House Democrats pass appropriations bill with Hyde Amendment intact

Denver, Colo., Sep 22, 2017 / 04:07 pm (CNA).- Five days after he was elected Pope, John Paul II met with journalists from around the world. The Pope was a scholar, a man of letters, and an actor. He understood the power of words and images, and he understood the power of media.

In his own country, Poland, John Paul had seen the state-run Communist media obscure the truth to create confusion and cement power. He had also seen the underground media – the resistance – risk lives and freedom to tell the truth. John Paul II knew that words and images could sow the lies of Satan, or bring the freedom that comes from living in truth.

When he met with them, he told journalists that they should use the freedom of the press “to grasp the truth,” and to help readers, listeners, and viewers “to live in justice and brotherhood, to discover the ultimate meaning of life, to open them up to the mystery of God.”

The Pope told reporters that they should try “to grasp the authentic, deep and spiritual motivations of the Church’s thought and action,” and “to elevate…the spirit and the heart of men of good will, at the same time as the faith of Christians.”

The mission of Catholic media is to seek the truth, and to share it, especially in light of eternal and enduring truths. We use words to reveal the Word himself, Jesus Christ. St. Paul says that encountering that Word transforms us, by “the renewal of our minds.”

Less than a month ago, I began working as editor-in-chief of Catholic News Agency, an apostolate dedicated to discovering the truth, and reporting it. Our team of writers, producers, and editors is committed to using our craft for the sake of the Gospel, to revealing the truth, and to helping Catholics understand the events of the world through the lens of faith, guided by enduring truths of the Gospel. We want to help Catholics see, judge, and act in the world as it really is.

The public square in the United States has become chaotic. Our political culture is often vindictive and small-minded, preferring power politics to the common good. Media often incites conflict, rather than reporting facts. Public discourse has becoming a shouting match. It has become difficult to know what is true.

Our mission is to point to the truth. We want to inform, to educate, and to inspire. We want to point to what is good, so that it can be supported and replicated. We want to point to what is evil, so that Catholics can respond. We want to point to the Church’s work in the world, and we want to explain the factors that influence the Church’s life and ministry. We want to point to the ways that God is moving in the world.

We want to help Catholics to know the truth, to believe it, and to practice it.

In our age, media and news reporting are changing quickly. At CNA, we want to report the news in ways that reach Catholics, wherever they are. Our wire service provides news stories and analysis to diocesan newspapers, to our partners the National Catholic Register and EWTN News Nightly, to our sister news agencies in other languages throughout the world, and to other news and media apostolates. Our website provides up-to-the-minute news about the Church and the world. On social media – Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – we’re learning new ways to report the news. We’ll continue to provide news wherever people look for it, and we’ll look for new ways to share the truth.

Our mission is, most of all, a mission of charity. We do our work because we love the Lord, and because we love our readers. We want to give you, our readers, the information, perspectives, and contexts that help you to live as Catholics in our times. As we continue our mission, we hope you’ll continue to pray for us, and share with us your ideas and perspectives. We hope that as we continue our work, we will be united with you in the search for truth.

[…]

Eileen O’Connor. Public domain. / null

CNA Staff, Aug 21, 2024 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

An Australian archbishop sent Servant of God Eileen O’Connor’s cause for sainthood to Rome on Monday in an important step on the road to leading to the possible declaration of Australia’s second saint.

O’Connor, who at the age of three suffered from a debilitating spinal injury, accomplished much during her 28 years of life, founding the Our Lady’s Nurses of the Poor, known as the “Brown Sisters” for their brown habits. The congregation was dedicated to care for the impoverished who were sick.  

Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney signed a final decree on Aug. 16 and sent documents detailing evidence for O’Connor’s cause to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in Rome on Monday, according to the archdiocesan paper The Catholic Weekly. Her cause for sainthood first opened in February 2020.

O’Connor would be Australia’s second saint, following St. Mary of the Cross MacKillop, who was canonized in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI.  

Eileen O’Connor was born in Melbourne in 1892, the eldest of four children, to devout Irish Catholic parents.

Due to a curvature of the spine, O’Connor was three foot nine, and could not stand or walk for much of her life. 

She suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, stunted growth, periods of blindness, long periods of paralysis, and extreme nerve pain, and had a condition that is now known as transverse myelitis, which involves inflammation of the spine. 

When her father died, the family experienced financial challenges. Father Edward McGrath, a parish priest and member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, found accommodations for the family.

O’Connor later worked with McGrath to found a congregation of nurses to care for those who were poor and ill. She told McGrath that she had experienced a vision of Mary, who encouraged her to embrace her suffering for others.

They faced many challenges with the congregation initially and were accused by a Sacred Heart missionary of maintaining an improper relationship. As a result of the allegations, which were later disproven, McGrath faced limitations in his role as a priest. His order threatened him with expulsion unless he ceased contact with O’Connor. He refused and traveled to Rome, where he successfully appealed his case and was reinstated in his order. 

In 1915, O’Connor, with the help of her nurse, traveled to Rome and London to support his cause in 1915. She was granted an audience with Pope Benedict XV. 

While McGrath’s appeal was successful, he was prevented from returning to Australia for almost three decades. He traveled to Britain where he served as a chaplain for the British Army during World War I and received the Military Cross and a nomination for the Victoria Cross for acts of bravery in war.  

O’Connor continued with her work on her own. She led the congregation, who called her “Little Mother,” until she died at 28 on January 10, 1921, of chronic tuberculosis in her spine. 

When her remains were later exhumed and moved to the chapel at the congregation’s home in 1936, her body was found to be incorrupt. 

Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor continued its ministry in Australia. Now an independent ministry of the Sisters, the Brown Nurses serve as employed nurses who care for the sick and the poor in their homes. 

Canonization process 

Father Anthony Robbie, a priest of the Archdiocese of Sydney and diocesan postulator of O’Connor’s cause, will be traveling with Archbishop Fisher to Rome to present the evidence to the dicastery after four years of investigation. 

Father Julian Wellspring oversaw the cause which began about four years ago in February 2020. 

O’Connor was declared a Servant of God in 2018. 

The modern-day path to sainthood entails a three-stage process in which individuals are declared in succession venerable, blessed, and saint. 

Church authorities examine and investigate the life of the person at least five years after his or her death, then send the results to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, where nine theologians will vote on whether the person has lived a virtuous, heroic life. If the panel agrees, the information will be reviewed by cardinals and bishops and then brought before the pope. With his approval, the Dicastery will declare the person “venerable.” In the case of martyrs, the title of “blessed” is automatically given. 

A venerable is declared blessed when a miracle attributed to his or her intercession is confirmed by a canonical investigation. A blessed can be canonized after the confirmation of a second miracle.

[…]

Wheeling, W.V., Aug 23, 2019 / 04:43 pm (CNA).- After nearly a year without a bishop, due to the scandal-ridden former Bishop Michael Bransfield, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia has a new shepherd, who was installed at a Mass yesterday on the feast of the Queenship of Mary.

Hundreds of Catholics, hopeful for a fresh start, came from throughout the diocese to fill the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Wheeling for the 2+ hour Mass and glimpse their new leader, Bishop Mark Brennan. Thousands more tuned in to the event via a Facebook live stream posted by the diocese.

“It’s a new beginning. We hope it’s a new beginning,” Joe Herrick, a Catholic who attended the Mass, told a local Fox News affiliate.

“We’re very hopeful for the future. I’m really praying Bishop Brennan will be able to lead us and mend the flock together so we can be one.”

Brennan, who gave the homily, did not hesitate to address the tumultuous year that both the diocese and the universal Church have experienced.

“My friends, the ‘people walked in darkness’ and ‘dwelt in the land of gloom’. Those words of Isaiah, referring to enemy armies oppressing the kingdom of Israel, are an apt description for how many Catholics in this country have felt over the past year and how many West Virginia Catholics have felt for even longer,” Brennan said on Thursday, Aug. 22 at his installation Mass.

While he did not specifically name Bransfield, Brennan spoke of the diocese’s “painful past” and the “crisis” it now faces as a result of the scandals.

“The scandals we have learned about have caused painful disappointment, confusion, anger and distrust of Church leaders,” he said.

In September 2018, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Bishop Michael J. Bransfield from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston while an investigation was launched regarding allegations of financial and sexual misconduct against him. Archbishop William E. Lori was appointed apostolic administrator of the diocese in the interim.

Bransfield, who had been bishop of the diocese since 2004, reportedly sexually harassed, assaulted and coerced seminarians, priests, and other adults during his time there. He is also reported to have used diocesan funds to make large financial gifts to other bishops and to pay for personal luxuries. According to a report from the Washington Post, concerns about Bransfield’s finances were raised as early as 2012 and were evidently ignored for years by some bishops who were the recipients of these gifts.

In July 2019, after assessing the investigation into Bransfield by Lori, the Vatican announced sanctions against Bransfield, including that he is no longer allowed to participate in public Masses or to live within his former diocese. He is also expected to “make personal amends” for his wrongs, Pope Francis said in a communique.

“Behavior has consequences, and there are consequences to bad behavior in the past that will have to be dealt with,” Brennan said in his homily. “That is one of my responsibilities and I assure you that I will meet it.”

But still, there is hope, the new bishop added. “…Isaiah’s message to an oppressed people does not end in the darkness. Hear it again: ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone,’” he said.

“My friends, it takes no humility on my part to admit that I am not the light,” Brennan said, provoking laughter from the congregation. Instead, he said, it is the light of Christ that will lead the diocese out of these “dark times” and into a future of hope.

“The light of Christ beckons us to move now from the painful past toward him, not in denial but in confidence that the Lord will supply us with the wisdom and strength to do things better, to live our faith with greater integrity and to reflect more brightly, as far as our human weakness and limitations will permit, his own enduring light,” he said.

Brennan acknowledged numerous groups of people whom he said have already been lights in the darkness, including parents who continue to catechize their children, Catholic school and religious education teachers who do the same, parish priests who faithfully administer the sacraments, as well as diocesan chancery workers and faithful young people.

“Christ’s light has been shining in the darkness through all of them and, as St. John says in his Gospel, the darkness has not overcome it. I thank God for these faithful West Virginia Catholics,” he said.

The scandals may also have driven some people away from the Church, Brennan said, but he encouraged Catholics in the diocese to look to their roots circa the Civil War – when West Virginia seceded from Virginia in order to remain in the Union – for inspiration to remain united in faith.

“When the dark clouds of secession were rolling over the State of Virginia in the spring of 1861, the people of these western mountains chose to remain in the United States of America. They would not break their unity with Ohio and Pennsylvania, Michigan and Kentucky. They petitioned Congress to admit them as the State of West Virginia, which Congress did in 1863,” he said.

“Many of their sons—the ancestors of some here present — fought to maintain the integrity of the Union.”

He urged Catholics of today to fight for that same unity in the Church.

“Unity with one another and with God is what the Lord wants for us— and what, in our hearts, we truly desire,” he said.

“One man told me not long ago that he stopped going to Mass in his parish because of the recent scandals but then he asked himself: who was he helping by doing that? No one. Who was he hurting? Himself. He has since returned to Mass, still eager to see the Church address its failings and bring about lasting reform but conscious that walking away doesn’t help,” he added.

“As Simon Peter said to the Lord when some disciples were leaving Jesus because of hard teachings, ‘Lord to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.’” The Blessed Virgin Mary is another example of someone who said “yes” to the Lord despite difficult circumstances, Brennan said.

“…like Mary, we can let God fulfill his purpose in us and not let the darkness return to cover the earth. We can right the wrongs of the past and move on to make Christ known, helping our neighbor in need and remaining united in faith and love,” he said.

“West Virginia Catholics: cherish your faith and the holy Church that has nurtured it,” he added.

“Make Mary’s ‘yes’ to God your own and work with me and your brothers and sisters to let the light of Christ be a light brightly visible in the mountains and valleys, the city streets and country roads of this beautiful part of God’s creation: West Virginia.”

[…]