Month: September 2020

CNA Staff, Sep 18, 2020 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- Dioceses in Florida and Alabama have shut down offices and schools as a large storm has flooded numerous houses and left over half a million people without power.

Hurricane Sally made landfall Sept. 16 near G… […]

CNA Staff, Sep 18, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- What do St. Thomas More, St. John Paul II, and Dag Hammarskjöld have in common?

According to a new course by the International Catholic Legislators Network, they all modeled the beatitudes in their roles as political and religious leaders.

In the second part of online classes for Catholic and other Christian political leaders, ICLN is studying these three men for their course “The Virtues Practiced by Great Statesmen who Changed the World.”

“What these remarkable leaders had in common was that they were Christians first, and all else followed from this that constituted their core identity,” the ICLN said in a statement about the course.

“The times in which they lived and fruitfully worked in the service of God and their fellow human beings were no less challenging than the conflict-ridden and confused world in which we live today,” the ICLN stated. “Thus, they offer concrete answers and useful suggestions for what it takes to be a faithful and highly effective Christian leader in public office in secular society today.”

St. Thomas More was a 15th century lawyer, author, and statesman who lost his life opposing Henry VIII’s plan to subordinate the Church to the English monarchy.

More’s eventual martyrdom would come as a consequence of Henry VIII’s own tragic downfall. The king wanted a declaration of nullity of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, a marriage that Clement VII declared to be valid. More refused, and was eventually imprisoned and killed for refusing to accept Henry VIII’s new marriage to Anne Boleyn and for rejecting his attempt at seizing control of the Church. In the ICLN course, More will be studied for modeling the virtues of humility and righteousness, according to the course outline.

Dag Hammarskjöld is the second statesmen to be studied in the course. Hammarskjöld, a Swedish diplomat, served as the Secretary General for the United Nations from 1953-1961. He was known for being a deeply religious man who led with integrity and a strong peacekeeping ability. “From scholars and clergymen on my mother’s side, I inherited a belief that, in the very radical sense of the Gospels, all men were equals as children of God, and should be met and treated by us as our masters in God,” he said in a radio program in 1953.

Hammarskjöld died under mysterious circumstances in a plane crash in 1961 while on a peacekeeping mission to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Initial investigations said the cause of the crash was likely pilot error, while subsequent investigations have said that the plane may have been attacked or compromised. The ICLN course noted that Hammarskjöld will be studied as someone who modeled the beatitudes of being “pure in heart” and a “peacemaker.”

St. John Paul II is the third statesmen that the ICLN will study, as someone who modeled the virtues of “courage under persecution and suffering”, as well as mercy. As a young seminarian, St. John Paul II (then Karol Wojtyla) lived through Nazi rule of Poland in World War II. As a priest, bishop, and cardinal, he worked peacefully to oppose the anti-religious communist rule in Poland. Once he became pope in 1978, besides leading the Catholic Church for more than 25 years, John Paul II was a key leader in bringing about a peaceful end to communist rule in eastern Europe.

Dr. Christiaan Alting von Geusau, J.D., LL.M, will be the instructor for the ICLN course. Catholic and Christian political leaders who wish to participate in the course may register online. The course will be held for 50 minutes each Thursday, and participants may participate in the live-streamed course or through saved recordings of the course.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 18, 2020 / 12:10 pm (CNA).- After San Francisco’s archbishop called on the city to reopen churches for indoor Masses, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said he should listen to the “science,” but admitted she had recently attended a church service in the city, possibly in violation of public health orders.

“With all due respect to my archbishop, I think we should follow science on this,” Pelosi told reporters at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Friday.

“I don’t know if [San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone] was speaking as our pastor or as a lobbyist—advocate. But whatever it is, I am sure that he must have meant [reopen churches] if it is scientifically safe, rather than jeopardizing people’s health if they want to go to Church,” she added.

Citing a recent Washington Post op-ed by Cordileone, in which the archbishop criticized the “unfairness” of a city health order that currently bars indoor religious services except for funerals, while allowing businesses such as gyms and nail salons to serve customers indoors, Erik Rosales of EWTN News Nightly asked Pelosi, a Catholic elected from a San Francisco district, for comment.

Rosales asked Pelosi on Friday, “Should churches in San Francisco be allowed to reopen with precautions?”

Pelosi’s answer suggested she may have violated standing health regulations herself. The congresswoman said that she had attended church in San Francisco “recently, and I did receive Communion.” She noted that she had to sign up in advance to do so, and “there were probably 12 people” in attendance, observing social distance, in a church that fit around 250 people.

“With all due respect to my archbishop, I think we should follow science on this, and faith & science are sometimes counter to each other” — @ErikRosalesNews asked @SpeakerPelosi whether churches in San Francisco should be allowed to re-open if they adhere to safety precautions. pic.twitter.com/BgXr05fXd7

— EWTN News Nightly (@EWTNNewsNightly) September 18, 2020

San Francisco’s guidance for gatherings currently says that only one person at a time is allowed inside a church “for prayer, individual counseling, to pick up, or drop off items.”

The city’s mayor London Breed announced this week that outdoor religious services with up to 50 people would be permitted beginning Sept. 14, but indoor religious services were still prohibited until Oct. 1, where they would be permitted with a cap at 25 people.

A June 29 cease-and-desist letter from the San Francisco city attorney to the archdiocese said that indoor religious services were not allowed, with exceptions for funeral services with up to 12 people or live-streamed Masses with necessary personnel present for the streaming. 

Speaker Pelosi’s office did not respond to an inquiry from CNA as to the Mass she attended, whether it was a funeral Mass or whether it occurred before the city’s health order.

Pelosi also claimed that “faith and science are sometimes counter to each other. Around here people say to me, ‘you’re a person of faith, why do you believe in science?’”

Science, she said, is “an answer to our prayers.”

Pelosi, a Catholic whose district comprises much of San Francisco, has been an outspoken supporter of abortion and the redefinition of marriage. She has been endorsed by the National Abortion Rights Action League in 2020, and promised that “with the support of NARAL, we will defend Roe v. Wade” and support “a woman’s right to choose.”

Recently, Pelosi promised to withhold the Hyde Amendment from relevant spending bills next year—threatening to end a decades-old policy that has barred taxpayer dollars in the form of Medicaid reimbursements from funding elective abortions.

In June of 2014, Pelosi asked Archbishop Cordileone to cancel his participation in the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C., saying that some supporting groups had pushed “disdain and hate towards LGBT persons.” While noting that “[w]e share our love of the Catholic faith and our city of San Francisco,” she said she respected the archbishop’s “view” of same-sex marriage.

In 2009, Pelosi told Newsweek magazine that she had “some concerns about the church’s position respecting a woman’s right to choose,” as well as “about the church’s position on gay rights.”

“I am a practicing Catholic, although they’re probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith,” she said, adding that “women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.”

In response, then-San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer wrote in a column that her statement included “some fundamental misconceptions about Catholic teaching on human freedom.”

He wrote that it is “entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel—racism, infidelity, abortion, theft. Freedom of will is the capacity to act with moral responsibility; it is not the ability to determine arbitrarily what constitutes moral right.”

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CNA Staff, Sep 18, 2020 / 11:30 am (CNA).- After controversy surrounding the film “Cuties,” Netflix subscribers are cancelling the service at eight times the normal rate, an industry magazine has reported. The film’s release on the st… […]

Denver Newsroom, Sep 18, 2020 / 11:20 am (CNA).-  

An Oklahoma City priest who discovered he was invalidly baptized as a child received that invalid sacrament from a deacon in a Texas parish, the bishop of Fort Worth said this week, while encoura… […]

Denver Newsroom, Sep 18, 2020 / 10:25 am (CNA).- Two officials of the U.S. bishops’ conference will be candidates to replace Msgr. Brian Bransfield, the outgoing general secretary of the conference.

Monsignor Jeff Burrill and Fr. Michael Fuller … […]