Sacramento, Calif., Apr 8, 2019 / 02:02 pm (CNA).- A California Senate committee has passed a bill requiring student health clinics on college campuses to provide abortion pills.
Senate Bill 24 would require all public universities in the state to off… […]
Fr. Sean Sheridan, TOR, has resigned as president of Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. Fr. Sheridan informed the university’s trustees of his decision during a regular meeting of the board on Friday. The unexpected decision […]
Chicago, Ill., Apr 8, 2019 / 12:15 pm (CNA).- A religious sister can expect that if she is faithful to her vows, fervent in prayer, and zealous in following Jesus, her face might someday wind up on the front of a holy card.
But few religious sisters expect ever to find themselves on a baseball card.
Sister Mary Jo Sobiek, OP, though? She’ll premiere on a Topps baseball card this summer.
The sister, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, caught attention from baseball scouts and casual fans last year, when she threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Chicago White Sox game last August.
The sister bounced the ball off her bicep before delivering a strike straight over the plate.
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Sobiek, a teacher at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois, didn’t expect her pitch to go viral. But it did. Video clips got millions of views, made ESPN’s Sportscenter highlight reel, and were featured in national media.
The sister is no stranger to a baseball diamond. She played shortstop on the softball team at Cathedral Catholic High School in St. Could, Minnesota, and continued playing softball at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.
“Growing up, I was naturally gifted as an athlete — that was my God-given gift,” Sobiek told the Duluth News Tribune last year.
“To be a good athlete, you have to be strong in body, mind, and spirit,” Sobiek told Runner’s World.
“There will be times that you’ll lose, and you have to know how to prepare your mind for those failures. Striving towards sainthood requires the same level of discipline, humility, and stick-to-it-ness.”
After Sobiek’s pitch, Topps decided to place her on a baseball card in their Allen and Ginter series, which features baseball players along celebrities.
“We wanted to feature her on the set because she is a huge sports fan, a lifelong baseball fan,” Susan Lulgjuraj told Chicago’s WBEZ.
“And when we saw her throw that first pitch last year, it kind of clicked. We said, ‘How cool would it be to feature Sister [Mary] Jo on a card?’” she added.
Sobiek, 49, earned $1,000 for appearing on the card, which she intends to donate for a scholarship fund in her name at Marian Catholic High School.
Though her baseball card debut is complete, Sister Sobiek fans and memorabilia collectors will be waiting, most likely a while, for the release of that holy card.
New York City, N.Y., Apr 8, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The Holy See’s representative to the United Nations told the UN Commission on Population and Development that insistence upon a “right to abortion” at their annual spring meeting detracts from the commission’s efforts to address the real needs to mothers and children.
After UN representatives from European countries called for “speeding up progress” toward “universal access to sexual and reproductive services, including safe and legal abortion,” Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the UN, spoke out.
“To formulate and position population issues, however, in terms of individual ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ is to change the focus from that which should be the proper concern of governments and international agencies,” Auza said April 3.
“Suggesting that reproductive health includes a right to abortion explicitly violates the language of the ICPD, defies moral and legal standards within domestic legislations and divides efforts to address the real needs of mothers and children, especially those yet unborn,” the archbishop continued.
The Vatican representative also called for action to be taken when migrants are exploited, for “responsible consumption” of the world’s resources, and reaffirmation that the family is the fundamental unit of society.
Auza said that many of the questions involving the transmission of life cannot be adequately dealt with unless in relation to the good of the family.
“Governments and society ought to promote social policies that have the family as their principal object, assisting it by providing adequate resources and efficient means of support, both for bringing up children and looking after the elderly, to strengthen relations between generations and avoid distancing the elderly from the family unit,” he said.
Planned Parenthood’s Director of Advocacy María Antonieta Alcalde also participated in the UN Commission on Population and Developement’s 52nd session April 1-5.
“Every year, millions of women and girls are forced to continue their pregnancies due to a lack of access to safe and legal abortion,” Alcalde told the UN Commission April 3.
Alcalde called for “comprehensive sexuality education; access to sexual and reproductive health services; access to safe and legal abortion; and civil society participation” to be included in the commission’s program of action.
The UN population commission concluded its fifty-second session reaffirming their commitment to the “programme of action” adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo 25 years ago.
Saint Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to the Secretary General of the Cairo conference in 1994 stating that he was gravely concerned about the draft final document of the population and development conference. He noted that there was already a “tendency to promote an internationally recognized right to access to abortion on demand, without any restriction, with no regard to the rights of the unborn.”
“The vision of sexuality which inspires the document is individualistic,” St. John Paul II said.
The pope asked the Secretary General, “What future do we propose to adolescents if we leave them, in their immaturity, to follow their instincts without taking into consideration the interpersonal and moral implications of their sexual behaviour? Do we not have an obligation to open their eyes to the damage and suffering to which morally irresponsible sexual behaviour can lead them? Is it not our task to challenge them with a demanding ethic which fully respects their dignity and which leads them to that self-control which is needed in order to face the many demands of life?”
“Political or ideological considerations cannot be, by themselves, the basis on which essential decisions for the future of our society are founded. What is at stake here is the very future of humanity,” St. John Paul II said.
Vatican City, Apr 8, 2019 / 10:38 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Monday recognized the heroic virtue of nine-year old Brazilian boy, who “never complained” during cancer treatments, but instead offered his suffering to Jesus.
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Paris, France, Apr 6, 2019 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- The Institut Catholique de Paris hosted a conference Tuesday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the leadership organization for Catholic bishops’ conferences in Africa, at which the Church in Africa was invited to reflection on inculturation and its relationship with the Church in Europe.
The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar will hold its golden jubilee in Kampala July 26-30.
Brigitte Cholvy, a professor who directs post-graduate courses at the Institut Catholique de Paris, discussed the April 2 conference with La Croix, a French Catholic daily.
She told the publication that the interation between African and European theology means there is a need to discuss “the task of inculturation within a globalized context.”
“We need to be careful not to lean towards exoticism, while preserving all that has meaning in a given culture at a liturgical, ecclesial and Christological level,” Cholvy told La Croix.
The professor noted that those to be evangelized must be considered, while remembering also “that even in the most remote places in Africa, globalization has already arrived.”
According to Cholvy, the Institut Catholique de Paris “welcomes 50% of all doctoral students of Sub-Saharan origin,” and La Croix noted that many African priests and religious are educated in Europe.
The conference discussed Africa’s responsibility for mission; the family; and the relationships between faith and culture, and the Church and society.
Among the speakers at the conference was Fr. Leonard Santedi, rector of the Catholic University of the Congo, who said that SECAM “pursues common reflection above all,” and that “our voice needs to become stronger, less timid and be raised as it has been against Boko Haram in Nigeria.”
According to La Croix, self-reflection on the Church in Africa is hardly a new phenomenon; it noted the 1956 publication of “Des pretres noirs s’interrogent” (“Black priests challenge us”), which has been called “the birth of African theology”. The work, which La Croix said “led to the launch of reflection on African Christianity”, is a collection of more than 10 essays, with a preface by the then-Archbishop of Dakar, Marcel Lefebvre.
In May 2018 SECAM met with representatives of the German bishops’ conference to discuss integral human development, with both groups affirming their need to continue the work of evangelization. Such meetings have been occuring every four to five years since 1982.
The bishops pointed to poverty, misery, disease, and despair in Africa “caused by human greed and corruption, injustices of all kinds and violence and fratricidal wars,” and in Europe, a “dearth of spiritual values, excessive materialism and consumerism, individualism, little or no of respect for the life and rights of the unborn, of the aged and the infirm.”
“All of these evils .. point to the fact that as Church we still have a lot to do in our evangelization mission,” they affirmed.
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