Newark, N.J., Feb 13, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Newark released a list of names of credibly accused clergy on Wednesday, including disgraced former archbishop of the diocese Theodore McCarrick. The archdiocese listed McCarrick as &ldqu… […]
Once the news came out today that John Henry Newman (1801-90) would soon be made a saint, after the Vatican announced that the pope had formally approved a second miracle attributed to the great convert’s […]
Burlington, Vt., Feb 13, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- A new poll, released Tuesday, reports that most Americans, including those identifying as pro-choice, are opposed to the late-term abortions. The poll comes amid attempts in several states to expand acce… […]
Pittsburgh, Pa., Feb 13, 2019 / 01:34 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Pittsburgh has launched a new addiction ministry to bring rehabilitation to addicts and families through a holistic approach, including spirituality and close relationships.
“We have a big opiate crisis in Pittsburgh, like every big city,” said Father Michael Decewicz, a recovering alcoholic and one of the leaders behind Addiction Recovery Ministry (ARM).
“How can we as Church respond in love to the addicted and the afflicted? This is our chance as Church, as people of God to reach out to those who are suffering addictions and afflicting their loved ones,” he told CNA.
ARM began Feb. 10 with a Mass of Healing from Addiction. An estimated 200 gathered at the liturgy, where addicts received Anointing of the sick.
Anointing of the sick “can be administered to a member of the faithful who, having reached the use of reason, begins to be in danger due to sickness or old age,” according to the Code of Canon Law.
Father Decewicz noted to CNA the proximity of the program’s initiation to the Feb. 11 feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. He said it correlates to the healing miracles of Lourdes, but also emphasized that addiction is a disease, not a moral choice.
The ministry is funded by Pittsburgh’s On Mission for the Church Alive campaign, a movement in the diocese to condense unused or small parishes into multi-parish groups. Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh said the program is an effort to strengthen ministries.
Located at the John Paul I Center in Sharpsburg, the program will begin with three meetings a week of either Narcotics Anonymous or NARANON, a support group for friends and family of addicts suffering from an addiction to narcotics.
Decewicz said program will later add Alcoholics Anonymous and ALANON, the family support group for alcoholics, and eventually have a variety of all four of these meetings three times a day.
The program will also include monthly opportunities for education on the disease of addiction and spiritual nourishment, which may include “a talk on the spirituality of recovery and addiction,” said Decewicz.
He said this ministry is an opportunity for evangelization. The results might not be immediate, he said, but these are moments to plant the seeds of the faith and help people, who often have been wounded by organized religion, reconsider the Church.
“God calls us in our brokenness. We need to spread that message that God touches us in our brokenness and in our frailty. To bring a message of compassion and empathy….to affirm the dignity of every human being regardless of what they are suffering,” he said.
“For years AA has met in the basement of the church, it’s time to invite them upstairs,” he said.
Father Decewicz said a major component of the ministry will be the opportunities for one-on-one encounters. If people call the program, he said the organization will the return the call within 24 hours and connect the person to a recovering addict who can be a guide or a friend.
Decewicz will be one of the individuals answering calls, helping direct people to the proper services, and discussing his or her experience. Another volunteer for the ministry is Carol Smith, a retired Program Manager for a women’s residential facility and a recovering addict of nearly 24 years.
“You need the right tools, the right people around you to support you,” she told CNA. “There is someone here who can help you, who can identify with you, and get [you] to a meeting.”
She stressed the healing potential of 12 steps programs and shared her own experience with addiction – getting into prescription drugs when she was about 12 and the damage that followed.
Smith was introduced to prescription painkillers because of a dental procedure. She fell in love with these opiates, she said, noting she began stealing drugs from her father’s drug store. After her little brother was born and she felt more estranged from her family, Smith began to spend more time with the wrong crowd, getting deeper into alcohol and other types of drugs.
Even as the drug habit progressed, she was able to function, receiving good grades throughout high school and getting accepted into the University of Pittsburgh. While maintaining an addiction to heroin, Smith graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and later on worked for the government as a supervisor in the welfare department.
She said her life began to take a tragic turn after her husband died. She was forced to resign from her position because of a problem with theft, and eventually ended up in the hospital with sores on her legs from heroin abuse. From the hospital, she was taken to jail which then led to a work release program.
After prison, the addiction was still too much, and Smith again began shooting up heroin. “[Getting high,] that’s all I know how to do. I’ve been doing it for the past 40 years,” Smith told her supervisor when she was confronted about her relapse. But, instead of getting taken back to jail, Smith was taken to an eight week outpatient program, where she was introduced to NA.
“I started going to meetings every day and that’s when the bulb finally went off – you can get through a day without getting high, you can live without using.”
Smith explained the importance of faith in the 12 step program, calling it an opportunity for people to experience the love of God. She further added that evangelization efforts begin with people living this love.
“God is a part of it,” she said. “There’s a lot of people, especially people in addiction, they think that God’s given up on them and that he could never love them with the horrible things they’ve done.”
“The biggest thing is you let them know that God’s love them,” she said. “I think it is more about being an example if you are going to try and have other people come to God or look at him the way you do.”
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2019 / 11:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has sent a letter to Nicolas Maduro responding to a recent invitation to mediate in the Venezuelan political crisis, according to an Italian newspaper.
On Feb. 13, the Milan daily newspaper Corriere Della Sera published a report saying that the pope had written to Maduro reiterating his desire for the avoidance of violence in the country.
According to the article, the pope wrote on Feb. 7 that previous peace efforts in Venezuela were “interrupted because what had been agreed in the meetings was not followed by concrete gestures to implement the agreements.”
“The Holy See clearly indicated what were the conditions for dialogue to be possible” in December 2016 in “a series of requests,” it went on to say.
The Holy See did not comment on the letter, citing the private nature of the correspondence.
The Corriere della Sera report only quoted fragments of the alleged letter, including Francis’ reiteration of his desire to “avoiding any form of bloodshed” and his concern for “the suffering of the noble Venezuelan people, which seems to have no end.”
The newspaper noted, however, that Pope Francis addressed Maduro as “señor,” rather than “president.”
Two men currently claim to be the legitimate president of Venezuela: Nicolas Maduro and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido.
After winning a contested election in which opposition candidates were barred from running or imprisoned, wide-spread protests followed Maduro’s Jan. 10 inauguration,
Juan Guaido declared himself as interim president on Jan. 23. Since then, numerous governments across the world, including the United States, have recognized Guaido as the legitimate interim leader of the country, though Maduro remains in effective power supported by the military.
Maduro’s leadership of Venezuela during his previous term was marred by violence and social upheaval, with severe shortages and hyperinflation leading millions of Venezuelans to emigrate.
On Monday, Vatican Secretariat of State unofficially received a delegation from Venezuela affiliated with Guaido and discussed human rights, the common good, and “avoiding bloodshed” in Venezuela.
Following international recognition of Guaido in January, Maduro wrote a letter to Pope Francis asking him to mediate in the political situation in Venezuela.
Pope Francis has sought to maintain neutrality on Venezuela, telling reporters Jan. 28 it would be “pastoral imprudence” on his part to choose a side in the current split in Venezuela.
Venezuela’s bishops have taken a less neutral stance, calling Maduro’s election “illegitimate” and backing opposition marches in January. On Feb. 1, Venezuela’s bishops met with Guaido in an effort to mobilize the entrance of humanitarian aid to the crisis-stricken country.
Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo, Apostolic Administrator of Caracas, called the proposal for Vatican mediation “non-viable” in a Feb. 6 radio interview.
In a Feb. 8 interview with CNA, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a key advisor and strategist on Venezuela for the Trump administration, said that previous attempts by the Vatican to lead negotiations with Maduro had been a “fiasco.”
Pope Francis said Jan. 28, “I support in this moment all of the Venezuelan people – it is a people that is suffering – including those who are on one side and the other. All of the people are suffering.”
First circulated underground in communist Czechoslovakia in October 1978, Vaclav Havel’s brilliant dissection of totalitarianism, “The Power of the Powerless,” retains its salience four decades later. It should be required reading for politicians given to […]
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2019 / 03:32 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis Wednesday approved the canonization of Bl. John Henry Newman, a Roman Catholic cardinal, scholar, and founder of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England.
Following a Feb. 12 meetin… […]
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2019 / 03:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that one’s prayer should always be a dialogue with God with charitable consideration for others’ needs.
“There is no room for individualism in dialogue with God,” Pope Francis said Feb. 13, noting that there is no “I” in the words of the “Our Father” prayer.
One’s prayer should not contain an “ostentation of one’s problems as if we were the only ones in the world to suffer,” the pope advised.
“In prayer, a Christian brings all the difficulties of the people who live next to him: when the evening descends, he tells God about the pains he has encountered on that day, putting before Him many faces, friends and even enemies,” he said.
In a continuation of his weekly catechesis on the “Our Father,” Pope Francis focused on the prayer’s repeated use of the words “you” and “us,” rather than an individualistic “I” in his Wednesday general audience.
“Jesus teaches us to pray, having first of all ‘You’ on our lips because Christian prayer is dialogue: ‘hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done,’” he said. It is about “you” and then “we,” a community of brothers and sisters.
“If one does not realize that there are many people around him who are suffering, if he does not pity for the tears of the poor, if he is addicted to everything, then it means that his heart is of stone,” he said.
“In this case it is good to beg the Lord to touch us with his Spirit and to soften our heart,” he continued.
The pope warned Catholics not be hypocrites seeking attention through prayer, but to follow Christ’s instructions to pray in “the silence of your room” where one can “withdraw from the world, and turn to God calling him ‘Father!’”
Prayer “at its root, is a silent dialogue, like the crossing of glances between two people who love each other: man and God,” he explained.
Pope Francis said that “there are men who apparently do not seek God, but Jesus makes us pray for them too, because God seeks these people above all.”
“Saints and sinners, we are all brothers loved by the same Father,” Pope Francis said.
Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2019 / 03:06 am (CNA).- Millennials are notoriously blamed for being killers of previously-thought-necessary industries and activities: Applebees. Napkins. Golf. Mayonnaise. Lunch. And so on.
For the ever-shrinking number of millennials who are practicing Christians, could evangelization be on the chopping block next?
Recent data from the Barna group, which researches the intersection of faith and culture, shows that of millennials practicing their Christian faith, almost half – 47 percent – believe it is at least somewhat wrong to “share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith.” This is significantly higher than the number of Gen X-ers (27 percent), and Boomers (19 percent), who said the same.
But while at a glance this statistic may be alarming, given the missionary mandate of the Church, there might be more behind it than just another hit on the millennial kill list.
Elizabeth Klein is an assistant professor of theology at the Augustine Institute in Denver, Colorado. One of the main goals of the institute is to prepare students to respond to the New Evangelization – a term popularized by Pope John Paul II that emphasizes a renewed call to share the Gospel with the world.
Klein said before sounding the alarm about the death of evangelization, the statistic should be read in light of the others also shared by Barna – that 96 percent of millennials believe “part of my faith means being a witness about Jesus,” that 94 percent said that “the best thing that could ever happen to someone is for them to know Jesus,” and that 73 percent said “I am gifted at sharing my faith with other people” – higher than every other generation included in the data.
And in 2013, 65 percent of millennial Christians said they had shared the Gospel with someone in the past year, compared to the national average of about half of Christians in general.
“I thought it was interesting that they didn’t highlight that millennials in fact evangelize more than the older generations do,” Klein said of an article from Christianity Today on the data.
Furthermore, she said, the phrasing of the particular question about evangelization probably also affected the way millennials responded.
“I thought the phrasing of the specific question – it’s about people who already have a religious faith, so I thought that was a big factor,” Klein told CNA.
“I think millennials are more likely to see someone of a different faith as more of an ally maybe than in the past,” she said, “because we are in such a post-Christian, post-religious world that anyone else who is practicing a faith may be more likely to be seen as someone you have a lot in common with, rather than the chief object of evangelization for millennials,” which would probably be atheists or fallen away Catholics, she said.
Vince Sartori is a regional director with the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), which trains students and missionaries on college campuses to form disciples through friendships and Bible studies. Evangelizing in a millennial culture is at the heart of the group’s work.
Sartori, who served as a missionary on two different campuses before becoming a regional director, said he has noticed a hesitancy in millennials on campus to engage in evangelization.
“I think some of it comes down to a misunderstanding of evangelization versus proselytization,” Sartori told CNA.
Proselytization, Sartori said, happens when “the person is preaching or going out to be heard, not listening to someone but rather just trying to get a point across.”
Evangelization, on the other hand, is “about building trust, encountering a person, understanding a person, and introducing them to Jesus and proposing ideas, as opposed to just telling them something.”
Sartori said the way millennials answered this question also reflects the current political climate and a culture that prioritizes people’s comfort over everything else.
“In this culture of ‘if you disagree with me you hate me,’ I would say most millennials would say: ‘I’m not trying to convert anyone,’” Sartori said.
“But I would hope everyone is trying to convert someone, it’s just that there’s a right and true way, and then there’s a way that’s just kind of yelling at people, and that’s obviously not what I’m about and not what anyone would desire. And I think in general millennials are really sensitive to that.”
Klein also said that millennials are reacting to the polarization that characterizes the political and social media world of today.
“Actual authentic dialogue has in fact broken down, and I don’t think that’s a delusion of millennials; things are often so polarized that it is very difficult to have a dialogue which is perceived as open and a back and forth, and not somehow inauthentic or aggressive” she said.
“It’s not that they don’t want to share their faith, but it seems that sharing via dialogue or speaking makes people uneasy, and I don’t think that’s inexplicable, that seems to make sense,” she said.
Part of the training of FOCUS missionaries is teaching them how to evangelize, Sartori said – which includes building friendships and trust with people before proposing that they consider going to church or learning more about Jesus.
“The three habits (taught to missionaries in training) are the things we emphasize that help us to go and do evangelization,” Sartoir said. “The first is divine intimacy (with God), the second is authentic friendship, and the third one is clarity and conviction for what we call spiritual multiplication. So this idea that you’re investing deeply in a few people, and sharing your faith in a way that they can then go and do that with others.”
“You’re listening, you’re building trust, you’re speaking in a way that they’re going to be able to hear you,” Sartori said, “but you’re also hearing where they’re coming from on things.”
Once a friendship is established, Sartori said one of the easiest ways to talk to someone about God is to ask them about the faith tradition they had while they were growing up.
“It’s the basic questions of like – did you ever go to church growing up? Something like that that’s less attacking than, say, ‘How do you feel about abortion?’ or something that’s more politicized or a hot topic,” Sartori said. “You want to do something that’s a softer, more inviting conversation, so you can just understand the person.”
After a conversation about faith has been opened, then it can be time to invite someone to events at a parish or into a Bible study, if the person is open to it.
“While there’s an urgency for someone to accept the Gospel as quickly as possible, we also want to propose it and not impose it, so we’re not going to rush into anything on that,” Sartori said.
Klein said millennials are also most likely to be tuned into the need for authentic witness – that someone must be living a personal life of holiness and friendship with God before they can propose it to someone else.
The article on the Barna research from Christianity Today ended with: “Younger folks are tempted to believe instead, ‘If we just live good enough lives, we can forgo the conversation entirely, and people around us will almost magically come to know Jesus through our good actions and selfless character.’”
“This style of evangelism is becoming more and more prevalent in a culture constantly looking for the fast track and simple fix,’” it said, quoting Hannah Gronowski, the founder and CEO of Christian non-profit Generation Distinct.
But Klein said this kind of attitude is overly dismissive of the importance of personal holiness.
“Witnessing personal holiness – it’s not like that’s easy, its plenty important,” she said, especially with the recent sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church.
“I don’t think that millennials are crazy to think that personal holiness is the most important thing right now, especially when dialogue has broken down and there has been a lot of – with the recent scandals – insane hypocrisy where people’s lives are not matching what they’re saying,” she said.
“I think a big part of it is…holistic Catholic formation,” Klein added. “If you’re not prepared to pursue wisdom and pursue personal holiness, you’re not going to have that authentic witness and authentic life to share.”
While that doesn’t remove the necessity of evangelizing with words, Klein said, it does point to why millennial Christians may have answered that particular question the way they did, beyond a trend toward universalism and relativism.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church itself recognizes the disconnect that may exist between a person’s holiness and the preaching of the Gospel: “On her pilgrimage, the Church has also experienced the ‘discrepancy existing between the message she proclaims and the human weakness of those to whom the Gospel has been entrusted.’ Only by taking the ‘way of penance and renewal,’ the ‘narrow way of the cross,’ can the People of God extend Christ’s reign. For ‘just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression, so the Church is called to follow the same path if she is to communicate the fruits of salvation to men.’” (CCC pp. 853).
“It’s very clear that the Church has a missionary mandate, but I think it nuances that very well and talks about the hypocrisy that has been found,” Klein said. “I think that tension is what millennials are most keyed into, that personal holiness comes first before you can even think about opening your mouth.”
An oft-quoted line, typically attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, speaks of the tension between personal holiness and evangelizing: “Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words,” the saying goes.
But if that quote really came from St. Francis of Assisi, Sartori said, it came from a saint who preached the Gospel so prolifically that he was known to preach it “to the birds.”
“He couldn’t stop preaching,” Sartori said, “so of all the people to have said that, St. Francis is one of the greatest examples of preaching (the Gospel).”
So while personal holiness is a must, he said, so is preaching the Gospel with words.
“To preach the Gospel is an integral part of being a Christian,” he said, “and we can’t separate that.”
In a celebration in St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco this past November, the founders, staff, and several authors recalled the many books and initiatives that have poured forth from that dynamic and innovative source […]
© Catholic World Report