Year: 2017

Vatican City, May 19, 2017 / 11:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis warned that ideologues sow confusion and division in the Church in the name of false clarity, rather than relying on the Pope, the bishops, and Church councils inspired by the Holy Spirit.

“We are human, we are sinners,” he said, adding that there are difficulties even in the Church. Being sinners leads to humility and drawing closer to God who saves us.

Looking to the early Church, Pope Francis made a distinction between those who had “forceful discussions” but “a good spirit,” and those who “sowed confusion.”

“The group of the apostles who want to discuss the problem, and the others who go and create problems,” the Pope distinguished. “They divide, they divide the Church, they say that what the Apostles preached is not what Jesus said, that it is not the truth.”

The Pope’s words came in his homily at Casa Santa Martha May 19, Vatican Radio reports. He reflected on the Council of Jerusalem of 49 A.D., recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, which rejected claims that gentile converts to Christianity would have to be circumcised.

In the early Church, he charged, “there were jealousies, power struggles, a certain deviousness that wanted to profit from and to buy power.”

In the end, the apostles’ discussion came to agreement.

“They had hearts open to what the Holy Spirit said. And after the discussion ‘it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,’” the Pope said.

This is not “a political agreement” but “the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” that led them to reject the “necessities” some would require of Christian converts, like a refusal to eat meat sacrificed to idols and a requirement to abstain from “illegitimate unions.”

The “liberty of the spirit,” however, allowed gentiles to enter the Church without circumcision.

At that first Church Council, Pope Francis said, “the Holy Spirit and they, the Pope with the bishops, all together,” gathered together in order “to clarify the doctrine,” as would be done through the centuries at successive councils so that “what Jesus said in the Gospels, what is the Spirit of the Gospels, would be understood well.”

The Pope encouraged the congregation not to be afraid in the face of “the opinions of the ideologues of doctrine.” He stressed that the Church has “its proper Magisterium, the Magisterium of the Pope, of the bishops, of the councils.” They should follow the path “that comes from the preaching of Jesus, and from the teaching and assistance of the Holy Spirit.” This path is “always open, always free,” because “doctrine unites, the Councils unite the Christian community” but “ideology divides.”   

Pope Francis further warned against divisive elements in the Church.

“But there were always people who without any commission go out to disturb the Christian community with speeches that upset souls: ‘Eh, no, someone who says that is a heretic, you can’t say this, or that; this is the doctrine of the Church,’” he said.

“And they are fanatics of things that are not clear, like those fanatics who go there sowing weeds in order to divide the Christian community.”

He said their “great error” results from when Church doctrine, which comes from the gospel and is inspired by the Holy Spirit, “becomes an ideology.”

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Vatican City, May 18, 2017 / 04:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In an afterword to a book on silence and prayer recently authored by Cardinal Robert Sarah, Benedict XVI praised the prelate as a spiritual model given the depth of his interior life, saying the liturgy is safe in his hands.

“Cardinal Sarah is a spiritual teacher, who speaks out of the depths of silence with the Lord, out of his interior union with him, and thus really has something to say to each one of us,” Benedict XVI said.

The emeritus Pope added that we ought to be grateful to Pope Francis for his 2014 appointment of Cardinal Sarah as prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

The liturgy, Benedict said, has a certain type of “specialization” which ultimately “can talk right past the essential thing unless it is grounded in a deep, interior union with the praying Church, which over and over again learns anew from the Lord himself what adoration is.”

“With Cardinal Sarah, a master of silence and of interior prayer, the liturgy is in good hands,” he said.

Benedict’s afterword to Cardinal Sarah’s book marks one of the rare occasions he has spoken publicly or published any sort of document since his retirement in 2013.

Although Cardinal Sarah’s book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, was published last month, future printings will include Benedict’s afterword, which he wrote during the Easter Octave. The full text of the essay was published by First Things May 17.

The book is in interview format, and was conducted by French journalist and author Nicolas Diat, who also collaborated on Sarah’s 2015 interview-book God or Nothing.

In his afterword, Benedict reflected on the topic of silence itself, pointing to the letter of St. Ignatius of Antioch to the Ephesians that reads: “It is better to keep silence and be (a Christian) than to talk and not to be.”

Referring to Christ as a teacher, the text says that “even what he did silently is worthy of the Father. He who has truly made the words of Jesus his own is able also to hear his silence, so that he may be perfect: so that he may act through his speech and be known through his silence.”

Benedict then reflected on what it means to hear Christ’s silence and to know him through it, noting that in the Gospels we learn that Christ spent many nights “alone on the mountain” in prayer and conversation with the Father.

“We know that his speech, his word, comes from silence and could mature only there,” he said. “So it stands to reason that his word can be correctly understood only if we, too, enter into his silence, if we learn to hear it from his silence.”

Although historical context is necessary in order to interpret Christ’s words, that in itself is not enough “really to comprehend the Lord’s message in depth,” Benedict said.

Those who today read the “ever-thicker” commentaries on the Gospels often still end up “disappointed” he said, because they learn “a lot that is useful about those days and a lot of hypotheses that ultimately contribute nothing at all to an understanding of the text.”

“In the end you feel that in all the excess of words, something essential is lacking: entrance into Jesus’s silence, from which his word is born,” he said, adding that “if we cannot enter into this silence, we will always hear the word only on its surface and thus not really understand it.”

Pointing to Cardinal Sarah’s book, Benedict said the prelate “teaches us silence — being silent with Jesus, true inner stillness, and in just this way he helps us to grasp the word of the Lord anew.”

Although the cardinal rarely speaks of himself in the text, Benedict said his answers reveal the depth of his spiritual life.

In response to one of Diat’s questions on whether in his life he has ever felt that words were too “cumbersome” or heavy, Cardinal Sarah responds by saying, “In my prayer and in my interior life, I have always felt the need for a deeper, more complete silence…The days of solitude, silence, and absolute fasting have been a great support. They have been an unprecedented grace.”

This answer, Benedict said, makes visible “the source from which the cardinal lives, which gives his word its inner depth.”

“From this vantage point, he can then see the dangers that continually threaten the spiritual life,” he said, noting that this also goes for priest and bishops.

This threat endangers the Church as well, “in which it is not uncommon for the Word to be replaced by a verbosity that dilutes the greatness of the Word,” Benedict said.

He then pointed to another passage of the book which he said is a good examination of conscience for every bishop: “It can happen that a good, pious priest, once he is raised to the episcopal dignity, quickly falls into mediocrity and a concern for worldly success.”

“Overwhelmed by the weight of the duties that are incumbent on him, worried about his power, his authority, and the material needs of his office, he gradually runs out of steam,” Cardinal Sarah said.

Benedict said that given the depth of Cardinal Sarah’s own spiritual life, he is a “spiritual teacher” who, because of his silent prayer with God, has something to say to everyone.

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Vatican City, May 18, 2017 / 10:26 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said that there is no outcome that can justify the use or destruction of embryos for scientific purposes – even for the commendable cause of trying to help those suffering from incurable diseases.

“Some branches of research, in fact, utilize human embryos, inevitably causing their destruction. But we know that no ends, even noble in themselves, such as a predicted utility for science, for other human beings or for society, can justify the destruction of human embryos,” he said May 18.

Pope Francis spoke during a meeting at the Vatican Thursday with people affected by a rare and incurable genetic brain disorder called Huntington’s disease, along with their families and caretakers.

His comments were significant given the massive slate of members from the medical and scientific communities who treat the patients with Huntington’s and perform research on how to prevent the disease or slow its progression. Present were some 1,700 people from 16 different countries. Sponsors for the event included major corporations such as Virgin Airlines.

There are several ethical problems surrounding the research on Huntington’s disease, including the use of embryonic stem cells taken from embryos made through in vitro fertilization.

The Pope noted this fact during the audience, encouraging scientists to pursue scientific advancement only through means that do not contribute to the “throw-away culture” which treats human beings as objects for use.

The is not the first time Francis has spoken out against embryonic stem cell research. In his 2015 environment encyclical Laudato Si, he decried “a tendency” within the field of science “to justify transgressing all boundaries when experimentation is carried out on living human embryos.”

“We forget that the inalienable worth of a human being transcends his or her degree of development,” he said, adding that once technology disregards ethical principles, “it ends up considering any practice whatsoever as licit.”

“When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected.”

Once the human being seeks absolute dominion, the foundations of our life “begin to crumble,” the Pope said in Laudato Si, so that instead of cooperating with God, man puts himself in God’s place “and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature.”

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