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Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — Better to take risk of carrying the freshness of the Gospel to others than to be a “museum Christian” afraid of change, Pope Francis told Serra International.
“When Christians go about their daily lives without fear, they can discover God’s constant surprises,” he said June 23. Read more »
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act contains “many of the fundamental defects” that appeared in the House-passed American Health Care Act “and even further compounds them,” said the bishop who heads the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.
The Senate released its health care reform bill in “discussion draft” form June 22.”As is, the discussion draft stands to cause disturbing damage to the human beings served by the social safety net,” Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, said in a statement released late June 22. “It is precisely the detrimental impact on the poor and vulnerable that makes the Senate draft unacceptable as written.” Read more »
Catholic News Service
BALTIMORE — When Henry VIII, as England’s reigning monarch, was declared “a defender of the faith,” the future “must have seemed so bright to Thomas More and John Fisher,” Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori said in a homily June 21.
He described an England which “seemed to have been spared the painful divisions that racked the Catholic Church on the continent of Europe.” Under Henry, he said, “monastic life and learning were flourishing” while “ordinary Catholics showed their love and loyalty to the church.”
“Who could have imagined the severe test More, Fisher and English Catholicism would face in so short a time?” Archbishop Lori asked. Read more »
Dialog Editor
Diocesan pilgrims will stop at Annecy, Rome, Assisi
Frankly speaking, the Diocese of Wilmington’s 150th Anniversary Pilgrimage to Annecy and Rome next spring will be all about Francis. Four leaders of the church named Francis, that is, will highlight the journey — Bishop W. Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Pope Francis, St. Francis de Sales and St. Francis of Assisi.
Bishop Malooly will lead the diocesan pilgrimage from April 16-26 next year starting in Annecy, France, where Francis de Sales, the patron saint of the diocese, ministered. Read more »
WASHINGTON — The head of the U.S. military archdiocese June 20 expressed sorrow for the lives lost in “the tragic ship collision” involving the USS Fitzgerald off the coast of Japan.
Seven sailors died aboard the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer, which collided with a Philippine-flagged merchant vessel early in the morning June 17. Hours later, their bodies were found in flooded berthing compartments. Read more »
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The U.S. Catholic bishops “unequivocally reject” acts of violence such as the attack outside a London mosque and pleaded with all people “to cease from committing or plotting to commit further acts.” Read more »
Catholic News Service
ROME — Instead of “pretending to be adolescents,” parents must help young people see the blessing of growing into adulthood, Pope Francis told priests, religious, catechists and parish council members from the Diocese of Rome.
The belief that youthfulness is a model of success “is one of the most dangerous ‘unwitting’ menaces in the education of our adolescents” that hinders their personal growth because “adults have taken their place,” the pope said June 19, opening the Rome Diocese’s annual convention.
This “can increase a natural tendency young people have to isolate themselves or to curb their process of growth” because they have no role models, the pope said. Read more »
WASHINGTON — After almost 12 years as an Episcopal priest, Deacon Jonathan Erdman entered into full communion with the Catholic Church along with his family in 2016 and a year later, he is becoming a Catholic priest.
He will be ordained a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter June 29.
This spring, 590 men entered the priesthood in dioceses throughout the United States, according to a report released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. The report is based on an annual study that the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate conducted for the USCCB. Read more »
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, said the state of Alabama erred in denying an indigent defendant now on death row a separate psychiatric evaluation that would assist in his own defense.
The ruling, issued June 19, overturned the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in 2015 in the case of James McWilliams, and returned it to that court for further review. Read more »
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The retired Catholic archbishop of Havana called for dialogue between the United States and Cuba, and said it’s the only way in which past and present problems can be solved.
In a June 19 letter published in Palabra Nueva, the magazine for the Archdiocese of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who played a major role in the rapprochement between Cuba and the U.S., said “resorting to old models” and applying them presently to Cuba can “overshadow or delay” the resolution of conflicts between the two countries. Read more »
