Berlin, Germany, Sep 5, 2019 / 12:02 pm (CNA).- The German bishops are pressing forward with a controversial synodal program, creating a new Synodal Assembly in partnership with an influential German lay group. The decision […]
Rome, Italy, Sep 5, 2019 / 11:24 am (CNA).- More than 20 years ago, Ann Pollak traveled to Calcutta, hoping to volunteer alongside Mother Teresa. The experience would spark a years-long process that would eventually lead her to adopt a severely handicapped child from one of the care centers run by the Missionaries of Charity.
“It has not been easy, at all, but the blessings have far, far outweighed the sacrifices,” Pollak told CNA. “Oddly, in adopting a blind child, I began seeing the world through my own eyes from a different perspective.”
Nearly 18 years ago, Pollak adopted a child from one of Mother Teresa’s orphanages. But adoption was not initially her intent.
In 1995, Pollak travelled to India in order to meet Mother Teresa. She spent two weeks doing volunteer work and was impressed with Mother Teresa’s constant smile, and the fact that despite winning a Nobel Prize and being globally famous, the religious sister was very approachable.
Pollak would return to do volunteer work numerous times in the years that followed. In 1997, about a month before Mother Teresa’s death, she was working with handicapped children. She was assigned to feed one little girl, Rekha, who was blind, autistic and mentally delayed.
“She had the sweetest smile on her face,” Pollak recalled of Rekha. “I just fell in love with her.” She also believed that the child had potential to develop and grow, if she was able to get the proper care and attention from a family.
A year later, Pollak returned to India to see if the little girl was still there. She was.
Pollak said that she wanted to find the young girl a family, or at least a school, somewhere that would be able to offer the proper care for someone with her particular needs.
But as time went on, she became frustrated with her inability to find anyone to care for the girl. She began praying every day, asking God for a solution. Although she had not previously considered adoption, she began to feel an inner call to adopt Rekha.
“I couldn’t find any other solution,” she reflected.
It took almost a year to prepare and get everything in order. Numerous complications arose. Pollak recalled praying what Mother Teresa had termed her “Little Novena” – a series of 9 Memorare prayers offered consecutively.
Within days, the complications had been resolved and the adoption process was complete. “I attribute that to the intercession of Mother Teresa and also the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Pollak said.
Rekha was seven-and-a-half years old at the time of her adoption. Now, almost 18 years later, Pollak said that her daughter has come a long way. While some of her conditions can never be cured – for example, she was born without eyes, and therefore has no chance of ever being able to see – there are other areas in which she has developed significantly.
Despite autism and mental delays, Rekha was able to start speaking at age 15. Once she started speaking, she began picking up more and more words, and now has a basic vocabulary.
But the transition was not easy. For years after she was taken away from India, Rehka had frequent, violent fits.
“During these fits, she would bite herself, rip off her clothes, throw herself on the floor…and she also physically hurt me,” Pollak said, recalling times that her daughter would bite her or tear out her hair.
Pollak believes that these fits were caused by Rekha’s inability to communicate her needs, combined with insecurity at being transported to a new and unknown life, as well as hormonal changes as she went through puberty.
Thanks to medication and a great deal of devotion and time, Pollak said that “Rekha is today a much calmer individual – the fits still occur but they are much less intense and much less frequent.”
“Rekha has helped me to become a more patient person!” she added.
Many of Pollak’s friends and family were not initially supportive, with some of them believing that she was making a serious mistake. A dear friend told her that she was ruining her life.
Her younger sister was married to an adoptee and was sympathetic and supportive, she recalled. But her older sister made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with the adoption, including assuming any responsibility if anything were to happen Pollak.
But over time, Pollak said she seen how her daughter has brought out the best in humanity.
“Over the…years that she’s been with me, I have witnessed the graciousness, kindness and love of other human beings, from people whom we’ve met maybe only on a bus ride to people who have become a part of our life,” she said, pointing specifically to the caregivers they had worked with over the years.
“People frequently stare at us in public because we are sort of an ‘odd couple’ and because Rekha is often very boisterous, but those stares are so often accompanied by smiles.”
On Sept. 4, 2016, Pollak and Rehka were both able to attend Mother Teresa’s canonization, an opportunity that Pollak considers incredibly special.
“Today, I believe that my mission to meet Mother Teresa indirectly led me to Rekha,” she said, reflecting on her own journey to adoption. While there were many factors in her decision, which unfolded over several years, she said that watching the saint’s work more than 20 years ago was part of the inspiration that led to her become more deeply involved in the life of the girl she would go on to adopt.
“Seeing Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta and in other places in the word has a strong impact, and can turn a casual observer into a protagonist,” she said.
An earlier version of this story was originally published on CNA Sept. 5, 2017.
Maputo, Mozambique, Sep 5, 2019 / 09:44 am (CNA).- Pope Francis urged Church leaders in Mozambique Thursday to avoid being part of conflicts and divisions, but to go out of their way to visit others and to encourage dialogue and solutions.
“The Church in Mozambique is invited to be the Church of the Visitation,” the pope told Mozambican bishops, priests, seminarians, religious men and women, consecrated, and catechists in Maputo Sept. 5.
The Church in Mozambique, he continued, “cannot be part of the problem of rivalry, disrespect and division that pits some against others, but instead a door to solutions, a space where respect, interchange and dialogue are possible.”
“You, at least the older ones among you, witnessed how division and conflict ended in war. You must always be ready to ‘visit’ to shorten distances,” like Mary did at the visitation to her cousin Elizabeth, he said.
The meeting took place in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in the afternoon of the first full day of Pope Francis’ visit to three African countries Sept. 4-10.
Before the meeting at the cathedral, he met privately with a group of people from the port city of Xai-Xai, which is about 139 miles north of Maputo.
In February 2000 the city, which sits on the Limpopo river, was hit by flooding and submerged in nearly 10 feet of water and mud.
Francis told the roughly 2,500 people present, all active in the Church’s ministry, that they “are called to face reality as it is.”
“Times change and we need to realize that often we do not know how to find our place in new scenarios,” he noted, advising people to look to Mary’s ‘yes’ at the Annunciation as an example of what to do.
“The announcement of the incarnation is made in Galilee, in a remote and conflict-ridden region and a little town – Nazareth,” he said.
“It takes place in a house, not a synagogue or a religious place, and is made to a layperson and a woman. What has changed? Everything. And in this change, we find our deepest identity.”
The pope addressed the crisis of priestly identity, noting that what he would say is also applicable to bishops, seminarians, and consecrated men and women.
He said sometimes, without necessarily meaning to, priests can start identifying with their daily activity as priests, with certain activities, meetings, rituals, and with certain important and solemn places.
Instead, he said, the image of Mary, “that simple young woman in her home, as opposed to all the activities of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, can be a mirror in which we see the complications and concerns that dim and dissipate the generosity of our ‘yes.’”
“Renewing our call has to do with choosing to say yes and to let our weariness come from things that bear fruit in God’s eyes, things that make present and incarnate his son Jesus.”
“The priest is the poorest of men unless Jesus enriches him by his poverty, the most useless of servants unless Jesus calls him his friend, the most ignorant of men unless Jesus patiently teaches him as he did Peter, the frailest of Christians unless the Good Shepherd strengthens him in the midst of the flock,” Francis said.
He drew a contrast between Mary and Zechariah, who, when he was told his wife Elizabeth would bear a son, “could not overcome his desire to control everything.” Instead Mary, “surrendered herself; she trusted.”
The weariness of a priest should not be from expending energy measuring one’s work against one’s “due” from God, he argued, but should be related to the “ability to show compassion.”
“We are to rejoice with couples who marry; we are to laugh with the children brought to the baptismal font; we are to accompany young fiancés and families; we are to suffer with those who receive the anointing of the sick in their hospital beds; we are to mourn with those burying a loved one,” he urged.
“Take this, eat this…” he said. “These are the words the priest of Jesus whispers repeatedly while caring for his faithful people: Take this, eat this; take this, drink this… In this way our priestly life is given over in service, in closeness to the People of God… and this always leaves us weary.”
The pope said he hopes young people will find in their priests an example of how to follow Jesus “radiant with the joy of a daily commitment, not imposed but fostered and chosen in silence and prayer.”
He also encouraged Mozambican women to live out their baptismal call to evangelize.
Pope Francis quoted a catechist, who had spoken earlier in the meeting and said: “‘We are a Church that is part of a heroic people’ that has experienced suffering yet keeps hope alive.”
“With this holy pride that you take in your people, a pride that invites a renewal of faith and hope, all of us want to renew our ‘yes,’” he said. “How happy is Holy Mother Church to hear you manifest your love for the Lord and for the mission that he has given you!”
At the end of the meeting, Pope Francis said a prayer for vocations and led the Our Father before giving his apostolic blessing.
His next stop will be to make a private visit to the Matthew 25 House, a charity run by the local Catholic church with the apostolic nunciature and about 20 religious congregations. It provides warm food and hygienic and health services to street children and youth.
Maputo, Mozambique, Sep 5, 2019 / 05:02 am (CNA).- Pope Francis encouraged young people of different faiths in Mozambique Thursday to not give up in the face of their country’s challenges, but to confront them with joy and hope.
“How do yo… […]
Maputo, Mozambique, Sep 5, 2019 / 03:13 am (CNA).- In his opening speech in Mozambique Thursday, Pope Francis encouraged the country’s authorities to work diligently for peace.
“Peace is not merely absence of war but a tireless commitment … […]
Booneville, Mississippi, Sep 5, 2019 / 03:05 am (CNA).- After a wedding venue employee in Mississippi cited her Christian beliefs in refusing to host the wedding of a mixed-race couple, a Catholic scholar clarified that “marriage is a colorblind institution.”
“A man and a woman, regardless of their race, can unite as one-flesh as husband and wife, and that marital union can give rise to new life and connect that life with his or her mother and father,” said Ryan T. Anderson, the John Paul II Teaching Fellow at the University of Dallas and a co-author of “What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense.”
Anderson told CNA that race is not relevant to the nature of marriage, and the race of a person does not negate any of the requirements of a valid marriage.
His comments come after a woman in charge of a wedding event venue in Mississippi apologized for declining to host the wedding of a mixed-race couple, something she had claimed violated her “Christian belief.”
According to the Washington Post, a black groom-to-be and a white bride-to-be had scheduled their wedding celebration to be held at Boone’s Camp Event Hall in Booneville, Mississippi. They were finalizing plans when they were informed that the venue retroactively declined to host their celebration because the wedding would violate the owner’s Christian beliefs.
The groom’s mother and his sister, LaKambria S. Welch, drove to the venue to demand answers. In a filmed exchange first posted by the website Deep South Voice, Welch can be heard calmly asking a woman in a gray shirt about the cancellation.
“Well we don’t do gay weddings or mixed race,” the woman in the video said. “Because of our Christian race – I mean our Christian belief.”
Welch told the woman that she, too, is a Christian, and asked the woman from where in the Bible her belief came.
“Well, I don’t want to argue my faith,” the woman responded. “We just don’t participate. We just choose not to.”
“Ok. So that’s your Christian belief, right?” Welch said.
“Yes ma’am,” the woman replied.
After the video spread on social media, the venue issued an apology that has apparently since been deleted. According to The Washington Post, the apology was reportedly written by the woman in the video, who said she did not know that the Bible did not condemn mixed-race marriages.
“As my bible reads, there are 2 requirements for marriage and race has nothing to do with either!” the apology post said, according to the Washington Post. “All of my years I had ‘assumed’ in my mind that I was correct, but have never taken the opportunity to research and find whether this was correct or incorrect until now.”
The incident drew intense criticism on social media as well as from Booneville city officials, who said on Facebook that they were “aware of the comments recently made by a privately owned business located within the city of Booneville. The City of Booneville, Mayor, and Board of Aldermen do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, age, national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status. Furthermore, the City of Booneville, Mayor, and Board of Aldermen do not condone or approve these types of discriminatory policies.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not object to interracial marriages. In fact, when the Catechism speaks about “mixed marriages,” it is in reference to couples of mixed creeds who marry – for example, a Catholic marrying a Protestant (or other baptized non-Catholic).
“Difference of confession between the spouses does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle for marriage, when they succeed in placing in common what they have received from their respective communities, and learn from each other the way in which each lives in fidelity to Christ,” the Catechism states.
“But the difficulties of mixed marriages must not be underestimated. They arise from the fact that the separation of Christians has not yet been overcome. The spouses risk experiencing the tragedy of Christian disunity even in the heart of their own home,” it adds.
The Catechism, and other Catholic documents, do not mention interracial marriages as immoral for any reason.
The Catholic Church does teach, however, that the sacrament of marriage must be between one man and one woman: “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”
The Catechism adds that men and women must give themselves to each other in marriage freely, totally, and fruitfully, meaning that the couple must be open to life. The sacrament of marriage also “requires the inviolable fidelity of the spouses.”
For a same-sex couple, marriage is impossible according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, because sexual acts between same-sex couples are “contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved,” the Catechism states.
Instead, people with same-sex attractions “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and are “called to chastity,” the Catechism states.
Anderson clarified that interracial marriage differs from same-sex marriage, because the biological sex of the individuals involved is directly relevant to the nature of marriage, unlike their race.
Because the Catholic Church is concerned for the good of spouses, children, and the greater society, Anderson said, it teaches that marriage must be between a man and a woman.
“While marriage must be a colorblind institution, it can’t be sex-blind. Only a man and a woman can unite as one-flesh, and every child has a mother and a father,” he said.
“So it’s for good reason that marriage is about uniting the two halves of humanity–male and female–for a common good they participate in that, in turn, benefits the general common good.”
Author’s note: After the Sunday Angelus on September 1st, Pope Francis announced that he will create 13 new Cardinals at a consistory to be held on October 5th. Ten of the Cardinal-elects are of voting […]
Washington D.C., Sep 4, 2019 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, grand chancellor of Rome’s Pontifical Institute John Paul II and president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has responded to controversy over a plan to restructure the school’s faculty and curriculum.
“We will be able to address and overcome the concerns and the hesitancies that have greeted the renewed structure of the Academy, and I might add of its sister entity, the John Paul II Institute as well,” Paglia said Sept. 3 at Loyola Marymount University in California.
Paglia said that concern can be overcome through the “solid and loving theological basis” outlined for the Academy in a January letter from Pope Francis, written to commemorate the Academy’s anniversary.
In the letter, Paglia said, “the Pope recalls for us the great theological truth that must be our guiding principle—all of creation is brought into being by God’s love, a love that is so profound that itself it is a family, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and that it is a family so fruitful that it has produced on Earth a family that mirrors it.”
Paglia emphasized that the school must “participate in dialogue with everyone” while working to fulfill its mission.
In his address, Paglia spoke about the importance of a Catholic perspective in the study of bioethics, saying linguistic and cultural differences, as well as different theological and philosophical approaches, can condition the way subjects are studied and taught, even when they are foundational to the Catholic faith.
Paglia acknowledged the recent conflict which has engulfed the pontifical institute, following the approval of new statutes for the school in July, and reiterated the pope’s stated aims for its reform.
The new statutes were issued in response to a 2017 announcement by the pope that he would legally refound the institute to broaden its curriculum, from a focus on the theology of marriage and the family to an approach that will also include the study of the family from the perspective of the social sciences.
After the new statutes, students, alumni, and faculty raised concerns about the role of faculty members in the institute’s new governing structure, about the reduction of theology courses and the elimination of some theology disciplines, and about the dismissal of some faculty members, especially Fr. José Noriega and Msgr. Livio Melina.
Critics of the changes voiced their concern that the essential purpose of the institute was being diluted, and a group of 49 academics from universities around the world wrote to the administrators of the Institute asking for the reinstatement of the dismissed faculty.
Yesterday, it was reported that the vice-president of the Institute proposed a compromise between university administrators and concerned faculty members.
Noting an apparent “impasse” between faculty and administrators, Fr. Jose Granados suggested a “proposal for a constructive solution” in an Aug 27 letter to Paglia and the school’s president, Msgr. Pierangelo Sequiri.
Granados’ proposal is that a chair of fundamental moral theology, scheduled for elimination from the university’s faculty, be retained, and that a new chair be added to the university’s faculty to complement it.
In his speech Wednesday, Paglia reiterated Francis’ stated aims in refounding the school, saying that “the Pope wants the Academy, and the Institute, to widen its scope of reflection: not limiting itself to addressing specific situations of ethical, social or legal conflict; articulate an anthropology that sets the practical and theoretical premises for conduct consistent with the dignity of the human person; and make sure it has the tools to critically examine the theory and practice of science and technology as they interact with life, its meaning and its value.”
Concluding his speech, Paglia said that “wisdom and boldness” were essential to both the Academy and Institute’s mission to “understand our heritage of faith with a rationality that is worthy of man.”
“It is for this reason that the Academy, and the Institute, without in any way abandoning the tradition and accomplishments of their founders, will participate in dialogue with everyone,” Paglia said, “so that the development and use of the extraordinary resources that the Pope speaks of is oriented toward promoting the dignity of the person and the human family in the light of the passionate Divine love that brought it into being and will lead it safely home.”
Newark, N.J., Sep 4, 2019 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the Archbishop of Newark, blessed a group of protesters on Wednesday, as a they demonstrated in front of the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.
The g… […]
Vatican City, Sep 4, 2019 / 05:45 pm (CNA).- Two cardinals have sent letters to fellow members of the College of Cardinals, raising concerns about the working document for an upcoming synod of bishops on the pan-Amazonian region.
“Some points of the synod’s Instrumentum laboris seem not only in dissonance with respect to the authentic teaching of the Church, but even contrary to it,” Cardinal Walter Brandmüller wrote to fellow cardinals in an Aug. 28 letter obtained by CNA.
“The nebulous formulations of the Instrumentum, as well as the proposed creation of new ecclesial ministries for women and, especially, the proposed priestly ordination of the so-called viri probati arouse strong suspicion that even priestly celibacy will be called into question,” the cardinal wrote.
Brandmüller said that the leaders of the pan-Amazonian synod have given him concern about its proceedings.
“The sole fact that Cardinal (Claudio) Hummes is the president of the synod and thus will exercise a grave influence in a negative sense, suffices to have a well founded and realistic concern, as much as in the case of bishops (Erwin) Kräutler, (Franz-Josef) Overbeck, etc.”
Hummes, a native of Brazil, was prefect of the Congregation for Clergy from 2006-2010. Bishop Krautel, 80, is the emeritus bishop of the Brazilian Prelature of Xingu in the Amazon, and has been a long time proponent of married priests. Bishop Overbeck, 55, is the Bishop of Essen. Overbeck is known in Germany as an advocate for a re-examination of the Church’s teaching on ordination and sexual morality.
Brandmüller, 90, was for three decades a professor of Church history, and was president of the International Commission for Contemporary Church History from 1998 until 2006. He was made a cardinal in 2010, but, at age 81, he had passed the age limit for participation in the election of a pope.
“We must face serious challenges to the integrity of the Deposit of the Faith, the sacramental and hierarchical structure of the Church and its Apostolic Tradition. With all this has been created a situation never before seen in the Church’s history, not even during the Arian crisis of the fourth and fifth century,” Brandmüller added.
Brandmüller said that all cardinals must consider how they will react to “any heretical statements or decisions of the synod.”
“I would hope, therefore, that Your Eminence, for your part, will seize this opportunity to correct, according to the teachings of the Church, certain positions expressed in the Instrumentum laboris of the pan-Amazonian synod,” the cardinal concluded.
Also on Aug. 28, Cardinal Raymond Burke wrote to fellow cardinals, telling them that he “shares completely the deep concerns of Cardinal Brandmüller on the upcoming Synod on the Amazon, based upon its Instrumentum laboris.
Noting that the synod’s Instrumentum laboris “is a long document marked by language which is not clear in its meaning, especially in what concerns the Depositum fidei,” Burke added that it “contradicts the constant teaching of the Church on the relationship between the created world and God, the uncreated Creator, and man, created in the image and likeness of God to cooperate with him as guardian of the created world.”
Cardinal Burke also claims that the Instrumentum laboris “characterize the teaching regarding the unicity and universality of the salvation brought by Christ alive in the Church as relative to a particular culture and emblematic of what they call ‘petrified doctrine’ (n. 38).”
In the synod’s working document, Burke added, “the truth that God has revealed Himself fully and perfectly through the mystery of the Incarnation of the Redeemer, the Son of God, is obscured, if not denied.”
“Cardinal Brandmüller indicated in his letter the serious difficulties regarding the ordained ministry and perfect continence of the clergy. These proposals, as the cardinal indicates, attack the ‘hierarchical-sacramental structure’ and ‘the Apostolic Tradition of the Church.’”
The “disturbing propositions of the Instrumentum laboris” Burke said, “portend an apostasy from the Catholic faith.”
The synod is scheduled to take place in Rome, Oct. 6-27.
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