German Cardinal Gerhard Müller visited the home and family of Mark Houck, a pro-life father of seven who was arrested on Sept. 13 by several FBI agents in the early hours of the morning. / iFamNews via YouTube
Boston, Mass., Oct 14, 2022 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
German Cardinal Gerhard Müller visited the home and family of Mark Houck, a pro-life father of seven who was arrested on Sept. 23 by several FBI agents in the early hours of the morning.
In a video posted on YouTube Oct. 12, the cardinal is seen on the front porch of the Houck family home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the 48-year-old had been taken into custody at gunpoint in front of his terrified wife and children.
Müller then made a statement condemning the arrest of Houck, whom he called “a peaceful father defending his son, defending the right of life of the babies.”
“Persecution of the good people is always a sign of the beginning of dictatorship and tyranny,” Müller said in the video posted by the pro-life outlet iFamNews.
“But the United States has always had the leadership for democracy and democracy doesn’t work when there is no respect of basic rights of life and personal integrity of your body and your liberty,” the cardinal continued. “We are citizens of the states and not serfs of some ideological leaders.”
“This is not acceptable and this is a scandal. They are making America ridiculous in the eyes of society,“ he said.
Müller compared the actions of the FBI to the “Chinese Communist police” and questioned, “How could it happen in a democratic state where natural law is the basis of the decisions of the American nation?”
“Therefore as a Catholic bishop and Roman Catholic cardinal, I condemn these actions against non-armed families, against children; it’s threatening for children, terrorizing them,” he said. “There is no reason and no justification for this brutal action against these peaceful families.”
Müller questioned how Western nations can speak out against Putin’s war in Ukraine “when we are doing the same things that are threatening the children. How is this possible?”
“I hope that the American government will apologize for this brutal act against humanity,” he said.
“Amen,” Mark Houck responded.
Müller is seen in the video giving Houck, his wife, and his children a blessing.
Speaking briefly, Mark Houck said that when the FBI showed up at his house in full force to arrest him, his only desire was to protect his children.
“Do whatever you want to me, but don’t hurt them,” Houck said. He added that his children are “the real victims in all of this.”
“But we claim victory in Christ. We claim victory in Jesus,” he said.
“Thank you for bringing Cardinal Müller to be with us today, to bless our family, to declare that this was wrong and that this is evil, and that we have his full support,” Houck said in the video.
Houck has pleaded not guilty to two alleged violations of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. A trial date is set for Jan. 24 in Philadelphia.
Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has voiced criticism of the Synodal Way in Germany. On Oct. 6 he appeared on EWTN’s The World Over with Raymond Arroyo and spoke about the Church’s Synod on Synodality.
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Memorial lights commemorating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. / Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 11, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Nearly 3,000 names are engraved in bronze at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. But 10 of… […]
Chicago, Ill., Mar 26, 2020 / 03:38 pm (CNA).- As homeless shelters have been limited by the coronavirus, the Clerics of Saint Viator will help fund an initiative to house homeless people amid the pandemic.
The religious order based in Arlington Heights, a Chicago suburb, has donated $63,000 to help over 60 homeless people stay at two hotels in the city. The initiative will last for at least three weeks, but it will likely be extended.
The religious order partnered with Journeys: The Road Home in Palatine to help homeless people have a place to quarantine during this pandemic. As of March 25, over 1,800 cases of the coronavirus have occurred in Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reported.
As the organization has also received donations from numerous other religious organizations in the area, the hotels were able to house 81 people last night with 10 more clients who will be checked-in today.
Suzanne Ploger, Journey’s director of development, told CNA that it is essential to help homeless people protect themselves from the virus as they are unable to self-quarantine.
Not only has the pandemic caused public facilities and businesses to close, but it has closed homeless shelters. Because of the pandemic, the organization’s services and volunteers have been limited. She said a majority of the volunteers for the homeless ministry are elderly people, who also need to be kept safe from the outbreak.
Experts are urging people to “ stay indoors, and then all the restaurants are closing and all the public facilities are closing,” she said.
“If you don’t have a home to shelter in place, where are you supposed to be? That’s where we were struggling with how we can provide the best services to our clients and keep them safe as well as be able to keep our staff and our volunteers healthy too.”
She said the clients have been chosen by those who are most at risk of COVID-19. She said the organization has prioritized 100 people who normally use their shelters and ranked them in terms of those with advanced age, families, or health issues.
“As we have secured the hotel room and we have secured the amount of funding to house that person in that hotel room for three weeks, then we house them and then we’d go down to the next rank on the list,” she said.
The organization will also help feed the clients in the hotel with a meal delivery system.
“We’re packing up food pantry bags, we’re packing up meals, some people are donating food again, and we’re starting that system of delivering meals to the hotels. Right now we’re doing it almost every day,” she said.
The Journey is a homeless service agency that partners with 21 religious organizations that provide emergency shelter. It began 30 years ago and, under normal circumstances, will house about 100 homeless people each night.
Besides the hotel, the organization will keep open a limited number of services including a food pantry, clothing closet, mail services, and emergency case management.
Father Daniel Hall, the provincial superior for the Viatorians, said, without living assistance, this pandemic may cause dozens of homeless people to get sick. He said this project should be important to Catholics and encouraged parishioners to donate.
“This is in line with our mission as a Catholic religious community,” said Hall, according to the Daily Herald. “This crisis could lead to between 60 to 80 men, women and children on the verge of living on the streets, and even more vulnerable to the coronavirus.”
“It is my hope that you join us in this commitment to care for our most vulnerable sisters and brothers during this crisis.”
Pope Francis greets a crowd of an estimated 25,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome for his Regina Caeli address on May 22, 2022. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, May 22, 2022 / 07:33 am (CNA).
In his Sunday Regina Caeli address, Pope Francis reflected on Jesus’ words to the disciples at the Last Supper in the Gospel reading from John: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”
Speaking to an estimated 25,000 pilgrims gathered on a bright day in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, the pope noted that Jesus also makes a point to add, “Not as the world gives do I give it to you” (John 14:27).
“What is this peace that the world does not know and the Lord gives us?” Pope Francis asked.
“This peace is the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit of Jesus. It is the presence of God in us, it is God’s ‘power of peace,'” he explained. “It is He, the Holy Spirit, who disarms the heart and fills it with serenity. It is He, the Holy Spirit, who loosens rigidity and extinguishes the temptations to attack others. It is He, the Holy Spirit, who reminds us that there are brothers and sisters beside us, not obstacles or adversaries.
“It is He, the Holy Spirit, who gives us the strength to forgive, to begin again, to set out anew because we cannot do this with our own strength. And it is with Him, with the Holy Spirit, that we become men and women of peace,” Pope Francis said.
“This is the source of the peace Jesus gives us,” he added. “For no one can leave others peace if they do not have it within themselves. No one can give peace unless that person is at peace.”
Pilgrims at St. Peter’s Square in Rome on May 22, 2022. In his Regina Caeli address, Pope Francis spoke about the peace of Christ. Vatican Media
Pope Francis said, “Let us learn to say every day: ‘Lord, give me your peace, give me your Holy Spirit.’ This is a beautiful prayer. Shall we say it together? ‘Lord, give me your peace, give me your Holy Spirit.’”
Again encouraging the crowd to pray with him, he said, “I didn’t hear it well. One more time: ‘Lord, give me your peace, give me your Holy Spirit.’”
Focusing on the context of Gospel reading, Pope Francis observed that Jesus’ words to his apostles are “a sort of testament.”
The pope said, “Jesus bids farewell with words expressing affection and serenity. But he does so in a moment that is anything but serene,” referring to Judas’ unfolding betrayal and Peter’s imminent denial that he even knows Jesus.
“The Lord knows this, and yet, he does not rebuke, he does not use severe words, he does not give harsh speeches,” Pope Francis said. “Rather than demonstrate agitation, he remains kind till the end.”
He continued, “There is a proverb that says you die the way you have lived. In effect, the last hours of Jesus’ life are like the essence of his entire life. He feels fear and pain, but does not give way to resentment or protesting. He does not allow himself to become bitter, he does not vent, he is not impatient. He is at peace, a peace that comes from his meek heart accustomed to trust.”
In so doing, “Jesus demonstrates that meekness is possible,” the pope observed.
“He incarnated it specifically in the most difficult moment, and he wants us to behave that way too, since we too are heirs of his peace,” he said. “He wants us to be meek, open, available to listen, capable of defusing tensions and weaving harmony. This is witnessing to Jesus and is worth more than a thousand words and many sermons. The witness of peace.”
Pope Francis invited all disciples of Jesus to reflect on whether they behave in this way.
“Do we ease tensions, and defuse conflicts? Are we too at odds with someone, always ready to react, explode, or do we know how to respond nonviolently, do we know how to respond with peaceful actions? How do I react?” he asked.
“Certainly, this meekness is not easy,” while adding ,“How difficult it is, at every level, to defuse conflicts!”
Jesus understands this. He knows “that we need help, that we need a gift,” the pope explained.
“Peace, which is our obligation, is first of all a gift of God.”
Pope Francis said that “no sin, no failure, no grudge should discourage us from insistently asking for this gift from the Holy Spirit who gives us peace.”
“The more we feel our hearts are agitated, the more we sense we are nervous, impatient, angry inside, the more we need to ask the Lord for the Spirit of peace,” he said.
Pilgrims gather at St. Peter’s Square in Rome on May 22, 2022, for Pope Francis’ Regina Caeli address. Vatican Media
Pope Francis invited the crowd to pray with him, “Lord, give me your peace, give me your Holy Spirit.” He added, “And let us also ask this for those who live next to us, for those we meet each day, and for the leaders of nations.”
After praying the Regina Caeli at noon, Pope Francis commented on the beatification in Lyon, France, later on Sunday of Pauline Marie Jericot, who founded the Society of the Propagation of the Faith for the support of the missions in the early 19th century. The pope called her “a courageous woman, attentive to the changes taking place at the time, and had a universal vision regarding the Church’s mission.”
Pope Francis continued: “May her example enkindle in everyone the desire to participate through prayer and charity in the spread of the Gospel throughout the world.”
Pope Francis also noted that Sunday marked the beginning of “Laudato Si’ Week,” a weeklong reflection inspired by his 2015 encyclical on the environment. He called the observance an opportunity “to listen ever more attentively to the cry of the Earth which urges us to act together in taking care of our common home.”
Pope Francis also mentioned that May 24 marks the Feast day of Mary Help of Christians, who is “particularly dear to Catholics in China.”
He added that Mary Help of Christians is the patroness for Chinese Catholics and is located in the Shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai in addition to many churches and homes throughout the country.
“This happy occasion offers me the opportunity to assure them once again of my spiritual closeness” to believers in China, he said.
“I am attentively and actively following the often complex life and situations of the faithful and pastors, and I pray every day for them,” he said.
“I invite all of you to unite yourselves in this prayer so that the Church in China, in freedom and tranquility, might live in effective communion with the universal Church, and might exercise its mission of proclaiming the Gospel to everyone, and thus offer a positive contribution to the spiritual and material progress of society as well.”
Pope Francis also greeted participants in Italy’s annual pro-life demonstration, titled Scegliamo la vita, or in English, “Let’s Choose Life.”
“I thank you for your dedication in promoting life and defending conscientious objection, which there are often attempts to limit,” Pope Francis said.
“Sadly, in these last years, there has been a change in the common mentality, and today we are more and more led to think that life is a good at our complete disposal, that we can choose to manipulate, to give birth or take life as we please, as if it were the exclusive consequence of individual choice,” the pope said.
“Let us remember that life is a gift from God! It is always sacred and inviolable, and we cannot silence the voice of conscience,” he concluded.
“Persecution of the good people is always a sign of the beginning of dictatorship and tyranny” (Cardinal Müller). Would that our bishops and cardinals were as forthright as Müller. Perhaps, government [this present regime] wouldn’t act with such impunity. Perhaps initiate a political conversion back to Constitutional principles and justice.
The closing line to this article gives the link to Cardinal Muller’s remarks about today’s deformed synodality….On this topic, Cardinal Grech is quoted announcing from on high that the Holy Spirit is speaking through the LGBTQ+ “community.”
Butt, perhaps his synodality is NOT broad enough? Rather than politicized street factions, or even eminent theologians alone, inclusion must not peripheralize historians and anthropologists!
FIRST, Grech’s birthing of a fabricated church of the Holy Spirit is really very old hat, resembling as it does the theory of Joachim de Fiora (1135-1202 A.D.). Even the Triune God is timebound—moving from the age of the Father (Old Testament), then to the Son (New Testament), then (and now) to be displaced by an unhinged Holy Spirit!
SECOND, as Cardinal Muller explains, this new displacement of the incarnate Christ is akin to the old heresies; he names Arianism.
A spinoff of Arianism was Nestorianism and in Arabia this heresy might be as close as some street prophet named Muhammad ever came to the Christianity that he absorbed into his own fiction. The Islamic fiction is that the Greek Bible contains a key translation error, that “paraclete” (Pentecost, as foretold by Christ) now is corrected by Islamic scholars to read “periclyte,”—the Greek form of Ahmad, another name for Muhammad! Christ, then, is a mere prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad.
THIRD, likewise, the traditional Church, as well articulated by Cardinal Muller, also becomes only a midwife, now pointing to Grech’s church of the LGBTQ+/Holy Spirit.
Instead of Muhammad’s alleged private revelations beginning on Mount Hara, we have from Cardinal Wretch, the alleged private revelation of the LGBTQ+ bedroom! And, instead of conquest by jihad, we have conquest by a media/synodal “plebiscite” (Muller’s brilliant summary) ushered-in by self-neutered bishops (successors of the apostles) as mere “facilitators” (immams?) at local and national synodal block parties.
The catch-all “People of God,” now reduced to an alphabetical congeries of private interests, just as the worldwide Muslim “ummah” is a congeries of many disparate nations. As with the Qur’anic “word made book” displacing the “Word made flesh”—we now have the LGBTQ+ mouthings as the “Holy Spirit made us.”
So, historically and anthropologically, a “pluralism of religions,” anyone? The greatest shell game of all time!. Who is this standup comic, this Wretch from Malta?
“Persecution of the good people is always a sign of the beginning of dictatorship and tyranny” (Cardinal Müller). Would that our bishops and cardinals were as forthright as Müller. Perhaps, government [this present regime] wouldn’t act with such impunity. Perhaps initiate a political conversion back to Constitutional principles and justice.
The closing line to this article gives the link to Cardinal Muller’s remarks about today’s deformed synodality….On this topic, Cardinal Grech is quoted announcing from on high that the Holy Spirit is speaking through the LGBTQ+ “community.”
Butt, perhaps his synodality is NOT broad enough? Rather than politicized street factions, or even eminent theologians alone, inclusion must not peripheralize historians and anthropologists!
FIRST, Grech’s birthing of a fabricated church of the Holy Spirit is really very old hat, resembling as it does the theory of Joachim de Fiora (1135-1202 A.D.). Even the Triune God is timebound—moving from the age of the Father (Old Testament), then to the Son (New Testament), then (and now) to be displaced by an unhinged Holy Spirit!
SECOND, as Cardinal Muller explains, this new displacement of the incarnate Christ is akin to the old heresies; he names Arianism.
A spinoff of Arianism was Nestorianism and in Arabia this heresy might be as close as some street prophet named Muhammad ever came to the Christianity that he absorbed into his own fiction. The Islamic fiction is that the Greek Bible contains a key translation error, that “paraclete” (Pentecost, as foretold by Christ) now is corrected by Islamic scholars to read “periclyte,”—the Greek form of Ahmad, another name for Muhammad! Christ, then, is a mere prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad.
THIRD, likewise, the traditional Church, as well articulated by Cardinal Muller, also becomes only a midwife, now pointing to Grech’s church of the LGBTQ+/Holy Spirit.
Instead of Muhammad’s alleged private revelations beginning on Mount Hara, we have from Cardinal Wretch, the alleged private revelation of the LGBTQ+ bedroom! And, instead of conquest by jihad, we have conquest by a media/synodal “plebiscite” (Muller’s brilliant summary) ushered-in by self-neutered bishops (successors of the apostles) as mere “facilitators” (immams?) at local and national synodal block parties.
The catch-all “People of God,” now reduced to an alphabetical congeries of private interests, just as the worldwide Muslim “ummah” is a congeries of many disparate nations. As with the Qur’anic “word made book” displacing the “Word made flesh”—we now have the LGBTQ+ mouthings as the “Holy Spirit made us.”
So, historically and anthropologically, a “pluralism of religions,” anyone? The greatest shell game of all time!. Who is this standup comic, this Wretch from Malta?
Within your circumlocutory considerations, one might suppose that Jesus was left outside the door!
Is it fun playing church? We both might look to Muller as a fitting guide to celebrate Jesus!
A godly man who brings honour to the church. A tireless fighter for righteousness. A servant of Christ.
Hard not to be impressed by Cdl. Muller.