed no parsing? There has been a concerted outcry by social media faulting the White House for omitting the words Coptic Christians in the news brief announced to the world. And of course, Pope Francis heard it and corrected the misstatement.

Who Are Coptic Christians?

A word about Coptic Christians. Over the years, they have been in the news emerging out of Egypt. Coptic Christians belong to the oldest of the Oriental Christian Churches living in Egypt. Most Copts belong to Orthodox Christianity with the smaller number, Catholic.

The Copts have inhabited present-day Egypt since at least the fifth century. In the mid-seventh century, their land was invaded by the Arabs, and by the mid tenth century, the Muslim conquest was complete.

The Copts are no strangers to hatred, persecution, and discrimination. Through the course of centuries up until recent times, their beautiful worship services have been interrupted, churches have been attacked, homes, destroyed, and Coptic women, violated. It is only in the past few years and days that the Egyptian government has begun to befriend them.

The Arabic word qibt, that is, Copt, has come to mean the nation of E-gypt/Egypt. Coptic Christians have been immortalized in at least one classic, The Alexandria Quartet, a tetralogy written by Lawrence Durrell between 1957 and 1960. In 1998, The Alexandria Quartet ranked number 70 of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century. A number of the main characters are Coptic.

Who Is a Martyr?

Pope Francis named the Coptic Christians as martyrs. A martyr is someone who suffers persecution and death for the sake of one’s faith. The word martyr means witness. Men and women give witness to what they believe. In the case of the workers in Libya, they died, persecuted solely because of their Christian faith. Pope Francis acknowledged this fact. The White House should have noted their martyrdom but did not.

Chief of the White House Staff and “Mr. Catholic”

At the White House, the current chief of staff, Denis McDonough, is known as “Mr. Catholic.” Of all the White House staffers, he should be the first one to notice a lack of sensibility toward Christians. Why so?

Mr. McDonough is a devout Irish Catholic. He is an alumnus (summa cum laude) of the prestigious St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN conducted by the Benedictine Order. He holds an advanced degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Two of his brothers are Catholic priests, one of whom is a theologian. A Redemptorist priest living in the Washington area counts as one of his closest friends and advisers.

Mr. McDonough is the one on whom Mr. Obama relies for faith-related issues: inner workings of the Catholic Church, the “just war” theory, even his dealings with Muslims. He helped prepare the theologian Miguel Diaz to become ambassador to the Vatican. Mr. McDonough deserves the title the White House has conferred on him, “Mr. Catholic.”

Not the death of Egyptian citizens but the martyrdom of twenty-one Coptic Christians — this is the crux of the matter that has offended so many Christians, non-Christians, and those of no faith. The White House should apologize for its recent misstatement.

Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Brentwood, NY, holds degrees in philosophy (Ph.L), musicology (Ph.D.), theology (M.A.), and liturgical studies (Ph.D). She has taught at all levels of Catholic education and writes with a particular focus on a theology of beauty and the sacred arts. Her e-mail address is jroccasalvo@optonline.net.

Share this article

Link to original article with sharing options:  catholicnewsagency.com

SUNDAY • FEBRUARY 22, 2015

First Sunday of Lent

First Reading (Gn 9:8-15; NRSVCE)

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

Second Reading (1 Pt 3:18-22; NRSVCE)

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you — not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Gospel Reading (Mk 1:12-15; NRSVCE)

And the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

MONDAY • FEBRUARY 23, 2015

Monday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Lv 19:1-2, 11-18; NRSVCE)

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord.

You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Lord.

You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

Gospel Reading (Mt 25:31-46; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

TUESDAY • FEBRUARY 24, 2015

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Is 55:10-11; NRSVCE)

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Gospel Reading (Mt 6:7-15; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us to the time of trial,

but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

WEDNESDAY • FEBRUARY 25, 2015

Wednesday of the First Week in Lent

First Reading (Jon 3:1-10; NRSVCE)

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Gospel Reading (Lk 11:29-32; NRSVCE)

When the crowds were increasing, Jesus began to say, “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!”

THURSDAY • FEBRUARY 26, 2015

Thursday of the First Week in Lent

First Reading (Est C:12, 14-16, 23-25; NRSVCE)

Then Queen Esther, seized with deadly anxiety, fled to the Lord. She prayed to the Lord God of Israel, and said: “O my Lord, you only are our king; help me, who am alone and have no helper but you, for my danger is in my hand. Ever since I was born I have heard in the tribe of my family that you, O Lord, took Israel out of all the nations, and our ancestors from among all their forebears, for an everlasting inheritance, and that you did for them all that you promised.

Remember, O Lord; make yourself known in this time of our affliction, and give me courage, O King of the gods and Master of all dominion! Put eloquent speech in my mouth before the lion, and turn his heart to hate the man who is fighting against us, so that there may be an end of him and those who agree with him. But save us by your hand, and help me, who am alone and have no helper but you, O Lord.”

Gospel Reading (Mt 7:7-12; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

FRIDAY • FEBRUARY 27, 2015

Friday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Ez 18:21-28; NRSVCE)

But if the wicked turn away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all my statutes and do what is lawful and right, they shall surely live; they shall not die. None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them; for the righteousness that they have done they shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live? But when the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity and do the same abominable things that the wicked do, shall they live? None of the righteous deeds that they have done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which they are guilty and the sin they have committed, they shall die.

Yet you say, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? When the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it; for the iniquity that they have committed they shall die. Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:20-26; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”

SATURDAY • FEBRUARY 28, 2015

Saturday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Dt 26:16-19; NRSVCE)

This very day the Lord your God is commanding you to observe these statutes and ordinances; so observe them diligently with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you have obtained the Lord’s agreement: to be your God; and for you to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, his commandments, and his ordinances, and to obey him. Today the Lord has obtained your agreement: to be his treasured people, as he promised you, and to keep his commandments; for him to set you high above all nations that he has made, in praise and in fame and in honor; and for you to be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:43-48; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”