VOLUME 1, ISSUE 14  •  APRIL 4, 2015

Table of Contents

Copyright Notice

VATICAN NEWS

Pope praises deceased Assyrian patriarch as wise pastor, ecumenical leader

500 years after birth, witness of St. Teresa of Avila remains strong, says Pope

Holy Week is about humility – there is no other way, Pope says

A sweet sign of hope: Pope’s envoy returns to Iraq with Easter cake

Vatican Appointments: Cardinal Versaldi to Congregation for Catholic Education

Blood of the martyrs sustains the Church, Pope reflects

Don’t flirt with spiritual worldliness, Pope cautions priests

Pope Francis to inmates: ‘I too need to be washed by the Lord’

True martyrs die in prayer – not with clenched fists, papal preacher says

For Pope Francis, Good Friday shrouded in grief over persecuted Christians

WORLD NEWS

Church in Cuba enters new era with thaw of U.S. diplomatic relations

Pope’s delegation offers comfort, communion to Iraqi refugees

A ‘wee movie with a big message’ for the people of Scotland

With #BringBackOurGirls no longer trending, Nigerians aghast at ‘inaction’ from donors

In open letter, 500 British priests ask Synod to stand firm on Church teaching

More than 100,000 ask Mexican Supreme Court to affirm right to life

Three weeks as an Islamic State captive – one woman tells her story

Christians returning to Homs, Syria, even though Islamic State looms

In Ukraine, Churches confront fearsome suffering

What Holy Week looks like in a remote Indian diocese

A Medieval devotion alive and well for a handful of modern Romans

U.S. NEWS

History, truth, and politics: Researcher seeks to clear the record on Junipero Serra

Cardinal George returns to hospital for routine care

Everyone but churches can use NYC schools – will the mayor do anything about it?

U.S. bishops: Stop shameful detention of migrant families

Wall Street Journal, NY Times writer defend Indiana religious freedom law

Is Indiana that controversial? Poll finds Americans support religious freedom laws

‘A travesty of justice’: No murder charges over baby cut out of mother’s womb

These nuns provide ‘death with dignity’ – but it’s not assisted suicide

Be ‘saints of this prison,’ Bishop Conley tells inmates at Confirmation

An Arcus news service? RNS denies LGBT money influences religion coverage

Passover and the Passion: Jewish roots enrich Holy Week celebrations

FEATURES

Temperamental Parenting

It was never about the cake

‘My Son, with you I am well pleased, so well pleased’

He moved me

Sign of Peace at Mass needs to maintain a public character

‘Saint John Paul the Great’ offers a fresh perspective on the new saint

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Sunday • April 5, 2015

Monday • April 6, 2015

Tuesday • April 7, 2015

Wednesday • April 8, 2015

Thursday • April 9, 2015

Friday • April 10, 2015

Saturday • April 11, 2015

The Catholic Digital News

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Volume 1, Issue 14 • April 4, 2015

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope praises deceased Assyrian patriarch as wise pastor, ecumenical leader

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • March 28, 2015

Pope Francis addresses interreligious faith leaders in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jan. 13, 2015. (EWTN)

Vatican City — Pope Francis has sent a telegram of condolences following the death of Catholicos Dinkha IV, patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, describing him as an “important spiritual leader, a courageous and wise pastor.”

The patriarch passed away on Mar. 26 in Rochester, Minnesota at the age of 79.

Addressing the telegram to Mar Aprem, Metropolitan of the Assyrian Church of the East for India, Pope Francis assured him, as well as all bishops, clergy, and faithful of the “spiritual closeness of all Catholics.”

“The Christian world has lost an important spiritual leader, a courageous and wise pastor who faithfully served his community in extremely challenging times,” the Pope said.

He observed that the Iraq-born patriarch had “suffered greatly because of the tragic situation in the Middle East, especially in Iraq and in Syria, resolutely calling attention to the plight of our Christian brothers and sisters and other religious minorities suffering daily persecution.”

The pontiff recalled how he and the patriarch had spoken “at length” about the crisis in the Middle East during the latter’s visit to the Vatican in October, 2014.

Born in Iraq on Sep. 15, 1935, Catholicos Dinkha had been residing in Chicago, Illinois, where he had set up headquarters amid instability brought about the Persian Gulf War in the 1980s.

The patriarch had led the ecumenical efforts of the Assyrian Church, which had become separated from the rest of the Christian world in the 5th Century after rejecting the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon. Along with Saint John Paul II, Catholicos Dinkha signed the “Common Christological Declaration Between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church” on Nov. 11, 1994.

Pope Francis also acknowledged the “enduring commitment” of the patriarch “to improving relations among Christians and in particular between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.”

Following the death of Catholicos Dinkha, the Assyrian Church of the East issued a statement: “His Holiness had dedicated his entire life, to serving our Lord and our Holy Church. All his life he worked hard to be a spiritual father to us all. Heaven has welcomed him today and may he rest in peace.”

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VATICAN NEWS

500 years after birth, witness of St. Teresa of Avila remains strong, says Pope

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • March 28, 2015

Carmelite sisters in Birmingham. (catholicrelics.co.uk via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Vatican City — On the 500th anniversary of St. Teresa of Avila’s birth, Pope Francis praised the Spanish mystic and reformer for her witness of self-gift to God, as well as her particular relevance during this Year of Consecrated Life.

“How much goodness does the testimony of her consecration – born directly from the encounter with Christ, her experience of prayer as continuous dialogue with God, and her community life, rooted in the motherhood of the Church – do for us!” the Pope said, according to Vatican Radio’s translation.

In a Mar. 28 letter addressed to Fr Xavier Cannistrà, superior general of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, the pontiff wrote that it is providential that the anniversary of the saint’s birth should coincide with the Year of Consecrated Life, which began late last year.

St. Teresa of Avila, the Holy Father said, “shines as a sure and attractive model of total self-giving to God.”

Born March 28, 1515 in Avila, Spain, St. Teresa is known as a mystic and reformer. Entering the Carmelite order in 1535, she became disillusioned by the laxity of monastic life within the cloister, and committed herself to reforming the order. She is considered one of the founders of the Discalced Carmelites.

During her lifetime, St. Teresa wrote several important works on the spiritual life, such as Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection. Canonized 40 years after her death in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, she was declared as one of the first ever female doctors of the Church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

St. Teresa of Avila remains relevant for consecrated men and women, Pope Francis wrote, as demonstrated by her prayer life, her proclamation of the Gospel, and her understanding of the importance of community life.

Describing her as “primarily a teacher of prayer,” the pontiff said that “the discovery of Christ’s humanity was central to her experience.”

For St. Teresa, prayer arose in all occasions, not simply in times and places of seclusion, the Pope said. Moreover, she believed that “continuous prayer” – even when it was imperfect – had value.

“The saint asks us to be steadfast, faithful, even in times of dryness, personal difficulties or urgent needs that call us.”

The “concrete proposals” and methods of prayer left by St. Teresa offers “us a great treasure to renew consecrated life today,” the Pope said.

“Far from closing us in on ourselves or leading us only to inner balance, (they) always make us start again from Jesus and constitute a genuine school to grow in love for God and neighbor.”

Pope Francis went on to describe St. Teresa as a “tireless communicator of the Gospel,” at a time when the Church was in the midst of difficulties. Instigator of the “Teresian reform” of the laxities demonstrated by the Carmelite cloister in which she lived, she demonstrated a “missionary and ecclesial dimension has always marked the Carmelites and Discalced Carmelites,” he said.

“Even today the saint opens new horizons for us, she calls us to a great undertaking, to see the world with the eyes of Christ, to seek what He seeks and to love what He loves.”

Finally, St. Teresa recognized the importance of “authentic community life” in sustaining both prayer and the evangelical mission, the Pope said.

Warning against “the danger of individualism in fraternal life,” he added, the saint commends those living in community to place themselves “at the service of others,” with a humility consisting “of self-acceptance, awareness of one’s own dignity, missionary courage, gratitude and trust in God.”

“Teresian communities are called to become houses of communion, capable of witnessing to fraternal love and to the motherhood of the Church, presenting to the Lord the needs of the world, torn by divisions and wars.”

Pope Francis concluded by imparting his Apostolic blessing, praying that the Carmelite community’s “witness to life” would allow “the joy and beauty of living the Gospel to shine and attracts many young people to follow Christ closely.”

The worldwide Year for Consecrated life began Nov. 30, 2014 and will continue until the World Day of Consecrated Life on Feb. 2, 2016.

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VATICAN NEWS

Holy Week is about humility – there is no other way, Pope says

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • March 29, 2015

Francis leads procession of palms in St. Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday March 29, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis on Palm Sunday said that imitating the humility of Jesus is what makes Holy Week “holy,” and encouraged attendees to mimic his attitude of humiliation as the week unfolds.

Referring to the day’s second reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which recounts how Jesus “humbled himself” by taking on human form, the Pope said that “these words show us God’s way and the way of Christians: it is humility.”

Humility, he said, is “a way which constantly amazes and disturbs us: we will never get used to a humble God!”

As the Church sets out on the path of Holy Week that leads us to Easter, “we will take this path of Jesus’ own humiliation. Only in this way will this week be holy for us too!” Francis explained.

Pope Francis spoke to the thousands of pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his March 29 Palm Sunday Mass, which the Church celebrates in recollection of how the inhabitants of Jerusalem laid palms along the road where Jesus entered on a donkey, hailing him as king the week before he was killed.

After processing to the altar with his own palm in hand, the Pope blessed those the pilgrims were holding, and participated in the reading of Jesus’ entire Passion and death, taken from the Gospel of Mark.

In his homily Francis focused on how Jesus’ incarnation and death serve as strong examples of God’s humility, which he shows to his people even when they disobey and complain to him.

Despite the shame Jesus faced, “this is God’s way, the way of humility. It is the way of Jesus; there is no other. And there can be no humility without humiliation,” Francis said.

By taking on the “form of a slave,” Jesus shows us that true humility is expressed in service to others, and consists of stripping and emptying oneself of worldliness so as to make room for God, he said.

“This is the greatest humiliation of all,” the Pope noted, and warned against taking that path of the world, which tempts us with “vanity, pride, success,” just like the devil did with Jesus during his 40 days in the desert.

However, Jesus “immediately rejected” this temptation, he said, explaining that “with him, we too can overcome this temptation, not only at significant moments, but in daily life as well.”

He encouraged attendees to follow Jesus on his path of “humiliation” during Holy Week, and noted how throughout the course of the next week, the Church will participate in Jesus’ suffering in a concrete way.

“We will feel the contempt of the leaders of his people and their attempts to trip him up. We will be there at the betrayal of Judas, one of the Twelve, who will sell him for thirty pieces of silver. We will see the Lord arrested and carried off like a criminal; abandoned by his disciples, dragged before the Sanhedrin, condemned to death, beaten and insulted,” he said.

In addition, we will also hear how Peter, the “rock” among the disciples, denies Jesus three times and will hear how the crowds, urged by their leaders, call for Barabas to be freed and Jesus crucified.

Jesus will be “mocked by the soldiers, robed in purple and crowned with thorns. And then, as he makes his sorrowful way beneath the cross, we will hear the jeering of the people and their leaders, who scoff at his being King and Son of God,” the Pope explained.

He closed his homily by recognizing the many who selflessly give themselves in hidden service to others, and by praying for those who are persecuted “because they are Christians.”

Referring to them as the “martyrs of our own time,” Francis said these people refuse to deny Jesus and therefore endure “insult and injury with dignity.”

He prayed that as the Church sets out on the path of Holy Week, faithful would commit to following Jesus’ way of humility with determination and “immense love” for him, saying that it is this love which “will guide us and give us strength.”

After Mass the Pope led pilgrims in the recitation of the traditional Angelus prayer, and noted in comments after how Palm Sunday also marked the 30th World Youth Day, which was established by St. John Paul II in 1984.

This year’s theme – the second in a series on the beatitudes – is “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” while last year’s was “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Next year’s theme for the international gathering in Krakow, Poland, will be “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”

The Pope also prayed for the 150 victims of the Germanwings Airbus plane crash in the French Alps earlier this week, which included a group of German students, and entrusted them to the intercession of Mary.

Francis’ slate of activities for Holy Week includes a Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday, as well as a visit to a Roman prison later that evening, where he will wash the feet of inmates and celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.

The next day, Good Friday, the Pope will keep in line with papal tradition and celebrate a service for the Passion of Our Lord in St. Peter’s Basilica before heading to the Colosseum, where he will lead thousands in the traditional prayer of the Stations of the Cross.

The Roman tradition of holding the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on Good Friday goes back to the pontificate of Benedict XIV, who died in 1758.

On Holy Saturday Francis will preside over the Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica starting at 8:30 p.m., during which he will administer the sacrament of baptism to certain individuals.

Easter morning, April 5, he will celebrate the Mass of Our Lord’s Resurrection in St. Peter’s Square before giving his ‘Urbi et Orbi’ blessing – which goes out to the city of Rome and to the world – from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

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VATICAN NEWS

A sweet sign of hope: Pope’s envoy returns to Iraq with Easter cake

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • March 29, 2015

Piece of Colomba cake. (Anna via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Vatican City — Pope Francis’ personal envoy to Iraq will return to the country during Holy Week, bringing with him the pontiff’s love and solidarity along with a special gift from the diocese of Rome: cake.

“During Holy Week, which is now close, these families are sharing with Christ the unjust violence of which they are victims, and participating in the pain of the same Christ,” a March 27 statement from the Vatican read.

Cardinal Fernando Filoni, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, traveled to Erbil as Pope Francis’ personal envoy in August of last year. He returns to Iraq in order to “stand beside the families” who have been forced out of their homes due to extremist violence.

With the funds taken up from a special collection, the families of the diocese of Rome will also show their solidarity with those suffering in Iraq by sending an Easter cake “to share the joy of Easter” based on faith in the Resurrection of Christ.

The gift being offered to refugee families is a traditional Italian sweet baked during Easter called a “Colomba” cake, which is formed in the shape of a dove.

In order not to “forget the suffering of the families in Northern Nigeria,” Pope Francis has also sent the cakes as a gift to those affected by extremist violence in the region by way of the local bishops’ conference.

Pope Francis, the statement added, prays for these families “and hopes they can return and resume their lives in the lands and places where, for hundreds of years, they have lived and woven good relationships with all.”

The capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Erbil, is where more than 70,000 Christians fled after their villages came under attack by the Islamic State (ISIS) last June. The militants have since established a caliphate and have persecuted non-Sunnis in its territory, which extends across swaths of Iraq and Syria.

ISIS has forced more than 1.2 million Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims from their homes in Iraq, under threat of death or heavy fines if they do not convert.

In an interview with CNA shortly after his return from Iraq last August, Cardinal Filoni revealed that at that time, Francis had given $1 million as a personal contribution to help Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq who had been forced from their homes.

Of that sum, “75 percent of the money was delivered to Catholics, and the remaining 25 percent to the Yazidi community,” he said.

The cardinal also recounted that the Pope had entrusted him with letters for Kurdish president Masoud Barzani and Iraqi president Fuad Masum, presenting him “as his personal envoy and expressing his concern for what Christians and minorities in general are suffering, because they have been uprooted from their lands and persecuted.”

Pope Francis has spoken out numerous times assuring his closeness and solidarity to those affected by extremist violence in both the Middle East and Iraq.

In November, Francis visited a Salesian Oratory for refugee children during his three-day trip to Turkey, during which he which he told the youths that he shared in their sufferings, and prayed that God would offer them consolation.

The day before Christmas, the Pope wrote a letter to Christians in the Middle East recognizing that although their Christmas hymns would be “accompanied by tears,” the Child Jesus offers consolation.

“How much longer must the Middle East suffer from the lack of peace? We must not resign ourselves to conflicts as if change were not possible!” he said, also calling for an increase in efforts for unity and interreligious dialogue.

When the announcement of Cardinal Filoni’s first trip to Iraq was made in an Aug. 8 statement from the Vatican last year, it was noted that his presence among the refugees was a sign for them of the Pope’s “spiritual closeness to the people who suffer and to bring them the solidarity of the Church.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Vatican Appointments: Cardinal Versaldi to Congregation for Catholic Education

by Catholic News Agency’s Vatican Observer, Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • March 31, 2015

The facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, as seen from the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — Tuesday’s appointment of Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi as prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, together with Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki’s commission as a member of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, signals that Vatican financial reform continues and that curial reform will need time to become effective.

Cardinal Versaldi, 71, has served as president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See since 2011, and was transferred to the Congregation for Catholic Education March 31.

The prefecture has lost many of its competences since the Secretariat for the Economy, the Council for the Economy, and the Office for the General Auditor were established with the February 2014 motu proprio Fidelis Dispensator et Prudens.

Previously entrusted with oversight of the Vatican’s balance sheets, the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs had seen most of its competences taken over by the Secretariat for the Economy.

The secretariat issued a “Financial policy management” handbook and started training Vatican employees so that they could conform to the new standards for balance sheets.

On the other hand, the Council for the Economy took over the competences of financial address and programming entrusted to the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs.

A source who works in Vatican finances told CNA March 31 that “the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs should be suppressed in May.”

Cardinal Versaldi replaces Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, 75, who had served as prefect of the dicastery for 14 years and was appointed by St. John Paul II.

The appointment confirms that the Congregation for Catholic Education will remain a key body in the ranks of the Roman Curia, despite speculation about a new “super-Congregation” comprised of the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Pontifical Councils for Culture and Catholic Education – an option that is not seemingly being considered anymore.

On the other hand, Cardinal Versaldi’s promotion leaves the field open to carry forward the financial reform.

Another Vatican body going toward a financial reform is the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.

In October 2013, a reform of APSA’s statute assimilated the functions of the consultors to those of the members of an advisory board, the first step of a reform that is intended to make of APSA a sort of Vatican central bank.

APSA’s ordinary section was transferred to the Secretariat for the Economy in July, while the extraordinary section will be responsible of maintaining relationships with all the main central banks, in order to – a July 9 Holy See press office bulletin reads – “continue guaranteeing the Holy See’s liquidity and financial stability.”

However, the appointment of Cardinal Woelki as APSA member is meaningful, as the Archbishop of Cologne’s views are quite far from those of Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Muniche and Freising, who serves as Coordinator of the Council for the Economy and a member of the Council of Cardinals.

Cardinal Woelki comes as well from the wealthy and influential Church in Germany, and his appointment is likely intended to balance Cardinal Marx’ views.

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VATICAN NEWS

Blood of the martyrs sustains the Church, Pope reflects

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • April 1, 2015

Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica on Sept. 14, 2014. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis, in his General Audience address for Holy Week, said that the Christian martyrs of today, by the shedding of their blood, join with Christ in serving the Church through their witness.

“Even today,” the Pope said in off-the-cuff remarks, “there are many men and women, true martyrs, who offer their lives with Jesus to confess the faith only for this reason; it is a service. A service of the Christian witness to the point of shedding blood.”

In his Apr. 1 address, the pontiff recalled the “heroic witness” of Fr. Andrea Santoro, a Roman priest and missionary to Turkey, who was shot dead in the back moments before celebrating Mass on Feb. 5, 2006.

“This example, of a man of our times, and many others, sustain us in offering life as a gift of life for our brethren, in imitation of Jesus.”

The Pope has spoken out repeatedly on Christian martyrs of today. He has stressed that there are more persecuted Christians throughout the world now than there were in the early centuries of Christianity.

Addressing the crowds in St. Peter’s Square on the Wednesday of this year’s Holy Week, Pope Francis centered his catechesis on the upcoming Easter Triduum.

Observances officially begin Holy Thursday with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, commemorating the vigil of Christ’s Passion during which He offered his Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine, the first Eucharist. At this meal, Jesus also washed the feet of the Apostles.

“Jesus – as a servant – washes the feet of Simon Peter and the other eleven disciples” in a “prophetic gesture” which recalls the purpose of His life and Passion, which is in “service to God and his brethren,” Pope Francis said.

As Christians, he continued, we experience the cleansing of our sins by grace during our Baptism, as well as in the reception of the Eucharist, for which we must be properly disposed.

“If we approach Holy Communion without being sincerely willing to wash the feat of one another, we do not recognize the Lord’s Body,” he said.

Pope Francis went on to reflect on Good Friday, a day which culminates in Christ’s death on the Cross with the words: “It is accomplished.”

This word, he said, “signifies that the work of salvation is accomplished, that all of Scripture find their fulfillment in the love of Christ, the Lamb who was slain. Jesus, with his Sacrifice, has transformed the greatest iniquities into the greatest love.”

Pope Francis then spoke about Holy Saturday, during which “the Church contemplates the ‘rest’ of Christ in the tomb after the victorious battle of the Cross.”

This day is an opportune time to reflect on Mary, the Pope said. “On Holy Saturday, the Church, once again, identifies itself with Mary: all of its faith is gathered in her, the first and perfect disciple, the first and perfect believer.”

“In the darkness which surrounds creation, she alone remains to keep the flame of faith alive, hoping against every hope in the Resurrection of Jesus.”

Finally, during the Easter vigil, which begins late Saturday evening, Christ’s resurrection is celebrated.

“At times, the darkness of night seems to penetrate the soul,” the Pope said. “At times we think: ‘By now there is nothing more to be done,’ and the heart does not find the strength to love … but it is in this darkness that Christ ignites the fire of God’s Love: a blaze shatters the darkness and announces a new beginning.”

Like the women and disciples who went to the tomb on Easter Sunday, the Pope said, “as Christians, we are called to be sentinels of the morning, who know how to see the signs of the Resurrection.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Don’t flirt with spiritual worldliness, Pope cautions priests

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • April 2, 2015

Pope Francis celebrates Holy Thursday’s Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on April 2, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — During Holy Thursday’s Chrism Mass Pope Francis warned priests not to fall into a tiredness that leads to worldliness, and said that only resting in the Lord will enable them to continue when they feel worn out.

“There is also weariness of ourselves. This may be the most dangerous weariness of all,” the Pope said during his April 2 Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

“I like to call this kind of weariness ‘flirting with spiritual worldliness,’” he said, explaining that when priests are alone, “we realize how many areas of our life are steeped in this worldliness, so much so that we may feel that it can never be completely washed away.”

This is a dangerous tiredness to all into because while the other forms come from being exposed and going out to meet people, this tiredness is more “self-referential.”

“It is dissatisfaction with oneself, but not the dissatisfaction of someone who directly confronts himself and serenely acknowledges his sinfulness and his need for God’s mercy,” the Pope noted, explaining that this tiredness is like the “wanting yet not wanting” of those who gave up everything but still “yearn for the fleshpots of Egypt.”

“This can be a dangerous kind of weariness,” he said, and cautioned that “only love gives true rest. What is not loved becomes tiresome, and in time, brings about a harmful weariness.”

Pope Francis made his remarks on the priesthood during the morning’s Chrism Mass, which takes place in the Catholic Church each year on Holy Thursday and involves the blessing of oils used for the sacraments of Confirmation, Holy Orders and the Anointing of the Sick.

During the Mass all priests, bishops and cardinals present renewed the promises they made on the day of their ordination.

While Francis dedicated last year’s Chrism Mass to the joy of the priesthood and the priest’s call to anoint others with the “oil of gladness” they received at their ordination, this year he focused on how this joyful anointing can at times become tiring.

“The tiredness of priests! Do you know how often I think about this weariness which all of you experience? I think about it and I pray about it, often, especially when I am tired myself,” the Pope said.

He revealed that he prays for all priests as they minister to their flocks, including many who serve “in lonely and dangerous places,” and said that the tiredness of a priest “is like incense which silently rises up to heaven. Our weariness goes straight to the heart of the Father.”

Francis cautioned that when a priest feels “weighed down” by his pastoral responsibilities, the temptation can arise to try to rest “however we please,” and explained that rest itself is a gift from God which is often hard to do.

“For us priests, what happens in the lives of our people is not like a news bulletin: we know our people, we sense what is going on in their hearts,” he said, noting that priests, who share their people’s suffering, can get “exhausted, broken into a thousand pieces, moved and even consumed by the people.”

A priest’s ability to rest can say a lot about a his own capacity to trust and to realize that he himself is a sheep, Francis said, and asked the cardinals, bishops and priests present if they knew what it meant to rest.

“Do I know how to rest by accepting the love, gratitude and affection which I receive from God’s faithful people? Or, once my pastoral work is done, do I seek more refined relaxations, not those of the poor but those provided by a consumerist society?”

Francis also questioned whether the Holy Spirit was a truly a source of rest for them, or if his is merely considered the one who keeps them busy.

He encouraged priests to spend time in prayer, to seek wise advice from other priests, and to rest from “the demands I make on myself, from my self-seeking and from my self-absorption.”

Pope Francis then outlined more positive forms of weariness that can come up in the life of a priest, noting that one is what he called “the weariness of the crowd.”

To be among the people can be exhausting, Francis noted, and pointed to how Jesus himself was scarcely left with time to eat during his earthly ministry.

“But the Lord never tired of being with people. On the contrary, he seemed renewed by their presence. This weariness in the midst of activity is a grace on which all priests can draw. And how beautiful it is!”

This tiredness, he said, is “a good and healthy” and is a sign of the priest “who wears the smell of the sheep … but also smiles the smile of a father rejoicing in his children or grandchildren. It has nothing to do with those who wear expensive cologne and who look at others from afar and from above.”

If Jesus himself is the one truly guiding the flock, then priests “cannot be shepherds who are glum, plaintive or, even worse, bored. The smell of the sheep and the smile of a father,” Francis said.

The Pope then referred to “the weariness of enemies,” which he described as the tiredness that can come from fighting the devil and his minions, who work tirelessly to silence the word of God or distort it.

The devil, he said, “is far more astute than we are, and he is able to demolish in a moment what it took us years of patience to build up.”

Francis encouraged priests to never let their guard down, and to thwart the attacks of the devil without pulling up the good wheat “or presuming to protect like supermen what the Lord alone can protect.”

Pope Francis closed his reflections by drawing attention to how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet the night of the Last Supper.

Jesus, he said, “gets involved with us, becomes personally responsible for removing every stain, all that grimy, worldly smog which clings to us from the journey we make in his name,” and washes off the dirt our feet have accumulated by following him.

“Like battle wounds, the Lord kisses them and washes away the grime of our labors,” he said, explaining that to do this for others is something holy.

Francis closed his reflections by encouraging priests to go out to the peripheries to anoint others, and prayed that they “learn how to be weary, but weary in the best of ways!”

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis to inmates: ‘I too need to be washed by the Lord’

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • April 2, 2015

Pope Francis kisses an inmate’s foot at Rome’s Rebibbia New Complex Prison on April 2, 2015. (CTV)

Rome, Italy — Pope Francis on Holy Thursday told inmates of a Rome prison that God’s love is personal and endless, emphasizing that he too needs forgiveness and purification.

“Today I will wash the feet of 12 of you, but among these brothers and sisters are all of you, all of you, all — all that live here. You represent them,” the Pope told inmates of the Rebibbia New Complex Prison at the April 2 Mass of the Lord’s Supper.

However, Pope Francis stressed that “I too need to be washed by the Lord, so pray during this Mass, because the Lord will also wash my dirtiness, because I will become more of a slave than you, more of a slave in the service of the people, as Jesus was.”

The Pope celebrated the traditional Holy Thursday Mass commemorating the Last Supper at Rome’s Rebibbia New Complex Prison, located in the suburbs of Rome.

During the ceremony, which took place in the prison’s “Our Father” chapel, the Pope engaged in the traditional washing of feet. The ceremony commemorates the moment before the Last Supper when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.

Among the inmates who had their feet washed by Pope were six men incarcerated in the prison as well as six women detained in the nearby district prison for women.

In his off-the-cuff homily, Pope Francis reminded inmates that God’s love knows no bounds. He cited the gospel passage about how Jesus had loved his disciples “to the end.”

“Jesus loves us, but without limits, always, until the end,” the Pope said. “The love of God for us doesn’t have limits. There is always more, always more. He never tires of loving anyone.”

Francis emphasized that Jesus gave his life for each person by name, saying that “each one of us can say, ‘he gave his life for me.’ Each one … His love is like this! Personal!”

The Pope then explained that in the time of Jesus, it was the job of the slaves to wash the feet of the guests who came into the house. The Church asks priests to imitate Jesus in assuming the role of the slave by washing the feet of 12 people.

Pope Francis encouraged the congregation to remember “in our heart we need to have the certainty, we need to be sure that when that when the Lord washes our feet, he washes everything, he purifies us, he makes us feel his love again.”

Before calling up the 12 prisoners whose feet he would wash, the Pope emphasized to all present that “among these brothers and sisters are all of you, all of you, all, all that live here. You represent them.”

As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, it was common for Francis to celebrate Holy Thursday Mass in a prison or in any other places for the needy like hospices and slums.

Just after his election a little over two years ago, Pope Francis broke with the papal tradition of celebrating Holy Thursday Mass at the Basilica of Saint John in Lateran and visited a youth detention center instead.

The Mass was traditionally held in the papal basilica as an opportunity for the people of Rome to meet with Rome’s bishop, the Pope.

However, in 2013 Francis accepted an offer from Italian Justice Minister, Paola Severino, to celebrate the liturgy at the Casal del Marmo juvenile detention center, where he washed the feet of 12 young men and women, including a Muslim.

Last year for Holy Thursday Pope Francis visited the St. Mary of Providence Center, a 150-bed residential rehabilitation center for disabled people in Rome. He washed the feet of 12 residents.

The venue for his 2015 Holy Thursday Mass, Rome’s overcrowded Rebibbia New Complex Prison, has an official capacity of 1,200 inmates, but at present it houses some 1,750 people across 14 sections.

The prison has partnered with the Holy See-owned hospital Bambino Gesù in a call center work education program to help inmates reintegrate into society.

Francis’ predecessor Pope Benedict XVI visited the Rebibbia detention center December 18, 2011.

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VATICAN NEWS

True martyrs die in prayer – not with clenched fists, papal preacher says

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • April 3, 2015

Fr. Cantalamessa speaks during Good Friday’s liturgy at St. Peter’s Basilica on April 3, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — In his homily for the celebration of the Passion of Our Lord on Good Friday, papal preacher Father Raniero Cantalamessa called for a spirit of forgiveness amid rising persecutions in the world.

“True martyrs for Christ do not die with clenched fists but with their hands joined in prayer,” Fr. Cantelamessa said, according to the English translation published by Vatican Radio.

His remarks come as news of 147 Christians slaughtered by Somali jihadists at a University Campus in Kenya.

Remarking on this tragedy, Fr. Cantelamessa observed the fittingness of Jesus’ words to his disciples: “The hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (Jn 16:2).

He also cited the killings of twenty-one Coptic Christians in Libya at the hands of the Islamic State in February, observing how Christ gave them, in their final moments, “the strength to die whispering the name of Jesus.”

Fr. Cantelamessa made this reflection to the congregation gathered in Saint Peter’s Basilica, following the chanting in Latin of the John’s Gospel account of Christ’s Passion and Death. Pope Francis presided over the celebration, leading the faithful in the Veneration of the Cross, during which those present were invited to approach a wooden crucifix and kiss the feet of Jesus.

Beginning his reflection, he recounted the scene from John’s Gospel in which Pontius Pilate presents Jesus, scourged and wearing a crown of thorns, declaring to the people: “Ecce homo” – “Behold the man.”

“Jesus is in agony until the end of the world in every man or woman who is subjected to his same torments,” he said.

He recalled Christ’s words, that what is done to the hungry, naked, mistreated or in prison is done to Him.

“For once let us not think about social evils collectively: hunger, poverty, injustice, the exploitation of the weak,” saying these evils run the risk of becoming “abstractions — categories rather than persons.”

Rather, he said urged the faithful to consider the “suffering of individuals, people with names and specific identities; of the tortures that are decided upon in cold blood and voluntarily inflicted at this very moment by human beings on other human beings, even on babies.’

Fr. Cantelamessa decried the many instances of “Ecce homo” in the world, where men and women find themselves in a similar situation to Jesus standing before Pilate: “alone, hand-cuffed, tortured, at the mercy of rough soldiers full of hate who engage in every kind of physical and psychological cruelty and who enjoy watching people suffer.”

This phrase – Ecce homo – refers also to those who engage in torture, demonstrating what man is capable of.

He went on to say that while Christians are not the only group to suffer deadly violence, “we cannot ignore the fact that in many countries they are the most frequently intended victims.”

He cited a testimony of third-century Easter celebrations by Christians amid fierce persecutions, given by Bishop Dionysius of Alexandra, in which the places where they were attacked became places of celebration.

“This is the way Easter will be for many Christians this year, 2015 after Christ,” Fr. Cantelamessa said.

Turning to today, he reflected on a member of the secular press who denounced the indifference toward the mass killing of Christians, and what such indifference has led to in the past.

“All of us and all our institutions in the West risk being Pilates who wash our hands,” he said.

“However, we are not allowed to make any denunciations today,” he said. “We would be betraying the mystery we are celebrating. Jesus died, crying out, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).”

These words applied not only to the soldiers involved in Christ’s Crucifixion, who were ignorant, he said. “The divine grandeur of his forgiveness consists in the fact that it was also offered to his most relentless enemies.”

“Instead of accusing his adversaries, or of forgiving them and entrusting the task of vengeance to his heavenly Father, he defended them.”

Fr. Cantelamessa went on to stress that forgiveness entails a transformation to “a positive will to do good to them, even if it is only by means of a prayer to God on their behalf,” inspired by charity, and without the hope for divine retribution.

Against the challenge of some who would say that following Jesus means to surrender “oneself passively to defeat and to death”, he stressed: “The definitive victory of good over evil that will be manifested at the end of time has already come to pass, legally and de facto, on the cross of Christ.”

“Jesus overcame violence not by opposing it with a greater violence but by enduring it and exposing all its injustice and futility.”

Speaking on the recent rise of persecution, he observed “the problem of violence disturbs us, shocks us, and it has invented new and horrendous forms of cruelty and barbarism today.”

On the other hand, one could point out a seeming contradiction in a Christian’s horror of violence, taking into account that the Bible is rife with such stories, Fr. Cantelamessa said.

However, he stressed that it was not so in the beginning.

“God’s true intention is expressed by the commandment “You shall not kill” more than by the exceptions to that command in the law, which are concessions to the “hardness of heart” and to people’s practices.”

“Violence, along with sin, is unfortunately part of life, and the Old Testament, which reflects life and must be useful for life as it is, seeks through its legislation and the penalty of death at least to channel and curb violence so that it does not degenerate into personal discretion and people then tear each other apart.”

The violence found in the Old Testament finds its response on the Cross, he said. “On Calvary Christ delivers a definitive ‘no’ to violence, setting in opposition to it not just non-violence but, even more, forgiveness, meekness, and love.”

Any attempt at trying to link violence to God would result in a regression “to primitive and crude stages in history that have been surpassed by the religious and civilized conscience of humanity.”

Fr. Cantelamessa concluded his address by praying for “ our persecuted brothers and sisters in the faith and for all the Ecce Homo human beings who are on the face of the earth at this moment, Christian and non-Christian.”

He invoked in particular the intercession of Mary, at the foot of the Cross, calling her to “inspire the men and women of our time with thoughts of peace and mercy. And of forgiveness.”

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VATICAN NEWS

For Pope Francis, Good Friday shrouded in grief over persecuted Christians

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • April 4, 2015

Pope Francis at Good Friday liturgy held at St. Peter’s Basilica on April 3, 2015. (Bohumil Petrek/CNA)

Vatican City — Both Pope Francis’ Good Friday service at the Vatican and the Stations of the Cross held at the Colosseum later in the day zeroed-in on the plight of persecuted Christians around the world.

“In you, Divine Love, we see again today our persecuted brethren: beheaded, crucified, for their faith in you, beneath our eyes, or often with our complicit silence,” he said in a brief reflection April 3 following the Way of the Cross.

The Pope’s remarks come one day after the massacre of 147 students – mostly Christian, separated from their Muslim colleagues at the start of the attack – at Kenya’s Garissa University College at the hands of Somalian Al Shebaab gunmen.

Earlier today, Pope Francis condemned “this act of senseless brutality,” in a letter of condolence to the Kenyan Bishop’s conference, praying “for a change of heart among its perpetrators.”

According to the letter which was signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy Father called on authorities to increase their efforts in bringing an end to violence, promoting justice and peace.

Earlier in the day, during celebrations for the Passion of Our Lord in Saint Peter’s Basilica, papal preacher Father Raniero Cantalamessa also touched on the Kenya massacre, and other recent examples of Christian persecution.

Speaking also of the 21 Coptic Christians killed by ISIS last February, Fr. Cantalamessa said Christ gave them “the strength to die whispering the name of Jesus.”

Pope Francis has spoken out repeatedly on Christian martyrs of today. He has stressed that there are more persecuted Christians throughout the world now than there were in the early centuries of Christianity.

At the conclusion of the Way of the Cross – or Via Crucis – Pope Francis reflected on the suffering which Christ endured during His Passion.

“In the cruelty of your Passion, we see the cruelty in our heart, and of our actions,” he said.

“Oh Victorious Christ Crucified, your Way of the Cross is the synthesis of your life, the icon of your obedience to the will of the Father, and the realization of your infinite love for us, who are sinners.”

Pope Francis also spoke of those who, like Christ during his passion, feel abandoned, “disfigured by our negligence, and our indifference.”

The pontiff concluded his address by asking God to “teach us that the Cross is the Way toward the Resurrection,” and that “Good Friday is the path toward the Easter of Light.”

“Teach us that God never forgets any of his children, and never tires of forgiving us and embracing us with his infinite mercy. But also teach us to never be tired of asking for forgiveness, and believing in mercy, without limit, from the Father.”

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WORLD NEWS

Church in Cuba enters new era with thaw of U.S. diplomatic relations

by CNA/EWTN News • March 28, 2015

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Havana, Cuba. (James Emery via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Havana, Cuba — As the fifty year economic embargo and diplomatic isolation between the U.S. and Cuba comes to a close, the thaw of their historically icy relationship could have more than just social and cultural implications.

The renewed affiliation between the two countries, which began late last year, could have implications on how the Church operates in Cuba.

In fact, the first Catholic church since the 1959 Cuban revolution is set to be built in the small town of Sandino - a promising start to the renaissance of Catholic culture within the country.

“Let us hope that the future will bring peace and normality to the relations between the two nations,” Bishop Alfredo Petit Vergel, an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Christopher of Havana, told international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need March 25.

The Holy See aided in the restoration in Cuban-US diplomatic relations, playing a key role behind the prisoner exchange between the two countries last December with hopes that the restored relationship will improve human rights and religious freedom within Cuba. Some US politicians and commentators have argued that the move is a “victory for oppression.”

Bishop Petit responded that arguing that the lifting of the embargo gives a victory to a government that denies fundamental rights to its people “is a poor consideration of the Cuban reality as a whole.”

“Let us wait for future events to see who is right,” he advised.

Under Fidel Castro, who came to power in 1959, only two years before Bishop Petit was ordained a priest, the Church was heavily restricted, with thousands of priests jailed or exiled. Although some measures of freedom have been allowed since then, the Church in Cuba is still monitored.

Bishop Petit said that “Among other obstacles, there has been the lack of priests and pastoral workers. The government has always controlled the number of priests in the country — and it is never enough to do the pastoral work. That number has always been capped at 400 in a country of 11 million people.”

“The other difficulty for the Church has been gaining access to the media,” he added, while also noting that the Cuban government does not currently have oversight or control over the Church’s initiatives in the country.

The greatest need of the Church in Cuba is prayers, Bishop Petit reflected.

“Then, we must find ways to address the lack of priests and pastoral workers. Also, there is a need for economic support so that we can supply medicines and food to the very poorest people and we need the means to fulfill all our pastoral duties and attend to the spiritual needs of the faithful.”

He reflected that “the members of the Catholic Church in Cuba, as in every other place in the world, are part of the Cuban people,” saying the presence of the Church in Cuba brings a transcendent and Christian dimension to everyday life.

“The Catholic Church does not look for special privileges in Cuban society,” Bishop Petit concluded.

“The Catholic Church in Cuba, as in every other country of the world, looks only for the space to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

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WORLD NEWS

Pope’s delegation offers comfort, communion to Iraqi refugees

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • March 28, 2015

A young child at the Sharia Refugee Camp in Dohuk, Iraq. (Daniel Ibanez)

Erbil, Iraq — Hoping to awaken the world conscience on Iraq, a Pontifical delegation traveled to Erbil and Dohuk to foster local communion and shed light on the dramatic plight of Christians in the country.

The delegation also offered an icon of Our Lady Undoer of Knots, blessed by Pope Francis, to the local bishops.

“Our goal is to foster communion among Caritas and the other charitable agencies operating in Iraq to assist internally displaced persons, so that any intervention will be even more effective than it has been until now,” said Msgr. Segundo Tejado Munoz, under-secretary of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum and head of the delegation.

He told CNA that while the commitment of international charities until now “has been huge and of great impact,” there are ways to make it even more effective.

CNA was part of the delegation that traveled to Iraq March 26-29, visiting refugee camps in Erbil and Dohuk, in the territory of the Iraqi Kurdistan. The delegation included a representative from the Congregation for Eastern Churches, the general director of Caritas Internationalis, and representatives of some of the Catholic charities active in the territory.

With ISIS forces beginning a major offensive in June 2014, more than 2.5 million refugees – many of them Christian – fled from Mosul and the Nineveh Plan to Erbil and other cities in the Kurdish area, finding protection in Peshmerga-controlled lands.

There are now about 25 camps in the area housing internally displaced persons, and a house renting plan has been put into action.

Archbishop Barshar Warda of Erbil explained how the renting plan has developed.

“Around Erbil, there were houses that were not inhabited, and we managed to get 560 of these houses for rent for internally displaced persons,” he told CNA.

Rentals generally cost $500-1000 per month, but usually “two or three families can live in those apartments, and so they can manage the expense,” he said.

He added that the recovery plan for internally displaced persons was based on three priorities: shelter, education and health.

Churches in Erbil and Dohuk are now barely capable of sustaining Mass attendance, which multiplied with the arrival of massive refugee numbers.

Almost 1,000 young boys and girls took part in an early Palm Sunday celebration on March 28, concluding by throwing their caps into the air.

Archbishop Warda stressed that “for Easter, I want to underscore that any help here will make a difference in the life of the refugees – of the Christian refugees and of all the refugees here. The longer they are coming to stay, the more they are desperate.”

In Erbil, the Al Amal Hope Center hosts about 170 families in an unfinished building. Each family receives one or two rooms, and they can cook and wash their clothes in common areas.

One refugee, Farouq, lived in Mosul but was in Paris visiting his son when the violence arose in Iraq.

“I could remain there with him, and escape any danger. But I had a family in Iraq,” he said. So, he returned, fleeing with his wife and younger daughter to Erbil.

Another refugee, Ozman, was a school principal in Mosul. Now, he lives in the informal settlement of Sharia, not far from Dohuk, with his wife and his five children.

“Before the sudden arrival of the militants of the ISIS, we used to live in peace and harmony with Muslims,” he explained, adding that they feel betrayed by the militants.

The situation of internally displaced persons is critical. Many have been living in camps for nine months now, with no expectation of returning to their home towns.

The people do their best as they adjust to their new life for the foreseeable future. One settlement is surrounded by a fruit and vegetable market. Staff members of Caritas and other charities organize activities for children and offer informal classes.

Still, conditions are far from “normal,” and the people living in the camps miss their home towns.

Rabban Al-Qas, a refugee in Dohuk, told CNA that “the area is now safe, because we fostered a culture of encounter and harmony. But we need a new education, so that these things will never happen again.”

The Pontifical delegation gave the re-production of the icon depicting Our Lady Undoer of Knots to Archbishop Warda and Bishop Al-Qas. The icon was blessed by Pope Francis at the end of March 25 general audience.

“We explained Pope Francis that we were going to Iraq, and he was very pleased with that,” Msgr. Munoz said.

Pope Francis has repeatedly spoken about the situation in Iraq, offering prayers of solidarity and words of comfort, along with calls for dialogue and peace.

As a result of the Pope’s continual interest in the situation in Iraq, several more Papal delegations will travel to the country in the coming days.

Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, who had been appointed Papal envoy to Iraq last August, will spend Holy Week in Iraq.

Shortly after him, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, will visit. A trip by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for the Interreligious Dialogue, is also expected in the coming weeks.

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A ‘wee movie with a big message’ for the people of Scotland

by CNA/EWTN News • March 29, 2015

(YouTube)

Edinburgh, Scotland — Scottish Archbishop Leo Cushley of St. Andrews & Edinburgh is launching a new promo film across social media as he unveils his plans for the future of the Catholic Church in his part of Scotland.

“It’s a wee movie with a big message – bringing the joy of the Gospel to a contemporary Scottish society in desperate need of the healing love of Jesus Christ,” Archbishop Cushley said March 29.

The plans are set out in a Pastoral Letter entitled We Have Found the Messiah, which is being launched in all churches in the archdiocese on Palm Sunday.

“My big message is that the renewal and, yes, growth of the Catholic Church in our part of Scotland is very possible, but only if we create vibrant Christian communities gathered closely around Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist – that’s where Christ is most truly and powerfully present in our contemporary world,” the archbishop explained.

The Archdiocese of St Andrews was rocked by scandal in 2013 when Cardinal Keith P. O’Brien resigned after admitting to making homosexual approaches to other priests in the 1980s. Following his resignation, Pope Francis personally selected Leo Cushley – then a senior Vatican diplomat – to take over as archbishop.

Despite inheriting a reduced number of priests and practicing Catholics, Archbishop Cushley says that continued decline is far from inevitable.

“We must set about rebuilding God’s household with hope and joy. We can use this time as an opportunity for spiritual renewal and for refocusing our energies on a new evangelisation of our world.”

As well as the promo film, Archbishop Cushley’s vision is also set out in a pocket-sized booklet to be distributed to every person attending Palm Sunday Mass. He then intends to set off on a tour of 31 venues across the archdiocese in order to discuss his plans with both local priests and parishioners.

“We have to employ new ways – and rediscover some old ways – of communicating the timeless and beautiful proposition of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. If that means using social media, printed booklets and public meetings then great, let’s do it.”

A key part of Archbishop Cushley’s plan is to undertake a “realistic assessment” of the resources presently available to the Church at a local level, including numbers of clergy, churches and parish halls. While that process may lead to the eventual merging of some parishes, Archbishop Cushley was quick to stress that no conclusions have yet been reached.

“Contrary to speculation, no decisions have been taken and no decisions will be taken until we’ve had a fully inclusive discussion across the Archdiocese as to the way forward. I want to hear from everybody who has something to say. Timescale? Well, it will take the time it will take.”

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With #BringBackOurGirls no longer trending, Nigerians aghast at ‘inaction’ from donors

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • March 30, 2015

A parish destroyed by Boko Haram during its Oct. 29, 2014 seizure of Mubi, in Nigeria’s Adamawa state. (Diocese of Maiduguri)

Abuja, Nigeria — Almost a year after the terror group Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian school girls, humanitarian workers are fighting what they call global inaction in the face of the humanitarian crisis.

Most of the girls abducted from Chibok have not been rescued, though some have escaped on their own. “That sends a strong message to us – not just to Nigerians, but to the human race – that 200 and something girls could be abducted somewhere and 343 days after they are not back. That is a big problem we have to look into,” said Bukky Shonibare, a Nigerian humanitarian worker who was strategic coordinator of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

That movement tried to raise awareness about the abducted girls in the aftermath of their capture by Boko Haram last April 15. Most of the girls still have not been rescued; 57 have successfully escaped on their own, Shonibare said.

Shonibare spoke at the Hudson Institute Mar. 23 about Boko Haram and the humanitarian crisis in Nigeria. She was joined by Nigerian-born human rights lawyer Emanuel Ogebe, who also addressed the Islamist terror group’s recent pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State.

Boko Haram, the name meaning “book-education is forbidden,” has conducted a spree of violent attacks and kidnappings in West Africa, escalating in number and degree since 2009. Their attacks have killed more than 15,500 since 2012.

Any response to the abductions must be “holistic,” Shonibare insisted, because girls kidnapped by the terror group have returned pregnant or infected with HIV.

Some have even developed a “Stockholm Syndrome,” or allegiance to their captors, which is “fearful for us, because these people have the tendency to perpetrate the same evil that their abductors perpetrate,” Shonibare said. In a gruesome example, one girl who returned from captivity proceeded to murder her own mother.

Both Shonibare and Ogebe are frustrated with what they see as global inaction on the crisis. Ogebe described his disillusion on a recent trip to the United States with some of the escaped school girls, in a “rude awakening.”

In the U.S., he said, “we’ve not gotten any institutional funding from any major donors. It’s all been a completely grassroots affair.”

One big donor told him he couldn’t contribute to a fund for the girls because the kidnapping was so long ago. “I’m thinking that doesn’t change the fact that they [the girls] have needs. They’re here now,” Ogebe told CNA in a later interview.

One girl who received a scholarship to attend college in the U.S. was denied a visa by the U.S. embassy.

“That I don’t get, because she was in the same class with all these other girls, she was abducted with all these other girls,” Ogebe told CNA. She is now “back in Nigeria at risk, because the U.S. embassy is applying a different set of rules to one girl.”

He even reached out to contacts at the White House to possibly arrange a visit for the girls, especially since Michelle Obama had participated in the social media campaign for the girls.

“Nothing. We get nothing,” Ogebe said dejectedly.

As for large charity organizations in the U.S., “none of them is doing anything in Nigeria,” he said, which is baffling considering Nigeria has the largest persecuted Christian population in the world. Catholics are doing the most work of any Christian charity groups.

“When it comes to humanitarian work, Catholics are pretty much front-line there in doing good,” he added.

Nigeria has been racked with violence resulting in an estimated 3.2 million refugees or internally displaced persons. This particular crisis is a “ticking time bomb,” Shonibare said from her experience working with internally displaced persons as coordinator of Adopt-A-Camp.

Young men who are not in school or working are ripe for recruitment to violence. These boys want to be educated, she insisted, but not “if going to school is synonymous to being abducted or being killed. That is what we are going through in Nigeria.”

“We want something to be done,” she said, tearing up.

To compound matters, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State earlier this month, something Ogebe called one of the “worst marriages of terrorism,” adding that it could pose problems throughout Africa.

“Boko Haram killed in the first week of January the same number of people that it took ISIS six months to kill last year. So if they begin to share weapons and tactics, we’re looking at a very significant uptick in the bloodflows,” Ogebe said at the Hudson Institute.

The Nigerian terror group has a larger bodycount than Islamic State, yet the latter is more “tech-savvy,” he explained. That could change if their merger is successful.

And it could well have a continent-wide effect, he insisted. Boko Haram has expanded its operations into surrounding countries in West Africa, and Islamic State is active in North Africa.

Other terror groups – al-Shabaab in East Africa and MUJAO in Northwest Africa — could conceivably join the new union down the road as the start of a movement that could engulf the continent, he warned.

The U.S. State Department hasn’t helped matters by fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the conflict, he added.

“They tend to see what is happening in Africa through the lens of ‘oh, this is poverty-induced,’” he said, “and that is wrong. This is ideologically-driven, not a function of poverty.”

The U.S. also “misled Nigeria on how to deal with this situation,” he continued, because they initially “refused to recognize it as terrorism.”

However, the State Department did not put Boko Haram as a group on the official terror list until 2013 for multiple reasons, said Dr. Maryann Cusimano Love, a professor of international relations at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

First, the Nigerian government did not want an official terror designation given so as not to draw additional attention and resources to Boko Haram from sympathizers, she said. “Also, the bureaucratic process takes time,” she added.

The Nigerian conflict is complex and not purely ideological or economic, she explained.

“There has been violence in northern Nigeria long before Boko Haram, and that violence has economic and political roots and also breaks along religious and tribal lines,” she told CNA, adding that the country’s Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Abuja has re-affirmed this.

“While religion is often used to justify the violence, Boko Haram also began in opposition and outrage at the corruption and mismanagement of the Nigerian government, a view shared by many Nigerians who do not favor Boko Haram,” she added.

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In open letter, 500 British priests ask Synod to stand firm on Church teaching

by CNA/EWTN News • March 30, 2015

Session of the Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican on Oct. 6, 2014. (Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Westminster, England — In an unusual move, nearly 500 British priests signed an open letter urging the fathers of the upcoming Synod on the Family to issue a “clear and firm” proclamation of Church teaching on marriage and sexuality.

The letter was published March 24 by the Catholic Herald and has already caused a stir in the local Church and the Catholic blogosphere.

The priests, sensing confusion among the laity after last year’s synod, said they wished to “re-state our unwavering fidelity to the traditional doctrines regarding marriage and the true meaning of human sexuality, founded on the Word of God and taught by the Church’s Magisterium for two millennia.”

The priests were addressing the Fathers of the upcoming Synod on the Family, which will take place in October of this year. Much of the media coverage of the event focused on questions of morality regarding divorce and homosexuality.

Signatories of the letter called for the Synod Fathers to stand firm in reiterating Church teaching despite calls from some who are pushing against it.

Two of the signatories, who spoke to the Catholic Herald about the letter, said there “has been a certain amount of pressure not to sign the letter and indeed a degree of intimidation from some senior Churchmen.”

In a blog for the Catholic Herald the day following the letter’s publication, Father Alexander Lucie-Smith defended his signature on the letter. He noted that the last time British Catholics wrote an open letter published in the media, it was to express their dissent from the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which upheld the Church’s teaching on birth control.

But this new letter differs in that it is not one of dissent – rather, it is in full support of Church teaching, Father Lucie-Smith wrote.

“(N)early five hundred British priests (of which I am one) writing in support of traditional Church teaching, in obedience to the Bishops who asked us to make our views known, and indeed in obedience to the Pope, who has asked people to speak freely, indeed boldly,” he said. “That is what the word ‘parrhesia’, of which the Pope is quite fond, means.”

Pope Francis has encouraged open debate throughout the synod process. At the beginning of the preliminary Synod on the Family last year, he told participants to speak openly. In his closing remarks to the bishops at the synod last year, he encouraged the bishops to live in the tension of disagreement, saying that “personally I would be very worried and saddened if it were not for these temptations and these animated discussions; this movement of the spirits, as St Ignatius called it (Spiritual Exercises, 6), if all were in a state of agreement, or silent in a false and quietist peace.”

However, in his Wednesday general audience last week, the day after the letter was published, Pope Francis asked for a renewal of prayer for the synod, and not more “chatter.”

“I ask you, please, to not neglect your prayer. All of us – the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, priests, religious, lay faithful – we are all called to pray for the synod. There is need of this, not of chatter!” Pope Francis said March 25.

That same day, English Cardinal Vincent Nichols said in a statement published in the Catholic Herald that the media was not the place for priests to have this discussion.

“The pastoral experience and concern of all priests in these matters are of great importance and are welcomed by the Bishops. Pope Francis has asked for a period of spiritual discernment,” Cardinal Nichols said. “This dialogue, between a priest and his bishop, is not best conducted through the press.”

But many signatories who wrote blogs shortly after the publication of the letter said they felt they were doing their duty as priests in signing the document, and that they did so for pastoral and not political reasons.

“We are supposed (to) preach and teach and uphold the Catholic faith but not, according to (Cardinal Nichols), in the media, presumably he means the public forum … and yet Cardinals, including himself, do so,” said Father Ray Blake, a signer of the letter, in his blog.

“Does His Eminence really expect clergy to remain silent about the very thing many Catholics are deeply concerned about?”

Damian Thompson, an associated editor with the British news site The Spectator, suggested that Cardinal Nichols’ efforts to dissuade priests from speaking up “will backfire.” He also noted the wide range of signatories – priests that wouldn’t be classified as conservatives, much less as traditionalists.

As a moral theologian and as a pastor, Father Lucie-Smith said he did not hesitate to sign the letter, which asks “that doctrine and practice remain firmly and inseparably in harmony.”

Another signatory who also asked to remain anonymous while speaking to the Catholic Herald said that the issue of communion for divorced and remarried Catholics was a matter of pastoral concern and fidelity to the Gospel.”

“Mercy requires both love and truth. There’s a lot at stake. Not all priests would be comfortable expressing themselves in an open letter, but I’d be very worried if there were priests who disagreed with the sentiments it contains,” he told the Catholic Herald.

The upcoming Ordinary Synod on the family is set to take place Oct. 4-25, with the theme “Jesus Christ reveals the mystery and vocation of the family.” The conclusions of the gathering will be used by Pope Francis to draft his first Post-Synodal Exhortation, which can be expected in 2016.

The full text of the open letter as well as the names of the signatories can be found at: catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/03/24/nearly-500-priests-in-england-and-wales-urge-synod-to-stand-firm-on-communion-for-the-remarried/

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WORLD NEWS

More than 100,000 ask Mexican Supreme Court to affirm right to life

by CNA/EWTN News • March 31, 2015

Zocalo de Mexico. (Saúl Trabanca via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Mexico City, Mexico — More than 120,000 people have signed a petition asking the Mexican Supreme Judicial Court of the Nation to reaffirm that “abortion is not a right.”

The petition campaign was sparked by a lawsuit over the constitutionality of the Mexican state of Tlaxcala’s abortion reform law which could open the door to abortion in the whole country.

The pro-life organization CitizenGo, which launched the petition drive, will send the signatures to Luis Maria Aguilar Morales, president of the Mexican Supreme Court; Supreme Court Associate Justice José Fernando Franco González Salas who is presenting the case for the law’s unconstitutionality, and Enrique Peña Nieto, President of Mexico. CNN reported that in 2011, González Salas unsuccessfully petitioned the court to overturn pro-life laws in the Mexican states of Baja California and San Luis Potosi.

A letter sent along with the signatures points out that the case on Mexican Supreme Court’s schedule will be dealing with the unconstitutionality of the abortion laws in the state of Tlaxcala and that their ruling would be obligatory for all the country’s judges.

“Declaring the law unconstitutional would entail a grave violation of the first of all rights, the right to life and would be contrary to international treaties,” CitizenGo warned.

The petition acknowledged that the court is “debating the exceptions in the penal code for abortion in the state of Tlaxcala.”

“Nevertheless, if eight associate judges vote to declare Tlaxcala’s law unconstitutional, the immediate effect would be to invalidate Tlaxcala’s abortion reform law, and the secondary effect would be that the court’s ruling would be obligatory for all the judges in the country. As a result, in every state any person could have an abortion by means of appealing for constitutional judicial relief from the penal code.”

As a result, “(t)he judges would be obliged to grant judicial relief, and nothing would protect the unborn child.”

The more than 120,000 signers of the petition reminded the court that “the right to life from conception is recognized in the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights (ICCPR) of which Mexico is a signatory.”

Additionally, the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child establishes the child’s right to protection – in the ninth paragraph of the preamble, it is established that every minor holds the right to have his life protected, including before birth. In Article 6, paragraph 1, it says that every child intrinsically has the right to life.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child further emphasizes that “the unborn child from the moment he is conceived must come under the protection of the law. If someone attacks a pregnant woman and she loses the child, the aggressor is punishable for the injuries to the woman and the death of the baby.”

Based on these legal precedents, the signers of the Mexican petition called on the court to affirm the right to life as it makes its decision in the Tlaxcala case.

“Respect our legal tradition, our constitutional accords, the international treaties that Mexico has signed and our principles and values as a nation,” they demanded, emphasizing that “the right to abortion does not exist.”

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WORLD NEWS

Three weeks as an Islamic State captive – one woman tells her story

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • March 31, 2015

A woman walks on the roof of Ibn Tulum Mosque. (Hector de Pereda via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

Erbil, Iraq — The woman was just 19 years old when she was captured by militants from the Islamic State. Caring for her young son and pregnant with her second child, she was separated from her husband and told that she would be forced to marry a member of ISIS.

Her harrowing story is not unique, but the fact that she escaped places her in the minority of those who face the similar terror of life as an ISIS captive.

The woman’s name, and that of the village where she is staying with her two children, cannot be revealed for security reasons. CNA met her during a trip to Iraq with a papal delegation led by the Pontifical Council Cor Unum March 26-29.

On the wooden door of the room where the woman speaks with the pontifical delegation, a phrase in English is embossed: “God is Lord.” The woman holds her son in the hands, while her mother-in-law is taking care of the younger child, who is now four months. Her brother-in-law sits on her right.

She sometimes takes a deep breath, and sometimes holds back her tears, as if she is living once more what happened. But she agreed to tell her story, because she wants everyone to know what happened.

In early August, Islamic State forces attacked Mahmur camp, a U.N.-run refugee camp home to some 12,000 Turkish refugees who fled in the early 1990s during the height of Turkey’s conflict with Kurdish separatists. Mahmur is located in the vicinity of Erbil, and the residents there had established a school system and local government.

The attack was one of several similar military attacks in the region, part of ISIS’ major Northern Iraq offensive in the summer of 2014.

The woman said that she was taken by Islamic State militants on Aug. 5.

“As we had been aware that the ISIS forces were coming, we managed to escape,” the woman told CNA. “But those who had no opportunity to use a car moved more slowly, remained behind, and were then captured by the ISIS forces.”

She and her family were among some 3,100 people captured by the Islamic State. Of them, approximately 600 managed to escape while about 2,500 remained in the hands of Islamic State forces.

The woman recounted that “they divided into groups of male and female.”

“I was thus separated from my husband, and I have had no news of him ever since.”

After three days, Islamic State militants selected the married women and brought them into separate houses, where they stayed alone under the control of guards.

“After a couple of weeks of captivity, I was told by one of the guards that if I did not marry one of the ISIS members, they would have separate me from my child,” the woman recounted. “That very night I managed to escape.”

During the night of Aug. 28, the three guards watching her fell asleep, and she took advantage of the situation to get out of the house.

“I walked for four hours with my child, and myself pregnant. Then I was helped by an Arab family, who took me to the Peshmerga checkpoint, and I was then able to get to a refugee camp,” she said.

She then rejoined her brother-in-law and mother-in-law, who now all live together in the Dohuk governorate.

The woman’s brother-in-law told CNA: “We will always be grateful to the Peshmerga forces for helping us, but now we cannot trust anyone else. We would only trust an international force, sent to Iraq to end the war and bring finally peace.”

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WORLD NEWS

Christians returning to Homs, Syria, even though Islamic State looms

by Father Andrzej Halemba (Aid to the Church in Need) • April 1, 2015

The remains of St. Mary’s Syrian Orthodox parish in Homs, Syria. (Syrian Orthodox Diocese of Homs and Aid to the Church in Need)

Homs, Syria — In the wake of the Syrian regime’s taking full control of the ancient Christian city of Homs almost a year ago, a measure of normality has returned for local residents – including a remnant of the Christian population.

The long-time home of Sunnis, Alawites, and Christians living in relative harmony, the city suffered some of the worst fighting of Syria’s now five year-old civil war that has left the major industrial center in ruins.

The Christians of Homs – where the Syrian uprising got its major start in 2011 – have spent recent months with a small measure of cautious hope for a more stable future. That delicate trend is being challenged as ISIS has begun making its way into Homs Province in an apparent move to expand its territory by grabbing land controlled by the Syrian regime.

When Christians returned to the city last year, one of their priorities was to honor Dutch Jesuit Father Frans van der Lugt, who was murdered by a masked gunman in April 2014. The priest had stayed behind to care for Christians as well as Muslims trapped in the Old City by heavy fighting between the regime and the opposition.

Eleven churches in the Old City of Homs were badly damaged or destroyed during nearly three years of fighting. Most no longer have windows; copulas were perforated by shells; pews were burned or ripped out; and many icons were disfigured.

According to Jesuit Father Ziad Hilal, the situation in Homs has improved, even though violence erupts periodically and many people continue to live in fear. Earlier this year, a car bomb in the city center killed more than a dozen people, most of them students. In some parts of the city, rebels continue to challenge government troops.

Fewer than half of city’s hospitals are functioning, and inflation has boosted the cost of living beyond many people’s reach. What’s more, criminal gangs have taken to kidnapping for ransom, even targeting the poor. A number of Catholics are still missing.

However, despite the dangers, people have returned to their homes and started rebuilding houses, shops and churches; some offices have resumed functioning and a university has reopened its doors.

Father Hilal reported that late last year 1,700 Christians returned to their only partially-damaged homes, many of them having to rely on the provision of warm meals and other humanitarian supplies. Fuel and electricity are still in short supply.

It is estimated that some 40,000 Christians belonging to various Churches live in Homs today. One of their main centers of support is the Church of Our Saviour, where all are welcome. More than 5,000 parishioners take part in the Sunday celebrations, and some 600 children participate in religious instructions every week.

Christian life in Homs is stirring again, said Father Hilal.

The biggest visceral loss for local Christians remains the death of Father van der Lugt, whom many consider to have been a holy man.

His courage in staying and supporting the remaining Christians in Homs during the city’s siege is an example to all those longing for peace in Syria. His tomb in the Jesuit headquarters of Homs is destined to become a shrine and place of pilgrimage.

Father Halemba, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission in Syria, is in charge of the Middle East desk for Aid to the Church in Need.

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WORLD NEWS

In Ukraine, Churches confront fearsome suffering

by Reinhard Backes (Aid to the Church in Need) • April 2, 2015

Military chaplaincy in eastern Ukraine, 2015. (Aid to the Church in Need)

Kyiv, Ukraine — Bishop Bronislaw Bernacki of Odessa-Simferopol was stunned by the Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine.

“No one expected that another war would be carried out on European soil in this day and age,” the Roman Catholic prelate told international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need in March.

The annexation has literally ripped apart his diocese, which was only established in 2002. Bishop Bernacki is taking care of those Catholics living in that part of the diocese that still belongs to Ukraine, the region of Odesa on the Black Sea. Auxiliary Bishop Jacek Pyl has remained in Simferopol on the Crimean Peninsula and takes care of the faithful there.

The effects of the war are palpable in Zaporizhia, not far from the combat zone in eastern Ukraine, reports Auxiliary Bishop Jan Sobilo of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kharkiv-Zaporizhia. He reported that the number of refugees from the contested region around Luhansk and Donetsk is constantly growing. In Zaporizhia alone the number has risen to 75,000 people.

The Church operates a soup kitchen set up by the Albertine Order that serves refugees on a daily basis. Women with children receive additional aid once a week; but men are left empty-handed, simply because there is nothing more to distribute at the present time.

Suffering and hardship are also the lot of the faithful shepherded by Greek-Catholic Bishop Jaroslav Pryriz of the Eparchy of Sambir-Drohobyc, in western Ukraine. Twenty priests provide pastoral care of soldiers, mostly young men: volunteers as well as Ukrainian conscripts.

The bishop told Aid to the Church in Need that his priests “rotate every 45 days, because no one can stand it there any longer. Some who return never want to go back again because the psychological strain is just enormous. However, they go back because they want to take care of the faithful.”

“No matter whether they are Catholics, Orthodox, or members of other faiths, they are all are happy when a priest is just simply there for them, even though some have never even heard of God,” Bishop Pryriz added.

The bishop also reported on the situation in Kyiv: “Wounded soldiers from the east are being cared for at a temporary military hospital set up in the Greek-Catholic cathedral in Kyiv. Never before have I seen so much suffering, sorrow and tragedy. I am 53 years-old and have never experienced war, but what I am seeing now – people without hands, without legs, without eyes, ears – will haunt me forever.”

The prelate continued: “Many soldiers from our diocese have been killed. Either they have simply disappeared or no one knows anything about their whereabouts. We have been told that a number of them have been burned to death. Or they return in coffins. You cannot imagine it. There is so much sorrow over sons, fathers, husbands!”

Bishop Bernacki spoke for all his brother bishops and priests, saying, “We need peace and an end to the bloodshed. Christians in the East and West are celebrating Lent. I would like to invite all to pray for peace, because we can only overcome evil with good.”

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)

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WORLD NEWS

What Holy Week looks like in a remote Indian diocese

by Carl Bunderson (CNA/EWTN News) • April 3, 2015

In Kulagaon village for Holy Week Services, Bishop George and others push a car through the muddy roads after rain storm on April 1, 2015. (Catholic Diocese of Miao, India)

Miao, India — In the Diocese of Miao, located in India’s northeasternmost state of Arunachal Pradesh, Bishop George Pallipparambil is not staying quietly in his cathedral for Holy Week, but is rather holding services across the diocese in an effort to better serve his people.

“What we’re trying to do is to reach to as many places as possible. I’m not confining myself to the main church in Miao,” the bishop told CNA April 1. “I’ll be there only for the Easter Sunday Mass.”

“I finished today in one place, tomorrow I’ll be in a big community called Khonsa, and for Good Friday I’ll be in another district headquarters. For the [Easter] Vigil I’ll be in another place, and then for Sunday Mass I’ll be in Miao.”

The Miao diocese covers a vast area of nearly 17,000 square miles, and it is home to the easternmost portions of the Himalayas.

The terrain ranges “from the very low plains to the high snow-covered Himalayan peaks,” Bishop Pallipparambil explained. “Some of the biggest rivers in the world are in this region, coming down from the Himalayas flowing down to the plains.”

Mountainous terrain coupled with a lack of infrastructure explains why the diocese held its Chrism Mass entirely outside of Holy Week, on March 26.

The Chrism Mass is traditionally said on the morning of Holy Thursday, and it gathers all the priests of a diocese together with their bishop to emphasize their common ministry. The bishop blesses three kinds of oil – chrism, oil of the catechumens, and oil of the sick – which are distributed to the priests and used in sacramental anointings throughout the following year.

However, the Diocese of Miao has had to change this practice to adapt to its needs. The diocese was established in 2005, and Bishop Pallipparambil is its first ordinary.

“The first year we had [Chrism Mass] on Tuesday of Holy Week, and we found many of the priests could not reach back to their own places for Holy Thursday,” he explained. “So, we started in the last eight years to have the Chrism Mass in the previous week.”

Bishop Pallipparambil himself was beset by travel difficulties this week: heavy rains had made the road to Kulagaon village extremely muddy, and on his way to Holy Week services there, he had to get out and push his jeep along with passersby.

Another adaptation: the Chrism Mass last Thursday was not held in the cathedral at Miao, but rather in Minthong parish in the Longding district.

“It is one of the decisions we made when the diocese was created,” Bishop Pallipparambil said.

He explained that “having the Chrism Mass in the cathedral, at least for me, didn’t make sense,” because each year, the same people would attend and carry the holy oils back to the distant villages and parishes, where the local people “just don’t know what it is.”

“(W)hereas if the Chrism Mass is held in their place, they come to know because it is always done in their language, and so they know what it is. And when it’s time to have an anointing, whether it be for baptism or confirmation or another occasion, they know the sacredness of this oil.”

He added that “it brings all the priests and religious to pray together with the people the whole day before the Mass, so that also has a positive catechetical influence.”

This year, the Chrism Mass was the occasion for Bishop Pallipparambil to present the first translation of the entire New Testament into the Wancho language.

At the bishop’s request, Father TJ Francis spent three years working with Wancho leaders in preparing the translation, which will serve the 60,000 Wancho people who live in the Longding and Tirap districts.

Fr. Francis’ work “must inspire many of us to take up a similar responsibility to translate the Message of the Gospel to the language of the people we serve,” Bishop Pallipparambil said at the Mass. The Miao diocese is home to more than 100 distinct tribes, many of which have their own language.

Bishop Pallipparambil told CNA that the Wancho, of whom 95 percent are Christian, now have printed in their own language only the Bible and a few prayer and hymn books.

As the language had no written form, it also lacked its own script, the bishop noted, and Fr. Francis wrote the works with Latin letters. The priest has also produced a Wancho grammar.

Despite lacking access to written Scripture until now, many of the Wancho have converted “just by hearing and seeing” the Gospel.

“Some of their children in the ‘80s and ‘90s travelled outside their area and attended Christian schools, and when they got knowledge of Christianity they helped by teaching Bible in their own language,” he explained. The diocese also hold four to five-day Bible camps in which biblical stories and the catechism are explained.

Asked if the diocese hopes that the Old Testament will now be translated into Wancho, Bishop Pallipparambil affirmed “yes, we want to do it by all means at the earliest.”

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WORLD NEWS

A Medieval devotion alive and well for a handful of modern Romans

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • April 3, 2015

“Column of the Flagellation,” beieved by some to the pillar where Christ was scourged. (Michael Tinkler via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Rome, Italy — In the hours after evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, a few pilgrims in Rome make their way to the Church of Saint Praxedes, home to a fragment of stone alleged to be the pillar upon which Jesus was scourged.

Known as the Column of the Flagellation, the stone offers an object of contemplation for those visiting the church to reflect on Christ’s Passion. This is especially true on Holy Thursday, when pilgrims traditionally go to churches throughout the city to venerate the decorated altars within which the Eucharist has been reposed in anticipation of Good Friday.

The column is kept in a glass reliquary in one of the side chapels of Saint Praxedes, a 9th century church named after an early Christian martyr who has long-standing devotion in Rome, but about whom little is known for certain.

The pillar itself, sculpted from black-and-white marble, was retrieved from the Holy Land during the medieval period.

Is the artifact which continues to be visited by pilgrims as the column of the scourging a true relic of Christ’s Passion? Most scholars would say this is highly doubtful.

Yet the probable in-authenticity of the pillar does not take away from the value in venerating it, says one expert. Rather, it is reminiscent of the genuine spirituality of medieval Christians, like those who found the pillar and brought it back from the Holy Land.

“The Middle Ages had a very powerful sense of God’s Providence,” said Gregory DiPippo, managing editor of the New Liturgical Movement website, “and to them you could almost say it was illogical that God would allow something like (the pillar) – which would have been Sanctified by being part of the Lord’s Passion – to go missing.”

Whether the true pillar of the flagellation still exists anywhere is uncertain. Jerusalem’s Chapel of the Apparition claims to have the true pillar: a broken red porphyry column which bears no resemblance to the artifact in Rome.

However, in speaking of Saint Praxedes pillar, DiPippo explained it was improbable that the original would have survived on account of the 1st century uprisings which led to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Nonetheless, there is inherent value in venerating an object that may not be genuine, when one takes into account the objective of veneration, he added.

In the Western tradition, “you aren’t venerating the object for its own sake, necessarily, but rather as an expression of a sort of realized presence of the person or the event that it represents.”

This point is further illustrated by comparing Western and Eastern liturgical practices, he said, observing that in the West, the priest incenses the relics of the saints, whereas Byzantines incense the images and icons.

“It is the living presence, realized presence in this case, of the Passion of Christ,” DiPippo said. “Even if it isn’t authentic, we are still honoring the Passion of Christ by venerating it as such.”

The pillar of Saint Praxedes was first brought to Italy by Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, a 13th century prelate appointed by Pope Innocent III, who had been serving as papal legate in the Holy Land during the sixth Crusade. Returning to Rome in the 1220s, he brought with him the column in question.

“One mustn’t think of this as a conscious fraud on the part of Cardinal Colonna, or the people who received it as the relic of the flagellation,” DiPippo explained, but rather of Medieval devotion.

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U.S. NEWS

History, truth, and politics: Researcher seeks to clear the record on Junipero Serra

by Kevin Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • March 29, 2015

The statue of Bl. Junipero Serra at the Mission San Miguel in California. (Ken Figlioli via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Los Angeles, CA — California missionary Father Junipero Serra’s canonization is “long overdue,” says a university professor concerned that the priest’s history has been politicized and misrepresented.

“When he died, many native peoples came to the mission for his burial. They openly wept. Others of his colleagues and even colonists, believed that he would be made a saint, because of the way he had lived his life, a self-effacing life of a martyr,” said archaeology professor Reuben Mendoza of California State University, Monterrey Bay.

“Because of what he had achieved in his life, even then they had talked about his impending canonization,” Mendoza told CNA March 26.

Fr. Serra was born in 1713 on the Spanish island of Majorca in the Mediterranean. He left his position as a university professor to become a missionary to the New World, helping to convert many native Californians to Christianity and teaching them new and vital technologies. The Franciscan priest founded several of the missions that would go on to become the centers of major California cities.

The priest’s mission work often took place despite a painful ulcerated leg Mendoza said was caused by a spider bite soon after his arrival in Mexico. He died in 1784 at Mission San Carlos Borroméo del Carmelo in what is now the state of California.

St. John Paul II beatified Fr. Serra in 1988. In January, Pope Francis praised the missionary as “the evangelizer of the West” and announced his intention to canonize the Franciscan missionary during his scheduled 2015 visit to the U.S.

Mendoza learned from other researchers that Serra was “a very humble man and a man who had a great sense of humor.”

He said the “self-effacing” priest would sometimes insist on doing the work of young Indian boys who cleaned the Convent of San Fernando in Mexico City.

“He would sweep the halls and pick up the trash and maintain his spiritual stance through work and action.”

The priest’s sacrifices and “spiritual evangelization” led to the establishment of the missions that were “fundamental” to California’s history.

Mendoza lamented that “politics” had delayed the canonization.

“There has been a significant politicization of his canonization,” he said, pointing to opposition from those who feel that “the Church should not canonize a man who ultimately brought the missions to California and changed the lifestyles of native peoples.”

Mendoza rejected the possibility that native Californians could have avoided cultural change.

“As an anthropologist, I can tell you that all people change. There was already contact between other groups in the southwest and northern Mexico that had already initiated that process of change, and interaction and even conflict.”

Mendoza’s own view of Fr. Serra has changed from hostility to appreciation. While both of the professor’s parents had been devoted Catholics, his father “gradually soured on the Catholic faith” and “came to hate the Catholic Church for perceived wrongdoings.”

Mendoza had followed his father’s view and his initial research in archaeology, anthropology and history focused exclusively on Native Americans.

After the arrival of Spanish colonists, over 100,000 churches were built in a 150 year timespan in the New World.

“This is one of the greatest episodes of construction that the world has ever seen,” he said. “My eyes were pretty much closed to these churches.”

Mendoza still had a connection to Catholicism. He would sometimes feel moved to pray at the churches, preferring to say the Our Father in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec people. His archaeological work in Mexico and California, as well as his marriage to a Catholic woman, helped him see the missionary work in California and Father Serra in a different light.

He learned of the stories of Catholic missionaries he described as “good guys.” He cited Fr. Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta of the California mission San Juan Baptista, an early 19th century linguist who cared for native people and led a raid to bring back two young Indian girls who had been abducted from the mission.

“He led that raid with Indian warriors at his back,” Mendoza said.

The professor began to realize that while it is common to consider the missionaries’ impact on the Indians, it is far less common to consider the Indians’ impact on the missionaries.

“Here we see them literally becoming acculturated – learning the Indian languages, even doing their homilies in the multitude of Indian languages that they recorded and saved for posterity.”

Mendoza found his perspective further altered when he heard false stories about California history from grade school teachers leading their classes on tours of the mission. They would tell their students, many of whom were Latino and Native American, “horrific tales that teachers were clearly making up as they went along in their efforts to try to explain history that they didn’t understand.”

“They would go to features on the mission campus and tell the kids, ‘you see these three kits here with all this iron grillwork and the evidence for fire? This is where the Spanish and the friars would literally torture the Indians with fire’.”

“I’m listening to this, and I go, ‘Wait a minute, those are 1930s-era barbeque pits for the yearly fiesta barbecue of chickens. And yet this is what they are telling the children’.”

Visitors would confront Catholic priests at the mission and blame them for alleged abuses. Mendoza himself received personal attacks from people claiming to be of Native American descent who said “every brick in this mission represents another dead Indian.”

“I began to realize: especially the most malicious comments about Fr. Serra were usually by people who knew nothing about him, who had picked it up secondhand on the internet or on a blog, or who simply just didn’t care for the Catholic Church and its doctrine.”

Mendoza said it is clear from Fr. Serra’s writings that the priest would have been “mortified” to hear some claims about his treatment of the native people whom he “truly loved.”

The professor discussed the historical context of the missions, noting that the Spanish Empire had officially outlawed slavery outside of the Caribbean. Unlike the slave plantations of the English-speaking colonies, entrance into the California missions was a choice.

“You could not be coerced to come in, as was the case with African slaves who were being forced out of their homeland, and forced into servitude.”

He compared the missions to religious communes in which the friars were obliged to protect the “body and soul” of mission members.

Life outside the missions was difficult as well. Mendoza said that near the San Miguel mission, native people in the Central Valley were starving as a result of drought.

“They were beginning to settle around the missions, and when they saw that everybody got three square (meals) a day, everybody was clothed, everybody was housed, everybody was defended, people began to join the mission.”

“I don’t doubt that it’s likely that in some of these initial conversions, people didn’t fully understand what they were getting into,” the professor said. But while life in the missions was highly regimented, the work was intended to benefit the Indians and to sustain the mission as a community.

“Serra, I think, was mortified whenever native people succumbed to illness or disease. That’s not to say these didn’t exist prior to his arrival in the region, but clearly this had an impact on him.”

Mendoza predicted that the controversies over Fr. Serra will subside.

“The wide body of scholarship, the growing number of people who are beginning to understand who Serra was, will ultimately change a lot of the way we see him and the mission system overall.”

Mendoza particularly praised the book “Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary,” by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz. Their scholarship relies on new translations of documents and letters.

He also recommended the history of Fr. Serra by Gregory Orfalea, saying he “humanized” the priest.

Without efforts to humanize Fr. Serra, Mendoza said, “we continue to see books that literally pick and choose the facts that will support agendas that are clearly antithetical to the Hispanic tradition, to the Catholic tradition, and to the life of Serra proper.”

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Cardinal George returns to hospital for routine care

by CNA/EWTN News • March 30, 2015

Francis George, the Emeritus Archbishop of Chicago, was admitted to hospital over the weekend for routine care. (CNA)

Chicago, IL — Cardinal Francis George, the Emeritus Archbishop of Chicago, was readmitted to the hospital over the weekend for planned pain management and hydration issues.

The Chicago archdiocese said the visit to Loyola University Medical Center was not due to a medical emergency, ABC 7 Chicago reported.

However, the cardinal will not be able to participate in Holy Week or Easter liturgies at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral due to his health.

Cardinal George spent a week in the hospital earlier this month shortly after being dropped from a cancer drug trial in April.

The 78-year-old cardinal was first diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2006 and underwent a five-hour surgery to remove his bladder and other parts of his body affected by cancer. In 2012, his doctors discovered that the cancer had returned, this time to his kidney and liver.

In an effort to battle the returning cancer, Cardinal George took part in a cancer drug clinical trial last year, which experimented with helping the body recognize cancerous cells through the immune system. After it was determined that his trial was proving to be ineffective, he halted the treatment in January.

The first Chicago native to become the city’s archbishop, Cardinal George retired in 2014 amid his battle with cancer and was succeeded by Archbishop Blase Cupich. He had shepherded the archdiocese since 1997.

Last year, he said that the cancer could be the cause of his death, but that he was counting on prayers so that he “might be of service to the Lord and His Church in the time left.”

“As one nears the end of his or her life, I think the Lord sends us signs through a transformation of desire that, finally, in the end, helps us recognize more clearly that the only thing that is important is life with God,” he said during a press conference at the time of his retirement.

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Everyone but churches can use NYC schools – will the mayor do anything about it?

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • March 30, 2015

(Dystopos via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

New York City, N.Y. — Churches using New York City public school facilities for worship services are in limbo after the Supreme Court declined to review their case against a city prohibition on their doing so.

“Any community group can meet in New York City’s school buildings during non-school hours for any purpose – except for religious groups meeting to worship God,” Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, stated in reaction to the decision. ADF had petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case.

Lorence called the city’s law “nothing more than religious segregation – the kind of segregation the mayor has said he opposes.”

The law in question is a 20 year-old regulation of the New York City Board of Education that prohibits public school facilities from use for “religious worship services or as a house of worship.”

Two pastors at the Bronx Household of Faith, Jack Roberts and Robert Hall, led the latest legal effort against this regulation. After their initial victory at the district court level, churches began using public school facilities.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision last April. Now that the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case, the federal circuit court decision stands.

The question now is if churches using the facilities will be evicted. Mayor De Blasio stated last year that churches “deserve access” to the schools, but he has yet to overturn the board of education’s law.

New York City allows for many uses of public school facilities, including by labor unions, dance recitals, community meetings, and even filming of television shows Law and Order and Sex and the City.

Churches have contributed much to the city’s welfare, insisted ADF’s senior counsel David Cortman, so the city should not single them out for refusal in use of public facilities.

“The Education Department’s argument that it must ban worship services to protect children from religion – as though it were a disease – falls apart on many levels, not the least of which is how willing the city has been to accept the free help churches willingly offer,” Cortman said.

The Second Circuit Court ruled last April that, contrary to the district court’s ruling, the city did not have to allow the churches to use the school facilities under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause and Establishment clause.

The two clauses state that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The circuit court found that, while churches were using subsidized buildings for worship services, “the Free Exercise Clause, however, has never been understood to require government to finance a subject’s exercise of religion.”

The court also ruled that if the city thinks it risks a lawsuit based on the Establishment Clause for allowing religious services to take place in subsidized public schools, it can prohibit such services from taking place there so as to avoid appearing to “establish” a religion.

“History is replete with examples of churches using public buildings for worship,” ADF responded in its petition for writ of certiorari, noting that “the framers of the Constitution attended church services in the U.S. Capitol building, churches met in the federal court in New York City during the Great Awakening, and 49 of 50 of the largest school districts in the nation allow such practices today.”

In his lone dissent in the 2-1 federal court decision, Circuit Judge John M. Walker, Jr. argued that allowing churches to use the schools “is hardly the financing of that entity,” and that prohibiting them from doing so violates the Free Exercise clause.

He added that fees are charged for use of the facilities for all groups, so the law “is not a government subsidy.”

Furthermore, he argued that other religious activities are permitted in the schools by the city, such as meetings, hymn singing, and prayer, as long as it is not led by a religious figure. This undermines the city’s case of not appearing to “establish” a religion, he said.

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U.S. bishops: Stop shameful detention of migrant families

by CNA/EWTN News • March 31, 2015

Crowds turned up for a town hall meeting in Los Angeles at which Archbishop Jose Gomez spoke on immigration reform, Jan. 14, 2014. (Victor Aleman/vida-nueva.com)

San Antonio, Texas — Family detention centers across the U.S. are filling up with children and young mothers who are seeking shelter from violence, abuse, and persecution in their Central American home countries - and U.S. bishops are not pleased with the policy.

The Church has stood against the policy of detention centers for women and children fleeing violence, saying that they are contrary to social teaching and the dignity of the human person.

Controversy over the practice of immigrant detention has sparked exasperation among Catholic bishops and Lutheran leaders who say family detention centers are shameful and place heavy burdens on families, while staining the moral character of American society.

“Why do we feel compelled to place in detention such vulnerable individuals - traumatized young mothers and children fleeing persecution in their home countries?” stated Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio in a March 27 statement following his visit to the detention center for immigrant families located in Dilly, Texas.

Archbishop Garcia-Siller was not alone in his indignation at the detention facilities - he was joined by Bishop Eusebio Elizondo Almaguer, auxiliary bishop of Seattle and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, and Bishop James Tamayo of Laredo.

Other Christian leaders, including Michael Rinehart and H. Julian Gordy, both bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, united with the Catholic bishops in their stance opposing the detention of families fleeing violence and domestic abuse, imploring goverment officials to end the practice.

As of last summer, multiple detention centers have opened across the U.S. as a result of approximately 60,000 migrant families fleeing Central America and seeking aslyum across the border - many of whom have viable international protection claims or have fled extreme violence, death threats, rape, and persecution.

Although there were only about 100 spots for detention in the entire U.S. in 2014, that number has jumped to thousands over the period of one year.

The Department of Homeland Security has detained these families at facilities in New Mexico, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

The bishops are afraid that the use of detention centers could turn into a means for migrant deterrance, which would make the immigration policy violative of international law, according to the USCCB.

Last month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered a preliminary injunction that halted the government’s policy of detaining families solely for detterence purposes. The case was made on the behaf of families who are fleeing the credible fear of persecution and would have the possibility of granted asylum.

The family detention network is costly, employing around $2 billion taxpayer dollars per year.

“The detention of families serves no purpose and undermines due process. It especially harms children, who experience emotional and psychological harm from detention,” stated Bishop Elizondo, saying the detention method marks a low point in American immigration policy.

Looking for other alternatives for families seeking asylum, Bishop Tamayo stated there are humane ways to deal with the buildup of immigrant families who are entering the United States.

“The government should consider placing these families in humane alternatives to detention, where they could live in the community and access needed services, including legal representation,” he urged, saying the Church is ready to help in this effort.

Perhaps the most telling consequence of detention centers for families could be what the policy says about the moral character of society, suggested Archbishop Garcia-Siller.

“A great nation such as ours need not incarcerate the most vulnerable in the name of deterrence,” the San Antonio bishop said.

“The moral character of a society is judged by how it treats the most vulnerable in our midst. Our nation’s family detention policy is shameful and I impore or elected officials to end it.”

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Wall Street Journal, NY Times writer defend Indiana religious freedom law

by CNA/EWTN News • March 31, 2015

(Jon S via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Indianapolis, IN — Does the widespread reaction to Indiana religious freedom law mean there is growing intolerance for religious viewpoints? Two prominent essays in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times make the case that it does.

“The paradox is that even as America has become more tolerant of gays, many activists and liberals have become ever-more intolerant of anyone who might hold more traditional cultural or religious views,” the Wall Street Journal commented in a March 30 editorial.

The editorial said political liberals once defended the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s legal standard as “a good-faith effort to help society compromise on contentious moral disputes.” Congress had passed the 1993 legislation by an overwhelming majority and it was signed into law by Democratic president Bill Clinton.

The American Civil Liberties Union was among backers of the federal law, intended to restore legal protections removed by a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The editorial charged that opponents’ renunciation of the act 20 years later “says more about their new intolerance than about anyone in Indiana.”

“In the increasingly bitter battle between religious liberty and the liberal political agenda, religion is losing,” the Wall Street Journal lamented.

Gov. Mike Spence signed the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law on March 26, saying the bill ensures religious liberty is “fully protected under Indiana law.”

The legislation, similar to the federal act as well as legislation in 19 other states, declares that state and local governments may not “substantially burden” a person’s right to the exercise of religion unless they demonstrate doing so is “essential to further a compelling governmental interest,” and they must use “the least restrictive” means to further that interest.

Although the bill does not mention sexual orientation, opponents depicted it as an “anti-gay” bill. Several celebrities and leading CEOs called for a boycott of the state. Many former backers of the federal act also criticized the Indiana version.

Some critics of the Indiana law oppose its alleged protections for people with wedding-related businesses who cannot support same-sex “weddings” without violating their beliefs. The Wall Street Journal noted that the Indiana law would still require a business owner sued for declining to take part in such a ceremony to prove that his religious convictions were being “substantially burdened.”

While some critics of the Indiana law have said it is broader than the federal act because it allows a potential religious defense in private legal disputes, the Wall Street Journal editorial noted four federal appellate circuit courts have interpreted the federal law to apply to private disputes. It also noted that most courts have ruled that the government has a compelling interest in enforcing anti-discrimination laws.

The Indiana law also drew a defense from David Brooks, a New York Times columnist who backs “gay marriage.”

“As a matter of principle, it is simply the case that religious liberty is a value deserving our deepest respect, even in cases where it leads to disagreements as fundamental as the definition of marriage,” he said in a March 31 essay.

“At their best, Americans have always believed that people should have the widest possible latitude to exercise their faith as they see fit or not exercise any faith.”

Brooks said that there are “many wise and deeply humane people whose most deeply held religious beliefs contain heterosexual definitions of marriage.”

“These people are worthy of tolerance, respect and gentle persuasion.”

He said that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act emphasized that any government infringement on religious liberty should have a “compelling reason” and should do so in the “least intrusive way possible.”

Brooks worried that the “phenomenal achievement” of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act was now “going off the rails” due to the firestorm over the Indiana bill.

“If the opponents of that law were arguing that the Indiana statute tightens the federal standards a notch too far, that would be compelling. But that’s not the argument the opponents are making,” he said.

“The opponents seem to be saying there is no valid tension between religious pluralism and equality.”

Failure to balance religious liberty and civil rights, Brooks said, means “the cause of gay rights will be associated with coercion, not liberation.”

The columnist endorsed “creative accommodation” of disagreements over values.

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Is Indiana that controversial? Poll finds Americans support religious freedom laws

by CNA/EWTN News • March 31, 2015

(CNA/Marist Poll)

New York City, N.Y. — Indiana’s passage of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act last week has created havoc and been met with loud opposition from gay rights activists. But a poll this month found that most Americans agree with such religious freedom laws.

Fifty-four percent of respondents to a Marist Poll survey, commissioned by Catholic News Agency, support or strongly support First Amendment religious liberty protections or exemptions for faith-based organizations and individuals, “even when it conflicts with government law.”

About 65 percent of Marist Poll respondents opposed or strongly opposed penalties or fines for individuals who refuse to provide wedding-related services to same-sex couples “even if their refusal is based on their religious beliefs.” Only 31 percent supported or strongly supported such penalties.

The results of the poll were released in mid-March. In the days that followed, religious liberty became a heated issue, particularly surrounding the March 26 signing of the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The state’s governor, Mike Pence, said that despite media hype, the law is not based on anti-gay discrimination, but on a 20-year legal precedent of protecting the rights of religious individuals and charitable organizations.

The legislation declares that state and local governments may not “substantially burden” a person’s right to the exercise of religion, unless it is demonstrated that doing so is “essential to further a compelling governmental interest” and uses “the least restrictive” means to further that interest.

The Indiana bill reflects the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by a nearly unanimous Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

While that law was originally intended to apply to both federal and state government actions, the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that is applied only federally. Subsequently, 19 states passed their own versions of the law, explicitly applying it at the state level as well. President Barack Obama, who was at that time a state senator, voted in favor of the Illinois Religious Freedom Act in 1998.

The Indiana bill, however, triggered an intense reaction as it was signed into law, with news reports depicting it as “anti-gay” and critics claiming it would enable discrimination.

Wealthy business interests threatened consequences for the state. The CEO of Yelp said the company would not expand in Indiana. Marc Benioff, CEO of the software company Salesforce, canceled company events in Indiana. Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized the legislation, while the president of the NCAA, which will host the Final Four college basketball tournament in Indianapolis, warned that the legislation might affect future events.

Several celebrities also criticized the bill and a hacker briefly took down the State of Indiana’s website in apparent retaliation for the signing of the bill into law, the Indiana NBC affiliate WTHR reported.

But backers of the bill say critics are just plain wrong about its application. They point to nearly identical laws that are already in place at the federal level and in more than one-third of states nationwide, saying that the last two decades have shown that these laws have been used not to discriminate against gay individuals, but to protect religious rights.

Despite the loud outcry over the Indiana legislation, the Marist poll found that religious liberty wins in the court of public opinion.

Among its other findings: most Americans also reject penalties for public officials with reservations about taking part in same-sex ceremonies.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents opposed or strongly opposed penalties or fines for public officials who refuse to perform same-sex “marriages” even if their refusal is based on religious beliefs.

To see full results of the poll, visit maristpoll.marist.edu/313-tolerance-for-religious-rights/

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‘A travesty of justice’: No murder charges over baby cut out of mother’s womb

by CNA/EWTN News • April 1, 2015

(Sean McGrath via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Denver, CO — The archbishop of Denver lamented the law’s failure to protect all human life after it was announced that no murder charge would be filed in connection with a baby who died after being cut out of her mother’s womb.

“When the unborn child of a pregnant woman is murdered, a homicide has been committed,” Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila stressed in a March 27 archdiocese press release.

He called for elected officials to enact laws that recognize that unborn children can be victims of violent crimes.

The archbishop’s comments came in response to Colorado police reports that Dynel Lane will not be charged with murder. Police said that Lane stabbed Michelle Wilkins, a 7-month pregnant woman who was answering a Craigslist ad for baby clothes last week.

Cut out of her mother’s stomach, the baby died as a result of the attack, reports said. Wilkins spent five days in intensive care, but survived.

Boulder District Attorney Stanley Garnett announced on March 27 that Lane would not be charged for murder counts, but could face up to 100 years in prison with eight other felony charges.

He said that he had talked to Wilkins’ family, who told him that the baby girl was to be named Aurora.

“Colorado law sadly does not recognize the unborn child as a person capable of having a crime, such as homicide, perpetrated against it,” reflected Archbishop Aquila.

Without proof that the baby was alive and breathing outside her mother’s womb during the attack, Colorado would not allow for homicide charges against the unborn child.

Calling the failure to charge Lane for murder a “travesty of justice,” Archbishop Aquila said the laws of the state, which do not protect unborn children from homicide, are an inadequate reflection of reality.

Garnett acknowledged that “a lot of people” wanted Lane to be charged with homicide, according to reports from the Washington Post.

She faces other charges of first-degree attempted murder with two sentence enhancements, two counts of first-degree assault, two counts of second-degree assault, and first degree unlawful termination of pregnancy.

Voicing his sorrow and prayers, Archbishop Aquila pointed to St. John Paul II’s Gospel of Life, saying that the laws of Colorado should reflect this reality.

“There can be no true democracy without a recognition of every person’s dignity and without respect for his or her rights. Nor can there be true peace unless life is defended and promoted,” he quoted.

The archbishop asked the faithful and all people of good will to pray for the Wilkins family as they suffer the loss of their unborn child.

“I pray that God’s comfort will fill the hearts of Michelle and her family as they mourn the loss of Aurora and that the inadequate law of Colorado will change,” he said.

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These nuns provide ‘death with dignity’ – but it’s not assisted suicide

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • April 1, 2015

Little Sisters of the Poor. (Becket Fund for Religious Liberty)

Washington, D.C. — As states around the country consider legalizing physician-assisted suicide, “death with dignity” looks markedly different for patients under the care of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

In her 27 years with the order that cares for the “elderly poor,” Sister Constance Veit, L.S.P. says she has never seen or heard a patient asking for a lethal prescription.

“I think that’s because they are surrounded with a caring human and spiritual presence in our homes,” she told an audience at the Heritage Foundation.

Sister Constance was part of a recent panel in Washington, D.C., on caring respectfully for the elderly sick. The event was titled “Living Life to Its Fullest.”

End of life care was placed in the national spotlight late last year, when 29 year-old Brittany Maynard publically announced her decision to take a lethal prescription rather than suffer terminal cancer.

In describing her situation, Maynard used terms that Sister Constance says she has never heard from the patients under her care, like “purposeless prolonged pain” and “prolonged involuntary suffering and shame.”

“I have never heard any of our residents use the word ‘shame’ in the context of their suffering and dying,” she said.

Maynard’s story caught the attention of many and brought about a national debate on physician-assisted suicide, which is already legal in some states. The Colorado state senate defeated an assisted suicide bill back in February, but other states are considering similar bills.

The Death With Dignity National Center is pushing for these laws around the country.

Critics say the laws would unfairly pressure the elderly and disabled to end their lives. They charge such laws would normalize suicide as a solution to problems and decrease respect for life in American culture.

Caring for the elderly in their final days, the Little Sisters of the Poor say that a patient and his or her loved ones can experience a tremendous amount of good in their last days together that would be lost if they decided to take their life prematurely.

Patients of the Little Sisters are cared for and pain is relieved – all that can be done for the sick patient is attempted. The patient is accompanied around the clock.

“I would say that the room of a dying person almost becomes the spiritual center of our house at that point for those days,” Sister Constance said. “Our home is their home.”

The sisters make sure to provide a “peaceful, prayerful presence” for the dying patient “for as long as it takes until they make that passage from this life to the next.”

And it can be a rich time of healing for the family. Sister Constance recalled how the sisters kept an eight-day vigil for one dying woman. Although she was not conscious, members of her family reconciled with each other during that time, and some even came back to the faith who had fallen away.

“There’s so much to be shared, learned, and gained through these intense moments that you cheat people out of when a life is ended prematurely,” the sister reflected.

“The majority of the family members involved with the residents who pass away in our homes experience it as a moment of grace and a thing of beauty,” she added, “it’s rare that they feel it was anything other than a very powerful spiritual and human moment.”

Other members of the panel voiced concerns about physician-assisted suicide laws.

Farr A. Curlin, M.D., the Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities at Duke University School of Medicine, said the laws will bring new and grotesque questions to the national conversation.

People might start asking a terminally-ill patient, “Why are you staying alive?” he said. Those patients might start feeling useless to society and will “feel the pressure to exit the scene.”

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Be ‘saints of this prison,’ Bishop Conley tells inmates at Confirmation

by CNA/EWTN News • April 1, 2015

James Conley confirms men at the Nebraska State Penitentiary on March 31, 2015. (Southern Nebraska Register)

Lincoln, NE — On Tuesday of Holy Week, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln offered Mass and Confirmed four inmates at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, encouraging those present to embrace God’s mercy and strive for sainthood.

“God is calling you men to be the saints of this prison,” he told the inmates. “He is calling you to repent and to receive his mercy.”

“Your daily life reminds you of past mistakes. The world often looks on men who are incarcerated through eyes of hatred or mistrust.”

But Christ has a different view, calling all men and women to be saints, the bishop said.

He encouraged the inmates to “be present” whenever Mass is offered, to read Scripture and to pray the Rosary daily.

Bishop Conley celebrated the Confirmations in Spanish, and the music at the Mass was also in Spanish — both written and led by the inmates themselves.

Looking to that day’s Gospel reading, the bishop noted that St. Peter and Judas Iscariot both sinned against Christ by betraying him. However, unlike Judas, Peter repented of his sin.

“(Peter) probably felt that he had committed the unforgiveable crime. But he returned to Jesus, and professed his love, and his sorrow, and Christ forgave his sins,” Bishop Conley said.

These two disciples show an important decision each Christian must make: how to respond to our sinfulness.

Everyone can choose to despair or, as St. Peter did, “we can return to the Lord when we sin, confess our sinfulness, profess our love, and be made new,” the bishop said, noting that St. Peter later went on to spend time in prison and eventually died a martyr’s death for Christ.

Bishop Conley also drew attention to St. Maximillian Kolbe, “another prisoner who became a saint.”

Spending his time of confinement in prayer and offering his sufferings for the salvation of the world, St. Maximillian Kolbe “prayed that every man in prison would see Jesus,” even the Nazis who guarded him, the bishop said. Eventually, he also died as a martyr in prison.

The reality is that everyone has sinned and everyone has the option to despair or repent, Bishop Conley said. He encouraged all present to repent and “receive God’s incredible mercy.”

He asked the inmates for their prayers and assured them of his prayers.

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An Arcus news service? RNS denies LGBT money influences religion coverage

by Kevin Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • April 1, 2015

(Jason de Villa via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — The editor of Religion News Service has denied that a grant from a wealthy LGBT advocacy funder has biased its coverage of traditional religion, which includes a recent controversial story on Cardinal Raymond Burke.

The Arcus Foundation dispenses millions of dollars in grants every year to support LGBT activism. Its 2014 grants included $120,000 to the Religion Newswriters Foundation, the owner of the widely syndicated Religion News Service.

The Arcus Foundation’s grant listing said the one year of support was intended “to recruit and equip LGBT supportive leaders and advocates to counter rejection and antagonism within traditionally conservative Christian churches.”

The foundation’s Sept. 23, 2014 announcement said the grant aimed at “fostering a culture of LGBT understanding through the media” by funding the production of feature stories and blog posts “about religion and LGBT peoples of color.”

Kevin Eckstrom, RNS editor-in-chief, told CNA that receiving money from the advocacy group did not influence editorial choices.

“All editorial decisions about coverage of the LGBT community, or any other issue, are made independent of any foundation support, including Arcus,” he said, adding that RNS welcomes support “from any individual or foundation that supports our aim of informing and challenging our readers.”

RNS coverage of some Catholic figures has drawn criticism.

On March 27, RNS ran a story by David Gibson entitled: “Cardinal Raymond Burke: Gays, remarried Catholics, murderers are all the same.”

The RNS story drew on an almost 5,000-word interview in LifeSite News, which asked the cardinal about debates on whether Catholic leaders should emphasize positive qualities among people in committed unmarried or homosexual relationships and among those who have divorced and civilly remarried.

Cardinal Burke said that God wants salvation for everyone, but “that can only come about by conversion of life.”

“And so we have to call people who are living in these gravely sinful situations to conversion. And to give the impression that somehow there’s something good about living in a state of grave sin is simply contrary to what the Church has always and everywhere taught.”

The cardinal agreed with the interviewer that it is “not enough” to recognize that people living in public sin are kind, dedicated and generous.

“Of course it’s not. It’s like the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people.”

Gibson said the cardinal’s comments were “out of touch with the pastoral tone” of Pope Francis.

However, Mark D. Tooley, president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, argued that Gibson had mischaracterized the cardinal’s comments.

Writing on the institute’s blog “Juicy Ecumenism,” Tooley said the headline’s characterization was “distorting and snarky of a sort that is common towards religious traditionalists.”

“As a theologian, if asked, doubtless Burke would articulately explain that murder as a sin is of a different order than sexual immorality, although both are grave,” Tooley said. “He obviously cited murder as an example only for the sake of stark clarity. Should the Church be permissive towards a murderer because he is nice?”

Jim Davis, a writer at the GetReligion news analysis blog, similarly defended the cardinal.

“What Burke told LifeSite, of course – again, after he was asked – was that the Catholic Church still considers some deeds to be grave sins,” Davis said in a March 30 post.

Davis questioned whether the RNS story should have been presented as news instead of analysis or commentary, “which would have freed the writer to stack cards and give his viewpoint.”

The GetReligion writer also noted that Pope Francis has pursued both a pastoral strategy while also being “not so yielding” on issues like marriage.

Davis cited the Pope’s January remarks in the Philippines, in which the pontiff said “the family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.”

News outlets that syndicate RNS include the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, Crux, the National Catholic Reporter and America.

Speaking to CNA, Eckstrom defended the Gibson piece as “a fair and even-handed treatment of a controversial (and influential) figure within the Roman Catholic Church,” saying Tooley and GetReligion frequently criticize RNS because it does not “meet either’s standard of theological orthodoxy.”

He also said that all LGBT coverage underwritten by Arcus is “clearly labeled as such” and is “specifically focused on coverage of LGBT communities of color.” He said that the RNS general budget supports the “lionshare” of coverage of Pope Francis and LGBT issues within churches.

He noted that the grant language is “Arcus’ description of their funding, not ours.”

For its part, the Arcus Foundation’s self-described social justice program aims to cultivate “positive religious leaders and advocates” and to develop “effective faith messages and messengers” that have an impact in target communities. The foundation’s grants also oppose “the abuse of religious freedoms” through religious exemptions and aim to develop “religious and legal strategies to hold exemptions in check” while challenging “religious opponents of LGBT people in the U.S. and internationally.”

The foundation’s grant application page said it considers grant applications from organizations whose work “aligns with our values, strategic priorities and EEO requirement.”

Eckstrom said that the RNS grant proposal to the Arcus Foundation stressed the need to “increase and improve domestic and international coverage of how religion affects a diverse range of LGBT communities.”

“Our job is to offer readers a window into the personalities, theology and institutions that are shaping a momentous social and civic debate,” Eckstrom told CNA.

The $120,000 grant appears significant compared to the Religion Newswriters Foundation’s past revenue. Its tax forms show a total revenue of $216,000 in 2012, and $166,000 in 2011. Religion News LLC, the non-profit corporation that operates RNS, had $1.8 million in revenue for Fiscal Year 2012-2013.

One Arcus-sponsored RNS feature story was by Jay Michaelson, a former vice president for social justice programs at the Arcus Foundation. On March 31, RNS ran a different story by Michaelson about the controversy over Indiana’s religious freedom bill.

The stories did not acknowledge Michaelson’s past with Arcus, which together with the Ford Foundation has spent at least $3 million since 2013 supporting legal groups, law school projects, pro-abortion rights groups and media strategy development to counter religious freedom exemptions.

On April 1, Eckstrom told CNA he was “completely unaware” of Michaelson’s past affiliation with Arcus when RNS began working with him.

“All I knew was that he was a talented and skilled reporter with a particular expertise on the LGBT beat. He’s a professional full-time writer now, and that_s what matters to me, not necessarily where he worked in the past.”

The Arcus Foundation’s founder, heir Jon Stryker, is a major backer of “gay marriage.” The foundation’s executive director, Kevin Jennings, is the founder of the high school LGBT activist network GLSEN and served as assistant deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Education under the Obama administration.

The foundation’s other media-related spending has included support for Religion Dispatches, Media Matters for America, and Faith in Public Life.

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U.S. NEWS

Passover and the Passion: Jewish roots enrich Holy Week celebrations

by Adelaide Mena (CNA/EWTN News) • April 2, 2015

The Last Supper on the wall of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel on Oct. 29, 2014. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Washington, D.C. — As Catholics around the globe prepare for the Easter Triduum, the three-day period beginning with Holy Thursday and culminating in the celebration of Easter, the Jewish community prepares for its own liturgical celebration of Passover, remembering how God freed their ancestors from slavery in Egypt.

These two liturgical events are connected, and Catholics of Jewish origin stress that recognizing this connection can help give context and deepen the understanding of Christ’s Paschal sacrifice and the ultimate meaning of Easter.

Roy Schoeman, an author and self-described “Hebrew Catholic” – or Catholic of Jewish heritage – spoke to CNA about the inseparable link between Christ’s Passion and the whole of salvation history.

“Judaism and the Catholic Church are not two different religions,” but instead form “one tapestry of salvation,” reaching “from the Garden of Eden until the Second Coming,” and in which Abraham and the other Hebrew fathers play a significant role, he explained.

“They are one system of salvation that God set up at the beginning of time for all mankind, divided into two phases, the preparatory phase, which is to prepare for the incarnation of God as man, and the fulfillment phase, a second period of salvation history, in between God’s incarnation as man and His second coming.”

The covenant, or promise, God formed with Abraham to send a Messiah and set aside the Jewish people is a prefigurement of the sacrifice of Jesus and salvation of all peoples, Schoeman explained.

God’s testing of Abraham, asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac, is a clear image of this foreshadowing of Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary, he continued.

“Basically, as Abraham put the wood forth for his son’s sacrifice on his shoulders, led him up the mountain, bound him on the wood and was about to sacrifice him, was a precursor to the fulfillment of that picture.”

That fulfillment, “is God taking his own beloved son, putting the wood on His shoulders, leading Him up literally to the very same mountain, binding him to the wood, that is nailing him to the Cross, and truly sacrificing.”

“All of Passover was a prefigurement of the Crucifixion,” Schoeman continued.

“The Exodus from Egypt in Jewish theology was always seen as a prefigurement of the coming of the Messiah in Jewish theology. The Passover Seder is full of explicit Messianic references, including the place setting for Elijah,” he said of the ceremonial Passover meal.

For instance, throughout the Gospel narrative of the Last Supper and Crucifixion, “Jesus is explicitly equated with the Paschal lamb,” Schoeman commented. This is seen in the fulfillment of requirements such as “not a bone of the Passover lamb must be broken,” when Christ’s legs were not broken on the Cross.

The use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church is another sign of the link between the promises God made to the Jewish people and the fulfillment in Christ’s sacrifice.

This recognition is part of Church history – many writings of the early Church Fathers, Schoeman noted, likened “the Jews’ slavery to the Pharaoh in Egypt was a picture of mankind’s slavery to sin,” and drew other parallels between the Jewish people and the Universal Church.

Fr. Paul Schenck, a Catholic priest raised in the Jewish faith before becoming first a Protestant pastor and then being received fully into the Church, also spoke of the powerful lived experience and significance of the Eucharist, as well as its prefigurement in Passover.

“The Eucharist itself as an action, as a sacrifice, as a liturgy, arises out of the Passover,” he explained to CNA. “These are interlocked eternally.”

He noted the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist took place during the ritual Passover meal. “Out of this liturgy of the Exodus arises the Liturgy of the Eucharist, so it behooves us to understand the entity which is the blueprint, the framework of what we do.”

Both the Passover and the Eucharist share a unique view of ritual remembrance that involve a real presence and participation in the event remembered, he said. “We know the story of the first Passover is the story of the liberation of the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt. But it’s more than that, it’s a timeless event.”

Recalling one of his earliest memories of Passover as a young boy, Fr. Schenck commented particularly on the part of the meal where they were told, “Tonight we are slaves in Egypt.” This remembrance impacted him greatly: “I was no longer a kid in the suburbs of New York, I was a slave in Egypt,” he recounted.

“Passover is a timeless event, and there’s a reason for that,” he continued. “Passover illustrates the greatest sacrifice ever made in the history of the universe – the Passover of the Son of God, the Savior, who becomes the Lamb of God and takes away the sins of the world.”

It is this sacrifice, he said, that is remembered at every Mass. “I always remind Catholics, we celebrate the Passover at every Eucharist. We are perpetuating the feast.” During the celebration of the Mass, many of the prayers and the words of consecration during the liturgy come from “the very same prayer that we say at the Passover Seder.”

For Fr. Schenck, this link makes a profound impact on his celebration of the Eucharist.

“As a priest there’s simply no more transcendent, marvelous, wondrous moment than when I have the great and utterly undeserved privilege of reciting those words at the altar over the bread and the wine, and then after to elevate the host.”

However, perhaps most striking for Fr. Schenck is the importance Jesus attributes to the Last Supper, his final Passover meal before his death. Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke that He “desired with great desire to celebrate the Passover” with his disciples.

“That immediately tells us that this is an unavoidable, inescapable central element of our faith as Christians, as Catholics, as people of the Eucharist.”

For Catholics who wish to learn more about these roots at the base of Holy Week, Fr. Schenck suggested participating in a Passover Seder dinner, but cautioned Catholics to heed the bishops’ guidelines for participation.

The U.S. bishops’ 1998 document, “God’s Mercy Endures Forever: Guidelines on the Presentation of Jews and Judaism in Catholic Preaching,” acknowledges “educational and spiritual value” in participating in Seders, but warned against merging the liturgical rubrics of the Seder – called a Haggadah – with New Testament readings or with the Eucharist.

“Such mergings distort both traditions,” they cautioned, adding that the “primary reason why Christians may celebrate the festival of Passover should be to acknowledge common roots in the history of salvation,” and such celebrations are not a “restaging” of the Last Supper or alternative to the Triduum.

“When we celebrate the Passover it should be with an authentic Haggadah and it should be in unity with the Jewish people, not use it ever as a polemic,” Fr. Schenck warned.

Schulman echoed the call for learning and education, citing books and talks by scholars like Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre as useful resources for learning about the roots underneath the celebrations of Holy Week.

Regardless of background, Schoeman suggested, Catholics should learn about the history of the Jewish people, because it contains “the whole root and trunk of this story of the Last Supper, the Mass and the act of redemption.”

“It’s the flowering of the tree of Judaism. If you just cut off the top slice of the tree, you’re not seeing much.”

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FEATURES

Temperamental Parenting

by Jenny Uebbing • March 30, 2015

My second born, my sweet little John Paul Francis, he just has the most wonderful cheeks.

He is my snuggler, the child ever in search of comforting arms and soothing words and a soft lap to land on. He also lets me kiss those soft cheeks over and over again, never once pushing me away or fighting the snuggle. He’s never done hugging; he never pulls away first.

Not coincidentally, he was also my only “overdue” baby, preferring to hang out for an entire month longer than his 37 week big brother and a good 3 weeks past his 38 week old little sis.

I’m telling you, this kid is devoted to me.

It’s taken me a few years to come to appreciate how deep his little soul is. He thinks about crazy things, and hours later he’s still thinking about them, reflecting on joys and ruminating on perceived injustices alike. I can’t parent him the same way I parent the other two, which shouldn’t be surprising but somehow is, anyway. I have a word for him now though: melancholic. I’ll explain later.

It’s surprising that each kid requires an entirely unique set of parenting parameters within which to operate, to some extent.

It’s surprising to me that my kids don’t think and act like I do. Never more so than, say, when I’m frantically herding sleep drunken cats out the door for preschool pickup (late! again!) and somebody is distraught because he didn’t get to select his preferred pair of superhero briefs and oh the injustice of somebody else selecting and then helping you into your underwear.

(Honestly, when I write it out like that, it does seem rather troubling.)

And if I were the planning ahead type, I’d take note and cut my nap time tap tapping short a good 10 minutes early each afternoon rather than burning it down to the wire, choleric style, and then expecting everyone else to jump when I bark “go!”

Yes, that’s exactly what I’d do. I’d note my melancholic son’s tendency to wake up slow and snuggly and in need of some time to ponder and recalibrate to the waking world, and I’d gently rouse him and rub his little back, waiting patiently for his conscious brain to come back online while not at all thinking about the load of laundry I could be finishing or the dishwasher I could be loading or the emails I could be sending.

Then we’d calmly collect his sister from her nursery, process to the minivan in an orderly fashion, and drive at or near the speed limit all the way across town to collect our 4th musketeer.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe after a good night’s sleep and some careful reflection on the children I’ve actually been entrusted with and not the tiny clones of me that I was expecting to receive … maybe then I can manage a more humane afternoon routine.

I’m really glad they’re all so different, even if it is at times completely confounding. And I’m dying to see what the latest addition’s makeup will have to offer. So far we have, as near as I can tell, a choleric sanguine who is an impossible 100% extroverted, a mild mannered melancholic introvert, and a phlegmatic sanguine who seems fairly ambidextrous in terms of social preference. Happy in her room alone, happy in a crowd.

I love figuring out what each of my kids “are,” temperamentally, and trying to learn ways to better engage them through understanding their unique set of strengths and weaknesses. My choleric sanguine eldest son is my biggest challenge by a long shot, and mostly because his need for human interaction is very literally limitless.

I explained to him the concept of introversion versus extroversion a couple months ago in language a 4 year old could appreciate, and he actually started to cry when I expounded on the traits of an introvert. Tears. I guess of disappointment? Disbelief that anyone could or would need downtime? (mommy raises hand to the ceiling).

Whatever the case, that moment crystallized for me the stark contrast between us, and the lifelong struggle I’ll be engaged with (at least while he’s under our roof) trying to balance my sanity, which is tenuous in the best of times, with his constant craving for companionship. God was so smart to put us together; I can’t think of another relationship that has required more from me in terms of giving of self. Truly. And the days I won’t give? Our worst. Hands down.

So all this long winded soliloquizing to say: read this book. I’m not much for parenting books because they all tend to contradict each other, know what I mean? But this isn’t really a parenting book. It’s more like a code cracking manual, or an instruction booklet (but the good kind, not the IKEA kind).

And if you happen to look up in disbelief at your polar opposite offspring sitting across from you at the breakfast table in a sudden rush of understanding when you’re finished … well, you’re welcome.

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.

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It was never about the cake

by Jenny Uebbing • March 31, 2015

Probably you’ve heard once or fifteen times in the past 48 hours how the state of Indiana is trying to time travel back into the Middle Ages and start hunting down practicing homosexuals and publicly flogging them in the town square for their sins of the flesh.

“Indiana has passed a law which balances religious freedom for citizens, groups and businesses, with the state’s ‘compelling interests’ in requiring everybody to obey this or that particular law which might burden religion. It is not a remarkable law. The same language was passed federally by a bipartisan Congress in 1993 and signed by President Clinton. About 31 states have such a law either by statute or state constitutional interpretation.”— Helen Alvare, from an email to her WSFT supporters yesterday.

At least that’s the narrative our progressive mainstream media is broadcasting via every available channel, be they legitimate news sources or floundering, illogical op-eds by the very openly homosexual CEOs of very wealthy corporations who are therefore allowed to have bigger and more important opinions than the average citizen.

And this, y’all? This is crazy.

This is the best example of how public opinion - cultivated public opinion carefully crafted and executed by liberal think tanks, billion dollar corporations, and academicians, is becoming the highest power in the land.

In short: laws need not be based in reason or reality, but must instead conform to popular public displays of outrage and emotion.

But there’s a catch.

Some people - let’s call them Christians to simplify the discussion, believe that sex is sacred and, as God revealed in Scripture, is reserved for the exclusive marital relationship between one man and one woman.

Now, Christians believe this to be true because it is true, speaking from a natural law perspective.

God doesn’t make arbitrary thou shalt nots: if He says not to do it, it’s because it’s objectively wrong.

So murder. Lying. Stealing. Adultery (translation: sexual involvement with someone other than your spouse.)

Do some Christians (and lots of other people) do these things anyway? Of course. Because human nature and original sin and lots and lots of falling down and repenting and getting back up.

But now we have this prevailing cultural trend of not only tolerating a formerly forbidden and immoral behavior - homosexuality - but of openly embracing and celebrating it.

And I’m not speaking here of the person struggling with (or openly celebrating, as is more and more often the case) the disordered behavior and deviant attractions, but the very act of engaging in homosexual behavior. That’s what we’re being compelled to clap and cheer for.

And this bill in Indiana? All it is is the reiteration of an existing 20 year old federal law that 31 other states have some identical version of on the books that pledges protection for those individuals and businesses who don’t choose to jump up and down and cheer.

Does it say that you can discriminate against someone because you disagree with their lifestyle? No. Foolishness.

All it offers is the chance for businesses and individuals who are being compelled by prevailing public opinion and an increasingly invasive federal government to protect themselves from directly violating their own consciences by participating in immoral acts.

Because unless the gay couple coming to ask for a wedding cake is planning on entering into some kind of lifelong platonic union of mutual celibacy, that’s exactly what forcing someone to cater a gay “wedding” is doing: coercing their participation in the public celebration of immoral behavior: homosexuality.

That’s all this law is: an explicit protection for religious citizens who fear (and rightly so) the creeping encroachment of coercive government policies that directly contradict both reality and their deeply held moral beliefs.

But you won’t hear that in the media. Because the gay agenda is powerful, purposeful, and intent upon winning hearts and minds, by force if necessary.

It was never about the wedding cake in the first place. It was always about - and will continue to be about - the systematic redefinition of our collective moral code.

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.

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‘My Son, with you I am well pleased, so well pleased’

by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. • April 1, 2015

The Hebrew Scriptures record more than fifty prophecies concerning the passion and death of the expected Messiah. The theme of the Suffering Servant, despised, rejected, and abandoned, anticipates his sufferings. Amazingly, a few veiled references to the resurrection are found among them. The parallels between the Old and New Testaments offer the singular and compelling case that Jesus, and no other historical figure, fulfilled these prophecies. The most explicit of them are found in Isaiah’s chapters 50-53. The remaining are scattered throughout the Old Testament.

Jesus’ passion and death should be considered on two levels, the human and the divine. A common and familiar source of human suffering is malice. It was malice that crushed him. It was malice that led to his crucifixion.

Overview of Holy Week

Taken collectively and viewed in human terms, the last hours of Jesus were crowded with high drama. Judas had already sold him out, and his enemies were seeking a way to expedite his death.

Where were his defenders? Peter got cold feet. After boasting of his unwavering support for his Master, he betrayed Jesus not once but three times, swearing in the process. The other disciples fled. Every man for himself. The early hours of that Good Friday inched inexorably toward the Hour. Only the Beloved Disciple and a few women remained with the Lord. His Mother stood by to the end.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”

Once again, the stage is set this week for the Church to reenact the “crowning moment of salvation history.” The cast of characters includes the familiar players: Judas, Peter, the other disciples, Pilate, leaders of the Jews, Barabbas, the two thieves, the soldiers, and the mob. The stage is large enough to hold us and the rest of humankind. The sins of betrayal, denials, cowardice, venality, and political correctness are not just theirs but ours as well.

The truth is that Christ suffered and died for my sins and for yours. And, warns St. John: “If we say we are without guilt, we deceive ourselves; the truth is not to be found in us. But if we acknowledge our sins, he who is just can be trusted to forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrong” (1Jn 1:8-9).

The drama of salvation is about to begin.

Prophecies

What do the prophecies tell us about the last week of Jesus’ life? In most of the passages cited below, the first in parentheses refers to the Hebrew Scriptures, the second to their fulfillment in the Christian Scriptures. They are offered for personal prayer.

Palm Sunday

Jesus entered Jerusalem as a king riding on an ass. (Zech 9:9//Mt 21:5)

“Hail, King of the Jews. Hosanna to the Son of David.”

Wednesday – Thursday

The Messiah would be betrayed by a friend. (Ps 41:9//Jn 13:21)

Jesus was sold for thirty pieces of silver. (Zech 11:12//Mt 26:15; Lk 22:5)

Later these coins were given for the potter’s field and cast into the temple. (Zech 11:13//Mt 27:9-10)

Jesus would be falsely accused but would remain silent before his accusers. (Ps 35:11//Mk 14:57-58; Is 53:7/Mk 15:4-5)

Jesus’ friends deserted him. (Zech 13:7//Mt 26:56)

Others gave false witness about him. (Ps 35:11//Mt 26:60)

Poem for Holy Thursday Evening

Gethsemane

Gethsemane means “olive press.”

A place where the fruit of the tree is crushed and squeezed

and the unbearable pressure releases the oil inside.

And as the will of the Father

met the will of the Son,

the unbearable pressure

crushing and squeezing him,

the thorns of our wasteland digging ever deeper,

the sweat of our curse pooling on his skin,

he made his choice and cried,

“Not my will, but yours be done.”

And the oil of the Spirit flowed freely.

(Jeff Peabody, First Things, April 2015, 16)

In Jesus’ last hours, he was spat upon and scourged (Is 50:6, 53:5//Mt 27:26, 30) and struck on the cheek (Micah 5:1//Mt 27:30).

Good Friday

The Messiah was called the sacrificial lamb (Is 53:5//Jn 1:29 who was given for a new covenant (Is 42:6; Jer 31:31-34//Rom 11:27; Gal 3:17, 424; Heb 8:6, 8, 10;10:16, 29; 12:24; 13:20).

He was despised and rejected by men (Is 53:3:1-6), the one who bore “our grief” (Is 53:4, 6); “and with his stripes we are healed.” (Is 53:5)

The Messiah would be given vinegar to drink. (Ps 69:21//Mt 27:34, Jn 19:28-30)

The Messiah’s hand and feet would be pierced. (Ps 22:16; Zech 12:10; Ps 22:7-8; //Jn 20:25-27; Lk 23:35)

The Messiah’s bones would not be broken. (Ex 12:46; Ps 34:20//Jn 19:33-36)

The Messiah would be forsaken by God. (Ps 22;1//Mt 27:46)

The Messiah would pray for his enemies. (Ps 109:4//Lk 23:34)

The Messiah would be buried with the rich. (Is 53:9//Mt 27:57-60)

“We adore you O Christ, and we bless you.

Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.”

Holy Saturday

“Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep, asleep in the flesh, and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began.”

“Rise, let us leave this place.”

(From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday)

Resurrection Sunday

“I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25-26; 1 Cor 15:20)

The Messiah would resurrect from the dead (Ps 16:10; Ps 49:15//Mt 28:2-7; Acts 2:22-32)

“He who makes rich is made poor;

he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity.

He who is full is made empty;

he is emptied for a brief space of his glory that I may share in his fullness.”

(St. Gregory of Nazianzen, Liturgy of the Hours I: 161.)

Ascension Day

The Messiah would ascend to heaven. (Ps 24:7-10; Mk 16:19; Lk 24:51)

The Messiah would be seated at God’s right hand. (Ps 68:18; Ps 110:1//Mk 16:19; Mt 22:44)

Finally …

Listen to the Father’s joy: ‘My Son, I am well pleased with you, so well pleased. May every tongue confess that you are King of Kings and Lord of Lords.’

“We are Easter people, and Alleluia is our song.” (St. Augustine)

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.

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He moved me

by Jenny Uebbing • April 1, 2015

10 years ago on a cold spring evening in early April an old man died in his bed a half a world away, and a selfish, frequently drunken 22-year old college student fell to her knees in a dingy living room.

Eyes glued to the TV, I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing on the television screen and the corresponding ache in my chest for a man I’d never met and for a religion I barely practiced.

I was never the same again.

I spent most of April 2nd in a daze, missing all my classes and breaking into real tears periodically. Eventually the news coverage coming out of Rome lost its pull on me and I ventured from the couch to the front door, destination unknown.

Within a half a dozen blocks I found myself in front of the Catholic church I sometimes attended on weekends, still drawn to participation in the Mass even when the vigil had been spent blacked out drunk with 20,000 of my closest friends on Pearl Street.

I pushed on the heavy bronzed door and was surprised when it yielded to me. It was around noon, and the church was unlocked and completely empty save for an elderly woman sitting near the altar and a younger guy with camera equipment standing off to one side of the sanctuary.

At the end of the aisle someone had erected a makeshift shrine; a single votive candle burned beneath an easel holding the papal portrait of John Paul II. There were a few potted flowers, leftover Easter decor still dotted the stairway surrounding the altar.

Propelled almost unconsciously, I found myself at the front of the church and dropping to my knees in front of his picture. I noticed the red light burning in a lantern hung in my periphery, and I looked past the image in front of me to the tabernacle behind the altar. I knew He was there, too.

I dropped my head into my hands and wept. I had absolutely no explanation for the intensity of my reaction, given the attention I’d given to my Catholic faith for the past 4 years. College had effectively paganized me, at least in practice, and I was Catholic in name only.

I knew this, of course, but that morning for the first time it caused me both deep, reflective sorrow and inspired the hope that maybe I could turn things around.

I looked up at the sound of a camera clicking away and the young guy with the equipment shrugged his shoulders and asked sheepishly if I’d consent to having the images used in the paper. The next morning I saw myself under the fold on the front page of the Denver Post. Not many people have a picture of themselves on the day their conversion began in earnest, and even though it’s grainy, black and white, and not terribly flattering, it’s something I treasure. It’s proof that I was there, and now I’m here.

More than that, it captures the essence of my relationship with JPII: penitent prodigal meets spiritual father. Fireworks ensue. Lifelong friendship is cemented.

Later that same month I withdrew from all my college courses and stopped going out to bars every night. As my phone stopped ringing and my friends drifted away, I spent long weekend nights listening to CDs of famous Catholic speakers (Scott Hahn, anyone?) and gradually began to come alive to the mysteries and depth of the Faith.

By early May I had an acceptance letter in my hands from Franciscan University of Steubenville. I would transfer there at the summer’s end and spend the next 3 years in a kind of spiritual, emotional and physical rehab, piecing back together the real Jenny.

Through it all, St. John Paul II (who I never doubted was directly interceding for little old me) became one of my closest friends.

I couldn’t have dreamt it on April 2nd, 2005, but on Divine Mercy Sunday in the year 2011, I stood in St. Peter’s Square with a million other pilgrims, my 7-month-old son pressed uncomfortably close to my chest in a baby carrier, squeezed by Italians on every side, and listened as Pope Benedict gave him to the Universal Church as a “Blessed.”

If that wasn’t sufficiently awesome, three years later I returned to that same square, this time with two more sweet babies in tow and my husband by my side, and we distractedly wrestled toddlers through the long ceremony and misting Roman rain while Pope St. John Paul II was raised to the altar and proclaimed “Sanctus.”

JPII.

I smiled because I’d known for years that this day would come, and I cried because I never dreamt I would be there to witness it.

St. John Paul II, I love you. And I owe, quite simply, everything to your intercession. Please never stop praying for me.

Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, therefore no harm can befall you; all is very, very well. Do this in complete faith and confidence.”— Pope St. John Paul II

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.

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Sign of Peace at Mass needs to maintain a public character

by Msgr. M. Francis Mannion • April 2, 2015

The Catholic liturgical tradition regards the Sign of Peace at Mass as a disciplined and restrained public gesture, and not an affectionate gesture of intimacy and friendship. In fact, the peace sign is designed for people who, for the most part, do not even know each other’s names.

This derives from the fact that the liturgical assembly is not (and is not meant to be) a gathering of friends and intimates. In my view, it is a mistake to view those gathered in worship as friends and “friends who haven’t yet met.”

While the liturgical assembly includes spouses, family members and friends, for the most part it does not. It is generally a mixed gathering of neighbors, fellow citizens, and persons who are (and will remain) strangers to each other.

Indeed, the Eucharistic gathering is more like a town meeting than a community of intimates. It is a public rather than an intimate grouping.

Saying this goes against the strong emphasis on small group intimacy and interpersonal relationships popular in liturgical spirituality today? Many pastors and people appear to have absorbed from the culture at large a bias toward intimacy and against publicness. Indeed, our culture sets such store on privacy and intimacy that the small group is regarded today as the only humanly authentic social grouping. This explains why many parishes have over the years been busy attempting to turn liturgical assemblies into intimate gatherings of family and friends, and why they think anything less is intolerable and inauthentic.

By contrast, I believe that the Church needs to redeem publicness and challenge assumptions about intimacy that have their origin more in modern group therapy theory than in the Gospel.

Accordingly, I would hold that the Sign of Peace should not be regarded primarily as an intimate gesture, but as a public sign expressing fellow citizenship in Christ. It should retain its traditional role as a sign shared between people of goodwill, whether they know each other or not. The peace sign is not designed to turn people into friends, but to express the graciousness of all kinds and degrees of relationships in the public world.

What about the practice of spouses, relatives, and friends — people who know each other well — kissing and hugging each other during the Sign of Peace? The practice is probably here to stay, and pastors would be foolish to lose much sleep over it.

Yet, it should be kept in mind that when we gather for the Eucharist we come together as sons and daughters of God who are all equally related by baptism. For the moment, the stranger and the marginal person are as close to us as spouse and children.

Certainly, the Eucharist does not abrogate spousal and familial relationships, but it does set before us an order of things beyond all human degrees of relationship.

This is why the Sign of Peace is not meaningless when shared between strangers and only meaningful when exchanged between intimates. Indeed, the peace sign is never more meaningful then when shared between strangers, or those separated by human barriers of various kinds. The Sign of Peace declares: “We may be strangers at the human level, but not in God’s scheme of things.”

The Sign of Peace before Communion is an eschatological sign, by which I mean a sign of the way things will be in the Kingdom of God, in which the present world of division, racism, hostility, and suspicion will have passed away.

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 Society’s journal, Antiphon. At the invitation of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago he founded the Mundelein Liturgical Institute in 2000.

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FEATURES

‘Saint John Paul the Great’ offers a fresh perspective on the new saint

by Chris Gilbert • April 2, 2015

Can you sum up the life of a great saint who changed the world? Can you adequately convey the impact of a man who preached, wrote, and taught for most of his eighty-five years? What can be said about a young man who became a priest, a bishop, and then a pope, that hasn’t already been said? You cannot reduce this man to a book, but you can explore his life by looking at what he loved. The man is Karol Wojtyla – now immortalized as St. John Paul II - and the author who presents a peek into this beloved pope’s heart is Jason Evert.

The biography Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves is an excellent read for someone already familiar with the life and teachings of John Paul II, while also serving as a wonderful introduction to this spiritual giant of our times. Evert’s simple and direct style draws the reader in while keeping the lofty subjects accessible. Yet, it is the author’s passion and personal insight that make the book so powerful and applicable. It comes across as the impact of one man’s heart and mind upon the heart and mind of another. The personal insights, testimonies, and conversions shared through encountering John Paul II do not lose their force. The reader may find himself constantly whispering, “Wow!” and finding the nearest person to share, “You gotta hear this …”

Evert explores the life and influential events of this incredible man. From the tragic deaths of family members to narrow escapes from Nazis as a young seminarian to his fight against communism as a young Bishop to his attempted assassination in St. Peter’s Square, Evert moves the reader through the marvels and miracles that marked Wojtyla’s incredible life.

The reader will observe the pope’s prayer habits, mystical abilities, the inspiration for his famous Theology of the Body teachings, his continual embrace of personal poverty and detachment, and his insight into the purpose of pain backed by his own road of suffering. Amidst an intense life of prayer, writing, and pastoring, the Holy Father embraced a lifelong penchant for time spent hiking, skiing and praying in the great outdoors with those closest to his heart – the youth.

Perhaps most notably, the piercing sanctity and unusual brilliance of this man will not leave the reader despairing over his own futile chances at sainthood, but rather will inspire him to follow the model of the Holy Father as a beacon of hope for personal holiness.

Not only will the reader discover John Paul II’s numerous achievements throughout this volume, he will see the motivations that drove him and the power that enabled him to accomplish so much: a faith fortified by prayer and action.

After a truly exhilarating tour of the life of young Lolek to the papacy of John Paul II in Part I, the author frames the life of the Holy Father around his five loves: young people, human love, the Blessed Sacrament, the Virgin Mary, and the Cross. Each of these loves allows the reader interior access to the man himself, a narrative that goes beyond mere information or a nice story. Evert’s reflections deliver profound insights into how this saint viewed, embraced, and focused his life in light of these five loves.

Readers beware! Evert creates a dangerous encounter with Saint John Paul II, one powerful enough to effect real and lasting changes in a seeking human heart.

Chris Gilbert received his M.A. from Franciscan University of Steubenville in Theology with a specialization in catechetics. He worked in youth and young adult ministry for seven years. Now, he and his wife own their own business from home and are blessed by their three children. Chris also loves books because, for most of his life, he refused to read.

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SUNDAY • APRIL 5, 2015

Easter Sunday

First Reading (Acts 10:34a, 37-43; NRSVCE)

Then Peter began to speak to them: That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Second Reading (Col 3:1-4; NRSVCE)

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Gospel Reading (Jn 20:1-9; NRSVCE)

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

MONDAY • APRIL 6, 2015

Monday in the Octave of Easter

First Reading (Acts 2:14, 22-33; NRSVCE)

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.

“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know — this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says concerning him,

‘I saw the Lord always before me,

for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken;

therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

moreover my flesh will live in hope.

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One experience corruption.

You have made known to me the ways of life;

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’

“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying,

‘He was not abandoned to Hades,

nor did his flesh experience corruption.’

“This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear.”

Gospel Reading (Mt 28:8-15; NRSVCE)

So Mary Magdalene and the other Mary left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

While they were going, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, “You must say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.

TUESDAY • APRIL 7, 2015

Tuesday in the Octave of Easter

First Reading (Acts 2:36-41; NRSVCE)

Peter said to the Jews, “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.

Gospel Reading (Jn 20:11-18; NRSVCE)

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

WEDNESDAY • APRIL 8, 2015

Wednesday in the Octave of Easter

First Reading (Acts 3:1-10; NRSVCE)

One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o’clock in the afternoon. And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

Gospel Reading (Lk 24:13-35; NRSVCE)

Now on that same day two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

THURSDAY • APRIL 9, 2015

Thursday in the Octave of Easter

First Reading (Acts 3:11-26; NRSVCE)

While the crippled man who had been cured clung to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s Portico, utterly astonished. When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.

“And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets. Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you from your own people a prophet like me. You must listen to whatever he tells you. And it will be that everyone who does not listen to that prophet will be utterly rooted out of the people.’ And all the prophets, as many as have spoken, from Samuel and those after him, also predicted these days. You are the descendants of the prophets and of the covenant that God gave to your ancestors, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”

Gospel Reading (Lk 24:35-48; NRSVCE)

Then the two disciples of Jesus told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

FRIDAY • APRIL 10, 2015

Friday in the Octave of Easter

First Reading (Acts 4:1-12; NRSVCE)

While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead. So they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who heard the word believed; and they numbered about five thousand.

The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is

‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders;

it has become the cornerstone.’

There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Gospel Reading (Jn 21:1-14; NRSVCE)

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.

When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

SATURDAY • APRIL 11, 2015

Saturday in the Octave of Easter

First Reading (Acts 4:13-21; NRSVCE)

Now when the Jewish leaders saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus. When they saw the man who had been cured standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. So they ordered them to leave the council while they discussed the matter with one another. They said, “What will we do with them? For it is obvious to all who live in Jerusalem that a notable sign has been done through them; we cannot deny it. But to keep it from spreading further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.” So they called them and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” After threatening them again, they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people, for all of them praised God for what had happened.

Gospel Reading (Mk 16:9-15; NRSVCE)

Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.

After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.

Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”