Washington D.C., May 3, 2017 / 11:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- College educated Christians are more likely to be churchgoers than their less educated counterparts, and seem to show about the same level of religious commitment as other American Christians, a… […]
Did you find the Gorsuch hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee a depressing exercise in political theater? Are you tired of the members of the “world’s greatest deliberative body” playing “Gotcha!” games that would embarrass […]
Charlotte, N.C., May 3, 2017 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A breakaway Catholic group is in the news for attempting to ordain a woman as a Catholic priest at a non-denominational church in North Carolina.
Abigail Eltzroth, 64, went through the simulated ordination at the Jubilee! church in Asheville, N.C. under the aegis of the group Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. She has said she intends to start a Catholic community in the area of Asheville.
The local diocese, however, reaffirmed Catholic teaching that such an ordination is null.
“I hope that Catholics in the diocese will understand that it would be sinful to receive a fake sacrament from a woman priest and that includes attending a fake Mass,” said David Hains, spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte.
Eltzroth converted to Catholicism from a Presbyterian background in her 50s, the Charlotte Observer reports. The simulated ordination was carried out by Bridget Mary Meehan, who presents herself as a Catholic bishop.
Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests traces itself back to the attempted ordination of seven women on a ship cruising the Danube River in 2002. Attempted ordination of a woman is automatic excommunication for both the person attempting the ordination and the person attempting to be ordained.
From the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has been clear on the issue of women priests, while still emphasizing the unique and important role of women in the Church.
On his return flight from Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families Sept. 28, 2015, the Pope reiterated that women priests “cannot be done,” and called for a more comprehensive theology on women.
In an interview with Vatican Insider in December 2013, Francis responded to a question on whether or not he’d ever consider naming a woman a cardinal. The very question, he indicated, stemmed from an attitude of clericalism.
“I don’t know where this idea sprang from. Women in the Church must be valued not ‘clericalised,’” the Pope said. “Whoever thinks of women as cardinals suffers a bit from clericalism.”
Throughout the three years since, Francis has consistently called for a more “incisive” feminine presence in the Church, yet has refrained from limiting this presence to a mere position.
Vatican City, May 3, 2017 / 04:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis recalled his recent visit to Egypt, saying that given its rich biblical and cultural history, the country is a sign of hope, and has a special role to play in brokering peace in the Middle East.
“Egypt for us was a sign of hope, of refuge and of help,” the Pope said during his May 3 general audience.
He noted how in scripture Jacob and his sons traveled to the region when it was in famine, and later Jesus himself also found refuge there from Herod.
“So recounting this trip enters on the path of recounting hope,” he said, adding that for Christians, “Egypt has the sense of speaking about hope, whether in history or today, and of this brotherhood that I am telling you about.”
Pope Francis spoke just days after returning from his April 28-29 visit to Egypt, which was made largely as the result of a recent thawing in relations between the Vatican and the prestigious al-Azhar University, one of the highest institutional authorities in Sunni Islam, which had been strained since 2011.
The visit also took place in wake of increasing attacks on Egypt’s Coptic community, and as such was meant to offer support for local Christians as well as cement Catholic-Muslim relations.
During his visit, Pope Francis met with the Great Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed Mohamed al-Tayyeb, at the al-Azhar University, where he also spoke to the International Conference for Peace. He then met with Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and civil authorities before sharing a moment of prayer with Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II.
He also spent time with Egypt’s Christian community, celebrating Mass for Catholics on the second and final day of his trip, and meeting with the country’s priests, religious and seminarians.
In his general audience address, the Pope thanked Egypt for “the truly warm welcome” he was given, saying President el-Sisi and the Egyptian authorities made “an extraordinary commitment so this event could take place in the best of ways.”
The goal, he said, was for the visit to be “a sign of peace for Egypt and for that entire region, which unfortunately suffers from conflicts and terrorism.”
Francis told pilgrims that his visit to the al-Azhar University had the “double horizon” of promoting dialogue between Christians and Muslims, and of promoting peace on a global level.
“In this context, I offered a reflection that valued the history of Egypt as a land of civilization and alliance,” he said, explaining that Egypt is widely considered to be “synonymous with ancient civilization and with treasures of art and knowledge.”
This serves as a reminder “that peace is built through education, the formation of wisdom, of a humanism which includes as the religious dimension, the relationship with God, as an integral part,” he said, pointing to the speech given by al-Tayyeb.
“Peace is also built starting from the alliance between God and man, founded on the alliance between men,” he said, explaining that this is a law which can be summed up in the two commandments of love of God and neighbor.
Francis then said this same foundation is also the basis of building “the social and civic order, in which all citizens of every culture, origin and religion are called to participate.”
Because of “the great historic and religious patrimony” of Egypt and its role in the Middle East, the country has “a peculiar task on the path toward a stable and lasting peace, which does not rely on the law of force, but the force of the law.”
Turning to his encounter with Egypt’s Christian community, the Pope said that Christians in Egypt, as in every other nation, “are called to be the leaven of brotherhood,” which is only possible if they are in communion with Christ.
Recalling how he signed a joint-declaration with Patriarch Tawadros, Francis said the two renewed their commitment to finding a shared baptism, and prayed together for the “the martyrs” who have died in recent attacks on the Coptic community.
“Their blood fertilized that ecumenical encounter,” he said, noting that in addition to himself and Tawadros, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople was also present.
Francis then pointed to the Mass he celebrated with Egyptian Catholics, calling it a celebration of “faith and fraternity,” in which the presence of the Risen Lord was truly felt.
He also recalled his meeting with the priests, religious and seminarians of Egypt, saying he saw in them “the beauty of the Church in Egypt,” and could pray with them for all Christians in the Middle East, that “they be salt and light in that land, in the midst of that people.”
Speaking off-the-cuff, he noted that Egypt has “a lot of seminarians,” which he said is “a consolation.”
He closed by offering his thanks and praying that the Holy Family of Nazareth, who “emigrated on the banks of the Nile to avoid the violence of Herod,” would always bless and protect the Egyptian people, “and guide them on the path of prosperity, fraternity and peace.”
Fatima, Portugal, May 3, 2017 / 03:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After a whirlwind trip to Egypt last week, Pope Francis in just 10 days will head to Portugal for the centenary celebration of the Marian apparitions of Fatima, where anticipation is building f… […]
Lima, Peru, May 3, 2017 / 12:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a radio interview for the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, a cardinal from Peru discussed the sanctification of work and outlined a typical day in his own life.
“How many hours does a cardinal work?” asked journalist Miguel Humberto Aguirre. “I think all of them,” replied Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani of Lima.
In his weekly Saturday radio program on station RPP April 29, Cardinal Cipriani said that his day usually starts at 5:00 a.m. and normally ends around 10 or 11 at night.
He said that he gets up “early to be able to pray because there’s a moment for prayer, for the Divine Office where there won’t be phone calls or interruptions. So you try to do it first thing in the morning. Very early, I go into the chapel and many times I celebrate Mass” at that time.
Then, the archbishop continued, “comes work itself, and part of the work is to be informed about what’s going on in the country and the world, that is, to read news about the Pope, things about Peru,” and other topics.
Then comes “the office like anybody else: people who want me to bless their house, people who are going to get married, people with some difficulty, times to meet with priests who want to talk, I go to a hospital to bless a facility, I talk with a person who has a problem in their home life, and so on.”
Cardinal Cipriani also said that an important part of his daily work is that spent “praying the Rosary or reading a little theology to keep up to date.”
“I also have to go and attend social obligations. Sometimes a family invites you to some anniversary.” In the end, he reflected, “you spend the entire day serving. My time is for others, I don’t have my own time.”
“That’s the way it is for everybody,” he continued. “In the case of a married man, your time is for your wife, your children and your grandchildren, you don’t close yourself off.”
At the end of the day, he said, “to relax a little bit, I watch NBA basketball.” The cardinal himself was part of Peru’s national basketball team in the 1960s.
The cardinal also touched on the idea of sanctifying our work, pointing to St. Joseph as the patron in this regard.
The first key in seeking to sanctify work is to perform one’s tasks well, whatever they may be. “So right now we’re working on the radio, let’s do it right,” he told the radio host as an example. “May the people listen to us and say ‘it helped me, it was well done, it gave us some insights, it’s been inspirational for us’.”
Similarly, he went on, “the person who plays soccer should play it well, try to score goals, try to win. The person who’s in Congress should try to make proper laws, study the issues, attend your meetings. Do you work well.”
“We spend a lot of time engaged in our work, whether it’s at the office or at home. From the time we have breakfast and get ready, and then when we come back home and take care of the kids. We have to find God there,” he emphasized.
The second key to sanctifying work is found in the virtues, Cardinal Cipriani said.
“And you who are working, how to do you live out honesty, joy, generosity, justice, patience?” he reflected. “Do you do your work because the boss is looking, or do you do it knowing that you must do it well?”
“I sanctify myself if I do the work well, and if I do it before my Creator and my Father,” he emphasized.
Washington D.C., May 2, 2017 / 05:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At a Mass on Tuesday, the archbishop of Washington, D.C. thanked law enforcement officers and first responders for putting themselves in harm’s way for the betterment of society.
“This Mass,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl said, “should call forth from all of us enormous gratitude.” He thanked officials in attendance, their fallen comrades who died in the line of duty, and the families of the deceased.
Cardinal Wuerl was the celebrant and homilist at the 23rd annual Blue Mass at St. Patrick’s Church in downtown Washington, D.C. The Mass is said for law enforcement and fire safety officials, and for those who have died in the line of duty.
According to the Archdiocese of Washington, the tradition of the Blue Mass dates back to 1934 but it has only been an annual tradition beginning with 1994.
In 2016, there were 144 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty in the U.S., according to the Officer Down Memorial Page.
In attendance at the Mass were various federal and local law enforcement honor guards and families of slain law enforcement officials. At the end of the liturgy, two trumpeters played Taps after the names of the slain officials from the past year were read.
“Taps” for fallen law enforcement/fire safety at the end of DC’s Blue Mass. pic.twitter.com/nZJZvabJ0O
— Matthew Hadro (@matthadro) May 2, 2017
“Recognizing that not every law enforcement officer, firefighter, emergency responder or medical personnel returns home at the end of their shift, we pray especially for the fallen and their families,” the cardinal wrote later on his blog.
“Reflecting our faith in the Resurrection, our prayers are directed to our loving and ever-merciful God, whom we ask to receive into his kingdom of new and eternal life those who have paid the last full measure so that others might live, prosper and be free,” he continued.
Those officers fallen in the line of duty show us that “violence” is around us, the cardinal admitted in his homily. “We recognize unfortunately that violence is also a part of life,” he said, yet “we must never let it change us.”
He reflected on the first reading of the martyrdom account of St. Stephen, insisting that there was “more to the story” than an unjust death.
The officers who “stand in harm’s way” in defense of human dignity witness to “the great hope that there is a better way,” he added. “Your lives and your service are a great witness to that hope,” he told the officials in attendance at the Mass.
Ultimately, these officers are motivated by love, the cardinal stressed: “their love of their families to be sure, and also their love for the community, their selfless love for those they do not even know, for those who may not even like or appreciate them, but for whom they are willing to risk their own lives.”
“This love is reflected in all of the routine day in and day out challenges they face all the time.”
More from DC’s Blue Mass honoring law enforcement & 1st responders: bagpipers in the preliminary procession playing “Minstrel Boy” pic.twitter.com/NRAdIq0kwA
— Matthew Hadro (@matthadro) May 2, 2017
Denver, Colo., May 2, 2017 / 05:24 pm (CNA).-
The historical legacy of Christopher Columbus is tarred by bad history in the quest to change Columbus Day, according to a researcher who has focused on Columbus’ religious motives for exploration.
“They’re blaming Columbus for the things he didn’t do. It was mostly the people who came after, the settlers,” Prof. Carol Delaney told CNA April 25. “I just think he’s been terribly maligned.”
“I think a lot of people don’t know anything much, really about Columbus,” said Delaney, an anthropology professor emerita at Stanford University and the author of the 2011 book “Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem.”
She said Columbus initially had a favorable impression of many of the Native Americans he met and instructed the men under his command not to abuse them but to trade with them. At one point Columbus hung some of his own men who had committed crimes against the Indians.
“When I read his own writings and the documents of those who knew him, he seemed to be very much on the side of the Indians,” Delaney said, noting that Columbus adopted the son of a Native American leader he had befriended.
Columbus is again in the news in Colorado, which in 1907 became the first U.S. state to make Columbus Day an official holiday.
Now, one Colorado legislator aims to repeal Columbus Day as a state holiday.
State Rep. Joe Salazar’s 2017 bill charges that Columbus’ voyage “triggered one of history’s greatest slave trades” and created “a level of inhumanity towards indigenous peoples that still exists.”
The bill excerpts three paragraphs from the writings of Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish Dominican friar born in 1484 who became the first Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico and advocated for indigenous Americans. He wrote strong polemics against Spanish abuses.
Bishop De las Casas depicted the Spaniards as “acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before.” De las Casas claimed that the native population of Hispaniola was reduced to 200 people from 3 million.
He said the Spanish killed “such an infinite number of souls” due to lust for gold caused by “their insatiable greed and ambition.” He charged that the Spanish attacked towns and did not spare children, the elderly or pregnant women. He said they stabbed and dismembered them “as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house” and made bets on how efficiently they could kill.
Salazar’s bill describes these as “Columbus’ acts of inhumanity.”
Delaney, however, emphasized that the acts of the colonists need to be distinguished from those of Columbus.
Bishop De las Casas’ own view on Columbus is more complex, she said. Other scholars have noted that Las Casas admired Columbus and said he and Spain had a providential role in “opening the doors of the Ocean Sea.” The bishop thought Columbus was treated unjustly by the Spanish monarchs after he was accused of mismanagement.
De las Casas himself is not above criticism. He owned indigenous people as slaves before changing his mind on their mistreatment. At one point he suggested to the Pope that black Africans be enslaved as an alternative to enslaving Native Americans.
Among the critics of the Colorado bill are the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternity founded in 1882, which takes its name from the explorer who brought Christianity to the New World. Columbus was a widely admired Catholic at a time when American Catholics were marginalized.
“Scholars have long shown that de las Casas was prone to hyperbole and exaggeration, and the bill does not take into account recent scholarship on de las Casas or Columbus,” the Knights said in an email to members.
“The legacy and accomplishments of Christopher Columbus deserve to be celebrated. He was a man ahead of his time and a fearless explorer and brilliant navigator whose daring discovery changed the course of history,” the group continued. “Columbus has frequently been falsely blamed for the actions of those who came after him and is the victim of horrific slanders concerning his conduct.”
Isaac Cuevas, a spokesman for the Knights of Columbus, was even more forceful, connecting the move against Columbus Day to a dark period in Colorado’s past.
“Nearly a century ago, the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado targeted Catholics including Italian-Americans. One of the Klan’s tactics throughout the United States was the denigration of Christopher Columbus and the attempted suppression of the holiday in his honor,” he said.
Cuevas said that a committee hearing on the bill was “tinged with offensive anti-Catholic overtones.” He charged that the bill “takes us back to what the Klan outlined in the 1920s in order to promote ethnic and religious resentment and marginalize and intimidate people with different religious beliefs and ethnic backgrounds.”
Rep. Salazar put forward a bill in previous years against the Christopher Columbus holiday. His 2016 bill to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day was defeated in the state legislature.
“After speaking with the American Indian community and other communities, they were saying, ‘We actually never really wanted a day – this isn’t what this is about. This is about removing a state holiday about a man who engaged in genocide against our people’,” Salazar told the Colorado Statesman newspaper recently.
Columbus Day drew particular controversy in Colorado on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the New World. Organizers of Denver’s 1992 Columbus Day parade canceled it at the last minute due to threats from radical activists with the American Indian Movement.
Columbus has been a major figure for Catholics in America, especially Italian-Americans, who saw his pioneering voyage from Europe as a way of validating their presence in a sometimes hostile majority-Protestant country. The Knights of Columbus, the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world, took his name, his voyage and his faith as an inspiration.
At one point in the nineteenth century there were even proposals to push for the voyager’s canonization.
In 1892, the quadricennial of Columbus’ first voyage, Leo XIII authored an encyclical that reflected on Columbus’ desire to spread Catholic Christianity. The Pope stressed how Columbus’ Catholic faith motivated his voyage and supported him amid his setbacks.
Under pressure from some Native American activists and their allies, some U.S. localities have dropped observances of Columbus Day, while others have added observances intended to recognize those who lived in the Americas before Columbus sailed.
Delaney acknowledged that some Native Americans were sent to Spain as slaves or conscripted into hard labor at the time Columbus had responsibility for the region, but she attributed this mistreatment to his substitutes acting in his absence.
She thinks Columbus Day should be continued, even if the indigenous peoples of America also deserve recognition.
For her, Columbus’ handling of the killings of his crew showed restraint. After his ship the Santa Maria ran aground on his first voyage, he left 39 men on a Caribbean island with firm orders not to go marauding, not to kidnap or rape women, and always trade for food and gold.
“When they returned on the second voyage, they found all of the settlers had been killed,” she said. The priest on that voyage wanted to attack the locals and kill all of their people in revenge, but Columbus strongly refused to make such a move.
She noted the explorer’s relationship with a Native American leader on Hispaniola, a Taino chief named Guacanagari. Columbus had very good relations with him and adopted one of his sons. That son took the name of Columbus’ natural son, Diego, and accompanied Columbus on his final three voyages.
Columbus on his second return voyage took six Indians back to Spain, but not as slaves.
“He took them because they wanted to go,” Delaney said.
Vatican City, May 2, 2017 / 04:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Moralists without empathy are unable to see how God transforms “hearts of stone” into real hearts of flesh – and it’s a problem that harms the Christian community, Pope Francis said.
“This causes suffering in the Church. The closed hearts, the hearts of stone, the hearts which do not want to be open, do not want to hear, the hearts which only know the language of condemnation,” the Pope said during his Tuesday morning homily at Casa Santa Maria.
He reflected on the hardness of heart which lead to the death of Saint Stephen, as depicted in the day’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles at Mass.
The temple authorities who stoned St. Stephen are what Pope Francis called “those who condemn all who are outside the law.” He said Stephen had called them “uncircumcised of heart” because they lacked an ability to understand the word of God.
Although the apostles were called foolish by Christ on the walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, the Pope clarified that they were blinded by misunderstanding and fear but capable of hearing the truth and being corrected.
“When Jesus rebuked them, they let his words enter them and their hearts burned within them, while those who stoned Stephen were furious and did not want to listen!”
Pope Francis referred to the Lord’s “beautiful promise” to the Prophet Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.”
A tender and responsive heart understands correction and how to hear. Closed hearts, however, don’t know how to listen, they only “know how to condemn, they do not know how to say ‘Explain it to me, why do you say this? Why this? Explain it to me.”
He said these stony hearts are not able to handle Christ’s words of rebuke and are the same hearts which led to the deaths of Saint Stephen and the prophets in the Old Testament.
“There was no place in their hearts for the Holy Spirit,” Pope Francis said, comparing them to Stephen who “was filled with the Holy Spirit, he had understood everything, he was a witness to the obedience of the word made flesh, and this was done by the Holy Spirit.”
Reflecting on the Gospel when the Pharisees propose to stone the adulteress, he told those present to “look inside yourself” to see the sins which Christ makes clearer.
“We look at the tenderness of Jesus, the witness of obedience, that great witness, Jesus, who has given life, which makes us look for the tenderness of God, confronting us, our sins, our weaknesses.”
The fear, misunderstanding, and foolishness of the apostles on the way to Emmaus represent us with our “many doubts, many sins” the Pope said. However, during the temptation to pull away from the cross, he said we should “make space to hear Jesus, who makes our hearts burn.”
Pope Francis urged the faithful to “enter this dialogue and let us call for the grace of the Lord which softens the rigid hearts of those people who are always closed in the law and condemn all who are outside the law.”
Washington D.C., May 2, 2017 / 03:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A massive spending package to be voted on by Congress has drawn applause for continuing foreign aid spending, but also concern at its proposal to keep funding Planned Parenthood.
The pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List said the bill’s funding of Planned Parenthood was “incredibly disappointing,” and president Marjorie Dannenfelser insisted that it was “imperative” for the House to pass a “reconciliation bill that redirects the abortion giant’s funding to community health centers.”
The House has voted multiple times to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding because it is the nation’s largest performer of abortions, with more than 300,000 abortions per year according to its own reports. A measure defunding the organization for one year was included in the American Health Care Act, but that bill had failed to reach the House floor for a vote. A revised health care bill is now being considered by Congress.
On Sunday, an agreement was reached between the House and Senate on an Omnibus bill, a funding bill for the rest of the 2017 fiscal year that could be voted on this week.
Regarding foreign assistance, the Omnibus bill includes $990 million for international famine relief when famines are breaking out or are on the verge of occurring in four countries: Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen.
In addition, the bill directs a $1 billion increase in funding of humanitarian aid programs “to assist in responding to the historic levels of refugees and displaced persons.”
Catholic Relief Services, the international aid arm of the U.S. bishops’ conference, praised this funding increase.
“These funds are a lifeline for over 20 million people at risk of starvation because of conflict and a prolonged drought,” said Bill O’Keefe, vice president for government relations and advocacy.
“Members of Congress from both parties recognized that this small part of the budget has a huge impact, not only on those in need, but also on our nation’s security. This generosity is America at its best.”
The bill also maintains restrictions on international abortion funding through the Helms Amendment and bars funding of groups deemed to be supportive of forced abortions and sterilizations under the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, the House Appropriations Committee said.
Additionally, Hyde Amendment restrictions on funding of abortions in the U.S. are maintained in the bill, and programs promoting abstinence for teens receive a 50 percent increase in funding, the committee noted. The Hyde Amendment has been policy for over 40 years.
On immigration, the bill reportedly does not fund the building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. “Sanctuary cities,” or those cities which do not cooperate with federal demands on immigration enforcement, would not be defunded.
Funding for programs fighting the opioid epidemic in the U.S. would also increase by $150 million. In 2015, some 33,000 died from opioid abuse and the number of overdose deaths from heroin or opioids quadrupled between 1999 and 2015, as well as deaths from prescription opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
However, President Trump has already proposed cuts to foreign aid, the Environmental Protection Agency, and increases in defense spending and immigration enforcement funding. When the president released his initial budget proposal in March, Catholic Relief Services came out against the proposed cuts to foreign aid.
The cuts would be detrimental to programs helping those in need at a time when the number of those displaced from their homes is at its highest recorded level, CRS said.
© Catholic World Report