New York City, N.Y., Oct 12, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Armed conflicts brings out “the most vicious forms of violence against children” and the world must act to aid the young victims of violence and all unaccompanied children world… […]
Here are three major ways in which Protestantism has influenced the Catholic Church. […]
Charlotte, N.C., Oct 11, 2017 / 03:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- It has been six years since Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic liberal arts school near Charlotte, North Carolina, filed the first lawsuit challenging the federal contraception mandate.
“… […]
Ruteng, Indonesia, Oct 11, 2017 / 02:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An Indonesian prelate resigned Wednesday as Bishop of Ruteng amid mounting concerns surrounding an alleged mistress and reportedly stolen funds.
Bishop Hubertus Leteng, 58, was accused of borrowing $94,000 from the Indonesian bishops’ conference, as well as $30,000 from the Diocese of Ruteng.
Leteng said the money was being used to fund a poor youth’s education, although he failed to give any further details or information, according to Ucanews. He was additionally criticized for reportedly taking a mistress – an allegation which Leteng called “slanderous.”
In June, more than 60 priests of the diocese resigned from their assignments in protest of Leteng’s administration of the diocese.
A year earlier, 112 of the diocese’s 167 priests had signed a letter of no confidence in Leteng, citing their suspicions of financial mismanagement and incontinence.
The Vatican has been investigating the accusations brought against Leteng since April, and Pope Francis accepted Leteng’s resignation Oct. 11.
Following Leteng’s departure, Bishop Sylvester San of Denpasar will serve as apostolic administrator of Ruteng until a bishop is named.
Leteng was ordained a priest of the Ruteng diocese in 1988, and was appointed its bishop in 2009. He was consecrated a bishop April 14, 2010.
Though Indonesia is a heavily majority-Muslim country, the island of Flores, on which Ruteng is located, is largely Catholic. Flores was colonized by Portugal, and nearly 89 percent of the population of the Ruteng diocese is Catholic.
The structure of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which mirrors the Catechism of the Council of Trent, reaches back to the early Church and […]
Washington D.C., Oct 11, 2017 / 12:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the Trump administration announced a repeal of emissions standards, Catholic leaders warned it could hurt poor communities and thwart long-term efforts to fight climate change.
“Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato si’, calls us to action in caring for our common home. A national carbon standard is a critical step for the U.S. at this time,” Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, chair of the U.S. bishops’ domestic justice and human development committee, stated Oct. 10 after the Environmental Protection Agency announced a planned repeal of the Clean Power Plan.
Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced the repeal on Monday.
The Clean Power Plan, finalized in 2015 under the Obama administration, set goals for states to reduce carbon emissions from the utility sector, ultimately aiming to cut emissions by 32 percent by 2030.
President Obama announced the plan in August 2015, citing the need to curb pollution amid climate change and to reduce domestic health concerns such as asthma rates.
“By some estimates, a fully implemented Clean Power Plan could have prevented: 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths; 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children; and 2,700 to 2,800 hospital admissions,” the Catholic Climate Covenant, a national partnership that seeks to educate Catholics about Church teaching on the environment, said.
The plan was “an important step forward to protect the health of all people,” then-chair of the U.S. bishops’ domestic justice and human development committee, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, stated.
However, in February 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the plan being put into effect. President Trump ordered a review of it with the possibility of rescinding the plan in his executive order on energy independence in March, and Bishop Dewane warned that the order “effectively dismantles the Clean Power Plan.”
Pruitt, in a March 30 letter to state governors, told them that in light of the Supreme Court’s stay on the plan, they did not have to abide by the goals and standards set by the plan.
“It is the policy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that States have no obligation to spend resources to comply with a Rule that has been stayed by the Supreme Court of the United States,” Pruitt wrote. “The days of coercive federalism are over.”
On Monday, Pruitt announced the plan would be repealed, to the disappointment of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Climate Covenant.
The chief fault of Tuesday’s announcement was that there is no sufficient replacement plan, Catholic Climate Covenant said.
Furthermore, coming on the heels of the U.S. pulling out of the international Paris climate agreement, where participating countries pledged to cut pollution and contribute to the Green Climate Fund, the repeal “solidifies the already troubling approach of our nation in addressing climate change,” Bishop Dewane said.
Recent Popes along with bishops from all over the globe “have all accepted the reality of human-forced climate change,” Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, stated on Tuesday. “And we know that our burning of fossil fuels is among the biggest contributors to this moral dilemma.”
The Clean Power Plan offered “flexibility to allow states to meet carbon reduction targets in meaningful ways,” he said. “This repeal now throws all of these potential gains into question.”
Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’, on care for our common home, specifically called for policies to reduce carbon emissions, he added.
In paragraph 26 of the encyclical, Pope Francis warned that “some of the negative impacts of climate change … will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption.”
“There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy,” the encyclical stated.
Vatican City, Oct 11, 2017 / 10:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In an Oct. 11 speech to members of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, Francis said the topic of the death penalty should have “a more adequate and coherent s… […]
Vatican City, Oct 11, 2017 / 06:19 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis said Christians are never bored or hopeless, but know how to wait patiently – even when life is hard, monotonous or unclear – with the knowledge that after the darkness, there is always light.
“The Christian was not made for boredom, but for patience,” the Pope said Oct. 11. This, he said, is because “they know that even in the monotony of days that are always the same a mysterious grace is hidden.”
There are people people “who with the perseverance of their love become like wells that irrigate the desert,” he said, adding that “nothing happens in vain, no situation in which a Christian finds themselves immersed is completely refractory to love.”
“No night is so long that the joy of dawn is forgotten. And the darker the night, the closer it is to dawn,” he said.
And if we stay united to Jesus, “the cold of difficult moments does not paralyze us; and if even the whole world preaches against hope, if it says that the future will only bring obscure clouds, the Christian knows that in that same future there is the return of Christ.”
In the end, “everything will be redeemed. Everything,” he said, noting that there will be suffering and times when “anger and indignation come out.” However, “the sweet and powerful memory of Christ will dispel the temptation to think that this life is wrong.”
Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims during his Oct. 11 general audience in St. Peter’s square, continuing his catechesis on Christian hope. In this week’s speech, he focused on an aspect of hope he called “vigilant waiting.”
Vigilance “is one of the wires of the New Testament,” he said, and pointed to a passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus tells his disciples: “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks.”
After Jesus’ resurrection, moments of serenity and anguish seemed to “continually alternate,” he said, but noted that despite times of confusion and uncertainty, “Christians never gave up.”
Today too, the world “demands our responsibility, and we take it all and with love,” Pope Francis said. “Jesus wants our existence to be laborious, that we never let our guard down, to welcome with gratitude and wonder every new day given to us by God.”
Every morning is like “a blank page,” he said, which Christians must write with “good works.”
When Jesus returns, “we need to be ready for salvation when it arrives, ready for the encounter” with the Lord, he said, and asked pilgrims in off-the-cuff remarks: “have you thought what that encounter with Jesus will be like, when he comes?”
This encounter, he said, “will be an embrace, an enormous joy, a great joy! We must live in anticipation of this encounter!”
And after having an encounter with Jesus, “we cannot do anything but scrutinize history with trust and hope,” he said.
Using the image of a house, Francis said Jesus is the structure of the house and we are inside, looking at the world from the windows. Because of this, “we do not close in on ourselves, we do not regret with melancholy a past presumed to be golden,” he said.
Instead, “we always look forward, to a future which is not only the work of our hands, but which above all is a constant concern of God’s providence,” he said, adding that “everything that is opaque one day will become light.”
God does not go back on his word, and he “never disappoints,” the Pope said. Rather, the Lord’s will for us “is never nebulous, but is a well-outlined project of salvation.”
“Because of this we do not abandon ourselves to the flow of events with pessimism, as if history were a train that has lost control,” he said, stressing that “resignation is not a Christian virtue.
Nor is it the task of Christians to shrug their shoulders or “bend their backs” in front of a future that seems “inevitable.”
“Those who bring hope to the world are never never remorseful people,” he said, explaining that no one can build peace with “our arms folded.”
‘”There is no builder of peace who in the final count has not compromised their personal peace, taking on the problems of others,” he said, adding that “the remorseful person is not a builder of peace but is lazy, is one who wants to be comfortable.”
Christians, on the other hand, build peace “when it’s risky, when they have the courage to take risks in order to bring good, the good that Jesus has given to us, has given to us as a treasure.”
Pope Francis closed his audience saying the “refrain” of every Christian existence is that “in our world we need nothing but the caress of Christ.”
“What a grace if, in prayer, in the hard days of this life, we hear his voice responding reassuring us: ‘Behold, I will come soon.’”
Vatican City, Oct 11, 2017 / 03:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The life of Pope John XXIII shows the saint’s deep spiritual nature, as well as his great kindness towards others, said a cardinal who knew him well.
“If in John Paul II the key word is courage of the faith, in John XXIII the key word is the strength of goodness,” Cardinal Comastri told CNA.
Cardinal Comastri is the President of the Fabric of Saint Peter, Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, and Vicar General for the Vatican City State. He worked alongside both Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II for many years as a member of the Roman Curia.
Recounting the day when John XXIII was elected Pope, the cardinal recalled that when the new pontiff appeared on the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to greet the crowds, he could hear their voices but could not see them due to the brightness of the lights.
The cardinal said that “He gave a blessing but when he returned to the doorway he said: ‘I heard the voices but I couldn’t see anyone.’”
“It was a lesson for me, if I want to see the faces of my brothers, I have to turn off the lights of my pride.”
“Right away it was a wise reading of the fact of how John XXIII was,” Cardinal Comastri noted, emphasizing that the new Supreme Pontiff “immediately… communicated with acts of kindness.”
Giving an example to illustrate this point, the cardinal brought to mind a conversation that John XXIII had with his secretary, Msgr. Loris Capovilla, a few days before his first Christmas as Pope in 1958.
During the conversation, the cardinal continued, the Pope told Msgr. Capovilla “Listen, Fr. Loris, my mother taught me that for the holidays we must not only go to Mass, but we must also do works of mercy.”
When the secretary asked what he wanted to do, John XXIII replied that “The day of Christmas I will go to the children in Bambino Gesu hospital. And December 26, I’m going to visit the prisoners of the Regina Coeli prison.”
Noting that it was the first time a Pope had traveled to the hospital, Cardinal Comastri explained that there was “great excitement” and that when he arrived, “the children all jumped from their beds to go and meet the Pope and the Pope greeted them all good-naturedly as Jesus with the children.”
However, seeing that there was one child who remained in his bed, the cardinal revealed that the Pope “was the one to approach the child,” who, when he sensed someone close, stretched out and touched the pontiff, asking, “Are you the Pope?”
When John XXIII replied with a “yes,” Cardinal Comastri recalled that the child told him “I am happy but I can’t see you because I am blind,” to which the Pope responded by “lowering his eyes” and calling the child by his name, saying “Carmine, we are all a little blind; we pray to the Lord to give us the sight of the heart to recognize ourselves as brothers.”
The cardinal continued the narrative, explaining that the next day when Pope John XXIII went to the Roman prison Regina Coeli, he discarded his prepared speech and spoke to the inmates “with the heart.”
Reflecting on how a member of his own family had been imprisoned when he was a child, the pontiff expressed that it had been a difficult and emotional situation, and that although he could keep the experience to himself, he shared it in order to put the prisoners “more at ease,” the cardinal explained.
Quoting the Pope’s words to the inmates, Cardinal Comastri remembered how he told them that “now you need to rebuild your lives and you need to do one thing: eliminate the word despair and prepare yourselves to spend your lives doing good because this is also the Father’s house and you are also sons of God.”
Upon hearing this, the cardinal recounted that one of the prisoners broke through the security barrier, running and throwing himself on his knees at the Pope’s feet, asking, “Holy Father, I am a delinquent, is there also hope for me?”
Pope John XXIII replied by affirming that “there is hope for all, there is also hope for you,” and telling him “do not worry.”
On the way back to the Vatican, Cardinal Comastri said, the Pope once again turned to his secretary, Msgr. Capovilla, and said, “Fr. Loris, these are the true joys of being Pope, these are the joys of the believer.”
“That’s the life of Pope John,” the cardinal observed, adding that “it’s full of these small flowers, strength and goodness.”
This article was originally published on CNA March 18, 2014.
It is not right to assert that canon law—however much its practical clarity might have sharpened the theologians’ speculative discussions over the centuries—dictated ecclesiology. […]
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