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Minneapolis, Minn., Jul 23, 2018 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Bishop Andrew Cozzens, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St.Paul and Minneapolis has given a series of talks ahead of the anniversary of Humanae Vitae. He has used the talks to highlight the damage done to couples and families by artificial contraception, contrasting it with the benefits of adhering to the Church’s teaching.

In a talk to young adults at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis on June 28, he invited listeners to consider what the sexual revolution had promised and what it had actually delivered.

“Let’s just step back and ask ourselves, ‘Has it been so great?’ … This idea that sex could be no pressure, no fear of pregnancy and only amount to the expression of my love for that person — has that actually produced the results that society says?”

In an earlier address at St. Stephen’s Church, also in Minneapolis, he said that the practice of artificial contraception was directly linked to the increased divorce rates, and that couples who reject it have a higher chance of staying together. He drew the connection during a talk helping to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae vitae.

St. Stephen’s is also home to the Sagrada Familia center, which provides assistance and support for couples seeking to use natural family planning. He used the occasion to reflect on how the world has changed in the half-century after the release of Blessed Pope Paul VI’s famous  encyclical which affirmed the traditional prohibition of artificial contraception.

The encyclical contains one of the Church’s “most controversial teachings, but also, in a certain way, one of her most important,” said Cozzens.

Condemning artificial contraception is something that makes Catholics “most radical,” he explained. “We stand out as Catholics by our declaration that contraception is morally evil,” while noting that most other Christian denominations no longer share this belief.

While this may be difficult for many to grapple with and follow, Cozzens said that the failure to heed Paul VI’s prophetic warning had warped the culture and ushered in an increase in various societal ills, such as abortion and unwed pregnancy, as well as marital breakdown and divorce.

“Much of what we see around us in the culture today, 50 years later, is actually the result of not following God’s plan for sexuality and marriage”.

“This is the direct result of the breaking down of the sacredness of sexuality.”

Cozzens explained how Blessed Pope Paul VI had predicted these problems when he wrote that if sex was stripped of its procreative potential and orientation, women would be treated as a “mere instruments” of satisfaction by men, who would “forget the reverence due to a woman.”

The introduction of artificial contraception into marriage has a transformative effect on the marital act, Cozzens said, one which “turns that act into something that is not a covenantal, sacramental, symbolic, total gift of self” because it excludes God’s plan along with the potential of marital fertility.

Acting against this plan has “consequences,” warned Cozzens, observing that about 50 percent of marriages in the United States now end in divorce, an increase of “several hundred percent” since Humanae Vitae was published.

Alternatively, the bishop said, couples who follow faithfully the Church’s teaching on contraception and relied on natural family planning–a Church-approved method of observing a woman’s natural cycle of fertility and abstaining from sexual relations when necessary– have a much higher success rate of staying married.

While living this teaching faithfully requires considerably more effort by married couples than does artificial contraception, Cozzens said that because it “requires discipline and sacrifice” it helps to strengthen the love and respect between husband and wife.

Statistical studies “prove that the Church is right on this teaching,” said Cozzens.

“Couples who practice this teaching of the Church have about a 98 to 99 percent success rate in marriage.”

Married couples who disregard the Church’s warnings against contraception, he warned, were depriving themselves of the vital support of God’s love, and “not experiencing the joy He desires to have and share” with them.

“Let’s pray for each other, and for our world, that our Church and our world will come to reverence this beautiful teaching about marriage, so that we might remain in Him, and His love and joy might increase.”

Humanae Vitae was published on July 25, 1968, the fiftieth anniversary of its publication is on Wednesday.

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Archbishop Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo was elected president of Caritas Internationalis during the Vatican-based confederation of national charities’ General Assembly on May 11-16, 2023. / Courtesy of Caritas Internationalis

Rome Newsroom, May 15, 2023 / 10:45 am (CNA).

Archbishop Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi has been elected as the new president of Caritas Internationalis, the second-largest humanitarian aid organization in the world after the Red Cross.

The Catholic archbishop of Tokyo was Japan’s first missionary priest in Africa, where he first volunteered at a Caritas refugee camp, the start of 30 years of service with the Catholic charitable organization.

More than 400 delegates taking part in Caritas Internationalis’ 22nd General Assembly in Rome May 11-16 elected Kikuchi to serve a four-year term. The body must still elect a secretary general.

“Caritas must be on the front lines to welcome, accompany, serve and defend the poor and vulnerable,” Kikuchi, 64, said in his speech to the assembly.

“This mission must be sustained and be the focus of the members of the Confederation, and I would like to be the one, together with the secretary general, to lead the entire organization to fulfill this important mission of the Church. We are all invited to walk together.”

As president of Caritas Internationalis, Kikuchi will lead a confederation of more than 160 Catholic charities operating in 200 countries and territories. He succeeds Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who has served as Caritas’ president since 2019.

Japan’s first missionary priest in Africa

After he was ordained a priest in 1986 with the Society of the Divine Word, also known as the Divine Word Missionaries, Kikuchi was sent to serve as a missionary priest in rural Ghana for eight years. 

“I was sent to a ‘bush’ parish, deep in the bush, without electricity, without water. … And that was really an important experience for me and that helped create my identity, I suppose,” Kikuchi said in an interview with Vatican Radio on May 14.

He witnessed extreme poverty with “many people … dying without proper medication” and the spread of HIV-AIDS, but he was struck by how people supported each other and how that created hope.

After his work in Ghana, Kikuchi returned to Africa in 1995 as a Caritas volunteer at a refugee camp in Bukavu, Zaire, which took in hundreds of thousands of refugees during the Rwandan genocide.

Kikuchi recalls that the Rwandan refugees “had no food, no clothing, no shelter, and people were in need of everything.”

He said: “The second time I went to the camp, I met some of the leaders and asked them what they needed. And I was expecting the leader to tell me that ‘we need food, we need education, we need medication, we need shelter’ — or something like that. … But rather than that, he said, ‘Father, you come from Japan. So, when you go back to Japan, tell them that we are still here: We are all forgotten.’ And that really shocked me.”

“After that experience, I met so many people in different areas, in different countries struck by disaster, or people in war-torn or conflict areas. I heard the same story and the same cry again and again, that ‘we are forgotten; we are forgotten’. So, this is the real mission of Caritas: to help people know they are not forgotten. We want to be with them.”

Kikuchi became the executive director of Caritas Japan in 1999 and was appointed as a bishop by John Paul II in 2004. 

He went on to serve as the president of Caritas Japan from 2007 to 2022, also participating as a member of the Caritas Internationalis Executive Committee from 1999 to 2004 and leading Caritas Asia as its president from 2011 to 2019.

Pope Francis appointed Kikuchi as archbishop of Tokyo in 2017 and he currently serves as the president of the Japanese bishops’ conference and the secretary general of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences.

Pope’s reform of Caritas

The Japanese archbishop takes the helm of the Church’s charitable arm as it is going through a critical period of reform, six months after Pope Francis dismissed its top leaders.

Pope Francis issued a decree in November that removed the organization’s administration and stated that Caritas would undergo a review “to improve its management rules and procedures — even if financial matters were managed well and fundraising objectives regularly achieved — and thereby better serve its member charities around the world.”

A press release issued at the time said there was no finding of any misappropriation of funds or sexual abuse but cited deficiencies in Caritas’ “management and procedures, seriously prejudicing team spirit and staff morale.”

A provisional administration, led by a former Bain Capital management expert, has run the global organization ever since.

“It is not only that we are an NGO, but we are much more than that. We are a Catholic Church organization, and the institute of the service of the Church,” Kikuchi said.

“So, that means that Caritas is supposed to be a witness of the love of God. What we do is not only provide food or materials or any kind of assistance, but rather we want to be witnesses of the love of God to show people that this is how God loves all people.”

[…]

Daddy Yankee performs during his concert “La Meta” at Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot on Nove.30, 2023, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. / Credit: Gladys Vega/Getty Images

ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 14, 2023 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
Pedro Quiles, forme… […]