February 26, 2009 • 2:11 pm 3
“Solidarity is the conviction that we are born into a fabric of relationships, that our humanity ties us to others, that the gospel consecrates those ties and that the prophets tell us that those ties are the test by which our very holiness will be judged.” -Rev. J. Bryan Hehir
GIVE some time today to reflect how solidarity relates to your life.
Filed under: Culture, Personal Reflections, Spirituality
February 25, 2009 • 3:52 pm 0
Today’s Ash Wednesday reflection suggests that our hearts can extend our reach throughout the world as compassionate ambassadors of Christ.
Pray
Lent begins in irony. The Ash Wednesday Gospel entreats us to be subtle about our prayer and fasting. These spiritual practices should be done in solitude, in a locked room. No showy appearances or long faces allowed. But instead we head for church, get in line and receive a black, sooty imprint of the cross upon our foreheads. Then we walk out into the world for all to see. It’s a sign that raises the stakes on the whole season, so the Gospel suggests that we start by checking our motives. If people are staring, they better be seeing Jesus and not us. A cross on my forehead means I’m marked as a Christian, an ambassador of Christ, as Paul puts it in his second letter to the Corinthians.
Looking for Christ’s ambassador this Lent? She’s right over there, with the cross on her head. You can tell by the way she loves the poor. You can tell by the way he speaks out against injustice. You can tell by the way she welcomes and listens. You can tell by his joy. Even after the ashes come off at sundown, the sign should remain.
In your prayer this week, consider, who is watching you this Lent? Who is urgently seeking to meet Christ’s ambassador? How might you extend Jesus’ welcome?
Fast
But you may still go to your inner room to fast and pray. Lent is about an interior journey as well as an outward one. As Lent begins, ask Jesus to gently reveal to you what you must give up in order to be the disciple he seeks. What is getting in the way, causing you to stumble? What is taking up too much time and space, leaving less room for the work of the Gospel? These are the things to give up this Lent.
Learn
An ambassador lives in a foreign place, offering a piece of home to the compatriot, extending welcome in the name of a distant host. Through Operation Rice Bowl you will have the chance to visit several countries this Lent, with an eye toward how Christ is inviting you to be his ambassador, the representative of his love, his solidarity and his compassion. In Egypt the owner of a small business will invite you to explore the dignity of work and the rights of workers. A Filipino farmer will help you to experience the call to opt for the poor. In Tanzania, a young woman orphaned by AIDS will teach you about the dignity of the human person. A Honduran dairyman amplifies the call to tend God’s creation. A teacher in Ghana will illustrate the give and take of building community through participation. And finally, a family in Colorado Springs will bring home the idea that solidarity can occur both nearby and far away.
Give
By now you may have managed to assemble your Rice Bowl and place it in a spot where it will catch your eye throughout Lent. Six weeks stretch before you. How will you fill the little cardboard box? How will you ensure that it isn’t overlooked? Now’s a great time to strategize with family or friends, perhaps setting a goal for how much each would like to contribute by Easter. Visit Operation Rice Bowl’s Interactive Map to learn about CRS programming supported by your contributions. Create a list of incentives and ideas for making contributions. A great start might be giving the house a thorough sorting and cleaning. Put all the loose change you find in your Rice Bowl. Haul off unneeded items and extra shoes and clothing to the local St. Vincent de Paul Society. Meanwhile, we’ll give you more ideas for ways to contribute with each weekly e-mail or refer to your Home Calendar Guide. And remember, by the end of Lent, 25 percent of your Operation Rice Bowl contributions will stay in your own diocese to meet needs close to home, while the rest will travel the world addressing hunger across the globe.
Filed under: Uncategorized
February 17, 2009 • 4:08 pm 0
VATICAN CITY, 17 FEB 2009 (VIS) – In the Holy See Press Office this morning, a press conference was held to present a forthcoming academic congress entitled: “New frontiers of genetics and the dangers of eugenics”. The congress, promoted by the Pontifical Academy for Life for the occasion of its twenty-fifth general assembly, is due to take place in the Vatican’s New Synod Hall on 20 and 21 February. Participating in today’s presentation were Archbishop Rino Fisichella and Msgr. Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, respectively president and chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and Bruno Dallapiccola, professor of genetic medicine at Rome’s “La Sapienza” University. ”
The congress will be attended”, Archbishop Fisichella explained, “by scientists from a number of universities, who will examine the question from various points of view: from the strictly biomedical to the legal; from the philosophical and theological to the sociological”. “Thanks to the great work undertaken over the last ten years, above all that of Francis Collins on the Human Genome Project, it is possible to map thousands of genes and thus achieve an understanding of various types of disease; this often offers a real possibility of overcoming heredity ailments”.
“The aim of this congress is to verify whether, in the field genetic experimentation, there are aspects that tend towards – or effectively implement – eugenic practices”, said the archbishop. Such practices “find expression in various scientific, biological, medical, social and political projects, all of them more or less interrelated. These projects require an ethical judgement, especially when it is sought to suggest that eugenic practices are being undertaken in the name of a ‘normality’ of life to offer to individuals”. “Such a mentality, which is certainly reductive but does exist, tends to consider that some people are less valuable than others, either because of the conditions in which they live, such as poverty or lack of education, or because of their physical state, for example the disabled, the mentally ill, people in a ‘vegetative state’, or the elderly who suffer serious disease”.
“Not always do the requirements of medical science meet with the approval philosophers or theologians”, said the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. “If, on the one hand, certain people frequently succumb to the temptation to consider the body in purely material terms, on the other, a concern to ensure the fundamental unity of each individual … is something that must not be marginalised or overlooked”. “Of course research aimed at alleviating individual suffering must increase and develop”, he concluded, “yet at the same time we are called to ensure the increase and development of an ethical conscience, without which all achievements would remain limited and incomplete”.
The Human Genome Project “is one of the great undertakings of the beginning of this new millennium”, said Msgr. Carrasco in his remarks. “If for medicine, and not only for medicine, a knowledge of the human genome is absolutely essential, it is equally important to identify its ethical, legal and social consequences”, he added. “Today”, said the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Life, “eugenics represents the principal discriminatory utilisation to which the discoveries of genetic science can be put. This is what the congress aims to examine. Obviously, the main objective is to call people’s attention to the considerable benefits we may obtain from genetic research if, as seems correct and appropriate, it attracts the efforts of researchers and public and private investments, while overcoming any temptation to follow the deceptive shortcuts presented by eugenics”. In his comments Professor Dallapiccola indicated that “the proliferation of genomic analyses is destined not only to make people’s lives more dependent on medicine, but also to transform the role of doctors. … The post-genome era risks producing a further involution of the figure of the doctor, who is perhaps destined to become a ‘genomicist’, in other words a specialist in interpreting the sophisticated data emerging from some highly-technological instrument”.
“We must”, he concluded, “take a critical stance, both towards ‘reductionists’ who believe the sequence of the human genome is sufficient to clarify the meaning of human life, and towards ‘determinists’ who hold that they can predict people’s biological destiny, simply be examining their DNA”.
OP/CONGRESS GENETICS EUGENICS/FISICHELLA VIS 090217 (710)
Filed under: healthcare, Medical Ethics
February 13, 2009 • 12:47 am 0
Latin American Prelates Envision Continent of Love BOGOTA, Colombia, FEB. 12, 2009 ( Zenit.org ).- The roots of the economic crisis point to the need for a new international structure, say bishops of Latin America. This conclusion came in a statement from the leadership of the Latin American bishops’ council, which met in Colombia last week. Taking up the observation made by Benedict XVI, the prelates affirmed that “the current crisis is not the result of immediate financial difficulties, but a consequence of the state of ecological health of the planet, and above all, of the cultural and moral crisis that we live, whose symptoms have been evident for some time now all around the world.” Thus, the bishops declared, “globalization should abide by ethics, placing everything at the service of the human person created in the image and likeness of God.” “The current financial crisis has shown the excessive desire for luxury above the valuing of work and employment, making it into an end in itself,” they added. This inversion of values “perverts human relationships,” the bishops warned, “substituting them for financial transactions, which should be at the service of production and the satisfaction of human needs.” The prelates continued, “It has become evident that globalization as it is currently configured has not been capable of interpreting and reacting in function of objective values, which are found beyond the market and which make up the most important part of human life: truth, justice, love and especially, the dignity and rights of everyone, even those who live at the outskirts of the market itself.” The Latin American prelates lamented that international economy has concentrated power and riches in just a few hands, excluding the underprivileged and increasing inequality. They urged “seriously considering the need to establish bases for a new international order, founded on new game rules, which also take into account the values of the Gospel and the social teaching of the Church, with the aim to promote a globalization marked by solidarity and rationality, that would make of this continent not only the continent of hope, but also the continent of love.”
Filed under: consumerism, Economic Policy, Market Place
February 7, 2009 • 8:28 pm 0
ZE09020605 – 2009-02-06 Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-25022?l=english
CARITAS PRESIDENT ON THE ROLE OF FAMILY
Interview With Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga
By Gilberto Hernández García
MEXICO CITY, FEB. 6, 2009 (Zenit.org).- With all of the importance that families have for individuals and society — including in the economic realm — the decision to form a family should be made with ample preparation, says the president of Caritas. Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga affirmed this last month when he spoke with ZENIT at the 6th World Meeting of Families, held Jan. 14-18 in Mexico City. In this interview, he considers the impact of poverty on family relationships and the Church’s response.
Q: You have a broad vision of social issues and their repercussion on families. In this regard, what is the issue that most concerns the Church today?
Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga: The family itself — that is the principal point, the most important option in the life of the human being; as a consequence, it is on the list of the concerns we have: what to do so that people are ever better prepared for this life option. All big things are prepared for, they are not improvised, but many times the greatest decision of life, which is love and family, is improvised in a frightful way. Sometimes we have families that start off because of a mistake and not because of a decision made freely. To prepare this life option is perhaps the biggest objective of all evangelization of family ministry.
Q: What do you think about the evident process of poverty and inequality that Latin America suffers and that in many cases restrains the integral development of families?
Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga: In the World Meeting of Families, a specialist in economics presented to us the consequences that a lack of families has for economic development, for poverty itself. With studies and statistics, she showed us that physical and mental health is much better in united families than in single-parent or disintegrated families. Poverty is much worse in broken than in united families. In this regard, they looked at distinct aspects, for example, higher education and the obstacles when parents are divorced. These are elements very little considered by the press and it’s worthwhile to give them attention. The educative role of the family is spoken of; some reduce it to school education. Here it was made clear what moral education in the family means, spiritual education, economic aspects and the testimony of the father of the family, when in the midst of life’s vicissitudes, he is capable of heroically accompanying the family. These are unexplored riches and it’s worthwhile to make them known, because there are people who suffer and hearing these cases gives them strength. Poverty is a reality that is increasing in our countries, instead of diminishing. Now we have this very grave financial crisis and it is foreseen that it will have many consequences.
Q: Some say poor countries are poor because they don’t regulate births. Many governments focus their strategies against poverty with policies of birth control.
Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga: These birth control policies are in reality the elimination of the birth rate. They consider only one of the perspectives. It is thought that we are poor because we have a large population and this is a sophism. Population is necessary for economic development; there is a country in Latin America that was the first, already in the 50s, to apply reductions of birth rate. What has happened to that country? It cannot grow and, as a consequence, it doesn’t have consumers so that there are prosperous businesses. They have to import everything from other large countries and barely have a subsistent economy — not a development as there should be. The Church speaks clearly of responsible paternity and maternity; the transmission of life is a great responsibility of the parents, not a product of some disorder. It is a great responsibility. In the same way governments have the grave responsibility to procure the common good for all citizens, and if there are citizens that should be privileged, it should be the poor and not those who have more. And that is why the Church, that is Mother, heavily insists in its social doctrine that the family is not like an element that doesn’t play a part in the social problems. In the social doctrine of the Church, a very important chapter is the family, because it is very linked to everything that refers to social problems. The Church has always made the appeal to governments to concern themselves with poor families.
Q: What merit has the idea that the Church only gives privileges to the rich?
Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga: One who says this doesn’t know the life of the Church. In the first place, the Church is not reduced to the hierarchy; every baptized person is the Church. If we look at all the pastoral developments in the continent, we see that the Church has made a preferential option for the poor. In Mexico there is a unique case for our continent: businessmen and people of the high economic class sustain the Instituto Mexicano de Doctrina Social (Mexican Institute of Social Doctrine), which educates the people precisely in the conviction they have that one of the best ways to relieve poverty is through education. The institute has given scholarships to students from poor countries, including Cuba, who have come to Mexico with full scholarships, to go deeper in the study of the social doctrine of the Church. So this judgment cannot be generalized. One who examines the life of the Church understands that the preferential option for the poor is not poetry, but reality. Sometimes Catholic morality is criticized because it is opposed to the use of condoms as a solution for the problem of HIV-AIDS. Well I want to say that 27% of the organizations in the world [that work] in favor of patients with this illness are from the Catholic Church and they receive barely 2% of the Global Fund for aid for HIV-AIDS patients. If we move to programs of housing construction, we realize what it means when, during natural disasters, I speak as president of Caritas Internationalis, the most respected institution in the preferential option for the poor.
Filed under: AIDS, Caritas, Economic Policy, morals, Social Doctrine
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