Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire, which announced on March 13, 2024, that its institute will partner with the University of St. Thomas, Houston, to launch a master’s program in evangelization and culture this summer. / Credit: Word on Fire
CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Word on Fire and the University of St. Thomas, Houston, announced on Wednesday that they are launching a master’s program in evangelization and culture this summer.
Set to begin in June, the program will be an “accredited and academically rigorous” master of arts degree in evangelization and culture, said Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute.
Founded by Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Word on Fire is a nonprofit global media apostolate founded to evangelize and educate with an emphasis on contemporary media.
The master’s program is a natural outgrowth of the Word on Fire Institute, which offers live seminars, courses, and opportunities to interact with professors and fellows to its almost 24,000 members, Petrusek said.
“It’s rooted in the same inspiration we have to provide the Church with the best formed evangelists that we can possibly provide,” he told CNA. “And so now we’re doing so in a way that includes a professional degree.”
Petrusek said the institute has “long wanted to provide” members with “a means to get properly and fully and comprehensively formed in the Word on Fire Institute ethos in a way that’s accredited.”
“But up until this point, we didn’t have an outlet for those who really wanted to take it to the next level and to receive a degree,” he said. “And so, thanks be to God, that’s what we’re able to do now in partnership with the University of St. Thomas, with our M.A. program.”
Word on Fire Institute has been in conversation with University of St. Thomas, Houston, for more than two years in building out the program, Petrusek said, noting that the university “has long been doing very good work in providing an authentically Catholic, faithfully Catholic education.”
“We were really excited to have the opportunity to work with them, to build on the strengths that they already have, and to work on our own strengths,” he said. “So the partnership was a natural one, and we look forward to building it as we move into the future.”
The courses, offered live online, will include the Theology of Bishop Robert Barron, Biblical Studies for Evangelists, and Christology for Evangelists as well as a course on the Evangelical Legacy of Vatican II and practical evangelization, among others.
The master’s program includes an optional intensive summer program in person at St. Thomas.
The program will also offer courses such as Evangelization and Anthropology, Art and Architecture for Evangelists, and Dante for Evangelists.
“We’re seeking to [evangelize] in a way that’s highly culturally competent,” Petrusek explained.
Petrusek said that one pillar of Word on Fire that’s “especially important” for this initiative is “looking for the ‘seeds of the word’ in the culture.”
“Now, this is something that goes back to the very beginning of the Church,” he said. “It’s speaking in ways that are intelligible to people wherever they are, across the different dimensions of the culture.”
“The culture,” he noted, is an “umbrella term” that includes entertainment, politics, art, architecture, literature, and technology.
“We want our students to be able to speak to individuals in all those different niches of contemporary culture,” he said but noted that Word on Fire is not looking to “accommodate secular culture.”
“We’re looking at points of contact where we can get a foothold in, to have conversations, and ultimately, to open the door to possible conversions to the relationship with Christ and his Church,” he explained.
Word on Fire Institute hopes to not only form “culturally competent” students but also students who have “thick skin.”
Petrusek said that over the past 40 to 50 years, the Church “in many degrees, has grown timid, especially in the West.”
“And so we’re seeking to overcome that timidity and to go out into the different facets of the culture, recognizing that it’s not going to be easy — it’s sometimes going to be hostile,” he said. “It will very commonly be indifferent and skeptical, and that’s fine. Those aren’t going to be barriers for us to move into those spaces.”
This evangelization is also “high-spirited,” Petrusek explained.
“Moving out into the culture, as [you’re] truly manifesting joy, which does not mean always having a goofy smile on your face,” he said. “It means knowing who you are and what you’re for, being grounded in Christ.”
The program costs $600 per credit hour and is taught live online.
The faculty will include faithful scholars and leaders in Catholic thought, including Word on Fire Institute professors.
Barron is closely involved in the program and may teach, Petrusek noted.
“To what degree he’ll be teaching is something that we’re still working on long-term,” he said, adding: “But he will certainly be a part of it.”
Word on Fire has had “tremendous interest already” after Wednesday’s launch, Petrusek said.
“There’s been a great response,” he said, but noted that a small class size is important for the program.
“We are committed to keeping our classes at a level where conversation is not only possible but encouraged,” he said.
“Another thing that’s a highlight of our program, that we’re very proud of, is we don’t do canned content,” Petrusek continued. “So no recorded lectures and no sort of asynchronous passive content. It’s really incarnational to the extent that that’s possible online.”
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From left to right: Shannon Mullen, editor-in-chief of the National Catholic Register; Kelsey Wicks, executive director of the ACI Group; and Jeanette De Melo, executive director of the National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency. / EWTN… […]
Amanda Achtman’s last photo with her grandfather, Joseph Achtman. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Amanda Achtman
CNA Staff, Nov 5, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
When the Canadian government began discussing the legalization of euthanasia for those whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable,” 32-year-old Amanda Achtman said something in her began to stir. Her grandfather was in his mid-90s at the time and fit the description.
“There were a couple of times, toward the end of his life, that he faced some truly challenging weeks and said he wanted to die,” Achtman recalled. “But thank God no physician could legally concede to a person’s suicidal ideation in such vulnerable moments. To all of our surprise — including his — his condition and his outlook improved considerably before his death at age 96.”
Achtman said she and her grandfather were able to have a memorable final visit that “forged her character and became one of the greatest gifts he ever gave me.”
The experience of walking with her grandfather in his last days led Achtman to work that she believes is a calling. On Aug. 1, she launched a multifaceted cultural project called Dying to Meet You, which seeks to “humanize our conversations and experiences around suffering, death, meaning, and hope.” This mission is accomplished through a mix of interviews, short films, community events, and conversations.
Amanda Achtman speaks during the Evening Program at St. Mary’s Cathedral during “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” event in Calgary Sept. 23, 2023. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
“This cultural project is my primary mission, and I am grateful to be able to dedicate the majority of my energy to it,” Achtman told CNA.
Early years
Achtman was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She grew up in a Jewish-Catholic family with, she said, “a strong attachment to these two traditions that constitute the tenor of my complete personality.”
Her Polish-Jewish grandfather, with whom she had a very close relationship as a young adult, had become an atheist because of the Holocaust and was always challenging her to face up to the big questions of mortality and morality.
“One of the ways I did this was by traveling on the March of Remembrance and Hope Holocaust study trip to Germany and Poland when I was 18,” Achtman said. “My experiences listening to the stories of Holocaust survivors and Righteous Among the Nations have undeniably forged my moral imagination and instilled in me a profound sense of personal responsibility.”
Shortly after her grandfather’s death, Achtman discovered a new English-language master’s program being offered in John Paul II philosophical studies at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland.
“Immediately, I felt as though God were saying to me, ‘Leave your country and go to the land that I will show you — it’s Poland.’ At the time, the main things I knew about Poland were that the Holocaust had largely been perpetrated there and that Sts. John Paul II, Maximilian Kolbe, and Faustina were from there,” Achtman explained. “I wanted to be steeped in a country of saints, heroes, and martyrs in order to contemplate seriously what my life is actually about and how I could spend it generously in the service of preventing dehumanization and faithfully defending the sanctity of life in my own context.”
On Sept. 23, 2023, Amanda Achtman organized a daylong open-house-style event called “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” in Calgary, Alberta. Participants added ideas for how we, the Church, can prevent euthanasia and encourage hope. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
The rise of euthanasia in Canada
In 2016, the Canadian government legalized euthanasia nationwide. The criterion to be killed in a hospital was informed consent on the part of an adult who was deemed to have a “grievous and irremediable condition.”
“The death request needed to be made in writing before two independent witnesses after a mandatory time of reflection. And, consent could be withdrawn any time before the lethal injection,” Achtman explained.
Then, in 2021, the Canadian government began to remove those safeguards. “The legislative change involved requiring only one witness, allowing the possible waiving of the need for final consent, and the removal, in many cases, of any reflection period,” Achtman told CNA.
“Furthermore, a new ‘track’ was invented for ‘persons whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.’ This meant that Canadians with disabilities became at greater risk of premature death through euthanasia. Once death-by-physician became seen as a human right, there was practically no limit as to who should ‘qualify.’ As long as killing is seen as a legitimate means to eliminate suffering, there is no limit to who could be at risk.”
Euthanasia — now called medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada — is set to further expand on March 17, 2024, to those whose sole underlying condition is “mental illness.” Last year, Dr. Louis Roy of the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons testified before a special joint committee that his organization thinks euthanasia should be expanded to infants with “severe malformations” and “grave and severe syndromes.”
Renewing the culture
Achtman followed the debates around end-of-life issues in Canada and wanted to figure out a way to restore “a right response to the reality of suffering and death in our lives.”
“The fact is, our mortality is part of what makes life precious, our relationships worth cherishing, and our lives worth giving out of love. That’s why we need to bring cultural renewal to death and dying, restoring our understanding of its meaning to the human condition.”
At the Sept. 23, 2023, open-house event called “The Church as an Expert in Humanity,” there were table displays of ministries in the diocese who are doing the best work on suffering, death, grief, and caregiving. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
On Jan. 1, 2021, Achtman made a new year’s resolution to blog about death every single day for an entire year in a way that was “hope-filled and edifying.”
It ended up being very fruitful to Achtman personally, but she said “it also touched a surprising number of people, inspiring them to take concrete actions in their own lives that I could not have anticipated.”
The experience, Achtman said, made her realize that it’s possible to contribute to cultural renewal through things like coffee shop visits, informal interviews, posting on social media, being a guest on podcasts and webinars, organizing community events, and making videos.
“Basically, there are countless practical and ordinary ways that we can humanize the culture — wherever we are and whatever we do the rest of the time.”
The Dying to Meet You project
When it comes to the mission of Dying to Meet You, Achtman told CNA that “God has put on my heart two key objectives: the prevention of euthanasia and the encouragement of hope” and added that “the aim of this cultural project is to improve our cultural conversation and engagement around suffering, death, meaning, and hope through a mix of interviews, writing, videos, and events.”
Achtman said the project is an experiment in the themes Pope Francis speaks about often — encounter, accompaniment, going to the peripheries, and contributing to a more fraternal spirit.
“There is a strong basis for opposition to euthanasia across almost all religions and cultures, traditionally speaking,” Achtman said. “Partly from my own upbringing in a Jewish-Catholic family, I am passionate about how the cultural richness of such a plurality of traditions in Canada can bolster and enrich our value of all human life.”
To that end, one of the projects Achtman has in the works is a short film on end of life from an Indigenous perspective to be released mid-November.
“It’s not so much that we have a culture of death as we now seem to have death without culture,” said Achtman, who hopes her efforts will help change that.
An inspiring hometown event
This past Sept. 23, Achtman organized a daylong open-house-style event called “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” in her home city of Calgary, which took place at Calgary’s Cathedral, the Cathedral Hall, and the Catholic Pastoral Centre. The morning featured a ministry hall of exhibits with 18 table displays of ministries throughout the diocese doing the best work on suffering, death, grief, and caregiving. In the afternoon, there were three-panel presentations.
The morning of “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” in St. Mary’s Cathedral Hall in Calgary, Alberta, featured a ministry hall of exhibits with table displays of ministries in the diocese doing the best work on suffering, death, grief, and caregiving. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
The first involved Catholics of diverse cultural backgrounds speaking about hospitality and accompaniment in their respective traditions. It included a Filipino diaconal candidate, a Ukrainian laywoman working with refugees, an elderly Indigenous woman who is a community leader, and an Iraqi Catholic priest.
The second was called “Tell Me About the Hour of Death,” where participants heard from two doctors, a priest, and a longtime pastoral care worker.
The third panel focused on papal documents pertaining to death, hope, and eternal life. A Polish Dominican sister who has worked extensively with the elderly spoke about John Paul II’s “Letter to the Elderly.”
Later, an evening program was held in Calgary’s Catholic Cathedral and included seven short testimonies by different speakers that “were narratively framed as echoes of the Seven Last Words of Christ.” Among the speakers were a privately sponsored Middle Eastern Christian refugee, a L’Arche core member who has a disability, and a young father whose daughter only lived for 38 minutes. Afterward, Calgary’s Bishop William McGrattan gave some catechesis on the Anima Christi prayer, with a special emphasis on the line “In your wounds, hide me.”
“The day was extremely uplifting and instilled the local Church with confidence that the Church indeed is an expert in humanity, capable of meeting Christ in all who suffer with a gaze of love and the steadfast insistence, ‘I will not abandon you,’” Achtman told CNA.
Calgary’s Bishop William McGrattan listens to the seven testimonies echoing the seven last words of Christ during the evening program. Credit: Edward Chan/Community Productions
Our lives are not wholly our own
Many believe euthanasia is compassionate care for those who suffer. Shouldn’t we be able to do what we want with our own lives? And can suffering have any meaning for someone who doesn’t believe in God?
Achtman said these questions remind her of something Mother Teresa said: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other,” as well as the John Donne quote “Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.”
“Our lives are not wholly our own and how we live and die affects the communities to which we belong,” Achtman said. “That is not a religious argument but an empirical observation about human life. If someone lacks ties and is without family and social support, then that is the crisis to which the adequate response is presence and assistance — not abandonment or hastened death. As one of my heroes, Father Alfred Delp, put it, a suffering person makes an ongoing appeal to your inner nobility, to your sacrificial strength and capacity to love. Don’t miss the opportunity.”
Amanda Achtman pictured with Christine, an 88-year-old woman who got a tattoo that says “Don’t euthanize me,” which is featured in a short four-minute documentary. Credit; Photo courtesy of Amanda Achtman
The mission continues
Achtman also organized a “Mass of a Lifetime,” a special Sunday Mass for residents of a local retirement home, on Oct. 15.
Attendees at the Mass of a Lifetime event, a special Sunday Mass for residents of a local retirement home held on Oct. 15, 2023, in Calgary, Alberta. Credit: Amanda Achtman
“I was inspired by a quotation of Dietrich von Hildebrand, who said: ‘Wherever anything makes Christ known, there nothing can be beautiful enough,’” Achtman said. “Applying that spirit to this Mass, we made it as elaborate as possible to show the seniors that they are worth the effort.”
Achtman also recently produced a four-minute short film about an 88-year-old woman named Christine who got a tattoo that says “Don’t euthanize me.” It can be viewed here:
Throughout 2023-2024, Achtman told CNA, she is basing herself in four different Canadian cities for three months each “in order to empower diverse faith and cultural communities in the task of preventing euthanasia and encouraging hope.” She started in her hometown of Calgary and is off to Vancouver this month.
In addition to her work with the Dying to Meet You project, Achtman does ethics education and cultural engagement with Canadian Physicians for Life and works to promote the personalist tradition with the Hildebrand Project.
CNA Staff, May 5, 2020 / 04:14 pm (CNA).- With pornographic website traffic spiking while countries remain on lockdown, the bishops of the United States are urging the Justice Department to protect victims of human trafficking and exploitation by enforcing obscenity laws and prosecuting producers of violent pornography.
“We write to you today to urge you to confront the ongoing harms wrought by the pornography industry and to protect its victims,” the U.S. bishops wrote in an April 30 letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“This should include enforcement of obscenity laws, investigation of pornography producers and website owners for criminality, national leadership in encouraging states and localities to develop rigorous policies against the industry and in the service of survivors, and more.”
The bishops noted that pornography juggernaut Pornhub has made waves in the past few months by offering free “premium” subscriptions to its content to people in countries on lockdown during the pandemic.
Pornhub claims that on the days that the free premium memberships took effect in Italy, France and Spain, traffic in each country increased by 57%, 38% and 61% respectively compared to an “average day.”
The bishops acknowledged that many people are suffering through lockdowns and isolation alone, and echoed Pope Francis’ call to recognize the importance of “belonging as brothers and sisters” in the midst of crisis.
“Pornography is the antithesis of this. Rather than remembering and loving our fellow humans as brothers and sisters, it objectifies them – often directly exploiting them – and diminishes the health of users’ relationships with others,” the bishops wrote, noting that at least 15 states have declared pornography a public health crisis.
In December 2019, four members of Congress called on Attorney General William Barr to bring back the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in the DOJ’s Criminal Justice Division.
The task force, founded in 2005 under the George W. Bush administration, was responsible for investigating and prosecuting producers of hard core pornography under obscenity laws. Eric Holder, attorney general under President Barack Obama, dissolved the task force in 2011.
As the demand for extreme pornography— much of which includes violence— increases, lax or non-enforcement of obscenity laws “may provide a gateway for this demand to metastasize, increasing the incidents of trafficking, child pornography, other abuse, and broader unjust conditions,” the bishops wrote.
Many of the participants in pornographic videos— even if they have legally consented— “have their consent…compromised by desperate circumstances,” while many have not consented at all, the bishops noted.
In addition, pornography can have a devastating effect of families, they wrote. Porn provides a “terrible model and expectation of how persons should treat each other,” especially for the young.
“As pastors, we frequently see the pain that results from a pornography habit,” the bishops concluded.
“Marriages that are injured or even broken by a spouse’s pornography use, which some divorce lawyers report as a factor in over half of their cases, have a ripple effect on children and society. Strong families are necessary for strong, safe communities.”
On March 9, Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) called for the attorney general to investigate Pornhub, highlighting the site’s promotion of videos showing the sexual assault and rape of a victim of human trafficking.
During 2019, at least 58 videos of the sexual abuse and rape of a 15-year-old girl appeared on Pornhub. The girl had been missing for a year and reportedly was forced to have an abortion. Her mother found her on the adult website, leading to the arrest of her captor, Christopher Johnson, a 30-year-old Florida man.
As of May 5, more than 862,000 people have signed an online petition at change.org calling for Pornhub to be shut down. The petition also calls for its executives to be held accountable for alleged complicity in human trafficking.
In November, the payment vendor PayPal abruptly cut payment services for Pornhub.
Laila Mickelwait, the creator of the petition and Director of Abolition for Exodus Cry, an anti-trafficking group, told CNA in February that because of the massive amount of content on Pornhub, she believes there are more instances of the sexual exploitation and child pornography than has been reported.
Mickelwait said the company that owns Pornhub has a monopoly on the pornographic industry.
“Everybody’s in agreement that children should not be trafficked and raped. Women should not be trafficked and raped for profit, for the sexual pleasure of billions of people who visit that website. There’s just no arguing with that,” she said.
Very much needed and uplifting.
A note for possible clarification somewhere down the road…In one of his writings, Pope Benedict proposed that some “interreligious” dialogue would be less confusing if framed preliminarily as “intercultural”–so as to deal more freely with cultural predispositions, such as the very different notions of natural law under Christianity and fatalistic Islam.
The Word on Fire initiative focuses on Western culture, not on a multicultural and religiously divided world. The clarification at some point, then, might be the same as retaining clarity between what is distinctly ecumenical and what is interreligious, a clarity not totally apparent elsewhere under the preliminary-plus-blurred notions of “pluralism” and “fraternity.”
On a detail, when getting into architecture, an indispensable resource is Steven J. Schloeder, “Architecture in Communion: Implementing the Second Vatican Council through Liturgy and Architecture,” Ignatius, 1998. The traditional is unfolded rather than a victim of our “throwaway culture” and the rogue hermeneutics of discontinuity.
Very much needed and uplifting.
A note for possible clarification somewhere down the road…In one of his writings, Pope Benedict proposed that some “interreligious” dialogue would be less confusing if framed preliminarily as “intercultural”–so as to deal more freely with cultural predispositions, such as the very different notions of natural law under Christianity and fatalistic Islam.
The Word on Fire initiative focuses on Western culture, not on a multicultural and religiously divided world. The clarification at some point, then, might be the same as retaining clarity between what is distinctly ecumenical and what is interreligious, a clarity not totally apparent elsewhere under the preliminary-plus-blurred notions of “pluralism” and “fraternity.”
On a detail, when getting into architecture, an indispensable resource is Steven J. Schloeder, “Architecture in Communion: Implementing the Second Vatican Council through Liturgy and Architecture,” Ignatius, 1998. The traditional is unfolded rather than a victim of our “throwaway culture” and the rogue hermeneutics of discontinuity.