This week the archdiocese of Atlanta announced an end date to the general dispensation from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass.
In a letter to parishioners in the archdiocese, Archbishop Hartmayer said that he “believes it is time to begin to bring more people physically back to church.”
Citing the wide availability of vaccines and the previous year’s “extraordinary” steps to combat Covid-19, the Archbishop said he finds it “an appropriate time to take our next step forward to full reopening of our churches.”
In his April 29 letter to the public, Hartmayer said that the dispensation will expire on May 22. “While the general dispensation will lift,” he said, “I am putting into place some exceptions for certain circumstances.
The letter outlined the specific persons for whom the dispensation is still applicable according to canon law.
Those who are ill or who would be significantly compromised by Covid-19 because of underlying health conditions were told by the Archbishop that they may continue use the dispensation.
The list of dispensed persons also included those experiencing flu symptoms, pregnant women, anyone exposed to Covid-19, and those 65 years of age or older, citing the CDC’s recommendation of high-risk individuals.
Those who miss Mass through no fault of their own and those with significant anxiety of becoming ill at mass are dispensed from the obligation as well.
Hartmayer wrote that those “legitimately dispensed from the obligation to attend Mass are still to observe the Lord’s Day by participating in a broadcast of the Sunday Mass or by spending time in prayer or meditating on Scripture, either individually or as a family.”
The Archbishop wrote that masks and social distancing will still be required in the parishes and emphasized that outdoor masses remain a possibility to accommodate higher numbers of the faithful. He said that people should remain reasonably distanced from those who are outside their family.
Hartmayer thanked all clergy and employees of the diocese for their creativity and dedication during the lockdowns.
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Catholic actor Jonathan Roumie during a visit to Unbound’s headquarters in Nov. 2023. / Danika Wolf/Unbound
CNA Staff, Mar 20, 2024 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus in the popular television series “The Chosen,” will speak at the spring 2024 commencement at the Catholic University of America (CUA), the school announced Wednesday.
“Countless numbers of people have had their lives changed for the better by Jonathan Roumie through his portrayal of Jesus Christ,” CUA president Peter Kilpatrick said in a March 20 press release.
“Jonathan’s work is a testament to how Catholics can use their God-given talents to deliver messages of hope and to bring people closer to God,” Kilpatrick continued. “I look forward to welcoming him to The Catholic University of America.”
Besides playing Jesus Christ in “The Chosen,” which is now in its fourth season, Roumie has been featured on the Hallow prayer and meditation app, and has served as a ministry leader. He was also a keynote speaker at the annual March for Life in 2023 in Washington, D.C., and has more than 1.4 million followers on Instagram.
“Speaking at The Catholic University of America’s commencement is such an honor because I will be among those who not only value a quality education but a college experience formed by the Catholic faith,” Roumie said in the press release.
“I so look forward to celebrating with these graduates and sharing some insights into how one can live an inspired, fulfilling, and faithful life using the skills, talents, and intellect given to them by God,” he continued.
Roumie will speak at commencement on May 11 and receive an honorary doctoral degree, along with four others.
Rabbi Jack Bemporad, an interfaith leader, will also receive an honorary doctorate. Having fled the fascist takeover of Italy when he was 5 years old, Bemporad has since dedicated himself to improving relations among Christians, Muslims, and Jews across the world. He has authored several books about Christian and Jewish relations and is the founding director of the Center for Interreligious Understanding.
John Finnis, professor emeritus of University of Oxford and University of Notre Dame Law School and a Catholic legal and political thinker and renowned philosopher, will be receiving an honorary doctorate, along with speaker and writer Teresa Pitt Green, advocate, speaker, and co-founder of The Healing Voices magazine.
Father Piotr Nawrot, a Roman Catholic priest of the Divine World Ministries known for rediscovering and reconstructing 13,000 pages of music held by members of the Moxo and Chiquito tribes, among others, will also receive an honorary doctorate.
The commencement ceremony will take place on the steps of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, with about 1,300 graduating students.
CUA, established in 1887, just announced the launch of its “Lead with Light” brand platform, which Kilpatrick said “encapsulates who we are as an institution.”
The platform, he said, highlights “our dedication to academic excellence” as well as the “warm and welcoming community” at CUA, “where Christ is at the center of everything we do.”
A young woman holds a pro-life sign during a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2023, marking the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. / Joseph Portolano/CNA
Washington D.C., Jun 25, 2023 / 06:40 am (CNA).
Marking the first anniversary of Roe being overturned, a group of pro-life leaders rallied hundreds to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday with the message that they were united around the fight for full, legal protection for the unborn from the moment of conception in all 50 states.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told those gathered on a sunny, hot summer day that while she celebrated the 25 states that have passed strong pro-life laws, “we are in fact living in a divided states of America” where “a person’s location determines if they will survive the abortion gauntlet as we did.”
Hawkins said the country must become “an America where every human being is recognized as the unrepeatable person as they are with equal rights and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed, not because of what state their mother resides in or if they are perceived to be convenient or the circumstances of their conception.”
Hawkins told CNA that pro-life leaders are uniting around the belief “that every human being is a human person at conception” and that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal justice clauses should be equally applied to persons in the womb.
“At a very minimum if you’re running for federal office, you should be able to acknowledge that abortion is a federal issue,” she said. “We want to see every presidential contender join with us to acknowledge what is so clearly written in the Fourteenth Amendment: that all human beings are human persons and deserve equal protection of our laws.”
Lila Rose, president of the pro-life group Live Action, called the Fourteenth Amendment “one of the most beautiful notes in our national song” and lamented that “when it comes to preborn children we have failed to extend these protections.”
Rose called it a “tragic contradiction” that “while our society celebrates advancements in prenatal care and technology, we simultaneously deny personhood and rights, the personhood and rights of these very same children. It is inconceivable that we would selectively deny these rights to one group of human beings solely based on their location: the womb.”
Republican presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence, who recently called on his fellow GOP presidential candidates to join him in backing a “minimum” nationwide 15-week abortion limit, made an appearance at the rally.
“As we celebrate this anniversary, let us here resolve that we will work and we will pray as never before to advance the cause of life in the laws of the land in every state in America. That we will support women in crisis pregnancies with resources and support for their care, for the unborn, and for the newborn as never before,” Pence said.
“We stand for the babies and their unalienable right to life,” he said, pledging that he and his family “will never rest and never relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-life America, shared words of advice for the growing list of 2024 presidential candidates: “Get your act together. Figure out what you’re for and advance it. Don’t wait,” she urged.
“We have consensus in this country,” she added. “Start with that and be the president you’re called to be in justice and love for moms and justice and love for their babies.” Consistent Gallup polling shows that the majority of Americans would prefer to limit abortion to the first three months of pregnancy.
There were many young people in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial, including Katriel Nyman, a 17-year-old from Washington state who is with Students for Life Tri-Cities. She told CNA that it was “really encouraging to see a bunch of people who believe in rights from conception.”
She said she’d “like to see more pro-lifers continue to persevere through this” post-Dobbs fight because “even if abortion isn’t legal in your state, you should be fighting for the rights of infants that are soon to be born in other states.”
Sameerah Munshi, a recent graduate of Brown University who is interning with the Religious Freedom Institute, held a sign with a verse from the Quran about the sanctity of life that read “We have dignified the children of Adam.”
She told CNA that she wanted to make her voice heard as a Muslim who believes, based on her faith, that abortion is wrong in most cases. She said many Muslims followers feel, as she does, that life begins “in the first couple weeks after conception.”
Munshi said that in the year since the Dobbs decision, “a lot of people that I know who don’t have strong opinions on abortion have been coming out either in favor or against” abortion. She sees it as valuable that there’s more discourse about the abortion issue and people are “coming to more conclusions for themselves as opposed to maybe rhetoric that they’ve seen in the news or rhetoric that they feel has been a part of their political platform.”
Jessica Newell, a Catholic student who is interning with Live Action and entering her third year at Coastal Carolina University, told CNA that “it’s so important for people who are indoctrinated by this culture to learn the truth about biology and the truth about God and that they’re made in the image of God.”
She emphasized that the pro-life movement still has so much to do and part of that work is “letting people know that they’re loved, that is a big step in changing the culture to a culture of life.”
Melissa Ohden, who survived a saline-infusion abortion at 31 weeks gestation, stood at the rally alongside her oldest daughter Olivia, 15, and a sign which read “Babies survive abortions. I am one of them.”
“This was a very personal thing for Roe to be overturned,” she told CNA, “It is a day that we can celebrate, but it has not been a chance to pause, take our breath, it has been a time of continuing to hit the ground running.”
In her work heading the Abortion Survivors Network, Ohden said that since the Dobbs decision she’s heard from “more women than ever reaching out to us after their chemical abortions have failed.” She said it’s important to reach moms who are vulnerable to chemical abortions which make up the majority of abortions in the country.
Ohden said that since Dobbs the pro-life movement “has continued to be the side that is providing resources and support whether it’s in communities, at the state level, pushing for federal policy that supports mothers and children and families in a greater way.”
Her daughter Olivia said it was “amazing” to be at the rally with her mom and called the issue an emotional one because “people like my mom should be protected no matter who they are, where they are.”
Washington D.C., Oct 16, 2018 / 04:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Following a comment by President Emmanuel Macron, in which he expressed skepticism that any well-educated woman would decide to have many children, women with large families have been using the… […]
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