By Devin Watkins
“If we lose our roots, how can we be, wherever we are in the world, a tree that grows and bears fruits of love, charity and sharing?”
The Congregation for the Eastern Churches proposed that provocative question in a letter urging Catholics to give generously to the annual Holy Land Appeal.
All parishes around the world are asked to take up a special collection—usually on Good Friday—to help Christians in the land where Jesus was born, lived, died, and was resurrected.
Funds collected make up the main source of material support for Christian life in the Holy Land. Money goes toward preserving sacred places, assisting the region’s Christian minority, and forming candidates for the priesthood, as well as investing in the education of Palestinian Muslims to build “a country where mutual respect reigns.”
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, sent the appeal letter to local Churches around the world, offering a reflection on the deeper meaning of the Holy Land Collection.
“The gesture of offering, even a small one, but by everyone, like the widow’s mite, allows our brothers and sisters to continue to live, to hope, and to offer a living witness to the Word made flesh in places and on the streets that saw His presence.”
Cardinal Sandri noted that this year’s collection is particularly important, since Christians in the Holy Land have endured two years without “the warmth and solidarity of pilgrims visiting the Holy Places and local communities.”
Families, he added, have suffered immensely, mostly from lack of work linked to pilgrims.
Christ, said the Cardinal, continues to suffer in His Body, which is the Church, especially in the Middle East, as well as in other parts of the world where persecution, violence, and wars persist, “as happens in Ukraine.”
Cardinal Sandri recalled that Pope Francis made two Apostolic Journeys to places assisted by the Custody of the Holy Land, which receives 65 percent of the Collection: Iraq in March and Cyprus in December.
The Pope, said the Cardinal, sought to reach out to many “lonely and suffering” Christians in Iraq, who have struggled to remain in the land of Abraham amid the pain of nearly two decades of war.
In response to the Holy Father’s gestures of closeness, Catholics everywhere are invited to extend their gaze of love toward the Holy Land and offer their own small gesture of relief, according to Cardinal Sandri.
The Congregation for the Eastern Churches also released a breakdown of last year’s Collection, which raised over US$6 million.
“The territories that benefit in various forms of support from the Collection are Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.”
Education for laypeople and priestly formation are among the primary destinations for the 35 percent of the Collection destined for the Congregation for the Eastern Churches.
Bethlehem University perhaps deserves special mention, as the institution offers education that aims to help reconcile the religious and cultural differences that have marred life in the Holy Land for countless generations.
“Almost 3,300 young people, mostly Palestinian Muslims, are trained intellectually and humanly with the hope of engaging in the construction of a country where mutual respect reigns and where human dignity is preserved.”
Regensburg, Germany, Mar 24, 2022 / 05:20 am (CNA).
The home of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI’s late brother has opened its doors to Ukrainian refugees.
The house in Regensburg, southern Germany, had lain empty after Msgr. Georg Ratzinger’s death on July 1, 2020, at the age of 96, until the arrival of two refugee families.
Benedict XVI visited his brother days before he died, celebrating Mass at the house in the city’s Old Town.
The building now houses two families from the town of Horishni Plavni, around 80 miles southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.
Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg visited the families on March 23. He presented welcoming gifts of beer, lemonade, and a Marian icon, the Diocese of Regensburg said.
Father Ruslan Denysiuk, a Ukrainian Orthodox priest, decided to leave Ukraine following the full-scale Russian invasion because he and his wife, Hanna, are expecting their fourth child in April.
He left Horishni Plavni by car with Hanna, their three children Bogdan (17), Maria (12), and Ilia (11), and their 74-year-old grandmother. They drove west to neighboring Moldova, then through Romania, Hungary, and Austria, on a more than 1,550-mile trek to Germany.
Days after the family found refuge at Msgr. Ratzinger’s former home, they were joined by Galina Lysenko and her 13-year-old daughter Aleksandra, who were members of Father Denysiuk’s parish. Lysenko’s husband remained in Ukraine to help defend Horishni Plavni.
Local residents have donated pots, crockery, clothes, furniture, and toys to the two families.
Msgr. Ratzinger’s former residence is owned by the Collegiates’ Monastery of St. John. The families moved in with the help of the local Caritas organization. More homes have also been sourced and equipped, with the support of the local neighborhood and the Kolping Catholic social organization.
According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, more than 3.6 million people have fled Ukraine in the first month of the war. Over 200,000 refugees have arrived in Germany, a country with a population of 83 million.
Bishop Voderholzer will take part in the worldwide consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25.
He will also preside at a prayer service for peace at Regensburg Cathedral on March 26. Music will be provided by the celebrated Regensburger Domspatzen choir, once led by Msgr. Ratzinger. Father Denysiuk will sing a prayer in Church Slavonic. A collection will support Ukrainian refugees.
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The ways pollution, health, climate change and racism blur together were in sharp focus last week during Loyola University Chicago’s conference on climate.
The virtual event, held March 14-18, featured seven panel discussions spread across five days that all touched on ways that increasing global temperatures impact people’s ability to live healthy lives, but often in disproportionate ways.
“The pope clearly says some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience, and they’re constantly being exposed to atmospheric pollution, pollution of the water, pollution of soil, but it all yields these health impacts,” said Sylvia Hood Washington, an environmental epidemiologist and historian, referencing Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. “So that is the goal of fighting against environmental racism, because these communities have found that they are not in a resilient space. They are not living in an environment where their bodies are being protected.”
“This is a right-to-life issue,” she said.
The Loyola climate conference featured a range of speakers, from scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), to environmental justice advocates and climate activists, to young Black entrepreneurs, to the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker.
Loyola Chicago has held the climate change conference most years since 2014. Hosted by its School for Environmental Sustainability, the conference in past years has focused on themes like the economics of climate change and youth activists, and welcomed speakers such as former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, who now serves as the White House’s point person for domestic climate policy.
The 2022 conference was the second in a row Loyola Chicago held virtually, after the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the March 2020 gathering just as it was about to start.
This year, the conference placed its spotlight on environmental justice and unequal climate implications on public health.
Disproportionate impacts on health and wellness
The World Health Organization projects 250,000 additional deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 connected to factors impacted by climate change, including malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress.
As climate change leads to warmer temperatures and more frequent intense storms, it also impacts the way that certain vector-borne diseases are transmitted, according to the CDC. In the U.S., reported cases of diseases contracted from mosquitoes, ticks and fleas, such as Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus, doubled from 2004 to 2019, a period that has included the 10 hottest years globally on record.
But the rise in rapidly spreading diseases cannot be attributed solely to climate change, said Ben Beard, deputy director of CDC’s vector-borne diseases division during a panel March 14. Instead, climate change combines with other factors such as deforestation, changing land use patterns and global migration, which is also expected to increase as temperatures continue to rise.
“Climate change is not driving this in a vacuum without all these other factors that are going on at the same time,” he said.
Beard added that under direction of the Biden administration, the CDC has developed a climate and health taskforce to develop research and surveillance tactics for diseases and also address equity issues for people most at risk.
“Climate change has wide-ranging health effects, and an integrated understanding of climate, ecology and epidemiology is critical for predicting and averting epidemics of infectious diseases,” Beard said.
But disease transmission is only one way that climate change is impacting health. Heat is, too.
“It’s unfortunately not just an inconvenience. Heat can and does kill people,” said Kim Knowlton, a senior scientist with NRDC and environmental health sciences professor at Columbia University who has spent years connecting the dots between climate and health.
In the U.S., an estimated 5,600 deaths and 65,000 emergency room visits each year attributed to extreme heat, numbers that are expected to rise as record-hot days increase and heat waves last longer. In addition, more frequent and larger wildfires lead to numerous respiratory illnesses as the smoke causes decreases in air quality.
Health impacts of climate change, whether from rising heat, air pollution or increased flooding, are not evenly felt across states or communities.
“There are communities in our country [and] around the world who are going to be differentially burdened and more exposed and be more in harm’s way,” Knowlton said.
Throughout the conference, several panelists referred to a recent study that found historically redlined communities in the U.S. — where majorities of people of color and immigrants lived that were deemed high risk for loans and where polluting industries were regularly located — are far more likely today to breathe dirtier air, even 50 years after the practice was barred.
David Lammy, a Labour member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, said during a March 15 panel that similar situations exist in his home city of London, and the disparities of environmental injustice are illustrated worldwide by maps showing the majority of greenhouse gas emissions generated by countries in the global north, while nations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are in the global south.
“Let’s be clear, these are not random events. The hardships felt by these communities are a consequence, a symptom of decades of inequality in our societies, exposing those on the margins to the hardest conditions and their fates sealed from birth. And we’ve yet to see the worst of it,” he said.
“Ultimately, we cannot remain colorblind in our response to the climate crisis. If we do, we fail billions on the planet who have done the least to deserve that fate,” he added.
One of those communities, Altgeld Gardens, sits roughly 30 miles south of Loyola Chicago. Cheryl Johnson, executive director of People for Community Recovery (PCR), spoke about the “toxic doughnut” — a term coined by her mother, Hazel, who’s often called the “mother of environmental justice — that surrounds Altgeld with numerous chemical and industrial plants.
A March 18 webinar highlighted much of the work that PCR has done for decades to combat environmental health hazards in their south Chicago neighborhood.
“The pollution that happens in my neighborhood, it just don’t stay here — it affects everybody. And are we going to make the choice that we want to breathe clean air, or are we going to continue to breathe dirty air? We have to do that collectively as a group,” Johnson said.
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Hood Washington said it is the right-to-life dimension that connects the Catholic Church to pushing for environmental justice. In the early 2000s, she worked with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to develop a film on environmental justice to share with Black Catholics; Loyola’s Hank Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage is working to make the film more widely available.
Chanelle Robinson, a theology doctoral student at Boston College, added that Francis has reminded the world “how marginalized communities, especially the poor, experience disenfranchisement alongside the Earth.”
The interconnections across health, climate and race were evident not just in the panel discussions but also in the institutions guiding them. Joining the School of Environmental Sustainability in hosting were other Loyola programs, including the Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health, the Center for Urban Research and Learning, the School of Social Work and the Institute for Racial Justice.
Government and community solutions
The conference also looked at ways governments and communities are working to address climate change and the inequities it raises.
One response in Illinois has been the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which the state legislature passed and the governor signed into law in September. The legislation sets goals for the state to use 100% renewable energy by 2050 and reach net-zero emissions in its power sector five years earlier, and it provides funding and resources to help low-income and disadvantaged communities benefit from the clean energy economy.
“We took on a monumental battle to reduce carbon admissions, to remove harmful pollutants from the air, massively expand our investment in renewable energy, retrain workers for the green jobs of the future, and anchor it all in the values of ethics and equity and consumer protections,” Pritzker said.
Key to the legislation is that it includes equity throughout, not just as an add-on. That was a direct result from the work of communities, labor groups and environmental advocates across Illinois who engaged the process.
“We decided early on that equity was going to be at the center of this bill, and it’s literally baked in throughout,” said Delmar Gillus, chief operating officer for Chicago-based Elevate Energy.
That the state was able to pass such a major climate bill in the midst of a pandemic was also a notable achievement, added Jennifer Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council.
“All of these challenges really brought the power passion out of our community leaders, out of our grassroots groups, out of our legislature, and so we were able to use that passion, and these challenges not as something to block us, but as an inspiration for us to work harder,” she said.
Lammy said a major lesson from the pandemic “is the ability of the global community to mobilize when it wants to” in the face of a major threat. He too stressed that no single country or societal sector alone can address climate change, and that it is paramount to include Indigenous groups, Black and brown people, and those on the frontlines in decisions about how the world can overcome them.
“Those closest to the problem are so often also those closest to the solution,” he said. “And we must listen to those voices. Listen and empower.”
Rome — For four weeks, the Vatican has offered to serve as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine, and for four weeks, such overtures have been ignored by Russia.
As Russia’s war against Ukraine rages on, Pope Francis has incrementally escalated his rhetoric against the invasion, condemning it as an “unacceptable armed aggression,” while refusing to directly name President Vladimir Putin or Russia as the aggressors.
The diplomatic tightrope has been defended as consistent with longstanding Vatican neutrality, necessary for protecting Catholics in both Ukraine and Russia and as an effort to preserve any possible role the Holy See could play in brokering a peace deal.
Others, including those generally sympathetic to Francis, have criticized the approach as a failure to use the pope’s far-reaching megaphone to directly condemn Putin and prevent further aggressions, too cautious in an effort to advance ecumenical relations with the Russian Orthodox Church. Critics have also expressed skepticism of the possibility of the Vatican actually being able to serve a role in negotiating a ceasefire.
The Vatican’s diplomatic corps is the oldest in the world, with a reputation for notoriously discreet and calculated approaches to geopolitical engagement.
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Francis now faces one of the greatest international challenges of his nearly decadelong papacy, and the tensions over the Vatican’s approach to Ukraine and Russia reveal the complex web of intra-ecclesial politics and influence of the global cast of characters who craft and compose the Holy See’s role in the world stage.
As religion meets realpolitik, at stake is the Catholic church’s hopes for greater unity with other Christian confessions, a desire to protect the identity of local Catholic congregations and the tremendous challenge of overcoming long-held Russian suspicions of Roman Catholicism.
Vatican-Russian relations
To understand the current moment, according to Victor Gaetan, author of God’s Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy, and America’s Armageddon, one must return to the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.
Benedict, elected in 2005, and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, elected in 2009, are both respected theologians of their own traditions and both saw eye-to-eye on the need to fight against the rising tides of moral relativism in the West.
Soon thereafter, in 2010, the Vatican and Russia exchanged ambassadors with full diplomatic recognition, for the first time in nearly a century.
“This is the period when the relationship between the Holy See and Russia, and the Holy See and Kirill, began blossoming,” Gaetan told NCR.
That relationship would help pave the way for an eventual in-person meeting in Cuba between Pope Francis and Kirill in 2016, the first-ever meeting of a Roman Catholic pontiff and the Russian Orthodox patriarch.
During this time from 2009 to 2012, Gaetan noted, a Lithuanian-born Vatican diplomat, then-Msgr. Visvaldas Kulbokas, was stationed at the Vatican embassy in Moscow, providing him a front-row seat to the complicated realities of Russia-Vatican relations.
From 2012 to 2020, Kulbokas worked at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, where he served as the translator for meetings between the pope and Putin, and, according to Gaetan, was part of the “small team” that prepared the highly sensitive meeting between Francis and Kirill in 2016, where he would again serve as translator.
In June 2021, Kulbokas was given a new assignment: to serve as the Vatican’s ambassador in Ukraine — a country of about 44 million, with about 5 million Catholics.
According to Gaetan, the vibrant Catholic community, mostly in western Ukraine, had both a tense relationship with its Orthodox neighbors in the east, and was eager for closer relations with the West and the European Union, especially following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
It fell to Kulbokas to navigate those divides.
A religious cold war?
Tamara Grdzelidze, who served as Georgia’s Vatican ambassador from 2014 to 2018, told NCR that when she arrived in Rome to assume her duties, it was shortly after the Crimea annexation.
Drawing on her own experience of Russia’s military attack on Georgia in 2008, she cautioned both her fellow ambassadors and Vatican officials to wake up to the threat of Russia. At one event, she recalls specifically speaking to Ukrainians and warning “what they did in 2008 in Georgia, it will be the same for you if the West fails to recognize it properly.”
Ulla Gudmundson, Sweden’s Vatican ambassador from 2008 to 2013, told NCR she recalled Baltic representatives to the Vatican being upset when the Holy See would refer to conflict between Ukrainians and Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as a “civil war.”
“This was falsifying reality to them,” Gudmundson said.
In 2021, Italian Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania, for the primary purpose of ordaining Kulbokas as archbishop. Ukraine is a country, Parolin said at the ordination Mass, that “experiences conflicts difficult to fully overcome.”
Ukraine’s eastern-rite Catholics are led by Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who has known Francis since Shevchuk was posted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2009 as the head of the diaspora community of Ukrainian Greek Catholics.
Since his 2011 election as head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Shevchuk has not been shy about his concerns about Russia, repeatedly warning that Russia sought a return to an era of Soviet-style rule, which would have grave implications for the country and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
During this time, the Vatican, according to Gaetan, relied on Kulbokas to help further relations with the Orthodox in order to prevent a “religious cold war.”
Yet George Demacopoulos, co-director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, told NCR he questioned the sincerity of the Russian Orthodox Church’s interest in ecumenical relations.
“Kirill positioned the Russian Orthodox Church as the sole defender of traditional values around the world,” he said. “What hope is there for ecumenical relations if with every passing word, you’re suggesting that there is no value in the West and that anyone who believes in liberal democracy, protection of minority rights and pluralistic societies are by definition satanic?”
“That’s not going to win you any ecumenical friends,” he said.
Beyond Francis’ desire for reconciliation between the two churches, Demacopoulos said that in his estimation, one potential reason that the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches, had found an alliance is over certain culture war fights, particularly when it comes to opposition to gay marriage and women’s ordination.
“The Kremlin’s alliance with Kirill has been critical in instrumentalizing selective Christian principles for political gain,” he said. “I can imagine that one of the reasons the Vatican, up until Putin really showed his hand, really championed some of the rhetoric that he [Kirill] uses is precisely because they themselves are aligned with some of the traditional values.”
Vatican neutrality
In Rome, the tensions, sometimes real and other times perceived, between the need for unity among religious believers and preserving strong identities among local churches have played out through two Vatican offices beyond the Vatican’s Secretariat of State: the Congregation for Oriental Churches, headed by Argentine-born Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, led by Swiss-born Cardinal Kurt Koch.
“You could say they offer two different perspectives of the same lands,” said Gaetan.
Koch has prioritized relations with the Russian Orthodox and was closely involved in the pope’s 2016 meeting with Kirill. Just before the outbreak of the war, Koch and others were preparing for a second meeting between Francis and Kirill that was expected to take place this summer, a possibility all but now officially crushed by the war and Kirill’s continued defense of it. When Francis, on March 16, met via video conference with Kirill and rejected his framing of the Russian invasion on religious grounds, it was Koch who was by his side.
Sandri, who is known to have close relations with Francis given their shared homeland, convened a major Vatican summit of Eastern church leaders in Rome on the eve of the war in February. In an audience with Francis at the end of the conference, the pope acknowledged the “threatening winds” of conflict that confronted both the countries and the local churches.
Metropolitan-Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia told NCR in February that during that meeting with the pope, he directly discussed the need for the Holy See to speak forcefully about the threats to Ukraine.
Since the invasion, both Shevchuk and Kulbokas have remained in Kyiv, with Shevchuk releasing daily video messages calling for an end to Russian aggression and Kulbokas celebrating daily Mass in the nunciature’s kitchen to avoid the shelling. During his March 20 Sunday Angelus, Francis specifically praised Kulbokas for remaining in Kyiv and being present with those suffering from war.
While Kulbokas has been cautious and limited in his public statements, in a recent interview with the Catholic news site Crux, he defended the Holy See’s approach in this current crisis.
“When we hear the Holy Father talking about war, there is no neutrality: He condemns it with the strongest wording, underscoring that every war is an invention of the devil, is a satanic work,” Kulbokas said.
Former ambassador Gudmundson, however, told NCR that “when human rights, respect for human lives, etc. are being violated by one party, it becomes increasingly difficult not to name the aggressor,” but she added, “I suppose it’s not the end of the world if the pope does not mention Russia as the aggressor, if there is a tiny chance that he can somehow work on Kirill.”
Former ambassador Grdzelidze said that she, too, “appreciated the Vatican’s approach of never mentioning particular parties,” but added that this stance allows the party or parties at fault to manipulate the Vatican’s position.
“Hidden negotiations don’t work with Russia. The underlying policy of their diplomacy is lying,” she cautioned. “The Vatican’s diplomacy works with civilized countries, but not with Putin. They should talk with and to Russia directly and name things, but they don’t.”
The pope as peacemaker?
Both Francis and Parolin have held out hope that the Vatican’s neutrality will allow it to ultimately save more lives and to be available to serve a role as peacemaker if possible. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has expressed openness to that idea in the past, but Russia has not indicated any interest.
Grdzelidze, who is also an Orthodox theologian and served for 13 years at the World Council of Churches in Geneva, said. “Kirill is 100% behind Putin’s approach.”
Fellow Orthodox theologian Demacopoulos concurred.
“The pope is genuinely trying to do the right thing and reach out to a church that he respects and to advocate for peace,” he said, “while the institutional Russian Orthodox Church is simply taking advantage of him for their own opportunistic, Kremlin-narrative purposes.”
“My own take is to name the aggressor,” he said. “If you really are going to be the advocate of the oppressed, then it could be constructive to name the oppressor.”
But in a recent interview in the British Catholic journal The Tablet, the former Vatican nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, insisted, “President Putin listens to the pope.”
In 1978, the Vatican intervened in a peace negotiation between Argentina and Chile in a conflict over the Beagle Channel, successfully staving off an armed conflict, in part because the Vatican held a unique ability to influence the two deeply Catholic South American countries.
Michael Kimmage, who served on the policy planning staff at the U.S. State Department from 2014 to 2016, where he was responsible for the Russia and Ukraine portfolio, said in his view it was “absolutely not possible” for the Vatican to broker a peace deal in the current war.
There is an “old fashion narrative,” Kimmage told NCR, that the Catholic Church is a “traditional enemy” of Russia. This is a “long-standing Russian frame,” he said, that makes the geopolitics of the moment very difficult for the Holy See to navigate.
His assessment has been shared by a number of other leading regional experts who warn that Putin’s grip on the Russian Orthodox church severely limits any role the Vatican can play.
Instead, Kimmage, who is the chair of the history department at the Catholic University of America, said that the Holy See’s role should be “speaking to the conscience of other European leaders.”
In recent weeks, the pope has sent two cardinal emissaries to Ukraine to express his closeness to those fleeing violence and has repeatedly spoken by phone with Ukraine’s president and Catholic leaders. At the same time, both Zelensky and the mayor of Kyiv have appealed directly to Francis, asking him to visit the Ukrainian capital, saying his physical presence in the war-torn country may be one of its last opportunities for bringing about peace.
For Kimmage, the church’s “moral stewardship” and vast network are needed in responding to the humanitarian crises, which, he said, “are legion and still to come” and to “help knit together Ukrainian society” after the war.
When that time will come — and what Francis and the Vatican will say or do in between then — remains to be seen.
At Politico, Christopher Cadelago and Jonathan Lemire look at President Joe Biden’s trip to Europe this week. They rightly – and frighteningly – note that Biden is facing off with Vladimir Putin and also racing against the clock. “The alliance has largely marched in lockstep to confront Moscow — a remarkable demonstration of collective resolve not seen for many decades. But its bonds could soon be faced with deep strains, chief among them a creeping sense of powerlessness among the allies and reluctant admissions that the war may only end when Vladimir Putin decides it does.” That is a sobering fact, but a fact nonetheless.
At Business Insider, a report on Italy’s seizure of property belonging to one of Russia’s richest oligarchs, Alexei Mordashov. The property, on the island of Sardinia, was estimated at $116 million. Let it be the first of many such seizures and let them all be sold and the proceeds go to rebuilding Ukraine.
In The New York Times, freelance journalist Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider of the University of Massachusetts Lowell ask “Why are we letting Republicans win the school wars?” It is one of the more interesting essays on the subject and, though they do not use this language, they recognize that the way previous Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama talked about education had been poisoned by neoliberalism. They write:
Democrats can reclaim education as a winning issue. They might even be able to carve out some badly needed common ground, bridging the gap between those who have college degrees and those who don’t by telling a more compelling story about why we have public education in this country. But that story must go beyond the scramble for social mobility if the party is to win back some of the working people it has lost over the past few decades.
This is a very smart and provocative piece. Berkshire, you may remember, authored the report on the New Hampshire school board races that I linked to last week in my column about keeping the culture wars out of the classroom.
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In the Washington Post, Andriy Yermak, a key aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, warns that just as the Western powers underestimated the courageous resilience of the Ukrainian people before the war, they are now underestimating the brutality of which the Russian military is capable. The scenes from the city of Mariupol are heart-breaking.
In the Louisville Courier-Journal, Ricky L. Jones of the University of Louisville urges Catholics to remember the life and work of Daniel Rudd, a pioneering Black Catholic who started the American Catholic Tribune, was active in the Afro-American Press Association and was one of the founders of the Catholic Press Association and of the Black Catholic Congress. The plantation house, Anatok, where Rudd was born, was recently torn down, a terrible loss of historical significance. Jones urges Kentucky Catholics not to lose sight of this amazing man’s story and points readers to a biography by Gary Agee published by the University of Arkansas Press. Happy to report a friend just sent me a copy of that very book and I look forward to reading and reviewing it soon.
From Arch Daily, the Pritzker Architecture Prize for 2022 has been awarded to Diébédo Francis Kéré, an architect from Burkina Faso, whose 2017 Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens is simply stunning.
“We don’t think he’ll make it,” the nurse tells me.
Rodolfo’s feet stretched beyond the sweat-thickened sheets of the hospital bed. He has COVID-19 and the virus does not go. His body is embroidered with IVs and tubes stitch his last weeks together. The hospital barring all outside visitors during the COVID surge, I stand outside the ICU room and inhale the antiseptic sanitizer, the voice of the doctor muffled beneath his mask, a nurse aiming the iPad toward Rodolfo, his body transmitted to his family through the screen. The doctor tells them that he was dying, that this was unexpected, any hour now.
“We are sorry. We are sorry. What do you want? What do you need?” they urge.
But his wife knows only to say: “No English. Español … please, español.” And before anyone can contact the interpreter, her daughter — a teenager who long ago learned how to translate the United States to her parents — already makes this responsibility her own. None of us spoke as they wept on the iPad.
A few minutes pass and I call Rodolfo’s wife from a phone in the ICU and offer to pray. I press my ear onto the dark slot while they continue to watch him from the iPad. Her voice appeared softly:
“No se que hacer sin el …” she says.
“We want to be with him,” his daughter says.
“Cuentame quien es. Tell me about who he is,” I ask.
Rodolfo, the forklift driver. Rodolfo, who loved cumbia music. Rodolfo, who drank too much. Rodolfo, who had volunteered at the parish festival. Rodolfo, who forgot to call when he’d come home late. I hear them cry again, their voices bubbling through the receiver. They want him home. Queremos estar juntos en casa. They do not want a plastic mattress for a death bed. They want sheets that smell like the fabulous lavender of too much cleaning on the weekend. They want to embalm his feet with the golden-toe socks he always purchased from Kohl’s and turn on the TV to Cruz Azul vs. Club Tijuana. They want to hold his hand. We cry. I translate last rites. “I am still here for you” is what I want to tell them as if my voice could substitute the warmth of held hands. Then it is the last goodbye. The last heart beats. The last “Te quiero, Papi.”
A friend once asked me what it’s like to be a hospital chaplain, so here it goes. I am haunted by the names of COVID-19 patients: Gutierrez and Hernandez, Cortez with her glitter-gold nail polish, Alba and Gonzalez where my own abuelas once grew from those family trees. I am haunted by the weight of names I have forgotten: anointings and international phone calls; funerals, boxes of ashes, people cremated and flown to homelands; and so many N95 masks and paper surgical gowns bursting from the trash bins like unfinished laundry.
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The impulse in Christian writing is to conclude this essay with an invocation of hope — to think about the resurrected Christ. To tell you, “We are all in this together.” To remind you that while somewhere in the hospital someone is dying someone else is giving birth to their first child. To remind you that wildflowers, half-forgotten for months, will speckle the edges of the road again. But I am not telling you about Rodolfo’s death solely for your spiritual benefit. This essay is not for an Ash Wednesday homily nor your morning Lenten reflection.
I’m writing because it’s been three months since Rodolfo died. I write to show you a complicated, extraordinary life. I want to reveal what I know of that life to you and how it ended. This is how I want to be generous with you, dear reader. I want you to hold his hand, grasp it tightly, at least through my words. Because none of us could, not even his family. I want you to imagine the reek of soiled linen mingled with hand sanitizer and scratch at the itchiness of surgical masks worn for 24 hours. I want you to bless his forehead with holy water and hear his laughter even though I myself never had the chance to hear it. These are both small and big desires. It doesn’t take much to find cumbia music on the internet and play one song. Search “Eres Mi Canción” by Rubén Blades. Write it down. Listen to it as you read this essay again. Don’t forget this is my desire for you.
My truest relics are no longer displayed in chapels. These are relics no one can pray to, relics without a sanctuary like recipes without a cookbook. You only pray to them if you can remember them.
After Rodolfo died, staff transported his body to the morgue and two custodians arrived to clean his room and replace the sheets with new ones. This is the protocol of environmental services. One custodian slowly tugs at the soiled sheets as if weighed down by a lifetime. The other, who makes the hospital beds by rote, quickly sets clean sheets as stern and straight as paper, only soon to be wrinkled again the next morning. Still, there’s something to be said about a perfectly made bed that is like a template for healing. They gather the soiled linen and trash in a plastic bag, and, doing what they must do, cart these relics away.
I have prayed to saints who aren’t saints, and I have prayed to them using everything but my palms pressed together. That is to say, I wrote this essay to remember Rodolfo. And now, by what I have shared, I can feel less alone in remembering him with you. Thank you for your company, dear reader, however far you are, or however fast you skimmed, may my memories of Rodolfo be your own too.
Slowly emerging from the heartbreak of death, destruction and massive displacement caused by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine are the inspiring demonstration of diverse nonviolent strategies that are upending the logic of war, and the recognition that if we are to avoid World War III, de-escalation, diplomacy and peace-building are the only route forward.
Agreement is widespread that the stories of creative, active nonviolence in Ukraine and Russia must be told. They are stories about dogged diplomacy, civil resistance, elements of civilian-based defense, symbolic action, non-cooperation, winning over enemy combatants, solidarity and accompaniment, music and art, acts of kindness and welcome, the use of digital tools to document war crimes and more.
They are about nonviolence — a way of life and a spectrum of realistic, effective strategies for preventing or interrupting violence, for protecting human life and the planet, for promoting a more just and peaceful world.
This is what nonviolence researcher Maria Stephan calls “a moment of profound moral clarity.” The war in Ukraine is not more important than the other wars destroying human lives and the Earth, but, as the British Catholic magazine The Tablet editorialized on March 19, it is “history-making, game-changing, paradigm-shifting.”
The perennial debate on just war criteria continues, but given the ongoing carnage and potentially catastrophic consequences, Pope Francis’ assertion that “there is no such thing as a just war” rings true.
The question is not whether to defend against a brutal military invasion, but how. The nonviolent strategies being used by Ukrainians in many different locations are vitally important and illustrate powerful and effective ways to defend their communities and to break the cycles of violence. Their courageous actions point to a future when nonviolence will be the universal ethic that humans, for the sake of survival, have finally embraced.
To move in that direction, we know what we need to do. We know that we need a paradigm shift. We have been living in a context of war and preparations for war, assuming that militarized security was the only way to survive. We in the U.S. have shaped our society, and especially our economy, around that belief.
The war in Ukraine is hyper-visible and, by its too-possible link to nuclear weapons and its threat to nuclear power plants, it is über-dangerous, an existential threat to all life and our common home, planet Earth. But the unquenchable, heartbreaking violence unleashed by war in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Colombia demands the same response.
We know what we need to do. We need to stop accepting perpetual war and unending layers of violence as normal. Racism, imperialism, militarism, nationalism, the theft of resources to prepare for war, economies dependent on and fortunes made from trade in weapons, cultural violence, economic violence, extremes of wealth and poverty, gender-related violence all create fertile soil in which violent conflict and war percolate and spread.
We know what we need to do. We need to reject the possibility that war can be just. Period.
We know what we need to do. We need to stop dismissing nonviolence as naive, simplistic, disengaged or ineffective and to invest in a radical reset of our values, our priorities, our relationships with each other and with the planet. We need to start right now to build a new nonviolent paradigm that replaces the scarcity model and “survival of the fittest” with values that draw on the wisdom and experience of cultures and traditions committed to respect, wholeness, connectedness, mutual dependence, reciprocity, justice and life, and upon which we need to rebuild the systems and structures of our societies.
Such a complete shift may take decades: of listening to the stories and understanding the experience of the most marginalized and neglected communities; of transformative education, life-skills development and values formation; of redesigning and rebuilding political, economic, financial, social, cultural, environmental systems so that they promote socioeconomic justice, human dignity, whole Earth healing and, therefore, peace.
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Every step toward a solution in Ukraine must lead toward the kind of paradigm shift that we know we have to make if we plan to survive for much longer on this planet. For example:
Pope Francis, following Jesus, has been setting the stage for full-on Catholic engagement in this urgent paradigm shift. His visionary 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” his clarion call for ecological conversion and for a “new post-pandemic normal” point clearly in this direction.
In the 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, he said: “Every war leaves our world worse than it was before. War is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful capitulation, a stinging defeat before the forces of evil.”
And to an international congress of educators on March 18, he said: “A war is always — always! — the defeat of humanity, always. … There is no such thing as a just war: They do not exist!”
Theology gets a bad rap, often seen as a bunch of eggheads asking questions that no one really cares about. In the Middle Ages, it revolved around how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, or so the legend goes. Today it focuses on doctrinal subtleties and commandments that most people would rather do away with.
Theology matters, however, because truth matters. God is Truth and he has revealed himself to us so that we can know him, come to know ourselves, and live in a loving communion with him.
What is theology? Aquinas calls it a science, an organized body of knowledge that proceeds from the truths of a higher science, namely God’s own knowledge of himself. Through faith, God enables us to know him in a way that goes beyond the natural grasp of reason. This supernatural knowledge enlivens the mind, awakening reason to a new way of seeing: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).
We all desire to the know the truth and theology reflects the need to think about and understand the faith, our knowledge of the highest and most important realities.
The Church gives us this time of Lent for renewal and purification. It is a time, of course, for breaking off our attachments to things, although it should also involve more time for reflection and prayer. Yes, Lent is a great time to study theology! Although we may not all pick a work of academic theology, we should all seek to understand our faith better, following the example of Our Lady, who “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).
The more we know, the more we can love and can understand the movements of God in our lives. Theology entails a lifelong task of coming to know God more, of encountering him in Scripture, meditating upon the mysteries of faith and conforming our minds to the truth.
For those ready for a more serious dive into academic theology, there are some amazing resources recently translated and made available by Emmaus Academic Press. The first is Mauro Gagliardi’s Truth Is a Synthesis: Catholic Dogmatic Theology (2020), translated from Italian, which provides a thorough overview, at just over 1,000 pages of the central doctrines of the faith.
While firmly rooted in the great theological tradition, it leads the modern reader into an active search for truth:
Theology is not in the realm of opinion, but rather that of healthy debate and engagement, a search for Truth in an ever more perfect way. Moreover, theology does not study the sources of faith merely out of a historical interest …. Certainly the historical approach to texts is necessary, but it is not everything. There must be an ‘alethic’ approach (from the Greek aletheia, meaning ‘truth’). The theologian studies the sources to discover and learn in a deeper way the Truth, which is always ‘relevant’ and never ‘overcome’” (98).
While standing against contemporary relativism, a deep dive into the Church’s theological tradition can guide us along the divine way of truth.
Even if theology is not simply the study of historical sources, we do need models in this search for truth, mentors in how to think rightly in relation to faith. Emmaus Academic has undertaken a project of enormous importance in making one of these guides accessible, translating Father Matthias Scheeben’s (1835-88) magnum opus, his Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, into English for the first time in nine volumes. Scheeben was one of the greatest theologians of the 19th century, who in a mystical fashion, both prayerful and penetrating, leads his readers into the great mysteries of faith.
At the beginning of the first volume, Scheeben relates how theology not only teaches us about God but should also lead us to him, because “a teaching that has God as its object and its principle must therefore have God also as its goal and lead to Him, and therefore must teach and bring about the religious union of man with God” (Vol. 1, 2019, 1). Scheeben’s theology bears witness to how theology not only instructs but should lead us into a greater love of God.
In addition, through a partnership with the Aquinas Institute, Emmaus Academic is making St. Thomas Aquinas’s opera omnia available for the first time in English. Although the Angelic Doctor’s two great summas, the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles, have been long available in English, another major work, written earlier in his life, his Commentary on the Sentences, will be available in translation for the first time (with four volumes already available), as well as other important works, such as his biblical commentaries. Along with Scheeben’s Dogmatics, the appearance of these works is of monumental importance for theology.
Theology does not focus on arcane questions or mere opinion. It helps us to grasp the realities that God has revealed to us so that we can know him and share in his own divine life. Although many people today cast doubt upon our ability to know anything with certainty, theology rests firmly upon the fact that God has spoken to us and calls us into a communion of knowledge and love with him.
As we take more time for prayer during Lent, we can grow in our understanding of our faith as we encounter the One who is Truth itself.
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The history of the Catholic Church features a number of great spiritual masters, saints, and mystics. Some of the giants of the Church’s rich spiritual and mystical tradition include Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Louis de Montfort, and Saint Faustina. A towering figure among all these giants is Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), the priest and mystic who was a key figure in the Counter-Reformation in Spain and is one of the thirty-seven Doctors of the Church. He wrote four massive treatises on the spiritual life—most famously The Dark Night of the Soul and The Ascent of Mt. Carmel—and worked to reform the Carmelite order with St. Teresa of Avila.
Father Donald Haggerty has written many books on the spiritual life and contemplation. His new book Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation (Ignatius Press, 2022) is an in-depth exploration of the writing of the prolific Spanish mystic. Father Haggerty’s book helps the reader approach the theological richness and daunting prolificacy of the remarkable saint. It has been described as a “profound and beautiful book” by Father Peter John Cameron, O.P., a “spiritual masterpiece” by Kathryn Jean Lopez, and a “bold, bracing, exhilarating book” by Matthew Levering.
Father Haggerty is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. He taught moral theology and worked as a spiritual director in seminaries for twenty years, and has directed numerous yearly retreats for the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by St. Teresa of Calcutta.
He recently corresponded with Catholic World Report about his most recent book.
Catholic World Report: How did this book come about? Do you have a particular devotion to Saint John of the Cross?
Fr. Donald Haggerty: I became captivated by St. John of the Cross in my first year studying for the priesthood, which is now over thirty-five years ago.
At that time I asked a priest on the faculty at St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York, a former rector Monsignor Montano, if he might be willing to do a private study with me for credit on Pope St. John Paul II’s doctoral dissertation, published by Ignatius Press and entitled Faith According To Saint John of the Cross. I remain grateful to this day for that opportunity. Later, in my fourth year, I wrote a master’s thesis under this same priest’s direction on St. John of the Cross and his Spiritual Canticle.
In the years since, I have turned and returned continually to the writings of this Carmelite saint as a challenging stimulus to my spiritual life. He is an author who, at least for me, has passage after passage which repay re-reading. I have used him very often in private prayer, quoted him for years in retreats for the Missionaries of Charity, and regularly have encountered new insights in his writings. We grow over time in the company of his teaching, so that these passages take on different and deeper meaning over time.
So I would say I have more than a devotion to him. He has been a wonderful and close mentor in my life.
CWR: You’ve written several works on spirituality, including Contemplative Provocations: Brief, Concentrated Observations on Aspects of a Life with God (2013), The Contemplative Hunger (2016), Conversion: Spiritual Insights into an Essential Encounter with God (2017), and Contemplative Enigmas: Insights and Aid on the Path to Deeper Prayer (2020). How is this book in continuity with those?
Fr. Haggerty: The three earlier books with “contemplative” titles are all much affected by the influence of St. John of the Cross on my thought and spirituality. These earlier books consist of meditative insights on prayer and interior life and deeper spirituality. The impact of St. John of the Cross resonates on many of these pages, depending on the topic. A turn to these books after reading this new book on St. John of the Cross will certainly enhance one’s appreciation for the Carmelite mystic. The themes of God’s hidden concealment, the role of purification and suffering in spiritual advancement, the deeper truths of interior love for God are prominent in these books and essential aspects of the teaching of St. John of the Cross.
These earlier books have also been much affected by my involvement over the years with the Missionaries of Charity and St. Teresa of Calcutta. The combination of a contemplative pursuit of Our Lord in his divine mystery and of the encounter with his mystery in the presence of the poor has marked my life. These books all reflect that essential blending of the contemplative quest for God with an active life lived in the world.
CWR: What’s is the point of contemplation? How would you respond to those who dismiss or downplay contemplation, saying that we should focus on corporal works of mercy?
Fr. Haggerty: A short answer about the meaning of contemplation is not really possible, which is why this book on the great master of contemplation has been written.
In one sense, the word contemplation refers specifically to a particular grace given in prayer to those who are serious about prayer. Relations with God are bound to undergo an alteration of interior experience as we give ourselves more generously to God. As we grow more united to the will of God, a transition takes place in the silence of prayer, a threshold is crossed, which requires a different receptivity on our part in response to the invitation of God. This contemplative transition changes our interior life of prayer, but even more it begins to transform our soul, showing its effects in all areas of life.
In the spiritual life, what happens within us in grace will always show itself in outward manifestations. With the beginnings of contemplative graces, God becomes more truly the transcendent mystery of infinite love, and at the same time our crucified Lord becomes more utterly personal in his love for our soul. Everything in effect changes as greater depths open up in our soul’s relations with God, and there is no finishing point to this movement into depth except at the end of life.
In answer to the objection that a commitment to the practice of private prayer somehow `steals from’ or `subtracts from’ the more worthy pursuit of helping others in charity, the response must be a strong rebuttal. Interior depth in prayer, when it is filled by God, always carries its effects outside prayer to greater charity, greater humility, greater generosity.
Mother Teresa and her sisters have been a living proof of this spiritual truth. She always wanted her sisters to be contemplatives in the heart of the world; from prayer they go out to meet the presence of Christ in the poorest of the poor. Their remarkable generosity flows out of the hours they spend in prayer each day. The depth of love and surrender to God that we bring from prayer makes us see differently and perceive suffering and human need in a more sensitive manner.
The true contemplatives of this world are always the souls of greater love and attentiveness to the needs of others.
CWR: What role does asceticism play in contemplation? And can asceticism be taken too far?
Fr. Haggerty: Asceticism is in no way a cause of the grace of contemplation. But some effort of a disciplined self-restraint is essential if we are to grow in a depth of prayer in our lives. This is perhaps overlooked in many lives, but certainly not by St. John of the Cross. He does not advocate a harsh approach to asceticism, but a sensible understanding rooted in a wisdom about the human will.
The will is the great faculty of charity and love, and it requires a dynamic effort of self-emptying to grow in a depth of love. As St. John of the Cross comments: “Deny your desires and you will find what your heart longs for.” We cannot advance in prayer or holiness if we are casual and uncaring about a sacrificial dimension in our life. When we are indulgent in choices for the sake of bodily pleasure, even of an innocent nature, and impulsive in pleasing ourselves and satisfying our own preferences, the will is essentially dominated by self-absorbed pursuit. Contemplation depends for its inception and its growth on the will being united in love with the will of God.
The capacity for exercising self-denial to some degree is a kind of preliminary test if we desire the longing of our will to lean out more vigorously toward a love for Our Lord. Otherwise, there are constant barriers rising up between ourselves and God. The result then is that prayer inevitably dulls and dissipates. We ought to remember as well that an asceticism of love is the goal, which demands an effort of the mind, not just of the body. Indeed, a capacity for mental austerity is a great need for an advancement in love – an ability to turn our thoughts during a day away from irritations and uncharity toward prayer and a love of God.
Naturally asceticism, like everything else, can be taken to extremes. The mistake in that case would be to presume that bodily ascetical practices are a measure in themselves of spiritual growth, which is false. It is love, charity, sacrificial self-giving, that open us to deeper graces in prayer and carry us toward the deeper invitations of God.
With that said, however, it would seem that extremes in bodily asceticism are rather rare in the current day, and should not become a reason or excuse to forsake the importance of sacrifice and self-discipline in the spiritual life.
CWR: In the book you talk of “loss of self for the greater love”; is a sort of kenosis necessary for deep and authentic contemplation?
Fr. Haggerty: The contemplative life of prayer finds its foundation in the central Gospel passages where Jesus urges us to lose ourselves, to die to ourselves, in a love for him and the Gospel, in order to discover our true self in him. This demands a sacrificial life, the kenosis or self-emptying that is at the heart of all genuine love.
Married couples who perceive the true challenge of their vocation know well this need of giving up self for the sake of greater love. But it is also a dynamic process in the life of prayer. A turning from self in order to turn a loving attention toward our beloved Lord in prayer requires this ongoing kenosis. Prayer has a need for self-forgetfulness, which is a quality of love. The Other who is God, rather than ourselves, becomes the greater focus of our attention when we love. Our longing for Our Lord in prayer, our surrender to him, takes place more deeply as we release ourselves from self. Contemplative prayer will always display this aspect of self-emptying, which includes also the trials of purification undergone in prayer.
This book exposes the very important teaching of St. John of the Cross on the link between the trials of purification and the advancement in depth in a soul’s relations with God. There are observable patterns of fruitful effects as we decrease more, and his importance increases. All people of serious spirituality have noticed, for instance, that sacrificial self-giving outside prayer often paves the way to a renewed encounter with God in prayer.
Conversely, our effort to love Our Lord in a pure desire for him in prayer, even in dryness and obscurity, often unleashes a surge of greater generosity in our life outside private prayer. The loss of self in or out of prayer is never an arrival at an unfruitful emptiness or absence. God mysteriously fills with his own presence what we empty in ourselves or give away out of love for him.
CWR: In the process of researching and writing the book, was there anything you discovered that surprised you?
Fr. Haggerty: In my years of reading and pondering St. John of the Cross, I have again and again received new thoughts and insights that I had not perceived before, and encountered passages read previously that conveyed new depths of meaning. He is certainly a spiritual guide who rewards faithful attachment to his guidance.
In fact, I would affirm there is no spiritual writer like him in his ability to write passages of which one can never tire nor arrive at a satiety. The year prior to writing the book was no different. I was struck much by his descriptions in The Living Flame of Love of the human faculties of intellect, will, and memory as vast caverns of longing within the soul. He writes of the “vast emptiness of their deep capacity” to be filled by the presence of God.
His treatment of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity infusing these faculties with the divine presence is a crucial part of his teaching on contemplative prayer and spirituality. This teaching opens a door into profound implications for the life of prayer. The effort of digging down beneath layers of depth in one’s encounter with divine love is never concluded. The infinite magnitude of God’s love makes this quest in prayer a never-ending adventure over a lifetime.
Another section likewise struck me more than ever during the course of writing this book. In delving again into The Spiritual Canticle, I was moved freshly by his depiction of the soul wounded with love for God, and God’s own wound of love for the soul he loves in a special manner.
CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
Fr. Haggerty: I wrote this book out of love for St. John of the Cross and his writings and with the desire that his teachings on prayer and spirituality should become more accessible and attractive to the wide range of people today seeking greater depth in their spiritual life.
We have been living for a while now in a time when a desire for deeper prayer is on the upsurge. Many lay people make time for silent, private prayer as well as for daily Mass. Eucharistic adoration continues to spread in parishes, drawing many people.
I would say emphatically that St. John of the Cross is an essential guide for those who commit themselves to a regular practice of silent prayer. He teaches clearly that contemplative graces are open to all who are willing to live generously in their love for God and his will. This possibility of a deeper contemplative disposition taking hold in our lives is an invitation from God, like the call to holiness. It should be humbly recognized by many unsuspecting people for whom God waits to give greater gifts to their souls.
CWR: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Fr. Haggerty: The traditional maxim that the hidden contemplative souls are the great fire burning beneath all that is fruitful in the Church is always worth repeating. The contemplative souls have a unique power of intercession for others precisely because they are souls of love.
And Our Lord and his Mother Mary apparently cannot resist the requests of souls animated by love when they pray for others. It seems that a quiet, contagious spread of contemplative prayer in the Church is taking place among many souls who have discovered a love for prayer. These people are a great hope for the current day. It would be wonderful if silent prayer is recognized more and more as a necessity in the daily lives of young lay people, of married couples, of religious and priests, of seminarians.
The deepening love for prayer will have untold fruits; indeed, the Church in any era is measured by its quality of prayer. We should pray that prayer itself becomes a greater need in the Church and in the world. Nothing else may be more important at this critical time in history.
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“Whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Luke 11:23).
When people feel discombobulated, they say their thoughts are scattered. The meaning of the word diabolic is to cast apart, scatter; it is the opposite of symbolic, to gather together. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was all about restoring order and reason to a world challenged by the forces of chaos. Moriarity, Holmes’ nemesis, was a caricature of Nietzsche, the brilliant German philosopher whose critique of culture and thought represented by the British empire seemed to presage nihilism and threatened to open the door to chaos.
The theme of the struggle between order and chaos runs through human history, culture and religion. In today’s Gospel, Jesus’s announcement of the coming of the kingdom of God provokes alarm in the existing order and its underlying ideas of dominance, division and conflict as defining human affairs. Evil spirits under the prince of demons, Beelzebul (literally, “lord of the flies”), have ruled the world with fear and the threat of death. When Jesus drives out evil spirits, his critics accuse him of being in league with the devil. He responds that the scattering of demons is proof that greater power is at work, “the finger of God.” A new world order of love, healing and reconciliation has overcome evil.
The cost of this restoration is Jesus’ willingness to die for love, thus overcoming death by embracing it and taking it with him to the grave. But at the moment of ultimate disintegration, God reverses the power of sin and death with the greater power of love and life. Where death would scatter the human race in diabolic triumph, Jesus mounts the cross and draws all things to himself. With the resurrection, a new creation is revealed. God’s original plan is restored.
Each day we have the ability to either choose to gather with Christ, the symbol and rallying center of God’s loving plan for the universe, or to disintegrate, to be scattered. The most radical thing we can do is to say, “Today, Lord, I gather with you; today I choose love.”
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By Benedict Mayaki, SJ
Cardinal Michael Czerny, on Wednesday, visited the François Marie Paul Liberman Major seminary in Sébikotane, Dakar, Senegal, accompanied by Archbishop Michael Banach, the Nuncio to Senegal, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Mauritania.
The interim Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in the West African country for the 9th World Water Forum taking place from 21 – 26 March. The Forum provides the opportunity for participants from the water community and other aspects of society to dialogue and coordinate efforts to respond to global water-related challenges.
A grand welcome met the Cardinal upon his arrival with the seminarians lined up in the courtyard of the compound. The Rector, Fr. Augustin Sagna received Cardinal Czerny and led him on a tour of the Seminary premises.
The Cardinal then met with the formation staff and the about-sixty seminarians in formation for the priesthood. In his address, he highlighted the importance of integral human development in formation, insisting that no one develops on their own and development should involve everyone. He also stressed the need for evangelization, not only of people but also of the means of communication, particularly social media. Then, he invited them to a greater participation in the synodal path as the Church continues towards the Synod of Bishops in 2023.
Reflecting on the World Water Forum, Cardinal Czerny called upon the seminarians to do their part to contribute to the protection and conservation of water and other resources, in keeping with the teachings of Pope Francis in Laudato sí.
Denver Newsroom, Mar 23, 2022 / 15:25 pm (CNA).
California will eliminate several costs of abortion procedures under a law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Tuesday. The law, which will increase monthly insurance premiums, is among the state’s continuing efforts to expand abortion despite the objections of Catholic leaders and others who oppose the procedure.
“Instead of focusing on how to make abortion services more affordable, the legislature should be working on making the cost-of-living more affordable for mothers and caregivers,” California Catholic Conference executive director Kathleen Domingo said March 18 after the California Assembly passed the bill.
“Where is the equitable push for services for mothers who can’t afford to take their child to the doctor when they are sick or for increased benefits for pregnant mothers to ensure their health and the health of their child?” she asked. “Removing co-pays and using taxpayer money for abortion procedures instead of increasing parental support services tells California’s mothers they are less valuable than those seeking abortions.”
The Democratic-controlled Assembly passed the bill last week by a vote of 46-18 on a party-line vote. The California Catholic Conference thanked those who contacted their legislator to ask them to oppose S.B. 245, called the Abortion Accessibility Act. Newsom signed the bill into law March 22.
Insurance co-pays and deductibles can add an average cost of $543 to a medication abortion and $887 to a surgical abortion, the California Health Benefits Review Program has said. The new law eliminates these costs. Abortions will be cheaper, but the costs will be paid by a slight increase to monthly insurance premiums for both employees and employers.
California already requires health insurance companies to cover abortions. The abortion policy research group the Guttmacher Institute estimates that in 2017, 132,680 abortions took place in the state, among the 862,320 abortions in the U.S. that year.
Newsom has pledged to make California a “sanctuary state” for abortion, in light of expectations that the U.S. Supreme Court will modify or reverse precedent mandating legal abortion nationwide.
“As states across the country attempt to move us backwards by restricting fundamental reproductive rights, California continues to protect and advance reproductive freedom for all,” said Newsom. Newsom’s statement also included a statement from his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Both cited the possibility of abortion restrictions advancing in other U.S. states.
Toni G. Atkins, a Democratic State Senator from the San Diego area and State Senate President pro Tempore, also commented on the bill.
“No one should have to make important medical decisions based on a bottom line, especially not time-sensitive, life-altering decisions like having an abortion,” she said March 22. “By eliminating cost-sharing on all abortion services, the Abortion Accessibility Act will help ensure Californians have the freedom to choose what is right for them and their families, regardless of how much money they have.”
California supporters of abortion have joined the Future of Abortion Council to craft state policy on abortion. The council is made up of some 40 California organizations. Its members include seven Planned Parenthood affiliates, three regional ACLU affiliates, and the Office of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In December 2020, the council released a 14-page report on policy proposals to respond to possible changes if the U.S. Supreme Court revisits Roe v. Wade and other precedents that mandate permissive abortion laws nationwide. Atkins, the Senate’s president pro tempore, wrote a letter introducing the report.
Its recommendations suggest subsidizing travel, lodging, and childcare for people traveling from other states to procure an abortion. The report also recommends an extension of California’s Medicaid coverage of abortion to include low-income patients from other states who would qualify for coverage if they were residents.
Other recommendations include scholarships and student loan assistance for medical students who agree to perform abortions in rural parts of California. Some proposals have been included in the draft state budget, which allocates some $20 million to support the state’s “clinical infrastructure of reproductive health care services.”
California’s requirement that health insurance cover abortions has prompted some lawsuits and federal complaints from churches and others which object to the coverage. The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services had ruled this mandate to be a violation of federal law.
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Washington D.C., Mar 23, 2022 / 14:26 pm (CNA).
Senators are continuing to press Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on the abortion issue during her confirmation hearings with questions such as, “When does life begin, in your opinion?”
Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana asked Jackson — the federal judge nominated by President Joe Biden to replace retiring Justice Stephen G. Breyer — that particular question on Tuesday.
“Senator, I don’t know,” Jackson responded, before laughing.
Kennedy prompted, “Ma’am?”
“I don’t know,” Jackson repeated, later adding, “I have personal, religious, and otherwise beliefs that have nothing to do with the law in terms of when life begins.”
“I have a religious view,” she added, “that I set aside when I am ruling on cases.”
Kennedy then asked when the law begins to protect a human person, or “when does equal protection of the laws attach to a human being?”
Jackson, again, said she did not know.
The point of viability
The following day, on Wednesday, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas questioned Jackson about viability, or the point at which a baby can survive outside the womb.
“What does viability mean when it comes to an unborn child, in your understanding?” he wanted to know.
“I hesitate to speculate,” Jackson responded. “I know that it is a point in time that the court has identified in terms of when the standards that apply to regulation of the right.”
After Cornyn continued to press her, she added, “I am not a biologist, I haven’t studied this.”
“What I know is that the Supreme Court has tests and standards that it has applied when it evaluates regulation of the right of a woman to terminate their pregnancy,” she said referring to abortion. “The court has announced that there is a right to terminate up to the point of viability, subject to the framework in Roe and Casey, and there is a pending case right now that is addressing these issues.”
In response to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California on Tuesday, Jackson previously called Roe and Casey “settled law” concerning “the right to terminate a woman’s pregnancy” during the Tuesday hearings.
Dobbs v. Jackson
The abortion questions come as the Supreme Court prepares to issue a ruling later this year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that directly challenges Roe v. Wade, or the court’s 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
In Roe v. Wade, the court ruled that states could not ban abortion before viability, which the court determined to be 24 to 28 weeks into pregnancy. Nearly 20 years later, the court upheld Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 1992 ruling said that while states could regulate pre-viability abortions, they could not enforce an “undue burden,” defined by the court as “a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”
On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked Jackson directly about Dobbs and Roe.
“Do you commit to respecting the court’s decision if it rules that Roe was wrongly decided and that the issue of abortion should be sent back to the states?” the senator asked.
Jackson responded that “Whatever the Supreme Court decides in Dobbs will be the precedent of the Supreme Court — it will be worthy of respect in the sense that it is precedent and I commit to treating it as I would any other precedent of the Supreme Court.”
The legal term “precedent” refers to previous court decisions that judges consider and build upon when deciding similar, subsequent cases.
Abortion up until birth
During his alloted time of questioning on Wednesday, Cornyn also asked Jackson, “Is it your understanding, under the current precedent of the Supreme Court, that there’s a right to abortion up to and including the time of delivery of the child?”
“Senator, I don’t know actually,” she said. “The Supreme Court, in every case, is looking at individual regulations of the government related to individual rights and I am not aware of the court having made a pronouncement about whether or not regulation can extend all the way up until birth.”
“It’s because the court is looking at individual cases and making its rulings in the context of individual cases and not making sort of pronouncements in general,” she added.
Fetal pain
On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina questioned Jackson on the topic of fetal pain.
“Can an unborn child feel pain at 20 weeks in the birthing process?” he asked.
“Senator, I don’t know,” Jackson said.
Graham followed up: “Are you aware of the fact that anesthesia is provided to the unborn child of that time period if there’s an operation to save the baby’s life because they can, in fact, feel pain?”
She said she was not.
Jackson’s abortion record
Blackburn on Tuesday, along with Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina on Wednesday, asked about Jackson’s record in a case related to abortion.
In addition to having the support of abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood for her nomination, Jackson co-authored a 2001 amicus brief in McGuire v. Reilly in support of a Massachusetts law that created a “buffer zone” preventing pro-life sidewalk counselors from approaching women outside of abortion clinics, according to Susan B. Anthony List.
In a letter dated March 21, a coalition of nearly 40 national and state pro-life leaders led by Susan B. Anthony List expressed concerns about this case to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“In an amicus brief co-authored by Jackson on behalf of the Massachusetts National Abortion Rights Action League (Mass. NARAL) and other abortion groups regarding buffer zones around abortion clinics in Massachusetts, she portrayed pro-life sidewalk counselors as a ‘hostile, noisy crowd of ‘in-your-face protesters,’” they wrote.
Blackburn accused Jackson of attacking pro-life women while in private practice.
“You described them, and I’m quoting, ‘hostile, noisy crowd of ‘in-your-face protestors,’” Blackburn brought up. “How do you justify that incendiary rhetoric against pro-life women?”
Jackson said that the brief represented her law firm’s clients.
“I drafted a brief along with the partners in my law firm who reviewed it and we filed it on behalf of our client,” she said.
After a follow-up question from Blackburn, Jackson clarified, “That was a statement in a brief, made an argument for my client, it’s not the way that I think of or characterize people.”
Jackson agreed with Cornyn and Blackburn that the U.S. Constitution does not include the word “abortion.”
Echoes of Barrett hearing
As happened on Tuesday, when Graham asked pointed questions about Jackson’s Christian faith, the abortion-related questions senators have asked this week have been similar to those that senators asked of President Donald Trump’s 2020 nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
During her confirmation hearing, Barrett was asked a number of questions about Roe, and about a statement that she signed in 2006 as a private citizen at church affirming the protection of life from conception to natural death.
“What I would like to say about that is, I signed that almost 15 years ago in my personal capacity when I was still a private citizen, and now I’m a public official. And so while I was free to express my private views at that time, I don’t feel like it is appropriate for me anymore because of the canons of conduct to express an affirmative view at this point in time,” Barrett responded then.
“But what that statement plainly says is that when I signed that statement, that is what I was doing at that point as a private citizen,” she added.
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Nobody denies that conspiracies occur. They happen every time two or more people collude in order to secure some malign end. When people criticize “conspiracy theories,” it is a particular kind of conspiracy that they find implausible. I’ve written several times before about some of the marks of conspiracy theories of this dubious kind. They tend to be grounded in “narrative thinking” rather than a rigorous and dispassionate consideration of the merits and deficiencies of all alternative possible explanations. They tend to violate Ockham’s razor, posit conspiracies that are too vast and complicated to be psychologically and sociologically feasible, and reflect naiveté about the way modern bureaucracies function. The vastness of the posited conspiracy often has implications for the reliability of news media and other sources of information that make the theory epistemically self-defeating and unfalsifiable. (For simplicity’s sake, from here on out I’ll use the expression “conspiracy theories” to refer, specifically, to theories having vices like these – acknowledging, again, that there are conspiracies of a more plausible kind, and thus conspiracy theories of a more plausible kind.)
A superficially similar but at bottom very different sort of theory is represented by examples of the “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Theories of this kind posit forces which might seem analogous to the malign actors imagined by conspiracy theorists, but which ultimately operate in an impersonal manner. Hence Marxism analyzes prevailing moral and cultural institutions as ideologies functioning to uphold dominant economic interests, Foucault regards them as expressions of power, Critical Race Theory as expressions of “white supremacy,” and so on.
Such theories share some of the flaws of conspiracy theories. Like conspiracy theories, they rely on “narrative thinking” rather than rigorous argumentation, oversimplify complex social phenomena, and read sinister meaning into what is innocuous. They also tend to dismiss criticism and counterarguments as merely the expression of the purported sinister forces, rather than evaluating them logically and dispassionately. (“That’s just what the interests of [power, capital, white supremacy, etc.] want you to think!”) Like conspiracy theories, they thereby open themselves up to the charge of being self-defeating. If everything is “nothing but” the expression of some economic interest and can be dismissed as having no objective validity, why can’t we say the same of Marxism? If it is merely the expression of the interests of power, what power interests does Foucault’s analysis itself serve? If it is the expression of racism, how can Critical Race Theory itself be exempt?
All the same, instances of the “hermeneutics of suspicion” are not conspiracy theories, because they don’t attribute the phenomena they analyze to any sort of plotting or design. The claim is not that a cabal of capitalists, racists, or other powerful interests got together in a smoke-filled room to map out how cultural and social institutions would be set up. Rather, the malign forces such a theory posits are treated as impersonal abstractions that (somehow) nevertheless operate as if they were concrete, personal entities. Accordingly, such theories tend to commit a fallacy of hypostatization or reification. Where conspiracy theories attribute too much to human agency, the hermeneutics of suspicion attributes too little to it. Abstractions like “capital,” “power,” “white supremacy,” etc. don’t exist over and above specific individuals and institutions who could intelligibly be said, whether correctly or incorrectly, to exercise power, to have economic interests, to harbor racist attitudes, or whatever. Hence, to the extent that an analysis cannot be cashed out in terms of the motives and activities of such specific individuals and institutions, it fails to capture anything real.
Now, there is a third kind of theory which claims to explain the same sorts of phenomena as conspiracy theories and the hermeneutics of suspicion, but does not have the problems that those approaches exhibit. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a commonly accepted label for this approach. Borrowing from F. A. Hayek, I’ll label them theories of “spontaneous order,” though I’m not entirely happy with the phrase. In addition to Hayek, the best-known representatives of this sort of approach are the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson. Smith’s “invisible hand” principle is one application, as is Hayek’s elaboration of how prices generated in the free market encapsulate scattered bits of information that would otherwise be inaccessible to economic actors. In an earlier post, I suggested that Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model” of mass media, when abstracted from the specific political assumptions they bring to bear on it, counts as another application.
What analyses of this kind describe are, as Ferguson famously put it, “the results of human action but not of human design.” Smith argues that when economic agents act in their own best interests, society in general reaps unforeseen benefits insofar as production, innovation, services, etc. are efficiently fitted to actual demand. Hayek argues that when consumers are guided by market prices, economic information is communicated and used as effectively as possible. Herman and Chomsky argue that the incentives built into a corporately-owned media system tend naturally to filter out information and opinions awareness of which would be contrary to the common interests of corporations and governments.
Now, you may or may not agree with one or more of these theories of “spontaneous order.” That’s fine. I’m neither defending nor criticizing any of them here, but just using them as examples of a general style of analysis. Note, however, that you don’t need to agree with the use these theorists make of these theories in order to find the theories themselves of interest. Smith and Hayek are favorable to the market economy, and Herman and Chomsky are unfavorable to corporate media. But that is irrelevant to the cogency (or lack thereof) of their analyses. Someone could agree that the effects described by Smith and Hayek are real and still be unfavorable toward the free market, and someone could agree that the effects described by Herman and Chomsky are real and still favor corporate media. It all depends on what other premises and values are factored into one’s overall political or economic view of things.
Anyway, the thing to emphasize for present purposes is that theories of “spontaneous order” are neither conspiracy theories nor instances of the hermeneutics of suspicion. The effects described by Smith, Hayek, and Herman and Chomsky are brought about by specific human beings and specific institutions acting in clearly identifiable ways according to explicit motives. There is no reference to reified abstractions acting in ways that only personal or other concrete entities can. (The “invisible hand” is no exception, because Smith’s whole point is that there is no such hand. It’s only as if there were.)
At the same time, these specific agents and institutions are not acting with the intention or design of bringing about the specific effects that Smith, Hayek, and Edward and Chomsky describe. There is no conspiracy. Consumers are not consciously trying to increase the efficiency with which economic information is transmitted, reporters are not consciously trying to uphold the interests of corporations, and so on. Again, the whole point of theories of this kind is to explain how complex social patterns can be “the results of human action” and at the same time “not of human design.”
We might think of the systems posited by “spontaneous order” theorists on the model of what philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright calls “nomological machines.” A nomological machine is a system of substances whose causal powers, when acting in tandem, generate patterns which approximate laws of nature. For example, the solar system is a nomological machine. What it is fundamentally made up of are objects like our sun, the various planets and asteroids, etc., all with their distinctive properties and powers. Given that such objects are in the right sort of proximity to one another and mutually trigger the operation of their causal powers, the result is a system that more or less operates in the way described by Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Cartwright’s point is that laws of nature are not fundamental to physical reality. Rather, what are fundamental to physical reality are various concrete physical substances, and their distinctive properties and causal powers. When these substances get into the right configuration, the result is a pattern that approximates a law. Laws are, accordingly, idealized descriptions of phenomena that are themselves derivative from something more fundamental. Treating laws as themselves the fundamental facts about physical reality just gets the natural world badly wrong. (See chapter 3 of my book Aristotle’s Revenge for detailed exposition and defense of this sort of view.)
The processes posited by theories of “spontaneous order” are like this. Given a collection of individual economic actors responding to market forces, the result (the theory says) will be the patterns described by Smith and Hayek. It’s as if these economic actors are following economic laws, but really they are not. Any purported economic laws are really only approximations at best of complex patterns that arise when economic actors interact in certain ways under certain conditions. Something similar can be said of the behavior of media personnel, government officials, etc. in the context described by Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model. It’s as if they are following some law of corporate media behavior, though really they are not.
Because human beings and social phenomena are vastly more complex than (say) the solar system, the “laws” in these cases are only very remote approximations and idealizations, rather than closely conforming to what actually happens (since human beings, after all, are moved by far more than merely economic considerations, political incentives, etc.). There are and can be no strict “laws” where human beings and social phenomena are concerned. But the “spontaneous order” models are still useful, because they do capture real systemic features and tendencies, even if mere tendencies (rather than exceptionless patterns) is all they are.
I would suggest that Cartwright’s account provides one way of seeing what is wrong with conspiracy theories and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Cartwright’s neo-Aristotelian view of laws is what you might call a “bottom-up” view. Again, what are fundamental to nature are concrete substances and their powers, and laws are derivative abstractions, and typically approximations at best. (This is true, as Cartwright famously argues, even of laws of physics.) The view she opposes takes a “top-down” view of laws, according to which laws are the fundamental physical reality and imposed from above on the rest of nature – whether by a divine designer, or as just a brute fact about the world.
Conspiracy theories and the hermeneutics of suspicion are, I submit, comparable to “top-down” views about laws of nature, and are especially comparable to attempts to identify strict “laws” governing economic or other social phenomena. They both try to wedge what is really a very messy, complex social reality into a simplistic model that abstracts from how human beings and human institutions actually operate. Conspiracy theories do so by identifying a “designer” of the patterns they claim to explain, whereas the hermeneutics of suspicion takes those patterns to be something like a brute fact about the social world rather than the product of design. (I don’t claim that my analogy here is terribly exact, only that it is suggestive.)
The Substack writer Eugyppius has written some helpful articles (e.g. here and here) about why the manner in which governments have handled the Covid-19 situation is best understood in “spontaneous order” terms rather than in terms of conspiracy. In particular, the stubbornly incompetent and callous nature of pandemic policy reflects the incentives, values, and information flow that prevail in modern bureaucracies, rather than centralized planning.
As Eugyppius emphasizes, this by no means entails that those responsible for making policy don’t often have bad motives. That’s not the point. The point is that in order effectively to counter destructive policies and corrupt and incompetent authorities, we need to understand how social institutions, including governments, actually work. Conspiracy theories and the hermeneutics of suspicion darken our understanding – and thereby inadvertently give aid and comfort to bad policymakers whom we can effectively resist only with sobriety.
(Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared on the author’s blog in a slightly different form and is reprinted here with his kind permission.)
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Santiago de Chuco — Fr. Carlos Campos knew he would face multiple challenges when he was appointed to run the principal church in Santiago de Chuco, in the mountains of northern Peru, but he never expected them to include physical threats.
The department is home to some of Peru’s poorer districts, and large swaths of it are often isolated during the rainy season, the first three months of the year. Poverty and isolation worsened when the pandemic hit only a few months after he arrived, and Peru’s government implemented a drastic three-month lockdown.
Fr. Campos and a group of young parishioners formed a Laudato Si’ group and began outreach work that has included technical assistance for farmers, food distribution and, most recently, construction of a soup kitchen that will provide around 150 meals daily, primarily to elderly residents. He also oversees a small parochial school.
The social work went over well, but Fr. Campos did not find the same reaction when he began questioning the impact of wildcat mining in the province. Instead of support, he started receiving threats.
“Wildcat mining not only affects the environment, but all of society. We received threats when we began to object to what they were doing. Challenging them is basically like David taking on Goliath,” Fr. Campos said.
Santiago de Chuco and surrounding provinces are rich in gold and other metals, and mining has existed since pre-Columbian times. While there are world-class formal mines in the zone, huge areas of the province have been invaded by wildcat miners, who burrow into hills in search of minerals. They do not use protective gear, and they do not abide by environmental standards.
Fr. Campos said the problem intensified during the pandemic, when other sources of work evaporated and people turned to mining.
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“What little control there was over wildcat mining disappeared with the pandemic. It has become a free-for-all wherever you go. They are contaminating the air, soil and water,” he said.
Peru’s government and international agencies have focused attention on wildcat mining in the Amazon, especially in Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios department, where Pope Francis called illegal gold mining a “false god” during a 2018 visit to Peru. Several districts in Madre de Dios have been under a state of emergency since February 2019, but destruction and violence continue.
Unknown gunmen shot and killed an environmental activist March 20 in La Pampa, one of the more notorious wildcat mining zones. The Puerto Maldonado Vicariate condemned the murder of Juan Fernández, demanding an investigation and asking what good is the emergency if the state cannot protect its citizens. Fernández’s brother is the leader of a base Christian community in Madre de Dios.
“We are in solidarity with those in Madre de Dios who, day after day, feel abandoned by a state that does not seem to protect them. They are being threatened and killed,” said the vicariate.
Wildcat mining in the highlands has received much less attention.
The epicenter in this part of Peru is Quiruvilca, a town 13,150 feet above sea level in Santiago de Chuco. Its name means “silver tooth” in Quechua, Peru’s most prevalent Indigenous language.
The large polymetallic mine in Quiruvilca abruptly closed in December 2017, leaving thousands of miners unemployed overnight. The majority immediately decided to mine for themselves, and many others moved in with the pandemic. Mayor Oscar Diestra said he does not know how many people are working the hills, but at last count there were more than 100 different economic activities — from digging into the earth to operating food stalls — related to mining in the town.
“Everything here revolves around mining, even if we do not have a mining company any longer,” he said.
Krakow, Poland, Mar 23, 2022 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
In the month since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than two million people have crossed the border with Poland seeking refuge.
In the Polish city of Kraków, the local Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski has shown his support for Ukraine’s battered population, first by welcoming new arrivals at the main train station and then by personally welcoming refugees in his residence.
Jędraszewski lives in the Bishop’s Palace, in the center of the city regarded as Poland’s cultural capital. It was there that the future St. John Paul II lived in the 1960s and 70s before his election to the papacy.
Eleanor Petritschenko, a 55-year-old from Rivne, a city in western Ukraine, is one of four refugees currently staying in the palace, which also houses Kraków archdiocese’s Metropolitan Curia.
Eleanor resigned herself to leaving her home when drones began flying over her neighborhood at the end of February. She took her 92-year-old mother, Catharine Shimonovitsch, with her. Their departure was all the more difficult because they had to leave behind the men in their family, who were obliged to stay and defend the country.
Their ordeal, which echoes that of the other 3.6 million Ukrainians forced to flee the country since Feb. 24, was nonetheless alleviated by the helping hand of Archbishop Jędraszewski.
The two women arrived in Kraków on March 3 after a long and difficult journey that took them out of Ukraine, into neighboring Slovakia, and then to Poland.
Their initial challenge was to find a shelter suitable for an elderly woman. They sought assistance from a parish priest in Kraków.
“This good priest put us in touch with the diocesan curia, and he told us that the archbishop had personally offered to welcome us in his residence,” Eleanor told CNA.
She was joined shortly afterward by her son’s mother-in-law and her five-year-old child.
For Eleanor, a practicing Catholic with a devotion to St. John Paul II, this help came straight from heaven.
“I pray to St. John Paul II every day,” she said, “and I have done so with even greater intensity as the need to leave my home has become more and more evident, asking him to guide me where I was meant to go.”
The church that she used to attend in Rivne was dedicated to the Polish saint in 2015, in accordance with the wishes of the Neocatechumenal Way, which runs the parish.
Eleanor’s mother-in-law, who has been involved with the Neocatechumenal community for some 20 years as a missionary, received John Paul II’s blessing in Rome in the early 2000s.
“We wanted to be in his town,” Eleanor said. “There were many obstacles and difficulties on the road from Rivne to Kraków, and we overcame them each time miraculously.”
“Through the intercession of St. John Paul II, God led us to this residence, and he is now acting through all the great people around us, starting with the archbishop and his chaplain, Father Rafał Wilkołek, to protect us.”
“We now have everything our body and soul need, and we give thanks for that.”
Archbishop Jędraszewski visited Eleanor and her mother shortly after their arrival.
“I will never forget this encounter,” Eleanor said. “He is of great spiritual stature and embodies, in my eyes, the man with a capital M: he has a great spirit, an open heart, and full of love. May God protect him!”
Both Eleanor and her mother hope to return to Ukraine as soon as the war is over. For the time being, she worries about her husband, her two sons, and her sister who remain there.
There is a growing fear that western Ukraine will be attacked from its northern neighbor Belarus. The missionaries of the Neocatechumenal Way have reportedly left the area.
Meanwhile, Poland’s Catholics are helping the more than 2.1 million new arrivals from Ukraine. In the Kraków archdiocese alone, some 20,000 people are being supported in parishes, while 4,500 of them are being taken care of by the local branch of Caritas.
Caritas in Kraków has raised more than 1.5 million euros (around $1.65 million), thanks to the generosity of the city’s inhabitants, and distributes over 2,000 meals daily.
Agnieszka Homan, the charity’s spokeswoman in Kraków, told CNA that these figures do not include the countless personal initiatives of citizens or other local Catholic associations.
“The community of Kraków is extremely generous,” she said. “Every week we receive truckloads of all kinds of basic necessities, which we have to manage and distribute. To date, we have also sent almost 300 tons of goods to Ukraine.”
“We are all exhausted but still determined to bring relief, by all possible means, to our Ukrainian brothers.”
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WASHINGTON — The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson began with introductory remarks March 21 followed by 13 hours of questioning the next day about her role as a judge and a public defender and her views on abortion, critical race theory and her own faith.
Questions continued March 23, to be followed by remarks from witnesses the next day.
Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, also was asked by Republican senators about her defense of Guantanamo Bay detainees and sentences she gave in child pornography cases.
The 51-year-old nominee was joined by family members in the hearing room, including her husband, their two daughters, and her parents and other family members and friends.
In her opening statement, she said that as a federal judge she has always taken seriously her responsibility to be independent.
“I decide cases from a neutral posture,” she told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the second day of hearings when the senators were each allotted 30 minutes of questioning. “I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me, without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath.”
Jackson said it was “extremely humbling” to be considered for Justice Stephen Breyer’s seat on the court and added that she “could never fill his shoes,” but if she were confirmed, she hoped she would “carry on his spirit.”
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On the first day of the nomination hearings, crowds of supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court pleased that, if confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to be a Supreme Court justice; they carried “Confirm KBJ” signs. A group of pro-life protesters also had gathered to protest President Joe Biden’s nominee, stressing that she would support keeping abortion legal.
Jackson was asked a few times March 22 about her abortion views. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked Jackson, as she has asked the last three court nominees, if Roe v. Wade, the court’s 1973 decision legalizing abortion nationwide, was settled law. Jackson, as other nominees before her have done, agreed that the court’s decision was a binding precedent.
Later when she was asked by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., if she has a personal belief on when life begins, she said she did.
“I have a religious belief that I set aside when I am ruling on cases,” she told the committee.
At the end of the March 22 questioning, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked if Jackson would respect the Supreme Court’s decision if it overturned Roe v. Wade later this year in the Mississippi abortion case. Jackson said she would treat it as she “would any other precedent.”
Earlier that day, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Jackson about her faith and she responded that she is “Protestant, nondenominational.” When pressed further about how important her faith is to her she said that it was very important but added: “There is no religious test in the Constitution under Article 6.”
She also said it’s very important to “set aside one’s personal views about things” in the role of a judge.
Graham, who kept on this topic, asked: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are in terms of religion?”
The judge said she was reluctant to talk about her faith in this way because she wants the public to know she has the ability to separate out her views.
Graham said he had no doubt about that and then went into how poorly Justice Amy Coney Barrett had been treated in her questioning referring to Barrett’s federal judiciary nomination hearing in 2017 where Feinstein said to her: “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.”
When Jackson was asked by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about her potential support for critical race theory, an academic theory about how racism is spread in society, the nominee said the theory doesn’t “come up in my work as a judge, which I’m respectfully here to address.”
She later told Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., that she has never used critical race theory in judging a case.
In the second round of questioning March 23, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were allotted 20 minutes each for questioning. Jackson will not appear March 24 when senators will hear from the American Bar Association, which assesses judicial nominees’ qualifications, and outside witnesses.
The committee then determines if it will pass Jackson’s nomination to the full Senate for a vote. It takes a simple majority of the Senate — 51 votes — to confirm a nominee. Democrats now have 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris could cast a tie-breaking vote.
The senators have said they hope to finish the confirmation process before they break for Easter recess April 11.
DUBLIN — A survivor of clerical sexual abuse who quit the Vatican’s advisory group on abuse said she believes new reforms of the Roman Curia will further erode the independence of the body.
Marie Collins, whose advocacy led to an Irish government inquiry into the handling of abuse allegations in the Dublin Archdiocese, was one of the founding members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2014. She quit in 2017, warning that “the reluctance of some in the Vatican Curia to implement recommendations or cooperate with the work of a commission, when the purpose is to improve the safety of children and vulnerable adults around the world, is unacceptable.”
Collins told The Irish Catholic newspaper that the Curia reorganization unveiled by Pope Francis March 19, which will see the commission become part of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, will further undermine the work of the body she was once part of.
“When I was on the Commission (for the Protection of Minors) we got a lot of resistance to our work from the (doctrinal congregation) … they basically felt that we were interfering. And that, I believe, is the norm in the Vatican — they really do not like anyone who are seen as outsiders coming in,” Collins told The Irish Catholic.
She said when the commission was first launched, “the whole idea was to bring in experts from outside the church into an independent body” that would advise the pope directly.
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Under the pope’s new apostolic constitution for the Roman Curia, due to take effect in June, the commission will now work “within” the newly renamed Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, although it will continue to have its own offices, officials and statutes.
Collins said if Pope Francis thought a department should oversee the commission’s work, the doctrinal dicastery would be the wrong one.
The problem “all along” with how the church handled abuse was that “it was looked at as a legal problem and a problem of discipline but it’s not, and the (doctrinal dicastery) has a very bad history of dealing with survivors in a caring and healing way; that has not changed in recent times, either,” she said.
But Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston, who heads the Commission for the Protection of Minors, praised the reforms of “Praedicate evangelium” (“Preach the Gospel”), insisting that “for the first time, Pope Francis has made safeguarding and the protection of minors a fundamental part of the structure of the church’s central government: the Roman Curia.”
“Linking the commission more closely with the work of the new Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith represents a significant move forward in upgrading the place and mandate of the commission, which can only lead to a stronger culture of safeguarding throughout the Curia and the entire church,” he said.
The cardinal praised what he described as the decision to maintain the commission “as a separate body within the dicastery that enjoys direct access to the Holy Father and with its own leadership and staffing.”
Cardinal O’Malley said “the renewed and reaffirmed pontifical commission will play an increasingly incisive role in ensuring the church is a safe place for children and vulnerable persons.”
VATICAN CITY — As Russian bombardments continue to decimate Ukraine, Pope Francis prayed that God would free the world from war and the need to self-destruct.
“May the Lord send us his Spirit so that we may understand that war is a defeat for humanity, that those who make war have a need for defeat and may he free us from this need of self-destruction,” the pope said March 23 during his weekly general audience.
Before concluding the audience, the pope led pilgrims in praying a Hail Mary to remember the innocent victims of the war in Ukraine, especially those “who are displaced, who have fled, the people who have died, the wounded and so many soldiers who have fallen, those on both sides.”
According to a report published by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights March 20, at least 902 civilians, including 75 children, have been killed since Russia’s attack on the country began nearly a month ago. The report said the U.N. believes “the actual figures are considerably higher,” but intense bombardments have made it impossible to verify other reports.
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For example, in his address to the Italian parliament March 22, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that due to Russia’s heavy bombing of the port city of Mariupol, “there is nothing left there.”
With the intensity of the attacks, particularly on non-military targets and residential areas, some believe that Russia, having failed to capture the capital city of Kyiv, is now waging a war of attrition to wear down Ukraine’s defenses.
“It is news of death,” the pope said of the escalating violence and loss of life. “We ask the Lord of life to free us from this death of war. With war, everything is lost. Everything. There is no victory in war. It is all defeat.”
Addressing world leaders, Pope Francis insisted the manufacturing and deployment of weapons “is not the solution to the problem.”
“The solution is working together for peace, and as the Bible says, of turning weapons into instruments of peace,” the pope said.
South Bend, Ind., Mar 23, 2022 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Philadelphia will deliver the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame in May, the school announced on Wednesday.
Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., president of Notre Dame, said March 23, “We have previously honored Archbishop Gudziak for his work as leader of the Ukrainian Catholic University as a center for cultural thought, for his Christian witness and for the formation of a Ukrainian society based on human dignity. We now further recognize him as he speaks forcefully and eloquently in support of the Ukrainian people and in opposition to the Russian invasion of his ancestral homeland.”
“The students, faculty and staff at Notre Dame have demonstrated continuing solidarity with Ukraine over this past month, and I know that they will benefit from and appreciate hearing the words of Archbishop Gudziak at our graduation celebration in May.”
The commencement ceremony will be held May 15 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend. Archbishop Gudziak will receive an honorary degree at the event.
The archbishop was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1960, to parents who had moved from Ukraine. He was ordained a priest of the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Lviv in 1998, and in 2012 was consecrated abishop and appointed Apostolic Exarch of the Ukrainian Apostolic Exarchate of France. He oversaw that Church’s elevation to an eparchy the following year, and remained there until he was appointed to Philadelphia in 2019.
When he moved to Ukraine in 1992, Gudziak founded the Institute of Church History in Lviv, and then served as vice rector, then rector, of the Lviv Theological Academy, which is now Ukrainian Catholic University, of which he is president.
Archbishop Gudziak received the Notre Dame Award in June 2019, and the following November was a keynote speaker at Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture’s 20th annual fall conference.
At that November 2019 address, Archbishop Gudziak said there are some good things happening in the world, “and yet the times are not so good.”
“In fact, they’re similar to…what it was in 1914 when the Western world was convinced that progress would lead us to great happiness. Then the massacres began. World wars. The genocides.”
He noted that for all of our technological and social progress, Americans are lonelier, more depressed and more stressed than ever. In Pennsylvania, one of the states where he serves, the opioid crisis has left people sick, dying, lonely and without hope.
“It’s important to focus on friendship because no amount of material, educational, technological, industrial welfare can compensate for the relationships that we are called to,” he said.
Gudziak said some of the most profound friendships he’s seen are those he witnessed in Soviet Russia before it fell, and those he continues to witness in countries controlled by communism, although these friendships are not easy or without cost.
“In all of these countries that were or continue to be communist, where millions of people were killed, where the system killed systematically, people over generations developed a reflex to put on a mask, put up a facade, build a wall because the outside world is dangerous,” Gudziak said.
Families are encouraged to inform authorities against each other in communist countries, “so people in the family don’t say things, because you can’t trust. It becomes like a radiation.”
“You can’t taste it, has no smell, no color, but it mutates the genes. There’s an extra fear chromosome. It’s a reflex. You can’t control it. Two billion people have an added obstacle to cultivate profound friendship.”
And yet it was in these oppressive conditions in Soviet Russia that the Ukrainian Catholic Church, while it lost many members, grew deep roots and bonds of friendship among those that remained.
“(T)he Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which had about 4 million members in 1939, with 3,000 priests, was totally – on a visible level – liquidated,” Gudziak said.
“In 1945-46 all the bishops were arrested, hundreds of priests with their families were deported to Siberia. The church was rendered illegal and it remained the biggest illegal church in the world for 43 years until 1989. And it was very reduced. By 1989 there were only 300 priests left,” he said.
“But what a community it was! Forged in that fire of persecution,” he added.
When he met the underground Church, Gudziak said everything was stripped to the bare minimum – bishops had jobs as ambulance drivers or coal workers, there were no schools or churches or official institutions of any kind. The bishops didn’t even know one another’s names, because it was too dangerous to tell someone your name in underground seminary.
“And yet they were profoundly friends of Christ, and it was an incredible, intense relationship of those in the underground,” Gudziak said.
“The friendship was not just kind of a nice thing, it cost profoundly to be a friend of Christ in an atheist totalitarian system,” he said. “It cost to pass down the faith to your children. But the fruits are amazing.”
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A man in a woman’s bathing suit: A male with mildly suppressed testosterone can claim the identity of woman? Winners (Amy Welborn)
The second secret: “To avoid (a new world war) I will come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the first Saturdays of the month. Fátima: Was Rússia validly Consecrated? (Fundacao Oureana)
The “conversion” of Russia: “We should not interpret Our Lady of Fatima as foretelling Russia’s conversion to Catholicism.” Papal consecration of Russia, Ukraine has history of controversy behind it (CatholicNews.com)
“Serious toll on children’s mental health”: More than a quarter of U.S. parents say their child has seen a mental health specialist with the majority doing so since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. New Report Shows How Many Adolescents Have Sought Mental Health Help Since the Pandemic (TownHall.com)
Pssst! Shhhh! Five-year-old students were told to keep conversations about LGBT topics “confidential”. Texas Elementary Schoolers Told To Keep Pride Week ‘Community Circles’ ‘Confidential’ (Daily Caller)
Will the real Vigano please stand up: Virtually everything you may think you know about the war in Ukraine is a “gross falsification of the mainstream media.” George Weigel: Unhinged conspiracy claims? (Catholic Weekly)
Prosperity preaching: “The emphasis of Neo- Christianity is based on power and acquisition of spiritual powers.” Catholic bishop urges priests to shun prosperity preaching (Vanguard)
Mask fatigue: A group of pilots from JetBlue, American Airlines, and Southwest have filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 10 Pilots From Major Airlines Suing CDC Over Mask Mandates On Airplanes (Daily Wire)
once the needle goes in, it never comes out: “if you’ve never seen a serious addict seeking to justify their addiction and their behavior in pursuit of it before, you’re in for a startling show” masking the problem (bad cattitude)
Can’t take a joke: Seth Dillon, the Christian satire site’s CEO, says it is worth losing a Twitter account to tell the truth. Babylon Bee defiant after Twitter locks account over tweet naming Rachel Levine ‘Man of the Year’ (Fox News)
Freedom of Communication: All of this is being done in the name of science, but let’s be clear: there’s nothing scientific about censorship. Al Gore, Vanishing Polar Ice, and the Perils of Censoring ‘Misinformation’ (Intellectual Takeout)
Behold the handmaid of the Lord: The following is a meditation St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote considering Mary’s turmoil upon hearing the angel’s words and the cry of the whole world for her response. A Meditation on the Annunciation (The Word Among Us)
Preach the Gospel: On the ninth anniversary of the formal inauguration of his pontificate, Pope Francis published Praedicate Evangelium (Preach the Gospel), his new constitution for the structure of the Roman Curia. 10 Highlights of ‘Praedicate Evangelium’
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of said news item or essay.)
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Denver Newsroom, Mar 23, 2022 / 11:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Friday, March 25, entrusting the nations to Mary’s help and protection. The pope has asked all the bishops — and indeed all the faithful of the entire world — to join him.
The consecration itself will take the form of a prayer that Pope Francis will recite during a penitential service in Rome.
So, how can you participate?
Your parish may have something in the works. If not, organize it yourself!
The pope released a letter March 23 asking all Catholics to assemble in their parishes on Friday to pray the act of consecration. So, there’s a good chance your parish may be organizing something. You can always contact your parish to ask if they know about the pope’s request, and if they don’t yet have plans, whether you can organize a gathering at your parish.
You can watch Pope Francis do the consecration on TV, or online.
EWTN will be carrying live coverage of the pope’s penitential service, beginning at 5 p.m. Rome time. You can watch on cable, or online. CNA will also be carrying the livestream on our Facebook page.
Here’s a handy time zone cheat sheet:
17:00 Rome
17:00 West Africa Standard Time (Nigeria)
16:00 GMT (London)
12:00 Eastern Time (New York, Washington, Miami)
11:00 Central Time (Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas)
10:00 Mountain Time (Denver, Salt Lake City)
9:00 Pacific Time (Los Angeles, Seattle)
8:00 Alaska Daylight Time (Anchorage, Juneau)
6:00 Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time (Honolulu)
It’s worth noting that the Vatican has said that the pope likely will not pray the actual consecration prayer until around 6:30 pm Rome time, if you would like to pray with the pope simultaneously.
Your bishop may already have invited you to join him in the consecration.
Many bishops have already announced plans to join Pope Francis in praying the consecration. Most are doing so in conjunction with a Mass, prayer service, or Stations of the Cross. The chances are good that your bishop will be praying the prayer publicly in some form, likely at your cathedral. There’s also a good chance your local gathering will be livestreamed if you can’t make it in person.
The important thing is that you check with your diocese directly. New announcements are coming every day, and if it’s your desire to participate in the consecration with your bishop, contacting your diocese directly is the best way to learn how to do that.
That being said, CNA has an updated list of all the U.S. dioceses that have publicly announced their participation in the consecration (and there are now over 100 that have); you can access that list here.
Can’t watch or join a gathering in person? Set your alarm for 5 p.m. Rome time, and pray.
It’s ok if you can’t watch or join in a prayer service or Mass in person — you can join the Church in prayer wherever you are.
Again, the text of the consecration is already available, and you are welcome to pray it when the time comes, or whenever you can. You could also consider praying a Hail Mary, or the rosary.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
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By Benedict Mayaki SJ – Dakar, Senegal
Catholic and Islamic leaders highlighted the efforts religions are making to combat global water challenges at a special session entitled “Religions and the Right to Water for All”, organized by various elements of the Caritas organization.
The Holy See’s delegation to the 9th World Water Forum, taking place on 21 – 26 March in Dakar, Senegal, is led by Cardinal Michael Czerny, the interim Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Throughout the week, participants from various sectors—including political and economic decision makers, as well as international agencies, academia, and the private sector—are meeting to collaborate on efforts to respond to global water challenges, in this largest international water-related event, the first to be held in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Forum also provided an opportunity to further celebrate World Water Day, which is annually commemorated on 22 March.
Following the grand opening ceremony at the Dakar Arena on Monday, the forum broke up into smaller panels, each on tackling a different theme relating the precious liquid resource and how it contributes to the promotion of peace and development.
On Wednesday, a special session was hosted by Caritas Senegal, in collaboration with Catholic Relief Services and the Holy See’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Development, at the Abou Diouf International Conference Centre (CICAD), Diamniadio, Dakar, within the framework of the World Water Forum.
The session, entitled “Religions and the Right to Water for All”, explored the religious point of the view on water and how it can contribute to promoting the right to access to safe, potable water for everyone, particularly the poor and in areas where water supply is not always guaranteed.
The first panel, dedicated to presenting the views of Islam, Senegalese culture, and the Bible on water was introduced by Bishop Jean-Pierre Bassène of Kolda and President of Caritas Senegal.
Presenting the Islamic perspective was Imam Ahmadou Makhtar Kanté, of Point-E Mosque, who explained that the right to everyone to water is born of good sense, which is not only limited to the Islamic religion but is for everyone. He said that the right to water is present in Islam in the paradise-lost and the story of Adam, and that, even in that paradise, Adam was promised that he will never be thirsty.
The Imam further stressed that in the Koran, we are citizens of the earth and no one has the right to deprive another of it. He notes that the Islamic holy book also speaks of guarding against waste in all its forms, even while humans are to enjoy of creation.
Mr. M. Noumo Mane, a PhD student of Assane Seck University of Ziguinchor, who spoke on Water in the spiritual traditions of Senegal, said that water is a source of life but is also predominantly present in religious and traditional practice. He highlighted the different uses of water: for the treatment of some illnesses, for the pouring of libation in traditional prayers to ancestors and for purification before ceremonial prayers.
He called for proper water management at local and national levels, inspired by the traditional attitude of respect for water. Mr. Mane also stressed the importance of the protection of water sources and for proper distribution to avoid situations where some have an abundance while others are parched.
Archbishop Benjamin Ndiaye of Dakar presented the Biblical vision on water, noting its presence in several passages.
He cited several examples, including Jesus’ words on the Cross: “I thirst”, water as sign of salvation in Psalm 23… “near restful waters he leads me to revive my drooping spirit”; Water running from the side of the Temple and bringing life (Ezekiel 47), the use of water in the sacrament of baptism, among others.
He concluded his speech by inviting everyone to a care of creation and water resources in the spirit of Pope Francis’ teachings in Laudato si’.
The second panel, moderated by Mr. Tebaldo Vinciguerra, an official of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, saw Cardinal Czerny speaking on promoting and realizing the right to drinking water and sanitation.
Reiterating the Pope’s words to the World Water Forum, he stressed that the right to drinking water and sanitation is closely linked to the right to life, which is rooted in the inalienable dignity of the human person and constitutes a condition for the exercise of other human rights.
In this light, he continued, the world has a serious social debt to people who do not have access to water and sanitation, and also to those whose traditional sources of water have been polluted or damaged through poor management.
The Cardinal highlighted that the world is at the verge of two “cliffs”, pointing out firstly, that we have to start by changing what we do individually before changing how we speak. He said that the Forum has underlined solutions to global water challenges and thus, all that is left is to take action as the solutions have been recommended, which are all achievable.
The second “cliff” is the problem of governance and how we manage our lives together in society. In this light, he stressed the importance of authorities listening to and hearing the voices of those not heard and taking adequate action.
The Secretary-General of Caritas Senegal, Fr. Alphonse Seck also gave a presentation of the concrete commitments of the Church on the ground through Caritas.
He spoke of some projects promoted by Caritas and of some of the challenges, including the price of water and sustaining access to water for people who need it. He also highlighted the work of Caritas through community mobilization
Fr. Seck’s presentation was followed by that of Dr. Mohamed Ahmed Sneiba, Director General of the Senegal office of the NGO Direct Aid Society, who also illustrated the concrete commitments of his organization in responding to water challenges.
Professor Pedro Arrojo Agudo, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, highlighted the importance of basing the right to water on an ethical criterion of priorities, separating between water as an essential element for life, general community interest on water, and the use of water for economic development and growth.
He insisted that water is a common good, necessary for all and owned by none and called for us to make peace with nature and to take steps to ensure sustainability and proper management of water resources.
The special session was concluded with a word of acknowledgment by Anta Gueye-James, CRS Country Representative in Senegal.
Vatican City, Mar 23, 2022 / 10:15 am (CNA).
Pope Francis will meet with a delegation of Canadian Indigenous people and Catholic bishops at the Vatican from March 28 to April 1, the Vatican confirmed on Wednesday.
On March 28-31, the pope will meet with the Indigenous groups individually, before a final audience on April 1 in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall. Members of the Canadian bishops’ conference will also take part.
The delegation’s week-long visit will also include attendance at the pope’s Sunday Angelus and Wednesday general audience, as well as a private tour of the Vatican Museums.
The visit was initially scheduled to take place in December 2021, but was postponed due to an uptick in coronavirus cases. The new dates were announced on Feb. 1 by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Assembly of First Nations, Métis National Council, and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
The delegation to Rome will include “Indigenous Elders, knowledge keepers, residential school survivors, and youth,” the Feb. 1 statement said.
Pope Francis’ meeting with Indigenous peoples has been in planning since June 2021, following the reported discovery of unmarked gravesites at the site of former residential schools in Canada.
Canada’s residential school system operated from the 1870s until 1996. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children were separated from their families and sent to the schools, which were established by the federal government and run by Catholics and members of Protestant ecclesial communities, to force assimilation and strip them of familial and cultural ties.
The Catholic Church, or Catholic religious orders, ran more than two-thirds of the schools.
According to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an estimated 4,100 to 6,000 students died while they were enrolled at the schools. The majority of the students died of diseases, including influenza and tuberculosis.
When members of the delegation arrive in the Vatican, they intend to ask Pope Francis for an apology for the Church’s role in the residential school system, as well as the release of all records that relate to the residential schools, and the return of any Indigenous items from Canada that the Vatican may possess in its archives.
In October 2021, Pope Francis said that he would be open to the idea of a papal visit to Canada. Should the visit happen, it would be the first time a pope has visited Canada since 2002, when St. John Paul II visited for World Youth Day.
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