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Ministry/Outreach (Religion)

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  • Asia/Mongolia - The Church Prepares for the Ordination of the First Native Priest

    06/02/2016 6:55:28 PM PDT · by marshmallow · 5 replies
    Ulaan Baatar (Agenzia Fides) - "We will soon have the first native priest of Mongolia: Joseph Enkh, who will be ordained a priest in Ulaan Baatar on 28 August 2016 by His Exc. Mgr. Wenceslao Padilla, Apostolic Prefect of Ulaan Baatar. This event is particularly important for our young Church, re-founded in 1992 and today has just over a thousand baptized. The ordination of a native priest will stimulate the enthusiasm and sense of belonging among the Mongols, towards a church that has long been seen as foreign", says Fr. Prosper Mbumba, Congolese missionary in Mongolia, a member of the...
  • CAMPAIGNERS FOR WOMEN'S ORDINATION HAVE UNPRECEDENTED MEETING WITH VATICAN REPRESENTATIVE

    06/02/2016 8:12:50 AM PDT · by ebb tide · 26 replies
    The Tablet ^ | June 1, 2016 | Christopher Lamb
    The group has been given official permission to hold a public demonstration in the gardens of Castel Sant’Angelo. Campaigners calling for women priests are meeting in Rome this week where they have launched a poster campaign drawing attention to their cause and where they will participate in their first ever official public demonstration. Women’s Ordination Worldwide, which this year marks its 20th anniversary, wants to re-open dialogue in the Church in spite of Pope John Paul II’s ruling that the matter should not be discussed. Despite the ruling, since 2002, around 150 women have been “ordained” and all of them...
  • German Jesuit Says Catholic Church Should Fight for Homosexuality as a Human Right

    06/01/2016 6:35:28 PM PDT · by marshmallow · 41 replies
    OnePeter5 ^ | 6/1/16 | Maike Hickson
    On 25 May 2015, the official website of the German bishops, katholisch.de, reported on an interview given by the notable German Jesuit, Father Klaus Mertes. In his interview, originally given to the German newspaper, taz, Mertes claims that it took the Catholic Church in the West 200 years to get “where we are now” with regard to the question of homosexuality. He continues: “In Africa or South East Asia, people are still at a very different point. The fight for the rights of the homosexuals is a world-wide project for which it is thus worth remaining in the Church.” In...
  • Archbishop Who Opposes Communion for Remarried Will Lead US Implementation of Amoris Laetitia

    06/01/2016 6:17:41 PM PDT · by marshmallow · 31 replies
    The Catholic Herald (UK) ^ | 6/1/16 | Staff Reporter
    Archbishop Chaput has said that receiving the Eucharist must be preceded by turning away from serious sinsArchbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has been named as chairman of the committee of US bishops working on the implementation of Amoris Laetitia, according to a statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The news sends a signal on the question of admitting divorced and remarried people to Communion. Archbishop Chaput has said that to do so, except when the divorced and remarried live “as brother and sister”, would be “departing from Catholic teaching”. In a 2015 article for First Things magazine, the...
  • Cardinal Schonborn Criticizes Bishop who Discouraged Votes for Pro-Abortion Presidential Candidate

    06/01/2016 4:31:59 AM PDT · by marshmallow · 6 replies
    LifeSite News ^ | 5/30/16 | Micahel Kant
    May 30, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Should the Church speak out in public – and also in political – debates? This question rushed back into the minds of those who followed the presidential elections in Austria at the end of April and the end of May. Austrians elect their president directly every six years. The winning candidate must receive more than 50% of the votes in the first round; otherwise a second ballot is held between the two most successful candidates. This term’s candidacy came down to Alexander Van der Bellen of the Green Party (Grünen) and Norbert Hofer of the...
  • Cardinal Caffarra: Pope Cannot Change Doctrine in a Footnote

    05/30/2016 6:13:19 AM PDT · by marshmallow · 4 replies
    OnePeter5 ^ | 5/27/16 | Maike Hickson
    The retired archbishop of Bologna, Italy, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra – one of the authors of the Five Cardinals Book and a strong defender of the traditional Catholic teaching on marriage – has recently given an interview to the Italian website La nuova bussola quotidiana. In this 25 May interview concerning marriage and the family, Cardinal Caffarra makes clear that even if the state now makes laws allowing so-called same-sex marriages, they “cannot change the reality of things.” He says that “mayors (especially Catholic ones) have to make a conscientious objection” in this matter. To celebrate such a union, Caffarra continues,...
  • Baghdad Patriarch Calls on Christians and Muslims to Pray for Peace Between May and Ramadan

    05/30/2016 5:39:34 AM PDT · by marshmallow · 13 replies
    AsiaNews ^ | 5/28/16 | Joseph Mahmoud
    Baghdad’s Queen of the Rosary Church will host an interfaith prayer against violence and terrorism next Monday. The Chaldean Patriarch launched the initiative, reiterating there are no military options but prayer against conflicts affecting "innocent people". He also urged Muslims to think about renewing their way of thinking and culture.Baghdad (AsiaNews) – Chaldean Patriarch Louis Mar Rapahel Sako has issued a prayer for peace in Iraq, Syria, and the entire Middle East that will be held next Monday (30 May). For the prelate, prayers, not military options can "solve conflicts" in which “innocent people always” pay the highest price. Only...
  • About Wearing Cassocks and Other Good Habits

    05/29/2016 12:51:11 PM PDT · by NRx · 7 replies
    No Other Foundation ^ | 05-27-2016 | Fr. Lawrence Farley
    I am a great fan of the BBC series “Call the Midwife”, which features a group of Anglican sisters working among the poor in a London neighbourhood as midwives. Their order is fictional, but is based upon the actual order and London experiences of the Community of St. John the Divine, then working in London and now moved to Birmingham. Being such a fan of the series, I wanted to check out the real community online. Their numbers are fewer now, as the community has been reduced to five elderly women. What interested me was that unlike their BBC counterparts...
  • Iraqi Refugee Children Make First Communion in Erbil Camp

    05/28/2016 11:12:46 AM PDT · by marshmallow · 8 replies
    Catholic News Agency ^ | 5/28/16 | Elise Harris
    Erbil, Iraq, May 28, 2016 / 05:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday, the first of three rounds of displaced Iraqi children made their First Communion in a refugee camp in Erbil, providing a silver lining to an otherwise bleak situation. Out of the 5,500 people living in Erbil’s Aishty 2 camp for the displaced, the majority – more than 2,000 – are children. Of these, 470 will make their First Communion in the coming weeks. The number of children receiving the sacrament is up from last year’s class, which numbered about 400. Since this year’s number of recipients is so...
  • Retired FDNY Captain to Become Catholic Priest for New York Archdiocese: 'Now I Will Save Souls'

    05/27/2016 6:20:57 AM PDT · by marshmallow · 15 replies
    NY Daily News ^ | 5/27/16 | Thomas Tracy
    He once fought fires in Hell’s Kitchen. Now he’ll be fighting the fires of hell. After two decades of beating down blazes and saving lives, retired FDNY Captain Tom Colucci has found a higher calling — he’s about to become a Catholic priest for the New York Archdiocese. Timothy Cardinal Dolan will welcome Colucci, 60, to the priesthood on Saturday during a special ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “I spent 20 years saving people. Now I will save souls,” said Colucci, the first city firefighter to shed his bunker coat for a priest’s collar. “I thought about being a priest...
  • Russian Orthodox leader: American, European de-Christianization is 'Apocalyptic'

    05/27/2016 6:12:41 AM PDT · by marshmallow · 28 replies
    The head of the Russian Orthodox Church received a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on May 24 and lamented the secularization of Europe and the United States. “We are deeply worried to see what is going on in the Christian world,” said Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who referred to the “ongoing de-Christianization of the European and American civilization” as “an apocalyptic scene: sin is affirmed by law.” “As you know, we underwent a period of state atheism,” he said in reference to over seven decades of Soviet Communist rule. “However, the moral paradigm remained Christian in its major...
  • SSPX reconciliation. I think it might happen (Catholic Caucus)

    05/26/2016 2:43:41 PM PDT · by NYer · 10 replies
    WDTPRS ^ | May 26, 2016 | Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
    I have said for years that the SSPX could be reconciled without all sorts of doctrinal declarations about points in Vatican II documents.I see this at the NCRegister: Cardinal Müller Expects SSPX to Recognize Disputed Council TeachingsCardinal Gerhard Müller has said he expects the Society of St. Pius X, which has always opposed the Second Vatican Council’s declarations on religious freedom and ecumenism, to “unreservedly recognize” freedom of religion as a human right, and an obligation to ecumenism.In an interview in the June edition of the German publication Herder Korrespondenz, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that...
  • Fr. Z’s 25th Anniversary of Ordination

    05/26/2016 2:38:32 PM PDT · by NYer · 4 replies
    WDTPRS ^ | May 26, 2016 | Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
    Well… this is it.  I made it this far.Many priests observe the anniversary of their ordination at this time of year. It is a common time for ordinations, probably because Ember Days were common times for ordinations and Ember Days fall during the Pentecost Octave.It is my anniversary of ordination today, 25 years ago, by St. John Paul II in St. Peter’s Basilica.  I suppose that might make me a 2nd class relic.Silver.It was not only the Feast of St. Philip Neri, 26 May, but it was also Trinity Sunday. A beautiful sunny day.I got up that morning, ate breakfast, said my...
  • Pope Francis Asks God To "Convert The Hearts" Of Islamic Terrorists"

    05/26/2016 6:28:23 AM PDT · by Biggirl · 29 replies
    Breitbart.com ^ | May 26,2016 | Thomas D. Williams, PH.D
    Following on the latest spate of devastating attacks by the Islamic State in Syria, Pope Francis prayed to God Wednesday to “convert the hearts of those who sow death and destruction.” In his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, the Pope addressed the tens of thousands of pilgrims and tourists in a special appeal for prayer for the Middle East.
  • Met Saba (Esber) on the Orthodox "Diaspora" (Orthodox Caucus)

    05/25/2016 10:58:28 AM PDT · by NRx · 2 replies
    Notes on Arab Orthodoxy ^ | 05-25-206 | Metropolitan Saba (Esber)
    On the Issue of the Orthodox "Diaspora" Introduction It seems, during the course of work on the Great Orthodox Council, that the issue of the "diaspora" will be the most important, in the sense that there is no issue more important than it. Due to serious disagreements that currently exist between the Orthodox Churches, mostly due to historical factors, the other working papers, most of which have been agreed upon, were formulated according to the lowest common denominator of agreement and not at the level hoped for by the people of God. The issue of the "diaspora," however, has remained urgent because...
  • First Communion for Iraqi Refugees Represents Hope for a Persecuted People

    05/25/2016 6:09:47 AM PDT · by marshmallow · 1 replies
    The National Catholic Register ^ | 5/24/16 | Doreen Abi Raad
    What God is giving us in faith and strength is helping us to give more, and that by itself will bring us closer to God,” said Sister Waffa Yousif, who helped train the 30 first communicants.BEIRUT — Outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Beirut, Lebanon, the children could hardly contain their excitement. All the suffering of their lives in forced exile seemed to vanish as they anticipated the holy sacrament for which they had so diligently prepared. Two girls joined hands and gleefully spun each other around. Dressed in white robes adorned with wooden rosaries on...
  • German Journalist Calls Pope Francis a Relativizer

    05/24/2016 4:45:15 PM PDT · by ebb tide · 23 replies
    One Peter Five ^ | May 24, 2016 | Maike HIckson
    Alexander Kissler is a German author and journalist who is responsible for the Culture Section of the German intellectual journal Cicero. He is also one of the few open critics of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Open Door Politics with regard to the immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa. He had, for example, an outcry of indignation after the Cologne incident on New Year’s Eve in 2015, where hundreds of women were aggressively pursued by “North Africans, most of them asylum seekers.” Now he has directed his indignation toward the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis. The cause of...
  • Christians Have a Mission to Convert all Muslims, Says Vatican Official

    05/23/2016 6:38:24 PM PDT · by marshmallow · 109 replies
    The Catholic Herald (UK) ^ | 5/23/16 | Staff Reporter
    Cardinal Kurt Koch, who leads ecumenical relations for the Vatican, made the comments at an interfaith meeting in CambridgeChristians have a mission to convert all Muslims, according to one of Pope Francis’s senior aides. Cardinal Kurt Koch, who leads ecumenical relations for the Vatican, made the comments at an interfaith meeting held by Cambridge University’s Woolf Institute. Cardinal Koch also said that Christians should not try and convert Jews and should view Judaism as a “mother”. “We have a mission to convert all non-Christian religions’ people [except] Judaism,” he said, before reportedly adding that this extended to jihadis responsible for...
  • Pope Francis Calls Greedy Employers 'True Leeches'

    05/21/2016 6:21:30 AM PDT · by Auntie Mame · 53 replies
    Courthouse News Service ^ | May 20, 2016 | SEAN DUFFY
        (CN) — Pope Francis condemned the sin of "living off the blood of the people" while criticizing immoral employers for not providing health care for their employees, calling them "true leeches."     During his homily on Thursday, the pontiff brought up a hypothetical situation in which a business employs a worker from September to June but does not provide health care coverage.     "Exploitation of people today is a true slavery," he said. "We thought that slaves do not exist anymore. They exist. It's true, people don't go to Africa to take them and then sell them in America, no. But it's in our...
  • Redemptorist Priest among Marylanders featured on Vietnam TV Series

    05/20/2016 6:43:31 PM PDT · by NKP_Vet · 15 replies
    http://www.catholicreview.org ^ | May 20, 2016 | Paul McMullen
    Forty-five years after he served as a U.S. Army chaplain in Vietnam, Redemptorist Father John Bauer continues to expand his admiration for the resourcefulness and resolve of the men and women who were under his pastoral care during wartime. Father Bauer, now on the staff of his childhood parish in Highlandtown, is among a half-dozen Catholics featured in "Maryland Vietnam War Stories," a 3-hour documentary airing over as many nights, May 24-26, on Maryland Public Television. Father Bauer was among the participants who attended a recent advance screening, where a fellow veteran noticed his clerical collar and approached him during...