Denver, Colo., Feb 13, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Last week, a priest wrote to me. He said that as he surveyed the difficulties facing the Church, he was starting to wonder if it had been a mistake to convert to Catholicism.
I felt terrible. At… […]
Mobile, Ala., Feb 13, 2018 / 01:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Supreme Court has delayed the execution of an Alabama man who killed a police officer in 1985, on the grounds that the inmate reportedly suffers from dementia.
Vernon Madison, now 67 yea… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2018 / 12:08 pm (CNA).- The federal budget proposal released by the Trump administration on Monday has been met with worry from U.S. bishops who stressed the need to protect the poor.
“Budget decisions ought to be guided… […]
South Bend, Ind., Feb 12, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend issued a statement on Thursday criticizing the University of Notre Dame’s recent decision to provide “simple contrac… […]
Tallahassee, Fla., Feb 12, 2018 / 04:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A proposed resolution in Florida would declare pornography a public health risk, allowing for greater education and research into the hazards of porn, especially among developing children and… […]
New Orleans, La., Feb 12, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Of the 106 historically black colleges in the United States, only one is Roman Catholic – Xavier University of Louisiana.
But Xavier is also the only Catholic college, of the United States’ 251 Catholic colleges, to have been founded by an American-born saint.
C. Reynold Verret, president of Xavier University of Louisiana, told CNA that the spirit and charism of St. Katharine Drexel, foundress of the school, continue strongly on campus today.
“She saw education as a transformative gift, and that’s something we need to understand today,” Verret said. “That education is not a gift to the individual, even though it does improve the life of the individual, but it’s a gift to the communities to which those individuals returned, in which they serve, it’s an ever-expanding gift.”
Katharine Drexel was born to a wealthy and devout Catholic family in Philadelphia in 1858, and shocked much of society when she decided to become a religious sister and a missionary to Native Americans and African-Americans.
Supported by the inheritance from her father, Drexel and her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament founded schools to serve these populations throughout the United States, including a Catholic secondary school for African-Americans in Louisiana in 1915.
By 1917, she also established a preparatory school for teachers, one of the few career tracks available to Black Americans at the time. A few years later, the school was able to offer other degrees as well and became a full-fledged university in 1925.
Drexel’s gift was her ability to see potential, and God’s presence, in all people, despite having grown up in a segregated world.
“There’s a famous New York Times interview in 1915 when…the reporter asked Mother Katharine – ‘why are you using this expensive Indiana limestone for a school for black children?’ And Mother Katherine said, ‘do they not deserve the best?’” Verret said.
“We often remind ourselves of that, and I think that comes from her spirituality, where she could see, despite living in a segregated country where some were more valued than others, somehow she could see value in all, and I think that is her charism,” he said.
That charism continues on in Xavier University today through its “rigorous academics, its great faculty, and expectations,” Verret said.
Besides being a top-ranked Historically Black College and University (HBCU), Xavier University also sends the most African Americans on to medical school of any HBCU in the country, Verret told CNA. The school is also one of the top HBCUs for sending students on to doctoral programs in the sciences, and has several alumni who are currently serving as federal judges, he added.
“We have great students, some who come to us and may not have had the pre-collegiate experience that they needed or deserved,” Verret said. “But we recognize where their gaps are and address them and they graduate.”
Verret said that the Catholic Church has a rich tradition in the black Catholic community from which to draw, and that the Church can continually grow and learn when it comes to reaching out to the black community. During Katharine Drexel’s time, many Catholic Churches and institutions operated with the same segregation as the rest of the country.
“As a human institution we fall short of God our Father and the calling of Jesus, but that’s not (surprising) because we’re human institutions in the process of perfection – we are called to speak the truth and to bring real information and light before the world and into the Church,” he said.
The Institute of Black Catholic Studies out of Xavier University also examines the worship styles and cultural traditions of black Catholics in the country.
What is distinct about black Catholic culture can be seen clearly in the music and worship style of the community, Verret said.
“I would offer any parish to use the hymnal ‘Lead Me Guide Me’, created by the Institute of Black Catholic Studies in the late 70s and 80s,” Verret said. “The style of worship somewhat differs from the style of worship in the Northern European tradition – it is not quiet, it is much more expressive of spirituality, people sing, people express things with their hands.”
While Xavier University is historically black, the school has always been open to students of other races, and today’s student population is about 70 percent black and 30 percent students of other races.
This diversity provides students with learning opportunities both in and out of the classroom, Verret said, which can show students how to be united even with those who are different than they are, Verret said.
“In this moment we’re still struggling with – ‘who’s the other?’ We’re not assuming that we are all one people. But really we have an expansive global message [at Xavier] which is that we are one people and what we have to give is for the large community and the larger nation,” he said.
During February, which is Black History Month, the school is also sponsoring events and speakers to honor their cultural heritage, including an art exhibit, a private screening of the movie Black Panther, and a screening of the HBCU series “Tell Them We Are Rising”.
Verret added that he hoped the message that Xavier University sends through its students and alumni is one that continues to dissipate the myth that black students can’t perform as well as other students.
“We are disabusing the nation of the myth that was prevalent after the Civil War, which is that these young people are not educated and could not be educated at a high level. What Xavier did was to educate students who can sit and compete and be equal and present whether at medical school or law school…and these students demonstrate that they’re able to achieve and contribute at those levels, and that’s an important message.”
Washington D.C., Feb 11, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Dominican friars around the world celebrated a unique tradition last week: they offered Masses for their deceased parents and for all deceased parents of friars. Feb. 7 is specifically designat… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 10, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops have praised signs of progress against ‘abortion ideology,’ in response to a State Department report on new limits to U.S. funding for groups involved in abortion.
… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 9, 2018 / 03:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The USCCB issued a statement Friday praising the early morning passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act, which, in addition to preventing a government shutdown, also codified into law a new FEMA policy that would allow churches and other houses of worship to apply for disaster relief funds.
The policy was developed by FEMA in January, after three Texas churches damaged by hurricanes sued the government claiming discrimination.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>U.S. Bishops Chairmen Commend Provisions in Budget Act that Ensure Houses of Worship Can Apply for Federal Disaster Assistance <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/BudgetDeal?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#BudgetDeal</a> <a href=”https://t.co/Js5JOpRmIB”>pic.twitter.com/Js5JOpRmIB</a></p>— US Catholic Bishops (@USCCB) <a href=”https://twitter.com/USCCB/status/962020270662868992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>February 9, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
As houses of worship–including churches, synagogues, and mosques–are often directly involved in the recovery effort after a natural disaster, it makes sense that they too are able to receive federal assistance with rebuilding, said a statement from Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty, and Bishop Joseph C. Bambera, chairman of the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.
“We applaud Congress for including provisions in the Budget Act that direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make disaster relief assistance available to houses of worship on the same terms as other nonprofit entities. These provisions ensure that houses of worship are treated fairly,” said the bishops.
South Bend, Ind., Feb 9, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the University of Notre Dame announced it would fund “simple contraceptives” in its insurance plan, one Notre Dame professor has criticized the move, calling it “a giant leap into immorality.”
“Now the University [of Notre Dame] is to be sole funder and proprietor of a contraception giveaway,” wrote Notre Dame law professor Gerard V. Bradley in an essay published Thursday at Public Discourse.
“What is solemnly declared for years to be morally impossible is, suddenly, the substance of Notre Dame’s free choice,” Bradley wrote.
In a Feb. 7 statement, Notre Dame’s president Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC, announced that while the insurance plan at the university will not provide abortifacients, the school will fund the use of “simple contraceptives,” which apparently include drugs that prevent conception.
In the statement, Jenkins noted that contraception is indeed “contrary to Catholic teaching,” while explaining that offering contraception to the school was a way to “respect” other religious traditions and conscientious decisions – particularly decisions made by those in the university’s community who rely on access to contraception through the insurance plan.
This step came as a surprise to many, since the university was one of the institutions which sued the United States over the 2012 Obamacare contraception mandate.
“In its lawsuit, Notre Dame cited chapter and verse of Church teaching,” Bradley recalled.
“The University said, basically, that, to remain faithful to its beliefs, it could not be involved in any way whatsoever with a process designed to provide contraceptives to its employees, its students, or their dependents,” he continued.
Bradley noted that “Notre Dame’s practice until just a few years ago exhibited all the ‘respect’ possibly due to those who want to contracept.”
The university “rightly did nothing,” he said, to make contraception available or cheaper, while at the same time, it “did not discriminate in the workplace against those who chose to contracept.”
While Bradley said the allowance for contraception will cause incalculable harm to “so many persons’ minds, bodies and souls,” he also noted that “Fr. Jenkins supplied a primer about how Catholics should make all sorts of morally important decisions that is not only mistaken, but catastrophic for the moral life.”
“Our moral duty to respect others’ choices does not have anything to do with giving them the means to do evil,” Bradley said, adding that “one should not respect another’s specific immoral choice at all.”
“Everyone’s immoral choices should be regretted, and their repetition discouraged, and their occurrences criticized appropriately,” he continued.
Bradley said he believes that Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the diocese where Notre Dame is located, will speak out against the decision, noting that he will “have no choice but to publicly do so” in order to “protect all the faithful in his care from this grave scandal.”
Bradley said that the rationalization behind Jenkin’s most recent allowance for contraception is a “crucial mistake” which violates the sexual and moral teachings of the Catholic Church, as delineated in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, “Humanae Vitae.”
“God does not want us to weigh up pros and cons of adhering to the moral truth,” Bradley said.
“And the greatest respect we can show others is to bear faithful witness to the truth.”
© Catholic World Report