St. Cloud, Minn., Mar 5, 2018 / 04:00 pm (ACI Prensa).- The Diocese of St. Cloud has announced that it will declare bankruptcy as it faces 74 civil claims alleging the sexual abuse of minors.
St. Cloud is the fourth diocese in Minnesota to declare ban… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 5, 2018 / 10:37 am (CNA).- Since the beginning of the debate on whether chapter eight of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia permits the divorced and civilly married to receive Holy Communion, Cardinal Donald Wuerl has lamented that the exhortation has been co-opted by that single issue and that, really, the Holy Father’s concern is much broader than that debate suggests.
Some people, though, have suggested that the synods and Amoris Laetitia were simply a cover to change the practice of not giving Holy Communion to the divorced and civilly married. In a newly-released pastoral plan for the Archdiocese of Washington, Cardinal Wuerl has taken a decided step away from such a cynical view and captured the passion of the Pope Francis’ insistence that because we are all in need of it, we must also go out and give God’s mercy and truth to those who do not know it, who are not living it, and who are desperate to receive it.
Sharing in the Joy of Love in Marriage and Family, the Archdiocese of Washington’s pastoral plan, focuses the implementation of the exhortation not on questions of sacramental doctrine and practice, since these truths have been definitively taught and Church teaching has not changed.
Rather, echoing a cornerstone in the thought of Pope Francis, Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, Wuerl’s plan begins with the principle that “the desire to love and to be loved is a deep, enduring part of our human experience.” This desire is part of God’s providential care for us and his plan for marriage. Echoing a reflection on our need for God that Joseph Ratzinger once made in his “Introduction to Christianity,” Cardinal Wuerl notes that the joy of love in this life “gives us an invitation to experience Christian hope in the love of God that never ends.”
It’s somewhat surprising that it was thought necessary to hold two synods and to issue an apostolic exhortation to encourage priests and parish leaders to reach out to people living in irregular situations. In the United States I’ve certainly not noticed priests turning people away who struggle to live the Christian life. If anything, I think many priests are loathe to challenge people to strive for holiness and virtue by living in the grace of Jesus Christ. Perhaps that’s another story about our own weaknesses as priests and pastors.
But in a culture given over to secularism, materialism, and individualism, it’s indisputable that many people do not experience marriage as a force of life-giving joy. Moreover, in at least two generations, the majority of Catholics have not been catechized or given the teaching of the Church in a meaningful way. There are many reasons for that, but the question before us is what to do with those who live in irregular situations.
There are two extreme responses we could make to persons who aren’t living in the truth of Christ’s teaching about marriage. We could simply ignore the situation and let them continue on as they have been. Some may be living with a sort of resentment of the Church’s teaching, and some may be ignoring it (and receiving Holy Communion in the meantime). Or we could, upon learning of people’s sins and struggles, simply exhort them to live in a way consistent with Church teaching (and in those cases to refrain from Holy Communion until they do). Neither of these solutions seem aligned with a pastoral sensibility. The former is passively laxist and the latter will likely have no effect on persons unaccustomed to receiving difficult truths from ecclesial authority.
Despite the ambiguity of various passages in chapter eight of Amoris Laetitia, I think that the Holy Father asks us to choose neither of these paths. In his pastoral plan for the archdiocese of Washington, Cardinal Wuerl avoids the question of Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly married, even though he repeatedly asserts the need for the formation of conscience, and explains that personal judgement does not supersede the objective moral order. Rather, noting that “each one of us is in an ‘irregular situation’ when it comes to our relationship with the true God,” the cardinal reminds his priests and pastoral leaders that the “Church offers the love and mercy of God as the sure path to fulfill the human desire for love, walks with those who bear and try to overcome the trials and difficulties that too often mark marriage and family as they do life in general.”
The thrust of the pastoral plan and the majority of the text, therefore, focuses on meeting people where they are and finding ways that priests, parish staff, and youth leaders can work to form the consciences of the faithful in order to invite those who are struggling in marriage and irregular relationships to come to know the mercy, love, and liberating truth that Jesus Christ offers.
Encouraging individual meetings between priest and parishioner, developing comprehensive formation in marriage with the assistance of mentor couples, offering retreats for couples, and teaching families to pray together are just some of the suggestions the pastoral plan makes.
Cardinal Wuerl’s plan focuses not specifically on couples in irregular situations but on all marriages. That’s why it focuses on preparing youth to give and to love, on developing a culture supporting the self-offering of marriage, on formation during the engagement period, and on supporting families in unique situations such as those with children who have special needs or those families with immigrant members.
After so much polarization, we finally now have a local implementation of Amoris Laeitia that sees the larger picture of Pope Francis’ challenge and vision. It’s a plan that doesn’t get bogged down in a question that was neither asked nor answered in the exhortation: whether divorced and civilly remarried can receive Holy Communion. That question was already answered by Pope St. John Paul II in his 1983 exhortation on the family Familiaris Consortio and has been reaffirmed repeatedly by the Holy See.
Some will no doubt be disappointed that Cardinal Wuerl did not repeat the Church’s teaching on the matter. Yet, it seems to me that to do so would be to continue the tired arguments of the last few years to the detriment of a vision that seeks to encounter the faithful and to help them not only to know the doctrines of our faith but to experience the liberating truth of what we believe.
The cardinal understands that “many adult Catholics do not know the fullness of what the Church teaches and have never experienced it lived out. Some know Church teaching, but citing the primacy of individual conscience (which is sometimes a misinformed conscience), they simply pick and choose which teachings they will practice or not follow.” He is also well aware of the pressures Catholics face from the culture not to take seriously the demands of Christ and his Gospel.
All of this being the case, Cardinal Wuerl’s pastoral plan recognizes that many people have great difficulty in grasping the positive value of the Church’s teaching or have difficulty in embracing it fully. Nevertheless, he is clear: “The underlying moral principle which should inform both that personal discernment and the priest’s ministry is that a person whose situation in life is objectively contrary to moral teaching can still love and grow in the faith, he or she can still take steps in the right direction and benefit from God’s mercy and grace while receiving assistance from the Church.”
We are not permitted to claim that any situation in this life is irredeemable or that any person is lost until they die in a state of mortal sin (which is something that only God can know definitively). So we have to believe that listening to, forgiving, loving, teaching, and accompanying those who struggle can by God’s grace initiate positives steps that move them in the right direction toward a normalized relationship with God: to reconcile with loved ones, to live chastely when necessary, and to live with integrity as children of God.
Some may insist that Cardinal Wuerl leaves too much to personal judgment and conscience. I point out that his pastoral plan clearly states that “prudential judgments of individuals about their own situation do not set aside the objective moral order.” Additionally, it states, “In Catholic pastoral ministry there is an interaction of objective moral directives and the effort to live them according to one’s ability to grasp them and thus make prudential judgments.”
While it is true that every person is bound to follow his or her conscience, the conscience must be well-formed. That people often act because their conscience is either ignorant of or deadened to the divine law does not lessen our responsibility not only to teach but also to evangelize and to accompany. Indeed, the mere statement of truth is not the goal of a disciple’s mission but rather the liberation and conversion of those caught in sorrow, addiction, and sin is.
Denver, Colo., Mar 4, 2018 / 04:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Colorado bishops have released a statement of solidarity with a Mennonite investigator who has been imprisoned for failing to testify in a death penalty case due to her religious beliefs.
“… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 3, 2018 / 03:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archdiocese of Washington has released a pastoral plan aiming to implement Amoris Laetitia within the archdiocese.
Amoris Laetitia is the post-synodal apostolic exhortation published by Pop… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 2, 2018 / 07:20 pm (CNA).- After the Supreme Court rejected the idea that detained immigrants are entitled to periodic bond hearings, a Catholic immigration lawyer warned that detention centers take a toll on those who spend long periods of time there.
“I was just recently in a facility in South Texas where they were detaining children and families and it was an old Walmart that had been converted into a jail like facility,” said Michelle Saenz-Rodriguez, who serves on the Dallas bishop’s Immigration Task Force.
The detention facility has a “bathroom in the middle of the room. You don’t have any privacy, which really makes people feel that…they don’t have any dignity,” Saenz-Rodriguez told CNA.
“A lot of people are depressed…they have suffered violence in their country and now they really need treatment,” she continued.
On Feb. 27, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that periodic bond hearings are not required for detained immigrants who face possible deportation.
The class-action lawsuit, Jennings vs. Rodriguez, was brought by a collection of immigrants who have been in custody for long periods of time. It includes both immigrants who are claiming asylum and those who were detained on charges of committing a crime.
A lower court had ruled that bond hearings must be held every six months in cases where an immigrant is being detained.
Saenz-Rodriguez, a Catholic immigration lawyer who has worked with the detained for 27 years, said immigrants often refer to these detainment centers as the “hieleras” or “refrigerators” due to the constant, uncomfortably cold temperature inside.
She said that she often sees cases in which the detention time is 14-15 months or more.
“I have a client right now…who had applied for asylum in the United States and was actually deported…He was sent back to Honduras and when he was in Honduras they [a gang] tried to kill him and he was badly, badly beaten. So he makes his way back to America and he is detained at entry…not entitled to any type of bond,” said Saenz-Rodriguez. “It took us, I want to say, 16 months to get his case heard and ultimately he was granted protection.”
“Unfortunately, right now it is a broken system that is overburdened and the immigration judges, even though they want to hear cases, there is just not enough human manpower to get it done,” she said.
She added that the immigrants in question often “turn themselves in. They don’t sneak across the border. They literally walk up to the bridge or the officer and say ‘I’m here seeking protection,’ so it is not like they are catching them.”
“I mean there is a certain extent of human trafficking where you’ll see a smuggler trying to bring people across, but the vast majority of people who have asked for asylum are turning themselves in when they get to the border.”
Dr. Christopher Wolfe, a University of Dallas politics professor specializing in Constitutional Law and Catholic Social Teaching, said that “the question of whether this issue involves an injustice or not is not the same as whether the policy is unconstitutional or not. Those are two different questions.”
“I would doubt that there is Constitutional grounds for requiring bail hearings for detained immigrants. And, therefore, it seems best to me that those who think such a policy is necessary should go to Congress to get legislation for it,” he told CNA.
Saenz-Rodriguez said that she has been encouraged by Dallas Bishop Edward Burns’ involvement in seeking to serve the immigrant community in his diocese.
“He’s been out there and he immediately formed a task force of all the different sectors of the community trying to say, ‘How do we make people understand that this should not be a polarizing issue? This needs to be a humanitarian issue.’”
Denver, Colo., Mar 2, 2018 / 02:35 pm (CNA).- Pro-life Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois faces a primary challenger backed by pro-abortion rights groups, putting a focus on the priorities of the Democratic Party and its sympathizers.
“I think my pro-life beliefs fit in perfectly with standing up for the little guy, the little girl, those who are most vulnerable among us. I think that fits in with the Democratic Party,” Lipinski told CNA March 1.
“It used to be, if you go back 40 years ago, there was not at all a partisan split between the parties on being pro-life. There were pro-life Democrats and pro-life Republicans and there were Democrats and Republicans on the other side,” he said. “Just as 40 years ago it made sense for Democrats to be pro-life, it still makes sense today.”
The pro-abortion rights groups EMILY’s List, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood have backed Lipinski’s primary challenger, Emily Newman, who has been endorsed by several other Democratic members of Congress ahead of the March 20 primary election in a heavily Democratic Chicago-area district. The LGBT activist group Human Rights Campaign has also backed Newman.
Some Democrats say NARAL’s activism is a reason Lipinski has not yet been endorsed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is in charge of helping Democratic congressional candidates.
NARAL’s chief financial officer, Steven Kravitz, is treasurer of an anti-Lipinski political action committee, Citizens for a Better Illinois, which in the last month has spent over $400,000 to oppose Lipinski, Politico reports.
Newman’s camp had its own explanation.
“Democratic Party institutions’ reticence(sic) to endorse Rep. Lipinski is understandable — Rep. Lipinski is a Democrat in name only,” said Newman’s campaign manager Erik Wallenius, according to Politico.
Lipinski, however, defended his party affiliation.
“I’m a Democrat because I think there are times when the government needs to stand up for those who are defenseless, those who need help,” Lipinski said, citing the needs of senior citizens on Medicare or Social Security.
Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, said the congressman’s opponents within the party had engaged in a “misinformation campaign” trying to link him to conservative causes.
“When you look at his record, he’s not a conservative,” Day told CNA. “He’s been representing his district and the Democrats in his district quite well. Labor, education, environment—he has a 90-something percent lifetime record in those areas.”
“The traditional Democratic Party supported labor, supported education, supported working families,” she said. “Now I think the abortion lobby is trying to reinvent what it means to be a Democrat.”
Day stressed the importance of Lipinski’s role as co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.
“He’s been a huge voice for the 21 million pro-life Democrats who see him as our leader,” Day said. “He’s the one we can count on. He’s fighting there for us in Congress in trying to push the Democratic Party to be more understanding and supportive of our point of view.”
“His voice there is hugely important in making sure the life issue continues to be bipartisan,” she said, warning that the elimination of pro-life Democrats in Congress would harm the pro-life movement as a whole.
In the wake of claims Planned Parenthood violated laws against selling fetal tissue for profit, in 2015 Lipinski voted to defund the organization and transfer its funding to over 13,500 other health clinics–legislation which failed to pass the Senate. He co-sponsored a bill to add the criminal penalty of murder to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.
In 2010, he was one of the few Democrats to vote against the Affordable Health Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, and later backed legislation intended to address concerns about abortion funding and religious freedom violations enabled by the initial legislation and President Barack Obama’s related executive order.
Lipinski attributed his primary challenge to an effort among some Democratic Party activists to create a “Tea Party of the Left.”
“They want to have a party that is pure as they define that, and so I think that’s a big reason for that (primary challenge) right now,” he said, warning that efforts to narrow the party would harm its prospects for electoral success.
“Democrats need to be a ‘big tent’ party,” he said.
“I think it’s terrible for the party at this time when we’ve lost over 1,000 seats nationwide since 2010. At the 2014 election, Democrats in the House were at our lowest point since the Great Depression when Herbert Hoover was president. We’ve come up a little bit since then but we still have a big deficit to make up.”
Day also thought campaigns against pro-life Democratic officeholders would harm the political prospects of Democrats, about 30 percent of whom self-describe as pro-life.
“I really believe the Democratic Party is listening to the wrong people right now. Abortion on demand, taxpayer funding, pushing pro-lifers out of the party is not going to be a strategy that’s going to help us build,” she said. “This doesn’t feel like a good long-term strategy to be not backing a loyal Democrat.”
Lipinski said that pro-life Democrats who stand for election face a tough fight.
“The issue is more on the outside than inside the party,” he said. “There are activist groups who have a lot of influence in Democratic primaries who are on the other side. They want to defeat pro-life Democrats in primaries. That makes it much more difficult.”
“The party needs to step up and say ‘we will support pro-life candidates who want to run for office,’” he added. “I think the pro-life groups need to step up and understand that there’s a need to have pro-life people in both parties, and they need to step up for pro-life Democrats in primaries.”
Day said abortion backers will find their own candidates to run against pro-lifers.
“The abortion lobby has a history of targeting pro-life Democrats,” she said. In her view, the massive expenditures in a safe Democratic district “shows that the abortion lobby cares more bout their own issue than the health of the party.”
Lipinski, a member of the Blue Dog Democrat coalition, has the endorsement of many labor unions, and both major Chicago newspapers. On March 1, he secured the endorsement of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, as of Dec. 31 Newman had about $236,000 cash on-hand, while Lipinski had $1.6 million. His internal polling numbers put him ahead about 30 points, the Washington Examiner reports.
As for Democrats for Life of America, the group will be holding their annual conference in Denver July 20-22 on the theme “We Want our Party Back”
“We’re the party that’s supposed to protect those who need assistance, including pregnant women who don’t want to have abortions but feel that it’s their only choice,” Day said. “We want to be representing what we’re historically representing.”
Cincinnati, Ohio, Mar 2, 2018 / 03:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An Ohio priest praised a proposed state law to criminalize the nonconsensual publishing of sexual videos or photos, known as “revenge porn.”
Monsignor John Zuraw, chancellor of the… […]
Austin, Texas, Mar 1, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops has suggested churches in Texas sever ties with pro-life group Texas Right to Life, encouraging Catholic to volunteer with other pro-life groups in the state.
The TCCB’s advisory was read after Masses and printed in church bulletins in the Diocese of Fort Worth last Sunday. Texas Right to Life is the state affiliate of National Right to Life.
The TCCB urged in a parish advisory notice that Catholics not be involved with Texas Right to Life’s activities and that parishes not allow the organization to use their sites for events.
The TCCB cited Texas Right to Life’s opposition to incremental pro-life reforms, such as laws that restrict certain types of abortion rather than outlaw the act entirely, and mentioned “conflicts on end-of-life reform” and issues with the organization’s voter guide among their concerns about the organization.
“The bishops have been compelled to publicly correct Texas Right to Life’s misstatements on end-of-life care and advance directives,” the bishops stated.
“Texas Right to Life implied that the legislation the bishops were supporting allowed euthanasia and death panels rather than the reality that the legislation reflected the long-standing Church teaching requiring a balance of patient autonomy and the physician conscience protection.”
The TCCB claimed that Texas Right to Life’s voter guide excluded pro-life members of the Texas legislature, and “was not based on a fair analysis of a legislator’s work.”
“Unfortunately, a number of legislators who have consistently voted for pro-life and end of life legislation have been opposed by Texas Right to Life,” said the bishops.
The TCCB encouraged people to volunteer their time with other pro-life organizations as well as Church-sponsored pro-life ministries.
On its website, Texas Right to Life issued a statement defending themselves from the TCCB’s claims, saying they were “disappointed but not surprised.” Texas Right to Life stated that the bishops were being “uncharitable” in their description of the group, and that they had in fact worked hard to secure wins in the legislature.
“Uncharitable mischaracterizations of our political and policy goals serve only to dissolve the spirit of collaboration that yielded recent legislative victories to protect the most vulnerable in our state—victories that were hard-fought against the leadership of the Texas House,” they said.
Texas Right to Life also defended their voter’s guide, saying that they were seeking to endorse candidates who would commit to new legislative leadership in the state.
Joe Pojman of the Texas Alliance for Life in Austin told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that “some of [Texas Right to Life’s] goals are not well-founded in law.”
The group has come under criticism from others who claim that even pro-life legislators face reprisal from Texas Right to Life if they vote contrary to the group’s recommendations.
Republican Kyleen Wright, president of Texans for Life, told the Star-Telegram, “I thought our pro-life lawmakers would need protection from abortion-minded people. But no — we have to protect them from Texas Right to Life saying they’re not pro-life enough.”
Des Moines, Iowa, Mar 1, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- On Wednesday, the Iowa Senate approved a measure 30-20 that would prohibit abortions in the state after a baby’s heartbeat is detected during a pregnancy.
The legislation, Senate File 2281, moves that a physician cannot perform an abortion after a heartbeat has been detected. The measure would require that physicians test women before an abortion to determine the presence of a fetal heartbeat. The bill would make certain exceptions in cases of medical emergencies.
The legislation now moves on to the House of Representatives, which has a Republican majority.
A statement from the the Iowa Catholic Conference said that the state’s bishops “support the life-affirming intent of ‘heartbeat’ abortion legislation such as Senate File 2281.”
“We appreciate legislators for their efforts to advance the protection of unborn children and we remain committed to helping with efforts aimed at resolving questions regarding the bill’s constitutionality,” the statement continued.
During the legislation’s presentation in the Senate, the bill’s sponsor Sen. Amy Sinclair said that the presence of a beating heart is the “indication of another human being’s life,” according to the Des Moines Register.
Fetal heartbeats during pregnancy can be detected around 6-7 weeks of pregnancy.
“Please take a moment with me to reflect on what it means to be human, to be a person with rights, to aggressively defend your own right to life and to defend your reasonable expectation that your government should actively support you and all other individuals with a beating heart in that very same endeavor,” Sinclair said
“Senate File 2281 gets at the very heart and soul of what it means to be an American, of what it means to be a person,” she continued.
Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, a leading opponent of the bill, called the legislation “unfathomable,” saying that “there are no other provisions in Iowa code that say an Iowan cannot access medical care unless it is to prevent death.”
If the bill passes, and a physician did perform an abortion after a fetal heartbeat had been detected, the doctor could be criminally charged with a Class D felony and serve upwards of 5 years in prison.
The fetal heartbeat abortion ban was attempted last year by House Republicans, but withdrawn when it failed to gain support. However, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad did sign a bill last year prohibiting most abortions after 20-weeks of pregnancy.
“Science shows that life begins at conception,” the Iowa bishops’ statement read.
“May we continue to work together in solidarity on ways to protect vulnerable people, including the unborn.”
Indianapolis, Ind., Mar 1, 2018 / 04:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A married Catholic priest in the Indianapolis archdiocese faces several criminal domestic violence charges after he allegedly assaulted his wife in September 2017.
The priest serves the Pers… […]
© Catholic World Report