Readings: • Gen 2:7-9; 3:1-7 • Ps 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17 • Rom 5:12-19 or 5:12, 17-19 • Mt 4:1-11 Several years ago I was out to dinner with a group of people, including a […]
Concerns that Pope Francis could cause a schism in the Church have been percolating in Catholic circles for some time now: US Catholic,Crux, Inside the Vatican, The Spectator. More recently, though, a narrower and more technical question has begun to surface, namely, whether […]
Orlando, Fla., Mar 3, 2017 / 04:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- President Donald Trump visited a Florida Catholic school on Friday, praising the Catholic education system and touting his support for school choice programs.
“You understand how much your students benefit from full education, one that enriches both the mind and the soul. That’s a good combination,” the president told Bishop John Noonan of Orlando at St. Andrew Catholic School March 3.
He toured the pre-K-8th grade school, located in Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood, and spoke with students, who presented him with two cards. He visited a fourth grade class, the Associated Press reports.
President Trump responded to a girl who told him she wanted to own her own business, saying she’s “gonna make a lot of money. But don’t run for politics.”
His tour was followed by public comments attended by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Florida Gov. Rick Scott, various Catholic school officials and Bishop Noonan.
There, President Trump reflected on the contributions of Catholic education.
“St. Andrew’s Catholic school represents one of the many parochial schools dedicated to the education of some of our nation’s most disadvantaged children, but they’re becoming just the opposite very rapidly through education and with the help of the school choice programs,” he said.
He praised the school principal, Latrina Peters-Gipson, for her work, saying, “The love of what you do is really fantastic.”
The visit marked the president’s first official trip to a school since he took office. According to the Washington Post, about 300 of the school’s 350 students are beneficiaries of a Florida tax credit program that funds scholarships for families with limited resources.
Henry Fortier, superintendent of schools in the Diocese of Orlando, said the visit was an “exciting opportunity to share the good news and the work that we do.” He said school choice has also been an important part of his career in previous administrative roles in the archdioceses of New York and Baltimore.
“I know that there’s a lot of controversy about school choice for parents and lots of people have different opinions, but I see it as a partnership,” Fortier said. “It’s not a situation of us versus them, it’s a situation of us providing opportunities to our parents so that they have the right to choose an education that is appropriate for their children.”
“It shouldn’t be for just the wealthy that can afford it,” he said, lamenting that many working class families do not have the opportunity to choose the education for their children.
Fortier said the diocese’s schools work closely with their public school counterparts.
He said 25 percent of students in the Diocese of Orlando are in the state of Florida’s Step Up tax credit scholarship program. Of those 25 percent, 727 graduated in 2016, a graduation rate of 100 percent with a 99 percent placement in college or the military.
The superintendent touted the schools’ higher-than-average school scores on college entrance exams and student tests.
President Trump, repeating a campaign phrase, said education is “the civil rights issue of our time.”
“It’s why I’ve asked Congress to support a school choice bill. We’ve come a long way, I think. We’re ahead of schedule in so many ways when it comes to education.”
He predicted schools like St. Andrew would have “a fantastic relationship” with the Secretary of Education that would create “a lot of good things for your school and for the entire system.”
Bishop Noonan prayed for the president, his family, and everyone present.
“We pray for this day in dialogue that we may share the good news, and the future of our students,” he said.
President Trump thanked the bishop for his “uplifting prayer” and praised the bishop’s support for schools like St. Andrews.
The president’s visit drew criticism from some public school advocates like Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who characterized the president’s visit as a continuation of an “ideological crusade.”
Weingarten said that many voucher programs do not improve students’ academic outcomes and are not transparent in their spending and teaching policies.
Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor at The Catholic Association, said the president’s visit was appropriate given Catholic schools’ “record of success.” She said Catholic high school students are twice as likely as public school students to graduate college and their high school education is half the cost as public schools.
According to Ferguson, Catholic high schools in inner cities have a 99 percent graduation rate.
Editor’s Note: This is the second and final article on the Stopes v. Sutherland libel trial of 1923. The first article discussed the background of the case, including UK birth-control advocate Marie Stopes’ enthusiastic interest […]
Vatican City, Mar 3, 2017 / 09:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- 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.”
Paterson, N.J., Mar 3, 2017 / 06:36 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic chapel that has served a New Jersey shopping mall since 1970 has scheduled its final Mass.
St. Therese’s Chapel at the Bergen Town Center in Paramus, N.J. was set to close on As… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 3, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- 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.”
The fast is the weapon of protection against demons – St. Basil the Great.
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.
Lent (is referred to) as a joyful season…It’s the joy of loving Him more.
“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.
Paris, France, Mar 3, 2017 / 12:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- 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… […]
One of the most frequent platitudes spoken and written about in the public form today concerns education. While particular instantiations vary, the principle idea runs as follows: “There is a crisis in education and it […]
Vatican City, Mar 2, 2017 / 08:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Vatican conference on biodiversity has found that wasteful attitudes when it comes to consumption could be leading to the extinction of certain species, and that changing personal habits and a promoting more equal distribution of the earth’s resources could make the difference.
“We’re consuming more than is what available…there’s no doubt that in the richer countries in the world, we’re wasting an enormous amount and that’s all adding to the total,” Professor Peter Hamilton Raven said March 2.
Part of the reason for this waste, he said, is because “we don’t really understand the value of what we’re wasting. It appears to be a free commodity, like air, or space or fuel.”
“According to our standard of living we’re sucking resources from all over the world,” he said, noting that with the current rate of consumption, half of the world’s biodiversity could be extinct by the end of the century.
Based on the science, this hypothesis “is entirely possible if we continue with our greedy and unequal habits,” Raven said, adding that the loss is “something we cannot recover from easily.”
He stressed the importance learning to value the resources available to us, saying that to prevent the loss of biodiversity can’t happen “without having exhibited the reverence for life which must be a characteristic of our species.”
Raven, a professor at the Missouri Botanical Garden and research institute, spoke at a news briefing on a Feb. 27-March 1 study week on biological extinction, subtitled “How to Save the Natural World on Which We Depend.”
Hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the main aim of the gathering was to “review what we know about biological extinction, its causes and the ways in which we might limit its extent,” according to the final March 2 statement released by participants.
Alongside Raven at the briefing was Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Professor Werner Arber, President of the Academy, and Professor Partha Sarathi Dasgupta, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences.
In comments to journalists, Dasgupta echoed Raven’s concern about waste, saying that when it comes to biodiversity, “an enormous proportion of lifeforms are invisible…the microbes, the soil, the decomposers” and critters that we don’t typically think about.
“If you are only looking at the final goods and services,” he said, “you forget” the resources that go into producing them.
Particularly in urban areas that are more “detached” from the natural world, a person might see an earthworm crawling around on the ground, “but you forget how important they are,” he said, adding that the purpose of the conference was to take a look at some of the invisible organisms that might have gone missing.
For much of mankind, particularly in developed countries, “we think there is an unlimited pool of resources so we can take what we like,” he said, but stressed that this is not the case.
In their final statement, participants concluded that that based on comparisons with the fossil record, the current loss of species rate “is approximately 1,000 times the historical rate, with perhaps a quarter of all species in danger of extinction now and as many as half of them may be gone by the end of the present century.”
Due to man’s dependency on living organisms for necessities such as food and medicine to climate and even beauty, these losses “will inflict incalculable damage on our common prospects unless we control them.”
In their discussion, participants said the danger isn’t isolated to the extinction of species, but also effects the how the earth functions in general.
The “enormous increase” in human activity in the past 200 years alone not only threatens various species, but the use of fossil fuels “is putting huge strains on the earth’s capacity to function sustainably,” they said, and citing rising sea levels, higher global temperatures and ocean acidification as examples.
Discussion also focused at length on the topic of inequality, particularly the disparity between rich versus developing countries, linking the issue of poverty to an imbalance in consumption which results in the endangerment of certain species.
Participants argued that the 19 percent of the world’s richest people use “well over” half of the world’s resources, and because of this, wealthier nations are “substantially responsible for the increase in global warming and, consequently, the decrease in biodiversity.”
On the other hand, they said the world’s poor, “who do not enjoy the benefits of fossil fuels, are indirectly responsible for deforestation and some destruction of biodiversity, because their actions take place within a world economic system dominated by demands made by the wealthy, who have much higher overall consumption levels without paying any externalities to conserve global biodiversity.”
Given the vast difference between the rich and the poor on a global plane, participants suggested “wealth redistribution” as one positive action that could be taken.
“Ending extreme poverty, which would cost about $175 billion or less than 1 percent of the combined income of the richest countries in the world, is one major route to protecting our global environment and saving as much biodiversity as possible for the future,” they said, adding that this can be done differently in individual poor regions.
The panel present at the news briefing also addressed the point of population growth, saying conference participants across the board recognized that the loss of biodiversity and the negative effects of climate change don’t have to do with the number of people on the planet, so much as their habits and behavior.
In comments to journalists, Archbishop Sorondo said that throughout the conference, “what was clear is that the population is not the cause of climate change, but it’s the human activity and use of fossil fuels that produces climate change.”
“Consequently the population isn’t the cause, but human activity, which uses those resources,” he said, adding that it’s not a question “of how many human beings, but the activity and use of the materials consumed.”
“So today, to conserve biodiversity and to have an integral environment, this depends on human activity,” he said, and stressed the importance of educating families on the issue.
Dasgupta echoed the statement, encouraging people “not to translate the sustainable output” that nature offers as solely up to human numbers, because a sustainable number of people “depends on the standard of living, the quality of life that we have on average.”
Consumption is a key to this point, he said, adding that the disparity between rich and poor compounds the issue. On this point, “growth doesn’t seem to change the distribution amongst us,” he said, adding that “if the distribution doesn’t change it’s as if you’re becoming richer.”
In his comments, Raven noted that while the earth can’t sustain “an infinite” number of people, “no one really knows the number of people the world will really support.”
But when it comes to the issue of consumption, Raven said a sense of solidarity, “love and charity” ought to guide our actions, encouraging people to not just care about the future of “their own children and grandchildren,” but also “for others.”
© Catholic World Report