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Norwalk, Conn., Sep 8, 2016 / 02:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After 14 years of serving the Church’s apostolate for men and women with same-sex attraction, Fr. Paul Check will step down from his current position as Executive Director in order to take up his new position as rector of the seminary in his diocese.  

“I will leave my current role with a measure of both peace and sadness,” Fr. Check wrote in an announcement. “I am peaceful because I trust in my Bishop's decision, and I am grateful for and humbled by the confidence that he has placed in me.”

“At the same time, however, I will be sad to leave what is such a unique and vital apostolate in the life of the Church today - ‘a light that shines in the darkness’ - and one that offers hope to many. Pope Benedict once wrote that Jesus is both logos and agape. I believe the Courage/EnCourage ministry reflects that twofold character of Christ in its clarity and charity, even as it remains a ‘sign of contradiction’ to the world, all in fidelity to the Master.”

Courage, founded in 1980, aims to help Catholics with same-sex attraction in their spiritual growth, including life in chastity. Its partner organization EnCourage is an apostolate for parents, friends, and family members of those with same-sex attraction.

Fr. Check has been involved with both organizations for 14 years, serving as Executive Director of both groups for almost nine years. He will be transferring to his new position as rector of St. John Fisher seminary by December 31, having received the appointment from Bishop Frank Caggiano of the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

In his announcement, Fr. Check called his time with the apostolate a “tremendous blessing, in particular by deepening my understanding of the tangle and the nobility of the human heart, and of my appreciation for the beauty and efficacy of grace.”

“My work with the members of Courage and EnCourage has changed my priesthood, and I will always be edified by your example. As our beloved Fr. John Harvey, OSFS, of happy memory, liked to say, ‘Our members are our best ambassadors.’ Your voice and experience deserve a wider audience, for the good of many souls.”

He said he also believes the apostolate has prepared him well for his new assignment at the seminary, and that he plans to share what he’s learned through his involvement with the ministry with the students under his charge.

Courage has not yet announced who will succeed Fr. Check as Executive Director.

Fr. Paul Scalia, the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Courage International, expressed “tremendous thanks” to Fr. Check for his service to the apostolate in a statement. He also asked for prayers for both Fr. Check and the organization during this time of transition.

“One sign of a health in any organization is the capacity to make a transition in leadership. Courage International is blessed with an exceptionally dedicated staff who is working tirelessly to be sure this transition happens smoothly,” Fr. Scalia said.

“The Courage apostolate already experienced one such transition when Father Check succeeded Father Harvey. We are being asked again to trust in the providence of our loving Father — that, as He has never left Courage without strong leadership, so now He is already at work for our good. Indeed, I am very grateful for the leadership of the episcopal board and pleased with the plans in place to announce Father Check’s successor soon.”

Fr. Check plans to remain involved with the apostolate as a member of the board of directors, and that he hopes to continue attending the annual Courage conference for years to come. He said he has great faith and hope in the current members of the apostolate, that they will carry the ministry forward.

“Please be sure of my sincere gratitude for your friendship in the Lord and your prayers.”

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Washington D.C., Sep 8, 2016 / 04:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the United States has declared that genocide is taking place against Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq, what is the next step for genocide victims displaced from their homes?

“Together, we will advocate for the Christian, Yazidi, and other communities in Northern Iraq that they may return to their homes on the Nineveh Plain to be secured there by coalition and successive international forces,” Andrew Doran, senior adviser to the group In Defense of Christians, stated at the Sept. 7 press conference beginning the group’s advocacy convention in Washington, D.C.

The Nineveh Plain is a 1,600 square mile area in northern Iraq that has been home to various ethnic and religious minorities, including Assyrian Christians who have lived there for centuries as one of the earliest Christian communities.

When militants of the Islamic State swept across northern Iraq in 2014, they displaced hundreds of thousands of these minorities from their homes. They killed innocents, raped and enslaved women and young girls, and destroyed churches and shrines.

In March, the State Department declared that the Islamic State had committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims, and had also committed “crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing” against some “Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities.”

However, advocates insist that declaring genocide is just the beginning of putting back together the shattered society of northern Iraq.

“There has been far too much of a history of sort of declaring something and then everybody packing up their tents and going home,” Katrina Lantos Swett, former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, stated at the convention press conference.

One of the next steps the U.S. can take now is to help resettle genocide victims in their homes, should they choose to go back. However, what should be the best course of action and how soon must this be done?

The first step would be a safe, secure return for the victims. “The Christians should return to their homes just as quickly as that region is secure,” Doran told CNA.

A coalition of forces, including Iraqi security forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga and local militia, are fighting to eventually retake Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. That fighting will be long and difficult, Doran acknowledged, but the Nineveh Plain, which lies north and east of the city, would be the first to be abandoned by Islamic State before the city would fall.

There will be refugees from the city already looking to relocate to the plain, he noted.  

“In the long term there would need to be coalition and other successive forces to – not substantial numbers, but some numbers – to patrol and keep safe the region around the Nineveh Plain,” he said. The area “will be relatively easy to secure.”

However, then the area needs to be made livable. And it is here where plans need to be laid for the long-term stabilization of the region.

First, the infrastructure would need to be rebuilt since there are whole villages that are “like ghost towns” and houses that have not been occupied for two years, Doran explained. Then there would have to be economic revitalization of the region, with the help of outside investors.

Finally, efforts would have to be made towards “reconciliation” of the various groups in the region – Christians, Sunnis, Yazidis, and Kurds.

In Defense of Christians is hoping for a congressional resolution to support the policy, which would ultimately have to be proposed by the Iraqis themselves.

“We the organizers of this conference are currently advocating for a new congressional resolution that voices U.S. support for the government of Iraq as it moves to create this province,” Robert Nicholson, executive director of the Philos Project, stated at the press conference.

The province would be semi-autonomous and part of a newly-federalized Iraq, where “power and governance” is relegated to the “lowest level,” Nicholson explained.

The idea isn’t new, advocates maintain, as the Iraqi government had planned to create three new provinces in January of 2014, months before Islamic State took over Mosul and the Nineveh Plain.

“The first community that needs to be helped and empowered” is the Assyrian Christians, Nicholson said. They would need “administrative autonomy in their local affairs” and a security force that would be trained and equipped, along with an “international rapid deployment force based in the Nineveh Plain” and legal protections for their culture and language.

They should still have the rights and duties of Iraqi citizens, IDC said, insisting that the area will not be a “ghetto” for minorities. However, if they need a safe zone they must be self-sufficient, and the Nineveh Plain would provide the best opportunity for that.

Would the de-centralization of Iraq lead to further sectarian conflict?

“I think because it wasn’t decentralized, the sectarian conflict is precisely what led to ISIS,” Doran stated.

“In other words, the Sunni populations of Anbar and Nineveh province who felt alienated by the Tehran-dominated central government, those conditions led precisely to many people in the population welcoming ISIS as an alternative to what they regarded to be an oppressive central government.”

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Los Angeles, Calif., Sep 8, 2016 / 04:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics can learn a lot about evangelization from the liturgy, say organizers of an upcoming conference in Los Angeles

“This year in particular, we are looking at the relationship of the liturgy and the New Evangelization and discussing the ways in which liturgy is at the heart of the effort to re-evangelize Catholics who have fallen out of the practice of their faith,” Dr. Anthony Lilles, conference coordinator for the Society for Catholic Liturgy, told CNA.

“We live at a time when too many of us sacrifice at the altar of productivity – we worship the works of our hands,” he continued. “The liturgy of the Catholic Church teaches us to surrender the works of our hands to the worship of God and the care of our neighbors.”

The Society for Catholic Liturgy’s 2016 conference, called "The Liturgy and the New Evangelization", will be held Sept. 29-Oct. 1 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and the University of Southern California Caruso Catholic Center. In addition to organizing an annual conference, the group publishes Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal triannually.

Lilles, who is academic dean at the Los Angeles archdiocese’s Saint John’s Seminary in Camarillo, noted that the Second Vatican Council described the liturgy as “the source and summit of our whole Christian life.”

The conference’s papers and presentations are intended to “promote dialogue and direction for the Church,” organizers said, and speakers will make presentations in both English and Spanish.

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles will celebrate a liturgy at the cathedral the first day of the conference and then address the opening banquet.

“Archbishop Gomez in particular will explore the importance of popular piety as a portal through which the lay faithful can rediscover the joy of the Church and, thus, the mystery of the Mass,” Lilles explained.

Bishop Elias Zaidan of the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angles will celebrate the Maronite liturgy at the cathedral on Friday morning and deliver the conference’s keynote speech.

Lilles noted the “unfolding crisis of religious persecution” that faces Christians in the Middle East.

“Bishop Zaidan will offer some reflections on their plight and the essential role that the Maronite liturgy has served in sustaining the faith of the Church persecuted,” he said.

The Friday night banquet will conclude with a showing of Lannette Turicchi’s documentary “Pope John Paul II: Prophet for our Time.”

On Oct. 1, Father James Fryar, F.S.S.P., will offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

The conference will feature 12 academic papers and six pastoral presentations.

The conference’s Spanish track includes presentations from the Colorado-based priest Fr. Daniel Cardo about the Eucharist and the Eucharistic Rites in the New Evangelization.

Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, executive director of the secretariat of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, will present on the topic “The Rites of Christian Initiation and the Baptized but Uncatechized.”

Father Andrew Menke, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship, will review the U.S. bishops’ current liturgical projects.

Other topics include architecture, marriage, and the renewal of liturgical catechesis.

“Liturgy, the public act of worshipping God, is the supreme activity of humanity, the most defining characteristic of living life to the full,” said Lilles. “We were created for a blessed happy life and every liturgy anticipates this ultimate meaning of our existence.”

The conference website is at http://liturgysociety.org/conference.

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By Rhina Guidos

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- It's becoming increasingly difficult for Chicagoan Mary Jennett to see and hear daily about the hardship and persecution Christians face, especially in the Middle East.

So Jennett decided to do something about it by attending a Sept. 7-9 convention in Washington organized by In Defense of Christians, a group trying to find solutions to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and the preservation of Christianity in areas of conflict around the world.

"They're part of our faith family," Jennett said of the Christians facing persecution.

Jennett and about 50 others attended an evening prayer service Sept. 7 at Washington's Holy Rosary Church, where organizers brought in roses symbolizing the life of Christian martyrs killed in the Middle East. They were followed by lighted candles carried in by various faith leaders.

Father Andre Mahanna, who guided the ecumenical prayer service, said the leaders wanted to remind those who attended the event that even after pain and sadness, light can enter into the world.

The service was intended to set a tone of hope for those attending the convention titled "Beyond Genocide: Preserving Christianity in the Middle East." The prayer service also marked one of the first public appearances by Archbishop Christophe Pierre as the apostolic nuncio to the United States.

During a panel discussion earlier in the day, organizers said they would use their time in Washington to talk to lawmakers and policymakers who deal in Middle East affairs about a plan to establish a province, or safe zone, for indigenous Christians and other minorities of the Ninevah Plain region in Iraq. They also want to ask for U.S. support for security and stability in Lebanon, and relief from the Syrian refugee crisis. They also planned to ask elected officials to encourage Egypt to rebuild and construct churches and bring "Turkey to account for its genocide against Armenians and Assyrians."

Kirsten Evans, In Defense of Christians executive director, said growth in the organization, which now has 11 chapters around the country, has been fueled by Christians trying to find a way to help.

"They don't know what to do, but they want to do something," Evans said.

The group offers resources to raise awareness within parishes and in interested local communities, provides education and promotes ecumenical outreach, Evans said.

Bishop Gregory J. Mansour of the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Maronite Diocese of St. Maron, said the convention allowed for a meeting of various Christians and others working on humanitarian efforts to help those who are suffering from violence in the Middle East.

He said it was particularly important to follow up with international courts to send a message that "genocide is not acceptable; we need to follow up legally on this manner as well keep it on the radar." Bishop Mansour also emphasized that those gathered for the conference are not against Islam.

"I would not be part of a group that is anti-Islam because they suffer from this as well," he said.

He said Christians can "reach out to our Muslim brothers who are also victims of this, these criminal gangs, hiding behind Islamic, Quranic teachings. If we can appeal to them to say we want to reach out to you, we want to live in peace, we want you to live in peace. We want to prosecute the criminals and we want to be equal citizens with you."

In Defense of Christians, he said, is not a group of Democrats or Republicans, of pro-Saudi or pro-Iranian supporters. Instead, he said, the group, has worked toward unity, such as the ecumenical prayer service that kicked off the conference and that allowed for participation of members of the East and West church traditions.

"We have all the different divisions of Christianity from 431, 451, 1054 the Protestant Reformation and they're all working together," he said, referencing the different ecumenical councils, some which caused the early church to splinter.

Since it began in 2014, the group said it has garnered significant participation from members of Congress, human rights experts, international activists and academics. In 2014, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was booed and walked off the stage after telling the group to make the state of Israel their ally, a message not met well by some in the crowd. John Ashcroft, former U.S. attorney general, addressed the gathering's third annual solidarity dinner.

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