Monday, October 25, 2010

Post #81

Excerpt from Western Catholic Reporter: Pope names 24 new cardinals

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict named 24 new cardinals Oct. 20, including 10 Italians and four Africans.

The appointments bolster the strength of the Vatican Curia within the College of Cardinals. Many of the Italians to receive the red hat hold curial offices that are traditionally occupied by cardinals.

The pope announced the names at the end of his weekly general audience Oct. 20 and said he would formally install the cardinals during a special consistory at the Vatican Nov. 20.

"The universality of the Church is reflected in the list of new cardinals," the pope said. “In fact, they come from various parts of the world and fulfill different tasks in the service of the Holy See or in direct contact with the people of God as fathers and pastors of particular churches.”

The new cardinals come from 13 countries on five continents. The pope named 10 curial officials -- a higher number than expected -- along with 10 residential archbishops and four prelates over the age of 80. One unusual aspect of the pope's list was that two of the residential archbishops were retired.

The November ceremony will mark the third time Pope Benedict has created cardinals since his election in April 2005. After the consistory, he will have appointed about 40 per cent of the cardinals currently under the age of 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.

Thirteen of the voting-age cardinals will be American -- matching a historically high number for the United States – two will be Canadians and 25 will be Italians.

The consistory will leave the College of Cardinals with 203 members, a new record. Of those, 121 will be under age 80, one more than a numerical limit of 120 that has often been waived. Seven cardinals will turn 80 over the next six months.
The pope named four cardinals who are over the age of 80, prelates he said were "distinguished for their generosity and dedication in service of the Church."

Here is the list of the 24 cardinals-designate, in the order in which the pope announced them Oct. 20:

■Italian Archbishop Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints Causes, a Salesian, 72.
■Coptic Patriarch Antonios Naguib of Alexandria, Egypt, 75.
■Guinean Archbishop Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, 65.
■Italian Archbishop Francesco Monterisi, archpriest of Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, 76.
■Italian Archbishop Fortunato Baldelli, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, 75.
■U.S. Archbishop Raymond Burke, head of Apostolic Signature, 62.
■Swiss Archbishop Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, 60.
■Italian Archbishop Paolo Sardi, pro-patron of Knights of Malta, 76.
■Italian Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, 66.
■Italian Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, a Scalabrinian, 75.
■Italian Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, 68.
■Zambian Archbishop Medardo Joseph Mazombwe, retired archbishop of Lusaka, 79.
■Ecuadorean Archbishop Raul Eduardo Vela Chiriboga, retired archbishop of Quito, 76.
■Congolese Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya of Kinshasa, 71.
■Italian Archbishop Paolo Romeo of Palermo, 72.
■U.S. Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, 69.
■Brazilian Archbishop Raymundo Damasceno Assis of Aparecida, 73.
■Polish Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz of Warsaw, 60.
■Sri Lankan Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don of Colombo, 62.
■German Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, 57.
■Spanish Archbishop Jose Manuel Estepa Llaurens, former military ordinary of Spain, 84.
■Italian Bishop Elio Sgreccia, retired president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, 82.
■German Msgr. Walter Brandmuller, retired president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, 81.
■Italian Msgr. Domenico Bartolucci, retired director of the Sistine Chapel Choir, 93.

Source:
http://www.wcr.ab.ca/WCRThisWeek/Stories/tabid/61/entryid/86/Default.aspx

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Post #80

Excerpt from Reuters:  Vatican synod ends with criticism of Israel

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Israel cannot use the biblical concept of a promised land or a chosen people to justify new settlements in Jerusalem or territorial claims, a Vatican synod on the Middle East said Saturday.

In its concluding message after two weeks of meetings, bishops from the Middle East also said they hoped a two-state solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinians could be made a reality and called for peaceful conditions that would stop a Christian exodus from the region.

"We have meditated on the situation of the holy city of Jerusalem. We are anxious about the unilateral initiatives that threaten its composition and risk to change its demographic balance," the message said.

In a separate part of the document -- a section on cooperation with Jews -- the synod fathers took issue with Jews who use the Bible to justify settlements in the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.

"Recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the Word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable," the document said.

Many Jewish settlers and right-wing Israelis claim a biblical birthright to the occupied West Bank, which they call Judea and Samaria and regard as a part of historical, ancient Israel given to the Jews by God.

NO PROMISED LAND

Asked about the passage at a news conference, Greek-Melchite Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros, said:

"We Christians cannot speak about the promised land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people. All men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.

"The concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians," he added. "The justification of Israel's occupation of the land of Palestine cannot be based on sacred scriptures."

The synod's concluding message repeated a Vatican call for Jerusalem to have a special status "which respects its particular character" as a city sacred to the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Jerusalem remains a key issue of dispute. Palestinians want East Jerusalem for the capital of a future state. Israel has annexed the area, a move never recognized internationally, and has declared Jerusalem to be its "united and eternal" capital.

While recognizing "the suffering and insecurity in which Israelis live" and the need for Israel to enjoy peace within internationally recognized borders, the document was more expansive and detailed on the situation of Palestinians.

It said Palestinians "are suffering the consequences of the Israeli occupation: the lack of freedom of movement, the wall of separation and the military checkpoints, the political prisoners, the demolition of homes, the disturbance of socio-economic life and the thousands of refugees."

It urged Christians in the region not to sell their homes and properties. "It is a vital aspect of the lives of those who remain there and for those who one day will return there."

It condemned terrorism "from wherever it may proceed" as well as anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and discrimination against Christians.

Palmor echoed the synod's call for Christians to remain in the Middle East. "Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the number of Christians has increased over the years, and naturally warmly welcomes their presence," he said.

Middle East Synod: Message to the People of God

Sources include
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/101023/world/international_us_vatican_mideast
http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=433122
http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=433320

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Post #79

Excerpt from the Globe & MailBrother André: The Rocket Richard of miracles

by Eric Reguly

5,000 Canadians are making the pilgrimage to Rome to watch Holy Cross Brother André Bessette's elevation to sainthood today (Sunday, Oct 17).

The event promises to be a festival of colour and ceremony, with tens of thousands of visitors, many of them politicians, ambassadors and senior Roman Catholic Church officials from the countries that claim the new saints.

André is a superstar in Quebec. When he died at age 91 of old age - there is no medical record of a fatal disease - on Jan. 6, 1937, a million people filed by his coffin, the equivalent to one in three Quebec residents at the time. "For Montreal, his canonization is a great drawing card," said Anne Leahy, Canada's ambassador to the Holy See in Rome. "People in Quebec are proud of Frère André just like they are proud of Maurice Richard."

André's body, placed in the Crypt Church, below the present day basilica, was a sight to behold. Piled against the walls were hundreds of crutches that had been owned by cripples allegedly cured by André. He is associated with an extraordinary 125,000 miracles, though he never considered himself a healer. Instead, he urged the unwell to see a doctor or pray.

André's first Vatican-confirmed miracle was the healing in 1958 of a Quebec man, Giuseppe Carlo Audino, who suffered from cancer. He prayed to André and the cancer disappeared. This miracle was cited in André's beatification by John Paul II in 1982.

André saw himself as a simple man, incapable of miracles "I am nothing," he would say, "only a tool in the hands of Providence, a lowly instrument at the service of St. Joseph."

André was born Alfred Bessette, one of ten children, in a town about 40 kilometres southeast of Montreal in 1845. He had a miserable upbringing. He was only nine when his father was killed by a falling tree. Three years later his mother died of tuberculosis. André was small and sickly, had little schooling and was largely illiterate. He never wrote a full sentence in his life, making the research into his career, his spirituality and his miracles reliant on the observations of friends, fellow brothers, eyewitnesses and biographers.

After his parents died, he bounced from family to family, job to job and worked as a farm hand, tinsmith, blacksmith, baker, shoemaker, coachman and, four years, in textiles mills in the United States. He returned in 1867, the year of Canadian confederation, and presented himself in 1870 to the Congregation of Holy Cross in Montreal, where he was given the name Brother André and a low-exertion job as porter at Notre-Dame College.

He doubled up as a floor washer and barber, and the sacks of coins he saved over the years from his five-cent-a-pop haircuts would later be used to finance the building of a chapel on Montreal's Mont Royal. The chapel, which still exists, is next to the larger Crypt Church that was completed under André's watch in 1917. The basilica, which was started in 1924 and not completed until 30 years after André's death, sits atop the Crypt Church. Dedicated to St. Joseph and inspired by André, the basilica's 97-metre-high dome is the world's third largest of its kind.
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Saint-Joseph’s Oratory invites Web surfers to experience Brother André’s canonization live on dedicated Twitter and Facebook accounts. These sharing and discussion sites, found respectively at twitter.com/frere_andre  and facebook.com/saintfrereAndre, will be regularly updated with photos, clips, videos and testimonials. During the weekend of October 16 and 17, live news from the canonization event in Rome will also be featured. Those wishing to join the discussions on Twitter are invited to use the #frere_andre hashtag. The Salt & Light network’s blog (www.saltandlighttv.org/blog/brotherandre) will also offer a rich source of information, as well as opportunities for sharing, on all activities surrounding the celebrations of Brother André’s canonization.
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Sources include
http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/broandre.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Bessette
http://www.holycrosscongregation.org/
http://www.saint-joseph.org/en_1123_index.php
http://www.saint-joseph.org/en_1200_index.php

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Post #78

Sad Catholic 101 nominated for Canadian Blog Awards

This humble blog has been honoured by being nominated as Best Religion and Philosophy Blog 2010 in the 2010 Canadian Blog Awards. Thank you to those who nominated this blog for such an honour. If you would care to vote on behalf of this blog, you may do so at the following link: http://polldaddy.com/poll/3901065/  Thank you for your consideration.

Post #77

Feast Day: October 16, 2010
Copiosa Apud Eum Redemptio

Saint Gerard Majella (April 6, 1726, Muro Lucano, Basilicata – October 16, 1755, Caposele, Campania) is a Roman Catholic saint. He is the saint whose intercession is requested for children (and unborn children in particular), childbirth, mothers (and expectant mothers in particular), motherhood, falsely accused people, good confessions, lay brothers and Muro Lucano, Italy.

When he was born, he was given the name Gerard. He was the son of a tailor who died when Gerard was twelve, leaving the family in poverty. His mother then sent him to her brother so that he could teach Gerard how to sew and help the business. During this time, he was abused by a man whom his uncle sent to help him. He kept silent, but soon his uncle found out and the man who taught him resigned from the job. He loved to be like Jesus Crucified and tried at all costs to suffer. He tried to join the Capuchin order, but his health prevented it. He joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer founded by St. Alphonsus in 1749.

When falsely accused by a pregnant woman of being the father of her child, he retreated to silence. She later recanted and cleared him, and thus began his association as patron of all aspects of pregnancy. He was reputed to have bilocation and read consciences. His last will consisted of a small note on the door of his cell saying, "Here the will of God is done, as God wills, and as long as God wills." He died on October 16, 1755 in Caposele of tuberculosis, aged 29.

Gerard Majella was beatified in Rome on January 29, 1893, by Pope Leo XIII. He was canonised less than twelve years later on December 11, 1904, by Pope Saint Pius X. The feast day of Saint Gerard Majella is October 16.




Lord, as we are unworthy to come before you alone, we make these prayers to you through the intercession of St. Gerard.

1. Lord, you are always ready to forgive us our sins, help us to repent and to live continually in your friendship.
Through the intercession of St. Gerard, Lord hear us.
2. Lord, the giver of all life, protect the lives of all unborn children that their parents may rejoice at their birth.
Through the intercession of St. Gerard, Lord hear us.
3. Lord, you found happiness in your home in Nazareth, grant to our families a share in this happiness.
Through the intercession of St. Gerard, Lord hear us.
4. Lord, you are the giver of true peace, grant that there may be peace with justice throughout the world and especially in our own country.
Through the intercession of St. Gerard, Lord hear us.
5. Lord, we know that the harvest is great but that the labourers are few, grant to your church many good priests, brothers and nuns.
Through the intercession of St. Gerard, Lord hear us.
6. Lord, you were always interested in the sick and suffering grant that they may be restored to health if it be your holy will.
Through the intercession of St. Gerard, Lord hear us.

Sources include
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06467c.htm
http://mission.liguori.org/redemptorists/saints/majella/bio.htm
http://mission.liguori.org/redemptorists/saints/majella/main.htm
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=150
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Majella
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12683a.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01334a.htm
http://www.cssr.com/english/

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Post #76

Excerpt from Agence France Presse: Woman is ordained as Catholic priest in Canada

(AFP) MONTREAL — Despite a Vatican ban and threats to excommunicate her, a sixth Canadian woman was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest Saturday, an official with a group supporting women in the priesthood said.

The group Roman Catholic Womenpriests ordained Linda Spear, a retired teacher from Quebec, in an Anglican church in Sutton, Quebec, eastern Canada.

According to Bridget Mary Meehan, who was ordained as a bishop in 2006 in the United States, Roman Catholic Womenpriests was founded shortly after 2000 and has grown swiftly.

The first seven women priests were ordained on a boat in the Danube in 2002 and since then another 80 women have become priests in the United States as well as about 20 others around the world, Meehan told AFP by phone.

Spear is the first Quebecer but the sixth Canadian woman to become a Catholic priest this way. She was symbolically ordained by US bishop Andrea Johnson. Spear can celebrate the sacraments such as marriage but they will not be recognized by the Vatican, which limits the priesthood to men.

"We are not leaving the church, we are leading it into living Jesus's example of Gospel equality. Jesus called men and women to be disciples," Meehan said.

"We are disobeying an unjust church law that prohibits women's ordination and is rooted in discrimination," she explained. Spear could be excommunicated; Meehan already has been.

Marie Bouclin is the group's ordainment coordinator for Eastern Canada and was Ontario's first female Roman Catholic priest.

"The people are not reacting that way. They're saying, you know, it's about time," Bouclin said in an interview on her way to Quebec for the ceremony.

"We find that people are very open."

Bouclin says it's a question of equality and justice, adding that issues such as violence against women and the problems of pedophilia plaguing the Church will continue so long as women are not admitted into the clergy on an equal footing with men.

Bouclin was ordained in 2007 and says she hasn't yet received her notice of excommunication from her bishop or the Vatican. But she says her bishop has let the priests in her community know that she is not to take communion or play any official role at mass and that she has excommunicated herself.

Sources include
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jLyfYXD0oC7uVYZo0D90iJqgAGrA?docId=CNG.9069423c15ce0426af7f79fa1a9b81e0.a01
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2005/07/25/qc-ordain20050725.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2010/10/10/quebec-woman-ordained-priest.htmlv
http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/index.php
http://godtalktv.org/

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Post #75

Charles E. Curran, Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human Values at Southern Methodist University, addressed the closing gathering of some 600 moral theologians from all over the world in Trent, Italy. The followng is an excerpt of an article published in the National Catholic Reporter in September, 2010.

Excerpt from National Catholic Reporter: "Church crisis reflects lack of pastoral leadership"

Charles Curran: Today, however, moral theology is done on every continent. At the same time, white moral theologians in the United States have “rightly been criticized for our abysmal failure to recognize the evil of racism in our country and our church, and the consequent white privilege we enjoy.”

Catholic feminists have also reminded moral theologians of the “patriarchy that continues to exist in our church and our society” and liberation theologians have called attention to the plight of the poor and the socially and politically oppressed -- and of the need to make their plight an important hermeneutic principle in Catholic social ethics.

Nevertheless, as Curran listened to the discussions over the previous three days, he realized that there was one important issue that did not receive sufficient attention.

He referred specifically to the difference in methodological approaches taken by the majority of Catholic moral theologians around the world and the approach still followed by the church’s hierarchical magisterium.

Curran referred more specifically still to the history of Catholic moral theology in the 20th century undertaken by Boston College’s Jesuit Fr. James Keenan.

Keenan described the methodology of Pope John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor as neo-manualist.

The theology professor pointed out that “few moral theologians found the encyclical a hospitable acceptance of their work during the 25 years since [Pope Paul VI’s encyclical] Humanae Vitae.”

In a similar vein, the great Irish moral theologian Fr. Enda McDonagh has entitled his latest book Theology in Winter Light.

John Paul II himself recognized this great disparity in methodological approaches as a “genuine crisis,” but Curran noted that the meeting of moral theologians at Trent this summer had not really addressed this crisis.

“We cannot put our heads in the sand,” Curran declared. “The present problems of priests’ pedophilia and its cover-up by bishops have made many recognize the need for change in our church.

“The reality is,” Curran continued, “that many people have left the church not because of disagreements with basic areas of faith and Catholic eucharistic celebration, but often because of issues mentioned above, as well as the pedophilia crisis.”

Our church today, Curran insisted, is in serious trouble, and not just in Europe and the United States, although the problems there are great and need to be recognized as such and addressed.

Indeed, the second largest religious denomination in the United States today consists of Catholics who are no longer active in the church. The sense of alienation from the church is especially acute among women.

“Our love for the church and our role as Catholic moral theologians call for all of us to address these issues no matter what our positions are....We are called to put flesh and blood on the ancient axiom, “In necessariis, unitas; in dubiis, libertas; in omnibus, caritas.” (“In necessary matters, unity; in doubtful matters, freedom; in all things, charity.”

What Curran did not provide is a basic reason for this crisis. It is a crisis, after all, of pastoral leadership.

The facts are that John Paul I lived only thirty-three days as Pope and that John Paul II, elected at the relatively young age of 58, served as Bishop of Rome for 26 ½ years. During that time, John Paul II pursued a conscious plan to transform the hierarchy into a rigid, authoritarian body, utterly dependent on the Vatican for rewards and punishments of every kind.

With few exceptions, that plan has succeeded.

Sources include:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/essays-theology/church-crisis-reflects-lack-pastoral-leadership
http://www.smu.edu/Perkins/FacultyAcademics/DirectoryList/Curran.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Curran_(theologian)

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Post #74

Excerpt from the Associated Press: US judge asks Vatican to serve court paper to pope

MILWAUKEE — A federal U.S. judge is asking the Vatican to cooperate in serving the pope and two other top officials with court papers that stem from decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by a priest in Wisconsin.

The request is an incremental step in a lawsuit that accuses the officials of conspiring to keep the allegations against the Milwaukee priest quiet. The Vatican is not obliged to comply with the request.

When faced with similar requests the Vatican has made service difficult, time-consuming and expensive by insisting, for example, that documentation be translated into Latin, one of the Vatican's official languages.

Mike Finnegan, the attorney representing the Chicago-based plaintiff, said Friday he's not holding out hope that the Vatican reverses course and begins to cooperate now.

"Based on what they've done in other cases, I don't expect them to do the right thing," he said. "I expect more delay and obstruction."

Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's U.S.-based attorney, said he hadn't seen the court request and couldn't comment on whether the Vatican would comply with it.

The lawsuit, filed in April in U.S. federal court, names as defendants Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, and his predecessor, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

It claims the three men knew about allegations of sexual abuse at a Milwaukee-area school for the deaf, and called off internal punishment of the accused priest. The Rev. Lawrence Murphy, who died in 1998, was accused of sexually abusing some 200 boys at the school from 1950 to 1974.

The Vatican has argued that it isn't liable for clerical sex-abuse cases because according to canon law and the structure of the Catholic Church, bishops — not Rome — are responsible for disciplining pedophile priests.

Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland had complained about Murphy in a 1996 letter to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the powerful Vatican office then-Cardinal Ratzinger led from 1981 to his election as pope in 2005.

That office told the archbishop to move forward with a canonical trial against Murphy in 1997. But after the office received a letter from Murphy it urged a different course, citing Murphy's advanced age, failing health and a lack of further allegations.

The Wisconsin bishops ordered the proceedings halted. In the end, Murphy died while still a defendant in a canonical trial, which could have led to him being removed from the clerical state.

The court order requesting the Vatican's cooperation in the lawsuit was signed Sept. 24 by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa. It was released Friday by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

Sources
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h_l0HtfJc-Jw9Q-CWAxTBrUGLaYwD9IJ4GE00?docId=D9IJ4GE00
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bweakland.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_T._Randa
http://www.snapnetwork.org/