She was blind, but now she sees, after prayers before St. Charbel’s relic

Fra’ Matthew Festing, the Order of Malta’s 79th Grand Master, pictured on Feb. 18, 2013, at the order’s headquarters in Rome. / Estefania Aguirre/CNA.

Valletta, Malta, Nov 18, 2021 / 06:10 am (CNA).
Fra’ Matthew Festing, the 79th Grand Master o… […]

A screenshot of the image at the Synod of Bishops’ Facebook page / null

Denver Newsroom, Sep 27, 2022 / 18:00 pm (CNA).

A social media stir has greeted the image of a “woman priest,” among several other artistic images, posted to the Synod of Bishops’ Facebook page. Though it is unclear whether the Facebook page noticed the figure, the artwork does come from a Philadelphia gathering of college students that said Holy Orders should be open to women.

“In #Frascati22 our experts are working on the syntheses produced during the local consultation phase,” the Synod of Bishops’ Facebook page said in a Sept. 24 post, referring to the Italian town of Frascati. These gatherings for the Synod of Synodality included “pages and pages full of stories, insights, but also in some cases real works of art. Look at that!”

The Facebook post includes several cropped artworks with the Latin-language watermark of the Synod of Bishops in the upper-left corner.

One image shows five young people holding hands in front of a church, including a woman in the vestments of a priest. She is next to a person holding a microphone and wearing a yellow shirt that says “pride” in rainbow-colored letters. The person with a microphone appears to say “we are the young people of the future and the future is now.” The uncropped image is subtitled “Chain of Discipleship.”

Comments on the Synod of Bishops’ Facebook page zeroed in on the woman in clerical vestments.

“Why is there a woman in a chasuble?” asks one commentator.

“This is epic cringe. Uggh,” says another.

Though the images are unsourced, CNA determined they originate with the Philadelphia Catholic Higher Education Synod. The artwork is included, uncropped, in this synod’s May 16 summary report. The images “reflect and precede each of the organizing themes included here,” the report says.

Despite authoritative Catholic teaching that the Church cannot ordain women, the report’s authors recommend that the Church “open doors to women in leadership and Holy Orders.”

In the 1994 document Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, St. John Paul II definitively excluded the possibility of the ordination of women to the priesthood. In 2016 remarks, Pope Francis characterized this as “the final word.”

The Philadelphia Catholic Higher Education Synod drew about 400 participants from 11 Catholic colleges or universities and three non-Catholic universities’ Catholic centers. Archbishop Nelson Perez of Philadelphia attended the final plenary session with more than 50 college students and an almost equal number of campus administrators and officers, the report said.

Becky McIntyre, a northwest Philadelphia artist and alumna of St. Joseph’s University, created the images. On her professional website, she said she had been “commissioned as a visual notetaker to facilitate an interactive art installation and create digital synthesized notes of the Philadelphia Catholic Higher Education Synod cross-campus listening session event.”

CNA reached out to a spokesperson of the Synod of Bishops but did not receive a response by publication. CNA also sought comment from McIntyre and the Philadelphia Catholic Higher Education Synod.

One of McIntyre’s images summarizes the synod and pictures students against the backdrop of the Philadelphia skyline. One element of local color is included: a small image of Gritty, the mascot of the National Hockey League’s Philadelphia Flyers.

It appears to be a visual summary of this synod: 48 listening sessions at 14 universities, 28 interracial sessions, and 27 interreligious meetings. Six young people sit in folding chairs. They are labeled as “Muslim,” “first-year education student,” “physics major,” “CLC leader,” “grad student,” and “Queer.”

The image records several statements, though it is unclear if they are direct quotations from synod participants. “Being Catholic is a crucial part of my identity,” says one. “It’s all about encounter with Christ,” reads another comment.

Other comments seem more critical. “I fear labeling myself Catholic because I don’t want to be thought of as ignorant,” says one. “The only woman leader in my church was in the choir,” said another. “I don’t want my future family to be excluded because I’m gay,” one comment says.

Another synod comment suggests more “coffee dates” with priests, religious, and campus ministers.

In another image, McIntyre appears to depict the Church as a refuge from all the tensions, divisions, and broken bonds of life. Yet another image depicts the threads of various identities, including racial, ethnic, and sexual identities, being woven into a single garment by hands captioned “God is Love.”

The synod’s summary report includes various views in tension or conflict.

Some students found joy in “a strong affiliation with a tradition with deep history in the midst of so much change provides comfort and clarity.” Others cited an “inability to be who you truly are in the church, being unhealthy, hurtful, wrong.” There was consensus on some matters like the need to “be animated by a God who loves recklessly and a Church defined by hospitality.”

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Baltimore, Md., Nov 13, 2018 / 10:35 am (CNA).- About three months after calling for an investigation into the claims made by former Apostolic Nuncio Carlo Vigano, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas is not confident that the Vatican will ever properly investigate allegations outlined in the nuncio’s August letter.

In an interview with CNA on Monday at the USCCB’s Fall General Assembly in Baltimore, Md., Strickland also expressed concerns that bishops of late have strayed from their “basic mission” as the shepherd of souls.

Vigano, former nuncio to the U.S., released a testimony in August which claimed that Pope Francis had removed restrictions on Archbishop Theodore McCarrick that had been imposed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals in July of this year, following a series of public allegations against him concerning the sexual abuse of minors, seminarians, and priests. The dioceses of Newark and Metuchen subsequently confirmed they had previously reached two out-of-court-settlements with adult accusers.

Regarding the Vatican’s pledge to investigate Vigano’s various claims, Strickland told CNA he is concerned that the investigation is going far too slowly.

“I’ve worked in the tribunal for years, I’ve studied canon law,” he said. “We used to always say working in the tribunal, ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’ so that’s my thought. It’s just taking too long.”

Strickland told CNA that he is not entirely sure what was causing this delay, but he did acknowledge that Americans are generally accustomed to investigations happening quickly, while Europeans often have a more relaxed mindset.

When asked if he believed anything could be done to get Rome to speed up the investigation, Strickland was skeptical. He told CNA that while he accepts that it is up to Rome to deal with Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, he believes that the Church in the United States should do its own investigation into his alleged crimes and learn from what they uncover.

“There’s got to be files. He’s an American. I mean, his whole priesthood has been in the United States,” said Strickland.

“I would say, let’s help Rome, and have our own investigation, and do what we can. Certainly, we can.”

The delay in the investigation into McCarrick is a sign of deeper issues within the Church, Strickland said. He told CNA that he was “disappointed” thus far with how things have been handled. He described the lack of a proper investigation as an “illustration that the same machinery that caused the whole McCarrick mess, still functions–or doesn’t.”

“It’s that same kind of machine that allowed him to move through the ranks doing all this stuff and just sort of side-tracking the moral issues,” he said. He blamed this “machine” for slowing down the investigation into uncovering what exactly McCarrick did.

The Vigano letter, he said, has “sort of pulled the curtain back” on deeper issues within the Church–namely, moral decay amongst the clergy and the Church as a whole.

Strickland said he believes the issues regarding McCarrick, Vigano, and the lack of any real investigation into either can be traced to what he describes as a drifting away from the main job of a bishop: a need to promote the salvation of souls.

“We need to worry about the salvation of Theodore McCarrick’s soul, as bishops,” he said.

“We need to be focused on the salvation of the victims and the abusers. That, to me, is the core issue.”

Strickland pointed to the events of the past summer, primarily the reaction to what he called the “Vigano question,” as proof that this primary concern has fallen out of focus among some of his brother bishops.

“All of what’s happened this summer. It’s ‘Oh, well, we’ve got to worry about global warming.’ That’s not our job,” he said, in an apparent reference to comments made by Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, who in August dismissed the nuncio’s allegations as a “rabbit hole”, saying Pope Francis has a “bigger agenda” to worry about, including defending migrants and protecting the environment.

Strickland said that there is certainly a need for “good people, good laity,” working on various issues such as global warming, immigration, and general injustices in the world, noting that he’s on the board of a Catholic charity.

But he expressed concern that an overemphasis on these kinds of works is serving as a distraction from the ultimate call of a bishop: bringing people to holiness, promoting the sanctity of life, and “living the virtues.”

“I think we’ve got it flipped,” he said. “As bishops, our first job is the holiness of the people of God. The salvation of souls.”

In every situation he encounters as a bishop, Strickland said, he tries to consider how his actions may affect the salvation of souls.

Looking ahead to the future of the Church, Bishop Strickland said he believes there needs to be increased accountability among bishops, improvements in teaching the various facets of the faith – especially in terms of sexuality – continued state investigations into abuse, and reforms to ensure that seminarians will be protected throughout the formation process.

“We need to make sure that seminarians are not victimized,” he said, adding that a man who is called to seminary should not be at risk of “having his life destroyed by the people who are supposed to be forming him for the priesthood.”

One area where Strickland expressed confidence was in regards to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. Although he said there are loopholes that need to be tightened, he is “fairly confident” that the appropriate steps to “revamp and strengthen” the charter will be taken.

As a bishop, however, there are responsibilities that go along with his roles as a spiritual father and shepherd to a diocese, he told CNA. He cannot “just sit in a corner and go and pray” – during times of controversy and upheaval, he has to prioritize what he does first.

“I’m a shepherd. I’ve got sheep,” he said.

“And sheep are bleeding, and getting slaughtered, and wolves are attacking. We can’t be worried about what color we’re going to paint the barn…Deal with the most important (things) first, then get others to figure out the barn.”

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