Washington D.C., Aug 9, 2017 / 06:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- What can a missionary in North Korea do to preach the Gospel in a Communist dictatorship? Simply care for the sick patients he is there to help, says one priest in that situation.
“We are… […]
Vatican City, Aug 9, 2017 / 04:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Wednesday that Pope Francis has named Bishop Emanuel Hana Shaleta as head the eparchy of Saint Peter Apostle of San Diego of the Chaldeans, pulling him from his prior post in Canada.
Shaleta has until now served as Bishop of Mar Addai Eparchy of Toronto. Announced in an Aug. 9 communique from the Vatican, his appointment to San Diego came alongside the nomination of Bishop Frank Kalabat, who oversees the Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle of Detroit, as apostolic administrator for the Toronto eparchy.
Born in Fishkabour-Zakho, Iraq Nov. 12, 1956, the bishop completed his studies in his village before entering the Dominican-run Minor Seminary of Saint John in Mosul in 1971.
Like most clergy from Iraq, he was eventually invited to Rome for his studies, beginning courses at the Pontifical Urbanianum University in 1977, after having completed his studies in philosophy and theology.
He was ordained a priest by St. John Paul II May 31, 1984. He then continued his studies at the Urbanianum’s Faculty of Theology, obtaining a doctorate in Biblical Theology in 1987.
Bishop Shaleta was then transferred to the United States through the Eparchy of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Detroit, where from 1987-2000 he served as pastor of St. Paul Parish in North Hollywood, Calif.
In 2000 he was named vice-pastor of St. Joseph parish in Troy, Mich. He was subsequently named pastor in 2006, and was later named pastor of St Gregory parish in Township, Mich., a position he held until 2015.
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his priestly ordination in 2009, Shaleta was givene the title “chorbishop,” which refers to a prelate or archpriest of honor in Eastern Christian Churches.
In January of 2015 Pope Francis named him bishop of the Mar Addai eparchy in Toronto, and he received his episcopal ordination a month later, on Feb. 6, 2015.
As far as languages, the bishop speaks Chaldean, Arabic, Italian and English, and is familiar with Assyrian, Kurdish, French and German, as well as Latin, Hebrew and Greek.
The Eparchy of San Diego’s website, it was established by St. John Paul II in 2002, who at that time accepted the Chaldean Synod’s election of Fr. Sarhad Jammo as the first bishop for the St. Peter the Apostle diocese.
In total, the eparchy covers 17 States: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
Vatican City, Aug 9, 2017 / 03:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis said the Church doesn’t exist for people without faults, but for sinners in need of God’s mercy – a point he often returns to – and lamented the fact that there are many Catholics who believe the opposite.
“We who are accustomed to experiencing the forgiveness of sins, perhaps too much like ‘a cheap market,’ we should at times remind ourselves of how much we cost the love of God,” the Pope said Aug. 9.
“Jesus didn’t go to the Cross because he heals the sick, because he preaches charity or because he proclaims the beatitudes,” he said. Rather, “the Son of God goes to the Cross above all because he forgives sins, because he wants the total, definitive freedom of man’s heart.”
“He does not accept that the human being consumes their entire existence with this irremovable ‘tattoo,’ with the thought of not being able to be welcomed by the merciful heart of God.”
And this, Francis said, is how sinners are forgiven. Not only are they reassured at a psychological level, feeling free from a sense of guilt, but Jesus does more: “he offers the people who have erred the hope of a new life, a life marked by love.”
Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall for his weekly general audience, continuing his catechesis on hope.
He began by pointing to the Gospel reading from Luke in which, after Jesus forgives the sins of a woman who anoints his feet with oil, the Simon the Pharisee asks “who is this who even forgives sins?”
Jesus’ act of forgiving the woman’s sins was “a scandalous gesture,” Francis said, noting that to have a known sinner come into the house of Simon to anoint Jesus was startling, because at the time the mentality was “between the holy and the sinner, the pure and the impure, the separation had to be clear.”
“But the attitude of Jesus is different,” the Pope said, noting that from the beginning of his ministry Jesus embraced lepers, the sick and the marginalized.
“Such behavior was by no means normal, so much so that Jesus’ sympathy for the excluded, for the untouchables, will be one of the most disturbing things for his contemporaries,” he said, adding that “wherever there is a person suffering, Jesus cares for them, and that suffering becomes his own.”
Rather than following the stoic philosophers, who linked physical suffering to sin and believed such “punishment” had to be endured with heroism, Jesus shared in human pain, “and when he encounters it, from the depths of his being bursts that attitude which characterizes Christianity: mercy.”
Jesus shows compassion, but “literally: Jesus feels his insides quiver.” This is often referenced in the Gospels, where Christ incarnate “reveals the heart of God” and offers healing to those who suffer.
“It is for this reason that Jesus extends his hands to sinners,” Francis said, noting that there are many people today living a life of error “because they can’t find anyone willing to look at them in a different way, with their eyes, or better, with the heart of God, which is hope.”
At times we forget that Jesus did not act with an easy love that comes “for a cheap price,” he said, adding that Jesus understands not only the physical pain of those who suffer, but also the internal pain of those who feel that they are “bad” people or that there is something essentially “wrong” with them because of their faults.
Francis closed his address telling pilgrims that it would do them well to think about how “God did not choose people who have never done wrong as the first dough to form his Church.”
Rather, “the Church is a people of sinners who experience the mercy and forgiveness of God,” he said, adding that St. Peter understood the truth about himself when the cock crowed, instead of his generous works, “which swelled his chest, making him feel superior to others.”
The Church is not for the perfect, but for sinners, he said, adding in off-the-cuff remarks that he can think of “a lot of Catholics who think they are perfect and they despise others, (and) this is sad.”
“We are all poor sinners in need of God’s mercy, which has the strength to transform us and radiate hope to us every day,” Pope Francis said.
And to the people who understand this, “God gives the most beautiful mission in the world, which is to tell of his love for their brothers and sisters, and the announcement of a mercy that he does not deny to anyone.”
After greeting pilgrims from various countries around the world, Pope Francis closed his audience with an appeal for an end to violence in the world following an attack this week in Nigeria, in which a gunman entered a Church and opened fire, killing 11 and wounding several others.
He also pointed to an uptick in “homicidal violence” in the Central African Republic this week, directed against the Christian population.
“I wish that all forms of hatred and violence would cease, and that no more such shameful crimes be committed in places of worship, where faithful are gathered to pray,” he said, and led pilgrims in praying a Hail Mary for the people of Nigeria and CAR.
Rome, Italy, Aug 9, 2017 / 03:04 am (Church Pop).- As Iraq and surrounding areas face the destruction of many of the region’s archaeological treasures, one priest and his fellow Dominicans are preserving the area’s history and culture throu… […]
Los Angeles, Calif., Aug 9, 2017 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- More than 1,600 youth gathered at the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles this weekend for the third annual City of Saints conference, where local teenagers participated in w… […]
Lourdes, France, Aug 8, 2017 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A government proposal in the United Kingdom to set up an anti-extremism commission could unjustly affect faithful Christians, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury has warned.
The present is “a time when our own country faces uncertainty about its calling and struggles to define arbitrary values which might preserve society now confronted by aggressive ideologies and homicidal terror,” Bishop Davies said during his homily at a July 31 Mass.
He was speaking to English pilgrims at Lourdes, and addressed the proposal by Prime Minister Theresa May’s Consverative minority government to establish a Commission for Countering Extremism.
This commission, meant to counter Islamist extremism, is to “stamp out extremist ideology in all its forms” and identify extremisms which undermine British values.
May has said that “there is clearly a role for government in tackling extremism where it involves behaviour that is or ought to be criminal. But there is also a role for government to help people and build up organisations in society to promote and defend Britain’s pluralistic values.”
A similar effort by David Cameron’s Conservative government to promote “British values” in schools was received by Catholic Voices UK as a potential harm to sincere religious believers and to Catholic schools. Bishop Davies at that time warned, “our values cannot be arbitrarily formulated by any passing generation of politicians even if they have the best intentions.”
In his homily at Lourdes, the bishop noted that there is confusion in the UK over what constitutes extremism, citing a recent poll that found “1 in 3 Britons now regard the claims of Christianity and even the person of Jesus Christ as representing extremism.”
“It is even possible that the very faith in Christ on which our nation was built, might become a focus of the Government’s counter-extremism agenda,” he lamented.
In the face of this, Christians are called to acknowledge that “we know of no moderation … in our following of Christ and in all that contributes to the good of society, recognising how we are all called to the extremes of charity; of virtue; of grace; of unswerving adherence to goodness and truth, to the high goal of holiness in which lies our ultimate happiness.”
This, he said, is the heart of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching:”an utterly inclusive message, that we are all called to holiness which is the perfection of love, the complete happiness of becoming a saint.”
“This was the first calling of the English people and it is the divine vocation which can now shape our lives, our families and the whole future of our society.”
The bishop did warn against a “destructive extremism” which seeks to de-construct marriage, family, and human identity, and which “calls for medical experimentation with no reference to ethical boundaries; that decrees the unborn may live only to terms fixed by man, demands legal protections be removed from the sick and the aged.”
“It is such extremism which surely threatens the foundations of society.”
The “extreme agenda” of Christ and the Church is “the call to the perfection of charity and the fullness of the Christian life which today we share,” he concluded.
Hagatna, Guam, Aug 8, 2017 / 04:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Nearly 100 lawsuits have accused Catholic clergy in Guam of sex abuse over a 50 year timespan, alleging assault, manipulation and intimidation of the alleged victims, according to a new report.
T… […]
Washington D.C., Aug 8, 2017 / 03:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Some U.S. evangelical Christian leaders want to talk with Pope Francis about a prominent Jesuit-run journal’s essay on Christianity and American politics that depicted some Catholic-Evangelical collaboration as an “ecumenism of hate.”
“Rather than being offended, we have chosen to attempt to make peace,” Johnnie Moore said, according to Time Magazine. “We would be willing to get on a plane tomorrow to Rome to meet with whoever, whenever to create a space for dialogue instead of conflict.”
Moore, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals and past president of the Virginia-based Liberty University, requested the meeting with the Pope and other Vatican leaders on behalf of some U.S. Evangelical leaders, including some close to President Trump.
He is part of a group of evangelical Christian leaders who are informal advisors to President Trump. Only parts of the letter were made public.
Moore voiced surprise at the essay, considering the Pope’s reputation as a “bridge-builder,” the Washington Post reports. His letter alluded to contemporary “ongoing persecution, political division and global conflict,” saying there are “efforts to divide Catholics and Evangelicals.”
“We think it would be of great benefit to sit together and to discuss these things,” said the letter. “Then, when we disagree we can do it within the context of friendship. Though, I’m sure we will find once again that we agree far more than we disagree, and we can work together with diligence on those areas of agreement.”
Moore sent the request to Pope Francis as well as to the Archdiocese of Washington and other possible intermediaries on Aug. 3.
The Rome-based Jesuit-run journal La Civilta Cattolica on July 13 published an analysis piece co-authored by its editor, Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J., and Rev. Marcelo Figueroa, a Presbyterian pastor who is editor-in-chief of the Argentine edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of Vatican City.
The essay, titled “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A Surprising Ecumenism” made a number of claims, alleging that many conservative Christians have united to promote an “ecumenism of hate” in policies that contradict Pope Francis’ message of mercy. They claimed that that “Evangelical fundamenta lists” and “Catholic Integralists” are being brought together in a “surprising ecumenism” by a shared desire for religious influence in politics.
The piece’s analysis of American Christianity listed various influences like Christian fundamentalism, the “dominionism” of Presbyterian thinker Pastor Rousas John Rushdoony, the Prosperity Gospel, inspirational writer Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, and the polemical lay Catholic site Church Militant. It attempted to link these figures and trends with political trends and figures like Republican strategist Steve Bannon and Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
The essay did not mention by name any of President Trump’s religious advisers.
The essay noted the American trend of “values voters” whose political decisions prioritize abortion, same-sex marriage, religion in schools and other matters. Both of these Catholic and Evangelical factions, the authors claimed, “condemn traditional ecumenism and yet promote an ecumenism of conflict that unites them in the nostalgic dream of a theocratic type of state.” They charged that this collaboration also advances a “xenophobic and Islamophobic vision that wants walls and purifying deportations” and thus an “ecumenism of hate.”
However, the essay drew criticism from several quarters, including the editors of Commonweal Magazine, themselves unsympathetic to U.S. Catholic conservatism.
In a July 25 editorial, they described the essay as “a mishmash of wild and erroneous claims, made in a disjointed, almost impenetrable style,” whose authors “seem woefully ignorant of American religious history.” They said the essay was a “lost opportunity” to criticize the partisan use of religion in a way that might engage “those who do not yet have ears to hear.”
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia characterized the essay as “an exercise in dumbing down and inadequately presenting the nature of Catholic/Evangelical cooperation on religious freedom and other key issues.” He characterized this cooperation as “a function of shared concerns and principles, not ambition for political power.” The archbishop said it was surprising “when believers are attacked by their co-religionists merely for fighting for what their Churches have always held to be true.”
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat half-panned the essay as “bad but important.” Despite its apparent intention to warn about “the darker tendencies in Trumpism,” he said it reflected a superficial understanding of American religion and missed the fact that both Catholic-Evangelical alliances and liberal religious politics have failed. Douthat saw an increase in “disillusionment and homelessness” among Catholic thinkers, while the contradictions of political liberalism seem to make the moment “ripe for serious Catholic rethinking.”
For his part, Catholic commentator George Weigel suggested the publishing of the article reflected poorly on the competence of La Civilta Cattolica and the Vatican Secretariat of State, which vets its articles.
The essay drew support from Prof. Miguel H. Diaz, a U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See under the Obama administration. Writing at Crux, he said the essay rejects “human indifference” that is “politically manifested and religiously justified.”
Anthony Annett, a climate change and sustainable development advisor at the Center for Sustainable Development – Earth Institute at Columbia University, wrote in Commonweal July 28 that the essay showed a light on “the pathologies of a certain brand of American Catholicism.” Its basic point, he contended, was that “a small but vocal and influential segment of American Catholicism is now far more comfortable with the world of right-wing political evangelicalism than with global Catholicism.”
Barinas, Venezuela, Aug 8, 2017 / 03:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The crisis in Venezuela continues to deepen following elections for a Constituent Assembly promoted by President Nicolás Maduro. In its wake, the bishops of the country, supported by the Vatican, have continued to speak out against potential fraud in the elections and to demand an immediate solution.
Bishop José Luis Azuaje Ayala of Barinas, vice president of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference, told CNA that “we are very concerned about the complexity of the situation,” above all “because of the moral degradation that has become present in the country”.
“There is large number of murders that, according to the national prosecution, number 121 deaths. Of these, 25 percent have been murdered by state security agencies and 40 percent by groups of armed civilians sympathetic to the regime. There are more than 1,500 wounded, with more than thousands of detainees, in little more than three months, give us a hellish picture that would make any person or institution worried about the lives of citizens at stake,” he said.
The United Nations Human Rights Office has warned the Venezuelan government over the use of excessive force against protesters.
This disorder and violence is compounded by the shortage of basic products such as food and medicines, which “is the result of dire governmental policies, of improvisation, of wanting to establish a socialism without humanist support, and in its place generating a permanent conflict plagued by corruption and violence,” Bishop Azuaje said.
Bishop Azuaje affirmed that all bishops of the country “hold the hope that every historical process has a beginning and an end” and “that what happens to us is not eternal, but is destroyed as time goes on.”
They hope this despite the fact that “every day we feel a greater repression of the government through different state agencies or feel the same because of fear of certain groups. It is forming anarchy in the national consciousness; that is to say, the government has lost its legitimacy and authority. “
Constituent Assembly and constraints
The prelate, like much of the international community, is convinced of fraud in the electoral process surrounding elections for a national Constituent Assembly. The process, initiated by president Maduro, will reform the constitution, which opposition members claim will allow Maduro to remain in power indefinitely.
The assembly has already removed from office attorney general Luisa Ortega Diaz, who had faulted the Supreme Court for stripping the National Assembly of its powers earlier this year.
Last week, the company Smartmatic, which is in charge of the electronic voting system for the election, confirmed manipulation of electoral results. The bishop said the revelation “did not surprise us.”
“On Sunday, (July) 30 we could see with our eyes the small amount of participation of the people in the elections. In this way a direct, informal, but experiential audit was made,” Bishop Azuaje explained.
“Before six o’clock in the afternoon, which was the official time of the closing of the tables, they sent to speak to one of the observers of the National Electoral Council to announce that there was an immense number of people remaining still in lines to vote, and the vote was extended for another hour. I looked at the school that is close to the diocesan see where there were several polling stations and it looked like a desert. They tried to make people believe that there were voters at that time. There’s nothing more false. It was like the official announcement of fraud. “
After the election it was also revealed that “before and during the electoral process for the Constituent Assembly, many people were coerced and threatened to attend to vote,” the bishop alleged. “There are stories of people who are Catholic, are part of our parishes and almost confess as if it was an unforgivable sin. They feel humiliated because their freedom was restricted, because they were threatened that they would lose their jobs or benefits received in government social programs.”
Dialogue with the Vatican
The representative of the bishops’ conference also addressed the Vatican-facilitated dialogue process that took place in Venezuela between the government and the opposition in 2016.
The bishop denounced the result, which, in his view, was “a feigned dialogue on the part of the government without any result.”
“Whenever this government has been at a disadvantage, it has asked to dialogue; but it is always the same script: dialogue is used to gain time and advance in the hegemonic project of totalitarianism and greater power of domination,” Bishop Azuaje stated.
“The Holy See has always been aware of what is happening in the country. Both Pope Francis and the Secretary of State, Cardinal Parolin, are well informed of the country’s problems. They have always been willing to mediate, and we thank them for that. But experiences teach. The failed dialogue from October to December has taught that governments like this should have something more than goodwill,” he said categorically.
He also explained that the Vatican “has reminded the government that to return to the table, they must meet what was agreed in October of last year, and recorded by Cardinal Parolin in the letter addressed to President Maduro on December 1, 2016.”
This agreement states that the government must commit to “setting an electoral calendar, the release of political prisoners, the opening of a humanitarian channel to let food and medicines enter the country, and return power to the National Assembly.”
In the bishop’s view, the real solution involves a “total change of government through general elections,” perhaps beginning with a “possible transitional national government.”
However, he noted that “we can not forget justice” because “there has been a lot of corruption and violence” and “those responsible for this can not be left uninvestigated.”
Regardless of how the political situation in Venezuela ends, however, Catholics must live and react to the crisis facing the country.
“A Catholic in the circumstances in which we live must be a permanent promoter of the common good, solidarity, and justice,” the bishop advised. “It is not a time of adornment, but of going to the essential, to what gives meaning to life.”
“We know that nothing will be easy when working for the good of the community, but Christians have a fundamental belief that the power of the Holy Spirit not only animates us, but enlightens us in walking the narrow way. It offers us challenges, but it gives us its strength, ” Bishop Azuaje said.
“I want to go to the extreme of saying that a Catholic can not bend to exclusionary policies, much less the voracious corruption that exists in the country, nor raise his hand to strike the dignity of anyone,” he added.
“A committed Catholic should demand justice and work for the people with the sole interest of developing processes that lead to greater human development,” the bishop urged.
Alvaro de Juana contributed to this report.
Vatican City, Aug 8, 2017 / 11:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A congratulatory letter sent from Pope Francis to a same-sex couple regarding the baptism of their children was a standard form letter sent to all who write to the Pope, a Vatican source has confirmed.
The letter was not an endorsement of gay unions, the source told CNA, and the Pope may not have known that the letter was going to a gay couple, since it was addressed to a single individual.
Tony Reis, an LGBT activist, and his partner David Harrad published on Facebook in April that they sent a letter to the Pope, telling him about the baptism of their three adopted children in a church in Curitiba, Brazil.
The couple told AFP that they had received a congratulatory letter in return, signed by the Vatican Secretariat of State, Monsignor Paolo Borgi.
The letter, translated from Portuguese, said that the Holy Father “looks with appreciation” at the letter on the baptism of the children, and “expressed his feelings of esteem…and his wishes for the good spiritual fruits of his ministry as Pastor of the Universal Church.”
“Pope Francis wishes him well, invoking for his family the abundance of divine graces, so that they may live constantly and faithfully the condition of Christians, as good children of God and of the Church, and sends them a propitious Apostolic Blessing, asking them not to stop praying for him,” the letter concludes.
Along with the letter in Portuguese, the couple received a photograph of the Pontiff.
“(T)hat letter is the standard model of courtesy response that the Vatican sends to all the people who write to the Pope, and therefore was not a letter (that was) expressly thinking about them,” the Vatican source told CNA.
The same source said the letter is addressed to one person, “further evidence that the Secretary of State was unaware that it was a homosexual couple” who had written the first letter. The couple has not published the text of the letter they sent to Pope Francis, so it is unknown whether they presented themselves as a same-sex couple.
In 2015, the Vatican clarified a similar incident, when Fr. Ciro Benedittini, the deputy director of the Vatican Press Office, confirmed that a standard form letter sent to a lesbian couple who had written the Pope was not an endorsement of same-sex marriage.
On numerous occasions throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has reaffirmed Church teaching on marriage, voicing concern about what he sees as attacks on marriage and the family.
“(T)he family – as God wants it, composed of a man and a woman for the good of the spouses and also the generation and education of children – is deformed by powerful contrary projects supported by ideological colonization,” the Pope told a group in Rome in September 2015.
That same year, he voiced support for “efforts in defense of the family” in a greeting to pilgrims from Slovakia, on the day before a country-wide vote on whether to legalize same-sex unions.
Speaking during a trip to the Philippines, Pope Francis warned bluntly, “The family is also threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage.”
And in an October 2014 audience, he warned that “the family is being bastardized,” cautioning against a common view in society that “you can call everything family, right?”
“What is being proposed is not marriage, it’s an association. But it’s not marriage! It’s necessary to say these things very clearly and we have to say it!” he stressed, lamenting that there are so many “new forms” of unions which are “totally destructive and limiting the greatness of the love of marriage.”
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