Catholic News 2

Full Article

Full Article

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Wednesday said access to food and water is a basic human right, and called on believers and people of good will everywhaere to take personal responsibility for the needs of their neighbors. The appeal came during the Holy Father's weekly General Audience in St. Peter’s Square. The Pope focused on feeding the hungry – the first of the Corporal Works of Mercy – during the catechetical portion of the event.

Below, please find the official English-language summary read out following the main catechesis in Italian

***************************************************

Dear Brothers and Sisters:  In our catechesis for this Holy Year of Mercy, we have reflected on God’s mercy and our own responsibility, as followers of Jesus, to be “merciful like the Father”.  Among the corporal works of mercy, the first is that of feeding the hungry. Access to food and water is a basic human right, yet so many members of our human family, especially children, continue to suffer from hunger and thirst. While grateful for the generosity and solidarity shown in the case of many tragic situations worldwide, we must never forget that this work of mercy calls us to respond personally to concrete situations of need in our own lives. Saint James warns against ignoring the practical needs of our brothers and sisters, for faith without works is dead (Jas 2:14-17). In the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Jesus tells his disciples to provide food for the crowds, yet he shows them that, in sharing what they have, he will give it increase. Jesus himself is the bread of life, and he makes it clear that our relationship with the Father depends on the way we respond to the hunger and thirst of our brothers and sisters.

Following the catechetical summary, the Holy Father greeted English-speaking pilgrims

I greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s Audience, particularly those from England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Malta, Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Indonesia, China, Singapore, Japan, the Philippines and the United States of America. With prayerful good wishes that the present Jubilee of Mercy will be a moment of grace and spiritual renewal for you and your families, I invoke upon all of you joy and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Full Article

(Vatican Radio) A letter from the Holy See regarding the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been published on the website of the UN General Assembly.

The letter, dated 25 September 2016 and signed by Archbishop Bernadito Auza, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN,  evaluates the Agenda and makes some considerations regarding the Agenda in light of Pope Francis’ address to the United Nations when he travelled to New York in September 2015 and of other principles.

You can find the full text of Holy See’s letter to the UN General Assembly here.

Below, is the synopsis of the letter provided by the United Nations:

On October 5, The United Nations General Assembly published on its website a September 25, 2016 letter from the Holy See regarding the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development on the first anniversary of the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. The UN published it as an annex to Agenda Items 13 and 117 of the 71st Session of the General Assembly. 

In the Letter, the Holy See wished to consider certain general principles in evaluating the 2030 Agenda and in interpreting and implementing it at the national and international levels. It laid out the key points of Pope Francis’ 25 September 2015 Address to the United Nations and considered the 2030 Agenda in light of those and other principles. 

The general principles highlighted in the Holy See’s letter were the need to understand integral human development, to recognize the poor as dignified agents of their own destiny, to provide both spiritual and material means, to respect the principle of justice, to protect the right to education in light of the transcendent destiny of the human person, to respect the rule of law, to seek peaceful resolutions of disputes, to serve other and respect the common good, and to build the foundation of a universal fraternity. 

In the application of those principles to the 2030 Agenda, the Holy See stated that it “agree with most of the goals and targets enumerated in the Agenda,” but wished to make “clarifications and reservations on some of the concepts used,” taking into consideration the reservations it entered into the record on Targets 3.7 and 5.6 and about Paragraph 26. 

It made clarifications about the purpose of the Agenda, the centrality of the human person, the concept of human dignity, the promotion of women and men, girls and boys, health, the rights and duties of the family and of parents, and integral human development. 

Full Article

Orange, Calif., Oct 19, 2016 / 03:49 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Stephanie Packer cherishes every moment with her husband and four children. Living with a terminal illness in Orange, California, her goal is “to do everything I can to have one more second with my kids.”

When assisted suicide legislation was officially passed in California in 2016, Packer experienced the ultimate slap in the face: her insurance company denied the coverage of critical chemotherapy treatment that her doctors recommended for her condition.

Her insurance would, however, cover end-of-life drugs for just $1.20.

“It was like someone had just hit me in the gut,” said Packer, who shared her story in the new documentary, Compassion and Choice Denied.

Produced by the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, the documentary details Packer’s experience of living with a terminal illness in an age where assisted suicide is cheaper than the fight for life.

Particularly concerning: the insurance company had initially suggested that they would cover the chemotherapy drugs. It was one week after assisted suicide was legalized that they sent Packer a letter saying they were denying coverage. Despite multiple appeals, they continued to refuse.

“As soon as this law was passed, patients fighting for a longer life end up getting denied treatment, because this will always be the cheapest option… it’s hard to financially fight,” Packer said in the documentary.

Physician-assisted suicide is legal in a handful of states, and is on the ballot for voters in Colorado this fall. The push to legalize assisted suicide has gained momentum since the high profile suicide of cancer patient Brittany Maynard in 2014.

Many prominent Catholic leaders, such as Pope Francis, have spoken out against assisted suicide, calling it “false compassion.” Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez has said that assisted suicide “represents a failure of solidarity” and abandons the most vulnerable in society.

“We are called as people to support each other, to hold each other’s hand and walk through this journey,” Packer said, adding, “I want my kids to see that dying is a part of life, and the end of your life can be an opportunity to appreciate the things you didn’t appreciate before.”

Packer leads support groups for individuals with terminal and chronic illnesses. She said there was a clear morale change in many of the group members when physician-assisted suicide became legalized in her state.

“Normally, we would talk about support and love, and we would be there for each other, and just encourage them that, you know, today is a bad day, tomorrow doesn’t have to be,” she said.

But when assisted suicide was legalized, individuals became more depressed, with some saying that they wanted to end their lives.

“Patients are going to die because of this,” Packer said. “Patients need to know what this means, and the public needs to know that it’s going to kill these patients because they aren’t going to get the treatment they need to extend their life.”

She also said that assisted suicide proponents have twisted the meaning of suicide to make it sound “sweet and pretty,” and have also redefined what it means to live with a terminal illness.

“It makes terminally ill patients feel ‘less than,’ that they are not worthy of that fight, that they're not worth it,” she said.

Packer believes that end-of-life drugs should never “be supported by physicians or run by the government. That’s not okay... because it affects me negatively and affects my fight and my ability to stay here longer with my children.”

Packer pointed to other resources, saying that there is a whole treasury of support for terminal patients – financially, psychologically, physically, and even if patients just need someone to talk to.

While life-affirming palliative care remains an expensive medical cost, Packer recommended that more energy and resources fund hospice care, instead of making death the cheaper option.

“We can start to fix our broken health care system, and people will start to live instead of feeling like they have to choose to die.”

 

 

 

Full Article

Vatican City, Oct 19, 2016 / 04:35 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis said that while donating money to charity might make us feel good, seeing real poverty in the flesh is a challenge we have to face, rather than trying to avoid it.

“Poverty in the abstract doesn’t challenge us, it makes us think, lament, but when you see poverty in the flesh of a man, woman or child, yes, this challenges us,” he said Oct. 19.

To see our brothers and sisters in this state, he said, questions “the attitude we have to run away, the attitude of running away from the needy and not drawing near to them.”

Pope Francis’ comments were made during his catechesis for the general audience, which centered on the passage in James 2 that says “faith without works is dead.” In particular, Francis highlighted the corporal works of mercy of feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty.

When faith is dead, it is “incapable of doing works, of charity.” There is always someone who needs our help, our words and our commitment, the Pope said, stressing that we cannot delegate this job to someone else.

“One of the consequences of so-called ‘well-being’ is to lead people to withdraw into themselves, making them insensitive to the needs of others.”

This model deceives us, making us live as if our lives were “a fad to follow and change with every season,” he said, adding that reality is “not so,” and “must be accepted and dealt with for what it is, and often there is the need to meet urgent situations.”

Frequently we do not encounter the hungry and thirsty in person, but merely hear about sad news or see sad images in the media, Francis explained, noting that often these images move us and encourage us to donate to charity.

This is important, because it can help many, but it “perhaps does not involve us directly,” he pointed out.

“But when, going down the street, we cross a person in need, or a poor man comes knocking at the door of our house, it is very different,” because we are “no longer in front of an image, but we are personally involved. There is no longer any distance between me and him or her.”

It is important to question ourselves honestly about what we do in these situations, the Pope said, asking: do we look away or step around the person? Do we stop what we are doing to help? Or do we try to get rid of them as soon as possible?

“The experience of hunger is tough,” especially for those who have lived through times of war or famine, he said, “yet this experience is repeated every day” with the poor living “next door to abundance and waste.”

“Think for a moment,” he continued. “How many times do we pray the ‘Our Father,’ and yet we do not really focus on those words: ‘Give us this day our daily bread?’”

Quoting Pope Benedict XVI’ encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” Pope Francis said that feeding the hungry is “an ethical imperative for the universal Church” and “it is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that preserves food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination.”

“This is why feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty are included among the corporal works of mercy,” the Pope said, telling pilgrims to refrain from putting “a bit of makeup on the reality of the needy” in order to hide from one’s own responsibility.

However, story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes gives us all hope for how we can help, he said, explaining that “it tells us that the little we have, if we entrust it to the hands of Jesus, and we share it with faith, becomes a superabundant wealth.”

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article