The group had previously been denounced by both the US Bishops' Conference and the Vatican's doctrinal office for causing confusion on sexual morality among the Catholic faithful.

It's unclear what the topic of the meeting was.

The organisation said in an Oct 17 statement that its controversial co-founder, Sister of Loretto Jeannine Gramick, thanked the Holy Father for "his openness to blessing same-sex unions, as well as for his opposition to the criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people in civil society."

None of the Holy Father's comments in the meeting were reported in the organisation's statement. CNA asked the organisation what was discussed in the meeting but did not receive a response before publication.

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The bishops' choice of new leadership revealed the deeper ecclesiological orientation of the body. They had to decide if they wanted to be a part of the ongoing reception of the Second Vatican Council in the context of the magisterium of Pope Francis, or not, a choice made all the more obvious by the success of the synodal process so far.

As papal nuncio Archbishop Christophe Pierre reminded them in his opening address, the bishops govern the church "cum Petro and sub Petro," with Peter and under Peter. They forgot that law, or ignored it, 30 minutes later.

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They also announced that their Rome bureau would remain in operation for now.

As one of the few Catholic news outlets in the English-speaking world that covers the Catholic Church accurately, faithfully, and according to high professional standards, this news stunned the Catholic media community.

The decision was made as part of a "reorganization" of the Communications Department at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which will result in 21 employees (mostly CNS staff) losing their jobs.

In addition to CNS's domestic operations shutting down, the USCCB Publishing Office—which produces many titles including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, and the Roman Missal—will also cease operations.

According to the official statement from the USCCB, these changes "will allow the remaining functions—including the Catholic News Service Rome Bureau and the Office of Public Affairs—a more sustainable foundation upon which to do their work."

For over 100 years, CNS has served the Church as a wire service, producing articles and photos (and more recently, videos and other digital content) about the Catholic Church at the local, national, and international level.

Just as local newspapers rely on subscriptions to wire services like the Associated Press and Reuters to cover stories that they don't have the money and resources to cover, Catholic News Service provides content for diocesan newspapers and other Catholic publications like America and Our Sunday Visitor.

In recent decades, as Catholic newspapers—as with the journalism industry as a whole—have struggled to remain financially afloat, CNS has provided them with valuable content that has helped them to survive.

It is important to note that although CNS is owned and funded by the USCCB, they do have a great deal of journalistic independence built into their contract and they are unionized.

CNS journalism is recognized in the industry as being competent and executed with high professional standards.

More important, however—and I know this personally—is the professional integrity of the CNS staff.

This is a veteran team of journalists that's losing their jobs.

Most of them have worked in the field for decades, and have earned the respect of their peers in the industry.

If you speak with journalists from other outlets, they recognize and respect the professionalism and high standards of the CNS organization.

As a Catholic media outlet, Where Peter Is does not primarily do journalism—although we have been known to commit journalism from time to time.

But as a site that regularly provides analysis and commentary on news and events in the Church, we rely on good, professional, and ethical journalism every day. And the quality and standards of the work done by CNS are top-notch.

You might be asking why they are being shut down if they do such good work.

Clearly a major factor is money.

Journalism, especially Catholic journalism, is no longer a profitable industry.

In fact, it's difficult to turn a profit in most areas of Catholic media.

Certainly, I don't ever expect the message of Where Peter Is to be profitable.

It seems the best way to make money in Catholic media in the current environment is to be sensational, ideologically-driven, and self-promoting.

The rest of us, including CNS, have to rely on donations or funding from people or organizations that believe in the mission of our outlets.

And for whatever reason, the US bishops decided that the service CNS provides in informing the public about the Church isn't worth the cost.

But in terms of effectiveness and public visibility, CNS is arguably one of the best things the USCCB has going for it.

I fear that this decision was made in part because some US bishops were not thrilled with the idea of funding a media organization that they don't have complete ideological control over.

Yet the decision to abandon CNS after a century of work seems to oppose the message of the Vatican II decree Inter Mirifica, which says that the Church "considers it one of its duties to announce the Good News of salvation also with the help of the media of social communication and to instruct men in their proper use."

Additionally, ending this service to diocesan newspapers and other Catholic publications seems to be a signal that the end is near when it comes to the US Church following the decree's call that "a good press should be fostered.

To instil a fully Christian spirit into readers, a truly Catholic press should be set up and encouraged…It should disseminate and properly explain news concerning the life of the Church.

Moreover, the faithful ought to be advised of the necessity both to spread and read the Catholic press to formulate Christian judgments for themselves on all events."

If good Catholic journalism is going to exist, someone has to believe it's worth paying for.

And if no one does, then the entire field will be left to people and organizations with ideological agendas and low standards.

I imagine that many US dioceses, assuming their newspapers don't also shut down, will turn to the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency.

In other words, the shepherds of the US Church will have turned their flocks over to an organization whose constant attacks were described as "the work of the devil" by the pope last year.

On the treatment of Church employees

This story hits particularly close to home for me because I was laid off from my job in the USCCB Communications department during the last reorganization in May 2017.

In late 2016 and early 2017—the months leading up to the layoff—we were told by upper management that our department was going to be reorganized, and how the new structure was going to benefit the staff.

Layoffs were never mentioned.

I was so foolish that I was looking forward to our department's fresh start. Which meant that I was completely blindsided by the news that my position had been eliminated.

At the time, I was already struggling emotionally—my dad had recently died, we had an infant at home—so the trauma of losing my job totally shattered me.

Adding insult to injury was the callous statement of the Conference's chief communications officer about the layoff, "It was based on positions and not people."

In other words: even though we've completely upended your life, your well-being is meaningless to us.

Recovering from the shock and devastation took me a very long time.

Seven years earlier, I turned down a much higher-paying job offer with another company to accept a position at the USCCB because I felt a strong call to work for the Church in the areas of media and communications.

Unfortunately, my experience there was doing mostly administrative tasks and working on dry and repetitive projects.

There was little collaboration and very little opportunity to propose ideas or solve problems.

Morale was low.

Staff members would watch as managers made poor decisions with money, spending huge sums on overpriced failures and cutting corners on things that produced clear results. (One wonders how many jobs could have been saved by repurposing the $28 million the bishops plan to spend to rent out a stadium for a few days in Indianapolis in 2024.)

In the end, it was only after the layoff that I was able to truly respond to that call and help the Church communicate the message of Jesus Christ with a group of my fellow Catholics through this website.

It's hard to ignore the irony that it was only after the institutional Church cast me aside that I was finally able to use my communication skills to serve the Church, share the faith, and to help amplify the message of Pope Francis to others.

But it was a difficult road and all of it came at a high cost.

In May 2017, CNS was untouched by the layoff.

At the time, USCCB leadership explained that CNS was not affected by the reorganization "because of the tremendous content creation capacity that is there…It's a well-respected, well-known brand."

What a difference five years makes.

This week, many of my former colleagues, people I admire—many of whom I consider dear friends—were told they will be losing their jobs. And remarkably much of the leadership team whose vision dictated the last "reorganization" still remains in place.

Please keep these fine journalists and communications professionals in your prayers as they discern what's next in their lives.

And please pray for our Church leaders, that they may realize the importance of a healthy Catholic media environment.

• Mike Lewis is a writer and graphic designer from Maryland, having worked for many years in Catholic publishing. He's a husband, father of four, and a lifelong Catholic. He's active in his parish and community. He is the founding managing editor for Where Peter Is.
• First published in Where Peter Is. Republished with permission.

US Bishops' Conference head and Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez's (pictured) 4 November speech to a group of Catholics in Spain shows "a serious misunderstanding, and perhaps even a willed ignorance, about the goals and motivations of contemporary social justice movements," says Fr Bryan Massingale.

Massingale is concerned Gomez described the US anti-racist movement as an angry expression of corrosive secularism being pushed by an "elite leadership class."

Gomez characterizes social justice movements like Black Lives Matter as "pseudo-religions based on profoundly atheistic ideologies that are hostile to Catholic belief," Massingale says.

But Massingale says most Black Catholics he knows advocate Black Lives Matter "precisely because of our belief in the universal human dignity of all people as images of God.

"We declare that Black Lives Matter precisely because of our allegiance to what the archbishop calls the Christian story."

From Gomez's perspective, the "new social movements and ideologies ... were being seeded and prepared for many years in our universities and cultural institutions."

He said in the U.S., amid the tension and fear created by the pandemic and social isolation, "these movements were fully unleashed" with George Floyd's death.

While Gomez characterized new social movements as evidence of "extremism" and a "harsh, uncompromising and unforgiving approach to politics," he was selective about the examples he used.

Some observers note he didn't mention anti-vaccine demonstrations or violent incidents such as the 6 January insurrection. During the insurrection, Donald Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. Many invoked their faith while doing so.

A Black sociology professor at Villanova University says Gomez's talk sends a message to Catholics who are people of colour or involved in anti-racism that Gomez does not stand in solidarity with them.

"This is beyond disappointing because the president of the [bishops' conference] should, in fact, do more than stand in solidarity. He should be an anti-racism activist in his own right," she says.

Another Black commentator says one of her immediate takeaways from Gomez's speech was "how out of touch and erroneous" his interpretation of social justice movements in America is.

"Today's social justice movements are rooted in the very ideals that Catholics profess: that all life is sacred, that the least among us deserve respect and protection, and that we must strive to end oppression and hatred."

Gomez's message sought to "erase the voices of millions" of Catholics and Christians of color who are involved in the anti-racism movement, she says.

"Seventy-nine per cent of Black Americans identify as Christian, and you better believe most of those people are also against racism," the commentator says. "He is revealing the blind spot that many leaders in the church have."

She noted Pope Francis has commended activists who protest against police brutality and racism. He called them the "Collective Samaritan" - who did not turn away when they saw "the wound to human dignity, afflicted by such an abuse of power."

Source

• Religion News Service
• America Magazine
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: America Magazine

No one doubts that the proposal is directed at regular Mass-goer Joe Biden, the nation's second Catholic president.

More significant than the proposal itself, however, is the fact that the leadership of the bishops' conference has moved toward it in the face of Vatican opposition, expressed in a go-slow letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the USCCB president, Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, last month.

"The idea that very direct warnings and guidance from the Vatican would simply be seen as an advisory opinion was not part of my experience," John Carr, policy adviser to the bishops from 1987 to 2012, told the National Catholic Reporter's Christopher White, adding that for them, Pope Francis has become "just one voice among many" and now "the question is not whether I agree with the pope but whether the pope agrees with me."

In modern times, such readiness to dismiss papal teaching has indeed been extraordinary.

In his magisterial "Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes," Eamon Duffy titles the section on the popes of the 20th century "The Oracles of God."

This oracular status was, ironically, the result of their loss of temporal power in the 19th century.

Forced to cede their lands and much of their income to the secular powers, the popes established a degree of control over the church that they had never before enjoyed — from the control of episcopal appointments to doctrinal authority that could rise to the level of infallibility.

Where once Catholic monarchs decided much of what happened in the church, by the 20th century the pope's "spiritual role and symbolic power" had grown, Duffy writes, "to dizzying heights."

Now that era appears to be coming to an end, for the U.S. bishops' proposal on the Eucharist is but the latest example of Catholic resistance to papal direction.

Conservatives in the church have been unsettled by Francis ever since his famous "Who am I to judge?" remark about gay people shortly after he assumed the papacy in 2013.

But outright resistance can be dated from his opening the door to Communion for the divorced and remarried, and specifically from the letter effectively charging Francis with heresy that was issued in 2016 by four semiretired cardinals, led by uber-conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke.

Similarly, after Francis revised church doctrine to deny the legitimacy of the death penalty under any circumstances, Burke (whom Francis had removed as head of the Vatican's top judicial body) put out a "Declaration of the truths relating to some of the most common errors in the life of the Church of our time," which insisted that capital punishment was licit under church law.

To be sure, Burke's position was not embraced by the U.S. bishops' conference.

But when Attorney General William Barr — past Knights of Columbus board member and recipient of the right-wing National Catholic Prayer Breakfast's 2019 "Christ's Lay Faithful" award — lifted the long-standing moratorium on federal death penalty executions that same year and ordered up one execution after another, the bishops' response was tepid.

Tepid also characterizes the bishops' response to "Laudato Si'," Francis' powerful encyclical on climate change.

Since it was issued in 2015, the number of bishops who have made climate a major part of their teaching and advocacy agenda can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

And let us not forget former U.S. papal nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò‘s discredited letter accusing Francis of covering up former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's history of abuse and calling for Francis' resignation.

As the National Catholic Reporter's White points out, the same American bishops who spoke up for Viganò are the ones behind the current push for a Eucharist document.

Not that they are alone.

Behind the anti-Francis bishops is a media ecosystem ranging from websites like Church Militant and The Catholic Thing to the EWTN television network, whose lead anchor, Raymond Arroyo, is also a regular on Fox News. T

here are, as well, organizations like the Acton Institute and the Napa Institute, which serve to mobilize wealthy Catholics around conservative policy positions.

The moral and financial strength of the bishops has been severely weakened by the abuse scandal.

Money talks, and much of the money for the church and its institutions now comes not from ordinary parishioners but increasingly from rich conservatives.

The term for state control of the church in early modern times was Gallicanism, because it was in France that such control was most clearly articulated and most thoroughgoing.

The term for the new post-oracular papacy might be Americanism, because America is where the authority of the pope is now most seriously called into question.

In the late 1890s, Pope Leo XIII condemned as heretical an Americanism that embraced the separation of church and state and equal status of all religions — a position the church was still decades away from endorsing.

The new Americanism is manifested in libertarian capitalism and a narrow moralism that has little commitment to the common good.

Though progressive on economic policy (he favoured labour unions), Leo XIII was an authoritarian who believed in centralized, hierarchical control of Catholic life.

By contrast, Francis is advancing a philosophy of synodality, which looks to the entire body of the faithful to work out church policy country by country.

Thus far Francis has done little to rein in the Americanism of his time. But his patience may not last for long.

• Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and director of the college's Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. He is a Contributing Editor of the Religion News Service.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.
• Image: Salt Lake Tribune

Journalists, here's your answer: This is a stupid story for canonical, theological and political reasons.

First, and foremost, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops does not have the canonical authority to tell Biden that he cannot go to Communion.

During the papacy of John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, emphasised the limited authority of bishops' conferences.

Who can or cannot go to Communion in a diocese is to be decided by the local bishop, not the bishops' conference. The most the conference can do is make recommendations to local bishops.

If the USCCB wants the authority to decide such matters, it will need to request an exception to church law from Rome.

This request requires a two-thirds vote of the conference bishops and Rome's approval for the exception.

It is highly unlikely that the pope would approve such an exception. The odds are that the Vatican would not even respond to the request while Biden is in office.

As a result, as long as Biden resides in Washington, D.C., and goes to church there, it will be Cardinal Wilton Gregory who determines whether he can go to Communion.

Gregory has said he will not stop Biden from going to Communion.

When Biden is in his home state of Delaware, it will be up to the local bishop there.

Delaware has just gotten a new bishop, and while his predecessor allowed Biden to go to Communion, the new bishop has not yet made his position known.

Likewise, when Biden is travelling around the country, it will be the local bishop wherever he goes to Mass who decides whether he can go to Communion or not.

Biden's aides are smart enough to avoid scheduling him for Mass in a diocese with an unfriendly bishop.

Biden and his staff have also been smart enough to avoid being pulled into a debate over his worthiness for Communion.

He says this is a personal matter, and his staff keeps the news cameras out when he goes to church.

Second, theologically, no one is worthy to go to Communion. We are all sinners, and it is God's gracious kindness and love that invites us to the Lord's table. We do not earn the right to Communion.

As Pope Francis would say, the church is a field hospital for the wounded. It is not a country club for the elite. This attitude has led Francis to make it easier for divorced and remarried Catholics to go to Communion.

Every Catholic is asked to reflect on their attitude as they approach Communion, but it is exceptional when church officials block an individual from Communion.

Some bishops believe that certain issues are so grave that they should be grounds for stopping someone from going to Communion.

Putting aside the merits of the debate, there are practical problems. For example, which issues should make the list?

Some say abortion and gender issues, but it should be noted that Biden has never challenged the church's position on the morality of abortion.

He believes that it should be legal, which is the position of more than half of Catholics. If Biden should be banned from Communion, then so should more than half of American Catholics.

But what about other issues?

• What about politicians who lie about the results of the election and encourage their followers to overturn the will of the people?
• What about politicians who support racism through voter suppression laws?
• What about politicians who fight policies to deal with global warming?
• What about politicians who deny refuge to those fleeing oppression and want, who do nothing to save those dying in the desert or drowning at sea?
• What about politicians who deny Medicaid to the poor?

Everybody has their list of people who should be denied Communion. Who is to decide?

When he was archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, no liberal, put it succinctly when he said he did not want his priests playing cop at the Communion rail.

We should also remember that St John Paul II gave Communion to pro-choice politicians, notably former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (not even a Catholic at the time). He also gave Communion to the mayor of Rome.

All of this leads to my third conclusion, that this is all about politics, not the Eucharist.

The bishops who are talking about having the bishops' conference at its June meeting deny Biden Communion are not stupid.

They know canon law.

They know that the bishops' conference does not have the authority to ban Biden from Communion.

The pro-life groups pushing this agenda also know this.

So, what is going on? It is politics.

The Democratic Party has abandoned any semblance of giving space to opponents of abortion.

During the 2020 presidential primaries, no serious Democratic candidate even supported the Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal spending on abortion.

Biden, who had supported the amendment during his entire political career, changed his position before the campaign, even though a majority of Americans oppose federal funds for abortions.

Opponents of abortion see no alternative to the Republican Party, and they are willing to wage war on Democrats no matter what.

The Communion wars are part of this political strategy, not any spiritual one.

Republicans know that the Communion wars are catnip to journalists, and Republicans and their episcopal allies prefer these stories to those describing Biden's efforts on COVID-19, infrastructure, climate change and jobs.

Stories about the bishops' conference denying Communion to Biden are about as realistic as stories about the National Governors Association impeaching the president.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

They have said the shots are moral and are needed urgently to save lives.

The barrage of differing philosophical opinions on the three approved vaccines were based on how central the use of fetal cell lines was in their production.

The lines are essentially reproductions of fetal cells from abortions done in the 1970s and 1980s. The shots themselves don't actually contain fetal cells.

Earlier this week, the chairs of the U.S. bishops' conference committees on doctrine and pro-life activities issued a statement advising Catholics awaiting a COVID-19 vaccine to choose, if possible, the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines over the recently approved Johnson & Johnson's.

This was due to a less remote connection between this newest vaccine and abortion. A previous statement by the New Orleans Archdiocese characterized the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as "morally compromised." A handful of other bishops have concurred.

Some Catholic leaders and medical professionals worried that the stream of criticism over the Johnson & Johnson shot could discourage devout Catholics from getting vaccinated. Some felt the need to say explicitly that getting a vaccine is not at all problematic morally, and there is an ethical imperative to do so.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith noted that due to the very production and distribution challenges currently in place in the U.S. and globally, "it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process."

They continue that due to the "grave danger" presented by the spread of the SARS-CoV2 virus that causes Covid-19, "all vaccines recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience."

And they emphasize that while vaccination — like all medical interventions — is voluntary, there is a moral "duty to protect one's own health [as well as] the duty to pursue the common good."

A group of prominent conservative Catholic scholars said none of the vaccines developed in the U.S. so far should be seen as "more morally tainted" than one another.

The statement by the eight scholars noted that the abortion was not done in order to provide research material. The scientists working to develop the coronavirus vaccines decades later were not involved in the abortion. The cell line is so common for testing that "the great majority of processed/packaged food products available for sale in the United States are likely to contain ingredients produced or tested" with it.

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

Washington Post

The photos show the bodies of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria, who were fleeing from El Salvador which is wracked by violent crime.

In the photos, Ramirez and Valeria are lying face down near the river bank. Valeria's arm is draped around her father's neck, suggesting she clung to her father in their final moments.

Valeria's mother, Tania Vanessa Avalos, was still on the Mexican side of the river and survived.

Pope Francis was "profoundly saddened by their death, and is praying for them and for all migrants who have lost their lives while seeking to flee war and misery," a Vatican spokesman said.

"This image cries to heaven for justice," the US bishops' conference said.

"This image silences politics. Who can look on this picture and not see the results of the failures of all of us to find a humane and just solution to the immigration crisis?

"Sadly, this picture shows the daily plight of our brothers and sisters. Not only does their cry reach heaven. It reaches us. And it must now reach our federal government," the bishops said.

US President Donald Trump said he was disturbed by the images, but the deaths could have been prevented.

"If we had the right laws, that the Democrats are not letting us have, those people, they wouldn't be coming up. They wouldn't be trying," the president said.

"They can change it very easily so people don't come up and people won't get killed."

A top Republican said the photos should stir Congress to address the crisis on the border.

"This isn't who we are as a country. We have obligations to humanity that are being completely ignored," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested that Martinez and his daughter might not have died had Trump agreed to Democratic efforts to help migrants fleeing Central American countries to enter the US as refugees.

"How could President Trump look at this picture and not understand that these are human beings fleeing violence and persecution, willing to risk a perilous, sometimes failed journey in search of a better life?" Schumer asked.

The head of the United Nations' children's agency also responded to "the heart-rending photo ... is a stark reminder of the perils facing migrants trying to reach the US," he said.

"It is a searing image that should shake each of us to our core," said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

Fore said she is deeply concerned for the well-being of migrant children at the US-Mexico border. Some are being sheltered in "grim" facilities, she said.

In her opinion, this situation is hard to fathom in the United States which has "such a rich history as a champion for children in need around the world."

Source

• America Magazine
• AP News
• Image: CNN

The US Catholic bishops' conference apologied last Wednesday for the role of bishops in the church's clergy sexual abuse scandal.

At the same time, they announced new initiatives to hold abusive or negligent bishops accountable. Read more

This month's violent "Unite the Right" protests in Charlottesville, Virginia have resulted in the bishops making a new resolution to oppose and eliminate racism.

"The times demand it; our Gospel demands it," Bishop George Murry says.

African-American Murry joined the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo to announce a new anti-racism effort for the dioceses, parishes, schools and other institutions.

"Recent events reveal yet another reminder of what can be traced back to the original sin of the United States: racism," Murry says.

The Bishops Conference has established a new 'Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism' to lead this work, which Murry will chair.

The new committee's brief is "to focus on addressing the sin of racism in our society and even in our church and the urgent need to come together as a society to find solutions."

DiNardo says the new committee will be "wholly dedicated to engaging the church and our society to work together in unity to challenge the sin of racism, to listen to persons who are suffering under this sin, and to come together in the love of Christ to know one another as brothers and sisters."

Source

• National Catholic Register
• Pittsburgh Catholic
• Image: Diocese of Pittsburgh

With a background in strategic planning and the experience of serving as dean of a major Catholic business school—the University of Notre Dame's acclaimed Mendoza College of Business—Woo also brings a sharp business acumen to running an agency dependent upon the support of others to carry out its work.

In these excerpts from the interview we conducted with her for our May 2013 issue, Woo discusses business ethics, funding challenges, and passing on the faith.

How did you become interested in studying business?

My academic training was in strategy. There are very few people who specialize in strategy and strategic planning. I was 21 years old when I decided that I wanted to get a Ph.D. in strategy, although I don't know why I did it. It was a new field, people didn't know much about it and neither did I.

But it was the opposite of my undergraduate major, which was economics. I wanted something really broad, but it might not have been the best major for a person without experience. I grew to love it though. And now my role and my contribution to CRS is to make sure that we are strategically on track and that we are organizationally healthy in fulfilling our mission.

Having worked at a Catholic business school, how important do you think it is to teach ethics and values to business leaders in today's world?

Development cannot take place without business, because in the end, business is there to create jobs. They don't only create a market for products, but behind the products are people and talent. If there's no market, there's no place for exchange, and we will be tending to our own little plot somewhere. Continue reading

Sources

• U.S. Catholic
• Image: Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand

In virtue of our membership in the Catholic Church we are ordinarily free to receive Holy Communion. In fact, it is most desirable that we receive the Lord's Body and Blood, so that Holy Communion stands out clearly as a participation in the sacrifice actually being celebrated. Indeed, we should all cherish the grace given to us in the Eucharist. We should strive to receive Holy Communion regularly, gratefully, and worthily. We may find ourselves in situations, however, where an examination of our conscience before God reveals to us that we should refrain from partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ. Moreover, we should be cautious when making judgments about whether or not someone else should receive Holy Communion.

Objectively, certain thoughts, actions, and omissions entail grave sinful matter. As Catholics, we are obliged to form our consciences regarding what constitutes grave matter in accordance with the Church's teaching. While it is not possible to make a complete list of thoughts and actions that involve grave matter, they would all be serious violations of the law of love of God and of neighbor. If we follow the order of the Ten Commandments, some examples of such thoughts and actions would be:

Believing in or honoring as divine anyone or anything other than the God of the Holy Scriptures; Swearing a false oath while invoking God as a witness; Failing to worship God by missing Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation without a serious reason, such as sickness or the absence of a priest; Acting in serious disobedience against proper authority; dishonoring one's parents by neglecting them in their need and infirmity; Committing murder, including abortion and euthanasia; harboring deliberate hatred of others; sexual abuse of another, especially of a minor or vulnerable adult; physical or verbal abuse of others that causes grave physical or psychological harm; Engaging in sexual activity outside the bonds of a valid marriage. Read more

Sources

• The Deacon's Bench
• Image: Aufer a Nobis