VOLUME 1, ISSUE 42  •  OCTOBER 17, 2015

Table of Contents

Copyright Notice

VATICAN NEWS

From the synod: Mercy is not an abandonment of Church teaching

Don’t fall into the traps of relativism and rigidity, Pope says

Proclaim the beauty of God’s plan for family, L.A. archbishop tells synod

Pope prays for victims of weekend blasts in Turkey

Disunity in the Church is perilous, Archbishop Chaput cautions at synod

Poverty, environment, economy – it’s all about the human person, Holy See tells U.N.

Cardinal Dolan reportedly among concerned bishops who wrote Pope about synod

Vatican aims for child protection norms to be custom-fitted per culture

Cardinal Pell responds to reports of synod letter

How the ‘shadow council’ is trying to influence the Synod on the Family

Diverse synod groups united in concern over ‘gender ideology’

Pope Francis establishes new dorm for Rome’s homeless men

Synod letter leak was intended ‘to sow strife’, says Cardinal Müller

Violent marriages: A woman’s quest to help synod bishops grasp the issue

Pope Francis asks forgiveness for scandals in the Church

We need to be clear on what marriage actually is, synod bishops insist

Read today’s report from the German small group at the Synod

Cardinal Sarah says the Christian family counters both Islamic, Western extremism

Do aliens exist? Pope Francis tackles this (and other things) in new interview

Pope meets with Chilean miners five years after ‘miraculous’ rescue

Don’t ‘regionalize’ Church teaching on marriage, says Irish archbishop at synod

Pope Francis makes secret stop at new dorms for Rome’s homeless

A tough synod topic: The ‘silent martyrdom’ of incest, abuse in families

At synod, Cardinal Marx openly promotes Communion for divorced-and-remarried

WORLD NEWS

Polish archbishop: Unless we recognize sin, Christ’s incarnation is meaningless

More scheming outside the synod? Soros foundation rep attends LGBT lobby event

‘Confess-a-thon’ at Colombian mall draws 350 priests

Naming the unknown martyr: Could these remains be St. John Plessington?

Pro-abortion madness in Argentina: Half-naked activists attack cathedral

New policy forces Missionaries of Charity to end adoption services in India

‘It’s truly a miracle’ – kidnapped Syrian priest escapes from Islamic State

Caritas Pakistan marks 50 years of service in South Asia

Why one Irish archbishop has a special devotion to the Little Flower family

U.S. NEWS

After break-in, Bishop Conley prays for burglar’s conversion

Are those who strive for virtue the new minority? Cardinal Dolan thinks so

Planned Parenthood to stop accepting money for fetal body parts

Why three gay Catholics left the Church – and why they returned

Men and women are complementary – but what does that look like in practice?

FEATURES

Pope Francis and True Mercy

From All Hallows’ Eve to Halloween: Part I

The Right to Life is NOT single issue politics: Life is a lens through which we view every issue

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Sunday • October 18, 2015

Monday • October 19, 2015

Tuesday • October 20, 2015

Wednesday • October 21, 2015

Thursday • October 22, 2015

Friday • October 23, 2015

Saturday • October 24, 2015

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Volume 1, Issue 42 • October 17, 2015

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VATICAN NEWS

From the synod: Mercy is not an abandonment of Church teaching

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • October 10, 2015

Bishops exiting the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall during the Synod on the Family on Oct. 9, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — Mercy has emerged as a major theme in the synod of bishops, as discussion has moved forward with many participants emphasizing that while mercy is greatly needed, it must always be linked to truth.

“The question is not whether we’re here to change doctrine, but to make sure pastoral care takes account of real, actual, concrete situations of what each person is doing,” Fr. Thomas Rosica told journalists Oct. 10, quoting one of the synod participants.

“The proclamation of the Gospel and the embrace of God’s mercy are two equally valid and intrinsically related aspects of life.”

Fr. Rosica, the English-language assistant to the Holy See press office, read aloud snippets of the brief interventions given by unnamed synod participants in both last night’s and this morning’s general congregations during an Oct. 10 press briefing.

According to another synod father, “mercy toward sinners is not a form of weakness nor an abandonment of Church teaching.”

“Unless we acknowledge openly people’s situations, we will not be able to address those situations clearly,” they said, adding that “we have to learn to speak the truth in love in many situations, because in many situations people are completely powerless over what has befallen them.”

Yet another participant stressed that in order to view the Church’s doctrine on marriage in the light of mercy requires both “attention to the pastoral dimension and the application of the Church’s teaching.”

Others made such comments as: “mercy cannot be encountered unless it is measured against an eternal law,” and “one must seek truth in order to encounter mercy, and the Church must seek truth when confronting the theme of marriage.”

For another participant, “mercy means giving people a challenge; it is not covering reality with gift wrap.”

The overwhelming emphasis on the link between mercy and doctrine came as the synod fathers shifted into the second phase of their discussion.

Pope Francis officially opened the 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops Oct. 4, with the event closing on Oct. 25.

Divided into three parts, each week dedicated to one of the three sections of the instrumentum laboris, or working document. Participants spent the first week of the meeting discussing the document’s section titled “Listening to the challenges of the family.”

The subsequent sections are “Discernment of the family vocation” and “The mission of the family today.”

In the briefing, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., said that mercy was a theme “very spoken about” by the 75 synod fathers who made interventions in the previous two sessions.

Specifically mentioned was mercy as “closeness and tenderness” toward families and couples in difficulty, he said, but noted that “the truth of mercy and justice – don’t oppose mercy with the truth,” was also addressed.

Cardinal Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, Major Archbishop of of the Syro-Malankar Archeparchy of Trivandrum, was also present at the briefing.

In response to a question from a French journalist on whether an in-depth examination of doctrine would take place during the synod, the cardinal said that the synod “in fact is destined to be a pastoral one.”

And not just this, he said, “but all synods, because it gives some guidelines to the pastors and the people around that pastoral community.”

He said that showing the mercy of God, given through Christ, is part of the family’s mission; but stressed that in his personal opinion, this mercy always demands conversion on the part of the other.

“When we speak about God’s mercy, it is also demanding a certain personal acceptance of being converted to that reception of mercy … it demands a point of conversion from the individual recipient.”

Cardinal Thottunkal explained that while it is important to understand and support each person in the reality they are living, it’s also necessary to help them receive God’s mercy “in a more conducive atmosphere of conversion to the Lord.”

The Gospel “demands this as a condition” when it says that “the Kingdom of God is at hand, be converted,” he said.

Christ gave the same message when he told sinners: “I forgive you, but don’t sin anymore,” the cardinal said, adding that the Gospel asks for everyone to have this disposition.

Other topics brought up by the synod participants were the indissolubility of marriage, the role of parents in educating their children, the importance of prayer and a missionary spirit within families, the importance of children, and a longer marriage preparation process.

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VATICAN NEWS

Don’t fall into the traps of relativism and rigidity, Pope says

by CNA/EWTN News • October 10, 2015

Pope Francis says Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 4, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — In his homily on Friday Pope Francis focused on the importance of knowing how to discern whether something comes from God or the devil, who seduces and leads us to either become too rigid or relativistic.

“The Evil Spirit never tires … the Christian can never be assured that all is well, he must discern things and be well aware of where they come from, of what their roots are,” the Pope said Oct. 9 during his Mass in the chapel of the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse.

In his homily, the Pope centered on the day’s Gospel passage from Luke, in which after casting out a demon from a man, Christ is accused by the crowd of collaborating with the demon Beelzebul.

The group, Pope Francis said, “did not appreciate him and sought to interpret Jesus’ words and actions in a different way, against Jesus.”

While some did this out of envy, others had a “doctrinal rigidity” they couldn’t let go of, he said. Still others were afraid that the Romans would come to massacre them.

“For many reasons they sought to distance Jesus’ authority from the people, even with slander as in this case … they continually put him to the test, put a trap in front of him, to see if he fell.”

Francis cautioned that such misinterpretations of the situation come from the evil spirit, who stealthily enters a person and “drop by drop” gives them instructions on how to “do things with relativism.”

In order to guard against the evil spirit, one must discern the roots of any given situation, because “temptations always return.”

He emphasized the importance of being watchful and vigilant, because “the bad spirit never tires,” but enters and makes us fall into an even worse situation.

The devil “is hidden, he comes with his very polite friends, knocks at the door, asks for permission, comes in, and lives with that person,” Francis said, explaining that little by little the devil leads the person away from God.

When relativism enters its like “soothing the conscience (or) anaesthetizing the conscience,” he said.

Pope Francis stressed that “when the evil spirit succeeds in anaesthetizing the conscience, it is then he can claim a true victory, for he has become the master of that conscience.”

This can lead one to take on attitudes that say “everyone has problems, everyone sins,” he said, but cautioned that inside the ‘everyone’ is really ‘no one,’ meaning ‘everyone yes, but me no.’

Francis said that watchfulness and discernment are both key remedies for such attacks, and encouraged attendees to follow the Church’s counsel in making a daily examination of conscience.

“What happened today in my heart because of this? From where do these comments, words, teachings come? Who says this?”

Both are needed “in order to not allow the one who deceives, seduces and fascinates enter,” he said, and prayed that the Lord would give them the grace to both discern well and be watchful.

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VATICAN NEWS

Proclaim the beauty of God’s plan for family, L.A. archbishop tells synod

by CNA/EWTN News • October 10, 2015

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles speaks at the North American College, May 2, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles addressed his fellow synod fathers on Saturday, encouraging the Church in sharing the beauty of the Creator’s plan for creation, the human person, and the family.

“I believe that the Church must present a new evangelical catechesis on creation, as an essential element of the new evangelization,” he said Oct. 10 in a brief address, known as an intervention, during the Synod on the Family.”

“We must proclaim the beauty of God’s plan of love for creation, for the human person, and for the human family. Our new evangelization must proclaim an integral human ecology that reveals the nature, vocation and teleology of the human person as created by God.”

Please find below the full text of Archbishop Gomez’ intervention:

Holy Father, Synod Fathers, brothers and sisters,

The Word of God reveals our Creator’s plan for his creation and for human history. This divine Word is the authentic starting point for understanding the family’s vocation and mission.

As the Instrumentum Laboris (nos. 39, 44), recognizes, we can discern a “divine pedagogy” in the history of salvation that unfolds in the Sacred Scriptures.

To strengthen marriage and the family in our time, I believe the Church must recover the divine pedagogy found in the Scriptures. Just a few weeks ago, when he was in the United States Pope Francis reminded us again — that God entrusted his loving plan for creation to the family.

And as I see it, the crisis of the family in our time is, to some extent, a crisis of anthropology. Our culture has lost its sense of the meaning of the human person and creation. This loss is rooted in the loss of God.

My perspective is shaped by my experience as the Archbishop of Los Angeles. The family of God in Los Angeles is made up of people from every continent and nationality.

Los Angeles is also the home of Hollywood — the place where the “virtual world” of movies, television programs, fantasy sports and all kinds of media products are created. So Los Angeles has a great influence on the perception of the human person and the family in contemporary society.

I believe that the Church must present a new evangelical catechesis on creation, as an essential element of the new evangelization. We must proclaim the beauty of God’s plan of love for creation, for the human person, and for the human family. Our new evangelization must proclaim an integral human ecology that reveals the nature, vocation and teleology of the human person as created by God.

The Church needs to recover and reflect on the “family” images found in the Scriptures and most ancient Tradition, and in the universal Church’s liturgy and popular piety:

• the human person as the imago Dei;

• the Church as “family of God”;

• the family as the “domestic Church”;

• Divine filiation and the Christian life as spiritual childhood.

In the face of the widespread crisis of the family, I believe our society needs to hear once more the beautiful truth about the human person and God’s loving plan for creation and history, a plan that is centered in the family.

Counting on the intercession of the Holy Family we need to illuminate, by our pastoral priorities and practice, how the family is the crucial “way” for the Church and for God’s plan for human society

And in the words of our newest American saint, St. Junipero Serra, we will go, siempre adelante!

Thank you very much.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope prays for victims of weekend blasts in Turkey

by CNA/EWTN News • October 11, 2015

Pope Francis delivers an Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square, June 15, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis expressed his condolences Sunday for those affected by attacks in Ankara, during a protest over the weekend which has left at least 95 people dead.

Addressing the crowds in St. Peter’s Square following the Angelus Oct. 11, the Pope said he received the news of Saturday’s attacks “with great pain.”

“Pain for the many killed. Pain for the wounded. Pain because the perpetrators attacked unarmed persons who were protesting for peace.”

“While I pray for that beloved country, I ask the Lord to welcome the souls of the departed, and to comfort the suffering and (their) families.”

The Oct. 10 attack believed to have been perpetrated by two suicide bombers struck a group of pro-Kurdish demonstrators and labor activists who were holding a rally near the capital city’s main train station, three weeks ahead of an election, according to Reuters.

Before reciting the Angelus with the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis reflected on the Gospel reading of the day. During his reflection, he issued a challenge to all the young people in the Square as to whether they would joyfully follow Christ, or sadly walk away, like the rich man depicted in Sunday’s readings.

“Have you felt the gaze of Jesus on you?” the Pope asked. “How do you want to respond? Would you prefer to leave this Square with the joy that Jesus gives us, or with the sadness of heart which the world offers?”

The Pope centered his pre-Angelus address on the day’s Gospel reading from Mark, which recounts the rich man, who is described as “young”, asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.

“Eternal life,” the Pope explains, does not refer merely to the afterlife, but to a life that is full, “accomplished, without limits.”

The rich man in the Gospel says he has followed the commandments “which refer to love of one another” since his youth, but recognizes that his “desire for fulness” has not been satisfied, the Roman Pontiff said.

Christ responds by challenging the man to sell everything, give to the poor, and follow him. However, because his heart is “divided by two masters: God and money,” the Pope said, he is unable to respond to this call, and sadly leaves.

As the Gospel recounts, Christ says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. He adds therefore that salvation is impossible for man, but not for God.

“If we entrust ourselves to the Lord, we can overcome every obstacle that prevents us from following him on the journey of faith,” the Pope said. “Entrust yourself to the Lord. He gives us strength. He gives us salvation. He accompanies us on the journey.”

Christ then promises that those who leave behind everything and follow him will have eternal life, and will receive a “hundredfold.”

In receiving this “hundredfold,” the Pope said: “we are deprived of goods and receive in exchange the delight of true good; we are freed from the slavery of things and gain the freedom of service for love; one renounces possession and receives the joy of the gift.”

“The young man was not won over by the gaze of Jesus’ love, and therefore was not able to change,” Pope Francis said. “It is only in welcoming the Lord’s love with humble gratitude that we are freed from the seductions of idols and the blindness of our illusions.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Disunity in the Church is perilous, Archbishop Chaput cautions at synod

by CNA/EWTN News • October 11, 2015

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia speaks with CNA, Sept. 15, 2014. (Joaquin Piero Perez/CNA)

Vatican City — Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia spoke to the synod fathers on Saturday on the importance of precision in language, particularly regarding unity in diversity, and recalled the Protestant Reformation.

“Imprecise language leads to confused thinking,” the archbishop said Oct. 10 at the Vatican, giving “two examples that should cause us some concern”: ‘inclusive’ and ‘unity in diversity’.

Regarding the oft-used expression “unity in diversity”, he noted that “we need to honor the many differences in personality and culture that exist among the faithful. But we live in a time of intense global change, confusion and unrest. Our most urgent need is unity, and our greatest danger is fragmentation.”

“Brothers, we need to be very cautious in devolving important disciplinary and doctrinal issues to national and regional episcopal conferences – especially when pressure in that direction is accompanied by an implicit spirit of self-assertion and resistance.”

Then he referred to Erasmus, a priest of the early 16th century who called for reform in the Church, yet who opposed Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation.

“Five hundred years ago, at a moment very like our own, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote that the unity of the Church is the single most important of her attributes,” Archbishop Chaput said. “We can argue about what Erasmus actually believed, and what he intended with his writing.”

“But we can’t argue about the consequences when the need for Church unity was ignored. In the coming days of our synod, we might fruitfully remember the importance of our unity, what that unity requires, and what disunity on matters of substance implies.”

Please find below the full text of Archbishop Chaput’s Oct. 10 intervention, “Language and its Implications”, at the Synod on the Family:

Brothers,

The Holy Father has wisely encouraged us to be both fraternal and candid in speaking our thoughts during this synod.

Just as our thoughts shape the language we use, so too the language we use shapes our thinking and the content of our discussions. Imprecise language leads to confused thinking, and that can sometimes lead to unhappy results. I want to share with you two examples that should cause us some concern, at least in the English-speaking world.

The first example is the word inclusive. We’ve heard many times that the Church should be inclusive. And if by “inclusive” we mean a Church that is patient and humble, merciful and welcoming – then all of us here will agree. But it’s very hard to include those who do not wish to be included, or insist on being included on their own terms. To put it another way: I can invite someone into my home, and I can make my home as warm and hospitable as possible. But the person outside my door must still choose to enter. If I rebuild my house to the blueprint of the visitor or stranger, my family will bear the cost, and my home will no longer be their home. The lesson is simple. We need to be a welcoming Church that offers refuge to anyone honestly seeking God. But we need to remain a Church committed to the Word of God, faithful to the wisdom of the Christian tradition, and preaching the truth of Jesus Christ.

The second example is the expression unity in diversity. The Church is “catholic” or universal. We need to honor the many differences in personality and culture that exist among the faithful. But we live in a time of intense global change, confusion and unrest. Our most urgent need is unity, and our greatest danger is fragmentation. Brothers, we need to be very cautious in devolving important disciplinary and doctrinal issues to national and regional episcopal conferences – especially when pressure in that direction is accompanied by an implicit spirit of self-assertion and resistance.

Five hundred years ago, at a moment very like our own, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote that the unity of the Church is the single most important of her attributes. We can argue about what Erasmus actually believed, and what he intended with his writing. But we can’t argue about the consequences when the need for Church unity was ignored. In the coming days of our synod, we might fruitfully remember the importance of our unity, what that unity requires, and what disunity on matters of substance implies.

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VATICAN NEWS

Poverty, environment, economy – it’s all about the human person, Holy See tells U.N.

by CNA/EWTN News • October 11, 2015

(UnSplash/Catholic News Agency)

New York City, N.Y. — Global efforts to fight poverty, protect the environment and make decisions about the economy must all be connected by the common thread of promoting human dignity, a Holy See representative told a United Nations body this week.

“In our efforts to promote sustainable economic and environmental development, we must never forget that everything is connected,” said Archbishop Bernardito Auza, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations.

He quoted the words of Pope Francis: “Concern for the environment needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.”

“The inherent link between sustainable development and care for our common home challenges those models of development that, while inarguably generating wealth and economic progress, also cause greater socio-economic inequalities and the destruction of our environment,” the archbishop said.

“In the race to more amazing technological progress and to ever greater material wealth, we have left billions of persons behind and abused our planet.”

Archbishop Auza addressed the Second Committee of the 70th Session of the General Assembly General Debate in New York.

His October 8 remarks dealt with the connection between poverty, the environment and the global economy.

“Pope Francis sees the environmental degradation and the exclusion of so many from enjoying the fruits of development as two sides of the same challenge. He reminds us that we are not faced with two crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis that is both social and environmental.”

Therefore, the archbishop said, “strategies to find solutions to the complex problems we face today demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the underprivileged, and at the same time protecting nature.”

In fighting poverty, Archbishop Auza said, the goal must be the promotion of integral human development and human dignity.

“Poverty is the lack not only of material goods, but also of social, cultural and spiritual resources and all those less tangible values needed to lead a wholesome and dignified life as individuals and societies,” he told those present.

“For this reason, lifting people out poverty does not just mean adequate food and water, basic health care and decent work; it also means that all enjoy the realization of their fundamental right to education, to free speech, to religious freedom and other fundamental human freedoms.”

The archbishop also acknowledged the reality of global interdependence and the migration crisis, saying that they give new urgency to the need for an awareness of ethical and moral responsibilities.

It is not enough for economic discussions to focus on increasing profits or consumption, the Holy See’s observer said. Deeper questions must be asked about which actions are right and just.

“In this regard, our discussions should not only address the systemic economic challenges and opportunities, but they must also focus on how to incorporate proper ethical and moral requirements into systems, so that they can serve the weaker communities and countries and not reinforce greater inequalities through favouring the stronger,” the archbishop said.

“If we fail to inject such moral values into our globalized systems, we risk abetting a globalized indifference unwilling to hear the cries and incapable of feeling the pain of the victims of our action, or the lack of our action.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Cardinal Dolan reportedly among concerned bishops who wrote Pope about synod

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • October 12, 2015

Cardinal Timothy Dolan (right) speaks with bishops outside the Vatican’s Synod Hall on Oct. 13, 2014. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — New York’s archbishop is listed among the signatories in a letter last week to Pope Francis over whether this year’s Synod on the Family lacked the “openness and genuine collegiality” needed to accomplish its purpose, it was revealed Monday.

In the letter dated Oct. 5, Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the other prelates allegedly addressed the Pope with the aim of alerting him to concerns that new procedures imposed on this year’s gathering, in contrast to previous synods, could hinder the participants in their responsibilities.

The names of the thirteen prelates, along with the content of the letter, were published Oct. 12 by Sandro Magister. However, representatives of at least two of the prelates listed, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois and Cardinal Angelo Scola, have denied that the cardinals signed the document.

At an Oct. 12 press conference, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said he had “nothing to confirm about the document, as it was a confidential one.”

Offered in a “spirit of fidelity,” the letter addresses the drafting of the final document to be submitted to the Holy Father at the conclusion of the synod, and the disproportionate degree of attention given to doctrinal and theological debates which take away the need to reinforce the dignity of marriage and family.

As a result of these procedural changes, there is “concern that the new procedures are not true to the traditional spirit and purpose of a synod,” the letter reads.

“It is unclear why these procedural changes are necessary. A number of fathers feel the new process seems designed to facilitate predetermined results on important disputed questions.”

One of the primary tasks of the synod fathers is to create the final document based in part on the Instrumentum Laboris (the “preparatory document”), parts of which the letter says require “substantial reflection and reworking.”

“The new procedures guiding the synod seem to guarantee it excessive influence on the synod’s deliberations and on the final synodal document.”

The letter highlights the way in which these procedures inhibit the production of the final document, as opposed to previous synods.

“In the past, the process of offering propositions and voting on them served the valuable purpose of taking the measure of the synod fathers’ minds,” the letter reads.

“The absence of propositions and their related discussions and voting seems to discourage open debate and to confine discussion to small groups; thus it seems urgent to us that the crafting of propositions to be voted on by the entire synod should be restored.”

It also expresses concern that vote on the final document will come too late in the process to allow for “full review and serious adjustment of the text.”

“The new synodal procedures will be seen in some quarters as lacking openness and genuine collegiality,” the letter reads.

The letter also cites the the manner in which the drafting committee of the final document has been organized, saying members are appointed rather than elected.

“The lack of input by the synod fathers in the composition of the drafting committee has created considerable unease,” the letter adds.

“Members have been appointed, not elected, without consultation. Likewise, anyone drafting anything at the level of the small circles should be elected, not appointed.”

The letter also cites concern that excess attention given to doctrinal and theological debates over Communion for the divorced and remarried could compromise the task at hand – examining the pastoral care of the family – in a way that could have wider repercussions for the Church’s mission.

“Various fathers have expressed concern that a synod designed to address a vital pastoral matter – reinforcing the dignity of marriage and family – may become dominated by the theological/doctrinal issue of Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried.”

“If so, this will inevitably raise even more fundamental issues about how the Church, going forward, should interpret and apply the Word of God, her doctrines and her disciplines to changes in culture.”

The signatories warned that the Church should take heed from the fate of other denominations which abandonment core Christian beliefs in the name of pastoral care.

“The collapse of liberal Protestant churches in the modern era, accelerated by their abandonment of key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation, warrants great caution in our own synodal discussions.”

This year’s Synod on the Family, which runs from Oct. 4-25, is the second and larger of two such gatherings to take place in the course of a year. Like its 2014 precursor, the focus of the 2015 Synod of Bishops will be the family, this time with the theme: “The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and the modern world.”

Updated at 10:55 a.m, MST Oct. 12, 2015: Two additional cardinals have said they did not sign the letter: Péter Erdõ, archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary, and Mauro Piacenza of Genoa, Penitentiary Major at the Vatican.

Updated at 11:55 am, MST Oct. 12, 2015 Cardinal Pell’s spokesman released the following statement:

“A spokesperson for Cardinal Pell said that there is strong agreement in the Synod on most points but obviously there is some disagreement because minority elements want to change the Church’s teachings on the proper dispositions necessary for the reception of Communion.

Obviously there is no possibility of change on this doctrine.

A private letter should remain private but it seems that there are errors in both the content and the list of signatories.

The Cardinal is aware that concerns remain among many of the Synod Fathers about the composition of the drafting committee of the final relatio and about the process by which it will be presented to the Synod fathers and voted upon.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Vatican aims for child protection norms to be custom-fitted per culture

by Andrea Gagliarducci and Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • October 12, 2015

View of St. Peter’s Basilica from the Pontifical Urbaniana University on June 5, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — When it comes to protection against abuse, guidelines need to be implemented according to the customs of each country if they are to be effective, said one official of the Vatican’s commission for the protection of minors, which met in Rome over the weekend.

“The important thing about guidelines is that they’ve got to fit the country that they’re in, and the culture that they’re in,” said commission member Bill Kilgallon, director of the National Office for Professional Standards of the Catholic Church in New Zealand.

“What we don’t want to do is impose something that we don’t have the power to impose. But it won’t work if you try and impose something that’s the same for everybody,” he told CNA.

“Guidelines are important, but the implementation of the guidelines is more important,” he said.

Kilgallon was present at a briefing held following this month’s set of meetings of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which ran Oct. 9-11.

As a member of the commission, which has been divided into several working groups, Kilgallon is leader of the group responsible for developing a template of guidelines, aimed at aiding bishops and religious communities forming guidelines of their own.

He explained these guidelines are geared toward prevention of abuse, selection of clergy, religious, and staff, for dealing with complaints, processes for community education, etc. The commission has been broken up into several working groups. During the weekend meetings, these groups each came together and reported on their work thus far.

The New Zealand native said problems in his own country with regard to this issue are the same as in other countries. He said there needs to be, first, a “better-informed Church.”

“There’s still a big issue about education, and awareness-raising, about abuse, because the Church should be able to provide a very effective ministry to people who have been abused.”

This does not apply just to victims of clerical abuse, but also abuse within families and elsewhere.

“There’s also a continuing issue about making sure that we are very careful in our selection of people to work in the Church, with in employment or as volunteers, so the Church becomes a much safer environment.”

This week’s assembly kicked off with Mass celebrated by Pope Francis in the Santa Marta residence. It gathered together its 17 members, which is headed by Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

On the slate for the group’s October meeting were: guidelines for the safeguarding and protection of minors; healing and care for victims, survivors and their families; formation of candidates to the priesthood and religious life and the education of Church leadership; education of families and communities; theology and spirituality; canonical and civil norms.

Members then set the program for the commission’s next meeting which will take place February, 2016.

Announced in December 2013, the commission was officially established in March 2014 by Pope Francis to explore various proposals and initiatives geared toward the improvement of norms and procedures for protecting children and vulnerable adults.

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VATICAN NEWS

Cardinal Pell responds to reports of synod letter

by Marco Mancini (CNA/EWTN News) • October 12, 2015

Cardinal George Pell leaves the Vatican’s Synod Hall after a session of the Synod on the Family on Oct. 13, 2014. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — The text of a letter allegedly written by 13 cardinals to Pope Francis is inaccurate, said Cardinal George Pell, prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, adding that the contents of private documents should remain private.

“The list of signatories is wrong, and so is the content,” Cardinal Pell told CNA Oct. 12.

“I don’t know what they did, exactly. Perhaps they attributed incorrect signatures to a wrong text,” he continued, as to how the errors could have been inserted into the text. “I am not the head of any lobby, I am just a messenger.”

The cardinal’s comments come in response to a report that he was among the signatories of an Oct. 5 letter to Pope Francis over whether this year’s Synod on the Family lacked the “openness and genuine collegiality” needed to accomplish its purpose.

In the letter, 13 prelates allegedly addressed the Pope with the aim of alerting him to concerns that new procedures imposed on this year’s gathering, in contrast to previous synods, could hinder the participants in their responsibilities.

The names of the 13 prelates, along with the contents of the letter, were published Oct. 12 by Sandro Magister.

However, representatives of at least four of the prelates listed – Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, Cardinal Angelo Scola, Cardinal Péter Erdõ, and Cardinal Mauro Piacenza – have denied that they signed the document.

In an Oct. 12 statement, a spokesperson for Cardinal Pell said that while there is strong agreement on most issues within the synod, “there is some disagreement because minority elements want to change the Church’s teachings on the proper dispositions necessary for the reception of Communion.”

“Obviously there is no possibility of change on this doctrine,” it said.

“A private letter should remain private,” the statement continued, adding, “The Cardinal is aware that concerns remain among many of the Synod Fathers about the composition of the drafting committee of the final relatio and about the process by which it will be presented to the Synod fathers and voted upon.”

Asked about the letter at an Oct. 12 press conference, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said he had “nothing to confirm about the document, as it was a confidential one.”

Offered in a “spirit of fidelity,” the letter released by Magister addresses the drafting of the final document to be submitted to the Holy Father at the conclusion of the synod, and the disproportionate degree of attention given to doctrinal and theological debates which take away the need to reinforce the dignity of marriage and family.

As a result of these procedural changes, there is “concern that the new procedures are not true to the traditional spirit and purpose of a synod,” the letter reads.

“It is unclear why these procedural changes are necessary. A number of fathers feel the new process seems designed to facilitate predetermined results on important disputed questions.”

One of the primary tasks of the synod fathers is to create the final document based in part on the Instrumentum Laboris (the “preparatory document”), parts of which the letter says require “substantial reflection and reworking.”

“The new procedures guiding the synod seem to guarantee it excessive influence on the synod’s deliberations and on the final synodal document.”

The letter highlights several ways in which signatories believe these procedures inhibit the production of the final document, as opposed to previous synods.

It voices concern over the absence of propositions, along with discussion and voting on them; the late timing of the vote on the final document, such that there will not be time for “full review and serious adjustment of the text”; the fact that members of the drafting committee for the final document were appointed rather than elected; and what is described as a disproportionate focus on the issue of Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried.

This year’s Synod on the Family, which runs from Oct. 4-25, is the second and larger of two such gatherings to take place in the course of a year. Like its 2014 precursor, the focus of the 2015 Synod of Bishops will be the family, this time with the theme: “The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and the modern world.”

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VATICAN NEWS

How the ‘shadow council’ is trying to influence the Synod on the Family

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • October 12, 2015

Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising (left) speaks at a press conference held by German bishops at the Teutonic College, Oct. 5, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — When the first week’s reports of the 13 small groups at the Synod on the Family were released on Friday, the influence of those who participated in May’s “Shadow Council” could be discerned in the report of the German speaking group.

The secretive May meeting was organized by the German, French, and Swiss bishops’ conferences; and while nearly all of the small groups strongly criticized the synod’s instrumentum laboris, or working document, the German report is different, as it praises the working document for both its method and contents.

The three French speaking groups have a more nuanced approach to the instrumentum laboris, given the varied compositions of each groups, though at least one of the French groups showed a positive attitude to it.

The German group’s positive assessment of the instrumentum laboris come from the attitude already experienced at the ‘shadow council’.

The German group praised the instrumentum laboris‘ methodology, saying, “the overall presentation of the text found unanimous agreement. We’re also very much in agreement with the order of the document, including the structuring of the three chapters. It takes the order of papers from earliest sentence and conferences which lead from seeing to judging and finally into action.”

The group emphasized that “as bishops, we take a stand on marriage and family,” while adding that “we also want to listen to the circumstances and challenges of their life, and to accompany and strengthen them with the loving regard of the Gospel.”

This sentence recalls one of the proposals of the ‘shadow council.” The participants in the May meeting advocated approval of contraception, homosexual acts, and admission to Communion for the divorced-and-remarried, after a consideration of the circumstances, and proposed a “narrative theology” based on personal experience – which is linked to rejecting the notion that any act can be intrinsically evil.

How did the experience of the ‘shadow council’ weigh in the working of the German group?

Among the shadow council participants, two were in the German speaking small group at the synod: Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, who gave the final speech at the May 25 shadow council, and Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin, who in a February interview with a German newspaper called for changes in the pastoral care of homosexuals, saying that to “portray homosexuality as a sin is hurtful.”

Archbishop Koch is the group’s relator, working alongside its moderator, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna.

In a lengthy interview granted to the Jesuit-run magazine La Civiltà Cattolica in September, Cardinal Schoenborn stressed that since the social and cultural context has changed, the Church must find new ways of approach. He also proposed “personal penitential paths” for the divorced-and-remarried.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, is also part of the German group: his proposal for the admission of (some of) the divorced-and-remarried to Communion is well known.

The group also includes two ‘conservative’ cardinals of the Roman Curia: Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

A strong defender of Church doctrine on faith and morals, Cardinal Mueller seems to be virtually isolated in the German small group, as the positions of the “prelates of the shadow council” seem to be prominent.

The composition of the French groups are more balanced, which is mirrored in their final reports.

Out of three French language reports, only that of ‘French C’ – whose moderator is Bishop Maurice Piat of Mauritius, and whose relator is Archbishop Paul-André Durocher of Gatineau – completely backs the methodology of the instrumentum laboris.

The French C group underscored that the method of see, judge and act “is well adapted to our subject: it permits us to organize abundant material in a logical and productive way.”

The group also underscored that “the implicit anthropology of our modern culture is far from the Christian vision” of the family. The group also asked for a completely new introduction in the final report, which would “make explicit the link between the Synod and the New Evangelization, Evangelii Gaudium, and the Synod on the Family.”

The group also noted its concern over the emergence of gender ideology. The members consided that “many gender theories have been developed in sociology and philosophy, trying to analyze some human and social phenomenona in order to enrich our understanding of the world.”

However, the group stressed, when these theories “try to impose a point of view which denies the relation between the sexual identity and our actual sex, it dissolves the family, the parenthood, the human love.”

Meanwhile, the French A group (moderated by Cardinal Gerald Lacroix of Quebec and related by Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Lille) includes two ‘shadow council’ participants: Bishop Jean-Luc Brunin of Le Havre and Bishop Jean-Marie Lovey of Sion.

This group asked the text to adopt “the point of view of family life, not limited to that of ckuples and marriage”, and lamented that “some (of the prelates) are worried that not all the amendments proposed, drafted and adopted after an intense discussion will not be taken in consideration.”

The group wants to underscore that “these amendments have been elaborated with much attention and with discussion that required a lot of energy and abnegation, in order to take into account the opinions of everyone.”

The three Italian and two Spanish speaking groups seemed uninfluenced by the shadow council, and the four English groups were emphatically opposed to its program – English D, for example, “found much of the text [of the instrumentum laboris] to be flawed or inadequate.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Diverse synod groups united in concern over ‘gender ideology’

by CNA’s Vatican Observer Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • October 13, 2015

(wong yu liang via shutterstock.com)

Vatican City — Despite the significant differences among the 13 small groups that are discussing the working document at the Synod on the Family, the majority are in agreement that gender ideology poses a serious challenge for families in the modern world.

Seven of the bishops’ working groups – which are divided by language – mention gender ideology as one of their major concerns and suggest that the synod’s working document does not sufficiently address the issue.

Gender theory or ideology is the idea that one’s ‘gender’ is chosen and need not correspond with one’s biological sex.

Pope Francis has tackled the issue at least once during his series of general audiences dedicated to family.

“I ask myself, if the so-called ‘gender theory’ is not, at the same time, an expression of frustration and resignation, which seeks to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it,” the Pope said April 15 of this year. “Yes, we risk taking a step backwards. The removal of (sexual) difference in fact creates a problem, not a solution.”

The Holy Father’s concern is shared by bishops at the synod.

The small group known as “French B” noted in its first report that “a wide discussion within our group focused on gender theory. In particular, it was underlined that gender theory has the character of an ideology when it is spread, or better imposed, by some international organizations.”

The group referred to pressure exerted by some international bodies, making financial aid dependent on the adoption of regulations based on gender ideology. This phenomenon has been denounced by numerous African prelates during the Synod.

However, concerns about gender ideology were not limited to the prelates from Africa. In Italy, bishops have been constantly fighting over the past year against attempts to introduce textbooks into the nation’s schools that present gender theory as a fact.

It was no surprise, therefore, that the issue was also raised in two Italian small groups.

“For what concerns the anthropological and cultural context, it seemed necessary (that the synod text) would more widely refer to the risks of gender ideology, as well to the negative influence it has on scholastic programs of many countries,” said small group “Italian A.”

Small group “Italian B” presented a specific amendment on the issue, saying, “The group more clearly emphasized the ideological character of gender ideology, in order to lend families a hand so that they can take back their original right to educate children in a responsible dialogue with other educative agencies.”

Meanwhile, the group “English D” lamented that “there were a number of elements missing” from the working document, including “a serious reflection on gender ideology.”

And the “Spanish B” group mentioned the challenge of gender ideology among “the ongoing anthropological changes,” that are “deeper than what we can imagine.”

Also delving into the issue was the group “French C,” which underscored gender ideology as one of its top two concerns.

“We are concerned by the uprise of a new ideology that is often called gender ideology,” the group stressed.

It said that “several gender theories have been developed in sociology and philosophy, with the attempt to analyze some human and social phenomenon.” But “when these theories are taken as an absolute, they tend to create a unique thought that aims to sweep away everything else.”

“While (these theories) try to impose a view that denies the relation between sexual identity and the sex of individuals as we are, they dissolve families, parenthood, human love in its more noble and humanizing part,” the group concluded.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis establishes new dorm for Rome’s homeless men

by CNA/EWTN News • October 13, 2015

Pope Francis’ dorm ‘Gift of Mercy’ for the homeless in Rome, Italy on Oct. 12, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis and his brother Jesuits in Rome have converted an old travel agency building into a new homeless shelter for men, just in time for the cold winter months.

The new dormitory is called “Gift of Mercy,” because mercy is “love’s second name,” Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, the Apostolic Almoner, told Vatican Radio.

He added that the initiative is a response to Pope Francis’ call to the faithful to care for the poor and the homeless.

Earlier this year, Pope Francis established showers, bathrooms and a barber shop inside the Vatican to serve the homeless population.

The new shelter, just around the corner from the Vatican in Via dei Penitenzieri, is furnished by the Papal Office of Charities and donations, and is run by sisters from Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.

With enough space to house 34 men, the shelter brings the Vatican’s total capacity for housing the homeless up to 84.

Besides the “Gift of Mercy” house, the Missionaries of Charity also run the “Gift of Mary” home in the Vatican, a homeless shelter for women established by Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa in the late 1980s.

Residents in the new “Gift of Mercy” house are welcome to stay for up to 30 consecutive days, and a schedule set by the sisters helps keep things running smoothly.

The sisters register each guest as they arrive between 6-7 p.m. Soon after, it’s lights out, with a wake-up call at 6:15 a.m. After time for bed-making and personal hygiene, the dorm closes at 8 a.m. to give the sisters a chance to clean before the next night.

The dorm was inaugurated last week in a private ceremony with a blessing and Mass celebrated by Archbishop Krajewski, with the dorm’s first guests and volunteers in attendance.

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VATICAN NEWS

Synod letter leak was intended ‘to sow strife’, says Cardinal Müller

by CNA/EWTN News • October 13, 2015

Pope Francis together with Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, Nov. 19, 2014. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — Cardinal Gerhard Müller spoke with an Italian daily on Tuesday about the synod and about a letter allegedly sent to Pope Francis from a number of cardinals abouts its process, calling the leak of a private document scandalous.

“I’m not saying whether I signed or not. The scandal is that it makes public a private letter of the Pope,” the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told Corriere della Sera Oct. 13. “This is a new Vatileaks: the Pope’s private documents are private property of the Pope and no one else. No one can publish it, I do not know how that could happen.”

“The intention of those who willed its publication is to sow strife, to create tensions. I think that’s clear.”

The text of a letter, and a list of 13 cardinal signatories, were published by Vaticanista Sandro Magister the day before. Several of the prelates listed have denied having signed the document, and others have contested the text published by Magister.

Cardinal Müller is among the list of signatories published by Magister, as well as an alternate version published by Jesuit-run America magazine.

After discussing the letter with Corriere della Sera, the cardinal turned to larger issues of the synod, and Francis’ papacy.

He took umbrage at “those who sustain that in the Roman Curia there is opposition to the Pope. Those who say and write that there are wolves, that Francis is surrounded by wolves. This is an offensive expression, and criminal. I am not a wolf against the Pope.”

“I know who is the Pope and what is meant by his primacy a thousand times better than those who say these things. As prefect of the Congregation, I am the first collaborator of the Holy Father; not only myself but all those who are part of it. I will let no one put in doubt my obedience and my service to the Pope and the Church.”

Pope Francis had cautioned last week against a ‘hermeneutic of conspiracy’ surrounding the synod, and Cardinal Müller reflected that the ‘conspiracy’ would be “To say we are friends of the Pope, and they are the enemy!”

“I do not know anyone here who is against the Pope,” he affirmed.

Acknowledging that there has been concern expressed over the synod’s regulations, he said it “always discusses how to improve procedures, everyone has the freedom to say their opinion on this: the regulations are a human, not a divine law!”

Cardinal Müller spoke positively about the use of small groups for discussion at the synod, saying that “everyone has the freedom to express themselves more fully,” and that “in the [synod] hall there are only three minutes for each intervention, and a synthesis of all aspects cannot be done.”

“There was tension between doctrine and pastoral approach,” the cardinal said, “but it is the task of the synod to see these two aspects together. Every Catholic bishop, in his person, is a teacher of the faith and also shepherd of the flock.”

Regarding the link between doctrine and mercy, Cardinal Müller said, “Orthodoxy must be realized in pastoral care, and there is not a healthy pastoral care without doctrine: that is the teaching of Jesus, not an academic doctrine of theologians.”

He added that the debates should not be characterized as between “liberals” who are approved by the masses, and unpopular “conservatives” who defend the doctrine revealed by Christ.

“It is not as if one [bishop] is of the Ten Commandments, and another is of mercy. And the Gospel requires also the conversion of our lives. The door is narrow.”

Cardinal Müller then turned to the divorced-and-remarried.

“Persons are suffering because their marriage is broken, not because they cannot receive Communion. For us the center of the Eucharist is the consecration: each Christian has the obligation to attend Mass, but not to receive Communion. Concentrating only on this one point resolves nothing.”

He added that “a general rule” in this regard “is not possible.”

“Marriage is a sacrament, and the Church has not authority over a sacrament.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Violent marriages: A woman’s quest to help synod bishops grasp the issue

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • October 13, 2015

(luxorphoto via shutterstock.com)

Vatican City — Christauria Welland is a clinical psychologist who’s worked with both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence – and with one in three women worldwide suffering from abuse at the hands of a partner, her goal is to make sure bishops know about the problem.

Often kept secret through shame or fear of stigma, the scourge of physical and emotional violence between couples is something the Catholics are anything but immune from, and Welland says she hopes to bring about healing and change through awareness and education.

After raising the issue with Vatican officials during last year’s extraordinary synod of bishops on the family, she’s seeking to push the issue even further onto radar of this month’s event by distributing booklets to all of the synod participants.

This year’s Synod on the Family runs from Oct. 4-25, is the second and larger of two such gatherings to take place in the course of a year. Like its 2014 precursor, the focus of this year’s synod is the family, this time with the theme: “The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and the modern world.”

A professor and author, Welland began working in the field of domestic violence 45 years ago, and has extensive experience working in Catholic communities.

She works in private practice in Solana Beach, Calif., with a hospital practice in the rehabilitation unit at Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas and Paradise Valley Hospital in National City. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Alliant International University in San Diego, where she teaches a licensure course on domestic violence.

For the first 25 years of her career, Welland focused on victims of domestic violence, however, for the past 20 years she has concentrated on abusive men.

She was in Rome during last year’s extraordinary synod of bishops on the family, where she met for the second time with the secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Archbishop Jean Laffitte, to discuss possible initiatives designed to bring greater attention to the issue of domestic violence.

At the council’s request, Welland drafted a 100-page booklet titled “How Can We Help to End Violence in Catholic Families: A Guide for Clergy, Religious and Laity,” for the Philadelphia World Meeting of Families, where she was the only speaker to present on violence inside the home.

Addressing ways in which Catholics can both respond to and prevent domestic violence, as well as how to educate Catholic youth and couples on how to avoid it, the booklet is available in six languages and as of last week was distributed to all synod participants.

In an Oct. 13 interview with CNA, Welland said that domestic violence is “such a common problem that there’s probably at least one person in every extended family who’s gone through that experience.”

Although she said the issue has been gaining greater awareness in the public eye, it’s still a major problem, and that the numbers tend to be higher “in countries where women have fewer rights, where their legal rights are not equal to men’s rights.”

In terms of statistics, Welland said that worldwide one in three women are effected by some sort of physical or sexual abuse from their partners, while the number effected by emotional or other types of abuse could be higher.

While most countries don’t have stats on men, in the U.S. 28 percent are affected. So it’s “a very big problem worldwide,” she said, noting that, depending on the country, the lowest statistics read one in five women, whereas the highest are one in two.

She defined domestic violence – frequently referred to by research professionals as “Intimate Partner Violence” (IPV) to distinguish from other types of domestic abuse – as any “physical, sexual, emotional, economic abuse, isolation” and in general “the kind of control that one partner exerts over the other.”

Even though there are no specific studies exploring the frequency of IPV within Catholic families, Welland said that it still happens, and that Catholics “aren’t immune” from the phenomenon.

“I hear it every single day, from my Catholic and my non-Catholic patients, so I think it’s something we need to be really aware of,” she said.

Welland said she intentionally made her booklet short and easy to read so that people would actually take an interest, and expressed her hope that synod would “focus on this issue because it is so common in Catholic families.”

A recent example can be seen in a heart-wrenching open letter one Catholic woman wrote to the synod fathers, in which she tells the story of her husband’s dramatic anger problems and the failure of those around her – priests included – to provide adequate help.

One of the synod participants, Archbishop John Baptist Odama of Gulu and president of the Ugandan Episcopal Conference, has already spoken up about the issue.

Archbishop Odama told CNA that in his intervention during last week’s first round of general congregation discussions, he “defended the rights of women against violence whether it be in their homes or in society in general.”

“Violence done to women, or done to children or to anybody is a violence done to the family,” he said, adding that he knows well the toll that violence can take, since his area for 20 years was “bedeviled by internal insecurity and insurgency.”

What he saw during that time was “children suffering, but more the mothers who had given life to these children being put in a situation of stress and of pain.”

“I lived with it and I wouldn’t wish it to happen again, not only in our area but it shouldn’t happen again in any part of the world, in a society of humanity as a whole,” the archbishop said.

Archbishop Odama explained that his intervention at the synod was aimed not just at changing the situation in the specific context of Africa, but of humanity as a whole.

“In other parts (of the world), wherever it may be women suffer. So I’m addressing with a small local experience, but with a global issue … we live local but our vision of life should be global.”

Before speaking at the World Meeting of Families Welland spent a month in Africa promoting her booklet and other information surrounding IPV.

She said that after presenting information to various priests, religious, catechists and several bishops in Kampala, Uganda, she got “a very positive response,” and published the booklet there in both English and French.

In terms of African “there’s a very great interest,” she said. “I would say priests and bishops, sisters, anybody who is a pastoral worker is really looking for answers.”

“How do I deal with this, because it is so common and it does show up in your parish office, it shows up in the confessional, it shows up in your school, in your Catechism class.”

In terms of best practices in handling situations of violence in the home, even from a pastoral standpoint, the most important things are not to blame victim and to focus on the person who needs help.

“The first thing is don’t blame the victim. You don’t want to make trite comments, cliché’s like ‘you have to forgive and forget,’” Welland said, because when those comments are made “you can really put someone in danger and you don’t really help them process … you’re kind of discounting what their issue is.”

On the other hand, working with the person who is violent is crucial, because “that’s the person who has the power to change. He or she is the one who needs to make changes so the family will change.”

If a person has any sort of desire to change then the change is possible, she said, noting that the percentage of people who want no change at all is normally very low.

Welland said that while she’s not working with the Church directly, she leads a program in Latin America in Spanish that she developed while working with abusers in San Diego, and that most men have found her program “very effective.”

She voiced her hope that the synod fathers would give the issue the attention it needs and deserves during the synod, and that they would find her booklet helpful in terms of knowing how to handle situations of IPV on a pastoral level.

“If we want to have good marriages in the Church and happy families, if you take that through domestic violence you’re not going to get that goal, that’s never going to happen,” she said.

“So it’s really important to know how to be aware of it and help people prevent it, and if it shows up to know how to treat it and how to respond to it.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis asks forgiveness for scandals in the Church

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

Pope Francis at the Vatican on April 3, 2014. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis opened this Wednesday’s general audience by apologizing for unspecified scandals that have recently arisen in the Vatican.

Speaking off-the-cuff, the Pope opened the gathering by saying: “Before beginning the catechesis, I would like, in the name of the Church, to ask your forgiveness for the scandals that, in these times, have fallen on Rome and the Vatican. I ask your forgiveness!”

Pope Francis did not specify the nature of the scandals in his catechesis. When asked by journalists which scandals were being implied, Holy See press office director Fr. Federico Lombardi said he would not speculate if the Pope himself did not.

The central theme of Pope Francis’ Oct. 14 address pertained to “promises we make to children,” namely: those promises which affect children’s expectations about life, their faith in human beings, and “their ability to understand God’s name as a blessing.”

The basic promises of “welcome and care, closeness and attention, faith and hope,” can be summarized by a single promise, he said, which is love.

Explaining that this is a promise made by every man and woman to every child, he said “children come into the world and expect to have this promise confirmed; they expect it in a total, trusting, vulnerable way.” He added that this is true regardless of ethnicity, culture, and conditions of life.

When this promise is violated, “children are wounded by an unbearable scandal, which is much more serious because they do not have the means of interpreting it.”

The Pope cited Jesus’ words accounted in Matthew in response to this sort of scandal: “Woe to those who betray their trust, woe!”

Pope Francis went on to stress how crucial it is to protect a child’s natural inclination to trust in God’s love, which he says is present at birth.

He warned against wounding a child’s “spontaneous trust in God.”

“The tender and mysterious relationship between God and the soul of a child must never be violated,” he said, adding that children are sensible to God’s love from birth.

When a child feels love, he “also senses that there is a God who loves children.”

Along with receiving nourishment and care, a newborn child receives the “confirmation of the spiritual quality of love,” Pope Francis said: being given a name, smiles, etc.

The Pope also referred to the promise given by parents who give of themselves, explaining that this love brings with it a “glimmer” of the love of God.

“Only by looking at children with the eyes of Jesus can we truly understand in a sense that, in defending the family, we protect humanity!”

Pope Francis went on to reflect on this relationship between children and God in the context of the Holy Family and the Church.

“The point of view of children is the point of view of the Son of God,” he said. “The church itself, in baptism, makes great promises to children,” through the commitment of their parents and the Christian community.

The Pope reflected on how Mary, through whom Jesus came among us, “makes the Church able to follow the path of her maternity and faith.” For his part, the Pope added, St. Joseph makes us worthy to “welcome Jesus in every child which God gives to the earth.”

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VATICAN NEWS

We need to be clear on what marriage actually is, synod bishops insist

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • October 14, 2015

(Alex Studio via shutterstock.com)

Vatican City — Numerous bishops voiced alarm over the lack of a clear definition of marriage in the synod’s controversial guiding text, prompting a call for one based on scripture and Church teaching to be added.

“The Instrumentum Laboris nowhere defines marriage. This is a serious defect,” group “D” of the four English-speaking circles wrote in their second report, published Wednesday.

This lack of definition “causes ambiguity throughout the text,” the group wrote, suggesting a paragraph from the 1965 Second Vatican Council document “Gaudium et Spes” as a correction.

The Vatican II document states that marriage between a man and a woman has “been established by the Creator and qualified by His laws, and is rooted in the conjugal covenant of irrevocable personal consent.”

“By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown,” the document reads.

“Thus a man and a woman, who by their compact of conjugal love ‘are no longer two, but one flesh,’ render mutual help and service to each other through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions.”

Published Oct. 14, the prelate’s observations came in the second round of small group reports released during this year’s synod of bishops on the family.

Pope Francis officially opened the 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops Sunday, Oct. 4, with the event closing on Oct. 25.

The gathering is divided into three parts, with each week dedicated to one of the three sections of the instrumentum. So far the bishops have spent the first week of the meeting discussing the document’s first section, titled “Listening to the challenges of the family.”

Discussion has moved onto the second part, titled “Discernment of the family vocation,” and will culminate next week with the third, “The mission of the family today.”

Divided by language into 13 groups with around 20 members each, small groups are playing a larger role in this year’s synod. While the groups’ individual reports were only published once last year, they are now being published after each of the synod phases.

One small group is in German, four in English, three in Spanish, two in Italian and three in French. Groups were determined by both the language of participants and the requests of the synod fathers.

Group “D” of the English speaking circles – led by Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia – said that while the text of the synod’s guiding document has “many good insights on marriage,” it could be clearer.

The part dedicated to Catholic doctrine on marriage “stretches over too many paragraphs. It needs to be brought together in a more concise, compelling way,” they said.

Likewise, English speaking group “B” – led by Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster and Archbishop Martin Diarmuid of Dublin – said that a “renewed and deeper reflection on the theology of marriage should be one of the fruits of the Synod.”

They suggested that the reflection begin with the book of Genesis, “which already provides a definition of marriage as a unique union between a man and a woman, so total and intimate that because of it a man must leave his father and mother in order to be united with his wife.”

Along with a clear definition marriage, the passage also provides the three basic qualities of marriage as it was from the beginning, they said, naming the characteristics as “monogamy, permanence, and equality of the sexes.”

Many of the groups also expressed concern that the notion of marriage indissolubility was cast in a negative light, and suggested re-phrasing the paragraphs so that the concept is seen more positively, rather than “as a burden,” as group “D” put it.

English speaking group “C” – headed by Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh and Archbishop Benedict Coleridge of Brisbane – echoed the sentiment, underlining the need to speak about the indissolubility of marriage “as a gift from God rather than a burden.”

They said the Church must find a more positive way of speaking about the topic, “so that people can fully appreciate the gift,” and stressed that while Church teaching on the issue “has been constant,” the way it is articulated has not been.

Group “C” also said there is a need to express “heartfelt appreciation” for couples who are already living their marriage as a genuine vocation, and referred to their witness as “a unique service to the Church and the world.”

In the reports great attention was also given to the topic of women, specifically their role in the Church and those who face violence in the home.

The English group “D” said that violence against women “was a key part of the discussion,” and suggested that the instrumentum laboris “be more sensitive” to women abused either by their husbands or within their families.

Other topics touched on by the groups were education and prayer within the family, specifically the importance of participating in Sunday Eucharist together. Groups also pointed to the increasing phenomenon of youth who don’t marry, either out of fear or a general lack of confidence in marriage.

An increase in references to scripture was also proposed, specifically passages relating to the family such as the books of Tobit, Hosea and Luke Chapters 1-2.

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VATICAN NEWS

Read today’s report from the German small group at the Synod

by CNA/EWTN News • October 14, 2015

Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising at a press conference held by German bishops at the Teutonic College in Rome, Oct. 5, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — Read below the full text of the report released Wednesday by the German-speaking small group at the Synod on the Family. The reports of the 13 small groups, or circoli minori, were all released Oct. 14 in their own languages: four English, three French, three Italian, two Spanish, and one German. The text below is CNA’s translation of the German original:

We extensively debated the concepts – that are, again and again, considered to be opposites – of mercy and truth, of grace and justice, and their theological relationship to each other. In God, they are not opposites: because God is love, in God justice and mercy are one. God’s mercy is the foundational divine truth of revelation, which is not in opposite to other divine truths of revelation. Rather, it reveals to us the deepest foundation of revelation, since it tells us, why God emptied himself in his son and why Jesus Christ through his Word and through his sacraments is present and remains for our salvation in his Church. The mercy of God through this reveals to us the reason and the goal of the entire work of Redemption. The justice of God is his mercy, with which he makes us just.

We also considered what consequences this interpenetration has for how we accompany marriages and families. It precludes a one-sided, deductive hermeneutic, which subsumes concrete situations under a general principle. In the sense of Thomas Aquinas and also the Council of Trent, the application of foundational principles is expected to be applied with prudence and wisdom to each specific, often complex situation. This is not about exceptions, in which the Word of God would not apply, but about the just and proper application of the words of Jesus – for instance the words on the indissolubility of marriage – in prudence and wisdom. Thomas Aquinas illustrated this necessity of making a concrete application when he says: “to prudence belongs not only the consideration of the reason, but also the application to action, which is the end of the practical reason.” (STh II-II 47.3: “ad prudentiam pertinet non solum consideratio rationis, sed etiam applicatio ad opus, quae est finis practicae rationis”).

Another aspect of our discussion was the topic of gradually leading people to the sacrament of marriage as mentioned repeatedly in the third chapter of the second part [of the instrumentum laboris], from informal relationships to unmarried cohabiting couples to couples married by the state up to ecclesially valid, sacramental marriage. To accompany these people on the different steps pastorally, is a great pastoral responsibility, but also a joy.

It also became clear to us, that in many discussions and perceptions we think too statically and not sufficiently biographically-historically. The Church’s teaching on marriage has developed and deepened historically. At first it was about humanizing marriage, which led to the conviction of monogamy. In the light of the Christian faith, the personal dignity of the marriage partners was recognized more deeply and the image of God in man perceived through the relationship of man and woman. In a further step, the ecclesiology of marriage was deepened, and marriage understood as a domestic Church. Finally the sacramental nature of marriage became fully conscious to the Church. This historical path of deepening is also today reflected in the biography of many people. They are first touched by the human dimension of marriage, they are then convinced by the Christian view of marriage in the life of the Church, and from there find their way to the celebration of a sacramental marriage. Just like the historical development of the Church’s teaching on marriage took time, so the pastoral approach must give time to people to mature on their way toward sacramental marriage, and not act according to the principle of “all or nothing”. It is here that the thought of a “dynamic process” developing (FC 9) is to be brought further towards the present, which John Paul II already expounded in Familiaris consortio: “The Church’s pastoral concern will not be limited only to the Christian families closest at hand; it will extend its horizons in harmony with the Heart of Christ, and will show itself to be even more lively for families in general and for those families in particular which are in difficult or irregular situations.” (FC 65) The Church unavoidably finds herself in a situation of tension here, between on the one hand a necessarily clear teaching on marriage and family, and on the other hand the concrete pastoral responsibility to accompany people and convince them, when their lifestyle only partly complies with the basic principles of the Church. With them, the Church must walk on the path towards a life of marriage and family in fullness as the gospel of the family promises.

For this a pastoral care is required that is directed at the person, and that includes the normativity of the Church’s teaching and the personhood of the human being in equal measure, keeping an eye on a person’s ability to form a conscience and strengthening their responsibility. “For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths.” (GS 16)

Furthermore, we request for the final version of the text to consider two aspects:

Any impression should be avoided that Holy Scripture is just used as a source of quotations for dogmatic, juridical or ethical convictions. The law of the New Testament is the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the faithful (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1965 - 1966). The written word is to be integrated into the Living Word which dwells in the Holy Spirit in the heart of humankind. This gives Holy Scripture an extensive spiritual power.

Finally we struggled with the concept of natural marriage. In the history of humankind this natural marriage always is also shaped culturally. The concept of natural marriage can imply that there is a natural form of life for humankind without any cultural imprint. We therefore suggest to write instead: “marriage, as it is based in Creation”.

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VATICAN NEWS

Cardinal Sarah says the Christian family counters both Islamic, Western extremism

by CNA/EWTN News • October 14, 2015

Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, at the Vatican, Feb. 10, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — Cardinal Robert Sarah has told the Synod of Bishops they should respond to the twin threats of Western and Islamic radicals by helping the world realize the beauty of the Christian family.

“To use a slogan, we find ourselves between ‘gender ideology and ISIS.’ Islamic massacres and libertarian demands regularly contend for the front page of the newspapers,” the cardinal said last week in his intervention at the synod. “From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family.”

He compared the twin challenges of “the idolatry of Western freedom” and Islamic fundamentalism to two “apocalyptic beasts.”

Cardinal Sarah, the Guinea-born head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, said he hoped the synod would help Pope Francis “enunciate clearly truths and real guidance on a global level.”

He especially advocated that the Church promote the “epiphany of the family.”

“We must proclaim the truth without fear,” he said, stressing God’s plan for the family as monogamous, conjugal love that is open to life.

“Together with a strong and clear word of the Supreme Magisterium, pastors have the mission of helping our contemporaries to discover the beauty of the Christian family.”

The Synod of Bishops is meeting in Vatican City Oct. 4-25 to discuss the mission and vocation of the family in the Church and the modern world.

In Cardinal Sarah’s judgment, the family in the West faces “subjectivist disintegration” through easy divorce, abortion, homosexual unions, and euthanasia. He specified the threats of the gender theory, the LGBT lobby, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and the radical feminist group Femen.

He also criticized “the pseudo-family of radical Islam” which he said legitimizes polygamy, female subservience, sexual slavery, and child marriage. He named as threats Boko Haram, the Islamic State, and Al-Qaeda.

For Cardinal Sarah, the Spirit of Truth promotes “communion in distinction.” By contrast, these negative global trends encourage confusion about marriage.

“Furthermore, they demand a universal and totalitarian rule, are violently intolerant, destroyers of families, society and the Church, and are openly Christianophobic,” said the cardinal, according to a translation of his remarks by journalist Diane Montagna.

Cardinal Sarah suggested these two trends have a demonic origin, alluding to St. Paul’s words of Ephesians 6: “We are not contending against creatures of flesh and blood …”

“We need to be inclusive and welcoming to all that is human; but what comes from the Enemy cannot and must not be assimilated,” the cardinal advised. “You cannot join Christ and Belial! What Nazi fascism and communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism are today.”

For Cardinal Sarah, the marriage crisis is “essentially a crisis of God, but also a crisis of faith.”

“We bishops have the urgent duty to recognize and promote the charisms, movements, and ecclesial realities in which the family is truly revealed, this prodigy of harmony, love of life and hope in eternity, this cradle of faith and school of charity.”

The 2014 Extraordinary Synod was marked by tensions among some bishops and controversy over some proposals to change Catholic practices in order to better accommodate Catholics in irregular relationships.

The cardinal said that he sensed in the 2014 synod “the temptation to yield to the mentality of the secularized world and individualistic West.” He warned against approaches that mean “giving up hope in the transforming power of faith and the Gospel.”

“The Gospel that once transformed cultures is now in danger of being transformed by them,” he said.

Some 2014 synod procedures did not seem aimed to advance discussion and communion, he said. Rather, they seemed to “promote a way of seeing typical of certain fringe groups of the wealthiest churches.”

“This is contrary to a poor Church, a joyously evangelical and prophetic sign of contradiction to worldliness.”

He also questioned why some statements not granted a consensus of a two-thirds majority at the 2014 synod were included in the mid-synod relation and the working documents for the 2015 synod. He said these documents ignored other pressing issues like gender ideology.

For the 2015 synod, the cardinal proposed more transparency and respect among the synod fathers. He suggested the summaries of their interventions be published to help discussion.

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VATICAN NEWS

Do aliens exist? Pope Francis tackles this (and other things) in new interview

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

Pope Francis greets pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during his Wednesday general audience on June 18, 2014. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis discussed in a new interview topics ranging from his reasons for canonizing the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, to his thoughts on whether there could be life on other planets.

The interview with French journalist Caroline Pigozzi of Paris Match was conducted in Italian, and published in both Italian and French Oct. 15.

Pigozzi is known for making the Pope’s eyes light up in January when on board his flight to the Philippines she gifted him a silver bas-relief, or carving, of St. Therese of Lisieux, to whom he has a strong devotion.

In the interview, the Pope said that he is doing “well,” but confessed that he is tired due to his recent Sept. 23-27 visit to the United States, as well as the demands of the current synod of bishops on the family.

He then responded to questions covering a wide variety of topics, including climate change, as well as his thoughts on whether or not extraterrestrials exist.

The journalist brought up NASA’s discovery last July of a new planet, Kepler 452 B, which resembles Earth in its dimensions and characteristics, asking whether there could be thinking beings elsewhere in the universe.

“Honestly I wouldn’t know how to answer,” the Pope replied, explaining that while scientific knowledge has until now excluded the possibility of other thinking beings in the universe, “until America was discovered we thought it didn’t exist, and instead it existed.”

“But in every case I think that we should stick to what the scientists tell us, still aware that the Creator is infinitely greater than our knowledge.”

Francis said that the one thing he is sure about in the universe and the world in which we live is that it “is not the result of chance or chaos,” but rather of divine intelligence.

It is the result “of the love of God who loves us, who created us, who desired us and never leaves us alone,” he said.

Pope Francis also spoke about the reasons behind his decision to canonize the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, Louis and Zélie Martin. They will officially be declared saints by the Pope this Sunday, Oct. 18, and are the first married couple to be canonized together.

The Martins, he said, “are an evangelistic couple who throughout their whole life gave witness to the beauty of faith in Jesus, both inside and outside of their home.”

At a time when “a certain bourgeois ethics” despised the poor with the excuse of maintaining a certain decorum, the Martins instead opened their hearts and doors to them, he said.

“Those two, with their five children, devoted their energy, time and money to help the needy. Certainly they are a model of holiness and of married life.”

St. Therese, the youngest of the Martin’s five children, is someone the Pope frequently goes to with special intentions, and to ask for favors.

He said that the reason for his strong devotion to the young Carmelite nun is that “she is one of the saints that speaks to us most about the grace of God.”

“The little Therese understood in her existence what love is, the reconciling love of Jesus, which impels the children of his Church. This is what Therese of Lisieux has taught me,” he said.

Francis said he also appreciates the saint’s reflections on the dangers of gossip and “the spirit of curiosity,” both of which he has spoken of often since his election as Bishop of Rome.

On the topic of climate change, the Pope was asked if he had a message for the upcoming climate summit in Paris. He responded by saying that “the Christian is a realist, not catastrophic.”

“Because of this, we cannot hide the evidence: the current world system in unsustainable,” he said, and expressed his hope that the summit “can contribute to a concrete choice, shared and farsighted, for the common good.”

He said there must be an end to the “indiscriminate exploitation” of the planet and the deterioration of our common home, and that we must “protect man from auto-destruction.”

To do this, humanity has to renounce the idolatry of money and again place the human being, their dignity and the common good at the center. Otherwise, “out descendants will be forced to live on heaps of rubble and dirt.”

Pope Francis, who is a known pizza-lover, was also asked if he has ever considered hopping on a bus dressed as a simple priest and going to a Roman pizzeria.

In response, the Pope said that “I haven’t completely abandoned my black clerics under the white cassock!”

“I would certainly like to be able to wander the streets still, the streets of Rome, which is a beautiful city.” He said he has always been “a priest of the streets,” and that some of Jesus’ most important encounters happened there.

However, he also recognized that while he would love to go out and eat a good pizza with friends, it’s not easy. In fact, he said that to do so is “almost impossible” for him.

Yet Francis did say that he has no lack of contact with people, and that as Pope he meets “many, much more than when I was in Buenos Aires, and this gives me great joy!”

“When I embrace the people I meet, I know that Jesus is keeping me in his arms,” he said.

Francis also touched on his reasons for never visiting the U.S. until this year. He explained that the trips he made were all for meetings related to his duties either bishop or as master of novices, provincial and rector of philosophy and theology for the Jesuits, and that none of them were held in the U.S.

“None of those meetings, congresses or synods took place in the United States. This is the reason I never had the occasion to visit this country before.”

Other topics addressed in the interview were migration, the refugee crisis, global conflicts and his reasons for calling the Jubilee of Mercy, which he said was the result of deep reflection and prayer.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope meets with Chilean miners five years after ‘miraculous’ rescue

by CNA/EWTN News • October 15, 2015

Pope Francis blesses Esperanza Ticona with her father, miner Ariel Ticona, and Esteban Rojas in St. Peter’s Square, Oct. 14, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano/Grace Hill Media)

Vatican City — Pope Francis met this week with a group of Chilean miners who spent more than two months in a collapsed mine in 2010, before a dramatic rescue that many have hailed as miraculous.

The miners had a chance to meet the Pope after his weekly general audience. They presented him with a miner’s helmet and other gifts.

Among those present to meet the Holy Father were Ariel Ticona, one of the miners who was trapped underground, along with his five-year-old daughter, Esperanza, who was born during the time that he was in the mine.

On Aug. 5, 2010, a cave-in occurred at the San Jose copper and gold mine, trapping 33 men underground. For the next 69 days, they remained trapped under a half-mile of rock deep beneath Chile’s Atacama Desert, as an international emergency team worked around the clock until their rescue on Oct. 13.

During part of that time, they were able to maintain limited communication with the world above through a small passageway. They were given supplies and a crucifix, and they requested statues of Mary and the saints in order to set up a make-shift chapel in the mine.

All 33 men survived the more than two months underground, despite the confined space and heat in the mine, as well as the limited food, water and air.

The rescue efforts captured the attention and prayers of the world. Pope Benedict XVI sent personally blessed rosaries to the family members of each buried miner with a promise of his prayers. Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz of Santiago celebrated a Mass with their loved ones.

The bishops of Chile publicly thanked Pope Benedict for his special prayers at the time of the rescue.

Marking the fifth anniversary of the rescue, the miners gathered in Rome. In addition to meeting with Pope Francis, they attended a screening of an upcoming movie about their story, by Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures.

The film – entitled “The 33“ and starring Antonio Banderas – tells the true story of the miners’ ordeal, their struggle to survive, and their reliance on faith throughout their two months in the mine.

“The 33” will be released in theaters next month.

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VATICAN NEWS

Don’t ‘regionalize’ Church teaching on marriage, says Irish archbishop at synod

by CNA/EWTN News • October 15, 2015

The Opening Mass of the Synod on the Family, Oct. 4, 2015. (Martha Calderon/CNA)

Vatican City — Catholic teaching on marriage and the family is universal, not something local bishops’ conferences can decide for themselves, an Irish archbishop said Thursday.

Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, the Primate of All-Ireland, said he did not support “the idea that somehow it’s up to individual bishops conferences to interpret the teaching of the Church.”

“I think if we are part of a universal teaching Church, then we do have a very clear vision for marriage and the family and I don’t think that should be subject to interpretation at the level of individual episcopal conferences,” he told The Irish Catholic Oct. 15.

Archbishop Martin moderates one of the four English-language discussion circles at the Synod of Bishops underway at the Vatican to discuss the vocation and mission of the family.

His remarks come after some bishops have indicated a desire to localize decisions on Church doctrine and practice. For example, in February Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising had indicated that the German bishops would take their own program of pastoral care for marriage and the family regardless of the synod’s outcome.

“We are not a branch of Rome. Each conference of bishops is responsible for pastoral care in its cultural context and must preach the Gospel in its own, original way,” Cardinal Marx said. He added that the German bishops are in communion with the Church on doctrine, while also trying to distinguish between doctrine and pastoral care.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia voiced concern about such proposals in his Oct. 10 intervention at the synod. He warned against devolving important disciplinary and doctrinal issues to bishops’ conferences, “especially when pressure in that direction is accompanied by an implicit spirit of self-assertion and resistance.”

Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has strongly criticized proposals to delegate doctrinal or disciplinary decisions on marriage and the family to bishops’ conferences.

The cardinal called this “an absolutely anti-Catholic idea that does not respect the Catholicity of the Church.”

“Episcopal conferences have authority on certain matters, but they are not a magisterium beside the Magisterium, without the Pope and without communion with all the bishops,” he said in a March interview with the French newspaper Famille Chretienne.

Many German bishops have favored allowing Catholics who have divorced and civilly remarried to receive Holy Communion. This would counter traditional Catholic practice and doctrine about the indissolubility of marriage and the worthy reception of the Eucharist.

Cardinal Mueller’s March interview warned that attributing independent authority to a bishops’ conference risks reawakening polarization between the local and universal Church.

The place of bishops’ conferences in doctrinal decisions was discussed by Pope Francis in his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. He criticized excessive centralization as a barrier to evangelization.

He cited the Second Vatican Council’s desire that bishops’ conferences be in a position to advance a collegial spirit in the Church between the bishops and the Pope. Pope Francis said that this desire has not been fully realized and that the status of bishops’ conferences’ doctrinal authority has “not yet been sufficiently elaborated.”

However, the Pope also cited St. John Paul II’s 1999 motu proprio Apostolos suos, on the theological and juridical nature of episcopal conferences.

Apostolos suos discussed episcopal conferences’ doctrinal authority to issue catechisms and to approve Bible editions and translations. That document also emphasized the responsibility of bishops to follow the universal magisterium of the Church and to avoid interference in the work of bishops in other countries, given the worldwide reach of communications.

For his part, Archbishop Martin told The Irish Catholic he found it difficult to see how proposals to allow the divorced and civilly remarried to receive Holy Communion can be reconciled with the Catholic understanding of marriage and the Eucharist.

He also said there is “very much room” to reach out to couples whose marriages have not succeeded and “to make them feel welcome in the Church … We could be much more welcoming to couples and families who perhaps feel excluded completely from the life of the Church, because of what they perceive as the Church’s judgment of them. I think there is an awful lot of room in that for us to show a more welcoming and Christ-like pastoral approach.”

Archbishop Martin also said he finds its “difficult to be able to reconcile the idea of Communion for divorced and remarried with our understanding in the Church of the dissolubility of marriage and therefore also our understanding of the Eucharist as being in communion with the Church.”

In his interview, the archbishop also discussed the clerical sex abuse crisis, as well as domestic violence and abuse.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis makes secret stop at new dorms for Rome’s homeless

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • October 16, 2015

Pope Francis makes a visit to Rome’s new dorms for homeless men on Oct. 15, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — After last night’s synod session Pope Francis didn’t go back to his residence at the St. Martha house as usual, but instead decided to pop by the Vatican’s new dormitory for homeless men.

According to an Oct. 16 communique from the Vatican, the Pope left for the dormitory shortly after the synod’s evening session yesterday closed at 7 p.m., taking off in his Fiat.

Located around the corner from the Vatican on Via dei Penitenzieri, the new shelter is called the “Gift of Mercy” house, and was inaugurated during a private Oct. 7 ceremony with a blessing and Mass with the dorm’s first guests and volunteers in attendance, celebrated by Papal Almoner Archbishop Krajewski.

Furnished by the Papal Office of Charities and donations, the dorm is run by sisters from Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, and was established with the help of the Jesuits.

Upon his arrival, Pope Francis was greeted by Archbishop Krajewski; the head of the Office of Papal Charities Msgr. Diego Ravelli; the Superior General of the Jesuits Fr. Adolfo Nicolás; Fr. Joachin Barrero, superior of The General Curia Community; three of Mother Theresa’s sisters and some volunteers who manage the new structure.

Francis greeted each of the shelter’s 30 guests individually in the common area before following them to the dormitory, visiting both their beds and other service areas, including, apparently, the laundry room, according to photos from the event.

The Vatican’s communique noted that as the Pope greeted them for roughly 20 minutes, the guests were “visibly moved and happy with his visit.”

With enough space to house 34 men, the shelter brings the Vatican’s total capacity for housing the homeless up to 84.

Besides the “Gift of Mercy” house, the Missionaries of Charity also run the “Gift of Mary” home in the Vatican, a homeless shelter for women established by Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa in the late 1980s.

As part of their stay at the “Gift of Mercy” house, the men are invited to enjoy dinner every night at the “Gift of Mary” shelter, which houses 50 beds for women.

The sisters register each guest as they arrive between 6-7 p.m. Soon after, it’s lights out, with a wake-up call at 6:15 a.m. After time for bed-making and personal hygiene, the dorm closes at 8 a.m. to give the sisters a chance to clean before the next night.

The new dorm is the latest in a string of charitable initiatives launched through the Papal Charities. Earlier this year, Pope Francis established showers, bathrooms and a barber shop inside the Vatican to serve the homeless population.

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VATICAN NEWS

A tough synod topic: The ‘silent martyrdom’ of incest, abuse in families

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • October 16, 2015

Inside the Vatican’s synod hall on Oct. 14, 2015. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — Violence, incest and sexual abuse within the family were among the issues addressed by synod fathers in their most recent talks, as well as the Church’s role in bringing light to difficult situations.

One of the synod bishops specifically referred to “the martyrdom of silence in many families where incest has taken place.” He said that in the midst of the horror of such situations, the Church “has to become the voice and give voice to the martyrs, those who have suffered the terrible evil of incest.”

The contributions of synod fathers during both yesterday’s evening session as well as today’s morning session were summarized in an Oct. 16 press briefing, led by Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi.

Both the English and Spanish language assistants to the Holy See press office – Fr. Thomas Rosica and Fr. Manuel Dorantes – were there to summarize the interventions in their respective languages as well as Fr. Bernard Hagenkord S.J. in Italian, and Mrs. Romilda Ferrauto in French.

After 30 of the synod participants spoke yesterday evening, three auditors also gave their interventions, all of whom were couples. This morning all of the fraternal delegates and the rest of the synods’ 27 auditors, addressed the gathering.

Violence has been a consistent theme over the past few days of discussion, with various synod fathers discussing either violence against women or domestic abuse. Today, however, was the first time that incest and sexual abuse in the family came up during the briefing.

Human sexuality in general was a topic which seemed to be widely discussed, with several synod fathers expressing the need to refer to it in a more positive light.

Participants highlighted “the disastrous effects and results of very poor sex education programs in many countries, which are then transmitted through books, and then manuals and media,” Fr. Rosica said.

The Church is therefore “a mother and teacher of love who really has to be involved in the passing on of information on human sexuality.”

Fr. Dorantes said that the Spanish interventions echoed the need, and said that the Church must place a greater emphasis on sexual education, weighing in on the topic in a very clear way since the current sex education is often “negative and distorted.”

“Many parents of families don’t speak about the beauty of sexuality with their own children, leaving this responsibility to public entities,” he said.

“The Church still hasn’t entered this area, presenting the Good News of human sexuality as a path of love, and not as a path of sin.”

It was noted that married couples play a special role in educating on human sexuality, and that their perspective is enriching to the synod discussion.

Emphasis was also placed on the need to deepen in the teachings of Bl. Pope Paul VI’s historic encyclical Humanae Vitae and the strength of the marriage bond, with synod fathers stressing the link between God’s love and that of man.

Children were also a big topic of discussion coming from the African continent, with one participant specifically noting that children are frequently viewed as the recipients of pastoral care, but ought to also be considered “as subjects of promoting family relationships and family life.”

“They are not just the recipients, but they are the protagonists,” the synod father who spoke maintained.

Another point that came up was how in some Third World countries children are viewed more as liabilities rather than as a blessing.

In these countries the perspective must change, so that children are seen as “as a real sign of hope for the future of that country and also a sign of vitality for the culture of that country,” Fr. Rosica mentioned.

Many bishops also shared their experience of being moved and formed by the individuals whom they serve when, after setting out as pastor and teacher, they themselves were catechized by the couples they sought to form.

One particular synod participant observed that “it’s easy for us as priests and bishops to be drawn into ways of power and control as if we are the only ones who have to impart the knowledge, whereas working with couples and families is a mutual process of growth and holiness.”

Care of the elderly and their contribution to society were also brought up numerous times, particularly the feelings of isolation and uselessness which often accompany the ageing, and are frequently followed by despair and suicide.

Among the other topics synod participants touched on were globalization; social media; extractive industries; climate change; migration; parents who work multiple jobs; youth ministry; infertility; orphans; the role of family in creating peace and the need for a new, more modern pastoral adapted to the times, even in terms of the Church’s canonical rite.

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VATICAN NEWS

At synod, Cardinal Marx openly promotes Communion for divorced-and-remarried

by CNA/EWTN News • October 16, 2015

Cardinal Reinhard Marx at the Vatican Press Office on Oct. 17, 2014. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — After years of both direct and indirect remarks on the subject, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx issued his most direct statement yet in favor of offering Communion to the divorced-and-remarried.

In an Oct. 14 address to his fellow bishops from around the world, gathered at the Synod in Rome, he said that “we should seriously consider the possibility – based on each individual case and not in a generalizing way – to admit civilly divorced and remarried believers to the sacrament of Penance and Holy Communion.”

This should be permitted, he continued, “when the shared life in the canonically valid marriage definitively has failed and the marriage cannot be annulled, the liabilities from this marriage have been resolved, the fault for breaking up the marital lifebond was regretted and the sincere will exists to live the second civil marriage in faith and to educate children in the Faith.”

Cardinal Marx’s statement follows years of increased calls from several of the German bishops for a change in the Church’s rules.

The Catholic Church acknowledges that marriage is indissoluble – that is, ended only by death, particularly in marriages between baptized persons, which are sacramental. The Church allows couples to seek an annulment in cases where they do not believe that a true marriage ever existed to begin with, for various reasons including immaturity, psychological illness and deception. However, if a sacramental marriage does exist, it cannot be broken by civil divorce.

Therefore, if a divorced person enters a new civil marriage – unless the Church has declared the nullity of their first union – they are in an adulterous union with their new partner, since they are still sacramentally bound to their original spouse. As a result, they may not receive sacramental Communion, as adultery is a grave sin.

Proposals to allow Communion for the divorced-and-remarried have surfaced numerous times in recent Church history. On at least four separate occasions in the last 50 years, Popes have rejected this idea, saying that the Church cannot change its teaching to go against the nature of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

During his flight last month from Philadelphia back to Rome, Pope Francis told journalists onboard the papal flight that giving Communion to the divorced-and-remarried was an overly simplistic solution to the problem.

The Pope recently announced new procedures to streamline the annulment process, making the process of investigating the nullity of a marriage less timely and costly.

However, Cardinal Marx suggested that the Pope’s actions are not sufficient. Even greater pastoral care from the Church will not prevent divorce, he said and “(t)he new method for determining the nullity of a marriage cannot cover all cases in the right way.”

“Often the breakdown of a marriage is neither a result of human immaturity nor a lack of wanting to be married,” he said.

The cardinal acknowledged the Church’s understanding of why the divorced-and-remarried are unable to receive Communion.

“The reason given for this is that civilly divorced and remarried believers objectively live in continued adultery and thus in contradiction to what is shown symbolically in the Eucharist, the faithfulness of Christ to his Church,” he said.

However, he questioned, “does this response do justice to the situation of those affected? And is this necessary from a theological point of view of the sacrament? Can people who are seen to be in a state of grave sin, really feel that they wholly belong to us?”

Cardinal Marx said that the German bishops in recent months have discussed at length the problem posed by those who have entered into a second civil marriage while still sacramentally bound in their first marriage.

As an example of this discussion, he referenced a “study day” that has come to be known as a “shadow council,” organized together with the Swiss and French bishops’ conference, and which advocated an acceptance of homosexual acts, among other things.

“Even if a resumption of the relationship would be possible – usually it is not – the person finds themselves in an objective moral dilemma from which there is no clear moral-theological way out,” Cardinal Marx said in his address.

“The advice to refrain from sexual acts in the new relationship not only appears unrealistic to many. It is also questionable whether sexual actions can be judged independent of the lived context.”

The cardinal questioned whether sexual acts in the second union “without exception be judged as adultery? Irrespective of an appraisal of the concrete situation?”

He suggested consideration of Communion for the divorced-and-remarried as a solution for the problem.

Numerous bishops have spoken out against this proposal, saying that it violates the clear teaching of the Church and the words of Jesus, who said in Luke 16:18, “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.”

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WORLD NEWS

Polish archbishop: Unless we recognize sin, Christ’s incarnation is meaningless

by Robert Rauhut (CNA/EWTN News) • October 13, 2015

Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan speaks with EWTN. (Andreas Dueren/CNA)

Rome, Italy — In a wide-ranging and hard-hitting interview with EWTN Germany, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, president of the Polish bishops’ conference, said that were we to cease to recognize sinfulness, then Christ’s Incarnation would be rendered “void of its meaning.”

“We void the meaning of the whole work of the incarnation because we say that Christ has not come to us; however, beyond Christ, there is no salvation or redemption,” Archbishop Gadecki told EWTN’s Robert Rauhut in an interview which took place shortly before the Synod on the Family began.

The Polish archbishop also cautioned against chasing fads in the Church, as well as the social sciences, and discussed the importance of unity in doctrine, the continuing relevance of St. John Paul II’s teaching, the intimacy between justice and mercy, and how the Church can help marriages and families.

Please find the full text of the interview below, as translated by R. Andrew Krema:

EWTN: Your Excellency, the first question: Today, we live in a world that seems to be dominated by a misunderstanding of terms. Therefore, it is helpful to begin by defining what we, as Catholics, understand by the term, “Sacramental Marriage.”

Archbishop Gadecki: One could look at it from the perspective of canon law, or one could also look at it from the perspective of pastoral teaching. In number 48 of the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic marriage is described as “intima communio vitae et amoris,” so practically, as an intimate companionship of life and of the love of two people, a man and a woman, who mutually complement each other. This complementarity defines the Catholic marriage. However, that’s not all because – at the same time – overlying the marriage is a communion with Christ, which is why the Catholic marriage is not merely a sociological relationship and social plane on which man and woman stand. It is rather – at the same time – n image of the relationship and communion that exists between Christ and the Church. Hence, we heard before the Synod – the first session of the extraordinary Synod – we heard a Jewish Rabbi, who spoke about marriage: that we all must be aware that there is a difference between an ordinary, natural marriage, and a religious marriage. In the natural marriage, there are two people, namely man and woman. In the religious marriage, there are three people, namely, God, man, and woman. And this is applicable to Catholic marriage, which is not just a communion between two human persons; rather, it is elevated by grace, by Christ.

EWTN: In Germany, the discussion of the Synod concentrates itself primarily around two problems. One problem is the permission of married persons to Holy Communion, who live in an extramarital relationship. The other problem is the recognition of same-sex relationships. Archbishop, what do you make of it?

Archbishop Gadecki: When talking about homosexual relationships, they can never be called “marriages.” They can call it what they want, but in the understanding of the Church, there is no such thing as a marriage between two people of the same sex, whether it be two women or two men. Therefore, this topic should not be a subject of the Synod, because the Synod deals with the family in the Catholic understanding. In contrast, we have here a relationship that has nothing to do with Catholicism. We may act with respect toward the dignity of every person, who abides in such a relationship – toward his or her human dignity – but we absolutely cannot call it a marriage. And a state which calls such a relationship a marriage, does great harm to the culture, which has established itself over 2,000 years. That’s one thing. When talking about allowing divorced-and-remarried persons to Holy Communion, there is a huge restriction of the Synod’s set of topics, because the Synod is not gathered to decide on this point. The Synod is gathered to resolve the new pastoral problems of marriage and the family, and to show the vocation of marriage and family in light of divine revelation such that they are in accord with, and not against, divine revelation. Therefore, I think that those who reflect on whether divorced-and-remarried Catholics should be allowed to receive Communion must “unfortunately” hear the voice, which was there from the beginning, to which Jesus referred in chapter 10 of Mark’s Gospel and in chapter 19 of Matthew’s Gospel, where he says that it was not so in the beginning. From an exegetical perspective, one can say that it is not only about the temporal aspect – that at the creation of the world, or before the creation of the world, it was not so. So, one can temporally understand the “in the beginning it was not so,” but it could also be understood as St. Augustine did: “from the beginning on,” which means “in Jesus Christ.” Christ is the Beginning, the Word, and the Wisdom of God who created the world. So, “in the beginning,” which means “in Christ,” it was not so. Christ calls himself the “Beginning.” And there is one other interpretation, which is very interesting, whose origin is beyond the Jewish tradition. It comes from the Greek tradition. It says “en arche,” which means “according to the law.” “According to the law,” it was not so. “Bereshit“ can also be translated as “en arche“ in Greek. “According to the law, it was not so.” For the Catholic Church, the words of Christ against divorce and new relationships form not only a guideline as the way to holiness but also establish the sacrament.

EWTN: But what does that mean? Now there are some theologians who say that the pastoral situation should change, but the doctrine should not. If the pastoral approach changes, then does the doctrine also change?

Archbishop Gadecki: Everything changes. If the thinking changes, then the praxis also changes. Therefore, one cannot change the doctrine expecting that the praxis will stay the same or that it will not undergo any changes.

EWTN: I want to return once more about the question of same-sex partnerships, which should strictly not be a topic of the Synod. Nonetheless, we hear of more voices in Germany that the people in these relationships are living in “fidelity and responsibility.” The sociological data show something else. Archbishop, what’s your take on it?

Archbishop Gadecki: Let’s put it this way: surveys and sociology in relation to theology can have a supportive, but not a determining, role. Christ said, “Male and female he created them” and only a complimentary relationship, which they mutually serve each other, is a relationship that one can rightly call, according to the bible, a family – initially a marriage, then a family. And therefore the whole drive of modernity is what we now feel and in a very strong form because during the first session of the Synod, the African Bishops bemoaned that large aid funds were made available in order to establish so-called “gay marriage” as legally allowed in these African countries. It seems to me that we sense something similar when pressure comes from organizations originating closer to us than those that the African countries endure.

EWTN: Which organizations are you talking about?

Archbishop Gadecki: I think that on one side, there are those organizations which command massive monetary resources and which are at the same time influenced by this homosexual crisis. Whether it’s Brussels, or New York or Washington, is anyone’s guess, but there is definitely a homosexual lobby that clearly attempts not only to gain tolerance concerning itself, but also tries to upend the classical sense of marriage that has a tremendous tradition behind it.

EWTN: And does this so-called “Gay lobby” also operate in the Church?

Archbishop Gadecki: I do not think that prudent bishops or priests could create such an influential lobby that functions in the Church and could produce results in accordance with the worldwide gay lobby. Perhaps there is someone with homosexual tendencies who would like for his presence to be tolerated. The Church can cherish and tolerate everyone, but she can absolutely not promote active homosexuality, something that clearly has been decided in the Bible. The Church lives from the Word of God. There is no possibility to allow such a condition in which we turn our back on the Bible; otherwise we would be avoiding our source, without which the Church becomes a desert.

EWTN: A few influential voices in Germany have said in other words, “the Church in Germany cannot wait until the Synod or someone else makes assertive decisions because we have to act today.” My question is, is it possible to think that something in the German Church could be allowed that would not be allowed, say, in the Polish or African churches?

Archbishop Gadecki: That isn’t possible. Since a canonical praxis is possible; in other words, there is certain pragmatism; certain provisions exist for the life of the Church in each country considering the circumstances of each country in which the Church exists. The organization of the life of the Church looks different in Africa than it does in Greenland, or Europe, or South America. But this organization of the life of the Church is a secondary question. On the contrary, the unity of the doctrine is the top priority, that is to say the one and the same teaching of the Catholic Church. The Church cannot sing with 100 different voices, as the post-moderns would hope. Also if it seems that we carry the impression that these voices are sparse and say that something else among ourselves is contradictory to one another, then that is the effect of a mistake, but not a questioning of principle, which is the one and Catholic doctrine of teaching from which the Magisterium is based. If the Church taught 10 or 100 different doctrines, then she would break into 10 or 100 different Churches; but the Church is one, catholic, and apostolic.

EWTN: Archbishop, you are an exegete. Sacred Scripture clearly states, “What God has joined together, no human being must separate.” Now we have different exegetes, including Italians, who are trying to show that these words are about indissolubility are actually about dissolubility. What do you think about these theories, Archbishop?

Archbishop Gadecki: I think this is an expression of a tremendous recourse, which happens in relation to the Words of Christ himself. This recourse is comprehensible if we look at Judaism and Islam. Judaism and Islam, as far as I understand, deal with a contract. Marriage is a contract between two parties. This contract can be dissolved at any time. Many of our women, even here in Poland, commit a big mistake by letting themselves be lead by emotions, which is understandable, and enter into a union, say with a Muslim, with the belief that they are bound in a sacrament, while for the Muslim, it is only a contract, which can be dissolved at any moment regardless of whether or not it is the agreement of both parties. And it seems to me that these new exegetical theories that appear, regardless whether it is in Germany or Italy, somehow try to legalize divorce and say that, in essence, Christ didn’t say what he said. And then in a pragmatic way, we solve the problem that concerns the dogma of the indissolubility of marriage. For me, this is an expression of intelligent forsakenness.

EWTN: The so-called “progressive” voices like to call upon the Second Vatican Council but forget the teachings of “the saint of the family” John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Which valuable aspect of the teaching of St. John Paul should we not let be forgotten?

Archbishop Gadecki: I think that everything that was written by Cardinal Wojtyla, including The Acting Person, was a major contribution to the thinking on marriage and family. Then came Familiaris consortio and the “Letter to Families.” Each document is a powerful step forward. Those who challenge these teachings don’t have a sheer idea as to what they actually do. They claim that they are “outdated,” which was over 20 years ago, and now we have to move on. The Gospel and the Magisterium of the Church are subject to the same rights, which we define as tradition. In the Church, tradition has its defined form. Tradition is not some conservative source. Tradition is the enduring development with immutability of essence. As Vincent of Lerins said, tradition is like a child. It develops every day. It becomes smarter, bigger, more mature and better educated. But on the other hand, it never essentially changes. It is born like a human, develops like a human, and dies like a human. It never essentially changes. In this sense, the term bears two contradictions: the enduring development and the challenge of change. When we look at the doctrine of the Church, we see that there is a development of the doctrine, but this development never crosses out the Gospel. You can’t cross out the backbone of the Church.

EWTN: John Paul II is not only a “saint of the family” but also a great missionary of “divine mercy” by the encyclical Dives in Misericordia and the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska. Today, people like to talk about “mercy,” but forget about “justice,” “sin,” and also “truth.”

Archbishop Gadecki: That is a huge hermeneutical mistake. “Justice” and “mercy” are actually inseparably bound together because they show, so to say, two sides of a situation. Justice is giving another person what that person is rightly due. Mercy is giving another person what is not rightly and justly due to another. In other words, both of these realities seem to be in opposition to one another, but are actually inseparable according to the understanding of Catholic doctrine. Divine mercy, which has no limits, is inseparable and best illustrated in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The Parable of the Prodigal Son shows the steadfastness of divine mercy, that is to say that God is not conditioned by the action of man. He is not conditioned by the action of sinners because God remains merciful to the end. In contrast, the human person doesn’t experience mercy when one sins and says therefore “praise me;” rather, mercy is experienced when one has reached the pit of despair, sees that it was clearly better to be in the house of the Father, and takes a step back to the way to God.

EWTN: What does mercy mean in reference to the family?

Archbishop Gadecki: In the same spirit, God reveals his merciful love in relation to every person, but especially to marriages and families, which are a special creation of this divine love. And surely, divine love reveals itself in marriages and families more than it does outside of marriages and families; or at least this love is easier to perceive. Regardless in what situation marriages find themselves in, whether they be normal or not, they must be conscious that divine mercy unchangingly accompanies them the whole time because only in such a setting as this will marriages not fall into the feeling of guilt; rather, they strive to come out of sin and turn back towards grace.

EWTN: Today, the understanding of a “sense of sin” is vanishing. We hear those, who demand an adaptation of the Church to the world, which often leads to us forgetting the third person in the relationship – God – due to a reduction of theology to sociology. Is this path promising?

Archbishop Gadecki: It has no future. Sometimes we use sociology in order to describe religious phenomena, but that is a fragile, inadequate tool. On the contrary, if one loses this notion of sinfulness, then practically every attitude is good. There is nothing from which one has to convert; but the Gospel begins with the words: “Repent and believe in the Kingdom of God!” And Jesus Christ speaks of himself, of his mission, why he has come into the world, of his coming to the sinners. If we don’t recognize sinfulness, then we can say that the coming of Christ is void of its meaning. We void the meaning of the whole work of the incarnation because we say that Christ has not come to us; however, beyond Christ, there is no salvation or redemption.

EWTN: I want to make reference to the contemporary challenges that face the family. One of these challenges is the so-called “gender theory” or “gender-mainstreaming.” Archbishop, you have personally experienced communism. Do you see similarities between the emergence of cultural Marxism today and that of communism from the past, against which the family and marriage fought?

Archbishop Gadecki: Surely, there is something in common. There is a present similarity between these two trends because both communism and post-communist leftist movements hold no value with respect to the human person. In other words, they do not respect the human person and its value like Christianity does; these movements attempt to ruin all interpersonal relationships. Communism wanted to break up society by class, and the solidarity of the classes, and also antagonize one against another. And now this is happening through another, more subtle intrusion – the tenets of gender: the questioning of correctness of the existence of marriage and family; the destruction of the institution of marriage; and family as “oppressive,” which contributes against the growth of humanity and its existence would reduce humanity. Therefore, I think there are different instruments and different methodologies, but the goal is the same: the pulverization of the society so that the human person stays alone and people can boldly and more skillfully manipulate humanity.

EWTN: Archbishop, do you then mean that this more subtle theory is also considerably more dangerous?

Archbishop Gadecki: No doubt. Humanity has not oriented itself very quickly to today’s theories, for in the earlier Marxist class systems, humanity knew that injustice was in the theories. And if today one were to talk about gender – that humanity is different, and that there are different cultures, then one would be fishing for something that appears very worthwhile, say treating each person individually on a subjective basis, which, by the way, is the foundation of individualism. In other words, when ‘genderism’ enters the room, it is about a pure ideology, which actually tries to destroy marital and familial relationships evincing the society that many want to create is classless.

EWTN: How can the Church counteract “gender-mainstreaming” and the cultural “Marxism?”

Archbishop Gadecki: I think this can be counteracted through the doctrine of true Christian teaching: that which makes people conscious of the value of the human person, about the splendor of marriage and family, about love and responsibility, which is connected to the whole, about everything that is, up to this point, present in the teaching of the Church. The responsiveness and assistance, which the Church can render to marriage and family, establishes that the Church has an anthropology that corresponds to humanity. And by teaching and remembering this, the Church accomplishes a big step forward toward this situation, which Pope Francis called a “field hospital.” She takes on the role of the “field hospital” where the broken are brought to be healed. This healing does not often succeed because the human person today can be so closed in his individualism that he does not allow any other thought to approach him besides his own opinions and convictions. There are also certainly other difficulties that we need to be aware of, like a good preparation for marriage and family – that those who enter into marriage are made aware that it isn’t about “folklore” such as flowers, music and pictures, but that they are entering into a sacrament, which is inseparable and indissoluble. Particularly, it seems that a good marriage preparation includes an exploration of the couple’s faith, or if they actually have any faith. For if they have no faith, their entrance into marriage will be hurt, and the sacrament will never arrive at its fulfillment, even though Christ ceaselessly accompanies them with his grace. Those are some possible ways to help marriages and families. The differences between then and now of the teaching of the Church, in view of this, entails that people then had prepared earlier, closer and more direct preceding the wedding, in contrast with today in which the preparation is for marriage until death, for continual accompaniment until death. And in this preparation, a particular change occurred: back then people held the idea that the priest was assumed to be the one to help the couple prepare for the wedding and accompany them in various ways. However, the discourse today, especially in the first part of the Synod, is that there has to be a much stronger Christian involvement with families. These Christian marriages in parishes should engage in helping struggling families and be an example of a life and show others that it is possible to live in a relationship in which there is fidelity, in which there is an indissoluble bond, and in which there is also, at the same time, love, which is inwardly and outwardly expressed.

EWTN: Genderism and cultural Marxism are political challenges that we face today. Another challenge is the economization of marriages; in other words, when talking about both partners in a marriage, there is an internal economization of marriage just as there is an external economization. In what way can the Church act in order to support marriages in light of this challenge?

Archbishop Gadecki: I think the basic type of support lies in drawing attention to the fact that the human person has priority over everything else, including the economy, culture, politics, and anything else. The human person is the reference point of the Church. If this is so, the human person is not at the service of the economy; rather, the economy is to serve people. If you take the present situation and look closely, one notices the full subordination of the family to other things such as the economy – each family member under the economy. We presently find examples of this in corporations, where people are maximally exploited, because in this economy, it is about nothing but massive profits, in principle. You can indeed talk about cultural changes, but that does not have a greater meaning. In this case, it is mainly about beating out even more money.

EWTN: Marriage is certainly not a commodity …

Archbishop Gadecki: And marriage is not a commodity. And if we now subordinate marriage and family to the economy, we have actually ruined marriage because so long as it brings in profit, it will be exploited by the economy. If this subordination would no longer bring in profit, then we would leave what remains from marriage. And as a result, the subordination ends.

EWTN: How can the church make people more cognizant of this problem?

Archbishop Gadecki: If anything, by the social teaching of the Church as opposed to anything else. People need to be made aware that the human person has more value in what the person is, than in what the person has: that is the philosophical thought taken up and renewed by Pope John Paul II, who spoke to marriages and families. For if they are only geared towards quick economic development, great damage is done unto the family. We have many examples of that today – of young, intelligent, educated people; also women, who begin their professional life and are exploited by their employers – corporations – until the very end. They tell me of a reoccurring phenomenon; namely, that people work 12 or 14 hours daily, sit until late at night in the office working, and this life works out for a few years. After a good education and a nice salary, it works out. And then after a while it begins to go downhill, and they begin to take drugs to break in on the daily rhythm. And after a certain time, this will be noticeable and they are thrown away like trash. Then the next person comes in and makes the same mistakes and goes out the same way. If we accept such a subordinate criteria for the economy, we undoubtedly ruin marriage and the family. And now I hear that the newest sociological studies have turned the situation around, and now people are beginning to say that a married woman in the workplace is much more valuable than an unmarried woman. In other words, they are more valuable than those who are “single” and have put everything into a full career. Those who are married women and mothers are much more responsible, plan better, can better allot their energy, and are simply more valuable to their respective institutions than those who are not married and don’t have families. The criteria changes, the situation changes, and the Church should not run after every concern just to ultimately sit back with empty hands.

EWTN: Another source of challenges comes from the media and their images of relationships, family, and marriage on the Internet and in television. How can the Church react to these challenges?

Archbishop Gadecki: Yes, that’s true. The image of marriage and family in the media is a tragedy. What is mostly depicted as “marriage” by the media has nothing to do with Christianity. That is the view of the actors on life, which is later transferred and projected to society. People who, perhaps shall we say, are somewhat simple, receive these programs unresponsively, especially television programs. And after a while, they begin to mimic these behaviors that they see: adultery, infidelity, exchange of partners, the drive for success, lust, glamor, and so on. Like it or not, the media destroys marriage. Of course it cannot be said universally that all of media does so, but in the majority, I think. It is not only a plan that the media deploys, but also something that corresponds to the nature of the media because the television media especially has a narrow perspective of reality and can only show this narrow view of reality – only what can pass through the camera lens. On this account, so it appears to me, the nature of the media is itself a fraud.

EWTN: Where can Catholics find good examples?

Archbishop Gadecki: I think that in this moment, we convince ourselves more and more that if there were not a strong Catholic media, people would find themselves in a hopeless situation. And thus, in reading today, tons of books, even good books, are published that nobody wants to read, and – let’s put it this way – they are not especially big academic books for which one requires a certain preparation; rather, they are popular works about marriage, the family, about children that nobody wants to read. That’s why I think that if people have already fallen into this view, we must at least attempt to show the fuller reality in Catholic media, through which people are encouraged to strive for what is “above” so that they will not be pulled down – like the media – into the deep abyss; rather, that they turn back towards the Spirit. So that they don’t live, as St. Paul said, striving for the body, but they strive for the Spirit.

EWTN: A consequence of the many negative examples is a huge lack of knowledge, even among the laity in the Church, on what marriage is, what the family is, what’s behind them, and despite catechesis in Germany, and perhaps partly in Poland too, this lack of knowledge seems to be catastrophic. What can the Church do so that Catholics are aware of what they should believe?

Archbishop Gadecki: Yes. I would begin the answer here by saying that the lack of knowledge of the teachings on marriage is not greater than the lack of knowledge about some other topics. Today, we could say, it’s sufficient just to go to school, and when the school year begins, the children have already forgotten what they learned the previous year. The schooling of children is a terribly complicated matter, very complicated and very difficult. It reaches some, but for others it does not, bypassing them into oblivion and is eventually washed out. One completes a college education as a great expert of one specific narrow field, but everything else appears of little importance or essence to his work. Something similar is happening with Catholic teaching. One learns the catechism from grammar school to high school and even through college, in campus ministry. And from this comes the common tragic result: someone heard something somewhere but does not know what it’s about. Therefore, we have to take care of the teaching of priests who preach, but in relation to television, that’s nothing – practically a couple of minutes compared to many hours of the impact of television, but the situation is not hopeless. For if, say, a person takes this interest up, then he goes back later and searches on his own. Today, the internet is, on one hand, an abyss, and on the other, we could say, an encyclopedia of knowledge; perhaps not the highest, but at least something simpler that can also be used for Catholic teaching. In Poland, the Church websites and those of Church organizations and groups are very rich.

EWTN: Also with regards to marriage?

Archbishop Gadecki: Yes, the whole apostolic teaching office is translated into Polish and accessible. Also accessible are all of the texts from Paul VI, John Paul II, as well as Pope Benedict XVI, and his Opera Omnia, which have been published by the Catholic University of Lublin. So whoever feels the desire can arrive at the source.

EWTN: Must the Church offer marriage preparation courses, and do they need to be intensified during married life?

Archbishop Gadecki: Yes, this is also a problem that these marriage preparation courses, so to say, do not have the character of the completion of office work; rather, that they give a solid foundation for marriage and family. We are also thinking of another form. We are preparing it, and a certain part of it – adult catechesis – has already been done knowing that the catechesis does not bring the children and youth much because it will actually be ruined by the parents, most frequently by their behavior or by apathy in contrary to what the children have learned. So we have to give more attention to adult catechesis in various forms, the simplest being sacramental catechesis. When their child is baptized, receives first Holy Communion, or is Confirmed, the catechesis won’t be about the children but about the situation of the parents – how they are, and what they can do to become closer to Christ.

EWTN: In your opinion, Archbishop, when we look full of hope towards the future, in what areas should the Church be especially present in order to support marriages and families? What are the fields? Media? Marriage preparation courses?

Archbishop Gadecki: I think media, catechesis, ordinary teaching, publications, all these manners – also Catholic readings, Catholic press – are good and at a good standard. They are all the means that the Church disposes of. In relation to the pre-war times, they are smaller in number. Back then, during the time between the world wars, the Catholic press was strong, tremendously strong; but, compared to today, we can say that the quality has risen.

EWTN: And what about the groups in which married couples can actually meet?

Archbishop Gadecki: There are certainly more family support groups … for us the domestic Church is highly developed. In other words, there are people who have been through a liturgical-pastoral preparation led by the Oasis movement of Fr. Blachnitzki and have just married and are now forming Church groups in homes among families. In Germany, these similar types of groups also exist, in which families form particular circles, meet, support each other, and travel with their children together. Something similar happens here as special attention is given to the immersion into the doctrine. There is also Equipes Notre Dame and other movements that support families. There is certainly reassurance especially from young married people who have a need for such support.

EWTN: I want to go back again to the question about people in irregular situations who live according to the doctrine of the Church. How should the Church take care of these people so that they are still present in the Church since this relationship to the Church often falters?

Archbishop Gadecki: The Synod has principally directed attention to this: to those who are separated; to those who are divorced but not committing themselves to a new relationship; to those who are divorced and committing themselves to a new civil relationship. All of these situations are essentially different and the Church should approach each in a different way. Those who live in separation are strengthened by and encouraged to receive Holy Communion because clearly, let’s put it this way – they live in a situation that does not challenge the sacramental relationship in the sense that there is no dissolution of the indissoluble relationship. Then similarly with those who are divorced but not committed to a new relationship, they also have the right to receive Holy Communion. Often, they don’t know that at all. Those who are divorced and committed to a new relationship must also know that, contrary to what many think, the Church is not closed to them, although it cannot give permission to receive Holy Communion since this is an expression of a full relationship with Christ. They are invited to hear the Word of God, to attend Mass, to engage in charitable works, and to support other families. There are places in the Church in which divorcees who live in new civil relationships can be valuable to themselves and to others.

EWTN: How strongly engaged can people, who are divorced and have remarried, be engaged in the life of the parish? We’re talking about service as perhaps a lector or catechist who prepares children for first Holy Communion. Presently, the Church sees no such possibilities.

Archbishop Gadecki: That is a difficult issue, since we have here not only the question of the impossibility of receiving Holy Communion, but also the representation of the Church in these demanding ministries. For example, the extraordinary minister of Holy Communion cannot be anyone who is divorced and in a new civil relationship because they would be, in a way, an anti-witness; but he or she can be, say, very helpful and be likewise realized in charitable works. He or she can of course teach, but as we fundamentally say in Poland, he or she should not be a catechist since this is a sort of challenge to witness, of authentic witness. So certain functions, not limited only to Holy Communion, needing a legitimate witness, should not be assumed by divorcees living in a new marital relationship.

EWTN: I want to direct attention to the question about children who are often the first victim when a relationship fails, when the parents separate. Must the church increase her attention to and raise her voices for the children?

Archbishop Gadecki: Of course, since what practically exists in divorce is some kind of egoism of the adults. They look at themselves, the impossibility of the two people living together, and at the attempts that led to nothing, but they don’t look a bit at the child. Indeed, a great success of the first Synod was the discussion of homosexual persons – that the problem of homosexuals adopting children is a small example of the rights of the child. Thus, not only do adults have rights, but children have theirs as well. And children have the right to be raised in a complementary family with a mother and a father. In a nutshell: children are not toys in the hands of adults that please them once and then can be thrown away.

EWTN: That means that it is also about the responsibility of the parents.

Archbishop Gadecki: Yes, responsibility. In the case that they resort to divorce, the children wander from one parent to the other as the court decides, and no longer have an example of a good and healthy relationship. And with high likelihood, it will clearly be more difficult for them to start their own family because every little difficulty leads to them letting go of relationships and will search out the next person to exploit.

EWTN: When it comes to the Church in Poland, is she bright, clear and also faithful to the doctrinal teaching of John Paul II and Benedict XVI? Does Pope Francis exactly know the standpoint of the Polish Church?

Archbishop Gadecki: I think he knows it because in practice, the participation of the Polish Church at the first Synod was rather loud. We clearly said that we hold ourselves to, and do not deviate from, the traditional doctrine of the Church, just like the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I think that everyone who reads what Pope Benedict XVI said to the Roman Rota from 2007 to 2013 finds therein the teaching that can’t be inverted. That is really brilliant teaching – a truly brilliant teaching – under which one should be subordinated and which one should accept. One should not submit to the streams and tendencies of the new age, because the streams will be one thing today and another tomorrow. And the mission of the Church is not to run after the world, but to guide the world and show it the right path. I spoke of this last time here in Thorn at the Crowning of Mary. In a way, the Church takes on the role of a GPS-Navigation system for the human person. I mean that wherever the person is located, wherever he’s gone astray, or has fallen, it suffices that he connects with the Church, and she will show him the way to the goal, regardless of what place in the world he is in and regardless of what spiritual situation he finds himself in.

EWTN: Does that also mean that there can be no compromises given out that would not be faithful to doctrine?

Archbishop Gadecki: I don’t see a possibility to create a compromise between truth and falsity. Which compromise could even be given between truth and falsity?

EWTN: A final question with regard to the future: Archbishop, what hopes do you have for the coming Synod?

Archbishop Gadecki: I think on one side, it will confirm the one teaching we know and that is not an invention of this or any Pope, rather it is of the Church. That is the great stream of the intellectual efforts of the Church and of the faith of the Church. On the other side, it will show how in new ways we can realize the vocation to marriage and family in greater fidelity to Christ and in which way within the Church, which is composed of many different people with various vocations, can be given support through communion. Today, the human person is more exposed to intense pressure and finds himself in a much more secularized world than earlier. In this support, the Church helps the human person not lose itself in the whole. For it is not only a question, to put it this way, of whether or not I take the right steps in life; rather, it is a question about eternity.

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More scheming outside the synod? Soros foundation rep attends LGBT lobby event

by Kevin Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • October 14, 2015

(Guillaume Paumier via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Rome, Italy — Attendees at an LGBT activist event lobbying the Synod of Bishops included an official from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, one of the most influential funders in the world.

“Open Society Foundations program officer Peter Matjasic was one of the participants of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics assembly,” Antonia Zafeiri, the foundations’ European communications officer, confirmed to CNA Oct. 13.

Zafeiri said the assembly was “an opportunity to discuss with civil society representatives sharing similar values” in line with the foundations’ mission to “promote equality and combat discrimination of minority groups.”

The newly launched Global Network of Rainbow Catholics held its first assembly in Rome Oct. 1-4. It drew together several dissenting Catholic groups engaged in LGBT activism. The gathering claimed representatives from 30 countries.

Matjasic is a program officer for the Open Society Initiative for Europe, a branch of the Open Society Foundations established by the politically active billionaire investor George Soros. The foundations’ website said they expended about $827 million globally in 2014.

On his Twitter account, Matjasic praised the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics’ discussions about their mission statement, approach, and structures.

The global network’s assembly also included the Ways of Love conference, which advocated that the synod adopt LGBT activist groups’ “best practices” in pastoral ministry. The conference included journalist Robert Mickens’ live interview with former Irish president Mary McAleese, a vocal critic of Catholic teaching.

Matjasic said on his personal Twitter account that McAleese gave “a compelling condemnation of Roman Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.”

Open Society Foundations did not respond to CNA questions about whether it financially supported the groups involved.

The European Forum of LGBT Christian Groups, a founding member of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, has received funding from the Open Society Institute for a project to document and oppose “religion-based intolerance in Eastern Europe.” The European Forum’s annual report said it also took part in an Open Society institute conference in Barcelona in September 2014 about reaching the “movable middle” and made a presentation about “combating religion-based opposition.”

The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics has advocated that the 2015 Synod of Bishops revive controversial language on homosexuality from previous synod documents. The synod is meeting at Vatican City Oct. 4-25.

The U.S.-based LGBT activist group Human Rights Campaign also had a representative at the global network’s founding assembly: Lisbeth Melendez Rivera, director of the campaign’s Latino and Catholic Initiatives.

In 2014 the Human Rights Campaign launched an activist effort that stressed the synod’s importance as “the opportunity to create a precedent for change.” The group has been critical of the late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, as well as synod delegates Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky.

The Human Rights Campaign is very influential in American life, as major corporations compete to score high on its corporate equality index. Its corporate partners include American Airlines, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Bank of America, Northrop Grumman, Chevron, Lexus, Goldman Sachs, and Coca-Cola. The organization did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics issued a message to the synod that claimed that many in the Church “thought that they were serving God by hating us, and some still do, especially among the hierarchy.”

The activists said they launched the network to share information, counter falsehood, encourage each other and strengthen their families. They rejected criminalization of LGBT activities, especially countries where some actions result in execution.

In addition, the network claimed to be reaching out to bishops.

“We want to set up our network in such a way that we can even be useful to you, though we know from long experience how frightened many of you are of communicating with us discreetly, even less talking to us on the record!” its message said.

The Ways of Love 2015 conference included a keynote speech from Mexico’s Bishop Raul Vera, who was the center of controversy several years ago for his support of a homosexual ministry that rejected aspects of Catholic teaching. The 2014 conference’s keynote speaker was Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, a retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney who authored a book which was rebuked by Australia’s bishops for doctrinal problems.

The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics includes Dignity USA and New Ways Ministry, two U.S. groups that have recently called for same-sex marriage to be recognized as a sacrament. Other members include the LGBT Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council, the Polish group Wiara I Tecza, the Italian group Nuova Proposta, the Chilean group PADIS and the Maltese group Drachma.

In a related effort, the European Forum for LGBT Christian Groups lobbied the synod bishops. The forum’s Catholic coordinator, Michael Brinkschroeder, in September sent e-mails to several bishops inviting them to the Ways of Love conference. His e-mail included a series of written interviews with self-identified LGBT Catholics from several west African countries. He said they face exclusion from family, loss of work, and blackmail.

That interview project was funded by the Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund and the U.S.-based Arcus Foundation in response to “the extremely negative influence from bishops from Western Africa on the final document of the Family Synod 14,” according to the European Forum’s 2014-2015 activities report

The Arcus Foundation has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into LGBT activist projects related to the synod. These projects include European Forum efforts to respond to “homophobic Catholic church family synod decisions” and efforts to help the forum “pursue its successful strategy of shifting traditional views.” The foundation grants also funded the drafting, testing and use of “a counter-narrative to traditional values” in contexts like the 2015 Synod on the Family, according to the forum’s annual report and grant announcements from the foundation.

The Arcus Foundation is a partner of the U.S. State Department’s Global Equality Fund. Ford Foundation president Darren Walker sits on the Arcus Foundation’s eight-member board of directors.

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‘Confess-a-thon’ at Colombian mall draws 350 priests

by CNA/EWTN News • October 14, 2015

Confession in the Gran Estación Mall in Bogotá, Colombia. (Colombian Bishops Conference)

Bogotá, Colombia — In the South American nation of Colombia – where an estimated 70 percent of the population identifies as Catholic – it is not unusual to encounter Catholic priests at a cathedral, or perhaps at a religious school or hospital.

Seeing scores of priests at a shopping mall, on the other hand, is a less frequent occurrence.

But for thousands of shoppers at Gran Estación Mall in Bogota, Colombia last week, that’s exactly what happened.

Some 350 priests congregated at the mall to offer the Sacrament of Reconciliation in a “Confess-a-thon” held Oct. 6-7.

Shoppers were surprised to see the priests, who were spread out at different stations throughout the mall, offering opportunities for Confession, or just to talk.

Many took advantage of the opportunity.

“It’s good to draw near to the Lord, to be reconciled, to give up all this evil,” said Luz Alba, a woman at the Bogota mall, according to the Colombian Bishops Conference.

The bishops’ conference reported on the event on its website. It shared the testimony of Father Ariel Viáfara, a priest of the Apostolic Vicariate of Guapi.

“It’s a marvelous opportunity to go out to the people so they can be reconciled with God,” the priest said.

Fr. Hernán Baéz explained that the mall was chosen because it contains a chapel and prayer room, run by the Lord of the Beatitudes Parish, which Fr. Baéz heads.

“What we were able to accomplish with these days of Confession is to show that the merciful Jesus walks through the streets, even in a mall,” he said.

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Naming the unknown martyr: Could these remains be St. John Plessington?

by CNA/EWTN News • October 14, 2015

Bones which are believed to belong to English martyr and priest St. John Plessington. (Diocese of Shrewsbury/Simon Caldwell)

Shrewsbury, England — The English priest St. John Plessington was among dozens martyred because of an anti-Catholic hoax in the seventeenth century. Now a diocese seeks to confirm whether remains long venerated as a martyr’s relics are his.

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury praised the saint’s “faithfulness to the point of death” and his witness to priestly life and mission in the diocese.

St. John Plessington was canonized in 1970 by Blessed Paul VI as one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales.

“As one of England’s 40 martyrs he points to the long continuity of our Catholic faith and our unswerving loyalty to the See of Peter,” the bishop told the Shrewsbury Catholic Voice.

“If funds could be found to identify and authenticate his relics it would allow our connection to his heroic ministry and martyrdom to become visible and tangible in a new way for generations to come.”

St. John Plessington was born into a recusant family, and was ordained abroad in 1662. He returned to England to minister.

In 1679 Titus Oates fabricated evidence of a Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II. British authorities believed the hoax and began to enforce strict Elizabethan-era laws that considered being a Catholic priest an offense of high treason.

St. John Plessington was charged with being a Catholic priest, and was executed by being hanged, drawn, and quartered. He was among more than 35 Catholics executed as a result of Oate’s fictitious “Popish Plot.”

Before his execution, the saint wrote down his final testament. He said he was a priest and affirmed he was innocent of treason and plotting; he also said he was willing to die for his faith.

Many of the saint’s bodily remains were lost after his execution in Chester, more than 40 miles north of Shrewsbury.

In the late 19th century bones were discovered hidden in a pub next to St Winefride’s Well in Flintshire, a Welsh county which borders on Chester. The location was a headquarters of Jesuit missionaries, though Plessington was not a Jesuit.

These bones were taken to the Jesuit retreat house of St. Beuno’s and venerated as the relics of an anonymous martyr.

Bishop Davies and others hope that DNA testing of the bones can be matched with known relics, to prove they are the remains of St. John Plessington.

Forensic scientists who examined the bones and said they are the skull and the right leg of a priest hanged, drawn and quartered. The skull has a hole punctured by a pike pushed through the head. The bones were found in a garment dated to the period of St. John Plessington’s execution.

The Diocese of Shrewsbury is appealing for donors to fund research to confirm the identity of the remains.

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Pro-abortion madness in Argentina: Half-naked activists attack cathedral

by CNA/EWTN News • October 14, 2015

The Mar del Plata cathedral c. 2007, which was attacked Oct. 11, 2015. (Juan Enrique Gilardi via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Mar del Plata, Argentina — A mob of violent abortion supporters attempted to desecrate an Argentine cathedral and threw stones and bottles at Catholics praying the rosary in front of the church on Sunday.

The feminist activists bared their chests, on which they had painted phrases such as “I had an abortion” and “I choose.” They approached the cathedral in Mar del Plata Oct. 11 shouting “the Church is a piece of trash, you’re a dictatorship.”

The activists were among the tens of thousands of participants in the 30th National Meeting of Women. They were pushed back by local police. Authorities had set up a railing around the church and stationed police there in anticipation of an attack.

The abortion supporters knocked down part of the protective railing and police reacted with tear gas and rubber bullets. The most violent demonstrators were arrested but released soon after.

Martin Patrito, the president of the pro-life group ArgentinosAlerta, told CNA the incident is “the first time the police got involved” to protect a Catholic church from attacks by abortion activists. He considered police involvement to be progress.

Prior to the incident, ArgentinosAlerta launched a petition asking the authorities for a police presence to counter the violence of the abortion advocates.

Patrito said that the National Meeting of Women has “numerous workshops on various topics concerning women” and many of these are “very reasonable.”

“But the feminists manipulate all of this and when the event is over, everything concludes with a big march where the main slogan is abortion on demand,” he said.

The residents of Mar del Plata are outraged by the violence unleashed by the abortion activists and their hatred against the Catholic Church, Patrito said.

He criticized the activists for “running at the mouth talking about women’s rights, but it seems they can’t stand the right to religious freedom.”

“This reminds us of the Islamic State which can’t stand the presence of Christians in their countries.”

Mobs of abortion activists have tried to desecrate Catholic churches during previous gatherings of the National Meeting of Women in a number of cities in Argentina.

In November 2013 young men peacefully defended the Cathedral of San Juan de Cuyo against one mob and prayed the rosary during its attack. The feminists spat at the men, physically assaulted them and sprayed them with aerosol paint.

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New policy forces Missionaries of Charity to end adoption services in India

by CNA/EWTN News • October 15, 2015

Missionaries of Charity house, Kolkata India. (Zvonimir Atletic via shutterstock.com)

Calcutta, India — Orphanages in India run by the Missionaries of Charity have decided to close their doors in light of new adoption guidelines that the sisters say violate their ideological and religious views.

Sister Amala, who serves at Nirmala Shishu Bhawan, a New Delhi orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity, explained the decision.

“The new guidelines hurt our conscience. They are certainly not for religious people like us,” she said, according to NPR.

The new protocol issued by the Ministry of Women and Child Development allows single, divorced, and separated individuals to participate in adoption services from the Missionaries of Charity, who have a policy of only placing children with a married mother and father.

“Our rules only allow married couples to adopt,” Sister Amala explained, saying the sisters are concerned about the moral upbringing of the children who are adopted by single individuals, rather than a mother and a father.

Under the new law, prospective parents will now register online through the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), which will allow single, separated or divorced individuals to participate in registered adoption services throughout India.

The new guidelines are aimed at boosting the number of adoptions within India, where the adoption process is notoriously complex. According to the Ministry of Women and Children Development, opening adoption services to a wider group of prospective parents will help increase adoptions within the country.

Indian Women and Child Development Minister, Maneka Gandhi, commented on the situation at a local conference, saying that “we are trying to persuade them, they are good people,” but that the Missionaries of Charity did “not want to come under a uniform secular agenda.”

Instead, the sisters opted to seek de-recognition from CARA, believing the new rules to contradict natural law. So far, over a dozen orphanages run by the Missionaries of Charity have ceased adoption services over the past two months.

“It is not a religious rule but a human rule,” Sister Amala said, according to the Catholic Herald. “Children need both parents, male and female. That is only natural, isn’t it?”

In addition to allowing single individuals to adopt, the new guidelines will also include a choice in which child is adopted, giving prospective parents the ability to pick one of six different children at the orphanage.

This option was not available previously, as the Missionaries of Charity placed the orphaned children with their adoptive families based on the parents’ background, ethnicity, and best overall match.

“Parents are not allowed a choice, even if the child has a deformity. We cannot allow parents one option out of six to adopt children,” Sister Amala stated, according to The Indian Express.

“When a woman gives birth to a baby, is she allowed a choice? She gets what God gifts to her,” she continued, saying that it should be no different for adoptive parents.

The Missionaries of Charity, who were founded by Mother Teresa, will continue their care for the poor and abandoned in India. NPR reported that instead of providing adoption services, the sisters will turn to special needs children within the country who are still orphaned.

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‘It’s truly a miracle’ – kidnapped Syrian priest escapes from Islamic State

by CNA/EWTN News • October 15, 2015

Father Jacques Mourad, who recently escaped from the Islamic State. (Terre Sainte Mag)

Homs, Syria — A Syrian priest who was captured by Islamic State militants in May thought he would die for his faith. Now, he credits the Virgin Mary and the help of a Muslim friend for his escape.

“This is the miracle the Good Lord gave me: while I was a prisoner I was waiting for the day I would die, but with a great inner peace. I had no problem dying for the name of Our Lord; I wouldn’t be the first or the last, just one of the thousands of the martyrs for Christ,” the Syriac Catholic priest, Father Jacques Mourad, told Italian TV 2000.

“I want to thank all those who prayed for my liberation. It’s truly a miracle that a priest has been freed from the hands of the Islamic State. A miracle that the Virgin Mary worked for me.”

Father Mourad was prior of the Monastery of Mar Elian in the Syrian town of Al Qaryatayn, about 60 miles southeast of Homs.

He said he was captured with another young man on May 21 after the militants arrived at the monastery.

“The first four days we were in the mountains, locked up in the monastery’s car we were captured in,” he said. “On Aug. 11 we were taken to near Palmyra, where there are 250 other Christian prisoners from the city of Al Qaryatayn.”

The Islamic State had captured Al Quaryatayn Aug. 6. Only around 30 Christians were able to escape the town for Homs after it was captured.

Father Mourad that his captors regularly asked him to declare his faith.

“Almost every day there was someone who came to my prison and asked me ‘what are you?’

“I would answer: ‘I’m a Nazarene, in other words, a Christian.’

“‘So you’re an infidel,’ they shouted. ‘Since you’re a Christian, if you don’t convert we’ll slit your throat with a knife’.”

Despite the threats, the priest refused to renounce Christ.

Father Mourad said he wore a disguise in order to escape.

“I escaped on a motorbike with the help of a Muslim friend. But now I’m working with an Orthodox priest and other Bedouin friends and a Muslim friend to free the 200 other Christians who are still imprisoned,” he said.

According to the priest, 40 other Christians were able to escape the same day as his interview with Italian television.

On Oct. 10 Father Mourad celebrated his first Mass since his release, Agence France Presse reports.

The priest was also pastor of a parish in Al Qaryatayn, where he served as an active mediator between the Syrian army and rebel forces in their years-long civil war, Fides news agency said.

The Monastery of Mar Elian dated back 1,600 years and was the subject of restoration work in recent decades.

It provided refuge to hundreds of Syrians displaced from Al Qaryatayn, partnering with Muslim donors to provide for their needs.

However, Islamic State militants destroyed the monastery in August.

Since the Syrian civil war began in March 2011, more than 250,000 people have been killed. Four million have become refugees, and another 8 million Syrians are believed to have been internally displaced by the violence.

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Caritas Pakistan marks 50 years of service in South Asia

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

Archbishop Coutts says a Mass of Thanksgiving for the 50th anniversary of Caritas Pakistan in Lahore, Sept. 17, 2015. (Caritas Pakistan)

Lahore, Pakistan — Hundreds of Catholics in Pakistan gathered last month for a Mass of Thanksgiving which kicked off celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Caritas Pakistan, part of the worldwide confederation of Catholic relief organizations.

“It is a very special occasion to celebrate this glorious occasion of a 50 years’ journey of works of solidarity that Caritas Pakistan and the bishops have courageously committed to in taking the Gospel’s values to people in distressing situations, despite facing growing persecution and discriminations against the Christian community,” Asif Nazir, a Caritas member in the country told CNA Oct. 15.

Nazir pointed out that through Caritas “the bishops in Pakistan have stood strong with undeterred faith, reaching remote areas and helping people of all religions in times of calamity and natural disasters.”

Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi, who is chairman of Caritas Pakistan, celebrated the thanksgiving Mass in Lahore’s Youhanabad neighborhood Sept. 17. Concelebrants included Bishop Rufin Anthony of Islamabad-Rawalpindi, Bishop Joseph Arshad of Faisalabad, Bishop Benny Travas of Multan, and a number of priests.

During his homily Archbishop Coutts reflected on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, saying, “Our work is not complete without compassion.”

Amjad Gulzar, executive director of Caritas Pakistan, thanked the organization’s benefactors as well as the local and central government, saying that “this golden jubilee gives us a chance to renew our commitment to helping the poor and needy … it is not the end of a program, but the beginning of a new venture.”

Caritas Pakistan is the social agency of the nation’s bishops, which was established in 1965 to provide support for families and children, the elderly, homeless, refugees, prisoners, the disabled, and to assist in peace building and environmental issues. It has helped the Church in the country to provide education, health, and social development, to uplift the Pakistani community.

The celebration of the anniversary included a workshop on Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’. Fr. Pascal Robert, a professor at Karachi’s National Catholic Institute of Theology, said it is “a call to relate ourselves with every creature alive.”

Estephen David, climate change officer at Caritas Pakistan, noted that “Pakistan ranks number 15 among the countries on the climate change risk index … the World Bank estimates that climate change in South Asia has impacted on Pakistan a loss of around $3.57 billion over the past 18 years.”

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WORLD NEWS

Why one Irish archbishop has a special devotion to the Little Flower family

by CNA/EWTN News • October 16, 2015

Relics of St. Therese of Lisieux and her parents Louis and Zelie Martin at St. Mary Major’s Basilica in Rome, Italy on Oct. 16, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Rome, Italy — As members of one Martin family are about to be canonized on Sunday, another Martin family prepares to celebrate in Rome.

Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, the Primate of All-Ireland, told CNA that his family, who shares the same surname as the Little Flower family, has a special devotion to the Martins, including parents Louis and Zelie, who will be canonized Oct. 18.

“In our family, the story of St. Therese is very dear to us,” he said Oct. 16.

His mother named two of his sisters after members of the Martin family: one is Marie Therese and the other, Zelie Therese.

“For my sister Zelie, of course it’s been quite funny. As she grew up in Ireland, no one really knew the name ‘Zelie’. So everyone would say (the wrong pronunciation). She gets called everything!” he said. “But now I’ve told her, ‘Your name is famous!’”

The archbishop’s sister and her husband are travelling to Rome for the canonization of St. Therese’s parents, while Archbishop Martin will concelebrate the canonization Mass. Meanwhile, his 87-year-old mother will “tune in” from Ireland.

The fact that the canonization of this married couple is taking place during the Synod on the Family, he said, is “a great vote of confidence in the family.”

Part of the appeal that St. Therese holds for his mother, and so many others, is the simplicity of her “little way”— something that he said laid the foundation for Vatican II’s universal call to holiness.

What St. Therese and her family show us is, “Look, anyone can strive to holiness,” he said.

Married in 1858 just three months after meeting each other, Louis and Zelie at first lived in celibacy for nearly a year. They eventually went on to have nine children, four of whom died in infancy, while the other five entered religious life.

Both of them had attempted to enter religious life before they met — Louis wished to be a monk and Zelie wished to be a nun with the Order of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Zelie was turned away due to poor health, while Louis was denied entry because he couldn’t speak Latin.

Louis and Zelie Martin were indeed a holy family, Archbishop Martin said.

They were known to attend daily Mass each morning at 5:30, they opened their home to dine with the poor and fostered their daughters’ religious vocations.

“I just think it’s a wonderful witness to all of us today,” the archbishop said.

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After break-in, Bishop Conley prays for burglar’s conversion

by CNA/EWTN News • October 13, 2015

Bishop James D. Conley prays with brother bishops at his installation as the ninth bishop of Lincoln, NE. (Seth DeMoor)

Lincoln, NE — When Bishop James Conley’s residence in Lincoln, Nebraska was invaded and burglarized this weekend, he offered a message of forgiveness and called on the faithful to pray that the thief will discover Christ and return the stolen items.

“One of Christ’s last acts on the Cross was forgiveness of a repentant thief,” Bishop Conley said in a statement, adding that “certainly, the Church forgives the person responsible for this crime. God offers his mercy well.”

“I ask all Catholics to join me in praying that the thief will experience a conversion of heart, and seek the mercy of God,” the Lincoln bishop continued.

Around 1:30 P.M. on Saturday, Oct. 10, the alarm in Bishop Conley’s residence was set off, notifying local diocesan officials and the Lincoln police. The bishop was not at home at the time of the break-in.

Among the items stolen were pectoral crosses, one of which is believed to contain a relic of the cross of Jesus. However, no additional items of value were taken from the bishop’s home, and local law enforcement has opened an investigation into the burglary.

Pectoral crosses, usually large and ornamental, are worn by Catholic bishops, cardinals, and popes around their chest as a symbol of their distinctive seat within the Church.

“These crosses belong to the whole Diocese of Lincoln. They signify the unity of our Church in Christ. Let us pray together that they might be returned,” Bishop Conley said.

The Diocese of Lincoln is fully cooperating with the investigation of the burglary, according to diocesan spokesman J.D. Flynn.

“Forgiveness does not exclude accountability,” Flynn said in a recent press release, urging the burglar to give back the crosses. He also stated that the return of the stolen items would be accepted – even anonymously – at any Catholic Church.

Bishop Conley underscored the various outreaches that the Diocese of Lincoln provides, including shelter, food, counseling, training for employment, and crisis assistance. The bishop voiced hope that the local Church would be able to help the burglar, if he or she is in need.

“We care a great deal about the poor, because Jesus Christ was poor. I hope no one will resort to stealing because of some poverty,” Bishop Conley noted, saying, “I hope people, including this thief, will know that the Catholic Church stands eager to help in whatever way we can.”

“I pray, quite sincerely, that the thief will discover that Christ died for him, loves him, and desires to bring him to eternal joy.”

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U.S. NEWS

Are those who strive for virtue the new minority? Cardinal Dolan thinks so

by CNA/EWTN News • October 13, 2015

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York at a Mass of diaconal ordination said at St. Peter’s Basilica, Oct. 1, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — Married couples who endure hardships together; gay men and women trying to live chastely; engaged couples who choose not to cohabitate. What do all these people have in common?

They’re all striving for holiness and, according to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, they’re the “new minority” to whom it is important to extend inclusion in the Church.

“… these wonderful people today often feel themselves a minority, certainly in culture, but even, at times in the Church!” the Archbishop of New York said in his Oct. 12 blog post. “I believe there are many more of them than we think, but, given today’s pressure, they often feel excluded.”

The cardinal, who is currently in Rome for the Synod on the Family, said that inclusion has emerged as a “very refreshing, consistent” theme discussed at this year’s synod.

He listed immigrants; those with same-sex attraction; single people; those with disabilities; racial minorities; the divorced or widowed; the elderly and homebound, all as being essential to the life of the Church.

“We in the family of the Church love them, welcome them, and need them,” he said.

However, there is another group of people that should be remembered when discussing those who feel excluded from modern society – and even the Church – he said.

“I am thinking of those who, relying on God’s grace and mercy, strive for virtue and fidelity,” Cardinal Dolan said.

This includes couples who choose not to cohabitate before marriage; spouses who endure hardships in marriage; gay men or women who embrace chastity; a mother who sacrifices her career for her children; and spouses who lovingly welcome children into their marriage.

“They are looking to the Church, to us, for support and encouragement, a warm sense of inclusion,” he said. “We cannot let them down!”

Cardinal Dolan’s comments came shortly after Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput addressed the synod assembly, calling for precise language, especially when speaking about inclusion and “unity in diversity.”

“Brothers, we need to be very cautious in devolving important disciplinary and doctrinal issues to national and regional episcopal conferences – especially when pressure in that direction is accompanied by an implicit spirit of self-assertion and resistance,” Archbishop Chaput had said.

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U.S. NEWS

Planned Parenthood to stop accepting money for fetal body parts

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • October 14, 2015

(Steve Rhoades via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — Planned Parenthood Federation of America announced on Tuesday that its affiliates will no longer accept any reimbursements for fetal tissue donations.

The change comes after a series of videos were released revealing the organization’s role in the donation of fetal tissue from aborted babies for compensation. The group behind the videos, the Center for Medical Progress, argued that the amounts of compensation were illegal, but Planned Parenthood denied that claim, stating that the accusations were part of a “discredited smear campaign.”

“This removes beyond the shadow of a doubt the ludicrous idea that Planned Parenthood has any financial interest in fetal tissue donation,” the organization’s president Cecile Richards stated.

David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress called the announcement an “admission of guilt.”

“If the money Planned Parenthood has been receiving for baby body parts were truly legitimate ‘reimbursement,’ why cancel it?” he responded in a statement. “This proves what CMP has been saying all along – Planned Parenthood incurs no actual costs, and the payments for harvested fetal parts have always been an extra profit margin.”

Daleiden has claimed that Planned Parenthood clinics accepted illegal amounts of compensation for fetal tissue of aborted babies they donated to harvesters. Federal law allows for the donation of fetal tissue for “reasonable” compensation, to cover the costs of shipping and handling, but not for “valuable” compensation.

The allegation of law-breaking stems from a series of investigative videos released by CMP starting in July, showing undercover conversations with Planned Parenthood officials, footage taken from inside clinic laboratories, and interviews with the head of a tissue harvesting company StemExpress, which procured tissue from Planned Parenthood clinics.

In one interview, a regional Planned Parenthood doctor said that babies were sometimes delivered at clinics before an abortion procedure could be performed, leaving open the question of whether the babies were left to die.

In a video released in September by CMP, senior Planned Parenthood officials were recorded warning that affiliates should approach the fetal tissue trade for compensation with caution.

Planned Parenthood’s senior medical advisor, Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, said it had “the potential for a huge P.R. issue,” in a conversation with an actor posing as a prospective fetal tissue buyer.

Deborah VanDerhei, national director of the Consortium of Abortion Providers at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that “If they [affiliates] are going to do it, that’s fine, but we want them to think about, really, the New York Times headline.”

Richards has repeatedly responded to the allegations by claiming the organization had broken no laws in accepting compensation for fetal tissue.

Currently two House committees are investigating the organization and its practices. The House Judiciary Committee last week held a hearing on the “medical ethics” at Planned Parenthood clinics.

Susan Thayer, a former center manager at a clinic in Storm Lake, Iowa, testified that her clinic routinely overbilled Medicaid for birth control – $35 a cycle for contraceptives that cost less than $3 – and would even send the full bill to Medicaid for certain services they already partially billed patients for. Those profits from clients they described as voluntary donations.

Thayer also said that when a baby was discovered in a dumpster in her town and the local authorities requested the clinic’s medical records, the clinic used the opportunity to fundraise, claiming that the personal health information of female clients was threatened.

“Planned Parenthood is more concerned about its bottom line than about the health and safety of women,” Thayer stated before the House Judiciary Committee on Oct. 8.

Republicans have also announced that a special committee will be formed to investigate Planned Parenthood’s practices concerning abortions and fetal tissue donations.

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U.S. NEWS

Why three gay Catholics left the Church – and why they returned

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

(Frank Gaertner via shutterstock.com)

Philadelphia, PA — Dan, Rilene and Paul knew that once their stories were out, life would not be the same.

“We’ve been advised not to google ourselves,” Rilene said, laughing.

These three are the subjects of a recently released documentary, “Desire of the Everlasting Hills,” which chronicles their stories of having same-sex attraction, and how they eventually found peace in the Catholic Church.

The film made its world premiere in Pennsylvania July 19 last year at a conference for Courage, the Vatican-approved apostolate that reaches out to Catholics with same-sex attraction with the goals of growing closer to God, engaging in supportive friendships, and learning to live full lives within the call to chastity.

Its simple style and universal themes of human love and longing, however, make the film a touching and moving experience for a much broader audience.

All three said they approached their involvement in the film with some trepidation. They were hesitant about the responses they might get from their family and friends, and those in the LGBT community.

“I was very scared to do this movie,” Dan told CNA when the film debuted. A professional musician, he was worried what people in the music industry might think. He didn’t want to be seen as “Dan the gay man.” Before this film he had never been publicly out, and had occasionally dated women.

“But I was thinking about 1 Peter 3:15, where he says ‘Always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that lies within you.’ With how good God has been to me, if I can help other people through my story, that’s why I chose to do this.”

Dan’s passion is especially to help young people who are experiencing same-sex attraction. Although he was Catholic when he was young, his family became Protestant by the time he was in his teenage years. He remembers feeling like there was no one he could talk to about what he was experiencing.

“I remember the pastor doing a series on sexual purity, and he was talking about lusting after women,” Dan said, “And I remember thinking, ‘Who can I tell, that the guy two pews in front of me is the guy that I’m lusting after?’”

In the film, Dan recounts going to a strip club as an experiment. He ended up talking vegetables with a dancer, and still uses some of her gardening tips to this day.

He then decided that he still wanted the normalcy of a dating relationship, so he started dating Jason, with whom he was in a relationship for about a year. But his desires for a family and biological fatherhood were reawakened when he found himself falling in love with Kelly, a woman at work.

When his relationship with Kelly ended, Dan said he found himself tempted to find another relationship with a man.

“But I had reached a threshold where I realized the path to peace … was not going back.”

Rilene participated in the film because she felt she owed it to God to be as outspoken about him as she had been about being gay.

“When I was gay I dragged my partner out of the closet,” she said. “I feel like I at least owe God the same level of full disclosure, so that’s why I am openly back in the Church and abandoned my gay identity.”

In the film, Rilene recalled that at first she wanted to be loved by a man and to have a family. But after a dating dry spell and a woman making a move on her at a party, she started questioning whether or not she might really be attracted to women.

On a business trip, she met a woman, Margo, who was to be her partner for 25 years.

“I think she was a lot like me in many ways, she was professional,” Rilene said. “And she wanted me, honestly. And I needed to be wanted.”

But even throughout that relationship, Rilene said she felt restless and often alone. After a series of financial downfalls and a marriage proposal from Margo, Rilene left the relationship and eventually found her way back into a Catholic parish.

She said she felt like the film was a good chance for her and the other subjects to sort through their thoughts and examine their lives.

“There were so many blessings in this movie for us, the actual conversation, the questioning, helped to focus our own thoughts for each of us on different aspects of our life that maybe we hadn’t considered as closely before.”

“And it has wonderful graces so far, and whatever else comes, that’s the way it goes, we’ll just take it as it comes.”

Paul got involved in the gay scene after moving to New York City in the 1970s. He landed a high-end job as an international model and rubbed elbows with celebrities at clubs in the city.

“Studio 54, especially if you were young and somewhat attractive, you could go there and it would be total heaven. The lights, the way people dressed, the music, the movie stars … it was exactly like you’ve heard,” he said in the film.

When he wasn’t at the studio or at the gym, Paul spent his time looking for partners. He found himself going through dozens, and then hundreds, and then thousands of lovers.

“It became frantic, and it was never my intention … but I became insensitive to what it means to be with a partner, both body and soul.”

When the AIDs epidemic claimed around 90 percent of his friends, Paul decided to move to San Francisco for a fresh start. He met his partner, Jeff, there and they moved to a cabin in Sonoma County.

One day while watching T.V., Paul came across a strange image and called Jeff into the room to laugh at what they saw.

“I’m laughing mockingly at this nun with a patch over her eye, a distorted face (I didn’t know she had a stroke at the time), and a complete, old fashioned habit,” he said.

It was Mother Angelica on EWTN.

Jeff and Paul both laughed at “these crazy Christians”, but when Jeff left the room, Paul kept watching.

“I was about to change the channel, she said something so intelligent and so real and so honest that it really struck me.”

“You see God created you and I to be happy in this life and the next. He cares for you. He watches your every move. There’s no one that loves you (that) can do that,” Mother Angelica said.

From then on, Paul was hooked on Mother Angelica. But he hid his new obsession. He would change the channel after watching her so that Jeff or anyone who used the T.V. wouldn’t see the nun.

“And it reminded me as I was doing this of when I used to turn the channel when I was watching porn because I didn’t want Jeff or anyone else to see a porn station come up.”

Paul anticipates that the negative response to this film will be huge. Even though the film wasn’t public at the time of the interview, Paul said he’s already seen a reaction.

“I got blowback because I walked up the stairs … of a church called the Catholic Church. I lost clients, I lost friends.”

“People were in shock that an educated, relatively intelligent man could believe in Jesus Christ. These were the few friends that were aware that I was back in the Church.”

Dan echoed Paul’s sentiments about the reaction he expects from the film.

“I think my colleagues would have no problem if I were to come out as gay. I think they’re baffled by the fact that I’m Catholic.”

All three also said that once they were back in the Church, they started to distance themselves from the label “gay” or “lesbian”.

Within the Church, the terminology is not preferred because it tends to pigeonhole people by defining them first by their sexual drives.

“I went to a Protestant conference and one of the people said, ‘Maybe you need to consider the fact that the label ‘gay’ doesn’t define you,’ and that was one of the most liberating things,” Dan said. “I think the very fact that the Church would avoid the terms gay and lesbian speaks to the truth of the human person, and there’s something vitally important about the Church’s refusal to use that.”

When asked about what the Church needs to do to better serve people with same-sex attraction, the answer was resoundingly that priests and the Church need to be better educated about the Church’s position.

Rilene said within the first few years of living with Margo, a priest knocked on her door for a parish survey. When she burst into tears, explaining that she used to be Catholic but felt unwanted by the Church because she was a lesbian, the priest didn’t know what to say.

“He just said, ‘No, we want you!’ But there was nothing behind that … he just had no tools. So I think that our priests need the education, they need training. I know priests who I don’t think even know what the Church’s position is on it, or are resistant to it.”

“So, that’s what we need to do. We need to arm our priests.”

Dan said he hoped that priests would also not shy away from the topic, or the Church’s teachings on the subject.

“One of the guys in Courage said chastity isn’t a consolation prize. Our lives are better because of the Church’s teaching, and we shouldn’t be embarrassed by that,” he said. “We should shout it from the mountaintops, it’s the good news!”

This story originally ran July 25, 2014 with the headline “Film: People with same-sex attraction find peace in Church.”

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U.S. NEWS

Men and women are complementary – but what does that look like in practice?

by Hillary Mast (CNA/EWTN News) • October 16, 2015

(KieferPix via shutterstock.com)

Washington, D.C. — The idea that men and women are different and complementary has been part of the Catholic Church from its beginning.

But what exactly does this mean for the Church today? What does it imply for women serving in the Church – Should they fill the exact same roles as men? Should there be a quota for each sex in service to the Church?

Not at all, according to Mary Hasson, editor of the book, “Promise and Challenge: Catholic Women Reflect on Feminism, Complementarity, and the Church.”

“The point isn’t to tally up how many women are where … and at this level versus that level, the question is … have we integrated women fully so that we are living that complementarity in the way that God intends?”

After the Holy Father’s call for a deepening of the “theology of women,” a group of Catholic women under the leadership of George Mason law professor Helen Alvare gathered to discuss women’s role in the Church, with a particular emphasis on the idea of complementarity between the two sexes.

“I think harmony is a great word to describe complementarity, because when you have harmony, you see things blending together in one beautiful whole, as opposed to … two pieces you’re trying to fit together,” Hasson told CNA.

The group – made up of attorneys, theologians, philosophers, economists, religious sisters and professors – gathered to form the Catholic Women’s Forum at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where Hasson is a fellow, to discuss what complementarity has to do with the life of the Church today. This book is the result of their presentations at the 2014 Symposium on Women in the Church.

“Complementarity is one of those technical words people sometimes think they know what it means. And yet in discussing and probing deeper … we realized there’s a lot of richness to the idea of complementarity that needs to be not just explained, but lived more fully and put into practice particularly within the Church,” Mary Hasson said of the Catholic Women’s Forum.

The group is not out to change Church teaching, she emphasized.

“The Church has spoken,” Hasson said, especially in explaining why it is impossible to ordain women to the priesthood, which is one of the extremes that people tend to think of when discussing the role of women in the Church.

But the other side of that spectrum, in Hasson’s opinion, is the belief that “nothing should ever change.”

“When you focus on that one extreme, you miss what we really should be doing as laymen and laywomen,” she said. “So the interesting distinction in where the development and growth in the Church needs to occur is the fuller understanding of what the clergy are called to do and what the lay people are called to do.”

By looking somewhere between these two extremes, the Catholic Women’s Forum is interested in figuring out practical ways to encourage further collaboration between men and women in the Church.

“When you bring up the idea of women’s roles in the Church, too often people automatically think of polar extremes. You know, we’re talking women priests or we’re talking status quo, we keep thing the same and nothing should ever change.”

The group is working to engage more women in the Church through their annual Catholic Women’s Symposium and the Catholic Women’s Leadership Luncheon, where Catholic scholars and leaders working on these topics host leadership events for female professionals in the Washington, D.C. area.

In seeking to better understand a theology of women, Hasson also stressed that it is imperative to explore the theology of men.

To that end, the book includes a chapter by Professor Deborah Savage of St. Paul Seminary at University of St. Thomas called, “The Genius of Man.”

“We live at a time when boys are told over and over again that men are responsible for all the evils in the world,” she wrote. “Fathers, and men in general, are disinvesting in family structures and the persons within them, even though evidence shows that such involvement provides men with a way toward real perfection and happiness.”

What’s needed, she proposed, is a rediscovery of what makes men tick. By revealing that, we can also learn more about women’s unique attributes and how the two can work together to create something new.

“Both the masculine and feminine genius are in fact supernatural realities that, though they can be spoken of on the level of nature, require participation in the life of grace to reach their full expression,” Savage wrote.

Hasson agreed. “The Church has always talked to women about motherhood, but we need to see that the understanding of our motherhood is helped the more we understand fatherhood,” she said.

“It’s that relationship – fatherhood and motherhood, not just a man and a woman – that tells us all sorts of things. Theologically it tells us something about the life of the Trinity.”

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FEATURES

Pope Francis and True Mercy

by Bishop Robert Barron • October 13, 2015

Having just returned from a week covering Pope Francis’s triumphant journey to the United States, I can confidently tell you that the news media are in love with the Vicar of Christ. Time and again, commentators, pundits, anchorpersons, and editorialists opined that Pope Francis is the bomb. They approved, of course, of his gentle way with those suffering from disabilities and his proclivity to kiss babies, but their approbation was most often awakened by this Pope’s “merciful” and “inclusive” approach, his willingness to reach out to those on the margins. More often than not, they characterized this tenderness as a welcome contrast to the more rigid and dogmatic style of Benedict XVI. Often, I heard words such as “revolutionary” and “game-changing” in regard to Pope Francis, and one commentator sighed that she couldn’t imagine going back to the Church as it was before the current pontiff.

Well, I love Pope Francis too, and I certainly appreciate the novelty of his approach and his deft manner of breathing life into the Church. In fact, a number of times on the air I commented that the Pope’s arrival to our shores represented a new springtime after the long winter of the sex abuse scandals. But I balk at the suggestion that the new Pope represents a revolution or that he is dramatically turning away from the example of his immediate predecessors. And I strenuously deny that he is nothing but a soft-hearted powder-puff, indifferent to sin.

A good deal of the confusion stems from a misinterpretation of Francis’s stress on mercy. In order to clear things up, a little theologizing is in order. It is not correct to say that God’s essential attribute is mercy. Rather, God’s essential attribute is love, since love is what obtains among the three divine persons from all eternity. Mercy is what love looks like when it turns toward the sinner. To say that mercy belongs to the very nature of God, therefore, would be to imply that sin exists within God himself, which is absurd.

Now this is important, for many receive the message of divine mercy as tantamount to a denial of the reality of sin, as though sin no longer matters. But just the contrary is the case. To speak of mercy is to be intensely aware of sin and its peculiar form of destructiveness. Or to shift to one of the Pope’s favorite metaphors, it is to be acutely conscious that one is wounded so severely that one requires, not minor treatment, but the emergency and radical attention provided in a hospital on the edge of a battlefield. Recall that when Francis was asked, in a famous interview two years ago, to describe himself, he responded, “a sinner.” Then he added, “who has been looked upon by the face of mercy.” That’s getting the relationship right. Remember as well that the teenaged Jorge Mario Bergoglio came to a deep and life-changing relationship to Christ precisely through a particularly intense experience in the confessional. As many have indicated, Papa Francesco speaks of the devil more frequently than any of his predecessors of recent memory, and he doesn’t reduce the dark power to a vague abstraction or a harmless symbol. He understands Satan to be a real and very dangerous person.

When Pope Francis speaks of those on the margins, he does indeed mean people who are economically and politically disadvantaged, but he also means people who are cut off from the divine life, spiritually poor. And just as he reaches out to the materially marginalized in order to bring them to the center, so he reaches out to those on the existential periphery in order to bring them to a better place. In speaking of mercy and inclusivity, he is decidedly not declaring that “I’m okay and you’re okay.” He is calling people to conversion. As my mentor, Cardinal Francis George, said, “All are welcome in the Church, but on Christ’s terms and not their own.”

Nowhere has the confusion on this score been greater than in relation to the Pope’s famous remark regarding a priest with a homosexual orientation, “Who am I to judge?” I would wager that 95% of those who took in those words understood them to mean that, as far as Pope Francis is concerned, homosexual activity is not really sinful. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Pope was responding to a hypothetical involving a priest with same sex attraction, who had fallen in the past and who is now endeavoring to live in accord with the moral law, a sinner, in a word, who has been looked upon by the face of mercy.

So as we quite legitimately exult in the beauty of Pope Francis’s unique style and theological emphasis, let us not turn him into an advocate of an “anything goes” liberalism. As St. Augustine long ago reminded us, misericordia (mercy) and miseria (misery) are two sides of the same coin.

Bishop Robert Barron is an auxiliary bishop 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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FEATURES

From All Hallows’ Eve to Halloween: Part I

by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. • October 14, 2015

Halloween fever is just around the corner. In two weeks, many children and adults will don costumes of all designs and descriptions. PetSmart has designed an elaborate Halloween web site for dogs, cats, and other pets. At Halloween parties, adults will primp their outfits while children will ring doorbells ready to blurt out “trick or treat.”

Ask the meaning of Halloween, and most people will give you blank stares. Children will shrug their shoulders hoping that their ignorance will not deprive them of a treat from the questioner. The short answer? In the Middle Ages, Halloween was marked on the Christian church calendar as All Hallows’ Eve, the day before All Saints’ Day, formerly known as All Hallows’ Day.

With every passing year, October 31st grows into a mega-business. It is set aside for images of devils and evil spirits, witches, goblins, ghouls, oversized cats, bonfires, Jack-O’-Lanterns, trick or treating. You may argue: What’s the harm in having a few hours of fun once a year? Fun is fast turning into vandalism and violence. Some parents keep their children close to home instead of risking their safety to go trick or treating without an adult. Others chaperone their children lest they be deprived of the enjoyment linked to the night’s festivities. What’s the harm in getting dressed up in Halloween costumes once a year? The response to this question will come in Part Two of this essay.

The Devil in Music

The musical composition, “Danse Macabre,” by Camille Saint-Saëns is traditionally played on Halloween. It suggests the presence of the devil and evil spirits by highlighting the ‘devil’s interval,’ a tinny sound of two notes that jar the ear as though someone is harping on wrong notes. This sound is never (never) permitted in classical composition except to make a point. Clearly, the point of “Danse Macabre” is to mimic the devil in music.

How did we get from All Hallows to Halloween?

Pagan Origins

Hundreds of years before Christ, the Druids of Celtic lands made mischief by heckling others with mean tricks and scaring them into offering fruits and sweets. They were prompted by the long nights and early darkness of winter months.

In contrast, Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruits and gardens, was celebrated on November 1st. In the Roman Empire, the custom of eating or giving away fruits, and especially apples, became popular.

The Christian Celebration

As with Christmas and Christmas Eve, the Church sacralized a pagan celebration. In this case it Christianized the mischief of the Druids and the practice of the Roman goddess Pomona. From the seventh- or eighth century, the Church marked October 31st as All Hallows’ Eve, the eve of All Saints’ Day. The day recalled men and women who had died as Christians but were not officially canonized.

By the eleventh century, All Souls’ Day, the day after All Saints’ Day, was dedicated to the commemorate all the faithful departed. All Hallows’ Eve was then linked to the two feast days. In Ireland and Great Britain, the end of October marked the end of the fall harvest and the beginning of the barren winter, and the faithful were reminded of the call to sainthood as well as the reality of the Four Last Things, death, judgment, heaven, or hell.

Depending on where one lived, All Hallows’ Eve was celebrated by praying that all would attain sainthood like all the saints. At the same time, prayers were offered to the dead whose prayers, in turn, one sought.

In her book, The Year and Our Children, Mary Reed Newland writes: “Late in the evening in the country parishes, after supper was over, the housewives would spread a clean cloth on the table, set out pancakes and curds, and cider. And after the fire was banked and chairs set round the table for the returning loved ones, the family would recite Psalm 129, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord” (De Profundis clamavi ad te, Domine) and then go to bed.

The English custom of knocking at doors began by begging for a soul cake. In return, the ‘beggars’ promised to pray for the dead of the household. The refrain sung at the door varied. It could be as short as

“a soul cake, have mercy on all Christian souls for a soul cake”

to a later version:

“Soul, soul, an apple or two,

If you haven’t an apple, a pear will do,

One for Peter, two for Paul,

Three for the Man Who made us all.”

Advent of the Doughnut

With the soul cake came a new development and an ingenious variation — the doughnut. To remind people that life on earth was but a passing reality, a hole was carved out of the middle of the cake so that those who ate the cake were reminded of eternity. Later on, charades, pantomime, and mini-dramas were developed on the reality of life after death and the means of attaining salvation. With the remembrance of a saintly life came images of evil and scary creatures like those mentioned above. Cats were ancient symbols of the devil. Still, the familiar and seasonal harvest fruits such as apples, cornstalks and pumpkins were given out to beggars. Christian art depicted death by skulls and bones to remind Christians of death. Pagan and Christian symbols existed side by side.

It is not definitively known to what extent there was a link between the practices of the Druids and the people of Ireland and Great Britain. Nevertheless, Christendom cast its thoughts from the end of temporal life to thoughts of death, sainthood and the departed souls. The saints in heaven and those suffering in Purgatory are part of the full and complete Body of Christ, the Church. In 1955, All Hallows’ Eve was stricken from the Church calendar. Since then, the religious significance of October 31st has disappeared. What remains is a day of devilish antics.

To be continued next week.

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

The Right to Life is NOT single issue politics: Life is a lens through which we view every issue

by Deacon Keith Fournier • October 15, 2015

As we enter into the presidential campaign season in the United States of America, politically charged rhetoric is being used to confuse and confound Catholic Christian voters. Nowhere is this clearer than in the efforts to call voters concerned about the Right to Life “single issue voters”. Sadly, some Catholic politicians, such as Nancy Pelosi, are leading the charge.

Congresswoman Pelosi rejects the teaching of the Catholic Church and the Natural Moral Law concerning the fundamental Right to Life. She has been repeatedly corrected by bishops. Yet, she persists in a flagrant disregard for the teaching of the Catholic Church. She also intentionally misleads people concerning the clear teaching of the Catholic Church.

Her infidelity to the social doctrine of the Catholic Church is harming collaboration with other Christians. I have been involved in building principled alliances with Christians of other communities for decades. I can attest to the confusion among many of our Christian friends.

They have respect for the Catholic Church, often because of its unchangeable teaching concerning the Right to Life. So, they simply do not understand how Nancy Pelosi and some other Catholic politicians can hold some of their political positions on matters concerning the protection of human life and still claim to be faithful Catholics.

It is imperative that Catholic Christians think and act properly concerning this foundational truth; all human persons are created in the Image of God. Because of that they have an inherent dignity - at every age and stage of their lives. This truth is what informs our respect for every human life whether that life is found in the first home of the womb, a wheelchair, a jail cell, a hospital room, a hospice, a senior center, a soup kitchen or on a refugee boat.

The Right to Life position is not about an issue at all. Nor are those who hold it “single issue voters”. The Pro-Life position is a worldview, a lens through which we should view every political, cultural, social and economic issue. It should inform every aspect of our participation in society, especially the exercise of our citizenship. As we approach this election season, it must also inform the way we vote.

The Right to Life is the foundation for every human right. The language often used in the political discussion surrounding legal abortion reveals an Orwellian newspeak which is polluting our public discourse. Phrases such as “abortion rights” should never be used and must be completely rejected. Abortions do not have rights, only human persons have rights.

Every procured abortion is the taking of innocent human life and is always and everywhere intrinsically immoral. Without the right to life there are no other rights and the infrastructure of rights is thrown into jeopardy. Human rights are goods of human persons. When there is no human person to exercise them, all the rhetoric extolling them is nothing but empty air and sloganeering.

We must stand in solidarity with those who have no voice. In the Joy of the Gospel Pope Francis wrote that, “Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care, with particular love and concern, are unborn children, the most defenseless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this. Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church’s effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative.

“Yet this defense of unborn life is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems.

“Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the defense of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of the powers that be. Reason alone is sufficient to recognize the inviolable value of each single human life, but if we also look at the issue from the standpoint of faith, every violation of the personal dignity of the human being cries out in vengeance to God and is an offence against the creator of the individual.

“Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or ‘modernizations’. It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.” (Par. 213, 214)

The Pro-Life position is a solidarity position. The child in the womb is our neighbor. It is always and everywhere wrong to take the life of an innocent neighbor. When there is no recognition of a preeminent right to life, there quickly follows an erosion of the infrastructure of all human rights. Human rights do not exist in a vacuum; they are goods of the human person.

Our failure to recognize that our first neighbors in the womb have a right to be born and live a full life in our community undermines our claim to be a compassionate society. All the talk about compassion for the poor rings hollow when we fail to hear the cry of the ones whom Teresa of Calcutta rightly called the “poorest of the poor”.

We are responsible for one another. We are our brother and sister’s keeper. Created in the Image of God, men and women are called into relationship and are, by both grace and nature, social beings. We will never find the fullness of human freedom and flourishing outside of relationships, with God and with one another.

The child in the womb is our first neighbor. Medical science confirms what our conscience long told us. We now routinely operate upon him or her in the womb. We send 3D and 4D ultrasound photos of him or her as they grow in that first home of the whole human race. These children are members of our human family. It is always and everywhere wrong to kill an innocent neighbor.

The fundamental human right to life also helps to inform much in our criminal justice system. For example, in our criminal law, we prosecute someone who intentionally takes the life of a woman with child in a vehicular homicide for two criminal offenses. The irony is immediately obvious.

Legalized abortion on demand is an open rejection of the entire ethic of being our brothers (and sisters) keeper and its implications. There can be no enduring lasting solidarity upon which to build a secure future in a culture that kills its own children and calls it a right. No politician or political candidate who advocates for legalized abortion, or for euthanasia, passive or active, should ever receive the support of Catholic Christians.

Deacon Keith A. Fournier is Founder and Chairman of Common Good Foundation and Alliance. A member of the clergy, a Roman Catholic Deacon, he is also a constitutional/human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties. He has long been active at the intersection of faith, values, and culture and currently serves as Special Counsel to Liberty Counsel. Deacon Fournier is also a Senior Contributing Writer for THE STREAM.

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SUNDAY • OCTOBER 18, 2015

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Is 53:10-11; NRSVCE)

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.

When you make his life an offering for sin,

he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;

through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.

Out of his anguish he shall see light;

he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.

The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

Second Reading (Heb 4:14-16; NRSVCE)

Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Gospel Reading (Mk 10:35-45; NRSVCE)

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

MONDAY • OCTOBER 19, 2015

Memorial of Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues

First Reading (Rom 4:20-25; NRSVCE)

No distrust made Abraham waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Gospel Reading (Lk 12:13-21; NRSVCE)

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

TUESDAY • OCTOBER 20, 2015

Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Rom 5:12, 15b, 17-19, 20b-21; NRSVCE)

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.

For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Gospel Reading (Lk 12:35-38; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.”

WEDNESDAY • OCTOBER 21, 2015

Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Rom 6:12-18; NRSVCE)

Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Gospel Reading (Lk 12:39-48; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?” And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and prudent manager whom his master will put in charge of his slaves, to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. But if that slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and if he begins to beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and put him with the unfaithful. That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”

THURSDAY • OCTOBER 22, 2015

Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Rom 6:19-23; NRSVCE)

I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Gospel Reading (Lk 12:49-53; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son

and son against father,

mother against daughter

and daughter against mother,

mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

FRIDAY • OCTOBER 23, 2015

Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Rom 7:18-25a; NRSVCE)

I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Gospel Reading (Lk 12:54-59; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

“And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.”

SATURDAY • OCTOBER 24, 2015

Saturday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Rom 8:1-11; NRSVCE)

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law — indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Gospel Reading (Lk 13:1-9; NRSVCE)

At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them — do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”