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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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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Saturday morning paid his respects for Miriam Woldu, a 34-year-old receptionist at the Pope’s residence who died recently at her apartment on the outskirts of Rome.

The receptionist was an Eritrean-born Italian citizen, who was seven-months-pregnant. She had been suffering diabetes-related complications during her pregnancy.

The funeral was held on Saturday in the Church of the St. Stephen of the Abyssinians, located on the grounds of the Vatican.

The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, said before the funeral Mass, Pope Francis prayed silently for 20 minutes in the church – “showing his great affection and respect for his dear collaborator in the Casa Santa Marta” – and left a bouquet of 12 white roses.

Last month, Pope Francis remembered another deceased member of the Casa Santa Marta staff – a cleaner named Elvira – during his Sunday Angelus. The Holy Father said his collaborators “are not just employees, but are a part of the family in the house.”

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Friday met with the CEO and co-founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom.  The photo-sharing social network was founded in 2010, and bought by Facebook in 2012. Over 300 million people use the service each month.

Systrom posted a photo of the meeting on his Instagram profile, writing: “Today I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis. We spoke about the power of images to unite people across different cultures and languages. It was by far one of the most memorable experiences of my life!”

In January, Pope Francis met separately with both  Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of the parent company of Google, and  Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Friday met with Bodo Ramelow, the Minister-President of the German state of Thüringen.

Ramelow is the first politician from the Left Party – which is descended from East Germany’s Communist party – to govern a German state.

After the meeting, Ramelow told Vatican Radio’s German Programme he invited the Holy Father to visit Thüringen to mark the anniversary of the Reformation, although he admitted it was unlikely to happen, given the Pope’s schedule.

“I explained to him that we have created a new programme called Achawa, which is the Hebrew word for brotherhood,” said Ramelow, a practicing Protestant. “This has brought together Catholics, Protestants, and many representatives of civil society… We think about the issues of the Reformation as a common theme, and encourage people to think about faith.”

The two men also spoke about the German response to the current refugee crisis. Ramelow said the first step was “to invite the people to have courage, not fear.”

"We want to talk to them about the fears they have,” he added.  “But we do not want to give room to those who would stoke those fears, and certainly we cannot provide a stage to the preachers of hate."

Ramelow told Vatican Radio he was pleased with his meeting with the Pope, adding “this key term ‘mercy,’ the central element of this pontificate, is truly lived by [Pope Francis]”

During the meeting, Ramelow gave the Pope a replica of a 1534 Bible and a bronze statue of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

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(Vatican Radio) Long-time Vatican official Msgr. Paul Tighe was consecrated a bishop on Saturday afternoon in a ceremony presided over by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The new bishop was in December named the Adjunct Secretary for the Pontifical Council of Culture. He had previously served as Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications since 2007.

Among those concelebrating the Mass was the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin.

Archbishop Martin said Bishop Tighe, who served as Director of the Communications Office of Dublin Diocese from 2004-2007, “was a person of kindness and integrity, whose contribution to life of the Universal Church, particularly in social communications, was widely respected.”

Archbishop Eamon Martin, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, sent congratulations to Rome on behalf of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

“Bishop Tighe possesses many gifts including a strong pastoral outlook, a fine theological mind and is a communicator par excellence,” the Armagh Archbishop said. “I am confident that he will do excellent work in his new role as Adjunct Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture. I wish Bishop Tighe every blessing in the years to come and assure him of my prayerful support.”

Bishop Tighe was given the titular see of Drivastrum.

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The Archdiocese of Seoul has opened three Holy Doors in as many shrines dedicated to the early martyrs of the Korean Catholic Church to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the brutal anti-Christian persecution known as Byeong-in.

The decision is part of the year dedicated to memory of the martyrs proclaimed by the capital’s archbishop, Card Andrew Yeom Soo-jung. "Compared to the Catholics of 150 years ago, our faith today seems weaker,” said the prelate in his homily on Tuesday, the first day of the special year. “May the Lord help us follow the example of the martyrs.”

The great Byeong-in persecution began on 23 February 1866 when, alarmed by the Christian message, which preaches equality among men and contradicts Confucian teachings, Korea’s rulers ordered a nationwide crackdown on Catholics. About 9,000 people, roughly half of the Catholic community at the time, died a violent death by order of the king.

On the same day, 150 years later, the Holy Doors in the three Archdiocesan shrines dedicated to the memory of the martyrs were opened: the Jeoldusan mausoleum (pictured), Saenamteo shrine, and the Catholic church of Yakhyeon. According to the Archdiocese’s Communications Office, about 2,000 faithful took part in the opening ceremony at each site.

For his part, Archbishop Yeom opened the year dedicated to the martyrs’ memory at Myeongdong Cathedral, in the heart of the capital.“Compared to the Catholics of 150 years ago,” he said, “our faith today seems weaker despite all the religious freedom we have. This is why we must remember our ancestors of faith, who kept their beliefs even in the worst and most painful situations.”

For the prelate, “We cannot keep moving forward without reflecting on our past. May the Lord help us follow the example of the martyrs, and live a life of service to others.”

(Source:AsiaNews) 

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Ottawa, Canada, Feb 27, 2016 / 06:27 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Legal assisted suicide will soon arrive in Canada, prompting a Catholic archbishop to reflect on what the last rites mean for those who want to kill themselves.

Priests should work to dissuade people who request assisted suicide, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa said. Priests should pray with these people and their families. However, someone who requests assisted suicide doesn’t have the right disposition to receive anointing of the sick.

“Asking to be killed is gravely disordered and is a rejection of the hope that the rite calls for and tries to bring into the situation,” the archbishop said, according to Canadian Catholic News.

Last rites – which is the sacrament given to the elderly or gravely ill – includes the forgiveness of sins.

“But we cannot be forgiven pre-emptively for something we are going to do – like ask for assisted suicide when suicide is a grave sin,” said Archbishop Prendergast.

Canadian lawmakers are preparing new assisted suicide laws. The law had previously criminalized assisted suicide. Those who counseled, aided or abetted a suicide faced up to 14 years in prison.

Then in February 2015 the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that doctors may help patients who have severe and incurable suffering to kill themselves. The national parliament was tasked with crafting a legal response to the decision.

The government’s final report on the topic was published Feb. 25. It said all publicly funded health care institutions must provide euthanasia and assisted suicide. This includes Church-run hospitals, hospices and nursing homes. The report has no protections for doctors who have religious or moral objections to referring a patient to a doctor who will help him or her commit suicide.

If the recommendations are accepted, the new law could have a major impact on Catholic institutions, the U.K. newspaper The Catholic Herald reports.

A full response from parliament is expected by June 2016.

Many other Catholic bishops have spoken out against assisted suicide.

“Caring for the dying does not include killing them or helping them kill themselves,” Bishop Douglas Crosby of Hamilton, the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the Canadian Parliament in a Jan. 20 intervention.

The bishop said the Canadian government should prioritize palliative care, fund further research and education in pain relief and advance suicide prevention programs. He said the government must guarantee conscience rights in law.

Bishop Hamilton also wrote against assisted suicide in the Canadian bishops’ Lenten message to laity. In the Feb. 8 message he urged Catholics to be in communion with the Pope and the bishops and oppose assisted suicide.

The Catholic bishops of Alberta reflected on assisted suicide in a Feb. 11 message for the Catholic Church’s World Day of the Sick.

“The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada makes legally permissible in some circumstances what is morally wrong in every circumstance: the taking of innocent human life. This is unacceptable in a truly just and ethical society,” they wrote.

They said “no Catholic may advocate for, or participate in any way, whether by act or omission, in the intentional killing of another human being either by assisted suicide or euthanasia.”

“When any life can be taken at will, the dignity of all lives is seriously eroded and respect for human life in our society as a whole is diminished.”

They warned that the law will place some people at serious risk, including the disabled and the mentally ill. Purported safeguards are not effective, they said.

The Alberta bishops warned that some jurisdictions in Canada undermine the conscience rights of doctors and other healthcare workers opposed to suicide. To force a physician to assist in a suicide or euthanasia would “fundamentally redefine what it means to be a doctor,” they said. “Killing is not medicine.”

In October 2015, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada issued a joint declaration against euthanasia and assisted suicide. They were joined more than 30 other Christian denominations as well as 20 Jewish and Muslim leaders.
 

Photo credit: kiri11 via www.shutterstock.com

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Vatican City, Feb 27, 2016 / 09:23 am (CNA).- Professor Saeed Khan, an expert in Islam, has said that mercy is central to the Muslim faith – a mercy with roots in Catholicism and which is opposed to the misguided, fundamentalist interpretations of some extremist groups. 

Mercy is “the core of Islam,” Saeed Khan told CNA in a Feb. 25 interview, adding that the Muslim concept of mercy “is actually an expansion of Catholic notions of mercy.”

While the conventional understanding of mercy is typically “showing compassion and forgiveness for those in need,” in Islam mercy also means “a blessing and a gift,” he said.

The concept of mercy as both a blessing and a gift shows God’s omniscience and omnipotence in the sense that mercy is proactively given, rather than simply reactively received by someone seeking forgiveness, Khan explained.

Because of this, creation itself “is a mercy to mankind,” he said, adding that the various prophets throughout history, including, in his words, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jesus and Mohamed, “are also mercies on mankind because they have been the ones to transmit and convey the divine message.”

Khan is a lecturer for Detroit-based Wayne State University’s Department of Near East and Asian Studies. He teaches courses on Islamic and Middle East History, Islamic Civilizations and the History of Islamic Political Thought.

He was present in Rome as a speaker for a Feb. 25-26 conference organized by the Pontifical Council Cor Unum in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the publication of retired pontiff Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est,” meaning “God is love.”

The document was published Dec. 25, 2005, just eight months after his election as Bishop of Rome.

Conference participants came from all over the world to discuss the encyclical from theological and charitable perspectives, as well as the perspective of other religions such as Judaism and Islam.

Khan himself spoke on the first day of the conference, offering participants his perspective on the Muslim understanding of mercy.

In his comments to CNA, Khan said the Islamic concept of God’s closeness to humanity is that he “is closer to you than your own jugular vein.”

This shows that a very intimate relationship that exists which can only be infused by love, he said. “So when Pope Benedict XVI mentioned in his encyclical that the primacy of love and how God then manifests that love then to his creation that is also an Islamic concept.”

Khan said mercy is also closely linked to the concept of charity. In Islam, charity is “a devise of mercy” that goes beyond providing material needs such as food and clothing, but reaches the spiritual level, he said.

As an example, he pointed to a famous saying of the Prophet Mohamed that “even a smile is a form of charity” since it forms a human connection. This is especially true, he said, at a time when humanity is becoming increasingly more impersonal, despite advancements in technology and communications. 

However, while mercy is “the core of Islam,” there is tragically a difference between “Islam as an ideal and Islam as it is applied and as it is practiced by people,” Khan said, noting that the same can be said of any religion.

“Unfortunately there are people who will invoke the name of Islam to all kinds of unspeakable and egregious things,” he said.

“Those may claim to be believers who act out in such vengeful and violent ways, but again, it is such an anomaly and such an aberration from the divine message that it’s very difficult to be able to say with a certain straight face that this is really what God intended.”

The professor said that instead, to get to the heart of true Islam one has to go back to the sources of in order to see the real divine message and understand what God is really mandating.

Mercy, Khan said, “is so embedded in Islam that in several places within the Quran it says ‘and establish regular prayer and charity.’”

He noted how two of the 99 attributes Muslims recognize in God are “all-merciful” and “ever-merciful.” These phrases, he added, are invoked at least 17 different times during the five daily prayers Muslims recite throughout the day. 

The terms are also invoked by Muslims before they embark on “any act or deed,” so therefore the concept of an all-merciful God also exists in Islam, the professor explained.

When it comes to verses in the Quran supporting vengeance and violence such as death by the sword, Khan said that Islam is “a totalistic religion” which also provides instructions on what to do in a time of war, persecution or when one’s life is threatened.

He acknowledged that there are sanctions for war and for committing physical violence in the Quran, but said they are “a last resort,” and are heavily regulated to societies that would otherwise be “very unregulated, very anarchic, even more brutal than they already are.”

Turning to the current Jubilee of Mercy, the professor touched on Pope Francis’ numerous affirmations that the Holy Year isn’t just for Catholics, but for people of all religions, including our “Muslim brothers.”

When asked how Muslims can participate in the Jubilee, Khan said that one of the most important things to remember is that it’s not just God who is merciful, “but we who are his instruments on earth have an obligation as well as the opportunity to express that kind mercy.”

He noted how the Quran speaks to two different audiences, namely, believers and non-believers, and that mercy is something that can and should be commonly expressed.

“It is incumbent on Muslims to understand that when it comes to mercy, this is something that then binds both believers and all of humanity in the fact that mercy can be displayed, and should be displayed, to everyone,” he said. 

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