Vatican City, Oct 7, 2018 / 03:39 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s prefect for the Congregation for Bishops released a letter Sunday morning refuting charges Pope Francis lifted sanctions against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and saying […]
Vatican City, Oct 7, 2018 / 05:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A married couple striving to faithfully live out their life-long commitment to each other, need both God’s grace and love that is anchored in self-gift, Pope Francis said Sunday.
“What allows married couples to remain united in marriage is a love of mutual self-giving sustained by the grace of Christ,” the pope said Oct. 7.
“If, on the other hand, individual interest and satisfaction prevail in the spouses, then their union cannot endure.”
He explained that if divorce or separation should happen, however, the Church does not condemn, but “on the contrary, faced with so many painful marital failures, she feels called to live her presence of love, of charity, of mercy, to bring back the wounded and lost hearts to God.”
The same mercy God shows to all his people when they fail through sin, “teaches us that wounded love can be healed by God through mercy and forgiveness,” Francis stated.
In his meditation before the Sunday Angelus, Pope Francis reflected on the day’s Gospel, when Jesus defends the permanency of marriage in the face of questioning by the Pharisees. Jesus explained that Moses allowed divorce, because of “the hardness of your hearts,” but that this does not correspond “to the original intention of the Creator.”
Jesus invokes a passage from the Book of Genesis, where it says, “God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
The pope noted Jesus’ words that “what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
“This teaching of Jesus is very clear and defends the dignity of marriage, as a union of love that entails fidelity,” he said. In this Gospel passage, Jesus confirms God’s plan for marriage, not allowing for any exceptions to the permanent commitment of marriage.
“He does this to confirm the plan of God, in which the strength and beauty of human relationships stand out,” he said.
“The Church, on the one hand does not tire of confirming the beauty of the family as given to us by Scripture and Tradition; at the same time, she strives to make his maternal closeness felt concretely to those who live the experience of broken relationships or carry on in a painful and tiring way.”
ROME, October 6th, 2018 — The Press Office of the Holy See released a communiqué on Saturday afternoon, offering the first direct response to the 11-page letter of “testimony” published in late August by the […]
Washington D.C., Oct 6, 2018 / 02:45 pm (CNA).- The Senate voted 50-48 Saturday to confirm the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The vote follows a procedural decision Friday to invoke ‘cloture,’ ending the debate on whether or not to ratify the judge’s nomination.
The Oct. 6 vote followed weeks of hearing and debate over Kavanaugh’s record as a judge, and also allegations of sexual misconduct made against Kavanaugh dating back to the 1980s.
Both Judge Kavanaugh and his primary accuser, Christine Blassey Ford, appeared before a session of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sept. 27. Following those appearances, a further FBI report was compiled and made available to senators Oct. 4.
The vote marks the end of one of the longer Supreme Court confirmation processes ever held.
The result hinged on four senators, three Republicans and one Democrat, who did not make their intentions clear until the final hours of deliberation.
Republican Senators Jeff Flake (AZ) and Susan Collins (ME) were joined by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in voting in favor of ending the debate Friday. All three voted to confirm Kavanaugh on Saturday morning.
Sen. Flake had previously called for the additional vetting of Kavanaugh by the FBI and declared that the report given to the Senate Oct. 4 contained “no additional information yet—no additional corroborating information” on the allegations which had been made against the judge.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was the only Republican to break with her party and announce she would vote against both cloture and confirming the nomination. On Friday she announced she would be voting against Kavanaugh’s nomination, despite believing him to be “a good man.”
“In my view, he’s not the right man for the court at this time,” she said.
Murkowski actually voted “present,” neither for nor against Kavanaugh, so that Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) could attend his daughter’s wedding. This was an example of the parliamentary convention of “pairing,” where an absent member arranges for another member intending to vote the other way to abstain.
After voting in favor of ending debate and bringing the process to a head on Friday, Sen. Collins told reporters that she had still to make up her mind.
“I will be voting yes on proceeding to the final confirmation vote and I will announce my intentions on how to vote later today,” Collins told reporters. She later made a near 50 minute statement on the floor of the Senate in which she said that she would back Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Collins called the process of vetting the judge a “dysfunctional circus” and said that the allegations against him had failed to meet even a “more likely than not standard.”
Along with Sen Murkowski, Collins is a supporter of abortion rights, and was thought at one time to be considering voting against Kavanaugh in the face of widespread pressure from abortion advocates who believe that his elevation to the Supreme Court might trigger a revisiting of the decision Roe v. Wade.
When confirmation hearings on Kavanaugh’s nomination began before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the beginning of September, pro-abortion advocates mounted a public campaign to sway senate votes.
Rachel O’Leary Carmona, chief operating officer of the Women’s March, said at the time that the reason pro-abortion protestors had disrupted Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings was because their “lives are at risk” and that “women will die if Kavanaugh is confirmed.”
O’Leary Carmona also said that politicians who refused to stop Kavanaugh would be made to “pay” during the November midterm elections and in 2020, saying, “if you’re a Democrat, we’ll primary you – if you’re a Republican, your seat will be flipped.”
Sen. Collins did, however, publicly praise Kavanaugh’s judicial record and said she did not think his nomination posed a threat to the landmark abortion decision.
Sen. Manchin is facing a closely fought reelection campaign in West Virginia, a state President Donald Trump carried in 2016 with 68 percent of the vote. His status as a pro-life politician has come under increasing scrutiny following public statements in support of Planned Parenthood and an August vote in the Senate to reject a measure that would have blocked federal government funding to the abortion provider.
If the final vote in the Senate had ended in a 50-50 stalemate, Vice President Mike Pence would have cast the deciding vote.
Despite the controversy which has subsequently surrounded his nomination, following allegations of sexual misconduct in high school, Brett Kavanaugh was originally hailed as an uncontroversial selection by President Trump.
At the time of his nomination, friends of the judge described him to CNA as a sincere Catholic committed to living out his faith.
Brett Kavanaugh was nominated on July 9 to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he once worked as a clerk. Kennedy is also a practicing Catholic.
In July, friends of the nominee described him as a sincere and humble man. Shannen Coffin, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who has known him for 20 years, told CNA at the time that Kavanaugh was “a devoted father, and spouse,” and someone with a strong ethic of service.
“He’s also the guy who after a day of long meetings with senators, you know, and without fanfare, was serving food to the homeless.”
Another long-time friend of Kavanaugh, Msgr. John Enzler, CEO and president of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., told CNA that the judge was “a guy who’s very friendly, very outgoing, very nice, lot of laughter, big smile, wonderful father, wonderful husband, man of faith, lives his faith, goes to church every week.”
As he takes his seat on the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh brings the number of Catholics sitting on the bench back up to six out of the nine justices. Chief Justice John G. Roberts is a practicing Catholic, as are Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Neil Gorsuch was baptized Catholic and received the sacrament of Confirmation, though he has reportedly attended an Episcopalian church for a number of years.
Vatican City, Oct 6, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At the end of the first week of the youth synod Saturday, Pope Francis and over 250 bishops spent the evening listening to testimonies from young people at an event inside the Vatican.
Speaking of… […]
Vatican City, Oct 6, 2018 / 10:10 am (CNA).- The Church’s youngest cardinal said Saturday that the Word of God must be the central point of the Church’s message to young people.
“In the midst of crises and difficulties we need to ref… […]
Vatican City, Oct 6, 2018 / 08:09 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Saturday that it would review its files pertaining to allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who has been […]
Cucuta, Colombia, Oct 6, 2018 / 06:01 am (ACI Prensa).- The Church in Colombia is assisting some 5,000 Venezuelan migrants a day, the president of the country’s bishops’ conference announced Tuesday.
Venezuela is suffering a years-long economic crisis which has caused 2.3 million people to emigrate since 2014.
“An average 5,000 people daily are being served with food and hydration, and in some cases with supplies of clothing, medicine, and personal hygiene items. The Church is doing this with the support of businesses and local, national, and international organizations,” Archbishop Oscar Urbina Ortega said Oct. 2.
Archbishop Urbina spoke during the 2018 Faith Cup in the course of a visit made by more than 600 priests participating in the soccer tournament to the Simon Bolivar International Bridge, an important border crossing between Colombia and Venezuela.
The priests also visited the Divine Providence Home, where meals are provided for Venezuelan migrants.
Archbishop Urbina reiterated that the Church in Colombia suffers “this time of so much pain” along with the migrants, and at the same time is “committed to providing them the aid that encourages them to carry on in the daily struggle to rebuild the social fabric of their country.”
He also recalled that the Colombian bishops’ conference has called for better aid and care from the international community regarding the migration problem.
“Given the exacerbation of the problem the Church will continue to raise its voice, making it known that much more is needed, much more aid and it is necessary to back away from saber rattling and armies marching along the border areas.”
Finally, Archbishop Urbina pointed out that the demand for public services, education, and health care has increased due to the lack of necessary resources.
Since Nicolas Maduro succeeded Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in 2013, the country has been marred by violence and social upheaval.
Poor economic policies, including strict price controls, coupled with high inflation rates, have resulted in a severe lack of basic necessities such as toilet paper, milk, flour, diapers and medicines.
Venezuela’s socialist government is widely blamed for the crisis. Since 2003, price controls on some 160 products, including cooking oil, soap and flour, have meant that while they are affordable, they fly off store shelves only to be resold on the black market at much higher rates.
Inflation in Venezuela may reach 1 million percent this year.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
“I am perfectly aware,” apologized Fr. Robert Hugh Benson in the preface to Lord of the World, “that this is a terribly sensational book.” But for fans of dystopian apocalyptic novels, no apology is necessary: […]
Lubbock, Texas, Oct 5, 2018 / 04:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic Charities of Lubbock has increased its efforts to help combat the homeless youth crisis in the northwest Texas city.
“We want to respect the dignity of every single person and lif… […]
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