Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2016 / 01:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite weather forecasts calling for what might end up being the worst blizzard in over a century, tens of thousands flooded the nation’s capital Friday to support the dignity of life. ... Read more
Vatican City, Jan 22, 2016 / 11:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his annual speech to the Holy See's main court on Friday, Pope Francis affirmed the indissolubility of marriage and clarified that poorly developed “personal faith” is not itself a grounds for finding that a marriage is null. “It should be clearly affirmed that the quality of faith is not an essential condition for matrimonial consent,” the Pope said in his Jan. 22 address to the judges of the Roman Rota at the Vatican's Clementine Hall. Consent – the typical basis for a tribunal investigating the validity of a marriage – “according to the longstanding doctrine, can be undermined only at a natural level,” Pope Francis reminded the judges. “Indeed, the habitus fidei (habit of faith) is infused in the moment of Baptism and continues to flow mysteriously into the soul, even when the faith is not developed or psychologically appears to be absent.” He added that “it is not unusual for newlyweds, drawn to marriage by the instinctus naturae, at the moment of celebration have a limited awareness of the fullness of God's plan, and only later, in family life, discover all that God the Creator and Redeemer has established for them.” “The lack of formation in faith and also an error regarding the unity, indissolubility and sacramental dignity of marriage may vitiate matrimonial consent only if they determine the will. It is precisely for this reason that errors regarding the sacramental nature of marriage must be evaluated very carefully.” The question of the necessity of a “mature faith” or “minimum of faith” for a valid marriage between the baptized has been raised in recent years. It has arisen primarily because of the large numbers of “baptized non-believers”: those who were baptized as infants but have not personally appropriated the faith they received at baptism. The dilemma was raised as early as the 1970s by the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. And it was voiced several times by Benedict XVI, who in his last address to the Roman Rota, in 2013, affirmed that “The indissoluble pact between a man and a woman does not, for the purposes of the sacrament, require of those engaged to be married, their personal faith; what it does require, as a necessary minimal condition, is the intention to do what the Church does. However, if it is important not to confuse the problem of the intention with that of the personal faith of those contracting marriage, it is nonetheless impossible to separate them completely.” The question was also brought up at the two recent Synods on the Family, and speculation about requiring a “minimum of faith” increased in September 2015 when Pope Francis released two motu proprio reforming the codes of canon law regarding annulments. In one of them, Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus, the Pope wrote that “the defect of faith which can generate simulation of consent or error that determines the will” is among the circumstances that can allow a case for nullity to be handled by a new, more brief process. However, his words today to the Roman Rota are significant for affirming that a “minimum of faith” is not required for a valid marriage between the baptized. The Pope delivers a speech to the members of the Rota, a court of higher instance at the Holy See, each January to inaugurate the court's judicial year. “The family, founded on indissoluble marriage, unitive and procreative, belongs to the ‘dream’ of God and of his Church for the salvation of humanity,” Pope Francis said. Both the family and the Church assist in “accompanying the human person until the end of their existence”, he said, noting that they do this “certainly with the teachings that they transmit, but also with their very nature as communities of love and life.” He noted that along with its definition as the “Tribunal of the Family,” the Rota can also be considered “the Tribunal of the truth of the sacred bond.” These two qualities, he said, are complementary. “Indeed the Church can show the merciful and indefectible love of God for families, especially those wounded by sin and by the trials of life, and at the same time, proclaim the essential truth of marriage according to God's plan.” Francis pointed to the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family. The two-year reflection has made possible a “profound and wise discernment” on family life, he said, indicating to the world that “there can be no confusion between the family beloved by God and any other type of union.” By their “work of the truth,” the Pope told the judges, the Church “proposes to declare the truth on marriage in a concrete case, for the good of the faithful, she keeps in mind at the same time those who, by their free choice or through unhappy circumstances live in a state of objective error, continue to receive Christ's merciful love, and therefore that of the Church herself.” He affirmed that the Church continues to propose marriage “in its essential elements – offspring, the good of spouses, unity, indissolubility, sacramentality.” These conditions are not simply “an ideal for the few,” but constitute a reality that, with Christ’s grace, “can be lived by all baptized faithful.” Francis pointed to the “pastoral urgency” in the Church for an adequate preparation for marriage, and called for a “new catechesis” on marriage, repeating the phrase for added emphasis. He closed his speech by recognizing that “the time in which we are living is very challenging both for the family, and for us pastors who are called to accompany them,” and wished them a good start to the new year. Read more
Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2016 / 09:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pro-lifers must make their lives a Nativity scene where they provide a welcoming witness and see Christ in the faces of the unborn, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said at the Jan. 21 ... Read more
New York City, N.Y., Jan 22, 2016 / 06:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy See’s representative to the United Nations has said that the entire international community is implicated “in one way or another” in the rise of civilian deaths i... Read more
Vatican City, Jan 22, 2016 / 05:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For Pope Francis, the ability to listen is the first requirement for good communication, which is something he said should never exclude, but must provide an encounter rooted in mercy and welcome.... Read more
Mosul, Iraq, Jan 22, 2016 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- St. Elijah's Monastery in Mosul dated back to the sixth century, making it the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq. Muslims and Christians alike have made pilgrimages to the Chaldean Catholic monastery, invoking both poets and historians to write about its religious impact within the Middle East. The Associated Press obtained satellite images this month showing that St. Elijah's, also known as Dair Mar Elia, was demolished by militants of the Islamic State, a militant Sunni Islamist organization, between Aug. 27 and Sept. 28, 2014. The AP published the images Jan. 20. Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, was overrun by the Islamic State in June 2014. In August, it further extended its reach in the regions surrounding the city. The militants have displaced hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims from their homes while slaughtering or enslaving thousands of others. "We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land," Fr. Paul Thabit Habib, a Catholic priest from Mosul who now lives in Erbil, told The Associated Press. He added that the monastery was "a very important place for the history of the Church in Iraq." St. Elijah's was located about four miles south of Mosul. It was built in the late sixth century and renovated or rebuilt several times. It was used by monastics until 1743, when a Persian shah martyred the 150 monks who lived there and refused to convert to Islam. The monastery then became a pilgrimage site. James Foley, a journalist who was to be beheaded by the Islamic State in August 2014, recorded efforts by the United States military to help renovate the monastery in 2008 during the Iraq War. The Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon, Louis Raphael I Sako, told Vatican Radio Jan. 21 that the destruction of St. Elijah's is disastrous and that the Islamic State are trying to “cancel the memory” of Christianity's ancient heritage in Iraq. Fr. Federico Lombardi, Holy See press offier, told the AP that “unfortunately, there is this systemic destruction of precious sites, not only cultural, but also religious and spiritual. It's very sad and dramatic.” St. Elijah's Monastery is not the first ancient site to be destroyed by the Islamic State since they declared a caliphate in June 2014. It destroys any non-Sunni religious sites, which it regards as pagan. By the end of July, the caliphate had seized Mosul's some 30 churches and monasteries, removing their crosses, and looting or burning most of them. The Syriac Orthodox cathedral of Mar Ephraim was turned into a mosque. In November 2014 al-Nasir convent and St. George's parish in Mosul were blown up. In February 2015 an Iraqi priest told CNA that his former monastery in Mosul is now “a prison for women – most of them are from the Yazidi religion – who were captured and taken as slaves.” And in August 2015, the group bulldozed Mar Elian Monastery, a Syrian structure that was founded before the year 500. Shia mosques and shrines in Mosul have been similarly demolished. The group have destroyed several pre-Christian sites as well, including at Nimrud, Hatra, Nineveh, and Palmyra. The tomb of the prophet Jonah, on which a mosque had been built, was destroyed with explosives in July 2014.It is feared that since the Islamic State does not always publicize its destruction, and information does not flow freely from the caliphate, more demolition has occurred than is known. Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Archeparchy of Erbil told CNA in June 2015 that the Islamic State “have destroyed walls and historical sites, but they were unable to destroy the faith of the community. And that’s the good news. That our people our people are strong enough to leave everything behind and just stay Christians.” Read more
Washington D.C., Jan 21, 2016 / 03:02 pm (CNA).- It was an event that wasn't supposed to have anniversaries. When the March for Life started 43 years ago, abortion on demand up to the point of birth had just been legalized by the United States Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade. At that point, pro-life issues weren't nearly as politically entrenched as they are today – in fact, many legislators on both sides of the aisle thought the decision was ill-conceived and would surely be changed. “People were just in shock, they were short of shell-shocked the year after Roe vs. Wade,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, told CNA. “People were thinking that this thing was going to get corrected...they were such poorly conceived Supreme Court decisions, and really outside of the parameters of what the Supreme Court would normally do,” she added. But it's been 43 years since the March for Life began, and the event has become an almost go-to staple in the world of youth ministry trips and church events for pro-life denominations. As a political march that has yet to overturn Roe v. Wade continues to tick off anniversary after anniversary, many people are left wondering - is the March even relevant anymore? “Fatigue is understandable,” said Mallory Quigley, communications director the Susan B. Anthony list, a political organization that lobbies for pro-life legislation and supports pro-life candidates – particularly women. “It's been 43 years, that’s so long for this injustice to continue,” she told CNA. At the same time, Quigley said, that abortion on demand remains legal is all the more reason to keep fighting. “We have got to be there as pro-life Americans speaking up and speaking out for the unborn children and moms that are at risk and have suffered and have died because of abortion,” she said. And yet, there's much to be hopeful about in the pro-life movement. This last summer saw a decline in the number of abortions nationwide in the United States, though the specific reasons as to why remain unclear. A growing number of Americans do not support abortion on demand, though they do support it under certain circumstances. For Mancini, the March is always an energizing moment as well as a powerful message for politicians about the pro-life cause: it’s a movement that’s robust, powerful, and full of young people. “It becomes a paradigm of what the entire movement is about, but if you didn't see that in one collective place, people wouldn't believe it's true.”Not always a right-wing cause At the time of the March for Life’s inception, pro-life attitudes were a bit more closely aligned with the Democratic party, and it wouldn’t become a deeply divisive partisan issue for several more years. Some of the earliest featured speakers at the March for Life even included several now-prominent pro-choice advocates – Joe Biden, Jesse Jackson and Harry Reid, to name a few, Mancini said. “The first year the March happened, it was very small and there were a lot of legislators,” she said. “Now, it’s much more cultural.” The movement grew because it had to. Through the '70s and '80s, the national March remained a relatively small movement of politically minded activists. During the Reagan presidency, pro-life issues shifted from slightly left to more definitely right. But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the March became a much more youthful, grassroots and cultural event. “Nellie Gray (the founder of the March for Life) was working very closely with churches and bishops, it was really grassroots and very Catholic, so more and more schools started bussing young people in for the march for life,” Mancini said. Now, the March for Life has a reputation for being a youthful event – hordes of college and high school students descend on Washington D.C. during the days leading up to the event, bringing lively chants and songs and colorful posters with them as they make their way to the capitol, often in freezing winter weather. “You're not alone” Aimee Murphy is one of those young people that started attending pro-life events at the age of 17. At the time she was a pro-life atheist, and often felt like the odd one out in her high school – but meeting other young people at bigger events like the March for Life made her realize that she wasn't alone. “It was so important for me as a young person to see...that I was not the only high school student who cared about the pre-born,” she told CNA. Now a millennial activist and the Executive Director of the “Life Matters Journal,” Murphy said it’s easy, and maybe even fair, to criticize the March for Life as an expensive, superfluous event – if it remains just that. “If you don't go home and do something the March for Life is useless,” she said. “As pro-life activists who struggle against a culture and a media and a legislature who isn’t willing to do anything that would actually make a difference in terms of abortion, you face this idea that the evil is too big, there’s nothing that I personally can do, and you’ll sit around and feel bad for yourself,” Murphy said. “But the March for Life, inasmuch as it gives people hope and encourages them to do something and change what is going on, then it’s absolutely priceless.” That sense of community and solidarity, particularly with other like-minded young people, is crucial to keeping high school and college students engaged in the pro-life movement after they graduate said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. Last year alone, there were around 200,000 people in attendance at the national March – many of them students and young adults. “We tell everyone to at least come once, because it's a formative event,” she said. “The key to making them life-long activists is getting people to understand that this is a group that they want to be a part of, and this is a group that’s winning, and the March for Life does that.” Hawkins echoed Murphy in that while the March is an important event, what happens afterwards is of equal importance. “That means envisioning a country without abortion and figuring out ok, if abortion was made illegal tomorrow, what would we need? What do we need to do? And that’s eliminating the need for abortion, eliminating the belief that that girl has to kill her child.”Hopes for change in 2016 Besides serving as a rallying point for the pro-life movement, the March for Life also continues to send a political message to legislators on Capitol Hill as well as to the national media in Washington, D.C. “We finally have a majority of people in this country who believe that abortion is morally wrong, we have a majority of people in our country who are for common sense restrictions on abortion, we have for the first time in history a Congress that is investigating Planned Parenthood,” Hawkins said. “It really proves to the rest of the country that this is not the minority, we are the majority, we’re not going away, and it entices others to join our movement,” she added.According to Gallup, only 29 percent of Americans last year believed that abortion should be legal under any circumstances, while 51 percent of Americans believed that it should be legal only under certain circumstances. Passing legislation that would allow for some common sense restrictions on abortions – such as banning abortion after five months, when a child is capable of feeling pain in the womb – is an area where the pro-life movement is hoping to see some progress in the next year, Quigley said. “Public opinion is continuing to catch up with science. People are understanding that the unborn child is alive, that it is a human being,” she said. Pain-capable abortion bills and the defunding of Planned Parenthood are two of the major issues of political focus in the pro-life movement in 2016. While there are a lot of reasons to hope for political change, the best thing for the pro-life movement would be to elect a pro-life president this year, Mancini said. “Even when there is codified law, the executive branch pushes it so much or just re-writes things to be what they want, it’s daunting and it’s continual,” she said. “So it would be so fantastic to have an administration that was pro-life so we’re not always working on the defensive end.” The March for Life is also a common reference point for politicians when talking about the strength and the youthful energy of the pro-life movement, Mancini said, so it’s important that they continue to see that year after year. “I have yet to hear a member of Congress speak about the issues and not allude to the MFL, because it’s such a success and such a victory to point to all those people coming together for a common reason and a common human rights issue,” she said. This year’s national March for Life will take place on Friday, January 22. Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend, even as a possible blizzard threatens the area. For Quigley and thousands like her, the March still matters, rain or shine. “It’s so important that everyone here in Washington understands that America is a pro-life nation.” Read more
Washington D.C., Jan 21, 2016 / 02:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Supreme Court has announced that it will review a case about a Missouri Christian pre-school which was prohibited from participating in the state’s scrap tire program because it ... Read more
Philadelphia, Pa., Jan 21, 2016 / 02:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archdiocese of Philadelphia and World Meeting of Families have announced that they have a unique way to raise money for local charities this year: auction off the car that Pope Francis us... Read more
Vatican City, Jan 21, 2016 / 10:42 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis observed the feast of St. Agnes on Thursday with the time-honored custom of the blessing of lambs, whose wool will be used to make palliums, a vestment worn by metropolitan archbishops which signify their unity with the Church of Rome. The two small lambs, traditionally less than a year old, were placed in baskets and carried to the Urban VIII Chapel in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace Jan. 21, where they received the Holy Father’s blessing. St. Agnes, whose name means “lamb” in Latin, was a young girl when she consecrated her virginity to God. Although stories of her martyrdom vary, tradition holds that the beautiful young girl was pursued by various men, whom she refused because of her promise to God. Feeling slighted, these men then turned her over to Roman authorities, outing her as a Christian. She was then put to death by the sword after refusing to give up her virginity or denounce her faith, at the young age of 12 or 13. The young saint is buried in the basilica named for her, located on Rome’s Via Nomentana. Since she is mentioned in the Roman Canon, her association with the pallium is an important symbol of unity with the successor of Saint Peter. During the blessing of the lambs, one lamb wears a white crown symbolizing the saint’s purity, and the other lamb to wear a red crown, emblematic of her martyrdom. St. Agnes is usually depicted as carrying a lamb in her arms, and she is the patron saint of young girls, engaged couples, and victims of sexual assault. When the sheep are shorn in the summer, religious sisters will collect the wool and use it to weave the palliums, which are white stoles with six black crosses worn by archbishops to show their unity with the Pope and their apostolic authority. The vestment dates back to at least the fifth century. After the palliums are woven, they are kept in an urn at the tomb of St. Peter until the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, when they are presented to the archbishops who were newly appointed in the last year. Read more
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