Year: 2019

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News Briefs

Give religious reps a vote on education committees, Scottish bishop urges

May 29, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Dundee, Scotland, May 29, 2019 / 11:40 am (CNA).- The Bishop of Dunkeld has met with local government officials to discuss the council area’s decision to strip voting rights from religious representatives on education committees.

“The outcome of the meeting was both cordial and fruitful,” Bishop Stephen Robson said May 28, according to The Courier, a Dundee daily. “Both parties are moving forwards to engage in a meaningful collaboration, working to strengthen our mutual partnership in support of Catholic education.”

Earlier this month, Perth and Kinross Council became Scotland’s first council area to withdraw religious representatives’ voting rights on education committees. The Scottish government had decided that while religious representatives must be appointed to council areas’ education committees, they do not have to be afforded voting rights on those committees.

The Humanist Society Scotland has urged that the rest of Scotland’s 32 council areas also deny religious representatives a vote on education committees.

Perth and Kinross has four Catholic schools, and the Scottish Catholic Education Service “said the Church now has a diminished say” on their future, The Courier reported.

Catholic schools in Scotland are part of the state system, and are not owned by the Church. The Church does have rights over the content of religious and moral education at its schools.

Barbara Coupar, director of the Scottish Catholic Education Service, said, “our representatives do not vote on matters that will not impact on Catholic schools. We believe there was a disproportionate response from the council on this issue and there were better alternatives to resolve the issue. The Church representative on the education committee has an invaluable role in articulating the official response of the Catholic Church on these matters.”

After meeting with Bishop Robson, Perth and Kinross council leader Murray Lyle said that “senior elected members and council officials met with representatives of the local Diocese of the Scottish Catholic Church, and would endorse the view expressed by Bishop Stephen. We look forward to continuing to work closely with our colleagues in the Catholic Church.”

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Essay

“Uncle Ted” and Me…

May 29, 2019 George Weigel 55

The dossier of correspondence between Theodore McCarrick and various officials of the Holy See, including Pope Francis, recently released by Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo, sheds light down the dark alleys of McCarrick’s career, highlighting his relentless […]

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News Briefs

The Holy Spirit makes human words ‘dynamite,’ Pope Francis says

May 29, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, May 29, 2019 / 04:16 am (CNA).- The Holy Spirit is what gives power, life, and dynamism to evangelization, not good rhetorical skills, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

According to St. Luke – Pope Francis said – the words of men become effective not thanks to rhetoric, but thanks to the Holy Spirit, “which has the power to purify the word, to make it the bearer of life.”

The Holy Spirit is what makes the Bible different from a written history, he said at the general audience May 29. The Holy Spirit “helps us to make that word a seed of holiness, a seed of life, to be effective.”

“When the Spirit visits the human word it becomes dynamic, like ‘dynamite,’ that is, capable of lighting hearts and blowing up patterns, resistances and walls of division, opening up new paths and expanding the boundaries of God’s people,” he emphasized.

After a months-long series of reflections on the Our Father, Pope Francis shifted gears into a course of catecheses on the Acts of the Apostles.

This book of the Bible, written by St. Luke the Evangelist, recounts what happens following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the pope said.

“The narrative plot of the Acts of the Apostles starts right here,” he said, “from the overabundance of the life of the Risen One transfused into his Church.”

The Acts of the Apostles, he explained, tells of “the journey of the Gospel in the world and shows us the marvelous union between the Word of God and the Holy Spirit that inaugurates the time of evangelization.”

Contrary to what might be imagined, he said the protagonists of the Acts of the Apostles are not the apostles, but “the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.”

Pope Francis reflected on the “the promise of the Father,” communicated to the apostles through Jesus: that “John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the holy Spirit.”

“The baptism in the Holy Spirit, in fact, is the experience that allows us to enter into a personal communion with God and to participate in his universal salvific will,” he said.

“There is therefore no struggle to earn or merit the gift of God,” he added. “Everything is given for free and in due time. The Lord gives everything for free, freely. Salvation is not bought, you do not pay, it is a free gift.”

Francis also underlined that the apostles gathered in the upper room, together with Mary and other women, to pray with “perseverance.”

“In fact, it is through prayer that one overcomes loneliness, temptation, suspicion and opens one’s heart to communion,” he said.  
 
“We also ask the Lord for patience in waiting for his steps,” he stated, “to not want to ‘manufacture’ his work and to remain docile by praying, invoking the Spirit and cultivating the art of ecclesial communion.”

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