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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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Washington D.C., Feb 22, 2016 / 05:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of the Church must be united under the Holy Father and not divided into factions, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban maintained Thursday at a lecture in which he shared lessons gleaned from South Africa's effort to end apartheid.

Bishops “should never be seen as pitted against each other in a contest or control over the Church, but rather they’re a college,” Cardinal Napier said Feb. 18 in Washington, D.C., where he was delivering the annual Cardinal Dearden lecture at the Catholic University of America.

The lecture is meant to promote the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and Cardinal Napier focused on the collegiality among bishops taught in Lumen gentium, the council's 1964 dogmatic constitution on the Church.

Cardinal Napier discovered the power of collegiality when he joined South Africa's bishops’ conference and they united the Church in opposition to the racial segregation of apartheid, then a national policy.

At their first plenary session in 1979, “I got the experience of what it means to be a bishop,” he said. South Africa's bishops were already “committed to engage in what Pope Francis would now call pastors earnestly listening to each other, but also listening to the laity.”

In the Church’s struggle against apartheid, he said the central question was, “How does the Church become involved in transforming society?”

The bishops went to work. They opened Catholic schools to students of all races – which contrasted with the government’s policy of segregation at the time.

In 1977 South Africa's bishops issued a declaration of commitment on social justice and race relations within the Church, acknowledging that “the Catholic Church in South Africa is lagging behind in witness to the Gospel in matters of social justice,” and committing the Church to practicing de-segregation and social justice.

Their challenge, as the bishops saw it, was transforming the minds of Catholics who accepted the prevailing segregation into believing that “each and every person … has equal dignity and worth.” This was done through promoting a vision of the Church that is “community serving humanity,” Cardinal Napier emphasized.

The bishops and the faithful thus worked together to overcome widespread discrimination in South Africa through “becoming a real community of brothers and sisters” in Christ.

These same principles of collegiality must be at work today in “reforming the Church, beginning with marriage and the family,” he insisted. “These are the foundation stones upon which the Church and society are built.”

Cardinal Napier referred specifically to the bishops present at the recent Synod on the Family, but also spoke more broadly of the college of bishops in his talk. The bishops must be “walking together,” he said, “in a joint effort to make the Church a change-maker in modern society.”

“I think it’s more about ourselves being one, from the bishops down,” he said of the Church, citing St. John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical on commitment to ecumenism, Ut unum sint.

If the bishops splinter into factions, he added, then the faithful “will be split along the same lines.”

Cardinal Napier noted that Pope Francis has emphasized collegiality in his work to “reform and renew the Church.”

The Pope decided from the beginning of his pontificate “that the only way to get this [reform] happening would be to involve the college of bishops, of cardinals, right from the beginning,” he said.

“Whatever influence we have on our society, we have to do it through that vision of being a community serving humanity,” Cardinal Napier concluded.

 

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Denis Grasska, The Southern Cross

By Denis Grasska

SAN DIEGO (CNS) -- San Diego Bishop Robert W. McElroy is challenging U.S. Catholics to take an active role in combating "the scourge of anti-Islamic prejudice."

"We are witnessing in the United States a new nativism, which the American Catholic community must reject and label for the religious bigotry which it is," he said in a keynote address delivered Feb. 17 in the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice.

The evening event took place against the backdrop of the first national Catholic-Muslim dialogue, which was held Feb. 17-18 at the Catholic university.

Last May, after more than 20 years of regional dialogues with representatives of the U.S. Muslim community, the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops established a national Catholic-Muslim dialogue.

Motivated by the call of "Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council's declaration on the relationship between the Catholic Church and non-Catholic faiths, the dialogue seeks to foster understanding and collaboration between Catholics and Muslims. Chicago Archbishop Blase J. Cupich has been named its first Catholic co-chairman.

In addition to Bishop McElroy's speech, the evening also featured a keynote speech by Sayyid M. Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America's Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances, who reflected on the state of Catholic-Muslim relations from the Muslim perspective.

A discussion with both men was conducted on stage by Ami Carpenter, an associate professor at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, with members of the audience invited to ask questions.

In his remarks, Bishop McElroy exhorted Catholics "to recognize and confront the ugly tide of anti-Islamic bigotry" in the United States, to actively seek relationships with Muslims on a personal level, to accompany the Muslim community as it wrestles with religious liberty issues, and to join with them "to witness to and fight for" a Middle East where Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities can coexist peacefully.

Bishop McElroy said U.S. Catholics should view with repugnance the "repeated falsehoods" that Islam is inherently violent, that Muslims seek to supplant the U.S. Constitution with sharia law, and that Muslim immigration threatens "the cultural identity of the American people." Such claims, he said, are strikingly reminiscent of the anti-Catholic bigotry that was once prevalent in the United States.

However, the bishop's denunciation of prejudice does not signify a denial of the reality of terrorism.

"I want to underscore that it is not bigotry to fear or to combat the violence and terror which some Muslims in the world have unleashed in the name of faith," he explained, while acknowledging that some Christians also have attempted to use their faith to justify acts of violence.

Bishop McElroy also challenged U.S. Catholics to overcome the "patterns of social segregation" that lead them to associate almost exclusively with people from similar backgrounds. Because of this trend, he said, many Americans do not have a significant friendship with a single member of the Muslim faith.

"Religious bigotry thrives in an environment of social isolation," he said. "Encounter, which leads to friendship and, thus, deeper understanding, is the most important antidote to prejudice and bigotry."

Through such encounters, he said, Catholics may take inspiration from the rich spirituality of the Muslim people, which includes the centrality of daily prayer, a commitment to asceticism and an understanding of "the immensity and the richness" of divine mercy.

Bishop McElroy reflected on the development of Catholic doctrine on the subject of religious freedom and noted that it was once suggested that, "in a (John F.) Kennedy presidency, it would be the pope who would ultimately govern the United States." He said Catholics must speak out against "distortions of Muslim theology and teaching on society and the state, because these distortions are just as devastating in the present day as the distortions of Catholic teaching ... which were disseminated in American society in the 19th century."

He encouraged Catholics "to walk with the Muslim community" as it reflects upon issues of religious liberty and the relationship between church and state.

Before concluding his presentation, Bishop McElroy issued one last challenge: Catholics and Muslims should work together toward a peaceful future and an end to religious conflict. Praising Islam's respect for "the peoples of the Book" -- its term for adherents of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, each of which trace their lineage back to the patriarch Abraham -- the bishop acknowledged the fear and grief that has been caused by religious violence worldwide.

He called it "a terrible wound to the Christian community" that Christians in the Middle East are facing "extinction" in a region that has been there home for more than a millennium, while it is "a great tragedy for the Muslim community" to see Muslim refugees denied safe haven in Europe.

"This final challenge to the Catholic community in the United States," Bishop McElroy said, "is in reality a challenge to both the Catholic and Muslim communities to walk in solidarity, witnessing, strategizing and advancing public policy within the U.S. and within the Muslim world to forge a secure future for all of the 'peoples of the Book' in the Middle East and throughout the world."

In his own keynote presentation, Syeed noted that the first millennium was marked by positive relations between Christianity and Islam, but that changed in the millennium that followed, which included the Crusades.

"The long stretch of endless confrontation between the two faiths divided the world into a 'house of Islam' and a 'house of Christianity,'" he said. "Such a division ... helped to establish mutually destructive attitudes and stereotypes that shaped our respective cultures and formed our individual consciences for centuries."

But "a new era of understanding and recognition" dawned during the latter half of the 20th century, he said. "Nostra Aetate" was instrumental in bringing an end to "the millennium of confrontation between Islam and Christianity." This improved relationship, he said, also has coincided with the emergence of a "vibrant Muslim community" in the West.

Unfortunately, said Syeed, the Islamic State terrorist group has reintroduced "the terminology of (the) Crusades era." It identifies Christians as "crusaders" rather "people of the Book." The "antidote" to the Islamic State philosophy, he said, comes through robust Catholic-Muslim dialogue as well as the lived experience of Muslims in the West.

He specifically cited his own organization, the Islamic Society of North America, whose members have lived peacefully among American Christians for more than 50 years. Living in a pluralistic society has encouraged American Muslims to re-examine the original sources of Islam and to reconsider some conventions that were adopted centuries later.

For instance, while women are prohibited from driving cars in Saudi Arabia, Syeed explained, many American Muslims have taken a different view on the subject, citing Muhammad's own exhortation that parents train their sons and daughters to be good camel-drivers and applying that directive to modern-day modes of transportation.

"'Nostra Aetate' and the Islamic practices of American Muslims have thoroughly identified natural allies between the Abrahamic faiths and other religious communities," he said. "This is the shape of a new millennium of alliance-building for common values of mutual respect and recognition.

"All faiths are striving to promote those divine values enshrined in our sacred texts and scriptures," he continued, "so that those who exploit them for reinforcing hate, extremism, violence and instability are identified as the enemies of all faiths."

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Grasska is assistant editor of The Southern Cross, newspaper of the Diocese of San Diego.

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