Vatican City, Nov 7, 2016 / 04:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Monday that recently nominated Cardinal-elect Archbishop Joseph William Tobin of Indianapolis will soon be taking over as the new head of the Newark, N.J. Archdiocese. Born i... Read more
Arlington, Va., Nov 7, 2016 / 02:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Following a tumultuous and divided election season, Catholics in the U.S. should find ways to create unity and healing, said Supreme Knight Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus. “(T)he question we should ask ourselves is in what way Catholics in America can be a future source of unity and reconciliation or whether we will be a cause of further division and hostility,” Anderson said Nov. 5. “The answer to that question will depend in large measure upon what it means today to be a Catholic in America. In other words, what is fundamental to our identity as Catholics?” Anderson spoke in Arlington, Virginia at the Catholic Distance University Founder’s Award Dinner, where he was the recipient of the Founder’s Award. He referenced the WikiLeaks emails involving John Podesta, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. In one leaked email, Podesta discusses the idea of planting seeds for a possible “Catholic Spring” in which the laity would revolt against the bishops to demand changes in Church moral teaching. In another email, Center for American Progress fellow John Halpin, himself a Catholic, calls conservatism among Catholics “an amazing bastardization of the faith,” and Podesta suggests that conservative Catholics are attracted to the Church’s intellectual tradition because “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they're talking about.” Part of what is so troubling about these emails, Anderson said, is that some of the disparaging comments about Catholics were made by other Catholics. “This episode presents a serious challenge to Catholics,” Anderson said, “regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s election, our country will remain deeply divided and those divisions are, to a very real extent, also reflected within our own Catholic faith community.” The solution to this, he continued, will require “faithful Catholics to fully exercise their responsibilities as citizens” at a time when many are disheartened and frustrated. “Now is the time for more – not less – Catholic values in our electoral process. Now is the time for more – not less – Catholic values in our nation.” Anderson proposed six concrete areas where Catholicism in the United States has an opportunity to grow and promote unity. First, he said, is “the renewal of parish life as a true Eucharistic community,” with a greater appreciation for the Eucharist as the source and summit of unity, charity and Christian life. Next, a “renewed evangelization of family life” is needed, “centered upon the calling of every Catholic family to be a domestic church which, in solidarity with other families, would be a source of unity, charity and reconciliation.” In addition, Anderson said, Catholics should grow in their devotion to Mary as the Patroness of the U.S., seeing in her a model of “understanding our responsibilities toward our neighbors and for the common good as citizens.” Also necessary is a “deeper understanding of those moral principles and issues that are non-negotiable for us as a faith community,” which leads to a deeper understanding and application of the Church’s Social Doctrine. A greater commitment to authentic Catholic education that forms the entire person at every academic level is also important for Catholic identity, he said. Finally, he concluded, the Church in the U.S. needs “a greater appreciation of the office of bishop as the source of unity for the local church” and deeper communication among clergy, religious and laity. Read more
Washington D.C., Nov 6, 2016 / 02:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new poll released Friday shows Donald Trump winning the Catholic vote by 16 points – but is it an accurate prediction of how Catholics will vote next Tuesday? “We just don't have enough data to say anything very reliable this year,” cautioned Dr. Mark Gray of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which conducts social science research on the Catholic Church, at Georgetown University. “The Exit Polls will provide better insight but we won't see these until after the fact,” he told CNA. Of all the general election polls, only a few of them have reported the religious affiliations of respondents. And for those that have, their revelations of the Catholic vote vary widely. The latest survey of likely voters by Investor’s Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence shows Catholics supporting Trump by a 16-point margin – 54 to 38 percent, with three percent supporting the Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Four percent are “not sure” who they will support. While an Oct. 21 IBD/TIPP survey had Trump winning Catholic voters 49 to 36 percent, with five percent voting for Johnson, Trump’s lead narrowed to just 46 to 41 percent on Oct. 28, with Johnson’s support increasing to eight percent. However, after the FBI announced Oct. 28 that it was again investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server from her time as Secretary of State, Trump’s margin of support among Catholics increased again to 16 percent by Friday, Nov. 4. Other polls – conducted before the FBI’s Oct. 28 announcement – show markedly different results in the Catholic vote. A Pew Research poll, released Oct. 27, showed Clinton narrowly winning the Catholic vote among registered voters, 46 to 44 percent. The Public Religion Research Institute, meanwhile, showed Trump winning among White Catholics 48 to 41 in a compilation of surveys from Sept. 22 to Oct. 17, but Clinton winning Latino Catholics by a vast margin, 84 percent to 12 percent. What is to be made of these poll numbers? “There is so much volatility in the polls in what appears to be a close race,” Dr. Gray noted, and in what is expected to be a close race, that “volatility” will be magnified. “We also have fewer polls this year than in previous elections,” he added, and “on top of that the Catholic sample is typically 18 percent to 25 percent of survey respondents so the problems with margin of error are even bigger. You get more volatility with a smaller sample.” Thus, it is hard to accurately predict how the general public will vote, much less a sub-group like Catholic voters, he said. Joshua Mercer, co-founder of CatholicVote.org, agreed that the Catholic vote is hard to predict with certainty right now. There has been “a lot more fluidity” in the public’s support for the candidates this year than in 2012, he noted. “Overall, there’s a lot less polling,” he added, which means that “there’s a lot less information to go around.” Ultimately, the election result may come down to several key swing states like Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, and Ohio, he said, and those states have sizeable Catholic populations. “They are all states where Catholic voters are going to decide the next president,” he insisted. Catholics are expected to vote as the rest of the populace votes, as this has been the case in recent elections. Catholics have voted along with the popular vote in the last few presidential elections, choosing Al Gore in 2000 when Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, as well as voting for George W. Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, always mirroring the rest of the electorate. In the mid-term elections, Catholics went for the victorious party, voting for Democrats in 2006 when the party took control of Congress, and then voting for the victorious Republicans in 2010 and 2014. Read more
Vatican City, Nov 6, 2016 / 04:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After celebrating Mass for prisoners in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis in his Angelus address appealed for better prison conditions and asked that as part of the Jubilee of Mercy, compete... Read more
Vatican City, Nov 6, 2016 / 03:23 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis held a special Mass held for prisoners inside St. Peter’s Basilica, telling them that while paying the price for their crimes is necessary, they must never lose hope for the future or the desire for true freedom. In his Nov. 6 homily, the Pope pointed to how in his letter to the Romans St. Paul refers to God as “the God of hope.” By saying this, “Paul almost seems to tell us that God too hopes. While this may seem paradoxical, it is true: God hopes! His mercy gives him no rest,” just like the father waiting for the return of the Prodigal son, or the shepherd looking for his lost sheep. “So if God hopes, then no one should lose hope. For hope is the strength to keep moving forward,” he said. “It is the power to press on toward the future and a changed life. It is the incentive to look to tomorrow, so that the love we have known, for all our failings, can show us a new path.” Hope is ultimately proof of the power of God’s mercy, Francis said, adding that mercy “invites us to keep looking ahead and to overcome our attachment to evil and sin through faith and abandonment in him.” The Jubilee of Prisoners, celebrated for prisoners and their families, penitentiary employees, prison chaplains and various associations that assist both inside and outside of the prison system, took place Nov. 5-6 in Rome as part of Pope Francis’ wider Jubilee of Mercy. Roughly 4,000 people attended, of which 1,000 were prisoners from 12 countries around the world. Though the majority of the prisoners were from Italy, a Lutheran delegation was present from Sweden. Around 50 prisoners and ex-prisoners were also present from the U.S., including a group of 22 from Cincinnati. Inmates of all types were included among the participants, including minors, people on house arrest, and those with varying sentences. Though Pope Francis has taken a special interest in individual cases of death row inmates, none were present during the Jubilee event. Ahead of Sunday’s Mass St. Peter’s Basilica opened at 7:30 a.m. for the jubilee event, which included singing, testimonies given by 4 participants and a rosary ahead of Pope Francis’ arrival. All tickets for the Mass, as usual for Jubilee events, were completely free of cost. After Mass, attendees made their way to the “Reception Celebrating Mercy” in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, for which no ticket was required. During Mass, it was the prisoners themselves who carried out various roles in the liturgy, such as lectoring. The hosts used during Communion were also made by prisoners of the Opera maximum security prison in Milan as part of “The Meaning of Bread” project organized for the Jubilee of Mercy. In his homily, Pope Francis said the day’s readings offered a strong message of a hope “that doesn't delude.” Hope, he said, “is a gift of God” and as such “is placed deep within each human heart in order to shed light on this life, so often troubled and clouded by so many situations that bring sadness and pain.” The roots of this hope must be nourished so as to bear fruit in the certainty “of God’s closeness and compassion, despite whatever evil we have done,” he said, adding that “there is no corner of our heart that cannot be touched by God’s love.” Mercy, the Pope continued, is something that must be thought about “more deeply.” While breaking the law certainly involves “paying the price,” particularly when it comes to losing one’s freedom, at the same time “hope must not falter.” “Paying for the wrong we have done is one thing, but another thing entirely is the breath of hope, which cannot be stifled by anyone or anything.” Francis noted that at times “a certain hypocrisy” leads people to view prisoners as merely “wrongdoers, for whom prison is the sole answer.” “We don’t think about the possibility that people can change their lives; we put little trust in rehabilitation,” he said, explaining that in doing this we forget “that we are all sinners and often, without being aware of it, we too are prisoners.” Often times we are “locked up within our own prejudices or enslaved to the idols of a false sense of well-being,” he said. “We get stuck in our own ideologies or absolutize the laws of the market even as they crush other people.” In these moments, we imprison ourselves behind walls of “individualism and self-sufficiency” and are deprived “of the truth that sets us free,” Pope Francis said, stressing that “pointing the finger against someone who has made mistakes cannot become an alibi for concealing our own contradictions.” While no one can consider themselves just before God, no one can live “without the certainty of finding forgiveness,” he said, and prayed that none of the prisoners present would allow themselves to “held captive by the past!” “By learning from past mistakes, you can open a new chapter of your lives. Let us never yield to the temptation of thinking that we cannot be forgiven,” Francis said. He noted that while there are some wounds that only God can heal, when violence is met with forgiveness “even the hearts of those who have done wrong can be conquered by the love that triumphs over every form of evil.” Pope Francis closed his homily by turning to Mary, praying that she would look upon each of them “with a mother’s love” and intercede so that their hearts “can experience the power of hope for a new life, one worthy of being lived in complete freedom and in service to your neighbor.” Read more
Dublin, Ireland, Dec 23, 2016 / 09:01 am (CNA).- The Celtic cross has been recognized as an emblem of Irish Christianity for centuries. Today, the symbol is visible from thousands of feet in the air, greeting passengers who fly into the City of Derry ... Read more
Lincoln, Neb., Nov 5, 2016 / 02:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop James Conley of Lincoln has called on the group “Nebraskans for the Death Penalty” to retract social media advertisements which distort his words to promote a capital punishment initiative in the state. The advertisements use heavily redacted quotes, taken out of context, from one of Bishop Conley’s interviews regarding Referendum 426, a state ballot measure attempting to maintain the death penalty after legislators voted to abolish it. On October 26th, Bishop Conley conducted a 12-minute radio interview with Coby Mach, host of KLIN’s Drive Time Lincoln. The bishop explained the Catholic Church’s theological and pastoral positions on the death penalty. While the Church allows for the death penalty in principle, he said, it holds that in contemporary times, “the circumstances where that would be an option are practically non-existent… we can protect people without recourse to the death penalty.” Bishop Conley noted that the bishops of Nebraska encourage Catholics to retain the death penalty’s repeal because “the death penalty is a way that we resort to a violent act to try to solve problems.” The state’s bishops have said that while Catholics are not formally required to support the bishops' judgment on this issue, they are required to evaluate the Nebraska’s death penalty in light of the Church’s moral framework: especially the requirement that the death penalty be used only when it is absolutely necessary for public safety. Bishop Conley also called for prison reform across Nebraska, encouraging state officials to make prison safety a serious priority. “Violence to deal with violence,” the bishop said, “is not the answer.” Days later, however, the death-penalty advocacy group “Nebraskans for the Death Penalty” used an edited version of the bishop’s remarks, without providing context, in paid social media advertising. JD Flynn, spokesman for the Diocese of Lincoln, said that the advertisements “unfairly cherry-picked portions of Bishop Conley’s comments, from one radio interview, to misrepresent the central message of our bishops: that executing people solves no problems in our state, there is clearly no need for it, and no convincing justification for it.” On Thursday, November 3rd, Bishop Conley asked that the advertisements be retracted. According to the Nebraska Catholic Conference, the advertisements were still being used on Facebook on Saturday, November 5th. Flynn explained that “Bishop Conley has asked civilly and politely that his words and images not be used, disingenuously, to promote the death penalty. But 'Nebraskans for the Death Penalty' has been unwilling to respond with civility. These ads are intended to confuse Catholics about what Nebraska’s bishops believe.” “Bishop Conley certainly has encouraged Catholics to pray about the death penalty, and to seriously study the Church’s teaching on this matter. But using Bishop Conley’s image, and selectively misrepresenting his words, to promote the death penalty is disingenuous, unfair and disrespectful,” Flynn said. “I hope 'Nebraskans for the Death Penalty’ will retract these ads, and I hope their major donors and supporters will call on the group to do so.” Among the prominent supporters of “Nebraskans for the Death Penalty” is Nebraska’s Catholic governor, Peter Ricketts. According to media reports, Ricketts has personally donated $300,000 to the death penalty group, making him one of the campaign’s largest personal donors. “Governor Ricketts is a man of integrity, a great Catholic, and a friend to the Church,” Flynn said. “I don’t think he’d appreciate the disrespect and duplicity of ‘Nebraskans for the Death Penalty.’ I’m sure that as he becomes aware of the situation, he’ll encourage the group to stop using the face of Bishop Conley, a consistent opponent of the death penalty, in order to confuse Catholics before the election.” “I also hope,” Flynn said, “that Nebraska’s Catholics will choose to build a culture of life, by keeping the needless violence of execution out of our state. We don’t need the death penalty. I hope they’ll vote to ‘Retain the Repeal’ of the death penalty.” Read more
Vatican City, Nov 5, 2016 / 02:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a lengthy, wide-ranging speech to members of international NGOs, Pope Francis offered a clear and stern warning against modern attitudes of fear that close us to others and ultimately ruin socie... Read more
Rome, Italy, Dec 22, 2016 / 03:52 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For religious sisters working to end forced prostitution through human trafficking, there is one thing consistently left out of the conversation: the clients – who they are and how they are d... Read more
Washington D.C., Nov 5, 2016 / 04:48 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For years, the American Medical Association has held a strong stance against measures promoting physician-assisted suicide. But that could change. Recently, the American Medical Association ann... Read more
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