Author Archives: Tereza Ma

St. Thomas Aquinas meets bluegrass in best-selling album by Dominicans

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By Kelly Sankowski
WASHINGTON (CNS) – Bluegrass music may not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of Dominicans, but for the 10 Dominican brothers and priests at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington who recently released their debut album, “The Hillbilly Thomists,” the two have a lot in common.”The life of holiness is the happiest life. It is the good life,” said Brother Jonah Teller, who plays guitar on the album. “I was drawn, and I think a lot of men are drawn, by the joy the brothers exhibit … to be living this life, to be saving our souls, to be drawing closer to Jesus, and to do it with brothers.”
Likewise, while listening to bluegrass music, “there is a real happiness that is just drawn out of you,” he said. “So I think that we’re geared to be happy, and bluegrass lets you be happy in a really expressive way.”
That happiness was tangible as six of the Hillbilly Thomists played to a standing-room-only crowd April 11 at the Catholic Information Center in Washington. Middle-age men tapped their feet and babies clapped their hands to the tunes. The musicians laughed with each other as they created the proper setting for bluegrass music, which they said is usually played informally around a kitchen table.
Brother Simon Teller, who plays the fiddle in the new album, is Brother Jonah’s brother. They grew up in Cincinnati, attending St. Gertrude Parish, where Dominicans in the religious order’s Eastern province go for their novitiate year.
Looking through old family photos, Brother Simon found one of himself as a 13-year-old, playing the fiddle alongside now-Father Thomas Joseph White, who had begun playing the bluegrass mandolin after his novice master told all novices to take up a hobby.
Little did the 13-year-old know that he would later wear a similar white habit and again play the fiddle alongside Father White, who is now an associate professor of systematic theology at the Dominican House of Studies.
Father White and Father Austin Litke founded the Hillbilly Thomists in the early 2000s. They chose the name from a quote by Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, who said: “Everybody who has read ‘Wise Blood’ thinks I’m a hillbilly nihilist, whereas … I’m a hillbilly Thomist.”
Brother Justin Bolger was a professional touring musician and a sound engineer before entering the Dominican order. Brother Joseph Hagan and others had studied music in college. Brother Simon had spent summers as a street musician in Asheville, North Carolina.
“The different skills we brought fit well together,” said Brother Joseph, who plays the drums. “Obviously, we came together primarily for God. … We aren’t just people who have skills and (who) use each other to make an album.”
Unless they are practicing for a specific gig, the Hillbilly Thomists’ schedule of playing together is pretty fluid.
“It is a true extension of our fraternal life,” Brother Jonah told the Catholic Standard, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington.
The product of the brothers’ fun pastime has received a response that none anticipated. It was in the top 10 of the bluegrass Billboard charts for about 10 weeks, at one point reaching the No. 3 spot, and it also reached the top 20 of all albums on Amazon. People from around the world are listening to it, reviewing it and often learning about St. Thomas Aquinas in the process, as they Google, “What is a Thomist?”
Country and bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs stopped by the Dominican House of Studies to visit the Hillbilly Thomists and, before playing bluegrass with them, joined them for prayer and lunch.
The impetus for the album was as a fundraiser, since the album’s proceeds go to the Dominican House of Studies, but the album also is a form of preaching, said Brother Simon. The Dominicans also are known as the Order of Preachers.
The songs are “about Christ and grace and about very human things like death,” he said. The themes are found in tracks such as “What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul?” inviting the listener to contemplate dying and meeting God; “Poor Wayfaring Stranger,” reflecting the experience of pilgrimage; and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” invoking an image of relying on God.
People have told the brothers that they see the album as something that they can send to their children who have fallen away from the Church or share with their non-Catholic friends, said Brother Simon. It is considered “cultural, but at the core of it is Christianity,” he said.
While the songs have deep and complex theological themes, part of the beauty of the bluegrass is its simplicity, said Brother Joseph.
“The lyrics are very prayerful, if not just simply prayers,” he said.
Since they take vows of obedience, Brother Simon said it is difficult to talk about the future of the band, but added, “We’re all excited to see where the Lord takes it.”

(Sankowski is on the staff of the Catholic Standard, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington.)

The Hillbilly Thomists perform at the Catholic Information Center in Washington April 11. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn) See HILLBILLY-THOMISTS April 19, 2018.

Pope meets his advisory commission on child protection

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By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – In its efforts to help advise the pope, the Roman Curia, bishops’ conferences and local churches on protecting minors from abuse, a Vatican commission listened to abuse survivors from Great Britain and discussed the results of Australia’s public inquiry into its country’s institutional responses to abuse.
The plenary assembly of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) April 20-22 was the first gathering with a group of new members appointed in February.
Pope Francis met with the commission members in a private audience April 21 and had met the day before with Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, who is president of the 17-member commission. The commission secretary is U.S. Msgr. Robert W. Oliver, a Boston priest, canon lawyer and former promotor of justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The pope said he wanted to confirm the commission’s statutes, which were issued April 21, 2015, “ad experimentum” for a period of three years, according to a press statement by the commission April 22.
During their meeting, according to the statement, members “heard presentations on ‘The outcome of the Australian Royal Commission,’ on ‘The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child,’ and on ‘The role of faith communities in overcoming abuse trauma.'”
Members also listened to the survivor advisory panel of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission from England and Wales. An unidentified speaker from the advisory panel said, “I hope our visit will help the PCPM to develop a wider network of survivors who are willing to advise and support the ongoing work of the commission in a similar way.”
The panel’s contribution was meant to reflect the papal commission’s “ongoing commitment to ensuring that the thoughts and contributions of people who have been abused inform all aspects of the commission’s work,” the statement said, as well as “help the commission to develop effective ways to integrate the voice of survivors into the life and ministry of the church.”
After Pope Francis founded the commission in 2014, two abuse survivors were named as members. However, one survivor, Peter Saunders, was asked to take a leave of absence in 2016 after he publicly criticized the way some church leaders had handled accusations of abuse; the other survivor, Marie Collins, quit the group in 2017 over what she described as resistance coming from Vatican offices against implementing recommendations.
In February, the pope reconfirmed nine new members, including Teresa Kettelkamp, a former colonel in the Illinois State Police and former director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection.

‘Is my dad in heaven?’ little boy asks pope

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By Cindy Wooden
ROME (CNS) – After circling a massive, crumbling public housing complex on the outskirts of Rome, Pope Francis had an emotional encounter with the neighborhood’s children.
Question-and-answer sessions with youngsters are a standard part of Pope Francis’ parish visits. And, at St. Paul of the Cross parish April 15, there were the usual questions like, “How did you feel when you were elected pope?”
But then it was Emanuele’s turn. The young boy smiled at the pope as he approached the microphone. But then froze. “I can’t do it,” Emanuele said.
Msgr. Leonardo Sapienza, a papal aide, encouraged the boy, but he kept saying, “I can’t.”
“Come, come to me, Emanuele,” the pope said. “Come and whisper it in my ear.”
Msgr. Sapienza helped the boy up to the platform where the pope was seated. Emanuele was sobbing by that point, and Pope Francis enveloped him in a big embrace, patting his head and speaking softly to him.
With their heads touching, the pope and the boy spoke privately to each other before Emanuele returned to his seat.
“If only we could all cry like Emanuele when we have an ache in our hearts like he has,” the pope told the children. “He was crying for his father and had the courage to do it in front of us because in his heart there is love for his father.”
Pope Francis said he had asked Emanuele if he could share the boy’s question and the boy agreed. “‘A little while ago my father passed away. He was a nonbeliever, but he had all four of his children baptized. He was a good man. Is dad in heaven?'”
“How beautiful to hear a son say of his father, ‘He was good,'” the pope told the children. “And what a beautiful witness of a son who inherited the strength of his father, who had the courage to cry in front of all of us. If that man was able to make his children like that, then it’s true, he was a good man. He was a good man.
“That man did not have the gift of faith, he wasn’t a believer, but he had his children baptized. He had a good heart,” Pope Francis said.
“God is the one who says who goes to heaven,” the pope explained.
The next step in answering Emanuele’s question, he said, would be to think about what God is like and, especially, what kind of heart God has. “What do you think? A father’s heart. God has a dad’s heart. And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptized his children and gave them that bravura, do you think God would be able to leave him far from himself?”
“Does God abandon his children?” the pope asked. “Does God abandon his children when they are good?”
The children shouted, “No.”
“There, Emanuele, that is the answer,” the pope told the boy. “God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much.”
Pope Francis encouraged Emanuele to “talk to your dad; pray to your dad.”
Earlier, a young girl named Carlotta also asked the pope a delicate question: “When we are baptized, we become children of God. People who aren’t baptized, are they not children of God?”

Pope Francis embraces Emanuele, a boy whose father died, as he visits St. Paul of the Cross Parish in Rome April 15. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

“What does your heart tell you?” the pope asked Carlotta. She said, they are, too.
“Right, and I’ll explain,” the pope told her. “We are all children of God. Everyone. Everyone.”
The nonbaptized, members of other religions, those who worship idols, “even the mafiosi,” who terrorize the neighborhood around the parish, are children of God, though “they prefer to behave like children of the devil,” he said.
“God created everyone, loves everyone and put in everyone’s heart a conscience so they would recognize what is good and distinguish it from what is bad,” the pope said.
The difference, he said, is that “when you were baptized, the Holy Spirit entered into that conscience and reinforced your belonging to God and, in that sense, you became more of a daughter of God because you’re a child of God like everyone, but with the strength of the Holy Spirit.”

Timely prescription for holiness

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guest Column
With his new apostolic exhortation on holiness, “Gaudete et Exsultate” (“Rejoice and Be Glad”), Pope Francis delivered an easy-to-read guide to living an authentic Christian life in today’s world.
Don’t be afraid of holiness, he wrote, for “it will take away none of your energy, vitality or joy.”
God calls each of us to be holy “by living our lives with love and bearing witness in everything we do,” the pope wrote.
He cited as an example a woman who refuses to gossip with a neighbor, returns home and listens patiently to her child even though she is tired, prays the rosary and later meets a poor person and offers him a kind word.
The 104-page document, released April 9, is a timely reminder that we all need to dial down the intensity as we navigate the fast-moving journey of modern life.
Some of the specific issues addressed in the document – behavior on social media and the welcome of migrants – could have been taken from the day’s headlines.
For instance, although he’s one of the world’s most popular social media figures, with more than 40 million Twitter followers and 5.3 million on Instagram, Pope Francis warned against the “verbal violence” found online. “Even in Catholic media, limits can be overstepped, defamation and slander can become commonplace, and all ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be abandoned,” he wrote.
On the controversial topic of migrants, the pope said the condition of migrants is often considered, including by some Catholics, to be a lesser issue than “grave” bioethical matters such as abortion. But kindness to the poor and the abandoned is a basic tenet of Christianity, “not a notion invented by some pope, or a momentary fad.”
The pope also wrote explicitly and at length about the devil as an evil force who poisons us with “hatred, desolation, envy and vice,” and warned us to be on guard. Intentional or not, that section of the document seems to put to rest a recent uproar caused by an elderly Italian journalist who claimed the pope told him he did not believe in the existence of hell.
Overall, though, the pope’s road map to holiness is rooted in Catholic traditions from the beatitudes to the Jesuits’ call for “finding God in all things” to the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux.
The simple acts of daily living, the kindnesses we extend to others and, yes, the care we give to ourselves are all part of it, the pope wrote.
And while we should not mistake excessive piety for holiness, Pope Francis called on us to cultivate a prayer life, become involved with a parish, receive the sacraments and examine our conscience regularly as part of a holy life.
We heartily endorse that prescription, and we heartily endorse the notion that God’s call on us to live a holy life requires a personal response given our individual state in life, talents and circumstance.
To be sure, there are challenges in the pursuit of holiness in a world hostile to the notion, but nothing we do is without challenge – and attaining a holy life is cause to “rejoice and be glad.”

(This is an unsigned editorial from the April 12 issue of Catholic New York, newspaper of the Archdiocese of New York.)

Married life’s stages of love

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Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD,

Reflections on Life
By Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD
When a man and woman are joined in marriage as young people, the first stage of their love is easy to discern. It is safe to call their first decade of marriage ten years of passion, for it was the magnet of passionate love that first drew them to communicate with each other. Percy Sledge sang it best, “When a man loves a woman, can’t keep his mind on nothing else!” This is how most marriages begin.
The exception might be the case where a couple were friends (storge, the Greek for friendship love) before eros (Greek for erotic love) was ignited. In many ways, experiencing storge before eros is a much better guarantee of lasting love.
In that first decade of marital love, the chemical power and magic of estrogen and testosterone mix with the outreach and imagination of the human longing for love to create the human foundation for the treasure of love. That foundation we refer to as young love that has all the ingredients for fulfilling, lasting love, but must be tested, tempered and matured in the cauldron of everyday living. Those who refuse to grow will soon find that the wellspring of their love has been poisoned.
Ten years of fashion can be a description of the second decade of marital love. By then, a young couple have hit their stride in love and family life, tiptoeing into social life. Where children have entered their life, the couple is keenly aware of and faithful to their first obligation of rearing and educating their children. As their children grow, the young parents are gradually able to participate a bit in social life.
With most of the initial fire of passion still burning, they nevertheless feel freer to integrate their statements of fashion in social circles with the wonders of love and family. Almost imperceptibly, their initial decade of passion is beginning to morph into ten years of fashion, indicating that they are now a settled couple.
Of course, not consciously taking stock of the nature of their decades of married life, the settled couple move into ten years of compassion. No longer hot, the fire of passion is now warm and comfortable, leaving lots of room for heartfelt compassion and generous sharing among their own family members and in their workaday contacts with friends, coworkers and strangers alike. We say of a couple who are at this juncture in life that they are mellowing out. The years or decades between these stages of love are not necessarily well-defined.
Somewhere in this love mix, there are usually three other forms of love.
Pragma (the Greek for everyday business) is the name given to pragmatic love that does not allow itself to get lost in the fire of erotic love or the closeness of friendship love. Usually, pragmatic love is intimately tied into the pedestrian personality of an individual whose bent is to make everything, including love, as practical as possible.
Pragmatic love can be of great importance in our human quest for love, for it keeps our feet on the ground while our heart and mind explore the heights of emotion and human sentiments. Pragma should be complementary to all other forms of love.
Ludus, the Latin word for play or game, is the name given to ludic love that is lighthearted and playful. Full of cheerfulness, ludic lovers are jovial and prone to tease each other, fulfilling the old saying, “People who love each other tease each other.” As in the case of pragmatic love, ludic love is closely related to the personal temperament of individual lovers. A healthy amount of playfulness is desirable in an intimate relationship, except where the personalities of the lovers make it annoying.
At this point, it should be obvious that the makings of marital bliss are like a wonderful cake whose recipe consists of certain desirable ingredients. If one uses those ingredients in proper proportions, they will balance off and merge into the longed-for product. The ingredients in this case are love of friendship (storge), erotic love (eros), pragmatic love (pragma), ludic love (ludus) and benevolent love.
Agape, the Greek for benevolent love, the highest form of love predicated of God alone (from the Latin bene = well and volens = wishing), means well-wishing, the same as the Christmas message of “Peace on earth, good will to people.”
Finally, pulling all forms of love together, we wish endless years of Agape for married couples as well as for the unmarried. Although properly predicated of God alone, we humans do our best to work benevolent love into our lives, trusting that agape will animate and supercharge storge, eros, pragma and ludus.
Seldom do Italians literally say, “I love you,” which would be “Ti amo” in Italian (Te amo in Latin). Usually, they tell the beloved, “Ti voglio bene,” that means literally, “I wish you well.” That is agape, benevolent love.,
“God is love, and all who abide in love abide in God and God in them.” (1 John 4:16)

(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)

Regional Encuentros gain momentum as national event looms

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Regional meetings are the latest phase of a multiyear preparation process for “V Encuentro,” or the Fifth National Encuentro, to be held Sept. 20-23 in Grapevine, Texas. Previous national encuentros were held in 1972, 1977, 1985 and 2000.
First came parish-level encuentros, then diocesan gatherings and now the regional meetings. A team from the Diocese of Jackson attended the regional meeting held in Miami, Florida, earlier this year and will also attend the national gathering. As the regional meetings progress, some common themes and messages are emerging. What follows are brief overviews of several other regional V Encuentro meetings.

Answer call to discipleship by addressing church’s needs, delegates told
SAN ANTONIO (CNS) – Answer the call to missionary discipleship by addressing the needs of your church. Meet young people where they are and just listen. Improve catechetical resources and prepare future leaders. These were some of the strategies discussed by more than 800 delegates representing 18 Catholic dioceses in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, as they participated in a bilingual three-day Region X encuentro in San Antonio April 13-15.
“What is the Holy Spirit calling us to at this moment as a region?” asked Ken Johnson-Mondragon, the Fifth National Encuentro’s research coordinator, as he presented to delegates in San Antonio a regional working document based on diocesan findings. He added that the conversations among participants while using the document as a discernment tool were most important.
The delegates worked in about 80 small groups to talk about challenges, opportunities and successful practices in areas like evangelization and mission, faith formation and catechesis, youth, family ministry, immigration and theology. Their recommendations will be presented before the national encuentro in Grapevine.
According to the working document, Hispanic Catholics make up 6 million of the estimated 8.4 million Catholics living in the U.S. church’s episcopal Region X. Some dioceses in the region, like Beaumont and Fort Worth, Texas, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Little Rock, Arkansas, have seen their Hispanic population increase more than 100 percent between 2006 and 2016.

All Catholics have duty to ‘walk with’ their neighbors, bishop says
ALEXANDRIA, Minn. (CNS) – The energetic spirit of the 200-plus people who gathered in Alexandria April 13 and 14 for the Region VIII encuentro captured the heart of St. Cloud’s Bishop Donald J. Kettler. The event was one of the year’s highlights for him, he said during a presentation to the gathering. Later in an interview with The Visitor, St. Cloud’s diocesan newspaper, he said that he was impressed with the “willingness among the people to develop their faith and share their faith. That evangelization spirit is here. I like their enthusiasm and their interest. … There really is an energy here.”
The regional encuentro had seven areas of ministry focus drawn from input given at the diocesan level: leadership development and pastoral training, families, youth and young adults, evangelization and mission, faith formation and catechesis, liturgy and spirituality, and immigration.
In addition to Bishop Kettler, other bishops attending were Auxiliary Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of St. Paul and Minneapolis and Bishop Robert D. Gruss of Rapid City, South Dakota.

Hispanic Catholics seen as the emerging ‘voice, conscience’ of church
PHOENIX (CNS) – Hispanic Catholics are being called “to be the ecclesial voice and conscience of the church in the U.S.,” said Hosffman Ospino, a leading expert on the intersection of Catholicism and Latino culture. “When the Hispanic Catholic community speaks, the church speaks,” he told participants in Phoenix for the Southwestern Regional Encuentro.
The Colombian-born Ospino, the final keynote speaker at the gathering, is an associate professor of theology and religious education at Boston College. He is a member of the leadership team for the V Encuentro.
The Feb. 23-25 regional in Phoenix drew about 480 delegates from 10 Catholic dioceses in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, which are in the U.S. church’s episcopal Region XIII. The delegates reviewed the diocesan reports and discussed recommendations for consideration in Grapevine in September. Ospino spoke only in Spanish; there was simultaneous translation of his remarks. His topic was “Bearing Fruit,” on the beneficial effects of the integration of Spanish-speaking Catholics into American church life.

Retired Bishop Foley, of Birmingham, dies at age 88

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala – (CNS) Bishop David E. Foley, retired bishop of the Diocese of Birmingham, died April 17 at the St. John Vianney Residence for Priests in Birmingham. He was 88.
News reports said he had been battling cancer.
His funeral Mass was elebrated April 23 by Mobile Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Birmingham with burial immediately following in the cathedral’s courtyard.

Now-retired Pope Benedict XVI greets retired Bishop David E. Foley of Birmingham, Ala., during a 2012 meeting at the Vatican. Bishop Foley died April 17 at the St. John Vianney Residence for Priests in Birmingham. He was 88. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano) See OBIT-FOLEY April 18, 2018.

Bishop Foley served 11 years as bishop of Birmingham. He submitted his resignation in 2005 at age 75 as required by canon law. He was then chosen by the diocesan consultors to serve for two and a half years as administrator of the diocese prior to the installation of Bishop Baker.
The bishop’s retirement was in name only: He never stopped being a priest. He would spend Christmas and Thanksgiving at prisons, would celebrate Mass at any parish when needed and would regularly help with confirmations.
Always humble, he quietly continued his ministry in recent years: visiting the sick at hospitals each week and celebrating Mass once a week for the elderly who were unable to travel.
The bishop was born Feb. 3, 1930, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He moved to Washington with his family when he was 4. His father was a special assistant to the U.S. attorney general from 1934 to 1962.
After studies at St. Charles College in Catonsville, Maryland, and St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Father Foley was ordained a priest of the Washington Archdiocese May 26, 1956.
Over the next three decades, he held a series of parish posts, including pastorates from 1970 to 1986, and served on various archdiocesan committees. He was made archdiocesan secretary for clergy in February 1986, shortly before he was named auxiliary bishop of Richmond, Virginia.
For many years, Bishop Foley was a regular guest on the “Pillars of Faith” program broadcast on the Eternal Word Television Network, or EWTN, based in the Birmingham Diocese.
In 2000, he issued new norms for televised Masses produced in his diocese – including most notably EWTN telecasts of the Mass, which air worldwide several times a day. One of the norms specified that when a priest stands at the altar during a televised Mass he is to face the people. Prior to the decree, EWTN regularly featured Mass telecasts in which the priest at the altar faced away from the people.
Warsaw said Bishop Foley was “always known for his keen intellect, pastoral sensitivity and powerful preaching.”
He said even though the bishop had occasionally disagreed with Mother Angelica, EWTN’s founder, he frequently visited her after she suffered a stroke and had brain hemorrhage to pray for her.
Less than two weeks before he died, the bishop issued a handwritten note to Catholics in the diocese that was published in parish bulletins the weekend of April 14-15.
The note said he had been blessed in the outpouring of love, cards, spiritual bouquets, phone calls and other greetings in recent days.
“I feel a great desire to respond individually to you. This is just not possible,” he wrote.
The bishop said his illness was progressing “with some suffering and inconvenience” and he appreciated the care he had been receiving.
A statement from the Diocese of Birmingham thanked Hope Hospice, caregivers, doctors, and St. John Vianney Residence for Priests staff for “the superb care given to Bishop Foley during his illness.”

Faith can help cleanse societal waters of racism, says Cardinal Wuerl

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By Mark Zimmermann
WASHINGTON (CNS) – With faith, people can confront and help overcome the evil of racism, Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl said in an April 17 talk at The Catholic University of America.
“The elimination of racism may seem too great a task for any one of us or even for the whole church,” he said. “Yet we place our confidence in the Lord, because in Christ, we are brothers and sisters, one to the other. With Christ, we stand in the spirit of justice, peace and love.”
Cardinal Wuerl, who as the archbishop of Washington is Catholic University’s chancellor, was invited by its president, John Garvey, to speak on his recent pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Racism Today.”
Speaking at the university’s Pryzbyla Center to an audience consisting mostly of seminarians and other students, the cardinal compared racism to a residue that has contaminated streams that flow into the societal well from which people drink. He warned that the unhealthy contaminants causing racism in our culture can be subtle and ubiquitous. “We have the possibility to be that fresh stream of water flowing into the societal well,” he said.
Noting that the U.S. bishops in their 1979 pastoral letter “Brothers and Sisters to Us,” identified racism as a sin, the cardinal said that evil has spanned continents and centuries and continues in today’s world.
“In societies around the world, the social construct of race has been used to classify ‘us’ and ‘them,’ separating those who are seen as ‘different’ — those who come from a different place or look differently or speak a different language,” Cardinal Wuerl said. “This construct has then led to the assertion of innate superiority of one group over the other. This has real destructive effects in society and in the lives of individuals and families.”
He said the concept of race is not a biological reality, but a social construct. “Properly understood, there are not multiple races, but objectively there is only one race – the human race,” he explained. “We are all one species, one people, one human family, albeit manifested in diverse ethnic, cultural and societal ways.”
He added, “We are, all of us, brothers and sisters, children of the same God.”
Quoting from his pastoral letter on racism, Cardinal Wuerl said, “Today we need to acknowledge past sins of racism and, in a spirit of reconciliation, move toward a church and society where the wounds of racism are healed.”
Noting that African-Americans – because of their skin color – have borne “the social scars of denigration and a cultural classification rooted, fostered and experienced in slavery in this nation and the denial of their fundamental human dignity,” he said the societal impacts of racism endure today.
“The context in which our response to racism takes place,” the cardinal said, “must also include a recognition of the lingering effects of slavery and segregation and of the many social inequities that exist, including the disparate negative impact that certain policies have had, including the concentration of people by race in residential neighborhoods, de facto segregation in public schools, with many African-American children being consigned to poor quality schools, the inequities manifested in employment opportunities, health care and incarceration rates.”
In his pastoral letter, Cardinal Wuerl emphasized the importance of church efforts to foster social justice, opportunity and hope in facing those problems.
Speaking in the month that marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Cardinal Wuerl praised him as being first and foremost “a man of faith.”
“His Christian faith is what animated his life and kept him going day after day,” the cardinal said. “Always faithful to the Lord and his Gospel, he also insistently, forcefully, yet without violence, reminded this nation that we are all brothers and sisters, because we are all children of the same God.”
Cardinal Wuerl also praised Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle, the first resident archbishop of Washington in 1948. Immediately he began working to integrate the archdiocese’s schools, six years before the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregation in public schools. Then-Archbishop O’Boyle also gave the invocation at the beginning of the 1963 March on Washington, which featured Rev. King’s immortal “I Have a Dream” speech.
In February, Cardinal Wuerl blessed commemorative bronze plaques honoring unknown enslaved men, women and children buried throughout the Archdiocese of Washington. The plaques will be installed this spring in the archdiocese’s five cemeteries, to prayerfully remember those enslaved people buried in unmarked graves.

(Zimmermann is editor of the Catholic Standard, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington.)

Tome Nota

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El programa “Hands ON + Hearts IN” (Manos ENCIMA + Corazones DENTRO) brinda experiencias en Holly Springs, Mississippi de discernimiento de una semana para mujeres que están considerando la vida como hermanas católicas. No hay costo para los participantes. Las próximas experiencias están programadas para el 7 al 11 de mayo, del 21 al 25 de mayo, del 20 al 24 de agosto y del 10 al 14 de septiembre.

Durante cinco días completos, las mujeres estarán acompañadas por hermanas de varias órdenes para proporcionar servicios prácticos a los necesitados como tutoría de niños, ayudar en una despensa de alimentos, limpieza de hogares para personas mayores, reparar casas dañadas o sirviendo comidas en un comedor de beneficencia.

Todas vivirán en comunidad durante la semana, compartiendo oración, cocina, reflexiones, orientación y mucha diversión. Los solicitantes deben registrarse un mes antes del inicio de un programa específico. Acompañados por los Ministros de Vocaciones, la experiencia de lunes a viernes ofrece una oportunidad práctica para ayudar a los necesitados mientras se discierne la vida como una hermana.
Para obtener más información sobre esta oportunidad de discernir la vida como hermana, contáctese con Hermana Sharon Glumb, SLW sglumb@slw.org; 847-577-5972 ext. 233 (oficina); 601-291-6738 (celular).Campamento Católico
junio 17- 23 niños/as 8 – 11 años

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Deposite sus armas, dicen los obispos mexicanos después de que el segundo sacerdote fuera asesinado

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Por David Agren
CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (CNS) – Sin embargo, otro sacerdote católico mexicano ha sido asesinado en su parroquia, el segundo ataque letal contra el clero en el país en menos de una semana.
El padre Juan Miguel Contreras García fue asesinado a tiros en la parroquia de San Pío de Pietrelcina en el suburbio de Guadalajara de Tlajomulco de Zúñiga. Una declaración del 20 de abril de la fiscalía del estado de Jalisco dijo que el padre Contreras fue confrontado y fusilado en la sacristía. Dos asaltantes posteriormente huyeron en un automóvil compacto. No se le ofreció ningún motivo para el ataque.
El ataque del padre Contreras siguió al asesinato, el 18 de abril, del padre Rubén Alcántara Díaz en el suburbio de Cuautitlán Izcalli, al norte de la ciudad de México. El padre Alcántara fue atacado el 18 de abril, justo antes de las 7 p.m. Misa en la Parroquia de Nuestra Señora del Carmen, la Diócesis de Izcalli dijo en una breve declaración.
La conferencia de obispos mexicanos emitió un llamado a la acción sobre la violencia que consume el país e impacta a la iglesia.
“Estamos haciendo un llamado urgente para construir una cultura de paz y reconciliación. Estos acontecimientos lamentables nos llaman a todos a una conversión mucho más profunda y sincera. Es hora de mirar honestamente nuestra cultura y nuestra sociedad para preguntarnos cómo nos perdimos. respeto por la vida y lo sagrado “, dijo la conferencia en una declaración el 20 de abril.
“Pedimos a los fieles católicos que acompañen a sus sacerdotes con la oración, sobre todo, en el servicio pastoral de las comunidades a las que están encomendados”, continuó la declaración.

El padre Rubén Alcántara Díaz, sacerdote de la parroquia de Nuestra Señora del Carmen en Cuautitlán Izcalli, México, fue asesinado en su parroquia el 18 de abril. Aqui esta fotografíado en 2015 con dos mujeres no identificadas. (Foto CNS cortesía del Padre Greg Luyet)

“Les pedimos a aquellos que no aprecian y les quitan la vida por cualquier motivo que miren hacia la cara amable de Dios, que no solo depongan sus armas, sino también el odio, el rencor, la venganza y todos los sentimientos destructivos”.
El padre Alcántara, quien también era el vicario judicial diocesano, fue abordado por el agresor y estuvo involucrado en una discusión antes del ataque, de acuerdo con los medios mexicanos. El asaltante alegó abuso en sus gritos y huyó de la escena, informó el diario Reforma. Su paradero sigue siendo desconocido.
Los ataques contra el clero se han vuelto comunes en México, donde la tasa de homicidios alcanzó niveles históricos en 2017 y la violencia que consume grandes extensiones del país no ha salvado a la Iglesia católica.
El Catholic Multimedia Center ha contado a 23 sacerdotes asesinados en México desde diciembre de 2012, cuando comenzó la administración de seis años del presidente Enrique Peña Nieto.