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 WASHINGTON-Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York called on everyone "concerned about the tragedy of abortion" to recommit to a "vision of life and love, a vision that excludes no one" on January 14. His statement marks the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Cardinal Dolan chairs the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"Most Americans oppose a policy allowing legal abortion for virtually any reason - though many still do not realize that this is what the Supreme Court gave us," wrote Cardinal Dolan. "Most want to protect unborn children at later stages of pregnancy, to regulate or limit the practice of abortion, and to stop the use of taxpayer dollars for the destruction of unborn children. Yet many who support important goals of the pro-life movement do not identify as 'pro-life,' a fact which should lead us to examine how we present our pro-life vision to others."

"Even as Americans remain troubled by abortion," wrote Cardinal Dolan, a powerful and well-funded lobby holds "that abortion must be celebrated as a positive good for women and society, and those who cannot in conscience provide it are to be condemned for practicing substandard medicine and waging a 'war on women'." He said this trend was seen recently when President Obama and other Democratic leaders prevented passage of the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act, "a modest measure to provide for effective enforcement" of conscience laws.

"While this is disturbing," said Cardinal Dolan, "it is also an opportunity." Pro-life Americans should reach out to "the great majority of Americans" who are "open to hearing a message of reverence for life." He added that "we who present the pro-life message must always strive to be better messengers. A cause that teaches the inexpressibly great value of each and every human being cannot show disdain or disrespect for any fellow human being." He encouraged Catholics to take part, through prayer and action, in the upcoming "9 Days for Life" campaign, January 16-24. More information on the campaign is available online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJwfcefUiU

He also cited the Year of Mercy called by Pope Francis as a time for women and men to find healing through the Church's Project Rachel post-abortion ministry.

The full text of Cardinal Dolan's message is available online.
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Keywords: Roe v. Wade, anniversary, Pro-Life, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, 9 Days for Life, USCCB, U.S. bishops, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Year of Mercy, Project Rachel, Pope Francis
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Don Clemmer
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 WASHINGTON-A recent grand jury report from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and the award-winning movie Spotlight are painful reminders that the Catholic Church must remain vigilant in the efforts to protect children from "the scourge of abuse," said the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People.

"Once again, the wounds inflicted through these heinous crimes have caused great pain and further mistrust in the Church," said in a statement Bishop Edward J. Burns of Juneau, Alaska, chairman of the Committee. "We must never lose sight of the fact that every victim/survivor has personally experienced profound injury, suffering, and betrayal."

Bishop Burns also highlighted the importance of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, adopted by the U.S. bishops in 2002. The Charter established policies such as collaboration with law enforcement, the permanent removal of offenders and the creation and maintaining of safe environments for children.  

The full statement follows:

A Statement on the Protection of Children
Bishop Edward J. Burns of Juneau
Chairman of the USCCB Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People
March 3, 2016

This week brought painful, but important, reminders that we must remain vigilant in our efforts to protect children from the scourge of abuse. The movie "Spotlight" won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It chronicles the courage of the victims and the journalists who told their story. In statements from Cardinal O'Malley in Boston and the Vatican newspaper in Rome, the Catholic Church renewed our determined and firm resolve to protect children and felt deep sorrow for the tremendous pain.

On Tuesday, we received news of a grand jury report out of Altoona, Pennsylvania. Although I can't speak to the specifics in Altoona and would defer to the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference as to any statewide impact, like everyone, I read the news with great pain.

It is heart wrenching and shocking to hear of this grand jury report or of any incidents of abuse, and it is even more disturbing when we learn that innocent children were abused by priests within the Church. Once again, the wounds inflicted through these heinous crimes have caused great pain and further mistrust in the Church. We must never lose sight of the fact that every victim/survivor has personally experienced profound injury, suffering, and betrayal.

These moments are a reminder why the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, adopted by the U.S. bishops in 2002, exists and must be followed. This highlights all the more the importance that we never grow complacent. As stated in the Charter, we are to cooperate with law-enforcement agencies, permanently remove those who have offended, and effectively create a safe environment for our children. Only with vigilance can we ensure that children are kept safe and so allow the Church to help our people in a process of healing and address the mistrust that rises from these cases.

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Keywords: USCCB, U.S. bishops, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Edward J. Burns, Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, sex abuse, survivors, victims, priests, Boston, Altoona, children, safe environments


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Norma Montenegro Flynn
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Phoenix, Ariz., Mar 3, 2016 / 03:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After a heated debate last month, the decision to replace public prayer with a moment of silence at Phoenix City Council meetings has been reversed.

Yesterday, the city council voted 7-2 to allow the chaplains of the city’s police and fire departments to give the opening invocations at city council meetings instead of the moment of silence.

Councilman Sal Diciccio, a practicing Catholic embroiled in the debate last month over the council’s prayer practices called the reversal a “big win for Phoenix.”

“What we passed was reinstituting invocation or prayer at the city of Phoenix; we made it stronger than it ever has been in its 65 year history,” Diciccio told CNA.

Last month, a sharply divided city council voted 5-4 to adopt a moment of silence instead of prayer at the opening of council meetings. The council debated it’s prayer and invocation policies after a Satanic temple member from Tucson was scheduled to give an invocation at an upcoming meeting.

Diciccio was among four council members who voted against the moment of silence policy last month. From Diciccio’s perspective, the moment of silence was the Satanic Temple’s goal all along – they wanted all prayer to be silenced.

But when the council voted on the reversal yesterday, they voted on the beginnings of a city ordinance that would instate the chaplains as the official prayer policy of the city council.

“Normally prayer is a policy, a very casual thing,” Diciccio said. “Our motion put it into law. What we passed – we created an ordinance. I don’t think anywhere in the country this is part of the books. It makes it really hard for someone to change it again, because it will actually be part of the city of Phoenix as an ordinance.”

Before the vote yesterday, the council heard testimonies from several people from the community, including a strong showing of Hispanic pastors and Brett Harvey, who argued in the Town of Greece v. Galloway Supreme Court case to uphold the right of public bodies to allow prayer under certain parameters.

Last month, the city council heard emotional testimonies for hours on the issue. Members of the Satanic Temple in Tucson were not present for and did not provide testimony at either meeting.

“We did not let this issue go away because some politicians wanted it to go away. I want to
thank Councilmembers Waring, Nowakowski and Gates and our faith community for their pressure on the politicians to reverse this decision,” Diciccio said in a statement after yesterday’s vote.

While the 7-2 vote established the fundamentals of the ordinance, the finalized language will go before the council for a final vote on March 23.

Diciccio said that while last month he was worried that the moment of silence would start to be adopted as official policies for public bodies across the state of Arizona and even in other states across the country, he hopes that the reverse decision will have a similar impact, and that other city councils will look to Phoenix’s policy as a model.

“The fact is that this was ingrained in our traditions for 65 years, and there was really no logical reason to get rid of it, none. There just was no logic there,” he said.

“The elected officials were able to see the impact of this on the public. Bottom line I think when you take away someone’s prayer, that’s a pretty big step. I don’t think they realized the magnitude of that decision.”

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Cologne, Germany, Mar 3, 2016 / 04:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A focus on the reception of Holy Communion by the divorced-and-remarried misses the larger point of pastoral care: participation in the Church's whole life, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said in an interview on Tuesday.

“The Pope always says that it is not about Holy Communion alone, but about integration within the life of the Church,” Cardinal Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told German daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger in an interview published March 1.

The final step of this process, he said, may be the reception of Holy Communion, “after a process of conversion and repentance, if the generally valid prerequisites for this are fulfilled.”

“A second marriage or a second spouse, as long as the rightful spouse is still alive, is not possible according to the Catholic interpretation of the words of Jesus.”

“The Pope and all of us however want to carefully avoid people ‘drifting away’ from the Church as community of salvation,” he reflected.

There are other forms of participation in the life of the Church that are “valuable and legitimate,” the cardinal noted.

“Community with God and the Church is not only constituted in the oral reception of Holy Communion.”

In addition to discussing pastoral care of the divorced-and-remarried, the interview touched on Islam, the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, the United States presidential election, clerical sex abuse, and the cardinal's relationship with Pope Francis.

Concluding with a discussion of divorce-and-remarriage and the reception of Holy Communion, Cardinal Müller acknowledged that “one may indeed struggle with the best way of handling a difficult situation.”

“But what certainly is not possible is putting the teaching of Jesus Christ up for negotiation,” he said.

“And that teaching is, after all: 'What God therefore has joined together, let no man separate'. There can be no compromise there, by which we as humans would turn the clear word of God into something vague. A sound pastoral approach is the opposite of relativizing the words of Christ.”

The cardinal defended the role of bishops in ensuring clear teaching. He compared this to motor vehicle inspections to ensure cars are roadworthy “so as to avoid accidents with serious consequences.”

“If the matter at stake is the salvation of humans and endangering eternal life, then bishops have an even bigger responsibility. And the word of God is in fact very clear. There is but one faith, even if there are legitimately different schools of theology.”

The Cologne newspaper asked the cardinal whether his explanation of the teaching on marriage and Holy Communion was a step back from the German bishops’ position at the 2015 Synod on the Family,  characterizing it as finding participation in Communion being conceivable for the divorced-and-remarried after a discussion with a priest in the internal forum.

In response Cardinal Müller noted that this is possible only if the divorced-and-remarried take on the duty to live in complete continence. He said this citing St. John Paul II's reminder “regarding the perennially valid teaching of the Church on marriage in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio.”

He added that reception of Holy Communion by the divorced-and-remarried must also take “into consideration the manifold situations upon which the process of reconciliation is predicated.”

“The Church is not able to dissolve or suspend a valid and truly sacramental marriage.”

One of the German leaders at the center of the remarriage controversy is Cardinal Walter Kasper, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger noted Cardinal Kasper’s description of a “battle” in the Vatican over the future of the Church.

Cardinal Müller responded: “He retracted that problematic metaphor.”

“A battle is aimed at destroying the enemy. But this is neither about the subjugation of others nor certainly about enmities. The subject was the teaching on marriage,” he explained.

The interviewer cited Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, who, he said, considers unrealistic the expectation of sexual abstinence in an irregular union.

Cardinal Müller commented: “That is also what the apostles thought, when Jesus explained to them the indissolubility of marriage (cf. Matthew 19:10). But what seems to us human beings to be impossible, is made possible by the grace of God.”

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