Police arrest man suspected of robbing Catholic parishes in fake priest scam

New York City, N.Y., Oct 18, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- The New York City council passed a law Wednesday that will require many centers serving women and children in the city to provide diapers and baby wipes free of charge. The bill had no opposing votes… […]

Pope Francis gives his homily at the Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on April 8, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Vatican City, Apr 8, 2023 / 13:40 pm (CNA).

At the Vatican’s Easter Vigil Mass, Pope Francis urged people to “roll away the stones of sin and fear” to experience the power of Christ’s resurrection.

In his Easter homily on April 8, the pope issued an invitation to “rediscover the grace of God’s resurrection within you!”

“Today, brothers and sisters, the power of Easter summons you to roll away every stone of disappointment and mistrust. The Lord is an expert in rolling back the stones of sin and fear … return to Him,” he said in St. Peter’s Basilica.

“Look with confidence to the future,” he said. “For Christ is risen and has changed the direction of history.”

The Easter Vigil, which takes place on Holy Saturday night, “is the greatest and most noble of all solemnities,” according to the Roman Missal.

The liturgy began in darkness with the blessing of the new fire and the preparation of the Paschal Candle. The candle symbolizes the light of Christ, which “shines in the darkness” that “has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Pope Francis arrived at the basilica in a wheelchair dressed in white and gold vestments. He presided over the vigil Mass from a white chair placed at the side of the main altar in the presence of 8,000 people.

Forty cardinals, 25 bishops, and about 200 priests processed through the dark church carrying lit candles to signify the light of Christ coming to dispel the darkness.

At the beginning of the liturgy, a cantor sang the Exsultet Easter Proclamation, which tells the story of salvation from the creation, the testing and fall of Adam, the liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and culminates in Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and leads us to salvation.

The basilica was lit up gradually until it was fully illuminated at the Gloria, when the bells of St. Peter’s tolled.

In his homily, Pope Francis asked people to remember the place where they came to know Jesus personally and to interiorly “return to that first encounter.”

“Remember that powerful experience of the Holy Spirit; that great joy of forgiveness experienced after that one confession; that intense and unforgettable moment of prayer; that light that was kindled within you and changed your life; that encounter, that pilgrimage,” he said.

“Each of us knows the place of his or her interior resurrection, that beginning and foundation, the place where things changed. We cannot leave this in the past; the Risen Lord invites us to return there to celebrate Easter.”

During the Easter Vigil Mass, Pope Francis baptized eight people from the United States of America, Nigeria, Albania, Italy, and Venezuela.

The congregation prayed the Litany of the Saints and renewed their baptismal promises as the candidates prepared to be received fully into the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis recalled the sorrow that the disciples must have experienced when Jesus’ tomb was sealed with a stone. He noted that there are also “sealed tombs” in the present, like the “tombs of disappointment, bitterness and distrust, of the dismay of thinking that ‘nothing more can be done,’ ‘things will never change,’ ‘better to live for today,’ since ‘there is no certainty about tomorrow.’”

“At times, we may simply feel weary about our daily routine, tired of taking risks in a cold, hard world where only the clever and the strong seem to get ahead,” he said.

“At other times, we may feel helpless and discouraged before the power of evil, the conflicts that tear relationships apart, the attitudes of calculation and indifference that seem to prevail in society, the cancer of corruption– there’s a lot –the spread of injustice, the icy winds of war.”

In these moments of discouragement, Christ’s resurrection “motivates us to move forward,” he said, “and to leave behind our sense of defeat, to roll away the stone of the tombs in which we often imprison our hope.”

“Dear brothers and sisters, let us follow Jesus to Galilee, encounter him and worship him there, where he is waiting for each of us. Let us revive the beauty of that moment when we realized that he is alive and we made him the Lord of our lives. … Let us rise to new life!” the pope said.

Pope Francis is also scheduled to preside over Mass on Easter Sunday morning in St. Peter’s Square, after which he will give the traditional “Urbi et Orbi” blessing.

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Washington D.C., Jan 23, 2018 / 02:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent Pew study shows that support for legal abortion varies widely among religious groups, with Catholics falling somewhere in the middle when it comes to beliefs about legal abortion.

Among Catholics in the United States surveyed in the study, 48 percent said they were in favor of legal abortion, while 47 percent said they were opposed to it and 5 percent said they didn’t know.

Unitarian Universalists are the most likely religious group to support legal abortion at 90 percent, while Jehovah’s Witnesses were the least likely to support, it at 18 percent, according to the study.

Among both atheists and agnostics, 87 percent support legal abortion; as do 83 percent of Jews; 82 percent of Buddhists; 68 percent of Hindus; 55 percent of Muslims; and 27 percent of Mormons. Among Orthodox Christians, 53 percent support legal abortion.

The numbers may be surprising, as the Catholic Church is one of the most outspoken opponents of legalized abortion in the U.S. and teaches that abortion under any circumstance is a grave sin.

However, a closer look at other available data for Catholics helps to explain some of this discrepancy.

Overall, “the more frequently you go to Mass the more likely you are to oppose to oppose abortion,” Mark Gray, a senior research associate with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) out of Georgetown University, told CNA.

However, responses vary significantly depending on the frequency of Mass attendance of the respondent as well as on the phrasing of poll questions about abortion, according to data from the General Social Survey analyzed by CARA.

When asked if they would support abortion if a woman wants it for any reason, 85 percent of frequent Mass attendees (those who go weekly) said they would not support abortion, while 56 percent of Catholics who attend Mass less than monthly said they would oppose abortion if a woman wants it for any reason.

Responses changed the most among Catholics when were asked whether they would support abortion in situations in which the “woman’s health is seriously endangered.”

When posed this question, 26 percent of weekly Mass attendees said they would oppose abortion in this circumstance, compared with 5 percent of infrequent Mass attendees saying the same.

The discrepancy between these two different sets of responses may be attributable to a misunderstanding of the principle of double effect, an aspect of moral theology which can be used in evaluating acts which will have multiple effects.

The principle of double effect states that an act which is not inherently evil may be chosen for a good end, even if it is foreseen that this act will have an additional, evil effect, which is not disproportionate to the good end. The actor chooses the positive end, and tolerates the evil effect as a consequence of achieving that good end. The act may never be chosen for the sake of the evil effect.

Therefore, in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, a physician may licitly choose the act of removing the affected area of the mother’s fallopian tubes to achieve the end of saving her life. The consequent death of the embryo or fetus owing to its removal is a foreseen, but unchosen, side effect of that act.

This principle of double effect is sometimes also invoked (incorrectly) to justify an abortion performed to save the life of the mother. However, the principle of double effect does not apply in this case, because the act of abortion is the direct killing of an innocent – an inherently evil act which is proscribed in all cases. Even if the act of abortion is chosen as an end to the means of saving the mother’s life, the act is itself nevertheless evil.

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