Washington D.C., Feb 8, 2018 / 10:58 am (CNA/EWTN News).- President Donald Trump lauded the importance of faith in American life as a foundation for freedom in his speech at the 66th annual National Prayer Breakfast this morning.
“Faith is central to American life and to liberty,” Trump began, “Our founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence. Our currency declares, ‘In God We Trust.’ And we place our hands on our hearts as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance and proclaim we are ‘One Nation Under God.’”
During his remarks, the president emphasized the interconnection between freedom of religion and a flourishing society.
“When Americans are able to live by their convictions, to speak openly of their faith, and to teach their children what is right, our families thrive, our communities flourish, and our nation can achieve anything at all.”
Trump also committed America to the defense of religious freedom worldwide saying “We know that millions of people in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and other countries suffer under repressive and brutal regimes. America stands with all people suffering oppression and religious persecution.”
“Our rights are not given to us by man, our rights come from our creator,” Trump said to the estimated 3,000 attendees at this year’s prayer breakfast.
The president said that he has seen God’s grace in the good works of American citizens who serve their communities, such as teachers, police officers, services members, and parents.
He also commended those Americans who responded to the tragedies that befell our country in the past year, particularly those who served others suffering amid hurricanes, forest fires, the Las Vegas shooting, and the opioid epidemic.
Following President Trump’s speech, U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, who was shot during practice for the Congressional Baseball Game last June, spoke about the role of his Catholic faith in his work in politics, his prayer life, and the power of prayer in his recovery.
“When you pray for somebody that you don’t know, they feel it. I felt that prayer, the prayers of so many people that I had never met before,” said Scalise.
Scalise reiterated the president’s comments on the integral relationship between faith and liberty. “If you go to the Jefferson Memorial right now, go read this inscription from Thomas Jefferson, ‘God, who gave us life, gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?’”
Another prayer offered at this morning’s gathering came from Democratic Senator Chris Coons who prayed, "Bless the world with better leaders," he said, "Who seek your wisdom.”
The U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director, David Beasley, who prayed for sustainable policies to address world hunger, read a passage from Matthew 25, and emphasized that "every human on the face of the earth was made in [God's] image."
Republican Senator James Lankford prayed, "We don't know everything, but we're so grateful to know the One who does.”
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The Adoration Chapel at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Beaufort, South Carolina. / Photo Credit: Aaron Miller, Miller Design & Marketing
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 20, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).
“Awesome. Awesome.”
That’s how Anna Sudomerski, the communications coordinator at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Beaufort, South Carolina, describes the parish’s eucharistic adoration program.
St. Peter’s is among the parishes in the United States that are hosting perpetual eucharistic adoration with the Blessed Sacrament exposed 24 hours a day.
Since Church law dictates that exposition of the Blessed Sacrament requires at least one adorer present at all times, this means the parishes that opt for this extraordinary form of worship must coordinate a major year-round effort to ensure at least one volunteer is present before the Eucharist every hour of the day.
Eucharistic adoration, whether exposed or reserved in the tabernacle, is an ancient custom of the Church dating back to its earliest centuries. Yet its practice today occurs among flagging faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, with U.S. Catholics signaling a growing reluctance to believe that Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.
Yet multiple parishes around the country in recent years have maintained vibrant adoration initiatives, including St. Peter’s, which began its perpetual adoration in the early 1990s.
Sudomerski said the St. Peter’s adoration program started at the parish’s original historic church in downtown Beaufort. With the construction of a new church building in 2006, adoration moved to a purpose-built chapel there.
For years, Sudomerski said, the adoration program was run by team captains who each supervised a specific stretch of hours within a given 24-hour period.
“They were in charge of certain times, like from midnight to 6 a.m., in case the adorer could not make it, so the captain would have to find a substitute or cover the hour themselves,” she told CNA. “We had four team captains covering midnight to 6, 6 to noon, noon to 6, and 6 to midnight.”
She said the church’s adoption of the sign-up software Adoration Pro “made it a lot easier for people to sign up.”
“From there, ever since, we’ve done several campaigns,” she said. “One to pass out interest forms to see who would be interested in what hour. We just finished another campaign because Father thought the Eucharist is the most important thing that we have. We’ve done callouts, mailings.”
Light of the World Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado
Kathryn Nygaard, the communications director at Light of the World Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado, outside of Denver, said the parish has maintained an adoration program since 2007.
“There are two parishioners who are the main adoration chapel coordinators and they do an incredible job,” she said. “In addition, there are 24 ‘hourly coordinators’ to assist with making sure substitutes fill in during open hours and communicating with the adorers in their specific hour.”
“There are approximately 270 people involved in adoration, as either regularly scheduled adorers or as substitutes,” she said. The church hosts two “renewal weekends” in February for adorers to re-up for the coming year; regular announcements are also made at weekend Masses to attract more interest.
Adorers at Light of the World use the church software Flocknote to communicate with one another, Nygaard said. “Most requests for substitutes are filled within 1-2 days,” she noted.
Bishops aim to ‘start a fire’ of eucharistic renewal
The U.S. bishops last year launched the National Eucharistic Revival, meant to “start a fire” of eucharistic devotion among Catholics in the United States. The initiative was first conceived following the 2019 Pew poll showing low numbers of Catholics with a belief in the Real Presence.
As part of the three-year program, parishes around the country have been encouraged to launch Eucharist-focused programs and events to draw parishioners into a deeper relationship with Jesus through the Blessed Sacrament.
Next year, the bishops will host a National Eucharistic Congress featuring multiple high-profile Catholic speakers along with what is expected to be a crowd of about 80,000 Catholics. Pope Francis in June called next year’s national congress “a significant moment in the life of the Church in the United States.”
St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Columbus, Nebraska
At St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Columbus, Nebraska, worshippers have been keeping perpetual adoration there for more than 62 years — since Feb. 14, 1961, according to a live clock on the parish’s website.
The parish on its website says the roots of its adoration program go back to 1949 and expanded thereafter. The program now includes worshippers from other nearby parishes who come to participate in adoration.
Parishioner Tim Cumberland told CNA the church is “blessed to have about 550 people in the program.”
“A few years ago, we went to an automated process of managing our perpetual adoration program, using the Adoration Pro software,” Cumberland said. “This has greatly improved our ability for our adorers to find subs online when necessary. A request for a substitute is usually filled within minutes.”
Kim Waller said the 25-year-old adoration program at Holy Infant Catholic Church in Ballwin, Missouri, still uses a coordinator-led sign-up program instead of an online sign-up. Like many programs, Holy Infant breaks down management of the adoration schedule into hourly segments.
“The 24 hourly coordinators form the backbone of perpetual adoration,” she said. “They ensure that there is at least one adorer present in the chapel at all times. The hourly coordinator reviews the sign-up list weekly to ensure that their committed hourly adorer fulfills his/her commitment and contacts the adorer if she/he has not been to adoration as committed for two consecutive weeks.”
A new team of coordinators just took over in January, Waller said. “The last several years, the ministry was administered by a couple who since have passed within six months of each other,” she said.
St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina
Donna Pierce told CNA she helped launch the 24/7 adoration program at St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina, roughly 30 years ago.
“I think we have about 10-15 people who have maintained their Holy Hour since it began, and currently we have 318 weekly adorers and about 60 substitutes, not counting the many people that pop in the chapel when they can,” she said.
Pierce said a priest from a perpetual adoration apostolate helped the parish launch the program. “He told us that having perpetual adoration is actually much easier to run than a 40-hours or other time frame,” she said. “Adorers incorporate their hour into their schedule, so you don’t have to keep signing up from scratch.”
She said the parish maintains participation in the program by way of biannual talks at Masses (which Pierce described as “our fall and Lent blitzes”). These efforts usually result in upwards of a few dozen sign-ups.
On the website for the National Eucharistic Revival, the bishops say that the current year of the program is focused on “fostering eucharistic devotion at the parish level, strengthening our liturgical life through the faithful celebration of the Mass, eucharistic adoration, missions, resources, preaching, and organic movements of the Holy Spirit.”
Catholic evangelist Tim Glemkowski in a video for the revival urged parish leaders to “prioritize personal encounters with Jesus in the Eucharist” over the course of the year.
“The heart of this invitation … is to create space in our parish calendar this year for people to come and encounter Jesus in the Eucharist personally,” he said. “This could mean parishes that don’t have perpetual adoration start that opportunity, or opportunities for eucharistic processions, or different devotional experiences.”
Pierce said that starting the St. Mary program decades ago was a daunting prospect, but she went ahead with it by putting her trust in God.
“It was terrifying when Msgr. [Thomas] Evatt asked me to be head coordinator to start it so long ago — I was 30 years old with a toddler and working part time,” Pierce said. “So I made a deal with God. He would have to be responsible for sustaining it, and we would just be his instruments.”
“How many, many times he made it obvious he was running it!” she said.
Graces for eternity
St. Bonaventure’s website, meanwhile, predicts that the graces of perpetual adoration will redound not just in the present but for eternity.
“Someday far, far from now, there will be a magnificent heavenly banquet where all of the adorers in the St. Bonaventure adoration program will be reunited,” the parish’s website says.
“Won’t it be wonderful,” the website continues, “for all of us who have been in the program to share stories of how many of our lives, and the lives of those we touched as a result, were radically changed by this personal and enduring encounter with Our Lord!”
Chesterton students celebrate Mass in the school’s new chapel. / Credit: Chesterton Academy of Our Lady of Hope
CNA Staff, Mar 18, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).
A newly launched Catholic school in Rhode Island is on a fast track to growth after what its leader described as a series of “miracles” that led to its acquisition of a disused Catholic property.
Dioceses across the U.S. regularly announce the sale of old parish properties that are no longer actively in use. The Diocese of Fall River in Massachusetts, for instance, is moving to sell a disused “seasonal church” in Dennis Port — the Our Lady of the Annunciation Chapel — so that the town can raze it to make way for a public park.
The Diocese of Springfield, also in Massachusetts, is likewise seeking buyers for several properties in its territory. Several years ago the diocese sold a shuttered Catholic high school that was then converted into apartments.
‘God and Our Lady are at the helm’
In Warwick, Rhode Island, meanwhile, the newly launched Chesterton Academy of Our Lady of Hope recently acquired the property of St. Francis School and Church from the Diocese of Providence in what the school’s head described as several miraculous occurrences that played out in rapid succession.
Michael Casey, the president and executive director of the institution, said the school — part of the Minneapolis-based Chesterton Schools Network — was first launched in early 2022 with the goal of opening for students at the start of the 2023 school year.
Casey said the school’s leaders chose Warwick for its central location in the state.
“We first went to the diocese to look for properties we could rent, and every property was either in terrible shape or was not for rent by the local pastor,” Casey said.
The school’s board of directors discovered the St. Francis property and sought to obtain it, but it was not for sale or lease at the time. The school settled instead on a 3,000-square-foot property, which Casey said was “tight.”
“As we tried to make this rental our temporary home, I felt it was too small and kept waiting for a shot at St. Francis,” Casey said, admitting that “every day, I drove by St. Francis Church and School, waiting for the for-sale sign to go up.”
After writing one last-ditch letter to the diocese, Casey learned that the property had just come up for sale and that closing bids on the parcel were in a matter of days. After a flurry of walkthroughs, consultations with a lawyer and real estate agent, a last-minute benefactor’s letter of collateral, and an extension from the realtor — all while the school community was praying a novena — they delivered the proposal “with two hours to spare.”
“I aged about 10 years from Tuesday night to the following Monday morning,” Casey admitted.
The school’s bid was ultimately accepted.
“There are so many miracles that happened in those three days and over the three months while the decision was made,” Casey said, “but we became owners of three acres with a church that seats 400 people, a school that can accommodate 160 students and a rectory [at which] we are housing our teachers.”
“It has been a crazy ride, but we believe God and Our Lady are at the helm,” Casey said.
Following the school’s acquisition of the property, volunteers and engineers both pitched in to help prepare it for opening. Workers “did quite a bit in a short time to get the buildings to code to move in,” Casey said. “We spent about $55,000 to open it and during the first year we needed about $20,000 in repairs that showed up as we started using the property again.”
He admitted that those investments were financially “draining” but that the school is engaging in fundraising as it grows into a four-year institution, after which “the financials look pretty good.” The school currently hosts about 20 students; the St. Francis property can accommodate a total of 160.
Casey said the school is well supported as it launches. Benefactors “are starting to get behind the mission and vision to help the school get to the next level,” he said, while volunteers “have been incredible, sharing their gifts in areas such as painting, construction, and much sweat equity.”
Casey said the experience with the school shows that lay Catholics looking to help the Church need to “step up and help instead of hoping someone else does it.”
“Catholic laypeople must become part of the solution for the Church’s future,” he said. “We need to support our diocese and priests.” The diocese, Casey added, has been “so supportive” of the school, with a different priest visiting the school “every day” to celebrate its daily Mass.
“Priests visit us from all over Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts, and the students have an opportunity to see how each priest has a different journey in faith,” he said. “They sometimes share lunch with the students. Priests or deacons help us every month for our First Friday Holy Hours. Both bishops and a few monsignors have celebrated Mass with us.”
Casey said the school aspires to “bring spiritual life back to the Warwick and greater Rhode Island community and help families committed to raising their children to be the next generation of saints.”
“Many Chesterton schools do not start this way with buying at the start,” he said, “but we believe with Our Lady of Hope guiding us, that we will be able to fill the school and help bring more souls to Christ.”
Washington D.C., Apr 19, 2018 / 03:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Summit on Wednesday, Robert George shared five steps Catholics can take to support religious freedom at home and abroad.
“We need to remember we are our brother’s keepers,” George, a Princeton professor who has twice served as chairman of the commission, told CNA.
“That is true whether our brother is someone here at home who is being persecuted and discriminated against or whether that person is in the Sudan or in Syria or Iran or in Vietnam or in China or in North Korea,” he continued.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) marked the 20th anniversary of the International Religious Freedom Act this year with a summit in Washington, D.C., focusing on the challenges and progress made in the state of religious freedom around the world.
USCIRF is a bipartisan federal commission that monitors global religious freedom violations.
“Whenever I speak about international religious freedom across the country, people always ask me what they can do to help. I always tell them first, to pray,” said current USCIRF Chairman Daniel Mark in his closing remarks at the summit April 18.
“First, pray … I want to second that motion,” George told CNA. The first step Catholics must take to address violations of religious freedom is prayer.
“Make your voice heard,” George pointed to as the second way to aid the cause of religious freedom. “Make clear to your elected representatives that religious freedom is a priority to you – domestic religious freedom and international religious freedom.”
“Third, there are wonderful organizations, including some that are Catholic, that deserve our financial support. People ask, ‘What can I do with my charitable giving? I’m not a millionaire. I don’t have a lot of money, but I want to give back. I want to thank God for my blessings. I want to help others,’” said George, “I hope that some people think about religious freedom as a cause to support.’
Fourth, “educate yourself and then talk about these issues to people in your parish, people in your family, people in your community,” said George, “We now have the internet. Anybody can learn about religious freedom issues. Go to the USCIRF website.”
Finally, George recommends that religious leaders and communities work together for their shared values. He encourages leaders across historic, theological, and religious divides to communicate and to work together to make a positive impact on civil society.
Former USCIRF chairs Katrina Lantos Swett, Leonard Leo, and David Saperstein spoke on a panel along with George about the current state of international religious freedom.
The panel discussed current threats to religious freedom posed by non-state actors abroad, such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and al-Shabaab. The mistreatment of Rohingya Muslims in Burma and the Uyghurs in China were also highlighted.
“While we focus on extinguishing the flames of sectarian conflict and oppression in countries like these, we cannot ignore the less-physical deeply religious freedom violations in our own backyard,” said Leonard Leo, who served as the USCIRF chair from 2009 – 2007.
“To maintain our standing in the world as a beacon against oppression, we also must put our own house in order by addressing subtler forms of coercion,” continued Leo.
George told CNA after the panel that the U.S. currently faces serious religious freedom challenges.
“Catholics now are in many cases victims of discrimination from the forces of secular progressiveness in our own country,” said George. “You see efforts to try to coerce Catholics and other pro-life physicians into performing abortions or to shut-down Catholic adoption agencies because they insist on places children with a mom and a dad. Or closing Catholic hospitals because they won’t perform abortions. These are serious violations of conscience.”
The current USCIRF chairman, Daniel Mark, is a political science professor at Villanova University. Mark told CNA he is encouraged that the world is “increasingly coming to understand the critical role that religious freedom plays in peace, stability, and prosperity.”
“It is such a foundational freedom,” said Mark. “We see that religious freedom, perhaps more than anything else, is the right that people are most willing to suffer and die for.”
He continued, “There is always the argument that we need to start with democracy and then build toward human rights. We’ve seen some cases, like Burma, where that hasn’t really worked. Maybe it turns out that the direction is the other way … that we need to start by pushing in these countries the core human rights, and from there, the right kind of culture and the right kind of governance will develop.”
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