Washington D.C., Mar 17, 2023 / 13:09 pm (CNA).

A synod of German bishops overwhelmingly approved Church blessings of same-sex unions and unions between divorced and remarried Catholics, but the move has faced harsh criticism from some members of the Catholic hierarchy who have accused the German bishops of abandoning the faith. 

German Cardinal Gerhard Müller and American Cardinal Raymond Burke rebuked the German bishops and called on them to be sanctioned in an interview on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo,” which aired on Thursday night, March 16. 

“There must be a trial and they must be sentenced and they must be removed from their office if they are not converting themselves and they are not accepting the Catholic doctrine,” Müller said during the interview.

“That is very sad that a majority of bishops voted explicitly against the revealed doctrine, and the revealed faith of the Catholic Church and of all our Christian thinking, against the Bible, the word of God in the Holy Scripture and in the apostolic tradition and in the defined doctrine of the Catholic Church,” the cardinal added. 

Müller said the laypeople and the bishops who supported these resolutions at the German Synodal Way are “influenced by this LGBT and woke ideology, which is materialistic and nihilistic.”

“It is absolutely blasphemic to make a blessing about those forms of life which is, according to the biblical and the ecclesial doctrine a sin because all forms of sexuality outside of a valid matrimony is sin and cannot be blessed,” he said. 

“If you look in the Bible, it’s absolutely only the matrimony between man and woman who are united in love in the body and in the soul,” the cardinal said, “and to have the possibility [to] become fathers and mothers and to found a family.”

Burke urged the Vatican to sanction the bishops who voted in favor of blessing homosexual unions.

“Whether it’s a departure, heretical teaching and denial of one of the doctrines of the faith, or apostasy in the sense of simply walking away from Christ and from his teaching in the Church to embrace some other form of religion, these are crimes,” Burke said. “I mean, these are sins against Christ himself and, obviously then, of the most serious nature. And the Code of Canon Law provides the appropriate sanctions.”

The cardinal warned that the Church is being “used” to push an ideological agenda. 

“These are human inventions, human ideologies that are being pushed and the Church is being used,” Burke added. “And what it does is it renders the Church then into some kind of a human agency, almost like a government agency that’s being manipulated to foster certain programs and certain agenda. And so we need to wake up to what is happening.”

“You will notice that in a lot of this talk, you never hear the name of Our Lord,” Burke said. “You never hear talk about what Our Lord Jesus Christ is teaching us, what he’s asking of us. So this is a very serious situation.”

The cardinal also responded to Arroyo’s suggestion that “opponents of these reforms are often derided as going against the pope.”  

“We are the ones who love the pope and are trying to help him to carry out his mission, whereas these people who simply ignore what Rome is saying to them, what the See of Peter is saying to them, show that they have no respect for him, whatever they are indeed the enemies of the pope. I think it’s clear any reasonable person can see that,” he said.

Burke said that Pope Francis “sometimes says things that are very clear and in accord with the Church’s teaching with regard to these matters.”

“What the agents of the revolution do is simply ignore these statements and take other statements in which he seems to be favorable,” he said.

Rome Newsroom, Mar 17, 2023 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis heard confessions at a parish in Rome on Friday and encouraged people to remember that God “holds out his hand and lifts us up whenever we realize that we are ‘hitting rock bottom.’”

In the presence of eucharistic adoration, the pope presided over a Lenten penitential service on March 17 to open “24 Hours for the Lord,” an initiative in which certain Catholic churches around the world will remain open 24 consecutive hours with round-the-clock confession and adoration.

“Brothers, sisters, let us remember this: The Lord comes to us when we step back from our  presumptuous ego. … He can bridge the distance whenever, with honesty and sincerity, we bring our weaknesses before him,” Pope Francis said.

“He holds out his hand and lifts us up whenever we realize we are ‘hitting rock bottom’ and we turn back to him with a sincere heart. That is how God is. He is waiting for us, deep down, for in Jesus he chose to ‘descend to the depths.’”

The pope underlined that God waits for us, especially in the sacrament of penance, where he said the Lord touches our wounds, heals our hearts, and leaves us with inner peace.

Pope Francis visited the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie al Trionfale, a parish located about one mile from the pope’s residence inside Vatican City.

Upon his arrival at the parish, the pope kissed a small Marian icon from his wheelchair and gave a bouquet of flowers to Our Lady. He offered greetings and shook hands with many people inside the parish from his wheelchair.

The pope offered a homily on God’s mercy before leading the parish in the Confiteor prayer.

Many people made confessions to priests — and some to the pope himself — during the Holy Hour at the Roman parish just outside the walls of Vatican City.

Pope Francis began the “24 Hours for the Lord” initiative in 2014, one year before he announced the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.

The Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization has asked dioceses around the world to once again open churches for 24 hours from Friday, March 17, to Saturday, March 18, to offer the opportunity to make confessions and pray in the presence of eucharistic adoration.

In his homily, Pope Francis asked the parishioners to repeat together the prayer of a tax collector in chapter 18 of the Gospel of Luke: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

The pope prayed: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner! When I forget you or I neglect you, when I prefer my words and those of the world to your own word, when I presume to be righteous and look down on others, when I gossip about others … God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

“When I care nothing for those all around me, when I’m indifferent to the poor and the suffering, the weak and the outcast, God, be merciful to me, a sinner! For my sins against life, for my bad example that mars the lovely face of Mother Church, for my sins against creation, God, be  merciful to me, a sinner.”

“For my falsehoods, my duplicity, my lack of honesty and integrity, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. For my hidden sins, for the ways in which I have unconsciously wronged others, and for the good I could have done and yet failed to do, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

The church in Ireland is launching a Year for Vocations as it grapples with a steep decline in seminary numbers and with aging priests.

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Washington D.C., Mar 17, 2023 / 09:45 am (CNA).

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his election to the See of Peter, Pope Francis sat down with Infobae — a news agency from Argentina — to reminisce about his pontificate and to discuss issues affecting the Church and the world. During the interview, he said: “There is no contradiction for a priest to marry.” He called priestly celibacy “a temporary prescription” and said that it’s a prescription that could be reviewed.

The Holy Father made clear what he meant by his words. He said that celibacy is a “temporary prescription” inasmuch as “it is not eternal like priestly ordination, which is forever.” Secular media outlets and even some Catholic news organizations immediately jumped to the conclusion that the pope is open to revising the discipline of celibacy and that he even might lift it. 

Of course, he said no such thing. When the requirement for celibacy was openly discussed at the 2020 Amazon Synod, Pope Francis chose not to even mention celibacy in his postsynodal exhortation.

The interview provides an opportunity to ponder the priesthood and celibacy. The Church’s teaching on celibacy is different from her teaching on the indelible character of ordination and holy orders being reserved to men alone. These are dogmas taught by the Church that need to be believed lest we fall into heresy or dissent.

That ordination to the priesthood forever marks a man was universally believed until the rise of Protestantism in the 16th century. The Church has always lived Hebrews 7:17 (“You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek”). Only after Protestants criticized the ordained ministry did the Council of Trent solemnly define that it is divinely revealed that every priest is a priest forever. Today, when priests are released from the obligations of the priesthood they do not become laymen again. They are simply given permission not to exercise the duties and obligations of the priesthood. They remain priests. No priest is ever “laicized,” despite the popularity of that unfortunate word.

In 1976, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith noted in its decree Inter Insignores that the Church had no authority to ordain women because Christ himself did not choose women to be among the Twelve and because the apostles, who were given authority to teach after Christ ascended, never chose women either. Rather than being explicit in Scripture, it’s a necessary logical conclusion from the revelation of Scripture and tradition.

Christ was not subject to cultural norms. The apostles, who taught more than Christ could in his earthly life, adopted many Greco-Roman customs instead of Mosaic norms. The Greeks had priestesses, but the apostles still did not ordain women. With the approval of Pope Paul VI, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared that these facts were definitive: the Church cannot ordain women. 

In 1994, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed this conclusion in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. A year later, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith noted that the saintly pope’s letter was declaring that it’s always been taught that women can’t be ordained. There may come a day, as happened in the 16th century, when a pope or an ecumenical council must solemnly declare that this is a divinely revealed truth, but for now, it’s part of the ordinary and universal magisterium that we must believe women can’t be ordained lest we become dissenters to the Catholic faith.

Celibacy is in a different category. Although the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke tells us that St. Peter had a mother-in-law, the Lord’s counsel in favor of virginity for the sake of the kingdom (Mt 19:12) became normative. St. Paul noted that unmarried men are entirely devoted to the affairs of the Lord (1 Cor 7:32). Celibacy was the discipline very early on.

Although there were local councils as early as the fourth century, such as the Council of Elvira, which mandated the celibacy of priests, it was understood that even married priests were practicing sexual abstinence because they were to be single-minded in the worship of God. It was a carryover from Judaism, which understood that priests serving in the Temple ought to abstain from sexual relations with their wives to keep themselves focused on God.

When Christ replaced the Temple and the Eucharist became the primary mode of divine worship, even those priests who married in the first centuries of the Church tended to practice a “Josephite” marriage — a marriage without sexual relations — so they could be pure and undivided in worshipping God. Modern critics of celibacy haven’t done their research. Even married priests during the first centuries of the Church ceased to be husbands in the intimate sense because they and their wives understood the primacy of the worship of God and the single-mindedness worship required from those consecrated to offer the Mass. 

Although the Roman Catholic Church even today has exceptions to priestly celibacy — the Anglican Ordinariate, for instance — and although the Eastern Church has married priests, even married priests today recognize the importance, value, and superiority of celibacy. Celibate priests live as Christ lived in this world. His celibacy and his sacrifice gave life to the world.

It’s certainly possible that one day in the future the discipline of celibacy may go away, but it’s not likely. Protestant denominations with married clergy have fewer vocations than many Catholic dioceses and religious orders. A celibate clergy has been normative in the Catholic Church for several hundred years. Parishes and dioceses aren’t prepared to support clergy families. Most priests earn less than minimum wage every year, regardless of the additional benefits they may receive — benefits most parishes and dioceses cannot afford to extend to a family. 

More importantly, while priests may struggle at times with celibacy, and they may sometimes see it as a trial in their service for the Lord and his Church, there are very few, perhaps only a handful, of good priests who would give up celibacy in their priesthood. It’s only critics and outsiders who tell priests that we should be married. As great a good as marriage is, we priests know that God requires even more from us.

It requires a certain grace to live celibacy joyfully and wholly. The necessity of such a grace guarantees that priests are entirely devoted to God and because we are given the grace to be so devoted throughout our lives.

CNA Staff, Mar 17, 2023 / 08:53 am (CNA).

Following the conclusion of the German Synodal Way, several bishops have announced plans to put into practice resolutions passed by the process, including liturgical blessings of same-sex unions in their churches. 

The Synodal Way, which concluded in Frankfurt on March 11, “give[s] us the tailwind we need for concrete changes in our diocese,” Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück said March 14.

Bode — who is vice president of the German Bishops’ Conference — said his diocese encouraged “all couples in our diocese who cannot or do not want to marry in church but still want to put their relationship under a church blessing” to “get in touch with us.” He added that such celebrations were already available in some parishes of his diocese.

Bode on Tuesday also announced that laypeople would be able to baptize babies and “regularly” preach at homilies, CNA Deutsch reported.  

Another German prelate, Bishop Heiner Wilmer of Hildesheim, added his support, telling staff in his diocese: “It is of great importance to me that LGBTQ people are accompanied pastorally, spiritually, and liturgically. I welcome the Synodal Way’s endorsement of establishing a task force to develop a handout for celebrations of blessing for same-sex couples as well as remarried divorcees,” CNA Deutsch reported.

On Friday last week, the German bishops and other delegates of the Synodal Way passed a resolution to develop and provide Church blessings to same-sex unions. 

Titled “Blessing ceremonies for couples who love each other,” the measure was opposed by only nine of 58 bishops, while 11 bishops abstained. 

German bishops who have previously voiced public support for the blessing of same-sex unions in the Catholic Church include Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising and Bishop Heinrich Timmerervers of Dresden-Meißen.

In March 2022, Cardinal Marx said he had personally blessed a same-sex couple in Los Angeles.

One year earlier, in March 2021, the Vatican confirmed that the Catholic Church does not have the power to give liturgical blessings to homosexual unions. Answering the question “does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex,” the Congregation — now the Dicastery — for the Doctrine of the Faith responded: “Negative.”

In an accompanying note, the Vatican’s doctrine office explained that blessings are sacramentals, and “consequently, in order to conform with the nature of sacramentals, when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord.”

Loughmourne, Ireland, Mar 17, 2023 / 08:32 am (CNA).

Father Owen Gorman remembers when Masses in Ireland were so crowded on Sundays that people had to sit on the steps outside the church.

“I grew up in a time in the 1970s and ’80s when churches were full for Sunday Mass. If you didn’t come early, you didn’t get a seat,” he told CNA. “That has changed now.”

In 2021, a survey by the Association of Catholic Priests found that only about 30% of Catholics in Ireland attend Mass weekly — a significant drop from 91% in 1975.

With decreasing vocations, priests in Ireland are also spread thin, with 2,116 priests serving at 2,650 churches or Mass centers. And more than a third of Irish priests are over the age of 60.

Gorman, 49, serves parishes in Aughnamullen East, Muckno, Latton, and Tullycorbet across the Diocese of Clogher in County Monaghan.

“We just have one seminarian for our diocese, and we haven’t had an ordination for six years now,” he said.

“In 20 years’ time, we will probably have about seven priests in the whole of our diocese, on current trends.”

The scandal of clerical abuse, the social upheaval of the 1960s, materialism, and “bad clericalism” all contributed to the dramatic decline of the Catholic Church in Ireland in the past 50 years.

“The Church had a tremendous amount of power within Ireland that created huge resentments,” Gorman said.

The abuse crisis concentrated minds and there reached a point in which all the pent-up grievances boiled over and “there was just rage against the Church.”

“There was definitely an overreach within Catholicism. We were involved in everything. We were involved in all aspects of life. … I think we took our eye off evangelization,” he reflected.

“We kind of catechized the young people in school, and then we said, ‘OK, that’s it for life.’ So, we never invested in them after that. We never spent our time in an evangelistic capacity, with the result that the faith suffered.”

In response to this crisis of faith, today in Ireland some movements and religious orders are pouring their energy into evangelization and faith formation. 

Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan of Waterford said that he sees this as a sign of hope for Ireland.

“I see tremendous hope actually. I see little pockets of light all over the country,” Cullinan said. “I see the Church as existing in small but wonderfully vibrant, loving pockets all around the place, like little candles, right around the country. And someday they’re going to light a big fire.”

Youth 2000

“There are a few youth movements within Ireland that have definitely created waves. Youth 2000 is one of them,” Gorman said.

Youth 2000 has as its goal to “raise up a new generation of saints” through peer-to-peer ministry for young people ages 16-35.

The international initiative, which came to Ireland in 1993, seeks to “draw young people to a deep and lasting union with Jesus Christ by placing the Eucharist, ‘the source and summit of the Christian life,’ at the center of its mission.”

Twenty-year-old Maria Mann said that Youth 2000 has helped her to find that “it’s so fulfilling when you have God in your life … it fills your heart and your soul.”

“I think our shepherds, our priests, are not preaching the truth. You know, they think that they are giving people what they want by a watered-down Mass or a shorter homily, but young people are craving the truth,” said Eva Newell, who is also active in Youth 2000 in Dublin.

“A lot of what we are finding is that they are craving tradition. They are craving what the Church is.”

Holy Family Mission

Holy Family Mission in County Waterford, Ireland, is also working to form young people in the faith by giving them the chance to live together in an intentional Catholic community, with daily Mass, eucharistic adoration, and missionary formation.

Started by three youth ministers, the nine-month “gap year” for people aged 18-30 brings together both Irish and international participants to study the faith while living on the grounds of the 200-year-old Glencomeragh estate, where they also help to organize retreats to share the faith with others.

Michael Tierney, a 27-year-old Ph.D. student from County Offaly, is currently participating in the “gap year for God.”

“For a lot of young people who are in the faith, it’s very countercultural. It’s not like it was a few generations ago, so you really need to know your faith,” he said.

“Holy Family Mission is really needed now to produce a generation of young people to lead the renewal of the Church and who are really grounded in what the Church believes.”

Irish Dominicans

In a country where at least 10 dioceses do not have a single seminarian studying for the priesthood, many Irish Catholics point to the number of vocations in the Dominican Order as a sign of hope for Ireland.

Father Colm Mannion, the Irish Dominicans’ vocations director, told CNA that at the moment there are 16 men in formation to become Dominicans in Ireland, some of whom left behind careers in law, health care, and other professions (including a professional soccer player who played for Manchester United) to join the order.

Part of the reason why young people are attracted to the Dominican Order is because of its charism of “studying the faith, dedicating our lives to learning truth … with a view to be able to go off and share with other people,” Mannion said.

“I think in Ireland, at the moment, there’s a real hunger for people to learn more about their faith,” he said. “And I think that is something we see a lot coming through in the younger generations.”

Many people in Ireland “have not really abandoned the faith, they’ve just kind of drifted,” Mannion noted.

“And very often the reason they have drifted from the faith is because they never really understood it to begin with,” he said.

“So I think for a lot of younger people now when they begin to see the richness of our faith and the great tradition that we have — and the great learning and the wisdom and the philosophy and the beauty of our faith — when people connect with that, they really want to be able to communicate that to other people.”

The Dominicans first arrived in Ireland in the year 1224, just three years after St. Dominic died.

“When you look at the history of the Dominican Order, as you look to the history of the Church in Ireland, there’s a lot of ups and downs over the centuries and persecutions. And we’ve experienced good times and bad times, but we’re still here 800 years later,” he said.

A great legacy of saints

Father Patrick Joseph Hughes, a country priest serving a farming community in County Cavan, offered the reminder of the great patrimony offered by Ireland’s saints and martyrs, including many brave priests, bishops, and laypeople who were killed for their faith under England’s Queen Elizabeth and the penal laws.

Tierney looks to the Bible and finds hope in how “in stories from the Bible we see how God uses just a remnant, like a small number of people, to actually spearhead this renewal of faith or to convert a whole town or village.”

“You do have to have courage because, you know, God is going to call you to unexpected places. And you have to have, I’d say, the courage of openness, too, and to be willing to go where he’ll lead you,” he said.

For Bishop Cullinan, the way forward for the Catholic Church in Ireland will “always come down to personal holiness.”

“As Pope John Paul II used to say, there is a hole in the human heart which only God can fill,” he said. “And that is what I continually work from, knowing that no matter what happens, Christ is the answer.”

The seven-member preparatory commission for the assembly of the Synod of Bishops met at the Vatican March 13-16 and had an audience with Pope Francis on the last day of their gathering.  

The Vatican Museums officially reopened its African and American ethnographic collections March 16 by showcasing intricately restored Rwandan raffia screens that were sent by Catholic missionaries to the Vatican for a 1925 exhibit.

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