Tag: Vatican Spring

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Archbishop: Family ministry is giving more love to those most in need

By Cindy Wooden

Archbishop Blase J. Cupich of Chicago arrives for a session of the Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican Oct. 14. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) See SYNOD-SECOND-REPORTS Oct. 14, 2015.
Archbishop Blase J. Cupich of Chicago arrives for a session of the Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican Oct. 14.

Chicago Archbishop Blase J. Cupich told reporters that something his mother once said might give the Synod of Bishops a way to balance the need to affirm church teaching while reaching out to those who are struggling.

The archbishop said Oct. 16 that his mother was asked if she loved one of her nine children more than the others. “Only if they need it,” she responded.

“That’s the way mothers speak,” the archbishop said, and that is the way the church needs to speak to families, especially to those who feel excluded or in need of extra attention. “The greatest contribution bishops can make to families is to act and speak like families act and speak,” he said.

At the same time, he said, the Catholic Church cannot “accompany, integrate and reconcile” people whom it does not know and with whom it is incapable of communicating.

“If we are going to really accompany people, we have to first of all engage them. In Chicago, I visit regularly with people who feel marginalized, whether they are the elderly or the divorced and remarried, gay and lesbian individuals, also couples. I think that we need to really get to know what their life is like if we are going to accompany them.”

But underlying all the outreach activity, he said, “We have to believe in the mercy of God and the grace of God to trigger conversion.”

The questions of ministry to homosexuals has come up in the synod, Archbishop Cupich said. “That discussion, it is clear to me, needs to mature in the life of the church. If we are really going to accompany people, we have to first of all engage them.”

“The words accompaniment, integration and reconciliation continue to be repeated in the synod,” he said, and the church needs to find a way to transform those words into real action on behalf of all people, including people who are gay or the divorced and civilly married “or other people who feel disenfranchised.”

On the issue of finding possible ways to lead the divorced and civilly remarried back to full participation in church life, including reception of the sacraments, Archbishop Cupich said synod members have been clear in their positions and those positions are diverse. Some, like the German bishops, see it as an urgent obligation for the church while others say it is impossible without weakening church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.

The divorced and remarried, he said, must be ministered to on “a case-by-case basis.”

General principles are essential, he said, but ministry — like a mother’s love — adapts to meet the needs of real-life situations.

Some Catholics need their bishops and priests to speak clearly and firmly, while others need their ministers to demonstrate humility and a desire to search together for the best way to live out God’s call, he said.

The pull of those two demands is something the archbishop said he has felt for 40 years as a priest. Archbishop Cupich added that he had an archbishop friend who claimed he wanted his tombstone to read, “I tried to treat you like adults.”

“We really do have to have an adult Catholic response to living the Christian life. That is, I think, where the Holy Father is leading us. We have the means by which we can help people come to decisions — important decisions — about how they live their Christian life” through prayer and discernment.

Religious education “cannot be just about giving people the fixed doctrines,” he said. It must also show them “the path the church has outlined for making prudent decisions. We have documents that really do help us do that,” including a document from the International Theological Commission from 2009 on natural law and moral decision-making.

In a section on “The moral dispositions of the person and his concrete action,” the document discusses the formation of the conscience with an explanation of moral norms, but also how the person must be helped to apply those norms in his or her real life.

“We can’t just refer to doctrines as though they are syllogisms that we deduce a conclusion to,” Archbishop Cupich said. “There has to be the integration of the person’s circumstances, case by case.”

Asked if the case-by-case approach also applies to pastoral ministry to homosexual persons, the archbishop responded: “Gay people are human beings, too, and they have a conscience. And my role as a pastor is to help them discern what the will of God is by looking at the objective moral teaching of the church, yet at the same time helping them — through a period of discernment — to understand what God is calling them to at that point.”

“We have to make sure that we don’t pigeonhole one group as if they aren’t part of the human family, as though there is a different set of rules for them,” he said.

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Synod should reflect on possibly allowing female deacons, says archbishop

Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Gatineau, Quebec, arrives for the opening Mass of the Synod of Bishops on the family celebrated by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Basilica Oct. 4. (CNS/Paul Haring)
Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Gatineau, Quebec, arrives for the opening Mass of the Synod of Bishops on the family celebrated by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica Oct. 4.

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Gatineau, Quebec, said the synod should reflect on the possibility of allowing for female deacons as it seeks ways to open up more opportunities for women in church life.

Where possible, qualified women should be given higher positions and decision-making authority within church structures and new opportunities in ministry, he told Catholic News Service Oct. 6.

Discussing a number of proposals he offered the synod fathers to think about, he said, “I think we should really start looking seriously at the possibility of ordaining women deacons because the diaconate in the church’s tradition has been defined as not being ordered toward priesthood but toward ministry.”

Currently, the Catholic Church permits only men to be ordained as deacons. Deacons can preach and preside at baptisms, funerals and weddings, but may not celebrate Mass or hear confessions.

Speaking to participants at the Synod of Bishops on the family Oct. 6, Archbishop Durocher said he dedicated his three-minute intervention to the role of women in the church — one of the many themes highlighted in the synod’s working document.

The working document, which is guiding the first three weeks of the synod’s discussions, proposed giving women greater responsibility in the church, particularly through involving them in “the decision-making process, their participation — not simply in a formal way — in the governing of some institutions; and their involvement in the formation of ordained ministers.”

 

 

Archbishop Durocher, who recently ended his term as president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, told CNS that much of his brief talk was focused on the lingering problem of violence against women, including domestic violence. He said the World Health Organization estimates that 30 percent of women worldwide experience violence by their partner.

He reminded the synod fathers that in the apostolic exhortation “Familiaris Consortio” in 1981, St. John Paul II basically told the church that “we have to make a concerted and clear effort to make sure that there is no more degradation of women in our world, particularly in marriage. And I said, ‘Well, here we are 30 years later and we’re still facing these kinds of numbers.’”

He said he recommended one thing they could do to address this problem was, “as a synod, clearly state that you cannot justify the domination of men over women — certainly not violence — through biblical interpretation,” particularly incorrect interpretations of St. Paul’s call for women to be submissive to their husbands.

In his presentation the archbishop also noted that Pope Benedict XVI had talked about the question of new ministries for women in the church. “It’s a just question to ask. Shouldn’t we be opening up new venues for ministry of women in the church?” he said.

In addition to the possibility of allowing for women deacons, he said he also proposed that women be hired for “decision-making jobs” that could be opened to women in the Roman Curia, diocesan chanceries and large-scale church initiatives and events.

Another thing, he said, “would be to look at the possibility of allowing married couples — men and women, who have been properly trained and accompanied — to speak during Sunday homilies so that they can testify, give witness to the relationship between God’s word and their own marriage life and their own life as families.”

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Before Pope Francis Met Kim Davis, He Met With Gay Ex-Student

By and

 

Ever since it became public that Pope Francis met in Washington with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, the questions have been swirling: Why did he meet with her, and was it meant as a political statement?

As it turns out, the Vatican said on Friday, the pope did not mean to endorse Ms. Davis’s views. It also said he gave her no more than a typical brief greeting, despite what her lawyer described.

Instead, the Vatican said that Francis gave only one “real audience”: to someone later identified as one of his former students, Yayo Grassi, a gay man in Washington who says he brought his partner of 19 years to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington for a reunion. They even shot video.

The disclosure, after the Vatican’s unusual attempt to correct the impressions left by Francis’ meeting with Ms. Davis, added to days of speculation about whether Francis intended to send a message on the place of gays in the church, or conscientious objection, and whether his advisers had fully briefed him on Ms. Davis, or had their own agenda.

The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

“The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

On the other hand, Mr. Grassi, a 67-year-old caterer, told The New York Times that he and the pontiff have known each other since the 1960s, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as the future pope was then called, taught him literature and psychology at the Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción, a Jesuit high school in Santa Fe, Argentina.

Mr. Grassi said that he had resumed contact with the future pope years later, when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires. He also visited the pope at the Vatican in September 2013, and later contacted his office to ask for an audience in Washington.

“Once I saw how busy and exhausting his schedule was in D.C., I wrote back to him saying perhaps it would be better to meet some other time,” Mr. Grassi said. “Then he called me on the phone and he told me that he would love to give me a hug in Washington.”

Mr. Grassi said that he had been accompanied by his partner of 19 years, Iwan Bagus, as well as four friends, and that the meeting took place at the Vatican Embassy on Sept. 23 — a day before Ms. Davis met the pope.

Mr. Grassi said that Francis had told him to arrange the visit through the office of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the papal nuncio, or envoy, in Washington.

“It was a private meeting, for about 15 to 20 minutes, in which I brought my boyfriend of 19 years,” Mr. Grassi said. His boyfriend, Mr. Bagus, worked on a video that was posted online that showed Francis hugging Mr. Grassi and the others.

Mr. Grassi said the meeting was purely personal. “I don’t think he was trying to say anything in particular,” Mr. Grassi said. “He was just meeting with his ex-student and a very close friend of his.”

Late on Friday, the Vatican confirmed the meeting. “Mr. Yayo Grassi, a former Argentine student of Pope Francis, who had already met other times in the past with the pope, asked to present his mother and several friends to the Pope during the Pope’s stay in Washington, D.C.,” Father Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement.

“As noted in the past, the pope, as pastor, has maintained many personal relationships with people in a spirit of kindness, welcome and dialogue,” the statement added.

Earlier on Friday, the Vatican said that Archbishop Viganò had arranged the pope’s meetings in Washington, including the one with Ms. Davis.

The news of the meeting with Ms. Davis was disclosed late Tuesday night by Ms. Davis’s lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, at the same time it was reported on the website of Inside the Vatican, a conservative publication edited by an American who has covered the Vatican for years.

For nearly eight hours, Vatican officials refused to confirm or deny that the meeting had occurred, before finally confirming it on Wednesday afternoon.

For Francis, the timing of the Davis controversy is not ideal. Beginning Sunday the Vatican is staging a critical three-week meeting of bishops and laypeople to discuss whether to recommend changing their approach to contemporary issues related to the family, like gay couples, single parents or whether divorced and remarried Catholics who have not obtained annulments should be allowed to receive communion.

That meeting, known as a synod, could become a showdown between liberals and conservatives. Francis has spent nearly two years trying to gradually build consensus and has repeatedly stated his desire for a more welcoming, merciful outreach — even as he has not signaled any willingness to change church doctrine.

News of his meeting with Ms. Davis buoyed Christian conservatives, who had been dismayed that the pope, in his emphasis on the poor, barely mentioned issues like abortion and homosexuality during his visit to Washington, New York and Philadelphia. It also puzzled and angered more liberal observers.

It also led observers of the Vatican to speculate about whether the encounter with Ms. Davis was a signal of support for her cause. Francis has emphasized that he strongly believes in conscientious objection as a human right, a position he reaffirmed on his plane ride home.

On Friday, the Vatican appeared to be distancing itself from Ms. Davis’s camp. Father Lombardi’s statement said that the brief meeting “has continued to provoke comments and discussion,” and that he was providing clarification “in order to contribute to an objective understanding of what transpired.”

The Vatican’s statement prompted reactions on both sides of the Atlantic.

In a phone interview on Friday, Mr. Staver said the meeting had been called by the Vatican.

“This was a private meeting initiated by the Vatican,” Mr. Staver said. “My contacts were Vatican officials in the United States. And I was informed the request came directly from the pontiff.”

Mr. Staver said the request had come on Sept. 14, the day Ms. Davis returned to work after her release from jail. Ms. Davis and her husband were picked up at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in a tan van by private security guards who spoke Italian, he said. She had been instructed to change her hairstyle so she would not be identified.

Mr. Staver said Ms. Davis was not among a large group of people meeting the pope. She saw no one else waiting to see the pope and no one else saw her. “Just think about it. If she was in a line, there is no way this could have been kept secret for five days,” he said.

But at the Vatican on Friday, a spokesman, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, said the invitation had been extended by the nuncio’s office — not from Rome.

“Who brought her in? The nuncio,” said Father Rosica, who is working with the Vatican’s media office in advance of a major meeting of bishops that begins this weekend. “The Nunciature was able to bring in donors, benefactors.”

Father Rosica said of the controversy: “I would simply say: Her case is a very complex case. It’s got all kinds of intricacies. Was there an opportunity to brief the pope on this beforehand? I don’t think so. A list is given — these are the people you are going to meet.”

Mr. Staver, for his part, said he had been briefly introduced to Archbishop Viganò in April, when he spoke at a large rally in Washington against same-sex marriage, before the Supreme Court ruled on the issue.

The Rev. James Martin, editor at large of the Jesuit magazine America, had cautioned in an article this week that the pope meets many well-wishers on his trips, and that news of the meeting with Ms. Davis had been manipulated.

“I was very disappointed to see the pope having been used that way, and that his willingness to be friendly to someone was turned against him,” Father Martin said in an interview on Friday. “What may originally have prevented them from issuing a statement was the desire not to give this story too much air. But what they eventually came to realize was that they needed to correct some gross misrepresentations of what had happened. It shows that Pope Francis met with many people on the trip, and that she was simply another person who he tried to be kind to.”

Father Rosica’s statement seemed to square with that account.

Asked on Friday if the Vatican press office had been unaware that Ms. Davis had met the pope, Father Rosica said: “No, but I think we may not have been aware of the full impact of the meeting. It is very difficult sometimes when you are looking at things in America from here.”

A receptionist who answered the phone at the Vatican Embassy in Washington on Friday said, “The nuncio does not deny that the meeting took place, but would not make any further comment.”

She said the embassy did not have its own spokesman, and that no other officials there would comment.

Archbishop Viganò is turning 75 in January, the age at which bishops must submit a formal request to the Vatican asking for permission to resign. These requests are not automatically accepted, and bishops often stay in their appointments well past age 75. But if Archbishop Viganò is held responsible for what is seen as a grave misstep on an important papal trip, he is likely to be removed at the first respectable opportunity, according to several church analysts.

“Nobody in the Catholic Church wants another Regensburg,” said Massimo Faggioli, an associate professor of theology and director of the Institute for Catholicism and Citizenship at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. He was referring to the backlash after Pope Benedict XVI, Francis’ predecessor, gave a speech in Regensburg, Germany, that appeared to denigrate Islam.

“This was not as serious as Regensburg, when Benedict read his own speech,” Dr. Faggioli said about the meeting attended by Ms. Davis. “But the pope has to be able to rely on his own system, and in this case the system failed him. The question is, was it a mistake, or was it done with full knowledge of how toxic she was?”

The meeting with Ms. Davis was clearly a misstep, Dr. Faggioli said, “because the whole trip to the United States he very carefully didn’t want to give the impression that he was being politicized by any side.”

He added, “And this thing is the most politicized thing that you can imagine.”

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At pallium Mass, Cupich calls for mercy toward nontraditional families

Archbishop Carlo Viganó formally presented the pallium to Archbishop Blase Cupich during a ceremony in Chicago on Aug. 23. (John Pham / Saint Joseph College Seminary)
Archbishop Carlo Viganó formally presented the pallium to Archbishop Blase Cupich during a ceremony in Chicago on Aug. 23.

By Michael O’Loughlin

CHICAGO – Catholics must avoid being rigid, embrace change, and show mercy, not harsh judgment, toward nontraditional families.

That was the message from Chicago’s Archbishop Blase CupichSunday afternoon after receiving his pallium, a wool stole that is a piece of liturgical regalia symbolizing his connection to the pope, from the papal ambassador to the United States.

In a 15-minute homily, Cupich said bishops and other Catholics should avoid “absolutizing one particular era” by remembering the richness and diversity of their faith.

At the same time, the Church should be “open to new avenues and creativity when it comes to accommodating families, particularly those who are broken, those who have suffered” and “not settle for solutions that no longer work, expressions that no longer inspire, and ways of working that stifle creativity and collaboration.”

He cited St. John XXIII, a reformer pope credited with ushering the Catholic Church into the modern era with his launch of the Second Vatican Council, and Pope Francis, highlighting his calls to protect the environment and to find new approaches to pastoral ministry.

Cupich said that John XXIII, canonized by Francis last year, “called the entire Church to a fresh appreciation of the ancient teaching of the medicine of mercy in an era when many in the Church preferred the narrow path of severity and condemnation.”

Cupich’s remarks were delivered just weeks before Pope Francis’ visit to the United States next month and the Synod on the Family at the Vatican in October, to which Cupich is expected to be named a delegate by Pope Francis.

It’s at the synod that bishops will continue a discussion of family life, including hot-button topics such as Communion for divorced-and-remarried Catholics, contraception, and sexuality — discussions that began last fall.

It was against this backdrop that Cupich described the Church today as “a community that goes after the lost sheep.”

“The task is not just to find them and bring them home,” he said, “but to lift them up high, to shoulder level, where they can begin to see and live a new life, a life of faith.”

Speaking to nearly 20 other bishops, dozens of priests from across Illinois and from his former diocese of Spokane, Wash., and to hundreds of worshipers gathered in the pews, Cupich said the Petrine ministry reminds us “of the whole story of God’s mighty deeds, which continues to develop in every age under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

Sunday’s nearly two-hour ceremony marked a new way of conferring the pallium — a white wool stole — on archbishops.

For more than three decades, newly appointed archbishops traveled to Rome to receive the stole each June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, but Pope Francis announced changes earlier this year.

Although Cupich and other newly appointed archbishops received their palliums when they traveled to Rome in June, they do not don them until the pope’s US ambassador, or nuncio, presents the stole formally during a ceremony in the bishops’ home archdioceses.

The pallium contains six black crosses, three of which are adorned with gold pins symbolizing the nails used in Jesus’ crucifixion. Some of the wool is taken from lambs the pope blessed on the feast of St. Agnes, and the ends are colored black to mimic a lamb’s hoof, symbolic of an archbishop’s role as shepherd.

Archbishop Carlo Viganó, the nuncio, called the pallium “a symbol of unity of your archbishop with the Holy Father.”

Cupich was appointed by Pope Francis to lead the nation’s third largest archdiocese — the Chicago area boasts more than 2 million Catholics — last November. The two met for the first time during a lengthy tête-à-tête in Rome in June.

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Paedophile priests: Pope Francis set up tribunal

Pope Francis has approved the creation of a tribunal to hear cases of bishops accused of covering up child abuse by paedophile priests.

pope francis 003

The unprecedented move followed a recommendation from the Pope’s newly created panel on clerical sex abuse.

The tribunal will have the power to punish bishops who failed to protect young victims.

Survivors’ groups have long called for the Vatican to do more to make bishops accountable for abuse on their watch.

Last year, the UN strongly criticised the Church for failing to stamp out abuse and for allowing cover-ups.

A statement from the Vatican said the department would come under the auspices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Its aim would be “to judge bishops with regard to crimes of the abuse of office when connected to the abuse of minors”, the statement added.

Catholic Church abuse scandals

•Germany – A priest, named only as Andreas L, admitted in 2012 to 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys over a decade

•United States – Revelations about abuses in the 1990s by two Boston priests, Paul Shanley and John Geoghan, caused public outrage

•Belgium – The bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned in April 2010 after admitting that he had sexually abused a boy for years

•Italy – The Catholic Church in Italy admitted in 2010 that about 100 cases of paedophile priests had been reported over 10 years

•Ireland – A 2009 report found that sexual and psychological abuse was “endemic” in Catholic-run industrial schools and orphanages for most of 20th Century

Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said bishops could also be judged if they had failed to prevent abuse from taking place.

Initially the complaints would be investigated by one of three Vatican departments, depending on whose jurisdiction the bishops were under.

They would then be judged by the doctrinal department.

Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the UK’s National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), said the move was good news for victims.

“We would welcome anything which looks closely at clerical abuse and shows more openness from the Church,” she added.

NAPAC’s founder Peter Saunders is part of the Vatican advisory commission which recommended the step.

The panel was set up by Pope Francis in 2013 to help dioceses improve abuse prevention measures and support victims. It is made up of 17 clerics and lay people from around the world.
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