secular Institute for the laity under religious vows

The Origins of St. Valentine's Day

A quick quiz: St. Valentine was:

a) a priest in the Roman Empire who helped persecuted Christians during the reign of Claudius II, was thrown in jail and later beheaded on Feb. 14.

b) a Catholic bishop of Terni who was beheaded, also during the reign of Claudius II.

c) someone who secretly married couples when marriage was forbidden, or suffered in Africa, or wrote letters to his jailer's daughter, and was probably beheaded.

d) all, some, or possibly none of the above.

If you guessed d), give yourself a box of chocolates. Although the mid-February holiday celebrating love and lovers remains wildly popular, the confusion over its origins led the Catholic Church, in 1969, to drop St. Valentine's Day from the Roman calendar of official, worldwide Catholic feasts. (Those highly sought-after days are reserved for saints with more clear historical record. After all, the saints are real individuals for us to imitate.) Some parishes, however, observe the feast of St. Valentine.

The roots of St. Valentine's Day lie in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was celebrated on Feb. 15. For 800 years the Romans had dedicated this day to the god Lupercus. On Lupercalia, a young man would draw the name of a young woman in a lottery and would then keep the woman as a sexual companion for the year.

Pope Gelasius I was, understandably, less than thrilled with this custom. So he changed the lottery to have both young men and women draw the names of saints whom they would then emulate for the year (a change that no doubt disappointed a few young men). Instead of Lupercus, the patron of the feast became Valentine. For Roman men, the day continued to be an occasion to seek the affections of women, and it became a tradition to give out handwritten messages of admiration that included Valentine's name.

There was also a conventional belief in Europe during the Middle Ages that birds chose their partners in the middle of February. Thus the day was dedicated to love, and people observed it by writing love letters and sending small gifts to their beloved. Legend has it that Charles, duke of Orleans, sent the first real Valentine card to his wife in 1415, when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. (He, however, was not beheaded, and died a half-century later of old age.)

Married man ordained

THE NEWS TRIBUNE

Published: February 11th, 2006 02:30 AM
A rarely invoked exemption to Roman Catholic canon law makes Father Gregory Elder the first married cleric to be ordained in the Diocese of San Bernardino, Calif. The former Episcopalian priest, with wife Sarah O'Brien Elder on Friday, will serve at Our Lady of Rosary Cathedral in San Bernardino.

from "american catholic"

During an illness I was gifted with two statues of the Blessed Virgin (Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal?). They portray Mary stepping on a snake. Why is she stepping on a snake and what does it mean?



Around 1830 St. Catherine Labouré received a vision of the Blessed Virgin and was told to have a medal struck. On the front of the medal was to be the figure of Mary standing atop a globe representing the earth. And she was to be shown crushing the head of a serpent with her feet.


From Mary's hands were to appear rays of light representing grace. Around the rim of the medal were to be the words, "O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." On the reverse side of the medal would be a cross surmounting the letter M and the sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary. The medal was made and because of the miracles associated with it has come to be known as the Miraculous Medal.


I do not know of a statue that is called the Miraculous Medal statue. But in the catalogs of religious articles, you will find statues called Our Lady of Grace. They picture Mary standing on a globe with a serpent beneath her feet.


These statues (and the Miraculous Medal) associate Mary with the woman in Chapter 3 of Genesis and the woman clothed with the sun in Chapter 12 of Revelation. Genesis 3:14-16 contains the words of God condemning the serpent for leading Eve and Adam into sin. There God pronounces he will "put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel."


Chapter 12 of Revelation speaks of the woman clothed with the sun whose son the dragon seeks to devour. In both instances the serpent or snake represents the devil and evil. Both passages are applied to Mary as the woman whose offspring will conquer Satan.

Movie Reviews:


When a Stranger Calls

By David DiCerto
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- "When a Stranger Calls" (Screen Gems) is not bad as far as B-movie psychological thrillers go. There's lots of sweaty-palm-inducing shadow play and things going bump on a dark and stormy night. But, in the end, that's all there is. Camilla Belle stars in this mediocre remake of the marginal 1978 horror film. As with Carol Kane in the original, she plays a high school student who, while baby-sitting at a secluded lakefront home, is terrorized by the phone threats of an unseen stalker ("Have you checked the children?"), only to later discover that the calls are coming from inside the house.
Director Simon West forgoes plot and plausibility in building an atmosphere of isolation and suspense, which, though unnerving, ultimately grows tedious.


And while he accomplishes his set task for the most part through suggestion and massaging viewers' paranoia, the final 20 minutes unravel into action mode.

There is some intense tussling between the plucky heroine and homicidal maniac, but West keeps the body count low and the violence relatively tame.

If you're in the mood for some easy jolts, you could do worse, but if you're looking for sophisticated cerebral chills "When a Stranger Calls," don't answer the phone.

The film contains some violence, including a hand skewered by a fire poker, scenes of menace and child peril, implied murders, brief images of dead bodies and scattered crude language. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
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Movie review:

Capote


Gripping chronicle of writer Truman Capote (a superb Philip Seymour Hoffman) getting the inspiration to write his acclaimed "nonfiction novel," "In Cold Blood," after a Kansas farm family is brutally murdered, and his probing interviews with the townspeople and the killers, which walk a fine line between calculation and compassion. Director Bennett Miller's sobering film masterfully recreates the early 1960s as Capote travels back and forth from the superficial New York social scene to the bleak aura of death row at Leavenworth, with fine performances by Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Chris Cooper and Amy Ryan. Brief violent images, an implied homosexual relationship, scattered profanity and rough language, crude expressions, a vulgar anecdote, sexual reference, and a hanging. A-III -- adults. (R) 2005
Full Review
The author of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and the darling of New York society surprised everyone when he decided to chronicle the disquieting murder of a Kansas farm family in the "nonfiction novel" that he would call "In Cold Blood."
The acclaimed book became a praiseworthy film in 1967, and later a television miniseries. Now in "Capote" (Sony Classics), based on a book by Gerald Clarke, we have a gripping account of how the effete writer with the distinctive baby voice got his inspiration.

Capote is played to perfection by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and in Dan Futterman's screenplay, we see how the writer was in a creative rut circa 1959, and how the newspaper account of the horrific murder sparked his interest.

With his New Yorker magazine editor's (Bob Balaban) blessing, he headed west -- with his longtime pal, Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who would later write "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- and despite his fey, urbane manner, totally at odds with the stolid citizens of that Kansas community, he manages to charm the locals, starting with the Kansas investigator, Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), and his wife (Amy Ryan). By disingenuously being "open" with them, they respond in kind.

His methods are unorthodox, and often questionable, as when he slips into the funeral home, and lifts the lids of the victims' coffins.

When the killers -- Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) -- are finally apprehended, Capote bribes the warden to have unlimited access to them, and especially befriends Smith, the more sensitive of the two, who opens up to the benevolent stranger. Smith had been refusing all food, but Capote lovingly spoons him baby food and gets him back on his feet. When Smith relates a pathetic childhood in orphanages, Capote tells him that he, too, had been abandoned.

Capote's kindly interest, however, is shown to be largely motivated by his desire to get good material for his book. Smith talks to him, but doesn't reveal details of the actual murder, which are what Capote needs most. Back home, Capote callously regales the socialites with hair-raising anecdotes.

As the writing of the book drags on over the years, Capote actually becomes impatient for the killers to be executed, so he can put closure to his book, and though he helped them obtain a "proper lawyer" early on, his true intent now comes to the fore, and he evasively skirts Smith's request for more legal aid. When Capote learns there's been yet another stay of execution, he virtually takes to his bed in despair. "They're torturing me," he selfishly wails.

Director Bennett Miller's sobering film masterfully recreates the early 1960s as Capote travels back and forth from the superficial New York glitterati to the bleak aura of death row at Kansas State Penitentiary in Leavenworth. Music is used sparingly, and the effect is riveting.

Hoffman does a spot-on impersonation of Capote, and paints a picture of a man whose vanity and frivolousness often get the upper hand. It's far from an approving portrait, and a well-observed scene of Capote disdaining Lee's masterpiece at the movie premiere of "Mockingbird" says it all.

Hoffman is well supported by Keener, Collins, Cooper, Ryan and the rest.

For a while it seems the film might be painting too sympathetic a picture of the culprits, especially Smith. But even as Capote warms, or seems to warm to him, we're given enough of a balanced picture so that we can plainly see Smith is far from a wounded puppy. Smith's sister, for instance, warns Capote that her brother would "just as soon kill you as shake your hand." And vulnerable and hurting as Smith is, you see he might be using Capote as much as the other way around.

Capote's homosexuality is barely touched on, except for calls back home to his then-partner, writer Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood).

"Capote" is one of the best adult films of the year, and Hoffman a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination.

NCCB.org

From "Catholic News"

'Pro-life, pro-poor' lawmakers rare but seek them out, activists told


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A major political challenge facing Catholics is finding the rare legislators who are "pro-life and pro-poor," said John Carr, head of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Social Development and World Peace. "We need to find the exceptions and support the exceptions," he said Feb. 13 at a plenary session of the 2006 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering. "We believe that life begins at conception but does not end there," he told 500 people involved in Catholic social ministry programs gathered from around the United States. The theme of the Feb. 12-15 gathering in Washington was "Bringing Good News to a Broken World." The annual meeting also included wrap-around sessions held Feb. 10-11. Carr said that Catholic public policy positions are nuanced and do not fall into the current polarized divisions of right versus left and Democrat versus Republican. "We are not the Democratic Party of prayer," he said. "We are not the religious caucus of the Republican Party."




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Late archbishop seen as guide to reorienting church, world to poor


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Both the church and the world should learn from the late Archbishop Oscar A. Romero of San Salvador to put the poor first, a theology professor at the Central American University told a Washington audience Feb. 13. Jesuit Father Dean Brackley, a U.S. priest who volunteered to teach at the university in El Salvador after six of his fellow Jesuits were killed there in 1989 along with their housekeeper and her daughter, was strongly critical of the U.S. government in his evening talk at St. Aloysius Church near Capitol Hill. He called current U.S. policy at home and abroad "a national failure" and accused the Bush administration of abdicating its "responsibility to care for the common good." But he said the example of Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated by Salvadoran soldiers while celebrating Mass in 1980, offered guidance on reorienting public policies and church priorities. "Where do the victims stand in our picture of the world?" he asked. "The poor are not something we can leave to someone else, or make a secondary issue. They must be at the top of the list." The poor are also "our best professors," he said. "They are experts in ... making do and finding a way."




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Hill visits not time to say 'I told you so' on Iraq, activists told


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Resist the temptation to say "we told you so" when bringing the Catholic Church's perspectives on the war in Iraq to members of Congress, a speaker advised a group of social ministry activists preparing to visit Capitol Hill. Before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S.-led forces, the U.S. bishops and Catholic activists were among those raising questions about the moral legitimacy of such an attack and predicting the sort of ongoing upheaval that has occurred, said Stephen Colecchi, director of the Office of International Justice and Peace for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Feb. 13. "Lots of people predicted how bad Iraq could get, including the U.S. bishops and the Holy See," Colecchi said. But he warned participants in the annual meeting of people involved in Catholic social ministries that reminding congressional staffers of the church's accurate predictions about Iraq might not be the most successful way of persuading them to listen to recommendations for how to handle the current situation there. The annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering includes a series of briefings about topics of current legislative interest, followed by lobbying visits to congressional offices.




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Meeting focuses on challenges to priests heading more than one parish


CHICAGO (CNS) -- For five years, Father Pat Lee has served as pastor of both St. Joseph and Immaculate Conception parishes on Chicago's near North Side. The two churches are six blocks apart, and Father Lee can make the walk in six minutes. But that doesn't mean the two communities are -- or want to be -- the same. "The biggest challenge is to lead people to a broader vision of what church is," said Father Lee, who participated in a Feb. 7-9 symposium on Multiple Parish Pastoring at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein. "I do bring the resources of two places to the broader mission of the church. That should be an advantage." Father Lee joined pastors, pastoral leaders, researchers and planners from about 20 dioceses across the United States at the symposium. The group of about 50 priests, religious and lay men and women discussed developing training resources, guidelines and recommendations for having a priest pastor more than one parish.




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World poverty is focus of Lenten 'Offering of Letters' campaign


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Bread for the World, the Christian citizens' anti-hunger lobby, will tackle world poverty in its annual Lenten "Offering of Letters" campaign. Under the theme "One Spirit, One Will, Zero Poverty," Bread for the World is asking for letters to advance its One Campaign, which seeks to fight extreme poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS in the developing world. Each year congregations have been asked to send letters to members of Congress asking them for legislative action relevant to the goals outlined that year by Bread for the World. The letters are typically written by church members after church services, then placed in the offertory collection the following Sunday to be dedicated to God and accompanied by special prayers for hungry people. Lent begins this year on Ash Wednesday, March 1. Legislatively, the letter campaign is calling for an increase in poverty-focused development assistance for poor countries in the federal budget for fiscal year 2007 with hopes that by fiscal year 2010 an additional 1 percent of the federal budget will go to such assistance.




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Italian bishops asked to suggest candidates for conference president


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Bread for the World, the Christian citizens' anti-hunger lobby, will tackle world poverty in its annual Lenten "Offering of Letters" campaign. Under the theme "One Spirit, One Will, Zero Poverty," Bread for the World is asking for letters to advance its One Campaign, which seeks to fight extreme poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS in the developing world. Each year congregations have been asked to send letters to members of Congress asking them for legislative action relevant to the goals outlined that year by Bread for the World. The letters are typically written by church members after church services, then placed in the offertory collection the following Sunday to be dedicated to God and accompanied by special prayers for hungry people. Lent begins this year on Ash Wednesday, March 1. Legislatively, the letter campaign is calling for an increase in poverty-focused development assistance for poor countries in the federal budget for fiscal year 2007 with hopes that by fiscal year 2010 an additional 1 percent of the federal budget will go to such assistance.




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Pope, curial officials discuss proposal to reconcile with Lefebvrites


ROME (CNS) -- Unlike bishops in most countries, the bishops of Italy do not elect the president of their bishops' conference, but this year they are being asked to suggest appropriate candidates. The Italian news agency ANSA reported Feb. 13 that Archbishop Paolo Romeo, the Vatican nuncio to Italy, sent a letter Jan. 26 to the heads of Italy's more than 200 dioceses asking them to suggest candidates for the office of president of the conference. The Vatican announced Feb. 14 that Pope Benedict XVI had asked Cardinal Camillo Ruini of Rome, conference president for the past 15 years, to continue in office until other provisions are made. According to the statutes of the Italian bishops' conference, "In consideration of the particular ties of the Italian episcopacy with the pope, bishop of Rome, the naming of the president of the conference is reserved to the supreme pontiff."




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To prepare for Olympics, Turin's faith communities worked together


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI presided over his first major meeting with top Roman Curia officials, an encounter that sources said focused on a proposal to reconcile with followers of the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. More than 20 heads of congregations and pontifical councils attended the Feb. 13 meeting, which was to be followed up by a similar session in late March. No details of the February meeting were made available by the Vatican press office. A Vatican source said the pope and other department heads listened as Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos outlined a possible solution to the 18-year-long impasse with the Society of St. Pius X, a self-styled traditionalist order founded by Archbishop Lefebvre. Its members reject modern liturgical practices and several teachings of the Second Vatican Council. One possible step being discussed at the Vatican was establishing an apostolic administration, a special juridical structure that would allow the Lefebvrites to offer pastoral care to their followers around the world.




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Vatican Museums trace origin to marble sculpture bought 500 years ago


TURIN, Italy (CNS) -- The Olympics have done more than bring athletes from 85 different nations together to compete; the games have brought Turin's Christian, Jewish and Muslim representatives together for the first time to collaborate. Cardinal Severino Poletto of Turin said that, while Catholic relations with the city's Waldensian and Orthodox churches have long been strong, interaction with the city's Jewish and Muslim leaders had been limited. "There were never any big initiatives involving non-Christian" religions, he told Catholic News Service in mid-February. But when Turin won the bid to host the Feb. 10-26 Olympics, that changed. A host city must provide spiritual assistance to all athletes and team members, so an interfaith committee made up of local religious representatives is set up years before the games begin. The Olympic interfaith committee's Catholic representative, Father Aldo Bertinetti, said working together has been such a positive experience that members have decided to remain united as a group even after the games.




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Colombian bishops to meet for talks with government, rebel forces


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Although they have thousands of objects on display and even more in storage, the Vatican Museums trace their origin to one marble sculpture, purchased 500 years ago. The sculpture of Laocoon, the priest who, according to Greek mythology, tried to convince the people of ancient Troy not to accept the "gift" of the Greeks' hollow horse, was discovered Jan. 14, 1506, in a vineyard near Rome's Basilica of St. Mary Major. Pope Julius II sent Guiliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo Bonarroti, who were working at the Vatican, to check out the discovery. On their recommendation, the pope immediately purchased the sculpture from the vineyard owner. The pope put the sculpture of Laocoon and his sons in the grips of a sea serpent on public display at the Vatican exactly one month after its discovery. U.S. Cardinal Edmund C. Szoka, president of the office governing Vatican City State, which includes the museums, marked the 500th anniversary of the museums by presiding over a Feb. 14 press conference.




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Protesters paralyze Haitian capital, call for Preval election victory


BOGOTA, Colombia (CNS) -- Four Colombian bishops were traveling to Cuba in mid-February to encourage members of the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest rebel group, and government officials to take steps toward starting formal peace talks, said Bishop Jaime Prieto of Barrancabermeja. The bishops' trip to Havana for the second round of exploratory talks set to begin Feb. 17 follows the Feb. 6-10 general meeting of the Colombian bishops' conference in Bogota. At that meeting, the conference reiterated its resolve to continue to work for a negotiated end to Colombia's 40-year-old conflict. Pax Christi International, a Catholic peace movement, also recently published a report that called on the church to continue working for peace in Colombia. Speaking to reporters Feb. 10, Bishop Prieto said the bishops hoped to persuade the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish acronym as ELN, and the government to discuss land mines, kidnapping and humanitarian accords, as they seek a preliminary agenda for peace talks. This second round of talks between government and rebel representatives will begin after the representatives meet with church officials and others from civil society.




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Senators say social action views influenced by Catholics they admire


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CNS) -- Mass demonstrations erupted in Port-au-Prince as burning tire barricades paralyzed the city, and at least one person was shot dead Feb. 13 in demonstrations following Feb. 7 presidential elections. The crowd accused U.N. peacekeepers of shooting the man, but the United Nations denied that peacekeepers opened fire on the crowd and said their soldiers fired into the air. The peacekeepers said the man was shot by someone in the crowd. In a third day of primarily peaceful demonstrations, several hundred protesters calling for recognition of the victory of presidential candidate Rene Preval, burst into an upscale hotel that served as an election press center in the hills of the Petionville neighborhood. Protesters said electoral officials were tampering with results to prevent Preval from winning 51 percent of the vote, which is needed to prevent a second round of elections; his lead had dropped from 60 percent to 48 percent.




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Olympic biathlete from Minnesota finds calm, strength in prayer


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Two U.S. senators told an audience of several hundred Catholic social ministry workers Feb. 13 how observing Catholics they admire has influenced their views of living out one's beliefs. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, described their view of social service being affected by seeing the work of priests, nuns and lay Catholics. The two senators spoke separately during an annual gathering of Catholic social ministry workers. It is co-sponsored by five agencies of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and 12 national Catholic social service agencies. DeWine told of meeting Oblate Father Tom Hagan, who runs an organization called Hands Together, which operates a variety of assistance programs in Haiti. Reid told brief stories about getting to know four Catholic activists: a nun who has been arrested numerous times for protesting at the Nevada nuclear test site; a civil rights activist who has worked for desegregation and to protect the rights of immigrants; a priest who is currently in a Georgia prison serving a term for protesting U.S. involvement in training military forces for Latin America; and former Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, who was Reid's high school football coach.




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For Ohio sportswriter and catechumen, Olympics 'ultimate assignment'


TURIN, Italy (CNS) -- Carolyn Treacy, the so-called underdog biathlete, found the needed calm and inner strength to make the XX Olympic Winter Games by praying a novena to the Infant of Prague. Facing top-notch athletes and harsh, icy weather at the mid-January Olympic trials in Fort Kent, Maine, the 23-year-old native of Duluth, Minn., recited the spiritual prayer "every day, once an hour for nine hours in a row," she told Catholic News Service Feb. 13. She was considered "a major underdog" at the weeklong trials and had failed to make the U.S. team for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. The prayer to the child Jesus includes the lines, "I implore you to assist me in this necessity, for I firmly believe your divinity can assist me," and "Take from us all affliction and despair, all trials and misfortunes with which we are laden." Treacy, a senior at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., said she got into the biathlon after her high school skiing coach recommended she give it a try. The biathlon combines cross-country skiing with .22-caliber rifle target shooting.




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Nebraska Olympian hopes bobsled track leads him to medal stand


TURIN, Italy (CNS) -- For a veteran sportswriter, covering the Olympic Games is "the ultimate assignment. It's like doing the Super Bowl for 17 days straight," said Tim Warsinskey of Mentor, Ohio. Even though he's working, "on average, 14 hours a day," he told Catholic News Service, "I can't get enough. This is fertile ground for good stories." Warsinskey, who will be baptized at St. Bede the Venerable Catholic Church in Mentor April 15, is one of six people from The Plain Dealer, a Cleveland daily, combing the Alps and the arenas and streets of Turin, capturing Olympic moments and dreams on film and paper. He said he thinks the U.S. media put "way too much emphasis on sports. I open up the newspaper and there are 12 pages dedicated to sports" and just a few pages to news, which he said is "not a good thing for society." But since sports seem to be driven by the U.S. market, he said it was logical papers would give the people what they apparently crave: results, bios and commentaries on their favorite sports figures.




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It is this 'chrisitanization' of pagan traditions that has driven many from the church. What do you think?

I believe people have made many choices along the way according to their belief systems from their families and many families are broken today! Divorce is the first thing people think about when things go wrong instead of trying to work things out in a family--same thing in the Church! Yes same thing in the Church!

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'Be faithful to the vision' of helping poor, social conferees told


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- An evangelical Presbyterian minister told hundreds of Catholics in Washington Feb. 13 to "be faithful to the vision" of helping the nation's poor. There is not that much difference between the U.S. bishops' 2003 "Faithful Citizenship" statement and his own organization's "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," issued one year later, said the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. In the section "We seek justice and compassion for the poor and vulnerable," "For the Health of the Nation" says, "God measures societies by how they treat people at the bottom," Rev. Cizik noted. "Too few politicians are concerned with the breadth and depth of evangelical theology on these issues," Rev. Cizik said. "But we're going to educate them," he added to applause from his audience at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, co-sponsored by five agencies of the U.S. bishops' conference and 12 national Catholic organizations.




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Wilmington Diocese begins study of future of priests' ministry


WILMINGTON, Del. (CNS) -- Faced with a declining number of priests and growing number of Catholics in the Diocese of Wilmington, a committee of priests will begin a yearlong study of the future of priestly ministry in Delaware and on Maryland's Eastern Shore. According to the diocese, the 10-member group, formed at a meeting of all diocesan priests in January, will define the role of the diocesan priest (create a job description, as one member put it); find ways that parishes located near one another might coordinate ministries; examine the distribution of priests and deacons in the diocese; seek ways to renew "priestly fraternity"; look at how to communicate more effectively; and find ways to promote priestly role models to encourage vocations. The committee expects to provide a report to diocesan priests at a special meeting in October and present its final recommendations to Wilmington Bishop Michael A. Saltarelli. Once approved, those recommendations are expected to be announced at the next annual clergy meeting in January 2007, marking the end of the committee's work.




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Speakers call human trafficking a global problem


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Trafficking in humans -- for slave labor or the sex industry -- is a global problem, speakers told a national conference of Catholic social ministry leaders Feb. 14. Mary DeLorey, a Catholic Relief Services policy and advocacy official, said that by conservative estimates victims of human trafficking number somewhere between 700,000 and 2 million people around the world and they are "primarily women and children." "It's a justice issue, it's a human rights issue. It's a mission that belongs to all of us," said Sister Mary Ellen Dougherty of the U.S. bishops' Migration and Refugee Services. A member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Sister Mary Ellen is manager for outreach, education and technical assistance in MRS' human trafficking program. Leading a workshop on the causes and impacts of human trafficking, the two women told the group that there is a need to raise people's awareness about the extent of human trafficking, its largely hidden nature and ways to combat it.




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'Winner-take-all' mentality fueling Haitian turmoil, say speakers


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Much of the post-election turmoil in Haiti stems from a "winner-take-all" mentality in which opposition political leaders do not understand the concept of working together, several speakers told Catholic social ministry officials. The Haitian bishops could help the situation by telling rivals "to avoid all-or-nothing politics," said Oblate Father Seamus Finn, director of the Oblate Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation Office. But bishops' statements so far have been general and not addressed this issue, he said. Jenny Russell, Catholic Relief Services consultor on Haiti, said that Haiti has a long history of dictatorships. "The concept of a presidential leader who shares power is not there," said Russell. "What we are seeing in the streets is a country without a democratic history," she said. The "paradox of the election" is that it shows the "winner-take-all" mentality and also a vibrant people who want to participate in political decision-making, said Russell.




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Win-win outcome for farmers, consumers sought for 2007 farm bill


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The next farm bill isn't due to be passed for another year, but some people are already strategizing various win-win scenarios for farmers, consumers, rural towns and the environment. Those elements would include utilizing farms as sources for renewable energy, limiting commodity payments and focusing on rural economic development beyond crop subsidies. The projected federal deficit, though, could alter federal farm policy, conferees were told Feb. 14 at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington, co-sponsored by five agencies of the U.S. bishops and 12 national Catholic organizations. The 2002 farm bill, which added $73.5 billion in new federal funds over 10 years for rural communities, was written in a time of budget surpluses, said Mark Halverson, minority staff director and chief counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee. William O'Connor, staff director for the Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee, was invited but unable to attend.




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Exhibit from Vatican makes last North American stop in Milwaukee


MILWAUKEE (CNS) -- With the exhibit "St. Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of the Popes" at the Milwaukee Public Museum, Midwesterners have a rare opportunity to get a peek at objects that trace the Catholic faith over the past 2,000 years. "It is an extraordinary exhibition that will mesmerize visitors of all backgrounds," said Dan Finley, museum president. "The museum is delighted to provide the Milwaukee community and visitors to the region with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see timeless works of art in such a meaningful context." The museum expects that the exhibit, which opened Feb. 4 and runs through May 7, will draw viewers from not only the Milwaukee area, but also surrounding states, as this is the tour's last North American stop and only Midwest venue. Msgr. Roberto Zagnoli, curator of the Vatican Museums, was at the Milwaukee Public Museum shortly before the opening for the uncrating of four of the objects to be showcased in the exhibit, including the Mandylion of Edessa, considered to be the oldest known representation of Christ. "The true meaning of this exhibit is the dialogue it will open up with people in all the world," Msgr. Zagnoli said.




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Pope Benedict concludes series of audience talks begun by predecessor


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Concluding a series of audience talks begun by Pope John Paul II in 2001, Pope Benedict XVI said the psalms and canticles used for morning and evening prayer are a "flowering garden" of praise and contemplation. At his weekly general audience Feb. 15, the pope announced that with a brief meditation on Mary's Magnificat he was concluding the series begun "years ago by my beloved predecessor, the unforgettable Pope John Paul II." Because of the large number of visitors present, the pope actually held two audiences: one in St. Peter's Basilica and the other in the Vatican audience hall. Arriving in the basilica more than 20 minutes late, the pope still spent about 10 minutes shaking hands and blessing guests sitting next to the barricades around the main altar. The crowd included some 6,000 Italian grade school and high school students.




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In message, pope asks Cuban Catholics to remember God is with them


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI asked Catholics in Cuba to remember that even in the midst of difficulty, God is always with them and wants them to share his love with all their compatriots. "Yes, he walks with everyone who lives in the country -- believers and nonbelievers, those close and those far off, those who sow and those who scatter -- because all are called to the banquet of life that the Father gives us," the pope said. In a message to a Feb. 15 conference in Havana to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first national meeting of Catholics in Cuba allowed after President Fidel Castro took power, the pope said a review of the past two decades must focus on identifying the presence and action of God. Time and history are marked by the presence of God, he said, and even in the midst of difficulty Christians are called to focus on the ways in which God has encouraged and strengthened them.




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Pope names Vatican's Muslim expert as nuncio to Egypt, Arab League


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI named the head of the Vatican's interreligious dialogue council, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, as the new ambassador to Egypt and the Arab League. The appointment, announced Feb. 15, placed the Vatican's most experienced Muslim expert in Cairo, where many of the Vatican's Islamic dialogue partners are located. At the same time, it raised questions about the future of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. No successor was named to head the council, and Vatican sources said the pope was considering combining its functions with another department in a restructuring move. Archbishop Fitzgerald told Catholic News Service that he knows Cairo well and expects to continue talks with Muslim leaders there "as much as a nuncio does." He said, "I would hope that as a nuncio I can encourage this."




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Church-backed report documents miseries of internally displaced


BOGOTA, Colombia (CNS) -- Every day, more than 800 Colombians leave behind their houses, jobs, belongings, friends, family and culture. They flee their homes seeking protection from death threats, massacres, mass arrests, economic blockades and other violence generated by the country's 40-year-old civil conflict. Half of them own at least a small plot of land. The majority have not finished grade school. Many of them are mothers raising their children alone. Half of them are younger than 15 years of age. Colombia's internally displaced people numbered 2.9 million between 1995 and 2005, according to a 10-year analysis prepared by the Colombian bishops' conference, Caritas Colombia and the local Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement, known by its Spanish acronym, CODHES. Government figures put the 10-year displacement figures at 1.8 million. The analysis, "Challenges for Building a Nation, the Country in the Face of Displacement, Armed Conflict and Humanitarian Crisis, 1995-2005," documented the emergency situation facing Colombia's displaced population.




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Prominent Israeli priest named new Melkite archbishop in Israel


JERUSALEM (CNS) -- For the first time, the Vatican and the Melkite Catholic Synod of Bishops have agreed on an Israeli citizen to be archbishop of Akko, Israel. Father Elias Chacour, parish priest of the northern Galilee village of Ibillin and founder and director of Mar Elias College there, said his appointment was submitted by the Vatican and endorsed by the Melkite Synod of Bishops in Lebanon Feb. 8. Normally, the bishops submit a list of names, and the pope appoints Eastern Catholic bishops. As of Feb. 15, the Vatican had not announced the appointment, but it was announced in Israel after the synod met. The archbishop-elect has been active in reconciliation and interfaith dialogue in Israel, both personally and through Mar Elias College, and was awarded the 2001 Niwano Peace Prize. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.




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Strong faith in God, duct-taped Bible help Olympic speedskater


TURIN, Italy (CNS) -- An unswerving faith in God and a duct-taped Bible have pulled 2002 Olympic gold medalist speedskater Derek Parra through life's ups and downs. "When I have trouble, I flip through the Bible and pick a page at random," said Derek Parra, a 35-year-old native of San Bernardino, Calif. "I read a passage, try to understand it and see how it relates to what's happening in my life," he told Catholic News Service. Parra hit the Olympic ice in Turin after a year marked by injuries and personal difficulties. He was part of the three-man U.S. team eliminated in the quarterfinals of the men's team pursuit Feb. 15 and hoped to return to his record-setting stride in the 1,500-meter race Feb. 21.




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Priests swap lives for weekend to stress parishes' post-Katrina ties


BLOOMINGDALE, Ill. (CNS) -- As government officials continue to debate the response time for relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina and discuss reconstruction projects across the Gulf Coast, members of St. Isidore Parish in Bloomingdale are taking action. Father Tony Taschetta, pastor of St. Isidore, vowed while celebrating Mass Feb. 5 that his congregation would work with members of St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Pascagoula, Miss., to help them rebuild a place of worship that the Aug. 29 hurricane destroyed, along with many homes in the coastal town. The suburban pastor wasn't preaching in his Illinois church, however. He was celebrating Mass at Sacred Heart Parish in Pascagoula, about five miles away from the ruins of St. Peter the Apostle Church. "We want to share our lives" with the people of the Mississippi parish, he said in a Feb. 6 telephone interview with the Catholic Explorer, newspaper of the Diocese of Joliet. "We want to stand in solidarity with them. This is not about building buildings."




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Milwaukee auxiliary, Dutch Protestant discuss Christianity's future


PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (CNS) -- The younger generation met the older generation at the World Council of Churches' gathering in Porto Alegre as a U.S. Catholic bishop sat on a stage in dialogue with a young female Protestant pastor from the Netherlands. The dialogue between Auxiliary Bishop Richard J. Sklba of Milwaukee and the Rev. Jantine Heuvelink, a chaplain at the University of the Hague, was featured in a "bate-papo," the Brazilian expression for chat. The chat sessions occurred in the mornings during the Ninth General Assembly of the World Council of Churches Feb. 14-23. During the "bate-papo" gatherings, young people challenged their elders to explain what they have done, or what they have not done, to create a better world. The topic for the Feb. 15 session was "Is There a Future for Christianity in the 21st Century?"




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Sports agent helps athletes prepare for life after Olympics


TURIN, Italy (CNS) -- Speedskaters spend many hours sharpening their blades to maximize their cutting power for when they make tight turns on slick ice. One Olympic luge hopeful, Patrick Quinn, is helping these athletes sharpen their marketable career skills so they are ready to make a living after the games. Patrick Quinn, who missed making his third Winter Olympics last December by a fraction of a second, is in Turin mentoring Olympic athletes and spinning their victories to the media and big-name sponsors. The 39-year-old Catholic from Chicago is an agent for about a dozen U.S. athletes competing at the games. "I'm like one-stop shopping" for interested sponsors, he told Catholic News Service. He said while athletes focus all their time and energy preparing and thinking about their next races "I'm thinking about what will set you up for the rest of your life," after the limelight and glory are gone. Quinn is the founder and head of Q Sports Marketing, an advertising and marketing company that promotes Olympians. He is a parishioner at Christ the King Catholic Church in Lombard, Ill.

Emphasizing your point.

February 17th, 2006
by
Andy Alexander, S.J.
University Ministry and the Collaborative Ministry Office

James 2:14-24, 26
Psalm 112:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
Mark 8:34-9:1


Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer

I really understand that the disciples of Jesus didn't comprehend his mission and felt very frightened by his prediction of his passion and death. It makes sense to me that they were resistant to going to Jerusalem with him. His words to them, however, are worthy of some prayerful meditation.

If we let ourselves come into God's presence consciously, and rest there for a moment, we can begin our meditation with its proper first prelude. God is Love and we can pause to experience that Love make its home in us and brings us peace. The second prelude would be to ask for what we desire in this prayer. Here it would be appropriate to ask for the grace to be open to the words of Jesus, addressed to me, in my life as it is now. It will be important to take the few moments it takes to sincerely ask to be given the deep experience of Jesus' calling me, calming me, offering me what I need to be his disciple.

If you wish to follow me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.
Deny myself. This gets my attention right away. He is asking me to be more selective in the ways I choose everything. It is fairly easy - the the freedom and honesty of resting here in his love - to admit the ways I am self-indulgent. I find myself asking for the gift to be freer and to be able to deny myself in this or that particular area. It is not difficult to imagine crosses in my life, even little ones. I'm sure he doesn't mean most of those. I suspect he is inviting me to experience the rejection I will likely encounter if I live my faith in him more completely and radically. Follow me. Yes, that's the choice. It is so easy to follow the ways of the world around me. To follow him, redirects everything else. It is nice to just rest and think about that for a while.

For if you wish to save your life you will lose it.
It really helps to hear this so clearly stated. I have lots of experience with this. I can come up with examples of when I have grabbed for something I thought I needed desperately and really risked losing myself, my identity, my integrity, my purpose.

But, if you lose your life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, you will save it.
And, I know this experience, too. When I've been free and generous in giving of myself to others, even in giving without counting the cost, those were the most fulfilling and self-identity defining experiences of my life. I can feel the desire to make this more and more my way of choosing, and growing in knowing how to do this- for the sake of the Gospel.

What profit is there for you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?
That's a question that I can carry with me into lots of situations, into lots of battles and huge investments of effort. What does it mean? Where is this leading me? What am I trying to win? And at what cost to me, my family, my faith, my relationship with God?

Thank you, Lord, for this brief opportunity to hear you speak to me so directly. Thank you for this clear call to freedom. You really do love me and desire to protect me from my self-destruction. I ask, as Ignatius prayed, "Give me your love and your grace and I will be rich enough, and ask for nothing more."

[email protected]

Issue Date: February 17, 2006

From the Editor's Desk

A fitting honor for Mrs. King

The caption at the bottom of the TV screen the day after the politician, preacher and star-studded, six-hour funeral for Coretta Scott King, said something like: "Rude comments?" The question was whether some of the talk, particularly from politicians, was impolitic, even impolite.

I suppose the answer depends on what one thinks a funeral should be and what anyone might expect with four presidents and a planeload or so of members of Congress under one roof in these politically charged times.

What I saw in it was a church-state collision of biblical proportions and temperament, moderated not a little by great music and humor, all-in-all a deeply human and fitting honor for someone so intimately tied to the struggle for simple justice and human dignity.

This was, as I see it, religion different from the public pieties parading today, the upwardly mobile sanctimony that has captured the language and symbols but so little of the substance of religion. The religion on display in the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church just outside Atlanta was, while politically savvy, at the same time a faith that called in its debts, as former President Jimmy Carter would say, always on behalf of the other. This is not a religion of checklists of orthodoxy or the gospel of prosperity. It's messier than that, understandably, so recently connected as it is with the outlandish acts of compassion and courage that marked the civil rights era.

It was easy to note that Coretta Scott King's funeral was far different from that of her husband who was still, at the time of his assassination, viewed as an enemy of the state in so many quarters.

In fact there were a fair number in that sanctuary who at one time or another would have been considered enemies of the state, people who, while nonviolent, had been less than polite in their insistence that the state was wrong.

It is no small irony that decades later, the powerful would want to gather and be seen -- and hear preaching not lacking a certain edge -- in a circumstance that once would have been toxic to their careers. No small irony and no small sign of hope.

~ ~ ~

While it may not be usual practice to turn our readers' heads toward other publications, I call your attention this week to an important editorial in Commonweal magazine about Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, a figure of considerable influence in some Catholic circles.

As a matter of background, Fr. Neuhaus has had a kind of Forrest Gump ability to show up at important moments of contemporary church history, though with far greater certainty and intellectual flair, of course, than the movie figure. He was certain, for instance, of what was most Christian at the start of his public life when he was nearly as far left on the spectrum of things as he is now far right, back in an era when he was cofounding Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam with Jesuit Fr. Daniel Berrigan. While Berrigan remained somewhat more single-minded than his friend of the time, the Jesuit also landed in jail and since has had far fewer invitations to the White House and papal palace than his counterpart.

Fr. Neuhaus was just as certain as a Lutheran cleric, when he was advising everyone what was best for all Lutherans as that community in the United States was evolving into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as he is now certain what is best for all Catholics, since his conversion in 1990 and subsequent ordination to the priesthood in this denomination.

He is a self-appointed arbiter of orthodoxy and is even now certain, as the editorial points out, of what is best for the new Pope Benedict XVI, whose election he has unceasingly praised. Seems Benedict, however, may not be as fully with Fr. Neuhaus' program as he should be. But the editorial illuminates that detail and much more eloquently, with wit and insight. It can be found at www.commonwealmagazine.org.

-- Tom Roberts

National Catholic Reporter, February 17, 2006

So, by this line of reasoning, should Jesus have become a member of the Sanhedrin?

No!

Climate change: Everyone talks about it; what can be done about it?


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- If, as the old saw suggests, everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it, what can anyone do about weather patterns that morph not only over seasons but generations? That phenomenon is known as climate change. It used to be known as "global warming," but the term climate change takes not only temperature into account, but also rainfall, ocean currents, farming, forestry and a host of other conditions affected by the weather. Climate change is on the minds of more and more people -- including those gathered for two Catholic-sponsored forums in Washington a day apart. Speaking at The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law Feb. 13, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, reported that village elders in the state's northernmost regions have told her "the ice pack is less stable, the snow pack is returning later and leaving earlier, changing the migratory patterns of animals." Speaking during a Feb. 14 forum at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, Michael McCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs for the Climate Institute and formerly executive director of the National Assessment Coordinator's Office, said the earth warmed by 0.8 degree Celsius over the 20th century, and that 2005 was the warmest year yet on record -- surpassing 1997, when temperatures were bolstered by a cyclical trend of Pacific Ocean warming.




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Don't cut aid to Palestinians because of Hamas, say speakers


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Opposition to a Hamas-controlled Palestinian government should not involve cutting off needed aid to the Palestinian people, said several Catholic officials during a panel discussion at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington. The speakers expressed concern that $150 million in foreign aid for Palestine in the 2007 federal budget could be cut or eliminated as a result of U.S. government opposition to Hamas because of its use of terrorism and its opposition to the existence of Israel. "We are concerned that the Palestinian people will be totally abandoned," said Gerald Flood, a counselor for the U.S. bishops' Office of International Justice and Peace. William O'Keefe, senior director for advocacy for Catholic Relief Services, said that Palestinians need humanitarian aid regardless of who is leading the government. LaVita LeGrys, associate director of the U.S. bishops' Office of Government Liaison, said the recent Hamas victory has stirred moves in Congress to restrict Palestinian aid. They spoke at a Feb. 13 panel on foreign aid.




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Inequities in health care system challenge Catholic leaders, Congress


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- An Illinois man takes pliers to his own teeth to "treat" an abscess. A college graduate with a full-time job in Kentucky dies from complications of an easily treatable disease because she has no health insurance. A Florida woman pays an extra $1,650 a year above her medical costs to get more personalized treatment and phone calls directly from her doctor. What's wrong with this picture? The issue of justice in health care probably has been discussed since before the Hippocratic oath was written. But as American medicine becomes more technologically complex, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is getting larger. Colleen L. Kannaday, president of St. Francis Hospital and Health Center in Blue Island, Ill., is one of the people working to narrow that gap. Appointed by the president of the Illinois Senate to the state's Adequate Health Care Task Force, she and 28 other task force members are charged with coming up with a plan that will give all residents of the state "access to a full range of preventive, acute and long-term health care services," without sacrificing quality or increasing costs.




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Clinic offers more than medical care to beleaguered D.C. neighborhood


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- "The poor live chaotic lives, and you can't force them into an organized system," says Cherie Sammis, clinical administrator and director of the Perry Family Health Center of Providence Hospital in Washington. "So we have to be very flexible," she adds. "I call it organized chaos." The Perry health center, founded in 1998, is much more than a clinic for the thousands of Washington residents who pass through its doors each year. Ranging from newborns to centenarians, they find advice on and help with a variety of life's challenges -- from literacy and language barriers to help with applying for Medicaid or for programs that provide free or low-cost drugs. "They take good care of me and my kids," said Nachele, a mother of two who is expecting her third child and asked that her last name not be used. "I remember coming here for shots as a little kid, and now I bring my own kids."




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Cardinal Rigali joins call for safer streets as churches host rallies


PHILADELPHIA (CNS) -- The city of Philadelphia is one of the most dangerous places in America. In 2005, 380 murders were committed in Philadelphia -- up from 330 the previous year. That is four times the national homicide rate. So far, 2006 is not showing improvement. On a rainy afternoon in early February, Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia threw his support behind the city administration's "Operation Safe Streets" -- engaging faith-based communities in the fight against violence. Speaking at a well-attended community meeting at St. Charles Borromeo Church in South Philadelphia, the cardinal said, "The elimination of violence means we -- all of us -- must change our hearts. We must educate others, and the church is going to continue to do that. "There is no way in the world we can accept violence for any human being," the cardinal said Feb. 4. "The cause of peace is the cause of the future. It is the cause of our society, and the cause of our children."




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Federal tax and budget cuts seen hurting poor, vulnerable


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The newly approved 2006 federal budget and the budget proposals for coming years will cut programs for the poor and vulnerable even as tax cuts and higher defense spending increase federal deficits, Catholic social ministry leaders were told Feb. 14 at a national conference in Washington. Ellen Nissenbaum, legislative director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the Bush administration's fiscal year 2007 budget proposal calls for deep cuts in domestic discretionary programs, some cuts in entitlement programs and tax cuts that will increase the deficit. "This fails the test of fairness, and it certainly fails the test of fiscal responsibility," she said. Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, said the 2006 budget reconciliation bill, just signed into law the previous week, institutes changes in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, program that will lead to less Medicaid funding and make it much harder for states to meet requirements for federal funding.




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Bishop criticizes production of 'The Vagina Monologues' at Notre Dame


FORT WAYNE, Ind. (CNS) -- The bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend said the University of Notre Dame should not have allowed the fifth annual production of "The Vagina Monologues" on its campus this year because he said the play "distorts the beautiful gift of human sexuality." "I regret the sponsorship of this play by Notre Dame again this year, and pray it will be the last time," said Bishop John M. D'Arcy. The bishop said the play "reduces sexuality to a particular organ of a woman's body separate from the person of the woman, from her soul and her spirit. It alienates woman from man whom God has entrusted to her as friend and companion. It separates sexuality and the human body from love." His statement was published in the Feb. 12 issue of Today's Catholic, the diocesan newspaper. The play was staged on Notre Dame's campus Feb. 13-15 although the university's president, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, stipulated that this year the performance had to take place in a lecture hall instead of a theater and students were not allowed to use the event as a fundraiser for local community agencies.




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Pope tells magazine staff church must participate in cultural debates


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Catholic Church must participate in modern cultural debates, finding ways to present enduring truths in a serious, yet accessible way, Pope Benedict XVI said. The pope met Feb. 17 with the editors and staff of La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit-run magazine founded by Pope Pius IX in 1850 and one that continues to be reviewed by the Vatican Secretariat of State before publication. By writing about cultural, social and political issues, the pope said, the magazine helps the Catholic Church in its dialogue with the modern world, identifying positive trends and offering the guidance of the Gospel. Increasingly, modern culture is "closed to God and to his moral law, even if it is not always prejudicially adverse to Christianity," the pope said.




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Vatican official: Spiritual reform must begin with religious orders


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI is seeking to revitalize the faith life of the church, a "spiritual reform" that must begin with the world's men and women religious, said Archbishop Franc Rode, head of the Vatican office that oversees religious orders. That means religious congregations must take stock, recover their "apostolic dynamism" and shed the excessive secularism of the post-Second Vatican Council period, Archbishop Rode said. Archbishop Rode, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, spoke with Catholic News Service about the challenges facing religious life and the directions being set under Pope Benedict. The 71-year-old Slovenian, a member of the Vincentian order, said the vitality of religious orders has always been essential for spiritual reform in the church. "Throughout the history of the church, religious orders and congregations were always the ones pushing forward, bringing dynamism and a call for holiness. They were always on the front lines," he said.




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Portuguese cardinal is 'objective fan' of soccer, sainthood causes


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Portuguese cardinal who heads the Congregation for Saints' Causes has been given extra duties by Pope Benedict XVI. The pope, having decided not to preside personally over most beatification ceremonies, usually delegates the responsibility to Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the 74-year-old congregation prefect. While no one expects Pope Benedict to match the super record-setting pace of canonizations and beatifications set by Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Saraiva Martins said the amount of work done by his office is not expected to slow any time soon. "I foresee the rhythm continuing as it has been," he told Catholic News Service. "With 2,200 causes open here, it is clear things will continue. "Even if no other causes were submitted, we would have enough causes to study to keep us busy for years and years, but new causes always are arriving," the cardinal said.




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Top Vatican, Spanish officials discuss Mideast, relations, papal trip


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI's planned trip to Spain in July, church-state tensions in the country and peace in the Middle East were on the agenda when Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos met Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state. Spanish newspapers reported that Moratinos had asked for an audience with Pope Benedict, but was told Feb. 9 that the pope normally meets only with heads of state or heads of government. The Vatican statement about Moratinos' Feb. 17 meeting with Cardinal Sodano did not mention the request for a papal audience, but described the meeting with the Vatican's top diplomat as "cordial." The Spanish and Vatican representatives, it said, spoke about bilateral relations and "other problems relating to the life of the church in Spain in the current situation." The Vatican statement did not list the problems. However, church leaders have been vocal in criticizing the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for promoting the recognition of same-sex marriages and the abolition of religious education in public schools, cutting government funding of some Catholic Church programs and streamlining the procedures for granting divorces.




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Bishop Brown gets FADICA award for distinguished leadership


LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- FADICA honored Bishop Tod D. Brown of Orange, Calif., with its distinguished Catholic leadership award "for his compassionate heart, commitment to truth, and for rekindling hope and faith within his flock." The commendation, presented Jan. 26 during the 30th anniversary meeting in Los Angeles of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, focused especially on Bishop Brown's January 2004 "covenant with the faithful" in response to the clergy sex abuse crisis. In the covenant, he and Auxiliary Bishops Jaime Soto and Dominic M. Luong of Orange pledged to promote healing for victims of sexual abuse and to "be open, honest and forthright in our public statements to the media, and consistent and transparent in our communications with the Catholics of our diocese." Francis J. Butler, president of FADICA, said Bishop Brown was "recognized because of the extraordinary courage and compassion he has shown as the shepherd of the Diocese of Orange."




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Pundits critique politics at Catholic social ministry conference


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Political pundits Mark Shields and David Brooks regaled a national gathering of Catholic social ministry leaders with jokes and one-liners Feb. 15 as they delivered serious underlying messages on politics and society. The occasion was the closing luncheon of the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, a four-day conference that brought together about 500 experts and leaders of Catholic diocesan and national social ministry organizations. Brooks, a New York Times columnist and political commentator on PBS' "News Hour," looked around the room and said he hadn't seen so many Catholics in one place since his last visit to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also made a case for the view that the basis for success in the United States today is not blood lines or inherited wealth but "inherited meritocracy" -- the raising of children in a framework of attitudes and values that prepare them to succeed in the face of the challenges of contemporary life. Shields, a syndicated columnist, "News Hour" commentator and host of CNN's "Capital Gang," contrasted the individualistic and partisan political atmosphere in Washington today with some of America's finer moments of investing in the future. "It has not always been this mean (in Washington politics). It has not always been this ugly," he said. "And it's important for us to celebrate our successes as well as to look with concern and anger at continuing injustices."




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Olympic skier attracts media attention for devotion to faith, family


TURIN, Italy (CNS) -- With a holy man on her skis and her husband and 4-year-old son close behind, a cross-country skiing Olympian from Gunnison, Colo., has taken Turin by storm. In the first week of her Olympic debut at the games, Rebecca Dussault's manager, promoter, fundraiser, photographer and webmaster husband, Sharbel Dussault, was busy working the phones and hunting for Internet access in the remote Italian mountain village of Pragelato. Their site, www.dussaultskis.com, was clocking 1,200 hits a day, Dussault said, and her husband had been staying up until 2 a.m. to go through the flood of e-mails, respond to requests for interviews and update the site launched early this year to document the family's pursuit of the Olympic dream. In just the first few days after the Olympics began, Dussault had done interviews for big-name Italian and U.S. radio and newspaper outlets, including National Public Radio, The Washington Post and Turin's major daily, La Stampa. "Even USA Today did a piece on Sharbel," she told Catholic News Service Feb. 15.




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Handsome, holy Italian man known for skiing, charity


TURIN, Italy (CNS) -- Once upon a time, a young, handsome fellow, sporting skis and chewing on a cigar, zipped across the Alpine peaks in Bardonecchia, about 75 miles east of Turin. Just a few months before he died in 1925 at the age of 24, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati had competed in a 15-kilometer race in the same mountains where the Olympic snowboarding competition was being held during the XX Olympic Winter Games. "Who can imagine how happy he would be today to see the Olympics here" in his own backyard, said Cardinal Severino Poletto of Turin. "He's a great saint," he told Catholic News Service, "a modern model of holiness and youth." In order to tell Olympic visitors more about Turin's favorite saint-in-the-making, two Blessed Pier Giorgio associations came together to set up two exhibits for the duration of the games. One was set up in a small church in Bardonecchia and another in a Turin church where Blessed Pier Giorgio was made a Third Order Dominican, a lay order.




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Church cautious about plan to examine possible remains of Joan of Arc


WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- A French church spokesman expressed caution about a forensic scientist's announcement that he would analyze what might be the remains of St. Joan of Arc. "The precise origin of these objects isn't known -- all we have are some fragments of cloth and human rib," said Bertrand Vincent, spokesman for France's Tours Archdiocese. "Even if these are confirmed as belonging to a young woman of the period, who was burned to death, this won't prove it's Joan of Arc. For now, the church is showing maximum prudence and reserve." Philippe Charlier, professor at Raymond Poincare Hospital, west of Paris, announced that he would analyze the fragments allegedly retrieved from below the stake in Rouen, France, where St. Joan was executed in 1431 at age 19. In a telephone interview with Catholic News Service Feb. 17, Vincent praised Charlier's "professional expertise and good intentions" and said that Tours would "take note" if the project were "conducted seriously, with proper results."




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Oh.