document.writeln("NEWS BRIEFS Feb-9-2010
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Archbishop says Saints' win another sign of hope city is rebuilding
NEW ORLEANS (CNS) -- New Orleans Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond said the New Orleans Saints' win in Super Bowl XLIV win was not just another football victory. 'I think it's another sign of hope in that our rebuilding is not just a possibility -- it's a reality,' the New Orleans native said after the underdog Saints -- playing in their first Super Bowl -- won the game with a 31-17 comeback victory over the Indianapolis Colts. 'The spirit of the city has changed,' he added. 'It's another sign that God is faithful.' Archbishop Aymond celebrated a Mass Feb. 7 for New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson and his wife, Gayle, and relatives, friends and team officials at their Miami hotel before the Super Bowl. 'All week long, people have been asking me, 'Who will win the Super Bowl?'' the archbishop told the 300-member congregation, all dressed in Saints' black and gold. 'And it's obvious, of course. History gives us a glimpse as to the answer,' he said. 'We know historically that many of the saints of old went into battle for the faith. And when they did so, they rode on colts. In the battle, the colts got wounded, but the saints had victory in eternal life. So, the Saints will win.' Those at the Mass included retired New Orleans Archbishop Philip M. Hannan, 96, two Dominican sisters from St. Louis Cathedral Academy in New Orleans, the past and present presidents of Loyola University and several other clergy and religious invited to the game by Benson. The Mass ended with a rousing a capella rendition of 'Oh, When the Saints Go Marching' In.'
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Pope puts charity at center of church life, USCCB official says
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- With his encyclical 'Caritas in Veritate' ('Charity in Truth'), Pope Benedict XVI 'placed charity at the very center of church life, and defines charity in the most challenging, demanding way,' said John Carr, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development. Speaking Feb. 8 at the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington, Carr said Pope Benedict made justice 'inseparable from charity and intrinsic to it.' The pope's encyclical underscores the importance of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Carr said in his talk, 'Speaking 'Charity in Truth' to Power.' 'CCHD is about the institutional path of charity -- empowering people so they can speak for themselves.' CCHD is the U.S. bishops' domestic anti-poverty agency. He said, 'We need to recommit to CCHD because its work is more important than ever.' Carr pointed to a year full of unexpected political developments since the last Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, one of them being the phenomenon of pro-life Democrats, whom he said are viewed as suspect by both other Democrats and other pro-lifers. Yet 'they made the difference ... in passing the health care bill' in the House, Carr said. Health care absorbs a lot of the public's interest and the bishops' as well, he added. Carr noted other items on the bishops' legislative agenda, including putting the needs of the poor first; fixing the U.S. immigration system; addressing long-term recovery in Haiti and 'the poorest places in the world'; working toward a responsible transition in Afghanistan; and reforming and strengthening foreign development assistance to promote a better and safer world.
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Time may be ripe for new progressive era, social ministry speaker says
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The time may be ripe for a new progressive era, according to Ray Boshara, a vice president and senior research fellow of the New America Foundation and an adviser to the last three presidents. Boshara likened the ills facing the United States a century ago to America's ills today and said he found them remarkably similar. He said the progressive movement, in a 30-year span taking in 1890-1920, had successfully addressed many of those ills. Boshara addressed via the Internet the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering Feb. 8 in Washington.'Thank God for technology, especially when it works,' said Boshara. 'Technology allows people to do things in their home that they never could have done before,' he said. Those kinds of innovations fuel job growth, especially given that small businesses account for a disproportionate share of job creation, according to Boshara, but he added a downside to technology: 'Eighty percent of what you buy today is produced by one or two companies.' To break the gridlock that has characterized much of the federal political process, Boshara said 'a new era' of antitrust efforts 'might be able to make new coalitions' among Democrats and Republicans, each of which would see advantages of breaking up monopolies.
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New missal not here yet, but Catholics urged to start talking about it
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The new English translation of the Roman Missal might not be in U.S. parishes for as long as two years, but Father Rick Hilgartner hopes Catholics are talking about it now. Mention of the upcoming changes in the prayers at Mass might come in the occasional bulletin insert, in adult religious education classes or Bible study groups or in a homily at Mass, said the associate director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Divine Worship in Washington. 'Anything to heighten people's awareness,' he added in a Feb. 2 interview with Catholic News Service. Along other liturgical organizations, the divine worship secretariat is gearing up to help educate the nation's 68 million Catholics on changes to the language of the Mass that were initiated in 2002 when Pope John Paul II issued a new edition of the Roman Missal in Latin. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments is in the final stages of reviewing the last sections of the translation before issuing its 'recognitio,' or approval. Once the Vatican approval is received, the president of each bishops' conference will decide when the new missal will start being used in each country. But before that can happen, priests and people must be involved in a 'two-tiered catechetical process' that starts with 'general and broad' discussions of such issues as the 'nature of the Mass, how it builds up the church and how we encounter Christ,' Father Hilgartner said. Further information and resources are available at a Web site launched by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, www.usccb.org/romanmissal.
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WORLD
Volunteers, staff recover books from Haitian seminary's ruined library
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CNS) -- Using an improvised pulley system, two members of the St. Martial Minor Seminary Alumni Association carefully lowered a box of books 40 feet to the ground, salvaging yet another couple dozen resources from the seminary's battered library. Four staff members were working inside, stepping gingerly around the debris on the top floor of the seriously damaged building that houses classrooms, offices and the library. Their job was to pull books from what shelves remained upright and package them for the short trip to the courtyard below, where alumni were checking the contents, marking the boxes and taping them shut before carting them off to storage. 'We have a safe place for the books,' Holy Spirit Father Renold Arisme, seminary headmaster, said Feb. 6. Once sealed, the boxes were stacked under a tarp in the adjacent St. Martial Church. Eventually, they will be taken off-site for storage until the seminary can rebuild the library. Dominique Franck Simon, alumni association president, said several of the organization's lay members stepped forward when they heard about the damage at the seminary. The books, a priceless resource for the seminary's 1,300 students, would be difficult to replace had they remained exposed to the elements on the fourth floor of the building. Jeremy Lachal, director of the Paris-based Libraries Without Borders, advised the work crew. He told CNS the organization often assists schools, universities and public libraries that sustain heavy damage in natural disasters or wars. The group focuses its work especially on poor and developing countries where resources to replace documents and books are limited.
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Irish cardinal welcomes news of decommissioning of weapons
DUBLIN, Ireland (CNS) -- News that Northern Ireland's second-largest paramilitary group had decommissioned its weapons might cause painful memories but should be welcomed, said the head of the Irish bishops' conference. 'Everyone who wishes for the long-term stability of our society can rejoice at today's news,' said Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland, after the decommissioning of the Irish National Liberation Army was independently verified Feb. 8. He praised 'those who have taken risks in order to make the good news of today a reality.' He also asked 'those with influence to do everything that they can to dissuade young people from following the destructive path of violence.' The Irish National Liberation Army, founded in 1974 following a split with the Irish Republican Army, was responsible for the death of more than 110 people during Northern Ireland's decades of violence, known as 'The Troubles.' Both armies fought for Northern Ireland to be reunited with the Irish Republic. Although the Irish National Liberation Army's political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, campaigned against the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, once the agreement was endorsed by referenda in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, the army declared a cease-fire. However, it continued to organize punishment beatings and shootings of members of the predominantly Protestant unionist communities in Belfast and Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
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PEOPLE
Canadian snowboarder to have hopes of parish, country riding in Olympic slalom
RICHMOND, British Columbia (CNS) -- St. Joseph the Worker parishioner Alexa Loo will have the hopes of her Richmond parish and the entire country riding with her when she goes for a snowboarding gold in the parallel giant slalom in the Olympics. The reigning North American slalom champion and silver medalist at the World Cup in Austria in January, Loo will be racing in her second Olympics. The Olympics, toward which she has dedicated her energy for years, will be just part of what will be a momentous year in her life. Once the Olympics are over she and her fiance Ari Goosen will attend marriage preparation courses and an engagement encounter at St. Joseph's. On May 21 she plans to marry Goosen in the church she and her family have attended since they moved to Richmond from Vancouver when she was 2 weeks old. 'My faith plays a part in my daily life. It's part of my upbringing,' she said. 'When I started dating my boyfriend the first thing I told him was, 'I'm a Catholic, and if we get married we'll raise the kids Catholics.'' It's probably that no-nonsense and dedication to the fundamentals that allowed her to take up snowboarding at the relatively old age of 15 and turn herself into an Olympic athlete. When she was growing up her routine was Mass on Saturday, then Sundays out on the hill skiing. 'For me my faith is who I am. I can't say I sit on the bus and say the rosary, but the night before a big race I'll pray, 'Please God, help me ride my best.''
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Former Canuck, seminarian among Olympic torch-bearers in Vancouver
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (CNS) -- A longtime professional hockey player and a seminarian were among those chosen to carry the Olympic torch around Vancouver in the days leading up to the Feb. 12 opening of the Olympics. Trevor Linden, who spent 19 seasons in the National Hockey League --16 of them playing for the Vancouver Canucks -- will take to the streets not with a stick in his hands, but carrying the Olympic torch. Noel Oco, who is just months away from becoming a member of the Order of St. Bruno, more commonly known as the Carthusians, was chosen to carry the torch after winning an essay competition. Oco will carry the torch late Feb. 10, while Linden will carry the torch down Main Street in Vancouver Feb. 11. The torch will be used to light the Olympic cauldron Feb. 12 during the opening ceremonies. Linden, who was baptized a Catholic in 2004 and been retired from professional sports for more than a year, said he sees the Olympic flame and the games as being less about sports and more about the world coming together. 'It (the flame) has come from Greece and zigzagged across Canada, so in that sense it's really united our country,' he said. ' Oco, who currently serves at Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Vancouver, wrote his essay about the power of the Olympic flame. 'No matter how powerful the Olympic flame is and what it represents, the flame inside each of us is greater than that flame. What the Olympic flame does is reflect off each of us and inspire us to live up to the ideals of the Olympic movement,' he said.
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Catholic faith has sustained 110-year-old through life's challenges
MILAN, Ind. (CNS) -- Emelie Weil, a 110-year-old parishioner at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Milan, has lived in three centuries, during 10 papacies and 20 U.S. presidencies. Throughout 11 decades, Weil said, her Catholic faith has sustained her. Considered a supercentenarian, she even survived a broken neck from a fall down a stairway 12 years ago. One Internet source notes that worldwide there are as many as 300 people age 110 and older out of 6.7 billion people, but the Gerontology Research Group in Los Angeles maintains an international list of only 75 such supercentenarians. 'I have a wonderful family,' she told The Criterion, newspaper of the Indianapolis Archdiocese. Weil still prays from her well-worn prayer book each day and says the rosary. She was born Emelie Seissiger on Nov. 20, 1899, in northern Kentucky. She met her future husband, Stephen Weil, a year later. After completing nursing school, Weil worked as a registered nurse in Chicago, New York and Cincinnati. In 1932, she and Stephen were married. Her husband died 11 years later of pneumonia, leaving her at age 43 with seven children to raise by herself on a 15-acre farm near Cincinnati. The oldest child, Mary, was 10 years old at the time and the youngest, Rita, was only 2 months old. Weil's advice for finding happiness in life is to be faithful to God. 'I haven't done anything that anybody else couldn't do,' she said. 'Just say your prayers, and do the best you can.'
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