Seventeen delegates from the U.S. and Canada are on a writing retreat as part of the Synod on Synodality — a multiyear worldwide undertaking set in motion by Pope Francis in 2021, during which Catholics have been encouraged to submit feedback to their local dioceses on specific questions laid out in documents provided by the Vatican.
Vatican News reported Feb. 15 that the delegates for North America are in Orlando, Florida, until Feb. 17 to work on composing a document called a continental synthesis, which will be submitted to the secretariat for the synod by March 31. The synthesis will be a final document of no more than 20 pages providing the region’s response to three reflection questions provided by the Vatican.
Participants in the writing retreat included Sister Leticia Salazar, chancellor of the Diocese of San Bernardino; Alexandra Carroll, communications manager for social mission at the U.S. bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development; and several bishops, including John Stowe of Lexington, Joseph Tyson of Yakima, and David Walkowiak of Grand Rapids.
One of the writers, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, requested prayers for the group.
These are the questions the writing group will be considering:
Which intuitions resonate most strongly with the lived experiences and realities of the Church in your continent? Which experiences are new or illuminating to you?
What substantial tensions or divergences emerge as particularly important in your continent’s perspective? Consequently, what are the questions or issues that should be addressed and considered in the next steps of the process?
Looking at what emerges from the previous two questions, what are the priorities, recurring themes, and calls to action that can be shared with other local Churches around the world and discussed during the first session of the Synodal Assembly in October 2023?
The synod is currently taking place in phases. The diocesan phase — in which about 700,000 people in the U.S. participated, out of 66.8 million Catholics in the country — ended last spring. The Vatican had asked all dioceses to participate, hold consultations, and collect feedback.
Along the way, the synodal process has sought to be “a kind of checkup of the health of the People of God scattered all over the world, with its difficulties, its trials, but also with its hopes and joys,” according to one organizer. It seeks, according to Vatican documents, to learn how the process of “journeying together” is happening in local Catholic churches across the world. At the same time, the synod has garnered controversy due, in part, to calls for changes to Church teaching and governance that have emerged during the consultation process.
The synod is now in the midst of its continental phase. Cardinals Mario Grech and Jean Claude Hollerich, who are overseeing the worldwide synod process, both have said that it will be the task of the Continental Assemblies to identify “the priorities, recurring themes, and calls to action” that will be discussed during the first session of the Synod of Bishops Oct. 4-29.
In North America, this phase consisted of a series of 10 virtual meetings of delegates appointed by the bishops of the United States and Canada. (The Catholics and bishops of Latin America, including Mexico, held a separate Latin American and Caribbean Continental Assembly.)
Holding the assemblies virtually, the bishops said, allowed for opportunities for participation in languages other than English. In all, there were five meetings held in English, three in Spanish, and two in French.
The first meeting in English took place on Dec. 14, 2022, and the last one took place Jan. 25. The Spanish and French meetings wrapped up Jan. 18 and Jan. 19, respectively. The assemblies included opportunities for prayer, spiritual reflection, small-group listening circles, and large-group sharing.
The bishops of each of the 192 dioceses in the U.S. and the 72 dioceses in Canada each appointed three to five delegates to represent them at the virtual assemblies. The meetings featured discussions on three reflection questions contained in the synod’s working document, which is filled with direct quotations from the reports sent by bishops’ conferences around the world. The 44-page document, which the Vatican released in late October 2022, summarizes the reports shared with the Vatican by bishops’ conferences, religious congregations, departments of the Roman Curia, lay movements, and other groups and individuals.
That document calls for “a Church capable of radical inclusion” and says that many synod reports raised questions about the inclusion and role of women, young people, the poor, people identifying as LGBTQ, and the divorced and remarried. The document, however, is not “conclusive,” organizers say, but rather is meant to spark dialogue and arouse feedback on what should be the priorities for discussion going forward.
The final, universal phase of the Synod on Synodality will begin with the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican in October, which will be followed by an additional session in October 2024. The feedback from the seven Continental Assemblies on the Document for the Continental Stage (DCS) will be used as the basis for another “instrumentum laboris,” or working document, that will be completed in June to guide the Synod of Bishops’ discussion.
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Atlanta, Ga., Jun 30, 2017 / 12:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A new book by entrepreneur and philanthropist Frank J. Hanna goes beyond the cliché advice often offered to college students, in an effort to help them focus on the things that really matter for true success in life.
Hanna, the CEO of Hanna Capital, is the author of the newly-released book, “A Graduate’s Guide to Life: Three Things They Don’t Teach You in College That Could Make All the Difference.”
In addition to his success as a merchant banker, Hanna is known for his philanthropy, particularly his commitment to Catholic education and evangelization. He is an EWTN board member. CNA is part of the EWTN family.
Amazon describes the newly-released book by saying, “The college years are often referred to as the best years of your life. Author Frank J. Hanna believes your best years are still ahead of you, but only if you have a strategy for living that goes beyond what you learned in school.”
“According to Hanna, wealth and success are not what you think. Drawing on a lifetime of business experience, he proposes a radically different approach. He shows that wealth is not merely money, competition has a higher purpose than simply getting ahead, and a life of happiness is simpler to attain than we imagine.”
CNA interviewed Hanna about his new book, his inspiration in writing it, and the advice he would offer college students today. The text of the interview is below:
You state in your book to young college students that “I want to change how you think about your future.” Why?
Unfortunately, we now live in a world of immediacy. This means that much of the advice we give to young people is catchy, and fits into a tweet or Facebook post, but at best it is often shallow, and at its worst, it is often wrong. Most college students have been filled with this kind of thinking for most of their lives, and so they are not thinking about their future in the manner most likely to lead to success.
You have a problem with the usual comment that college will be “the best years of your life”…
This is one of the clichés that happens to be bad advice. We want to encourage young people, as they head off to college; however, when we tell them that the next four years are going to be the best four years of their lives, we send two faulty messages. First, we imply that after college, the next fifty years are all downhill. And secondly, we put pressure on them while they are in college to try to live in a risky, extraordinary fashion – if these are the best four years of their lives, shouldn’t they be doing extraordinary things every day? This sort of adrenaline-seeking FOMO approach to life is not the way to happiness.
Why did you feel the need to describe human competition as opposed to animal competition?
All mammals compete for food, water, and mates. Humans do too. But if humans do not infuse their competition with love and prudence, they act like animals. If they compete like humans, they can bring out the best in one another.
How are hope and meaningful community connected to wealth in life?
For many years, I have studied wealth in business, and happiness trends among really wealthy people. I found that the common denominator for wealth in business was hopefulness in the future, and I found that the common denominator for happiness among rich people was not how much money they had, but whether they had good relationships with others, and hopefulness about the future of those relationships. I dive into more of the background of this issue in the book, and how to develop these sources of wealth, but these are the factors that the data shows produce well-being, which is actually the essence of wealth.
Could you comment on the current education system and why it inspired you to write this book?
I think our current education system, especially higher education, does a pretty good job of transmitting information. College and high school graduates today have more information than their parents or grandparents had. However, our colleges sometimes mistake information for knowledge, and so students may not have as much knowledge as they ought. Moving even beyond knowledge, it is wisdom that leads to human flourishing. But because wisdom is so often tied to questions related to transcendence, many of our colleges not only fail to impart wisdom – some of them even deny its existence, for to acknowledge wisdom is to acknowledge truth, and in a culture of relativism, many do not want to, or are afraid to, acknowledge absolute truth.
Amanda Achtman’s last photo with her grandfather, Joseph Achtman. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Amanda Achtman
CNA Staff, Nov 5, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
When the Canadian government began discussing the legalization of euthanasia for those whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable,” 32-year-old Amanda Achtman said something in her began to stir. Her grandfather was in his mid-90s at the time and fit the description.
“There were a couple of times, toward the end of his life, that he faced some truly challenging weeks and said he wanted to die,” Achtman recalled. “But thank God no physician could legally concede to a person’s suicidal ideation in such vulnerable moments. To all of our surprise — including his — his condition and his outlook improved considerably before his death at age 96.”
Achtman said she and her grandfather were able to have a memorable final visit that “forged her character and became one of the greatest gifts he ever gave me.”
The experience of walking with her grandfather in his last days led Achtman to work that she believes is a calling. On Aug. 1, she launched a multifaceted cultural project called Dying to Meet You, which seeks to “humanize our conversations and experiences around suffering, death, meaning, and hope.” This mission is accomplished through a mix of interviews, short films, community events, and conversations.
“This cultural project is my primary mission, and I am grateful to be able to dedicate the majority of my energy to it,” Achtman told CNA.
Early years
Achtman was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She grew up in a Jewish-Catholic family with, she said, “a strong attachment to these two traditions that constitute the tenor of my complete personality.”
Her Polish-Jewish grandfather, with whom she had a very close relationship as a young adult, had become an atheist because of the Holocaust and was always challenging her to face up to the big questions of mortality and morality.
“One of the ways I did this was by traveling on the March of Remembrance and Hope Holocaust study trip to Germany and Poland when I was 18,” Achtman said. “My experiences listening to the stories of Holocaust survivors and Righteous Among the Nations have undeniably forged my moral imagination and instilled in me a profound sense of personal responsibility.”
Shortly after her grandfather’s death, Achtman discovered a new English-language master’s program being offered in John Paul II philosophical studies at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland.
“Immediately, I felt as though God were saying to me, ‘Leave your country and go to the land that I will show you — it’s Poland.’ At the time, the main things I knew about Poland were that the Holocaust had largely been perpetrated there and that Sts. John Paul II, Maximilian Kolbe, and Faustina were from there,” Achtman explained. “I wanted to be steeped in a country of saints, heroes, and martyrs in order to contemplate seriously what my life is actually about and how I could spend it generously in the service of preventing dehumanization and faithfully defending the sanctity of life in my own context.”
The rise of euthanasia in Canada
In 2016, the Canadian government legalized euthanasia nationwide. The criterion to be killed in a hospital was informed consent on the part of an adult who was deemed to have a “grievous and irremediable condition.”
“The death request needed to be made in writing before two independent witnesses after a mandatory time of reflection. And, consent could be withdrawn any time before the lethal injection,” Achtman explained.
Then, in 2021, the Canadian government began to remove those safeguards. “The legislative change involved requiring only one witness, allowing the possible waiving of the need for final consent, and the removal, in many cases, of any reflection period,” Achtman told CNA.
“Furthermore, a new ‘track’ was invented for ‘persons whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.’ This meant that Canadians with disabilities became at greater risk of premature death through euthanasia. Once death-by-physician became seen as a human right, there was practically no limit as to who should ‘qualify.’ As long as killing is seen as a legitimate means to eliminate suffering, there is no limit to who could be at risk.”
Euthanasia — now called medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada — is set to further expand on March 17, 2024, to those whose sole underlying condition is “mental illness.” Last year, Dr. Louis Roy of the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons testified before a special joint committee that his organization thinks euthanasia should be expanded to infants with “severe malformations” and “grave and severe syndromes.”
Renewing the culture
Achtman followed the debates around end-of-life issues in Canada and wanted to figure out a way to restore “a right response to the reality of suffering and death in our lives.”
“The fact is, our mortality is part of what makes life precious, our relationships worth cherishing, and our lives worth giving out of love. That’s why we need to bring cultural renewal to death and dying, restoring our understanding of its meaning to the human condition.”
On Jan. 1, 2021, Achtman made a new year’s resolution to blog about death every single day for an entire year in a way that was “hope-filled and edifying.”
It ended up being very fruitful to Achtman personally, but she said “it also touched a surprising number of people, inspiring them to take concrete actions in their own lives that I could not have anticipated.”
The experience, Achtman said, made her realize that it’s possible to contribute to cultural renewal through things like coffee shop visits, informal interviews, posting on social media, being a guest on podcasts and webinars, organizing community events, and making videos.
“Basically, there are countless practical and ordinary ways that we can humanize the culture — wherever we are and whatever we do the rest of the time.”
The Dying to Meet You project
When it comes to the mission of Dying to Meet You, Achtman told CNA that “God has put on my heart two key objectives: the prevention of euthanasia and the encouragement of hope” and added that “the aim of this cultural project is to improve our cultural conversation and engagement around suffering, death, meaning, and hope through a mix of interviews, writing, videos, and events.”
Achtman said the project is an experiment in the themes Pope Francis speaks about often — encounter, accompaniment, going to the peripheries, and contributing to a more fraternal spirit.
“There is a strong basis for opposition to euthanasia across almost all religions and cultures, traditionally speaking,” Achtman said. “Partly from my own upbringing in a Jewish-Catholic family, I am passionate about how the cultural richness of such a plurality of traditions in Canada can bolster and enrich our value of all human life.”
To that end, one of the projects Achtman has in the works is a short film on end of life from an Indigenous perspective to be released mid-November.
“It’s not so much that we have a culture of death as we now seem to have death without culture,” said Achtman, who hopes her efforts will help change that.
An inspiring hometown event
This past Sept. 23, Achtman organized a daylong open-house-style event called “The Church as an Expert in Humanity” in her home city of Calgary, which took place at Calgary’s Cathedral, the Cathedral Hall, and the Catholic Pastoral Centre. The morning featured a ministry hall of exhibits with 18 table displays of ministries throughout the diocese doing the best work on suffering, death, grief, and caregiving. In the afternoon, there were three-panel presentations.
The first involved Catholics of diverse cultural backgrounds speaking about hospitality and accompaniment in their respective traditions. It included a Filipino diaconal candidate, a Ukrainian laywoman working with refugees, an elderly Indigenous woman who is a community leader, and an Iraqi Catholic priest.
The second was called “Tell Me About the Hour of Death,” where participants heard from two doctors, a priest, and a longtime pastoral care worker.
The third panel focused on papal documents pertaining to death, hope, and eternal life. A Polish Dominican sister who has worked extensively with the elderly spoke about John Paul II’s “Letter to the Elderly.”
Later, an evening program was held in Calgary’s Catholic Cathedral and included seven short testimonies by different speakers that “were narratively framed as echoes of the Seven Last Words of Christ.” Among the speakers were a privately sponsored Middle Eastern Christian refugee, a L’Arche core member who has a disability, and a young father whose daughter only lived for 38 minutes. Afterward, Calgary’s Bishop William McGrattan gave some catechesis on the Anima Christi prayer, with a special emphasis on the line “In your wounds, hide me.”
“The day was extremely uplifting and instilled the local Church with confidence that the Church indeed is an expert in humanity, capable of meeting Christ in all who suffer with a gaze of love and the steadfast insistence, ‘I will not abandon you,’” Achtman told CNA.
Our lives are not wholly our own
Many believe euthanasia is compassionate care for those who suffer. Shouldn’t we be able to do what we want with our own lives? And can suffering have any meaning for someone who doesn’t believe in God?
Achtman said these questions remind her of something Mother Teresa said: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other,” as well as the John Donne quote “Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.”
“Our lives are not wholly our own and how we live and die affects the communities to which we belong,” Achtman said. “That is not a religious argument but an empirical observation about human life. If someone lacks ties and is without family and social support, then that is the crisis to which the adequate response is presence and assistance — not abandonment or hastened death. As one of my heroes, Father Alfred Delp, put it, a suffering person makes an ongoing appeal to your inner nobility, to your sacrificial strength and capacity to love. Don’t miss the opportunity.”
The mission continues
Achtman also organized a “Mass of a Lifetime,” a special Sunday Mass for residents of a local retirement home, on Oct. 15.
“I was inspired by a quotation of Dietrich von Hildebrand, who said: ‘Wherever anything makes Christ known, there nothing can be beautiful enough,’” Achtman said. “Applying that spirit to this Mass, we made it as elaborate as possible to show the seniors that they are worth the effort.”
Achtman also recently produced a four-minute short film about an 88-year-old woman named Christine who got a tattoo that says “Don’t euthanize me.” It can be viewed here:
Throughout 2023-2024, Achtman told CNA, she is basing herself in four different Canadian cities for three months each “in order to empower diverse faith and cultural communities in the task of preventing euthanasia and encouraging hope.” She started in her hometown of Calgary and is off to Vancouver this month.
In addition to her work with the Dying to Meet You project, Achtman does ethics education and cultural engagement with Canadian Physicians for Life and works to promote the personalist tradition with the Hildebrand Project.
Pope Francis opens the Holy Door in L’Aquila, Italy, on Aug. 28, 2022. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Aug 2, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
The Dicastery for Evangelization issued a note on Thursday reaffirming that the Holy Doors of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope in Rome will be located at the four papal basilicas as well as at a prison.
The Jubilee of Hope will take place from Dec. 24, 2024 — Christmas Eve — to Jan. 6, 2026, the feast of the Epiphany.
The Holy Doors will be located at the Basilica of St. Peter, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, the Basilica of St. Mary Major, and the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. A fifth door will also be located at a prison, the name of which has not yet been announced.
The five Holy Doors were specified by Pope Francis when he officially proclaimed the 2025 Ordinary Jubilee through his bull of indiction, Spes Non Confundit (“Hope Does Not Disappoint”) on the feast of the Ascension on May 9.
The first Holy Door will be opened by Pope Francis at St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve this year to usher in the beginning of the Jubilee Year worldwide. This door will be the last one to be closed on the feast of the Epiphany in 2026, marking the end of the holy year.
The Archbasilica of St. John Lateran will be the second door opened by Pope Francis — on Dec. 29, the feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The Holy Father will then open the Holy Door at the Basilica of St. Mary Major on the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, on Jan. 1, and then on Jan. 5 he will open the Holy Door at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. These three papal basilicas will all be closed on Dec. 28, 2025.
The Dicastery for Evangelization has not yet specified the location or dates for the opening or closing of the Holy Door at a Rome prison.
In his papal bull, the Holy Father expressed his wish that prisoners “look to the future with hope and a renewed sense of confidence” during the Jubilee Year.
The note released by the dicastery’s Section for Fundamental Questions regarding Evangelization in the World did not mention the opening of any other Holy Doors within Italy or abroad but issued further guidelines for the granting and use of the Jubilee 2025 indulgence when visiting cathedrals, international and national shrines, and other significant places of worship outside of Rome.
The Decree of the Apostolic Penitentiary released on May 13, mentioned in the Aug. 1 note, states that the Catholic faithful who wish to live “this moment of grace in its fullness” can obtain the 2025 Jubilee indulgence in three main ways: pilgrimages, pious visits to sacred places, and works of mercy and penance.
The upcoming holy year will be the 28th jubilee celebrated in the Catholic Church and comes 10 years after Pope Francis opened the extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2015. That year, Holy Doors had been erected in basilicas and sacred sites in 40 different countries.
Twenty pages on “intuitions,” “tensions and divergences,” and “themes, priorities and calls to action.” That’s one tough assignment! From the back bleachers, how about these possible responses…
(1) After sixty years since the Second Vatican Council, how will the perennial Catholic Church position, itself, truly, in a coherent way to preach the alarming event of the supernatural Incarnate (!) Christ to a world split between (a) the disintegrating secular humanism in the West and (b) in the East and globally, a natural religion of 1.5 billion followers who replace “the Word made flesh” with the “word made book”?
In the West, note well that while thought in East European society was for seventy years corrupted by the Statist dominance of Soviet communism; today the Church itself is being deeply infiltrated and corrupted by the cultural gangrene of post-Christian society.
(2) Why is the Vatican’s benchmark synthesis so out of step with the earlier diocesan summaries on which it is ostensibly based? And, why should the Continental Drifts be limited or groomed by such a summary? https://www.pillarcatholic.com/vocabulary-of-a-synod/
(3) As a call to action, the continental synods should alert the pool of conclave cardinals to their critical responsibility to be fully informed on the likely periti (e.g., Edward Pentin, editor, “The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates,” Sophia Institute Press, 2020). Such that pressing themes, priorities, and calls to action, on the one hand, can get the prudential and even artful attention they deserve; while, on the other hand, these preoccupations do not remain conflated with rumblings to also cross-dress the perennial “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” Church into a churning and big-tent, non-definitive plebiscite.
That is, distinguish what the Church IS, from councils and synods as what the Church simply DOES. A synodal Church, yes, but not a churchy Synodality. The process is not the message.
Well, that 305 words, less than on page, so there’s lots of room for edits, recalling that harmonization is not a substitute for clarity.
Embarking. Wherewith 44 pages of working document that calls for a Church capable of radical inclusion. Batten hatches lift anchor loose hawsers. We sail. Where waters unknown shoals and reefs phantoms. Ahab calculates the devil navigates. To the devil with it all, we’re off to stun God and man.
Twenty pages on “intuitions,” “tensions and divergences,” and “themes, priorities and calls to action.” That’s one tough assignment! From the back bleachers, how about these possible responses…
(1) After sixty years since the Second Vatican Council, how will the perennial Catholic Church position, itself, truly, in a coherent way to preach the alarming event of the supernatural Incarnate (!) Christ to a world split between (a) the disintegrating secular humanism in the West and (b) in the East and globally, a natural religion of 1.5 billion followers who replace “the Word made flesh” with the “word made book”?
In the West, note well that while thought in East European society was for seventy years corrupted by the Statist dominance of Soviet communism; today the Church itself is being deeply infiltrated and corrupted by the cultural gangrene of post-Christian society.
(2) Why is the Vatican’s benchmark synthesis so out of step with the earlier diocesan summaries on which it is ostensibly based? And, why should the Continental Drifts be limited or groomed by such a summary? https://www.pillarcatholic.com/vocabulary-of-a-synod/
(3) As a call to action, the continental synods should alert the pool of conclave cardinals to their critical responsibility to be fully informed on the likely periti (e.g., Edward Pentin, editor, “The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates,” Sophia Institute Press, 2020). Such that pressing themes, priorities, and calls to action, on the one hand, can get the prudential and even artful attention they deserve; while, on the other hand, these preoccupations do not remain conflated with rumblings to also cross-dress the perennial “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” Church into a churning and big-tent, non-definitive plebiscite.
That is, distinguish what the Church IS, from councils and synods as what the Church simply DOES. A synodal Church, yes, but not a churchy Synodality. The process is not the message.
Well, that 305 words, less than on page, so there’s lots of room for edits, recalling that harmonization is not a substitute for clarity.
Great. And why is it not even obvious to them!
Or, why are they so stubborn in the face of it!
‘ (2) Why is the Vatican’s benchmark synthesis so out of step with the earlier diocesan summaries on which it is ostensibly based? ‘
Embarking. Wherewith 44 pages of working document that calls for a Church capable of radical inclusion. Batten hatches lift anchor loose hawsers. We sail. Where waters unknown shoals and reefs phantoms. Ahab calculates the devil navigates. To the devil with it all, we’re off to stun God and man.