1. Pope orders visitation of Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, By Elise Ann Allen, Crux, June 8, 2021
Pope Francis earlier this month asked an Italian bishop and expert in canon law to conduct visitation of the curial Congregation for Clergy, much like the one that recently concluded of the Vatican’s liturgy department.
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The move comes after Pope Francis earlier this year ordered another, similar, review of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments following the retirement in late February of the department’s former prefect, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, who had led the offices since 2014.
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The visitation into clergy also comes after the pope voiced concern about the criteria used for men who wish to enter diocesan seminaries, specifically mentioning the frequent failure to check on whether these men had been asked to leave other seminaries or religious orders.
“We have often seen seminarians who seem good but are rigid. And rigidity is not auspicious. Then we discover that behind that rigidity there are big problems,” he said during his inaugural remarks for the May 24 opening session of the Italian bishops’ plenary assembly, indicating that vocational formation, and that of priests specifically, would likely be a topic explored during the upcoming “synodal path” the Italian bishops are preparing to undertake.
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2021/06/pope-orders-visitation-of-vaticans-congregation-for-clergy/
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2. Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates, By R.R. Reno, The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2021, Pg. A17, Opinion
I’m not inclined to hire a graduate from one of America’s elite universities. That marks a change. A decade ago I relished the opportunity to employ talented graduates of Princeton, Yale, Harvard and the rest. Today? Not so much.
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My rule of thumb is to hire from institutions I advise young people to attend. Hillsdale College is at the top of that list, as are quirky small Catholic colleges such as Thomas Aquinas College, Wyoming Catholic College and the University of Dallas. In my experience, graduates from these sorts of places are well-educated. But more important, they’ve been supported and encouraged by their institutions, and they haven’t been deformed by the toxic political correctness that leaders of elite universities have allowed to become dominant.
The biggest liability that comes with hiring graduates from places like Haverford and Harvard is that they have been socialized to panic over pseudocrises. Talk of systemic racism and fixation on pronouns inculcate in young people an apocalyptic urgency, a mentality that often disrupts the workplace and encourages navel-gazing about “diversity,” “inclusion” and other ill-defined notions that are far removed from the main work of my organization, which is good writing, good editing and good arguments.
A few years ago a student at an Ivy League school told me, “The first things you learn your freshman year is never to say what you are thinking.” The institution he attended claims to train the world’s future leaders. From what that young man reports, the opposite is true. The school is training future self-censors, which means future followers.
Mr. Reno is editor of First Things.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-stopped-hiring-ivy-league-graduates-11623103004
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3. Activists in Canada topple statue, demand apology from pope amid reckoning over death of Indigenous children at residential schools, By Miriam Berger and Amanda Coletta, The Washington Post, June 7, 2021, 12:55 PM
Protesters on Sunday toppled a statute of Egerton Ryerson — one of the key figures behind Canada’s residential school system, which separated some 150,000 Indigenous children from their homes — amid growing anger over the Catholic Church’s refusal to issue an apology for its role in the abuse students faced.
The rally at Ryerson University in Toronto was organized in response to news last month that the remains of 215 Indigenous children had been found in the yard of a former residential school run by the Catholic Church in British Columbia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/07/canada-residential-schools-pope-francis-egerton-ryerson/
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4. Signatories on letter opposing USCCB vote on ‘Eucharistic coherence’ include 5 cardinals, 6 archbishops, By The Pillar, June 7, 2021
The signers of a May 13 letter which pressed the U.S. bishops’ conference to suspend its conversation on “Eucharistic coherence” include 47 diocesan bishops, five of whom are cardinals, along with 21 auxiliary bishops.
The letter, sent May 13 to bishops’ conference president Archbishop Jose Gomez, urged 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.”
“The serious nature of these issues — especially the imperative to forgo substantive unity — makes it impossible to address them productively in the fractured and isolated setting of a distance meeting,” the letter’s signatories wrote.
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The document has been expected to address, among other things, the question of whether Catholic politicians who support abortion and other policies at odds with Catholic doctrine should receive the Eucharist. That issue has long been the subject of public debate and controversy among the U.S. bishops, which has heated up since the election as U.S. president of Catholic Joe Biden, who supports expanded legal protection and public funding for abortion.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/signatories-on-letter-opposing-usccb
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5. Wisconsin priest digs in to refuse bishop’s demand to resign, By Todd Richmond and David Crary, Associated Press, June 5, 2021
The Rev. James Altman calls himself “a lowly priest” serving a blue-collar city in western Wisconsin. But when his bishop demanded his resignation – after a series of divisive remarks about politics and the pandemic – Altman refused to oblige and has since raised more than $640,000 from his conservative supporters to defend himself.
While not unprecedented, a Catholic priest’s refusal to abide by a bishop’s call to resign is certainly rare. Altman’s case, which has garnered national attention and made him a celebrity of sorts among conservative Catholics, has further fueled the divide between them and those urging a more progressive, inclusive church.
Altman, pastor of St. James the Less Roman Catholic Church in La Crosse, first came into prominence before the 2020 election with a fiery video on YouTube.
“You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat,” said Altman, admonishing people to “repent of your support of that party and its platform or face the fires of hell.”
https://apnews.com/article/wi-state-wire-wisconsin-health-coronavirus-pandemic-religion-dfe5a2f33612e1f527143d8c5008bb06
___________________________________________________________TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association. |
