VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1  •  MARCH 4, 2017

Table of Contents

Copyright Notice

VATICAN NEWS

Holy Father’s Message for Lent 2017

Francis to the participants in the formation course for priests on the new matrimonial process: ‘You are called by every person and every situation to be travelling companions’

Rome’s Anglican pastor: Papal visit an exciting, but normal, step

Angelus: The importance of feeling God’s paternity in a period of orphanhood

Pope’s historic visit to ‘All Saints’ Anglican Church

Surgeon and father among sainthood causes moving forward

The Pope grants an interview to Scarp de’ tenis, a Milan street magazine

Pope Francis: God gives all to those who surrender all

General Audience: Lent, journey of hope

Abuse survivor resigns from commission for protection of minors

The Pope imposes the ashes at the Basilica of St. Sabina: To experience Lent is to yearn for the breath of life our Father offers us amid the mire of our history

In Rome, a new generation of Benedict XVI scholars is on the rise

The Pope meets the clergy of his diocese in the Basilica of St. John Lateran

Pope Francis’ latest prayer video spotlights Christian persecution

Pope Francis seeks silence, reflection on annual retreat

WORLD NEWS

Syrian priest: After liberation of Aleppo, living conditions still dire

Are Mideast youth losing the virtue of hope?

Loving your neighbor means voting wisely, Northern Ireland bishops say

South Sudanese bishops call for food aid, peace negotiations

Local bishop: ‘The Madonna has not appeared in Medjugorje’

The Filipino Catholic Church is resisting the brutal drug war

Why Catholic teaching on marriage matters for society

Egypt’s Christians are being driven out – Will the world notice?

Europe will be ‘adrift’ if it loses Christian roots, faith leaders warn

U.S. NEWS

U.S. bishops denounce rise in anti-Semitic attacks

How assisted suicide discriminates against the poor and disabled

Congress can do more for religious liberty abroad, scorecard finds

After Trump’s address to Congress, pro-lifers stress protections in health care

FEATURES

Evangelizing through the good

Is the Catholic Church anti-woman? Two feminist scholars debate

Is the Benedict Option the only option?

These 17th-century monks did a beer fast for Lent

Multicultural ministry needs a new perspective

What’s the point of fasting, anyway?

Movie review: ‘Logan’

Double review: ‘The Shack’ and ‘My Scientology Movie’

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Sunday • March 5, 2017

Monday • March 6, 2017

Tuesday • March 7, 2017

Wednesday • March 8, 2017

Thursday • March 9, 2017

Friday • March 10, 2017

Saturday • March 11, 2017

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Volume 3, Issue 1 • March 4, 2017

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VATICAN NEWS

Holy Father’s Message for Lent 2017

The Holy See Press Office • February 7, 2017

Vatican City — The following is the full text of the Holy Father Francis’ message for Lent 2017 on the theme “The Word is a gift. Other persons are a gift.”

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Lent is a new beginning, a path leading to the certain goal of Easter, Christ’s victory over death. This season urgently calls us to conversion. Christians are asked to return to God “with all their hearts” (Joel 2:12), to refuse to settle for mediocrity and to grow in friendship with the Lord. Jesus is the faithful friend Who never abandons us. Even when we sin, He patiently awaits our return; by that patient expectation, He shows us His readiness to forgive (cf. Homily, 8 January 2016).

Lent is a favorable season for deepening our spiritual life through the means of sanctification offered us by the Church: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. At the basis of everything is the word of God, which during this season we are invited to hear and ponder more deeply. I would now like to consider the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk 16:19-31). Let us find inspiration in this meaningful story, for it provides a key to understanding what we need to do in order to attain true happiness and eternal life. It exhorts us to sincere conversion.

I. The other person is a gift

The parable begins by presenting its two main characters. The poor man is described in greater detail: he is wretched and lacks the strength even to stand. Lying before the door of the rich man, he fed on the crumbs falling from his table. His body is full of sores and dogs come to lick his wounds (cf. vv. 20-21). The picture is one of great misery; it portrays a man disgraced and pitiful.

The scene is even more dramatic if we consider that the poor man is called Lazarus: a name full of promise, which literally means “God helps.” This character is not anonymous. His features are clearly delineated and he appears as an individual with his own story. While practically invisible to the rich man, we see and know him as someone familiar. He becomes a face, and as such, a gift, a priceless treasure, a human being whom God loves and cares for, despite his concrete condition as an outcast (cf. Homily, 8 January 2016).

Lazarus teaches us that other persons are a gift. A right relationship with people consists in gratefully recognizing their value. Even the poor person at the door of the rich is not a nuisance, but a summons to conversion and to change. The parable first invites us to open the doors of our heart to others because each person is a gift, whether it be our neighbor or an anonymous pauper. Lent is a favorable season for opening the doors to all those in need and recognizing in them the face of Christ. Each of us meets people like this every day. Each life that we encounter is a gift deserving acceptance, respect and love. The word of God helps us to open our eyes to welcome and love life, especially when it is weak and vulnerable. But in order to do this, we have to take seriously what the Gospel tells us about the rich man.

II. Sin blinds us

The parable is unsparing in its description of the contradictions associated with the rich man (cf. v. 19). Unlike poor Lazarus, he does not have a name; he is simply called “a rich man.” His opulence was seen in his extravagant and expensive robes. Purple cloth was even more precious than silver and gold, and was thus reserved to divinities (cf. Jer 10:9) and kings (cf. Jg 8:26), while fine linen gave one an almost sacred character. The man was clearly ostentatious about his wealth, and in the habit of displaying it daily: “He feasted sumptuously every day” (v. 19). In him we can catch a dramatic glimpse of the corruption of sin, which progresses in three successive stages: love of money, vanity and pride (cf. Homily, 20 September 2013).

The Apostle Paul tells us that “the love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tim 6:10). It is the main cause of corruption and a source of envy, strife and suspicion. Money can come to dominate us, even to the point of becoming a tyrannical idol (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 55). Instead of being an instrument at our service for doing good and showing solidarity towards others, money can chain us and the entire world to a selfish logic that leaves no room for love and hinders peace.

The parable then shows that the rich man’s greed makes him vain. His personality finds expression in appearances, in showing others what he can do. But his appearance masks an interior emptiness. His life is a prisoner to outward appearances, to the most superficial and fleeting aspects of existence (cf. ibid., 62).

The lowest rung of this moral degradation is pride. The rich man dresses like a king and acts like a god, forgetting that he is merely mortal. For those corrupted by love of riches, nothing exists beyond their own ego. Those around them do not come into their line of sight. The result of attachment to money is a sort of blindness. The rich man does not see the poor man who is starving, hurting, lying at his door.

Looking at this character, we can understand why the Gospel so bluntly condemns the love of money: “No one can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or be attached to the first and despise the second. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money” (Mt 6:24).

III. The Word is a gift

The Gospel of the rich man and Lazarus helps us to make a good preparation for the approach of Easter. The liturgy of Ash Wednesday invites us to an experience quite similar to that of the rich man. When the priest imposes the ashes on our heads, he repeats the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” As it turned out, the rich man and the poor man both died, and the greater part of the parable takes place in the afterlife. The two characters suddenly discover that “we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it” (1 Tim 6:7).

We too see what happens in the afterlife. There the rich man speaks at length with Abraham, whom he calls “father” (Lk 16:24.27), as a sign that he belongs to God’s people. This detail makes his life appear all the more contradictory, for until this moment there had been no mention of his relation to God. In fact, there was no place for God in his life. His only god was himself.

The rich man recognizes Lazarus only amid the torments of the afterlife. He wants the poor man to alleviate his suffering with a drop of water. What he asks of Lazarus is similar to what he could have done but never did. Abraham tells him: “During your life you had your fill of good things, just as Lazarus had his fill of bad. Now he is being comforted here while you are in agony” (v. 25). In the afterlife, a kind of fairness is restored and life’s evils are balanced by good.

The parable goes on to offer a message for all Christians. The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers, who are still alive. But Abraham answers: “They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them” (v. 29). Countering the rich man’s objections, he adds: “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead” (v. 31).

The rich man’s real problem thus comes to the fore. At the root of all his ills was the failure to heed God’s word. As a result, he no longer loved God and grew to despise his neighbor. The word of God is alive and powerful, capable of converting hearts and leading them back to God. When we close our heart to the gift of God’s word, we end up closing our heart to the gift of our brothers and sisters.

Dear friends, Lent is the favorable season for renewing our encounter with Christ, living in his word, in the sacraments and in our neighbor. The Lord, who overcame the deceptions of the Tempter during the forty days in the desert, shows us the path we must take. May the Holy Spirit lead us on a true journey of conversion, so that we can rediscover the gift of God’s word, be purified of the sin that blinds us, and serve Christ present in our brothers and sisters in need. I encourage all the faithful to express this spiritual renewal also by sharing in the Lenten Campaigns promoted by many Church organizations in different parts of the world, and thus to favor the culture of encounter in our one human family. Let us pray for one another so that, by sharing in the victory of Christ, we may open our doors to the weak and poor. Then we will be able to experience and share to the full the joy of Easter.

From the Vatican, 18 October 2016,

Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Francis to the participants in the formation course for priests on the new matrimonial process: ‘You are called by every person and every situation to be travelling companions’

The Holy See Press Office • February 25, 2017

Vatican City — This morning in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father received in audience the participants in the Formation Course for the Pastors on the new process for the declaration of nullity of marriage, organized by the Tribunal of the Roman Rota in the Palace of the Chancellery and taking place from 22 to 25 February.

In the Pope’s address, he noted that everything that had been discussed and proposed at the Synod of Bishops on the theme of “Marriage and the Family” has been integrated into the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and translated into legal provisions contained in two documents: the Motu Proprio Mitis iudex and the Motu Proprio Misericors Jesus. “It is good,” he observed, “that you, parish priests, through these initiatives of study, can explore this issue further, because it is you, above all, who apply it in a concrete way in your daily contact with families.”

“In the majority of cases, you are the first interlocutors for the young people who want to form a new family and marry in the Sacrament of marriage,” he continued. “And you also receive those couples who, due to serious problems in their relationship, find themselves in crisis, and need to revive their faith and rediscover the grace of the Sacrament; and in some cases, who ask for instructions for initiating a process of nullity. No-one knows better than you, or is more in touch with, the reality of the social fabric in the territory, or experiences its varied complexity as you do: marriages celebrated in Christ, de facto unions, civil unions, failed unions, happy and unhappy families and young people. You are called by every person and every situation to be travelling companions, to witness and to support.”

“May your first concern be to bear witness to the grace of the Sacrament of marriage and the primordial good of the family, the vital cell of the Church and society, by announcing that marriage between a man and a woman is a sign of the nuptial relationship between Christ and His Church,” said the Pope to the parish priests. “This testimony is put into practice when you prepare marriage partners for marriage, making them aware of the profound importance of the step they are about to take, and when you accompany young couples with solicitude, helping them to live the highlights and shadows, the moments of joy and those of hardship, the divine strength and the beauty of their marriage.”

Francis emphasized that parish priests should always remind Christian spouses that in the Sacrament of Matrimony God is, as it were, reflected in them, “imprinting His image and the indelible character of His love”… The love of the Triune God and the love between Christ and the Church, His bride, must be at the center of catechesis and matrimonial evangelization: in personal or community meetings, planned or spontaneous, do not tire of showing everyone, especially married couples, this ‘great mystery.’ As you offer this testimony, be sure also to support those who have realized that their marriage is not a truly sacramental marriage, and want to come out of the situation. In this delicate and necessary task, may your faithful see you not only as experts of bureaucratic acts or legal norms, but as brothers who listen and understand them.”

“At the same time, be neighbors in the style proper to the Gospel, in encounter and welcome, to those young people who prefer to cohabit without getting married,” he said, “because on a spiritual and moral level they are among the poorest and the least, for whom the Church, following in the footsteps of her Master and Lord, wishes to be a mother who does not abandon them, but rather who approaches and cares for them. Christ also loves these people with all His heart. Look upon them with tenderness and compassion. This care for the least, precisely because it emanates from the Gospel, is an essential part of your task of promoting and defending the sacrament of marriage.”

Finally, the Holy Father recalled that in his recent address to the Tribunal of the Roman Rota he had recommended the establishment of a true catechumenate of newly-weds, including all stages of the sacramental journey: the period of preparation for marriage, its celebration and the years immediately afterwards. “This catechumenate is entrusted to you, pastors, indispensable collaborators of the bishops,” he emphasized. “I encourage you to put this into practice, despite the difficulties that may arise.”

The Pope concluded by thanking those present for their commitment to proclaiming the Gospel of the family and asked that the Holy Spirit help them be “ministers of peace and comfort in the midst of the faithful saints of God, especially the most vulnerable and needy.”

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Rome’s Anglican pastor: Papal visit an exciting, but normal, step

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 25, 2017

Pope Francis addresses a group of Anglican bishops on Oct. 6, 2016. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis will tomorrow become the first Roman Pontiff to set foot in an Anglican parish in Rome, marking a symbolic act the church’s pastor said is hugely significant, yet surprisingly normal for two communities that are close to one another.

“Personally, as a parish priest of 17 years in this place, I can’t imagine a more fulfilling moment in my ministry,” Jonathan Boardman, pastor of All Saints Anglican Church in Rome, told CNA.

“It’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened, except it isn’t,” he said, explaining that it’s a very “natural and normal thing” for a group of Christians to welcome the leader of their brethren to their house.

For Pope Francis to become the first Roman Pontiff to step inside an Anglican parish in Rome, then, is “the most exciting thing, and it’s the most normal thing,” he said, saying it’s a gesture “that explains a truth about our Christian living.”

Both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he said, have to find “the excitement of the Gospel and the fulfillment of it” in everything they do, “from the most rare thing to the most ordinary thing,” such as giving to the poor and offering prayers together.

Pope Francis’ visit coincides with the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the Anglican parish community in the heart of the Eternal City, and will consist of a short choral Evensong service, during which the Pope will bless and dedicate an icon of “St. Savior” commissioned for the occasion.

The symbolic “twinning” of All Saints Anglican Church with the Catholic parish of “Ognissanti” – the only Catholic parish in Rome dedicated to All Saints – will also take place during the liturgy, forming strong ecumenical ties between the two.

Ognissanti is the parish where Bl. Paul VI, on March 7, 1965, celebrated the first Mass in Italian following the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

After the singing of Evensong during his visit to All Saints, Pope Francis is expected to deliver a brief homily before taking questions from the congregation.

Established in 1816, All Saints contains the largest Anglican congregation in Italy, and is headed by Boardman and his assistant chaplain, Dana English. Both pastors will be present to welcome the Pope for his visit Sunday, as well as Robert Innes, the Anglican Bishop in Europe, and his suffragan, David Hamid.

In his comments to CNA, Boardman said that in his opinion, the reason a papal visit to an Anglican parish is possible now rather than in the past is likely due to “the fact that we’ve got Pope Francis.”

Francis “really determinately seeks to exhibit, to show the way in which he’s the Bishop of Rome and how that can be celebrated by other Christians who are present in Rome,” he said, noting that the visit builds on 50 years of dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans.

This positive dialogue the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion have enjoyed shows that Anglicans “are serious in giving honor to the Pope, in recognizing him as the leader of Christendom in some way, although obviously not in the juridical way,” Boardman said, explaining that this point “still keeps us separated.”

But from both the Catholic and Anglican sides, “I think both the Pope’s ability to recognize and accept and celebrate that (dialogue) with us, and our willingness to receive him and celebrate that (dialogue), are the two factors that have led us to where we are today.”

Pointing to Benedict XVI’s establishment of the Anglican Ordinariate in 2009 as a means of helping Anglicans who wish to become Catholic while maintaining certain elements of their liturgy and customs, Boardman called the move “a real generosity and attempt to meet some of the deficiencies, as they were conceived, of what kept us apart.”

While some on the Anglican side initially viewed the act as “hostile and invasive,” the pastor said for him that wasn’t the case, and that in his own personal view, the time has come “to settle down” and appreciate the gesture as “an act of generosity.”

“The degree to which Anglican patrimony truly has been inserted into the Roman Catholic world is something that’s ongoing,” he said, and noted that after the Pope’s visit to his parish this weekend, a Choral Evensong of the Anglican rite will be sung inside St. Peter’s Basilica March 13.

When it comes to progress Catholics and Anglicans have made toward unity, Boardman said he thinks the communities have grown closer, and that in his view “we’re closer to unity than we ever were before simply because time has passed and we’re nearer to God’s gathering us all in.”

“In that sense we’re nearer,” he said, but added that if they want to continue growing closer to one another, it can’t happen without taking on a more prayerful attitude.

There has to be greater openness “to God’s surprising demands on us, and our alignment with his will where all of us, all Christians” make the sacrifices and take the steps needed in order “to truly align ourselves with God’s will.”

Dialogue “has flourished” in the past 100 years, particularly after the Second Vatican Council, he said, acknowledging that unity is closer, but there is still a long way to go.

“We’re only just beginning truly to be real friends and being able to talk about our differences and our problems as friends,” he said, adding that “we’ve got a ways to go to resolve them.”

Some of the biggest hurdles that still need to be overcome exist on both a spiritual and practical level, he said, noting that the first challenge is always “to be faithful to God and to grow in spiritual depth.”

Apart from this, major issues from the Catholic standpoint include the ordination of women and homosexual individuals, whereas for Anglicans, how to accept papal primacy without “changing the nature” of Anglicanism is still a looming concern.

But putting the hurdles aside, Boardman said he hopes the twinning of his parish with the Catholic parish of Ognissanti will help to foster “greater friendship between our two communities.”

The gesture will offer both communities a way to experience the spiritual life of the other while staying “true to our … disciplines” and growing together through various activities, such as service to the poor.

“We’ve already started in sharing some of the feeding programs to the homeless in Rome,” he said, explaining that Ognissanti has already launched various projects, “but now we are participating in them.”

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VATICAN NEWS

Angelus: The importance of feeling God’s paternity in a period of orphanhood

The Holy See Press Office • February 26, 2017

Vatican City — At midday the Holy Father appeared at the window of his study to pray the Angelus with the faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square. He reflected on the day’s Gospel reading, which constitutes a powerful call to trust in God, Who cares for all creation, from the lilies to the grass in the field; His beneficent and solicitous gaze watches daily over our life. It flows under the goad of so many worries, which risk taking away our serenity and balance. “However, this anguish is often pointless, as it does not succeed in changing the course of events,” remarked Francis. “Jesus urges us insistently not to worry about tomorrow, reminding us that beyond all there is a loving Father Who never forgets His children. Entrusting ourselves to Him does not resolve problems magically, but enables us to face them with the right spirit, courageously; I am courageous because I entrust myself to my Father, who takes care of everything and loves me greatly.”

“God is not a distant and anonymous being,” the Pope explained. “He is our refuge, the source of our serenity and our peace. He is the rock of our salvation, to Whom we can cling in the certainty we will not fall. … For us. God is our great friend, ally and Father, but we are not always aware of this. We are not aware that we have a friend, an ally, a Father Who loves us, and we prefer to seek refuge in immediate goods we can touch, on contingent goods, forgetting and at times rejecting the supreme good, that is, God’s paternal love. It is so important to feel that He is our Father in this time of orphanhood! … We drift away from God’s love when w go in the obsessive search for earthly goods and riches, thus manifesting an exaggerated love of these realities.”

“Jesus tells us that this tiresome and illusory search is the reason for our unhappiness, and gives His disciples a fundamental rule of life: “Seek first, instead, the Kingdom of God.” “It is about implementing the plan that Jesus proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount, trusting in God Who does not disappoint … becoming faithful administrators of the goods He has given us, including earthly goods, but without ‘exaggerating,’ as if everything, including our salvation, depended solely on us. This evangelical attitude necessitates a clear choice, which today’s passage indicates with precision: ‘You cannot serve God and money,’ either the Lord or fascinating but illusory idols. This choice we are called to make then has repercussions on all our actions, plans and commitments. It is a clear choice that must be continually renewed, because there is a pressing temptation to reduce everything to money, pleasure and power.”

“Although honoring these idols leads to tangible, if fleeting results, choosing God and His Kingdom does not always show its fruits immediately. It is a decision that is taken in hope and that leaves to God its full realization. Christian hope looks to the future fulfilment of God’s promise and does not falter in the face of difficulty, since it is founded on God’s fidelity, which never fails. He is faithful, He is a faithful father, He is a faithful friend, He is a faithful ally.”

“May the Virgin Mary help us to entrust ourselves to the love and goodness of our heavenly Father, to live in Him and with Him. This is the prerequisite for overcoming the torments and adversities of life, and also persecutions, as the witness of so many of our brothers and sisters shows us.”

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Pope’s historic visit to ‘All Saints’ Anglican Church

The Holy See Press Office • February 26, 2017

Vatican City — This afternoon Pope Francis became the first pontiff in history to visit the Anglican Church of All Saints in Rome, his diocese. During the encounter, the Holy Father joined Anglican faithful in celebrating vespers in a ceremony during which he also blessed an image of Christ the Savior. The Pope was accompanied by Robert Innes, Anglican bishop of the diocese in Europe, and Rev. Jonathan Boardman, chaplain of the All Saints Church, who dedicated affectionate words of thanks to him for his visit.

“More than two hundred years have passed since the first public Anglican liturgy was held in Rome for a group of English residents in this part of the city,” said Pope Francis in his homily. “A great deal has changed in Rome and in the world since then. In the course of these two centuries, much has also changed between Anglicans and Catholics, who in the past viewed each other with suspicion and hostility. Today, with gratitude to God, we recognize one another as we truly are: brothers and sisters in Christ, through our common baptism. As friends and pilgrims we wish to walk the path together, to follow our Lord Jesus Christ together.”

“You have invited me to bless the new icon of Christ the Savior. Christ looks at us, and His gaze upon us is one of salvation, of love and compassion. It is the same merciful gaze which pierced the hearts of the Apostles, who left the past behind and began a journey of new life, in order to follow and proclaim the Lord. In this sacred image, as Jesus looks upon us, He seems also to call out to us, to make an appeal to us: ‘Are you ready to leave everything from your past for me? Do you want to make my love known, my mercy?.’”

“His gaze of divine mercy is the source of the whole Christian ministry. The Apostle Paul says this to us, through his words to the Corinthians which we have just heard. He writes: ‘Having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart’ (2 Cor 4:1). Our ministry flows forth from the mercy of God, which sustains our ministry and prevents it losing its vigor.”

“St. Paul did not always have an easy relationship with the community at Corinth, as his letters show. There was also a painful visit to this community, with heated words exchanged in writing. But this passage shows Paul overcoming past differences. By living his ministry in the light of mercy received, he does not give up in the face of divisions, but devotes himself to reconciliation. When we, the community of baptized Christians, find ourselves confronted with disagreements and turn towards the merciful face of Christ to overcome it, it is reassuring to know that we are doing as St. Paul did in one of the very first Christian communities.”

“How does St. Paul grapple with this task, where does he begin? With humility, which is not only a beautiful virtue, but a question of identity. Paul sees himself as a servant, proclaiming not himself but Christ Jesus the Lord (v. 5). And he carries out this service, this ministry according to the mercy shown him (v. 1): not on the basis of his ability, nor by relying on his own strength, but by trusting that God is watching over him and sustaining his weakness with mercy. Becoming humble means drawing attention away from oneself, recognizing one’s dependence on God as a beggar of mercy: this is the starting point so that God may work in us. A past president of the World Council of Churches described Christian evangelization as ‘a beggar telling another beggar where he can find bread.’ I believe St. Paul would approve. He grasped the fact that he was ‘fed by mercy’ and that his priority was to share his bread with others: the joy of being loved by the Lord, and of loving him.”

“This is our most precious good, our treasure, and it is in this context that Paul introduces one of his most famous images, one we can all apply to ourselves: ‘we have this treasure in earthen vessels’ (v. 7). We are but earthen vessels, yet we keep within us the greatest treasure in the world. The Corinthians knew well that it was foolish to preserve something precious in earthen vessels, which were inexpensive but cracked easily. Keeping something valuable in them meant running the risk of losing it. Paul, a graced sinner, humbly recognized that he was fragile, just like an earthen vessel. But he experienced and knew that it was precisely there that human misery opens itself to God’s merciful action; the Lord performs wonders. That is how the ‘extraordinary power’ of God works (v. 7).”

“Trusting in this humble power, Paul serves the Gospel. Speaking of some of his adversaries in Corinth, he calls them ‘super apostles’ (2 Cor 12:11), perhaps, and with a certain irony, because they had criticized him for his weaknesses even as they considered themselves observant, even perfect. Paul, on the other hand, teaches that only in realizing we are weak earthen vessels, sinners always in need of mercy, can the treasure of God be poured into us and through us upon others. Otherwise, we will merely be full of our treasures, which are corrupted and spoiled in seemingly beautiful vessels. If we recognize our weakness and ask for forgiveness, then the healing mercy of God will shine in us and will be visible to those outside; others will notice in some way, through us, the gentle beauty of Christ’s face.”

“At a certain point, perhaps in the most difficult moment with the community in Corinth, the Apostle Paul cancelled a visit he had planned to make there, also foregoing the offerings he would have received from them (2 Cor 1:15-24). Though tensions existed in their fellowship, these did not have the final word. The relationship was restored and Paul received the offering for the care of the Church in Jerusalem. The Christians in Corinth once again took up their work, together with the other communities which Paul visited, to sustain those in need. This is a powerful sign of renewed communion. The work that your community is carrying out together with other English-speaking communities here in Rome can be viewed in this light. True, solid communion grows and is built up when people work together for those in need. Through a united witness to charity, the merciful face of Jesus is made visible in our city.”

“As Catholics and Anglicans, we are humbly grateful that, after centuries of mutual mistrust, we are now able to recognize that the fruitful grace of Christ is at work also in others. We thank the Lord that among Christians the desire has grown for greater closeness, which is manifested in our praying together and in our common witness to the Gospel, above all in our various forms of service. At times, progress on our journey towards full communion may seem slow and uncertain, but today we can be encouraged by our gathering. For the first time, a Bishop of Rome is visiting your community. It is a grace and also a responsibility: the responsibility of strengthening our ties, to the praise of Christ, in service of the Gospel and of this city.”

“Let us encourage one another to become ever more faithful disciples of Jesus, always more liberated from our respective prejudices from the past and ever more desirous to pray for and with others. A good sign of this desire is the “twinning” taking place today between your parish of All Saints and All Saints Catholic parish. May the saints of every Christian confession, fully united in the Jerusalem above, open for us here below the way to all the possible paths of a fraternal and shared Christian journey. Where we are united in the name of Jesus, He is there (cf. Mt 18:20), and turning His merciful gaze towards us, He calls us to devote ourselves fully in the cause of unity and love. May the face of God shine upon you, your families and this entire community!”

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Surgeon and father among sainthood causes moving forward

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • February 27, 2017

Pope Francis says a Mass of Beatification in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 19, 2014. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis recognized on Monday the heroic virtue of eight persons on the path to canonization, including an Italian surgeon and father of eight who suffered from several painful diseases throughout his life.

The Pope met Feb. 27 with the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Amato, giving his approval for the causes to move forward.

Among them is Italian Victor Trancanelli. Born in 1944, he studied and became a talented surgeon before marrying his wife Lia. Together they had one natural son and adopted seven more children over the course of their marriage.

One month before the birth of their son, Diego, Victor developed ulcerative colitis and widespread peritonitis, which created the need for a permanent ileostomy. Only his wife and a few medical colleagues were aware of the ileostomy, which he bore with patience and without complaining.

Always thinking of the sick, after a year he was healthy enough to return to his work as a surgeon.

In the 1980s, he fell in love with Holy Scripture and with the Jewish roots of the Faith, working at the St. Martin Ecumenical Center. During that time, Victor, his wife, and a few friends started the association which is still running, “Alle Querce di Mamre,” to help women and children in difficult situations.

After another serious illness, he died June 24, 1998, at the age of 54. It is said that shortly before his death he gathered his wife and children around him, and said: “For this it is worth living.”

“Even if I had become, who knows who, if I had money in the bank, owned many houses, what would I bring with me now? What have I brought before God? Now I bring the love that we have given.”

Another cause moving forward is that of Fr. Titus Zeman, a priest of the Salesian order who was born in 1915 in Bratislava, Slovakia. He moved to Rome to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University for a period before being ordained in 1940.

He returned to his home country, but in 1950 the Communist regime in then-Czechoslovakia prohibited religious orders, deporting religious men and women to concentration camps. Fr. Zeman organized for young men in the Salesians to travel secretly to Turin, Italy to complete their studies for the priesthood.

He was eventually captured and endured a severe trial, where they called him a traitor and a spy of the Vatican. Narrowly missing the death penalty, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was released in 1964 after 12 years, enduring torture and other deprivation.

Severely weakened by the treatment during his imprisonment, he died only five years later on Jan. 8, 1969. He is considered to have died a martyr for the faith.

Fr. Zeman is known to have said: “Even if I lost my life, I would not consider it wasted, knowing that at least one of those that I helped has become a priest in my place.”

Following an increasing number of canonizations of laypeople in the last few years, another lay person whose cause has moved forward is Pietro Herrero Rubio, who lived 1904-1978.

The other causes are of the Bishop Ottavio Ortiz Arrieta of Chachapoyas (1878-1958); Jesuit priest Antonio Repiso Martínez de Orbe, founder of the Congregation of Sisters of the Divine Pastor (1856-1929); Antonio Provolo, a diocesan priest and founder of both the Society and the Congregation of Mary for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb (1801-1842); Maria of Mercy Cabezas Terrero, foundress of the Religious Institute of the Missionary Workers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1911-1993); and Sr. Lucia of the Immaculate (Maria Ripamonti), a member of the Congregation of the Handmaids of Charity (1909-1954).

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The Pope grants an interview to Scarp de’ tenis, a Milan street magazine

The Holy See Press Office • February 28, 2017

Vatican City — Pope Francis has granted an interview to “Scarp de’ tenis,” a monthly Milan-based street magazine. It is an editorial and social project supported by Caritas Ambrosiana and Caritas Italiana. The interview precedes the Pope’s visit to the archdiocese of Milan this upcoming 25 March.

The following are extensive extracts from the interview:

Scarp de’ tenis: Holy Father, let us speak about the invisible populations, homeless people. A few weeks ago, at the beginning of winter and with the arrival of the big chill, you ordered that they be received in the Vatican, that church doors be opened to them. How was your appeal received?

Pope Francis: “The Pope’s appeal was heard by many people and many parishes. Many of them listened. In the Vatican there are two parishes and each of them hosted a Syrian family. Many parishes in Rome opened their doors to receive them, and I know that others, which did not have any space in the church, collected money to pay rent for people and families in need for a full year. The aim to be reached must be that of integration, and therefore it is important to accompany them for the initial period. In many parts of Italy much was done. The doors were opened in many Catholic schools, in convents, in many other structures. Therefore, I say that the appeal was heard. I know that many people offered money to pay rent for homeless people.”

Scarp de’ tenis: In the past, everyone wrote about the Pope’s shoes, the shoes of a worker and a walker. Recently you went to a shop to buy a new pair. Why so much attention? Perhaps because today we find it so difficult to put ourselves in other people’s shoes?

Pope Francis: “It is very hard to put oneself in other people’s shoes, because often we are enslaved by our own selfishness. At a first level we can say that people prefer to think about their own problems without wanting to see the suffering and difficulties of others. There is another level, though. Putting oneself in the shoes of others means having a great capacity for understanding, to understand the moment and difficult situations. … If we think of the existences that are often made up of loneliness, then putting ourselves in the shoes of others means service, humility, magnanimity, which is also the expression of a need. I need someone to put himself in my shoes. … How often I come across people who, after having sought comfort in a Christian, be they a layperson, a priest, a nun, a bishop, say to me, ‘Yes, they listened, but they didn’t understand.’ Understanding means putting oneself in other people’s shoes.”

Scarp de’ tenis: Your Holiness, when you meet a homeless person, what is the first thing you say to him?

Pope Francis: “‘Hello. How are you?’ … People who live on the streets understand immediately if there is true interest on the part of the other person or when there is, I do not want to say that sentiment of compassion but certainly of suffering. It is possible to see a homeless person and look at him as a person, or as if he were a dog. And they are aware of this different way of looking at them. In the Vatican there is a well-known story of a homeless person, of Polish origin, who was generally found in Piazza del Risorgimento in Rome, and never spoke to anyone, not even the Caritas volunteers who brought him a hot meal in the evening. Only after a long time were they able to make him tell his story. “I am a priest, I know your Pope well, we studied together in the seminary.” The word reached St. John Paul II, who heard the name, confirmed that he had been with him in the seminary, and wanted to meet him. They embraced after forty years, and at the end of an audience the Pope asked to be confessed by the priest who had been his companion. “Now it is your turn,” said the Pope. And the companion from the seminary was confessed by the Pope. Thanks to the gesture of a volunteer, of a hot meal, a few words of comfort, a kind look, this person was able to rise again and resume a normal life that led him to become the chaplain of a hospital.”

Scarp de’ tenis: Many people wonder if it is right to give alms to people who ask for help on the street; what would you reply?

Pope Francis: “There are many arguments to justify oneself when you do not give alms. ‘But what, I give money and then he spends it on a glass of wine?’ If a glass of wine is the only happiness he has in life, that is fine. Instead, ask yourself what you do secretly. What ‘happiness’ do you seek in private? Or, on the contrary to him, you are more fortunate, with a house, a wife, children, which leads you to say, ‘Take care of him yourselves.’ Help is always right. Certainly, it is not a good thing just to throw a few coins at the poor. The gesture is important, helping those who ask, looking them in the eyes and touching their hands. Tossing the money without looking in the eyes, that is not the gesture of a Christian. Teaching in charity is not about offloading one’s own sense of guilt, but it is touching, looking at our inner poverty that the Lord understands and saves. Because we all have inner poverty.”

Scarp de’ tenis: The Pope has repeatedly come to the defense of migrants, inviting their acceptance and charity towards them. Milan in this sense is a capital of welcome. However, there are many who wonder whether we should truly welcome everyone indiscriminately, or if it is not necessary to impose limits.

Pope Francis: “Those who arrive in Europe are fleeing from war or hunger. And we are in a way to blame, because we exploit their lands but do not make any type of investment to enable them to benefit. They have the right to emigrate and they have the right to be received and helped. This, however, must be done with that Christian virtue which is the virtue that should be typical of governors, namely prudence. What does this mean? It means receiving all those who ‘can’ be received. And this is with regard to numbers. But it is equally important to reflect on ‘how’ to receive, because receiving means integrating. This is the most difficult thing, because if migrants do not integrate, they are ghettoized. … To integrate, then, means to enter into the life of the country, to respect the law of the country, to respect the culture of the country but also to ensure that one’s own culture and one’s own cultural riches are respected. Integration is a very difficult task. To receive, welcome, console, and immediately integrate. It is precisely integration that is missing. Every country must then see what number it is able to receive. It is not possible to receive if there is no chance of integration.”

Scarp de’ tenis: In your family history, there is the crossing of the ocean by your grandparents, with your father. How does one grow up, as the son of migrants? Did you ever feel a little uprooted?

Pope Francis: “I never felt uprooted. In Argentina we are all migrants. Therefore down there, interfaith dialogue is normal. At school there were Jews who arrived mostly from Russia, and Syrian and Lebanese Muslims, or Turks with Ottoman Empire passports. There was great brotherhood.”

Scarp de’ tenis: What do you miss most about Buenos Aires? Friends, visits to the slums, football?

Pope Francis: “There is only one thing I miss a lot: the opportunity to go out on the street. I like visiting parishes and meeting people. I don’t have any particular nostalgia.”

Scarp de’ tenis: Milan is ready to welcome you at the end of the month of March. Let us start with the charitable organizations, voluntary associations, those who are occupied with giving the homeless a place to spend the night, food, healthcare, the opportunity for redemption. In Milan we claim we manage to do this quite well. Is it enough? What are the needs of those who end up on the streets?

Pope Francis: “As for migrants, very simply, these people are in need of the same thing: that is, integration. Certainly, it is not simple to integrate a homeless person, because each one has a particular story. Therefore, we must approach each one, find the way to help them and to lend them a hand.”

Scarp de’ tenis: You often repeat that the poor can change the world. But it is difficult for solidarity to exist where there is also poverty and misery, such as in the outskirts of cities. What do you think?

Pope Francis: “Here too I offer my experience in Buenos Aires. In the slums there is more solidarity than in the city center quarters. In the slums there are many problems, but often the poor are more united among themselves, because they are aware that they need each other. I have found more selfishness in other quarters, I would not say wealthier because that would be to qualify by disqualifying, but the solidarity we see in poorer neighborhoods and in the slums is not found in other areas, even if there life is more complicated and difficulty. In the slums, for example, drug use is more visible, but only because in other quarters it is more covert, it is done wearing ‘white gloves.’”

Scarp de’ tenis: We have recently tried to interpret Milan in a different way, starting from the least and from the streets, and with the eyes of the homeless people who attend a Caritas Ambrosiana day center. With them, we have published a guide to the city as seen from the street, from the point of view of those who live there every day. Holy Father, what do you know about the city, and what do you expect from your imminent visit?

Pope Francis: “I do not know Milan. I have been there only once, for a few hours, in the distant 1970s. … But I strongly wish to do so; I hope to meet many people. This is my greatest expectation: yes, I hope to meet a lot of people.”

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis: God gives all to those who surrender all

by CNA/EWTN News • February 28, 2017

Pope Francis greets pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square at the General Audience on Oct. 19, 2016. (Lucia Ballester/CNA)

Vatican City — God pours out all of Himself on His people, said Pope Francis on Tuesday, explaining that God gives everything to those who surrender everything.

“Here is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more, now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come,” said the Pope, repeating the words of the Gospel of Mark in his daily homily.

Speaking to those gathered at Casa Santa Marta, the Pope reflected on the rich, young man in the Gospel who leaves saddened after Jesus asks him to give away all his possessions. He said the man wanted to follow Jesus, but chose money as a master above God.

Peter then asks Jesus what will happen to himself and the disciples who have given up everything, and the Pope said “it’s almost as if Peter is passing Jesus the bill.” But Jesus ensures that God’s gift will be overflowing – whoever gives everything will receive everything, because it is impossible for God to give less than everything.

Pope Francis said that when God gives everything, He gives fully of himself. The fullness emptied out on the cross, he explained, is the fullness of God. He said this fullness emptied out is the gift of God, but this Christian way of receiving is not an easy path.

Reiterating the words in Sirach, the Pope offered directions to following the Christian way: “pay homage to the Lord, and do not spare your freewill gifts. With each contribution show a cheerful countenance, and pay your tithes in a spirit of joy. Give to the Most High as he has given to you, generously, according to your means.”

Happiness was removed from the face of the rich man in the Gospel, said the Pope, adding that the man had walked away glum and downtrodden because he was unable to receive the fullness of the cross.

In contrast, Pope Francis concluded, are the examples of the saints who prove their complete receptivity with faces and eyes full of happiness. He repeated the words of the Chilean saint Alberto Hurtado, and asked that we may all receive the grace to repeat “I’m happy, Lord, I’m happy,” even in the face of poverty and suffering.

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General Audience: Lent, journey of hope

The Holy See Press Office • March 1, 2017

Vatican City — Lent as a journey of hope was the theme of Pope Francis’ catechesis during the general audience today, Ash Wednesday, which opens this liturgical time. The audience was held in St. Peter’s Square.

The Holy Father explained that Lent was instituted by the Church as a time for preparation for Easter, and therefore all the meaning of this period of forty days draws light from the Paschal mystery towards which it leads. “We can imagine the Risen Lord who calls us to emerge from our shadows, and we set out again on the path towards He Who is the Light. Lent is a period of penance, also of mortification, but not an end in itself; rather, it aims at enabling us to rise again with Christ, to renew our baptismal identity, that is, to be newly reborn ‘from on high,’ from God’s love. This is why Lent is, by nature, a time of hope.”

The meaning of Lent is better understood in the light of exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, narrated in the Bible in the book of the same name, Exodus. The starting point is the condition of slavery in Egypt: oppression, forced labor. But the Lord has not forgotten His people and His promise: he calls Moses and, with his strong arm, leads the Israelites out of Egypt and guides them towards the desert towards the land of the free. “During this journey from slavery to freedom, the Lord gives the Israelites the law, to educate them in how to love Him, the only Lord, and to love each other as brothers. The Scripture shows that the exodus was long and tiresome,” observed Francis. “Symbolically it lasts forty years, that is, the time of life of a generation. A generation that, faced with the trials of the journey, is always tempted to regret leaving Egypt and to turn back. But the Lord stays faithful and that poor people, guided by Moses, arrive in the promised Land. The whole journey is undertaken in hope: the hope of reaching the Land, and precisely in this sense it is an exodus, an exit from slavery to freedom. Every step, every hardship, every fall and every recovery: all of this has meaning only the plan for salvation of God, Who wants life for His people, not death; joy and not pain.”

“Easter is Jesus’ exodus, by which He opened the way to reach full, eternal and blessed life. To open up this way, this passage, Jesus had to despoil Himself of His glory, humiliate Himself, make Himself obedient up to the point of death, and to death on the cross. Opening the way to eternal life cost Him all His blood, and thanks to Him we have been saved from the slavery of sin. But this does not mean that He has done everything and we must do nothing; that He has passed through the cross and we go to Paradise by carriage. It is not like this. Our salvation is certainly His gift, but since it is a story of love, it requires our ‘yes’ and our participation, as our Mother Mary shows us, and after her, all the saints.”

“Lent lives according to this dynamic: Christ precedes us with His exodus, and we cross the desert thanks to Him and behind Him. He is tempted for us, and defeated the Tempter for us, but we too must face temptations, with Him, and overcome them. He gives us the living water of His Spirit, and it is for us to draw from the source and drink, in the Sacraments, in prayer, in adoration; He is the light that disperses the shadows, and we are required to feed the flame that is entrusted to us on the day of our Baptism.”

In this sense, as we read in the Roman Missal, Lent is the sacramental sign of our conversion, and one who follows the path of Lent is always on a journey of conversion. Lent, Francis repeated, is the sacramental sign of our journey from slavery to freedom, always to be renewed. “A journey that is certainly demanding, and rightly so, because love is demanding, but it is a journey full of hope,” the Pope affirmed. “Indeed, I would go further: the Lenten exodus is the path by which hope itself is formed. The fatigue of crossing the desert – all the hardships, temptations, illusions, mirages – all this serves to forge a strong and steadfast hope, modelled on that of the Virgin Mary, who in the midst of the shadows of the passion and the death of her Son continued to believe and to hope in His resurrection, in the victory of God’s love.”

“With the heart open to this horizon, we enter Lent,” the Holy Father concluded. “Aware that we are part of the holy people of God, let us start out joyfully on this journey of hope.”

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Abuse survivor resigns from commission for protection of minors

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • March 1, 2017

View of St. Peter’s Basilica. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — On Wednesday, the decision of clerical abuse survivor Marie Collins to resign from her post on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors was announced, citing frustrations with “a lack of cooperation” by the Curia as leading factor.

In a March 1 statement coinciding with the announcement of Collins’ resignation, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, who heads the commission, voiced “our most sincere thanks for the extraordinary contributions she has made as a founding member of the commission.”

“We will certainly listen carefully to all that Marie wishes to share with us about her concerns and we will greatly miss her important contributions as a member of the commission,” he said.

A laywoman from Ireland, Collins had been one of two clerical abuse survivors tapped to join the commission when it was established in March 2014. Plans to found the commission had been announced shortly before, in December 2013.

Of the original nine founding members of the commission, Collins was one of two clerical sex abuse survivors, alongside Peter Saunders from the UK.

However, Sanders was asked to take “a leave of absence” by the other members in February 2016, making Collins the only active abuse survivor serving on the commission until her resignation.

In a March 1 communique announcing her decision, the commission praised Collins as someone who has “consistently and tirelessly championed for the voices of the victims/survivors to be heard, and for the healing of the victims/survivors to be a priority for the Church.”

The communique said that in her resignation letter to Pope Francis, she cited her “frustration at a lack of cooperation with the commission by other offices in the Roman Curia” as a reason for stepping down.

However, she has agreed to continue working with the commission “in an educational role” given her “exceptional teaching skills” and the impact of her testimony as an abuse survivor.

Pope Francis, the communique read, accepted her resignation “with deep appreciation for her work” on behalf of other survivors.

In his personal statement, Cardinal O’Malley said that when the commission gathers for their plenary meeting next month, they will discuss the concerns that Collins brought up.

He voiced his gratitude to her for her willingness to continue working with the commission, specifically “in the education of church leaders,” including upcoming courses for new bishops and departments of the Holy See.

In comments to CNA, Fr. Hans Zollner SJ, who heads the Center for Child Protection (CCP) at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and is a fellow of member of the commission, said he “can understand and I certainly respect” Collins’ frustration.

“We can only be grateful that she has been with the commission for almost three years now. I think the commission will certainly cherish all that she has done for us and with us,” he said, but noted that “what she describes as resistance within the Curia” was perhaps “too testing” for her.

The message that everyone needs to be on the same page regarding abuse prevention and best practices is something that “has not happened instantaneously, and, honestly, I do not expect it to happen, especially if you look around at the global reality represented in the Catholic Church.”

“(So) I can understand that she is frustrated about that,” he said, and pointed to different perspectives on the issue taken by various cultures throughout the world.

“Canonically we’re on the same page, but we are not on the same page in regards to attitudes” regarding “with how much energy, with how much determination we deal with cases of abuse that have happened, and with prevention,” he said.

“If you look into the Church worldwide there are differences that are culturally bound, and, in the wider sense, also politically bound. So this is what is difficult to bear for a survivor.”

Zollner acknowledged that part of this difference in approach is also found within Curia, as mentioned by Collins in her letter of resignation.

“There are, as you can expect in any organization and in any institution, there are pushbacks, there are setbacks,” he said, but clarified that “this is not the Curia” as a whole.

He said they have had invitations to speak at different dicasteries and “we have already received new invitations.” Collins herself “says in her statement that she will continue to work with us, so if she thought it was the whole Curia then she would not work in this effort to educate those in the Curia,” the priest added.

He said part of the “pushback” Collins referred to was likely coming from specific offices or “the persons in the offices.” He stressed that he has “no idea” as to the specific cases she is referring to, but it could be along these lines.

Regardless of Collins’ resignation, Zollner said that “we need to continue working steadily as we have done.”

“The voice of survivors at the moment is not represented by persons, but certainly by all of the members’ experiences,” he said, noting that all of the members, including O’Malley, have met with survivors on several occasions, “so it’s not that the voice of survivors is not present anymore.”

When asked if the commission was planning to look for more survivor members to join, Zollner said he doubts there will be any changes to the commission’s current composition before the end of their term at the close of 2017, but the topic will likely come up during their plenary meeting next month.

Even before Collins decided to resign, the commission had planned to discuss “the future form and composition of this commission” during the plenary, he said, adding that they will likely have a proposal by March 24, when the plenary begins.

He referred to the testimonies given Thursday by commission members Kathleen McCormack and Sheila Hollins before Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse saying the Pontifical commission is underfunded, having the resources of a diocese rather than an organization that operates throughout the globe.

While funding has “always” been a topic of discussion, Zollner said this will likely also be on the table for discussion during their upcoming plenary.

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The Pope imposes the ashes at the Basilica of St. Sabina: To experience Lent is to yearn for the breath of life our Father offers us amid the mire of our history

The Holy See Press Office • March 1, 2017

Vatican City — Today, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the Holy Father presided at the prayer meeting which, following the form of the Roman “stations,” took place in the Basilicas of St. Anselm and St. Sabina, both situated on the Aventine Hill.

The event began at 4.30 p.m. in St. Anselm; after prayer, the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops and the archbishops along with the Benedictine nuns of St. Anselm and the Dominican fathers of St. Sabina, and a number of faithful, made a penitential procession towards St. Sabina where the Holy Father presided at the celebration of the Eucharist and the rite of the blessing and imposition of the ashes.

The following is the full text of the Pope’s homily, pronounced following the Gospel reading:

“Return to me with all your heart … return to the Lord” (Jl 2:12, 13). The prophet Joel makes this plea to the people in the Lord’s name. No one should feel excluded: “Assemble the aged, gather the children, even infants at the breast, the bridegroom … and the bride” (v. 16). All the faithful people are summoned to come and worship their God, “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (v. 13).

We too want to take up this appeal; we want to return to the merciful heart of the Father. In this season of grace that begins today, we once again turn our eyes to his mercy. Lent is a path: it leads to the triumph of mercy over all that would crush us or reduce us to something unworthy of our dignity as God’s children. Lent is the road leading from slavery to freedom, from suffering to joy, from death to life. The mark of the ashes with which we set out reminds us of our origin: we were taken from the earth, we are made of dust. True, yet we are dust in the loving hands of God, who has breathed his spirit of life upon each one of us, and still wants to do so. He wants to keep giving us that breath of life that saves us from every other type of breath: the stifling asphyxia brought on by our selfishness, the stifling asphyxia generated by petty ambition and silent indifference – an asphyxia that smothers the spirit, narrows our horizons and slows the beating of our hearts. The breath of God’s life saves us from this asphyxia that dampens our faith, cools our charity and strangles every hope. To experience Lent is to yearn for this breath of life that our Father unceasingly offers us amid the mire of our history.

The breath of God’s life sets us free from the asphyxia that so often we fail to notice, or become so used to that it seems normal, even when its effects are felt. We think it is normal because we have grown so accustomed to breathing air in which hope has dissipated, the air of glumness and resignation, the stifling air of panic and hostility.

Lent is the time for saying no. No to the spiritual asphyxia born of the pollution caused by indifference, by thinking that other people’s lives are not my concern, and by every attempt to trivialize life, especially the lives of those whose flesh is burdened by so much superficiality. Lent means saying no to the toxic pollution of empty and meaningless words, of harsh and hasty criticism, of simplistic analyses that fail to grasp the complexity of problems, especially the problems of those who suffer the most. Lent is the time to say no to the asphyxia of a prayer that soothes our conscience, of an almsgiving that leaves us self-satisfied, of a fasting that makes us feel good. Lent is the time to say no to the asphyxia born of relationships that exclude, that try to find God while avoiding the wounds of Christ present in the wounds of his brothers and sisters: in a word, all those forms of spirituality that reduce the faith to a ghetto culture, a culture of exclusion.

Lent is a time for remembering. It is the time to reflect and ask ourselves what we would be if God had closed his doors to us. What would we be without his mercy that never tires of forgiving us and always gives us the chance to begin anew? Lent is the time to ask ourselves where we would be without the help of so many people who in a thousand quiet ways have stretched out their hands and in very concrete ways given us hope and enabled us to make a new beginning?

Lent is the time to start breathing again. It is the time to open our hearts to the breath of the One capable of turning our dust into humanity. It is not the time to rend our garments before the evil all around us, but instead to make room in our life for all the good we are able to do. It is a time to set aside everything that isolates us, encloses us and paralyzes us. Lent is a time of compassion, when, with the Psalmist, we can say: “Restore to us the joy of your salvation, sustain in us a willing spirit,” so that by our lives we may declare your praise (cf. Ps 51:12.15), and our dust – by the power of your breath of life - may become a “dust of love.”

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

In Rome, a new generation of Benedict XVI scholars is on the rise

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • March 2, 2017

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in 2010. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — The theological legacy of Benedict XVI continues, four years after his pontificate came to an end.

A group of graduate students has gathered around the Ratzinger Foundation to further their studies and discussions on the thought of the former Pope, cardinal, and theology professor.

Professor Pierluca Azzaro, a collaborator of the Ratzinger Foundation who translated Ratzinger’s complete works into Italian, told CNA these students reflect “the increasing interest toward Joseph Ratzinger’s theology.”

In one gathering, the students heard Father Stephan Horn, the coordinator of the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis, the circle of Joseph Ratzinger’s former students.

Azzaro summed up Fr. Horn’s remarks: “Joseph Ratzinger never wanted to assert himself and his ideas. He rather wanted to open people’s gaze to the Church.”

The priest stressed Benedict XVI’s own identity as a priest and his care for the communication of the faith.

Besides the gathering with Fr. Horn, the students have held an introductory meeting and have met with Father Federico Lombardi, president of the Ratzinger Foundation and former Vatican spokesperson.

Azzaro said that he first met the students at the Ratzinger Library, located in the heart of the Vatican, at the Campo Santo Teutonico.

The Ratzinger Foundation inaugurated the library in November 2015. Students or people interested in Joseph Ratzinger’s work can access to the library for their studies. Two days per week, Azzaro stays in the library and helps students in their research.

The group of students is composed mostly of doctoral students or of those seeking a post-graduation diploma from the universities of Rome.

As he came to know the students through their common interests, Azzaro got the idea to involve them in Ratzinger Foundation activities.

Professor Azzaro said that the spirit of their meetings is taken from German universities. Every two months, a professor gathers his doctoral students in a conversation during which every student has the chance to explain his or her work. The professor coordinates the discussion.

The group of students includes 11 doctoral students, two researchers and five students working on their graduation theses. The group is composed of three Italians, two students from India, and one student each from Albania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mexico, Croatia, and Vietnam.

Their theses deal with a variety of subjects: systematic theology, moral theology, and even sacred music and Joseph Ratzinger.

The supervisor for two of these theses is James Corkery, an Irish professor well known for his studies on Benedict XVI and liberation theology. He will give a lecture to the students in May.

The former Pope’s work continues to be published in new forms.

Azzaro noted that Benedict XVI’s book “Teaching and Learning the Love of God” has now been printed in a second edition in every language since it was published in mid-2016 for the 65th anniversary of Benedict’s ordination. The book collects his homilies on the priesthood.

The Ratzinger Foundation itself was launched in December 2007 on the initiative of some of Ratzinger’s former students. The foundation aims to promote theology “in the spirit of Joseph Ratzinger.” It funds scholarships for poor students around the world.

Since 2010, the foundation has awarded its Ratzinger Prize to noted theologians. Some compare the honor to the Nobel Prize of Theology.

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VATICAN NEWS

The Pope meets the clergy of his diocese in the Basilica of St. John Lateran

The Holy See Press Office • March 2, 2017

Vatican City — This morning in the Papal Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, the Holy Father met with the clergy of his diocese during the traditional encounter at the beginning of Lent. During the meeting, the Pope read his meditation on “The progress of faith in the life of the priest,” in which he lists a series of guidelines for following the path of continuing formation and maturity in faith, valid for the disciple, the missionary, the seminarian, the priest and the bishop. “Fundamentally it is the virtuous cycle referred to in the Aparecida Document that led to the coining of the phrase ‘missionary disciple,’” he said.

“To live, grow and persevere in faith, we must nurture it with the Word of God,” he continued. “We must ask the Lord to increase it. It is a faith that must work by means of charity, sustained by hope and rooted in the faith of the Church.”

Memory, as the Catechism tells us, is rooted in the faith of our forefathers, and making memory of past graces confers to our faith the solidity of the incarnation; it situates it within a history, the history of the faith of our fathers. We, “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” look at what they look at, and “look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.”

Hope is what opens faith to the surprises of God, “Our God is always greater than all that we can think or imagine of Him, than what belongs to Him and His way of acting in history. The opening up of hope brings freshness and vision to our faith.”

Discernment, finally, is what concretizes faith, making it work through love, what enables it to give credible witness. Discernment of the opportune moment (kairos), as the Holy Father observed, is “fundamentally rich in memory and hope: recalling with love, it directs its gaze with lucidity at what best guides the Promise. And what guides best is always in relation with the cross. With that dispossession of will, with that inner drama of ‘not as I will but as you will,’ that places me in the hands of the Father and ensures that it is He Who guides my life.”

The second part of the Pope’s address focused on the figure of St. Peter, “sifted like wheat” by the Lord, so that with his tested faith he confirmed all of us who though we have not seen Christ, love Him. “The faith of Simon Peter has a special nature: it is a faith that was subject to trials, and with it he had the mission of confirming and consolidating the faith of his brothers, our faith.” Simon Peter’s faith has moments of greatness, such as when he confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, but these moments are followed almost immediately by others of great error, of extreme fragility and total confusion, such as when he tries to distance Jesus from the cross, when he began to sink in the lake and his three denials of Jesus.

Temptation is always present in the life of Simon Peter. He teaches us, in the first person, how faith progresses through confession and allowing oneself to be tested. “And also showing that sin itself enters into the progress of faith. Peter has committed the worst sin – denying the Lord – and they made him Pope nonetheless. It is important for a priest to know how to position his own temptations and his own sins in the scope of that prayer of Jesus that our faith not fail us, but that it instead mature and serve to strengthen the faith of others entrusted to him.

“What helps in the growth of faith is keeping together one’s own sin, the desire for the good of others, the help we receive and what we must give. It does not serve to divide: it has no value to feel perfect when we carry out our ministry and, when we sin, justify ourselves with the fact that we are like all the others. We must unite these things: if we strengthen the faith of others, we do so as sinners. And when we sin, we confess for what we are, priests, underlining that we have a responsibility towards people; we are not like everyone else. These two things unite well if we place the people before us: our sheep, the poorest especially. It is what Jesus does when He asks Simon Peter if he loves Him, saying nothing of the pain or the joy that this love causes him, He makes him look to his brothers in this way: feed my sheep, confirm the faith of your brothers.”

“Our elders said to us that faith grows in acts of faith. Simon Peter is the icon of the man whom the Lord Jesus makes accomplish acts of faith in every moment. When Simon Peter understands this ‘dynamic’ of the Lord, this pedagogy of his, he does not miss the opportunity to discern, in every moment, what act of faith he must do in His Lord. And in this he does not err. When Jesus acts as his master, giving him the name Peter, Simon lets Him do so. His ‘let it be thus’ is silent, like that of St. Joseph, and will be shown to be real throughout his life. When the Lord praises and humiliates him, Simon Peter does not look at himself, but is careful to learn the lesson of what comes from the Father and what comes from the devil. When the Lord rebukes him because he has aggrandized himself, he lets himself be corrected. When the Lord shows him, playfully, that he must not be dishonest with the tax collectors, he goes to fish with the coin. When the Lord humiliates him and tells him in advance that he will deny Him, he is sincere in saying what he feels, as he will be in bitterly weeping and in letting himself be forgiven.”

“There are many different moments in his life, yet a single lesson: that of the Lord Who confirms his faith so that he will confirm that of His people.” The Pope concluded, “Let us too ask Peter to confirm us in faith, so that we can confirm that of our brothers.”

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis’ latest prayer video spotlights Christian persecution

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • March 2, 2017

Screenshot from Pope Francis’ prayer video for March of 2017. (YouTube)

Vatican City — In his prayer video for March, Pope Francis prays for persecuted Christians, asking for the prayers and aid of the whole Church toward those mistreated on the basis of their beliefs.

“How many people are being persecuted because of their faith, forced to abandon their homes, their places of worship, their lands, their loved ones!” the Pope says in the video.

Released March 2, the video shows people from different countries being photographed as if arrested, then holding up signs reading “Protestant,” “Catholic,” and “Orthodox.”

“They are persecuted and killed because they are Christians,” the Pope says. “Those who persecute them make no distinction between the religious communities to which they belong.”

The video continues with real footage of destroyed churches in the Middle East, followed by clips of adults and children praying in a church, at home, and at a school, and people packing up food at a food bank, as the Pope asks: “how many of you pray for persecuted Christians?”

“Do it with me, that they may be supported by the prayers and material help of all the Churches and communities.”

An initiative of the Jesuit-run global prayer network Apostleship of Prayer, the Pope’s prayer videos are filmed in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and mark the first time the Roman Pontiff’s monthly prayer intentions have been featured on video.

The Apostleship of Prayer, which produces the monthly videos on the Pope’s intentions, was founded by Jesuit seminarians in France in 1884 to encourage Christians to serve God and others through prayer, particularly for the needs of the Church.

Since the late 1800s, the organization has received a monthly, “universal” intention from the Pope. In 1929, an additional missionary intention was added by the Holy Father, aimed at the faithful in particular.

Starting in January, rather than including a missionary intention, Pope Francis has elected to have only one prepared prayer intention – the universal intention featured in the prayer video – and will add a second intention focused on an urgent or immediate need if one arises.

According to a report released in January, global persecution of Christians has risen for the fourth year in a row and is on a “rapid rise” in Asia.

The advocacy group Open Doors UK warned in its annual report on Christian persecution, released Jan. 12, that “Persecution levels have been rising rapidly across Asia and the Indian subcontinent, driven by extreme religious nationalism which is often tacitly condoned, and sometimes actively encouraged, by local and national governments.”

Overall persecution of Christians has risen from last year, Open Doors UK noted, stating that “Christians are being killed for their faith in more countries than before.”

“Christians living in these countries need the support of their family, the body of Christ, to help them stand firm in their faith,” they stated.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis seeks silence, reflection on annual retreat

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • March 3, 2017

Pope Francis visits the grotto of St. Peter’s Basilica to pray at the tombs of his predecessors on Nov. 2, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis and members of the Roman Curia leave Sunday to begin their annual five-day retreat on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius; since 2014, held at the Casa Divin Maestro retreat house.

Casa Divin Maestro, nestled away in the woods on Lake Albano, is just a short distance from the Papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo in the town of Ariccia, some 16 miles outside of Rome.

One view from the retreat house encompasses the lake and the town of Castel Gandolfo; even the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica is visible in the distance.

The peace and serenity of the location reflects the mood Pope Francis wants to set for the entire retreat, Fr. Olinto Crespi told CNA.

“We know that the Pope does not rotate much: room, chapel, dining room. He speaks very little, even at the table. There is always a background of music and he himself stays silent,” he said. It is like “the real exercises of the school of St. Ignatius.”

Head of the household at Casa Divin Maestro, Fr. Crespi is one of five Pauline priests acting as “hosts” of the Holy Father and the Curia during the retreat. They are all “new” he said, so it will be the first time for all of them hosting the Holy Father.

The practice of the Pope going on retreat with the heads of Vatican dicasteries each Lent began some 80 years ago under Pope Paul XI. The spiritual exercises were held in the Vatican, but beginning in Lent 2014, Pope Francis chose to hold the retreat outside of Rome.

“Doing the exercises in the Vatican, at the time the meditation was given, each prelate went into his office. Therefore the Jesuit Pope wanted the exercises to be made in an atmosphere of recollection and prayer and they will do only the exercises,” Fr. Crespi said.

The five-day long retreat will include preaching on the Gospel of Matthew by Franciscan Fr. Giulio Michelini, selected by the Pope to preach for the occasion.

A typical day during the retreat begins with Mass followed by breakfast, Fr. Crespi said. They will then return to the chapel for the preaching by Fr. Michelini. After lunch they return to the chapel.

While many other groups that hold events at the house will gather in the auditorium, Fr. Crespi said that Pope Francis “wants to be alone in the chapel.”

“And this says further the climate that Francis wants to create,” he said. Even the Pauline Fathers of the retreat house “are asked not to disturb.”

The house has a good telephone line and good Wi-Fi, Fr. Crespi said, so there may be some time for cardinals to do a little work during the week if needed, but “the Pope himself sees very little. He is very reserved.”

Before Francis began going to Casa Divin Maestro for his annual spiritual exercises, the house was not unknown in the Vatican or to cardinals. Fr. Crespi believes that either the Pope heard of the place through word of mouth or perhaps he had even been there himself while still a cardinal.

“Even the Swiss Guards were here for a retreat,” he said. They would go on runs in the woods in the early mornings, which, he joked, “certainly the cardinals do not do.”

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WORLD NEWS

Syrian priest: After liberation of Aleppo, living conditions still dire

by CNA/EWTN News • February 24, 2017

Syria. (IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Aleppo, Syria — Nearly three months after the Syrian Army liberated the city of Aleppo from ISIS control, the local population is facing harsh living conditions in a city left in ruins after nearly six years of fighting.

In an interview with the French aid organization L'Oeuvre D'Orient, Father Ziad Hilal who carries out his pastoral ministry in Aleppo, said that the cost of living in Syria has gotten more expensive.

“Previously, the dollar used to be worth 50 Syrian pounds, today it is equivalent to more than 520 Syrian pounds. Ten times more! The people of Aleppo lack money to live on, few people have a job.”

“They need food, fuel, they have to pay tuition for the children, university students, for milk for the children. They have to pay for electricity generators for each family,” Fr. Hilal said.

“Several thousand people are there in the Aleppo region. They are often without shelter, or housed in old factories. They need everything. Others are close to Idleb (southwest of Aleppo) on the border with Turkey, in Damascus, in Lebanon. Others have taken refuge in Europe. There are also some who have remained in Aleppo by going over to the west side,” Fr. Hilal said.

The Jesuit priest explained that after the evacuation of the rebels from the eastern part of the city, “the situation has gotten a little better, but a lot of rebels still remain in the surrounding villages. There are exchanges of gunfire and shelling between Aleppo and the outskirts.”

“East Aleppo is almost destroyed. There is a military presence but the people can’t return there,” he said.

“Despite that, people are going out on the streets, they can go shopping, the children are calmer. On the other hand, neither electricity nor water have been restored to the city. After the fighting, we had ten days with the water supply cut off which was very trying for everyone. That’s why people aren’t coming back right now, even if some of them want to. Even more so because it’s been a rough winter this year, we’ve had two snowfalls,” Fr. Hilal said.

“The Church must now come alongside the refugees, the displaced, those marginalized. The people of Aleppo come not just to pray but also to get help.”

He stressed that this situation “is not easy work for the priests, the men and women religious, but we’re taking this on.”

For example, the six Catholic churches in Aleppo work together to run an initiative called “the milk place.”

Each month they distribute milk to about 2600 children in Aleppo. The churches also distribute food baskets, hygiene supplies, and pay for tuition and housing for families.

Fr. Hilal said that the reconstruction of Aleppo is premature “as long as there is no peace in the country.” However, he said that they are studying with a number of organizations the possibility of rebuilding some churches and destroyed houses.

“The Apostolic Nuncio in Syria, Cardinal Mario Zenari and Mgr. Dal Toso of Cor Unum, came three weeks ago to evaluate the situation.”

“On the other hand, we can’t expect electricity to be restored here for at least a year because the network was completely destroyed by the fighting. It would take millions and millions of euros to rebuild it,” he said. “Who’s going to pay for that? You have to invest in the city. You have to have hope.”

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WORLD NEWS

Are Mideast youth losing the virtue of hope?

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • February 25, 2017

(Nicole Mason/Unspash)

Beirut, Lebanon — Syriac-Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan has said that the number of youth wanting to leave the Middle East is a major concern, and stressed that if local Christians are going to stay, political agendas must be set aside.

“We hope that peace, reconciliation and stability will be realized as soon as possible,” the patriarch said Feb. 23. The problem is that there are geopolitical agendas that don’t involve us.”

Their greatest concern is “how to convince our people to return to their homelands,” he said, adding that “this goes above all for the youth … our youth are losing the virtue of hope.”

Head of the Syriac-Catholic Church of Antioch, Younan, who is based in Lebanon, spoke at the presentation of the project “Stand Together,” a digital ecumenical platform aimed at promoting religious freedom and drawing attention to persecuted Christians, particularly those from the Middle East.

The event was held at the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See. Among the partners sponsoring the initiative were Communion and Liberation, Rome Reports and the ISCOM association.

In comments to journalists, Patriarch Younan said that if Christians are to stay in the Middle East, “a welcoming, peaceful environment must be created for them so that they can return.”

If they have gone abroad, “it means that they are threatened, persecuted or are truly in straights for everything: they no longer have anything.”

In the summer of 2014 some 100,000 people were forced to flee when ISIS stormed their homes and villages, demanding that Christians either convert to Islam, pay a hefty tax or face death.

According to a recent U.N. report, between January 2014 and October 2015, at least 18,802 civilians were killed in Iraq. About half of them died in Baghdad province. Another 36,000 were injured.

Another 3.2 million people were internally displaced, include about 1 million school-aged children. In addition, millions more have fled to surrounding countries and are currently living as refugees.

Younan said that when he visited Christians displaced from Mosul and the Nineveh Plain after they first fled, he spoke with the Kurdish president, who told him that within a matter of months or even weeks, his people would be back in their villages with the Kurdish Peshmerga army to protect them.

“Two and a half years have passed” since that conversation, the patriarch said, explaining that during a November visit to the Christian villages in Iraq recently liberated from ISIS, “half of the houses were torched, the churches burned.”

Faced with the situation, Younan said his people ask “how can we return if there is no stability, without a strong governing presence?” The burning of their houses and churches, he said, was as if ISIS were telling Christians “you won’t ever come back, we don’t want you.”

The patriarch sympathized with their concerns, admitting that if that he himself had a family with children, “I would not return.”

Another big problem for those who have fled to other countries, such as Lebanon, is the fact that frequently they are not given refugee status, he said, explaining that these people know they will “not ever be accepted as Lebanese,” and so try to move abroad to Australia, Canada, the United States and Sweden.

When asked what can be done to help Christians to stay rather than moving abroad, the patriarch said the world has to avoid letting individual countries go there “to negotiate in order to have greater advantages in trade.”

Local Christians will never be able to be protagonists of change in their home countries because they are such a small minority. Pointing to Egypt as an example, he noted that only 8-10 million of the 80 million people living there are Coptic Christians, and mosques frequently control the elections.

“We try to live in peace with the others but we need stronger interventions on the part of the family of nations to say to these peoples: ‘Live in the 21st century, not the 7th,’” he said. “There must be a unified approach.”

Younan also commented on Pope Francis’ frequent declaration that “no religion is terrorist.” When asked if he agreed this declaration also applies to Islam, the patriarch said that “it’s they who have to prove this, it’s not up to me or the Pope to say it.”

In general “relations with Islamic religious heads are good,” he said, but added that for him, this is only at the “politico-diplomatic level, to not say that there is fanaticism.”

“We meet, we speak in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Syria, but the important thing is that we can’t do more, we are oppressed by a fundamentalism radical Islam that receives funding,” he said, voicing his hope “that Europe reawakens and finds an adequate solution.”

Referring to Pope Francis’ May 23, 2016, meeting with Imam Ahmed al Tayyeb of the prestigious Al-Azhar monsque at the Vatican, Younan called the move “a diplomatic step,” but said he would have representatives at a special Feb. 24 seminar at the Al-Azhar University on countering religious justification for violence.

He said that representatives from his Church have been to the university – widely considered one of the most authoritative voices in Sunni Islam – several times, and that with the joint-seminar with the Vatican they “want to make the world see that they are open.”

However, he also said there are still problems in the educational system of the university, including lessons in which youth use verses of the Koran that endorse violence “as they are.”

“Some are tolerant, others much less,” he said, noting that the two men who killed French priest Jacques Hamel in July 2016, didn’t know the priest, but murdered him “because they were formed like this.”

“It’s there that we need to intervene,” he said, explaining that while the seminar is a step, “Azhar must reform itself.”

When it comes to Vatican diplomacy, the patriarch said they are already doing a lot to intervene in the crisis in the Middle East, “but it’s not enough.”

He recalled that during the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family he urged the Vatican to speak with officials in the U.S. government, in the U.N. and with the foreign ministers in China, Russia and the E.U., telling them that the ancient Christian communities in the region “run the risk of disappearing.”

The primary message that needs to be conveyed is that “you must do something and enough with your own interests please,” he said, but added that so far, “nothing has been done.”

When asked if there was talk of Pope Francis visiting Kurdistan, Younan said that the proposal has been made by several bishops, but nothing is confirmed yet.

However, Younan said that while “will be very happy to have the visit of the Holy Father” if he does go, what they really want are “the facts that can reassure our people.”

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WORLD NEWS

Loving your neighbor means voting wisely, Northern Ireland bishops say

by CNA/EWTN News • February 27, 2017

(Corgarashu via Shutterstock)

Armagh, Northern Ireland — Ahead of Northern Ireland’s assembly elections, the region’s Catholic bishops have reflected on situation facing voters and the importance of voting with well-formed consciences.

“Far from separating us from concern about society and its development, the Gospel commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself commits us ‘to work for the good of all people and of each person, because we are all really responsible for all,’” said the bishops, citing the Compendium on the Social Doctrine of the Church.

The Feb. 22 message was signed by Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, and other leading Catholic bishops.

Northern Ireland’s Assembly elections will take place March 2. The vote for the region’s legislative body follows political controversies regarding overspending on a renewable energy heating program, which called into question the power sharing agreement between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein.

Deputy First Minister, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, resigned in protest Jan. 10 over allegations that First Minister Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party mishandled the project. The resignation triggered the elections.

In this climate, the bishops said, “the premature collapse of our political institutions is a serious matter for all of us.” Despite progress towards peace and prosperity in the 20 years since the pivotal Good Friday Agreement, they saw a return of “bitter language and tone of conflict” to political discourse.

They noted the sacrifices political leaders make, but also reflected on politicians’ duties “to help shape a healthy, positive and peaceful society in which there are ample, quality jobs, decent housing, comprehensive healthcare, and first-class education for all.”

Northern Ireland’s bishops encouraged voters to reflect on Catholic social teaching in their decisions.

They stressed the need to build a culture that loves and cares for others, especially the most vulnerable. They cited Pope Francis’ call for a “revolution of tenderness” that replaces hardened hearts with “a sensitivity and active concern to protect all and care for all.”

Noting pressures to introduce legal abortion in Northern Ireland, the bishops rejected a “throwaway culture” that treats human beings as disposable. They said the region’s laws should equally value the life of both mother and unborn child, and not “diminish our humanity by destroying another human life.” They warned against efforts to portray legal abortion as “limited,” as the procedure always intentionally takes the life of an innocent.

“Central to the good news that the Church proclaims is that the life of every person is sacred and inviolable, irrespective of the stage or state of that life,” they said. This is a fundamental principle that every other human right presumes.

The bishops lamented “disturbing levels” of child poverty, with almost 110,000 children in Northern Ireland living below the poverty line. The region has some of the highest levels of the numbers of working poor and the disabled, in addition to other features of income inequality.

The bishops said voters should prioritize “the systemic and comprehensive eradication” of childhood poverty and the provision of other social needs.

They advocated for a constructive political culture based on “a shared commitment to the common good” instead of the constitutional issues that have traditionally played a key role in Northern Irish politics.

Many Catholics have found it increasingly difficult to find a political party for which they can vote in good conscience. The bishops said that in the absence of clear alternatives, Catholics should “maximize the good” and limit any potential harm through their election choices.

Northern Ireland’s bishops stressed the importance of recognizing marriage as the union of one man and one woman. To recognize other relationships equally undercuts the importance of the biological bond and natural ties between parents and children.

They cited Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, which said same-sex unions are in no way similar to marriage and are not analogous to God’s plan for marriage and the family.

The bishops encouraged a welcoming attitude towards refugees who flee dangers including persecution, war, and natural disaster. They advocated an increase in the number of refugees resettled from Syria to Northern Ireland.

Similarly, the bishops voiced concern for the persecution of Christians abroad, as well as “subtle forms of exclusion and discrimination” against Christians in western democracies. They reported that local Christians have described a chilling effect in the region’s law and public policy that excludes church and faith groups from public funding or caricatures them in public debate because of their beliefs regarding marriage or their pro-life stand.

They noted the failure of the Northern Ireland Assembly to protect the right of a Catholic adoption agency to act in accord with its religion and voiced hope that this could change in the future.

They also rejected some views of “integrated” education that suggest Catholic schools do not contribute to reconciliation, tolerance, and understanding. In fact, the bishops contended, these schools have a Christian ethos that is “inclusive, welcoming and tolerant.” Some approaches to education reject parents’ rights to ensure a faith-based education for their children, and even cloak “a deep-seated hostility to the Catholic faith itself.”

Recommendations for voters also drew on Pope Francis’ encyclical on care for creation, Laudato si’, points out the challenges of environmental degradation and climate change. Northern Ireland’s bishops said caring for creation is good in itself and something owed to future generations.

They praised Northern Ireland’s leading role in the development of renewable energy technologies, and suggested the next Assembly should focus on further improving this aspect of the economy, while also encouraging protection for natural landscapes, fisheries, and other resources.

Further, the bishops noted the dangers of human trafficking and the “disturbing levels” of homelessness.

They noted the publication of an important report on historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland and acknowledged that both Church and society failed to protect the vulnerable.

“We apologize unreservedly to all those who suffered from their experience in Church-run institutions, and to their loved ones,” the bishops said, acknowledging the inadequacy of apology while urging the report’s recommendations against abuse be rapidly established.

The bishops concluded their statement with ten questions drawn from Catholic social teaching that voters should ask candidates.

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WORLD NEWS

South Sudanese bishops call for food aid, peace negotiations

by CNA/EWTN News • February 28, 2017

Catholics at a camp for internally displaced persons near Malakal, South Sudan on Jan. 13, 2016. (U.N. Photo/J.C. McIlwaine via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Juba, South Sudan — The bishops of South Sudan issued a call last Thursday for dialogue between the warring factions in the country, and international humanitarian aid to alleviate the famine affecting so many in their nation.

“Those who have the ability to make changes for the good of our people have not taken heed of our previous pastoral messages … we intend to meet face to face not only with the President but with the vice presidents, ministers, members of parliament, opposition leaders and politicians, military officers from all sides, and anyone else who we believe has the power to change our country for the better,” the South Sudanese bishops said in a Feb. 23 pastoral message to the faithful and people of South Sudan.

“We intend to meet with them not once, but again and again, for as long as is necessary, with the message that we need to see action, not just dialogue for the sake of dialogue.”

In their meetings with government and opposition leaders, the bishops will take as a model the importunate widow of Christ’s parable, they emphasized.

South Sudan has been embroiled in civil war since December 2013, when violence erupted in the capital city of Juba and quickly spread throughout the country. The war has is being fought between forces loyal to the country’s president and those loyal to its former vice president, and is largely drawn along ethnic lines. Peace agreements have been short-lived, with violence quickly resuming.

The bishops’ message came at the conclusion of a three-day plenary assembly together with the apostolic nuncio to South Sudan. They said they received “disturbing reports from all seven of our dioceses spanning the whole country.”

“The civil war, which we have frequently described as having no moral justification whatsoever, continues. Despite our calls to all parties, factions and individuals to STOP THE WAR, nevertheless killing, raping, looting, displacement, attacks on churches and destruction of property continue all over the country. In some towns there is calm, but the absence of gunfire does not mean peace has come. In other towns, civilians are effectively trapped inside the town due to insecurity on the surrounding roads.”

The bishops are particularly concerned that alongside fighting between government and opposition forces, “much of the violence is being perpetrated by government and opposition forces against civilians.”

“There seems to be a perception that people in certain locations or from certain ethnic groups are with the other side, and thus they are targeted by armed forces. They are killed, raped, tortured, burned, beaten, looted, harassed, detained, displaced from their homes and prevented from harvesting their crops … Even when they have fled to our churches or to UN camps for protection, they are still harassed by security forces,” they lamented.

They pointed to the famine facing more than 100,000 South Sudanese, saying “there is no doubt” it is “man-made, due to insecurity and poor economic management.”

“Hunger, in turn, creates insecurity, in a vicious circle in which the hungry man, especially if he has a gun, may resort to looting to feed himself and his family. Millions of our people are affected, with large numbers displaced from their homes and many fleeing to neighboring countries, where they are facing appalling hardships in refugee camps.”

Millions have become refugees or are internally displaced, and some 40 percent of the population is dependent on international aid.

The bishops expressed concern that some government officials seem to be suspicious of the Church.

“In some areas the Church has been able to mediate local peace deals, but these can easily be undermined if government officials are removed and replaced with hardliners who do not welcome Church efforts for peace. Priests, sisters and other personnel have been harassed.”

They detailed that Catholic radio programs have been removed, and churches burnt down. In May 2016, a Slovak nun, Sister Veronika Terézia Racková, was killed by militants; a physician, she had been working at a hospital in Yei.

The bishops also noted that on Feb. 14 “security officers attempted to close down our Catholic bookshop. They harassed our personnel and confiscated several books … We hear people saying that ‘the Church is against the government.’”

“We wish to inform all of you that the Church is not for or against anyone, neither the government nor the opposition,” the bishops stressed. “We are FOR all good things - peace, justice, love, forgiveness, reconciliation, dialogue, the rule of law, good governance – and we are AGAINST evil - violence, killing, rape, torture, looting, corruption, arbitrary detention, tribalism, discrimination, oppression – regardless of where they are and who is practising them. We are ready to dialogue with and between the government and the opposition at any time.”

The bishops called on the international community to act to alleviate the country’s humanitarian crisis, and said they will continue to make their people’s extreme hardships better known across the world.

Speaking to the people of South Sudan, the bishops said: “We call upon you to remain spiritually strong, and to exercise restraint, tolerance, forgiveness and love. Work for justice and peace; reject violence and revenge. We are with you … We wish to give you hope that you are not abandoned and that we are working to resolve the situation at many different levels.”

The bishops concluded by announcing that Pope Francis hopes to visit their country later this year.

“The Holy Father is deeply concerned about the sufferings of the people of South Sudan. You are already in his prayers, but his coming here would be a concrete symbol of his fatherly concern and his solidarity with your suffering. It would draw the attention of the world to the situation here. We call upon you to begin a programme of prayer for this visit to go ahead. Let us use the coming months fruitfully to begin the transformation of our nation.”

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WORLD NEWS

Local bishop: ‘The Madonna has not appeared in Medjugorje’

by CNA/EWTN News • February 28, 2017

The pilgrimage church in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Miropink via Shutterstock)

Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina — The bishop of the local Church where Medjugorje is located reiterated on Sunday his long-held belief that the alleged Marian apparitions at the site are false.

“The position of this Curia throughout this period has been clear and resolute: these are not true apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar-Duvno wrote in a Feb. 26 statement on his diocesan website.

He referred to investigations into the authenticity of the supposed apparitions that began with the diocese in 1982, and which have continued to the present time at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The alleged apparitions originally began June 24, 1981, when six children in Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, began to experience phenomena which they have claimed to be apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

According to these six “seers,” the apparitions contained a message of peace for the world, a call to conversion, prayer and fasting, as well as certain secrets surrounding events to be fulfilled in the future.

These apparitions are said to have continued almost daily since their first occurrence, with three of the original six children – who are now young adults – continuing to receive apparitions every afternoon because not all of the “secrets” intended for them have been revealed.

Since their beginning, the alleged apparitions have been a source of both controversy and conversion, with many flocking to the city for pilgrimage and prayer, and some claiming to have experienced miracles at the site, while many others claim the visions are non-credible.

The bishop holds the supposed apparitions to be nothing but a manipulation of the visionaries and the priests who work with them.

Bishop Peric, who was ordained a priest of the diocese which he now heads in 1969, emphasized his devotion to Mary, and his incredulity regarding the alleged apparitions in Medjugorje.

“During the course of my episcopal ministry, first as coadjutor (1992/93) and later as ordinary, with preaching and the publication of books, as well as with more than fifty Marian and Mariological articles, I have tried to present the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the incarnation and the work of the Son of God and Her Son, and her intercession for the whole Church, of which she is mother according to grace. At the same time I have highlighted, as was done by my predecessor of happy memory, Bishop Pavao Zanic, the non-authenticity of the apparitions, which by this time have reached the number of 47,000.”

The statement delves extensively in what Bishop Radic considers the ambiguousness of the apparition.

“The female figure who supposedly appeared in Medjugorje behaves in a manner completely different from the real Virgin Mother of God in the apparitions currently recognized as authentic by the Church: usually she does not speak first, she laughs in a strange way, before some questions she disappears and appears again, she obeys the ‘visionaries’ and the local pastor who make her come down from the hill into the church even against her will. She doesn’t know with certainty how many more times she will appear, she allows some of those present to step on her veil extended on the ground, and to touch her dress and her body. This is not the Virgin of the Gospels.”

The bishop also takes issue with the visionaries’ request for a “visible sign” from the Virgin and the promise from one the visionaries that there will be a sign at the top of the hill in the form of water.

“After almost four decades there is no sign whatsoever, nor water, just fantasies,” the bishop wrote.

The statement also makes detailed reference to the inconsistencies among the various visionaries regarding the purpose of the apparitions, as well as their duration.

“All the ‘visionaries’ but one agreed that the Virgin would appear for three more days … but she appeared to have changed her mind and still ‘appears’ for 37 years,” Bishop Radic said.

The statement mentions other irregularities, such as a strange trembling in the apparition, a false anniversary of the beginning of the apparition, inconsistencies in whether the apparition has a child, inexplicable silences, strange messages, discrepancies in dress, nervousness rather than peace among the seers, scandalous touching of the apparition, and intentional manipulation of the apparition.

“Considering everything that has been examined and studied by this diocesan Curia, including the investigation of the first seven days of the alleged apparitions, we can affirm in peace: the Madonna has not appeared in Medjugorje! This is the truth that we sustain, and we believe in the word of Jesus, according to which the truth will set us free.”

In April 1991, the bishops of the former Yugoslavia determined that “on the basis of the research that has been done, it is not possible to state that there were apparitions or supernatural revelations.”

On the basis of those findings the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith directed in October 2013 that clerics and the faithful “are not permitted to participate in meetings, conferences or public celebrations during which the credibility of such ‘apparitions’ would be taken for granted.”

In January 2014, a Vatican commission completed an investigation into the supposed apparitions’ doctrinal and disciplinary aspects, and was to have submitted its findings to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Pope Francis visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in June 2015, but declined to stop at Medjugorje during his trip.

Earlier this month, Francis appointed Archbishop Henryk Hoser of Warszawa-Praga as a delegate of the Holy See to look into the pastoral situation at Medjugorje. The Polish archbishop is to “suggest possible pastoral initiatives for the future” after acquiring a deeper knowledge of the local pastoral situation.

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WORLD NEWS

The Filipino Catholic Church is resisting the brutal drug war

by CNA/EWTN News • February 28, 2017

(Srdjan Randjelovic via Shutterstock)

Manila, Philippines — Caught in the throes of a brutal war on drugs, the people of the Philippines are increasingly looking to the Catholic Church to provide refuge and resistance.

Since last summer, more than 7,000 people, usually suspected drug addicts or dealers, have been killed by law enforcement officers in President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs. The attacks are often carried out in hit-and-run nighttime shootings by gunmen on motorcycles.

As the death toll mounts, more Catholic leaders and laypeople are taking action.

This week, The Guardian reported that many Catholic priests have been offering their churches as sanctuaries for people on government “kill lists,” or to those who believe they will be targeted. The Catholic Church connects these people to an underground network of people who provide refuge and assistance, such as finding employment.

One priest, Father Gilbert Billena, told The Guardian that at first he favored the war on drugs, and even voted for President Duterte, “but I didn’t expect this outcome,” he said. Now he offers sanctuary to those in danger.

Still, some priests and Catholics have been afraid to speak out or offer assistance, fearing that they will become the next targets. Many Filipinos, the majority of whom are Catholic, also support the drug war, believing that it will make their neighborhoods safer.

Leaders in the Catholic Church have been increasingly outspoken against the violent drug war, calling it a “reign of terror” in a recent pastoral letter that was read at all the Sunday Masses in the country on February 5. The letter, from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, denounced the killings and offered prayers and solidarity to the families of those who have been killed.

Brother Jun Santiago, with the religious order the Redemptorists, has been resisting the drug war in another way. Most nights, when the most brutal attacks of the drug war take place, he is out on the streets with journalists, capturing the scenes on his camera.

“I’m trying to get out of the brutality,” he said in a recent interview with Quartz. “I want to capture the stench, the smell of the crime scene. The night is so powerful. The darkness is so powerful. Right now people are sleeping and they don’t know what’s happening.”

In December, his photos made headlines after they were blown up and displayed outside of the National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Manila, also known as the Baclaran Church, where Br. Jun’s apostolate is based.

“It was a unique way of exposing reality,” Father Carlos Ronquillo, the rector of the Baclaran, told Quartz. “The power of images is something that I think can be harnessed if we as a church want to engage people to think deeply about what’s happening. Not only through words. Not only through preaching.”

Besides photography, the clergy and faithful of Baclaran Church also offer sanctuary and assistance to those whose lives are threatened by the drug wars. Through a program called the extra-judicial killing (EJK) response program, the church provides financial support, legal assistance, rehab programs and other aid to victims and families of the war on drugs. They also follow up with families of the victims photographed by Br. Jun.

“The concrete actions we are doing are really non-political,” Dennis Febre, who works for the program, told Quartz. “We respect [Duterte] as the president of the country, but at the same time the government needs to respect human rights.”

President Duterte and the Catholic leadership of the country have frequently clashed, with Duterte attacking the Church whenever they have spoken out against his leadership or his war on drugs.

In their recent pastoral letter, the Catholic bishops of the country called on the government to address the root causes of the drug problem, including poverty, family breakdown, and corruption. They said the government should address these problems through anti-poverty efforts to provide employment and living wages; family strengthening efforts; and reform in the country’s police forces, judicial systems and politics, rather than wholesale killings.

“To destroy one’s own life and the life of another, is a grave sin and does evil to society. The use of drugs is a sign that a person no longer values his own life, and endangers the lives of others. We must all work together to solve the drug problem and work for the rehabilitation of drug addicts,” they said.

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WORLD NEWS

Why Catholic teaching on marriage matters for society

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • March 2, 2017

(Ivan Galashchuk via Shutterstock)

Trieste, Italy — As Catholics continue to debate pastoral and doctrinal approaches to marriage, they should remember that the Catholic approach to marriage and the Eucharist has a direct impact on what the Church teaches about society as a whole, an expert on the Church’s social teaching has said.

“Protecting marriage as a social institution has protected all of society and its order,” Stefano Fontana, director of the Cardinal Van Thuan Observatory, said in the Feb. 28 edition of its newsletter.

The Church’s protection of marriage would suffer if adultery changes “from an intrinsic evil to a situation to be interpreted case by case,” if this interpretation is left simply to individual conscience and if the divorced-and-remarried are administered the Eucharist, Fontana said.

“A diminished theological consideration of the Eucharist would also imply worrying consequences in terms of the Catholic commitment in the public arena,” he said.

The Cardinal Van Thuan International Observatory for the Social Doctrine of the Church provides information about the Church’s social teaching and its relevance to society. It is named for Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, a Vietnamese bishop who spent years in prison before being liberated. He went on to serve in the Roman Curia, where he was named president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

For Fontana, Catholic social thought is based on the Eucharist.

“The Eucharist is the real foundation of the communion among men,” he said.

He reasoned that admitting the divorced-and-remarried to the Eucharist “would provoke many difficulties in the Catholic commitment to defend and promote family and to embody the principles of social teaching in society.”

This would be challenging even if the doctrine were left untouched, if access to Communion were granted according to the “case by case” rationale. If doctrine were not formally touched, Fontana said, “doctrine would be embodied anyway in a pastoral approach detached from it.”

According to Fontana, there is a concrete link between the Church’s sacramental life and “the Catholic commitment to politics.” Christians’ commitment to build a world according to God’s plan for the salvation of men has “a theological motivation and grace in the Eucharistic sacrament and in all the sacraments.”

Marriage is one of these sacraments and the basis of society. Without marriage, society becomes “a group of individual relations variously interconnected with no order.”

Fontana noted that marriage comes from the natural order, but nature cannot be self-sustained without grace.

Only in marriage between man and woman is there a basis of complementarity. This is the foundation of any other social relation intended to follow a natural order, and not “any subjective wish.”

Based on this rationale, Fontana draws a clear conclusion: “If we eliminate marriage, little is left of society. And the sacrament of marriage is important also from the political and social perspective.”

Fontana emphasized that this is the reason why the Church has protected marriage by considering adulterous acts as intrinsic evils.

His comments come amid serious debate about pastoral practice in light of Pope Francis’ 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia.

The Cardinal Van Thuan Observatory is based in Trieste, the seat of Archbishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, a former secretary of the Pontifical Council Justice and Peace. It works with many bishops conferences. Its work is given consideration by many in the Roman Curia.

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WORLD NEWS

Egypt’s Christians are being driven out – Will the world notice?

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • March 2, 2017

Coptic church. (Oleg Shishkov via Shutterstock)

Cairo, Egypt — A spike in attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt, spurred by a video threat from ISIS, has drawn the prayers and concern of advocates, who are urging global leaders to take notice.

“Americans need to know that one of the oldest Christian communities in the world is under threat from being completely pushed out of Egypt,” which would be disastrous both for Egypt and for Christianity itself, Philippe Nassif, executive director of the advocacy group In Defense of Christians, told CNA.

“We pray for those suffering terrorism and violence, for God to grant them peace and reassurance that they are not forgotten by Him or by all those who not only witness their plight but strive to advocate for them,” His Grace Bishop Angaelos, general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said Tuesday.

There have been 40 reported murders of Christians in Egypt in the last three months, Bishop Angaelos said in a recent statement, “culminating in the most recent murders of seven Christians in Al-Arish,” the largest city in the country’s Sinai region.

Twenty-nine were killed in a bombing at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo in December. The Islamic State took credit for the bombing and released a video threatening to target Christian “crusaders” in Egypt.

“Oh crusaders in Egypt, this attack that struck you in your temple is just the first with many more to come, God willing,” they said.

Since the video’s release, more Christians have been killed in Egypt and hundreds have reportedly fled their homes in the Sinai region in the north of the country after several murders there, the group In Defense of Christians claimed.

Many of these Sinai residents are “very poor,” Nassif said, and have fled to churches, Coptic charities, or to relatives’ homes.

Bishop Angaelos insisted that “the one common denominator is that these innocent children, women and men have had their lives brutally and tragically ended for no other reason except that they are Christians,” noting that written threats have been left in villages “urging Christians to ‘leave or die.’”

The current Egyptian government has condemned the attacks and in the past has pledged to protect embattled Christian minorities in the country, but Christians still suffer most in rural areas outside the capital of Cairo where the national government has lesser oversight.

“The security situation in Sinai itself has just deteriorated dramatically in the past year,” Nassif said, in the area with a “large Christian presence.”

“The ISIS affiliates in the Sinai are basically using a really poor economic situation, and they’re taking advantage of a very difficult geographic area” to target Christians, he said, many of whom have been killed “in lone wolf attacks” intended to instill fear in the rest of the Christian population and drive them out.

“Their goal is to really create real deep anxiety among all the Christians in Egypt, and to sow this sort of narrative that they were part of this sort of counter-coup against the Muslim Brotherhood,” he continued.

The Muslim Brotherhood had governed Egypt before they were ousted in a 2013 military coup. General Abdul Fattah el-Sisi became president months later after elections were held, and Christians have been blamed by insurgents as aiding his rise to power.

The international community must take notice of this persecution, which has “gone largely unnoticed,” Bishop Angaelos stressed.

“In our fast moving world that is filled with so much news of tragedy, war and death, it is all too easy for atrocities to become ‘incidents,’ and for individuals suffering them to become mere statistics, very quickly pushed aside by the next item of news,” he stated.

“In the eyes of the perpetrators they are a viable target, and in the eyes of the world they become a regrettable phenomenon; yet what is actually left behind are traumatized individuals, families and communities that have lost loved ones, living the reality of themselves being targeted.”

In Defense of Christians is asking the U.S. government to advocate that Egypt “prioritize the protection of the Coptic community.”

Catholics must not only pray for the victims of these attacks, but also for those in the government charged with protecting them, and for the perpetrators, Bishop Angaelos insisted.

“We also pray for those in positions of authority and influence that they may be advocates for all those entrusted into their care. Finally, and not of least importance we pray for those who perpetrate these crimes, that they once again become conscious of the true value of every life that appears to be dispensable in their eyes.”

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WORLD NEWS

Europe will be ‘adrift’ if it loses Christian roots, faith leaders warn

by CNA/EWTN News • March 3, 2017

(Catholic News Agency/Unsplash)

Paris, France — Catholic and Orthodox leaders in a joint statement urged Europeans to remember their Christian roots, and to return to them during this time of “widespread concern for (the) future” of Europe.

“… our societies are turning to their spiritual resources, to draw out means of responding to the situation that Europe is experiencing, and to trace the path ahead for a future full of hope and greater confidence,” the leaders said.

During the 5th European Catholic-Orthodox Forum, 12 delegates of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) met in Paris with 12 representatives of the Orthodox Churches in Europe last month to discuss the theme, “Europe in fear of the threat from fundamentalist terrorism, and the value of human person and religious freedom.’’

While governments guarantee the “fundamental rights of the human person,” many forces are currently at work that seek to marginalize or eliminate religion from the public square, the leaders said.

“We believe that Europe needs more than ever the breath of faith in Christ and the hope that it provides,” they said. “Christianity is a marker of identity that does not deny others their human rights, but seeks to cooperate with all for the realization of the common good.”

They focused in particular on the effects that terrorism and extreme secularization have on young people. Often, they noted, radicalized terrorists are distraught young people who see violence as an outlet, and as a way to exact revenge on non-believers and “infidels” whom they’ve been taught to see as “other.”

“Youth, however, is the time of hope and of building the future. We invite all young people to commit themselves to building a fraternal world that excludes no one,” they said.

“We do not hesitate to recall that our Churches themselves have undertaken just such a work to gain a deeper understanding of the word of God in the Scriptures not according to ‘the letter that kills’ but according to ‘the Spirit that gives life’ (2 Corinthians 3:6).”

They also noted the effect that some concepts of secularism are having on the young people of Europe, which have led “entire generations to a form of religious illiteracy which deprives citizens of the basic knowledge that is necessary for them to understand their own cultural heritage, as well as the cultural heritage of other traditions that are inspired by religion.”

Ignoring the religious heritage of Europe often leads, even if unintentionally, to discrimination and persecution within societies that claim to be open, they said.

“Cultural relativism, devoid of truth or moral good, cannot be established as dogma, because this actually leads to division between human beings.”

Addressing the large waves of migrants that Europe has experienced in the past few years, the leaders described welcoming the stranger as a Christian duty, and urged them to remember Abraham, whom Christians, Jews and Muslims have in common as a father in faith. They added that migrants in turn have a duty to peacefully integrate into their host countries, which must be united by a foundation that respects the religious and human rights of all people.

“Pluralistic societies are a real challenge for contemporary mankind, especially in Europe. Our long Christian tradition has taught us that the Gospel of Jesus has been able – and is still able – to bring men and women of every origin together in one single people of faith,” they said.

Ultimately, they said, in order for peace to prevail in Europe, the continent must be willing to engage in a dialogue with people of different faiths, and to return to its Christian roots, which provided Europe with “its universalist vision, its notion of the dignity of the human person and its moral principles.”

“If you are cut off from your roots, you will come adrift,” they said. “The emptiness within especially exposes the youngest people to the worst temptations. We firmly repeat that the Christian faith reconciles all the personal and social dimensions that are found in the human person.”

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U.S. NEWS

U.S. bishops denounce rise in anti-Semitic attacks

by CNA/EWTN News • February 27, 2017

(Tupungato via Shutterstock)

Washington D.C. — The U.S. bishops are responding with solidarity and concern for the Jewish community, following a surge in anti-Semitic actions in recent weeks.

“On behalf of the Bishops and people of the Catholic Church, as the Chairman of the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, I want to express our deep sympathy, solidarity, and support to our Jewish brothers and sisters,” said Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanksi of Springfield in a press release.

“I wish to offer our deepest concern, as well as our unequivocal rejection of these hateful actions,” Bishop Rozanski continued.

On Feb. 20, more than 150 headstones were damaged in University City, Missouri at the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery. Just a week later, over 100 headstones were found similarly knocked over at the Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery in Philadelphia.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia was “deeply saddened” by the vandalism at Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery, and called for “prayerful solidarity with the families of those whose final resting places have been disturbed.”

“As a community, we must speak out to condemn inflammatory messages and actions that serve only to divide, stigmatize, and incite prejudice,” the archbishop continued. “We must continually and loudly reject attempts to alienate and persecute the members of any religious tradition. Rather, as members of diverse faith and ethnic communities throughout the region, we must stand up for one another and improve the quality of life for everyone by building bridges of trust and understanding.”

No suspects have been named in either case, but the damage has reached hundreds of thousands of dollars.

More than 50 bomb threats targeting the Jewish community have also been reported across the country since the beginning of the year, including scares at Jewish community centers in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Milwaukee.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, violent anti-Semitic actions soared in 2015, and continued into 2016 with increased online anti-Semitic harassment.

Leaders and officials have denounced the surge in anti-Semitic actions, including words from President Donald Trump last week, who said the recent attacks on the Jewish community were “horrible and are a painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.”

Mayor Jim Kenney of Philadelphia also spoke out, saying that “hate is not permissible in Philadelphia,” and that the perpetrators “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” according to the New York Times.

Echoing these sentiments, Bishop Rozanski promised that “the Catholic Church stands in love with the Jewish community in the current face of anti-Semitism.”

Quoting Pope Francis, he pointed to the dangers of the anti-Semitic attacks, linking them to acts of dehumanization, which is most notably seen in hatred towards neighbors.

However, the Springfield bishop also voiced hope that these attacks could be an opportunity for neighborly love to shine brightly.

“But here we also find an opportunity: that the light of the love of neighbor may illuminate the Earth with its stunning brightness like a lightning bolt in the dark; that it may wake us up and let true humanity burst through with authentic resistance, resilience and persistence.”

“I encourage everyone to remember their neighbor, to find the opportunities to be lights of resistance, resilience, and persistence during these contentious times, especially with all our brothers and sisters of faith.”

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U.S. NEWS

How assisted suicide discriminates against the poor and disabled

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • February 28, 2017

(Andy Dean Photography via Shutterstock)

Washington, D.C. — While physician-assisted suicide is promoted as empowering terminally-ill patients, it could result in the poor being coerced to take their lives, experts warned at an event this week.

“When you deal with the issue of poverty, this immediately rises up – care is expensive, assisted suicide is not,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said at a Monday panel on physician-assisted suicide at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

The elderly sick may also be taken advantage of, the senator added. They may be told by their families that they are a “burden” on others, or they may simply feel that way. Then “this becomes a guilt issue” as they consider requesting a lethal prescription, he said.

Physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in the District of Columbia and in six states – Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, and Colorado via state laws, and in Montana through a state supreme court ruling.

Some 24 states are considering legalizing it, according to the group Death with Dignity that promotes these laws around the country. These so-called “Death with Dignity laws” allow patients diagnosed with a terminal illness with six months or less to live to request a lethal prescription from a doctor.

These laws have “otherwise been rejected by the people,” noted Ryan Anderson, the William E. Simon senior research fellow in American principles and public policy at the Heritage Foundation. The “vast majority of the states have considered” the laws already and rejected them, he added.

Critics have also warned about loopholes in the laws that provide room for dangerous abuses to take place.

Patients may “doctor-shop” until they find a physician who approves their request for a lethal prescription, even though the doctor may barely know their medical history. Or one witness for the patient’s decision to request a prescription may be a financial beneficiary of their death.

However, groups like Compassion and Choices and Death with Dignity are pushing for these laws to be introduced in state legislatures. And if legalized, physician-assisted suicide could prove especially dangerous to vulnerable populations like the poor, the elderly, and the disabled whose health care costs are seen by some as burdensome.

“Already because so many coverage decisions are based on financial considerations, people with disabilities have difficulty accessing the care we need,” Lindsay Baran, a policy analyst at The National Council on Independent Living, said in a written statement read at Monday’s panel.

In Oregon, she said, “we have several stories from people who have had doctor-recommended treatments denied only to be offered the assisted suicide drug as one of their covered alternatives” by insurance providers.

Physician-assisted suicide can indeed be “promoted” as a “cost-effective treatment,” Dr. G. Kevin Donovan, M.D. M.A., professor at Georgetown University Medical Center, warned at the panel.

Modern palliative care is capable of limiting the physical pain of terminally-ill patients, he added, answering one of the chief arguments of assisted suicide proponents about patients suffering pain for months on end as they prepare to die.

Palliative care is still “underrepresented in the practice of medicine right now,” Donovan said, yet “with additional funding” it could become more commonplace.

“Will palliative care be made more accessible when physician-assisted suicide is a legal option? Those who provide funding for health care know that death is always cost-effective,” he cautioned.

In California, Catholic opponents of assisted suicide were “told repeatedly by legislators” that “this will never be a publicly-funded benefit,” said Kathleen Buckley Domingo, associate director of life ministry for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Yet $2 million was set aside for these drugs by the state of California while 13 million people on the state’s Medicare fund are not covered for palliative care, she noted.

“Especially in our immigrant communities … especially in our poor inner city communities, there’s a huge disparity in the kind of health care that people are receiving,” she said. “They’re on MediCal, and this is now the cheapest and easiest option.”

The drugs are cheap and also easily available, she said, noting that they can be shipped directly to people’s homes.

One woman, Stephanie Packer in Orange, Calif., reported being denied chemotherapy treatment by her insurer while being offered cheap coverage for a lethal prescription, in a documentary produced by the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network.

The elderly sick are also vulnerable to such laws because they may be told by their families that they are a “burden” on others or they may simply feel that way.

In fact, in 2014 the State of Washington reported that of those who died in the state’s Death With Dignity program, almost 60 percent said they were concerned about being a “burden on family, friends/caregivers.”

“We have privileged assisted suicide over good medical care,” Donovan said, so much so that in California, by law if a hospitalized psychiatric patient has a terminal medical diagnosis, they “have to be released” if they request a lethal prescription.

“This is somebody who isn’t entitled to make decisions for themselves. That’s why they’re in a psychiatric hospital,” Donovan said.

Ultimately, assisted suicide laws are not about empowerment but rather about special interests, the panel said.

Legalizing it “doesn’t really give patients any new rights or protections,” Donovan insisted, as suicide is currently “legal in all 50 states,” but “it’s just not legal to help someone or promote it.” Rather, “it’s a physician-protection law,” he said.

The laws are supported by “very few people” who tend to be more well-educated and wealthier, but “those who are put at risk” are many, especially the elderly and those in lower-income brackets.

“I think those are usually called special interest bills,” he said.

The bills are also based on a “false reasoning” of autonomy, he added.

“If these bills wanted to honor choice, free choice,” he continued, “then how do we justify restricting this to people who are going to be dead in 6 months?” Why not those with nine or 12 month diagnoses, he asked, or the chronically ill or emotionally ill.

Even though proponents of assisted suicide argue that it saves patients from enduring months of painful suffering at the end of their lives, Donovan explained that many physicians may offer incomplete or even incorrect terminal diagnoses.

Two acts physicians do not perform well, he argued, are to “prognosticate the end of someone’s life” and “overdose our patients, lethally.”

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U.S. NEWS

Congress can do more for religious liberty abroad, scorecard finds

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • March 1, 2017

The U.S. Capitol building. (Vgm8383 via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — The United States Congress can do more to prioritize international religious freedom, and ensuring that bills come up for a vote is key to that, an advocacy organization has found in its new scorecard for Senators and Representatives.

At a time when the three-fourths of the world’s population lives in countries where freedom of religion is significantly restricted, members of U.S. Congress must be held accountable on how much importance they give to protecting and promoting this freedom abroad, The 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative maintained.

“Congress can do more to prioritize international religious freedom,” the Wilberforce Initiative concluded from its scorecard for the 114th session of Congress.

The card was announced last year as a way to hold members of Congress accountable for their activity – or lack thereof – in promoting religious freedom abroad.

“Most of the major international religious freedom initiatives over the past few decades came from Congress,” stated Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who earned the top score among members of the U.S. House.

The top scorer in the Senate was Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

The Wilberforce Initiative announced that “collectively, more people are persecuted for their faith now than at any other time in the world’s history. This includes more than 100 million people killed under repressive secularist and communist regimes in the 20th century.”

“Federal legislators can help our nation lead in the protection and promotion of religious freedom by publicizing various issues and cases, by passing bills in support of religious freedom, and, in some instances, by exerting pressure in support of religious freedom. It is critical that legislators use their influence to support those who are persecuted for their faith.”

So the Wilberforce Initiative’s scorecard tracks legislators’ votes on bills and their sponsorships or co-sponsorships of legislation, as well as their membership in religious freedom caucuses like the International Religious Freedom Caucus, the House Religious Minorities in the Middle East Caucus, and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

Most bills are not ultimately voted on, the Wilberforce Initiative maintained, so they make sure to keep track of members’ sponsorship of bills in an effort to bring up a vote on an important religious freedom issue. And many items, especially in the Senate, have not yet been voted on and provide “ample opportunity” for members to prove their commitment to religious freedom in 2017.

What were some of the most pressing matters of religious freedom in 2016?

Two of the biggest score items, according to the Wilberforce Initiative, were H. Con. Res. 75, a congressional resolution stating that the Islamic State was committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria, which passed the House in March; and the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, which passed both houses in December.

Some of the other items included the Combatting European Anti-Semitism Act of 2016 and Senate resolutions calling for sanctions on Vietnam’s human rights abusers, and condemning “the Government of Iran’s state-sponsored persecution of its Baha’i minority.”

House resolutions included a call for the U.S. to support a Nineveh Plain province for its inhabitants who were persecuted by the Islamic State and a “call for the global repeal of blasphemy laws.”

Most of the highly-recognized leaders on the issue are members of the House, as “the Senate has been less engaged in promoting religious freedom than the House,” the Wilberforce Initiative noted.

The Wilberforce Initiative also noted that low scores “do not necessarily indicate disagreement with international religious freedom, but reflect that it was not a high priority for that legislator. Conversely, high scores demonstrate that a given legislator actively supported international religious freedom legislation and has made support of international religious freedom a priority.”

It also stated that a scorecard “is an imperfect tool” and that “there are are additional factors that cannot be reflected,” such as quiet diplomacy and casework.

Of legislators who earned an “A,” 56 percent were Republicans and 44 percent were Democrats. Those with “B” and “C” ratings were also majority Republican. But among legislators who scored a “D,” 62 percent were Republicans and 38 percent were Democrats. No legislators earned an “F.”

Marco Rubio was the only Senator to receive an “A+,” while 13 Representatives received the score: Robert Dold (R-Ill.), Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), James McGovern (D-Mass.), Joseph Pitts (R-Penn.), Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), David Trott (R-Mich.), and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.).

Aside from Rubio, 2016’s presidential contenders did not fare so well on the list. Sens Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) got “C” marks, and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) received “D” ratings.

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After Trump’s address to Congress, pro-lifers stress protections in health care

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • March 1, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump. (Christopher Halloran via Shutterstock)

Washington, D.C. — After President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, pro-life leaders wished he had spoken more to their concerns of federal abortion funding in health care.

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, lauded Trump for his emphasis on “the inherent dignity of the human person” in expressing concern for “persecuted religious minorities in the Middle East” and the need to care for military veterans.

“We are concerned, however, that we have not heard about pro-life protections in the healthcare replace plan from the White House and we would have liked to have heard that addressed last night,” Mancini said.

President Donald Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday covered many topics, including border security, the “drug epidemic,” inner cities, aging infrastructure, and school choice, but he left out any specific mention of abortion or pro-life policies.

Congress is currently considering plans to repeal and replace the current health care law, but pro-life groups are concerned that problematic parts of the law – federal funding of abortions – may remain intact in the replacement plan.

These groups insist that the nation’s largest abortion provider Planned Parenthood be stripped of Medicaid funding as part of any repeal-and-replace plan – something House Speaker Paul Ryan promised would happen — but add that protections against federal funding of abortion coverage must also be extended in the replacement plan.

“The courts have ruled that abortion is health care,” the vice president of government affairs of the March for Life Tom McClusky explained to CNA.

“The American people, I believe, disagree with that, but until the courts are changed and the tax code is changed, any health care legislation, to be pro-life, needs to specifically address the pro-life issue,” he said.

One large concern of pro-life groups is that under the Affordable Care Act, federal subsidies were quite possibly funding abortion coverage in health plans offered on state exchanges.

When the Affordable Care Act was finally passed in 2010 and signed into law, the last Democrats to hold out in opposition changed their vote when President Obama promised an executive order forbidding funding of abortion coverage under the law. Pro-life leaders insisted that the promise would not have sufficient authority to stop such funding.

A 2014 Government Accountability Office report had found that the protocol set up to ensure separate billing of abortion coverage in health plans offered on the state exchanges was not being followed. This allowed for the possibility that federal subsidies for health coverage were directly funding abortion coverage.

Also, in several states, every plan offered on the exchanges included abortion coverage, an outrage to pro-lifers shopping for health plans that did not cover abortions.

McClusky explained other problematic areas of abortion funding in health care, including the use of refundable tax credits to purchase abortion coverage or plans with abortion coverage, and the need to extend abortion funding prohibitions to any increase in funding of community health centers.

Another concern he had was that “pro-life language” in a replacement bill could get stripped away by the Senate Parliamentarian.

However, something must be done to directly address these concerns, he insisted, because to do nothing would ensure the status quo.

“There’s no way that pro-life groups could oppose a bill that expands abortion in the U.S., meaning Obamacare, because the Democrats pass it – and then sit idly by, because the Republicans are passing this one it’s okay,” he insisted.

Mancini praised other pro-life actions by President Trump from his first 40 days in office, including his nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and his reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy, which forbids the U.S. from funding international non-government organizations that perform or promote abortions.

“We look forward to the continued commitment to pro-life priorities and urge Congress to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act and the Pain Capable 5-month abortion ban, and for the President to sign both into law,” she added.

Elsewhere in his Monday speech, Trump mentioned school choice, calling education “the civil rights issue of our time.”

“I am calling upon members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African-American and Latino children,” he stated.

“These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious, or homeschool that is right for them.”

School choice is an issue that affects many Catholic families, as many parents may wish to send their child to Catholic school or homeschool them for religious reasons.

For instance, in January, Jason Calvi of EWTN News Nightly reported on Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., a Catholic school where “half of the 380 kids receive a voucher” to attend through a D.C. scholarship program.

Speaking for homeschoolers, William A. Estrada, director of federal relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association, said he was “very pleased” that President Trump mentioned school choice and said that “it’s a measure of how successful home schooling is and how it has evolved.”

Two million students are homeschooled in the U.S. according to Department of Education estimates, he said.

Estrada insisted that families who choose to homeschool their children must be free to do so, untethered from federal funding which can carry hidden mandates on education. For that reason, the association opposes the bill H.R. 610 in Congress which would give vouchers to homeschooling families.

Also, with the Federal Higher Education Act homeschooled students who complete high school nevertheless are classified as those without diplomas. Certain state college systems in New York and California do not accept homeschooled students, he noted. Such students should be allowed to receive diplomas for completing all their high school courses, he insisted.

“That’s actually a real-world example of where Congress could act to improve freedom for homeschool families and homeschool graduates,” he said.

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FEATURES

Evangelizing through the good

by Bishop Robert Barron • February 21, 2017

Anyone even vaguely acquainted with my work knows that I advocate vigorous argument on behalf of religious truth. I have long called for a revival in what is classically known as apologetics, the defense of the claims of faith against skeptical opponents. And I have repeatedly weighed in against a dumbed-down Catholicism. Also, I have, for many years, emphasized the importance of beauty in service of evangelization. The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, the Sainte Chapelle, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, and the Cathedral of Chartres all have an extraordinary convincing power, in many ways surpassing that of formal arguments. So I affirm the path of truth and the path of beauty. But I also recommend, as a means of propagating the faith, the third of the transcendentals, namely, the good. Moral rectitude, the concrete living out of the Christian way, especially when it is done in an heroic manner, can move even the most hardened unbeliever to faith, and the truth of this principle has been proven again and again over the centuries.

In the earliest days of the Christian movement, when both Jews and Greeks looked upon the nascent faith as either scandalous or irrational, it was the moral goodness of the followers of Jesus that brought many to belief. The Church father Tertullian conveyed the wondering pagan reaction to the early Church in his famous adage: “How these Christians love one another!” At a time when the exposure of malformed infants was commonplace, when the poor and the sick were often left to their own devices, and when murderous revenge was a matter of course, the early Christians cared for unwanted babies, gave succor to the sick and the dying, and endeavored to forgive the persecutors of the faith. And this goodness extended, not simply to their own brothers and sisters, but, astonishingly, to outsiders and to enemies. This peculiarly excessive form of moral decency convinced many people that something strange was afoot among these disciples of Jesus, something splendid and rare. It compelled them to take a deeper look.

During the cultural and political chaos following the collapse of the Roman Empire, certain spiritual athletes took to the caves, deserts, and hills in order to live a radical form of the Christian life. From these early ascetics, monasticism emerged, a spiritual movement that led, in time, to the re-civilization of Europe. What so many found fascinating was the sheer intensity of the monks’ commitment, their embrace of poverty, and their blithe trust in divine providence. Once again, it was the living out of the Gospel ideal that proved convincing. Something similar unfolded in the thirteenth century, a time of significant corruption in the Church, especially among the clergy. Francis, Dominic, and their confreres inaugurated the mendicant orders, which is just a fancy way of saying the begging orders. The trust, simplicity, service to the poor, and moral innocence of the Dominicans and Franciscans produced a revolution in the Church and effectively re-evangelized armies of Christians who had grown slack and indifferent in their faith.

And we find the same dynamic in our time. John Paul II was the second most powerful evangelist of the twentieth century, but unquestionably the first was a woman who never wrote a major work of theology or apologetics, who never engaged skeptics in public debate, and who never produced a beautiful work of religious art. I’m speaking, of course, of St. Teresa of Kolkata. No one in the last one hundred years propagated the Christian faith more effectively than a simple nun who lived in utter poverty and who dedicated herself to the service of the most neglected people in our society.

There is a wonderful story told of a young man named Gregory, who came to the great Origen of Alexandria in order to learn the fundamentals of Christian doctrine. Origen said to him, “First come and share the life of our community and then you will understand our dogma.” The youthful Gregory took that advice, came in time to embrace the Christian faith in its fullness, and is now known to history as St. Gregory the Wonderworker. Something of the same impulse lay behind Gerard Manley Hopkins’s word to a confrere who was struggling to accept the truths of Christianity. The Jesuit poet did not instruct his colleague to read a book or consult an argument but rather, “Give alms.” The living of the Christian thing has persuasive power.

We have been passing through one of the darkest chapters in recent Church history. The clerical sex abuse scandals have chased countless people away from Catholicism, and a secularist tide continues to rise, especially among the young. My mentor, the late, great Cardinal George, surveying this scene, used to say, “I’m looking for the orders; I’m looking for the movements.” He meant, I think, that in times of crisis, the Holy Spirit tends to raise up men and women outstanding in holiness who endeavor to live out the Gospel in a radical and public way. Once again, I’m convinced that, at this moment, we need good arguments, but I’m even more convinced that we need saints.

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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Is the Catholic Church anti-woman? Two feminist scholars debate

by Maggie Maslak (CNA/EWTN News) • February 26, 2017

(Catholic News Agency/Unsplash)

Boulder, CO — For Erika Bachiochi, the Catholic Church has been able to offer a genuine pro-woman theology which not only safeguards and protects her stance as a feminist, but also enhances her ability to be strong in all aspects of her life.

Dr. Mary Anne Case would like to differ. She believes that while Catholic feminism exists, the institutional Catholic Church – namely the Vatican and Magisterium – is overtly anti-woman.

These two legal scholars from varied backgrounds met on the common stage of feminism at the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought’s 10th annual Great Debate in Boulder, Colo. on Feb. 23. The two women presented dissenting arguments for both sides of the spectrum on Catholic feminism and tackled the question: is the Church anti-woman?

Dr. Case, a law professor at the University of Chicago, answered in the affirmative, while Erika Bachiochi, a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, answered in the negative.

“In my lifetime, the Church that had made me a feminist betrayed me,” Dr. Case said in her opening statements.

“I think the Church has let us down, and I think the Church has let us down relatively recently. The early church was very much not anti-woman. The gospels are not anti-woman,” she continued, saying the Catholic Church of the past was not anti-feminist.

However, Dr. Case argued that when the Church definitively said “no” to priestly ordination for women in the 1970s, they closed the door to half of the population of the Church.

“The problem with the Catholic Church is that all authority flows from ordination. The Magisterium – as it need not be – is composed of men and cardinals,” Dr. Case said, suggesting that women should at least be allowed in the decision-making that flows from the hierarchy of the Magisterium.

The law professor spoke at the debate wearing a button from the 1970s on her shirt that said “If you aren’t going to ordain women, stop baptizing them.”

This, she said, is a representation of the economy of salvation: if women cannot be priests because they do not image Christ, how can women become saved in the eyes of the Church, since salvation can only arrive through the extent that Christ images us?

Dr. Case also pointed to some of the Catholic Church’s greatest thinkers, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed that “women are necessarily in a state of subjection,” and that females are “misbegotten males.” She also highlighted that the Sistine Chapel’s Creation of Man, is indeed that of a man – and does not include Eve.

Within the last 50 years, Dr. Case believes that the Church shifted away from the idea that men and women are equal when it introduced the idea of complementarity, particularly seen in Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, saying that placing characteristics or roles on each gender negates their equality.

“There should be no fixed notions concerning the role of males and females,” Dr. Case suggested, and pointed to St. Augustine’s notion that the soul does not have a sex.

In response, Bachiochi said that “papal teaching has rejected the essentialist view that woman and men possess mutually exclusive fixed character traits.” Sexuality does not take away from the equality of men and women, she said, but simply makes them “distinctive.”

While Bachiochi was once a pro-choice, socialist feminist, she has since shifted her beliefs towards the teachings and beliefs of Catholicism. She agreed with Dr. Case on a number of different levels, saying that “there should be more women’s voices in the Church.”

However, the most notable differences between the two scholars was on the point of clerics and sexual teachings. While Dr. Case argued that women can and should be ordained Catholic priests, Bachiochi said the notion reeked of clericalism.

“I have no less authority than a priest as a baptized Christian,” Bachiochi said.

“A priest has authority to represent Christ in a sacramental way, and I have the authority to represent Christ in every other area of my life,” she said, adding that the focus on female priests can also take away from the good work that professional and religious women are already doing within the Church.

However, Dr. Case pointed out that men in the Catholic Church “have all of the opportunities, and then some. How can the church not be anti-women … if women are not part of the decision making?”

To this, Bachiochi agreed that more female voices are needed within the Church, but did point to the Pontifical Council of the Laity, which seeks female voices, and other prominent church leaders such as Mary Glendon, who serves on various Vatican boards, and Sr. Prudence Allen, R.S.M., who is a philosopher appointed to the Vatican’s International Theological Commission.

Bachiochi went on to find fundamental differences with the modern idea of feminism, which claims that abortion and contraception rights are the capstone to the whole movement. She has found in her own experience that these same notions can also be the downfall to women.

Instead, Bachiochi suggested that Catholic feminism indeed exists, and is protected by the Church, precisely because of its teachings about sexual and reproductive rights, particularly Natural Family Planning.

“I believe that Catholic Christianity, and in particular the controversial sexual teachings of the Catholic Church, are deeply pro-woman. It was precisely these teachings on monogamy, divorce, birth control, abortion and infanticide that attracted women in the first century into the Christian fold,” Bachiochi stated.

“As a feminist, NFP does something that contraception neglects … it gets men to think about the reality,” she noted, saying that through NFP, less pressure is put on the woman to take the pill or get an IUD, and more emphasis is placed on men and their responsibility in the sexual act.

She also mentioned that the Catholic Church in particular has always been pro-woman, as seen through its recognition of female saints, political leaders, and scholars, and its production of educational systems and healthcare centered around the good of women.

Bachiochi additionally noted that “Mary, the Mother of God, is heralded by the Catholic Church as the single greatest human that has ever lived.”

“The greatest among us are not the clerics, but the saints.”

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Is the Benedict Option the only option?

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • February 26, 2017

(Catholic News Agency/Unsplash)

Denver, CO — When Josh and Laura Martin, both converts to the faith, moved their growing family of six from the city of Dallas, Texas to the hills of Oklahoma, they didn’t necessarily know that they were participating in the “Benedict Option.”

“We initially just wanted to get out of the city and raise our family in a more protected, slower-paced environment,” Josh told CNA.

“With all the families out here searching for the same thing, we gravitated towards it and made the leap.”

They moved to be close to the Benedictine Abbey at Clear Creek, Oklahoma, where dozens of other families from around the country have congregated over the course of the past 15 years or so.

Dubious of the direction in which the morals of modern society seem to be heading, they came in search of a slower pace and a more liturgical life with a community of other like-minded Catholics. Many villagers attend daily morning Mass with the monks before 7 a.m., and the traditional Latin Mass on Sundays. The monastery serves as the center of the community, the monks as a real-life example of religious life to the youngsters.

Journalist Rod Dreher is credited with dubbing this phenomenon “The Benedict Option,” a term inspired by the last paragraph of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s book, After Virtue, in which he wrote about waiting “for another - doubtless very different - St. Benedict.” This new Benedict would help construct “local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages.”

Just as Benedict was looking to escape the crumbling and increasingly anti-Christian culture of Rome, families like the Martins are looking to the hills of Oklahoma to escape today’s secular society, where Christian values are seen as increasingly foreign or even hostile to the status quo. They are disturbed by trends such as the legalization of gay marriage, of the increasing popularity of gender ideology, or the shrinking of religious freedom.

In his new book, “The Benedict Option,” Dreher calls the new societal trends and values “The Flood,” and argues that Christians can no longer fight the flood - they must figure out a way to ride it out and preserve their faith for generations to come.

“… American Christians are going to have to come to terms with the brute fact that we live in a culture, one in which our beliefs make increasingly little sense. We speak a language that the world more and more either cannot hear or finds offensive to its ears,” he writes.

“The idea is that serious Christian conservatives could no longer live business-as-usual lives in America, that we have to develop creative, communal solutions to help us hold on to our faith and our values in a world growing ever more hostile to them.”

Communities like the one surrounding Clear Creek Abbey seem to be the most obvious examples of the Benedict Option, their lifestyles most resembling the villages that grew up around the Benedictine monasteries in Europe centuries ago. However, Dreher does expand the definition to include other forms of Christian communities, like those that form around classical schools, such as St. Jerome’s school in Hyattsville, Maryland. The phenomenon is also occurring not just among Catholics, but among Protestant and Orthodox Christians as well.

Mike Lawless, his wife Kathy, and their children first learned about the community surrounding Clear Creek when they were living in San Diego. They were part of a homeschool group, and lived on the edge of town, as far away from the city hustle and bustle as possible.

But when a friend told them about the families moving near Clear Creek Abbey, the whole family of six (going on seven) loved the idea of the novelty and adventure of moving to the hills of Oklahoma, so they packed up and made the leap.

“What we were looking for was a healthier culture,” Mike told CNA. He wanted to raise his children in an environment that wasn’t heavily influenced by the prevailing secular culture.

When Josh and Laura Martin moved in 2007, they were expecting their fifth child. They too were looking for a better place to raise their family.

It was rough going at first. The land by Clear Creek Abbey is not great for farming. Josh tried to make the leap from management positions to manual labor, but it ultimately didn’t work.

“I just fell flat on my face, burned up all my money, learned a lot of good valuable lessons I wouldn’t trade for anything,” Josh said. “After 4-5 years we realized that you have to do something that you know how to do.”

He’s now in a management position for a medical device company in the area, and things have been a lot better. Similarly, Mike Lawless tried to make living off the land a priority. But after his attempts at farming and cattle were heading in a “direction that wasn’t positive,” he had to scale back his agricultural projects and return to the work he knew, which was mechanical engineering.

“That romantic vision was shattered there pretty quick when we moved,” Mike said.

Most families in the area do not subsist off the land alone, but there are few options for work in town. The Institute for Excellence in Writing, directed by Clear Creek villager Andrew Pudewa, employs some people in the area. Others, like Mike, do much of their work remotely. Still others make the hour commute to and from Tulsa for work.

Despite the sacrifices, the geographic retreat is an important aspect of the Benedict Option for many of its adherents.

“Being in a rural area, where you’re not maybe as distracted by the noise and goings on of the city, there’s a little bit more quiet, and that silence gives you the opportunity to appreciate (the liturgical season) more,” Laura Martin told CNA.

“There’s fewer distractions, and that is helpful I think in focusing on trying to regain some of the culture that we’ve lost or the connections that we’ve missed in our busy lives, so that element has been really helpful for us to grow in our faith.”

But one of the main critiques of the Benedict Option has stemmed from this idea of separation - both culturally and geographically. How can the faithful evangelize, as they are called to do, if they embed in communities of likeminded people in remote countryside hills?

“It’s not an insular community,” Josh insists, “but it is a sort of retreat because the cultural forces are so overwhelming that it’s difficult for me to imagine … trying to raise my family in that environment, so somewhere in that mix is the Benedict Option.”

The Martins are aware of the dangers of becoming too insular. They send two of their kids to public school, and they let their kids play soccer on a local league, which has made them a lot of local, non-Catholic friends. But not everyone in the village agrees on this, or other subjects. The use of T.V. and internet varies widely among families, as do opinions about whether women should wear anything other than skirts (and of what length those skirts should be), or how much contact is maintained with the outside world.

The Martins were careful to specify they spoke only for themselves.

“Out here it’s very dangerous to speak for the community, because … there’s not one unified approach, there are many dissimilarities,” Josh said.

But what there is, is a strong sense of community and a desire to live out the Catholic faith. Whether it’s for funerals, weddings, baby showers, dances, parties - almost everyone is involved, he said.

“Weddings are just a complete madhouse,” Josh said, laughing. Baby showers can sometimes include 60-70 women. When a new family arrives, everyone pitches in to help them move furniture and get settled.

“There’s a huge sense of cohesion,” he said. “Your life is so intertwined with the community. There’s a strong identity of being definitely Catholic that would be very difficult to leave.”

What about parish life?

For many Catholics, uprooting their lives and moving to Oklahoma (or near other monasteries) simply isn’t an option. The most basic building block of Catholic community and society available to them is their local parish.

Dreher writes of the importance of living in proximity to one’s parish, so that it can all the more easily become the center of one’s life. But Christians must still be discerning about whether their local parish is teaching the true faith, or whether it has been too compromised by the secular culture.

“The changes that have overtaken the West in our modern times have revolutionized everything, even the church, which no longer forms souls but caters to selves,” Dreher writes.

“As conservative Anglican theologian Ephriam Radner has said, ‘There is no safe place in the world or in our churches within which to be a Christian. It is a new epoch.’”

To be sure, parish life has seen significant shifts in the United States. When waves of Catholic immigrants arrived in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they found stability and community in the New World at their local, often ethnically segregated, parish. Often ostracized for their faith in other areas of society, they looked to their parish not only as a source for the sacraments, but as a place to meet friends, host meetings and dances, to rely on as a second family.

Society has since shifted. As Catholics became more accepted into mainstream society, they no longer looked to their parish as their only source of community. And as ethnic ties became looser, the need for Polish Catholics to go to the Polish parish, for example, dwindled. The hub of Catholicism, once the East Coast, shifted west as people moved out of the city.

But while things have changed, that doesn’t mean that flourishing parishes can’t be found today, said Claire Henning, executive director of Parish Catalyst, a group that studies what makes parishes thrive.

“I’ve become more aware of how I’ve always perceived a parish as a building - but it really isn’t that, it’s a living, breathing ecosystem that expands and contracts depending on who’s there.”

For their recent book “Great Catholic Parishes,” William Simon, founder of Parish Catalyst, identified four characteristics of thriving parishes: shared leadership among clergy and laity, a variety of formation programs, an emphasis on Sunday and the liturgy, and evangelizing to people both in and out of the pews.

One of the main questions these thriving parishes are constantly asking of themselves is: “How do we speak the language of the Gospel to the people of today?” Henning said. “So you need people who are thought leaders to be thinking of that.”

St. Mary’s parish in Littleton, Colorado, is one such parish, with around 1800 registered families, an orthodox Roman Catholic faith and a thriving community life.

“The goal is to be a family of families,” said Linda Sherman, director of family life and service for the parish.

“What we’re looking for is to support families in all their various nuances and ages, to support them in their Catholic faith, and as they are growing in their faith and growing closer to God.”

It can be difficult to create a sense of community in such a large parish, Sherman admits, but the key is getting families involved in ministry.

Perhaps one of the most important ministries that St. Mary’s offers is called Mother of Mercy ministry, the purpose of which is “to fill in the gaps of people who don’t have an existing support system of families in town,” Sherman told CNA.

How it works: anyone can sign up for Mother of Mercy, either offering or asking for services ranging from lawn-mowing to rides to the doctor to babysitting. It connects volunteers with folks who need them, and helps people feel like they have a local support system, she said.

There are also youth groups, young adult groups, family groups and bible studies that allow people to grow in their faith in smaller settings, which then strengthens both their faith and their connection to the parish.

It’s become increasingly important for parishioners to find a community of others who share their faith and values, Sherman said.

“It allows you to be stronger in your faith if you have people around you who support you in your values. And that’s whether you’re newly married or you’re 50 years old and you’re working in a job with people who don’t have the same faith life as you, or any faith life,” she said. “You don’t want to feel like the odd man out.”

And while Dreher expresses concerns about the orthodoxy of many parishes and churches, Henning said it is the churches that focus on liturgy and discipleship that prove to be the best parishes.

“They actually are strategic about planning for discipleship, they challenge and engage the spiritual maturity of their people,” she said.

“And they really excel on Sundays. There’s an intense interest on preparing good homilies, they get the best music they can get, they’re very hospitable. And they really do have a plan for evangelization, they enter into mission, and they have a vision and structure for moving beyond the doors of the church.”

Prayer and the Eucharist are also central to thriving parishes, as Simon points out in his book. St. Mary’s parish has a 24-hour adoration chapel, accessible by code.

“The Eucharist is the source of unity for the parish; is is the supreme action that unites all who experience it to Christ and to the prayer and tradition of the universal Catholic community,” Simon wrote.

Catholicism in the city: Ecclesial Movements

Another popular form of community within the Catholic Church, particularly in the post-Vatican II years of the 20th and 21st Centuries, has been Ecclesial Movements. These include groups such as Opus Dei, Focolare, or the Neocatechumenal Way.

In e-mail comments to CNA, Dreher said that he did not know enough about Ecclesial Movements to say whether or not they could constitute a “Benedict Option.” But they seem to have markedly different philosophies when it comes to living the Christian life in the world.

Ecclesial Movements seek to re-engage the laity in their faith and to evangelize the world. They include a variety of charisms, educational methods and apostolic forms and goals, and while they have local bases, they are not geographically bound to one location. Many have a presence in countries throughout the world.

Holly Peterson is the director of communications for Communion and Liberation, one such ecclesial movement that was founded by Italian priest Fr. Luigi Giussani.

As a young priest in 1950s Italy, where basically everyone went to Mass and Catholic school, Fr. Giussani began to realize that the faith didn’t actually mean anything to the real, lived experiences of the young students he was teaching. They went through the motions of the faith, but they didn’t seem to know what it meant to really live a Christian life.

“He later defined it by saying that he had this question in him - have the people left the church? Or has the church left the people?” Peterson told CNA.

Fr. Giussani started taking his students on retreats and excursions in the mountains so that he could teach them how to live an authentically integrated life of faith - much in the style of Pope John Paul II, a close friend of Giussani and the movement.

“He understood that … he needed to introduce them to life, because through their experience of life they would begin to understand who God was, who Christ was,” Peterson said.

As his students grew up and continued following his teachings, a movement was born. Membership in Communion and Liberation is freely given - there’s no registration or membership requirements, and there are many different levels of association, but a standard commitment is attendance at the weekly meetings, called School of Community.

School of Community is more than just a meeting, Peterson said. It’s a chance for catechesis, for members to be spiritually fed, but also for them to develop Christian friendships that grow outside of the official meetings. Members form strong friendships and communities that carry on outside of the weekly meetings. They go out to dinner, help each other with babysitting, have parties, and just live life together.

The movement also has consecrated lay men and women - called Memores Domini - who live in community but work in the secular world. There are doctors, rocket scientists, secretaries, teachers and many other kinds of professions found amongst the members.

But regardless of the level of association, CL members have a markedly different way of viewing the world than the Ben-Oppers.

“We’re not afraid of doom and gloom around the corner, not to say that that’s wrong, but that’s not our style,” Peterson said.

“Instead we desire to dive into the deep end of the pool. We want to be present where people are suffering, we want to do what Pope Francis has called us to do, which is to go to the periphery.”

“And the periphery isn’t necessarily skid row of L.A., though that is the periphery as well,” she added. “My periphery could be my workplace, where everyone might live a pessimism that’s so thick and so sad, where they have absolutely zero hope in front of the reality that we live.”

The Community of the Beatitudes, founded in France, is another active ecclesial movement. Like the name implies, they strive to live the teachings of the Beatitudes within their community. Their charism is Eucharistic and Marian, and in the Carmelite tradition.

The community has consecrated brothers and sisters, as well as several hundred lay members and friends at various levels of association, that are active throughout the world. In the beginning, lay members lived in community with the consecrated members in huge monasteries in Europe that allowed each vocation to have it’s own separate wing. But more recently, the Vatican told the community that the lay members must not live directly with consecrated members.

“Rome said lay must be real lay, you don’t stay set apart,” Sr. Mary of the Visitation, a member of the community in Denver, told CNA.

“So obviously they are lay people, they receive the spirit and the charism of the community, they are full members of the community, they’re fully part of the liturgy, but they live in the world.”

The Community of the Beatitudes, much like Communion and Liberation, quickly spread all over the world. Their apostolates serve the immediate needs of their surrounding communities in various ways - schools, hospitals, catechesis - rather than focusing on one particular type of ministry. Members and friends of the movement regularly come together for meals, liturgy, faith formation and service.

Sr. Mary of the Visitation said that while her community anchors her, she desires to invite more people to live a life following the Beatitudes.

Although rooted in prayer, “we live in the world,” she said. “So if I’m going for a walk in the neighborhood, I will meet people, obviously when they see my habit they will think about God, but then we can have a conversation and go deeper.”

Sr. Mary said that on the one hand, she understands the Benedict Option desire to preserve the good, and to separate oneself from evil. Preserving oneself from too much T.V., or other inappropriate media, is a good thing, she said.

But she also worries that the Benedict Option may look at those in the world as “other,” rather than as brothers and sisters.

“What I dislike in this idea, is that it would mean that the world is bad, and the Benedictine Option is good. But we’re not in a movie with the bad and the good. We are in the reality of life, where the world is within me, and this is the most difficult part is to convert myself,” she said.

“And I really think that my brothers and sisters from the world, I cannot judge them, I cannot be separate from them, because I don’t want to go to heaven without them.”

There have been concerns among some that ecclesial movements are taking the place of the parish in members’ lives. But lived properly, Peterson said, that’s not the case - movements should serve to strengthen parish communities.

“We try to be very engaged in the parish for that reason,” she said, “doing charitable work, teaching in parish schools, a lot of musicians in the movement are active in their parishes.”

Ultimately, she said, “I think these movements are the way that God is rejuvenating the Church … movements are called to give people life so that they can live in this crazy world here.”

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These 17th-century monks did a beer fast for Lent

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • March 1, 2017

(Africa Studio via Shutterstock)

Washington D.C. — As Ash Wednesday kicks off the Lenten season, Catholics enter into 40 days of abstaining from sweets, technology, alcohol and other luxuries.

But did you know that Catholic monks once brewed beer specifically for a liquid-only Lenten fast?

Back in the 1600s, Paulaner monks moved from Southern Italy to the Cloister Neudeck ob der Au in Bavaria. “Being a strict order, they were not allowed to consume solid food during Lent,” the current braumeister and beer sommelier of Paulaner Brewery Martin Zuber explained in a video on the company’s website.

They needed something other than water to sustain them, so the monks turned to a common staple of the time of their region – beer. They concocted an “unusually strong” brew, full of carbohydrates and nutrients, because “liquid bread wouldn’t break the fast,” Zuber noted.

This was an early doppelbock-style beer, which the monks eventually sold in the community and which was an original product of Paulaner brewery, founded in 1634. They gave it the name “Salvator,” named after “Sankt Vater,” which “roughly translates as ‘Holy Father beer,’” Zuber said.

Paulaner currently serves 70 countries and is one of the chief breweries featured at Munich’s Octoberfest. Although its doppelbock is enjoyed around the world today, it had a distinctly penitential origin with the monks.

Could a beer-only fast really be accomplished? One journalist had read of the monks’ story and, in 2011, attempted to re-create their fast.

J. Wilson, a Christian working as an editor for a county newspaper in Iowa, partnered with a local brewery and brewed a special doppelbock that he consumed over 46 days during Lent, eating no solid food.

He had regular check-ups with his doctor and obtained permission from his boss for the fast, drinking four beers over the course of a work day and five beers on Saturdays and Sundays. His experience, he said, was transformative – and not in an intoxicating way.

Wilson learned “that the human body is an amazing machine,” he wrote in a blog for CNN after his Lenten experience.

“Aside from cramming it [the body] full of junk food, we don’t ask much of it. We take it for granted. It is capable of much more than many of us give it credit for. It can climb mountains, run marathons and, yes, it can function without food for long periods of time,” he wrote.

Wilson noted that he was acutely hungry for the first several days of his fast, but “my body then switched gears, replaced hunger with focus, and I found myself operating in a tunnel of clarity unlike anything I’d ever experienced.” He ended up losing over 25 pounds over the course of the Lenten season, but learned to practice “self-discipline.”

And, he found, one of his greatest challenges was actually fasting from media.

As he blogged about his fast, Wilson received numerous interview requests from local and national media outlets, and he chose to forego some of these requests and step away from using media to focus on the spiritual purpose of his fast.

“The experience proved that the origin story of monks fasting on doppelbock was not only possible, but probable,” he concluded.

“It left me with the realization that the monks must have been keenly aware of their own humanity and imperfections. In order to refocus on God, they engaged this annual practice not only to endure sacrifice, but to stress and rediscover their own shortcomings in an effort to continually refine themselves.”

Catholics are not obliged to give up solid food for Lent, of course, but they must do penance during the season of Lent in the example of Christ’s 40-day fast in the wilderness, in commemoration of His death, and in preparation for Easter.

Catholics in the U.S., if healthy adults aged 18-59, must fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and are encouraged to continue the Good Friday fast through Holy Saturday to the Easter Vigil.

“No Catholic Christian will lightly excuse himself from so hallowed an obligation on the Wednesday which solemnly opens the Lenten season and on that Friday called ‘Good’ because on that day Christ suffered in the flesh and died for our sins,” the U.S. Catholic bishops wrote in their 1966 pastoral letter on fasting.

Fasting is interpreted to mean eating one full meal and two smaller meals that, taken together, do not equal that one full meal. There may be no eating in between meals, and there is no specific mention of liquids in the guidelines.

In their pastoral letter, the bishops also maintained obligatory abstinence from meat for all Catholics on Fridays in Lent, and “strongly recommend participation in daily mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting” on other Lenten days, as well as almsgiving, study of the Scriptures, and devotions like the rosary and the Stations of the Cross.

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Multicultural ministry needs a new perspective

by Msgr. M. Francis Mannion • March 2, 2017

One of the most pressing challenges facing the Catholic Church in the U.S. today is the necessity of more adequate ministry to the many ethnic communities growing within our national borders. Among the impediments said to be operative against effective incorporation of ethnic communities into the Church in the U.S. are that these communities are enormously diverse and, therefore, present huge challenges to mainstream Catholicism.

While these assertions are widely held among theorists of American Catholic multiculturalism, I suggest that they do not completely have the mature evidence of culture theory on their side.

The notion that American ethnic communities are quite diverse seems at first sight well grounded. Native American, Hispanic, African-American, and Asian cultures can seem enormously different from each other. Clearly considerable differences do exist at the levels of cultural customs and practices. But at the level of what anthropologists call the “deep structures” of cultures, there are notable and striking similarities.

Consider, for instance, that the cultures just mentioned hold in common many of the following characteristics: a pervasive sense of divine presence in ordinary life; an attachment to place and a closeness to the earth; a strong communal memory; a heroic attitude in the face of suffering and deprivation; a deep consciousness of the home as a holy place; reverence for parents, elders, and ancestors; a closely knit communal life; a well-developed system of group festivity and celebration; and a ritualized response to birth, human transition, and death. I would call these cultures “traditional-communal.”

I would argue that the Catholic cultures of Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Poland were historically traditional-communal, exhibiting the same features just outlined, and that they continued to be so after being transported to the U.S. in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Accordingly, it seems to me that the distance between the Native American, Hispanic, African-American, and Asians ethnic communities and traditional European-based Catholicism in the U.S. was historically not as great as many multicultural theorists suggest.

However, just as the European-based Catholicism in the U.S. began to reach out to the Native American, Hispanic, African, and Asian communities after the 1960s, it began to lose the ability to do so because it was fast adapting to the mainstream culture of the U.S., which I would describe as “liberal-individualistic.”

Liberal-individualistic culture, which has its origins in some strands of Protestantism, is highly puritanical, pragmatic, rationalistic, and privatized; it separates God from public life and assumes a secularist mentality. It is non-communal and non-celebratory.

The kind of American Catholicism which is liberal-individualistic is fundamentally incapable of dealing with ethnic and immigrant communities, especially the newer ones. It simply does not understand them and tries in vain to reach across the divide that separates liberal-individualistic cultures from traditional-communal ones.

I suggest, then, that if mainstream Catholicism in the U.S. today were less a reflection of liberal-individualistic culture, it would be better positioned to minister to Catholic ethnic communities.

The bottom line here is that the newer ethnic and immigrant communities are not the problem; mainstream U.S. Catholic culture is. While great efforts are being made in the Church to minister to ethnic communities, not enough attention is paid to the ability of these communities to teach mainstream American Catholicism how to be authentically Catholic — and less liberal-individualistic. Alongside diocesan offices reaching out to ethnic Catholic communities, I suggest that we need diocesan and parish programs in which Catholic ethnic communities can minister to and teach mainstream Catholicism in the U.S. how to recover its traditional-communal roots and become, therefore, more fully Catholic.

Msgr. Mannion is pastor emeritus of St. Vincent de Paul parish in Salt Lake City. He holds a Ph.D. in sacramental theology from The Catholic University of America. He was founding president of The Society for Catholic Liturgy in 1995 and the founding editor of the Society’s journal, Antiphon. At the invitation of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago he founded the Mundelein Liturgical Institute in 2000.

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What’s the point of fasting, anyway?

by CNA/EWTN News • March 3, 2017

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Washington D.C. — God commanded it, Jesus practiced it, Church Fathers have preached the importance of it – fasting is a powerful and fundamental part of the Christian life.

But for many Catholics today, it’s more of an afterthought: something we grudgingly do on Good Friday, perhaps on Ash Wednesday if we remember it. Would we fast more, especially during Lent, if we understood how helpful it is for our lives?

The answer to this, say both saints of the past and experts today, is a resounding “yes.”

“Let us take for our standard and for our example those that have run the race, and have won,” said Deacon Sabatino Carnazzo, founding executive director of the Institute of Catholic Culture and a deacon at Holy Transfiguration Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Mclean, Va., of the saints.

“And … those that have run the race and won have been men and women of prayer and fasting.”

So what, in essence, is fasting?

It’s “the deprivation of the good, in order to make a decision for a greater good,” explained Deacon Carnazzo. It is most commonly associated with abstention from food, although it can also take the form of giving up other goods like comforts and entertainment.

The current fasting obligation for Latin Catholics in the United States is this: all over the age of 14 must abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and all Fridays in Lent. On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, adults age 18 to 59 must fast – eating no more than one full meal and two smaller meals that together do not add up in quantity to the full meal.

Catholics, “if possible,” can continue the Good Friday fast through Holy Saturday until the Easter Vigil, the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference adds.

Other Fridays throughout the year (aside from Friday within the Octave of Easter) “are penitential days and times throughout the entire Church,” according to Canon Law 1250. Catholics once abstained from meat on all Fridays, but the U.S. bishops received permission from the Holy See for Catholics to substitute another sacrifice or perform an act of charity instead.

Eastern Rite Catholics, meanwhile, follow the fasting laws of their own particular church.

In their 1966 “Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence,” the National Conference of Catholic Bishops exhorted the faithful, on other days of Lent where fasting is not required, to “participation in daily Mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting.”

Aside from the stipulations, though, what’s the point of fasting?

“The whole purpose of fasting is to put the created order and our spiritual life in a proper balance,” Deacon Carnazzo said.

As “bodily creatures in a post-fallen state,” it’s easy to let our “lower passions” for physical goods supersede our higher intellect, he explained. We take good things for granted and reach for them whenever we feel like it, “without thinking, without reference to the One Who gives us the food, and without reference to the question of whether it’s good for us or not,” he added.

Thus, fasting helps “make more room for God in our life,” Monsignor Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter/St. Cyprian Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. said.

“And the Lord said at the well, with the (Samaritan) woman, He said that ‘everyone that drinks from this well is going to be thirsty again. Why don’t you let me go to work in your life and I’ll give you a fountain welling up to Eternal Life.’”

While fasting can take many forms, is abstaining from food especially important?

“The reason why 2000 years of Christianity has said food (for fasting), because food’s like air. It’s like water, it’s the most fundamental,” Deacon Carnazzo said. “And that’s where the Church says ‘stop right here, this fundamental level, and gain control there.’ It’s like the first step in the spiritual life.”

What the Bible says about it

Yet why is fasting so important in the life of the Church? And what are the roots of the practice in Scripture?

The very first fast was ordered by God to Adam in the Garden of Eden, Deacon Carnazzo noted, when God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17).

This divine prohibition was not because the tree was bad, the deacon clarified. It was “made good” like all creation, but its fruit was meant to be eaten “in the right time and the right way.” In the same way, we abstain from created goods so we may enjoy them “in the right time and the right way.”

Fasting is also good because it is submission to God, he said. By fasting from the fruit of the tree, Adam and Eve would have become partakers in the Divine Nature through their obedience to God. Instead, they tried to take this knowledge of good and evil for themselves and ate the fruit, disobeying God and bringing Original Sin, death, and illness upon mankind.

At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus abstained from food and water for 40 days and nights in the desert and thus “reversed what happened in the Garden of Eden,” Deacon Carnazzo explained. Like Adam and Eve, Christ was tempted by the devil but instead remained obedient to God the Father, reversing the disobedience of Adam and Eve and restoring our humanity.

Following the example of Jesus, Catholics are called to fast, said Fr. Lew. And the Church Fathers preached the importance of fasting.

Why fasting is so powerful

“The fast is the weapon of protection against demons,” taught St. Basil the Great. “Our Guardian Angels more really stay with those who have cleansed our souls through fasting.”

Why is fasting so powerful? “By setting aside this (created) realm where the devil works, we put ourselves into communion with another realm where the devil does not work, he cannot touch us,” Deacon Carnazzo explained.

It better disposes us for prayer, noted Monsignor Pope. Because we feel greater hunger or thirst when we fast from food and water, “it reminds us of our frailty and helps us be more humble,” he said. “Without humility, prayer and then our experience of God really can’t be unlocked.”

Thus, the practice is “clearly linked by St. Thomas Aquinas, writing within the Tradition, to chastity, to purity, and to clarity of mind,” noted Fr. Lew.

“You can kind of postulate from that that our modern-day struggles with the virtue of chastity, and perhaps a lack of clarity in theological knowledge, might be linked to an abandonment of fasting as well.”

A brief history of fasting

The current fasting obligations were set in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, but in previous centuries, the common fasts among Catholics were stricter and more regularly observed.

Catholics abstained from meat on all Fridays of the year, Easter Friday excluded. During Lent, they had to fast – one meatless meal and two smaller meatless meals – on all days excluding Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. They abstained from meat on Fridays and Saturdays in Lent – the days of Christ’s death and lying in the tomb – but were allowed meat during the main meal on the other Lenten weekdays.

The obligations extended to other days of the liturgical year. Catholics fasted and abstained on the vigils of Christmas and Pentecost Sunday, and on Ember Days – the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the Feast of St. Lucy on Dec. 13, after Ash Wednesday, after Pentecost Sunday, and after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in September – corresponding with the four seasons.

In centuries past, the Lenten abstention was more austere. Catholics gave up not only meat but also animal products like milk and butter, as well as oil and even fish at times.

Why are today’s obligations in the Latin Rite so minimal? The Church is setting clear boundaries outside of which one cannot be considered to be practicing the Christian life, Deacon Carnazzo explained. That is why intentionally violating the Lenten obligations is a mortal sin.

But should Catholics perform more than the minimum penance that is demanded? Yes, said Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., who is currently studying for a Pontifical License in Sacred Theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.

The minimum may be “what is due to God out of justice,” he explained, but we are “called not only to be just to God,” but also “to love God and to love our neighbor.” Charity, he added, “would call us to do more than just the minimum that is applied to us by the Code of Canon Law today, I think.”

In Jeremiah 31: 31-33, God promises to write His law upon our hearts, Deacon Carnazzo noted. We must go beyond following a set of rules and love God with our hearts, and this involves doing more than what we are obliged to do, he added.

Be wary of your motivation

However, Fr. Lew noted, fasting “must be stirred up by charity.” A Catholic should not fast out of dieting or pride, but out of love of God.

“It’s always dangerous in the spiritual life to compare yourself to other people,” he said, citing the Gospel of John where Jesus instructed St. Peter not to be concerned about the mission of St. John the Apostle but rather to “follow Me.” (John 21: 20-23).

In like manner, we should be focused on God during Lent and not on the sacrifices of others, he said.

“We will often fail, I think. And that’s not a bad thing. Because if we do fail, this is the opportunity to realize our utter dependence on God and His grace, to seek His mercy and forgiveness, and to seek His strength so that we can grow in virtue and do better,” he added.

And by realizing our weakness and dependence on God, we can “discover anew the depths of God’s mercy for us” and can be more merciful to others, he added.

Giving up good things may seem onerous and burdensome, but can – and should – a Catholic fast with joy?

“It’s referred to in the preface of Lent as a joyful season,” Fr. Lew said. “And it’s the joy of deepening our relationship with Christ, and therefore coming closer to Him. It’s the joy of loving Him more, and the more we love God the closer we draw to Him.”

“Lent is all about the Cross, and eventually the resurrection,” said Deacon Carnazzo. If we “make an authentic, real sacrifice for Christ” during Lent, “we can come to that day of the crucifixion and say ‘Yes Lord, I willingly with you accept the cross. And when we do that, then we will behold the third day of resurrection.’”

This article was originally published on CNA Feb. 20, 2016.

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Movie review: ‘Logan’

by Carl Kozlowski • March 3, 2017

All good things must come to an end, and that’s been the case with some of the most iconic teamings of actors and roles in film history. Sean Connery and Roger Moore played James Bond in seven films apiece, Daniel Radcliffe worked his magic as Harry Potter in eight, and now Hugh Jackman is hanging up his claws after nine films portraying the X-Men team member Wolverine.

His swan song is called “Logan,” and that stark title using his legal last name is but one sign that this edition of his cinematic adventures is more human-scaled than the usual flash and fury of his earlier adventures. The new film is co-written and directed by James Mangold, who has built an eclectic career as the director of such diverse movies as the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line,” the terrific Western “3:10 to Yuma,” and the offbeat romantic comedy “Kate & Leopold” (which also starred Jackman), and brought impressive grit to both this entry and the previous film in the series, 2013’s “Wolverine.”

Yet the biggest difference is that the new film is rated R, a big leap from the PG-13 ratings Jackman’s prior outings as the superhero received. The change is likely a response to fan boy complaints that the last film was not violent enough to provide them the rage-filled rampages the character is known for in comics, but it also is likely tied to the fact that Marvel Comics’ film division saw gold in pursuing the same hell-raising R-rated path that “Deadpool” followed to nearly $300 million at the US box office last year.

The new film takes place in 2029, and it’s a bleaker society in which Logan is working as a chauffeur and trying to put his past behind him as most of his fellow mutants are now dead. He is living in hiding in a desert junkyard, overseeing the care of the now-elderly Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) as he suffers from dementia.

Logan is dragged back into action by a Mexican woman who begs him to take her young daughter, Laura (Dafne Keen), to a rumored secret location near the Canadian border where mutants can live in peace. The girl’s very existence is a surprise to Logan, since the official government story has stated that no mutants have been born in 25 years.

It turns out Laura is but one of many children who were specially bred in a laboratory with the DNA of the various X-Men to have superpowers and eventually become an unstoppable and heartless army. As Logan and Xavier race to their destination with the girl, chased by ruthless hordes of assassins led by a bounty hunter (Boyd Holbrook) and evil scientist (Richard E. Grant), the film veers between incredibly violent battles and surprisingly thoughtful encounters.

Those showdowns are probably among the most violent fights ever committed to film, as both Wolverine and Laura slice, dice, puncture, stab, and even decapitate dozens of villains and gallons of blood spew everywhere on their cross-country race against time. Add in a boatload of strong obscenities throughout, and this is definitely not a movie for children to see — a caveat I offer after having seen plenty of young children attend “Deadpool” with their clueless parents.

Lacking the strong comedic edge of “Deadpool,” “Logan” is a darker tale in which the violence stands out even more distinctly and disturbingly. Frankly, it made me wonder if there are any standards of what child actors should be required to do in a performance.

That said, “Logan” has a great emotional depth and Jackman is terrific in it. Adult fans of the Wolverine character will definitely be pleased with the results in spite of (and perhaps because of) the relentless carnage, and Mangold has crafted a movie that sends its hero off in great feeling and style. But be very aware that this movie is really gruesome.

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

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Double review: ‘The Shack’ and ‘My Scientology Movie’

by Carl Kozlowski • March 3, 2017

This weekend brings us two movies about religion: the Christian-themed movie “The Shack,” based on the huge bestseller by William P. Young, Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings, and “My Scientology Movie,” an alternately funny and fascinating documentary on the notorious cult by BBC humorist Louis Theroux.

Before we get into these, I want to give a plug to a new season of CNN’s series “Finding Jesus: Faith, Fact, Forgery.” The first season proved a hit last year by focusing on well-known Pastors, theologians, and scholars, examined famous religious artifacts, and brought to life the places and people from the Bible touched by Jesus and the Gospel.

The new season explores such topics as the childhood home of Jesus, the tomb of King Herod, the bones of St. Peter, relics believed to shed truth about Doubting Thomas, the Pilate Stone, and the tomb of Lazarus. It premieres Sunday at 9 pm ET/PT and 8 p.m. CST.

Meanwhile, “The Shack” follows the story of a man named Mack Phillips (Sam Worthington). The opening is a flashback to himself as a child, who was severely abused by his father, a Protestant church elder who was an alcoholic. This part of his story and much of the film is told through a voiceover narration by his friend Willie (Tim McGraw), and after some poignant and powerful opening moments, the film jumps to Mack’s adult life as a father with a churchgoing family.

But deep down, Mack feels distant from God due to his unresolved childhood trauma with his father, and when his youngest daughter is kidnapped and later found dead while on a family camping trip, Mack is even more despondent and angry with God. He receives a strange note in the mail one day during snow season, saying it came from “Papa” – which was his dead daughter’s favorite name for God – and inviting him to come visit the shack where his daughter’s body was found.

At first, Mack thinks the note is a sick joke, but he grabs a gun for safety and heads out to the woods to find out what’s happening. At first the shack is old and decrepit, but soon he encounters a young, Middle Eastern-looking man (Abraham Aviv Alush) who convinces him to come in.

There, Mack finds that the man is sharing the shack with a middle-aged black woman (Octavia Spenser) who says she’s the “Papa” who wrote the note, and a woman (Sumire Matsubara) who calls herself Sarayu. It turns out that these three are supposed to be physical incarnations of the Holy Trinity, with Papa as God the Father, the Middle Eastern guy as Jesus and Sarayu as the Holy Spirit.

The reason they’re in these human forms is that they are presenting themselves to Mack in a way that he can process easily, since he’s afraid of father figures. The rest of the movie follows his long emotional journey through the visit with the three mysterious figures as they help him handle his grief and answer his questions about life, death and existence in a way that helps him heal emotionally and spiritually.

Some might see this concept as odd, but it’s clear that the makers of “The Shack” have good intentions and the movie does handle some of life’s biggest questions in a positive, Christian light. The book it’s based on was embraced by millions of Christians as well.

The look of “The Shack,” which is directed by Stuart Hazeldine, is remarkable, with lush cinematography and impressive locations and effects. The performances are touching and top-notch as well. The one big downside is that, at 132 minutes, the movie could have been about a half hour shorter and been more effective.

Beautifully made with strong performances, “The Shack” is a movie that gives answers to life’s toughest questions. It’s one of the best films in the recent wave of the Christian genre.

A completely different kind of movie about religion – one that is playing only in major cities but worth seeking out – is the half-serious/half-comical new documentary “My Scientology Movie,” by BBC reporter and humorist Louis Theroux. He’s like a thinner, British Michael Moore and very funny.

The movie opens with Theroux explaining in narration that he wanted to make a documentary about Scientology, but was refused access to the cult’s members and facilities. He in particular had hoped to interview current cult leader David Miscavige, but was taken aback by the vitriol with which he was denied.

Theroux opts instead to find a few key former Scientology officials who had left the cult, in particular a former violent interrogator named Marty Rathbun, and ask them about their experiences. But when they, and particularly Rathbun, are reticent to open up about the bleakest moments, Theroux decides to use a psychological trick to make them be forthcoming: he says he’s shooting a narrative movie using actors to portray Miscavige and Scientology’s most famous member, Tom Cruise, and asks Rathbun and the others to be at the auditions and on set, as the actors recite lines and act out tirades that are utterly shocking.

The result is a harrowing and fascinating documentary, with a strong deadpan sense of humor throughout by Theroux. There are also suspenseful and disturbing moments in which Theroux, Rathbun and others are stalked and filmed all over California by mysterious people showing up with cameras and harassing them.

Add in the re-enactments and the memories they inspire in Rathbun and others, and “My Scientology Movie” becomes an invaluable look at how cult mindsets work. Viewers should be forewarned about the barrage of F words in two or three scenes re-enacting the behavior of the cult’s head David Miscavige, but most adults and especially those eager to learn about this “cult to the stars” (designated so because of its particularly strong outreach to movie and TV stars) will find this fascinating and entertaining viewing.

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

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SUNDAY • MARCH 5, 2017

First Sunday of Lent

First Reading (Gn 2:7-9; 3:1-7; NRSVCE)

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17; NRSVCE)

R: (cf. 3a) Have mercy on me, O God; blot out my transgressions.

Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

R: Have mercy on me, O God; blot out my transgressions.

For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

Against you, you alone, have I sinned,

and done what is evil in your sight.

R: Have mercy on me, O God; blot out my transgressions.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your holy spirit from me.

R: Have mercy on me, O God; blot out my transgressions.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and sustain in me a willing spirit.

O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

R: Have mercy on me, O God; blot out my transgressions.

Second Reading (Rom 5:12-19; 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 — sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. 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. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. 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.

Gospel Reading (Mt 4:1-11; NRSVCE)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,

so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

and serve only him.’”

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

MONDAY • MARCH 6, 2017

Monday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Lv 19:1-2, 11-18; NRSVCE)

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord.

You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Lord.

You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 15; NRSVCE)

R: (Jn 6:63b) The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

The law of the Lord is perfect,

reviving the soul;

the decrees of the Lord are sure,

making wise the simple.

R: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

The precepts of the Lord are right,

rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the Lord is clear,

enlightening the eyes.

R: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

The fear of the Lord is pure,

enduring forever;

the ordinances of the Lord are true

and righteous altogether.

R: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable to you,

O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

R: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Gospel Reading (Mt 25:31-46; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

TUESDAY • MARCH 7, 2017

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Is 55:10-11; NRSVCE)

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 34:4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19; NRSVCE)

R: (18b) When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles.

O magnify the Lord with me,

and let us exalt his name together.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me,

and delivered me from all my fears.

R: When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles.

Look to him, and be radiant;

so your faces shall never be ashamed.

This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord,

and was saved from every trouble.

R: When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles.

The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

and his ears are open to their cry.

The face of the Lord is against evildoers,

to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

R: When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles.

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears,

and rescues them from all their troubles.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,

and saves the crushed in spirit.

R: When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles.

Gospel Reading (Mt 6:7-15; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us to the time of trial,

but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

WEDNESDAY • MARCH 8, 2017

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Jon 3:1-10; NRSVCE)

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 51:3-4, 12-13, 18-19; NRSVCE)

R: (19b) A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

R: A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your holy spirit from me.

R: A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

For you have no delight in sacrifice;

if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

R: A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Gospel Reading (Lk 11:29-32; NRSVCE)

When the crowds were increasing, Jesus began to say, “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!”

THURSDAY • MARCH 9, 2017

Thursday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Est C:12, 14-16, 23-25; NRSVCE)

Then Queen Esther, seized with deadly anxiety, fled to the Lord. She prayed to the Lord God of Israel, and said: “O my Lord, you only are our king; help me, who am alone and have no helper but you, for my danger is in my hand. Ever since I was born I have heard in the tribe of my family that you, O Lord, took Israel out of all the nations, and our ancestors from among all their forebears, for an everlasting inheritance, and that you did for them all that you promised.

Remember, O Lord; make yourself known in this time of our affliction, and give me courage, O King of the gods and Master of all dominion! Put eloquent speech in my mouth before the lion, and turn his heart to hate the man who is fighting against us, so that there may be an end of him and those who agree with him. But save us by your hand, and help me, who am alone and have no helper but you, O Lord.”

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 7c-8; NRSVCE)

R: (3a) On the day I called, you answered me.

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart;

before the gods I sing your praise;

I bow down toward your holy temple

and give thanks to your name.

R: On the day I called, you answered me.

For your steadfast love and your faithfulness;

for you have exalted your name and your word

above everything.

On the day I called, you answered me,

you increased my strength of soul.

R: On the day I called, you answered me.

Your right hand delivers me.

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;

your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.

Do not forsake the work of your hands.

R: On the day I called, you answered me.

Gospel Reading (Mt 7:7-12; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

FRIDAY • MARCH 10, 2017

Friday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Ez 18:21-28; NRSVCE)

But if the wicked turn away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all my statutes and do what is lawful and right, they shall surely live; they shall not die. None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them; for the righteousness that they have done they shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live? But when the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity and do the same abominable things that the wicked do, shall they live? None of the righteous deeds that they have done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which they are guilty and the sin they have committed, they shall die.

Yet you say, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? When the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it; for the iniquity that they have committed they shall die. Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-7a, 7bc-8; NRSVCE)

R: (3) If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive

to the voice of my supplications!

R: If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,

Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with you,

so that you may be revered.

R: If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,

and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord

more than those who watch for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!

R: If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?

For with the Lord there is steadfast love,

and with him is great power to redeem.

It is he who will redeem Israel

from all its iniquities.

R: If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:20-26; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”

SATURDAY • MARCH 11, 2017

Saturday of the First Week of Lent

First Reading (Dt 26:16-19; NRSVCE)

This very day the Lord your God is commanding you to observe these statutes and ordinances; so observe them diligently with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you have obtained the Lord’s agreement: to be your God; and for you to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, his commandments, and his ordinances, and to obey him. Today the Lord has obtained your agreement: to be his treasured people, as he promised you, and to keep his commandments; for him to set you high above all nations that he has made, in praise and in fame and in honor; and for you to be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 119:1-2, 4-5, 7-8; NRSVCE)

R: (1b) Happy are those who walk in the law of the Lord.

Happy are those whose way is blameless,

who walk in the law of the Lord.

Happy are those who keep his decrees,

who seek him with their whole heart.

R: Happy are those who walk in the law of the Lord.

You have commanded your precepts

to be kept diligently.

O that my ways may be steadfast

in keeping your statutes!

R: Happy are those who walk in the law of the Lord.

I will praise you with an upright heart,

when I learn your righteous ordinances.

I will observe your statutes;

do not utterly forsake me.

R: Happy are those who walk in the law of the Lord.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:43-48; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”