Catholic News 2

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Denver, Colo., Oct 6, 2016 / 12:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wrote a letter to Catholic leaders during a two-day conference in Denver this week, identifying himself as pro-life and vowing to support core values such as religious liberty and school choice.

“I have a message for Catholics: I will be there for you. I will stand with you. I will fight for you,” he wrote Oct. 5. “I am, and will remain, pro-life. I will defend your religious liberties and the right to fully and freely practice your religion, as individuals, business owners and academic institutions.”

Trump's letter was addressed to the 18th Annual Catholic Leadership Conference, being held Oct 4-6 in Denver.

He stated that Catholics are “a rich part of our nation's history” and that “the United States was, and is, strengthened through Catholic men, women, priests and religious Sisters.”

The GOP candidate has met a mixed reaction among Catholics. His commitment to the pro-life cause has been questioned by some advocates, due to his strong pro-choice statements in 1999 and 2000, as well as his comments during the campaign that his sister Maryanne Trump Barry would be an ideal Supreme Court nominee, despite her striking down New Jersey’s ban on partial-birth abortions as a judge. He has also pushed for an expansion of the death penalty.

While he later said that he is committed to appointing pro-life judges, his earlier statements have left some Catholics wary of his sincerity in being pro-life.

In his letter, Trump pointed to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s extreme pro-abortion record and support for the HHS mandate, which requires many religious non-profits to fund and facilitate abortion and related products against their religious convictions.

“Hillary Clinton supports forcing The Little Sisters of the Poor who have taken care of the elderly poor since 1839, pay for contraceptives in their health care plan (even though they have never wanted them, never used them and never will), and having the government fine them heavily if they continue to refuse to abide by this onerous mandate,” Trump wrote.

He added that Clinton “has been hostile to the core issues and policies of greatest concern to Catholics: life, religious liberty, Supreme Court nominations, affordable and quality healthcare, educational choice and home schooling.”

The GOP candidate also noted that Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, has a 100 percent voting record from the National Abortion Rights Action League and supports same-sex marriage, despite professing to be Catholic.

“On issues and policies of greatest concern to Catholics, the differences between myself and Hillary Clinton are stark. I will stand with Catholics and fight for you,” he said. “Hillary Clinton has been openly hostile to these core Catholic issues for a long time, and is only going to be worse with Tim Kaine now following her lead.”

Trump’s commitment to religious freedom has been questioned, due to his proposal for an indefinite ban on allowing Muslims into the U.S. and a potential system of monitoring those already in the country.

And while the GOP candidate says he opposes same-sex marriage, he has attracted criticism from defense-of-marriage groups who note that he has bragged in the past about having affairs with other married women. Additionally, Trump’s casino was the first in Atlantic City to have an in-house strip club.

Trump concluded his letter by saying that he “offers a much brighter future for our beloved country” than does Clinton.

The presidential candidate's letter comes amid a tumultuous election season.

Last month, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said he believes “that each candidate is very bad news for our country, though in different ways.”

“One candidate, in the view of a lot of people, is a belligerent demagogue with an impulse control problem. And the other, also in the view of a lot of people, is a criminal liar, uniquely rich in stale ideas and bad priorities,” the archbishop added.

And in March, more than 30 Catholic intellectual leaders signed an open letter authored by George Weigel and Robert George denouncing Trump as a man “manifestly unfit to be president of the United States” who has “driven our politics down to new levels of vulgarity,” pleading with Catholics not to vote for Trump in the primaries, which were then in full-swing.

Read Donald Trump’s full letter to the Catholic Leadership Conference here.

Full Article

Damascus, Syria, Oct 6, 2016 / 01:02 pm (Aid to the Church in Need).- This week, children at more than 2,000 schools across Syria are drawing images of peace and writing messages to the political decision-makers of the European Union and the United Nations under the motto “Peace for Children.” More than one million children are also signing a petition.

This appeal for peace is a joint campaign sponsored by Catholic and Orthodox Christians in Syria, while all religious communities have been invited to take part.

Children of all Christian denominations in Damascus, Homs, Yabroud, Aleppo, Marmarita, and Tartus are marking today as the Action Day for Peace. They are expressing their desire for peace through songs, dances, theatrical performances, prayers and other activities. Several children in Aleppo will also talk about their personal experiences.

Sister Annie Demerjian, one of the local organizers of the event, said: “When a child talks about losing his father, for example, we will follow it up by praying for all children in Syria who have lost parents or siblings.”

The main ceremony will be held in Damascus Oct. 7and will be attended by groups of 50-75 children from each of the major urban centers of Syria.

In addition, Syrian schoolchildren – also including many Muslims – are writing messages to the global community on balloons. These include such messages as “We want peace!”, “Give us our childhood!”, “We don’t want any more war!” and “We want to go to school!”

Thousands of children in Syria have been killed during that country's civil war. According to the Oxford Research Group, more than 11,500 children died in the first two years of the conflict alone.

Half of the 11.4 million Syrians who have fled inside or outside of the country are underage minors. More than 2.1 million Syrian children are unable to attend school because of the war, and many children are severely traumatized. Children are frequent victims, not only of direct acts of war, but of abductions, torture and sexual exploitation.

The children’s campaign for peace is an initiative of the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). Since the Syrian conflict began in March of 2011, ACN has been active in supporting the victims of the war and providing financial support, in particular for families who have lost their homes, have been forced to flee the country or have been displaced within the country.

Aid is primarily granted to projects that secure the immediate survival of the people, and especially of children and babies. A sizable amount of the financial aid is used to procure accommodations for what are in general large families with many children, to supply essential foods and medicines as well as baby formula and diapers, warm winter clothing and heating oil and electricity.

The aid is also earmarked to ensure that children can attend school. The aid is provided directly to the families in need, irrespective of their religious affiliation, through a network Catholic bishops and local church structures. Since 2011, some $15 million in grants has gone to the various projects in Syria.

Full Article

IMAGE: CNS/Reuters

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- If Christians are called to live their faith concretely, then they cannot leave out concrete signs of the unity to which Jesus calls them.

And just because the formal Anglican-Roman Catholic theological dialogue has been forced to grapple with new church-dividing attitudes toward issues such as the ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex marriages, it does not mean that common prayer led by Anglican and Catholic leaders and concrete collaboration by Catholic and Anglican parishes are simply window dressing.

Dozens of Catholic and Anglican bishops and several hundred priests and laity from both communities gathered in Rome in early October to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Vatican meeting of Blessed Paul VI and Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury, almost 50 years of formal theological dialogue through the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (known as ARCIC) and the 50th anniversary of the Anglican Center in Rome.

The celebrations, highlighted by an ecumenical evening prayer service Oct. 5 with Pope Francis and Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, coincided with a meeting of a newer body, the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, known as IARCCUM.

The commission brought together 19 pairs of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops from the same country or region to examine how, acting together, they could witness to the faith and serve those in need locally and recommend ways for Catholics and Anglicans globally do to the same.

Canadian Archbishop Donald Bolen, the Catholic co-chair of IARCCUM, said the common theological agreements forged by ARCIC and accepted by both churches, were never meant to sit on a library shelf, but "to transform our communities."

"Every agreement of faith we register" should translate into "common prayer, common witness, common study, common mission, a common ecclesial life," said the archbishop, who is about to be installed as head of the Archdiocese of Regina, Saskatchewan.

While sharing the Eucharist still is not possible, the IARCCUM process is designed to encourage Catholic and Anglican communities to do together everything possible based on the beliefs they share and on the conviction that mission and ministry to a divided world require a common Christian witness.

In his homily at the ecumenical evening prayer, Pope Francis urged Catholic and Anglican bishops, before undertaking any new initiative in their dioceses, to ask if it is possible to do the project together with their Catholic or Anglican neighbors.

As Pope Francis had said Oct. 1 in Georgia when asked about Catholic-Orthodox relations: "Let's leave it to the theologians to study the things that are abstract." Everyone else in the church should be asking how they can relate to other Christians as brothers and sisters.

The answer, he said, is: "Friendship. Walk together, pray for each other, and do works of charity together when you can. This is ecumenism."

During a conference Oct. 5 at the Pontifical Gregorian University reviewing the work of both ARCIC and IARCCUM, Archbishop Bolen said, "You may say, and many have said, there are obstacles -- including new obstacles -- that separate us," but those issues "shouldn't really derail our ecumenical relations" because the relations are motivated by Jesus' prayer that his followers be one so the world would believe.

The pairs of IARCCUM bishops, he said, had spent days discussing the challenges their people are facing: challenges of poverty; threats to human life, including euthanasia; a massive influx of refugees and migrants; war and violence; and increased secularization. "We need to be together. We need to build bonds of communion between our churches, and the world needs that."

Anglican Archbishop David Moxon, director of the Anglican Center, said that through the work of ARCIC, "We have been given significant common ground on which to stand." He listed the agreed areas of faith as including: baptism, belief in God as Trinity, the church as communion, and Scripture as the living word of God. Additionally, there is substantial agreement on the meaning of ordained ministry and on the Eucharist.

Paul Murray, a Catholic member of ARCIC, spoke about the ecumenical process as one involving prayer and friendship, "unpicking the knots" of past misunderstandings, recognizing legitimate differences and sharing the gifts and strengths one community sees in the other.

Basically, there is a sense of ecumenism leading to "loving desire for that which appears good and attractive in the other," he said. "At its heart, ecumenism is about falling in love with the grace of God in the other."

Paula Gooder, a biblical scholar, one of the "Six Preachers" at Canterbury Cathedral and an Anglican member of ARCIC, spoke of the conviction that progress in the theological dialogue is possible, but only if "we move away from wishing other traditions could be just like our own."

Archbishop Welby told the conference that 50 years of Catholic-Anglican dialogue means members of the churches know that "we love one another. And at that point, we have to start talking honestly, more honestly to each other and not putting out the best china" or pretending to be only holy and healthy and strong.

Particularly by using the method of ecumenism espoused by IARCCUM, he said, Anglicans and Catholics can heal the wounds they have inflicted on each other and on the Body of Christ "not especially by looking at each, but by walking side by side into a wounded world and seeking to heal the world, and in so doing, finding we heal one another."

- - -

Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden.

- - -

Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

Full Article

By

NEW YORK (CNS) -- New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said Oct. 6 he hopes a new archdiocesan program to provide compensation to survivors of clergy sexual abuse will "help bring a measure of peace and healing" to those victims.

He announced the new voluntary Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program for those who have survived abuse by priests or deacons of the archdiocese.

At a news conference, he said that while the Catholic Church, and the New York Archdiocese in particular, "has made great strides" in addressing abuse, "we continue to hear from victim-survivors that more needs to be done to reach out to those who have been hurt in the past."

Cardinal Dolan noted that New York church officials have been working with 10 district attorneys who serve in the area covered by the archdiocese, which has dismissed clergy found guilty of abuse and put in place safe environment programs to prevent abuse.

The new program is "another step" in efforts "to respond to the past scourge of sexual abuse of minors by clergy," the archdiocese said in a news release.

The cardinal named Kenneth Feinberg, a well-known attorney who specializes in mediation and alternative-dispute resolution, to administer the new program. He will be assisted by his colleague Camille Biros.

In 2014, Feinberg and Biros led the victim-compensation team set up by automaker General Motors after a flawed ignition switch in some of its cars led to the deaths of 124 people and injuries for another 275 people. Feinberg was charged with compensating the injured and the families of those who died.

The New York Archdiocese said Feinberg and Biros will have complete autonomy in deciding compensation for victim-survivors. Cardinal Dolan said the archdiocese "will respect and honor any decision they make regarding compensation for those who suffered abuse by a member of the clergy of this archdiocese."

The archdiocese said it has already begun reaching out to victim-survivors who have previously notified the archdiocese that they had suffered abuse by a member of its clergy, and they have been asked to participate in the first phase of the program.

Once the first phase is completed, Feinberg and Biros will begin the second phase, which means they will review new allegations brought against known offenders "as well as new allegations brought against clergy who have not previously been alleged to have engaged in misbehavior," the archdiocese said.

"Anyone bringing forward a new allegation will be required to follow the policy of the archdiocese to notify the appropriate district attorney's office, so that they might determine if a crime has been committed. Such allegations will also be investigated by independent professionals and examined by the archdiocesan lay review board," the archdiocese said.

To cover the cost of compensating victims, the archdiocese said it will take out a long-term loan. It "will not use money given by the people of the archdiocese to support parishes, schools and charitable works," the news release said. None of the funds to be paid to victims will be taken from the annual stewardship appeal, a new capital campaign called Renew and Rebuild or from any money given by a donor "for a specific ministry or apostolate."

Others have been named to an independent committee to oversee the new program's implementation and administration: former New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly; U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska, and Dr. Jeanette Cueva, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and an expert in child psychiatry.

"We have been told, time and again, by victim-survivors that they are not principally interested in money, but instead are seeking some tangible sign of the church's desire for healing and reconciliation," Cardinal Dolan said in his statement.

"As this Year of Mercy nears its conclusion," he said, "it is only appropriate that we take this opportunity to follow Pope Francis and once again ask forgiveness for whatever mistakes may have been made in the past by those representing the church, even by us bishops, and continue to seek reconciliation with those who have been harmed and feel alienated from the church."

- - -

Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article