Gallup, N.M., Mar 29, 2018 / 11:21 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Catholic Church prepares to receive thousands of Catholic converts this Easter, Sacred Heart Cathedral in Gallup, N.M., is preparing to receive seven. Gallup’s bishop says he is grate… […]
Vatican City, Mar 29, 2018 / 08:21 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Thursday the Holy See stated that a reported interview between Pope Francis and an Italian journalist, which claims the Pope denied the existence of hell, should not be considered an accurate d… […]
Vatican City, Mar 29, 2018 / 03:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At his annual Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, Pope Francis said that a good priest is one who is close to his flock and who makes Jesus’ presence felt in people’s lives – as more t… […]
Rome, Italy, Mar 29, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On the night of Holy Thursday Christians in Rome and around the world will take part in a tradition from the early Church, obeying Christ’s command to “keep watch” by making a pilgrimage to churches to adore Christ in the Eucharist together.
In Rome, this tradition takes the form of walking to seven churches, or more, to visit and pray before the Eucharist at what is called an “altar of repose,” where the hosts consecrated at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper are preserved for use on Good Friday.
“In each church, the altar of repose is decorated with beautiful, fragrant spring flowers and surrounded by flickering candlelight, that breaks the darkness in the rest of the church. Praying at these altars brings our hearts and minds right to the garden, as we pray there with Jesus,” Ashley and John Noronha, Catholic tour guides, told CNA.
The Noronhas, a married couple, have led a group of people on the Holy Thursday church walk each of the 10 years they have lived in Rome. They have also led groups in the United States.
Each year they gather a group of friends of all ages, they said, made up of both locals and pilgrims, to take part in the church walk together, enjoying “the fellowship that comes from praying together.”
They said that “the idea of visiting different churches on Holy Thursday provides an opportunity for local communities to encourage and strengthen each other in the faith.”
John and Ashley noted that one particular blessing of being in Rome – a city with more than 900 churches – is that it is easy to visit the many beautiful and historic churches by foot since they are in such proximity to one another.
The tradition of the seven churches walk is believed to have begun in Rome during the first centuries of the Church. The idea was born out of trying to keep vigil in the same spirit as the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, John said, even though they failed to stay up and pray as Christ asked.
The pilgrimage emphasizes two things: One is the actual act of prayer, following Christ’s plea to keep “vigil” with him, so that we do not “fall into temptation, since our spirit is willing, and flesh is weak.”
The other is the building of community, since people throughout the city gather together to pray, Ashley said. “We are already united through our Catholic faith, but the fact that we all get to be in close proximity as well… is just really powerful.”
“There’s something special that happens when people pray together; friendships can really be born from that,” she continued.
“The flowers of course bring us to the garden, that idea that we’re there with Jesus, praying, trying to keep our eyes open, to fight our weaknesses,” Ashley said.
“I certainly like the aesthetic part of it, in the sense that here we are getting to be with Christ in this incredible atmosphere: the fragrant flowers, the beautiful flickering candlelight. It’s a feast for the senses.”
The couple encouraged others to consider beginning the tradition in their own communities if they do not have a group to join. They advised to begin by reading about the tradition to really understand what it is first; both the spiritual significance and the historical symbolism.
The walk is “a beautiful opportunity to have not only a spiritual experience, but also one of fellowship with people,” John said. He added that people should not worry about the size of the group at first, but just to invite their family, or three or four people, as a starting point.
Those few people “will have such an amazing experience they will bring others” the next year, and “it will just grow,” he said.
From a logistical perspective, Ashley encouraged calling local parishes ahead of time to find out which will be open and what hours. Then to plan a route to share ahead of time so that people can join in at any point in the evening.
Traditionally, churches remain open until midnight, when they are closed to symbolize Christ’s abandonment by his apostles the night of his imprisonment.
They also said that while the tradition in Rome is to visit seven churches (influenced by St. Philip Neri’s pilgrimage to the seven major basilicas, which started in the 1500s), places around the world have their own tradition of what number to visit.
“According to tradition, the number of churches visited would vary depending on the location in the world and proximity of churches,” John said. Therefore, the tradition can be adapted to fit what is possible in each community.
John said, for example, that in the Eastern Orthodox Church the tradition is to visit eight churches, and in some places in India, there are prayer groups who will keep vigil all night long on Holy Thursday.
The just-issued document for the upcoming youth synod emphasizes social justice, the empowerment of women, and changing the Church’s moral teachings. […]
Beijing, China, Mar 29, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA).- Ever since President Nixon famously “opened” China to the West, the country’s rise as an economic and political superpower has been a thorny nettle to grasp. The conventional wisdom has been that, while there are grave and pervasive issues in China relating to political freedom and human rights, these will be gradually eroded by a developing economy and growing middle class – a process best hastened by open trade and engagement with Western nations.
The hope of many policy makers, be it realistic or fanciful, is that China will slowly, eventually, change from within. But as leaders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement can attest, many of them fresh from jail, if the change is coming, it isn’t yet in view.
Indeed, as President Xi relaxes into his new role of President-for-Life, things appear to be moving backwards, rather than forwards. Political and religious arrests, forced sterilizations, human organ trafficking – these are not the stuff of Orwellian nightmares, but part of any serious discussion of the situation in China. Just this week President Xi rolled out the red carpet for the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un; a man reported to have executed musicians with anti-aircraft guns, and abducted schoolgirls for sex slaves.
In the Machiavellian world of realpolitik, in which China’s status as an economic and military superpower make it too big to be ignored, governments may find that the unpalatable task of doing business with China is unavoidable. But it need not be so for the Church. The Church has no trade deficit with China, no sovereign territory to defend in the South China Sea, no national debt held by the Chinese government. The Holy See, through its status as a sovereign entity in international law, is in a unique position – it has the diplomatic clout to make its voice heard, without the entanglements of a major nation state. With this in mind, what are Catholics to make of the deal being brokered between China and the Vatican?
Since the New Year, there have been numerous reports of a concordat in the making between the Chinese government and the Holy See. The apparent substance of the deal is to hand the Chinese government considerable power over episcopal appointments in exchange for bringing the underground Church above ground, ending the split with the state-sanctioned Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. Public criticism has been fierce from respected figures like Cardinal Zen, a hero of the Chinese underground Church, who called the proposed deal an “act of suicide” by the Church and a “shameless surrender.”
In response, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Parolin, has said “sacrifices” need to be made, and that the plan is not “a political exchange, but falls within the evangelical perspective of a greater good, the good of the Church of Christ.” Parolin’s hope is that “we won’t have to speak of ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ bishops, ‘clandestine’ and ‘official’ bishops in the church in China, but about meeting among brothers and sisters, learning the language of collaboration and communion again.”
If the Vatican’s strategic aim is that a unified Church in China will provide an opportunity for a more public and influential Catholic voice in Chinese society, the signs are not encouraging. As CNA has reported recently, news of President Xi’s lifetime term came with a reordering of government business, with one change being the placement of the state-approved Church under the direct supervision of the explicitly atheist Chinese Communist Party. Yesterday, Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin, of the underground Church in China, was detained by state authorities. He was apparently taken in by the police for refusing to concelebrate Mass with an illicitly consecrated, state-backed bishop. He has since been released, but forbidden from celebrating the Chrism Mass.
As one of the underground bishops apparently earmarked by the Vatican to give way to a state-anointed replacement, the government’s treatment of Bishop Guo gives a foretaste of the sort of “government first, Catholic second” enforcement a united Church in China can expect. Indeed, the publicity around the Vatican’s pressure upon Bishop Guo to step aside in hopes of a future deal may have served to embolden Chinese authorities to act. The de facto delegitimization of faithful bishops in China by the Vatican’s political maneuvering may have practical, as well as spiritual, consequences for the faithful in China.
Also today, reports have emerged that the Vatican-China deal may have broader diplomatic implications. It has been suggested that any deal on bishops may come with pressure on the Vatican to break off diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, the democratic nation better known as Taiwan. The Chinese government insist that Taiwan is a rebel province, and place heavy pressure on countries not recognize the island as a sovereign state. The Holy See has recognized the Republic of China since 1942, and remains among the most prominent sovereign entities to do so.
A Vatican rethink on Taiwan may well be expected – doing business with China often comes with the condition of adopting the “One China Policy,” and rejecting Taiwanese claims to sovereignty. If the Vatican could be persuaded to abandon its support, it would end of one of the Holy See’s most high-profile principled diplomatic stands of the modern era.
Of course, the actual text of any agreement has not been signed, or disclosed for public discussion. Until the actual details of any such deal are known, it is impossible to say with certitude what is good or bad about it. What can be said, indeed what seems obvious, is that there not yet a clear upside to the possible deal with Beijing.
For all the Vatican’s efforts to cement a deal with China, there is no clear prize at the end of the road. Every new report suggests that, by accepting Communist nomination of episcopal appointees, the Church will cede considerable practical authority over the Church in China. Worse, as the arrest of Bishop Guo and the threat to Vatican-Taiwan relations show, the moral authority of the Church is being materially sacrificed. Yet nothing appears to be on offer in return, beyond the nebulous hope that a unified Church, under Communisty party oversight, could open new possibilities – which seems unlikely, as long as police can arrest any bishop who is too Catholic for Beijing.
Supporters of the deal say that it will diminish persecution of faithful Catholics in China. But Xi’s call for the “Sinicization” of all religions in China might mean the opposite- that Beijing will pressure bishops to downplay some aspects of Church teaching, and that faithful clerics and laity could be hung out to dry. Those willing to toe Beijing’s line might be safe, for now, but those who hold fast to faith might have little place to turn if they openly evangelize, speak out too boldly in favor of human rights, or refuse to contracept.
The Holy See exists, at the diplomatic level, to be an outspoken champion for human dignity and religious freedom. Its unique status is supposed to insulate it from the worldly concerns and pressures which tie the hands of governments. Yet in its dealings with China, the Vatican is risking the unique moral authority its effectiveness rests upon. Without that, the Church becomes just another NGO doing what it can – a witness to human limitations, not divine truth.
Ed Condon is a canon lawyer working for tribunals in a number of dioceses. On Twitter he is @canonlawyered. The opinions experessed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Catholic News Agency.
Hartford, Conn., Mar 28, 2018 / 10:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In light of Holy Week, the Knights of Columbus announced that it will be donating more than $1 million to aid persecuted Christians in the Middle East.
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Denver, Colo., Mar 28, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent study shows that when it comes to upward economic mobility, family and community makes a notable difference in the lives of black boys.
The study found that significant gaps exist between black and white boys when it comes to upward economic mobility throughout their lifetimes, while these differences are nearly non-existent between black and white girls.
While racism is widely considered to be a factor in that economic disparity between white and black boys, numerous other factors are also at play, according to the study conducted by researchers Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie Jones, and Sonya Porter at The Equality of Opportunity Project.
Black boys on the whole face an upward economic mobility gap even when raised in similar neighborhoods, families and income levels as white boys, the study found.
But the study found one notable exception – black boys from impoverished neighborhoods do as well as white boys from similar neighborhoods when there are a lot of black fathers and married couples present in the community. The study found that the presence of fathers matters at a community level, meaning that even black boys without resident fathers did as well as white boys, if they came from communities with high concentrations of black fathers and married couples.
“That is a pathbreaking finding,” William Julius Wilson, a Harvard sociologist who studies economic struggles of black men, told the New York Times. “They’re not talking about the direct effects of a boy’s own parents’ marital status. They’re talking about the presence of fathers in a given census tract.”
Some responses to the study have claimed that family structure matters minimally for the upward mobility of black boys. However, Dr. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, told CNA that those takes ignore this important finding about marriage structure at the neighborhood level.
Those “are obviously two important family structure indicators that matter at the neighborhood level, so the point there is it’s not just what happens in the individual households, but what’s sort of happening to the family in your neighborhood or your community that would seem to matter for mobility,” Wilcox told CNA.
Wilcox also noted in an article on the study that on the whole, young black men are much more likely to be raised in single-parent homes than young white men, so “if you control for household income growing up, you miss the ways in which racial differences in family structure affect outcomes for boys via their impact on family income.”
Furthermore, the study compares the household income of black boys to their individual income as grown men. Wilcox said a more accurate comparison would be to compare the household income of black boys to the household income of those same boys when they reach adulthood, in order to measure the impact that marriage and family structure continues to have on income.
“I think you would find a very different story, because as they note in the study, blacks marry at much lower levels than do whites, and…you do find that the family structure plays a major role in accounting for the contemporary family income gap, or household income gap between blacks and whites today,” he said.
Bishop Shelton Fabre, chair of United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Subcommittee for African-American Catholics, told CNA that this study shows the need to support and encourage marriage and fatherhood in all communities.
“I know that its manifestation in the African American community is unique, but I think in many cultures, that the whole notion of what it means to be a father, and how to support men who are fathers, and to call men to fatherhood, I think that that’s a need,” he said, “more than just in the African American community.”
The Church can and does encourage fatherhood and married couples especially through marriage preparation programs, Fabre said, as well as Marriage Encounter retreats that support couples throughout their marriage.
Furthermore, the rise of apostolates geared toward men, such as “That Man is You”, show the growing need for providing support for fathers and men in the Christian community, Fabre noted.
“That Man is You” is a Catholic ministry for men that says it “honestly addresses the pressures and temptations that men face in our modern culture, especially those relating to their roles as husbands and fathers.”
The Church is also able to fill in some of the gaps in places where fewer fathers are present, Fabre noted, through mentorship programs at the parish level or through organizations such as the Knights of St. Peter Claver. The Knights of St. Peter Claver is the largest African American Catholic lay organization in the United States, and “provides mentorship and opportunities for young black men to come to know their faith, and that mentorship certainly would get into what does it mean to be a good father,” Fabre said.
It’s important that the Church emphasize the unique things that fathers and mothers bring to families, Fabre added.
“A mother’s love, and a mother’s example, are unique. But the role of father is unique as well. The father brings that sense of security and stability, and other things that young men need to come to know,” he said. “I think mothers provide a lot, but for a young man to have a father to guide him, and to just listen to him and bounce ideas off of him, and help him to learn from his mistakes, and to make his choice that much sweeter, I think that’s the role of a father. I think it’s because a father has a particular role, and a mother has a particular role in the family. And children need that.”
Washington D.C., Mar 28, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops have voiced concern over the abnormally low levels of refugees admitted to the U.S. under the Trump administration, saying that it puts those fleeing danger at risk, and fails … […]
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