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Trump at prayer breakfast: ‘Faith is central to American life and to liberty.’

February 8, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Feb 8, 2018 / 10:58 am (CNA/EWTN News).- President Donald Trump lauded the importance of faith in American life as a foundation for freedom in his speech at the 66th annual National Prayer Breakfast this morning.

“Faith is central to American life and to liberty,” Trump began, “Our founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence.  Our currency declares, ‘In God We Trust.’ And we place our hands on our hearts as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance and proclaim we are ‘One Nation Under God.’”

During his remarks, the president emphasized the interconnection between freedom of religion and a flourishing society.

“When Americans are able to live by their convictions, to speak openly of their faith, and to teach their children what is right, our families thrive, our communities flourish, and our nation can achieve anything at all.”

Trump also committed America to the defense of religious freedom worldwide saying “We know that millions of people in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and other countries suffer under repressive and brutal regimes. America stands with all people suffering oppression and religious persecution.”

“Our rights are not given to us by man, our rights come from our creator,” Trump said to the estimated 3,000 attendees at this year’s prayer breakfast.

The president said that he has seen God’s grace in the good works of American citizens who serve their communities, such as teachers, police officers, services members, and parents.

He also commended those Americans who responded to the tragedies that befell our country in the past year, particularly those who served others suffering amid hurricanes, forest fires, the Las Vegas shooting, and the opioid epidemic.

Following President Trump’s speech, U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, who was shot during practice for the Congressional Baseball Game last June, spoke about the role of his Catholic faith in his work in politics, his prayer life, and the power of prayer in his recovery.

“When you pray for somebody that you don’t know, they feel it. I felt that prayer, the prayers of so many people that I had never met before,” said Scalise.

Scalise reiterated the president’s comments on the integral relationship between faith and liberty. “If you go to the Jefferson Memorial right now, go read this inscription from Thomas Jefferson, ‘God, who gave us life, gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?’”

Another prayer offered at this morning’s gathering came from Democratic Senator Chris Coons who prayed, “Bless the world with better leaders,” he said, “Who seek your wisdom.”

The U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director, David Beasley, who prayed for sustainable policies to address world hunger, read a passage from Matthew 25, and emphasized that “every human on the face of the earth was made in [God’s] image.”

Republican Senator James Lankford prayed,  “We don’t know everything, but we’re so grateful to know the One who does.”

 

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News Briefs

Could Mississippi expand its abortion ban?

February 6, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Jackson, Miss., Feb 6, 2018 / 04:31 pm (CNA).- An abortion ban is up for debate in Mississippi, where the House of Representatives has passed a bill that would bar most abortions after 15 weeks into pregnancy.
 
House Bill 1510 passed by a Feb. 2 vote of 79-31, with some Democratic support in the Republican-controlled House, the Associated Press reports. The bill allows exceptions for when a woman’s life is in danger or when an unborn child has a severe abnormality.
 
“Women deserve real health care, not some fake health care that involves the destruction of human life and a woman’s health,” said Rep. Andy Gipson, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary B Committee.
 
State records indicate about 200 abortions a year are performed on women 15 to 20 weeks pregnant, he said.
 
Rep. Becky Currie, the bill’s sponsor, said the bill is appropriate because most women discover they are pregnant months before the pregnancy reaches 15 weeks.

According to Felicia Brown-Williams, state director for Planned Parenthood Advocates Southeast, the bill is unconstitutional because the U.S. Supreme Court will not allow abortion bans earlier than the age of fetal viability.
 
Bill opponent Rep. Sonya Williams-Barnes, a Democrat, said the proposal is “just another fancy way of telling a woman what to do with her body and when to do it.”
 
The bill must now pass the Senate.
 
Both Mississippi and North Carolina bar abortion at 20 weeks into pregnancy, measured from a woman’s last menstrual period. Other states start from a date two weeks later.
 
The state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, does not perform abortions as late as 20 weeks and so it did not challenge the current law, clinic owner Diane Derzis told the Associated Press. The clinic does perform abortions three weeks past the proposed ban limit.
 
It is unclear whether such abortion limits will pass scrutiny in federal court.
 
CNA sought comment from the Dioceses of Jackson and Biloxi but a response was not available by deadline.

 

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News Briefs

U.S. bishops kick off National Marriage Week

February 6, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2018 / 03:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- This year’s National Marriage Week USA kicks off on Wednesday, Feb. 7, and will continue until Feb. 14, St. Valentine’s Day.

In a letter to the United States Conference of Catholic … […]

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Germain Grisez had ‘a lively sense of Providence,’ long-time friend says

February 6, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2018 / 09:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A longtime friend of distinguished theologian Germain Grisez will celebrate the scholar’s funeral Tuesday, at St. Anthony Shrine Roman Catholic Church in Emmitsburg, Md. Grisez died Feb. 1, at the age of 88.

Grisez was professor emeritus at the Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, and the author of dozens of books and articles. He was widely regarded as an astute and original ethicist and moral theologian, and a vocal defender of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae.

Father Peter Ryan, SJ, a professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, met Grisez after his brother, Bill Ryan, was taught by the scholar at Georgetown University. The men developed a friendship while Fr. Ryan was studying theology in Rome, and the friendship became a relationship of scholarly collaboration.  

 “The Lord saw fit to give me many years of friendship and close collaboration with Germain,” Ryan said. “It’s been a real blessing.”

When their friendship began, Grisez asked Ryan to review draft chapters of “Living a Christian Life,” the second volume of his landmark work of moral theology, “The Way of the Lord Jesus,” which includes three printed volumes.  The volumes also appear on Grisez’s website along with hundreds of pages of a fourth volume and many of his other works.  

After the second volume was published, Ryan continued to collaborate with Grisez; the pair published articles together and consulted with one another regularly about individual projects.  

In fact, Ryan told CNA that he will continue to work on a theology text—a book on eschatology—that he and Grisez began together. “It will be very much inspired by his thought,” Ryan said.

Ryan said that Grisez’s scholarship was rooted in his deep spirituality.

“He was very interested in having us see that morality is not about extrinsically ‘laying down the law,’ but is rather the implication of loving persons, wanting all that is good for persons, desiring their true fulfillment,” he told CNA.

For Grisez, morality is best understood as “striving for what is truly good for you and others,” Ryan said. “It’s beautiful to live that way—and not always easy!”

Ryan told CNA that Grisez wrote a good deal about personal vocation–that idea that “God has a unique, unfolding plan for everyone’s life.” Following the Lord’s plan means “always seeking God’s Kingdom first, or living out what Grisez calls ‘evangelical life.’”

For motivation to live that way in the face of difficulties, Ryan cited Romans 8:18, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.”
 
“I think Germain really tried to live that,” he said.

Ryan said his “mentor and collaborator,” was “a remarkable man, a very firm believer. He had a strong and unswervingly orthodox faith, which he defended with great lucidity. And he was loyal.  He loved his family and was a faithful friend.”

“I think he had a lively sense of Providence.’

He also, said Ryan, loved to work.

“He was a workhorse. He was 20 years older than me, and he would be working as if he were 20 years younger. I would think, ‘if he can do it, I should be doing it.’”

Ryan said the witness of Grisez’s life helped him know how to preach at his friend’s funeral.

“He was very concerned that we need to be prepared for death, and to live with confidence that the Lord really will destroy sin and death, and that we will be able to live with Him in great joy.  He knew that the definitive Kingdom that God is preparing is real and very much worth devoting one’s entire life to,” he said.

Ryan also told CNA that he would not be starting from a blank slate as he prepared the funeral homily.  Grisez, Ryan said, had some “thoughts sketched out about what it would be good to talk about—and he was thorough!”

 

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