Cardinal Robert Sarah offers Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for his 50th anniversary of priesthood in 2019. / Credit: Evandro Inetti/CNA.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 29, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
The past year had no shortage of news in the Catholic realm, both in the Vatican and beyond. Read on for a recap of some of the most important – and interesting – figures who made headlines this year.
President Joe Biden
On Jan. 20, 2021, President Joe Biden (D) was sworn in as the second Catholic president of the United States. Born in Scranton, PA and raised in Delaware, Biden attended Catholic grammar and high school before matriculating at the University of Delaware.
Since becoming president, Biden has faced criticism from both the left and the right over his various positions, as well as his continued reception of the Eucharist at Mass. As president, Biden eliminated many pro-life policies from the Trump era. He met with Pope Francis in late October, where the two purportedly discussed the Eucharist.
Cardinal Robert Sarah
Cardinal Robert Sarah, a native of Guinea, resigned as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in February 2021. Sarah, who had reached the retirement age of 75 in June 2020, was the most senior African prelate at the Vatican. He had been appointed head of the liturgy department by Pope Francis in November 2014.
Sarah had previously served as the president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum and as secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
“Today, the Pope accepted the resignation of my office as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship after my seventy-fifth birthday. I am in God’s hands. The only rock is Christ. We will meet again very soon in Rome and elsewhere,” said Sarah on Twitter following his resignation.
Jonathan Goodall and Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali
Each year, many people cross the proverbial Tiber and are received into the Catholic Church. This fall, however, the Tiber Swim Team landed two big-name recruits: two former Church of England bishops.
Jonathan Goodall, the former Anglican bishop of Ebbsfleet, announced on Sept. 3, the feast of St. Gregory the Great, that he was stepping down from his position and entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. The date was a nice touch, as St. Gregory the Great launched a mission to convert the then-pagan England to Christianity.
Goodall was formally received into the Church on Sept. 8. He said his decision came after “only after a long period of prayer, which has been among the most testing periods of my life.” He said he was “abidingly grateful to all who have so generously supported Sarah and me in these years, especially the laity and clergy of the See of Ebbsfleet — who have been the focus and joy of my ministry and devotion since becoming bishop in 2013,” and that it was “an immense privilege” to have been bishop.
Not to be outdone, a few weeks later the now-Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali announced that he, too, would be entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican bishop of Rochester, entered into full communion with Rome within the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on Sept. 29. He was ordained a deacon on Oct. 28, and then a priest on Oct. 30.
Unlike Goodall, who came from a more conservative Anglican background, Nazir-Ali described himself as being part of the “Evangelical” wing of Anglicanism. At one point, he was considered to be a possible future Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the world’s 85 million Anglicans.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)’s bishop. Cordileone and Pelosi are both Catholic. And that’s about where their similarities end.
Pelosi, a committed Democrat, lamented that the support of pro-life voters for former President Donald Trump was an issue that “gives me great grief as a Catholic.” Pelosi made the comment on a Jan. 18 podcast with former senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I think that Donald Trump is president because of the issue of a woman’s right to choose,” said Pelosi, implying that pro-life voters boosted Trump to victory in 2016. She added that these voters “were willing to sell the whole democracy down the river for that one issue.”
Cordileone rebuked Pelosi in a statement issued days later, saying, “No Catholic in good conscience can favor abortion” and that “Our land is soaked with the blood of the innocent, and it must stop,” he said.
The archbishop also promoted a “Rose and a Rosary for Nancy Pelosi” campaign, which saw more than 16,000 people commit to praying for Pelosi’s change of heart on life issues.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas wrapped up a three-year stint as the head of the USCCB’s pro-life committee in 2021. The outspoken defender of life unleashed on Biden in a Feb. 13 interview with Catholic World Report.
“The president should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic, and acknowledge that his view on abortion is contrary to Catholic moral teaching. It would be a more honest approach from him to say he disagreed with his Church on this important issue and that he was acting contrary to Church teaching,” said Naumann.
“When he says he is a devout Catholic, we bishops have the responsibility to correct him. Although people have given this president power and authority, he cannot define what it is to be a Catholic and what Catholic moral teaching is,” the archbishop added. He further called for the bishops to “correct” the president, “as the president is acting contrary to the Catholic faith.”
Sr. Lucile Andre Randon
The coronavirus pandemic continued throughout the world in 2021, killing hundreds of thousands of people. One person who beat it, however, was the world’s second-oldest person: a French nun named Sr. Lucile Andre Randon.
Right before Randon’s 117th birthday, coronavirus swept through the Sainte Catherine Labouré retirement home in Toulon, southern France. Eighty-one of the 88 residents of the facility tested positive in January of this year, and 10 died.
Fortunately, Randon did not display any symptoms of the disease and recovered in time to celebrate her birthday on Feb. 11.
Asked if she was scared of COVID, she told France’s BFM television, “No, I wasn’t scared because I wasn’t scared to die… I’m happy to be with you, but I would wish to be somewhere else – join my big brother and my grandfather and my grandmother.”
Hidilyn Diaz
The covid-postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics finally were staged in the Summer of 2021, and Catholic athletes shined on the world stage.
On the third full day of the games, Hidilyn Diaz won the first gold medal for the Philippines, inspiring an entire nation with her faith, grit, and perseverance. Diaz’s triumph came in the women’s 55-kilogram weightlifting event, and she won gold with an Olympic record lift of a combined weight of 224 kilograms.
After completing her final lift in a very close competition, Diaz held her hands to her face, burst into tears and clutched at her Miraculous Medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary hanging from her neck. Later, on the podium at the medal ceremony, Diaz pointed skyward after singing the Philippine national anthem, then made the Sign of the Cross before stepping down and shouting “Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!” (“Long live the Philippines!”)
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Francis says: “It will do us good to ask ourselves if we are still living in the period in which we need the Law, or if instead we are well aware that we have received the grace of having become children of God so as to live in love,” he said.
JESUS SAID: “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” (John 15:9-10)
JESUS ALSO SAID: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. (John 14:15)
So yes, we are aware. Jesus commanded we obey the commandments as the method through which we give and receive God’s love and grace.
“But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’ (Acts 5:29).
And Jesus warned, in the form of a command: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)
And then, other than the Fourth Gospel, there are the letters of John:
“And by this we can be sure we know him, if we keep his commandments. He who says that he knows him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar and the truth is not in him. But he who keeps his word, in him the love of God is truly perfected; and by this we know that we are in him” (1 John 2:3-5).
What is there about “thou shalt not have strange gods before me” that leaves a niche inside St. Peter’s Basilica for Pachamama and the synodal antics in Germania; or about “thou shalt not commit adultery” that offers wiggle room, so to speak? But who are we to judge?
“Do I disregard the Commandments? No. I observe them, but not as absolutes, because I know that what justifies me is Jesus Christ.”
And, therefore, we never mention Veritatis Splendor which holds that “…the commandment of love of God and neighbor does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, BUT (Caps added) it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken” (n. 52).
And lest moral ambiguity itself be made into an absolute (!), this: “The relationship between faith and morality shines forth with all its brilliance in the UNCONDITIONAL RESPECT DUE TO THE INSISTENT DEMANDS OF THE PERSONAL DIGNITY OF EVERY MAN (italics), demand protected by those moral norms which prohibit WITHOUT EXCEPTION (Caps added) actions which are intrinsically evil” (n. 90).
So much for the new pseudo-absolutes: the Fundamental Option, “proportionalism,” and “consequentialism” (nn. 65 and 75).
His Holiness is on a mission to reinterpret the Apostle Paul as the epistles of Martin Luther. Paul made it clear Christ perfects the Law since it is in Christ and love for him that we can live the Commandments [Rules] in spirit and in truth. If you love me, keep my commandments (JN14:15). A fundamental truth that we are justified by Christ alone was misinterpreted by Luther with omission of works, whereas Christ, Paul, the Apostles demanded repentance. The marketing of His Holiness’ doctrine to the world is as most know mercy sans strict adherence to rules with the deceptive argument of Luther’s doctrine of justification. In principle[only] it is true since it is Our Lord who first provides prevenient grace. A premise Luther cites as election. Nonetheless, we do respond to grace in time although in the order of nature God first provides grace. What is omitted is free will, a reality that troubled Luther. Therefore, predestination. We are free to reject that grace as Saint Thomas Aquinas pointedly asserts. Otherwise without consent there would be no true repentance, simply facsimile. Jesus’ Gospel as Bishop Barron faithfully markets is instead the Word on Fire.
Noticing another card on the table, we see that Predestination is not only key to Lutheranism but is also a central tenet of Islam. As a mindset, we are broadly alerted to the similar DNA for early Protestantism and for much-earlier and more distant Islam:
“There is something decidedly Islamic in original Protestantism, with its idea of an all-controlling hidden God and His infallible Prophet, its secularization of marriage, its Puritanism and messianism. Even today some of the survivals of original (i.e., pre-liberal) Protestantism in remote parts of Scandinavia, Holland, Scotland and the United States have, at least culturally, more affinity with the Wahhabis than with Catholics from which they stem. It must be borne in mind that not so much the authoritarian organization but the liberal theology [e.g., free will versus Predestination of the elect] of Catholicism was the target of the reformers” (Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, “Liberty or Equality,” 1952).
A complication to keep in mind—-grace without moral absolutes—-as Church voices propose mutual understanding now at the cross-cultural (no longer inter-religious) level, under the Abu Dhabi Declaration of 2019….
“The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed [!] by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings,” states the bundled document (versus an only “permitted” pluralism of religion).
Interesting nexus between Protestant reform and Islam. Abu Dhabi credo pluralism and diversity of sex seems inserted under camouflage of religions, race, language. There’s an affinity in Abu Dhabi with Fratelli Tutti. About the distancing from free will by the Reformers beginning I suppose with Luther, at least markedly is the satisfying sense of being saved whatever. And with that an icy Kantian coldness [Kant despised sentiment, music comparing the latter with flatulence] seen in rejection of a Loving Blessed Mother given us by her Son from the Cross. Certainly not however for Protestants I’ve known who in our day became more religiously eclectic. Now with Francis there’s emphasis on sentiment, perhaps, not anomalously couched in harshness toward the very human aesthetic of tradition, and his frequent striking derogation of Mary.
Silly me. I always thought the multiple moral laws that require defending life from harm had a self-evident connection to love. Where did my parents go wrong in raising me? Where did my teacher of moral theology who taught in more fomal terms what my parents taught me go wrong?
Just as I was getting very depressed at witnessing Francis express another point of Lutheran ignorance in not distinguishing between ancient ritual law and divinely endowed innate natural law that Our Lord revealed in all its beauty, at the Sermon on the Mount, that is a healing salve for the world as a field hospital for which Francis claims to care but gives many indicators to the contrary, I watched EWTN’s World Over rebroadcast of an interview of Father Richard Neuhaus from 2002, being prophetic about the integration of moral doctrine, the truth about love, and the crisis in the Church. Watch it. It will remain on YouTube for a long time. (08-26-21 broadcast)
46 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood outside, asking to speak to him. 48 But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” 49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brethren! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (Matthew 12:46-50)
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11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; 15 and if any one’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:11-15)
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According to these passages we need to give a response to God’s love and His call. The way some people use God’s unconditional love and justification through Jesus Christ appears to suggest once saved always saved. For all practical purposes hasn’t a stiff-necked, hard-hearted, impenitent sinner filed for divorce from God? Reconciliation with God requires sinners who are willing to repent of their own free will.