Vatican City, Oct 25, 2016 / 02:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The kingdom of heaven is able to grow when its members are docile to the Holy Spirit – rather than when they focus on structures and organization charts, the Pope said during his homily at Mass on Tuesday. “What is the Kingdom of God?  Well, perhaps the Kingdom of God is a very well-made structure, everything tidy, organization charts all done, everything and the person who does not enter (into this structure) is not in the Kingdom of God,” Francis rhetorically suggest while saying Mass Oct. 25 at the chapel of the Santa Marta house in the Vatican. “No, the same thing can happen to the Kingdom of God as happens to the Law: unchanging, rigidity … the Law is about moving forward, the Kingdom of God is moving forward, it is not standing still. What’s more: the Kingdom of God is re-creating itself every day.” Divine law, the Pope said, is meant to help us as we are “journeying towards fullness” and “towards hope.” He recalled the parable of the yeast, which is mixed in with flour and makes bread, but dies in the process. “What is the attitude that the Lord asks from us in order that the Kingdom of God can grow and be bread for everyone, and is a house too for everyone? Docility: the Kingdom of God grows through docility to the strength of the Holy Spirit.” He said that flour “ceases to be flour and becomes bread because it is docile to the strength of the yeast, and the yeast allows itself to be mixed in with the flour… I don’t know, flour has no feelings but allowing itself to be mixed in one could think that there is some suffering here, right? But the Kingdom too, the Kingdom grows in this way and then in the end it is bread for everyone.” Docility to the Holy Spirit keeps one from becoming a “rigid person” who “has only masters and no father,” he said. “The Kingdom of God is like a mother that grows and is fertile, gives of herself so that her children have food and lodging, according to the example of the Lord. Today is a day to ask for the grace of docility to the Holy Spirit. Many times we are not docile to our moods, our judgements. ‘But I do what I want….'  The Kingdom does not grow in this way and neither do we grow.” “It is docility to the Holy Spirit that makes us grow and be transformed like the yeast and the seed,” he concluded. “May the Lord give us all the grace of this docility.”  Read more

Vatican City, Oct 25, 2016 / 09:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released an instruction Tuesday regarding burial and cremation, reiterating the Church's teaching that cremation, while strongly discouraged, can be permissible under certain restrictions – and that scattering the ashes is forbidden.Ad resurgendum cum Christo, or “To rise with Christ”, published Oct. 25, states that while cremation “is not prohibited” the Church “continues to prefer the practice of burying the bodies of the deceased, because this shows a greater esteem towards the deceased.” The document explains that after “legitimate motives” for cremation have been ascertained, the “ashes of the faithful must be laid to rest in a sacred place,” such as in a cemetery or church. It goes on to state that is not permitted to keep the ashes in a home or to scatter them “in the air, on land, at sea or in some other way, nor may they be preserved in mementos, pieces of jewelry or other objects.” “The burial, the last liturgy for us, is an expression of our hope for the resurrection,” Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the congregation wrote, “and therefore the Church continues to teach that the normal burial of the body is the normal form.” As the document explains, “by burying the bodies of the faithful, the Church confirms her faith in the resurrection of the body, and intends to show the great dignity of the human body as an integral part of the human person whose body forms part of their identity.” “She cannot, therefore, condone attitudes or permit rites that involve erroneous ideas about death, such as considering death as the definitive annihilation of the person, or the moment of fusion with Mother Nature or the universe.” Rather, burial in a cemetery or another sacred place “adequately corresponds to the piety and respect owed to the bodies of the faithful departed who through Baptism have become temples of the Holy Spirit and in which ‘as instruments and vessels the Spirit has carried out so many good works.’” The Vatican originally answered the question of whether or not cremation was allowed in 1963, but with the increase in both its popularity and in practices such as scattering the ashes or keeping them in the home, it found it necessary to provide a new set of norms as guidance for bishops. The instruction emphasized that “following the most ancient Christian tradition, the Church insistently recommends that the bodies of the deceased be buried.” A proper respect for the dignity of the body, according to Fr. Thomas Bonino, an official at the CDF,  promotes the hylomorphic understanding of the human person as being composed of both body and soul. “One must perhaps start from the idea of ecology,” Fr. Bonino told CNA, “meaning respect for nature. But the body is part of our nature, so a true ecology is also an ecology which takes into account the corporality of man.” Fr. Bonino explained that because “the body forms part of our identity” together with the soul, this teaching “must be reaffirmed” in preaching and in catechesis. Practices such as scattering the ashes in nature can be a form of “pantheistic confessions, as if nature were a god,” Fr. Bonino said. Or it can express the false ideology “that after death nothing of the person remains, that the body just returns to the earth and there is nothing more.” The new norms address these issues, he said, while also reacting against the idea that death is only about the individual or the immediate family. “Death also deals with the community to which the deceased belonged,” he pointed out. The Vatican document highlighted several other reasons for the importance of the burial of the dead, including that the Church considers burying the dead to be one of the corporal works of mercy. “From the earliest times, Christians have desired that the faithful departed become the objects of the Christian community’s prayers and remembrance. Their tombs have become places of prayer, remembrance and reflection,” it stated. By reserving the ashes of the deceased in a sacred place, we can be assured that they are not excluded from the prayers of their family and the Christian community, it continued, as well as provide a more permanent marker for posterity, especially after the immediately subsequent generation has passed away. “We are Catholics … and we must try to understand all elements of our life in the sense of the Christian faith,” Cardinal Müller said. “We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord and also we have the hope for our resurrection of our body… And therefore the big tradition as Christians has always been burial.”Mary Shovlain contributed to this piece. Read more

Vatican City, Oct 25, 2016 / 05:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday Pope Francis met with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, head of the country’s socialist regime, at the Vatican to discuss the dire political, social and economic situation of Venezuela and its citizens. “The meeting took place within the framework of the worrisome political, social and economic situation that the country is going through – a situation that is having serious repercussions in the daily lives of the entire population,” an Oct. 24 communique from the Vatican read. Francis, who didn’t have any public commitments earlier in the day, met with Maduro privately Oct. 24 in the evening. According to the Vatican communique, the Pope, “who has at heart the welfare of all Venezuelans,” wanted to affirm his continued contribution to Venezuela’s “institutionality and everything that will help to resolve the outstanding issues and build trust between the various parties.” Nicolas Maduro took over for former Venezuelan socialist president Hugo Chavez when the latter died from cancer in 2013. In the stormy aftermath of the takeover, Venezuela has been marred by violence and social and economic upheaval. Poor economic policies, including strict price controls, coupled with high inflation rates, have resulted in a severe lack of basic necessities such as toilet paper, milk, flour, diapers and medicines. Venezuela's socialist government is widely blamed for the crisis. Since 2003, price controls on some 160 products, including cooking oil, soap and flour, have meant that while they are affordable, they fly off store shelves only to be resold on the black market at much higher rates. The Venezuelan government is known to be among the most corrupt in Latin America, and violent crime in the country has spiked since Maduro took office. Demonstrations broke out in the country in January 2014 after Monica Spear, a former Miss Venezuela, was murdered along with her ex-husband on a highway near Caracas when their car broke down. Protests intensified after the attempted rape of a student shortly after Spear’s death, and since then Maduro’s government has jailed many peaceful protestors and political opponents. The regime is known to have committed gross abuses, including violence, against those who don’t share their political ideologies. Maduro was scheduled to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican last year, but canceled his June 7, 2015, visit at the last minute due to a doctor’s note from the president saying he was forbidden to board a plane due to a cold and severe ear infection. The situation in Venezuela has been steadily deteriorated, even since last year. The Pope’s meeting with Maduro took place in the backdrop of a Sept. 1 demonstration, called the “Taking of Caracas,” in the Venezuelan capital, bringing together as many as 1 million citizens who support a referendum to recall President Nicolás Maduro. Both opponents and sympathizers of Maduro’s government took to the streets. However, the government’s critics vastly outnumbered government supporters, according to organizers. Archbishop Diego Padrón Sánchez of Cumaná, president of the Venezuelan bishops' conference, said in a statement that the country’s government is suffering from a “chronic” hearing disorder in face of the suffering of the people. “What the people have done, both the opposition and government supporters, was a free, democratic, constitutional and peaceful expression of the awareness of their civil rights,” he said, charging that the government “carried out violence with the various persecutions conducted against different opposition leaders.” “The government's hearing disorder has become chronic in the face of the people’s suffering, shortages, food shortages, the high cost of living and lack of public safety,” he complained. According to the communique on the Pope’s meeting with Maduro, Francis invited the president “to undertake with courage the path of sincere and constructive dialogue.” He also invited the Venezuelan dictator to make it a priority “to alleviate the suffering of the people – first of all, those who are poor – and to promote a climate of renewed social cohesion which would offer a vision forward with hope for the future of the nation.” Read more