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Los Angeles, Calif., Sep 28, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Through Guadalupe Radio the Archdiocese of Los Angeles raised more than $90,000 last month to help reunited separated immigrant families in southern California.

“It was Archbishop [Jose] Gomez’s vision to have us be the leaders in treating immigration not as a political topic, but that it was important for the human dignity of people, first and foremost,” said Isaac Cuevas, the archdiocese’s director of immigration affairs.

A two-day campaign was held on Guadalupe Radio at the end of August, raising $92,000 in support of humanitarian efforts by Catholic Charities. Then, Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles approved a virtual collection plate for the same efforts, which went into effect this week.

Cuevas told CNA that the money will be used to help families with a three-month transitional process and legal fees.

The families were affected by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy: immigrants found illegally crossing the border would be held in a federal jail until they go before a federal judge, who must determine whether immigrants will receive prison sentences for crossing the border illegally.

This shift lead to family separation, because children cannot be held legally in a federal jail for more than 20 days per the 1997 Flores Settlement. These children were placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services while their parents’ cases were processed.

Cuevas said he received a call in August by the USCCB stating that 20 reunited families would be coming to the Los Angeles. He said these people came to the city with “literally nothing.”

“These families were arriving in the city – some didn’t have any connections, some did have connections but they were arriving with zero resources,” he said.

The radio fundraiser was a small miracle, he said, noting the money raised far exceeded the original goal. The diocese first sought to support 20 reunited families, but raised enough money to support 56 families throughout the greater Los Angeles area.

“I consider it a small miracle that even though we were modest with our $30,000-50,000 goal with the radio efforts alone we reached $92,000 in two days.”

Cuevas said the money would be used to help the families with basic necessities, including food, clothing, and school supplies. While the families find places to live and the children get placed in schools, the funds will also contribute to mental health services and proposals for self-sufficiency.

The other part of the project will aid Esperanza Legal Services, a legal non-profit underneath Catholic Charities. According to Angelus News, the money will be used to hire more legal staff for Esperanza to serve these families.

Angelus reported that a majority of the families are still undergoing deportation proceedings and require attorneys to fight their cases, which may allow them to apply for asylum status.

Cuevas gave CNA an example of one of the families the agency has been able to help – a mother and her two sons, ages 15 and 7. He said that after their detention, the eldest expressed doubts that he would see his mother again and the youngest still struggles with separation issues.

“They assumed that the two boys would be kept together, even though they were being separated from their mom. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case and the three of them were separated individually. The eldest talks about … [that] he believed he would never get to see his mom again because he saw her go be taken away in handcuffs,” he said.

“The three were reunited. [But,] the youngest has a really hard time of even being away from his mom, like just having her be in another room makes him panic.”

Cuevas said the immigration system in United States is broken and needs to be addressed. He added that immigration policy needs to be seen foremost as a responsibility toward vulnerable persons.

“Before you get into the politics of any topic, it’s identifying with the necessities from a humanistic standpoint. The topic of immigration is exactly that – it’s people in need,” he said.

“As the Church, obviously, we believe in the country and the responsibility for us to protect its borders, but we also believe that people deserve human dignity. And that is where we would push and remind people to start with that first.”

[…]

Denver, Colo., Sep 27, 2018 / 04:41 pm (CNA).- In a new book, evangelist Curtis Martin offers a plan to help equip the next “generation” of Christian disciples for evangelization.

Curtis Martin, co-founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, has spent 21 years working to build an organization that brings the message of the Gospel to students on college campuses.

“Making Missionary Disciples: How to Live the Method Modeled by the Master,” offers the lessons Martin says he’s learned from Jesus Christ over those years.

“Really what we’re trying to do is to invite people to learn the art of spiritual conversations,” Martin told CNA. “We hear homilies, but we seldom, as Catholics, discuss our faith over lunch. And I don’t mean discuss scandals…I mean [discuss] the great life of Jesus Christ, the great life of the saints, the great life of the heroes of the Old Testament.”

“If we learn the art of that conversation, we will become infectious, radiant Catholics who will radiate love and joy and mercy into the culture.”

This model presented in the book, he said, is not “novel” in the Church, but rather has been duplicated over and over again throughout the years, and is especially present in religious communities. St. Paul teaches in Corinthians that people were meant to learn by imitation, Martin said, and people need a human person in front of them setting an example.

“The purpose in creating missionary disciples is the very thing we’ve been doing in FOCUS for the last 21 years; that we could share that with people in other organizations, in families, in businesses, in parishes, in diocese, et cetera, because we think it’s going to bear great fruit there, and that’s what we’re seeing already.”

“We really believe that this book, and what we’re talking about, actually applies to [parents and professionals in diocese] maybe even more than it does the college campus,” Martin said. “The alumni are actually bearing more fruit than our full-time missionaries…We’re doing a second round of research to validate that.”

Martin highlights three main habits in the book that are “simple, but hard,” because they involve changing behavior to make evangelization possible. These three habits are Divine Intimacy, Authentic Friendship, and Clarity and Conviction about Spiritual Multiplication, which Martin calls “The Method Modeled by the Master.”

The first habit, Divine Intimacy, boils down to the fact that anyone who wants to teach others about the Catholic faith should, Martin said, have experienced the love of God in a personal way. Love of others, Martin said, should stem from a total love for God, as well as a foundation of the teachings of the Church, the Sacraments, fellowship with other believers, and of course, prayer.

“If I’m cold, or just lukewarm, I’m not going to able to communicate fire, the only way I can do that is to be on fire,” he said. “So Divine Intimacy is the foundation stone for everything else.”

The second habit, Authentic Friendship, comes when we cooperate with the grace God gives us for evangelization, Martin wrote in the book.

“I am willing to love you because I’ve already been love infinitely by God,” he said. “I don’t need you to fill me up; God is already doing that.”

The third habit is Clarity and Conviction about Spiritual Multiplication.

“I’m going to work with a few people, get very intentional about knowing about Christ, following Christ, living for Christ, and then inviting them to go out and invite others to do the same,” Martin explained. “You impart not only faithfulness, as essential as faithfulness is, you impart fruitfulness, which is exactly what Jesus did.”

On the theme of investing deeply in a few close friends, Martin again drew the conversation back to the methods Jesus used to proclaim God’s Kingdom. Martin said Jesus taught his apostles, first and foremost, to love by investing deeply in them and sometimes only them.  

“The Savior of the entire world…His methodology was to find twelve guys and go camping for three years,” Martin reflected. “He invested profoundly, deeply, in twelve guys in order to reach the whole world, but he imparted not just faithfulness, He imparted fruitfulness. And those twelve men, by the power of Christ, changed the world. And we can do the same by returning to the Method Modeled by the Master.”

Jesus, Martin said, regularly rendered the extraordinary as ordinary, by performing miracles on a daily basis. However, Jesus also rendered the ordinary extraordinary by “loving beautifully” in the Holy Family, with Mary and Joseph, for the first 30 years of His life. Martin said no one since Adam and Eve have been able to love each other as much as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did.

The Church has that capacity for love, Martin said, and saints “come in groups.”

“It’s really hard to become a saint by yourself,” he said. “To be able to walk toward Christ with others allows us to fulfill that great command to love God and love neighbor.”

Martin said his organization conducted research on FOCUS alumni, who are now no longer college students or full-time missionaries, but rather full-time parents or full-time professionals. Martin said they’re now living the “normal life,” but they’re “living the normal life extraordinarily well.”

In a certain sense, Martin said, this makes sense: college students are at the height of frivolity in their lives, distracted by such things as video games, alcohol, and even recreational drugs. As a result, as a group, college campuses are often not receptive to the Gospel.

“[College students] also happen to be at one of the most pivotal times in their lives,” Martin said. “Whereas when you move a few years down your life, and all of a sudden you’re a married [person], maybe you’ve got a few kids, and you meet someone who’s living for Christ.”

Martin argued that a father or mother, or a husband and wife, who are struggling with communication, balancing their budget, raising their children, or praying, will be more likely to seek the advice and companionship of a radiant Christian person.

For this reason, the “ground is much more fertile,” Martin said, in a parish than it is at a university.

The book, “Making Missionary Disciples: How to Live the Method Modeled by the Master” is available this week from FOCUS.org and from Amazon.

[…]

Washington D.C., Sep 27, 2018 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Catholics living in a state where both of the major party’s gubernatorial candidates oppose key Church teachings have a difficult choices to make on Election Day, a theologian told CNA.

The Catech… […]

Washington D.C., Sep 27, 2018 / 07:00 am (CNA).- The 40 Days for Life 2018 fall campaign began on Wednesday, claiming groups in a record 415 cities are taking part.
 
“The momentum in the pro-life movement is ours to keep or lose,” Sha… […]

Phoenix, Ariz., Sep 27, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Canadian cardinal has a provocative message for priests, bishops, and seminarians struggling to attain holiness: “You must become fire.”

“If the flame entrusted to us at Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordination flickers and dies, or is abruptly extinguished, and the darkness of evil envelops the priest or bishop, then havoc is wrought upon the most vulnerable, and the splendor of the Holy Priesthood is sullied,” Cardinal Thomas Collins said Sept. 18.

The Archbishop of Toronto delivered the keynote address at the 55th Annual National Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors, which took place Sept. 17-21 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The theme of fire, in many forms, was integral to his talk.

“If we who are bishops and priests do not become fire, and if those preparing for the priesthood do not, but instead become trapped in the dark and cold embrace of the world, the flesh, and the devil, then we are bound for destruction…and we fail those entrusted to our pastoral care,” Cardinal Collins said.

Cardinal Collins proposed four facets of the scriptural theme of fire and applied them to the priestly life and the ministry of guiding men to the priesthood.

First, the Fire of Sacrificial Love. In the same way that a sacrificial offering is totally consumed by fire, so too should a priest be consumed by his mission, giving his life fully to Christ and his people, and not merely giving his “leftovers.”

“When the sacrificial fire goes out in a priest or bishop, then he begins to put first his own wants – not his needs, but his wants. He wants control, or adulation, or a comfortable life, or worldly success, or popularity, or satisfaction of his lusts. Outwardly going through the motions of priestly or episcopal service, and saying all the right things, his actual conviction is that Christ must decrease, but I must increase.”

“If priests or bishops lead self-indulgent lives, then we should not be surprised if shocking instances of abuse occur. Self-indulgence is the culture in which both sexual and financial corruption flourish,” Cardinal Collins said.

Rather than think himself a “narcissistic star” around whom the parish revolves, a priest should engage in selfless ministry, always hoping at the end of his life to hear the Lord’s words: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Cardinal Collins recommended that vocation directors “watch out for signs of self-indulgence and narcissim” in seminarians, and for “positive signs of humble service, concern for others, and unassuming hard work.”

He said the process of discernment and formation to cultivate this attitude takes many years, and the process ought not be “sped up.”

“Because it takes time for signs both positive and negative to become evident, it is good to have a lengthy period of discernment and formation, to allow hidden problems to surface before ordination …  in my own diocese and seminary I have lengthened the process: more time before entry into the formation community: a year or two in the associates program, four years of College Seminary for some, plus a propaedeutic year, and four years of theology, and a parish internship too.”

Collins’ second facet, Purification by Fire, is a frequent theme in both the Old and New Testaments. Cardinal Collins tied this theme back to the various ongoing sexual abuse scandals in the Church, and emphasized that the revelation of hidden evils is a “great and life-giving purification in the Church.”

“Disastrously, a toxic sentimentality, in which both the call to repentance and the vision of judgment are obscured, has entered into the Church, and never more so than in the few decades following Vatican II, from the seventies to the mid-nineties,” the cardinal reflected.

“There was a blurring of the clear lines of morality, and the creation of a distorted and highly subjective concept of conscience. It is no coincidence at all that this was the very period, we now clearly realize, in which most of the devastating incidents of priestly and episcopal abuse that are now in the news took place.”

He said that policies to deal with abuse are “surely necessary,” but added, “we surely do not need a policy to stop us from engaging in self-indulgent evil that leads to the Lake of Fire. All Christians, but especially bishops and priests, need to listen to and act on these simple words of Jesus: Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near at hand.”

“It is also true that when the moral and spiritual demands of Christianity, or of the priesthood, become no more than an ideal, much to be praised in honeyed words, but with no practical relevance, and held to be impossible to actually live, then individually and as a Church we have become gnostics,” Cardinal Collins stated.

“But neither Christianity nor the priesthood is an abstract ideal; God does not play with us, holding out to us an ideal that it is impossible for us to live. By God’s grace, and only by God’s grace, every single one of us can actually become a saint. Vatican II spoke of the universal call to holiness, not the universal call to mediocrity. With a vision of the purifying refiner’s fire to keep us honest, we are challenged every day to be happy, healthy, holy priests. Nothing less than that. That is the reality of the priesthood.”

Collins emphasized the need for repentance, and suggested that priests recite quietly  the “Jesus Prayer”  during the elevation of the Host and Chalice at Mass, as well as frequently making use of the sacrament of confession.

“If we are to serve the Lord, and to invite others to do so, we must experience constant purification, and live in a spirit of repentance. Let the weeds and chaff within our hearts be thrown into the fire,” he said.

Third, the fire of Pentecostal Zeal is a boldness granted to the apostles that inspired them to be “on fire” for the Gospel, which Collins said all disciples of Christ should be.

This zeal is different, Collins said, from how “lively” or “quiet” a seminarian or priest’s personality might be, but rather, deep within, “profoundly committed to the life of holiness, that the fire will burn steadily and quietly throughout their priestly life.”

“There are two times when a priest or bishop is horizontal in Church: face down at his ordination and face up at his funeral,” Collins said. “In every moment between those two points, he must be on fire with sacrificial love and priestly zeal.”

Finally, the fire of “Majesty and Mystery” is the spirit of the Burning Bush found in the Book of Exodus; a captivating and personal call that comes when a person experiences the presence of God, and ultimately discerns their “glorious” vocation.

“Priests are not branch managers, and bishops are not CEOs,” Collins warned. “Woe to those who think in those terms, or who think of a priestly or episcopal career. We are unworthy servants and messengers of the living God.”

The priesthood is a tremendous privilege that most be treated with reverence, he said, and reminded the audience that the priesthood has always been and always will be “entrusted to frail and sinful men.”

He noted that “the priesthood, not the priest … must be treated with reverence.”

“Clericalism is not too high an estimation of the priesthood, but too low an estimation: it is using the holy priesthood to advance one’s personal desires,” the cardinal said. “If bishops or priests use their sacred office to dominate others, to take advantage of people’s quite appropriate reverence for the priestly office, or to manipulate that reverence to satisfy the cleric’s self-indulgent desires, then that is not simply evil; it is sacrilegious evil.  

“Profound awareness of the majesty of the Lord who calls us must penetrate to the depths of our souls,” Cardinal Collins said. “If it does not, then priesthood and episcopate can become worldly, and can be corrupted.”

[…]

Salem, Ore., Sep 26, 2018 / 08:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A ballot initiative in the state of Oregon could, if passed, ban the use of public funds for abortion on demand, which has directly cost taxpayers nearly $25 million since 2002.

If Measure 106 pas… […]

Wheeling, W.V., Sep 26, 2018 / 04:45 pm (CNA).- Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore has begun an investigation into the alleged misconduct of Bishop Michael Bransfield, who until recently led the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.

Lori was appointed apo… […]

Washington D.C., Sep 26, 2018 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- A recent study from the University of Maryland has shown that members of the generation born in and after the mid 1980s are divorcing at a lower rate than older cohorts.

Philip Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, released an analysis Sept. 15 which drew on census data to show that the divorce rate in the United States had dropped by 18 percent between the years 2008 and 2016. The drop was credited in large part to millennials staying married–even if they are marrying at lower rates than previous generations did at the same age.

Dr. John Grabowski, associate professor of moral theology and ethics at the Catholic University of America, told CNA that he believes the report is “kind of good news and bad news.”

“The good news is: the divorce rate is falling, particularly among millennials. The bad news is less people are getting married, especially poorer people. Many people are just choosing to cohabit.”

While it had been thought that a drop in the divorce rate could be credited to an aging population less likely to divorce, the study showed that even when controlling for age the divorce rate still dropped by 8 percent, and that the millennials who do marry tend to stay married more than older demographics.

Slightly more than 10 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 are divorced, a number which has stayed relatively stable since 1980. In contrast, over a quarter of people over the age of 44 are divorced, a 10 percent rise since 1980.

According to a separate study from Bowling Green’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research, the divorce rate for people aged 55 to 64 almost doubled between 1990 and 2015.

In calculating the divorce rate, Cohen compared the number of divorces to the number of married women so that the divorce rate would not be positively impacted by fewer marriages overall.

Grabowski hypothesized that the lower divorce rates among millennials could be partly explained by marriage no longer being considered a social an expectation or requirement among their generation.

This means that those who do marry are being “much more intentional” about the process, he said. “In some ways they’re swimming against the tide a bit culturally by doing that.”

Additionally, Grabowski suggested that the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s had led to an increased exposure to the negative effects of divorce on men, women, and children.

“People are more aware now of the resources and practices that they need to have a healthy marriage–in other words, to keep a marriage working,” he explained. It also helps, he said, that people are better informed about what it takes to keep a marriage working, and that there are more resources available to aid a troubled marriage. 

While the news that millennials are increasingly shunning divorce can be read as a positive development, the decreasing number of millennials who marry at all may indicate cause for concern, Grabowski said.

Cohabiting couples often cite disincentives to marry–such as the high cost of a “fairytale wedding”–but Grabowski told CNA that he believes the benefits of married life clearly outweigh any cost. 

“We have decades of social scientific research that shows that people who do get married do better economically, health-wise, and emotionally than people who remain unmarried or who simply cohabit or serially cohabit with different people,” he said.

The largest group of people living in poverty in the United States are single-parent households with children, “usually headed by women,” Grabowski added.

“People who remain unmarried but have children are at a huge economic disadvantage compared to their married counterparts.”

Many millennials, Grabowski theorized, may be afraid of entering a marriage after watching their parents or relatives divorce. Still, he said that the analysis showed “a little bit of good news” about marriage as a whole.

“And if the millennials kill divorce, or kill the divorce rate, well, that’s a good thing. If only we could convince maybe more of them to enter into marriage, we’d be doing really well.”

[…]

Arlington, Va., Sep 26, 2018 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Arlington has announced that it is conducting a review of all clergy personnel files and that it will publish a list priests and deacons who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a … […]

St. Paul, Minn., Sep 26, 2018 / 12:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At a hearing in US bankruptcy court Tuesday, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of Saint Paul and Minneapolis told clergy abuse victims their persistence and courage have made children more safe.

At the… […]