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Remember the missionaries of mercy? Here’s what they’ve been up to

April 6, 2018 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Apr 6, 2018 / 02:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Hundreds of Pope Francis’ missionaries of mercy are gathering at the Vatican in coming days for formation and fellowship, for the first time since their mandate was extended at the end of the Jubilee of Mercy.

It has been two years since the missionaries were first commissioned on Ash Wednesday 2016 during the jubilee, and it has been nearly 18 months since the pope extended their mandate at the close of the holy year, allowing them to continue hearing confessions freely in every diocese throughout the world and lifting censures – ecclesiastical penalties – that normally require the permission of the pope.

The missionaries, who number over 1,000 and come from all over the world, have spent much of the past two years working to spread the message of God’s mercy and forgiveness through their daily activities and ministries, including talks, retreats, and social communications. An emphasis on confession is central to their work, which many of the missionaries say is greatly needed.

“I’m very grateful the Holy Father has continued our mandate, because not only is it needed, but also, it’s a joy to do this work as a priest,” Fr. John Mary Devaney told CNA April 6.

He said the missionaries originally got a letter informing them that their mandate would end with the close of the Jubilee of Mercy, and were surprised and delighted when Pope Francis published a letter the day after the end of the holy year saying their ministry would be extended.

Devaney said the majority of American Catholics he meets do not go to confession regularly. But when he has heard the confession of someone who has been away for decades, the experience was largely life-changing for the penitent.

The encounter with God’s mercy in a new or forgotten way is so powerful, he said, that “I have no doubt that they will continue to go to confession again.”

Devaney, who comes from the Archdiocese of New York, hosts the weekly program Word to Life on SiriusXM radio, and is just one of some 600 Missionaries of Mercy expected to come to Rome for an April 8-11 meeting focused on spiritual formation and building fellowship.

During the meeting, missionaries will have the opportunity to go to confession themselves and listen to talks dedicated to themes relevant to their ministry, such as confession as a sacrament of mercy, and sin and mercy in the life of the priest.

The event will open April 8 with Mass for Divine Mercy Sunday, which the missionaries will concelebrate alongside Pope Francis.

They will hear talks from Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments; Archbishop Rino Fisichella, prefect of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization; and Archbishop Jose Octavio Ruiz Arenas, secretary for the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization.

The missionaries’ work was placed under the jurisdiction of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, from which they receive instruction and ongoing communication throughout the year.

According to Msgr. Graham Bell, an official working with the council, the main idea for the event is that it offer “ongoing formation” to the missionaries.

“It’s about the exercise of your ministry as Missionaries of Mercy. So it’s understanding how mercy works, how it functions in the life of persons, and in the life of priests,” he told CNA April 5, adding that the scope is simply “to make them better at what they do.”

What the council wants from the missionaries, he said, is to place a strong emphasis on the sacrament of confession, and to promote their ministry through specific activities, particularly during major liturgical seasons such as Lent and Advent.

And with no clear end in sight to the missionary mandate, Bell said the idea is to continue having meetings on a regular basis to offer formation and time to share stories. So far, from the feedback they council has received, the missionaries “have a very, very strong impact,” he said.

For Fr. Roger Landry, a missionary of mercy who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York, the ministry of mercy is always needed in the Church, but is especially crucial in the modern global context.

Landry told CNA that both St. John Paul II and Pope Francis have emphasized that “we are living in a ‘kairos of mercy,’ a time in which God’s loving forgiveness is especially crucial.”

This, he said, is because “we’re living at a time in which unexpiated guilt is wreaking so much havoc.”

“After two World Wars and the Cold War, the Holocaust, the genocides in Armenia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, after so many atrocities from tyrannical governments, after the waterfalls of blood flowing from more than two billion abortions worldwide, after the sins that have destroyed so many families, after so much physical and sexual abuse, after lengthy crime logs in newspapers every day, after the scourge of terrorism, after so much hurt and pain, the terrible weight of collective guilt crushes not only individuals but burdens structures and whole societies.”

The modern world, he said, is like “one big Lady Macbeth, compulsively washing our hands to remove the blood from them, [but] there is no earthly detergent powerful enough to take the blemishes away.”

People can speak to psychiatrists and psychologists, but their words and advise can only help deal with guilt, “not eliminate it,” Landry said.

“We can confess ourselves to bartenders, but they can only dispense Absolut vodka, not absolution, and inebriation never brings expiation.”

There is also the attempt by many to try to escape reality through “distractions and addictions” such as sports, drugs, entertainment, food, power, materialism, lust and many other things, Landry said, but stressed that none of this “can adequately anesthetize the pain in our soul from the suffering we’ve caused or witnessed.”

“We’re yearning for a second, third or seventy-times-seventh chance. We’re pining for forgiveness, reconciliation, and a restoration of goodness. We’re hankering for a giant reset button for ourselves and for the world.”

Landry said his mandate has also impacted his work at the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the U.N., much of which is already dedicated to the works of mercy, such as caring for the poor, defending the vulnerable, feeding the hungry and seeking to provide education and care for those suffering due to war.

In addition to his work at the U.N., Landry said bishops have also sought him out and asked him to come to their dioceses to speak and hear confessions, and “thanks be to God, there has been a lot of fruit.”

Similarly, Fr. John Paul Zeller, a friar with the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word and a missionary of mercy from Birmingham, Ala., said he has had the opportunity to travel around the United States and offer talks and retreats centered on mercy, and has seen enormous fruits.

One of the things he has emphasized the most is reaching out to people who have been far from the Church or who have had a bad experience in confession, and have either left the Church or refused to go back to the sacrament as a result.

In comments to CNA, Zeller noted that when they were first commissioned in 2016, Pope Francis told them that people had been “lambasted” at times by priests in the confessional, and that this experience did a lot of damage.

“I really took that to heart,” Zeller said, explaining that there have been multiple times he has stood in front of a group and apologized for these bad experiences, saying “if anybody here has had a bad experience in the confessional, from childhood until now, I beg you in the name of Jesus Christ, I beg you in Jesus’ name and as a representative of our Holy Father, I beg your forgiveness.”

The results have been profound, not only in people returning to the sacrament, but in those seeking him out for spiritual advice or guidance.

“So many people are starving for a shepherd, starving for someone to show them love, show them that they care and to listen to them,” he said, adding that “it’s been such a privilege” to be put into situations where he is able to offer help to a person in real need.

However, Zeller stressed that mercy doesn’t mean a lack of justice. These two virtues, he said, are not opposed, but rather, according to the logic of God, they are “the same thing.”

“Sometimes we come across as thinking mercy is just being all sappy and not firm with people and not clear with people…. [But] when we’re exercising mercy, we need to exercise the virtue of justice too.”

In addition to talks and retreats, Fr. Devaney has turned to media to get the message of mercy out.

Though his primary ministry is carried out at a hospital, Devaney said that he and another missionary of mercy – Nigerian Fr. Augustine Dada, who is currently one of the missionaries serving in New York – decided to offer a special program dedicated to mercy on his SiriusXM radio show for Lent.

Looking forward, the missionaries voiced hope that a full list of all the Missionaries of Mercy would be made public so that people would know where to find one if needed.

They also expressed a desire for additional instruction on the technicalities of how to lift censures –  penalties for certain delicts, or canonical “crimes” – which they have been given the faculty to remit. Some of the missionaries said they are uncertain about the process for remitting those penalties.

The missionaries were initially given the faculty to remit penalties for four of these types of delicts: profaning the Eucharistic species by taking them away or keeping them for a sacrilegious purpose; the use of physical force against the Roman Pontiff; the absolution of an accomplice in a sin against the Sixth Commandment, (“thou shalt not commit adultery”) and, in limited circumstances, a direct violation against the sacramental seal by a confessor.

In an April 2017 letter confirming their mandate, the pope added an additional delict to the list, allowing the missionaries to remit the penalty associated with recording what a priest or penitent says in confession, and the diffusion of that the recording online.

Fr. Zeller told CNA that while he was in Rome for the commissioning of the missionaries during the jubilee, he was able to visit the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican court dealing with some cases of excommunication and with matters addressed in confession, where he got an explainer from an official on how remitting censures works.

For more than an hour, “I asked questions upon questions, and we went over the different censures,” Zeller said, adding that “to see how the Church deals with them and how much the Church deals with the salvation of souls was astounding to me.”

“I came away from there with a renewed sense of how much the Church cares about the soul,” he said, explaining that when the Penitentiary gets an inquiry from a priest involving a delict that incurred automatic excommunication, a response, remission, and penance are sent back within 24 hours.

“Nothing happens that quickly in the Church, nothing,” he continued. “Everything, on every level of the Church, everything takes so long…but when it comes to sin, when it comes to that restoring people to grace…I am just so grateful for…how much the Church cares about the salvation of souls.”

A response is  “sent out in less than 24 hours. That’s saying a lot,” Zeller emphasized. He said he has had the opportunity to explain the process to other priests, and hopes that in the future, better formation will be offered in seminaries for how to handle these delicts if they are confessed.

However, while remitting censures is a part of their mandate, the missionaries agreed that it is not the most important part.

Fr. Devaney told CNA that the circumstances that incur censures are rare, and that while they have been given the faculty to remit them, “the core and heart of what [Pope Francis] wants is for us to just go and renew Catholics, in particular, with God’s mercy.”

 

[…]

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Analysis: What to expect from a weekend conference on Church ‘confusion’

April 6, 2018 CNA Daily News 4

Vatican City, Apr 6, 2018 / 11:05 am (CNA).- Before he died, the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, emeritus Archbishop of Bologna, told friends that he wished for a conference that would gather bishops and other Catholics to reflect on the state of the Church.

The conference “Church, where do you go?,” scheduled for April 7 in Rome, can be considered the fulfillment of Cardinal Caffarra’s wish.
 
Not by chance, the conference is dedicated to his memory. Not by chance, the subtitle of the conference is “only the blind would deny there is confusion in the Church,” a passage of one of his latest interviews.
 
A number of significant topics that have arisen during Pope Francis’ pontificate will be discussed: the 50th anniversary of the Humanae Vitae; questions about the Church’s doctrine on matters of sexual morality; the issue of conscience, which was crucial during the 2015 synod on family, and the concept of “discernment,” which is sometimes used in arguments justifying more open access to communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.
 
The topics of discussion will also include the limits of the papal authority and infallibility.
 
There are all the ingredients of a rich food for thought.
 
Relators of the conference are Cardinals Raymond Leo Burke, Walter Brandmueller and Joseph Zen Zekiun; Bishop Athanasius Schneider; philosopher Marcello Pera; professors Renzo Puccetti and Valerio Gigliotti; and journalist Francesca Romana Poleggi.
 
The titles of the lectures touch critical issues, and also explore the possibility of correcting the pope, if his statements seem to contradict Catholic doctrine. This demonstrates the increasing preoccupation in some circles with the protection of the deposit of faith.
 
Though some presentation titles might seem harsh, the topics are real, and they are intended to be part of an attempt to respond to open issues, such as those put forth by the 2016 dubia of four cardinals, that asked the pope certain questions about the doctrine of the Church, in light of the different ways Amoris Laetitia was being interpreted.
 
The late Cardinal Caffarra was one of the signatories of those dubia, and his approach to the issue provides a good way to glimpse into the conference, beyond any possible vis polemica.
 
Cardinal Caffarra always underscored he was not against the Pope, but he was merely seeking clarity on issues of faith. His signature at the end of the dubia, and the following letter he sent to the Pope to solicit a response, was intended as a search for the guidance of Peter on questions on faith and doctrine.
 
The Apr. 7 conference will be concluded by a short video interview Cardinal Caffarra granted on the issue of Humanae Vitae, one of the increasingly controversial topics of the moment.
 
Presenting a book on the contribution of Cardinal Karol Wojtytla (then Pope John Paul II) to the preparatory commission of Humanae Vitae, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, emeritus prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stressed that overturning the teaching of the Bl. Paul VI encyclical would be “a crime against the Church,” and denounced the work of a “secret commission” to re-write Humanae Vitae.
 
The commission is a study group led by professor Gilfredo Marengo, that is said to be looking back to the genesis of the encyclical.
 
The genesis of Humanae Vitae is one of main topics of discussion, and Renzo Puccetti, one of the lecturers, described it very well in the book “I veleni della contraccezione” (“The poisons of contraception”) that explains how the contraceptive pill was invented, developed and spread, describes the work of the lobbies of demographic control and how Catholics responded with natural family planning, and describes the struggle between bishops, theologians, doctors, and association of lay people over contraception.
 
This struggle poisoned the years before and after the Second Vatican Council, but Paul VI resolved to staying faithful to the doctrine.
 
The rebellion that followed provides a lot of clues about what is going on now. The encyclical was strongly resisted by a group of theologians that grabbed the headlines, and the pope was subjected to strong pressures.
 
The first step was to question the authoritativeness of the encyclical, saying that norms of contraception were not mandatory, as the document did not present a solemn declaration of infallibility.
 
This is the reason why Cardinal Wojtyla, who took part the in the preparatory committee, recommended that Paul VI clearly express the infallibility, not of the encyclical, but of the teaching expressed in the encyclical, a part of deposit of faith that needed to be preserved to stay faithful to the Gospel.
 
If the story behind Humanae Vitae says a lot about how campaigns against Catholic teaching is carried on even nowadays, the issue of pope’s infallibility is another interesting topic.
 
Is Amoris Laetitia or any other Papal document beyond the possibility of any mistake? To this extent, it is worthy to note that Cardinal Walter Brandmueller, another of the speakers, wrote in 1992 a book titled “The Church and the right to be wrong” about the Galileo case.
 
Cardinal Brandmueller took the example of Galileo to stress that the Church does not claim any infallibility except in some, well defined cases. Things can be discussed, in the end. Noting this is also an indirect response to those who blame any critic of Amoris Laetitia as a critic of papal authority itself.
 
Cardinal Burke is a very well known personality, and on numerous occasions he has addressed the problems of confusion over Catholic teaching. and the need to tackle that issue for the sake of the faithful.
 
Cardinal Zen has become the loudest voice in the defense of the Church’s freedom in China. While a discussion on the China-Vatican deal on the appointment of bishops is underway, Cardinal Zen has expressed the concern of many Catholics of China, and decried a return to Ostpolitik, the label given to Holy See’s policy with Eastern bloc countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Ostpolitik was a diplomacy of dialogue and concessions, developed in the 60s by Msgr. Agostino Casaroli, later St. John Paul II’s Secretary of State.

Ostpolitik was also strongly criticized from the Cardinals of the Church of Silence, i.e., Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, Primate of Poland, and above all Cardinal Jozef Mindszenty, Archbishop of Budapest-Esztergom, that both considered the Holy See’s approach as amounting to too much dialoguing with the countries of the Soviet bloc.
 
Bishop Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, has been one of the strongest defenders of  Catholic teaching and a promoter of the Kazakhstani profession of truths on marriage.
 
Is the current approach on issues of doctrine and morality a replica of the Ostpolitik approach? Is the Church dialoguing too much with the world, giving up the primary task of evangelization?
 
Those are issues that will be explored during the April 7 discussion.
 
The conference will end with a declaration, which will likely restate the truth of faith regarding doctrine on marriage and sexuality.
 
According to the veteran Vatican watcher Sandro Magister, “this ‘declaratio’ will be the polar opposite of that ‘Kölner Erklärung’ – the declaration signed in Cologne in 1989 by German theologians now in the good graces of Francis – which concerned the principles later reaffirmed by John Paul II in the 1993 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor.”
 
It remains to be seen how much the conference will garner attention and make an impact. It is likely it will be labeled as an “anti-Francis” conference, but it is also likely that there will be a poor response to the hard-hitting questions raised during the lectures.

 

[…]

No Picture
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Pope Francis: We should leave every Mass better than when we went in

April 4, 2018 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Apr 4, 2018 / 03:31 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis said the Eucharist is key to living an authentic Christian witness, and that those who leave Mass unchanged, continuing to gossip or hold onto unholy habits, have missed the point.

“While the Mass ends, the commitment for Christian witness opens. We leave the church to go in peace to bring the blessing of God to our daily activities, to our homes, to our work, to the affairs of the earthly city, glorifying the Lord with our lives,” the pope said April 4.

The Mass, he said, is not just a weekly commitment that can be forgotten about once people go out the church doors.

“No. Christians go to Mass to participate in the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord, and to live as better Christians,” he said. “If we leave the church gossiping” or talking badly about other people, then “the Mass didn’t enter into my heart, because I am not capable of living Christian testimony.”

“Every time I leave Mass I must leave better than I went in,” he said, adding that the Eucharist should leave a person with a better heart, a better spirit and “a stronger desire to live as a Christian.”

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims in a rainy St. Peter’s Square for his weekly general audience, which this week fell during the Octave of Easter and was dedicated to his last round of catechesis on the Mass.

Francis opened with an aside wishing pilgrims a happy Easter and saying the flowers adorning the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica are representative of the joy and happiness that blossom after Christ’s resurrection.

He asked pilgrims to join him in wishing retired Pope Benedict XVI — who he said was watching the audience on television — a happy Easter, and told them to give his predecessor a big round of applause.

In his speech, the pope focused on the concluding rite of Mass, in which believers are told to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

The Mass, particularly with this commission, “finds fulfillment in the concrete choices one makes [and] involves us first-hand in the mysteries of Christ,” he said.

“We cannot forget that we celebrate the Eucharist to learn to become Eucharistic men and women,” he said, explaining that this means allowing Christ to act in and through the choices one makes, taking on his thoughts, feelings and actions.

St. Paul expresses this clearly when he speaks of his own assimilation to Jesus, saying he no longer lives, but Christ lives in him, Francis said, explaining that the apostle’s experience “also illuminates us.”

“In the measure in which we mortify our egoism, meaning we allow what opposes the Gospel and the love of Jesus to die, greater space is created in us for the power of his Spirit,” he said.

And while the liturgy is a prime way to gain great unity with Jesus, Francis noted that the presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine “does not end with the Mass.” Rather, the Eucharist is kept in the tabernacle in order to give communion to the sick who are unable to attend Mass, and it is also kept for moments of “silent adoration” through the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.

“Eucharistic worship outside of the Mass, whether in private or in community, helps us to remain in Christ” and imitate his words and actions, Francis said, adding that Christians are men and women “who allow their soul to grow with the strength of God.”

“Not these small, tight, egoistic souls,” he said, but “great souls” who allow themselves to grow with the strength of the Holy Spirit and after being washed by the body and blood of Christ.

The Eucharist also separates us from sin, he said, because “the more we participate in the life of Christ and progress in his friendship, the more difficult it is to separate ourselves from him with mortal sin.”

Community is also an essential element of the Mass, he said, because the Eucharist “makes the Church,” and ought to lead to an increased commitment in service of the poor, who bear the flesh of Christ.

Pope Francis closed his audience asking pilgrims to give thanks to the Lord “for the path of rediscovering the holy Mass which he has given us to walk together,” and prayed that each person would allow themselves “to be attracted with a renewed faith to this real encounter with Jesus, died and risen for us.”

“May our lives always flourish like this, like Easter, with flowers of hope and good works, that we always find the strength for this in the Eucharist, in union with Jesus.”

[…]

The Dispatch

Hell and Pope Francis

April 2, 2018 Mark Brumley 81

Let’s hope the lesson regarding Mr Scalfari has finally been learned so we don’t see further international headlines recounting this or that alleged contradiction by […]