The Consistory, among the 22 cardinals comes forth a new papabile: the American Dolan

Until yesterday at the Vatican there remained the unwritten rule that American cardinals were hardly electable in a conclave, not so much because of their human or pastoral profile, but because of their nationality. John Allen, among the most authoritative voices on the American Catholicism, said that for the same reason it would be difficult for a Secretary General of the United Nations to be an American because it would entrust too much superpower to a single nation. We figured the same for the Pope.

Thus, a similar attitude to not take into consideration a North American as pope possibles had remained unscathed until the other day when the new cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, positively struck all the 133 cardinals present at the closed door summit with the Pope. Even Benedict XVI before such a speech, so refreshing and of strong impact, couldn’t help but publicly complement him, using unusual adjectives: “An enthusiastic, joyful and profound demeanor.”

In effect the discourse that the cardinals had heard, even though delivered in very “primitive” Italian for which Dolan excused himself at the beginning, captured the attention of all, effectively combining a theological reflection on the state of things while speaking in common fashion using personal examples, humorously going back and forth with memories, citing romances and even a film, The Way. ……

Among the 22 cardinals, Dolan stood out because of his size. He is very tall and stout but with effect always smiling. And this is sufficient to transform him into a papabile.

 Kind of hard to immagine…. an American pope. What is certain is Dolan is making an international impression, and if Giansoldati’s description is accurate, he has made a positive impression on the whole college of cardinals. Just the fact that he was asked to give this address yesterday is indicative of the attention he is getting from the Holy Father.

If you read Italian, log on to: www.ilmessaggero.it/articolo.php?id=181960&sez=HOME_NELMONDO

Image source: www.patheos.com

Soon-t0-be Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York, was given honor of addressing the Holy Father and the cardinals of the Church in their day of preparation for the consistory which will elevate Dolan and others as cardinals. This address is normally reserved for a more senior cardinal, so Dolan’s selection in illustrative, perhaps, of his favor with the Pope and his brother cardinals. Here is a transcript of his words (original was Italian): 

The Announcement of the Gospel Today, Between missio ad gentes and the New Evangelization

Holy Father, Cardinal Sodano, my brothers in Christ:
Sia lodato Gesu Cristo!

It is as old as the final mandate of Jesus, “Go, teach all nations!,” yet as fresh as God’s Holy Word proclaimed at our own Mass this morning.

I speak of the sacred duty of evangelization. It is “ever ancient, ever new.” The how of it, the when of it, the where of it, may change, but the charge remains constant, as does the message and inspiration, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

We gather in the caput mundi, evangelized by Peter and Paul themselves, in the city from where the successors of St. Peter “sent out” evangelizers to present the saving Person, message, and invitation that is at the heart of evangelization: throughout Europe, to the “new world” in the “era of discovery,” to Africa and Asia in recent centuries.

We gather near the basilica where the evangelical fervor of the Church was expanded during the Second Vatican Council, and near the tomb of the Blessed Pontiff who made the New Evangelization a household word.

We gather grateful for the fraternal company of a pastor who has made the challenge of the new evangelization almost a daily message.

Yes, we gather as missionaries, as evangelizers.

We hail the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, especially found in Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes, and Ad Gentes, that refines the Church’s understanding of her evangelical duty, defining the entire Church as missionary, that all Christians, by reason of baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist, are evangelizers.

Yes, the Council reaffirmed, especially in Ad Gentes, there are explicit missionaries, sent to lands and peoples who have never heard the very Name by which all are saved, but also that no Christian is exempt from the duty of witnessing to Jesus and offering His invitation to others in his own day-to-day life.

Thus, mission became central to the life of every local church, to every believer. The context of mission shifted not only in a geographical sense, but in a theological sense, as mission applied not only to unbelievers but to believers, and some thoughtful people began to wonder if such a providential expansion of the concept of evangelization unintentionally diluted the emphasis of mission ad gentes.

Blessed John Paul II developed this fresh understanding, speaking of evangelizing cultures, since the engagement between faith and culture supplanted the relationship between church and state dominant prior to the Council, and included in this task the re-evangelizing of cultures that had once been the very engine of gospel values. The New Evangelization became the dare to apply the invitation of Jesus to conversion of heart not only ad extra but ad intra, to believers and cultures where the salt of the gospel had lost its tang. Thus, the missio is not only to New Guinea but to New York.

In Redemptoris Missio, #33, he elaborated upon this, noting primary evangelization — the preaching of Jesus to lands and people unaware of His saving message — the New Evangelization — the rekindling of faith in persons and cultures where it has grown lackluster — and the pastoral care of those daily living as believers.

We of course acknowledge that there can be no opposition between the missio ad gentes and the New Evangelization. It is not an “either-or” but a “both-and” proposition. The New Evangelization generates enthusiastic missionaries; those in the apostolate of the missio ad gentes require themselves to be constantly evangelized anew.

Even in the New Testament, to the very generation who had the missio ad gentes given by the Master at His ascension still ringing in their ears, Paul had to remind them to “stir into flame” the gift of faith given them, certainly an early instance of the New Evangelization.

And, just recently, in the inspirational Synod in Africa, we heard our brothers from the very lands radiant with the fruits of the missio ad gentes report that those now in the second and third generation after the initial missionary zeal already stand in need of the New Evangelization.

The acclaimed American missionary and TV evangelist, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, commented, “Our Lord’s first word to His disciples was ‘come!’ His last word was ‘go!’ You can’t ‘go’ unless you’ve first ‘come’ to Him.”

A towering challenge to both the missio ad gentes and the New Evangalization today is what we call secularism. Listen to how our Pope describes it:

Secularization, which presents itself in cultures by imposing a world and
humanity without reference to Transcendence, is invading every aspect of daily life and developing a mentality in which God is effectively absent, wholly or partially, from human life and awareness. This secularization is not only an external threat to believers, but has been manifest for some time in the heart of the Church herself. It profoundly distorts the Christian faith from within, and consequently, the lifestyle and daily behavior of believers. They live in the world and are often marked, if not conditioned, by the cultural imagery that impresses contradictory and impelling models regarding the practical denial of God: there is no longer any need for God, to think of him or to return to him. Furthermore, the prevalent hedonistic and consumeristic mindset fosters in the faithful and in Pastors a tendency to superficiality and selfishness that is harmful to ecclesial life. (Benedict XVI, Address to Pontifical Council for Culture, 8.III.2008)

This secularization calls for a creative strategy of evangelization, and I want to detail seven planks of this strategy.

1. Actually, in graciously inviting me to speak on this topic, “The Announcement of the Gospel Today, between missio ad gentes and the new evangelization,” my new-brother-cardinal, His Eminence, the Secretary of State, asked me to put in into the context of secularism, hinting that my home archdiocese of New York might be the “capital of a secular culture.”

As I trust my friend and new-brother-cardinal, Edwin O’Brien — who grew up in New York — will agree, New York — without denying its dramatic evidence of graphic secularism — is also a very religious city.

There one finds, even among groups usually identified as materialistic — the media, entertainment, business, politics, artists, writers — an undeniable openness to the divine!

The cardinals who serve Jesus and His Church universal on the Roman Curia may recall the address Pope Benedict gave them at Christmas two years ago when he celebrated this innate openness to the divine obvious even in those who boast of their secularism:

We as believers, must have at heart even those people who consider themselves agnostics or atheists. When we speak of a new evangelization these people are perhaps taken aback. They do not want to see themselves as an object of mission or to give up their freedom of thought and will. Yet the question of God remains present even for them. As the first step of evangelization we must seek to keep this quest alive; we must be concerned that human beings do not set aside the question of God, but rather see it as an essential question for their lives. We must make sure that they are open to this question and to the yearning concealed within. I think that today too the Church should open a sort of “Court of the Gentiles” in which people might in some way latch on to God, without knowing him and before gaining access to his mystery, at whose service the inner life of the Church stands.

This is my first point: we believe with the philosophers and poets of old, who never had the benefit of revelation, that even a person who brags about being secular and is dismissive of religion, has within an undeniable spark of interest in the beyond, and recognizes that humanity and creation is a dismal riddle without the concept of some kind of creator.

A movie popular at home now is The Way, starring a popular actor, Martin Sheen. Perhaps you have seen it. He plays a grieving father whose estranged son dies while walking the Camino di Santiago di Campostella in Spain. The father decides, in his grief, to complete the pilgrimage in place of his dead son. He is an icon of a secular man: self-satisfied, dismissive of God and religion, calling himself a “former Catholic,” cynical about faith . . . but yet unable to deny within him an irrepressible interest in the transcendent, a thirst for something — no, Someone — more, which grows on the way.

Yes, to borrow the report of the apostles to Jesus from last Sunday’s gospel, “All the people are looking for you!”

They still are . . .

2. . . . and, my second point, this fact gives us immense confidence and courage in the sacred task of mission and New Evangelization.

“Be not afraid,” we’re told, is the most repeated exhortation in the Bible.

After the Council, the good news was that triumphalism in the Church was dead.

The bad news was that, so was confidence!

We are convinced, confident, and courageous in the New Evangelization because of the power of the Person sending us on mission — who happens to be the second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity – because of the truth of the message, and the deep down openness in even the most secularized of people to the divine.

Confident, yes!

Triumphant, never!

What keeps us from the swagger and arrogance of triumphalism is a recognition of what Pope Paul VI taught in Evangelii Nuntiandi: the Church herself needs evangelization!

This gives us humility as we confess that Nemo dat quod not habet, that the Church has a deep need for the interior conversion that is at the marrow of the call to evangelization.

3. A third necessary ingredient in the recipe of effective mission is that God does not satisfy the thirst of the human heart with a proposition, but with a Person, whose name is Jesus.

The invitation implicit in the Missio ad gentes and the New Evangelization is not to a doctrine but to know, love, and serve — not a something, but a Someone.

When you began your ministry as successor of St. Peter, Holy Father, you invited us to friendship with Jesus, which is the way you defined sanctity.

There it is . . . love of a Person, a relationship at the root of out faith.

As St. Augustine writes, “Ex una sane doctrina impressam fidem credentium cordibus singulorum qui hoc idem credunt verissime dicimus, sed aliud sunt ea quae creduntur, aliud fides qua creduntur” (De Trinitate, XIII, 2.5)

4. Yes, and here’s my fourth point, but this Person, Jesus, tells us He is the truth.

So, our mission has a substance, a content, and this twentieth anniversary of the Catechism, the approaching fiftieth anniversary of the Council, and the upcoming Year of Faith charge us to combat catechetical illiteracy.

True enough, the New Evangalization is urgent because secularism has often choked the seed of faith; but that choking was sadly made easy because so many believers really had no adequate knowledge or grasp of the wisdom, beauty, and coherence of the Truth.

Cardinal George Pell has observed that “it’s not so much that our people have lost their faith, but that they barely had it to begin with; and, if they did, it was so vapid that it was easily taken away.”

So did Cardinal Avery Dulles call for neo-apologetics, rooted not in dull polemics but in the Truth that has a name, Jesus.

So did Blessed John Newman, upon reception of his own biglietto nominating him a cardinal warn again of what he constantly called a dangerous liberalism in religion: “. . . the belief that there is no objective truth in religion, that one creed is as good as another . . . Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment, a taste . . . ”

And, just as Jesus tells us “I am the Truth,” He also describes Himself as “the Way, and the Life.”

The Way of Jesus is in and through His Church, a holy mother who imparts to us His Life.

“For what would I ever know of Him without her?” asks De Lubac, referring to the intimate identification of Jesus and His Church.

Thus, our mission, the New Evangelization, has essential catechetical and ecclesial dimensions.

This impels us to think about Church in a fresh way: to think of the Church as a mission. As John Paul II taught in Redemptoris Missio, the Church does not “have a mission,” as if “mission” were one of many things the Church does. No, the Church is a mission, and each of us who names Jesus as Lord and Savior should measure ourselves by our mission-effectiveness.

Over the fifty years since the convocation of the Council, we have seen the Church pass through the last stages of the Counter-Reformation and rediscover itself as a missionary enterprise. In some venues, this has meant a new discovery of the Gospel. In once-catechized lands, it has meant a re-evangelization that sets out from the shallow waters of institutional maintenance, and as John Paul II instructed us in Novo Millennio Ineunte, puts out “into the deep” for a catch.

In many of the countries represented in this college, the ambient public culture once transmitted the Gospel, but does so no more. In those circumstances, the proclamation of the Gospel — the deliberate invitation to enter into friendship with the Lord Jesus — must be at the very center of the Catholic life of all of our people. But in all circumstances, the Second Vatican Council and the two great popes who have given it an authoritative interpretation are urging us to call our people to think of themselves as missionaries and evangelists.

5. When I was a new seminarian at the North American College here in Rome, all the first-year men from all the Roman theological universities were invited to a Mass at St. Peter’s with the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal John Wright, as celebrant and homilist.

We thought he would give us a cerebral homily. But he began by asking, “Seminarians: do me and the Church a big favor. When you walk the streets of Rome, smile!”

So, point five: the missionary, the evangelist, must be a person of joy.

“Joy is the infallible sign of God’s presence,” claims Leon Bloy.

When I became Archbishop of New York, a priest old me, “You better stop smiling when you walk the streets of Manhattan, or you’ll be arrested!”

A man dying of AIDS at the Gift of Peace Hospice, administered by the Missionaries of Charity in Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s Archdiocese of Washington, asked for baptism. When the priest asked for an expression of faith, the dying man whispered, “All I know is that I’m unhappy, and these sisters are very happy, even when I curse them and spit on them. Yesterday I finally asked them why they were so happy. They replied ‘Jesus.’ I want this Jesus so I can finally be happy.

A genuine act of faith, right?

The New Evangelization is accomplished with a smile, not a frown.

The missio ad gentes is all about a yes to everything decent, good, true, beautiful and noble in the human person.

The Church is about a yes!, not a no!

6. And, next-to-last point, the New Evangelization is about love.

Recently, our brother John Thomas Kattrukudiyil, the Bishop of Itanagar, in the northeast corner of India, was asked to explain the tremendous growth of the Church in his diocese, registering over 10,000 adult converts a year.

“Because we present God as a loving father, and because people see the Church loving them.” he replied.

Not a nebulous love, he went on, but a love incarnate in wonderful schools for all children, clinics for the sick, homes for the elderly, centers for orphans, food for the hungry.

In New York, the heart of the most hardened secularist softens when visiting one of our inner-city Catholic schools. When one of our benefactors, who described himself as an agnostic, asked Sister Michelle why, at her age, with painful arthritic knees, she continued to serve at one of these struggling but excellent poor schools, she answered, “Because God loves me, and I love Him, and I want these children to discover this love.”

7. Joy, love . . . and, last point . . . sorry to bring it up, . . . but blood.

Tomorrow, twenty-two of us will hear what most of you have heard before:

“To the praise of God, and the honor of the Apostolic See
receive the red biretta, the sign of the cardinal’s dignity;
and know that you must be willing to conduct yourselves with fortitude
even to the shedding of your blood:
for the growth of the Christian faith,
the peace and tranquility of the People of God,
and the freedom and spread of the Holy Roman Church.”

Holy Father,can you omit “to the shedding of your blood” when you present me with the biretta?

Of course not! We are but “scarlet audio-visual aids” for all of our brothers and sisters also called to be ready to suffer and die for Jesus.

It was Pope Paul VI who noted wisely that people today learn more from “witness than from words,” and the supreme witness is martyrdom.

Sadly, today we have martyrs in abundance.

Thank you, Holy Father, for so often reminding us of those today suffering persecution for their faith throughout the world.

Thank you, Cardinal Koch, for calling the Church to an annual “day of solidarity” with those persecuted for the sake of the gospel, and for inviting our ecumenical and inter-religious partners to an “ecumenism of martyrdom.”

While we cry for today’s martyrs; while we love them, pray with and for them; while we vigorously advocate on their behalf; we are also very proud of them, brag about them, and trumpet their supreme witness to the world.

They spark the missio ad gentes and New Evangelization.

A young man in New York tells me he returned to the Catholic faith of his childhood, which he had jettisoned as a teenager, because he read The Monks of Tibhirine, about Trappists martyred in Algeria fifteen years ago, and after viewing the drama about them, the French film, Of Gods and Men.

Tertullian would not be surprised.

Thank you, Holy Father and brethren, for your patience with my primitive Italian. When Cardinal Bertone asked me to give this address in Italian, I worried, because I speak Italian like a child.

But, then I recalled, that, as a newly-ordained parish priest, my first pastor said to me as I went over to school to teach the six-year old children their catechism, “Now we’ll see if all your theology sunk in, and if you can speak of the faith like a child.”

And maybe that’s a fitting place to conclude: we need to speak again as a child the eternal truth, beauty, and simplicity of Jesus and His Church.

Sia lodato Gesu Cristo!

 (source: http://cnsblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/cardinal-designate-dolans-address-to-pope-benedict-and-the-college-of-cardinals/)

I stand with my bishop and the body of bishops in their position.

Here is the USCCB’s response:

WASHINGTON – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have issued the following statement:

The Catholic bishops have long supported access to life-affirming healthcare for all, and the conscience rights of everyone involved in the complex process of providing that healthcare. That is why we raised two serious objections to the “preventive services” regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011.

First, we objected to the rule forcing private health plans — nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion. All the other mandated “preventive services” prevent disease, andpregnancy is not a disease. Moreover, forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal conscience laws. Therefore, we called for the rescission of the mandate altogether.

Second, we explained that the mandate would impose a burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those who consider such “services” immoral:insurers forced to write policies including this coverage; employers and schools forced to sponsor and subsidize the coverage; and individual employees and students forced to pay premiums for the coverage. We therefore urged HHS, if it insisted on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all of these stakeholders—not just the extremely small subset of “religious employers” that HHS proposed to exempt initially.

Today, the President has done two things.

First, he has decided to retain HHS’s nationwide mandate of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception, including some abortifacients. This is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern. We cannot fail to reiterate this, even as so many would focus exclusively on the question of religious liberty.

Second, the President has announced some changes in how that mandate will be administered, which is still unclear in its details. As far as we can tell at this point, the change appears to have the following basic contours:

·It would still mandate that all insurers must include coverage for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write. At this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate.

·It would allow non-profit, religious employers to declare that they do not offer such coverage. But the employee and insurer may separately agree to add that coverage. The employee would not have to pay any additional amount to obtain this coverage, and the coverage would be provided as a part of the employer’s policy, not as a separate rider.

·Finally, we are told that the one-year extension on the effective date (from August 1, 2012 to August 1, 2013) is available to any non-profit religious employer who desires it, without any government application or approval process.

These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protectionfor key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected. And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.

We just received information about this proposal for the first time this morning; we were not consulted in advance. Some information we have is in writing and some is oral. We will, of course, continue to press for the greatest conscience protection we can secure from the Executive Branch. But stepping away from the particulars, we note that today’s proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions. In a nation dedicated to religious liberty as its first and founding principle, we should not be limited to negotiating within these parameters. The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.

We will therefore continue—with no less vigor, no less sense of urgency—our efforts to correct this problem through the other two branches of government. For example, we renew our call on Congress to pass, and the Administration to sign, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. And we renew our call to the Catholic faithful, and to all our fellow Americans, to join together in this effort to protect religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all.

The Gregorian is where I studied back in 1977-78, and I have fond memories of the place. I am delighted that they hosted this much needed symposium.

Yesterday, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, Promoter of Justice, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith presented a wonderful paper entitled: A Quest for Truth in Sexual Abuse Cases. You may read it entirely in English at:

http://thr.unigre.it/vescovi2012/Portals/0/Documenti/8_Mercoledi/Scicluna-English.pdf

I would like to draw out for you a few key elements of his comments:

 “Love for the truth must be expressed in love for justice and in  the resulting commitment to establishing truth in relations  within human society.”

“…the teaching of Blessed  John Paul II that truth is at  the  basis of  justice explains why a deadly culture of silence or  “omertà” is in itself wrong and unjust. Other enemies of  the  truth are the deliberate denial of known facts and the  misplaced concern that the good name of the institution should  somehow enjoy absolute priority to the detriment of legitimate disclosure of crime.”

“The acknowledgment and recognition of the full truth of  the  matter in all its sorrowful effects and consequences is at the source of true healing for both victim and perpetrator.

“Experts in psychology are better equipped to explain how and  why the perpetrator develops coping mechanisms, whether  primitive or complex, like denial, sublimation, minimizing and  projection.   No coping mechanism can substitute the liberating effect on the cleric’s conscience and on his whole being as a person and as a minister of God derived from the full, humble, honest and contrite acknowledgment of his sin, his crime, his responsibility for the harm he has caused to the victims, to the Church, to society.”

“Experts in psychology are also better equipped to explain the  radical need of the victim to be heard attentively, to be understood and believed, to be treated with dignity as he or she plods on the tiresome journey of recovery and healing. We need the input of experts in order to be able to evaluate the so called  “recovered  memories” concerning event that allegedly happened decades previously.  No less challenging is the limited phenomenon of some victims who refuse to move on in life, who seem to have indentified “self” simply with “having been victims”.  These fellow brothers and sisters of ours merit our special attention and care.”

“The law is clear. But, as Blessed John Paul II rightly remarked  in 1994, the faithful need to be convinced that ecclesial society  is living under the governance of law.  The law may indeed  be  clear.  But this is not enough for peace and order in the community. Our people need to know that the law is being applied.”

“Another corollary of this “paramount criterion” is the duty to  cooperate with state authorities in our response to child abuse.  Sexual abuse of minors is not just  a canonical delict or a breach of a Code of Conduct internal to an institution, whether it be  religious or other. It is also a crime prosecuted by civil law.  Although relations with civil authority will differ in various  countries, nevertheless it is important to cooperate with such  authorities within their responsibilities.”

 ”Blessed John Paul II had this to say in 1994:  «You are well  aware of the temptation to lighten the heavy demands of  observing the law in the name of a mistaken idea of  compassion and mercy. In this regard, it must be firmly said  that if it is a question of a transgression that concerns the individual alone, one need only refer to the  injunction:  “Go  your way, and from now on do not sin again” (Jn 8:11).  But if  the rights of others are at stake, mercy cannot be shown or  received without addressing the obligations that correspond to these rights»”

It is too bad this symposium is not receiving more coverage, even in the Catholic media. The Catholic News Service did place an article on its website today. I would encourage all of you to log on to website above to read the many other presentations on this subject.

It seems clear that the Church more clearly understands and is confronting this evil of child sexual abuse. I applaud the men and women who are attending this symposium and the work they will do in returning to their home dioceses and congregations. May all of us educate ourselves sexual abuse of minors, and create safe environments in our Church institutions.

It looks promising. I would hope it bears fruit. The Holy See issued a message today addressed to Fr. Dumortier, SJ the rector of the Gregorian. In part, he said:

“… healing for victims must be of paramount concern in the Christian community, and it must go hand in hand with a profound renewal of the Church at every level…. the Holy Father therefore supports and encourages every effort to respond with evangelical charity to the challenge of providing children and vulnerable adults with an ecclesial environment conducive to their human and spiritual growth.”

Here is the news release (minus the media notes) regarding the symposium. It contains some interesting information.

PRESS RELEASE

Rome, January 24, 2012

Church leaders from across the world come to Rome to relaunch their commitment to the safeguarding of the vulnerable with a new global initiative: “Towards Healing and Renewal”

Bishops and Religious Superiors from across the world will come to Rome in February for the launch of the Catholic Church’s global initiative on safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.

Towards Healing and Renewal is being offered by the Gregorian University in Rome and consists of a major symposium followed by the launch of a multiinstitution e-learning centre which will run for the next three years – the Centre for the Protection of Children based in Munich, Germany. Delegates for the symposium will come from about 110 Bishops’ Conferences and also be superiors of more than 30 Religious Orders, making this a truly international gathering focusing on safeguarding by the Catholic Church.

This initiative has the support of several Vatican Congregations as well as the Secretary of State and the symposium, which will run from February 6-9, will have speakers from all continents in recognition of the global nature of safeguarding the vulnerable. The speakers include the testimony of a victim of abuse, who will address the delegates about the need for victims to be heard and how to effect positive change. Full details of the symposium and the speakers are available on the website thr.unigre.it.

Following the 2011 circular letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to Bishops’ Conferences requiring all Dioceses in the world to develop guidelines within the next year on the handling of all abuse allegations, the symposium will play a significant role in enabling Bishops and major religious superiors to move towards creating a consistent global response. Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, will give the opening address at the Symposium conference, and representatives from the CDF have had a very active role in giving shape to Towards Healing and Renewal.

The e-learning centre based in Munich (Germany), more formally known as the Center for Child Protection of the Institute for Psychology of the Pontifical Gregorian University, which will be run by Hubert Liebhardt, Visiting Professor at the Gregorian University as well as serving at the University of Ulm, has full funding secured for three years. It will enable the dissemination of good practices to assist in the setting up of local structures to introduce robust procedures to deal quickly and effectively with all allegations of abuse and will go live at the conclusion of the symposium.

“Towards Healing and Renewal” will also act as a catalyst in developing a culture of listening and healing within the Church.

Bishop Weisenburger was born in 1960 in the diocese of Springfield, Illinois. He studied theology at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and later obtained a license in Canon Law from St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada.

He was ordained a priest in 1987 and since then has held a number of diocesan positions including Vicar General and Rector of the cathedral in his home diocese.

The date of his episcopal ordination has not yet been set.

Congratulations, diocese of Salina!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, 

Please allow me a moment to share some news with you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Diocese of Winona and the Church in the United States directly, and strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people-the Catholic population and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write; and almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies. 

In so ruling, the Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. As a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply. 

We cannot-we will not-comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second- class citizens. Our brothers and sisters of all faiths, and many others of good will, already join us in this important effort to safeguard our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust She can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less. 

I am, therefore, asking two things of you. First, as a community of faith, we must commit ourselves to some extra time of prayer and fasting. I leave that time open to your good judgment and charity. We must pray that wisdom and justice may prevail and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, our efforts will amount to nothing; with God, our faith can move mountains! 

Secondly, I encourage you to please visit the Bishops’ Conference website at: www.usccb.org/conscience. There you can find a video presentation from Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York and the current President of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, concerning the importance of this matter and learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty. 

Sincerely yours in Christ, 

Most Reverend John M. Quinn 

Bishop of Winona

WHITE HOUSE MISREPRESENTS ITS OWN CONTRACEPTIVE MANDATE

The Obama administration, to justify its widely criticized mandate for contraception and
sterilization coverage in private health plans, has posted a set of false and misleading
claims on the White House blog (“Health Reform, Preventive Services, and Religious
Institutions,” February 1). In what follows, each White House claim is quoted with a
response.

Claim: “Churches are exempt from the new rules: Churches and other houses of
worship will be exempt from the requirement to offer insurance that covers
contraception.”

Response: This is not entirely true. To be eligible, even churches and houses of worship
must show the government that they hire and serve primarily people of their own faith
and have the inculcation of religious values as their purpose. Some churches may have
service to the broader community as a major focus, for example, by providing direct
service to the poor regardless of faith. Such churches would be denied an exemption
precisely because their service to the common good is so great. More importantly, the
vast array of other religious organizations – schools, hospitals, universities, charitable
institutions – will clearly not be exempt.

*

Claim: “No individual health care provider will be forced to prescribe
contraception: The President and this Administration have previously and continue to
express strong support for existing conscience protections. For example, no Catholic
doctor is forced to write a prescription for contraception.”

Response: It is true that these rules directly apply to employers and insurers, not
providers, but this is beside the point: The Administration is forcing individuals and
institutions, including religious employers, to sponsor and subsidize what they consider
immoral. Less directly, the classification of these drugs and procedures as basic
“preventive services” will increase pressures on doctors, nurses and pharmacists to
provide them in order to participate in private health plans – and no current federal
conscience law prevents that from happening. Finally, because the mandate includes
abortifacient drugs, it violates one of the “existing conscience protections” (the Weldon
amendment) for which the Administration expresses “strong support.”

*

Claim: “No individual will be forced to buy or use contraception: This rule only
applies to what insurance companies cover. Under this policy, women who want
2

contraception will have access to it through their insurance without paying a co-pay or
deductible. But no one will be forced to buy or use contraception.”

Response: The statement that no one will be forced to buy it is false. Women who want
contraception will be able to obtain it without co-pay or deductible precisely because
women who do not want contraception will be forced to help pay for it through their
premiums. This mandate passes costs from those who want the service, to those who
object to it.

*

Claim: “Drugs that cause abortion are not covered by this policy: Drugs like RU486 are
not covered by this policy, and nothing about this policy changes the President’s firm
commitment to maintaining strict limitations on Federal funding for abortions. No
Federal tax dollars are used for elective abortions.”

Response: False. The policy already requires coverage of Ulipristal (HRP 2000 or
“Ella”), a drug that is a close analogue to RU-486 (mifepristone) and has the same
effects.1 RU-486 itself is also being tested for possible use as an “emergency
contraceptive” – and if the FDA approves it for that purpose, it will automatically be
mandated as well.

*

Claim: “Over half of Americans already live in the 28 States that require insurance
companies cover contraception: Several of these States like North Carolina, New York,
and California have identical religious employer exemptions. Some States like Colorado,
Georgia and Wisconsin have no exemption at all.”

Response: This misleads by ignoring important facts, and some of it is simply false. All
the state mandates, even those without religious exemptions, may be avoided by self-
insuring prescription drug coverage, by dropping that particular coverage altogether, or
by taking refuge in a federal law that pre-empts any state mandates (ERISA). None of
these havens is available under the federal mandate. It is also false to claim that North
Carolina has an identical exemption. It is broader: It does not require a religious
organization to serve primarily people of its own faith, or to fulfill the federal rule’s
narrow tax code criterion. Moreover, the North Carolina law, unlike the federal mandate,
completely excludes abortifacient drugs like Ella and RU-486 as well as “emergency
contraceptives” like Preven.

1
See A. Tarantal, et al., 54 Contraception 107-115 (1996), at 114 (“studies with mifepristone and HRP
2000 have shown both antiprogestins to have roughly comparable activity in terminating pregnancy when
administered during the early stages of gestation”); G. Bernagiano & H. von Hertzen, 375 The Lancet 527-
28 (Feb. 13, 2010), at 527 (“Ulipristal has similar biological effects to mifepristone, the antiprogestin used
in medical abortion”).

3

*

Claim: “Contraception is used by most women: According to a study by the
Guttmacher Institute, most women, including 98 percent of Catholic women, have used
contraception.”

Response: This is irrelevant, and it is presented in a misleading way. If a survey found
that 98% of people had lied, cheated on their taxes, or had sex outside of marriage, would
the government claim it can force everyone to do so? But this claim also mangles the data
to create a false impression. The study actually says this is true of 98% of “sexually
experienced” women. The more relevant statistic is that the drugs and devices subject to
this mandate (sterilization, hormonal prescription contraceptives and IUDs) are used by
69% of those women who are “sexually active” and “do not want to become pregnant.”
Surely that is a minority of the general public, yet every man and woman who needs
health insurance will have to pay for this coverage. The drugs that the mandate’s
supporters say will be most advanced by the new rule, because they have the highest co-
pays and deductibles now, are powerful but risky injectable and implantable hormonal
contraceptives, now used by perhaps 5% of women. The mandate is intended to change
women’s reproductive behavior, not only reflect it.

*

Claim: “Contraception coverage reduces costs: While the monthly cost of
contraception for women ranges from $30 to $50, insurers and experts agree that savings
more than offset the cost. The National Business Group on Health estimated that it
would cost employers 15 to 17 percent more not to provide contraceptive coverage than
to provide such coverage, after accounting for both the direct medical costs of potentially
unintended and unhealthy pregnancy and indirect costs such as employee absence and
reduced productivity.”

Response: The government is violating our religious freedom to save money? If the
claim is true it is hard to say there is a need for a mandate: Secular insurers and
employers who don’t object will want to purchase the coverage to save money, and those
who object can leave it alone. But this claim also seems to rest on some assumptions:
That prescription contraceptives are the only way to avoid “unintended and unhealthy
pregnancy,” for example, or that increasing access to contraceptives necessarily produces
significant reductions in unintended pregnancies. The latter assumption has been cast
into doubt by numerous studies (see

http://old.usccb.org/prolife/issues/contraception/contraception-fact-sheet-3-17-11.pdf).

*

Claim: “The Obama Administration is committed to both respecting religious beliefs and
increasing access to important preventive services. And as we move forward, our strong
partnerships with religious organizations will continue.”

4

Response: False. There is no “balance” in the final HHS rule—one side has prevailed
entirely, as the mandate and exemption remain entirely unchanged from August 2011,
despite many thousands of comments filed since then indicating intense opposition.
Indeed, the White House Press Secretary declared on January 31, “I don’t believe there
are any constitutional rights issues here,” so little was placed on that side of the scale.
The Administration’s stance on religious liberty has also been shown in other ways.
Recently it argued before the Supreme Court that religious organizations have no greater
right under the First amendment to hire or fire their own ministers than secular
organizations have over their leaders– a claim that was unanimously rejected by the
Supreme Court as “extreme” and “untenable.” The Administration recently denied a
human trafficking grant to a Catholic service provider with high objective scores, and
gave part of that grant instead to a provider with not just lower, but failing, objective
scores, all because the Catholic provider refused in conscience to compromise the same
moral and religious beliefs at issue here. Such action violates not only federal conscience
laws, but President Obama’s executive order assuring “faith-based” organizations that
they will be able to serve the public in federal programs without compromising their
faith.

2/3/12

Conscience Protection.

Check it out, respond, and speak up for Conscience Protection and Religious Liberty.

Thank you!