VOLUME 1, ISSUE 36  •  SEPTEMBER 5, 2015

Table of Contents

Copyright Notice

VATICAN NEWS

Former nuncio awaiting Vatican trial died of natural causes, autopsy says

Pope Francis mourns death of 71 migrants who suffocated in abandoned truck

Pope Francis: conversion isn’t just an appearance – it’s a matter of the heart

What to learn at the World Meeting of Families: The family is a gift from God

Pope to Catholic lawmakers: Be strong, protect life

Pope Francis holds virtual audience with Americans in Chicago, Texas, L.A.

Benedict XVI: God’s truth, love, and goodness are what make us pure

All priests will be able forgive sin of abortion during Jubilee for Mercy

Pope listens to what Francis of Assisi can teach us about creation

Alliance between families and God can change the world, Pope Francis says

Vatican says ‘no’ to transsexual godparents amid Spain controversy

On WWII anniversary, Pope says ‘never again’ to war, condemns arms trafficking

Are dialogue and reconciliation with the SSPX part of the Jubilee for Mercy?

Strong words from the Vatican as migrant crisis spikes worldwide

Papal pop-by at Roman eyewear shop draws an enthusiastic crowd

Pope Francis to Israeli president: ‘The challenge is to unite’

Blessed Junipero Serra’s cross gets a kiss from Pope Francis

Doctrine and pastoral care go hand-in-hand, Pope Francis reminds theologians

Holy See expresses cautious support for U.N. development goals

WORLD NEWS

‘Africa will save the family’ – one cardinal’s prediction on the Church’s future

Bishop in Swaziland seeks prayer, reflection after country’s deadly truck accident

Why women are needed to help end violence in Africa

U.S. NEWS

Alabama Planned Parenthood failed to report suspected rape, report says

Illinois diocese: New policy tells families what to expect from Catholic schools

Catholic practice and Catholic faith: a survey looks at the U.S.

Black leaders to Smithsonian: Don’t honor Planned Parenthood founder

Ahead of U.S. visit, Pope Francis is popular among Americans

Citing Pope Francis, bishops call on Congress to renew religious freedom commission

Planned Parenthood’s CEO validates suspicions, advocacy group says

Philadelphia seminary plants, blesses a tree for Pope’s day for care of creation

Meet the monks who decided to go green years before Laudato Si

Are Pope Francis and the U.S. bishops split? Don’t believe the critics

D.C. choir hopes Pope Francis will sing along

Trump’s immigration plan undermines American identity, Archbishop Chaput says

Who’s behind the mysterious Eye of the Tiber?

Five federal judges rebuke court: Don’t tell the Little Sisters how to be Catholic

FEATURES

‘No Escape’ movie review

Catholic Education III: Fully Alive for Virtue

Why Junípero Serra Matters Today

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Sunday • September 6, 2015

Monday • September 7, 2015

Tuesday • September 8, 2015

Wednesday • September 9, 2015

Thursday • September 10, 2015

Friday • September 11, 2015

Saturday • September 12, 2015

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Volume 1, Issue 36 • September 5, 2015

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VATICAN NEWS

Former nuncio awaiting Vatican trial died of natural causes, autopsy says

by CNA/EWTN News • August 29, 2015

Józef Wesolowski, former apostolic nuncio to the Dominican Republic. (Jose Castro/CNA)

Vatican City — Initial autopsy findings indicate that disgraced former apostolic nuncio Jozef Wesolowski died of natural causes from a “cardiac event,” the Vatican announced Saturday.

The laicized archbishop was awaiting trial by the Vatican court for possessing child pornography and sexual abuse of minors when he died late Thursday evening at the age of 67.

Wesolowski’s death prompted the Office of the Vatican’s Promoter of Justice, also known as the Vatican prosecutor, to order an autopsy..

According to a Vatican statement released Aug. 29, the autopsy was conducted Friday afternoon. Based on “preliminary conclusions from the macroscopic exam,” the autopsy “confirmed the natural cause of death, attributable to a cardiac event,” the statement said.

The Office of the Promoter of Justice anticipates receiving additional results from laboratory examinations.

Prof. Giovanni Arcudi, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, was appointed to coordinate the three experts conducting the autopsy.

Wesoleski was awaiting a criminal trial in Vatican City on charges of pornography and pedophilic acts.

In 2013 the then-archbishop faced allegations of sexual misconduct and he resigned as apostolic nuncio to the Dominican Republic. A 13-year-old boy alleged that Wesolowski had solicited him for sexual favors in exchange for money.

The archbishop faced a canonical trial in a tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In 2014, the tribunal found him guilty of sexual abuse and subjected him to laicization, which meant he was unable to celebrate the sacraments.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis mourns death of 71 migrants who suffocated in abandoned truck

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • August 30, 2015

Pope Francis gives the Wednesday general audience in St. Peters Square Oct. 2, 2013. (Elise Harris/CNA)

Vatican City — In his Sunday Angelus address Pope Francis lamented the death of 71 migrants – mostly from war-torn Syria – whose bodies were found in an abandoned truck on an Austrian highway. He offered prayers for the victims.

“Unfortunately in the past few days many migrants have lost their lives in their terrible journeys. For all of these brothers and sisters, I pray and invite you to pray,” the Pope said Aug. 30.

He spoke to the pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square, offering his closeness to the archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Cristoph Schönborn – who was also present – as well as the entire Church in Austria.

“We entrust each of (the deceased) to the mercy of God; and we ask him to help us cooperate effectively to prevent these crimes, which offend the entire human family.”

On Thursday the bodies of the 71 migrants – most of them refugees fleeing Syria – were found inside of an abandoned truck parked off Austria’s A4 near the Austrian village of Parndorf, close to the Hungarian border.

A roadside employee called police after he noticed that the truck had been sitting motionless on the shoulder for “a while,” the Catholic Herald reports.

Since autopsies are still being done on the corpses, police say that it’s still too early to determine the exact cause of death.

However, authorities have noted that the truck’s cargo hold had no openings for ventilation on its sides, suggesting the migrants suffocated. Among the dead were 59 men, eight women and four children.

According to the Wall Street Journal, when found many of the corpses were so decomposed that officials said they likely had died up to two days earlier, before crossing into Western Europe.

Police noted that several cell phones had been recovered from the truck, and said they are being examined in order to determine if migrants had attempted to call for help, as well as to identify victims through the phone’s details and contacts. Police are also trying to trace the victims’ relatives.

Although various toiletries and clothes were also recovered from the truck, so far no identity cards have been found apart from one Syrian travel document.

The incident marks the latest in Europe’s widespread migrant crisis, and points to the fact that many migrants from parts of the Middle East and North Africa ravaged by war are now heading from Turkey to Greece, then crossing the Balkans into Hungary, in a course believed to be less risky than the often deadly route across the Mediterranean.

The Wall Street Journal reports that four men have been arrested in relation to the incident, and that a Hungarian court on Saturday said they could face up to 16 years in prison for alleged trafficking in connection with the deaths.

Cardinal Schönborn said in an article published in the Catholic Herald Aug. 28 that he was “deeply shaken” by the deaths.

He said the “terrible deed” makes the plight of the increasing number of refugees clearer than ever.

In addition to expressing his horror at the “indescribable inhumanity” of the act, the cardinal said that “courageous decisions” need to be made in order to help those who find themselves in similar situations.

He called for Europe to be united and to use the law to bring those responsible to justice, and offered his sympathy to those who suffered the “unimaginably agonizing death” as well as their families.

The cardinal will preside over an Aug. 31 Memorial Service in St. Stephen’s Cathedral for the victims of the disaster, as well as for all refugees who have died.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis: conversion isn’t just an appearance – it’s a matter of the heart

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • August 30, 2015

Pope Francis celebrates New Years Eve Vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 31, 2014. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — In his Sunday Angelus address Pope Francis said that merely obeying the rules isn’t enough to make us holy, but that if we truly want to serve God our conversion has to be deeper, changing the heart.

“It’s not exterior things which make us holy or not holy, but it’s the heart that expresses our intentions, our choices and the desire to do everything out of love for God,” the Pope told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square Aug. 30.

“External attitudes are the consequence of what we have decided in the heart, not the contrary: with external attitudes, if the heart doesn’t change, we aren’t true Christians.”

Pope Francis based his reflections on the day’s Gospel reading from Mark, in which the scribes and Pharisees criticized Jesus and his disciples for not following the tradition of “purifying” themselves by washing their hands before meals or when coming from the market.

Jesus’ response that “you disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition” has a strong prophetic tone that fills us with admiration for him, the Pope said.

“We feel that in him there is truth and that his wisdom frees us from prejudice,” he noted, but cautioned that Jesus’ words aren’t aimed for just the Pharisees, but are also meant to put us on guard.

With these words Jesus warns against the belief that a simple external observance of the law is enough to be considered a good Christian, he said.

“As then with the Pharisees, there is also the danger for us to consider ourselves good, or better than others based on the simple fact that we obey the rules, the customs, even if we don’t love our neighbor, we are hard of heart, superior and proud,” Francis observed.

The literal observance of the rules is “sterile” unless the heart also changes in a visible way, seen through concrete attitudes such as being open to an encounter with God and his word, pursuing justice and peace, and helping the poor, the weak and the oppressed, he continued.

Francis said that that the harm done to the Church by “those people who say they are very Catholic and go to church often, but after, in their daily lives, within the family, talk badly about others,” is well-known within our communities, parishes and neighborhoods.

This, he said, “is what Jesus condemns, because this is a counter-Christian witness.”

Pope Francis then pointed to Jesus’ declaration in the Gospel passage that “nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile,” saying his words signal a deeper aspect of Christian life.

What Jesus underlines is the “primacy of interiority, of the heart,” the Pope noted, adding that the line between good and evil doesn’t pass outside of us, “but within us.”

Francis then encouraged attendees to question themselves on their own internal state by asking where their heart is at.

Jesus, he noted, “said that your treasure is where your heart is. What is my treasure? Is it Jesus and his doctrine?”

“The heart must be purified and converted,” the Pope continued, adding that without a pure heart, “you can’t truly have clean hands and lips which speak sincere words of love, mercy and forgiveness. Only a sincere and pure heart is able to do this.”

Pope Francis concluded his speech by praying that Mary would intercede in helping to obtain for them “a clean heart, free from every hypocrisy.”

After leading pilgrims in the traditional Marian prayer, the Pope drew attention to the beatification of Syro-Catholic bishop Flavien-Michel Malké, who was killed in 1915 amid the Ottoman Empire’s genocide against its Christian minorities.

The bishop was declared “Blessed” yesterday during a special liturgy celebrated by Ignatius Youssef III Younan, Syriac Patriarch of Antioch, at the convent of Our Lady of Deliverance in Harissa, Lebanon.

In the context of a brutal persecution against Christians, the bishop “was a tireless defender of the rights of his people, urging all to remain firm in the faith,” the Pope said, noting how even today Christians are still persecuted worldwide.

Bishop Malké’s beatification inspired “consolation, courage and hope” in those who suffer because of their faith, he said. He expressed his desire that the beatification would serve as “a stimulus for legislators and government leaders, so that religious freedom is ensured everywhere, and for the international community, that it put an end to violence and abuse.”

Pope Francis officially approved of Bishop Malké’s martyrdom during an Aug. 8 meeting with Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. His beatification fell on the 100th anniversary of his martyrdom.

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VATICAN NEWS

What to learn at the World Meeting of Families: The family is a gift from God

by CNA/EWTN News • August 30, 2015

(jill111 via Pixabay CC0)

Vatican City — The World Meeting of Families event next month in Philadelphia aims to lead families to know their importance as a gift from God and to help them open their hearts to Jesus Christ, a priest involved in the event has said.

The family “is the place where we feel most loved, most protected, most safe, valued,” Father William Donovan, one of the meeting’s main organizers, told CNA. “In the natural economy of things, one could say after the gift of life itself, the second greatest gift God has given us is family.”

“The reason is because, once God gives us life, he also wants us to have a full life. He wants us to be loved, to be protected, to be safe, to be secure, to be valued,” said the Archdiocese of Philadelphia priest who also serves as Archbishop Charles Chaput’s liaison to the Pontifical Council for the Family.

This year’s World Meeting of Families will take place from September 22-27 with the theme “Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive.” Its closing Mass with Pope Francis will mark the end of his first visit to the United States. The meeting also includes presentations, testimonies, and other events.

“The idea is that we want to try to bring as many resources and assistance to the human family so that they can understand and execute its role as a place of love,” said Fr. Donovan.

Pope John Paul II founded the international event in 1994 to encourage families and to strengthen familial bonds. The event takes place every three years in a different city around the world.

Fr. Donovan said the event is a celebration of “the importance, the nature, the dignity, (and) the beauty of the family.” He added that the international gathering brings together pastoral resources on the family that participants can bring back to their respective countries and dioceses.

One of the tasks involved in promoting the World Meeting of Families was in spreading awareness, Fr. Donovan said. Although the event has been taking place for more than twenty years, many Americans were unaware of it.

“Of course, with the Holy Father`s coming, and that brings a great attention to it,” he said. “And, of course, the Holy Father is part of a long tradition. He represents Jesus Christ as the vicar of Christ, so his message will be full of hope, and joy.”

Observing the particular care which Pope Francis has shown to the family since the beginning of his papacy, Fr. Donovan recalled in particular the image of the family being the first school, the first Church, and – especially – the first hospital.

“This image is particularly captivating because when we talk about the families as being the first hospital, we talked about wounds, or weakness,” he said. “The Holy Father is interested in attending particularly to the wounds and weaknesses of the human family.”

The weeklong World Meeting of Families will be divided into three parts: an international congress from September 22-25, consisting of presentations by experts on the family; an artistic festival with Pope Francis, which will include testimonies by one family from each continent; and finally, outdoor Mass on Sunday in Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

“Perhaps one can say that the human mind is nourished by the Congress, the human heart will be nurtured by the cultural celebration and the spirit will be nurtured by the Mass,” Fr. Donovan said.

The priest said meeting organizers wanted the selection of speakers to showcase both the uniqueness of individuals and the shared experience which being part of a family brings.

“Just like each person is a unique gift of God — but there is something common in the human experience that we can all share about the dignity of a human person — the same thing is with the family,” he said.

Fr. Donovan added that organizers wanted the speakers to convey how “every family is a unique and irreproducible gift of God, but there’s something common to all families.”

Any man and woman of goodwill, both from within and outside the Church, “can participate in the importance and the dignity of the family,” he said.

However, the primary aim of the organizers is to lead families closer to Christ.

“It would be wonderful if each person can take away something that makes him or her a better person, and improves their family: opening their minds and hearts to Christ will improve themselves and their families,” the priest said.

“This is our hope: to bring greater happiness, greater peace, greater security, and salvation, to our families.”

This year’s World Meeting of Families will be the eighth of its kind, and the first to take place in the United States. The last World Meeting of Families was held in Milan in 2012.

The event takes place just weeks ahead of the Synod on the Family on Oct. 4-25. Its focus will be the theme: “The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and the modern world.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope to Catholic lawmakers: Be strong, protect life

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • August 31, 2015

Pope Francis celebrates Mass for the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple in St. Peter’s Basilica, Feb. 2, 2015. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — On Sunday, Pope Francis urged Catholic legislators to be protectors of human life, calling them to “be strong” against a throw-away culture marked by Christian persecution, and the rejection of the unborn and migrants.

The pontiff made these remarks during an audience with the International Catholic Legislators Network. During the meeting, members of the Network presented the Holy Father with a document outlining their commitment to promoting life in their respective nations, especially in areas of abortion, Christian persecution, and migration.

U.S. Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), a member of the Network present at the August 30 audience, told EWTN News Nightly how the Pope concluded the audience with off-the-cuff remarks about the “throw-away culture where the unborn child, the migrant is not wanted.”

“He also told us to be strong,” Fortenberry said.

The working document presented to Pope Francis outlines their commitment “to go deeper on the issues of protecting human life,” the Nebraska lawmaker later told CNA.

Among these issues are the persecution and “genocide” of Christians, along with its implications in international law. Another issue raised was the migration crisis, and Europe’s inability to coordinate efforts to help those escaping persecution and poverty, while addressing those who enter the continent seeking to recolonize it “in the name of Islam.”

The African voice, in particular, has gained significance in the fight to defend life and family values, Fortenberry said. He explained that the working document presented to the Pope articulates the Network’s intent to organize a conference on life issues in Africa.

“The African experience of Church and community has its own dynamics and culture,” the congressman said. “The particular situation they find themselves in is more trying to fight the assaults on human dignity and human family that are being imposed upon them by the West.”

“Values from the West,” he continued, “which are undermining family life, and attacking marriage,” by means including population control through abortion.

The people of Africa, however, are largely resisting these efforts, Fortenberry said.

“It’s not part of their culture. It’s not natural to them. And, of course, the faith re-enforces that.”

As part of the developing world, African countries have long endured the effects of colonization, neo-colonization, and globalization.

“There are benefits to that in terms of smart development … empowering people to move out of poverty, he said. “But, there is also strong baggage with that: And that means values from the West which are undermining family life, and attacking marriage.”

After presenting the document to Pope Francis, the African delegation broke into an African version of the Hallelujah, Fortenberry recounted.

“There’s a vibrancy of the faith there, there’s a strong set of vocations coming from there, which is a sign of healthiness in the Church, there is a commitment by – I hope – a growing number of public officials to stand strong, and it’s encouraging to me.”

“That’s one of the real joys,” he said: “to see African brothers and sisters coming there to be strengthened, to tell us their perspective, and help us rebuild a better just and good society.”

The International Catholic Legislators Network is a group founded by Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, and member of the British House of Lords David Alton, which meets annually in Rome.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis holds virtual audience with Americans in Chicago, Texas, L.A.

by CNA/EWTN News • August 31, 2015

Pope Francis at the Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on August 26, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis on Monday took part in a virtual audience with a group of Americans, less than a month before his historic trip to the United States.

The event was hosted by ABC News, which made the announcement of the audience Aug. 31. It will air on ABC News’ “20/20” at 10:00 p.m. ET Sept. 4 and will be posted online in English and Spanish.

Next month, the Pope will travel to Washington, D.C., New York, and Philadelphia. He will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama, address the United States Congress and the United Nations, and attend the World Meeting of Families, among other events.

The virtual audience allowed the Pope to talk via satellite with people from parts of the country that he will not physically visit on his trip – students at a Chicago inner city school, parishioners from a border town in Texas, and homeless men and women in Los Angeles, according to ABC.

The network released a preview clip of the Pope addressing Americans.

“For me, it is very important to meet with all of you, the citizens of the United States, who have your history, your culture, your virtues, your joys, your sadness, your problems, like everyone else,” the Holy Father said, adding that “this trip is important for me to draw close to you in your path, your history.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Benedict XVI: God’s truth, love, and goodness are what make us pure

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • September 1, 2015

Benedict XVI says Mass at the chapel of the Vatican’s Teutonic Cemetery for his former students at their annual gathering, Aug. 30, 2015. (Ratzinger Foundation)

Vatican City — When Benedict XVI said Mass on Sunday for the annual meeting of his former students, his homily focused on how God’s Word frees us from the forgetfulness of a world that no longer even thinks about God.

“The truth, love, and goodness which come from God render man pure; and truth, love, and goodness are encountered in the Word, which frees us from ‘forgetfulness’ in a world which no longer thinks of God,” the emeritus Pope said Aug. 30 while saying Mass for the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis at the chapel of the Teutonic Cemetery in the Vatican.

The Ratzinger Schuelerkreis has gathered annually to discuss topics in theology and the life of the Church since 1978, shortly after their mentor was pulled from academia to become a bishop.

Ratzinger participated in the Schuelerkreis until his abdication as Bishop of Rome; since then, he has come only for the concluding day of the meeting to say Mass for the group.

In his homily, which was delivered in German, Benedict recalled that three years ago the group had heard the same passage from the Gospel of Mark which was proclaimed in the Mass, and that Cardinal Christoph Schonborn had asked, “Shouldn’t we be purified from the outside and not only from the inside? Does evil come solely from the inside, or from outside as well?”

Calling it a very interesting question, Benedict replied to it in his homily, saying the answer must draw from the whole of the Gospel.

He asked whether the evil that attacks the Church comes from the world, and suggested: “We could say that we should respond with an exterior hygiene to the many maladies and, at times, epidemics which threaten us.”

Such an attitude is necessary, he said, so that death cannot prevail; yet he also maintained that it is insufficient, because the “epidemic of heart” is interior, and it is this interior disease which “leads to corruption and to other dirty things, those that lead man to think only of himself and not of the good.”

“What makes man pure?” Benedict asked. “What is the true strength for purification? How do we reach a cleanness of the heart?”

He then explained that Christ told his followers they are pure because of the word he announced to them, and so it is the truth, love, and goodness of God which make man pure.

“The Word is much more than words, because it is through words that we encounter the Word himself,” Benedict explained. “The Word is Jesus Christ himself, and we encounter the Word in those who reflect him, who show the face of God and who reflect his mildness, his humility of heart, his simplicity, his affection, his sincerity.”

“May the Lord grant us this ‘cleanness of heart’ though the Truth, which comes from God: this is the strength of purification,” Benedict concluded.

The emeritus Pope was speaking to a group of some 70 persons: both the original Schuelerkreis of his former students, and a younger group of scholars who studied his work after he was consecrated a bishop.

This year’s theme for discussion at the Schuelerkreis was “speaking about God in the contemporary world.”

Though Benedict was not present at the discussions, he is, in a sense, “always present among us, as we are in his footsteps, and as he always chooses the topic of discussion of our annual gathering,” Fr. Stephan Horn, who organizes the annual meetings, told CNA. He added that the former Bishop of Rome “was very lucid, and spoke for some time with each of us.”

The Schuelerkreis met this year at Castel Gandolfo Aug. 28-29, and was addressed by Msgr. Tomas Halik, a Czech priest and philosopher who has contributed to dialogue with non-believers. The group moved to the Vatican Aug. 30 for the Mass with Benedict.

Msgr. Halik told CNA he was “particularly impressed by the members of the Young Schuelerkreis: in them I saw the spirit of the young Ratzinger.”

In his lectures, Msgr. Halik said that “many say that Christianity is living a decay, while others say that it is completely dead … in my view, we are living the afternoon of Christianity; that is, Christianity is now having a siesta, a little rest.”

Following this afternoon, Msgr. Halik believes there will be a new day: recounting the traditional understanding of the day as beginning in the evening, he said that the stars which appear while Vespers are said “are the beginning of a new day; so, there will be a new day for Christianity.”

He added that many non-believers “are in fact seekers, and the Church’s task is now that of accompanying these seekers.”

The priest’s understanding was shared by the Schuelerkreis. Fr. Horn recounted that the group considered the crisis of current society, but found that there are reasons for optimism even within the crisis.

Following the Mass with Benedict, there was a ceremony to inaugurate the Pope Benedict Hall. It was announced that the Teutonic College will in November open a library dedicated to the former Roman Pontiff, cared for by the Ratzinger Foundation.

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VATICAN NEWS

All priests will be able forgive sin of abortion during Jubilee for Mercy

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 1, 2015

Priests celebrate Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver on Jan. 17, 2015. (Jeffrey Bruno/Catholic Charities CC BY 2.0)

Vatican City — In a new set of pastoral guidelines for the upcoming Holy Year of Mercy Pope Francis has made some significant moves, allowing all priests to forgive the sin of abortion and granting SSPX priests the faculty to forgive sins.

“One of the serious problems of our time is clearly the changed relationship with respect to life,” the Pope said in a Sept. 1 letter addressed to Archbishop Rino Fisichela, President of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, charged with organizing the Jubilee.

In today’s society “a widespread and insensitive mentality” has become an obstacle to welcoming new life, with many who don’t fully understand the deep harm done by the “tragedy of abortion,” he said.

However, Francis also noted that there are many women who, despite thinking abortion is wrong, feel that they have no other choice.

“I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal. I have met so many women who bear in their heart the scar of this agonizing and painful decision,” he said.

A woman who obtains an abortion automatically incurs a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication, as well as those who assisted her in the process. Normally the sin of committing an abortion can only be absolved by a bishop, or certain priests appointed by him.

For specific occasions such as Advent or Lent, some bishops extend this faculty to all priests within their diocese.

However, the Pope said that the forgiveness of God can’t be denied to a person who has sincerely repented, especially when the person comes to the Sacrament of Confession in order to be genuinely reconciled with the Father.

Because of this, Francis said, he has allowed all priests for the Jubilee of Mercy “to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it.”

In another significant move, Francis has also allowed priests from the Society of St Pius X to “validly and licitly” hear confessions during the Holy Year.

“This Jubilee Year of Mercy excludes no one,” the Pope said in his letter, explaining several bishops have informed him of the society’s “good faith and sacramental practice,” albeit combined with an “uneasy situation from the pastoral standpoint.”

The Society of St. Pius X was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 to form priests, as a response to what he described as errors that had crept into the Church following the Second Vatican Council. Its relations with the Holy See became strained in 1988 when Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without the permission of Pope John Paul II.

The illicit consecration resulted in the excommunication of the five bishops; the excommunications were lifted in 2009 by Benedict XVI, and since then, negotiations between the Society and the Vatican to re-establish full communion have continued.

In his letter, Francis expressed his confidence that solutions to recovering full communion with the priests and superiors of the Society could be found in the near future.

In the meantime, “motivated by the need to respond to the good of these faithful, through my own disposition,” he declared that those who approach priests of the Society for confession during the jubilee “shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins.”

Pope Francis also turned to those who, due to reasons of age, illness or incarceration, will not be able to walk through the Holy Door in order to obtain the plenary indulgence connected with the jubilee.

Each of the four major basilicas in Rome has a holy door, which are normally sealed shut from the inside so that they cannot be opened. The doors are only opened during jubilee years so that pilgrims can enter through them in order to gain the indulgence.

In May it was announced that as part of the Holy Year for Mercy, holy doors will for the first time be designated in dioceses, and will be located either in the cathedral or in a church of special significance or a shrine of particular importance for pilgrimages.

For the elderly and sick, often confined to their homes, the Pope said that living their illness and suffering with “joyful hope” and attending Mass, receiving communion and participating in community prayer, “even through the various means of communication,” is a way that they can receive the jubilee indulgence.

In regards to prisoners, Francis said that they will be able to obtain the indulgence in the chapels of the prisons.

He said that directing their thoughts and prayers to God each time they cross the door of their cell would signify their passage through the Holy Door, “because the mercy of God is able to transform hearts, and is also able to transform bars into an experience of freedom.”

The Pope also pointed to how a jubilee indulgence can be obtained for the deceased, and encourage faithful to the Saints for them during Mass, that “the merciful Face of the Father” free them of the remainder of every fault.

Francis then turned to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, explaining that the experience of mercy “becomes visible in the witness of concrete signs as Jesus himself taught us.”

Therefore, each time that someone personally performs one or more of the 13 works of mercy, such as feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, burying the dead, willingly forgiving offenses, comforting the afflicted or praying for the living and dead, that person will “surely obtain the Jubilee Indulgence.”

For all those who will celebrate and experience the grace of the jubilee either as pilgrims in Rome or in their individual dioceses, Francis prayed that the indulgence would be “a genuine experience of God’s mercy” for each one.

He affirmed that in order to receive the indulgence one must make a pilgrimage to the Holy Door, either in Rome or in their diocese, “as a sign of the deep desire for true conversion.”

In addition to the cathedrals and shrines where the Holy Door of Mercy will be opened, the Pope also designated that the indulgence could be attained in the churches traditionally identified as Jubilee Churches.

He stressed the importance of remembering that the reception of the indulgence must be linked “first and foremost to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist with a reflection on mercy.”

It will be necessary, he said, “to accompany these celebrations with the profession of faith and with prayer for me and for the intentions that I bear in my heart for the good of the Church and of the entire world.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope listens to what Francis of Assisi can teach us about creation

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 1, 2015

Pope Francis listens as Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa preaches for the liturgy celebrating the Day of Prayer for Care of Creation in St. Peter’s Basilica, Sept. 1, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — On the first World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the preacher to the papal household said that St. Francis of Assisi is a key model in showing the link between faith in God and care for our common home.

Saint Francis “is living proof of the contribution that faith in God can give to the common effort for the protection of creation,” Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., said Sept. 1 during his homily for a Liturgy of the Word presided over by Pope Francis, which was celebrated at St. Peter’s Basilica.

“His love for creatures is a direct consequence of his faith in the universal paternity of God.”

The World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation was instituted by Pope Francis last month to coincide with the Eastern Orthodox Church’s day of celebration for creation, which has taken place this day since since 1989.

Although Pope Francis presided over the celebration, Fr. Cantalamessa (who has been preacher to the Papal Household since he was appointed by St. John Paul II in 1980) gave the homily.

The liturgy began with the Canticle of the Three Young Men from the book of Daniel, and the Christian prayer in union with creation found at the conclusion of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si.

There was then a first reading, from Genesis 1; a responsorial, Psalm 148; a second reading, from Laudato Si; an Alleluia; and a Gospel reading, from Matthew 6.

Fr. Cantalamessa delivered his homily following the proclamation of the Gospel.

One of the greatest sins against creation, the Capuchin Franciscan priest said, is not listening to God’s voice, but “condemning it irretrievably, Saint Paul would say, to vanity, to insignificance.”

The priest turned to God’s first commandment to man and woman, do “fill the earth and subdue it,” as well as his charge that man would have dominion over the earth.

Often these passages are interpreted with a secular mindset in which the word “dominate” is taken out of the biblical context, he said, portraying a “political sovereign exploiting his subjects” rather than a father who guards and preserves his creatures.

“There is an evident parallel: as God is dominant over man, so man should be dominant over the rest of creation, that is, responsible for it and guarding it,” the priest said.

“Faith in God the creator and in man made in God’s image is therefore not a threat, but rather a guarantee for creation, and the strongest of all. He says that man is not absolute master of other creatures: he must account for what he received.”

A demonstratation that man’s abuse of creation does not follow the biblical vision is that today’s pollution map doesn’t coincide with the spread of the biblical region, but rather that “of a wild industrialization, turned only to profit, and with that the corruption that closes the mouth of all protests and resists all powers.”

Instead, the Bible brings to light a natural hierarchy which can be seen throughout nature, the priest observed.

This is a hierarchy, he said, is “for life, not against it,” and can be violated in various ways, such as when some spend ostentatious amounts on their pets and allow millions of children to “die of hunger and disease underneath their eyes.”

What St. Francis of Assisi shows us is a way to radically change our relationship with creation, in which we replace possession with contemplation, the preacher said.

Saint Francis, Fr. Cantalamessa noted, “found a different way to praise things, which is to contemplate, rather than owning them. He can rejoice in all things, because he has given up on owning any.”

“Possession excludes, contemplation includes; possession divides, contemplation multiplies,” he said, explaining that while only one person can own a lake or park, thus excluding others, when these things are left for contemplation, thousands can enjoy them without taking away from anyone else.

He also spoke pointed to the Gospel passage which was read, in which Christ says not to worry about what we will eat or drink, or what tomorrow will bring.

This passage, the priest observed, might seem contradictory to Laudato Si, in which Pope Francis encouraged others to be concerned about the future of the planet.

Rather than being in contradiction, the Gospel passage “puts the axe to the root - the same axe to the very same root at which Pope Francis puts his encyclical,” when it states at the beginning that “you cannot serve both man and wealth,” Fr. Cantalamessa said.

The preacher added that no-one can truly serve the cause of protecting creation without having the courage “of pointing the finger against the exaggerated accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few and against the money that measures them.”

Although Christ never condemned wealth in itself, what he did condemn was dishonest wealth, gained at the expense of others as a result of corruption and which is deaf to the needs of the poor.

What the Gospel passage says and what Pope Francis says in Laudato Si have the same undertone, namely, not to be concerned with our own tomorrow, but with the tomorrow “of those who will come after” us.

The example of St. Francis of Assisi, he said, shows that a religious attitude toward creation is not something far-fetched, but is based on something concrete.

He noted how the saint at one point said, “I don’t want to be a thief of alms,” meaning he was receiving more than he needed, and was thus taking away from others.

“Today this rule could have a very useful application for the future of the earth,” Fr. Cantalamessa said, explaining that while St. Francis didn’t have the global, planetary vision of the world’s ecological problem, he had a local, immediate vision.

St. Francis of Assisi “thought about what he could do and possibly his brother friars. Also in this he teaches us something,” the priest said, pointing to the popular slogan, “Think globally, act locally.”

“What sense does it have, for example, to pick on those who pollute the atmosphere, oceans, and forests, if I don’t hesitate to throw a plastic bag in the bank of a riverbed that will remain there for centuries unless someone retrieves it?” he asked.

Like peace, protecting creation is something “handcrafted” that begins with ourselves, he said, quoting a phrase of Pope Francis.

He concluded by saying that if St. Francis of Assisi were alive today, he might add another verse to his famous prayer, this time praising God “for all those who work to protect our sister mother Earth, scientists, politicians, heads of all religious and men of good will.”

“Praise be, my Lord, for him who, together in my name, has also taken my message and today is bringing it to the whole world!”

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VATICAN NEWS

Alliance between families and God can change the world, Pope Francis says

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • September 2, 2015

Pope Francis arrives to St. Peter’s Square for the General Audience on Sept. 2, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Encouraging families to hear God’s word and to put it into practice, Pope Francis said Wednesday that the family, by being allied with God, is called to counteract the “desertification” found in today’s cities.

“Our cities are becoming desertified for lack of love, for lack of smiles,” the Roman Pontiff said, addressing the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square Sept. 2 for the General Audience.

Cities have “many diversions, many ways of wasting time, of laughing, but love is missing,” the Pope said. However, the family has the ability to overcome this.

“The smile of a family is able to defeat this desertification of our cities. This is the victory of the love of the family.”

Since last autumn, Pope Francis has centered his Wednesday catecheses on the family, as part of the lead-up to the World Day of Families in September, as well as October’s Synod on the Family; today’s address was the last in the year-long series.

Throughout his catechesis, Pope Francis stressed the significance of “familial affections” and “the importance of families for spreading the faith” and for “helping to build a more human society.”

Although the Gospel says to love Christ more than our parents and children, it is not Jesus’ intent to “delete the fourth commandment” – honor your father and your mother – the Pope said.

“Neither can we think that the Lord, after having performed his first miracle for the spouses at Cana, after having consecrated the conjugal union between man and woman, after having returned sons and daughters to family life, asks us to be insensitive to these ties!”

“On the contrary, when Jesus affirms the primacy of faith in God, he does not find a more significant comparison than family affections,” he said.

Pope Francis said the “knowledge of affection” is the “best gift of familial genius.” If we do not learn this “grammar” in the family, it becomes difficult to learn it well.

“And it is properly through this language that God makes himself understood to all.”

“The invitation to put family ties within the scope of obedience to the faith and the covenant with God does not demean them,” the Roman Pontiff explained. Rather, “it protects them, frees them from egotism, guards them from neglect, leads them safely to endless life.”

Such family affections are a source of blessing, and “bring hope on the earth,” the Pope said, adding that when transformed by the Gospel, “they become capable of unimaginable things.”

Pope Francis gave the example of men and women who put themselves at risk and even sacrifice themselves for someone else’s child. He said this is the sort of love “which many scientists no longer understand.”

“And where there are these familial affections, these gestures from the heart are more eloquent than words.”

Pope Francis concluded his catechesis by praying that the Spirit may bring “happy disarray” to Christian families, and that “the city of man finds a way out of its depression.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Vatican says ‘no’ to transsexual godparents amid Spain controversy

by CNA/EWTN News • September 2, 2015

A view of the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica from the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Feb. 14, 2015. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — A media firestorm arose in Spain after a transsexual woman, who considers herself a man, asked to be the godfather of her nephew – leading a diocese’s bishop to turn to the Vatican for an answer.

After writing to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about the issue earlier this month, Bishop Rafael Zornoza Boy of Cádiz and Ceuta was told that since transsexual persons are not consistently living Church teaching, its “impossible” for them to fulfill their duties as a godparent.

The bishop wrote the letter after Alex Salinas, 21 years-old and born a woman, had requested to be the godfather of her nephew.

In their response, the congregation – charged with safeguarding Catholic teaching – said that it is “impossible to allow” a person with transsexual behavior to be a baptismal godmother or godfather.

In a Sept. 1 statement, the bishop said he turned to the Vatican due to “confusion among some of the faithful” and “the complexity and media attention garnered by this issue,” as well as the pastoral implications the decision has.

In the Vatican’s full response – which the bishop provided in his statement – the congregation explained that transsexual behavior “reveals in a public way an attitude opposite to the moral imperative of solving the problem of sexual identity according to the truth of one’s own sexuality.”

“Therefore it is evident that this person does not possess the requirement of leading a life according to the faith and in the position of godfather and is therefore unable to be admitted to the position of godfather or godmother,” they said, referring to canon 874 section 3 in the Code of Canon Law.

However, the congregation stressed that there is “no discrimination toward (Alex), but only the recognition of an objective lack of the requirements, which by their nature are necessary to assume the ecclesial responsibility of being a godfather.”

In his statement, Bishop Zornoza points out that the role of godparents in the sacrament of baptism is assumed “before God and his Church and, in relation to the baptized, the duty of cooperating with the parents in (the child’s) Christian formation, seeking to lead a life consistent with baptismal faith and faithfully fulfilling the inherent obligations.”

Godparents must be “firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized – child or adult – on the road of Christian life,” the statement continues, referring to paragraph 1255 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The bishop also suggested that if candidates meeting the requirements to be a godparent are not found, the baptism can still be celebrated in the same form, since the figure of godparents is not necessary in this sacrament.

Bishop Zorzona recalled Pope Francis’ words in his environment encyclical Laudato Si, in which the Pope said that “valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different.”

“In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment,” the Pope said, adding that “it is not a healthy attitude which would seek to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it.”

At the close of his statement, Bishop Zorzona emphasized that “the Church welcomes all persons with charity, desiring to help each one in their situation with tender mercy, but without denying the truth she preaches, which is offered to everyone as a path of faith to be freely accepted.”

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VATICAN NEWS

On WWII anniversary, Pope says ‘never again’ to war, condemns arms trafficking

by CNA/EWTN News • September 2, 2015

U.S. General Douglas MacArthur signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, formally ending World War II. (U.S. Navy, public domain)

Vatican City — Pope Francis remembered the official end of the Second World War on Wednesday with the plea: “never again,” and he decried similar horrors from today’s bloody conflicts, denouncing weapons trafficking.

The Pope recounted Sept. 2 today’s victims of war: “The persecuted minorities, the persecuted Christians, the insanity of destruction and the manufacturing and trafficking of weapons, bloodstained weapons, weapons soaked in the blood of many innocent (people).”

He cited the words of his predecessor, Blessed Paul VI: “War never again!”

These words, he said, are “the anguished cry which, from our hearts and from the hearts of men and women of good will, rise up to the Prince of Peace.”

The Pope’s remarks addressed pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square at the conclusion of his weekly General Audience.

“I renew my fervent prayer to the Lord of All that, through the Virgin Mary’s intercession, today’s world may not experience the horrors and the appalling suffering from similar tragedies,” he continued.

“This is also the permanent longing of peoples, especially those who are victims of several current bloody conflicts.”

The Second World War formally ended Sept. 2, 1945 on the U.S.S. Missouri, when Japan signed the documents of its surrender. Millions of soldiers and civilians were killed over the six-year conflict that engulfed large parts of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific.

Pope Francis has spoken on several occasions about World War II over the course of his pontificate. He sent a message to the French bishops paying homage to those who fought in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and he has also commemorated the 1943 bombing of Rome’s St. Lawrence Basilica.

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VATICAN NEWS

Are dialogue and reconciliation with the SSPX part of the Jubilee for Mercy?

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2015

Pope Francis at St. Peter’s Basilica for the convocation of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, April 11, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis’ decision that during the Jubilee Year of Mercy the faithful can receive absolution from priests of the Society of St. Pius X is the most recent attempt at reconciliation with the priestly society, according to a Vatican official.

The decision must be understood as Pope Francis extending his arm to the SSPX, a Vatican official who has taken part in talks between the Vatican and the society told CNA Sept. 2.

The official added that for the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis has solved the issue of the validity of absolutions granted by priests of the society.

In his Sept. 1 letter detailing the Holy Year of Mercy, which runs from Dec. 8, 2015 to Nov. 20, 2016, Pope Francis wrote that among his considerations were “those faithful who for various reasons choose to attend churches officiated by priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X.”

“This Jubilee Year of Mercy excludes no one,” he reflected. “From various quarters, several Brother Bishops have told me of their good faith and sacramental practice, combined however with an uneasy situation from the pastoral standpoint. I trust that in the near future solutions may be found to recover full communion with the priests and superiors of the Fraternity.”

“In the meantime, motivated by the need to respond to the good of these faithful, through my own disposition, I establish that those who during the Holy Year of Mercy approach these priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins.”

Later that day, the SSPX released a statement “express(ing) its gratitude to the Sovereign Pontiff for this fatherly gesture … on the occasion of this Holy Year, Pope Francis wants all the faithful who wish to confess to the priests of the Society of St. Pius X to be able to do so without being worried.”

The society’s statement added that “in the ministry of the sacrament of penance, we have always relied, with all certainty, on the extraordinary jurisdiction conferred by the Normae generales of the Code of Canon Law.”

The statement reflects the SSPX’s belief that even though their priests have not been given the faculty of hearing confessions by local ordinaries (because of their irregular situation in the Church) – which is necessary for the valid absolution of sins – their absolutions are nevertheless valid, because they believe Church to be in a state of “emergency” which overrides the need for faculties given by the local bishop.

The Society of St. Pius X was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 to form priests, as a response to what he described as errors that had crept into the Church following the Second Vatican Council. Its relations with the Holy See became strained in 1988 when Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without the permission of Pope John Paul II.

The illicit consecration resulted in the excommunication of the five bishops; the excommunications were lifted in 2009 by Benedict XVI, and since then, negotiations between the Society and the Vatican have continued, “to rediscover full communion with the Church.”

In remitting the excommunications, Benedict also noted that “doctrinal questions obviously remain and until they are clarified the Society has no canonical status in the Church and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry.”

The biggest obstacle for the society’s reconciliation has been the statements on religious liberty in Vatican II’s declaration Dignitatis humanae, which it claims contradicts previous Catholic teaching.

Doctrinal discussions between the SSPX and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith broke down in the summer of 2012, when the society’s superior general, Bishop Bernard Fellay, would not sign a doctrinal preamble presented by Rome.

In December 2012 the vice-president of the Ponticial Commission Ecclesia Dei, Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, wrote to the society’s priests, seeking “reconciliation and healing” and urging them that “some new considerations of a more spiritual and theological nature are needed … considerations that focus rather on our duty to preserve and cherish the divinely willed unity and peace of the Church.”

Talks between the CDF and the society resumed in 2014. In September of that year, representatives of both bodies held a two-hour meeting to discuss matters of Church teaching. The Holy See press office stated that “various problems of a doctrinal and canonical nature were examined, and it was decided to proceed gradually and over a reasonable period of time in order to overcome difficulties and with a view to the envisioned full reconciliation.”

And within the past year, the Holy See delegated both Cardinal Walter Brandmuller and Bishop Athanasius Schneider to visit the seminaries of the SSPX.

The prelates were sent to become better acquainted with the society, and to discuss doctrinal and theological topics in a less formal context in accord with the September 2014 meeting between Bishop Fellay and Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the CDF.

Both Cardinal Brandmuller and Bishop Schneider may well be among the brother bishops whom Pope Francis said “have told me of [the SSPX’s] good faith and sacramental practice,” coupled with an uneasy pastoral situation – in August, Bishop Schneider told Adelante la Fe that “I could observe a sound theological, spiritual and human reality” in the society’s seminaries.

Another recent sign of reconciliation toward the SSPX came earlier this year when the CDF appointed Bishop Fellay the first-instance judge in a delicta graviora case involving a priest of the society. Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, told Vatican Insider the decision was “a sign of benevolence and magnanimity” and “a step toward reconciliation.”

In the end, Pope Francis’ gesture of an open arm toward the SSPX for the mercy jubilee can be seen in the context of a hope for full reconciliation, amid a history of positive signs punctuated by halts in discussions between Rome and the priestly society.

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VATICAN NEWS

Strong words from the Vatican as migrant crisis spikes worldwide

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2015

Migrant. (John Perivolaris via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Vatican City — A Vatican official in charge of assisting migrants spoke about the increasing number of refugees around the globe and stressed that they should be welcomed as brothers and sisters – not seen as a burden.

From a Catholic perspective, migrants should above all be recognized as persons created “in the image and likeness of God, which is the basis of human dignity,” Fr. Matthew Gardzinski told CNA Aug. 26.

Christ left us the example that migrants “are brothers and sisters,” he said, and noted that too many migrants frequently find themselves “in very tragic situations, for example here in the Mediterranean, in Far East Asia.”

The process of welcoming migrants and helping them to integrate into their new society is “always a mutual enrichment, both for the society who accepts them and for the migrant who becomes a living part of that society.”

A member of the Society of Christ Fathers, Fr. Gardzinski is in charge of the migrants section for the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples.

The council serves as a point of reference and coordination for the various initiatives the Vatican oversees and organizes in terms of helping migrants and all people on the move throughout the world.

Their mission also entails encouraging the pastoral care and spiritual and physical accompaniment of migrants.

In addition to working with various charitable organizations such as Caritas Internationalis and the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the Vatican’s migrant council shares a particularly strong collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, since their mission tends to focus on political influence on society and governments.

The plight of migrants fleeing war-torn Syria was thrown into sharp perspective this week when photos from British newspaper the Independent began to circulate showing the dead body of a small Syrian boy that washed up on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey.

Aylan Al-Kurdi, three years-old, drown along with his mother and older brother in a failed attempt to reach the nearby Greek island of Kos from Bodrum, their most direct passage into the European Union.

The striking images of Al-Kurdi’s tiny body lying face down in the sand serves as a drastic illustration of the crisis currently unfolding in Greece, which has become one of the primary destinations of mainly Syrian and Afghani refugees seeking entrance into Europe.

After the photos of Al-Kurdi began to make rounds on social media and the worldwide web, many have begun to criticize European leaders for not doing enough to help incoming migrants.

Close to the situation in Greece is Fr. Luke Gregory, OFM, who lives on the Greek island of Rhodes, but travels to Kos every 15 days to celebrate Mass for Kos’ 30 Catholics in the city’s only Catholic Church – more of a chapel – named Agnus Dei, and which sits in the city’s Catholic cemetery.

He spoke to CNA Aug. 17 about the plight of the thousands of migrants who arrive to Kos and other Greek islands from Turkey by the boatload every day, uttering immediately: “the poor things, they are suffering so much.”

With a financially stressed economy, Greece has been completely unprepared for the 124,000 refugees that have reached their shore in the first seven months of 2015, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

No welcoming facilities or refugee centers have been established, and the island’s 26 police officers have been responsible for managing the 2-300 migrants that arrive each day.

Most of the new arrivals are left to fend for themselves, and those already on the island have taken over public spaces such as the beaches and parks.

Their tents can be seen everywhere, as well as their clothes which have been washed in the sea and left on trees to dry. Some are even sleeping on the property of Orthodox churches, who have opened their land to the migrants.

The government is doing “what’s possible” given the situation, Fr. Gregory, said, explaining that it has been the locals who, in their own financial duress, have welcomed the refugees and brought them food.

“Greeks have done well in welcoming them, as well as the hotels,” he said, explaining that the hotels have been providing food, while Kos locals have brought clothing and tents.

However, now that the tourist season is over most of the hotels are closing, it is Caritas who will provide the food.

But with a nationwide financial crisis and the number of refugees increasing daily, funds for provisions are limited, and Caritas’ Greece branch has turned to others for help.

The Italy branch has been the first to respond, and the first shipment of food arrived Aug. 25. Fr. Gregory said he is “very happy” with Italy, who despite having their own migration crisis were the first to give. “Bravo Italy!”

Others, including groups of youth around 19-20, have also provided help after hearing his homilies, the priest said, recalling how in the summer one group after Mass went directly to the market and bought food to hand out to the refugees.

The generosity on the part of locals “is touching,” he said, adding that despite current difficulties, “we must have faith.”

Fr. Gardzinski explained that there are both positive and negative consequences of migration. While one country loses the persons who migrate, the receiving country gains their ideas and creativity.

“For example here in Europe we’re seeing an aging population where these migrants are a vigorous force,” he said, noting how most of those who immigrate are among the younger generation.

“These are people that move not only physically, but they bring with them their ideas, their strengths, weaknesses, so at a certain point societies who were very ‘one-kinded’ all of a sudden become a society that is standing in front of someone who is a little different.”

Although there are some who fear that migration on the large scales that we’re seeing might water-down the culture of the countries they move to, Fr. Gardzinski said that it depends, and that the presence of migrants serves as a type of identity crisis.

“Maybe the word is a negative, but a ‘crisis’ in a sense that it puts to the challenge who you are on one hand to build your own identity, your own cultural traits, and on the other hand also to see the positive thing of the other person,” he said.

However, the priest also noted how xenophobic, restrictive or fearful attitudes can arise when the number of incoming people is larger than the receiving country.

While having fear in the face of such situations is a natural, human reaction, he said it’s important to look at what the fear is grounded on.

In terms of migration and the presence of new ideas and approaches, “it’s worthwhile to ask that question: what stands behind that fear, what stands behind that approach? Is it really something objective, or is it something more subjective, because I feel threatened, or challenged?”

Cardinal Antonio Maria Vegliò, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, spoke to CNA Aug. 27 about the topic, saying that in her social doctrine, the Church safeguards both the right of peoples to migrate, as well as to preserve one’s culture and the common good.

“Regarding migration, the social teaching of the Church concentrates on three rights: the right to migrate, the right of every country to regulate the waves of migration, and the right not to migrate,” he said.

“What does the Church do with regard to these rights? With reference to those who immigrate, we have the duty to safeguard their dignity, welcoming them, providing them a spiritual and material accompaniment, sensitizing public opinion, speaking out about their situation.”

On the other hand, he said that countries also maintain the right to regulate the waves of migration, creating policies based on the general needs of the common good.

But this must be done “warranting the respect of the dignity of every human person, included the migrants,” the cardinal said.

Fr. Gardzinski said that the challenge on this point always comes in finding a balance between the two, and that situations of crisis can often tend to push toward the black or the white.

However, this perspective doesn’t help to have an objective outlook when the situations “are already inflamed, or in a crisis beforehand,” he said, such as in situations like Greece.

On a personal level, the priest emphasized the need to work together in order to solve the current migration crisis, whether in Europe or the entire international community.

“I do not think one nation can actually handle migration by itself, it has to work together in collaboration because otherwise we are not able,” he said.

“The size of migration is just too big to be resolved from one perspective.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Papal pop-by at Roman eyewear shop draws an enthusiastic crowd

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2015

Pope Francis puts on his glasses during the general audience on March 27, 2013 in Vatican City. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Rome, Italy — Even the most ho-hum errands become extraordinary if it’s the Pope who’s running them.

And it is no different for Pope Francis, who popped in to his eye doctor on Thursday to get some new lenses and attracted a mob of onlookers in a matter of minutes.

The Pope rolled up in his blue Ford Focus to the optometry shop, Ottica Spiezia, located along the posh Via del Babuino, the evening of Sept. 3 accompanied by a modest entourage of security guards, a witness told the Associated Press.

Even though Francis’ appointment lasted less than an hour, enthusiastic onlookers streetside scrambled to snap photos and inundate Twitter with the news that they were witnessing the Pope running an errand outside the Vatican walls.

After about 40 minutes, the Pope opened the door and briefly greeted the crowd before heading back to the Vatican.

Shop owner Alessandro Spiezia said he was surprised by the papal pop-by, since he had offered to come to the Vatican to refill the prescription himself.

“I was supposed to go to the Vatican yesterday to bring them, but the Pope told his secretary, ‘No, I don’t want Spiezia to come here, I’ll go to Via del Babuino,’” Spiezia told the AP.

Spiezia supplied Francis’ frames last year, who liked them so much he decided to be a repeat customer.

Spotting the Holy Father outside the Vatican but in Rome is rare, largely for security reasons, a fact that Pope Francis himself has lamented. As a cardinal in Buenos Aires, he took public transportation almost every day.

Soehe, a young German tourist visiting Rome with his father, told the AP he was excited to spot the Pope at the eye glasses shop, especially after he waited for four hours earlier in the day to climb to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica, to no avail.

“There were too many people, and also the president of Israel was visiting and there were so many police officers, so it was too much for us and we went back to the hotel,” Soehe said.

“I told my father, ‘Hey, that was better than going to St. Peter’s dome: Seeing the Pope in a shop trying on new glasses.’”

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis to Israeli president: ‘The challenge is to unite’

by CNA/EWTN News • September 4, 2015

Pope Francis meets with Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Sept. 3, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis held an audience with Israeli president Reuven Rivlin on Thursday, where they exchanged gifts and discussed efforts to secure peace and to address the plight of Middle East Christians.

Pope Francis gave the Israeli president a new bronze medal at the Sept. 3 audience. On the medal was a depiction of a rock split into two parts, but joined by an olive tree. The medal bore the words: “Search for what unites. Overcome what divides.”

When the Pope gave the gift to Rivlin, he winked at the president. “There is some division, but the challenge is to unite,” Pope Francis said.

The audience focused on the political and social situation in the Middle East, giving “special attention” to the condition of Christians and other minorities, the Holy See press office reported.

“In this respect the importance of interreligious dialogue was recognized, along with the responsibility of religious leaders in promoting reconciliation and peace,” said the press office, which described the discussions as cordial.

The meeting also highlighted the need to promote a climate of trust between Israelis and Palestinians. It focused on the resumption of direct negotiations that aimed at “an agreement respecting the legitimate aspirations of the two populations, as a fundamental contribution to peace and stability in the region,” the press office said.

The Holy See and Israel have disagreed over the status of Palestine; Israel has objected to the Holy See’s recognition of the State of Palestine in its negotiations with Palestinian leaders.

When Pope Francis greeted the president, he spoke in English: “Pray for me.”

The president responded: “I will see you in Israel.”

Rivlin gave the Pope a replica of the earliest mention of King David’s dynasty outside of the Bible. The words were carved on a basalt stone dating back to the eighth or ninth century B.C. The original is in the Museum of Israel.

“I think it is right that His Holiness has this gift to remember the common roots between Judaism and Christianity,” the Israeli president said when he presented the gift.

He also gave a plate with the inscription: “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.”

The Pope also gave the Israeli president a copy of his encyclical on the care of creation, Laudato Si’. He also presented him with his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, explaining: “This is for all Christians, but there is a chapter dedicated to dialogue with the Jews.”

The official Israeli delegation included the president’s wife. The Pope gave everyone in the delegation a medal for the third year of his pontificate, marking the 500th anniversary of St. Theresa of Avila’s birth.

Rivlin also met with the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was accompanied by Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Secretary for Relations with States.

Other topics at the meeting included the relations between the Holy See and Israel, and between Israeli authorities and local Catholic communities. Both parties at the audience voiced hope for a prompt conclusion to the drafting of a bilateral agreement. They also hoped for an adequate solution for other matters of common interest, such as the situation of Christian schools in Israel.

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VATICAN NEWS

Blessed Junipero Serra’s cross gets a kiss from Pope Francis

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 4, 2015

Pope Francis venerates the cross which was buried with Bl. Junipero Serra, whom he will canonize later this month, at the General Audience held Sept. 2, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis on Wednesday kissed and blessed a cross that was buried with Father Junipero Serra, the early California missionary whom he will canonize during his U.S. visit later this month.

When Father Junipero Serra’s tomb was opened in 1943 to exhume the Franciscan priest’s body, a cross was found on his chest. Members of the Catholic Church Extension Society brought the relic to the Vatican for the Pope’s Sept. 2 general audience, and presented it to the Pope.

“The Pope blessed it, but he also venerated it, it was very touching,” Father Jack Wall, president of the Catholic Church Extension Society, recounted to CNA. “He reached down and kissed the cross … that was buried with Junipero Serra.”

Now that the cross has received the Pope’s blessing, it will return to California’s Diocese of Monterey, where it will be displayed in the museum at the Carmel Mission.

Bl. Junipero Serra played a leading role in California history. He helped to convert thousands of native Californians to Christianity and taught them new technologies. The 18th century Franciscan priest founded many of the missions that would go on to become the centers of major California cities. He was beatified in 1988 by Saint John Paul II.

Pope Francis will canonize Father Serra Sept. 23 during his visit to Washington, D.C.

In a May 2 homily, the Pope described the missionary as “one of the founding fathers of the United States, a saintly example of the Church’s universality and special patron of the Hispanic people of the country.”

Fr. Wall said the Catholic Extension Society is particularly excited about the canonization. He added: “it was part of Catholic Extensions’ hope to help us celebrate this moment in our country, the first Hispanic saint.”

He and other members of the society were in Rome to celebrate two occasions: the 110th anniversary of their founding and the 105th anniversary of their establishment as a papal society.

The Catholic Extension Society, headquartered in Chicago, aims to build up and strengthen the Catholic faith in the poorest places of the United States. Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago is chancellor of the society’s board of governors, and presented the cross to Pope Francis.

The society seeks to share in Pope Francis’ commitment to the poor through its assistance to the poorest dioceses in the United States.

Fr. Wall said the group wanted to tell Pope Francis, “there’s a movement in the United States, and we are really, absolutely embracing his mission to go to the peripheries, those marginalized in the United States, and to really bring that message of hope and joy and peace.”

The society raises roughly $25 million each year to support more than 1,000 projects, including church construction and assistance for seminaries and vowed religious. It also offers support to migrant workers and poor communities.

The society supports the Brownsville, Texas school whose students participated in a virtual audience with Pope Francis hosted by ABC News on Monday.

Fr. Wall said he hopes that Pope Francis will inspire Americans to make a greater effort to reach out to the poor.

“I think that’s his constant message, that we’re in solidarity with everybody in our human family – as he preached today, it’s about family and that we are connected and one with each other in so many ways, and especially as a Catholic community,” he said.

The Catholic Church is an institution which is constantly present to the poor across the United States, the priest observed. He said that a person can’t go to country’s poorest places and not see the presence of the Catholic Church.

“So we’re really a very important instrument of helping lift up people to their deepest aspirations of what they want to be as people,” he said.

For his part, Fr. Wall said that he will do his best to continue building up Pope Francis’ message “for us as Catholics to reach and meet the risen Christ in the poorest communities of our country.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Doctrine and pastoral care go hand-in-hand, Pope Francis reminds theologians

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • September 4, 2015

Pope Francis in prayer during the Liturgy of the Passion on Good Friday at St. Peter’s Basilica, April 3, 2015. (Martha Calderon/CNA)

Vatican City — The Church’s teaching and her pastoral ministry are not opposed, Pope Francis said in a video message on Thursday, even though this false dichotomy is frequently made.

“Not infrequently an opposition between theology and pastoral ministry emerges, as if they were two opposite, separate realities that had nothing to do with each other,” he said Sept. 3 to the International Theological Congress. “False opposition is generated between theology and pastoral ministry, between Christian reflection and Christian life.”

“We not infrequently identify doctrine with conservatism and antiquity; and on the contrary, we tend to think of pastoral ministry in terms of adaptation, reduction, accommodation, as if they had nothing to do with each other,” he lamented.

The Pope added that the Second Vatican Council was an effort “to overcome this divorce between theology and pastoral ministry, between faith and life.”

His words were sent to the theological congress, being held at the Buenos Aires’ Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina this week, which is commemorating the centenary of its theology faculty. The focus of the gathering is the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of Vatican II.

Pope Francis noted the importance of the university’s theology faculty for the local Church, saying that its centenary “celebrates life, history, the faith of the People of God journeying on earth and in search of ‘understanding’ and ‘truth’ from their own positions.”

“There exists no isolated particular Church that can be said to be the owner and sole interpreter of the reality and the work of the Spirit,” he added. “No community has a monopoly over interpretation or inculturation just as, on the other hand, there is no universal Church that turns away from, ignores or neglects the local situation.”

Francis noted that because the particular means of living out the Christian life vary from person to person and place to place, “one of the main tasks of the theologian is to discern and to reflect on what it means to be a Christian today, in the ‘here and now’.”

The Pope identified two temptations that arise in trying to make that discernment.

One he identified as “condemning everything: … assuming ‘everything was better in the past’, seeking refuge in conservatism or fundamentalism.

He also warned against “consecrating everything, disavowing everything that does not have a ‘new flavour’, relativising all the wisdom accumulated in our rich ecclesial heritage.”

“The path to overcoming these temptations lies in reflection, discernment, and taking both the ecclesiastical tradition and current reality very seriously, placing them in dialogue with one another.”

Pope Francis referred to St. John XXIII’s opening speech for the Second Vatican Council, and said the Church’s task is to distinguish “the Church’s living message” from “the form of its transmission” and “the cultural elements in which it is codified at a given time.”

Theologians’ discernment cannot, he cautioned, “lead to a betrayal of the content of the message. The lack of this theological exercise is detrimental to the mission we are invited to perform.”

“Doctrine is not a closed, private system deprived of dynamics able to raise questions and doubts. On the contrary, Christian doctrine has a face, a body, flesh: He is called Jesus Christ and it is his life that is offered from generation to generation to all men and in all places.”

Taking the Incarnation seriously, theologians cannot ignore “The questions our people pose, their anguish, their quarrels, their dreams, their struggles, their concerns,” he reflected.

The Bishop of Rome stated, “Our formulations of faith were born of dialogue, encounter, comparison and contact with different cultures, communities, and nations in situations calling for greater reflection on matters not previously clarified.”

He then added that it is suspicious when Christians “no longer admit the need” to be criticized by others. “People and their specific conflicts, their peripheries, are not optional, but rather necessary for a better understanding of faith. Therefore it is important to ask whom we are thinking of when we engage in theology.”

“Let us not forget that the Holy Spirit in a praying people is the subject of theology. A theology that is not born of this would offer something beautiful, but not real.”

Francis then outlined three characteristics of a theologian’s identity, noting that a theologian is first of all “a son of his people.”

As a person who knows their people’s language, history and tradition, a theologian is someone who learns to appreciate what they have received as a sign of God’s presence, and recognizes that the people into which they were born have “a theological sense that he cannot ignore.”

Secondly, the Pope said, “the theologian is a believer. The theologian is someone who has experience of Jesus Christ and has discovered he cannot live without him.”

Finally, theologians are prophets, he said, explaining that one of the greatest modern challenges “is not merely the ease with which it is possible to dispense with God – socially it has taken a step further. The current crisis pivots on the inability of people to believe in anything beyond themselves.”

This situation, he reflected, “creates a rift in personal and social identities” and “gives rise to a process of alienation, owing to a lack of past, and therefore of future. The theologian is thus a prophet, as he keeps alive an awareness of the past and the invitation that comes from the future. He is a able to denounce any alienating form as he intuits, reflecting on the river of Tradition he has received from the Church, the hope to which we are called.”

Francis concluded by saying the only true way of practicing theology is “on one’s knees,” in prayer.

“It is not merely the pious act of prayer before, and then thinking of theology. It is a dynamic reality of thought and prayer. Practising theology on one’s knees means encouraging thought when praying, and prayer when thinking.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Holy See expresses cautious support for U.N. development goals

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • September 4, 2015

Vatican City flag waving over St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City on May 28, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Washington, D.C. — The Holy See on Tuesday expressed its “strong support” for the 2030 United Nations development agenda, but added it has “firm reservations” about some items in the agenda document.

“This Agenda is a clear sign that, in spite of differences in some areas, the international community has come together and affirmed its commitment to eradicate poverty in all its forms and dimensions and to ensure that all children, women and men throughout the world will have the conditions necessary to live in both freedom and dignity,” the Holy See’s delegation to the United Nations said in a Sept. 1 statement on the document.

They also have “firm reservations to certain items,” as stated in an accompanying Sept. 1 press release.

The United Nations’ new global development agenda sets broad, comprehensive goals for the next 15 years with the aims of fighting global poverty and hunger and human trafficking, and promoting sustainable energy, among other desired achievements. Funding for the goals is massive, estimated to require $5-7 trillion.

Titled “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” the agenda was first drafted in 2014 and the outcome document was finalized Aug. 2. That document will be adopted at the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Summit Sept. 25-27. Pope Francis will address the U.N. general assembly just before this summit begins.

Within these broad goals are specific targets to meet in order to achieve those goals. Progress toward these targets and goals will be measured by specific indicators which will be drafted after the agenda goes into effect in 2016.

“The Agenda rightly puts the centrality of the human person as the subject primarily responsible for development,” the Holy See stated, adding that they are “confident that the related pledge ‘no one will be left behind’ will serve as the perspective through which the entire Agenda will be read to protect the right to life of the person, from conception until natural death.”

However, the Holy See expressed “reservations” about two targets in particular, targets 3.7 and 5.6. Pro-life advocates have already warned that language in these targets could be interpreted to promote abortion access worldwide.

Target 3.7 states, “By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes.”

Target 5.6 states, “Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences.”

Veteran U.N. watchdogs have already warned that language in these targets will be interpreted to include abortion access by wealthy donors, who will have the final word when the goals are implemented.

Language of “sexual and reproductive health” has been interpreted to include abortion access by many Western countries and U.N. agencies, one former U.N. diplomat who partook in many negotiations about sexual and reproductive health language told CNA in June.

Furthermore, donors from these countries and from the U.N. could then use the prospect of development funding to pressure poorer countries to liberalize their abortion laws, the former diplomat added.

Even though Target 5.6 does cite previous U.N. documents respecting national laws on abortion – the “Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action” – donors can still withhold development funding so as to pressure pro-life countries to change their abortion laws.

“To most of the world, especially the developing world, the U.S. is like a life-or-death situation for them,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) had told CNA in an August interview. “If they have refugees, they need refugee money. And to the developing world, the U.N. is almost like another government, if not a major government, for them.”

Western politicians have acknowledged that the language includes abortion access, such as the head of Canada’s permanent mission to the U.N., who in 2001 admitted that “services” for “reproductive health care” included abortion access. In 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Smith that the U.S. definition of “reproductive health” included abortion access.

Ultimately, the Holy See said it does not interpret this language to include abortion access, stating that it “does not consider abortion or access to abortion or abortifacients as a dimension of these terms.”

Rather, it interprets them “as applying to a holistic concept of health, which embrace, each in their own way, the person in the entirety of his or her personality, mind and body, and which foster the achievement of personal maturity in sexuality and in the mutual love and decision-making that characterize the conjugal-relationship between a man and a woman in accordance with moral norms.”

Marie Smith, who had served as a U.N. observer for the Holy See, has explained to CNA how controversial the development agenda has been.

Over 20 countries objected to the proposed agenda in 2014, she said, and when the outcome document was finalized on Aug. 2, there was still opposition to the language in question and “there still are broad differences” about it, she told CNA.

The Holy See also expressed its reservations about other items in the document.

Regarding contraception and other family planning terms, they reiterated their “well-known position concerning those family-planning methods which the Catholic Church considers morally acceptable and, on the other hand, family-planning services which do not respect the liberty of the spouses, human dignity and the human rights of those concerned.”

Regarding the term “gender”, the Holy See stated that it “understands the term to be grounded in the biological sexual identity that is male or female.”

In reference to sexual education mentioned in the document, the Holy See re-affirmed “the ‘primary responsibility’ and the ‘prior rights’ of parents, including their right to religious freedom, when it comes to the education and upbringing of their children, as enshrined, inter alia, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

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WORLD NEWS

‘Africa will save the family’ – one cardinal’s prediction on the Church’s future

by CNA/EWTN News • September 1, 2015

Cardinal Robert Sarah (L) and Bishop Arthur Roche (R) during a press conference at the Vatican Press Office on Feb. 10, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Cotonou, Benin — The African cardinal who heads the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship has high hopes for the Church on his continent – he believes that it can bring about the renewal of the family across the globe.

“I have absolute confidence in African culture,” Cardinal Robert Sarah told the Catholic weekly La Croix du Benin.

“I have absolute confidence in the faith of the African people, and I am sure Africa will save the family. Africa saved the Holy Family (during the Flight to Egypt) and in these modern times Africa will also save the human family,” the cardinal said Aug. 19 during a national Marian pilgrimage at Dassa-Zoumè.

Originally from Guinea, Cardinal Sarah chose be in Benin, one of the countries of his native Africa, during the launch of his new interview book in Rome.

Entitled “God or Nothing,” the book is a conversation between the cardinal and French journalist Nicolas Diat.

“God or Nothing” covers numerous topics, ranging from political questions to the sex abuse scandal in the Church to the post-modern world’s relationship to God.

Reflecting on whether democracy is an inherently Christian system, Cardinal Sarah responded, “Without a doubt there is a Christian conception of the equality of human beings,” adding that “a democracy that contributes to the integral development of man cannot subsist without God.”

One chapter of his book, entitled “Cornerstones and false values,” is dedicated to the family and addresses various pastoral challenges such as the defense of life and marriage.

Concerning the divorced and remarried, the cardinal said: “(T)hey find themselves in a situation that objectively contradicts the law of God.” He also voiced concern about “gender ideology,” saying, “My worry is that this is due more to certain governments and international organizations that are trying to impose this philosophy any way they can, sometimes forcibly.”

Ordained a priest in 1969, Cardinal Sarah became the youngest bishop in the world 10 years later. Pope John Paul II called him to Rome in 2002 to serve as the Secretary for the Evangelization of Peoples.

Pope Benedict XVI selected him as president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum in 2010, and in 2014 Pope Francis appointed him head of the Vatican dicastery on the liturgy.

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WORLD NEWS

Bishop in Swaziland seeks prayer, reflection after country’s deadly truck accident

by CNA/EWTN News • September 2, 2015

(Sergi Lopez Roig via shutterstock.com)

Manzini, Swaziland — The bishop of the small, southern African kingdom of Swaziland has called for prayer and reflection in response to a road accident that killed as many as 65 young girls preparing for the country’s Reed Dance festival.

“We mourn the death of so many young girls,” Bishop Jose Ponce de Leon of Manzini said Aug. 29.

“Each one of us had been entrusted by God with the safety and dignity of these young people,” he continued.

“Aside from those directly responsible for Friday’s accident, we need to ask ourselves if there was anything more we could have done to prevent it. Why do we wait until something like this happens before we take every single life seriously?”

The girls were riding in an open flatbed truck to cut reeds for the annual dance festival that celebrates Swaziland’s Queen Mother – and where the country’s polygamous king chooses a new wife.

The truck carrying the girls smashed into a van along the Mbabane-Manzini highway on Friday.

Bishop Ponce de Leon cited the Prophet Jeremiah’s words: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamenting and weeping bitterly: it is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more.”

He asked the faithful of Swaziland to dedicate a week of prayer for those who died.

“Let us also pray for their families and friends that ‘the God of all consolation’ (2 Cor 1:3) gives them peace and strength,” he said in a statement.

The bishop also encouraged reflection and solidarity.

“I call on you all to be close to the families of these children and to support them in every possible way,” he said.

Bishop Ponce de Leon voiced thanks for the prayers and messages of solidarity that other Catholic leaders, including the Southern African Bishops’ Conference, had sent in reaction to the accident.

Swaziland’s government said only 13 girls had died in the accident, the Associated Press reports. The Swaziland Solidarity Network, which put the death toll at 65, accused the government of undercounting the fatalities.

The human rights group rejected the government’s use of open flatbed trucks to transport large numbers of dancers to the festival.

The Reed Dance, which has been criticized as sexist by human rights groups, brings about 40,000 colorfully dressed, unmarried, and childless girls in beaded skirts to the royal residence. They bring reeds to reinforce the residence’s windbreak.

Swaziland’s King Mswati III, who has more than a dozen wives, traditionally chooses a new bride from the dancers.

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WORLD NEWS

Why women are needed to help end violence in Africa

by CNA/EWTN News • September 2, 2015

(Anna Omelchenko via shutterstock.com)

Nairobi, Kenya — Women are the key to reconciliation in both the family and society.

This was the message given to women from nearly twenty countries across Africa who convened this week in Nairobi, Kenya for “The African Women Moving Towards the African Year of Reconciliation” conference.

The three-day meeting was organized by the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) in collaboration with the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) with the support of Missio.

The theme of reconciliation is particularly relevant in the African church this year, as in June SECAM launched the African Year of Reconciliation in conjunction with its 46th anniversary of its founding.

This also comes ahead of the Holy Year of Mercy initiated by Pope Francis, which officially begins on Dec. 8 of this year.

In a homily to the women present at the conference, the Executive Secretary for the Pastoral Commission of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB), Father Charles Odira, told attendees that women, and mothers in particular, play a significant role in bringing reconciliation to the family.

“Reconciliation is not about muscles, it is not about shouting, it is not about who is good and who is bad, it is not about who is on the right and who is on the wrong, it is about the heart,” Father Odira said.

“Women are best placed to foster reconciliation in our societies because they have a nonviolent approach; they do not use muscles,” he added.

The fifty participants in the conference are being hosted by representatives from the Catholic Women’s Associations (CWA) in the Nairobi Archdiocese.

“We are so proud to host this big delegation of women from different countries of Africa. It is going to be an enriching encounter and we shall gain from the experiences we shall share,” the CWA Chairlady for the Archdiocese of Nairobi, Sabina Ng’ethe, told Catholic News Agency for Africa (CANAA).

Participant Marie-Claire Nikiema, who chairs the Catholic Women in Burkina Faso, told CANAA she hopes to take what she learns at the conference and apply it to a reconciliation ministry with which she is involved back home. She said her ministry brings women together to understand and console each other, and to share the good news of the Gospel through worship and devotions.

“We are living in a world where families are very fragile and in challenging situations. Some of our countries are experiencing violent conflicts due to religion and even tribalism. We women are conscious of that and have the possibilities of reconciling the world because all begins with the family,” Marie-Claire told CANAA.

In her ministry, she said: “We insist on each woman to reconcile with herself first, then with God, and the rest will follow quite smoothly.”

The topics the participants will reflect upon include the political, economic and socio-cultural context of Africa today, a theological overview of the social doctrine of the Church in the context of Africa today, the role of and opportunities for women in society and the Church with focus on the role of women for reconciliation in Africa in the context of the African Year of Reconciliation (AYR).

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U.S. NEWS

Alabama Planned Parenthood failed to report suspected rape, report says

by CNA/EWTN News • August 29, 2015

(CNA)

Mobile, AL — An Alabama Planned Parenthood clinic did not report the suspected abuse of a 14 year-old girl who had two abortions in four months at the clinic, according to findings by the state’s health department.

A 14 year-old girl visited the Mobile, Ala. clinic twice in April 2014 and received a medical examination. According to her health history kept at the clinic, she “had two living children given in separate births.”

The girl visited the clinic again in August. According to records from an Aug. 18 medical exam, “this was the second abortion in four months,” the health department found. However, they added, “there was no documentation in the medical record of the facility reporting suspected abuse to the proper authorities or the reasons why a report was not made.”

The clinic’s director of patient services confirmed to the department in a November 2014 meeting that no report was filed.

Alabama has a mandatory reporting law where persons dealing with children – doctors, health care workers, teachers and clergy, for instance – must report to law enforcement “when the child is known or suspected to be a victim of child abuse or neglect.”

The report comes as the national Planned Parenthood organization is under scrutiny for its possible role in clinics offering fetal tissue of aborted babies for money. A congressional investigation of the organization has been launched to see if its clinics broke the law. The Senate unsuccessfully voted to defund the organization, whose affiliates receive over $500 million in federal money annually.

The organization’s president Cecile Richards sent a letter to Congress on Thursday claiming that it and its affiliates have remained entirely within the law with respect to any offering of fetal body parts for money.

In its November 2014 survey, the state of Alabama found other violations at the Mobile clinic, including possible violations of the state’s parental consent for minor abortion laws, and distribution of the RU-486 abortifacient to a patient with low hemoglobin without consulting a medical director.

Furthermore, clinic workers did not wash their hands properly on multiple occasions, the document found, which would violate the state’s protocol for infection control.

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U.S. NEWS

Illinois diocese: New policy tells families what to expect from Catholic schools

by CNA/EWTN News • August 29, 2015

(Valley Library via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Springfield, IL — Cooperation, not exclusion, is the goal of a new parental agreement for students in Catholic schools run by the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., an official with the diocese has said.

“We have been and remain committed to partnering with any parents who desire their children to be educated and formed in our schools,” Jonathan F. Sullivan, Director of Catechetical Services for the Springfield diocese, told CNA Aug. 27.

“In those cases where a family may be living in a way contrary to Church teaching, we want to ensure that they understand the education and formation they are requesting from a Catholic school so that they can make a fully informed decision about what is best for their child.”

“The agreement does not target any couples, persons, or sins,” he added.

The diocese’s Family School Agreement has drawn coverage from some national news outlets like Buzzfeed, which suggested that it was targeting same-sex couples after one such couple attempted to enroll their children at a Catholic school in the diocese. Buzzfeed cited dissenting Catholic groups which criticized the policy and claimed it was intended to drive away divorced and gay parents.

Sullivan rejected this idea, saying that the children of the couple reported to be at the center of the story “have enrolled in the school and began classes last week.”

He said the diocese’s policy is that “the moral situation of a parent, on its own, should not affect the enrollment status of a student.”

“It is our hope that all families would use this as an opportunity to examine how they can more closely conform their lives to the example of Jesus Christ and continue to answer his call to holiness,” he said.

In a letter to church and school officials, Springfield’s Bishop Thomas Paprocki explained that while the policy was prompted by the same-sex couple, “the policy as actually developed will not single out same-sex couples.”

“Rather, it will be used for all parents to indicate that they understand and agree that children in the school will be taught the teachings of the Catholic Church in their fullness.”

He noted that the Catholic Church objects not only to homosexual activity, but also to heterosexual couples cohabiting without marriage and those divorced and remarried without an annulment.

“The implementation of this policy is premised on the hope we have for repentance and turning away from a sinful way of life, even if that may be years down the road.”

The family agreement is modeled after one in the Diocese of Wichita. The agreement asks parents to acknowledge that they understand and agree that their children will be taught the full teachings of the Catholic Church, “even if we are living a way of life that is contrary to those teachings.”

It says parents understand that if they don’t live in accord with Church teaching they will be expected to speak with the parish pastor to discuss “ways in which we could.”

Sullivan said that Bishop Paprocki promulgated the family agreement in July, but it does not apply to families who have already registered their children.

All families will be expected to sign the agreement when they register for the 2016-2017 school year. The agreement could be revised, Sullivan said.

In the form, parents pledge their “full cooperation with the school and parish to prepare our child(ren) to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.” The agreement also discusses expected Mass attendance, tithing, and “active witness to the Catholic faith.”

Sullivan described the agreement as “the ideal we hope to work toward in discipleship and stewardship.”

“We do not expect anyone to live this perfectly today but rather to be working toward that goal. We are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness,” he said.

The agreement also states the parish’s obligation to help parents in nurturing their children.

“We will make our best effort to form your child(ren) as a disciple of Jesus Christ,” it says.

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Catholic practice and Catholic faith: a survey looks at the U.S.

by CNA/EWTN News • August 30, 2015

(Rachel Titiriga via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Philadelphia, PA — What do practicing Catholics believe? A new U.S. survey has answered this question by breaking down the similarities and differences these Catholics have with non-practicing Catholics and with Americans as a whole.

“It should come as no surprise that Catholics who regularly attend Mass support the Church’s position in the greatest numbers,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus said Aug. 26. “But to measure accurately what Catholics really believe, this survey highlights the importance of looking at the level of Catholic practice in this country when discussing Catholics’ opinions on issues.”

Pope Francis is popular with the American public ahead of his September visit. About 60 percent of Americans approve of Pope Francis, as do 70 percent of Catholics and 83 percent of practicing Catholics, the Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll said.

About 90 percent or more of practicing Catholics said it is important to pray daily, to follow the teachings of the Church, to receive the sacraments, and to attend Mass regularly.

By comparison, only 42 percent of non-practicing Catholics said regular Mass attendance is important, while 61 percent said receiving the sacraments is important. About 79 percent of non-practicing Catholics said daily prayer is important, while only 70 percent said the same of following Church teaching.

Over 90 percent of Catholics saw practicing charity as important, regardless of whether they practiced the faith.

But respondents’ stated religious practice showed differences in Catholics’ views of other aspects of faith and morals.

About 65 percent of practicing Catholics said the Eucharist is “the true presence of Jesus Christ,” but a similar number of non-practicing Catholics said it is “a symbol.”

Another 72 percent of practicing Catholics said it is important to go to Confession at least once a year, compared to about 40 percent of non-practicing Catholics. About 83 percent of practicing Catholics said it is important to belong to a parish, compared to 48 percent of non-practicing Catholics.

Around 81 percent of practicing Catholics said abortion is morally wrong, compared to 60 percent of Americans and 51 percent of non-practicing Catholics. Asked about substantial restrictions on abortion, 91 percent of practicing Catholics supported restrictions while 84 percent of Americans as a whole did.

About 54 percent of practicing Catholics and 49 percent of all Americans said that same-sex marriage is morally wrong. However, only 27 percent of non-practicing Catholics said the same.

On religious freedom, 73 percent of practicing Catholics supported religious liberty protections even when these conflict with laws. About 67 percent of Americans overall agreed, as did 60 percent of non-practicing Catholics.

The survey of 1,027 U.S. adults and 222 U.S. Catholics was taken Aug. 4-17. It claims a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the overall result and 6.6 percentage points for the Catholic results, specifically.

The results also draw on an April 2015 survey of 3,002 U.S. adults and 702 U.S. Catholics.

The Knights of Columbus are a Catholic fraternal organization with almost 1.9 million members worldwide.

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Black leaders to Smithsonian: Don’t honor Planned Parenthood founder

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • August 31, 2015

Margaret Sanger, founder of the birth control movement, at the Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in New York City. (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Washington, D.C. — While Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger is sometimes hailed as a champion of women’s rights, she was no savior to minorities and those with disabilities, said speakers at a recent rally in Washington, D.C.

“Saviors come to give life, not to take it away,” said pro-life activist Ryan Bomberger at an Aug. 27 rally to remove Sanger’s bust from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

Bomberger was adopted after his mother, a victim of rape, chose to carry him to term. Last week, he was part of a group of black pastors and other pro-life advocates pushing for the removal of Sanger’s bust from the National Portrait Gallery’s “Struggle for Justice” exhibit.

Some of that group – a coalition of black ministers – had sent a letter to the gallery’s director on Aug. 7 asking her to remove the bust. They said that Sanger was a supporter of black eugenics and that her organization, Planned Parenthood, has 70 percent of its abortion clinics in minority communities.

The group has collected 14,000 signatures asking the gallery to take down the bust.

Sanger was a prominent advocate of birth control and abortion for women, especially minority women and those in poverty.

However, the answer to poverty is life and not death, Bomberger insisted, saying that his biological mother proved Sanger wrong. Herself a victim of rape, his mother “had the courage to go through nine months of a traumatic pregnancy.”

“Margaret Sanger grew up in brokenness. And we have choices as human beings as to whether we’re going to allow that brokenness to dictate further brokenness, or let that brokenness be transformed into something that is life-affirming,” he told CNA.

“My [adoptive] mother grew up in poverty. She had an alcoholic father, just like Margaret Sanger,” he continued. “And she took that, and embraced the possibility of those of us who were supposedly unwanted, adopting 10 children.”

Sanger opened her first Planned Parenthood clinic in New York City, and it is here where her legacy of “inhumanity” is playing out, Bomberger said. Since 2012, there have been more black babies aborted in the city than born. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control last year found that 78 percent of babies aborted in New York City were black or Hispanic.

Sanger’s advocacy of eugenics is an “incredibly personal” affront to disability activist Melissa Ortiz, founder of the group Able Americans, who joined the speakers in condemning Sanger’s legacy.

Sanger had proposed a “population congress” in her 1932 essay “My Way to Peace,” which would allow for the sterilization of those “whose progeny is already tainted” or who might transfer “objectionable traits” to their children. “The whole dysgenic population would have its choice of segregation or sterilization,” Sanger proposed.

“Margaret Sanger said that I, as a woman with a disability, was not fit to be a parent,” said Ortiz, who was born with a structural brain and spinal cord defect.

“As a woman born with a condition caused by a neural tube defect – a particularly hated disability in Margaret’s way of thinking – my own struggle for justice and inclusion stands in stark contrast [to Sanger’s],” she added. “My own life is a testament, as I’ve said before, that living with a disability really isn’t the end of the world.”

The legacy of Sanger’s eugenics lives on in the high abortion rate in pregnancies that have a “negative” pre-natal diagnosis like Down syndrome, Ortiz maintained. Anywhere from 61-93 percent of pregnancies with a diagnosis like Down syndrome end in abortion, according to a study referenced by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a pro-life research group.

Although abortion is still legal and widespread, there is hope for the pro-life movement, said Ken Blackwell, former Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

“There was an opportunity for us to take our marbles and go home in ‘73, but we’ve continued to fight. Today, we are standing before this National Portrait Gallery because we understand that man makes culture, and culture influences man,” he stated.

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U.S. NEWS

Ahead of U.S. visit, Pope Francis is popular among Americans

by CNA/EWTN News • August 31, 2015

Pope Francis speaks with journalists aboard the papal plane en route to Sri Lanka, Jan. 12, 2015. (Alan Holdren/CNA)

Washington, D.C. — Most Americans have a favorable view of Pope Francis and think he has a message for all the country’s citizens, but most also know little about him and aren’t sure news reports about him are accurate, a new survey reports.

“On his trip to the United States, not only will Pope Francis get to know the American people, but the American people will also get to know him,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus said Aug. 26.

“The Pope is popular among Americans, and especially among Catholics, and there is a hunger for his message, with the vast majority of Americans understanding that he brings a message for all of us.”

The Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll surveyed Americans about the Pope ahead of his visit in late September.

Almost 60 percent of respondents said they had a favorable or very favorable view of Pope Francis. This is about the same rating Benedict XVI had before his 2008 visit to the U.S. Ten percent of respondents voiced an unfavorable view of the Pope, while about 32 percent said they were unsure, or had not heard of the Pope.

Among all Catholic respondents, 77 percent viewed Pope Francis favorably. Practicing Catholics were most favorable, with 83 percent rating him favorably or very favorably.

Respondents approved of the Pope’s role as a spiritual and a world leader. They rated him highly for his work on inter-religious relations, and thought he was someone who cares about people like them.

The Pope will visit the U.S. Sept. 22-27, with stops in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Philadelphia. He will address Congress and the United Nations, and say the closing Mass for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

However, almost three quarters of Americans say they know little or nothing about the Pope’s U.S. visit. About 55 percent of practicing Catholic respondents said the same.

At the same time, 72 percent of Americans said the Pope has a message for all Americans, as did 90 percent of practicing Catholics.

The survey found that about 63 percent of Americans said they rarely or never follow news about the Pope. By contrast, 67 percent of practicing Catholics and 60 percent of all Catholics said they follow news stories about him.

Over half of Americans and 60 percent of practicing Catholics said they think reporters’ own points of view shape news about Pope Francis. Only about 35 percent of each group said papal news is “mostly accurate.”

Overall, the survey’s respondents were sceptical toward both major news outlets and Catholic media. Only about 40 percent of survey respondents trusted these news sources for accurate news about the Pope. However, about 70 percent of practicing Catholics said they trusted Catholic media outlets for accurate reports on Pope Francis’ visit.

About 66 percent of Americans approved of the Catholic Church, including 95 percent of practicing Catholics and 90 percent of Catholics overall. Poll respondents tended to approve of the Church’s contribution to people and communities in the U.S.

The survey’s sponsor, the Knights of Columbus, are a Catholic fraternal organization with almost 1.9 million members worldwide. The survey was conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

The survey of 1,027 U.S. adults and 222 U.S. Catholics was taken Aug. 4-17. It claims a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the overall result. and 6.6 percentage points for the Catholic result.

The results also draw on an April 2015 survey of 3,002 U.S. adults and 702 U.S. Catholics.

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U.S. NEWS

Citing Pope Francis, bishops call on Congress to renew religious freedom commission

by CNA/EWTN News • September 1, 2015

Dawn at the U.S. Capitol Building. (IPBrian via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — Congress has only one month to reauthorize the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Many human rights activists and religious leaders have stressed its importance, and the nation’s bishops suggest the commission would help the U.S. fulfill Pope Francis’ call to protect religious minorities.

“Protecting religious freedom is critical to the health of societies,” said the U.S. bishops’ Aug. 26 letter to Congress. They noted that about a quarter of the world’s countries still face high levels of religious hostilities.

“Christians and members of other minority groups are seeking refuge from violence in Syria and Iraq. Religious minorities are jailed on blasphemy and apostasy charges in Pakistan, Burma, and Sudan, just to note a few countries where vulnerable persons can be killed with impunity,” said the letter. It also noted the violence the radical Islamist group Boko Haram has inflicted on both Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.

“All these cases are indicative of a worldwide pandemic of religious intolerance that is threatening the stability of so many countries,” the letter added.

Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces signed the letter as chairman of the U.S. bishops’ international justice and peace committee. The letter called for the reauthorization of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; the human rights monitoring body’s current authorization expires Sept. 30.

The letter cited Pope Francis’ Aug. 5 message to the Knights of Columbus, in which the Pope called for a global response to violence against minority religious communities.

The Pope called for prayers “for the conversion of hearts, an end to fanatical violence and intolerance, and a general recognition of those fundamental human rights which are not granted by the state, but from the hand of the Creator, whom all believers invoke as a God of peace.”

The U.S. bishops said religious freedom appears to be “more imperiled globally.” The religious freedom commission’s reauthorization would allow it to continue its work in “raising the profile of those who are discriminated against, harassed and even killed for their faith.” They said the commission has a vital role in promoting human rights by monitoring and promoting religious freedom.

The religious freedom commission dates back to 1998. It monitors the state of freedom of religion and freedom of thought, conscience, or belief as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements. The commission makes independent policy recommendations to the president, the Secretary of State, and Congress.

In December 2014, Congress passed a nine-month extension reauthorizing the commission.

In a separate letter from the International Religious Freedom Roundtable, many other civic and religious leaders voiced support for the commission’s reauthorization and stressed the commission’s importance.

The commission has been “a consistent and reliable voice for people around the globe who desire nothing more than to peacefully worship and live out their faith according to the dictates of their conscience,” said the letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s chairman Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Ben Cardin (D-Md.). It urged the approval of S. 1798, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Reauthorization Act of 2015.

Signers of the letter included many Christian organizations, as well as Jewish, Sikh, Baha’i and humanist organizations. Individual scholars, religious leaders, and human rights advocates also asked the senators to work for “the swift passage” of the USCIRF reauthorization act.

“While there is very little we agree on theologically, or politically, we all agree on the importance of international religious freedom. It strengthens cultures and provides the foundation for stable democracies and their components, including civil society, economic growth, and social harmony,” the roundtable letter said.

The letter characterized religious freedom as “the ultimate counter-terrorism weapon” that preemptively undermines religious extremism.

“Religious freedom is a principle upon which our country was founded, and its promotion is a significant factor in U.S. national security and related global interests,” the letter added.

The letter said attacks on religious freedom are “systemic and growing.” The Pew Research Center has reported that in 2013, 77 percent of the world’s population lived in countries with “a high or very high overall level of restriction on religion,” compared to 68 percent in 2007.

The roundtable letter criticized a separate bill, the Further Independence of Religion for Security and Tolerance Freedom Act of 2015, on the grounds it has provisions that risk undermining USCIRF’s work.

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U.S. NEWS

Planned Parenthood’s CEO validates suspicions, advocacy group says

by CNA/EWTN News • September 1, 2015

Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Cecile Richards speaks during a rally in support of the organization. (CNA)

Washington, D.C. — Under fire after a series of recent sting videos, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s (PPFA) CEO Cecile Richards wrote a letter to Congress last week addressing the issues raised in the videos, which call into question Planned Parenthood’s procurement of fetal tissue for research.

In a follow-up letter to Congress, the Center for Medical Progress – the non-profit group that released the sting videos – said Planned Parenthood’s letter corroborates their initial claims that the organization is illegally selling fetal tissue at a profit and altering abortion procedures in order to obtain intact specimens.

In Planned Parenthood’s letter to Congress, Richards reveals that a California Planned Parenthood affiliate currently “receives a modest reimbursement of $60 per tissue specimen from the TPO.” According to Richards, “that affiliate also has a separate relationship with the University of California.”

Richards also argues that the reimbursement for tissue falls under the exceptions in the law that allow “for actual expenses (e.g. storage, processing, transportation, etc.) of the tissue. If an affiliate chooses to accept reimbursement for allowable expenses, it must be able to demonstrate the reimbursement represents its actual costs.”

However, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) questions whether $60 per specimen can lawfully be considered a modest and legal reimbursement:

“Thus, if ABR (a tissue procurement organization) harvests a liver and a thymus, a common fetal tissue order, from an 18-week fetus aborted at the San Diego clinic, Planned Parenthood receives a total payment of $120 from that case,” CMP wrote. “It stretches credulity to believe that ABR’s technician harvesting two organs from a fetus costs Planned Parenthood $120 – this is a new revenue stream off of fetal tissue with no real cost to Planned Parenthood, and thus a criminal profit.”

In a recent article in the Daily Signal, former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson discussed the fetal tissue procurement process during her employment, which ended in 2009. At the time, Johnson said her clinic participated in a fetal research program which reimbursed Planned Parenthood $200 per baby.

“The researchers provided the Styrofoam box and dry ice to Planned Parenthood. Literally the only cost we had was shipping the box. And that was about $20 every time we shipped,” Johnson told The Daily Signal. “So Planned Parenthood is getting $200 per specimen, and we’re taking all the specimens, putting them in one box and shipping it off for $20. The different fetal body parts are not shipped individually.”

The Center for Medical Progress also argues that in her letter to Congress, Richards admits that Planned Parenthood makes adjustments to abortion procedures in order to obtain intact specimens for reimbursement.

Richards’ letter states: “In performing the selected method, a physician may need to make multiple adjustments to the method as the surgery proceeds. These adjustments are clinical judgments – not a change of method – made by the physician as the abortion proceeds and are always intended to achieve the woman’s desired result as safely as possible. The key point, as the 1988 blue-ribbon commission recognized, is that there be no change that would impact the safety or well-being of the patient.”

The Center for Medical Progress also notes that Richards seems to conflate “the 2nd-trimester abortion methods of dilation and evacuation (D&E) and intact dilation and extraction (IDX), the latter known legally as ‘partialbirth abortion’ and prohibited by 18 U.S.C. 1531.”

When listing possible methods of abortion in her letter, Richards does not mention IDX as a possible method.

She “seems to refer to both as ‘dilation and extraction,’” CMP wrote. “PPFA Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, clearly described a partial-birth abortion according to the federal law during the lunch meeting CMP investigators had with her on July 25, 2014.”

After the release of several of the sting videos, Planned Parenthood’s main defense has been that the videos were “heavily edited” and therefore misleading. Planned Parenthood paid Fusion GPS, a political opposition-research company, to investigate and provide analysis of the videos.

Fusion GPS’s analysis “did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation” and “shows no evidence of audio manipulation.” While it identified cuts in the tape, the Center for Medical Progress maintains that these cuts were made during bathroom breaks of their actors and were made to protect their privacy.

“Of course, CMP is ready to provide original recording files to law enforcement and to Congress to the extent we are lawfully able to. Our attorneys are working diligently to resolve pending legal questions regarding the disclosure of these recording files to government investigators, including by seeking clarification of an unconstitutional prior restraint TRO imposed on CMP in federal litigation brought by Planned Parenthood’s proxy, the National Abortion Federation,” CMP wrote in their letter.

Four committees in the Senate and House are currently investigating the recent allegations against Planned Parenthood, and several states have decided to cut funding to the organization in wake of the video sting.

The Center for Medical Progress said they will continue to advocate for a thorough investigation of Planned Parenthood by each investigation, and they will cooperate fully with the federal government toward that end.

“The reduction of any human being, man, woman, or child, to a commodity, or to only the commercial sum of their parts, is offensive to the public and contrary to our foundational values as a people,” CMP wrote. “It would be unconscionable to allow Planned Parenthood to hold themselves above the law and human decency, with their barbaric abortion practice subsidized by half-a-billion taxpayer dollars each year.”

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Philadelphia seminary plants, blesses a tree for Pope’s day for care of creation

by CNA/EWTN News • September 2, 2015

Bishop Timothy Senior, rector of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, leads a tree blessing ceremony for the Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Sept. 1, 2015. (Rob Cardillo/Pennsylvania Horticultural Society)

Philadelphia, PA — Responding to Pope Francis’ call for Catholics around the world to observe Sept. 1 as a Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia planted a tree on its grounds on Tuesday.

The planting of a white oak was done in partnership with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and was followed by a blessing of the new tree by the seminary’s rector, Bishop Timothy Senior.

The seminary’s tree was the 500,000th in the society’s “Plant One Million” campaign. The effort aims to plant 1 million trees throughout 13 counties in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware.

“The annual World Day of prayer for the Care of Creation offers to individual believers and to the community a precious opportunity to renew our personal participation in this vocation as custodians of creation,” Pope Francis said in his letter announcing the day of prayer for the care of creation.

He modeled the day on a practice already observed among the Eastern Orthodox, and encouraged Catholics to organize both prayer and practical initiatives for the event.

The Pope added that it was to be an act of “raising to God our thanks for the marvellous works that he has entrusted to our care,” while also “invoking his help for the protection of creation and his mercy for the sins committed against the world in which we live.”

Francis led a Liturgy of the Word at St. Peter’s Basilica for the day of prayer.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia participated in the initiative not only through the tree planting at the seminary, but also by inviting all its 219 parishes to pray at Mass for the care of creation, and with personal prayers as a way to be aware that we are “custodians of creation.”

All parishes of the archdiocese were invited to include this intention among their prayers of the faithful: “For the protection of God’s gift of creation, that this effort on the part of government leaders and everyone will help to overcome the routine abuse and neglect of our common home. Let us pray to the Lord.”

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Meet the monks who decided to go green years before Laudato Si

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • September 2, 2015

Monks at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, VA. (Picture Farmer Films)

Berryville, VA — Years before Pope Francis’ recent ecology encyclical was published, a Trappist monastery in Virginia went back to its spiritual roots by embracing environmental stewardship.

“This really is a re-founding,” Fr. James Orthmann of Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va. told CNA, a “real renewal and a re-founding, and in a real sense getting back to our traditional roots.”

Since 2007, the community has taken concrete steps be better stewards of the earth in the tradition of the Cistercian Order, while also reaching into the outside world to draw more Catholic men to their monastic life.

The abbey was founded in 1950 after a planned Trappist abbey in Massachusetts burned down. The Diocese of Richmond offered to accept the monks and they procured 1200 acres of pasture on the Shenandoah River in Northwest Virginia, just in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east.

However the community has shrunk along with the overall number of religious priests and brothers in the U.S., which has fallen by more than 50 percent since 1965. The community’s Father Immediate – the abbot of their mother house – suggested in 2007 they start planning how to sustain the abbey for the long-term.

The monks discussed their most important resources and “literally everybody talked about our location, our land,” Fr. James recalled. “As monks who follow the Rule of St. Benedict, we have a vow of stability. So we bind ourselves to the community and to the place that we enter.”

The Trappists have a long history of settling in valleys and caring for the land, dating back to their roots in the Cistercian Order and their mother abbey in Citeaux, France, founded in 1098. Monks at Holy Cross Abbey began farming the land in 1950 but as the community grew older, they leased out the land to local farmers and made creamed honey and fruitcake for their labor.

“We live a way of life that’s literally rooted in the land,” Fr. James explained. “The liturgical life reflects the succession of the seasons, and the more you become sensitized to that, the symbolism of the liturgy becomes so much more compelling.”

So what specifically have the monks done to become better environmental stewards? First, they reached out to the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment to author a study on how the abbey could be more environmentally sustainable in the Cistercian tradition.

A group of graduate students made the project their master’s thesis. The result was a massive 400-page study, “Reinhabiting Place,” with all sorts of recommendations for the monks. With these suggestions as a starting place, the monks took action.

First, they turned to the river. They asked the cattle farmer to whom they lease 600 acres of their land to stop his cattle from grazing in the river. This would protect the riverbanks from eroding and keep the cows from polluting the water, which flows into the Potomac River, past Washington, D.C., and eventually feeds the massive Chesapeake Bay.

They fenced off tributaries of the river and planted native hardwoods and bushes on the banks as shelter for migratory animals and to attract insects and pollinators to “restore the proper biodiversity to the area,” Fr. James explained. They also leased 180 acres of land to a farmer for natural vegetable farming.

Most of the abbey’s property was put into “conservation easement” with the county and the state. By doing this, the monks promise that the land will forever remain “fallow,” or agricultural and undeveloped, and they receive a tax benefit in return. The county provides this policy to check suburban sprawl and retain a rural and agricultural nature.

The community also switched their heating and fueling sources from fossil fuels to propane gas. They had a solar-fed lighting system installed in two of the guest retreat dorms, and they pay for the recycling of their disposable waste. The monks stopped making fruitcake for a year to install a new more energy-efficient oven and make building repairs.

The have even started offering “green burials” at Cool Spring Cemetery in the Trappist style.

Normal burials can cost well over $7,000 with embalming fluids and lead coffins that can be detrimental to the soil. A Trappist burial, by contrast, is “rather sparse” and “rather unadorned,” Fr. James explained. A monk is wrapped in a shroud and placed directly on a wooden bier in the ground.

The Trappist burials, while quite different from a typical modern burial, actually have an earthy character to them that’s attractive, Fr. James maintained.

After the “initial shock” at seeing such a sparse burial for the first time, “oddly enough, it’s very cathartic and you have a real sense of hope,” he said. The burials are “a lot less formal” and “people [in attendance] are more spontaneous,” he noted, and there’s “even a certain joyfulness to it.”

With their “green burials,” the body is wrapped in a shroud or placed in a biodegradable container like a wooden coffin, and buried in the first four feet of the soil. By one year, just the skeleton may be left, but it’s a harkening back to the Ash Wednesday admonition, “Remember man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

And this contrasts with the complicated embalming process of normal funerals where chemicals like formaldehyde can seep into the ground.

The monks have already touched lives with their example of stewardship.

Local residents George Patterson and Deidra Dain are producing a film “Saving Place, Saving Grace” about the monastery’s efforts to remain sustainable. Once they fundraise the film’s budget of $300,000, it will air next year on a local PBS affiliate station. The affiliate’s general manager had looked at the story and thought everyone needed to hear it.

The monastery has been an “example” to the county’s leadership with its care for the land, Patterson said. Dain, a retreatant at the monastery 15 years ago, is not Catholic but found her time at the abbey “inspiring” and as a lover of nature praises their sustainability initiative.

All in all, the communal effort for stewardship is “helping to renew our life,” Fr. James said of the community.

Papal statements on the environment have given a boost to their efforts. “There was a lot of supportive stuff from the time of Pope Benedict about the environment,” Fr. James recalled, particularly in his 2008 encyclical Caritas in Veritate which upheld the responsibility of man to care for the environment.

This “helped bridge” any gulfs that kept certain members of the community from fully embracing the sustainability initiative, Fr. James said.

Parts of Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on the environment Laudato Si are “so sophisticated in (their) grasp of environmental teaching,” he continued, and it’s quite a support to have popes promoting environmental stewardship amidst the bureaucratic tediousness of upgrading the abbey’s land and facilities.

“At the end of the day, I can open up Laudato Si and say to myself ‘Ah, this is worth it. We should keep doing this. I’m going to keep putting up with the nonsense to get this done’,” he said.

The community hopes too that it can be a sustainability model for developing countries that might not be able to afford high-tech and expensive solutions to environmental problems. Their facilities are simple by nature and not sophisticated, and the monks’ consumption is already low because they take a vow of poverty.

Plus, retreatants at the monastery can observe first-hand the changes made and consider what they can do in their own lives to be more caring for the environment.

However, in its “re-founding” efforts, the community has also explored ways to attract more vocations to the abbey.

“In the last 10 years, we’ve lost most of our seniors first to illness, aging, and then death. So in a sense, the community has a whole new profile right now,” Fr. James said. The abbey was founded to be “separate” from the cosmopolitan world, but young men are not actively seeking out the monastic life like they did in the 1950s and 60s.

So the community created a new website and continuously update it with new posts. They started hosting “immersion weekends” where men come and live with the monks for a weekend, praying with them. They expanded their local profile in the community by hosting teenagers to earn their school community service hours. “Only two students had realized we existed here,” Fr. James recalled in a telling moment.

“We’re reaching out to men of all ages, and it’s probably even more likely, given the limits of our way of life, that nowadays it’s going to be older men who are coming to this vocation,” Fr. James admitted. “This way of life and its limits make much more sense to people who have tried their quote-unquote dream, have been disillusioned by the result, and they’re yearning for something more.”

What distinguishes Holy Cross Abbey and the Trappist way of life? Their vocation to community life, Fr. James answered, “the silence, the discipline of silence, and daily familiarity with the Scriptures.”

The monks follow an intense daily schedule of prayer, contemplation, and work that includes 3:30 a.m. prayer and a “Great Silence” beginning at 8:15 p.m. They don’t leave the abbey grounds and don’t own private property.

“It’s a lifestyle that very much will develop one’s interiority, spirituality, relationship with God,” he said. “It’s a vocation of adoration, done in community, and offered to the world around us through hospitality here in this place.”

And the modern world offers special challenges to a man discerning this vocation, he admitted.

“There’s not much in the pop culture to invite a person to even think about interiority. And in fact it can be rather threatening to people,” he said. “Initially,” when one begins to seriously cultivate an interior life, “it’s the negative stuff that comes up.”

However, “with guidance you realize that’s the negative face of very important, unrecognized resources. And our vulnerability is perhaps the greatest resource we have in life. (Even if) that’s not the message you’d get from watching Oprah.”

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Are Pope Francis and the U.S. bishops split? Don’t believe the critics

by CNA/EWTN News • September 3, 2015

Pope Francis with Archbishop Charles Chaput at the Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on June 24, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Philadelphia, PA — Ahead of the papal visit to the U.S., some critics have painted a narrative pitting Pope Francis against the “conservative” American bishops – but the Archbishop of Philadelphia doesn’t believe them.

Claims that that Church ignores the poor while obsessing over things like abortion and human sexuality are nothing new to members of the Catholic hierarchy, not even to the Pope himself, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said in a recent column.

“When Francis was an archbishop in Buenos Aires, Argentine political leaders reviled him publicly as ‘the leader of the opposition,’” Archbishop Chaput said. “When he defended Church teaching on issues like sexuality and marriage, they accused him of conducting ‘an inquisition.’”

The archbishop said critics claim the United States’ Catholic bishops, especially the “conservative” ones, spend too much time tackling issues such as religious freedom and the sanctity of human life while ignoring the poor and needy.

But nothing could be further from the truth, the archbishop continued. While the Church will continue to call for the respect of human life and religious freedom, dioceses across the U.S. spend substantially more in terms of dollars and manpower on caring for the poor and needy.

“If there’s anything ‘lopsided’ about the real witness of the Catholic Church in Philadelphia, it’s weighted heavily in favor of the poor. It always has been. And that’s the reality in nearly every diocese in the United States,” he said. “But it’s not a fact that fits comfortably into a storyline of ‘compassionate Pope Francis vs. conservative American bishops.’”

Each year, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia alone spends $4.2 million of privately donated funds caring for the homeless, battered women, people with disabilities and immigrants. On top of that another $100 million in public funding go towards similar efforts.

By comparison, fewer than 200 of the 1,600 full time employees for archdiocesan social ministries work in parenting, family and pregnancy services. The archdiocese spends less than $200,000 on “sanctity of life, family and laity” issues.

The archbishop said he hopes Pope Francis will see “how the American Church really conducts her mission” and learn “that American Catholics in general, and Philadelphia Catholics in a very special way, love and support him wholeheartedly.”

“I hope he sees that there’s tremendous good in our country, and a lot of it began here in Philadelphia, where our nation was born,” he said.

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D.C. choir hopes Pope Francis will sing along

by Adelaide Mena (CNA/EWTN News) • September 3, 2015

Choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. (Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception)

Washington, D.C. — Choir members from around the Washington, D.C. archdiocese chosen to sing for Pope Francis during his visit later this month hope to stir the soul of the pontiff – and maybe even inspire him to sing along.

“Our purpose is to engage the assembly. It’s to unleash the song of the heart of the people who are gathered there,” said Thomas Stehle, director of music ministries for the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C.

Stehle is the chief of planning music for the papal visit to Washington, D.C. He also served as the director of music for the papal Mass of Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.

“We believe music has a transformative power for those who engage in it. When you think a prayer, that engages a certain part of your body. When you say a prayer, that engages even more. And when you sing a prayer that engages so much more of you,” Stehle continued.

“It has a way of reaching someone’s soul.”

The archdiocesan choir is one of five separate choirs that will sing during the canonization Mass of Junipero Serra on Sept. 23, as well as at other events that day during the Pope’s visit to Washington D.C. The more than 90 participants who will sing for Pope Francis were chosen from over 300 singers who auditioned for Stehle and a panel of choir directors.

Joining the archdiocesan choir at the papal Mass will be the choir for the National Basilica, a gospel choir, an intercultural choir, and chamber choir from The Catholic University of America. The Washington Symphonic Brass and The Catholic University of America Orchestra will also provide music for the Mass and prelude music. In total, more than 300 performers will perform at the Mass.

“The diversity of the mosaic of who we are as Catholics is represented at this event, and it’s quite intentional,” Stehle elaborated.

Also intentional is the music Stehle chose to sing at the Mass and its prelude. Alongside classic Mass parts by Maurice Duruflé and Richard Proulx and arrangements of American hymns by Aaron Copland are works and 19 new compositions by regional composers.

By choosing hymns and settings from around the world, Europe, Latin America and the United States, the choir is “trying to capture the roots of our Pope,” a man who is himself of many different backgrounds and experiences.

“He is the Vicar of Christ, but he’s also the former archbishop of Buenos Aires,” Stehle said.

The singers in the choir told CNA that they were excited for the music they were about to sing, but also for whom they would sing it.

Nixon Garcia said he was “very excited” for many of the pieces, particularly some of the new ones, but also because “I’ve always wanted to be close to the Pope.”

“I’m just really excited to see Pope Francis,” Haley Holden told CNA. This will be her second time singing for a Pope, having sung for Pope Benedict XVI in 2008. “He just reminds me of your grandfather. That warm, inviting, welcoming person.”

“It’s going to be so cool how we’re all going to blend together,” commented Kristin Brown, who is also a music teacher, on the large choir. Brown said she wanted to audition because “I love the Pope.”

“I just think it would be the coolest thing to be on the altar with him singing at Mass.”

Rebecca Vanover, one of the members of the archdiocesan choir, told EWTN News Nightly that she hopes the music is engaging and compelling for Mass participants.

“I hope that they take away the beauty and the ministry that is music at the Mass,” she said. “I hope that they see the value and the importance of it as a liturgical component, but also as a component and an avenue of prayer.”

She also hopes that those that come to the Mass, through the music, find the liturgy “something that they can participate with, and something that’s accessible for them, regardless of language or background knowledge of the Church.”

This call to participation even extends to “engaging Pope Francis - if he feels inclined to sing,” she said.

“I hope the Pope can sing along!”

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Trump’s immigration plan undermines American identity, Archbishop Chaput says

by CNA/EWTN News • September 3, 2015

Archbishop Charles Chaput and Donald Trump. (Peter Zelasko/CNA and Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Philadelphia, PA — Caught between poverty and violence in their homelands and deportation in the U.S., immigrants face a plight that cannot be ignored by Christians, said Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

He pointed to a proposal by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as particularly problematic.

“As Christians, our faith obligates us to protect migrant families,” he said Sept. 1. “The duty and the privilege of that commitment apply to all of us equally.”

“Migration is about human beings. So it has moral implications,” the archbishop added at a panel discussion on immigration in Philadelphia.

The event’s sponsors included the Philadelphia archdiocese and the World Meeting of Families, which will host Pope Francis at the end of September.

“Some in public life – notably, but not only, Donald Trump – have called for an end to birthright citizenship. This is a profoundly bad idea,” Archbishop Chaput said. “It plays on our worst fears and resentments. And it undermines one of the pillars of the American founding and national identity.”

Birthright citizenship, by which anyone born in the United States has a right to U.S. citizenship, means that “any immigrant family is only a generation away from integrating fully into our nation,” the archbishop said. It prevents the creation of “a permanent underclass” of people who are “effectively stateless.”

The archbishop acknowledged the volatile role of immigration in U.S. politics, especially ahead of the 2016 presidential elections.

“Immigration can be a tough issue,” he said. “At least one of our presidential candidates has already made the national immigration debate ugly with a great deal of belligerent bombast. His success in the polls shows that many people – including many good people – are very uneasy about the direction of our country.”

The archbishop lamented the damage done when migrants have to leave their children, and also the damage when undocumented parents can be deported away from their children. The Obama administration has carried out a record number of deportations affecting about 2.6 million people.

“This brutally affects immigrant families – especially those with children who are U.S. citizens,” Archbishop Chaput said. “Some 75,000 families with U.S. citizen children are wounded every year by deportation, with one or both parents removed from American soil. Some of these same children have been forced to follow their parents to countries they don’t know. Others have stayed in the United States without their parents.”

The Philadelphia archbishop said it is likely Pope Francis will address migrants during his U.S. visit, which includes a speech to a joint session of Congress and the celebration of the closing Mass for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

Archbishop Chaput cited the Pope’s 2013 visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa, a key waypoint for migrants from Africa to Europe. The Pope remembered migrants who died trying to cross the Mediterranean and spoke of the “globalization of indifference” that treats migrants as part of a “throwaway culture.”

Like Pope Francis, Pope Pius XII and Pope Benedict XVI have described the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt as a refugee and migrant situation.

“The Family of Nazareth reflects the image of God safeguarded in the heart of every human family, even if disfigured and weakened by emigration,” Pope Benedict said in 2007.

Global inequalities force the separation of families, Archbishop Chaput stressed.

“Poverty and violence in their home countries force parents to leave their children behind and earn money in foreign lands to support them. Or in some cases, parents send their children away to other countries to protect them from harm.”

He said respect for the rule of law is a key element of the immigration system. However, Congress needs to pass immigration reform that will revise and strengthen laws in favour of the family, which he called “the seed of a healthy society.”

The archbishop stressed family reunification as a cornerstone of the immigration system. Reunification should be expedited and a main goal of the refugee program. He also rejected the detention of families as “needless and inhumane,” noting that a federal court has ordered the practice to end.

Wealthy nations also have the responsibility to coordinate a response to address poverty and conflict in other countries, which he said “inevitably spill across borders.”

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Who’s behind the mysterious Eye of the Tiber?

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • September 4, 2015

(Eye of the Tiber)

Denver, CO — If you’re a Catholic on Facebook, or the internet in general, chances are Samer Noam has made you laugh. Or he’s made you angry.

If he’s done his job the way he wants, he’s done both.

Noam is the man, the myth, the legend behind the Catholic satire site, Eye of the Tiber. Catholic News Agency had a chance to sit down with the Californian writer and professional smart aleck to talk inspiration, excommunication (well, his nightmares of it), and of course all those people who think it’s actual news.

1. What first inspired you to start writing Eye of the Tiber?

I’ve loved satire for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, anyone who loves the Church can recognizes that satire, like most everything else that’s good in this world, like literature, poetry, music, the sciences and so on has been secularized. Heck, even Judeo-Christian symbols like the rainbow and the thunderbolt were taken by those typically most hostile to the Church. The rainbow, of course, represents God’s covenant with Noah. The world now sees it as a symbol representing man’s covenant with another man. The thunderbolt, I understand, never really represented anything for the Church, but I kinda wish it did, because thunderbolts are pretty awesome, and I’d love an excuse to get one of them tattooed on me.

Where the heck was I? Ah yes, what inspired me? Love for the Church and love for good satire. The Onion is wonderful. Their ability to poke fun and to reveal truths with sometimes subtle, sometimes absurd headlines is breathtaking. But there was so many times I thought, and still do think, that they could tone down the sacrilege a notch or ten. And so, cue light bulb, and the idea of a Catholic satire site was born.

2. What is your goal for Eye of the Tiber?

To piss off every Catholic at least once. If you’re not happy with that answer, please delete and insert this: to shed light on the absurdity of some of the things going on in the Church while giving people an opportunity to laugh at themselves. And also not getting excommunicated. You think the last part’s a joke, but it’s not. I’ve literally had nightmares of being excommunicated because of an article. But the nightmare’s always followed by a happy dream about me being handcuffed and led to a tribunal during the Spanish Inquisition, and realizing that Toquemada is the Grand Inquisitor for my case, and he sets me free because Torqumada wasn’t as bad as he’s been made out to be.

Anyhow, that’s my goal for EOTT. Not the weird dream part per se, but letting readers know about random Catholic facts that I find interesting, while poking fun on important things like liturgical dancing and the other 7 Deadly Sins.

3. Are you a one-man team? Do you take submissions?

I’ve written most of the articles on the site. I’ve had a couple submissions from readers, and about ten to fifteen from friends. I don’t really accept articles from readers anymore because I found it difficult to deny someone when I didn’t think their article was a good fit for the site. It always made me feel bad to say no. It especially made me feel bad when that one guy I denied told me to shove it. I didn’t want to shove it, that’s the thing. I wasn’t telling him that it wasn’t funny … just that it simply wasn’t a good fit. I remember that I had had a long work week, and I was tired and had so many things going on, and shoving it was seriously the last thing on my mind. So I didn’t. I just decided that I’d no longer take submissions.

4. Where does your inspiration for articles come from?

Whiskey.

5. When you’re not running EOTT, what do you do?

I love hanging out with my family. I love reading, writing, praying, and working out. That last part was a lie. I hate working out. I have no idea what I was trying to pull off with that lie.

6. What has been the most popular EOTT article?

‘Peter Jackson Announces Plans For 72-Part Movie Series of the Silmarillion’ is the most popular EOTT article written. It got like 100k+ Facebook likes, 600+ Twitter reposts or whatever you call them, and a bunch of other relatively impressive stats as well. Actually, there was a while there where if you googled “Silmarillion” it was the top post in Google News. That was kinda awesome.

Best part about the article, though, is that it wasn’t even written by me. It was written by a priest friend, Fr. Andy Younan (Twitter: @Jonah_3001). The thing with many of these articles, as Fr. Andy (Twitter: @Jonah_3001) would agree with is that the ones you think are gold will typically suck and the ones you think will suck, will typically turn gold. It’s an odd thing that neither I (Twitter: @SCNaoum), nor Fr. Andy (Twitter: @Jonah_3001) can figure out. So if you ever see an article that just absolutely sucks, it’s because I (Twitter: @SCNaoum) thought it was genius. Don’t be frustrated. It was an honest mistake.

7. Which EOTT article has cause the most controversy?

I can’t remember exactly which article caused the most controversy, but I know that the ones written about the Mass typically get the most heated. If I write an article titled, ‘Report: Some 2nd Century Roman Christians Hated Latin Mass Because It Was Said In The Vernacular,’ I know I’m gonna piss off liturgical traditionalists. If I write one titled, ‘Clown At Circus Mass Reprimanded For Honking Sanctus Horn At Wrong Part Of Consecration,’ I know it’s gonna piss off whatever the complete opposite of a liturgical traditionalist is. I think they’re called Protestants, actually.

8. How often do people think EOTT is a real news source?

Very often. [Awkward silence]. Is there a follow up to the question?

9. How can satire speak truth in ways that news sources or other media cannot?

Satire is an interesting art form. It’s not only the greatest form of passive aggression there is, but it is, at the same time, the most direct form of criticism and examination. While proper journalism takes the issue at hand and attempts to reveal the fact of the matter, proper satire takes that very same matter assumed to be factual, beats it to a pulp, dissects it, finds the inaccuracy in what the media is reporting, siphons off the inaccuracy, beats it to a pulp once more just for good measure, waterboards it to make sure it has all the details, and represents it in a way so that the average reader can truly understand the fact of the matter without the spin. It’s in this way that satire is passive aggressive and at the same time direct. It takes a round about way of delivering direct truths. You know what I’m saying? Good, cause I sure as heck don’t.

10. What is your favorite liturgical dance?

My top three are The Catholic Carlton, Walk Like an Egyptian Coptic, and of course The Cha Cha Slide, Stand, Sit, Stand, Kneel.

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Five federal judges rebuke court: Don’t tell the Little Sisters how to be Catholic

by CNA/EWTN News • September 4, 2015

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

Denver, CO — In an unusual move, five federal judges have said their court should have given greater attention to the Little Sisters of the Poor’s religious freedom lawsuit against an Obama administration mandate that requires them to violate their Catholic beliefs, or face heavy fines.

“When a law demands that a person do something the person considers sinful, and the penalty for refusal is a large financial penalty, then the law imposes a substantial burden on that person’s free exercise of religion,” five judges with the Denver-based Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals said in a Sept. 3 dissent.

The judges said their court’s earlier panel ruling against the sisters is “clearly and gravely wrong – on an issue that has little to do with contraception and a great deal to do with religious liberty.”

On July 14 a majority of the three-judge panel had ruled against the sisters. The sisters had filed a lawsuit challenging the mandate which requires employers to offer health insurance plans covering contraception, sterilization, and some drugs that can cause early abortions.

Employers who fail to comply with the mandate face crippling penalties. In the case of the Little Sisters, the fines could amount to around $2.5 million a year, or about 40 percent of the $6 million the Sisters receive each year in order to run their ministry.

The court panel said that the 2014 Supreme Court decision protecting Hobby Lobby and other objecting companies from the mandate did not apply in the Little Sisters’ case. The panel said the 2014 decision was based on the lack of a religious accommodation for for-profit companies, and argued that the Little Sisters should take advantage of the religious accommodation the Obama administration had granted to non-profit employers.

The sisters have insisted the accommodation is insufficient, and they responded to the court panel’s decision with an appeal to the Supreme Court.

On its own initiative, the Tenth Circuit voted on whether the entire court of 12 judges should re-hear the case. The court on Sept. 3 still voted against a re-hearing, prompting the five judges to write their dissent.

Mark Renzi, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead counsel for the Little Sisters of the Poor, welcomed the action.

“These judges understand that courts and bureaucrats should not be telling nuns what the Catholic faith requires,” Renzi said Sept. 4. He said the five judges’ opinion offered “important support” for the Little Sisters’ appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Becket Fund characterized the five judges’ action as “almost unprecedented.”

The sisters are among several hundred plaintiffs who have challenged the federal contraception mandate, including several Catholic dioceses, Catholic Charities affiliates, universities, and the EWTN Global Catholic Network.

The Little Sisters of the Poor do not qualify for a full religious exemption to the mandate because they are not affiliated with a particular house of worship.

The federal government’s putative accommodation means that faith-based employers can sign paperwork to pass the burden of providing the objectionable coverage to insurers, who must then offer it directly to employees without cost.

The Little Sisters obtain their health coverage from Catholic organizations, Christian Brothers Services, and Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust. They have said the alleged accommodation still requires them and their Catholic partners to cooperate in providing drugs and procedures whose use Catholic teaching recognizes as sinful.

The five judges said the panel majority refused to acknowledge the religious sisters’ belief that it would be sinful to use the accommodation. Rather, the panel “reframes their belief.”

The dissenting judges objected: “it is not the job of the judiciary to tell people what their religious beliefs are.”

Other parties to the sisters’ lawsuit include the Christian Brothers benefits provider and the Baptist ministries GuideStone, Reaching Souls, and Truett-McConnell College.

Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, mother provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor, said the religious women “dedicate our lives to serving the neediest in society, with love and dignity.”

“We perform this loving ministry because of our faith and simply cannot choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith, and we shouldn’t have to,” she said July 23. “We hope the Supreme Court will hear our case and ensure that people from diverse faiths can freely follow God’s calling in their lives.”

The Little Sisters of the Poor have cared for the elderly poor and dying around the world for 175 years.

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‘No Escape’ movie review

by Carl Kozlowski • August 29, 2015

Imagine being a dad with a wife, two young daughters, and a well-paying engineering career, and then losing your job abruptly. The best new job that comes up is overseas, in Southeast Asia, which seems like a culture shock, but you hope for the best and sign on. The company wants you so badly, they’ve even put your image on a giant welcoming banner and hung it outside the finest hotel in the city.

Everything should be great – but you don’t speak the language and haven’t seen a newspaper in three days, so you have no idea that your new country’s leader was just executed in a bloody coup. Only when you leave the hotel to find a copy of USA Today do you realize that the unruly mob that has taken over the city hates Americans and wants every one of them to die – especially you, the face on the banner representing American imperialism to them.

What do you do? Where do you run? How do you get your family out safely?

Those are the bone-chilling questions at the heart of the new movie “No Escape,” a white-knuckle thriller that expertly uses its star, Owen Wilson, as an American everyman in a horrific situation that will have viewers on the edge of their seats and fully engaged throughout most of its running time. Packed with one harrowing twist after another, the movie also manages to make Wilson’s character, Jack Dwyer, and his family people worth rooting for.

The movie, written by the brother filmmaking team of John Erick and Drew Dowdle, with John Erick directing, sets events up calmly and efficiently in the opening moments by showing the Dwyer family on the plane over to Asia. They make acquaintances with a mysterious British man named Hammond (Pierce Brosnan), who says some cryptically strange things about the unnamed country they’re headed towards and then, upon landing, introduces them to a friendly local driver who nicknamed himself after country singer Kenny Rogers.

It seems like the family is one that is happy yet in a stressful transition, and when anti-American rioting breaks out while Jack is buying that newspaper, his wife Annie (Lake Bell, in a terrific performance) breaks down crying and admits that she doesn’t know if she can trust his judgment anymore. But to stay alive, she’ll have to put on a brave face and keep her kids calm and very very quiet if they are to survive amid all the running, jumping, Moped-racing and gunfights that ensue.

While most of the movie is a pulse-pounding thriller as well as a positive portrait of utmost devotion to family, “No Escape” has one particularly astonishing sequence that set the entire audience into audible gasps. Jack and his family are trapped on a rooftop where they were waiting with other Americans for rescue helicopters, only to find that the copter has been hijacked by coup member determined to shoot everyone on sight.

There’s only one way out: jump to the rooftop of another building. But this is nowhere near being easy, and sets off an utterly ingenious action setpiece that should leave no viewer able to watch without rooting and gasping loudly.

Too bad that sequence comes a half hour into the film, rather than at its climax. But other than a too-perfect appearance from a person who can save the family at the very moment that all seems hopeless, “No Escape” is solid entertainment for adults.

The movie features brief bursts of F words scattered far apart, along with a few lesser swear word. Most of the film’s R rating comes from its violence, which can seem harsh at a few moments but is largely left to the imagination or shot from afar. In particular, Annie is grabbed by a group of native bad guys who are attempting to sexually assault her, but the scene is shot with discretion and she is saved from that situation before anything can happen to her.

All in all, “No Escape” is surprisingly effective escapism amid the late-summer drought of good films at the box office and is solid entertainment for thriller fans 17 and over.

Carl Kozlowski has been a professional film critic and essayist for the past five years at Pasadena Weekly, in addition to the Christian movie site Movieguide.org, the conservative pop culture site Breitbart.com Big Hollywood, the Christian pop culture magazine Relevant, and New City newspaper in Chicago. He also writes in-depth celebrity interviews for Esquire.com and The Progressive. He is owner of the podcasting site radiotitans.com, which was named one of the Frontier Fifty in 2013 as one of the 50 best talk-radio outlets in the nation by talkers.com and will be re-launching it in January 2014 after a five-month sabbatical. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Catholic Education III: Fully Alive for Virtue

by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. • September 2, 2015

“I have come that they may have life, life to the full (Jn 10:10),”— the assurance of Jesus. In the second century, St. Irenaeus of Lyons gave the Church an equally-beautiful verse echoing that of the Jesus: “The glory of God is man and woman fully alive, and the glory of man and woman is the contemplation of God (Against Heresies 4:20).” It has been quoted countless times through the ages. To be fully alive is to develop one’s gifts within the context of a virtuous life. The end goal is life eternal.

What Is Virtue?

“Virtue,” writes Kenneth Woodward, “is a quality of character by which individuals habitually recognize and do the right thing.” Virtuous living is moral living. Children learn virtue in the family and from role models in schools.

The reality of ‘fully alive for virtue’ may be seen in one of the greatest composers of all time, Johann Sebastian Bach. You ask, “What does Bach have to say about education, if anything?” A glimpse into his life will give us some insight.

A Composer for All Seasons: Johan Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

The German word Bach means stream or brook, and Sebastian forms the deepest part of a long flowing stream of minor and amateur musicians, none more prominent than himself. “Not Brook but Ocean should be his name,” adds Beethoven. Bach belongs in the Lutheran religious family, but his earlier Thuringian ancestors, beginning with Günther Bache (ca 1372), would have been Catholic prior to the Protestant Reform sparked in 1517 by Martin Luther.

Bach’s mother and father died before he was ten, and the boy went to live with an older brother who cared for him like a son. The youngster attended the Old Latin Grammar School in Eisenach where Martin Luther had once been a pupil. There the expectations were high for those studying reading and writing, Greek and Latin grammar, a great deal of scripture, and singing in the choir. At the school, laziness was a non-existent word. Bach’s beautiful soprano voice won for him a scholarship in the choir of a nearby monastery. In addition to his formal studies, he studied musical composition and copied music, a habit he cultivated his entire life.

Bach worked at several different musical posts, the last one at St. Thomas School in Leipzig for twenty-seven years. There he achieved the status of music director. He was chief organist, choir director, and composer. His musical output is a sheer wonder, a treasure trove of more than 1,000 compositions.

Disappointments and Setbacks

Bach’s life was far from rosy. In all of his appointments, one thing was certain: If he wanted to keep his current position, he was forced to adjust to his employers’ demands. With a large family to support, he could not afford to incur their dissatisfaction. Keep in mind that, until Beethoven broke the mold in the nineteenth century, musicians were considered servants and subject to the patronage system. If appointed to a court, they and their families were given room and board plus a stipend that depended on their talent and docility.

Bach’s appointments came with irritating demands. He didn’t relish the idea of having to keep detailed reports on the good order of the organ and other instruments, teach Latin in the choir school, and work for low pay. He was always asking for a raise for the sake of his growing family. He complained endlessly to the municipal authorities about poor working conditions and sycophantic dedications to royal personages. Flashes of anger, continual vexation, envy, and persecution would often interrupt his train of musical thought and keen sense of order. In 1717, while at Weimar, he fell out of favor with the authorities. As a result, he was jailed for a month before he was unfavorably dismissed.

The grinding stress of composing music for every Sunday’s four-hour liturgical service took its toll. The ink was barely dry on the manuscript paper before it was performed by the choir, soloists, and congregation.

Faith, Industry, Hard Work, and Self-Discipline

Is there any composer able to match Bach’s output before his death at the age of sixty-five years? Perhaps Mozart, had he lived another thirty years. Perhaps. Who could be so prolific without a keen sense of responsibility and purpose, hard work and industry? Once when he was asked how he had set about to master the art of music to such a high degree, he replied: “I was obliged to be industrious; whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.” Laziness was not in the Bach playbook.

At the top or at the end of every composition, Bach inscribed sdg, soli Deo Gloria, “To God alone be glory.” Today, students are still encouraged to place a cross at the top of their work pages or amdg, ad maiorem Dei gloriam, “all for the greater glory of God.”

When One Door Closes …

From 1720 to 1723, Bach won a music position at Clöthen. His Calvinist employer favored more instrumental music than music for worship. With one musical door closed, he was gifted enough to open another. He concentrated on instrumental music, and this is the fruitful period when most of it was composed: the six delightful Brandenburg Concertos, the keyboard concertos, the concertos for harpsichord and orchestra, and the monumental Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II. Here imaginative flights of fancy paired with highly-structured fugues are composed in every key of the twelve-note scale, both major and minor — forty-eight in all. The so-called Bach “Ave Maria” is the very first prelude of forty-eight gems.

In 1720, Bach was required to travel with his employer, and he was away from home for four months. Imagine the shock on his return home to discover the tragic news that his wife Maria Barbara, who had been in perfect health before he left home, had died and had been already buried in his absence. Four children were left for him to raise. A year later, he married a singer Anna Magdalena. Their happy family increased to thirteen children in all, four composers among them.

The Fifth Evangelist

The word mediocrity was neither part of Bach’s vocabulary nor of his effort. On this point, Claude Debussy once noted: “If we look at the works of Bach, we find a god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity.”

From start to finish, Bach aimed high because all of his works were imbued with a deeply-felt religious faith. He cultivated the habit of perfection. The sacred works are monumental in scope: the great St. Matthew Passion, the Passion according to St. John, the B Minor Mass, the Christmas Oratorio to name a few. Then there are the hundreds of cantatas he composed every Sunday for worship at St. Thomas in Leipzig. Is it any wonder that he has been dubbed “the Fifth Evangelist?”

Bach died in 1750 of a stroke brought on by an unsuccessful operation on his eyes. Copying and composing music contributed to his eventual blindness. His reputation was virtually buried with him. Had it not been for Mozart who, as a boy, played duets in England with Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian, and Felix Mendelssohn who conducted Bach’s works in Berlin perhaps Bach might have remained a regional composer. These two composers revived his reputation and thrust him forth as one of the grandest stars of the musical constellation. With an eye for sharing him with the rest of the cosmos, astronauts have wished more than once that the complete works of Bach be placed in a time capsule and sent out into space.

Bach’s Greatness

Bach was a great composer not because he was a devout Christian. The goodness of art is ordered to the perfection of the work itself, irrespective of the good life of the artists who are concerned exclusively with the perfection of their work. But that perfection in its turn does not depend essentially on the moral and spiritual condition of the artists. With Bach, the perfection of his gift and his own personal goodness were realized together.

Bach is a musical craftsman of the first order. At first, his music can disappoint because it seems like a series of rambling notes. Gradually patterns emerge. The fecundity of his ideas seems endless. He is never stale, never boring. His music skips and dances, walks, marches; it weeps and wails, comforts and prays. The Baroque beat keeps beating. With him, life seems ordered and good because he and his music are ordered and good.

He does it all, and all we can do is marvel at this composer who never traveled beyond a 100-mile radius. Yet, his music has touched all ages, all musical taste of all nationalities, the devout as well as the lapsed. Listen to the philosopher Alain de Botton: “Most contemporary music is about the love between two people. What makes Bach’s music particularly striking is that it’s about the love of God. This should present a hurdle for someone, who like me, doesn’t believe in God — but doesn’t. What I appreciate in Bach is his ability to suggest to me what a belief in God feels like. His music seems to me to be about devotion to a perfect ideal — something purer, better, higher.”

Michael Torke, an American popular composer writes: “Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?”

With a touch of hyperbole and a flair for the dramatic, William F. Buckley opines: “If Bach is not in heaven … I am not going.”

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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FEATURES

Why Junípero Serra Matters Today

by Bishop-elect Robert Barron • September 2, 2015

The upcoming canonization of Blessed Junípero Serra in Washington, D.C. - the first ever to take place on American soil - has generated, as I’m sure you know, a good deal of controversy. For his defenders, Padre Serra was an intrepid evangelist and a model of Gospel living, while for his detractors, he was a shameless advocate of an oppressive colonial system that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Indians. Even many who typically back Pope Francis see this canonization as a rare faux pas for the Argentine Pontiff. What should we make of all this?

It might first be wise to rehearse some of the basic facts of Serra’s life. He was born in 1713 on the beautiful island of Mallorca off of the Spanish coast, and as a very young man, he joined a particularly severe branch of the Franciscan order. He quickly became a star in the community, recognized for his impressive intellectual gifts and his profound spirituality. After many years of study, he earned his doctorate in philosophy and commenced a teaching career, which culminated in his receiving the Duns Scotus Chair of philosophy. But when Padre Serra was thirty-six, he resolved to abandon his relatively comfortable life and promising career and become a missionary in the New World. He undertook this mission out of a sincere and deeply-felt desire to save souls, knowing full well that he would likely never return to his homeland. After spending a few years in Mexico City doing administrative work, he realized his dream to work with the native peoples of New Spain, first in Mexico and then in what was then called Baja California (Lower California). When he was around fifty years old, he was asked by his superiors to lead a missionary endeavor in Alta California, more or less the present day state of California. With the help of a small band of Franciscan brothers and under the protection of the Spanish government, he established a series of missions along the Pacific coast, from San Diego to San Francisco. He died in 1784 and was buried at the San Carlos Borromeo Mission in Carmel by the Sea.

Much of the disagreement regarding Junípero Serra hinges upon the interpretation of the mission project that he undertook. Though it is certainly true that the Imperial Spanish authorities had an interest in establishing a strong Spanish presence along the Pacific coast in order to block the intrusion of Russian settlers in the region, there is no doubt that Serra’s first intention in setting up the missions was to evangelize the native peoples. What fired his heart above all was the prospect of announcing the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who had never before heard it, and there is no question that his missions provided the institutional framework for that proclamation. Moreover, the missions were places where the Indians were taught the principles of agriculture and animal husbandry, which enabled them to move beyond a merely nomadic lifestyle. I find it fascinating, by the way, that there was nothing even vaguely analogous to these missions on the other side of the continent. Though by our standards they treated the native people in a rather patronizing manner, the Spanish evangelized and instructed the Indians, whereas the British settlers in the American colonies more or less pushed them out of the way.

Critics of Serra’s project claim that Indians were compelled to join the missions, essentially as a slave labor force, and were baptized against their will. The consensus of responsible historians, however, is that both of these charges are false. In fact, the vast majority of the Indians recognized the advantage of living in connection with the missions, and only about 10% of those who had come to missions opted to leave. To be sure, those who left were hunted down and, upon their return, were sometimes subjected to corporal punishment. Indeed, there is real evidence that Padre Serra countenanced such violence: in one of his letters, he speaks of the need to punish wayward Indians the way a parent would chastise a recalcitrant child, and in another document, he authorizes the purchase of shackles for the mission in San Diego. Certainly from our more enlightened perspective, we would recognize such behavior as morally wrong, and it is no good trying to whitewash the historical record so as to present Serra as blameless.

Having acknowledged this, however, it is most important to note that the lion’s share of the evidence we have strongly indicates that Serra was a steadfast friend to the native peoples, frequently defending them against the violence and prejudice of the Spanish civil authorities. Very much in the spirit of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the great sixteenth-century defender of the Indians, Serra insisted, again and again, upon the rights and prerogatives of the native tribes. In one case, he spoke out against the execution of an Indian who had killed one of Serra’s own friends and colleagues, arguing that the whole point of his mission was to save life, not to take it. As Archbishop Jose Gomez has argued, this represents one of the first principled arguments against capital punishment ever to appear in Western culture.

One might ask why Pope Francis - who certainly knows all of the controversy surrounding Padre Serra - wants to push ahead with this canonization. He does so, I would speculate, for two reasons. First, he understands that declaring someone a saint is not to declare him or her morally flawless, nor is it to countenance every institution with which the saint was associated. Secondly and more importantly, he sees Junípero Serra as someone who, with extraordinary moral courage, went to the periphery of the society of his time in order to announce Jesus Christ. Serra could have pursued a very respectable career in the comfortable halls of European academy; but he opted to go, at great personal cost, to the margins-and this makes him an extraordinary model of a Pope Francis style missionary.

Was Padre Serra perfect? By no means. Was he a saint? Absolutely.

Bishop-elect Robert Barron is an auxiliary bishop-elect of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries (wordonfire.org). He is the creator of two award-winning documentary series, Catholicism and Catholicism: The New Evangelization.

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SUNDAY • SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Is 35:4-7a; NRSVCE)

Say to those who are of a fearful heart,

“Be strong, do not fear!

Here is your God.

He will come with vengeance,

with terrible recompense.

He will come and save you.”

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

the burning sand shall become a pool,

and the thirsty ground springs of water.

Second Reading (Jas 2:1-5; NRSVCE)

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

Gospel Reading (Mk 7:31-37; NRSVCE)

Then Jesus returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. The people brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

MONDAY • SEPTEMBER 7, 2015

Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Col 1:24 – 2:3; NRSVCE)

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.

For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face. I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Gospel Reading (Lk 6:6-11; NRSVCE)

On another sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him. Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

TUESDAY • SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

First Reading (Mi 5:1-4a; NRSVCE)

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,

who are one of the little clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to rule in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

from ancient days.

Therefore he shall give them up until the time

when she who is in labor has brought forth;

then the rest of his kindred shall return

to the people of Israel.

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,

in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great

to the ends of the earth;

and he shall be the one of peace.

Gospel Reading (Mt 1:1-16, 18-23; NRSVCE)

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.”

WEDNESDAY • SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

Memorial of Saint Peter Claver

First Reading (Col 3:1-11; 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.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things — anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

Gospel Reading (Lk 6:20-26; NRSVCE)

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,

for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

“But woe to you who are rich,

for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now,

for you will be hungry.

“Woe to you who are laughing now,

for you will mourn and weep.

“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

THURSDAY • SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

Thursday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Col 3:12-17; NRSVCE)

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Gospel Reading (Lk 6:27-38; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

FRIDAY • SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

Friday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (1 Tm 1:1-2, 12-14; NRSVCE)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,

To Timothy, my loyal child in the faith:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Gospel Reading (Lk 6:39-42; NRSVCE)

Jesus told his disciples a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

SATURDAY • SEPTEMBER 12, 2015

Saturday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (1 Tm 1:15-17; NRSVCE)

The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Gospel Reading (Lk 6:43-49; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.”