SCRANTON — When the Catholic Publishers Association announced their 2021 Excellence in Publishing Awards on June 7, two books attributed to Deacon Ed Shoener of the Cathedral of Saint Peter Parish received high praise and recognition for their contributions to Catholic mental health ministry, particularly with regard to suicide.
Responding to Suicide: A Pastoral Handbook for Catholic Leaders was awarded top honors in the “Resources for Ministry” category by the Catholic Publishers. The Association also recognized When A Loved One Dies by Suicide: Comfort, Hope and Healing for Grieving Catholics with a second-place award in the “General Interest” category.
Both published works were compiled and edited by Deacon Shoener and Auxiliary Bishop John P. Dolan of San Diego, who were also among the books’ contributors.
Ordained to the permanent diaconate in 2004, Deacon Shoener launched his Catholic Mental Health Ministry, based at the Scranton Cathedral, in 2017. He began the support ministry following the death of his daughter, Katie, who took her own life after a 12-year battle with depression.
Deacon Shoener currently serves as president and a founding member of the Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers.
“If today is a typical day in the United States, about 130 people will die this day from suicide,” the deacon said. “Please pray for them, their families and those who will minister to them.”
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James Harris, an employee of Saint Francis Kitchen, hands food to Ryan Stefanovich and other volunteers, who helped to distribute it to seniors at Saint Catherine Manor in Dunmore on May 26, 2021.
DUNMORE – Residents living in two apartment complexes in Lackawanna County recently received a helping hand thanks to Catholic Social Services of the Diocese of Scranton.
On May 26, more than 50 elderly residents living at Saint Catherine Manor in Dunmore received fresh food and vegetables delivered to their door. A similar delivery took place for residents of Saint Michael on the Hill in Jessup on June 10.
Karen Beavers, a resident at Saint Catherine Manor for the last six years, greatly appreciated the extra assistance.
“Everything helps. Every little bit helps when you’re a senior,” Beavers said.
Ryan Stefanovich, a Catholic Social Services Relief Services Case Manager, said the residents received a number of different items.
“We have meat, chicken, hamburger, several canned vegetables, orange juice, tea and other things that the residents can use,” Stefanovich explained.
Catholic Social Services worked with Schiff’s to get all of the food delivered.
“Every little bit helps, especially in these unprecedented times,” Stefanovich added, referring to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Beavers said the food delivery is appreciated by residents – because many have medical conditions that make it hard to make frequent trips to the grocery store.
Asked what she will make with the food delivered to her, she responded, “I’ll probably make barbeque chicken!”
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Pope Francis leads an audience June 7, 2021 at the Vatican with priests staying at the St. Louis of France residence for priests in Rome. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis told a group of priests studying in Rome that if they do not want to be pastors, spending time with the faithful, they should request dismissal from the priesthood and concentrate on academics instead.
“Be pastors with the scent of your sheep, persons able to live, laugh and cry with your people — in other words, to communicate with them,” the pope told the priests June 7.
The priests, who are studying at pontifical universities in Rome, live at the city’s St. Louis of France residence.
The priesthood cannot be understood without its essential connection to “the holy people of God,” the pope told them. “The ministerial priesthood is a consequence of the baptismal priesthood of the holy faithful people of God.”
“If you think of a priesthood isolated from the people of God, that is not a Catholic priesthood,” he said. A Catholic priest puts God and God’s people at the center of his daily concerns, setting aside self-interest and “dreams of greatness.”
“To put God’s holy faithful people at the center, you must be a pastor,” he said.
A priest who would say, “No, I would like to be an intellectual only, not a pastor,” would be better off asking for “a reduction to the lay state,” the pope said. “But if you are a priest, be a pastor.”
Obviously, there are many ways to be a pastor, he said, but all those ways involve being “in the midst of God’s people.”
During the ongoing year dedicated to St. Joseph, Pope Francis asked the priests “to rediscover the face of this man of faith, this tender father, a model of fidelity and trusting abandonment to God’s plan.”
St. Joseph is a reminder that “having faith in God also includes believing that he can work even through our fears, our frailties, our weaknesses,” he said. “We must not leave frailty aside: it is a theological place.”
“My fragility, the fragility of each one of us, is a theological place of encounter with the Lord. The ‘superman’ priests end up badly, all of them,” Pope Francis said. “The fragile priest, who knows his weaknesses and talks about them with the Lord, he will be fine.”
To be the “apostles of joy” that the church and its people need, priests also must have a sense of humor, he said, and they must cultivate gratitude for being called to serve people and the church.
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Seminarian Luke Daghir, left, enjoys a moment with Deacon Ben Daghir, his twin brother, who ordained a transitional deacon May 1, 2021, in the chapel at St. Mark Seminary in Erie, Pa. (CNS photo/Anne-Marie Welsh, Diocese of Erie)
WASHINGTON (CNS) – Not a day goes by that identical twins Luke and Ben Daghir don’t get confused for each other.
It’s probably even more confusing now since Luke and Ben, both graduate seminarians, wear black shirts with white clerical collars.
“We’ve gotten so used to it, it’s become a part of our life,” said Luke during a June 3 interview with Catholic News Service held jointly with his brother. “You just smile.”
Just to add another layer of confusion, the twins grew up and went to Catholic schools in St. Marys, Pennsylvania — without the apostrophe — and are studying for the priesthood in Baltimore at St. Mary’s Seminary and University — yep, with the apostrophe.
There may be one way to tell the Daghir twins apart: Ben is further ahead than Luke in his graduate seminary work. Ben was ordained a transitional deacon in May, and if all goes well, will be ordained to the priesthood for the twins’ native Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania, over the Memorial Day weekend next year.
Luke isn’t that far behind. He’s on schedule to be ordained a transitional deacon in 2023, and a priest in 2024, also serving the Erie Diocese. That would mean four ordinations in four years in the Daghir household.
It was Luke who heard the first callings to priesthood — as early as third grade, he said, with continued nudgings in high school — but Ben got what for him was a definitive calling in his early 20s when the twins were enrolled at Benedictine-run St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
Both twins were studying education while simultaneously being exposed to the Benedictine charism of religious life at St. Vincent. After graduation, Luke returned to their high school alma mater, Elk County Catholic in St. Marys; he coached tennis and taught at the same school where he and his brother had played baseball and basketball.
It posed a different kind of dilemma in discernment. Which kind of priesthood appealed more to them: diocesan or religious? They could see the appeal in each. “It really is a choice between two very good goods. Either route is an exceptional route to serve Christ or the church,” Luke said.
In his own discernment process, Ben recalled hearing a priest talk on the topic: “He drew a distinction between the diocesan priest and religious life. In religious life, there is community already established, you enter into it and you thrive in that environment. The diocesan priest is sent out on mission to create community.”
“I just feel called deep down to evangelize, to foster community. To foster hope in areas that are struggling. That has the heart of the diocesan priest, to create community,” Ben said. “I saw Ben enter first the seminary for the diocese,” Luke said. “With Ben in, it turned me toward the diocese. Deep down as a priest, I want to be in a parish.”
A 2012 data brief from the National Center for Health Statistics sets the U.S. twin birthrate at 16.7 twin sets per 1,000 live births in 2009 — nearly double the 1980 rate of 9.4. But not all twins are identical. Any twin set with a boy and a girl is a fraternal twin set, and not even all twin sets of the same sex are identical.
That would make the decision for twin brothers to join the priesthood, er, doubly rare. But the Erie Diocese already has a set of twins in the priesthood.
Luke, speaking from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, during its annual Institute for Priestly Formation summer program, told CNS he was alerted to the presence of a Franciscan monk on the program faculty who himself has a Franciscan twin brother — and was going to seek him out.
Twinhood has its perks when it comes to Ben giving Luke a heads-up about what to expect in seminary life
“We were both big baseball players growing up. (Ben) being ahead in the seminary is similar to facing a pitcher earlier in a game. You’re going to go the person who’s already batted: What do they throw, what’s coming up?” Luke said. “In the seminary: How can I best prepare myself for this year, for this class, how can I learn from this professor? It’s really a special gift to ask him questions, knowing I’m going to get a good answer.”
Ben added, “There’s the delicate balance of letting a person enter the seminary and thrive.”
Parents can be ambivalent about a child going into a seminary or convent. “For me, they were extremely excited,” Ben said. “Our parents are extremely good at that. Not getting in the way between us and listening to the Lord, which is the most important thing.”
Ben added that when he told his folks of his plans, “Dad and me went for a walk that night. We just sat on the steps of our home parish we talked for an hour and a half … things he had seen in me long before. He had seen a priest but he didn’t want to push.”
“Ben and I have grown in sympathy with our parents. Seminary — it’s designed for the seminarian, it’s not designed for the parents,” Luke said. “There’s no program for the parents of 150 seminarians to be together” similar to the Creighton institute, he noted.
“There are beautiful images of Peter and John dropping their nets,” Ben added. “Not many talk about the parents having to drop their nets — their dreams, their hopes for having grandchildren. They have to drop them.”
Luke said, “Overall, I think they’ve been very supportive to us. We stay in contact. It’s fair to acknowledge it’s been challenging in ways, too. Our parents are reaching the age where all of their peers are having grandchildren.”
The twins have enjoyed seminary life, with the occasional odd challenge.
“There’s joy in seminary, I think that’s a message that needs to continue to be stated,” Luke said. “It’s a wonderful place of academic study, brotherhood — not just twin brothers, but brotherhood among men which is missing in our culture. The biggest thing is that if someone is thinking about seminary, it’s worth talking to the vocations director, take the big step, the big journey in front of you.”
After growing up with his twin and four years of dorm life in college, “the first time I ever had a room to myself was my first night of seminary,” Ben said. “Finally I had a room to myself, and I thought that was interesting. You do get your own room, and it took me, I’ll admit, several weeks to get used to having a room to myself. There were quiet moments that I was not expecting.”
“Jesus loves to call brothers,” Ben said, citing the apostles. Peter and Andrew and James and John. Another apostle was Thomas, whose name means “twin.” “It’s obvious 2,000 years later,” he added.
“Yes, we’re identical twins,” Luke said, “but on a deeper level, we’re genuinely being best friends, and that has grown and grown and grown in time.”
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Archbishop Filippo Iannone, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, attends a press conference to discuss revisions to the Code of Canon Law, at the Vatican June 1, 2021. Pope Francis has promulgated a revised section of the Code of Canon Law dealing with crimes and punishments. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The new series of laws and provisions set out in the revised section on crimes and penalties in the Code of Canon Law will help the Catholic Church in its efforts at safeguarding, said two canon lawyers.
And yet, like with every new norm and measure, its success will depend on following through on enforcement, being mindful in interpreting still unclear aspects and working on remaining gaps, they said.
Pope Francis promulgated the new changes in “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church,” and they will go into effect Dec. 8 — the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The revisions reflect almost two decades of work in updating, adding, clarifying and strengthening what the church considers to be crimes and what provisions for sanctioning are available.
Much damage has come from not understanding how applying sanctions is part of exercising charity and establishing justice, the pope said, as “charity and mercy require a father to commit himself also to straightening what at times becomes crooked.”
Claudia Giampietro, a canon lawyer and project officer at the office for care and safeguarding for the International Union of Superiors General, told Catholic News Service that this mindset of respect and protection is a significant change.
The ultimate principle of safeguarding “is recognizing that a wounded humanity needs respect, and this must inform every single act performed within and outside of the Catholic Church,” she told CNS in an email response to questions June 3.
It shows how the revisions have been informed by and reflect “the voice of victims and survivors of abuse, which is making the church aware and, therefore, responsible” in turning their requests “into canonical provisions which can support the healing process involving the entire ecclesial community,” she added.
Also, she said, by putting abuse, indecent exposure, pornography and grooming in a new chapter that adds the term “dignity,” — under the heading “Offences Against Human Life, Dignity and Liberty” — this shows an understanding that such crimes “harm the inalienable dignity of human beings acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” and are not just a violation of the Sixth Commandment.
“I believe that this choice of language expresses at its best the mind of a legislator (the pope) who has been always defending the inestimable value of every human life in his pontificate and in his entire life,” Giampietro said.
Msgr. Robert Oliver of the Archdiocese of Boston and formerly of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors told CNS that “the one thing that stands out for safeguarding is that the Holy Father has introduced legal requirements that suspected offenses be reported and that bishops respond to these reports by making use of the church’s penal procedures” for the restoration of justice, the reform of the offender and the repair of scandal.
In other words, where previous canons suggested what “can” be done when an offense has been committed, now the rules are what “must” be done and making sure the law is applied.
Giampietro said all the changes and new provisions created over the years “needed to be codified in the universal law to give clear normative directions to the whole church.”
It also includes changes “that had to be included in the code more permanently,” she said, such as those found in “Vos Estis Lux Mundi,” which was promulgated “ad experimentum,” for greater accountability of church leaders.
Another significant change is expanding the application of canons dealing with abuse to religious and laypeople who have a role, office or function in the church — not just to clergy, she said.
“It was a very much needed change as religious always felt that there was a gap in the legislation concerning them in relation to abuse cases,” she said, underlining how the women’s UISG has a safeguarding office and organizes online formation together with the men’s Union of Superiors General and the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Here, “canon law is being studied and discussed as one of the instruments which can help to establish safe environments,” she said, and “it is encouraging, as a laywoman, to see how much superiors general work together for the care and protection of minors and vulnerable persons.”
One critical element still needing attention, Msgr. Oliver said in an email response to questions June 4, is “clarifying the definition of ‘vulnerable persons,’ a process that will include deciding individual cases of people, who were ‘limited in their ability to understand or to want or otherwise resist the offense.'”
Other issues needing work to further help the church in its response to abuse, he added, would be publishing how cases are decided and explaining the reasoning behind those decisions.
“Now the task is to implement these principles and norms effectively and to work out areas that still need to be better related to one another,” he said, saying “the size of this task can easily be underestimated.”
“It will require that dioceses, eparchies and conferences of bishops and of religious build the necessary organizational structures, especially by investing in the training of experts to carry out the investigations and penal processes,” he said.
Giampietro said she was “very hopeful that more positive changes concerning (laypeople) will be implemented in canon law” in the future. For example, “we would need a greater balance with the inclusion of more ecclesiastical lay judges. This would help to tackle clericalism in the church, which Pope Francis has always discouraged.”
Every document and decree drafted over the years, she said, are pieces compiling a larger picture of what it looks like to “care for humanity.”
It shows “the will to learn from mistakes of the past and make sure that they are not repeated. Once we see these changes within this picture, we acquire the right disposition necessary to follow a path of universal healing,” she said.
The Code of Canon Law, first published in 1917 and revised in 1983, is still subject to alterations between revisions, according to Benedictine Sister Nancy Bauer, an associate professor of canon law at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
Unlike legislatures in many nations, “the legislator is the Roman pontiff. It is the pontiff who can revise a canon or abrogate it,” Sister Bauer said. “It’s not like the Synod of Bishops can get together and do this.”
She added, “Individual bishops can legislate certain things for their diocese and the conference of bishops can legislate certain things for their territory, but they have very limited ability.”
Last November, she noted, one canon was revised that governed the norms for who can establish an institute of consecrated life.
Between the 1917 and 1983 codes, “the code revision started in the late 1960s, went through the ’70s, and was pretty much done by 1980. It was pretty much done by the time (St.) John Paul II promulgated it in 1983,” Sister Bauer told CNS in a June 4 phone interview.
Has the pace of canon law revision picked up? “I think Pope Francis has revised more than I expected he would,” she replied. “He has a very pastoral heart, and I didn’t expect that he would be as involved in the law, the legal part. But I think it’s his pastoral heart that has prompted him to do this in many ways — the concern for the faithful, certainly the protection of minors and vulnerable adults.”
However, Sister Bauer said, “not all of the laws in the church are in the Code of Canon Law. The work of the church is to know where they are … so if a case comes up, they can really know what is the current law, whether it’s been revised or changed.”
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U.S. Catholic bishops attend a Nov. 11, 2019, session during the fall general assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore. The bishops’ 2021 spring assembly June 16-18 will take place virtually due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. (CNS photo/Bob Roller)
WASHINGTON (CNS) – When they gather virtually for their annual spring assembly June 16-18, the U.S. bishops will be asked to approve the drafting of a formal statement on the meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the Catholic Church.
They also will be asked to approve three translations by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy for use in U.S. dioceses of the United States, to endorse the sainthood causes of two military chaplains revered for their heroism in World War II and the Korean War, and approve drafting of a national pastoral framework for youth and young adults.
Also on the agenda will be an update from the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis on the Eucharistic Revival initiative; an update from the Subcommittee for Pastoral Care for Immigrants, Refugees and Travelers on a study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate; and an update on the work of the Subcommittee on the Catechism.
Earlier this year, the bishops voted to approve convening this June meeting in a virtual format given the challenges of meeting in person with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The “Action Item” asking the bishops to approve the drafting of a teaching document on the reception of Communion is likely to draw the most debate — and media attention — starting with a vote to formally approve the meeting agenda shortly after the assembly is called to order.
In early May, Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, president of the USCCB, received an unprecedented letter from 67 bishops appealing for a delay in a discussion during the bishops’ upcoming spring general assembly on whether to prepare a teaching document about the Eucharist.
The signers wrote that “we respectfully urge that all conference-wide discussion and committee work on the topic of eucharistic worthiness and other issues raised by the Holy See be postponed until the full body of bishops is able to meet in person.”
Among those signing the letter were Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston and Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey.
In a May 22 memo to fellow bishops, Archbishop Gomez explained that USCCB rules require that the body of bishops first be asked whether to issue a document on a particular topic.
The bishops’ letter and Archbishop Gomez’s memo follow an increasingly public debate among the bishops about Catholic politicians who support keeping abortion legal and whether they should be denied access to the Eucharist.
Archbishop Gomez in his memo said the USCCB Administrative Committee approved a request from Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, that time be included on the spring assembly agenda for discussion on drafting a teaching document on Communion.
The process, the archbishop said, involves the creation of an “Action Item” for the bishops to consider. “Importantly, the Action Item does not ask the body to approve a final statement, but only whether drafting of a text may begin,” he said.
The bishops’ meeting agenda also includes a report from the National Review Board, which advises the USCCB and the Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People about matters of child and youth protection, specifically on policies and practices.
There also will be a vote to approve a “National Pastoral Framework for Marriage and Family Life Ministry in the United States: Called to the Joy of Love” and a vote to authorize the development of a new formal statement and comprehensive vision for Native American/Alaska Native Ministry.
The assembly will begin with an address by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, papal nuncio to the United States, followed by an address by Archbishop Gomez as USCCB president.
The sainthood candidates whose causes the bishops will be asked to approve are Father Joseph Verbis Lafleur and Capt. Leonard LaRue, who became Benedictine Brother Marinus of St. Paul’s Abbey in Newton, New Jersey. Both have the title “Servant of God.”
Father Lafleur, a priest of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, was a World War II chaplain who gave his life while saving others on a Japanese prison ship.
Survivors recall the priest’s heroic efforts helping his fellow POWs escape the hull of the ship under Japanese gunfire by pushing them up to the deck at the cost of his own life. He died Sept. 7, 1944.
In October 2017, Father LaFleur was honored posthumously with the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart.
LaRue and the crew of the S.S. Meredith Victory piloted 14,005 refugees to safety during the Korean War from the port of Hungnam, now part of North Korea. The mission has been called a “Christmas Miracle.”
In early December 1950, the S.S. Meredith Victory’s duties involved delivering supplies to anti-communist forces in Korea, which included a stop in Hungnam. In the midst of the heavy fighting on land, LaRue, who also was a World War II veteran, volunteered the Merchant Marine cargo ship to participate in the rescue operation — the refugees’ last hope of escape. The captain entered religious life after the Korean War.
The public sessions of the bishops’ spring assembly are scheduled for: June 16 from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. (EDT); June 17 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. (EDT); and June 18 from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. (EDT). They will be livestreamed on the USCCB website — www.usccb.org/meetings.
The vote tallies on the action items, news updates, texts of addresses and presentations and other materials will be available on the USCCB website.
Those wishing to follow the meeting on social media should use the hashtag #USCCB21 and follow on Twitter (@USCCB) as well as on Facebook (www.facebook.com/usccb) and Instagram (https://instagram.com/usccb).
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Students from Wyoming Area Catholic School empty their ark-shaped banks into collection buckets in an effort to fight hunger in northeastern Pennsylvania.
“Kindness is Contagious” Wyoming Area Catholic School donates money to C.E.O. as part of pilot project
EXETER – When 150 students leave their classroom and head outdoors in late May – you would expect a lot of noise. The sound coming from the kids at Wyoming Area Catholic School on May 27, 2021, did not involve talking or joking around however.
The sound of coins – quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies – rattling around loudly filled a large tent on the school’s front lawn.
“That’s inspirational,” Rabbi Yossi Schulman told the students during a special presentation celebrating the school’s ARK Charity Program. “ARK” stands for Acts of Random Kindness.
As part of a pilot program, each student received a small plastic bank in the shape of an ark. The students collected money outside of school whenever they performed a selfless act. The kids brought the money to school and counted it weekly to highlight the power of collective giving.
The students chose to donate all of the money to the Commission on Economic Opportunity (CEO), which helps to fight food insecurity in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Students from Wyoming Area Catholic School raise plastic banks on May 27, 2021, and shake them to highlight the coins they collected as part of the schools ARK Charity Project. (Photos/Eric Deabill)
“I would hold the door open for people in the morning and when I’m at my house, my grandma would ask me to carry the bags and I would usually do it,” 10-year-old Cayden Richards said.
“I helped my mom with the laundry,” 10-year-old Julianna O’Hop added.
Rabbi Schulman, president of the Unite
the World organization, asked the Diocese of Scranton if one of its schools would participate in the pilot project and Wyoming Area Catholic School was selected.
“You have done such a phenomenal job,” principal Eileen Rishcoff told the students as the students and community members gathered to celebrate the project’s success.
Gretchen Hunt, Resource Development Director for C.E.O., called the students an “inspiration.”
“You’ve turned not just yourselves, but your whole family and your extended family into givers in demonstrating acts of kindness every day,” Hunt said.
Hunt explained that the funding the students collected will help children who don’t have enough food to eat at home.
“A lot of times, hunger, especially in families with children goes unseen,” she added. “It could be the kid sitting next to you in class, it could be the family that lives down the street that you play with after school and we don’t see it unless somebody tells you and that’s a hard thing to tell somebody when you’re struggling because you’re hungry.”
Students enjoyed taking part in the project.
“I love the fact that my school was given the opportunity to do this and help out our community and other people in need,” 12-year-old Isabella Falzone said. “This has just been a great opportunity for me to grow in my faith and really learn valuable life lessons about donating time and money and doing little acts of kindness.”
“I was really inspired and I thought it was really cool that our school was able to donate so much money in that short period of time that we had to do it,” O’Hop added. “It makes me feel really good that our school can raise so much money and that every kid in the school knows how important it is to raise money for other people.”
Part of the reason why the students had such fun with the project was because Wyoming Area Catholic School built a large ark, resembling Noah’s Ark, out of boxes. For every $5 donated, students got to color a picture of an animal and stick it to the ark. In no time, the ark was covered in lions, zebras, koalas, monkeys and alligators, among other animals.
On the day of the school presentation, the school donated a $2,000 check to C.E.O. to signify the students’ collection up until that point. By the end of the year, the school raised more than $5,000 total.
“Looking out at you today is perhaps one of the greatest inspirations I’ve seen in a very long time. You are our future! You are so inspiring to me personally, to our community, because of the way you grasped this project. You built the ark, you collected coins and money in such a short period of time, you understand the idea of giving back. Please never forget that. It is our responsibility to look out for others because if we don’t do it, who will?” Charles Barber, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Luzerne Foundation, told the students.
As the program wrapped up and each student deposited their coins in buckets to be tallied, one overriding theme became apparent. Rabbi Schulman emphasized it.
“Kindness is contagious,” he said.
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HARRISBURG, Pa. — The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference today congratulated Rep. Clint Owlett on the unanimous House passage of his House Bill 253. It calls for the establishment of a task force to look into the impact of the opioid epidemic on infants and children.
The PCC supports this measure and commends all members of the House on the final vote of 202-0.
“We all know of the disastrous impact that the opioid epidemic has caused throughout our Commonwealth,” said Eric Failing, the Executive Director of the PCC. “All of our Catholic Charities have witnessed a surge in requests for help from impacted families.
“It is our hope that the task force created through this legislation can specifically focus its attention on the infants and children impacted by the opioid epidemic and thereby identify and develop recommendations to help this vulnerable group.”
The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference is based in Harrisburg and is the public affairs arm of PA’s Catholic bishops.
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SCRANTON (June 7, 2021) – Marywood University will host hundreds of women on Saturday, June 19, as the 2021 Catholic Women’s Conference delivers a powerful message about God’s merciful love. After being cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference will bring together Catholic women from across northeastern Pennsylvania and beyond.
The day will begin with opening remarks at 8 a.m. followed by Mass with the Most Reverend Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, at 8:30 a.m.
Throughout the day, various speakers will focus on Divine Mercy, which is when God’s love meets and helps us in the midst of suffering. The daylong conference will conclude at 4 p.m.
Keynote speaker Theresa Bonopartis will share her deeply personal story of guilt, shame, healing and ultimate redemption through Divine Mercy. Bonopartis came to her life’s work after experiencing abortion as a teenager. It was only in discovering God’s infinite mercy and capacity to forgive that she came to learn how to forgive herself. She has collaborated with the Sisters of Life to co-found Entering Canaan Ministry: Healing After Abortion.
Other speakers at the 2021 Catholic Women’s Conference will include Father Chris Alar, a priest with the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception and Sister Virginia Joy of the Sisters of Life.
The day will also include Eucharistic Adoration, Recitation of the Rosary and inspirational music performed by Cleveland-born Christian music artist Taylor Tripodi and her band. Participants will also enjoy a continental breakfast, lunch and shopping at the Catholic Vendor Marketplace.
The cost to attend the conference is $40 if purchased before June 9. This year, the conference is also offering a livestream of the entire conference. The cost to participate in the virtual setting is $20. Student tickets are $20 and women religious are welcome free of charge.
Archbishop Filippo Iannone, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, attends a press conference to discuss revisions to the Code of Canon Law, at the Vatican June 1, 2021. Pope Francis has promulgated a revised section of the Code of Canon Law dealing with crimes and punishments. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – A series of laws and procedures promulgated by now-retired Pope Benedict XVI and, especially, by Pope Francis to protect children, promote the investigation of allegations of clerical sexual abuse and punish offenders are included in a heavily revised section of the Code of Canon Law.
The revision of “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church,” one of seven books that make up the code for the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, was promulgated June 1 and will go into effect Dec. 8, Pope Francis wrote.
Rewriting 63 of the book’s 89 canons, the revision addresses a host of issues that have come up in the life of the church since St. John Paul II promulgated the code in 1983. The descriptions of crimes of sexual abuse, including child pornography, are more explicit, and the required actions of a bishop or superior of a religious order in handling allegations are more stringent.
The revised canons also include new references to the attempted ordination of a woman and to a variety of financial crimes; like with the new canons dealing with sexual abuse, they rely on language from laws promulgated separately over the past 20 years.
“In the past, much damage has been caused by a failure to perceive the intimate relationship existing in the church between the exercise of charity and recourse — when circumstances and justice require it — to the discipline of sanctions. This way of thinking, as experience has taught us, risks leading to a life of behavior contrary to the discipline of morals, for the remedy of which exhortations or suggestions alone are not sufficient,” Pope Francis wrote in “Pascite Gregem Dei” (Shepherd God’s Flock), the apostolic constitution promulgating the changes.
While church law applies to all Catholics, the pope said, for bishops, the observance of canon law “can in no way be separated from the pastoral ‘munus’ (service) entrusted to them, and which must be carried out as a concrete and inalienable requirement of charity not only toward the church, the Christian community and possible victims, but also toward those who have committed a crime, who need both mercy and correction on the part of the church.”
Over the years, he said, it became clear that the code’s description of crimes and penalties needed to be “modified in such a way as to allow pastors to use it as a more agile salvific and corrective instrument, to be employed promptly and with pastoral charity to avoid more serious evils and to soothe the wounds caused by human weakness.”
The revised book was presented to the press June 1 by Archbishop Filippo Iannone and Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, respectively president and secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. In 2009, Pope Benedict had asked the council to begin the revision project.
The revision moves the canons about the sexual abuse of children — on the part of a priest, religious or layperson working for the church — out of the section on violations of the obligation of celibacy and into a newly titled section of “Offenses Against Human Life, Dignity and Liberty.”
It adds to canon law the crime of “grooming,” calling for penalties, including dismissal from the priesthood for a cleric who “grooms or induces a minor or a person who habitually has an imperfect use of reason or one to whom the law recognizes equal protection to expose himself or herself pornographically or to take part in pornographic exhibitions, whether real or simulated.”
However, the revised language still refers to rape and other forms of sexual abuse as “an offence against the Sixth Commandment” — You shall not commit adultery.
The continued use of the Sixth Commandment to refer to any improper, immoral or even criminal sexual activity “is traditional” in church law, Bishop Arrieta said, and for Catholics its meaning “is clear,” which is necessary when drafting a law that will be valid on every continent and in every culture.
In incorporating recent church law regarding abuse, the new code does not refer to abuse of “vulnerable” adults or “vulnerable persons” as Pope Francis did in his May 2019 motu proprio, “Vos estis lux mundi.”
Bishop Arrieta said the term “vulnerable person,” while understood and recognized in the law of many countries, is not universally accepted as a legal category of persons deserving special protection. Instead, the new law refers to people whom the law recognizes as deserving of the same protection extended to minors and those with “an imperfect use of reason.”
The revised law also foresees penalties for “a person who neglects to report an offence, when required to do so by a canonical law.”
Bishop Arrieta said that provision refers to the obligation to report serious crimes, such as sexual abuse, to church authorities, not civil authorities. If criminal reporting to the state is obligatory, the state will enforce that, he said.
The revised code also says, “Both a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order, incur a ‘latae sententiae’ (automatic) excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished by dismissal from the clerical state.”
Given that Pope Francis in April 2020 formed a second “Study Commission on the Female Diaconate,” Bishop Arrieta was asked why the revised canon did not specify priestly ordination, leaving open the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate.
Canon law, he said, relies on the current state of the teaching of the church. “If we come to a different theological conclusion, we will modify the norm,” he said, just as was done in January when Pope Francis ordered a change in the wording of canon law so that women, as well as men, could be formally installed as lectors and acolytes.
