The Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Spain has accepted “with filial obedience” the recent doctrinal note by the country’s bishops on practices of “intergenerational healing” that are not in accord with the magisterium and tradition of the Catholic Church.
In a statement published on its website, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal of Spain said it gratefully welcomes the content of the document approved by the Spanish Bishops’ Conference and “adheres to it with filial obedience, agreeing with its content and the concern that underlies it.”
The movement also stated that it “will continue to ensure that, within the scope of our association, part of the entire stream of grace, its guidelines are followed.”
The charismatic organization added that the bishops’ document, titled “His Mercy Extends from Generation to Generation,” is necessary “to clarify concepts, risks to this practice, as well as the areas of its implementation, in the light of the studies carried out and the notes from the magisterium of the Catholic Church that are enunciated.”
In addition, the association hopes that what the bishops have set forth will help “identify and correct these practices that deviate from the tradition and the magisterium of the Church and that can cause great moral and spiritual harm to the holy people of God.”
The statement from the Catholic Charismatic Renewal of Spain was signed by its national coordinator, Víctor Gregorio Arellano, and the national spiritual adviser, Father Francisco Javier Ramírez de Nicolás, a priest of the Diocese of Osma-Soria.
The Catholic Charismatic Renewal of Spain is a private association of the faithful whose statutes were approved by the Spanish Bishops’ Conference in 2004 and modified in 2011.
The doctrinal note from the Spanish Bishops’ Conference noted that Father Robert DeGrandis of the Society of St. Joseph “has popularized the practice in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal due to his involvement in it.”
De Grandis and other authors teach “the intergenerational transmission of sin and, correlatively, the possibility of intergenerational healing,” the bishops’ note criticizes.
The way to supposedly “cure” physical and mental illnesses consists of “identifying the sin in one’s own family tree” and breaking “the bond of sin” through “intercession, exorcisms, and, especially, the celebration of a Eucharist,” which results in a supposed healing, the doctrinal note explains.
The Spanish bishops point out that “sin is always personal and requires a free decision of the will” and that the same is true of the punishment associated with sin. The prelates noted that “the only sin that is transmitted from generation to generation is original sin” but that this occurs only “in an analogous way.”
Furthermore, they affirm that it’s not possible to “maintain that there is an intergenerational transmission of sin without contradicting Catholic doctrine on baptism,” the sacrament in which “the forgiveness of all sins occurs.”
Regarding the Eucharist, the bishops maintained that offering petitions during Mass for intergenerational healing “seriously distorts the Eucharistic celebration.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Vatican City, Jun 4, 2017 / 08:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At the end of Mass on Pentecost Sunday, Pope Francis prayed for the victims of the London Bridge terrorist attack.
“May the Holy Spirit grant peace to the whole world,” the Pope said after Mass, before praying the Regina Coeli.
“May He heal the wounds of war and of terrorism, which even this (Saturday) night, in London, struck innocent civilians: let us pray for the victims and their families.”
Seven people were killed and 48 others injured last night when three men drove a van into a crowd of people on London Bridge around 10 p.m. local time last night. The men then went on a stabbing spree in nearby Borough Market where people were enjoying a Saturday night out at restaurants and pubs.
The three men reportedly shouted “this is for Allah” during the attack. The three attackers were shot dead by police within eight minutes of the first emergency call.
According to police, 12 more people have been arrested in connection to the attacks.
It is the third terror attack in the UK in three months, after another car and knife attack in Westminster in March, which left five people dead, and the Manchester bombing at a concert less than two weeks ago, in which 22 people were killed.
In a statement on Sunday, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May promised to crack down on terrorism in the face of the recent attacks.
“(W)e believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face, as terrorism breeds terrorism, and perpetrators are inspired to attack…by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack,” May said.
“We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are,” she added.
May noted that while the recent attacks were connected by one common theme – “they are bound together by Islamistic extremism that preaches hatred, sews division, and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of truth,” she said.
“It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence and make them understand that our values, pluralistic, British values, are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.”
May also said that internet must be regulated against terrorism, and that “extremism” must be stamped out both in the private and public sector.
Archbishop Zbigņevs Stankevičs of Riga, Latvia (left), speaking during a Catholic conference in Warsaw in May 2022 on the natural law legacy of John Paul II (right.) / Photos by Lisa Johnston and L’Osservatore Romano
Warsaw, Poland, Jun 9, 2022 / 09:17 am (CNA).
Constant cooperation and dialogue among Catholic, Lutherans, Orthodox, and other Christian denominations have been crucial to protect life and family in the Baltic nation of Latvia, Archbishop Zbigņevs Stankevičs of Riga, Latvia, said during a recent Catholic conference in Warsaw.
In his speech, Stankevičs shared his personal ecumenical experience in Latvia as an example of how the concept of natural law proposed by St. John Paul II can serve as the basis for ecumenical cooperation in defending human values.
The metropolitan archbishop, based in Latvia’s capital, is no stranger to ecumenical work and thought. In 2001, he became the first bishop consecrated in a Lutheran church since the split from Protestantism in the 1500s. The unusual move, which occurred in the church of Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral in Riga, formerly the Catholic Cathedral of St. Mary, signaled the beginning of Stankevičs’ cooperation with the Lutheran church in Latvia, a cooperation that would ultimately become a partnership in the cause of life and the family. Since 2012, the archbishop has served on the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
“I would like to present this ecumenical cooperation in three experiences in my country: the abortion debate, the civil unions discussion, and the so-called Istanbul convention,” Stankevičs began.
Entering the abortion debate
Ordained as a priest in 1996, Stankevičs struggled to find proper consultation for Catholic couples on natural family planning. It was then that he decided to create a small center that provided natural family planning under the motto “let us protect the miracle [of fertility].”
This involvement in the world of natural family planning would lead him into the heart of the abortion debate in Latvian society, and, ultimately, to the conclusion that moral discussions in the public square benefit from a basis in natural law, something emphasized in the teachings of John Paul II.
“I knew that theological arguments would not work for a secular audience, so I wanted to show that Catholic arguments are not opposed to legal, scientific, and universal arguments, but rather are in harmony with them,” Stankevičs said.
“[A] few years later our parliament introduced the discussion to legalize abortion. No one was doing anything so I decided to do something. I consulted some experts and presented a proposal that was published in the most important secular newspaper in Latvia,” the archbishop said.
Stankevičs’ article, “Why I was Lucky,” used both biological and theological arguments to defend human life. He noted that his own mother, when pregnant with him, was under pressure to get an abortion; “but she was a believer, a Catholic, so she refused the pressure.”
After the Latvian parliament legalized abortion in 2002, the different Christian confessions decided to start working together to protect the right to life and the family.
In Latvia, Catholics comprise 25% of the population, Lutherans 34.2%, and Russian Orthodox 17%, with other smaller, mostly Christian denominations making up the remainder.
“We started to work together by the initiative of a businessman in Riga, a non-believer who wanted to promote awareness about the humanity of the unborn,” the archbishop recalled.
“Bringing all Christians together in a truly ecumenical effort ended up bearing good fruits because we worked together in promoting a culture of life: From more than 7,000 abortions per year in 2002, we were able to bring it down to 2,000 by 2020,” he said.
Map of Riga, the capital of Latvia. Shutterstock
Ecumenical defense of marriage, family
Regarding the legislation on civil unions, another area where Stankevičs has rallied ecumenical groups around natural law defense of marriage, the archbishop said that he has seen the tension surrounding LGBT issues mount in Latvian society as increased pressure is brought to bear to legalize same-sex unions.
Invited to a debate on a popular Latvian television show called “One vs. One” after Pope Francis’ remark “who am I to judge?” was widely interpreted in Latvian society as approving homosexual unions, Stankevičs “had the opportunity to explain the teachings of the Catholic Church and what was the real meaning of the Holy Father’s words.”
After that episode, in dialogue with other Christian leaders, Stankevičs proposed a law aimed at reducing political tensions in the country without jeopardizing the traditional concept of the family.
The legislation proposed by the ecumenical group of Christians would have created binding regulations aimed at protecting any kind of common household; “for example, two old persons living together to help one another, or one old and one young person who decide to live together.”
“The law would benefit any household, including homosexual couples, but would not affect the concept of [the] natural family,” Stankevičs explained. “Unfortunately the media manipulated my proposal, and the Agency France Presse presented me internationally as if I was in favor of gay marriage.”
In 2020, the Constitutional Court in Latvia decided a case in favor of legalizing homosexual couples and ordered the parliament to pass legislation according to this decision.
In response, the Latvian Men’s Association started a campaign to introduce an amendment to the Latvian constitution, to clarify the concept of family. The Latvian constitution in 2005 proclaimed that marriage is only between a man and a woman, but left a legal void regarding the definition of family, which the court wanted to interpret to include homosexual unions.
The Latvian bishops’ conference supported the amendment presented by the Men’s Association, “but most importantly,” Stankevičs explained, “we put together an ecumenical statement signed by the leaders of 10 different Christian denominations supporting the idea that the family should be based on the marriage between a man and a woman. The president of the Latvian Jewish community, a good friend, also joined the statement.”
The Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia, honors soldiers who died during the Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920). Shutterstock
According to Stankevičs, something strange happened next. “The Minister of Justice created a committee to discuss the demand of the constitutional court, and it included several Christian representatives, including three from the Catholic Church, which worked for a year.” But ignoring all the discussions and proposals, the Minister of Justice ended up sending a proposal to parliament that was a full recognition of homosexual couples as marriage.
The response was also ecumenical: Christian leaders sent a letter encouraging the parliament to ignore the government’s proposal.
According to Stankevičs, the proposal has already passed one round of votes “and it is very likely that it will be approved in a second round of votes, with the support of the New Conservative party. But we Christians continue to work together.”
Preventing gender ideology
The third field of ecumenical cooperation mentioned by Stankevičs concerned the Istanbul Convention, a European treaty which the Latvian government signed but ultimately did not ratify.
The treaty was introduced as an international legal instrument that recognizes violence against women as a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination against women.
The convention claims to cover various forms of gender-based violence against women, but Christian communities in Latvia have criticized the heavy use of gender ideology in both the framing and the language of the document.
The word “gender,” for instance, is defined as “the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men,” a definition that allows gender to be defined independent of biological sex and therefore opens the document to the question of whether it really is aimed at the protection of women.
Christian communities also question the biased nature of the committee designated to enforce the convention.
The governments of Slovakia and Bulgaria refused to ratify the convention, while Poland, Lithuania, and Croatia expressed reservations about the convention though it was ultimately ratified in those countries, a move the government of Poland is attempting to reverse.
“When we found out that the Latvian parliament was going to ratify it, I went to the parliament and presented the common Christian position,” Stankevičs explained. As a consequence of that visit, the Latvian parliament decided not to ratify the convention, Stankevičs said, crediting the appeal to the unity provided by the common Christian position argued via natural law.
“In conclusion,” the archbishop said, “I can say that in Latvia we continue to defend the true nature of life and family. But if we Catholics would act alone, we would not have the impact that we have as one Christian majority. That unity is the reason why the government takes us seriously.”
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