While many eyes, at least in the U.S., were focused on the conflicts and testimony playing out before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Church’s tumultuous summer continued as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò issued a new, […]
Vatican City, Sep 27, 2018 / 03:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has issued a new letter addressing his allegation that senior prelates have been complicit in covering up alleged sex abuse by […]
Denver, Colo., Sep 27, 2018 / 04:41 pm (CNA).- In a new book, evangelist Curtis Martin offers a plan to help equip the next “generation” of Christian disciples for evangelization.
Curtis Martin, co-founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, has spent 21 years working to build an organization that brings the message of the Gospel to students on college campuses.
“Making Missionary Disciples: How to Live the Method Modeled by the Master,” offers the lessons Martin says he’s learned from Jesus Christ over those years.
“Really what we’re trying to do is to invite people to learn the art of spiritual conversations,” Martin told CNA. “We hear homilies, but we seldom, as Catholics, discuss our faith over lunch. And I don’t mean discuss scandals…I mean [discuss] the great life of Jesus Christ, the great life of the saints, the great life of the heroes of the Old Testament.”
“If we learn the art of that conversation, we will become infectious, radiant Catholics who will radiate love and joy and mercy into the culture.”
This model presented in the book, he said, is not “novel” in the Church, but rather has been duplicated over and over again throughout the years, and is especially present in religious communities. St. Paul teaches in Corinthians that people were meant to learn by imitation, Martin said, and people need a human person in front of them setting an example.
“The purpose in creating missionary disciples is the very thing we’ve been doing in FOCUS for the last 21 years; that we could share that with people in other organizations, in families, in businesses, in parishes, in diocese, et cetera, because we think it’s going to bear great fruit there, and that’s what we’re seeing already.”
“We really believe that this book, and what we’re talking about, actually applies to [parents and professionals in diocese] maybe even more than it does the college campus,” Martin said. “The alumni are actually bearing more fruit than our full-time missionaries…We’re doing a second round of research to validate that.”
Martin highlights three main habits in the book that are “simple, but hard,” because they involve changing behavior to make evangelization possible. These three habits are Divine Intimacy, Authentic Friendship, and Clarity and Conviction about Spiritual Multiplication, which Martin calls “The Method Modeled by the Master.”
The first habit, Divine Intimacy, boils down to the fact that anyone who wants to teach others about the Catholic faith should, Martin said, have experienced the love of God in a personal way. Love of others, Martin said, should stem from a total love for God, as well as a foundation of the teachings of the Church, the Sacraments, fellowship with other believers, and of course, prayer.
“If I’m cold, or just lukewarm, I’m not going to able to communicate fire, the only way I can do that is to be on fire,” he said. “So Divine Intimacy is the foundation stone for everything else.”
The second habit, Authentic Friendship, comes when we cooperate with the grace God gives us for evangelization, Martin wrote in the book.
“I am willing to love you because I’ve already been love infinitely by God,” he said. “I don’t need you to fill me up; God is already doing that.”
The third habit is Clarity and Conviction about Spiritual Multiplication.
“I’m going to work with a few people, get very intentional about knowing about Christ, following Christ, living for Christ, and then inviting them to go out and invite others to do the same,” Martin explained. “You impart not only faithfulness, as essential as faithfulness is, you impart fruitfulness, which is exactly what Jesus did.”
On the theme of investing deeply in a few close friends, Martin again drew the conversation back to the methods Jesus used to proclaim God’s Kingdom. Martin said Jesus taught his apostles, first and foremost, to love by investing deeply in them and sometimes only them.
“The Savior of the entire world…His methodology was to find twelve guys and go camping for three years,” Martin reflected. “He invested profoundly, deeply, in twelve guys in order to reach the whole world, but he imparted not just faithfulness, He imparted fruitfulness. And those twelve men, by the power of Christ, changed the world. And we can do the same by returning to the Method Modeled by the Master.”
Jesus, Martin said, regularly rendered the extraordinary as ordinary, by performing miracles on a daily basis. However, Jesus also rendered the ordinary extraordinary by “loving beautifully” in the Holy Family, with Mary and Joseph, for the first 30 years of His life. Martin said no one since Adam and Eve have been able to love each other as much as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did.
The Church has that capacity for love, Martin said, and saints “come in groups.”
“It’s really hard to become a saint by yourself,” he said. “To be able to walk toward Christ with others allows us to fulfill that great command to love God and love neighbor.”
Martin said his organization conducted research on FOCUS alumni, who are now no longer college students or full-time missionaries, but rather full-time parents or full-time professionals. Martin said they’re now living the “normal life,” but they’re “living the normal life extraordinarily well.”
In a certain sense, Martin said, this makes sense: college students are at the height of frivolity in their lives, distracted by such things as video games, alcohol, and even recreational drugs. As a result, as a group, college campuses are often not receptive to the Gospel.
“[College students] also happen to be at one of the most pivotal times in their lives,” Martin said. “Whereas when you move a few years down your life, and all of a sudden you’re a married [person], maybe you’ve got a few kids, and you meet someone who’s living for Christ.”
Martin argued that a father or mother, or a husband and wife, who are struggling with communication, balancing their budget, raising their children, or praying, will be more likely to seek the advice and companionship of a radiant Christian person.
For this reason, the “ground is much more fertile,” Martin said, in a parish than it is at a university.
The book, “Making Missionary Disciples: How to Live the Method Modeled by the Master” is available this week from FOCUS.org and from Amazon.
Santiago, Chile, Sep 27, 2018 / 03:10 pm (ACI Prensa).- Amid the crisis facing the Church in Chile regarding sexual and other forms of abuse, the Archdiocese of Santiago has created the Bishops’ Delegated Commission for Truth and Peace.
This body will integrate the functions carried out by the Pastoral Office for Abuse Complaints and the Department for the Promotion of Safe Environments with the goal of addressing the harm done by members of the clerics of the archdiocese, responding to current needs and establishing ways to restore trust.
Their functions include coordinating the efforts of the archdiocesan entities aimed at promoting safe and secure environments, as well as receiving and accompanying those making accusations and the victims of abuse in ecclesial contexts.
They will also monitor canonical procedures in abuse cases, provide the necessary monitoring but also pastoral care of the clergy involved and the pastoral care for the communities and persons affected. They will inform the communities “in a duly and timely manner” and collaborate with civil institutions.
The Bishops’ Delegated Commission for Truth and Peace will be presided over by Andrea Idalsoaga Montoya, a lawyer from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and will be comprised of the vicar general, the judicial vicar, the vicar for the clergy, the chancellor, the diocesan delegate from the Pastoral Office for Abuse Complaints, and the director of the Department for the Promotion of Safe Environments.
The Diocesan Advisory Council for the prevention of abuse will continue to collaborate with the new commission.
Idalsoaga is the first woman and layperson to head up the tasks related to abuse complaints and abuse prevention training in the archdiocese. She will report directly to the Archbishop of Santiago.
She is also a member of the board of the Chilean Association of Canon Law. She was the judge of the National Ecclesiastical Appeals Tribunal for more than 14 years and worked as a professor of canon law at the Pontifical Catholic University’s School of Law between 2008 and 2012.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Matagalpa, Nicaragua, Sep 27, 2018 / 02:13 pm (ACI Prensa).- Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos of Matagalpa has called for an end to the deaths in the country occurring during protests against the government of Daniel Ortega after the death of 16-year-old Matt Andrés Romero, who died Sept. 23 during an anti-government demonstration.
“We mourn the death. We mourn one more death. It grieves our soul, the death of the young man, of the boy, Matt Andrés Romero. Our prayers for his family. Our love and solidarity with them. We continue to insist: not one more death, please,” Bishop Álvarez wrote on Twitter Sept. 25.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”es” dir=”ltr”>"Nos duele la muerte. Nos duele un muerto más. Nos duele hasta el alma, la muerte del jovencito, del niño, Matt Andrés Romero. Nuestras oraciones por su familia. Nuestro cariño y solidaridad con ellos. Seguimos insistiendo: ni un muerto más por favor". Mons. Rolando José.</p>— Monseñor Rolando José Alvarez L. (@DiocesisdeMat) <a href=”https://twitter.com/DiocesisdeMat/status/1044814230996873217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>September 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Romero died during the “We are all the voice of the political prisoners” march in Managua, where he was mortally wounded by a gunshot.
His family and friends affirm he was shot by paramilitaries supportive of Ortega. According to the authorities it occurred during a crossfire, which the organizers of the march refute.
With Romero’s decease, the number of deaths has risen to 323 since the protests began April 18 and include 23 children and adolescents, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
However, according to the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights, there have been more than 510 deaths. In addition there may be another 1,300 disappeared persons.
Nicaragua’s crisis began after Ortega announced social security and pension reforms. The changes were soon abandoned in the face of widespread, vocal opposition, but protests only intensified after more than 40 protestors were killed by security forces initially.
The country’s bishops have mediated on-again, off-again peace talks between the government and opposition groups.
Bishops and priests across the country have worked to separate protesters and security forces, and have been threatened and shot.
Anti-government protestors have been attacked by “combined forces” made up of regular police, riot police, paramilitaries, and pro-government vigilantes.
The Nicaraguan government has suggested that protestors are killing their own supporters so as to destabilize Ortega’s administration.
The Church in Nicaragua was quick to acknowledge the protestors’ complaints.
The pension reforms which triggered the unrest were modest, but protests quickly turned to Ortega’s authoritarian bent.
Ortega has been president of Nicaragua since 2007, and oversaw the abolition of presidential term limits in 2014.
The Church has suggested that elections, which are not scheduled until 2021, be held in 2019, but Ortega has ruled this out.
Ortega was a leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which had ousted the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and fought US-backed right-wing counterrevolutionaries during the 1980s. Ortega was also leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990.
This article was originally published CNA’s Spanish-language sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Washington D.C., Sep 27, 2018 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Catholics living in a state where both of the major party’s gubernatorial candidates oppose key Church teachings have a difficult choices to make on Election Day, a theologian told CNA.
The Catech… […]
What do serious, practicing Catholics think about the sex abuse crisis? To find out, you can commission a public opinion survey or you can attend a parish listening session. I chose the latter approach, and […]
Rome, Italy, Sep 27, 2018 / 10:42 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has stressed the need for ongoing formation for couples, before and after marriage, saying that even the basic teachings of the Church “could not be taken for granted.” The pope spoke in an address to participants in a recent course on marriage and family life held in Rome.
Speaking Sept. 27 in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran to an audience of priests, deacons, and lay people, Francis renewed his call for a “permanent catechumenate for the sacrament of marriage,” saying it was essential for couples to receive ongoing formation both before and after their wedding.
The course, which ran Sept. 24-26, was sponsored by the Diocese of Rome and the Roman Rota, the Church’s highest appellate court which handles marriage nullity cases.
Francis has previously insisted on the need for better, longer, more comprehensive instruction for couples in his annual addresses to the Rota.
“The greater effectiveness of pastoral care is realized where the accompaniment does not end with the celebration of the wedding, but escorts them at least for the first years of married life” the pope said.
Francis told the attendees that marriage was “a vast, complex and delicate apostolic field” which required the full energy and enthusiasm of the Church.
Praising the “courageous” witness of St. John Paul II on the family in the modern world, Francis said he sought to build upon the legacy of his “farsighted” predecessors through his reform of canon law in marriage nullity cases and in the pastoral application of his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia. The Pope said the aim of both of these efforts was to address the “urgent” need for comprehensive marriage formation.
“Marriage is not just a ‘social’ event, but a true sacrament that involves an adequate preparation and a conscious celebration,” the pope said. “The marriage bond, in fact, requires an engaged choice on the part of the engaged couple, which focuses on the will to build together something that must never be betrayed or abandoned.”
The work of marriage preparation is, according to the pope, best achieved through joint efforts by priests and married couples, though he stressed the importance and pre-eminence of the role of the parish priest.
“Priests, especially parish priests, are the first interlocutors of young people who wish to form a new family and get married in the sacrament of marriage. The accompaniment of the ordained minister will help the newlyweds to understand that marriage between a man and a woman is a sign of the spousal union between Christ and the Church, making them aware of the profound meaning of the step they are about to make.”
The pope’s comments were heard by some as a corrective to recent remarks by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. In July, Cardinal Farrell said that “priests are not the best people to train others for marriage” and that “they have no credibility.”
Pope Francis emphasised that the work of preparing couples for marriage needed to include basic formation in the faith, noting that in many cases marriages broke down not because of any inherent problem with the couple, but simply because they lacked the depth of faith needed to live the sacrament fully.
“So many times the ultimate root of the problems that come to light after the celebration of the sacrament of marriage is to be found not only in a hidden and remote immaturity suddenly exploded, but above all in the weakness of the Christian faith” Francis told the attendees.
“The more the journey of preparation is deepened and extended in time, the sooner the couples will learn to correspond to the grace and strength of God and will also develop the “antibodies” to face the inevitable moments of difficulty and fatigue of married and family life.”
The pope noted that those preparing couples for marriage could make no assumptions about the level of formation in the faith couples might have. Many, he said, “have remained stuck to some elementary notion of the catechism of the first Communion and, if all goes well, of Confirmation.” Because of this “it is essential to resume the catechesis of Christian initiation to the faith, whose contents are not to be taken for granted or as if they were already acquired by the engaged couple.”
Addressing these common gaps in couples’ understanding of the faith would, Francis explained, both help them understand the faith and instil “a filial sense of the Church.”
Above all, the pope stressed, priests and lay formators alike should welcome the opportunity to form couples over a period of years, not weeks, calling it an essential expression of the Church’s maternal concern.
“It is an experience of joyful motherhood, when newlyweds are the object of the attentive care of the Church which, in the footsteps of her Master, is a caring mother who does not abandon, does not discard, but approaches with tenderness, embraces and encourages.”
The pope also discussed the difficulties faced by couples whose unions did break down, noting that the first priority should be to revive their faith and help them “rediscover the grace of the sacrament,” though in some cases the Church needed offer equal support through the nullity process which was also pointed toward the salus animarum.
Francis finished by noting that he was pleased to see that his reforms of the nullity process had been widely adopted into practice. These, he said, were meant as an aid to bishops and judicial vicars in dioceses whose work in tribunals is to seek the truth and “to comfort the peace of consciences, especially the poorest and far from our ecclesial communities.”
Washington D.C., Sep 27, 2018 / 07:00 am (CNA).- The 40 Days for Life 2018 fall campaign began on Wednesday, claiming groups in a record 415 cities are taking part.
“The momentum in the pro-life movement is ours to keep or lose,” Sha… […]
Phoenix, Ariz., Sep 27, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Canadian cardinal has a provocative message for priests, bishops, and seminarians struggling to attain holiness: “You must become fire.”
“If the flame entrusted to us at Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordination flickers and dies, or is abruptly extinguished, and the darkness of evil envelops the priest or bishop, then havoc is wrought upon the most vulnerable, and the splendor of the Holy Priesthood is sullied,” Cardinal Thomas Collins said Sept. 18.
The Archbishop of Toronto delivered the keynote address at the 55th Annual National Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors, which took place Sept. 17-21 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The theme of fire, in many forms, was integral to his talk.
“If we who are bishops and priests do not become fire, and if those preparing for the priesthood do not, but instead become trapped in the dark and cold embrace of the world, the flesh, and the devil, then we are bound for destruction…and we fail those entrusted to our pastoral care,” Cardinal Collins said.
Cardinal Collins proposed four facets of the scriptural theme of fire and applied them to the priestly life and the ministry of guiding men to the priesthood.
First, the Fire of Sacrificial Love. In the same way that a sacrificial offering is totally consumed by fire, so too should a priest be consumed by his mission, giving his life fully to Christ and his people, and not merely giving his “leftovers.”
“When the sacrificial fire goes out in a priest or bishop, then he begins to put first his own wants – not his needs, but his wants. He wants control, or adulation, or a comfortable life, or worldly success, or popularity, or satisfaction of his lusts. Outwardly going through the motions of priestly or episcopal service, and saying all the right things, his actual conviction is that Christ must decrease, but I must increase.”
“If priests or bishops lead self-indulgent lives, then we should not be surprised if shocking instances of abuse occur. Self-indulgence is the culture in which both sexual and financial corruption flourish,” Cardinal Collins said.
Rather than think himself a “narcissistic star” around whom the parish revolves, a priest should engage in selfless ministry, always hoping at the end of his life to hear the Lord’s words: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Cardinal Collins recommended that vocation directors “watch out for signs of self-indulgence and narcissim” in seminarians, and for “positive signs of humble service, concern for others, and unassuming hard work.”
He said the process of discernment and formation to cultivate this attitude takes many years, and the process ought not be “sped up.”
“Because it takes time for signs both positive and negative to become evident, it is good to have a lengthy period of discernment and formation, to allow hidden problems to surface before ordination … in my own diocese and seminary I have lengthened the process: more time before entry into the formation community: a year or two in the associates program, four years of College Seminary for some, plus a propaedeutic year, and four years of theology, and a parish internship too.”
Collins’ second facet, Purification by Fire, is a frequent theme in both the Old and New Testaments. Cardinal Collins tied this theme back to the various ongoing sexual abuse scandals in the Church, and emphasized that the revelation of hidden evils is a “great and life-giving purification in the Church.”
“Disastrously, a toxic sentimentality, in which both the call to repentance and the vision of judgment are obscured, has entered into the Church, and never more so than in the few decades following Vatican II, from the seventies to the mid-nineties,” the cardinal reflected.
“There was a blurring of the clear lines of morality, and the creation of a distorted and highly subjective concept of conscience. It is no coincidence at all that this was the very period, we now clearly realize, in which most of the devastating incidents of priestly and episcopal abuse that are now in the news took place.”
He said that policies to deal with abuse are “surely necessary,” but added, “we surely do not need a policy to stop us from engaging in self-indulgent evil that leads to the Lake of Fire. All Christians, but especially bishops and priests, need to listen to and act on these simple words of Jesus: Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near at hand.”
“It is also true that when the moral and spiritual demands of Christianity, or of the priesthood, become no more than an ideal, much to be praised in honeyed words, but with no practical relevance, and held to be impossible to actually live, then individually and as a Church we have become gnostics,” Cardinal Collins stated.
“But neither Christianity nor the priesthood is an abstract ideal; God does not play with us, holding out to us an ideal that it is impossible for us to live. By God’s grace, and only by God’s grace, every single one of us can actually become a saint. Vatican II spoke of the universal call to holiness, not the universal call to mediocrity. With a vision of the purifying refiner’s fire to keep us honest, we are challenged every day to be happy, healthy, holy priests. Nothing less than that. That is the reality of the priesthood.”
Collins emphasized the need for repentance, and suggested that priests recite quietly the “Jesus Prayer” during the elevation of the Host and Chalice at Mass, as well as frequently making use of the sacrament of confession.
“If we are to serve the Lord, and to invite others to do so, we must experience constant purification, and live in a spirit of repentance. Let the weeds and chaff within our hearts be thrown into the fire,” he said.
Third, the fire of Pentecostal Zeal is a boldness granted to the apostles that inspired them to be “on fire” for the Gospel, which Collins said all disciples of Christ should be.
This zeal is different, Collins said, from how “lively” or “quiet” a seminarian or priest’s personality might be, but rather, deep within, “profoundly committed to the life of holiness, that the fire will burn steadily and quietly throughout their priestly life.”
“There are two times when a priest or bishop is horizontal in Church: face down at his ordination and face up at his funeral,” Collins said. “In every moment between those two points, he must be on fire with sacrificial love and priestly zeal.”
Finally, the fire of “Majesty and Mystery” is the spirit of the Burning Bush found in the Book of Exodus; a captivating and personal call that comes when a person experiences the presence of God, and ultimately discerns their “glorious” vocation.
“Priests are not branch managers, and bishops are not CEOs,” Collins warned. “Woe to those who think in those terms, or who think of a priestly or episcopal career. We are unworthy servants and messengers of the living God.”
The priesthood is a tremendous privilege that most be treated with reverence, he said, and reminded the audience that the priesthood has always been and always will be “entrusted to frail and sinful men.”
He noted that “the priesthood, not the priest … must be treated with reverence.”
“Clericalism is not too high an estimation of the priesthood, but too low an estimation: it is using the holy priesthood to advance one’s personal desires,” the cardinal said. “If bishops or priests use their sacred office to dominate others, to take advantage of people’s quite appropriate reverence for the priestly office, or to manipulate that reverence to satisfy the cleric’s self-indulgent desires, then that is not simply evil; it is sacrilegious evil.
“Profound awareness of the majesty of the Lord who calls us must penetrate to the depths of our souls,” Cardinal Collins said. “If it does not, then priesthood and episcopate can become worldly, and can be corrupted.”
© Catholic World Report