Catholic News 2

Regina, Canada, May 7, 2017 / 03:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Saskatchewan government has said it will seek a temporary exemption to block a judge’s ruling that could force up to 10,000 students out of Catholic schools because they are not Catholic.

“We support school choice, including public, separate and faith-based schools,” Premier Brad Wall said, adding, “We will defend school choice for students and parents.”

He responded to a ruling that barred taxpayer funding for non-Catholic students at Catholic schools. Besides the Catholic schools, the ruling could affect 26 other faith-based schools, including a school for Muslim students.

Premier Wall said that the use of the exemption, called a notwithstanding clause, will protect the rights of students and parents “to choose the schools that work best for their families, regardless of their religious faith.”

The notwithstanding clause allows Canadian provinces to create laws that operate in spite of charter rights that the laws appear to violate. The temporary use of the clause can be renewed every five years.

On April 20, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Donald Layh ruled that any provincial government funding would violate Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the state’s duty of religious neutrality, and equality rights.

The decision concerned a lawsuit between a public school division and the Christ the Teacher Catholic Separate School Division.

It challenged the creation of a separate school division in 2003 in the village of Theodore, 130 miles northeast of Regina, before the village’s public school closed.

Some parents of non-Catholic students decided to send their children to the local Catholic school instead of busing them to a public school in another town.

The local public school division filed a legal complaint against the Catholic school division and the provincial government in 2005. The complaint charged that the funding was unconstitutional and wrongly put the Catholic school in the role of a public school. Funding of non-Catholic students at the Catholic school constituted discrimination against public schools, the complaint said.

The complaint also charged that a new school division was wrongly created to prevent the public school from closing.

The ruling was to have taken effect in July 2018.

Leader of the Opposition Trent Wotherspoon backed the government’s use of the notwithstanding clause, but said the government should have mediated a solution during the long period in which the case was considered by the courts.

The notwithstanding clause was last invoked in the year 2000, when Quebec used the clause in laws involving religious schools and schools for indigenous students. The Alberta province also invoked the clause.


 

 

 

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Vatican City, May 7, 2017 / 03:37 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis ordained 10 men to the priesthood, telling them to imitate Jesus in every aspect of their ministry, so as to avoid hypocrisy and draw near to their people, always serving with the joy that comes from being united to Christ.

“Aware of having been chosen from among men and formed in their favor to attend to the things of God, exercise in joy and sincere charity the priestly work of Christ,” the Pope said May 7.

He told the priests to “be joyful, never sad. Joyful, with the joy of the service of Christ, even in the midst of suffering, incomprehension, of your own sin.”

“Always have before your eyes the example of the Good Shepherd, who didn’t come to be served, but to serve,” he said, asking them to “please, don’t be ‘lords,’ don’t be clerics of state, but shepherds, shepherds of the People of God.”

Pope Francis ordained 10 men from different seminaries of the diocese of Rome Sunday, coinciding with the 54th World Day of Prayer for Vocations. They hail from different countries around the world, including Italy, Peru, Mexico and Azerbaijan.

Concelebrants for the Mass included Cardinal Agostino Vallini, Vicar General of Rome, as well as several of Rome’s auxiliary bishops.

As in the past, for his homily Pope Francis used the “ritual homily” from the Italian edition of the “Pontificale Romano,” the Latin Catholic liturgical book containing rites performed by bishops, for the ordination of priests, adding a few of his own person contributions to the text.

Speaking to the congregation, the Pope encouraged them to reflect on the service the new priests will undertake in the Church.

While Jesus was the only High Priest in the New Testament, he wanted to choose certain men from among his disciples, “so that exercising publicly in the Church and in his name the office of the priest in favor of all men, they would continue his personal mission as teacher, priest and shepherd.”

Francis stressed that the men chosen by Jesus were elected “not to make a career, but to do this service.”

A priest is above all called to serve the people of God, he said, explaining that it is precisely this service that will configure them to Christ and unite them the priesthood of their bishop.

“They will be preachers of the Gospel, shepherds of the people of God and will preside over the actions of worship, particularly the celebration of the sacrifice of the Lord,” he said.

Speaking directly to the new priests, Francis stressed that by exercising their ministry, “you will be participants in the mission of Christ, the only master.”

“Give that word to all, which you yourselves have received with joy, since you were children,” he said, telling them to “read and meditate assiduously on the Word of God in order to believe what you have read, teaching what you have learned in the faith, living that which you have taught.”

He told the priests to nourish the people of God with a doctrine that is “simple,” explaining that this is how the Lord himself spoke, and it “arrived to the heart.”

“Don’t give homilies that are too intellectual, elaborate. Speak simply, speak to the heart. And this preaching will be a nourishment,” he said, adding that it will also be a “joy and support” for the faithful.

Christ must be the “scent of your life,” the Pope said, stressing that “the word without the example of life isn’t useful; it’s better to turn around, (because) the double life is an bad sickness in the life of the Church.”

Pope Francis told the priests to recognize and be aware of what they are doing, primarily in administering the sacraments.

He also said to “imitate what you celebrate, so that participating in the mystery of the death and resurrection of the Lord, you bring the death of Christ into your limbs and walk with him in the newness of life.”

“A priest who has perhaps studied a lot of theology, and has received, 1,2,3,4 degrees, but who hasn’t learned to carry the Cross of Christ, isn’t useful,” he said, adding that “he will be a great academic, a great professor, but not priest.”

Turning to the Sacraments of Initiation – baptism, confession and the Eucharist – he placed particular attention on confession, during which a priest forgives sins “in the name of Christ and of the Church.”

Stressing the importance of mercy, he told the priests “please, I ask you, in the name of Christ and the Church, to be merciful, always.”

“Don’t load on the back of the faithful, weight that they can’t carry, not even you,” he said. “Jesus rebuked these doctors, and he called them hypocrites.”

Francis also urged them to spend time with the sick and elderly, explaining that perhaps one of the most “boring” or even “painful” tasks they have is visit the sick.

While it’s okay to have deacons or lay members of their parishes go and give communion to them, Pope Francis told the priest to do it themselves. Otherwise, “you don’t let yourselves touch the suffering flesh of Christ in the sick. This sanctifies you. You will draw closer to Christ.”

 He closed his homily telling them to always have before their eyes “the example of the Good Shepherd, who did not come to be served, but to serve,” and to seek salvation for the lost.

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Vatican City, May 7, 2017 / 05:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Reflecting on the image of the Good Shepherd, Pope Francis said his is the only voice that leads us to safety and friendship with God, and cautioned against the false wisdom of those who confuse and deter us from this path.

“It is not always easy to distinguish the voice of the Good Shepherd. There is always the danger of the thief, the robber and the false shepherd,” the Pope said May 7.

“There is always the risk of being distracted by the clamor of many other voices,” he said, and invited faithful “to not allow ourselves to be diverted by the false wisdoms of this world, but to follow Jesus, the Risen one, as the only sure guide that gives meaning to our lives.”

Francis spoke to pilgrims during his Sunday Regina Coeli address, which coincided with the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Shortly before leading pilgrims in the traditional Marian prayer, he presided over Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, where he ordained 10 men to the priesthood.

In his address, the Pope pointed to the day’s Gospel reading from John, which recounts the parable of the Good Shepherd. He said the passage gives us two images: the image of the shepherd, and the image of the gate to the fold of sheep.

“The flock, which is all of us, has as a home a fold that gives refuge, where the sheep abide and rest after the fatigue of the journey,” the Pope said, noting that there are two people in the passage who try to draw near to the flock.

One of these people is the shepherd, and the second is a stranger, “who does not love the sheep,” Francis said, explaining that Jesus identifies with the shepherd, “and shows a relationship of familiarity with the sheep.”

This familiarity is expressed through his voice, “with which he calls them and it is recognized and followed,” taking them the “grassy meadows” where they find the nourishment they need, he said.

When Jesus says “‘I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved,’” he is telling the disciples that they will have life and have it in abundance, the Pope said, noting that Christ, the Good Shepherd, “became the door of salvation for humanity, because he offered his life for his sheep.”

“Jesus, the good shepherd and gate for the sheep, is a leader whose authority is expressed through service, a leader who to command gives his life and doesn’t ask others to sacrifice it,” he said.

“In a leader such as this one can trust, like the sheep who listened to the voice of their shepherd because they know that with him they go to good and abundant pastures,” he said, noting that one signal is all that’s needed and the sheep follow.

They follow the shepherd, “they obey, they walk guided by the voice of him who they feel is a friendly, strong and sweet presence, who guides, protects, consoles and heals,” the Pope said, adding that “this is Christ for us.”

While we might at times feel “a bit in the dark” when it comes to the spiritual and affective dimension of Christian life, Pope Francis cautioned against the temptation to “rationalize the faith too much.”

By doing this, we “risk losing the perception of the stamp of that voice, the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd, who stimulates and fascinates,” he said, explaining that for Jesus, we are never strangers, but “friends and brothers.

He closed his address asking Mary to accompany the 10 new priests he ordained, and asked her to sustain “the many who are called by him, so that they are ready and generous in following his voice.”

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