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Vatican official raided over London property deal investigation…
Vatican City, Feb 18, 2020 / 09:06 am (CNA).- Vatican authorities have seized documents and computers belonging to a senior curial official as part of an investigation into financial misconduct, the Holy See announced on Tuesday. In a statement issued Feb. 18, the Vatican press office confirmed that investigators had raided the office and home of Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, the former head of the administrative office at the First Section of the Secretariat of State. The raid is part of an ongoing investigation into financial misconduct by officials at the secretariat. “This morning, as part of a search ordered by the Promoter of Justice, Gian Piero Milano, and the deputy, Alessandro Diddi, documents and computer equipment were seized at the office and home of Msgr. Alberto Perlasca,” the Vati...
Pope Francis adds year of missionary work as requirement for future Vatican diplomat priests…
Vatican City, Feb 17, 2020 / 05:09 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has requested that priests in formation for the Holy See’s diplomatic service be required to spend one year in missionary work, the Vatican announced Monday. The pope has asked the change to go into effect for the 2020/2021 academic year. He called for the curriculum update in a letter to the president of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, Bishop Joseph Marino. In order to face “growing challenges for the Church and for the world, future diplomats of the Holy See must acquire, in addition to solid priestly and pastoral formation, and the specific one offered by this Academy, also a personal mission experience outside their own Diocese of origin,” Francis wrote. It is an opportunity for the priests to share “with the missionary ...
My reaction to Querida Amazonia…
Pope Francis delivers his Sunday Angelus address from the window of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Feb. 16, 2020. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images) I am convinced that just as we were spared from serious error in Humanae Vitae, so the Holy Spirit spared the Church in Querida Amazonia. On Wednesday, Feb. 12, Pope Francis released his apostolic exhortation on the Amazon Synod, Querida Amazonia. I was greatly relieved when I read the carefully penned document, as I saw in it an answer to our prayers. You may recall I wrote the following in the National Catholic Register back on Oct. 27 at the close of the Synod: In the final document of the synod are included proposals for married priests on a wide scale and women ‘deacons.’ The Church is currently deeply divided an...
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, takes on politician who invoked Catholic teaching to justify murder…
By Tom Hoopes, February 15, 2020 Archbishop Joseph Naumann publicly corrected a state legislator’s misrepresentation of Church teaching in a strong, straightforward column about abortion. He also revealed more of what Pope Francis told U.S. bishops regarding the abortion issue when they visited him last month. His column is published in the Feb. 14 edition of The Leaven and is not yet available online. Last year the state’s Supreme Court, emboldened by a new governor who wants to ease restrictions on the abortion industry, which helped fund her candidacy, “discovered” a right to abortion in the very language of the Kansas state constitution that was written to protect the right to life. This year, an effort to put a state Constitutional amendment on the ballot for Kansas voters to dec...
Sunday homily: Undertaking the work of forgiveness…
A young girl at the time of the war, Maïti Girtanner was arrested for her collaboration with the French Resistance. She had endeared herself to the occupying German soldiers, partly because she spoke German, partly because she was a talented pianist who played music for them, and partly because she gave the impression that she could not be bothered with the war. She used the freedom won by these affections to carry messages for the resistance through restricted areas. In 1943, Maïti was arrested in Paris and imprisoned. During her incarceration, the Gestapo brutally tortured Maïti. One particular doctor inflicted torments and abuse which left her unable to play the piano. The injuries dealt to her spinal cord left her with permanent damage to her nervous system and constant pai...
Pope’s Sunday Angelus: “The Law is an instrument of freedom”…
Vatican City, Feb 16, 2020 / 06:26 am (CNA).- God gives the grace both to follow his law exteriorly and to accept it in one’s heart, which is what gives true freedom from passion and sin, Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Sunday. “Let’s not forget this: living the Law as an instrument of freedom, which helps me to be freer, which helps me not to be a slave to passions and sin,” the pope said Feb. 16. In his catechesis before the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis spoke about the difference between “formal compliance” and “substantive compliance” with the law, which is to accept the law also in one’s “the center of the intentions, decisions, words, and gestures of each of us.” “Good and bad deeds,” he said, “start from the heart.” The pope explained that “by accepting the Law of God in you...
J.R.R. Tolkien reveals heartfelt fatherly love in letter to his late son Christopher during WWII…
This is such a beautiful letter! The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the greatest and most popular writers of the 20th century. He was also a Catholic husband and father to four children. He passed away 1973, but his works continue to inspire millions throughout the world. The author’s third child Christopher Tolkien was also an author, illustrator, and academic. He edited and published many of his father’s literary works. He was the last of J.R.R.’s three boys to pass away on Jan. 16, 2020 at age 95. One letter written in 1944 by J.R.R. Tolkien recently surfaced on Reddit. The letter truly reveals the fatherly love Tolkien had for his son. Here’s a portion of the letter below: u/ratazuka, Reddit Here’s what this portion of the letter reads: “I sometimes feel appalled at ...
Does consecrated life trump marriage? Can the married change their minds?
By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Feb 11, 2020 In the wake of unusual vocations of married persons to the consecrated life, there is always speculation about the superiority of a consecrated single vocation, as compared with marriage, or of virginity over marriage generally. Some have gone so far as to argue that the “higher” calling to a form of consecrated life justifies breaking up a sacramental marriage to accommodate a “new vocation” of either the husband or the wife. This question was raised again last month after I explored the strange vocation of the Servant of God Rose Hawthorne, who set aside her husband’s will, with ecclesiastical permission, in order to undertake a special service to the poor who were suffering from cancer (Ecclesiastical judgment: Sain...
Abortionist Ulrich Klopfer’s 2,411 murdered babies buried in Indiana…
(Pixabay) Yesterday in South Bend, Ind., the state interred the remains of 2,411 fetuses whose bodies were found in the Illinois home of former abortionist Ulrich George Klopfer after he died last fall. “Today, we finally memorialize the 2,411 unborn babies whose remains were senselessly hoarded by Dr. Ulrich Klopfer after he performed the abortions from 2000 to 2003,” said Indiana attorney general Curtis Hill at the gravesite in Southlawn Cemetery. “These babies deserved better than a cold, dark garage or the trunk of a car.” Advertisement Advertisement Klopfer had performed abortions for nearly four decades in northern Indiana, primarily in South Bend, Ind., but also in nearby Fort Wayne and Gary. In 2016, his medical license was suspended after he was found to have broken laws requiring...
An amusing look at familial love in a TV commercial…
The commercial below shows a glimpse of the special kind of love that we call familial love. The Greeks called it storge (στοργή), and the Romans called it pietas. Both words refer to familial love, the natural or instinctual affection between parent and child. Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” depicting Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus with tenderness and sorrow, demonstrates beautifully the meaning of pietas. Familial love has some unique qualities. For example, we don’t choose our family; we are born into it. We can choose friends, and for the most part we select them because they are agreeable to us. Not always so within the family! And when couples marry, although they establish their own nuclear family, each brings to the marriage his or her own family and extended family. Because we ...
In this Sunday’s readings, Our Lord tells us to face up to the full demands of God’s moral law — no excuses…
The “Hippie” Jesus is one of the common misunderstandings of Christ that are circulating in popular culture. People think of Jesus as a laid back guru who traveled around Israel in this Volkswagen Vanagon, accompanied by twelve dudes in tie-died T-shirts. Jesus taught that all we need is Love, and not to be so uptight, like all those rule-bound priests and scribes. Of course, that view of Jesus is wrong. People adopt it, however, because they misunderstand the nature of Jesus’ conflict with the priests, scribes, and Pharisees that dominated Jewish religious practice in his day. Because Jesus criticizes them for the way they practice the law, people get the impression that Jesus was against law in general. But that’s sadly wrong. Jesus’ criticisms were le...
Pope Francis speaks about financial reforms to Vatican tribunal…
Vatican City, Feb 15, 2020 / 05:24 am (CNA).- As the Holy See awaits the results of a scheduled financial inspection, Pope Francis spoke about ongoing financial reform and investigations at the opening of the judicial year of the Vatican City State’s court, which he attended for the first time. He said Feb. 15 the Holy See is trying to conform to international law and has put in place processes to combat “illegality in the international finance sector.” To do this, the Vatican has put in place internal surveillance and intervention systems, which “have recently brought to light suspicious financial situations,” he stated. Situations, which, he continued, “beyond any possible illegality, are difficult to reconcile with the nature and purposes of the Church, and which have generated disorien...
