On a spring day about five years ago, when I was rector of Mundelein Seminary, Francis Cardinal George spoke to the assembled student body. He congratulated those proudly orthodox seminarians for their devotion to the dogmatic and moral truths proposed by the Church, but he also offered some pointed pastoral advice. He said that it is insufficient simply to drop the truth on people and then smugly walk away. Rather, he insisted, you must accompany those you have instructed, committing yourself to helping them integrate the truth that you have shared. I thought of this intervention by the late Cardinal often as I was reading Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
[...] the Pope also honestly admits that many, many people fall short of the ideal, failing fully to integrate all of the dimensions of what the Church means by matrimony. What is the proper attitude to them? Like Cardinal George, the Pope has a visceral reaction against a strategy of simple condemnation, for the Church, he says, is a field hospital, designed to care precisely for the wounded (292). Accordingly, he recommends two fundamental moves. First, we can recognize, even in irregular or objectively imperfect unions, certain positive elements that participate, as it were, in the fullness of married love. Thus for example, a couple living together without benefit of marriage might be marked by mutual fidelity, deep love, the presence of children, etc. Appealing to these positive marks, the Church might, according to a “law of gradualness,” move that couple toward authentic and fully-integrated matrimony (295). This is not to say that living together is permitted or in accord with the will of God; it is to say that the Church can perhaps find a more winsome way to move people in such a situation to conversion. - Da Mihi AnimasThese matters are way over my head of course, but what I see is the Holy Father opening doors, windows, and untying knots for ordinary people to come into the Church. Effectively ministering to them, going out onto the highways and bi-ways to accompany them back home. I also see him affirming those pastors who have already, for decades, ministered to the so-called misfits, outsiders. Those pastors we've often condemned as liberal - too liberal - who nonetheless ministered to those in irregular situations. Who knew, until now, these so-called liberals have been missionaries, chaplains in a field hospital, truly ministering - giving the Bread of Life to those who would otherwise maybe not fit in so well at a 'normal' parish?
Will Amoris Laetitia end all debate on these matters? Hardly. But it does indeed represent a deft and impressive balancing of the many and often contradictory interventions at the two Synods on the Family. As such, it will be of great service to many suffering souls who come to the Field Hospital. - Bishop Barron
*"Then I feel it is helpful to reaffirm that the Church does not impose but rather freely proposes the Catholic faith ..." - Pope Benedict XVI
Bayonne is a city in the Basque Country region of southwest France, where the Nive and Adour rivers meet. Narrow medieval streets characterize the old Grand Bayonne district. Here lie the Gothic-style Bayonne Cathedral, with its 13th-century cloister, and Château Vieux castle. Across the Nive river in the Petit Bayonne district is the Musée Basque, a museum devoted to the region’s arts, crafts and traditions.
"In Rome people seem to love with more zest,
murder with more imagination,
submit to creative urges more often,
and lose the sense of logic more easily than in any other place."
You are not constrained by us; you are constrained by your own affections.
Do not be yoked with those who are different, with unbelievers. For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?
What agreement has the temple of God with idols?
"Therefore, come forth from them
and be separate,” says the Lord. - 2 Corinthians 6
"The task of authoritatively interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on [Scripture or Tradition], has been entrusted exclusively to the living Magisterium of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ." - Dei Verbum # 10
The Orthodox Church of Greece on Tuesday said it would welcome a visit of Pope Francis to the island of Lesbos to meet with migrants and refugees arriving across the Mediterranean sea. - Vatican RadioIt appears the visit is scheduled for April 15:
The papal visit is one of the “monthly trips” to places of suffering, which Pope Francis decided to embark on once a month for the duration of the Holy Year of Mercy. Naturally, this visit is taking place in the context of the migrant tragedy in the Mediterranean, which sees scores of people trying to cross the Mare Nostrum to get to Europe. - Vatican InsiderLike the multicultural washing of feet, the going out to the peripheries such as the Isle of Lesbos, the Holy Father leaves himself wide open to misinterpretation. Too bad for those who are not open, who do not accept such acts of mercy.
For almost five centuries the inhabitants of Lesvos would visit the ruins of a monastery near the village of Thermi, northwest of the capital Mytilene, on Bright Tuesday. These people had forgotten the specific reason for the annual pilgrimage but remembered that Turkish soldiers had murdered monks in the old monastery there many years ago.
The devout Angelos Rallis chose to construct a chapel by the monastery ruins in 1959. That July 3, workers found the holy relics of St. Raphael of Lesvos as they cleared rubble, and shortly thereafter St. Raphael, along with Sts. Nicholas and Irene, started appearing to many Lesvos residents and told them the stories of their lives. After St. Irene revealed to the residents of Lesvos the place of her grave, her holy relics were discovered on March 12, 1961 in the clay cask in which she was martyred.
When Turkish soldiers invaded Lesvos, the 12-year-old St. Irene and her parents Maria and Basil, the village mayor, rushed over to the Monastery of the Nativity of the Theotókos near Thermi to warn the monks. The soldiers murdered the holy abbot St. Raphael of Lesvos while the holy deacon St. Nicholas of Lesvos watched, and then proceeded to murder St. Nicholas.
The Hagarenes severed one of Irene's arms and threw it down before her parents. While her parents watched, the soldiers put her in a big clay cask and started a fire beneath it, causing Irene to suffocate inside. Then the soldiers murdered her parents; they also beheaded the village teacher named Theodore and killed St. Irene's 15-year-old cousin, Eleni. Thus Irene and her family and neighbors received the crown of martyrdom. - Read more here.May the new Martyrs intercede for those facing martyrdom today.
"Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion." - Our Lord to St. FaustinaTomorrow is Divine Mercy Sunday.
"It is important then that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on this Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the Church, will be called Divine Mercy Sunday." - Pope John Paul II, Canonization of St. Faustina
"Divine Mercy! This is the Easter gift that the Church receives from the risen Christ and offers to humanity.'' JPII, 2001
"I want to grant complete pardon to the souls that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion on the Feast of My mercy." (Diary 1109)
"On My Feast - on the Feast of Mercy ... run through the whole world and lead souls that fainted away to the source of My Mercy. I will lead and strengthen them." - Jesus to St. Faustina
Let me seek him whom my soul loves.” - Song of Songs
Why did the states target abortionists and treat women as a victim of the abortionist?
It was based on three policy judgments: the point of abortion law is effective enforcement against abortionists, the woman is the second victim of the abortionist, and prosecuting women is counterproductive to the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists.
The political claim—that women were or will be prosecuted or jailed under abortion laws—has been made so frequently by Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and NOW over the past 40 years that it has become an urban legend. It shows the astonishing power of contemporary media to make a complete falsehood into a truism.
For 30 years, abortion advocates have claimed—without any evidence and contrary to the well-documented practice of ALL 50 states—that women were jailed before Roe and would be jailed if Roe falls (or if state abortion prohibitions are reinstated).
This claim rests on not one but two falsehoods:
First, the almost uniform state policy before Roe was that abortion laws targeted abortionists, not women. Abortion laws targeted those who performed abortion, not women. In fact, the states expressly treated women as the second “victim” of abortion; state courts expressly called the woman a second “victim.” Abortionists were the exclusive target of the law.
Second, the myth that women will be jailed relies, however, on the myth that “overturning” Roe will result in the immediate re-criminalization of abortion. If Roe was overturned today, abortion would be legal in at least 42-43 states tomorrow, and likely all 50 states, for the simple reason that nearly all of the state abortion prohibitions have been either repealed or are blocked by state versions of Roe adopted by state courts. The issue is entirely academic. The legislatures of the states would have to enact new abortion laws—and these would almost certainly continue the uniform state policy before Roe that abortion laws targeted abortionists and treated women as the second victim of abortion.
There will be no prosecutions of abortionists unless the states pass new laws after Roe is overturned.
This political claim is not an abstract question that is left to speculation—there is a long record of states treating women as the second victim of abortion in the law that can be found and read. To state the policy in legal terms, the states prosecuted the principal (the abortionist) and did not prosecute someone who might be considered an accomplice (the woman) in order to more effectively enforce the law against the principal. And that will most certainly be the state policy if the abortion issue is returned to the states.
Why did the states target abortionists and treat women as a victim of the abortionist?
It was based on three policy judgments: the point of abortion law is effective enforcement against abortionists, the woman is the second victim of the abortionist, and prosecuting women is counterproductive to the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists.
The irony is that, instead of states prosecuting women, the exact opposite is true. To protect their own hide, it was abortionists (like the cult hero and abortionist Ruth Barnett when Oregon last prosecuted her in 1968), who, when they were prosecuted, sought to haul the women they aborted into court. As a matter of criminal evidentiary law, if the court treated the woman as an accomplice, she could not testify against the abortionist, and the case against the abortionist would be thrown out.
There are “only two cases in which a woman was charged in any State with participating in her own abortion”: from Pennsylvania in 19111 and from Texas in 1922.2 There is no documented case since 1922 in which a woman has been charged in an abortion in the United States.
Based on this record—spanning 50 states over the century before Roe v. Wade—it is even more certain that the political claim that any woman might be questioned or prosecuted for a spontaneous miscarriage has no record in history and will certainly not be the policy of any state in the future. - Finish reading here.
Many people have noted how fitting it seemed that Mother Angelica passed away on Easter Sunday, the day on which Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection and triumph over death. Now, new details are emerging about her final days that show even more interesting convergences between her life and the liturgical calendar.
“It was on Good Friday,” EWTN Chaplain Fr. Joseph Wolfe explained in a sermon he gave recently about Mother Angelica’s death, “that I heard from one of the caregivers who was helping Mother.”
He continued: “Mother began to cry out early in the morning from the pain that she was having. She had a fracture in her bones because of the length of time she had been bedridden. They said you could hear it down the hallways, that she was crying out on Good Friday from what she was going through. These two people said to me she has excruciating pain.”
Fr. Wolfe saw a special meaning in her suffering on Good Friday, the day on which Christians remember Christ’s passion and death on the cross. “Well, do you know where that word ‘excruciating’ comes from? Ex, from, cruce, from the cross. Excruciating pain.”
But the pain didn’t last all day. “After the 3 o’clock hour arrived on Good Friday she was more calm, she was more peaceful.” Three o’clock is the time at which Jesus died on the cross, according to the Bible. - Finish reading at Church POP
