Category: 2024 News

SCRANTON – Faithful throughout the Diocese of Scranton will join with members of various Christian congregations of northeastern Pennsylvania for an Ecumenical Celebration of the Word of God on Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2024, at 12:10 p.m. in the Cathedral of Saint Peter.

The event highlights the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity which has been celebrated each January since its inception in 1908.

The theme for the 2024 celebration is: “ You shall love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).

The Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will serve as leader of prayer for the traditional ecumenical prayer service. Bishop Bambera is once again serving as Chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

Guest homilist for this year’s prayer service is Reverend Rebecca A. Barnes, Rector of Saint Luke Episcopal Church, Scranton, and President of the Scranton Multifaith Ministerium.

Students from Holy Rosary School in Duryea will provide the music for the religious gathering, under the direction of David Tighe.

The Ecumenical prayer service will be broadcast live at 12:10 p.m. on CTV: Catholic Television of the Diocese of Scranton. It will also be made available on the Scranton Diocese website and across all diocesan social media platforms.

As the universal Catholic Church, including local dioceses, immerses itself deeply into the call for a new evangelization proclaimed by Pope Francis through the 2023 Synod on Synodality, both ecumenism and interreligious dialogue have been given prominence in the discussion.

In the Vademecum for the Synod on Synodality, the Official Handbook for Listening and Discernment in Local Churches, it is stated: “The dialogue between Christians of different confessions, united by one baptism, has a special place in the synodal journey.”

According to Monsignor Vincent Grimalia, Diocesan Coordinator for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity provides not only an opportunity for prayer for Christianity, but a time to learn more about various Christian churches and communities while offering motivation and commitment for year-long participation in ecumenical activities.

“It is an opportunity to renew and re-energize our commitment to Christian unity,” Monsignor Grimalia said. “In a world with so much disunity, there is a need to overcome divisions and polarization and work to get nations and various ethnic, cultural and language groups to work together.”

Saint John Paul II, in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, quotes from the Second Vatican council.

He wrote, “This statement of the Decree Unitatis Redintegratio is to be read in the context of the complete teaching of the Second Vatican Council. The Council expresses the Church’s decision to take up the ecumenical task of working for Christian unity and to propose it with conviction and vigour: “This sacred Synod exhorts all the Catholic faithful to recognize the signs of the times and to participate actively in the work of ecumenism.”

Saint John Paul reflects on the necessity of prayer and dialogue among elements of ecumenism and reminds everyone of its importance because Jesus prayed for unity of his followers.

He continued, “All this is extremely important and of fundamental significance for ecumenical activity. Thus it is absolutely clear that ecumenism, the movement promoting Christian unity, is not just some sort of ‘appendix’ which is added to the Church’s traditional activity. Rather, ecumenism is an organic part of her life and work, and consequently must pervade all that she is and does; it must be like the fruit borne by a healthy and flourishing tree which grows to its full stature.”

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Jesus Christ’s words in the Gospel reading for Jan. 18, “I am with you always until the end of the age,” are critical as “an instruction for how to live in this broken world” and “bring goodness to it,” the U.S. bishops’ pro-life chairman said in his homily at the opening Mass of the National Prayer Vigil for Life.

“Christ himself” is the “only answer” to better the world “even as it persists in imperfection,” Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, told the congregation that filled the Great Upper Church at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.

“Christ speaks these words, not as an assurance that all our efforts will succeed by worldly metrics, but as a promise that he will be there in our successes and our failures … , in our victories and our losses. … And he will sanctify it all,” Bishop Burbidge said, according to his prepared text.

The pro-life movement has seen victory with the end of Roe two years ago but also has experienced loss as abortion policies are being pushed more than ever at the federal and state levels, he said.

The Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade in its Dobbs ruling on June 24, 2022, was “a moment of relief, a moment of new life, an exodus from the oppression under which we lived for 50 years,” said Bishop Burbidge, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

But “if the past year and a half has taught us anything, it is this: Dobbs is not the end. It is a victory — a tremendous victory — but not a decisive one,” he said. “The lives of the unborn are still in danger — in some places, more so than ever. The lives of innocent children are being taken. Mothers are still being harmed. Couples, children, and families are still in need of resources, support, and love.”

In negating its own precedent that made abortion access a constitutional right in 1973, the high court returned abortion policy to the states.

“Despite the tireless efforts and hard work of bishops and all the faithful, we suffered a particularly difficult loss for unborn life after Dobbs when several states enshrined abortion rights with radical amendments to their state constitutions,” Bishop Burbidge said. “In addition, Catholic politicians and intellectuals tragically continue to publicly endorse abortion as though it is a ‘right’ and advocate for pro-abortion policies.”

The current administration also “has removed safety protocols on the distribution of abortion pills, endangering women’s health and making vulnerable women more susceptible to coercion and abuse,” he said.

In states where “there are victories to be won,” Bishop Burbidge said, the pro-life movement “must continue to be strategic. … Where states have acted to enshrine extreme abortion policies into law, we must not lose hope. Even in the darkest places, we can be a light.”

Highlighting the theme of the annual March for Life set for Jan. 19, “With every mother, for every child,” he said, “More than anything, we must continue to serve. … The needs of mothers and babies are dynamic, and we must be dynamic too.”

“The work we do in pregnancy centers around the country is at the center of our mission,” Bishop Burbidge said. “We must fortify those efforts and ensure that those who choose life have a home, an income, food, clothing, and provisions for their children. We must help mothers and fathers through the challenges of pregnancy and welcoming a new life. Becoming parents or growing a family often comes with a need for greater emotional and spiritual support. We must be attuned to this need, and creative in how we respond to it.”

Bishop Burbidge was the main celebrant of the vigil Mass, which was attended by nearly 7,000 people and joined by 138 priests, and included three cardinals — Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston and Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the U.S. — 19 bishops and archbishops, 31 deacons and 314 seminarians. Among them were also Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, president of the USCCB; and two past chairmen of the USCCB’s pro-life committee, namely Archbishops Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, and William E. Lori of Baltimore, the USCCB’s vice president.

Cardinal Pierre read a message from Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, issued on behalf of Pope Francis, who prayed that God would strengthen people’s commitment to protecting human life at every stage. The pontiff imparted his blessing on all those participating in the Jan. 19 March for Life in Washington.

Bishop Burbidge opened his homily with a thank-you to pro-life supporters for their “zeal, perseverance, and love that drives your commitment. ” He praised them for their dedication to pro-life ministries around the country and for offering “prayer, witness, and advocacy … on behalf of the unborn” at the vigil and the next day’s March for Life.

In the face of “our opponents” being flooded with money helping them to “tell falsehoods, to deceive people, and to portray anyone who stands up for life as irrational, radical, and intolerant,” Bishop Burbidge said, the pro-life movement has “the Truth.”

“Yet, we must find new ways of communicating it,” the bishop continued. “How? Without compromise. Where? Even in the darkest places … through service and always with Christ at the center.”

“All of human life is sacred. The right to life is absolutely fundamental,” he said. “No one has a right to directly take the life of another. No one has a right to devalue another. No one has a right to say which lives are worth saving and worth living, and which lives are not.”

“We must never negotiate the Truth, but speak it in love, bring it to the darkest places, and continue to serve mothers, fathers, and families in need,” he added.

After Mass Archbishop Naumann was to lead the National Holy Hour for Life through 8 p.m., followed by a series of Holy Hours of Eucharistic devotion throughout the night in dioceses across the country. An 8 a.m. Mass Jan. 19 to close the vigil will be celebrated by Bishop Earl K. Fernandes of Columbus, Ohio.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pornography and lust undermine and rob people from experiencing God’s gift of love, Pope Francis said.

“Sexual pleasure, which is a gift from God, is undermined by pornography: satisfaction without relationship that can generate forms of addiction,” the pope said Jan. 17 at his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall.

“We must defend love, love of the heart, mind and body, loving by giving oneself to another – this is the beauty of a sexual relationship,” he said.

Continuing a series of audience talks about vices and virtues, the pope reflected on the vice or “demon” of lust, which is “a kind of ‘voracity’ with regard to another person, that is, the poisoned bond that human beings have with each other, especially in the sphere of sexuality.”

“Please note,” the pope said, “in Christianity, there is no condemnation of the sexual instinct.”

The Song of Songs in the Bible, “is a wonderful poem of love between two lovers,” he said, and the human experience of falling in love is “one of the purest feelings” and “one of the most astonishing realities of existence.”

“However, this beautiful dimension of our humanity, the sexual dimension, the dimension of love, is not without its dangers,” the pope said.

The “garden” of love “is defiled by the demon of lust,” which destroys relationships and can become “a chain that deprives human beings of freedom,” he said.

“To love is to respect the other, to seek his or her happiness, to cultivate empathy for his or her feelings,” Pope Francis said.

Lust, on the other hand, poisons relationships, he said. Toxic relationships display a sense of “possession of the other, lacking respect and a sense of limits,” and where chastity has been missing.

Lust, he said, “plunders, it robs, it consumes in haste, it does not want to listen to the other but only to its own need and pleasure; lust judges every courtship a bore, it does not seek that synthesis between reason, drive and feeling that would help us to conduct existence wisely.”

A person full of lust seeks only shortcuts and adventure and “does not understand that the road to love must be traveled slowly” with patience that, “far from being synonymous with boredom, allows us to make our loving relationships happy.”

Lust is also dangerous because sexuality “has a powerful voice. It involves all the senses; it dwells both in the body and in the psyche,” he said. “This is very beautiful, but if not disciplined with patience, if not inscribed in a relationship and in a story where two individuals transform it into a loving dance, it turns into a chain that deprives human beings of freedom.”

“Winning the battle against lust, against objectifying the other, can be a lifelong endeavor. But the prize of this battle is the most important of all, because it is preserving that beauty that God wrote into his creation when he imagined love between man and woman,” he said.

Building a life together is better than going on “the hunt,” he said, and cultivating tenderness is better than “bowing to the demon of possession. True love is not possession, it is given, serving is better than conquering.”

“If there is no love,” the pope said, “life is sad, it is sad loneliness.”

In remarks made to Polish-speaking visitors after his main catechesis, Pope Francis praised the teachings of St. John Paul II, “who with great devotion educated young people in mature love.”

Visitors gathered in the Paul VI Audience Hall also were treated to a brief performance by marching band members, dancers and gymnasts from Rome’s Imperial Royal Circus.

Meanwhile, outside St. Peter’s Square, cows, horses, sheep, goats, rabbits, chickens and a donkey were resting on piles of straw, hopping or butting heads with each other as part of the annual Jan. 17 blessing to mark the feast of St. Anthony the Abbot, patron saint of animals and farmers.

Members of an Italian association of farmers and ranchers brought their animals, safely housed in large pens or enclosures, and Rome residents brought their pets, mostly dogs, for the blessing by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – Amid the “paralyzing nature of polarization” in society today and the “tragedy of war” around the world, “the importance of living the love of Christ in our own circumstances cannot be overemphasized,” a U.S. bishop said in a message for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Jan. 18-25.

As chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, Bishop Joseph C. Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania, urged Christians throughout the United States to unite across denominational lines and pray for peace.

Each year a different country and theme is highlighted during the weeklong observance. For 2024, the Christians from Burkina Faso in West Africa developed the prayer materials and chose the theme from St. Luke’s Gospel, “You shall love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself.” (Lk 10:27)

“May Christians throughout our country come together across denominational lines to pray for peace in our world and an end to the sad divisions that prevent us from fully loving each other as Christ loves us all,” Bishop Bambera said in his message released Jan. 12.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity began as the Church Unity Octave in 1908, initiated by Father Paul Wattson and Mother Lurana White, who were Episcopalians and co-founders of the Society of the Atonement at Graymoor in Garrison, New York. They called for an observation of eight days of prayer for an end to divisions between Christians.

In 1909, Father Wattson and Mother White were received into the Catholic Church, along with 15 other members of the Society of the Atonement, or the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement. Pope Pius X gave his blessing to the Church Unity Octave and in 1916, Pope Benedict XV extended its observance to the universal church.

Since the Second Vatican Council, the weeklong observance has been co-organized by the World Council of Churches and what is now the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity.

In 1966, the council’s Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and the dicastery (formerly secretariat) began collaborating on a common international text for worldwide usage. Since 1968 these international texts, which are based on themes proposed by ecumenical groups around the world, have been developed, adapted and published for use in the United States by the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, according to a news release from the institute.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) – A new annual report by the U.S. bishops’ conference identifies five top threats to religious liberty in the United States, including a federal regulation it says could impose mandates on doctors to perform objectionable procedures and threats to the church’s service to people who are migrants.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ first annual “State of Religious Liberty in the United States,” published Jan. 16, said potential threats to religious liberty in the United States largely come in the form of federal regulations or cultural trends.

Five key areas of concern, the 48-page report said, include attacks against houses of worship, especially in the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas conflict; the Section 1557 regulation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which the report said “will likely impose a mandate on doctors to perform gender transition procedures and possibly abortions”; threats to religious charities serving migrants and refugees, “which will likely increase as the issue of immigration gains prominence in the election”; suppression of religious speech “on marriage and sexual difference”; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations, which the report said “aim to require religious employers to be complicit in abortion in an unprecedented way.”

The report’s introduction said that due to a divided federal government, “most introduced bills that threatened religious liberty languished,” resulting in threats in the form of “proposed regulations by federal agencies,” or cultural trends such as growing partisanship over migration.

The report noted the U.S. Supreme Court only heard two cases implicating religious liberty in 2023, “but in each case the Supreme Court ruled for broader protections — for religious exercise in the workplace, in Groff v. DeJoy, and for free speech based on religious beliefs, in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.”

Other areas of concern identified in the report include some state bills making clergy mandatory reporters for abuse without an exception for the seal of the confessional. As the report notes, “For Catholic priests, breaking the confidentiality of statements made during the Sacrament of Reconciliation — that is, breaking the seal of the confessional — is a grave offense, resulting in automatic excommunication from the Church.”

The report also identified partisanship within the church as an area of concern.

“This dynamic is not new, is not unique to Catholics, nor will it disappear anytime soon,” it said. “But it will be especially salient in 2024, and the long-term standing of the Church in the public square requires a conscious and sustained turn — away from partisanship and toward the Gospel.”

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chair of the USCCB’s Committee for Religious Liberty, who oversaw the report, told OSV News that the committee began this annual report in order to “educate the faithful” and “motivate people to get involved in promoting and protecting religious liberty.”

Bishop Rhoades noted that threats to houses of worship remain a significant cultural concern, as Catholic churches and organizations saw vandalism and other crimes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022 that overturned prior rulings by the high court making abortion access a constitutional right; other faith traditions have seen more violence occur at their places of worship, such as the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Dan Balserak, the USCCB’s religious liberty director and assistant general counsel, told OSV News the committee’s work has historically centered on “legal problems.”

“Things are such now these days that we are actually having to worry about the physical health and safety of people in their place of worship,” Balserak said. “Which is pretty disturbing.”

Both Bishop Rhoades and Balserak said that a growing cultural divide on the issue of migration also threatens to imperil the church’s service to people who are migrants and refugees.

“The church’s mission, you know, is we’re to serve, serve the poor and the needy. That’s part of our mission to the corporal works of mercy, so welcoming the stranger,” Bishop Rhoades said, an act of mercy demanded by Jesus Christ in Matthew 25 when he renders justice at the final judgment. “And we’re talking here about basic needs: sometimes food, sometimes shelter, clothing and other kinds of assistance. The church has always done this and it’s just part of our Christian responsibilities.”

Bishop Rhoades said some have suggested that “somehow the church is contributing to illegal immigration” through such service.

“Comprehensive immigration reform is something that the Catholic Church in the United States has been advocating for for decades,” he added. He said “our provision of humanitarian aid to human beings who are in need” is needed regardless of whether and how Congress would act.

Balserak said, “It seems that the role that religious charities play in the immigration system as service providers – helping immigrants get a place to sleep, get a meal, understand their legal obligations, the role that religious charities play in that regard – has been essentially scapegoated.”

The real burden of responsibility is with Congress which has failed to address “the immigration problem that the immigration crisis has created.”

Charities that ensure “newcomers who arrive in America deserve to have their basic human needs met” are sometimes then accused of “conspiratorial, outlandish stuff — like you know, facilitating ‘the great replacement.'”

The so-called “great replacement” theory is a conspiracy theory advanced by white supremacists in which they claim people of other races plot to eliminate the white race. The racist theory was amplified recently by Vivek Ramaswamy at a GOP presidential primary debate prior to dropping out of the race after a distant fourth-place finish in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses.

Erroneous claims about the church’s service to migrants, Balserak said, could imperil their ability to partner with the federal government on services to migrants and on other projects.

“At the end of the day … what’s being proposed is basically if you exercise your religious beliefs in this particular way or area, we’re going to penalize you,” he said, calling those claims “a classic religious liberty threat.”

Both Bishop Rhoades and Balserak said the USCCB annual report concerns the landscape for domestic religious liberty, but the issue of religious liberty in the U.S. has echoes around the globe.

Bishop Rhoades said an erosion of that liberty would not only be “harmful to our country, and the principles on which our nation was founded, but also I think affects others around the world.”

“If you’ve been paying attention to the international religious liberty front recently, we are incredibly blessed,” Balserak said. “For all the problems that we are talking about in this report, we are incredibly blessed to live in the United States.”

Balserak said the best way for Catholics to respond to religious liberty threats is to “go out and do the things that we are fighting for your right to do.”

“So what’s under threat right now?” he said. “Our service to immigrants? Go volunteer at a shelter for immigrants. We see arsons pregnancy resource centers – there’s a threat to the continued operation of ministries meant to help pregnant mothers in need – go volunteer at a pregnancy resource center.”

That “ground up approach,” Balserak said, “is the most viable long-term solution to current threats that we face to religious liberty.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – A key step in the search for Christian unity is getting to know people of other churches and denominations and coming to appreciate their faith and spirituality, Pope Francis told a group of Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox students studying at Catholic universities in Rome.

The students are among hundreds who, since 1964, have received scholarships from the Catholic Committee for Cultural Collaboration to pursue degrees in Rome while living at Catholic seminaries and religious residences.

Pope Francis met the students and officials of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, which coordinates the program, during an audience Jan. 12.

The program, the pope said, “benefits the sister churches of the East and contributes to the preparation of clergy and laity who, thanks to their studies, will serve the mission of the one Body of Christ.”

Welcoming the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox students into the community and religious life of Catholic seminaries and clergy residences, is also important, the pope said.

“This vital and direct contact with concrete communities, in which all share the same desire to follow the one master, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to serve his church,” he said, “helps not only the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox students, but the Catholic ones as well, to overcome prejudices, to break down walls and to build bridges of dialogue and friendship.”

From the very beginning, he said, Jesus drew to him people of different cultures and spiritual traditions.

“Those first disciples who became apostles, and to whom our traditions trace their origins,” the pope said, “were quite diverse: disciples of the (John the) Baptist, zealots, fishers and tax collectors; vastly different in background, character and sympathies! Yet it is hard to think of a group that was more united.”

“They found their cohesiveness in Jesus,” he said. “Walking in his footsteps, they journeyed alongside one another. Their unity in charity was cemented by the Holy Spirit, who sent them far and wide, thus binding them all the more closely to one another.”

Christians today, no matter their nationality or denominational identity, need to do the same, Pope Francis said.

“Studying here in Rome, you have a great opportunity to share with one another who Christ is for you, where you encountered him, how he won your hearts and laid hold of your lives, and the variety of traditions by which you offer him praise and acknowledge him as your Lord,” he said.

By sharing those experiences, he said, “I believe that our past histories, marred by mistakes and misunderstanding, sins and stereotypes, can gradually be healed, in as much as they are considered anew as part of a much greater story, that of fidelity to Christ, who loved the church and gave himself up for her.”