Cardinal Dolan says Democrats have abandoned Catholics

Springfield, Ill., Oct 24, 2019 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- The role of president in a bishops’ conference is not as powerful as one may assume, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois told CNA Wednesday.

“It’s important to understand that the bishops’ conference is not some kind of a regulatory body or a supervisory body,” Paprocki told CNA Oct. 23.

The conference, in fact, “doesn’t have any authority over bishops in their own diocese.”

While it would be easy to draw comparisons between the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops  and the United States Congress, Paprocki said that this was not at all the proper analogy for a bishops’ conference.

It is not normally the role of the USCCB to create or pass legislation, the bishop said.

“The meetings of bishops are not normally legislators–I say normally because there are some exceptions to that, and the exceptions are very narrowly defined in Canon 455,” he explained.

These exceptions include setting certain transactional thresholds or the age of confirmation, as well as voting on a specific issue with the permission of the Holy See.

“An example of (the latter) would be the Essential Norms that the bishops adopted in Dallas in 2002, for the protection of minors that was in conjunction with the Charter for the the Protection of Children and Young People,” he said.

“So the Charter is an example of a voluntary document that the bishops adopted.”

A conference of bishops, Paprocki said, is a “grouping of bishops in a region or in a country that comes together for joint pastoral activities.”

These joint pastoral activities mostly involve “advocacy type efforts,” he said.

“That’s, that’s basically what the conference tries to do–the bishops working together as equals.”

The president of a bishops’ conference has more of an advisory role than anything else, said Paprocki.

While the president would author statements from the conference, as well as keep the general assemblies running in an orderly fashion, he does not have supervisory authority over other bishops in their dioceses, nor does the president alone set the agenda for the general assemblies.

“It’s not really an authoritarian position,” said Paprocki. “That position is not like a supervisor of the other bishops and in that sense of mission.” Bishops are only accountable to the pope, Paprocki said, who is represented in the United States by an apostolic nuncio.

Paprocki is one of 10 bishops who have been listed as candidates for the upcoming presidential and vice-presidential elections at the United States Conference of Cathoilc Bishops. Candidates are nominated by their brother bishops, and Paprocki told CNA he was “quite surprised” to see his name put forward.

The current USCCB president, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, will conclude his term at next month’s general assembly in Baltimore. Typically, the vice president of the USCCB is voted in to lead the conference for the next term. Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles is the conference’s vice president.

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Washington D.C., Apr 29, 2019 / 10:30 am (CNA).- The president of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference has condemned the shooting at a synagogue near San Diego on April 27, and offered prayers for those affected.

“I, along with my brother bishops, am greatly saddened and deeply concerned over the news that another house of worship has been subjected to violence,” said USCCB President Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.

“Our country should be better than this,” DiNardo said in a statement released April 28.

“Our world should be beyond such acts of hatred and anti-Semitism. This attack joins an all too long list of attacks against innocent people, people of all faiths, who only want to gather and to pray,” he said.

Saturday’s shooting at Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California, killed one and injured three others. The shooter has been arrested and charged with murder. This is the second deadly shooting at a synagogue in six months. The shooter, John Earnest, wrote and published an anti-Semitic manifesto prior to the attack.

Earnest has also claimed responsibility for a March arson attack on a mosque in Escondido, California.

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy also expressed his closeness to the local Jewish communittee.

“Our hearts go out to everyone at Chabad House Poway for the senseless violence that took place earlier today. Houses of worship should be places of peace. Know that the entire Catholic Community of San Diego and Imperial Counties is keeping you in our prayers,” McElroy said in a statement.

The bishop asked that all the parishes of the diocese offer a special prayer for the victims of anti-Semitism at Sunday Mass, and circulated a draft for inclusion in the prayers of the faithful. 

“For the victims of the Chabad shootings and their families; for the Jewish community, our elder brothers in faith, who are once again subjected to the evil of anti-Semitic hatred and violence, this time in our own diocese; and for our world, so consumed by anger and division, that we might understand that the gift of peace you give in today’s Gospel is a command for us to love every man and woman in the human family; we pray to the Lord.”

Cardinal DiNardo said that violence in the name of religion or or committed against people of faith was was always and everwhere intollerable.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “both in the past and today, too many preach such hatred in the name of God. This cannot be abided; it must end.”

The cardinal’s statement echoes last month’s message from Pope Francis condemning anti-Semitism. In March, speaking to representatives from the American Jewish Committee, said that for Christians, anti-Semitism is “a rejection of one’s own origins” and a “complete contradition.”

At the March audience, Pope Francis referred to interfaith dialogue as an “important tool” in increasing understanding between Judaism and Christianity, and stressed the importance of forming new generation of young people who are committed to interreligious dialogue.

Citing the “rich spiritual heritage” shared by Christians and Jews, the pope said that members of both faiths should seek each other out during this time of “depersonalizing secularism” in the Western world.

The shooting follows the devastating attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue last year.

On Oct. 27, 48-year-old Robert Bowers entered Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue equipped with an assault rifle and three handguns. Shouting anti-Semitic slogans, Bowers killed eight men and three women. He also injured six others, including four policemen. After a shootout with Pittsburgh Police and SWAT, Bowers was wounded and eventually surrendered.

Following that attack, several Pennsylvania bishops issued round condemnations of the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said that “Religious and ethnic hatred is vile in any form, but the ugly record of the last century is a lesson in the special evil of anti-Semitism. It has no place in America, and especially in the hearts of Christians.”

Scranton’s Bishop Joseph Bambera, who is the head of the Committee for Ecumenism and Interreligious Affairs at the USCCB, issued a statement on Sunday, claiming the act of violence to be cowardly.

“Anti-Semitism is to be condemned and has to be confronted by our nation. The Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops stands with our Jewish brothers and sisters during this time of great distress. May God grant peace to the dead, healing to the injured, and comfort to the families of those hurt and killed and to all the Jewish Community.”

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