Archive for category: Uncategorized

I would suspect that if each person who experienced Pope Francis’ presence in Washington, D.C., New York or Philadelphia were able to share what that was like, it would be varied. But I think a common description would perhaps be “inspiring.” At least that would be my impression and experience.

Pope Francis gave us all much to think about during his visit to the United States. From my perspective, he truly revealed the heart of a shepherd and a pastor. In the gatherings with the U.S. bishops, he loved us, affirmed us, thanked us and challenged us in fully embracing the mission of Christ and his church.

Coming to the United States as chief pastor and shepherd of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis reaffirmed the importance of church, family, and the sanctity of human life at every stage of its development. He called for an inclusive attitude towards immigrants, reiterated the right of religious freedom and called for a conscious and responsible care for “our common home.”

As I have read the many texts of his talks and homilies, and reflected upon his messages, there is much to digest. Every venue in which he spoke brought forth a certain theme depending upon his audience. But he was very clear in calling all people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, to embrace the Gospel of Life and the mission of the Christ, to take the church outside its four walls and go into the streets meeting people where they are.

No matter where he went, Pope Francis excited people. The crowds were large and loud, every person hoping to get a glimpse of this spiritual leader. What was so touching were the ways in which he encountered the people in a personal way — a kiss to a baby, stopping and getting out of his car to hug a person with physical disabilities, a visit to a prison or time with the homeless. These are a few ways in which Pope Francis walked the talk.

I was also impressed by the Holy Father’s stamina and his willingness to embrace each experience, each venue, even when he looked exhausted and had difficulty walking. One can only imagine how much energy is needed at the age of 78 for a trip like this. But it appeared to me that the engagement with the people was what energized him.

I am sure that some people around the country had expectations of the Holy Father that were not met. For some conservative Catholics, he was criticized for not speaking more forcefully about the life and marriage issues which this country faces today. People on the other end of the spectrum were happy about his thoughts on immigration and climate change, but would never engage a conversation about his positions regarding abortion, traditional marriage or religious freedom.

Some people expect Pope Francis to speak out clearly on the political issues of today, condemning those who oppose the teachings of the Catholic Church. From my perspective, Pope Francis is not a politician, nor does he see himself as such, but a pastor. His role is not to condemn, but to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, modeling his life after him, the Good Shepherd. Therefore he approaches these political issues of the day in a different way than would a politician. He views the issues, not through a political lens, but through a moral lens, the lens of the Gospel. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (Jn 3:17). And the world was saved through love. Pope Francis speaks the truth with love, the love of Christ.

It was very clear in his messages, especially to the United States Senate and the United Nations, that Pope Francis embraces a policy of dialogue and not demagoguery. Dialogue opens up new opportunities for all. In his meeting with the bishops in Washington he said, “Dialogue is our method, not as a shrewd strategy but out of fidelity to the One who never wearies of visiting marketplaces, even at the eleventh hour, to propose his offer of love” (ref. Mt 20:1-16).

He further stated, “Harsh and divisive language does not befit the tongue of a pastor, it has no place in his heart; although it may momentarily seem to win the day, only the enduring allure of goodness and love remains truly convincing.”

What a beautiful grace for our country to have experienced Pope Francis’ presence for a short five days. He touched the hearts of many, both present at the events and those who were able to follow his journey through television coverage. I am very grateful for having been with him in Washington and Philadelphia. His messages and actions were truly inspiring.

I want to conclude with a message which Pope Francis asked the bishops to pass on to our people.

“I would ask you to share my affection and spiritual closeness with the people of God throughout this vast land. The heart of the pope expands to include everyone. May no member of Christ’s body and the American people feel excluded from the pope’s embrace. Wherever the name of Jesus is spoken, may the pope’s voice also be heard to affirm that: ‘He is the Savior’! From the coastal cities to the plains of the Midwest, from the deep South to the far reaches of the West, wherever your people gather in the Eucharistic assembly, may the pope be not simply a name but a felt presence, sustaining the fervent plea of the Bride: ‘Come, Lord!’”

 

The focus of this month’s West River Catholic is vocations. So often, when a person thinks of vocations, their minds generally lead them to the vocation of priesthood and religious life. Perhaps this is because of the priest shortage or a decline in vocations to religious life. The vocation of marriage oftentimes seems to be left on the back burner so to speak.

With the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia just around the corner and the Synod in Rome on marriage and the family beginning in October, I thought we might reflect this month on the vocation of marriage because the sacrament of marriage is the very foundation of the Christian family, and the family is the very foundation of civil society.

With the continuing social acceptance of same-sex unions, the recent decision from the United States Supreme Court redefining marriage and no knowing the ramifications and its impact on people of faith, all people of faith need to present the unique and beautiful meaning of the vocation of marriage and what God has intended from the beginning of time.

The word “vocation” is a very good definition of the relationship that God has with every human being in the freedom of love, because “every life is a vocation” (Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, 15). In that relationship, God calls each person to love and serve him and his church in a particular state or way of life. Each person’s vocation flows from the grace of baptism.

The church teaches that marriage is an authentic vocation, a call from God, and is just as necessary and valuable to the church and society as other vocations. Like all vocations, marriage must be understood within the primary vocation to love, because every human person is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love.

The vocation of marriage is not merely a private or personal affair. While being a personal union between a man and a woman, it is also for the good of the church and the entire community. The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of marriage and the family.

“As the Second Vatican Council reminds us, marriage is not a purely human institution ― the intimate partnership of life and the love which constitutes the married state has been established by the creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws.” (U.S. Catholic Bishops, 2009 Pastoral Letter: Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan)

God established marriage as a way for man and woman to participate in his love, selflessly giving themselves to each other in love. As a sacrament, marriage signifies and makes present in the couple Christ’s total self-gift of love. Their mutual gift of self, conferred in their promises of fidelity and love, becomes a participation in the covenant between Christ and the church.

In the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa” (Address to John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, May 2006).

It is the nature of married love to overflow, to be life-giving, thus creating a family. Therefore marriage is ordained not only to growing in love but to transmitting life, and therefore is ordered to the procreation and education of those children. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. (#62)

This communion of persons is also spoken of as the “original cell of social life.” St. John Paul II, in his encyclical On the Family (Familiaris Consortio, no. 75) wrote, “The future of the world and of the church passes through the family.” He often spoke of families as domestic churches, places where parents help children discover that God loves them and has a plan for each child’s life. But they are also places where authority, stability, and a life of relationships constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society.

In our culture today, even within Catholic families, the idea of marriage as a vocation — the living out this call as “a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit” — appears to have gotten lost in the malaise of secular ideals. As we have seen, when marriages and families begin to disintegrate into something less than what God has designed for them from the beginning, the impact on society is immense.

Marriage as a true vocation must be rediscovered so that families and society may be strengthened and truly become a civilization of love. To rediscover marriage as a vocation in Christ is to experience a sign of the Kingdom of God. The entire Catholic community must become involved in helping those called to the vocation of married life to live it faithfully, fruitfully, and joyfully.

“A marriage that is truly in Christ is a sign of the Kingdom that is coming. It is a blessing to the couple, to their children, and to everyone who knows them. It offers a sign of hope and a loving witness to human dignity in a world where hope often seems absent and human dignity is often degraded. It is a sign of the kingdom because the love of Christ moves the married couple to ever greater heights of love.” (Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan, pg. 56)

Let us all pray for married couples and those preparing for marriage that they see their lives together as a vocation and that their marriage will be renewed in Christ’s divine love.

The videos are shocking, sickening, appalling and deeply disturbing. The videos to which I am referring are those released by the Center for Medical Progress revealing how Planned Parenthood employees admit that they harvest and sell fetal tissue and body organs from aborted babies for profit. It is a fact that a 17-week-old baby has all its body parts and can be seen sucking its thumb in an ultrasound. Therefore, one of the most disturbing parts of one video entails Dr. Deborah Nucatola speaking about the retraction of a 17- week-old baby in a certain way so that her heart, liver, lungs and brain can be useful to the buyer. How can this type of an abortion at 17-weeks not be called murder, the destruction of human life? Every decent minded American should be outraged by these activities of Planned Parenthood. This activity is evil as is all destruction of human life, a gross manifestation of sin, and entirely against the will of God.

As a gift from God, every human life is sacred from conception to natural death. The life and dignity of every person must be respected and protected at every stage and in every condition. Sacred Scripture affirms this moral truth. In Psalm 139 we read: “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self you know. My bones are not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be. How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them!” (Psalm 139:13-17)

Or as we read in Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter Laudato Si, The Creator can say to each one of us: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you’ (Jer 1:5). We were conceived in the heart of God, and for this reason “each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary” (LS #65).

Therefore the right to life is the first and most fundamental principle of human rights that leads Catholics to actively work for a world of greater respect for human life and greater commitment to justice and peace. People can pretend that babies in the womb are just blobs of protoplasm. But it is God who reveals the truth. As science advances in this field, it is becoming much harder for any American to ignore what their conscience already tells them, life begins at conception.

The Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade is perhaps the worst, most tragic and evil decision ever made in the history of the United States. Statistics show that 55 million babies have been aborted since that Supreme Court decision. Abortion is a violation of human rights incomparable in magnitude and an atrocity for the whole human family. We must find a way to end these atrocities.

In the aftermath of these videos going public, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards tried to downplay these videos by blaming the “militant wing” of the anti-abortion movement. Perhaps it is always easier to blame others when getting caught in a scandal as horrendous as this. In the end, this organization has absolutely no respect the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person.

Following the revelation of these practices of Planned Parenthood, the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice announced plans to investigate the group that produced the videos instead of investigating the alleged criminal activity in harvesting and selling baby parts.

Planned Parenthood claims to be a non-profit organization. Yet they take in enormous revenues. Here are a few facts: During fiscal year 2013-2014, Planned Parenthood reported receiving a record $528.4 million in taxpayer funding in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements. It is important to note that taxpayer funding consists of almost half of Planned Parenthood’s annual revenue.

In 2013, Planned Parenthood performed a record high 327,653 abortions. During the years 2009-2011, Planned Parenthood performed nearly one million abortions (995,687). In 2014, abortions made up 94 percent of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy services, while prenatal care and adoption referrals dropped 14 percent and 4 percent, respectively. For every adoption referral made, Planned Parenthood performed 174 abortions. Planned Parenthood reported $127 million in excess revenue, and more than $1.2 billion in net assets. These are statistics from 2013-2014. Year after year, government subsidy (your tax dollars) and abortions are the lifeblood of Planned Parenthood. Are they really a non-profit organization? Isn’t it time to defund Planned Parenthood?

Despite this massive taxpayer support, Planned Parenthood is a highly political organization as well. During the 2012 election, Planned Parenthood spent $15 million on advertising and get-out-the-vote activities, according to the Washington Post on November 14, 2012. Planned Parenthood and its affiliates lobby at both the state and federal level to block any legislative proposals regulating abortion. They spent $33.6 million lobbying elected officials in 2013-2014, opposing legislation to put in place simple commonsense safeguards, including laws that would inform parents before their minor daughters obtain abortions as well as safety standards in abortion clinics to protect the women receiving services there. Is this organization really good for society and America? Should taxpayers continue to fund such an organization?

Perhaps Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) said it best, “You can’t say in one moment that’s not a human and then sell it in the next moment as a human organ and say now suddenly it is. It was a human all the way through. There was never a time that wasn’t a child, never a time that wasn’t a human, and it seems the ultimate irony to me that we spend time talking about humane treatment of animals being put down and a lion being shot illegally … and we completely miss children being ripped apart in the womb and their body parts being sold.”

On their website, Planned Parenthood claims to be an altruistic health care provider for women and girls. It says, “Care. No matter what.” But when one looks at their annual report, when one views these disgusting videos, it seems that their bottom line is not about women’s health but about the destruction of human life and selling body parts for profit. Those who participate in such activities have completely lost any moral compass. The real Planned Parenthood has revealed who they really are.

Do we, as taxpayers, really want to support such an organization that commits such heinous crimes against humanity? Please contact your congressmen and legislators, demanding an end to Planned Parenthood funding. They should not receive our money for their immoral activity, but our prayers for their conversion. This is what God desires!

As we all know, on June 26 a deeply divided United States Supreme Court issued a morally tragic ruling for our country and its future by redefining marriage. This ruling will force all states to license and recognize marriages between two persons of the same sex.

As I have had time to reflect upon this ruling redefining marriage in our country, and the media coverage of many who are still rejoicing, I was not too surprised in the action of the Court nor in the accepting reactions portrayed in the press, given the current trend of our culture. It is very troubling for those of us who hold to the traditional view of marriage. This includes not only the faithful of the Catholic Church but also the many faithful of other religious groups — Protestant communities, the Orthodox Church, Mormon community, Orthodox Judaism and Islam.

Redefining marriage in the law is gravely unjust. It affects everyone. I am frightened to anticipate how this short-sighted decision will determine the future course of our nation. The first effect of the Court’s decision is to invalidate marriage laws in the State of South Dakota and other states, thereby ordering the transformation of the social institution that is now the building block of every society and culture and has been since the beginning of time. The court has brought this social experiment into the forefront of modern American society. Time will reveal the extent of the destruction that this decision will have on society, but it is unavoidable that it will negatively impact the stability of family life and most especially the moral formation and psychological development of our children.

Marriage is the one institution that connects children to their mothers and fathers. Mothers and fathers are irreplaceable; this ruling does not respect the rights of children to be raised, where possible, by their own married mother and father in a stable home. While circumstances do not always permit every child the benefit of a traditional family, this ruling threatens to unseat the ideal of a family headed by a father and mother, which creates balance and stability in our society.

This decision will not stop public dialogue; the debate will and must continue. This ruling does not and cannot change the true definition of marriage as defined by God from the beginning of time. No one and no court can make what is false true. Marriage by its nature remains the union of one man and one woman. This is a matter of reason, not just faith. Man and woman were designed by God for each other, and only a man and a woman can form a union that brings forth children.

While the sweeping ramifications of the Court’s decision and its impact on people of faith are still unclear, as the church we will continue to strive to ensure that all of our pastoral practices are consistent with the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church.

In his opinion Justice Kennedy wrote: “It must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered.” He said both sides should engage in “an open and searching debate.”

I would hope and pray that an open and honest debate could happen, but I am not confident that those who oppose the Christian viewpoint really want to enter into such a debate. I would tend to agree more with Justice Alito’s viewpoint in his dissent, “It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.” We have seen this so often already prior to this decision.

Moving forward, this decision raises many serious questions about religious liberty and personal conscience for millions of Americans and their faith communities. How will this decision impact our own Catholic Social Services if they fail to place an adopted child with a same-sex couple? We have already seen Catholic adoption agencies in other states forced to close their doors because they would not violate their Catholic conscience.

It is presently ensured in Justice Kennedy’s opinion that we are given proper protection to continue to teach the principles that are foundational and central to our lives and faith. However, the ultimate effects of this decision on the non-profit status of Catholic institutions is yet undetermined. By redefining the very nature of marriage, this decision has implications for hundreds, if not thousands of laws at all levels and will impact society in ways the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly not given sufficient forethought. But we can be assured that the path moving forward will be treacherous for people of faith and religious institutions.

In our continued defense of religious freedoms, I also ask that we pray for family life and for all people to strengthen marriage. As time goes on, the media will portray this false narrative about marriage in many different venues as something “normal.” With renewed purpose, therefore, I call upon all people of good will to promote and defend the unique meaning of marriage: one man, one woman, for life.

Civil law teaches, and this ruling will make it more difficult for future generations to know the truth about marriage and for children to understand their origins. It is more important than ever that parents take the time to speak with their children about the true meaning of marriage as God has intended and why same-sex marriage is immoral and in violation of the natural law.

It is important that we increase our efforts to strengthen marriages and families and rebuild a marriage culture that is beautiful, holy and pleasing to God. Let us pray for all the future victims of this ruling, particularly the children who will be affected.

We must also seek to uphold the dignity of every human person, reaching out with love and support to all people, including those who experience same-sex attraction. All people are loved by God and are called to love him.

Finally, I ask that we diligently pray for all in positions of power and authority to respect our God-given freedoms so that we may live by and bear witness to the truth.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us.