Vatican City, May 3, 2018 / 01:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican issued guidelines and norms Thursday for calling for new courses in canon law, designed to respond to a worldwide, “urgent need” for more people with adequate training on th… […]
Vatican City, May 3, 2018 / 08:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his prayer video for the month of May, Pope Francis said laypeople are on the “front lines” of the Church’s life and activities, and asked Catholics of all states and vocations to pray for the laity and their mission.
“Laypeople are on the front line of the life of the Church,” the pope said in the video, published May 3, urging the Church to be thankful for the laity “who take risks, who are not afraid and who offer reasons for hope to the poorest, to the excluded, to the marginalized.”
As Francis speaks in his native Spanish, the video shows lay people in different professional and familial states, including a doctor embracing a patient, a mother holding her child, a newlywed couple leaving a church and rescue workers bringing a boat of migrants ashore.
The video then shows scenes of families, scenes of people jumping up and down and hugging during a sports competition, people hiking and a couple working in a greenhouse.
“Let us pray together this month that the lay faithful may fulfill their specific mission, the mission that they received in Baptism, putting their creativity at the service of the challenges of today’s world,” he said, adding that “we need their testimony regarding the truth of the Gospel and their example of expressing their faith by practicing solidarity.”
An initiative of the Jesuit-run global prayer network Apostleship of Prayer, the pope’s prayer videos are filmed in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and mark the first time the Roman Pontiff’s monthly prayer intentions have been featured on video.
The Apostleship of Prayer, which produces the monthly videos on the pope’s intentions, was founded by Jesuit seminarians in France in 1884 to encourage Christians to serve God and others through prayer, particularly for the needs of the Church.
Since the late 1800s, the organization has received a monthly, universal intention from the pope. In 1929, an additional missionary intention was added by the Holy Father, aimed at the faithful in particular.
However, as of last year, rather than including a missionary intention, Pope Francis opted to have only one prepared prayer intention – the universal intention featured in the prayer video – and will add a second intention for an urgent or immediate need should one arise.
In comments in a May 3 press release on the video, Fr. Frédéric Fornos, SJ, international director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network and the Eucharistic Youth Movement, noted that often people think priests are the only ones responsible for carrying forward the Church’s mission.
However, lay people “are the ones who are at the heart of the world, and the ones who have a key role in transforming society,” he said, adding that “it is in families, in classrooms, in offices, in factories, in the fields, in daily life, where we find the opportunity to be salt and light of God’s Kingdom, the flavor of the Gospel.”
Pope Francis himself has been a frequent critic of clericalism, saying that for many, the Church is reduced to just priests and the hierarchy, and encouraging lay Catholics to be more active in evangelizing. He has also made incorporating more space for laity within the ranks of the Curia a goal of his reform.
In an April 2016 letter to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Pope Francis called clericalism “one of the greatest distortions” facing the local Church on the continent.
“[We’d] do well to recall that the Church is not an elite [of] priests, of consecrated people, of bishops but all of us make up the faithful and Holy People of God,” he said, noting that everyone begins their life as a layperson.
Clericalism, he said, is the result of “a mistaken way of living out the ecclesiology proposed by the Second Vatican Council,” which “forgets that the visibility and the sacramentality of the Church belong to all the people of God and not just to an illuminated and elected few.”
He discouraged clergy from relying on trite phrases about their flock such as “it’s time for the laity.”
While well-intentioned, the phrase has little meaning when stacked against actions, he said, explaining that clergy should focus on encouraging the laity to be active, but “it is not the job of the pastor to tell the laypeople what they must do and say.”
“It is illogical and even impossible for us as pastors to believe that we have the monopoly on solutions for the numerous challenges thrown up by contemporary life.”
In an interview given to El Sembrador Nueva Evangelización – ESNE TV and Radio station the same year but published in 2017, Francis said he believes laity need to “come out of the caves.”
“Sometimes I think the best business we can do with many Christians, is to sell them mothballs so that they put them in their clothes and in their lives and aren’t eaten by moths,” he said, explaining that in order to fulfill their mission, lay Catholics “have to go out, they have to go and bring the message of Jesus” to others.
Similarly, in a speech to Bangladeshi bishops during his visit to the nation in December 2017, the pope told them to “show ever greater pastoral closeness to the lay faithful, and to “recognize and value the charisms of lay men and women, and encourage them to put their gifts at the service of the Church and of society as a whole.”
Kansas City, Mo., May 3, 2018 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A newly-released album by a chart-topping community of Benedictine nuns in rural Missouri is devoted to the hearts of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but is dedicated in a particular way to Saint Joseph’s paternity.
“St. Joseph has shown himself a father to us very poignantly in recent months, both spiritually and temporally, so this CD is our little votive to his paternal heart,” Mother Cecilia, prioress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, told CNA.
The Hearts of Jesus, Mary & Joseph at Ephesus was released to coincide with the May 1 feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Funds from the sale of the album will support the construction of the expanding community’s priory church, which has $2 million remaining.
The album can be purchased from the nuns’ website at https://music.benedictinesofmary.org/ or at Amazon. Digital copies are available from iTunes.
Construction of the priory church.
Mother Cecilia reflected that “Devotion to the Pure Heart of St. Joseph seems to be burgeoning in popular piety as connected with the Two Hearts. While there have not yet been official approbations of its explicit revelations … there is nevertheless a strong case in favor of this general devotion especially in the addresses of out recent popes.”
“The heart being the symbol of love and of conformity to the Divine Will, and St. Joseph being the patron of the Universal Church, it seems an apt devotion especially in our times amidst a crisis of fatherhood.”
She added that the theme of the album was suggested by Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect emeritus of the Apostolic Signatura, who was leading a retreat at the priory.
The cardinal “asked about a recording, to which I replied that we had thought of doing one in honor of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, but were torn since we had also promised one to St. Joseph,” Mother Cecilia recounted. “His Eminence turned to us and said simply, ‘You know what you should do is one to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the most Pure Heart of St. Joseph.’ The Sisters spontaneously broke into applause at the direct answer to the dilemma.”
The album includes 22 tracks, eight of which are original pieces.
One of the original compositions, “Hymn to the Three Hearts”, is by a guest composer, Lisa Nardi, who was introduced to the community’s music through her classical radio station, WQXR. The song includes lyrics written by the sisters at the priory.
“She was so taken by what she heard, that she reached out to us with a proposition to compose a piece for a future recording,” explained Mother Cecilia. “We happily took her up on her kind offer after hearing some of her other works, which were beautiful.”
The Sacred Heart of Jesus, being the oldest of the three devotions – revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 1670s – included on the album, has a great deal of music dedicated to it, the prioress said.
“We had a hard time narrowing down which songs to do. We included our originals, ‘For Love of Me’ and ‘The Heart of the Infant King.’ The lyrics of the former was actually a poem by St. Alphonsus, and the latter by one of our Sisters, who had just read the writings of Mother Louise Margaret de la Touche, author of The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood. We included a hymn by the great American champion of Gregorian chant, Dr. Theodore Marier, who wrote a very moving hymn to the Sacred Heart in his days at Manhattanville, and the well-known ‘Cor Dulce’ with propers of the Mass.”
Hymns to the Immaculate Heart of Mary “were a little more sparse,” she said. Among those chosen for inclusion on the album is “I Am Thine”, an original which has been sung at profession and investitures at the priory, “so it is very much beloved by our community.” The ‘Sub Tuum’ “was a challenging piece by Charpentier,” a French baroque composer. It is one of the community’s “first ventures” into music of that era, “but one we enjoyed very much.”
“We had an original, ‘The Blessed Heart,’ written 2006 in memory of a seventeen-year-old young lady who was to join us, but suffered a stroke shortly before her entrance at the age of seventeen,” Mother Cecilia added.
Mother Cecilia said the nuns “were a little dismayed by the generally narrow repertoire of Hymns to St. Joseph, especially songs that mentioned his heart, so sought to remedy the situation!”
The community has sung the “Hymn to St. Joseph” every Wednesday since 2007. And “Blessed Be St. Joseph” is an “entirely new piece,” the chorus of which was inspired by the invitatory for the feast of St. Joseph. The song’s verses “came from Fr. Olier’s prayer quoted by St. Peter Julian Eymard in his Month of St. Joseph,” Mother Cecilia explained. “Fr. Olier had a profound influence on St. Louis Marie de Montfort, and it was really a delight to set such beautiful words to new music.”
Life in the community is marked by obedience, stability, and “continually turning” towards God. They have Mass daily according to the extraordinary form, and chant the psalms eight times a day from the 1962 Monastic Office.
The nuns also support themselves by producing made-to-order vestments, as well as greeting cards.
Though the community practices limited enclosure, their music albums have brought them international renown and popularity – they have been Billboard’s Best-Selling Classical Traditional Artist several years in a row, and their albums have topped Billboard’s Top Traditional Classical Albums.
Sales of The Hearts of Jesus, Mary & Joseph at Ephesus will support construction of the priory church, which was begun in May 2017, and is due to be completed in September.
“In two short years, we have been blessed to raise $4 million dollars in funding, but we still have about $2 million left to go,” Mother Cecilia said. “We have great confidence that St. Joseph, to whom we entrusted the entire project, will see it through to the end, inspiring souls to assist us in raising this last amount.”
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The Republic of the Congo, also referred to as … […]
Hamilton, Canada, May 2, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic school board in Ontario has suspended a policy prohibiting students from raising money for groups that support activities contrary to Catholic doctrine.
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Bogotá, Colombia, May 2, 2018 / 02:57 pm (ACI Prensa).- Inspired by Pope Francis’ message during his 2017 visit to the country, the Church in Colombia is preparing to celebrate the first National Day of Reconciliation on May 3.
Auxiliary Bishop Elkin Fernando Álvarez Botero, secretary general of the Colombian Bishops’ Conference, explained that the bishops met in November 2017 to more deeply reflect on the message of the Holy Father during his Apostolic Visit to the country that year.
In that meeting, he said, the bishops “wanted to have a day set aside especially dedicated to praying for reconciliation among Colombians.”
The bishops decided that that celebration would coincide with the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, which in Colombia is May 3.
During his visit to Villavicencio in September 2017, the Holy Father urged Colombia “to open your heart as the people of God, allow yourself to be reconciled! Colombians, don’t be afraid to ask and offer forgiveness. Don’t resist reconciliation in order to come together, to re-encounter each other as brothers and sisters and overcome enmities. Now is the time to heal wounds.”
The pope’s trip was largely the result of the country’s ongoing peace process between the government and Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
After more than six decades of conflict, a peace deal was finally struck in August 2016, de-escalating a conflict which since 1964 has left some 260,000 people dead and an estimated 7 million displaced.
In preparing for the day of reconciliation, Bishop Álvarez Botero reflected, “Let us be convinced, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that reconciliation with God, with our brothers and sisters, with ourselves and with nature is the path we must take to reach peace.”
He urged Catholics not to grow tired of praying for reconciliation “and peace for our country, because they are a gift that only comes from Jesus Christ, who gave his life on the Cross to heal our wounds and to knock down the wall that separates us, hatred.”
The bishop encouraged people to make “a serious commitment to reconciliation” in order to “eradicate from our personal and communal life all that which divides and separates us, which leads us to violence and death.”
He also urged the people of the country “to cultivate, care for and promote the values that dispose us to live reconciliation.”
Among Colombians, he said, there is “dialogue, sharing, solidarity, understanding, patience and above all, the charity that allows us to reach out to the poorest and neediest with the same love that Christ taught us from the Cross.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Baghdad, Iraq, May 2, 2018 / 01:52 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Iraqi women rebuilding their lives after ISIS occupation were invited to a three-day gathering aimed, according to organizers, at empowering Christian women and offering them spiritual support.
Held April 27-29 in Qaraqosh ,the event drew inspiration from the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, added recently to the Church’s calendar by Pope Francis.
The event was meant to “rebuild women in the spiritual side, in the biblical side and in the psychological side,” Fr. Roni Momika told CNA April 30.
Momika, who was ordained a priest in a refugee camp after fleeing Qaraqosh when ISIS took over in 2014, leads a weekly women’s group at St. Ephraim church in Qaraqosh, which was burned and vandalized by ISIS but which has slowly started functioning as a normal parish again.
“This meeting is to empower women,” he said.
Catholics at St. Ephraim Church in Qaraqosh, Iraq.
In comments to CNA after a separate women’s event earlier this year, Momika said he has focused on supporting women “because they are the base of the community.”
“The situation here in Qaraqosh is still difficult because the houses are still burned and destroyed,” he said, adding that rebuilding is currently a slow process due to the extensive damage and a lack of funding.
“Everything is difficult here and we want to rebuild the woman before we rebuild the houses,” he said.
“If you rebuild the woman, you can rebuild the children, and when you rebuild the children, you can rebuild the family, and after that we can rebuild the community here in Qaraqosh,” he said.
In his comments April 30, Momika said the Church in Qaraqosh wants “to allow women to trust in themselves.”
Momika’s regular women’s group draws some 800 attendees weekly. He estimates that as many as 4,500 people, including children, attended some part of the larger April meeting.
Qaraqosh, formerly known as the Christian capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, had a population of nearly 50,000 before ISIS attacked in 2014, prompting the majority of inhabitants to flee in a single night. Most ended up living in crowded refugee camps in Erbil.
According to Momika, some 20,000 people have returned since the city was liberated in 2016, most of whom belong to the Syriac Catholic rite.
Many of these families are trying to establish a new normal in their lives, from the practical to the spiritual.
The decision to hold the recent meeting, Momika said, came after Pope Francis announced his decision to establish the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church.
The program featured lectures, videos, Mass and community time.
A special icon of Mary was written for the occasion, which was done by a local artist who dressed the Virgin in the traditional clothes of women from Qaraqosh.
On the final day of the gathering, Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Kirkuk and Kurdistan, Youhanna Boutros Moshe, celebrated Mass and led attendees in a procession to the city’s cathedral, Iraq’s largest church and the principal church of the Syriac-Catholic rite.
Looking at pictures of the gathering, “all the women are laughing and they are happy because it is the first time we are doing this [meeting] in Qaraqosh” since the city’s liberation, Momika said.
“We want to send a message that ISIS burned the stone but they cannot burn the soul and they cannot burn Christianity and our faith,” he added. “Our faith is big [in] our Jesus Christ and his Mother, the Virgin Mary. This is the message.”
Vienna, Austria, May 2, 2018 / 12:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The apostolic nuncio to Austria said Tuesday that he is “saddened and ashamed” that bishops and priests have been vocal critics of the Bavarian government’s mandate to display crosses in government buildings.
“You know, as nuncio, as a representative of the Holy Father, I am saddened and ashamed, that when in a neighboring country crosses are erected, it is bishops and priests of all people who think they have to criticize the decision. That is a disgrace! That is unacceptable,” Archbishop Peter Zurbriggen said May 1 at the Benedict XVI Philosophical-Theological University in Heiligenkreuz.
The nuncio, who is 74, lamented such religious and political correctness.
He noted that “We are in Heiligenkreuz,” which means in German “Holy Cross”. He was speaking at a “day of thanks” at the pontifical university, which is operated by Stift Heiligenkreuz, a Cistercian monastery located about 20 miles southwest of Vienna.
“Many know that my episcopal motto is ‘Sancta Crux, mihi lux’: Holy Cross, my light,” he added.
Archbishop Zurbriggen added that it is similarly shameful that some bishops have removed their pectoral crosses while visiting sites in the Holy Land.
“But then I think of … Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who recently visited Saudi Arabia and was received by the king. He wore a cross that was twice as big as that cross which I am wearing now. That is good!”
Cardinal Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, had met with King Salman in Riyadh April 18.
Archbishop Zurbriggen’s comments come after Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising criticized the Bavarian government’s move, saying the cross is “a sign of opposition to violence, injustice, sin and death, but not a sign [of exclusion] against other people.” The cross can be misunderstood as purely a cultural symbol, he said, and thus misused by the state.
Cardinal Marx said the Bavarian government had triggered “division, unrest and adversity”.
But Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg had applauded the government’s decision, saying that “the cross is the epitome of Western culture. It is the expression of a culture of love, compassion and affirmation of life. It belongs to the foundations of Europe.” Its public presence – which in traditionally Catholic Bavaria is near ubiquitous – should be seen as such, welcomed, and appreciated, he said.
This is the reason, Bishop Voderholzer said, Christians have placed crosses atop the peaks of Bavarian mountains: “Not the national flag or other symbols of human rule, as others might have liked to see at other times, but the cross. It should be widely visible, the cross, the sign of salvation and life in which Christ is heaven and earth, God and reconciled people, victims and perpetrators.”
The requirement that every entrance to state buildings display up a cross was announced by the office of Markus Söder, Bavaria’s premier. The directive to hang the crosses by June 1 has sparked a public debate in Germany, tapping into deeper angst about culture, values, and Christian roots in a country divided by questions of heritage, religion, and identity.
The accusation that the government would attempt to misappropriate the cross or designate it as a purely cultural symbol was flatly rejected by Söder, a Lutheran who hails from the Protestant region of Franconia in northern Bavaria.
“Of course the cross is primarily a religious symbol,” Söder told German media. However, the premier continued, the cross, in the wider sense, also carries with it basic foundations of a secular state.
Making the announcement April 24, Söder’s office had said the decision is meant to “express the historical and cultural character of Bavaria” and to present “a visible commitment to the core values of the legal and social order in Bavaria and Germany.”
© Catholic World Report
