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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS Oct-16-2012
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Parish as center of Catholic life focus of annual canon law convention
ROSEMONT, Ill. (CNS) -- Parishes, parish life and lay leadership were the focus of the Canon Law Society of America's 74th annual convention in Rosemont. "The parish is the place where people encounter Christ regularly. That's where people are baptized and confirmed. That's where all their celebrations of their life take place," said Rita Ferko Joyce, immediate past president for the Canon Law Society of America. The society wanted to focus on the structure of the parish and explore how it has changed over the years and what it might be like in the future, Joyce said. More than 350 canon lawyers and others involved in church legal work attended the Oct. 8-11 convention. Among the speakers was Msgr. Roch Page, judicial vicar of the Canadian Appeal Tribunal of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, based in Ottawa, Ontario. In a talk about parishes in the future, he described the parish as a means to reach the goal of establishing a eucharistic community. Shifting populations, a shortage of priests and a decline in religious practice are causing parish mergers and closures in the United States and will continue to do so, he said. Msgr. Page, who has written previously about the future of the parish structure, noted that issues facing parishes today are not the same everywhere and aren't happening everywhere at the same time. The shortage of priests will result in more parish closing or mergers in years to come, he said.
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CRS renews Rice Bowl campaign as part of worldwide effort to end hunger
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Catholic Relief Services' popular Lenten Rice Bowl campaign is getting a new name and a new look. Now called CRS Rice Bowl, the program will encourage greater connection between Americans and millions of people around the world struggling to overcome hunger. CRS President Carolyn Woo also pledged $150 million from the agency during the next three years toward food, nutrition and agriculture programs. The pledge is part of a $1 billion effort by members of InterAction, an alliance of U.S.-based international humanitarian organizations. "It is not enough just to commit funds. We must also strive for new solutions to also address hunger," Woo said in introducing the revamped program in an online news conference Oct. 16 marking World Food Day. "Through prayer, sacrifice and donations, the CRS Rice Bowl enables our actions to make a difference in the lives and well-being of others," she said. The program also focuses on a new message: "For Lent, for Life: What you give up for Lent changes lives." The agency is planning to develop a series of online, multimedia and social media resources to supplement the tradition of collecting funds in a card board "rice bowl" placed on family tables and in classrooms nationwide for 37 years. Materials will be accessible via computers, tablet computers and cellphones. For Lent 2013, the program will look at CRS efforts in Burkina Faso, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Lesotho and Pakistan. "The lack of food is a threat to all aspects of society. A lack of food will hurt society at its core," Woo said.
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WORLD
Bishops tell synod church needs lively parishes, Bible literacy
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The solemn yet exuberant liturgies of African Catholic churches are a model for other Catholic communities seeking to invigorate their parishes and reach out to lapsed members, a Nigerian bishop told the world Synod of Bishops. The celebrations of the Eucharist and other sacraments must be "more efficacious moments of faith impact," Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Oyo told the synod Oct. 15. Bishop Badejo was one of dozens of synod members who spoke about enlivening parishes as the primary agents of the new evangelization. "This can be done if we continually update homiletics and sacramental procedure with engaging art, language, idioms and imagery, which can better communicate their power and meaning," the bishop said. "The solemn, but exuberant multimedia liturgy" found in many African parishes also helps people focus on the action of the Holy Spirit, he said, and gives them the strength needed to stand up against "consumerism, corruption, materialism and relativism." Bishop Badejo said church leaders need to leave the "catacombs of fear and self-consciousness" and go where people spend their time, including "the streets, town squares, market places, nightclubs, shopping malls, even pubs and the slums. Priests and bishops may not get the 'high table' treatment in these places, but just a word or gesture from us" could be the first encounter leading to a life of faith, the bishop said.
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Cardinal says converts' top 3 Catholic things are penance, pope, Mary
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Adult converts to Catholicism regularly cite three things about Catholicism that they find attractive: the sacrament of confession, the pope and devotion to Mary, said New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. "Those three things, guess what, were kind of de-emphasized" after the Second Vatican Council, the cardinal said Oct. 15 during a brief meeting with English-speaking reporters at the world Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization. In his formal talk to the synod, Cardinal Dolan had said that a renewed appreciation for the sacrament of reconciliation is essential for the church's new evangelization. He told reporters that "it seemed to be a truism after the Second Vatican Council that the council did away with the sacrament of penance, which, of course, is not true." Instead of renewing the sacrament as the council wanted, he said, "we just gave up and we said, 'Well, that ain't going over,' so we stopped trying." The interesting thing, Cardinal Dolan said, is that the sacrament of reconciliation actually is something attractive to many people, especially the young. "They will often say that the church seems impersonal to them, a little faceless nameless," he said. "Well, boy, you can't find a more personal sacrament than penance. I mean this is one on one." Cardinal Dolan said he never understood the desire to expand use of so-called general absolution, which the Vatican has severely restricted, because it was like "a drive-in carwash" and highly impersonal.
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Congolese refugees fear going home but feel unwelcome in South Sudan
YAMBIO, South Sudan (CNS) -- As the military hunt for Joseph Kony continues throughout this region, refugees who fled across the border from Congo to escape his Lord's Resistance Army say their welcome in South Sudan is wearing thin. "I want to go home, but I'm afraid of Kony. As soon as the LRA is gone, I'll go back. It's my country," said Bernadet Adesa, 35, who lives in the Makpandu refugee camp near the border. "This has been a good place for us, but every day there are more and more problems between us and the South Sudanese. If anything bad happens here, we Congolese get blamed for it," she said. A Catholic priest who lives in the camp said the refugees are caught between being harassed inside South Sudan or returning to the Congo where the LRA, although weakened, still rampages through the forest, robbing, abducting and killing. "The Congolese no longer feel welcome here. They live on land that's not theirs, and their freedom to work and make money has been curtailed," Italian Comboni Father Mario Benedetti told Catholic News Service. After 38 years as a missionary in Congo, Father Benedetti accompanied the refugees to South Sudan in 2008. Today his parish is the refugee camp -- a ramshackle collection of mud huts 25 miles from Yambio. Father Benedetti suggests tough economic times are at the root of the tension. South Sudan has been in a crisis since January, when the government in Juba cut off the oil it pumps through pipelines that run through neighboring Sudan. A Sept. 27 agreement between the two governments will restart the oil flow, but it will take months for the situation to improve.
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Franciscan martyrs hailed during beatification in Czech Republic
PRAGUE (CNS) -- Fourteen Franciscan priests were beatified in the Czech Republic, four centuries after they were tortured to death by Protestant forces in a Catholic monastery. Presiding at the Oct. 13 ceremony at historic St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Saints' Causes, described the men as "heroic monks" whose actions in the face of violence can serve as an inspiration to modern-day people of faith to overcome evil with good. "Today, too, we need peaceful coexistence and understanding, so we must nurture this good seed until it becomes a mighty tree, bearing flowers and fruits of a humanity joined in reconciliation and brotherhood," Cardinal Amato said. Ecumenical ties with Protestants would be strengthened rather than weakened by the ceremony for Father Frederick Bachstein and 13 companions from the Order of Friars Minor, he told the 250 priests, leaders of the Franciscan order and 6,000 Catholics in attendance. "Far from living in hatred, these blessed martyrs prayed, worked and acted for good, as penitent witnesses to Christ's love," Cardinal Amato said. The friars, mostly from France, Netherlands, Germany and Italy, were sent by their order to Protestant-ruled Prague in 1604 to learn the Czech language and rebuild Our Lady of the Snows monastery, which was destroyed in earlier religious wars.
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Pope says farm co-ops can protect values while feeding people
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Farm co-ops can provide the world with an "alternative vision" to government or international agriculture policies that place too much emphasis on profits, protecting certain markets or employing new technology that could prove dangerous, Pope Benedict XVI said. The pope made his comments in a message marking the Oct. 16 celebration of World Food Day, a commemoration sponsored by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to highlight the global fight against hunger and the need to help farmers and farm workers. The theme of the 2012 celebration was: "Agricultural Cooperatives: Key to feeding the world." The cooperatives, Pope Benedict said, are an alternative to policies that "seem to have as their sole objective profit, the defense of markets, the non-food use of agricultural products (and) the introduction of new production techniques without the necessary precaution." The pope did not get specific about non-food uses, such as growing crops for bio-fuels, or whether the new techniques he referred to include genetically modified crops. He said agricultural cooperatives can be important ways for local people to control their own work lives and respond to local needs for employment and food security. At the same time, he said, they are a means to bring people together, value the contributions of individuals and promote the common good of a group.
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Blessed John Paul's popemobile put on display at Vatican Museums
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The white open-air jeep Blessed John Paul II was riding in when he was shot May 13, 1981, was taken out of storage and put on display in the Vatican Museums' newly revamped Popemobile Pavilion. The move wasn't meant to sensationalize the tragic event or turn it into a sideshow, but to highlight the car that has become "highly symbolic" of that fateful day and help people "reflect on the value of life and everything John Paul did," said Sandro Barbagallo. Barbagallo, an art critic at the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, was the driving force behind restoring and reopening the Museums' permanent exhibit of historic modes of papal transport. The grand opening took place Oct. 16 -- the 34th anniversary of Blessed John Paul's election as pope. The underground exhibit, which houses more than a dozen ornate papal carriages and nine papal cars, had been open only sporadically over the years. Deciding to put the 1980 white Fiat Campagnola on display was the impetus to re-launch the space and keep it open to the public to showcase its other transport treasures of the popes.
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Canonization rite changed to preserve integrity of Mass, monsignor says
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In a continuing effort to preserve the integrity of the Mass and highlight the meaning of a canonization, when Pope Benedict XVI declares seven new saints Oct. 21, the ceremony will look different than it has in the past. Msgr. Guido Marini, master of papal liturgical ceremonies, said the change will mark another step in Pope Benedict's efforts to remove from the papal Mass elements that are not strictly part of the liturgy, in accordance with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Earlier, the pope stopped giving new cardinals their rings during Mass; and in June he started the practice of giving new archbishops a pallium -- a woolen band around their necks -- before the entrance antiphon of the Mass. In a similar way, beginning Oct. 21, the canonization rite will take place before Mass begins. "Canonization is basically a canonical act" through which the pope exercises his ministry to teach and to legislate, Msgr. Marini told L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Oct. 16. "In effect, a canonization is a definitive sentence through which the supreme pontiff decrees that a servant of God, already listed among the blessed, is to be inscribed in the catalogue of saints and venerated in the universal church," the monsignor said. "The authority exercised by the pope in a canonization sentence will now be even more visible through the use of certain ritual elements," particularly through the pope's triple invocation of God's help in making such an important decision, he said. Msgr. Marini said the distinction between the canonization rite and the celebration of the Mass is meant to respond to the Second Vatican Council's call for the "splendor of the noble simplicity" of the Mass to shine forth.
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Pope offers reasons to hope for 'new springtime for Christianity'
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI said the enduring desire for God, the truth of the Gospel and the "restlessness" of today's youth are reasons to hope for a "new springtime for Christianity" in Europe and beyond. The pope made his remarks to an interviewer in a new documentary film, "Bells of Europe," which was shown at the Vatican Oct. 15 after the day's session of the world Synod of Bishops. The synod is dedicated to the new evangelization, a project aimed at reviving the Christian faith of secularized societies, especially in Europe and other Western lands. Pope Benedict told his interviewer that he has three main reasons to hope for a Christian revival, starting with the "fact that the desire for God, the search for God, is profoundly inscribed into each human soul and cannot disappear." He said he also takes heart from the eternal truth of the Gospel. "Ideologies have their days numbered," the pope said. "They appear powerful and irresistible but, after a certain period, they wear out and lose their energy because they lack profound truth. The Gospel, on the other hand, is true and can therefore never wear out," he said. Finally, Pope Benedict cited the dissatisfaction of young people today with the "proposals of the various ideologies and of consumerism."
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PEOPLE
Activists: Allowing 'medical aid in dying' means euthanasia for Quebec
OTTAWA, Ontario (CNS) -- Activists are pushing back against Parti Quebecois plans to allow what they say will be euthanasia in Quebec under the guise of "medical aid in dying." The head of the Catholic Organization for Life and Family said plans to introduce legislation are not a surprise because they were part of the Parti Quebecois' platform. Michele Boulva, COLF director, said her organization was encouraging "Quebec Catholics and all people who have any respect for the inalienable dignity and worth of all human beings" to contact members of the Quebec provincial legislature, asking them "to oppose any attempt to legalize euthanasia. This lethal practice must not enter our hospitals," she said. Linda Couture, director of the Quebec grassroots group Living with Dignity, said the Quebec elite are masking their euthanasia plans behind the words "medical aid in dying" without defining them. She expressed alarm at how fast the government is moving, noting the new government hopes to have a bill passed by June next year. In early October, Montreal radio station CJAD reported Parti Quebecois junior social services minister Veronique Hivon said she hoped to introduce legislation soon to help people who face unbearable end-of-life suffering. Though euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under the jurisdiction of Canada's Criminal Code, Hivon said health is a provincial matter. The province could also direct crown prosecutors not to prosecute cases of assisted death that fall under the guidelines for "medical aid in dying," she said.
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Copyright (c) 2012 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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