Month: May 2018

The Dispatch

Grace under pressure

May 30, 2018 George Weigel 1

In a culture that Solzhenitsyn rightly criticized for its obsession with “unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures,” AbbotThomas Frerking, OSB, has lived a vocation […]

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News Briefs

CUA appoints new dean of music, drama, and art

May 30, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., May 30, 2018 / 12:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic University of America announced Tuesday that Jacqueline Leary-Warsaw has been appointed dean of the university’s school of music.

“I am pleased to appoint Jacqueline Leary-Warsaw as the new dean,” said John Garvey, president of Catholic University, May 29. “She is a noted educator who has the leadership and experience to guide the school at a significant time in the history of the University.”

A proposal to create the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art, by joining the drama and arts departments to the music school, is pending, and is expected to take effect in the upcoming fall semester. The new school is intended “to bring together all on-campus arts faculty to foster cross-disciplinary efforts and anchor the University’s commitment to the arts,” the university said in a statement.

As dean of the school, Leary-Warsaw will be in charge of its promotion and growth, offering academic and administrative leadership, while representing the school to the university and the arts world, according to a university statement. Her appointment takes effect June 18.

“I am very honored and humbled to join The Catholic University of America community and to be a part of this very historic time as we prepare to launch the new School of Music, Drama, and Art,” said Leary-Warsaw. “I am eager to work with the University’s world-class performing and fine arts faculty at this time of progress through new artistic pursuits and a renewed commitment to the future of the arts at Catholic University.”

Leary-Warsaw succeeds Grayson Wagstaff, who has been dean of the music school since 2010.

Garvey thanked Wagstaff for “his many contributions to the school during his tenure as dean.”

Leary-Warsaw has served as chair of the department of music at Birmingham-Southern College, as well as an associate professor of music, and artistic director of the Conservatory of Fine and Performing Arts.

She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Louisville, a Master of Music from CUA, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University. She is also known for her work in research.

Leary-Warsaw is a classical soprano, and has performed in opera, oratorio, solo, and chamber recitals throughout the United States, Europe, and South America.

Some of her favorite roles performed include Sophie (Werther), Adele (Die Fledermaus), Isabelle/Madeline (The Face on the Barroom Floor), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Baby Doe (Baby Doe), Lucy (The Telephone), Kathryn (The Reformed Peasant), Nella (Gianni Schicchi), Nora (Riders to the Sea), Mrs. Gobineau (The Medium), and Judith in the world premiere of Erni’s Still Life, according to her bio.

Leary-Warsaw has been host, producer, and writer of the EWTN Global Catholic Television Network’s In Concert television series for 25 years.

She is a founding member of CUA’s Catholic Arts Council, and has worked for years with the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to produce the Annual Christmas Concert for Charity.

Leary-Warsaw is the wife of Michael Warsaw, who is chairman and CEO of the EWTN Global Catholic Network, of which CNA is a part.
 
 
 

 

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News Briefs

The Holy Spirit is the invisible gift of God, Pope Francis says

May 30, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, May 30, 2018 / 03:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that confirmation is the sacrament in which Catholics are marked with a seal that solidifies their belonging to Christ through the Holy Spirit, who he said is God’s invisible gift to each person who receives the sacrament.

Referring to how candidates for confirmation are told to “receive the seal of the Holy Spirit given to you as a gift,” Pope Francis said May 30 that the Holy Spirit “is the invisible gift bestowed” on candidates, and the holy oil they are anointed with, called “chrism,” is the “visible seal” of this gift.  

“In the image of Christ who bears on himself the seal of the Father, Christians are also marked with a seal that says to whom they belong,” he said, adding that “it is God himself who confirms us in Christ and who has given us the anointing, he has impressed us with a seal and has given us the deposit of the Spirit in our hearts.”

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly general audience, which this week focused on the sacrament of confirmation as a part of the process of Christian initiation in the Catholic Church.

Confirmation, he said, “shines in the light of baptism” and is fulfilled in the reception of the Eucharist.

He noted how candidates, at one point during the confirmation Mass, are asked to renew the promises made by their parents and godparents at their baptism. With confirmation, “now it is they themselves who profess faith in the Church, ready to respond ‘I believe’ to the questions asked by the bishop.”

The coming of the Holy Spirit requires that hearts be gathered in prayer, he said, noting that this is why after a moment of silence among the congregation, the bishop extends his hands toward the candidates and “asks God to infuse in them the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.”

While the Holy Spirit is the biggest gift given during the sacrament, he brings a variety of others with him, Francis said, and listed the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit spoken of by the prophet Isaiah and the fruits of the Holy Spirit referred to by St. Paul.

The seven gifts mentioned by Isaiah – wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, fear of the Lord and piety – are bestowed in a special way on candidates during the sacrament of confirmation and are the virtues “poured out onto the Messiah in order to fulfill his mission,” Francis said.

Likewise, he noted that in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians the apostle referred to the fruits of the Holy Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – which represent both the uniqueness and unity of the Holy Spirit.

“The one Spirit distributes the many gifts which enrich the one Church: he is the author of diversity, but at the same time the creator of unity,” the pope said, adding that while different people receive different gifts, “at the same time there is harmony and unity” among them all.

Francis then turned to the moment when the bishop lays his hands on the heads of the candidates, saying this gesture is biblical, having been spoken about in the Acts of the Apostles, and is how the Holy Spirit is communicated to the person receiving the sacrament.

This gesture is done “to better express the outpouring of the Spirit who pervades those who receive it,” he said, noting that soon after the laying on of hands, the candidates are anointed with holy oil, called “chrism.”

Used in both Eastern and Latin rites during the sacrament, the oil is “a therapeutic and cosmetic substance, which enters the wounds of the medical body in the tissue and perfumes the limbs,” he said.

This, he said, is the reason why oil was adopted as a liturgical and biblical symbol to express the action of the Holy Spirit, “who consecrates and permeates the baptized, embellishing them with gifts.”

After receiving the anointing with oil in the sign of the cross, the candidates receive an “indelible spiritual sign,” which is “the character that more perfectly configures them to Christ and gives them the grace of spreading its ‘good smell’ among men.”

Pope Francis concluded his address saying the Holy Spirit is “an undeserved gift to be welcomed with gratitude, making room for his inexhaustible creativity.”

The Spirit, he said, is a gift “to be preserved with care, to be indulged with docility, allowing oneself to be molded like wax by its fiery charity in order to reflect Jesus Christ in today’s world.”

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Gender theory flourished in an ideological vacuum, cardinal says

May 29, 2018 CNA Daily News 1

Rome, Italy, May 29, 2018 / 10:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Gerhard Müller reflected recently on the rise of gender ideology, saying it flourished in the vacuum left by the collapse of fascism and Soviet communism as a “new religion”.

“Marxism and fascism, anti-Christian ideology, fell. Capitalism is in crisis. There was room for true philosophy, for theology, for Christian religion. But people preferred to invent a new religion, which believes in the human being rather than God,” the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told CNA May 25.

The cardinal spoke before the presentation of the Italian edition of Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay, by Daniel Mattson.

“People cannot be classified according to their sexual orientation,” Cardinal Müller said. “We do not have human beings who are more special than others. Man must be described according to his persona and the fact that he is created in the image and likeness to God and his vocation to eternal life.”

This character fits “every human being.”

Speaking about pastoral care for homosexuals, the cardinal noted that “the Church has always had respect toward every human person, beyond any categorization.”

He also emphasized that “in gender ideology you can count dozens of genders, while human being is created as man and woman: this is our nature, and the God cretor’s will is expressed in this nature.”

Cardinal Müller underscored that people “must resist those who organize as an ideological group and want to change all the society, imposing their thought on every people.”

That is “an imposition of a unique thought,” as ideological groups “attack all those who do not think their way, they insult, they even destroy the human dignity of people who think differently from them.”

He said these people “are a lobby, an organization with their own interests.”

Cardinal Müller praised Mattson for not labeling himself as gay, but as “Son of God.”

“We can talk about anything in the secret of confession and with pastoral care, but no man can identify himself with a category that does not exist in reality,” Cardinal Müller said.

He also stressed that this construction comes from Marxist thought, because “the Marxist rationale claims that mind does not recognize reality, but it builds reality: when the communist party says that 2+2 is 5, everybody must believe it.”

Gender ideology and pastoral care for homosexual people are among the most discussed topics in the Catholic Church.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in 1986 a Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, which said, “We encourage the Bishops to provide pastoral care in full accord with the teaching of the Church for homosexual persons of their dioceses.”

“No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral. A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin,” it added.

And Benedict XVI discussed gender ideology in his final Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, on Dec. 21, 2012.

In the speech, he said that “the profound falsehood of (gender) theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.”

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