Kathryn Jean Lopez is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, where she directs the Center for Religion, Culture, and Civil Society, and also serves as editor-at-large of National Review magazine. Her columns appear […]
There is an old saying, which is as certain in its meaning as it is uncertain in its origins: “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” Destruction is preceded by delusion. This idea, […]
Guadalajara, Mexico, Sep 3, 2020 / 04:59 pm (CNA).- The Mexican pro-life association Los Inocentes de María (Mary’s Innocent Ones) dedicated a shrine in Guadalajara last month in memory of aborted children. The shrine, called Rachel’s Grotto, also serves as a place for reconciliation between parents and their deceased babies.
In an August 15 dedication ceremony, the archbishop emeritus of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, blessed the shrine and emphasized the importance of promoting “awareness that abortion is a terrible crime that frustrates the destiny of many human beings.”
Speaking with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, Brenda del Río, the founder and director of Los Inocentes de María, explained that the idea was inspired by a similar project by a choral group that created a grotto next to the adoration chapel of a monastery in Frauenberg, southern Germany.
The name “Rachel’s Grotto comes from the passage in the Gospel of Matthew where King Herod, seeking to kill the Christ Child, massacres all children two years and younger in Bethlehem: “A cry was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.”
The main goal of Los Inocentes de María, Del Río said, “is to combat violence against children, both in the womb and in early childhood, newborns and up to two, five, six years old, when lamentably many are murdered,” some are even “thrown into sewers, onto vacant lots.”
So far the association has buried 267 preborn children, newborns and infants.
The shrine is part of a project by the association to make the first cemetery for aborted babies in Latin America.
Del Rio explained that the parents of aborted babies will be able to go to the shrine “to reconcile with their child, to reconcile with God.”
Parents can give their child a name, handwriting it on a small piece of paper to be transcribed on a clear plastic tile placed on the walls next to the shrine.
“These acrylic tiles will be attached to the walls, with all the children’s names,” she said, and “there is a small mailbox for the father or mother to leave a letter for their child.”
For Del Río, the impact of abortion in Mexico extends to the country’s high rate of murders, disappearances, and human trafficking.
“That is contempt for human life. The more abortion is promoted, the more the human person, human life, is despised,” she said.
“If we Catholics do nothing in the face of such a terrible evil, a genocide, then who will speak? Will the stones speak if we keep silent?” she asked.
Del Río explained that the Inocentes de María project goes into marginalized and crime-ridden areas, looking for pregnant women and new mothers. They offer workshops for these women in local Catholic churches, teaching them about human dignity and development in the womb.
“We’re sure, men and women alike – because we also have men here with us helping out – that we’re saving lives with these workshops. Telling them, ‘Your baby is not your enemy, it’s not your problem,’ is to restore a whole life,” the association director said.
For Del Río, if babies from a young age receive from their mothers “the message that they are valuable, precious, a work of God, unique and unrepeatable,” then in Mexico “we will have less violence, because a child who is hurting, we tell the moms, is a child who will end up on the streets and in prison.”
At Los Inocentes de María, she said, they tell the parents who have had an abortion and are seeking reconciliation with God and their children, that “you are going to meet your children the moment you die, radiant, beautiful, splendid, that they are going to come to welcome you at the gates of Heaven.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
CNA Staff, Sep 3, 2020 / 04:40 pm (CNA).-
President Donald Trump on Thursday released a letter addressed to “pro-life leaders and activists” indicating his intention to advance legislative and administrative priorities against abort… […]
Denver Newsroom, Sep 3, 2020 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of San Francisco is set to begin training volunteers who will help parishes support Catholics in making end-of-life decisions for themselves and loved ones, informed by Catholic teaching about death.
Deacon Fred Totah, director of pastoral ministry for the archdiocese, told CNA that he fields a lot of questions about end-of-life problems in his parish— more so now than ever, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Catholic end-of-life ministry is a response to California’s 2015 legalization of assisted suicide under the End of Life Option Act, which took effect during June 2016. Under the law, patients may request and physicians may prescribe life-ending medications.
The Catholic Church teaches that assisted suicide and euthanasia— which both involve the intentional taking of life— are never permissible. Withholding “extraordinary means” of medical treatment and allowing death to occur naturally can be morally permissible under Catholic teaching.
The bishops of California, along with healthcare leaders, launched an initiative called Caring for the Whole Person in 2016 to help to educate people about Catholic teaching on dying.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles launched its Whole Person Care ministry during February 2020, and the Diocese of Stockton began doing training for its ministry in March.
Other California dioceses are in the process of building core teams for their ministries, Totah said, and he has reached out to them to offer help building their end-of-life ministries.
‘The door is always open for anybody to partner with us,” he said.
Totah told Catholic San Francisco that it is his hope that every parish eventually will have an end-of-life ministry. The ministry might also be combined with an existing parish ministry, he said, such as grief and consolation, Legion of Mary, or ministry to the sick and homebound.
A five-week Zoom training for the 25 volunteers will begin Sept. 16, and will run until Oct. 14.
The training will encompass five modules, he said, including an introduction to palliative and hospice care; Catholic teaching on end-of-life problems; planning for end-of-life; and grief and bereavement in the parish setting.
The Catholic Medical Association, along with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Health Association, have long supported an expansion of palliative care— medical care and pain management for the symptoms of those suffering from a serious illness, rather than the premature ending of their life.
The CMA emphasized their position that “the goal of palliative care is to promote effective relief of pain and suffering, not to eliminate the sufferer.”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services prohibit Catholic health care facilities from condoning or participating in euthanasia or assisted suicide.
A report from the California Department of Public Health said 374 persons ended their lives by assisted suicide in 2017 – the first full year that the law had been in effect.
The California Catholic Conference reiterated its opposition to assisted suicide in the beginning of 2018, criticizing the lack of data collected and a lack of transparency in the law’s implementation.
In January 2020, a county Superior Court dismissed a legal challenge against the End of Life Option Act, which a group of doctors had filed upon its passage. The US Supreme Court had the year before declined to review the case.
Oregon, Washington, Maine, New Jersey, Hawaii, Colorado, Vermont and the District of Columbia have all legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia along with California. In Montana the practice is legal by a court ruling.
Countries with legal euthanasia are the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, Luxembourg, and Canada. Assisted suicide is legal in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany.
The US House of Representatives in October 2019 sent a bill to the Senate that would expand funding and training for palliative care. The bill is currently in a Senate committee.
CNA Staff, Sep 3, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- The 2020 National Catholic Prayer Breakfast (NCPB) will be streamed online on Sept. 23 the organization announced on Wednesday. The event will honor Attorney General William Barr.
Former presidents and vice pr… […]
CNA Staff, Sep 3, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- The bishops of New York have spoken out against proposed cuts in the New York State budget, urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo not to add further burdens to the state’s poor and vulnerable in the wake of the corona… […]
CNA Staff, Sep 3, 2020 / 12:45 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis did not approve a proposal to ordain married men in the Amazon region because the idea was discussed, and even argued about, but not prayerfully discerned at a 2019 synod of bishops, according to notes from the pope included in an article published Thursday in the Catholic periodical La Civiltà Cattolica.
“There was a discussion … a rich discussion … a well-founded discussion, but no discernment, which is something different than just arriving at a good and justified consensus or at a relative majority,” Pope Francis said, on the issue of addressing a priest shortage in the Amazon by ordaining so-called viri probati, or older, mature and married men from local communities.
The pope clarified that synods of bishops should be opportunities for prayerful reflection, not parliamentary lobbying.
Pope Francis explained that a synod of bishops is a “spiritual exercise,” a period for discernment of how the Holy Spirit is speaking, and for self-examination regarding the motive beyond positions.
“Walking together means dedicating time to honest listening, capable of making us reveal and unmask (or at least to be sincere) the apparent purity of our positions and to help us discern the wheat that – up to the Parousia – always grows among the weeds.”
“Whoever has not realized this evangelical vision of reality exposes themselves to useless bitterness. Sincere and prayerful listening shows us the ‘hidden agendas’ called to conversion,” the pope added.
The October 2019 Synod of Bishops on the Pan-Amazon Region was a gathering of bishops from the region, and from other parts of the world, who met to discuss pastoral strategies for evangelization, catechesis, and pastoral care in the region, which spans several South American countries, and is beset by social, economic, and environmental challenges.
Some bishops at the synod proposed that Francis should permit the ordination of married men to the priesthood to address a regional shortage of priests. Critics of the idea said it would undermine the Church’s understanding of clerical celibacy as a gift, would become a widespread demand in the Church, and would not effectively resolve the clerical shortage in the Amazon.
In his Feb. 12 exhortation Querida Amazonia, which responded to the synod’s discussion on the region, Pope Francis did not endorse the proposal for the ordination of married men.
Instead, the urgent need for priests in the region “leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America, not only to promote prayer for priestly vocations, but also to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region,” he wrote.
In his remarks published this week, the pope emphasized that continued discernment is needed to implement the vision laid out in his exhortation. “I like to think that, in a certain sense, the synod is not over. This time of welcoming the whole process that we have lived challenges us to continue walking together and to put this experience into practice.”
Pope Francis was criticized in some quarters for his decision not to approve viri probati, despite support for the proposal from the bishops at the synod. Church historian Massimo Faggioli wrote in Commonweal that “what we see with Querida Amazonia might suggest a betrayal of the Amazon Synod at least in terms of what it means for institutional Church reforms.”
But in his recently published note, Francis emphasized that a synod is not a legislative body, looking only for majority approval on proposals.
“We must understand that the synod is more than a parliament; and in this specific case it could not escape that [parliamentary] dynamic. On this issue it was a rich, productive and even necessary parliament; but no more than that. To me, this was decisive in the final discernment, when I thought about how to do the exhortation.”
“One of the riches and originality of the synodal pedagogy lies precisely in going out of a parliamentary logic to learn to listen, in community, to what the Spirit says to the Church; for this reason I always propose to remain silent after a certain number of interventions,” the pope added.
“What sense would the synodal assembly have if it were not for listening together to what the Spirit says to the Church?” Pope Francis asked.
Denver Newsroom, Sep 3, 2020 / 11:26 am (CNA).-
A New York priest said his parish added a “pledge for racial justice” to Masses as part of its anti-racism initiatives, and that no one at the parish is required to participate in it. While video of the pledge has been the subject of criticism in the media and from some Catholics, the Archdiocese of New York has not commented on the matter.
“Under the sponsorship of the Pastoral Council, we held a prayer service for the victims of racism and commissioned our Sacred Space ministry to produce a display so that there would be heightened awareness. In that context, someone found a version of the pledge from a Unitarian Church in Texas,” Fr. Kenneth Boller, SJ, pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in New York City, told CNA Sept. 2.
“We invite people to take the pledge after the post communion prayer and before the final blessing-a time when many churches have announcements. People are invited to respond yes to each question. Some choose not to. That’s fine,” Boller added.
Liturgical law prohibits the addition of any components to Mass that are not prescribed by Church rubrics.
The General Instruction for the Roman Missal directs that each priest “must remember that he is the servant of the sacred Liturgy and that he himself is not permitted, on his own initiative, to add, to remove, or to change anything in the celebration of Mass.”
Similarly, the Second Vatican Council’s apostolic constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium, says that no person, “even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.”
For his part, Boller told CNA that the pledge is part of a broader effort in the parish to be attentive to racial justice.
“After the death of George Floyd our parish wished to be more pro-actively anti-racist. There had been a book discussion group on racism for 18 months and there was a recent history of dialog with an African-American Catholic parish in Harlem,” the priest said.
The pledge asks whether Catholics “support justice, equity, and compassion,” and affirm that “white privilege and the culture of white supremacy must be dismantled wherever it is present.” It also asks whether Catholics commit “to help transform our church culture to one that is actively engaged in seeking racial justice and equity for everyone,” and affirm “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”
The pledge gained attention earlier this week, when a redacted video of its recitation began circulating online. On Sept. 2, Fox News television host Tucker Carlson erroneously reported that the pledge, which he called “talking points from BLM” had “replaced the Nicene Creed” at the parish. In the same segment, commentator Eric Metaxas said that if the parish “had a swastika on the altar, it would be no different.”
“The people who are using these new terms — systemic racism or white privilege — these are Marxists,” Metaxas added. “If you do not reject this with everything you have, you are bringing about the death of Christian faith in America,” he said.
The U.S. bishops’ conference 2018 pastoral letter on racism, “Open Wide our Hearts” laments “years of systemic racism working in how resources are allocated to communities that remain de facto segregated.”
In June, Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, who is Black, wrote that “Prejudiced and racist attitudes of individuals also infiltrate institutional structures and organizations, thus forming the foundation for systemic racism….The residual effects of these attitudes are still felt by many Catholics of color today.”
The Archdiocese of New York told CNA it had no comment on the pledge and the controversy that surrounded its recitation during Mass.
CNA Staff, Sep 3, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The U.S. bishops’ conference is encouraging solidarity, charity and compassion for low-income and essential workers during the upcoming Labor Day festivities in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.&… […]
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