Vatican City, Oct 10, 2014 / 05:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Malala Yousafzai has received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17 – making her the youngest ever recipient of the prestigious award and prompting local Archbishop Joseph Coutts to laud the “great honor” she's bestowed on the country. The Pakistani teenager gained global attention when she was shot in the head by Taliban activists in 2012, at the age of 14, as a punishment for her public campaign for the rights of girls to be educated. She received treatment for her injuries in the United Kingdom, where she continues to reside with her family. Yousafzai has continued to campaign for global access to education. “This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard,” Yousafzai told the press on Oct. 10 following her reception of the reward. “They have the right to receive quality education. They have the right not to suffer from child labor, not to suffer from child trafficking. They have the right to live a happy life.”   “Through my story, I want to tell other children all around the world that they should stand up for their rights, that they should not wait for someone else, and their voices are more powerful.” She also said she was “honored” to share the reward with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian activist known know for his work in promoting children's rights. The announcement of Yousafzai's reception of the award also came as “wonderful surprise” to Archbishop Coutts, who serves as shepherd of Karachi, Pakistan. “The fact that a young girl like this,” he told CNA, “a teenager, has won the prize, such a prestigious international award, is a source of great pride for us, and for the country as a whole. A great honor.” Because the international community often associates Pakistan with terrorism, he said, this award “just shows that there's the other side to a country as well, that there are people like this little girl Malala who stand up to a lot of negative things that are happening.” “It is really something wonderful that has happened,” he said. Speaking about the significance of Yousafzai sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with Satyarthi, he said: “I think the connection there is: here is this child in Pakistan . . . who stands up so bravely for the education of women which was being threatened by a certain extremist group called the Taliban. Then the other side of the country is a senior person, a man who has been also working to save children.” Child labor and abuse are issues common to both India and Pakistan, he said. “Both of (the recipients), in their own way, have been working to protect children and to work for the development of children,” he said. Established in 1901, the Nobel Prize is an international award given by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm Sweden. It is awarded yearly for achievements in peace, as well as in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature. Pope Francis was also nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Had he won, he would have been the first pontiff in history to receive the award. Read more

Vatican City, Oct 10, 2014 / 02:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Synod of Bishops on Friday entered its decisive second phase, with the formation of small groups which are to come to decisions which will be synthesized into the synod's concluding “relatio.” The relatio will form the basis for discussion in the 2015 ordinary synod on the family. It will be presented Oct. 13 by Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest, who is serving as general rapporteur for the Synod of Bishops. The relatio will give the first response of the synod fathers to some of the event's discussions, including that of admission to Communion for the divorced and remarried. Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, told CNA Oct. 10 that “the document will include a part on the divorced and remarried, gay couples, and also part of the discussion raised on the possibility of reforming the process of declarations of nullity,” but it will also include “a wider part on the Church’s teaching on the family, and positive examples to live it.” The text of the document should be a balance between the two “poles” which have emerged in the synod. This polarity was expressed in the afternoon session of Oct. 9, when the hypothesis of a “penitential path” for the divorced and civilly remarried arose. The “penitential path” was among Cardinal Walter Kasper’s much-discussed proposals at the February consistory, and it was intended to grant some divorced and remarried persons access to Communion. Fr. Lombardi stated in a briefing with journalists that “concrete proposals” on how to carry forward such a penitential path had been advanced. Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, offered an alternative. He said, “another suggestion is that of blessing divorced and remarried people at the moment of the Communion,” adding that “this can be expressed ritually: one person approach the priest, cross his arms, and receive a blessing.” “This way, the person signals to the priest that he cannot receive Communion, but he need a blessing. We must tell people that it is possible to find grace again,” Cardinal Ouellet stated. The decisive moment of the synod will be next week during the small group discussions. The bishops will be broken up by language into 10 groups, discussing the issues at stake, and presenting their conclusions to the secretariat, which will draft the synod's relatio. Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto, who is secretary of the synod, said that “as during the Second Vatican Council the inter-session produced some of the most important stances, the free discussions will likely be the moment when the synod will take its shape.” The synod has raised many topics of discussion this week: the announcement of the gospel of the family; pastoral care of families, especially those in difficult situations; proposals regarding the divorced and remarried, and cases of nullity; and also the different challenges to the family worldwide. For example, bishops from Africa have stressed that “more than the issue of divorce and remarriage, their societies must face the problem of polygamy, and even the influence of multinational companies or international organizations pressuring for the introduction in their countries of reproductive health rights, same-sex marriage, and birth control,” Fr. Lombardi recounted. The debate has been “lively and animated,” he said, but at the same time “fraternal.” Fr. Lombardi maintained that “the climate is probably relaxed because everyone knows that this synod is part of a path that will be concluded with the 2015 ordinary synod on the same topic.” The synod’s final relatio will be presented to the Pope at the end of the week, and it will  be the basis for the instrumentum laboris of the 2015 synod. Read more

Vatican City, Oct 10, 2014 / 06:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his homily on Friday Pope Francis encouraged faithful to guard their hearts by doing a daily examination of conscience, saying that we if we don't, we risk letting the devil in rather than the Lord. “Guard the heart, as a house is guarded, with a key. And then watch the heart, like a sentinel: How often do wicked thoughts, wicked intentions, jealousy, envy enter in?” the Pope asked his Oct. 10 Mass attendees. The devil, he cautioned, “never leaves that which he wants for himself,” which are our souls. Pope Francis began his reflections by turning to the day’s Gospel reading from Luke, Chapter 11, in which Jesus is accused of casting out demons by the power of demons, and in which he describes how when an evil spirit leaves a person, it comes back with more and makes the person worse off than before. Satan never leaves us alone, he said, explaining that after Jesus was tempted in the desert, “the devil left Him for a time, but during the life of Jesus he returned again and again: when they put Him to the test, when they tried to trap Him, in the Passion, finally on the Cross.” “Can you do it? Let me see!” are phrases that hit home for all of us, the Bishop of Rome noted, observing how the devil not only tempts Jesus in this way, but also each of us. We need to guard our hearts, he said, otherwise “So many things enter in. But who has opened that door? Where do they enter from?” “If I do not realize (how much) enters into my heart, my heart becomes a (town square), where everything comes and goes.” It becomes “A heart without intimacy, a heart where the Lord cannot speak and cannot even be heard,” the Pope explained. He then drew attention to how in the Gospel Jesus says that “He who does not gather with me scatters,” saying that the meaning of “gather” in this sense means “To have a gathering heart, a heart in which we know what happens.” A practice “as old as the Church, but good,” that we can perform in order to help us achieve this type of heart, he noted, is the examination of conscience. “Who of us, at night, at the end of the day, remains by himself, by herself and asks the question: what happened today in my heart? What happened? What things have passed through my heart?” the pontiff probed, saying that if we don’t do this we fail to guard our hearts well. To guard our heart is “a grace,” the Pope explained, because by doing it we guard not only ourselves but also the Holy Spirit who dwells inside of us. “We know – Jesus says clearly – that the devil always returns. Even at the end of life, He, Jesus, gives us an example of this,” the Bishop of Rome pointed out. So we must be constantly attentive to what is happening in and around us. Pope Francis concluded his homily by encouraging all to “stand in silence before ourselves and before God, and at the end of the day ask ourselves: ‘What happened today in my heart? Did anyone I don’t know enter? Is the key in its place?’” By doing this we will defend ourselves from the wickedness of the devil, and “from that which we could do if these demons, who are very clever and at the end would cheat all of us, even if they enter.” Read more

Vatican City, Oct 10, 2014 / 04:32 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The effects of migration and poverty upon families, the pastoral care of children, the Eucharist in connection to our understanding of marriage: these are a few of the themes which Cardinal Vincen... Read more

Vatican City, Oct 9, 2014 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As three proposals emerged from the synod of bishops to reform the process of marriage annulment, a participant in the synod has stressed that a narrative putting justice on one side, and mercy on ... Read more

Vatican City, Oct 9, 2014 / 12:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With Paul VI due to be beatified at the end of the Synod on the Family, his teaching on the regulation of birth in Humanae vitae has been re-launched by the synod fathers, presenting the teachings in a positive way. Paul VI issued his final encyclical in 1968, after a commission of theologians and experts spent four years meeting to study in-depth whether the Church could be oen to the contraceptive pill other articifical forms of birth control. Though the opinions collected were generally favorable to an opening of Catholic moral teaching to contraception, Paul VI reaffirmed that sexual relations cannot be detached from fecundity. The decision opened a season of disputes against Paul VI’s pontificate, coming from both inside and outside the Church. Paul VI’s position has, however, been defended by Pope Francis. Asked if it was now time for Humanae vitae's teaching to be changed and for the Church to open to birth control, Pope Francis told the Italian newspaper “Il Corriere della Sera” in March “the question is not that of changing doctrine, but of digging deep and making sure that pastoral care takes into account situations and what it is possible for persons to do." This answer has set the tone of discussions at the Synod on the Family. The synod’s pre-discussion relation stressed that “the positive message of Humanae vitae can be re-proposed through a suitable historical hermeneutic, which knows how to grasp historical factors and concerns underlying its writing by Paul VI.”Humanae vitae was not solely an encyclical on the regulation of birth; it more widely dealt with married love and responsible parenthood, reaffirming the Church’s moral teaching on the sanctity of life and the procreative and unitive nature of conjugal relations. But the encyclical was often seen from a negative point of view because of its rejection of any form of artificial contraception. As the synod fathers are searching for new language to represent the teaching of the Church, a new language to propose the teaching of Humanae vitae is needed. The story of Humanae vitae can be also seen as “exemplar” for this synod of bishops. As Pope Francis announced he wanted to dedicate two years and two synods of bishops to the topic of the family, pressure to change the practice – if not the teaching – of the Church has arisen, especially for what concerns such topics as access to Communion for the divorced and remarried, and same-sex couples. A similar pressure for change was witnessed in 1963 when St. John XXIII established the commission for studying the topics of marriage, family, and regulation of birth. When Paul VI succeeded as Bishop of Rome, he enlarged the comission from six to 12 persons, and then in 1965 further increased it to 75 members, plus a president, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and two deputies, Cardinals Julius Doepfner and John Heenan. Though the commission had been established, the question of birth control came up at the Second Vatican Council during discussion of Gaudium et spes. Cardinal Leo Suenens asked on Oct. 29, 1964 if an opening to artificial birth control, and his opinion was backed by many participants of the council. The “progressive wing” acted as a true lobby. The Pontifical Commission ended its works, and Paul VI entrusted a restricted groups of theologians with a further examination of the topic. But in April 1967, a document favorable toward the birth control pill was published simultaneously in the French newspaper “Le Monde,” the English magazine “The Tablet,” and the American magazine “National Catholic Reporter.” The report stressed that 70 members of the Pontifical Commission were favorable to the pill; but the document was in fact “just one of the 12 reports presented to the Holy Father,” Bernardo Colombo, a professor of demographics and a member of the commission, revealed in an article he wrote in Teologia, the journal of the theological faculty of Milan and Northern Italy. So when Paul VI published Humanae vitae, public opinion was already oriented against the Church’s principles which he had reaffirmed, and bitter disputes arose against the Church. Now, it is time to re-propose Montini's teaching the encyclical, and the Synod of Bishops has taken up the issue. As the secular world is pushing for a change in Catholic doctrine, the reality and effectiveness of Humanae vitae, and its story, may in the end be a guiding light for the synod fathers. Read more