Cincinnati, Ohio, Mar 12, 2018 / 03:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An event hosted by the University of Cincinnati on faith and the LGBT community has dropped ‘Catholicism’ from its label after the local bishop sent an email to all diocesan priest… […]
Atlanta, Ga., Mar 12, 2018 / 02:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archbishop of Atlanta released a statement Friday announcing his opposition to a bill in the Georgia legislature that would discriminate between government and private entities in past cases o… […]
Los Angeles, Calif., Mar 12, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, 89, was one of five remaining members of her religious community, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles.
She died suddenly on March 9, a… […]
Vatican City, Mar 12, 2018 / 12:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday Pope Francis sent condolences for the death of Cardinal Karl Lehmann, the retired archbishop of Mainz, Germany, who died March 11.
Expressing his condolences for the death of the prominent cardinal in a letter to Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz March 12, Francis said he learned of Cardinal Lehmann’s death “with pain,” and is praying for him “who the Lord has called to himself after a serious illness and suffering.”
Cardinal Lehmann, who served as the bishop of Mainz for nearly 33 years, died in his home on the morning of March 11 at the age of 81. He retired in 2016, and in September 2017 suffered a stroke which left his health in serious decline.
His funeral Mass will take place March 21 at the Mainz Cathedral.
Cardinal Lehmann served as president of the German bishops’ conference for 20 years. Pope Francis said that in this long period of activity he “helped shape the life of the Church and of society.”
“He always had a heart open to the questions and challenges of the times, and to offering answers and orientations starting from the message of Christ, to accompany people along their path, seeking what unites…” he continued.
Lehmann was born on May 16, 1936 and ordained a priest for the diocese of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany in 1963. He was appointed bishop of Mainz in 1983 and served until his retirement in 2016. He was made a cardinal by St. Pope John Paul II in 2001.
While bishop of Mainz, he became a member of the circle for dialogue between representatives of the German bishops’ conference and the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany.
From March 1986-1988 he also became a member, and later president, of the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue between the World Lutheran Federation and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.
Lehmann was at the center of numerous controversies involving the Vatican.
During his tenure as president of the German bishops’ conference he clashed with Pope John Paul II over abortion. After years of political conflict, first-trimester abortion became permissible in Germany in 1995, as long as a women received counseling first from a state-approved counselor.
Lehmann supported the Church’s participation in the compulsory counseling through church counseling centers, despite objections from Pope John Paul II. In 1998, the pope banned the Church’s participation in the state’s counseling system.
In 1993, Lehmann was also one of three German bishops, alongside Walter Kasper and Oskar Saier, who issued a pastoral letter arguing that there should be room to allow divorced-and-civilly-remarried Catholics to receive communion “in particular situations.”
The bishops also proposed that the decision to receive the Eucharist should be left to the individual’s judgment, in discussion with a priest.
Following the promulgation of the letter, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, called the bishops to attend a series of meetings at the Vatican.
The CDF also issued a corrective letter in October 1994, reaffirming Church teaching that the divorced-and-civilly-remarried may not receive Holy Communion “as long as this situation persists,” unless the couple decides to live in continence.
In 2015 Lehmann was identified as having belonged to a group of progressive reformer cardinals, who are said to promoted alternative candidates at the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, and are rumored to have promoted the election of Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis.
It was dubbed the “St. Gallen Group,” after the host of their discussions, the Bishop of St. Gallen, Switzerland, Ivo Furer.
The group is said to have also included Cardinals Godfried Danneels, Walter Kasper, Ad van Luyn, and Achille Silvestrini, as well as the now-deceased Cardinals Basil Hume, Jose da Cruz Policarpo, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Carlo Martini, and Lubomyr Husar.
It met primarily between 1995 and 2006, discussing various topics, including papal primacy.
The group’s meetings were first revealed in an authorized biography of Cardinal Danneels. At the book’s launch in Brussels in Sept. 2015, Danneels said the group called themselves “the mafia.”
In 2005 Lehmann participated in the papal conclave that elected Benedict XVI, and in the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis.
Vatican City, Mar 12, 2018 / 10:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Vatican’s annual Good Friday Collection approaches, the head of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches has encouraged people to take pilgrimages to the Holy Land, in addition to su… […]
Vatican City, Mar 12, 2018 / 05:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his long tenure as a bishop and theologian, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who died March 11 in Mainz, Germany, was instrumental in shaping the life of the Church and society, Pope Francis said in … […]
Washington D.C., Mar 12, 2018 / 03:04 am (CNA).- Teen sex may be down, but widespread access to smartphones is driving an increase in teen sexting, recent research has found.
According to an analysis of studies by JAMA Pediatrics, as many as one in se… […]
Denver, Colo., Mar 12, 2018 / 02:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- These biblical commandments probably sound familiar: Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
These might not: Do not shave your beard with a razor. Do not wear garments of mixed fibers. Stone adulterers.
In a new T.V. show on CBS, main character Chip Curry, a film critic for a New York paper and soon-to-be father, sets out to improve his moral life by following every law in the Bible – all 613 of them – as literally as he possibly can, with the help of his ‘God squad’, which includes a rabbi and a Catholic priest.
The premise of the show is based on the 2007 New York Times bestseller A Year of Living Biblically, in which author A.J. Jacobs describes his real-life journey of taking the Bible as literally as possible for a year.
While the results in the show and the book are largely comical and portrayed in good humor (at one point a pebble is chucked at a cheating spouse), following every law ever given by God to the letter is nearly impossible, and not what Catholics are called to do, biblical scholar Andre Villeneuve told CNA.
“Good luck if you really want to try to live the Old Testament completely literally,” Villeneuve, who has a doctorate in biblical studies and teaches at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colo., told CNA.
“It would mean you would have to stone your son if he’s rebellious and doesn’t listen to you. You would have to stone adulterers. You would have to check every time you approach a woman that she’s not on her period because you’re not allowed to touch her,” he said, “a lot of these things that have to do with purity which are really frankly awkward and would be really problematic, if not impossible, to observe.”
The problem with such literal fundamentalism, he said, is that it doesn’t read and interpret the Bible in light of salvation history and in light of the intent of the laws given by God.
“The 613 commandments in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible, they were given to Jews to begin with, so it’s ridiculous for anyone, whether a Catholic or Christian, to say they’re going to live by all of these commandments, because they were never given to Gentiles,” he said.
Some of these commandments still stand, however – most notably, the 10 Commandments. When Christ came and established a new covenant, the apostles decided which laws were still meant to be followed by Christians, and which laws pertained only to Jews, Villeneuve said.
“What the (apostles) did is…they saw the law as divided into three categories – the moral laws, the ceremonial laws, and the judicial laws,” he said. “So what has been considered to be universal and perennial and never to be changed are the moral laws, which are the 10 Commandments and their interpretation.”
The ceremonial laws related to Jewish worship, or the judicial laws related to matters such as what kind of compensation you can expect if your neighbor’s animal comes onto your property, are not binding for Christians.
Catholics can distinguish what laws of the Bible to follow and what it means to follow them by reading the Catechism and following the teachings and traditions of the Church, Villeneuve noted.
“The easy answer … is that today we have the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the third part is called Life in Christ, or the Moral Law. That’s where you can see the Catholic interpretation of the Ten Commandments in light of jesus’ teaching, and the apostles and the teachings of the Church,” he said. “It’s essentially extracting what is universal about the commandments without taking up all the specific commandments that were given to Jews in their times and culture.”
Even the Jews do not follow and interpret all of the 613 commandments in the Hebrew Bible exactly literally, Villeneuve noted.
As an example, he pointed out that the law “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” may seem cruel at face value, but it was never interpreted literally, even by the Jewish people.
“It doesn’t mean literally gouging out an eye, it means what is an eye worth as far as livelihood, quality of life … and therefore your neighbor should compensate you by so much, by paying you back,” he said. “It’s read and interpreted in a way that’s not literal.”
“The bottom line is that the fundamentalist reading of scripture doesn’t work; even the Jews don’t live that way,” Villeneuve added.
“We don’t read scripture in a vacuum, we don’t believe in ‘sola scriptura’ (the Protestant doctrine of ‘scripture alone’), but it’s always read in light of Christian tradition and the teachings of the Church and the magisterium.”
Denver, Colo., Mar 11, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As Papua New Guinea begins to recover from a major earthquake, the Capuchin Province of St. Conrad is raising funds in an effort to help those affected by the devastation.
Capuchins have served as missionaries in the country since 1955, and several of the missionaries currently in Papua New Guinea belong to the St. Conrad province, based in Denver, Colo.
“Sadly, dozens of our people lost their lives, mainly caused by landslides. Four young girls were crushed by a falling wall as they slept in their home in Mendi town. Also in Mendi, a young couple and their first-born child were killed by a landslide,” reported Bishop Don Lippert of Mendi, himself a Capuchin.
“Telephone and internet communications are severely limited and in many places access to water and electricity has been interrupted. Many roads have been blocked by major landslides,” Bishop Lippert continued.
He added that “Reports from the remote parishes paint a grim picture of major loss of infrastructure. The diocese’s network of schools and health centers has sustained serious damages throughout the rural, mountainous area.”
Capuchin missionaries to Papua New Guinea built some of the country’s first schools, hospitals, and medical clinics.
On Feb. 26, the Papua New Guinea highlands were struck by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, causing over 100 deaths and countless more injuries. The epicenter of the quake was in Enga province, in the vicinity of Wabag.
Days later, on March 6, Papua New Guinea was again hit by a 6.7 magnitude aftershock, leaving the country without electricity and access to communication systems. Over a dozen more deaths occurred during the aftershock, raising the initial death toll to approximately 117.
The Papua New Guinea Red Cross estimated that upwards of 143,000 people have been affected by the earthquake, leaving as many as 17,000 displaced from their homes. Many people are relying on air-drops for their food and water supply.
The earthquake has also damaged much of the islands’ infrastructure through landslides
The governor of the Southern Highlands Province, William Powi, said that the local government has reached its limit for relief efforts, saying, “it is beyond the capacity of the provincial government to cope with the magnitude of destruction and devastation,” according to the New York Times.
Although the islands have a long journey ahead in rebuilding their devastated communities, the Capuchins hope that their funding campaign will give the islands the aid they need.
Pope Francis recently expressed his concern over the situation, invoking “divine blessings of strength and consolation” to those affected by the disaster.
Rome, Italy, Mar 11, 2018 / 02:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a world that has grown afraid, Pope Francis reflected on the importance of mercy and love, praising the work of the Community of St. Egidio and reminding Christians that they must share the gift… […]
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