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Collection Requested for Hurricane Irma Relief

Posted on by Vermont Catholic 
(CNS photo/James Ramos, Texas Catholic Herald) Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston gives a homily during a Sept. 2 Mass at St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Spring, Texas, for victims of Tropical Storm Harvey. Cardinal DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has asked the nation's bishops to take up an emergency collection in their Dioceses for those impacted by Hurricane Irma.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington has asked his fellow bishops throughout the country to take an emergency collection in their Dioceses during weekend Masses Sept. 23-24 to help those recovering from devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean and the southeastern region of the United States.

“While emergency outreach was immediate, we know that the road to recovery and the rebuilding of communities will be long and additional support will be needed,” said Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston in a statement issued Sept. 14.

The funds collected “will be used in the affected areas to support humanitarian aid, assistance with long-term efforts to restore communities after widespread destruction and for the pastoral and reconstruction needs of the Church in U.S. and the Caribbean,” he said.

Cardinal DiNardo acknowledged that his call “comes on the heels” of the emergency collection for victims of Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas and Louisiana and held on for days before moving inland.

Harvey, too, “caused catastrophic damage and compelled us to respond,” he said.

“Likewise, Hurricane Irma has been devastating and our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean, especially the Diocese of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, and the southern U.S. need our help.”

The earlier call for a collection came in an Aug. 28 letter from Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, as USCCB vice president, suggesting funds be collected during Masses the weekend of Sept. 2-3 or Sept. 9-10.

Hardly any place in the path of Hurricane Irma was left untouched. Its strength and size, with 120-plus-mph winds stretching 70 miles from its core, leveled entire islands in the eastern Caribbean, brought unprecedented flooding on Cuba’s north coast, devastated the Florida Keys, snapped construction cranes in downtown Miami and targeted cities along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

In the Keys alone, at least 25 percent of the homes were destroyed and 65 percent suffered significant damage, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Brock Long. “Basically, every house in the Keys was impacted,” he told the news media.

In a Sept. 12 statement, the U.S. bishops’ Executive Committee prayed for “the safety and care of human life” after two catastrophic hurricanes — Irma and Harvey — and they urged Catholics around the country to offer their prayers as well as financial support and volunteer help as they can.

Irma dwindled to a tropical storm as it neared the Florida-Georgia line early Sept. 11 and had died out over southern states by week’s end.

“The Church is a channel for grace and solidarity in the wake of natural disasters as it offers solace and support in their aftermath,” Cardinal DiNardo said Sept. 14. “However, as is so often the case, the Church itself in these regions is both a long-standing provider of aid and now is in need of tremendous assistance itself.”

Many church structures “have been damaged and their resources depleted, which makes it even more challenging to provide assistance and pastoral outreach to those in need,” he added.

The “Grave Evil” of Assisted Suicide

Posted on by Vermont Catholic 
CNS photo/Art Babych) A woman holds up a sign during a rally against assisted suicide in 2016 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario. Later, in a Toronto speech, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, urged Canadians to work to reverse euthanasia rulings.

By Caitlin Thomas

In the Church’s efforts to teach about the grave evil of assisted suicide and the threats it poses, we must use clear and vigorous language. And it is always, always important that we do so with love.

Assisted suicide is suicide. In the few states where it is legal, physicians willing to do so prescribe lethal drugs at the request of patients seeking the drugs to end their own lives. Proponents of assisted suicide use terms like “death with dignity” and “aid in dying.” But these are misleading. They are the sickly-sweet phrases of a poisonous ideology that attacks our full dignity and worth as human beings.

These phrases go beyond word games and become flat-out contradictions carefully etched into law. In fact, every state law (and proposed bill) legalizing assisted suicide in this country follows Oregon’s law, proclaiming, “the actions taken in accordance with [the law] shall not, for any purposes, constitute suicide [or] assisted suicide.” So, according to the law itself, assisted suicide isn’t assisted suicide? The only sensible response to this legal blustering must be something like this sentiment from a wise character in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce: “Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on having jaundice.”

We should not be seduced by slippery language into ignoring hard truths. The dying process can be painful, messy, full of uncertainty and difficult questions—just like life. But there is death with authentic dignity: dying at peace with God and our loved ones. Dying or terminally ill persons deserve the best care we have to offer, including appropriate treatment of symptoms and pain relief. There is a way to face this process with peace, not by hastening death, but by experiencing the support and loving care that our society should offer to those preparing for death. Assisted suicide, on the other hand, hurts the individual and the entire human family, sending a message that some lives are “completed” or not as valuable as others. We should kill the pain, not the patient.

Truth always walks hand-in-hand with love. It is not enough to say, “suicide is bad.” We must also say, “life is good”—especially when life is old, fragile, differently abled, so young and so small our eyes cannot see it, or of a different skin color or place of origin.

We should learn how to best love those who are close to death. We should pray for holy deaths for them and for ourselves, recognizing that Jesus brings us to new life with Him through His death and resurrection. We should pray for the grace to build a true culture of life. And we should affirm the goodness of life in all that we do and say.

Caitlin Thomas is a staff assistant for the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. To read the U.S. bishops’ 2011 policy statement on assisted suicide and related resources, visit www.usccb.org/toliveeachday.

“It’s what you do with what happens to you”

Posted on by Vermont Catholic 
(Vermont Catholic/Cori Fugere Urban)Chris Waddell brings a simple message to students at Mater Christi School in Burlington: “It’s not what happens to you. It’s what you do with what happens to you.”
Chris Waddell brought a simple message to students at Mater Christi School in Burlington: “It’s not what happens to you. It’s what you do with what happens to you.”

Speaking from his wheelchair on the stage in the school gymnasium Sept. 13, one of the most decorated male mono skiers in Paralympic history told students in second through eighth grade that while no one is free of struggle, everyone has the opportunity to choose how they react to their challenges.

He said people can see themselves as victims or survivors, as overwhelmed or challenged, as alone or part of a team, as having only one strategy or as having many; the latter in each pair is what fosters resiliency, he said.

“Not being able to walk is the worst thing I could imagine,” said the Utah resident who is a graduate of Middlebury College.

In 1988 a skiing accident in Massachusetts brought his worst nightmare to reality; his ski popped off in the middle of a turn. He fell, broke two vertebrae and damaged his spinal cord.

Paralyzed from the waist down, he learned and achieved more than he could have imagined.

“This is the most powerful I’ve been in my life,” Waddell said, noting that he had to let go of “some of the things that tripped me up every day” like frustration and worry that could have prevented him from accomplishing his revamped goals.

He returned to college just two months after the accident, began mono skiing in less than a year and was named to the U.S. Disabled Ski Team a little more than two years later. With 13 Paralympic medals, he became the most decorated male mono skier in history.

“If I had never had my accident, I’d never have been the best in the world at something,” he told the Mater Christi students during his One Revolution Foundation’s Nametags Educational Program.

The program has been presented to more than 150,000 students in more than 550 schools throughout the United States and in Russia. Nametags does not focus on disability but rather the universal experience of challenge and the power of resilience.

Created by Waddell and resilience educator Donna M. Volpitta, the program centers on the message, “It’s not what happens to you. It’s what you do with what happens to you” and people’s collective responsibility to create communities that allow people to thrive. It focuses on helping students learn that they have the power to make choices about how they are perceived — the “nametags” they wear. In the face of adversity, they can choose resilience.

Friends have told Waddell they could never have done what he has done, overcoming the loss of his ability to walk and turning it into triumphs elsewhere.

“Inspiration comes when we hear the truth…that we all need to hear,” said Timothy E. Loescher, president/head of school at Mater Christi who introduced Waddell to the assembly. (They were friends at Middlebury College.)

He thanked Waddell for “helping us develop into the people we are called to be.”

Also a track athlete, Waddell is one of a handful to have won World Championships in both winter and summer. He competed in four Winter Paralympics, winning 13 medals and three Summer Paralympics, winning a silver medal in the 200 meters. In World Championship competition, he won a total of nine medals.

He was inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame and the Paralympics Hall of Fame. Skiing magazine placed him among the “25 Greatest Skiers in North America.”

In 2009 Waddell became the first nearly unassisted paraplegic to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, using a specially made pedal-powered, four-wheel vehicle.

Patrick Walsh, 12, an eighth grader from St. Catherine of Siena Church in Shelburne, was impressed with Waddell’s tenacity and positive attitude.

For him, Waddell’s message mirrored the message of faith. “If you have a connection with God, you can get through anything. You can pray and feel better.”

Classmate Myla Altadonna, 13, said the message she would take from the presentation is “not to let anything get in your way.”

“Even when you have an obstacle, you can go on and do great things,” she added.

New Tool to use ‘Laudato Si” to measure, rank Nations’ Development

Posted on by Vermont Catholic 
(CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)A train carries coal near Ravenna, Ky., in this 2014 file photo. Catholic groups are developing a new tool to rank countries' work in human and environmental development.

A Catholic university, the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation and a Latin American foundation working on sustainable development have developed a tool to measure and rank countries’ efforts in human and environmental development.

The idea is to have an effective tool that measures using Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si'” as the basis for the initiative.

The “Laudato Si'” Observatory will be launched at the closing of the Ratzinger Foundation’s international symposium, scheduled Nov. 29-Dec. 1 in San Jose, said Fernando Sanchez, head of the Catholic University of Costa Rica.

Sanchez, a former Costa Rican ambassador to the Vatican, said the observatory hopes to prompt research and “to provide nations’ governments an absolutely academic tool … to promote positive change, which is what the pope is asking us to do, and it would be our major contribution with this symposium.”

The observatory “stems from taking the encyclical, dividing it into measurable topics — measurable indicators — and drawing up a human and environmental index,” all of which concern “human development and environmental development,” he added.

In the 2015 encyclical, Pope Francis urged a conversation that includes everyone and the need for a conversion to bring about lasting change on how people view the environment.

Sanchez said the papal encyclical is the framework for the observatory and its output and, compared to other measurements already implemented, “the great difference is that this index will have the church’s social doctrine as its anchor.”

“The possibilities to prompt change with this index are enormous,” he said.

The symposium, “On Care for Our Common Home, a Necessary Conversion to Human Ecology,” aims to make it “utterly clear that the struggle for human, social, environmental development is not an ideological issue,” Sanchez said.

“It’s an issue of survival, it’s an issue of responsibility, it’s an issue of conscience. That’s essential, and it’s what the Holy Father tells us. Besides, it’s not for some, it’s for all,” said Sanchez.

“And also, he clearly says that it’s a real issue … climate change,” although “some new leaders have tried to say it’s an invention,” said Sanchez, who reaffirmed that “it’s real, it’s urgent, it’s global and it’s not ideological.”

The three-day event, to be held at a luxury hotel on the outskirts of this capital city, features presentations by Cardinal Claudio Hummes, retired head of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy and president of the Brazilian bishops’ Commission for the Amazon; Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, head of the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education; and Tomas Insua, research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and executive director of the Global Catholic Climate Movement.

Sanchez said there is high expectation about general participation in the symposium, because scholars, entrepreneurs, environmentalists and students have been invited.

“The great challenge we have here is to take an issue, which is for all an important issue, discuss around it and do it in a simple way, as the pope is doing,” he said.
In his view, “one of the pope’s marvels … is that he has managed to ‘democratize’ the Holy See’s message, because everyone understands him. You may be in favor or against him, but you undoubtedly understand him, and this encyclical is a good example,” he said.

Related:
A former head of Catholic Relief Services will be in Vermont to speak at the “Action for Ecological Justice: Celebrating a Year of Creation” conference at St. Michael’s College on Sept. 30 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The conference will be the main event of the Diocese of Burlington’s Year of Creation, a yearlong, statewide, intentional focus on embracing the message of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical letter, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.”

Dr. Carolyn Woo, who from 2012-2016 was president and CEO of CRS, the U.S. Catholic Church’s official, international humanitarian and development aid agency, will present a personal look at the encyclical she helped Pope Francis present in Rome, at environmental degradation and its effect on the poor and at measures to minimize further environmental harm from carbon emissions and remediate damage already done.

The conference at St. Michael’s College will be open to people of all faiths.

General registration is $35 per person and includes morning pastries, lunch and afternoon breakout sessions. Students can register for free.

For more information, call Stephanie Clary at 802-846-5822.

U.S. Bishops Encourage Prayer, Support in Response to Hurricanes

Posted on by Vermont Catholic 
(CNS photo/Bob Roller)Franciscan Father John Tran Nguyen, pastor of St. Peter Church in Rockport, Texas, stands inside his destroyed church Sept. 8 in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The parish is home to mainly Vietnamese-American Catholics.

In the wake of two devastating hurricanes in just two weeks, the Executive Committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released the following statement:

“With lives and livelihoods still at risk in Texas, Florida, the Virgin Islands and throughout the Caribbean, we pray for the safety and care of human life in the wake of two catastrophic hurricanes. The massive scale of the dual disasters and the effect it has on communities, families and individuals cannot be fully comprehended or adequately addressed in the immediate aftermath of the storms.

At this time of initial recovery, we mourn the loss of life, homes and other property, and the harm to the natural environment, and we pray for all those affected and in need of assistance. We also pray for the safety of, and in thanksgiving for, the first responders who are risking their lives at this very moment in care for their neighbors, especially those who are elderly, sick, homeless, or otherwise already in need of special assistance.

We share Pope Francis’ trust that the Catholic faithful here in the United States will respond to the needs presented by these disasters with a ‘vast outpouring of solidarity and mutual aid in the best traditions of the nation.’ We encourage the faithful to respond generously with prayers, financial support, and for those who have the opportunity, the volunteering of time and talents in support of those in need.”

More information on how you can help can be found on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Emergency Collections for Disaster and Crisis Reliefwebpage.

Pope Amends Church Law on Mass Translations

Posted on by Vermont Catholic 
(CNS photo/Nancy Phelan Wiechec)An altar server holds a copy of a Roman Missal during Mass at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Alexandria, Va., in this 2011 file photo.

In changes to the Code of Canon Law regarding translations of the Mass and other liturgical texts, Pope Francis highlighted respect for the responsibility of national and regional bishops’ conferences.

The changes, released by the Vatican Sept. 9 as Pope Francis was traveling in Colombia, noted the sometimes tense relationship between bishops’ conferences and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments over translations of texts from Latin to the bishops’ local languages.

The heart of the document, which applies only to the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, changes two clauses in Canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law. The Vatican no longer will “review” translations submitted by bishops’ conferences, but will “recognize” them. And rather than being called to “prepare and publish” the translations, the bishops are to “approve and publish” them.

Archbishop Arthur Roche, secretary of the worship congregation, said under the new rules, the Vatican’s “confirmatio” of a translation is “ordinarily granted based on trust and confidence,” and “supposes a positive evaluation of the faithfulness and congruence of the texts produced with respect to the typical Latin text.”
Pope Francis made no announcement of immediate changes to the translations currently in use.

The document is titled “Magnum Principium” (“The Great Principle”) and refers to what Pope Francis called the “great principle” of the Second Vatican Council that the liturgy should be understood by the people at prayer, and therefore bishops were asked to prepare and approve translations of the texts.

Pope Francis did not overturn previous norms and documents on the principles that should inspire the various translations, but said they were “general guidelines,” which should continue to be followed to ensure “integrity and accurate faithfulness, especially in translating some texts of major importance in each liturgical book.”

However, the pope seemed to indicate a willingness to allow some space for the translation principle known as “dynamic equivalence,” which focuses on faithfully rendering the sense of a phrase rather than translating each individual word and even maintaining the original language’s syntax.

“While fidelity cannot always be judged by individual words but must be sought in the context of the whole communicative act and according to its literary genre,” the pope wrote, “nevertheless some particular terms must also be considered in the context of the entire Catholic faith, because each translation of texts must be congruent with sound doctrine.”

The pope said the changes would go into effect Oct. 1, and he ordered the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments to “modify its own ‘Regulations’ on the basis of the new discipline and help the episcopal conferences to fulfill their task as well as working to promote ever more the liturgical life of the Latin Church.”

The greater oversight provided earlier by the Vatican was understandable, Pope Francis said, given the supreme importance of the Mass and other liturgies in the life of the Church.

The main concerns, he said, were to preserve “the substantial unity of the Roman rite,” even without universal celebrations in Latin, but also to recognize that vernacular languages themselves could “become liturgical languages, standing out in a not-dissimilar way to liturgical Latin for their elegance of style and the profundity of their concepts with the aim of nourishing the faith.”

Another teaching of the Second Vatican Council that needed to be strengthened, he said, was a recognition of “the right and duty of episcopal conferences,” which are called to collaborate with the Vatican.