Only a well-formed conscience can decide: Cardinal Marx on sexual morality

Naples, Italy, Sep 19, 2018 / 12:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe of Naples usually does not faint at the sight of blood.

He has celebrated the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, an early martyr, many times over the years.

But this year, something caused Sepe to “blanch” and sit down during the Sept. 19 celebration of the miracle, Italian news agency ANSA reported.

While he refused to leave the altar, Sepe felt too faint to carry the phials of blood outside to show the crowds who had gathered in anticipation of the miracle, which typically occurs three times a year.

It is unknown what caused Sepe to feel ill during the celebration, though ANSA reported that it was “perhaps because of the heat.”

The blood did liquefy during the celebration, according to ANSA.

St. Januarius, or San Gennaro in Italian, is patron of Naples was a bishop of the city in the third century, whose bones and blood are preserved in the cathedral as relics. He is believed to have been martyred during Diocletian persecution.

The reputed miracle is locally known and accepted, though has not been the subject of official Church recognition. The liquefaction reportedly happens at least three times a year: Sept. 19, the saint’s feast day, the Saturday before the first Sunday of May, and Dec. 16, the anniversary of the 1631 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

During the miracle, the dried, red-colored mass confined to one side of the reliquary becomes blood that covers the entire glass. In local lore, the failure of the blood to liquefy signals war, famine, disease or other disaster.

The blood did not liquefy in December 2016, but Monsignor Vincenzo De Gregorio, abbot of the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, said it was a sign that Catholics should pray rather than worry about what the lack of miracle could mean.

“We must not think of disasters and calamities. We are men of faith and we must pray,” he said at the time.

The vial has sometimes changed upon the visit of a pope.

On March 21, 2015, Pope Francis met with priests, religious and seminarians at the cathedral and gave a blessing with the relic.

Sepe then received the vial back from the pope and noted that the blood had partially liquefied.

The last time blood liquefied in the presence of a pope was in 1848 when Bl. Pius IX visited. The phenomenon didn’t happen when St. John Paul II visited the city in October 1979, or when Benedict XVI visited in October 2007.

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Armagh, Northern Ireland, Feb 13, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of Armagh said Thursday that the pope’s apostolic exhortation on the Amazon was foremost a call to preserve the region, and that a focus on its failure to address the priestly ordination of married men is undue.

“I understand there has been disappointment over the airwaves yesterday, and a lot of people feeling that perhaps this was a moment at which Pope Francis was going to express his views on the ordination of married men as priests,” Archbishop Eamon Martin said Feb. 13 to the Irish public broadcaster RTE.

“But I think Pope Francis would be disappointed if this is the issue that we’re all talking about today, because his exhortation is a huge cry from the Amazon and a cry from the heart to protect that region that is being cruelly destroyed by, I suppose, the exploitation of its resources, the destruction of its natural beauty and its life.”

“He says, ‘listen, the whole world has a responsiblity to try and preserve the equilibrum of the planet, which so much depends on the health of the Amazon and the ecosystems there’; so his whole exhortaion is really in line with his thinking from a few years ago, in his famous encyclical Laudato si’; it’s really a call for the protection of the earth.”

While Pope Francis was expected to focus in Querida Amazonia on a proposal to ordain married priests in the Amazon region, the pope instead emphasized the importance of collaboration in apostolic ministry by Catholics in various states of life.

Archbishop Martin noted that the Pope “chose not to mention” the priestly ordination of married men.

“It’s been said he refused this or refused that; he’s actually left the question. I think that he’s done so in order to encourage all of us to focus on much bigger questions about Church ministry, organization, the involvement of lay people in the Church, the involvement of women in the Church, and he calls on the local Church there to actually officially recognize these roles in a way which it hasn’t done until now,” the archbishop commented.

Pressed on the topic, Archbishop Martin said that a call to consider the priestly ordination of married men was made in one of the 120 paragraphs of the Amazon synod’s final document, “so it wasn’t even at the Amazon synod the main theme of the synod, it was on this other issue I’ve been speaking to you about, the corruption, exploitation of the Amazon, the destruction of the indigenous peoples there, their displacement, oppression. These are the issues that he bishops at the Amazonian synod in October were most passionate about.”

He emphasized that Francis is urging the Church “to step back and look at the bigger issues for mission. One of his key themes since he began his pontificate is that the Church needs to go out, and therefore he’s calling on all of us throughout the world to respond to this crisis for priests  in the Amazon.”

“I know we think we’re very short on priests, but a Church which loses its missionary spurt and its missionary zeal is a Church which is dying, and I think that’s what Pope Francis is saying to us: stay missionary, get out there, go out and help these people.”

Archbishop Martin said that “if we’re to respond to Pope Francis’ call here in Ireland then we too need to be looking at how are we recognizing the role of our lay faithful, how are we recognizing officially and presenting in our Church the role of women; and these aren’t simply about ordination to the priesthood, but a recognition of the richness and the charisms … that lay people, lay women and men, can bring to our Church in terms of organization, proclaiming the Word, leading prayer, administering parishes, making decisions at a local and diocesan level, even exercising the pastoral care which in the past priests would have done.”

“It’s when we have this worshipping, vibrant, and living Christian community, it’s then that we have new vocations,” he stated.

In a Feb. 12 statement on Querida Amazonia, Archbishop Martin said it “highlights the problems of poverty, economic and social injustice and the violation of human rights which are intertwined in the vicious cycle of ecological and human degradation.”

He added that “Despite the challenges we have here in Ireland with finding enough priests and religious to serve our parishes, we should not forget that Ireland has always been a country which has responded to the Church’s call to mission … It would be wonderful if some Irish priests, religious and lay missionaries today were to consider offering even a five year period of ministry to the Amazon.”

Pressed nevertheless on the topic of priestly ordination of married men by RTE, the archbishop said that “this question is still open, I’m open to this question, I’m open to this question in the universal Church. I think Pope Francis recognizes it’s a question where there’s a lot of divided thinking, and I think that we can recognize the joy and beauty of the gift of the priesthood where a man gives his life wholly and entirely dedicated to God, set apart for the service of Christ and his Church, a real gift to the Church. At the same time, we have to look at other roles, other ministries within the Church.”

He said that “I’m very much open to the idea” of the priestly ordination of married men, “and I think Pope Francis is too. He doesn’t shut the idea down, he leaves it open for further dicussion within the Church.”

The final document of the synod had proposed “that criteria and dispositions be established by the competent authority, within the framework of Lumen Gentium 26, to ordain as priests suitable and respected men of the community … who have had a fruitful permanent diaconate and receive an adequate formation for the priesthood, in order to sustain the life of the Christian community through the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the Sacraments in the most remote areas of the Amazon region.”

Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican’s editorial director, wrote Feb. 12 that “after praying and reflecting,” Pope Francis “has decided to respond not by foreseeing changes or further possibilities of exceptions from those already provided for by current ecclesiastical discipline, but by asking that the essentials be the starting point,” for discussions regarding priestly ministry in the Amazon.

The pope’s failure explicity to permit the priestly ordination of married men in the Amazon has not deterred some of those who are calling for the practice.

Bishop Augusto Martin Quijano Rodriguez, Vicar Apostolic of Pucallpa, told Reuters that “the door is still open,” and that “the pope is asking for reflection. This proposal is still ongoing.”

The Central Committee of German Catholics, an influential lay group which is jointly managing the so-called synodal process with the German bishops’ conference, accused Pope Francis of a “lack of courage for real reforms” in his Amazonian exhortation.

ZdK wrote that the pope “does not find the courage to implement real reforms on the issues of consecration of married men and the liturgical skills of women that have been discussed for 50 years.”

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CNA Staff, Sep 18, 2020 / 12:00 am (CNA).- The Archbishop of Valencia said Sunday that if Spain’s euthanasia and assisted suicide bill is passed, it would be a “major and historic defeat for all of Spain, for Spanish society.”

“It is a defeat also for humanity, for man himself, for the legislature to take up the bill on euthanasia, assisted suicide, and to reject other proposals on palliative care that improved the current legislation,” Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera wrote Sept. 13.

The prelate also called the proposed euthanasia law “monstrous” and an “injustice.”

Directly addressing the country’s president, government officials, department heads, and legislators, Cañizares challenged: “Realize that you as a government or as parliamentarians should defend, protect, and guard the common good, based on fundamental rights and duties of the society you represent, the first of which is the right to life.”

But in reality “you have become enemies, who oppose society, ready to defeat that society you represent and must protect, by advocating such a bill, which spreads and expands a culture of death,” he said.

The Archbishop of Valencia pointed to the fact that the bill is being advanced through the legislative process amid the Covid-19 pandemic, so “what credibility can you hold on to in the face of that pandemic? With what moral authority can you address this people and ask us what is being asked of us? Aren’t you seen as a sign of contradiction?”

The cardinal said there’s still time left, and appealed to the authorities to make corrections to the bill, “as is so often done in government management or in parliamentary tasks and responsibilities.”

Cañizares stressed that he’s not “interfering in politics” but that his “responsibility as bishop and as a citizen doesn’t allow me to remain silent.”

The Archbishop of Valencia faulted the media for concentrating on unrelated side issues and giving scant attention to the euthanasia bill.

“Euthanasia, which does not constitute an historical defeat of a government, but a defeat of an entire state, and which is an infinitely greater and serious problem, even if you don’t see it that way, and I respect you,” he pointed out.

“Legislation like that doesn’t make for a true fraternity of authentic brothers of a new civilization of love that builds peace and is capable of facing the pandemic,” the cardinal concluded his exhortation.

The Spanish bishops’ conference issued a statement Sept. 14 calling instead for a palliative care law because “there are no patients who cannot be cared for, even if they are incurable.”

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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