Dublin, Ireland, Oct 3, 2018 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A “small but significant” number of general practitioners in the Republic of Ireland are appealing to the county’s health minister to exempt them from being forced to refer pat… […]
Dublin, Ireland, Oct 3, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of Ireland issued a letter Oct. 1 calling on the government of the Republic of Ireland to do more to address the country’s homelessness crisis. Nearly 115 families became homel… […]
London, England, Oct 2, 2018 / 03:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of England and Wales held their five-yearly ad limina visit to the Holy Father last week, at which Pope Francis encouraged them to live the faith joyfully.
“His message was simple: we are to live the gift of our faith with joy. Joy was his great emphasis. He explained that this joy is rooted firmly in our relationship with Jesus,” read an Oct. 1 statement from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales
“It is a joy of knowing that he is with us; of knowing the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, drawing and guiding us towards the will of God; a joy of knowing our Heavenly Father is waiting for us, longing to hold us in his embrace of loving mercy. This is the joy of the faith by which we are to live. He added that this joy is the source of lasting peace in our hearts and lives, no matter our circumstances.”
The English and Welsh ad limina was held Sept. 24-29.
Pope Francis, they said, “radiates this joy and peace.”
They said that “even in this time of turmoil, the Holy Father is so clearly rooted in God and blessed by God. His peace is secure. His life is serene. We know, because he showed us his heart. It is the heart of a loving father.”
“We spoke with the Holy Father about the difficulties of fulfilling our role as bishops. In turn he reflected on the importance of prayer and preaching in our lives, and of paternal closeness to our priests and people, with care and with firm justice.”
They reported that the pope “spoke of the encouragement he wishes to give to priests today, who can sometimes feel vulnerable in the face of difficult circumstances, in a critical environment. He spoke, movingly, of the wounds inflicted by abuse and neglect, wounds that wreak such harm in the lives of its victims and in the life of the Church. Wherever they are found, these are wounds in the Body of Christ and are painful to touch. He encouraged us, in our pastoral work, never to neglect even the tiny flames of faith that exist in so many communities and people.”
The bishops noted that they were joined on a number of their visits in Rome by two bishops of the Church of England, and on one by a representative of the Conference of Religious in England and Wales.
Ahead of their ad limina, the English and Welsh bishops had issued a statement addressing the recent sexual abuse scandals in the Church, both in the UK and abroad. They also announced an independent review of current policies and procedures for child protection and for handling complaints of sexual abuse.
A recent report by an independent government inquiry into sexual abuse highlighted cases of “appalling sexual abuse,” dating back decades, at two of the most prominent Catholic schools in the country, Ampleforth and Downside. Both of those schools are administered by a religious order.
The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales includes the 22 dioceses across the two countries. Its membership also includes the Military Ordinariate covering the armed forces of the UK, the Apostolic Eparchs of the Ukrainian and Syro-Malabar Churches in Britain, the Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, and the Apostolic Prefect of the Falkland Islands.
Oslo, Norway, Oct 1, 2018 / 05:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Among the 331 candidates for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize are the Copts, the Christian ethnoreligious group of Egypt.
Coptic Orphans, a Christian developmental organization, announced the nomination Sept. 24.
The group said that the Copts have been nominated “for their refusal to retaliate against deadly and ongoing persecution from governments and terrorist groups in Egypt and elsewhere.”
This year, 216 individuals and 115 organizations have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The award’s recipient will be announced Oct. 5.
Copts make up an estimated 10 percent of Egypt’s population, and they face a constant threat of violence.
In 2015, 21 Copts were beheaded by Islamic State in Libya; they have been recognized as martyrs by the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Coptic churches in Egypt are frequently bombed.
In December 2017, ten people were reported dead after terrorists attacked a Coptic church near Cairo. Forty-nine Christians died in church bombings on Palm Sunday in 2017. A Coptic priest was murdered in a knife attack in Cairo in October 2017.
Christians in Egypt have long faced attacks from Islamist extremists, particularly since Egypt’s military ousted president Mohammed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2013.
Monaco, Oct 1, 2018 / 12:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Princess Alexandra of Hanover, a member of the royal family of Monaco, has reportedly been removed from her distant place in the British line of succession after having become a Catholic.
The news was reported in English Sept. 27 by Royal Central, which cited Point de Vue, a French weekly.
Because the British monarch is head of the Church of England, which is the established church, British law bars Catholics from succeeding to the throne.
The Succession to the Crown Act 2013 allowed heirs to the throne to marry Catholics, among other changes. However, the law still stipulates that the acting British sovereign mustn’t be a Catholic. Catholics have been barred from the English throne since the Act of Settlement 1701.
The website of the British monarchy lists only the first 17 persons in the line of succession.
Princess Alexandra, 19, was born in Austria and was baptized as a Lutheran two months after her birth. She is the daughter of Caroline, Princess of Hanover and Prince Ernst August of Hanover. Through her father she is descended from Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Alexandra is the granddaughter of Grace Kelly, who in 1956 became Princess of Monaco when she married Rainier III. So in addition to having been in the British line of succession, Alexandra is 12th in line to the Monegasque throne.
She is a figure skater, and has represented Monaco at international skating competitions.
Along with Alexandra, Lord Nicholas Windsor has also been excluded from the British line of succession for becoming Catholic. Lord Nicholas is a great-grandson of George V, and was baptized in the Church of England. He was received into the Catholic Church in 2001.
Vienna, Austria, Sep 29, 2018 / 08:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has said that in his view, whether the Church could ordain women as deacons remains an “open question.”
The Archbishop of Vienna was speaking Sept. 29 to 1700 delegates from parish councils and other bodies in St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Reflecting that he recently had ordained 14 men to the permanent diaconate, he added, according to local news agency Kathpress, “perhaps one day also female deacons.”
Schönborn said that there had been female deacons in the Church in times past, and that “basically, this [question] is open.”
Pope Francis has spoken often about the importance of the role of women in the Church. In 2016 he appointed a new commission to examine the possibility of ordaining women to the permanent diaconate.
Archbishop Luis Ladaria, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was appointed president of that commission, consisting of 12 members – 6 men and 6 women.
According to sources, drafting of their final report was completed in April. Whether it has yet been submitted to the pope is unknown.
In 2002 the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a report which gave a thorough historical context of the role of the deaconess in the ancient Church.
The commission overwhelmingly concluded that female deacons in the early Church had not been equivalent to male deacons, and had neither a liturgical nor a sacramental function.
Rome, Italy, Sep 27, 2018 / 10:42 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has stressed the need for ongoing formation for couples, before and after marriage, saying that even the basic teachings of the Church “could not be taken for granted.” The pope spoke in an address to participants in a recent course on marriage and family life held in Rome.
Speaking Sept. 27 in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran to an audience of priests, deacons, and lay people, Francis renewed his call for a “permanent catechumenate for the sacrament of marriage,” saying it was essential for couples to receive ongoing formation both before and after their wedding.
The course, which ran Sept. 24-26, was sponsored by the Diocese of Rome and the Roman Rota, the Church’s highest appellate court which handles marriage nullity cases.
Francis has previously insisted on the need for better, longer, more comprehensive instruction for couples in his annual addresses to the Rota.
“The greater effectiveness of pastoral care is realized where the accompaniment does not end with the celebration of the wedding, but escorts them at least for the first years of married life” the pope said.
Francis told the attendees that marriage was “a vast, complex and delicate apostolic field” which required the full energy and enthusiasm of the Church.
Praising the “courageous” witness of St. John Paul II on the family in the modern world, Francis said he sought to build upon the legacy of his “farsighted” predecessors through his reform of canon law in marriage nullity cases and in the pastoral application of his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia. The Pope said the aim of both of these efforts was to address the “urgent” need for comprehensive marriage formation.
“Marriage is not just a ‘social’ event, but a true sacrament that involves an adequate preparation and a conscious celebration,” the pope said. “The marriage bond, in fact, requires an engaged choice on the part of the engaged couple, which focuses on the will to build together something that must never be betrayed or abandoned.”
The work of marriage preparation is, according to the pope, best achieved through joint efforts by priests and married couples, though he stressed the importance and pre-eminence of the role of the parish priest.
“Priests, especially parish priests, are the first interlocutors of young people who wish to form a new family and get married in the sacrament of marriage. The accompaniment of the ordained minister will help the newlyweds to understand that marriage between a man and a woman is a sign of the spousal union between Christ and the Church, making them aware of the profound meaning of the step they are about to make.”
The pope’s comments were heard by some as a corrective to recent remarks by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. In July, Cardinal Farrell said that “priests are not the best people to train others for marriage” and that “they have no credibility.”
Pope Francis emphasised that the work of preparing couples for marriage needed to include basic formation in the faith, noting that in many cases marriages broke down not because of any inherent problem with the couple, but simply because they lacked the depth of faith needed to live the sacrament fully.
“So many times the ultimate root of the problems that come to light after the celebration of the sacrament of marriage is to be found not only in a hidden and remote immaturity suddenly exploded, but above all in the weakness of the Christian faith” Francis told the attendees.
“The more the journey of preparation is deepened and extended in time, the sooner the couples will learn to correspond to the grace and strength of God and will also develop the “antibodies” to face the inevitable moments of difficulty and fatigue of married and family life.”
The pope noted that those preparing couples for marriage could make no assumptions about the level of formation in the faith couples might have. Many, he said, “have remained stuck to some elementary notion of the catechism of the first Communion and, if all goes well, of Confirmation.” Because of this “it is essential to resume the catechesis of Christian initiation to the faith, whose contents are not to be taken for granted or as if they were already acquired by the engaged couple.”
Addressing these common gaps in couples’ understanding of the faith would, Francis explained, both help them understand the faith and instil “a filial sense of the Church.”
Above all, the pope stressed, priests and lay formators alike should welcome the opportunity to form couples over a period of years, not weeks, calling it an essential expression of the Church’s maternal concern.
“It is an experience of joyful motherhood, when newlyweds are the object of the attentive care of the Church which, in the footsteps of her Master, is a caring mother who does not abandon, does not discard, but approaches with tenderness, embraces and encourages.”
The pope also discussed the difficulties faced by couples whose unions did break down, noting that the first priority should be to revive their faith and help them “rediscover the grace of the sacrament,” though in some cases the Church needed offer equal support through the nullity process which was also pointed toward the salus animarum.
Francis finished by noting that he was pleased to see that his reforms of the nullity process had been widely adopted into practice. These, he said, were meant as an aid to bishops and judicial vicars in dioceses whose work in tribunals is to seek the truth and “to comfort the peace of consciences, especially the poorest and far from our ecclesial communities.”
London, England, Sep 26, 2018 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- The bishops of England and Wales have released a statement addressing the recent sexual abuse scandals in the Church, both in the UK and abroad. They also announced an independent review of current polic… […]
Kyiv, Ukraine, Sep 26, 2018 / 11:45 am (CNA).- The Ukrainian Orthodox Church seems on the verge of achieving independent status, a development straining ties between the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow.
Earlier this month, Ecumenical Patriarch… […]
Fulda, Germany, Sep 25, 2018 / 04:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, chairman of the German bishops’ conference, personally apologized Tuesday for “failure and pain” following an extensive report that German clergy had abused thousands of children between 1946 and 2014.
“For too long in the church we have looked away, denied, covered up and didn’t want it to be true,” said Cardinal Marx at a news conference in Fulda, as reported by Reuters. “For all the failure, pain and suffering, I must apologize as the chairman of the Bishops’ Conference as well as personally.”
“Those who are guilty must be punished,” he added.
The report detailing the abuse in Germany was leaked to the German press Sept. 12.
The report, commissioned by the German bishops in 2014 and officially released Sept. 25, found allegations against 1,670 German clerics, or “4.4 percent of all clerics from 1946 to 2014 whose personnel records and other documents were reviewed in the dioceses.” Nearly 63 percent of the 3,677 alleged victims were male.
According to the German bishops’ conference, the aim of the study, in which all 27 dioceses of Germany took part, was “to obtain more clarity and transparency about this dark side in our church, not only for the sake of those affected, but also in order to be able to see the misdemeanours for ourselves and do everything possible to ensure that they do not repeat themselves.”
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