U.S. BISHOPS’ PRO-LIFE CHAIRMAN STRONGLY COMMENDS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FOR DISCONTINUING FETAL TISSUE RESEARCH AT NIH
 

WASHINGTON—The Catholic World News reported that Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it will discontinue research conducted within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) involving the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortion and it will ensure that efforts to develop ethical alternatives are funded and accelerated. Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities issued the following statement strongly commending the Trump Administration for this important pro-life action. Archbishop Naumann’s full statement follows:
 
“We strongly commend the Trump Administration for taking actions to move our tax dollars away from research using body parts from aborted babies and toward ethical alternatives. Scavenging and commodifying the body parts of abortion victims for use in research gravely disrespects the bodies of these innocent human beings. Their remains deserve the same respect as that of any other person. To subsidize this degrading practice with our taxpayer dollars is deeply offensive to millions of Americans. Further, the use of fetal tissue procured from aborted babies also can lead to legitimizing the violence of abortion by suggesting that body parts procured in abortion are necessary for research. In truth, research using fetal tissue from aborted babies is neither ethical nor necessary. Researchers have demonstrated the ability to pursue excellence in medical research without collaborating with the abortion industry to further victimize aborted babies.”


SEEK JESUS BEFORE MATERIAL THINGS 

VATICAN CITY --- The Catholic News Agency reported that Pope Francis said that is not wrong to be concerned with the daily necessities of life, but strengthening one’s relationship with Jesus is of far greater importance.   “The Lord invites us not to forget that if we need to worry about material bread, it is even more important to cultivate our relationship with him, to strengthen our faith in him, who is the ‘bread of life,’ come to satisfy our hunger for truth, our hunger for justice, our hunger for love,” the pope said. He reflected on the Gospel passage, in which a crowd of people are searching for Jesus and his disciples after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. When they find him, Jesus says to the crowd: “You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” In giving this answer, Jesus shows that “it is not enough that people search for him, he wants people to know him,” Francis said. Jesus wants “the encounter with him to go beyond the immediate satisfaction of material needs.” This is because “Jesus came to bring us something more” than the daily preoccupations of feeding and clothing ourselves, our careers, and so on, he said. “In fact,” he added, “the multiplication of the loaves and of the fish is a sign of the great gift that the Father has given to humanity and that is Jesus himself!” Being the true “Bread of Life,” Jesus wants to satisfy not just bodies, but souls, “giving the spiritual food that can satisfy the deepest hunger,” he continued. So, he invites the crowd of people to search not for material food, but for the food that lasts: his Word, his Body, and his Blood. In the Gospels, the crowd then asks Jesus what it is they must do to carry out the work of God, and Jesus answers them: “This is the work of God; that you believe in the one he sent.” “These words are addressed, today, also to us,” Francis said. “The work of God does not consist so much in the ‘doing’ of things, but in ‘believing’ in the One he has sent.” It is a Catholic’s faith in Jesus which “allows us to do the works of God,” he continued. “If we allow ourselves to be involved in this relationship of love and trust with Jesus, we will be able to do good works that smell of the Gospel, for the good and the needs of [our] brothers.” 

 

AS PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN
SOUTH CAROLINA DWINDLE,
CATHOLIC CHURCHES FLOURISH 

SOUTH CAROLINA --- The State.com reported that the membership of St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in Bluffton has grown by a whopping 70 percent in the past decade and is now 10,000 strong. Sunday Masses are crowded as latecomers squeeze into pews or stand in the back of the Beaufort County church. Twelve Masses are held Friday evening through Sunday — two of which are in Spanish. And work is underway on a new parish life center for community events. It’s not the only S.C. Catholic Church experiencing a rebirth. While mainline Protestant churches across the state are shedding members — even shutting down — Catholic churches are flourishing, buoyed by a growing community of Hispanic families and Northeastern retirees. Statewide, the number of individual Catholics registered with churches grew by about 19 percent from 2008 to 2017, according to a review of S.C. church records. With the number of registered individuals at St. Gregory’s Catholic Church leaping from about 6,000 in 2008 to more than 10,000 in 2017, its growth far outpaces the rest of South Carolina. It is now the second largest in the state, behind St. Mary Magdalene in Simpsonville, with 13,000 registered individuals. The sheer size of St. Gregory’s, which holds 800 people, is a far cry from Bluffton’s old church. St Andrew’s chapel, with its small wooden pews and blue carpet, which could seat only 125 worshipers.

 

LET'S NOT CAPITULATE
TO THE ABORTION CULTURE

NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. --- The Catholic News Agency reported that, responding to Fr. Thomas J. Reese's suggestion that the pro-life movement abandon efforts to make abortion illegal and focus instead on reducing the number of abortions, Cardinal Timothy Dolan voiced grave concern with the proposal. “As chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities, I want to indicate my serious reservations about Reese’s strategy, considering it a capitulation to the abortion culture, and a grave weakening of the powerful pro-life witness,” the Archbishop of New York wrote. “Catholic tradition and basic human rights teach us that every human being has an inalienable right to life that must be recognized and protected in law. While the law is not the only means of protecting life, it plays a key and decisive role in affecting both human behavior and thinking. We cannot give up!” Dolan continued. RNS had published an opinion piece by Reese May 27 asserting that the recent vote for the legalization of abortion in Ireland was a sign the pro-life movement “needs a new strategy.” Noting that most pro-choice laws are victorious when taken to the ballots, Reese believes the pro-life movement should stop fighting the “impossible goal” of criminalizing abortion and shift their efforts to a reduction in the number of abortions and supporting “programs that give women a real choice.”  “In short, the pro-life movement must support any program that lessens the burden on mothers and their children,” said Reese. Reese, a Jesuit priest, also highlighted the role of the Church in his proposed strategy, saying it should treat an unwed pregnant woman as a “hero, not a whore,” while schools should design programs and affordable housing to meet the needs of mothers and their children. He stated that the pro-life movement “has to support birth control as a means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies.”
 
“Planned pregnancies do not get aborted; many unplanned pregnancies do,” he asserted. “Those who consider artificial contraception to be wrong must also recognize that abortion is a greater evil. When forced to choose, one must choose the lesser of two evils.” Cardinal Dolan wrote that this is “one of Reese's most troubling assertions.” “In addition to rejecting the church’s teaching that contraception is itself morally flawed, and the fact that it can be medically harmful to women, his reasoning is questionable,” Dolan pointed out. In fact, only a good is a licit object of the will; an evil, however lesser, can never be chosen. Dolan noted that contraception cannot be effectively chosen as a way to avoid choosing abortion: “In reality, more than half of women seeking abortion were actually using contraception during the month they became pregnant, and studies have shown that once contraception is more widely available, abortion rates may actually rise!”

Reese also wrote that “closing [Planned Parenthood] clinics that provide health care and birth control to women before replacements are up and running is irresponsible and counterproductive.” “Working together, we could reasonably get abortions down to under 100,000 per year [in the U.S.] – far too many, but an achievable goal and better than where we are today,” Reese said.  While Dolan noted support for some of Reese’s suggestions, such as offering much-needed support to pregnant mothers, the New York cardinal said Reese’s strategy ultimately reminds him of “those in the mid-19th century who proposed amelioration as a way to reduce slavery in our country.” “Thank God, those who believed that slavery was a moral horror, a cancer on our country, and contrary to the higher values of a lawful republic, could never accept this capitulation.” Reese's assertion that the pro-life movement should give up efforts to give legal protection to unborn humans and instead work only to reduce the number of abortions “is an unnecessary dichotomy,” Cardinal Dolan wrote.  
 
Reese pointed to some polls which indicated decreased support for restricting abortion laws, but Dolan highlighted other research which noted an increase of Americans wanting more limits on abortion, adding moreover that polls should not control which issues to fight for. “Reese would be rightly disappointed, as would I, if pro-immigration reformers were to give up because polls discourage them,” Dolan said.
 
While the end to abortion may seem an impossible goal, Dolan said that through God, all things are possible. “Abortion is a grave injustice. We must do everything in our power to legally protect babies and to provide for the needs of mothers,” the New York cardinal said. “May we never give in to the culture of death or lose faith in our efforts to build a culture of life in our world.”
 

THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL DIFFERENCE

NEW YORK --- The Wall Street Journal wrote: For the thousands of nuns who have served as principals at Catholic schools, their emphasis on self-discipline must seem like common sense. But a new academic study confirms the sisters are on to something: You can instill self-discipline in students, a virtue that will help them in their studies and later in life. The study was conducted for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute by University of California-Santa Barbara associate professor Michael Gottfried and doctoral student Jacob Kirksey. The authors analyzed two waves of national data on elementary school students collected under the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study for the National Center for Education Statistics. They compared children in Catholic schools with those in public schools and other private schools, religious and secular. The authors found statistically meaningful evidence that students in Catholic schools exhibited less disruptive behavior than their counterparts in other schools. “According to their teachers, Catholic school children argued, fought, got angry, acted impulsively, and disturbed ongoing activities less frequently,” the authors write. Specifically, students in Catholic schools “were more likely to control their temper, respect others’ property, accept their fellow students’ ideas, and handle peer pressure.” In other words, they exhibited more self-discipline. The authors concede their findings aren’t causal, meaning there might be unobservable differences between students in different schools that account for the striking differences they have found. But the correlation is strong between the focus that Catholic schools put on self-discipline and better student behavior. We also know that, especially in urban areas, black and Latino students who attend Catholic schools show higher achievement, higher graduation rates and higher college enrollment than those at nearby public schools. At a time when the different suspension rates between minority and non-minority students has become a toxic debate, the authors offer three key judgments:

First: “Schools that value and focus on self- discipline will likely do a better job of fostering it in children.” If other schools “took self -discipline as seriously as Catholic schools do, they wouldn’t have to spend as much time, energy and political capital on penalizing students” for bad behavior.

Second: “Assuming that these results reflect a ‘Catholic Schools Effect,’ other schools might consider both explicit and implicit methods to replicate it.” The report notes that some “no excuses” charter schools are already doing this, through the curriculum or the way students interact with adults and teachers who model self-discipline themselves.

Third: “Don’t underestimate the power of religion to positively influence a child’s behavior.” Religion isn’t the only way to foster self-discipline, the authors emphasize, but it’s effective compared to most of the alternatives in channeling youthful energy into productive self-control.

Though the authors offer no easy prescriptions, they do say it is a “tragedy for the nation” that so many Catholic schools continue to close when they are most needed. Their lessons are worth preserving. Support our School at Saint Augustine…recommend it to family and friends…sponsor a low income student…

THE DEVIL IS A REAL THREAT TO
CHRISTIAN LIFE, NOT A MYTH, POPE SAYS

VATICAN CITY --- The Catholic News Service reported that Pope Francis said that the path to holiness does not involve wrestling with some abstract boogeyman, but involves a "constant struggle against the devil, the prince of evil."
 
In his new apostolic exhortation, "Gaudete et Exsultate" ("Rejoice and Be Glad"), released by the Vatican April 9, the pope urged Christians not to think of the devil as an intangible construct but rather "a personal being who assails us."
 
"We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea," the pope wrote. "This mistake would leave us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable." Taking advantage of that vulnerability, he added, the devil "does not need to possess us. He poisons us with the venom of hatred, desolation, envy, and vice."  Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has warned of the presence of the devil and the dangers of going to hell if one doesn't turn
 
away from sin. Recently, however, doubts were cast on the pope's beliefs on hell and the consequences of sin when Eugenio Scalfari, a co-founder and former editor of La Repubblica, an Italian daily, claimed that Pope Francis said, "Hell does not exist." The Italian journalist has explained on more than one occasion that he does not take notes or record his conversations with the pope; he re-creates them afterward from memory, including the material he puts in quotation marks.
 
Shortly after the interview was published in March, the Vatican issued a statement pointing out that Scalfari's article "is a product of his own reconstruction in which the actual words pronounced by the pope are not cited." In his apostolic exhortation on "the call to holiness in the modern world," the pope said Christian life isn't merely a struggle against human weaknesses or worldly mentalities but a spiritual battle against a very real threat. "We will not admit the existence of the devil if we insist on regarding life by empirical standards alone, without a supernatural understanding," he wrote.  While acknowledging that in biblical times there were "limited conceptual resources" to understand the difference between demonic possession and mental illness, the pope said it should not "lead us to an oversimplification that would conclude that all the cases related in the Gospel had to do with psychological disorders and hence that the devil does not exist or is not at work."
 
The path toward holiness, he explained, is a constant battle and without the "powerful weapons" of prayer, the sacraments and works of charity, Christians "will be prey to failure or mediocrity." "If we become careless, the false promises of evil will easily seduce us," the pope said. In the fight against the devil, Pope Francis added, cultivating good, progressing in the spiritual life and growing in love are the best ways to counter evil. However, those who choose to remain neutral and "renounce the ideal of giving themselves generously to the Lord, will never hold out." "Christian triumph is always a cross, yet a cross which is at the same time a victorious banner, borne with aggressive tenderness against the assaults of evil," he said.

EULOGY

The Roman Catholic Funeral Liturgy is not a memorial service; rather, it is the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the repose of the deceased.  If a eulogy for the deceased is desired, it is most appropriate that it be delivered either during the Wake Service at the funeral parlor or at the committal service at the grave site.

EUTHANASIA IS
ALWAYS WRONG, POPE INSISTS

VATICAN CITY --- The Catholic News Agency reported that, in a message to a meeting on end-of-life issues, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Life, Pope Francis emphasized that the decision to end extraordinary treatment is “completely different from euthanasia, which is always wrong.”
 
With the steady advances in medical treatments, the Pope said, situations can often arise in which a patient suffering from terminal illness might be kept alive by extraordinary means. Such treatments, he said, “are not always beneficial.” He remarked that doctors should avoid the temptation “to insist on treatments that have powerful effects on the body, yet at times do not serve the integral good of the person.” In some cases, the Pope continued, the decision to end treatment can be a humble acknowledgment of “the limitations of our mortality, once it becomes clear that opposition to it is futile.” This decision, he repeated, cannot be equated with the deliberate effort to end a human life. In his discussion of end-of-life care, Pope Francis also observed that costly treatments are generally available “to ever more limited and privileged segments of the population.” He said that the “systematic tendency toward growing inequality in health care” must be addressed. The Pope also said that when questions arise about end-of-life care, “the state cannot renounce its duty to protect all those involved.”Government should be particularly zealous of the rights of those who are most vulnerable, he said.

POPE CALLS FOR COMMON GOOD,
ETHICAL  RESPONSIBILITY
IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY

VATICAN CITY --- Vatican Radio reported that Pope Francis said that science, like any other human activity, has its limits which should be observed for the ‎good of ‎humanity itself, and requires a sense of ethical responsibility.”  “The true measure of progress, as ‎Blessed ‎Paul VI recalled, is that which is aimed at the good of each man and the whole man,” the Pope told participants in the plenary assembly of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture. 
 
The Pope said the Church wants to give the correct direction toman at the dawn of a new era marked by incredible advances  in medicine, genetics, neuroscience and “autonomous” machines.  Speaking about the incredible advances in genetics, he noted that diseases that were considered incurable until recently have been eradicated, and new possibilities have opened up to “program” human beings with certain “qualities”.  The Pope said that "science and technology have helped us to further the boundaries of knowledge of nature, especially of the human being,” but they alone are not enough to give all the answers. ‎“Today,” he explained, “we ‎increasingly realize that it is necessary to draw from the treasures of wisdom of ‎religious ‎traditions, popular wisdom, literature and the arts that touch the depths of the mystery of ‎human ‎existence, without forgetting, but rather by rediscovering those contained in philosophy and ‎theology.‎”
 
Church teachings. In this regard, the Pope pointed to two principles of the Church ’s teaching. The first is the “centrality of the human person, which is to be considered an end and not a means.”  Man must be in harmony ‎with creation, not as a despot about God's inheritance, but as a loving guardian of the work ‎of the Creator.‎ The second principle is the universal destination of goods, including that of ‎knowledge and technology. Scientific and technological progress, the Pope explained, should serve the good of all humanity, and ‎not just a few, and this will help avoid new inequalities in the future based on knowledge and prevent widening of the gap between the rich and the poor.  The Holy Father insisted that great decisions regarding the direction scientific research should take, and investment in it, should be taken together by the whole of society and should not be ‎dictated solely by market rules or by the interests of a few.‎  And finally, the Pope said, one must keep in mind that not everything that is technically possible or feasible is ethically acceptable. 

CHURCH AND CREMATION

VATICAN CITY --- Vatican Radio reported that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith just published a new instruction on the burial of the dead and on the conservation of the ashes in cases of cremation.  The instruction reiterates the long-held view that the Church is not opposed to the practice of cremation, though it continues to recommend that the bodies of the deceased be buried in cemeteries or other sacred places. However, the new document insists that ashes should not be kept in private houses and that the scattering of ashes on land or at sea is not permitted.

ANNULMENT FEES AS YEAR OF MERCY OPENS

As the Catholic Church began the Holy Year of Mercy, the Archdiocese of New York announced it will offer its marriage tribunal process to all who need it, without requiring payments or assessing fees. The Holy Father has asked that, while safeguarding a just and fair wage of the workers in the tribunal, national conferences of Catholic bishops will, insofar as possible, take care to assure that all cases are free of charge.  Pope Francis wants to make the process equally available to everyone.  Therefore, after proper consultation, Cardinal Dolan has decided that all fees involved in any process for the declaration of nullity submitted to the Metropolitan Tribunal of the Archdiocese of New York after December 8, 2015 will be eliminated.

ABORTION, EUTHANASIA, ARE
'ATTACKS AGAINST HUMANITY'

VATICAN CITY --- The Catholic News Agency reported that Pope Francis said that a civilization whose technological advancements do not seek to protect the most vulnerable, from conception until natural death, fails to live up to its responsibility. In remarks made during an audience at the Vatican with members of the Italian Science and Life Association, the pontiff decried victims of abortion and euthanasia, migrants left to die on the sea, and other travesties. Progress in civilization is not measured by its advancements in technology, but “its capacity to protect life, especially during the most fragile stages,” he said.

“The scourge of abortion is an attack against life.” Pope Francis also encouraged those present at the audience to engage with the scientific community. “Do not be afraid of embarking on a fruitful dialogue with the world of science, even with those who, while not believers, remain open to the mystery of human life,” he said. Life, Pope Francis said, “originates and accompanies all scientific progress; it is the miracle of life which always undermines some sort of scientific presumption, giving primacy to wonder and beauty.”

He told them not to lose sight of the “sacredness of every human person, in order that science may truly be at the service of man,” and not the other way around. Science has the ability to analyze specific details, Pope Francis said, which insures that “a just society recognizes the right to life from conception to natural death as paramount.” “The protection and promotion of life represents a fundamental task, especially in a society marked by the negative logic of waste.”

The pontiff observed that protecting the person involves encountering and sustaining those in need of protection, a responsibility which extends “from the center toward the peripheries.” “At the center, there is Christ,” the Pope said, and it is from “this centrality that you are directed toward the various conditions of human life.” “The love of Christ pushes us to make ourselves servants of the little and the elderly, of every man and every woman, for whom the primordial right to live should be recognized and protected.” “Therefore Christ, who is the light of man and the world, illuminates the way in order that science may always be knowledge in service of life.” This recognition of life’s value, however, obligates us to consider how we make use of it, Pope Francis said. “Life is above all a gift,” he said, and this creates hope and a future, so long as it is “enlivened” by familial and social relationships, which in turn “open new perspectives.” “Loving life means to take care of the other, to love him, to cultivate and respect his transcendent dignity."

THE NEW PERSECUTION

Russell Shaw, once secretary for public affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the author of many books, speculates: The persecution of the Catholic Church and other morally conservative religious bodies has begun in the United States. As predicted, it isn't -- thank God -- bloody persecution like the persecution of Christians in many countries. But it's real persecution and likely to get worse. This new persecution currently has two prongs. One consists of pressuring individual religious believers to cooperate with public policies inimical to faith. The other prong is pressure targeted at religious groups and institutions to adapt their programs to the promotion of values hostile to the sponsors' moral convictions. As for the second prong of persecution -- pressure to adapt religious programs and institutions to the promotion of hostile values, coupled with vitriolic denunciations of whoever says no to doing that -- it has been visibly in operation lately in San Francisco, where Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone came under attack for saying that teachers in Catholic schools shouldn't teach things contrary to Catholic morality.

This is astonishing. Why on earth should the Catholic Church, in its own schools, be obliged to provide a platform for teaching that contradicts Catholic moral doctrine? Yet this is what Archbishop Cordileone's critics, including San Francisco media, would require of the Church. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia pointed to the driving force that lies behind the new persecution -- a radical collapse of moral consensus, reflected in a disastrous breakdown of public moral discourse. Hang on to your hats. The worst of it has yet to come.

RELIGIOUS LEADERS URGE CONSCIENCE
PROTECTIONS IN RECOGNIZING MARRIAGE

WASHINGTON D.C. --- The Catholic News Agency reported that more than 30 U.S. religious leaders, including four Catholic bishops, have joined together to call on their country to preserve the “unique meaning of marriage” and to renew respect for religious freedom. “For many people, accepting a redefinition of marriage would be to act against their conscience and to deny their religious beliefs and moral convictions,” the letter said. “No person or community, including religious organizations and individuals of faith, should be forced to accept this redefinition.” A legal redefinition of marriage would have “serious consequences, especially for religious freedom,” the religious leaders warned. Such a change would affect every law involving marital status and require other relationships to be treated “as if they were the same as the marital relationship of a man and a woman.”
The letter emphasized the need for government protection for those with different views of marriage so that these people may “express their beliefs and convictions without fear of intimidation, marginalization or unwarranted charges that their values imply hostility, animosity or hatred of others.” The letter was signed by 35 religious leaders from Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Christian, Mormon and Islamic associations and churches. The recognition of same-sex civil partnerships and of “gay marriage,” especially when combined with strict anti-discrimination laws, have caused legal conflicts for religious individuals and organizations. Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, signed the letter. “We hope this letter serves as an encouragement to all of us, especially those dedicated to public service, to continue to promote both marriage and religious freedom as integral to a healthy and free society,” Archbishop Kurtz said. He said that marriage as a union of one man and one woman “provides the best context for the birth and rearing of children and should be specially protected by law.”

We pray to the Lord that God may hear the cry of the unborn threatened by abortion.
 

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