News Briefs

Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly calls Knights of Columbus to uphold dignity of life

August 2, 2022 Catholic News Agency 2
Patrick Kelly, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, delivers his Supreme Knight’s Report during the organization’s 139th Annual Convention, Aug. 3, 2021. Credit: Knights of Columbus/screenshot. / null

Nashville, Tenn., Aug 2, 2022 / 18:38 pm (CNA).

Patrick Kelly, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, said in his annual report on Tuesday that the organization is doubling down on its efforts to protect life from conception to natural death as part of its dedication to serving those on the most outer margins of society. 

Noting that there are many calls for the Knights’ support, Kelly said that “one opportunity looms especially large,” identifying it as ending abortion.

Knights for life

Kelly, who gave his speech in at the organization’s national convention at Nashville, Tennessee’s Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center Aug. 2, spent a significant portion of his speech calling the Knights to fight for the unborn, especially following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

Kelly praised the March for Life that takes place in Washington D.C. each year and in cities across the nation, calling for respect for the unborn. “Roe is overturned but we have more work to do,” he said. “We will continue to march for life until abortion is unthinkable.”

Another way the Knights are standing up for the unborn is through its ultrasound initiative, through which they have donated 1,566 ultrasounds to pro-life pregnancy centers, Kelly said. 

Kelly noted that the end of Roe doesn’t equate the end of abortion. Many states will expand protections of the life-ending procedure, he said. “They will double down on a culture of death,” he said. “So we must push forward with a message of life.”

“Let’s take up the cause in Springfield and Sacramento. Let’s oppose abortion in places like Albany, while supporting pro-life laws in Austin and Atlanta. And while we push for change in places like Washington state, let’s keep up the pressure on Washington D.C.,” he said.

One of the ways to engage in the fight for legislative protections for life is to support pro-life marches, he said. Kelly emphasized that the March for Life in Washington D.C. is a “major priority” for the Knights. 

In addition to changing the law, he said, hearts and minds must also be changed. The Knights can play a role in pointing pregnant mothers in fear toward life, he said. 

“The best thing we can do is redouble our support for pregnancy resource centers,” he added.

Those centers help mothers choose life each day and support new parents in giving their children a better life, he said.

“We must ensure that pregnancy resource centers have everything they need,” he said. “To start, we’ll place even more ultrasound machines, so more mothers can see their unborn children.”

Kelly then took aim at “one of the latest lies” which claims that pro-lifers don’t care about the well-being of children after their birth. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said, adding that the Knights have partnered with pro-life pregnancy centers to provide many resources, but that “now is the time to do even more.”

Doing more includes the Knights’ new initiative Aid and Support After Pregnancy, he said, in which the Supreme Council encourages local councils to increase donations to pro-life pregnancy centers. ASAP entails a 20% donation match from the Supreme Council.

Protecting families and religious freedom through faith

Kelly said that there are other challenges that need to be addressed in society. “We see it in the denial of human dignity. We see it in the blatant attempts to redefine the human person — and to push this radical agenda on our children,” he said. Kelly also said that religious freedom is at risk.

The Knights are called to trust in God and step into the breach to face these challenges head on, he said. Being a Knight “means drawing closer to the person of Jesus Christ, our King.”

Kelly said that the Knights have pledged $1 million to the U.S. bishops’ National Eucharistic Revival. Kelly added that evangelization is “one of my top priorities,” and there is a “special urgency” for it today.

Noting a crisis of faith in the Church, Kelly announced a discipleship and evangelization initiative that was piloted in Tennessee. Kelly told CNA Sunday that the initiative includes training for councils on how to evangelize, speak about the faith, and bring people in. 

Outreach to a new demographic

Kelly said the Knights are taking strides to engage more Hispanics in the organization. 

There are already many Hispanic Knights, he said, but he believes the Knights should have many more. The Knights are “intentionally cultivating” Latino leaders within the organization in order to achieve this goal, he said. 

Ukraine

Concluding his speech with the Knights’ efforts in Ukraine, Kelly said that the Knights have over 19,000 members within the Eastern European country.

He noted that “many of our brother knights are on the frontlines even now.” 

At least two members of the Knights have died in battle: Petro Popovych of Council 15804 in Kolomiya, and Oleh Vorobiov of Council 17651 in Lviv.

“We pray for their families. We commend their souls to the Lord, “ Kelly said. 

Kelly said that through the order’s Ukraine Solidarity Fund, it has raised almost $19 million in relief efforts. The Knights have also set up K of C Charity Convoys which ship humanitarian aid from Poland to Ukraine, he said. 

Crediting the efforts of the Knights in Poland, the order has also set up K of C Mercy Centers which provide both material and spiritual support, Kelly said. Kelly visited Ukraine and said that “I will always remember what I saw. And I will never forget the courage I saw in Ukrainian Knights.”

In closing, Kelly noted that “the days ahead will be difficult.” However, he encouraged all to praise God and ask him for help as Blessed Michael McGivney did. 

“And the Lord who has brought us this far will carry us further still,” he said. “As together we step into the breach. Vivat Iesus!”

Shortly before Kelly’s speech, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus, read a July 23 letter sent from Cardinal Pietro Parolin on behalf of Pope Francis.

The letter addressed to Kelly praised the Knights’ efforts to foster Eucharistic adoration, their defense of marriage and family, their upholding of the dignity of human life, and their efforts in support of Ukraine and of persecuted Christians in Africa and the Middle East.

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Cardinal Müller: ‘The German Synodal Way was over before it even started’

August 2, 2022 Catholic News Agency 2
Cardinal Gerhard Müller at a penance service in St. Peter’s Basilica on March 29, 2019. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.

Rome, Italy, Aug 2, 2022 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has sharply criticized the Synodal Way in Germany. 

In an interview with EWTN Vatican / CNA Deutsch, the 74-year-old cardinal said that the Synodal Way, declared a “reform process” by its initiators, is “over” and was on an “anti-Catholic, wrong track.”

The Holy See issued a statement June 21 noting that the Synodal Way was “not authorized” to “oblige the bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of governance and new orientations of doctrine and morals.” It was “necessary” to clarify this in order to “safeguard the freedom of the people of God and the exercise of the episcopal ministry.”

The Synodal Presidium — consisting of the German Bishops’ Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) — then accused the Vatican of a lack of willingness to communicate. It stated: “Unfortunately, the synodal presidium has not been invited to a conversation until today. That this direct communication does not take place so far, we regret irritated. Synodal church goes after our understanding differently! This also applies to the way of today’s communication, which astonishes us. It does not testify to a good style of communication within the Church when statements are published that are not signed by name.”

Cardinal Müller called these statements “intolerable,” and added that this “really has nothing to do with synodality and collegiality, nor with respect for the episcopal office.” He said the Holy See’s statement expressed nothing but the “simple principle of Catholic ecclesiology.”

When asked whether the Synodal Way in Germany was now at an end after the declaration from Rome, as the Münster canon lawyer Thomas Schüller wrote on Twitter, Cardinal Müller replied: “I think the Synodal Way was doomed from the start, it’s just that its initiators haven’t realized it yet.”

Müller said that the Synodal Way in Germany has nothing to do with “synodality,” nor with “way”. Rather, the construct is reminiscent of a “political organization” that considers itself the “vanguard of the universal Church.”

The cardinal said: “Revelation is entrusted to the Church for faithful preservation, and not, as the Synodal Way meant at the beginning, that this virtually randomly assembled body somehow has the right and authority to override the Church’s sacramental constitution and reinterpret Revelation according to its meaning.”

It was the “birth defect of this body” to set itself up as a vanguard of the Church, he said. 

“What is being pursued here is nothing other than division,” Cardinal Müller lamented. “It is a so-called reform with a crowbar.”

Among supporters of the Synodal Way there was an “intransigence,” the cardinal said, resulting from “a lack of knowledge of Catholic ecclesiology.”

Müller reflected on the president of the ZdK, Irme Stetter-Karp, who had emphasized in an article for the Hamburg weekly “Die Zeit” that it should be “ensured that the medical intervention of an abortion is made possible across the board.” 

Cardinal Müller said, “Whoever wants to guarantee these crimes, area-wide for the entire population, cannot pose as a reformer of the Church.”

“After all, the Church is not the object of our reform. The Church is founded by Christ, cannot be reformed, is unsurpassable; only we can go the way and must go the way of repentance and renewal,” he added. “We must reform and renew ourselves in Jesus Christ and thus give the answer to the challenges of today.”

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