US bishops approve hymn translations for Liturgy of the Hours

Chicago, Ill., Jun 19, 2018 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Two weeks ago, Chicago’s Catholic Charities opened hygienic services offering homeless persons showers and a place to do laundry in the city’s River North neighborhood.

“Our guests will have comfort of a warm shower, toiletries, bedding, clothing,” said Monsignor Michael Boland, president of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“These small mercies which most of us take for granted can help preserve health and restore hope to those who live at the margins of society. They can be a first step toward a life of self-sufficiency.”

On Wednesdays, guests at the St. Vincent Center at 721 N LaSalle Drive may claim a 30-minute shower spot from 10 a.m. until noon. Each person is given soap, toothpaste, shaving equipment, deodorant, and a set of clothes. The clients will also have access to a washers and dryers.

A trial of the program began two weeks ago and it was officially unveiled June 18. Since it began, the scheduled spots have been booked solid. The operating hours will expand depending on an increase of volunteers.

There are more than 80,000 homeless people in the Chicago area, according to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Catholic Charities in Chicago has provided food and other social services to impoverished people five days a week, serving more than 250 people a day.

Matthew Shay, 27, a substance abuse counselor for Catholic Charities, administers the program’s intake. As a former addict and vagabond, Shay insisted that cleanliness influences positive change on a practical and symbolic level.

“When they give up hygiene, they’re mentally giving up and feeling hopeless,” he said, according to the Chicago Tribune.  

“So when you provide that to somebody who doesn’t have it, it provides a sense of normalcy that common Americans take for granted. It’s a simple pleasure for us – simple pleasures that are really a privilege.”

In the last three years, Pope Francis inspired Rome-based facilities to provide laundry and bathroom services. In 2015, bathrooms were opened at St. Peter’s Square to provide showers and haircuts to homeless people. Two years later, a volunteer run laundromat was opened in the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome.

 “The Pope’s Laundry” was opened after Pope Francis’s apostolic letter Misericordia et misera, challenging Catholics “to give a ‘concrete’ experience of the grace of the Jubilee Year of Mercy.”

Charitable works has been a major feature of Pope Francis’ pontificate. The Pope has previously invited homeless men and women to dine with him and to experience the Sistine Chapel. Pope Francis has encouraged Catholics to attend to people on the “peripheries” of society, expressing the importance of the works of mercy.

“To want to be close to Christ demands to be near to our brothers, because nothing is more pleasing to the Father than a concrete sign of mercy. By its very nature, mercy is made visible and tangible in concrete and dynamic action.”

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Twins baptized by twins — Gianna and Andrew Renwick with Father Ben and Deacon Luke Daghir. / Credit: Don Wojtaszek

CNA Staff, Oct 28, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Twins Gianna and Andrew Renwick were born on July 18, each weighing slightly less than… […]

Honolulu, Hawaii, Apr 9, 2018 / 04:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Hawaii became last week the most recent US state to legalize assisted suicide, and the islands’ bishop has written about the shortsightedness of permitting some residents to end their lives.

“I find it ironic that the act of taking one’s life, which people have been doing quite autonomously for thousands of years, is now only to be sanctioned if one has the permission of one’s ‘health’ care provider, the State legislature and the governor,” Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu wrote in a March 28 editorial as the bill was being considered.

“My wonder at this apparent contradiction is compounded when I think of how, until now, we have prided ourselves on helping people not take their own lives. We have suicide prevention programs and hotlines, and have always considered suicide a tragedy that wreaks havoc on so many survivors who feel grief and frustration that they were not able to prevent this ‘autonomous’ decision from being made.”

The “Our Care, Our Choice Act” was signed into law by Governor David Ige April 5. Hawaii’s Senate passed the bill 23-3 March 29, and the House of Representatives had approved the bill earlier this year by 39-12.

A similar bill has passed the Hawaii state Senate in 2017, but failed in the House.

The law allows a terminally ill person to receive a prescription for a lethal medication if two doctors find that the person has fewer than six months to live and is mentally competent. The patient must undergo a mental health evaluation to determine that they are not “suffering from conditions that may interfere with decision-making, such as a lack of treatment of depression,” according to the AP.

The patient must make two requests for the life-ending medication, with a 20-day waiting period between requests, and sign a written request witnessed by two people, one of whom cannot be related to the patient.

A doctor may dispense the medication, but it may only be self-administered.

The law includes criminal penalties for tampering with a request for lethal medication or coercing such a prescription.

Ige emphasized the freedom of choice the law will provide for terminally ill patients.

“It is time for terminally ill, mentally competent Hawaii residents who are suffering to make their own end-of-life choices with dignity, grace and peace,” he said. “It does make sense to give the patient a choice to request the medication, obtain it and take it, or ultimately change their mind.”

Bishop Silva pointed out that under the law, the death certificate of one who commits assisted suicide will list as the immediate cause of death their terminal disease.

“In other words, it will lie about the real immediate cause of death, which is freely and deliberately ingesting a poison into one’s system,” he wrote. “If we call it another name besides suicide, then it may become respectable. Under no circumstances should we call it what it is, since certain insurance benefits may not be available to one’s estate if one commits suicide. So let’s also lie to the insurance company by calling it ‘death with dignity’ or some other title that will make it sound more respectable.”

The bishop also wrote that “As a spiritual leader, I also must raise the question of whether someone who deliberately, with documentable soundness of mind and determination of will, violates God’s basic commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ may be flirting with a fate worse than a debilitating terminal illness … God does allow us the autonomy to make such decisions, but he warns us of the dire consequences – and relentlessly attempts to turn us away from such self-destructive decisions.”

Bishop Silva said, “While our State Legislature may not base its decisions on eternal consequences, it should still think beyond the individual terminally ill person. What of family members who will have to live with the weight of their own consciences regarding this very unnatural process?”

He also questioned the law’s effects on those suffering depression: “Won’t this suggest to them that if life becomes too burdensome, checking oneself out of it sooner than later is a legitimate option?”

“If this door to choosing death is opened, will insurance companies and health care facilities continue to provide very expensive but ingenious treatments, developed over generations by scientists, technicians, and medical personnel? Or will the ‘bottom line’ lead them to refuse these expensive treatments because the patient has the choice of a much quicker and less expensive death?”

The bishop also raised the question of conscience protections for medical personnel and pharmacists who consider suicide to be gravely immoral.

Bishop Silva’s editorial echoed concerns about assisted suicide which have been raised by Pope Francis.

In June 2016, the Pope called assisted suicide a feature of the “throwaway culture” which offers a “false compassion” and treats a human person as a problem.

“True compassion does not marginalize anyone, nor does it humiliate and exclude – much less considers the disappearance of a person as a good thing,” the Pope told the directors of the orders of physicians of Spain and Latin America. He criticized “those who hide behind an alleged compassion to justify and approve the death of a patient.”

In addition to Hawaii, physician-assisted suicide is legal by law in the District of Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, and Colorado; and in Montana through a state supreme court ruling.  A bill to legalize assisted suicide is under consideration in Indiana.

In September the New York State Court of Appeals upheld the state’s ban on assisted suicide.

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