A shopping mall is destroyed after hurricane Otis hit Acapulco on Oct. 25, 2023 in Acapulco, Mexico. Otis made landfall through the coast of Acapulco around midnight of Oct. 25 as a category 5 storm. / Credit: Oscar Guerrero Ramirez/Getty Image
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U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C. / Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 26, 2023 / 17:20 pm (CNA).
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The southern border town of Qalaia, Lebanon. / Credit: Al-Qulaya Facebook page
ACI MENA, Oct 26, 2023 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
The scene of tension is not new to the villages of Lebanon’s southern border, especially the Christian ones. The towns that … […]
Bishop Robert Barron speaks to EWTN’s Colm Flynn about evangelizing the culture today. October 2023. / Credit: Word on Fire
Vatican City, Oct 26, 2023 / 14:30 pm (CNA).
Bishop Robert Barron said he regrets the Catholic Church’s “hand-wringing” in recent decades over how to share the Christian message with a secular culture.
In an exclusive interview with EWTN News this week, the 63-year-old bishop of Winona-Rochester said he wants to see the Church today embrace sharing the Gospel with the same gusto and confidence as when Sts. Peter and Paul evangelized Rome.
“Much of my adult life — and I say this with regret — the Church has been in a kind of hand-wringing mode of, ‘Well, what do we know, and who are we to tell you? And we’re here, really, to learn more from you.’ Come on!” Barron said during an interview at the North American College in Rome.
“Peter and Paul came to this town a long time ago and they weren’t here just to listen to Roman culture,” the bishop continued. “They were here with a message: ‘euangelion,’ there’s good news, and it’s good news that will change the world. And in fact it worked.”
“The fact that over there [St. Peter’s Basilica], Peter lies buried to this day, but dominating this once imperial capital is the cross of Jesus. That didn’t come welling up from Roman culture. That came from a message that these [apostles] brought. We should do our work with the same energy and the same panache and the same confidence,” Barron encouraged.
Barron, founder of the Word on Fire media apostolate, is in Rome to participate in the Oct. 4–29 session of the Synod on Synodality.
He said despite the apparent decline in faith and rise in what have been described as spiritual “nones” — people with no belief whatsoever — he still has hope in Christ and in the message of the Catholic Church.
“Being here in Rome with the synod, every day, people from all corners of the world — well, that means there’s something in Catholicism that is still very compelling to people, and that when it’s laid out in a way that’s intellectually satisfying and aesthetically pleasing and morally compelling, they respond to it,” he argued.
The bishop said he does not believe the “new atheist nonsense” will hold people’s hearts and minds in the long run.
“And the Church?” Barron added. “I look out at the city of Rome here: [The Church has] been around for a long time and we’ve been through a lot worse than we’re going through right now. So we will endure.”
“So Christ gives me hope and the Holy Spirit gives me hope,” he said. “We’ve been through a lot worse and there’s still nothing better on the table. There’s no fresher fish on the market than Christianity. It’s still the most beautiful, compelling message that we’ve got.”
The popular speaker and writer also said he does not think disagreements in the Church are worse than they were in the ’60s, ’70s, or ’80s.
People are not only critical of Pope Francis, he said, noting that Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were also attacked during their papacies, though without social media so it may not have been as much on people’s radars.
Barron also attended the Synod of Bishops on young people in October 2018.
Practically speaking, he said, the synodal assembly this month is more comfortable than the youth synod.
Prior synods were held in the Vatican’s New Synod Hall, which has theater-like seating. Barron described it as “a somewhat claustrophobic room” and like sitting in “the middle seat on an airplane.”
He added that the larger space of the Paul VI Hall, with tables and chairs, as well as wearing suits instead of cassocks every day, is also “more comfortable, more humane … easier to get through.”
“The best part of [the Synod on Synodality]” is being with Catholics from all over the world, he said.
He recalled the “cacophonous sound” of hundreds of people speaking in different languages at the three-day retreat held ahead of the synodal assembly in a town outside Rome.
“It was the universality of the Church in all of us,” he said, “a kind of cacophonous wonder. There’s no other group or society in the world, I don’t think, that could muster that kind of international universality, and that is an extraordinary thing.”
Watch EWTN’s full interview with Bishop Barron below.
Displaced Palestinians who fled their houses amid Israeli strikes wait at a food distribution point as they shelter in tents set up in a United Nations-run center following Israel’s call for more than 1 million civilians in northern Gaza to move south, in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. / Credit: MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images
CNA Staff, Oct 26, 2023 / 14:10 pm (CNA).
European Union leaders are set to call for the establishment of “humanitarian corridors and pauses” to transport aid to civilians into the Gaza Strip as the war between Israel and Hamas enters its third week.
The European Council “expresses its gravest concern for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and calls for continued, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access and aid to reach those in need,” reads the text of a resolution from the EU, set to be presented at a leadership summit in Brussels on Thursday, as reported by Reuters and multiple other media outlets.
The council statement said it was calling for aid access “through all necessary measures including humanitarian corridors and pauses.”
“The European Union will work closely with partners in the region to protect civilians, provide assistance, and facilitate access to food, water, medical care, fuel, and shelter, ensuring that such assistance is not abused by terrorist organizations,” the statement said.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 6,500 people in Gaza and wounded more than 17,400, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry reported on Thursday; meanwhile, Israeli authorities say more than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel since Hamas’ initial Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Some humanitarian aid has been allowed into Gaza since the start of the war, but the widespread closure of checkpoints into the area has brought about a health crisis for civilians in the region, particularly those who have serious medical conditions, an aid group told CNA recently.
Aid groups such as Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Aid to the Church in Need, Caritas International, and World Central Kitchen are working to provide families with assistance in the Holy Land and Palestine. CRS has spoken out in favor of “immediate humanitarian access” to the Gaza Strip.
Religious leaders in Jerusalem have likewise called for aid to be allowed into the stricken region, with Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant leaders pleading with Israeli leaders to “allow humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza so that the thousands of innocent civilians may receive medical treatment and basic supplies.”
Pope Francis first addressed the war in Israel and Palestine on Oct. 8, declaring that “terrorism and war do not bring any solution but only death and suffering for many innocent people.”
The pontiff has called for a worldwide day of prayer and fasting on Friday, Oct. 27.
Catherine Clifford, a professor at St. Paul University in Ottawa, and Archbishop Stanisław Gadecki of Poland at the Synod on Synodality’s Oct. 26, 2023, press briefing. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News
Vatican City, Oct 26, 2023 / 13:35 pm (CNA).
A Polish archbishop said Thursday one difficulty of synodality lies in distinguishing pastoral practice — which can be adapted to different cultural circumstances — from Church doctrine.
“In doctrine, the Church cannot bring to it the different viewpoints of those coming from the other continents or other parts of the world. Doctrine has to be ‘catholic’ [universal] and the same for everyone,” Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan said at a press briefing for the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 26.
This is in contrast, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference said, to “different pastoral expressions” of doctrine as appear in different cultures, languages, and historical situations.
Gadecki is one of three Polish bishops participating in the Vatican’s Oct. 4–29 assembly of the Synod of Bishops on synodality.
He said the method of this synod brings both differences and agreements, and participants are not hiding the challenges.
“It would be useless to get together for a month and hide difficulties that exist in different situations or in connection with different issues that require an answer,” he said.
On pastoral practice versus doctrine, Gadecki underlined that “countries have their own histories and they must also be in tune with that history” — including negative responses to the Church’s actions.
He said different pastoral expressions do not influence Christian doctrine, the magisterium, holy Scripture, and sacred tradition.
“As far as the essential things are concerned, there cannot be a development of Christian doctrine, but in the things that are not essential, there can always be a change as long as that change is a true development,” he said, referencing the theological concept of the development of doctrine.
A Romanian Orthodox bishop, who is taking part in the synod as a fraternal delegate, a participant without a vote, said one challenge in the Orthodox understanding of synodality is in reaching a consensus among bishops.
“In the Orthodox church, it’s not the majority that ‘decides’ as we often see in synodal processes,” Metropolitan Iosef of Western and Southern Europe said.
The good thing about synodality, he added, “is you’re never alone when you make decisions.”
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