Parkland shooter’s life sentence is ‘severe and just,’ Miami archbishop says

Orlando, Fla., Jul 12, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church may be thousands of years old, but its bishops are rapidly adjusting to the demands of 21st-century communication.

If the Church is to effectively evangelize in the modern world, a group of bishops argue, its leaders must be engaged online – but in the right way.

What’s most important is for Catholics engaging online, particularly priests and bishops, is to be sure to bring Christ with them online, said Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas.

“If we aren’t talking about the Gospel and what Jesus said today, then all the other stuff is going to be simply polemical, and our young people are tired of polemics,” he said during a panel discussion.

Young people, he added, want to know what Jesus has to say about the various issues and discussions happening online.

“I think, actually, we have kind of an obligation to sanctify social media,” the bishop said.

Bishop Flores spoke on social media use at a press conference during the “Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel in America” event on July 2 in Orlando, Florida. Joining him in the press conference were Dr. Hosffman Ospino, associate professor of theology and religious education at Boston College; Archbishop Wilton Daniel Gregory of Atlanta; and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, D.C.

Consultant and member of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communication Kim Daniels also brought up the opportunity presented by social media in a July 3 speech at the convocation. In many ways, she commented, social media is a modern “periphery” where many whose needs are overlooked gather together.

“It’s clear that we need to engage people where they are, and the place where people are is social media on their own devices,” she said. “We know this is a great advantage for us to have this opportunity to reach out.”

Daniels also said that the Church has millennia of experience in communicating and bringing people together that it can give to online spaces.

“We know what it is to be a global interconnective network. We know that these kinds of communities need stability, and they need fidelity, and they need mercy, and relation and we can bring those gifts there.”  

For an example of these kinds of gifts being used in the Church today, Daniels said to look at Pope Francis as an “extraordinary communicator.” His enthusiasm, honesty, frank discussion, and resistance to jargon makes him effective at bringing the Gospel to the peripheries, even online, she said.

“He brings something very substantive.”

Bishop Flores agreed with the need to bring substance and Christ to online spaces. “There’s one thing I do every day, and that’s that I will tweet out the Gospel of the day,” he said of his own personal Twitter use.

“If there’s anything I want people to know about the bishop it’s that the first thing he does in the morning is tell you about something Jesus said in the Gospel, because that’s the context from which we have to speak.”

“Maybe you’re not going to get a lot of followers if you comment on the Gospel every day, but it has an effect.”

However, bishops and Catholics can use social media in other worthwhile ways, Bishop Flores stressed. “I have a Twitter and I probably have more fun with it than I should,” he joked.

He said that he often takes group pictures of his confirmation classes, and the confirmande will share his photos online and discuss their confirmation.

“It gives them a chance to say that they’re happy to be Catholic.”

Their diocese also helps high school students utilize social media to develop skills in journalism through the diocese’s Mobile Journalism Project.

“We help get some mobile equipment for high school students who want to learn about journalism, because they’re out there everywhere,” Bishop Flores said.

After the students take pictures or write stories, the diocesean communications office will share them and give feedback. “It helps them get the idea that they can do this,” he said of the program’s impact on students.

Cardinal Wuerl also pointed to the need for bishops to play a more active role on social media, acknowledging the challenges it brings for those who didn’t grow up online.

“We need to be able to be a part of the conversation,” he urged. “If the Church is not part of their conversations, we’re not speaking to them.”

Dr. Ospino pointed out, however, that in many places in the country, this collaboration between generations is not the norm for social media use in the Church. He noted that there is a large “discrepancy” between people in leadership positions in the Church and those who are using the media constantly, with most lay leaders, priests and religious being in their mid 50s, 60s, and 70s, respectively.  

“It is more than likely that these people are not tweeting day and night,” he said. Instead, he encouraged Catholic leaders to learn how young people are interacting with social media and the kinds of conversations they are having.

Archbishop Gregory had a different warning. While he agreed that bishops and Catholics should use social media more effectively, he also worried that it has its limitations.

“There is a great challenge though with social media and I think it’s that it emphasizes one-on-one relationships. It doesn’t provide the opportunity of a sense of belonging to a group larger than yourself,” he said.

He noted that in his diocese, many young people will say that they don’t need to attend Mass because they can watch Mass on their smartphones, which runs counter to the Church’s understanding of Mass and the Church.  

“The Church is this community that is comprised of all of us together, and without that capacity to highlight that and to give expression to that, the best social media in the world will be missing a unique dimension of what it means to be the Church,” Bishop Gregory said.

“It doesn’t mean that we don’t use it, but we also have to recognize its limitations in delivering the Gospel message.”

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The body of St. Pio of Pietrelcino at San Lorenzo fuori le mura, Rome, Feb. 3, 2016. / Alexey Gotovskiy/CNA.

Denver Newsroom, May 25, 2021 / 03:01 am (CNA).
Early in his priesthood, Father John Paul Mary Zeller, MFVA, chaplain of EWTN, had an ‘i… […]

New Haven, Conn., Jan 3, 2019 / 09:09 am (CNA).- Catholics can be good US citizens and honest public servants, the head of the Knights of Columbus wrote Thursday in a message to members of the Catholic charitable organization.

“There have been times in our country’s past when uninformed or prejudiced people questions whether Catholics could be good citizens or honest public servants,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson wrote in the letter.

“Sadly, it seems that in some quarters, this prejudice remains.”

Anderson’s Jan. 3 letter was occasioned by two senators objecting last month to a federal judicial nominee’s membership in the Knights.

Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) asked whether his membership in the Knights of Columbus would prevent Brian C. Buescher from hearing cases “fairly and impartially.” Buescher is an Omaha-based lawyer nominated to sit on the US District Court for the District of Nebraska.

The Supreme Knight noted that Buescher’s “fitness for the federal bench” was questioned by Hirono and Harris “precisely because our Order holds firm to the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life and marriage.”

Anderson said, “Such attacks on the basis of our Catholic faith are hardly new. The Knights of Columbus was formed amid a period of anti-Catholic bigotry.”

From the founding of the Knights of Columbus until the presidential election of John F. Kennedy, “many still held that Catholics were unfit for public office,” he added.

The Knights of Columbus has always adhered to Catholic teaching, Anderson said, adding that “our primary motivation” is Christ’s commandment “that we love God completely and our neighbor as ourselves.”

It is this commandment of love that compels the Knights’ charitable work, he noted.

“This love also motivates us to stand with the Church on the important issues of life and marriage, precisely because the Church’s teaching reflects and is based on that love. We stand with our Church because we believe that what our faith teaches is consistent with reason, is timeless and transcends the changing sentiments of any particular time or place.”

The Supreme Knight also noted that in his letter to the Knights’ 2013 convention, Pope Francis had asked that the organization “bear witness to the authentic nature of marriage and the family, the sanctity and inviolable dignity of human life, and the beauty and truth of human sexuality.”

Anderson pointed out the no religious test clause of Article VI of the US Constitution, and the free exercise clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment, saying, “any suggestion that the Order’s adherence to the beliefs of the Catholic Church makes a Brother Knight unfit for public office blatantly violates those constitutional guarantees.”

“Let us continue to express our love of God and neighbor by helping those in need and by standing with our Church, regardless of the popularity of doing so,” Anderson exhorted.

“Let us also remember that, from our founding, we have embodied the truth that a good Catholic is a good citizen who shows civility and dignity even in the face of prejudice.”

Buescher was nominated to serve on the U.S. District Court Nov. 3. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Buescher’s nomination Nov. 28, sending him written questions Dec. 5.

Hirono had asked Buescher if he would end his membership with the Knights of Columbus if confirmed, so as “to avoid any appearance of bias,” saying the organization “has taken a number of extreme positions.”

And Harris described the Knights as “an all-male society”, and asked if Buescher was aware that the Knights of Columbus “opposed a woman’s right to choose” and were against “marriage equality” when he joined.

Harris raised a statement from Anderson saying abortion constituted “the killing of the innocent on a massive scale” and asked Buescher if he agreed with Anderson.

Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) noted the nominee’s previously outspoken opposition to abortion and asked, “why should a litigant in your courtroom expect to get a fair hearing from an impartial judge in a case involving abortion rights?”

Buescher ran in the Republican primary for Nebraska attorney general in 2014. During that campaign he described himself as “avidly pro-life” and said opposition to abortion was part of his “moral fabric.”

In his responses to the questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Buescher said if confirmed as a federal judge, he would follow established rules regarding conflicts of interest, and that he would not seek to advance personal opinions, but would make rulings in accord with the judicial precedents established by the US Supreme Court.

Anderson is not the only voice to raise objections to the senators’ line of questions.

A Jan. 2 Wall Street Journal editorial said that the senators’ “argument against Mr. Buescher fits a distressing pattern. No longer is it necessary to engage the political merits of a position, or—in the case of a judicial nominee—demonstrate he’d use personal views to override the law. Today it is enough to label a nominee’s religion or associations “extreme” and use that to try to banish him from public life.”

The editorial noted another recent instance in which a Catholic faced questions about her faith, mentioning the 2017 confirmation hearing for federal Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, in which Sen. Dianne Feinstein told Barrett “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.” That comment sparked a groundswell of support for Barrett’s nomination.

Last month, a Washington, D.C. chapter of the Knights of Columbus invited Harris and Hirono to join in their charitable activities, including a February Polar Plunge raising money for the Special Olympics. Neither senator has responded to that invitation.

The Knights of Columbus is active in 17 countries. In 2017, some 2 million members carried out more than 75 million hours of volunteer work and raised more than $185 million for charitable purposes.

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