Catholic News 2

The Diocesan Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) Directors’ annual meeting has opened in Lusaka with a call on new Directors to bring about a worldwide missionary openness to diocesan pastoral life.

“You will be expected to serve the Bishops in your respective Dioceses and bring about a worldwide missionary openness to the diocesan pastoral life,” said Zambia’s National Director Fr. Edwin Mulandu

Lusaka Archdiocese and Mansa Diocese have new PMS Directors.

Meanwhile Fr. Mulandu described the year 2016 which was the Jubilee Year of Mercy as a successful one.

“2016 has been a very successful Year of Mercy (for the Church) …We received a lot of graces as PMS. The (national) collections for the universal solidarity fund were marvellous,” he said.

The Pontifical Mission Society (PMS) Diocesan Directors’ National Annual Meeting closes Wednesday 11 January 2017.

(Zambia Conference Catholic Bishops -ZCCB)

Email: engafrica@vatiradio.va

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The Catholic Bishops of Kenya have once more appealed to both Government and opposition political parties to urgently embrace dialogue for the good of the country. The call comes after President Uhuru Kenyatta signed into law the Election Amendment Act of 2016 in spite of strong objection from the opposition and civil society.

In a press statement signed by the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Chairman, Philip Anyolo, together with other Kenyan Bishops, the prelates believe that there is still room for Kenyans to dialogue. The Bishops expressed their readiness to mediate and facilitate the process of dialogue in conjunction with other religious leaders and people of good will.

“We wish to make a passionate appeal, for sobriety, to give dialogue a chance in order to reach consensus and a harmonious resolution that embraces divergent views of all Kenyans,” the statement read in part.  

The Bishops appealed to all stakeholders to do everything possible to ensure peaceful and credible forthcoming 2017 elections that would also guarantee that processes are fair, inclusive and transparent.

They further reiterated that many socio-political problems the country faces could be resolved mutually through continuous engagement in meaningful dialogue.

“We sincerely believe that demonstrations and mass action should give way to this process of dialogue. While it is constitutional to picket, and demonstrate, we know that in the process lives are lost, people injured and property destroyed,” the Bishops write.

(Rose Achiego in Nairobi)

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Paterson, N.J., Jan 11, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic hospital faces an anti-discrimination lawsuit for cancelling a surgery to remove a uterus from a female who identifies as a man. The surgery was meant to treat gender dysphoria.

“This case involves whether a Catholic hospital can be compelled to perform a procedure that violates its sincerely-held religious beliefs,” Matt Sharp, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, told CNA.

“Our nation has long provided broad exemptions for organizations like this – for example, protecting them against being compelled to perform abortions,” he added. “Those same protections should extend to organizations that decline to be part of the procedures like the one sought here – procedures that not only raise religious concerns, but that many doctors and psychiatrists also believe pose serious long-term risks to the patients.”

Sharp spoke in response to the legal case of Jionni Conforti, who had scheduled a hysterectomy at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson, N.J. in 2015. The hospital canceled the procedure on the grounds it would violate the ethical and religious directives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Conforti’s lawsuit said a surgeon at the medical center had initially approved the surgery, which removes a uterus, as had Medicaid. However, a hospital administrator later barred it.

“I felt completely disrespected,” Conforti said, according to the Associated Press.

The lawsuit said physicians claimed the hysterectomy was medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria and to reduce the risk of cancer related to Conforti’s hormone treatments.

The lawsuit charges that the hospital violated state and federal anti-discrimination laws. It also cited guarantees in the hospital’s own patient bill of rights which guaranteed medical services without discrimination based on “gender identity or expression,” the New Jersey news site The Record reports.

Sharp, however, said that subjecting Catholic hospitals and other organizations, “who merely seek to continue to peacefully operate consistent with their religious beliefs as they have done for decades, to costly lawsuits not only hurts the organizations themselves, but also the thousands and thousands of people in the community who benefit from their services every year,” he said.

“Every hospital and physician should be free to make sound moral and ethical decisions as to the best treatments for their patients,” he added. “There are serious questions about the long term results of so-called sex reassignment surgery. Whether based on their sincerely held religious beliefs or ethical considerations, hospitals and physicians should not be compelled to perform these procedures by legions of state or federal bureaucrats.”

Sharp said that state non-discrimination laws which include gender identity as a protected category “have been repeatedly used to target religious organizations and threaten them with costly fines, and even jail time, if they don’t forfeit their religious freedom and disavow their beliefs about the immutability of sex.”

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Vatican City, Jan 11, 2017 / 03:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis issued strong words against worshipping idols, cautioning against the false hope that beauty, wealth and power can give, but which lead a person to trust in empty promises rather than in the Lord.

“It’s terrible, it hurts the soul what I heard one time years ago in the diocese of Buenos Aires: a woman, a good woman, very, very beautiful and who bragged about her beauty, commented as if it were natural: ‘Yeah, I had to have an abortion because my figure is so important.’”

Attitudes like this, he said “are the idols, and they take you on the wrong path and they don't bring you happiness.”
 
Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall during his weekly general audience, continuing his catechesis on Christian hope. While he has so far focused on the meaning and source of hope, in today’s audience he highlighted several types of false hope that can endanger one’s relationship with God.

In his address, the Pope said hope is “a primary need for man: to hope in the future, to believe in life, the so-called ‘thinking positive.’”

However, he cautioned that this hope must be rooted in “what can actually help in living and giving meaning to our existence,” rather than false illusions which in the end are both useless and meaningless.

Faith essentially means entrusting oneself to God, he said, but noted that when life’s difficulties come along, “man experiences the fragility of that trust and feels the need of various certainties, tangible, concrete securities.”

When faced with these difficulties, we are often tempted to seek consolation in the ephemeral, “which seems to fill the emptiness of solitude and alleviate the fatigue of believing,” he said, noting that first places we tend to look for security are in wealth, power, worldliness and false ideologies.

“At times we look for (security) in a god that can bend to our requests and magically intervene to change reality and make like we want; an idol, indeed, that in itself can do nothing, impotent and deceitful,” he added.

Francis then recounted in off-the-cuff comments how while still in Buenos Aires, he would frequently walk by a park where “seers” would sit at small tables and tell people their fortunes for a fee.

The story, he said, “always the same: there's a woman in your life, a man will come,” or “everything will go well.” But the people paid anyway, and “this gives you security. A security of – excuse the word – stupidity.”

“This is an idol, and we are so attached,” he said, observing that “the hope of gratuity” that Jesus Christ gives is sadly something “we don't trust as much.”

Pope Francis pointed out that idols aren’t always made of metal or a statue, but also consist of “those built in our minds,” when we try to transform what is limited into something absolute or when we reduce God to our own plans and ideas of the divine.

In these cases, “an, the image of God, creates a god in his own image, and is an unsuccessful image: it doesn’t feel, doesn’t act and above all doesn’t speak. But we are happier going to idols than to the Lord.”

However, hope in the Lord who both created the world and guides our lives blatantly contradicts the trust we place “in mute idols.”

Ideologies of wealth, power and success, “with their illusion of eternity and omnipotence,” and values such as physical beauty and health are not bad in themselves, but “when they become idols to which we sacrifice everything, they are all realities that confuse the mind and the heart.”

“Instead of favoring life, they bring death,” Francis said, noting that if we place our hope in idols we eventually become like them: “empty images with hands that can’t touch, feet that can’t walk, mouths that can’t speak... incapable of helping, changing things, smiling, giving of yourself and loving.”

This risk is also present in the men and women of the Church “when we make ourselves worldly,” he said, adding that we need to remain in the world, but must always guard against its illusions.

Francis closed his address saying the “marvelous reality” of hope is that by trusting in the Lord, we become like him and “his blessing transforms us into his children, who share in his life.”

“Hope in God makes us enter, so to say, into the range of his memory, his memory that blesses us and saves us,” he said.

After the audience, Pope Francis greeted pilgrims from various countries around the world, and gave a word of caution against “tricksters” who try to sell tickets to the weekly gather, which is always free of cost.

Whether it’s in St. Peter’s Square or Paul VI Hall, the audience is always free and an opportunity to “to talk to the Pope, to visit the Pope,” he said, cautioning attendees that if someone tells them they have to pay to get in, “they are ripping you off.”

“Be aware! This is free. Here you come without paying, because this is everyone’s house and whoever tells you to pay – this person is a delinquent. You don’t do this,” he said, and gave his blessing.

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Washington D.C., Jan 11, 2017 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics should be working to create a “culture of encounter” that shows charity and empathy to immigrants, said leaders of the U.S. bishops in a message this week.

“Our brothers and sisters who are forced to migrate suffer devastating family separation and most often face dire economic conditions to the point they cannot maintain a very basic level of living,” said  Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston and Archbishop José H Gomez of Los Angeles.

“Refugees flee their countries due to war and persecution which inspires them to risk everything for an opportunity to live in peace.”

Cardinal DiNardo is the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Archbishop Gomez is the vice-president. Their message was released for National Migration Week, a time set aside for reflection on the struggles, benefits, and shared realities of migrant families.

In concordance with Pope Francis' recent intentions, the statement voiced hope for a “culture of encounter,” conducive to unity and shared aspirations.

In recent years, families of refugees have been seeking asylum from countries in conflict, such as Sudan and Syria. Thousands of Iraqi Christians have been displaced under ISIS' persecution, mostly to refugee camps.

The pain and suffering of migrating families are an opportunity for mercy, said the Catholic leaders. ABC News reported on one couple who helped more than 100 Christian refugees relocate to America from Iraq.

Appealing to America's heritage as a melting pot, both Cardinal DiNardo and Archbishop Gomez called for reflection on the mercy shown to earlier generations of immigrants.

“As Catholics in the United States, most of us can find stories in our own families of parents, grandparents or great-grandparents leaving the old country for the promise of America,” they said, encouraging Americans to sympathize with people who have similar stories as their own forefathers.

Cardinal DiNardo and Archbishop Gomez also commented on overcoming the struggle of integration in the past. They said that “fear and intolerance” have tested the melting pot, but that we as a country have prevailed to be a society of inclusion.

“Whether immigrating from Ireland, Italy or countless other countries, previous generations faced bigotry,” they said, urging that National Migration Week be used as an opportunity to work for both secure borders and an embrace of the most vulnerable.

 

 

 

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