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Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, dies at 75…
Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre. (Wikimedia Commons.) The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is a Catholic lay religious order originally founded as the Knights Hospitaller around 1099 in Jerusalem for the protection and medical care of Holy Land pilgrims. Courtney Mares/CNA. ROME, Italy — The Grand Master of the Order of Malta Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre died early Wednesday at the age of 75. Dalla Torre had been in treatment for throat cancer in Rome in recent months. He is remembered by the Order of Malta for his kindness, appreciation of the arts, and charity towards the poor and disabled. “I worked with Fra’ Giacomo for over 20 years,” Philippa Leslie, communications director of the Order of Malta in Great Britain, told CNA. “He had a warm and sympathetic personality, a nice sen...
As a high school teacher, I’ve learned something from this long experiment: Online education is not fully Catholic education …
I am a Catholic high school teacher, and, by May 1st, I will have taught five weeks of online education. This is an act of obedience to various authorities so that, instead of having nothing available for my quarantined high school students, they will have something. I have already explored “group chat,” “shared screen,” and “simultaneous writing documents”; I have successfully communicated to various teenagers some key facts about calculus, Virgil, and economic theory. But I have not — and cannot — fully offer them Catholic education. There are three fundamental reasons why this is the case. First, Catholic education demands access to the sacraments, and this necessarily demands presence; moreover, the Church’s own sacramentality, in which the Catholic school participates, is maximized in...
Knights of Malta announce death of Grand Master, “following an incurable disease diagnosed a few months ago”…
Grand Magistry Announces Death of H.M.E.H. Grand Master Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto – Order of Malta This website uses technical and assimilated cookies as well as user-profiling third party cookies in a grouped format to simplify online navigation and to protect the use of services. To find out more or to refuse consent to the use of one or any of the cookies, click here. Closing this banner, browsing this page or clicking on anything will be taken as consent to the use of cookies. Close
AG William Barr tells prosecutors to keep watch for coronavirus orders that violate Constitution…
Attorney General William Barr issued a memo to federal prosecutors to be “on the lookout” for state and local directives imposed during the coronavirus pandemic that violate Americans’ constitutional rights. “If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID-19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court,” Barr wrote in the two-page memo released Monday. “The legal restrictions on state and local authority are not limited to discrimination against religious institutions and religious believers. For example, the Constitution also forbids, in certain circumstances, discrimination against disfavored spe...
Let’s never go back to “normal”…
We’re all hoping that life will return to “normal” in a few weeks, at least to some extent. We’re also hearing (often from the same source) that life will never be the same because of COVID-19. Obviously, we all want certain things to return to normal as soon as possible. We want to receive the sacraments and go back to work. We also want an end to (or at least a lessening of) the social distancing measures. Yet some things should never return to normal. God has embedded some important lessons that we need to learn from this experience, and which we would be wise to retain. The most evident is how innovative clergy and ministry leaders have become in helping people stay connected to their parish and our mission as Christ’s own Body. We’ve seen a revolution in the use of social media, for e...
With the Pope’s call for “obedience” on Mass restrictions, embattled Italian PM Giuseppe Conte got a badly-needed favor…
ROME – Since Pope Francis began livestreaming his daily Mass from the Vatican’s Santa Marta residence, many people around the world have been grateful for the opportunity to hear the pope’s words and to participate, albeit virtually, in his liturgy, helping to break the isolation of the coronavirus quarantine. Tuesday morning, however, probably no one was more grateful than Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Conte got a badly needed favor, as the pontiff essentially hit the off switch on mounting Catholic resistance to the PM’s program for recovery by calling for “prudence and obedience.” What remains to be seen is whether, in addition to pastoral conviction, the utterance was also a clever political tactic, in effect putting the Italian leader in the pope’s debt and creating capital I...
Coronavirus pandemic delays beatification of Stefan Cardinal Wyszyńsk, John Paul II’s ‘unforgettable primate’…
CNA Staff, Apr 28, 2020 / 07:30 am MT (CNA).- The beatification of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the former Primate of Poland who heroically resisted Communism, has been postponed because of the coronavirus. Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz said April 28 that the beatification would no longer take place as planned in Warsaw’s Piłsudski Square on June 7. “A pandemic threatening the health and life of people makes it impossible to prepare and carry out this ceremony,” the archbishop of Warsaw said. “The first priority must be concern for human safety.” A new date will be announced when the pandemic is over, the cardinal said, adding that the Holy See supported the decision. Wyszyński is credited with helping to preserve and strengthen Christianity in Poland during the Communist r...
Building a new world in light of the Resurrection…
Recently, Pope Francis called on the members of the Church to build a new world where there is equity among the poor and the rich. He did this in the face of the terrible devastation that has fallen on Italy during this time of pandemic. He also did so in light of the hope that we have in Christ. The Lord has risen from the dead and this opens up new possibilities for humanity- even in the face of anguish and anxiety. It is the role of the whole Church to proclaim this hope – the hope that we have in the Risen Lord. Whatever else a new world might be, it would be reductionistic to see it only in terms of improved economic and distribution systems. Indeed, the greatest problem that the poor face today is not material. The worse of all inequalities is that the most vulnerable are...
The bread and the wine and the power of the Cross to transform them…
There is an engaging image of the Church contained in a passage from last week’s Office of Readings. It is instructive because it speaks not only of themselves but of the power that makes them. It is appropriate that we should receive the body of Christ in the form of bread, because, as there are many grains of wheat in the flour from which bread is made by mixing it with water and baking it with fire, so also we know that many members make up the one body of Christ which is brought to maturity by the fire of the Holy Spirit …. Similarly, the wine of Christ’s blood, drawn from the many grapes of the vineyard that he had planted, is extracted in the wine-press of the cross. When men receive it with believing hearts, like capacious wineskins, it ferments within them by its own power(From a s...
“The time has come to resume the Sunday Eucharist” — Italy’s bishops criticize state for keeping public Mass ban…
Rome Newsroom, Apr 26, 2020 / 03:29 pm MT (CNA).- Italy’s bishops have criticized Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte for failing to lift the ban on public Masses. The Italian bishops’ conference Sunday released a statement denouncing Conte’s decree on “phase 2” of the coronavirus lockdown restrictions, which it says “arbitrarily excludes the possibility of celebrating Mass with the people.” During a press conference April 26 to announce the next phase of Italy’s COVID-19 restrictions, beginning May 4, Conte said funerals may resume with a maximum of 15 people present. Other religious celebrations, including public Masses, will resume “in the coming weeks.” In their April 26 statement, the bishops referred to two bodies which advised Conte on lifting lockdown ...
Despite our technological hubris, we remain toddlers in God’s gracious creation — so give thanks to God, Governor Cuomo…
Upon hearing the puerile remarks of Governor Andrew Cuomo last week, Chesterton came to mind. The lapsed Catholic governor is usually prone to inanity and offense, but this reached new heights: “We have turned the corner on the Coronavirus plague. It was not faith or prayers that did it. Only hard work and science.” To such blather, Chesterton says: “The madman is the one who has one idea completely right, but one does not know where it fits into the whole of things.” Indeed, as with so many men of modernity, the governor is a madman. Yet he does have one idea right: essential to man’s flourishing is hard work and the pursuit of knowledge. But he does not know “where it fits into the whole of things.” The whole is God, which Mr. Cuomo fails to see, and that blindness is as large as a galax...
Why you’re very unlikely to get the coronavirus from runners or cyclists (no matter what you’ve read about aerosols)…
Under social distancing, we’re all doing our best to stay sane, and one of the best ways to maintain sanity is to go out for some nice fresh air. But venturing outside can be stressful if you’re worried that the very air is full of virus particles just waiting to infect you. So, how worried should you be that any time you go outside, you’ll contract coronavirus from a fellow pedestrian, runner, or cyclist who happens to exhale as they pass by? The answer is, you probably don’t need to freak out about it. As long as you’re maintaining at least 6 feet of distance from other people and you’re not in a high-risk group, you’re engaged in a very low-risk activity, particularly if you and others are wearing masks. Earlier this month, Belgian and Dutch engineers publicized some findings that went ...
