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Pencil Preaching for Friday, April…

“It is fulfilled” (John 19:30).

Is 52:13—53:12; Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9; Jn 18:1—19:42

Good Friday of Holy Week

Of all the questions we might ask about the impact of the Jesus community on history, the first ought to be why it survived at all. Why did it emerge from the countless movements, religions and charismatic impulses passing through the ancient world to fire the imaginations of poets, artists and mystics and end up influencing global culture to the extent that it has?

How did an obscure hill country Jewish preacher leave such a profound imprint on the collective psyche of the world, attracting billions of adherents and shaping even the arguments of skeptics who dismiss him?

Apart from the theological answer that he was God incarnate come to save the world, another case might be made for the symbol that came to characterize the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The cross he died on placed him at the intersection of human despair and divine response. The body of Jesus hangs vertically and reaches horizontally. He is fixed in the human imagination at the crossroads of hope and despair, love and death, locked in the universal question the cross poses for all of us: Love or Death, which one is ultimate?

Jesus’ violent death, a human being sacrificed at the height of his powers and in the fullness of his freedom, is what gives the cross its power. No hapless victim, Jesus dies for love when he might have fled. He could have saved himself, but saved us instead, emptying his life into ours so completely that life and death are redefined by love. This is what a human being looks like. This is the image and likeness of God, revealed to the world on a cross.

The sign of the cross is therefore the simplest, most complete and portable catechesis we have. By making it over our bodies, head to heart, shoulder to shoulder, we bless our lives in relationship to God and in outreach to one another. It is the perfect prayer for Good Friday.

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Critics say the Vatican statement…

Indigenous people in the U.S. and Canada had mixed reactions to the Vatican’s repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, a series of 15th-century papal bulls that legitimized colonial exploitation, but they agreed the statement should be followed with further action.

Marie-Anne Day Walker-Pelletier, a former chief of the Okanese First Nation who represented Saskatchewan residential school survivors on a visit with Pope Francis at the Vatican in March 2022, told NCR she finally felt listened to after trying for years to get the Catholic Church « to really understand and appreciate the pain and suffering that we went through throughout the many hundreds of years. »

Maka Black Elk, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation who is Catholic, said: « It is still only a step, but it’s a step in the right direction. »

On March 30, the Dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development released a joint statement that declared that the Catholic Church « repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery.’ « 

The 15th-century papal bulls have been cited at the U.S. Supreme Court, starting in a unanimous decision in 1823 where Justice John Marshall wrote « that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands. » 

As recently as 2005, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg cited the « doctrine of discovery » in denying the Oneida Indian Nation in Central New York the right to tribal sovereignty in repurchased ancestral lands.

While the Vatican statement refers to the « doctrine of discovery » as a « legal concept, » Cora Voyageur, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, said that the concept « spilled over into the political, the social, the cultural, economic aspects of Indigenous life of people all around the world. »

Steven Newcomb, who is Shawnee/Lenape and author of the 2008 book Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, said that the Vatican statement is « woefully inadequate. » 

« All they have are the titles of those three documents [forming the Doctrine of Discovery], but they don’t tell you what’s in the documents, » he said.

The Vatican statement quotes from the 1537 papal bull Sublimis Deus, where Pope Paul III defended the liberty and property rights of Indigenous peoples. But the statement does not quote from the three 15th-century papal bulls that are cited as forming the Doctrine of Discovery, which explicitly endorse the domination of Indigenous peoples and the Portuguese slave trade of Africans.

The 1452 papal bull Dum Diversas gave Pope Nicholas V’s blessing « to capture, vanquish, and subdue the Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ and put them into perpetual slavery and to take all their possession and their property. »

For Voyageur and others, the Vatican statement’s claim that « the contents of these documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers » sidesteps the church’s responsibility. 

Mark Charles, a Navajo theologian and the author of the 2019 book Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, said that Inter Caetera, a 1493 papal bull granting Spain certain land in the Americas, was written after Christopher Columbus’ first voyage, « basically justifying what had already taken place. »

« It’s not that their words and the papal bulls were being manipulated and co-opted by political entities, they were being written for political entities to justify these actions, » Charles said.

Charles sees the Vatican statement as « very clearly trying to limit » the Catholic Church’s legal liability, especially by framing past harms as perpetrated by individual bad actors instead of by church institutions.

When Francis visited Canada in July 2022, Indigenous Canadians called on him to reject the Doctrine of Discovery. In a press conference on his flight home after the visit, the pope said the church’s treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada amounted to a « genocide, » but also appeared confused about the doctrine itself.

« There’s a view from the shore looking out at those invading ships coming toward our ancestors, and then a view from the ship, » said Newcomb, who has met multiple times with Vatican officials, including one with Francis, urging them to appropriately address the consequences of the papal bulls. 

« They want to see their own history and the history of their institution probably in the best, most favorable light, » he said.

Black Elk described the process of producing the Vatican statement as « clearly very deeply thought about. » He cited Jesuit superior general Fr. Arturo Sosa’s visit to Red Cloud Indian School, a former boarding school run by Jesuits, in August 2022, where Black Elk is executive director for truth and healing.

Black Elk said Sosa took two letters to Francis from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe calling on the pope to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery and that Sosa wrote in September that he had shared the letters with Francis and talked with him about his personal feelings on the necessity of repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.

Black Elk said that he « felt comforted that the truth and healing work that we’re doing here at Red Cloud might have played a small role in helping [the repudiation] along. »

« I see this as being another step in a very long journey to heal that relationship because there were harms done, » said Voyageur, a survivor of Holy Angels residential school.

Voyageur called on Catholics to support efforts to revitalize Indigenous languages and to respect Indigenous spirituality. Indigenous people experience continuing traumas from the Doctrine of Discovery, such as families who still do not know the location of the remains of their family members who died in residential schools and those who are dealing with the effects of clergy sexual abuse.

« All the churches that betrayed First Nations, and including the government, they need to come together, they need to sit at the same table and they need to put the actions in place, » said Walker-Pelletier, speaking about language revitalization and workplace equity.

« And we have to be at the table too, » she said. « They’re not going to be planning without us anymore. »

Black Elk said that a key next step for the Vatican would be engaging with Indigenous communities who have asked for items in the Vatican Museums to be repatriated.

He also said that the Vatican should support U.S. and Canadian bishops doing local healing work, pointing to a 2021 letter from Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City and Bishop James Wall of Gallup, New Mexico, to all U.S. bishops  about forming relationships with Indigenous communities as a starting place.

Newcomb said that if the Catholic Church is going to take responsibility for the Doctrine of Discovery, the church must consider the land it holds.

« Throughout the entire Western hemisphere and probably in other areas of the world where this doctrine of domination was taken, [the Catholic church has] possession of those lands on the basis of those very documents that they say have no value for them, » Newcomb said.

Newcomb said that domination, rather than discovery, is the problem with the series of papal bulls and their long-lasting influence. « How is it and why is it that the claim of a right of domination has been made into the organizing principle of the planet? »

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Pastor Founds Knights Council to Renew Parish

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Taking in a Ukrainian Brother Knight

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Father Innocent – God’s Perfect Love For Us

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Ukrainian Knights Prepare Care Packages

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Catholic groups praised a United…

Various Catholic groups praised a United Nations’ resolution that calls on the International Court of Justice to outline countries’ obligations for protecting the earth’s climate, and the legal consequences they face if they don’t carry these out.

The resolution was pushed by Pacific Islander youth and by the small island nation of Vanuatu, whose future is threatened by rising sea levels and cyclones. The U.N. General Assembly adopted the resolution by consensus March 29.

The Laudato Si’ Movement, an international network of Catholic groups working to protect the environment in line with Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on the need to care for the earth, welcomed the resolution « given that it takes concrete and safe steps on the way out of the current impasse in terms of science-backed climate change mitigation. »

The movement’s Carmelite Fr. Eduardo Agosta Scarel told OSV News the resolution « is asking the international court to issue an informed opinion on the legality or otherwise of the current failure of States to comply with the existing normative framework to care for the earth’s climate, and to highlight inconsistencies, noncompliance and loopholes. »

ICJ opinions are nonbinding but hold significant moral and legal weight.

Supporters of the U.N. resolution hope the international court’s forthcoming advisory opinion regarding climate protections — expected in about two years — will urge world governments to speed up their climate action.

The Catholic Climate Covenant, a Washington-based organization inspired by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2001 statement on climate change, told OSV News it supported the U.N. resolution’s « underlying principle … to ensure greater international climate financing. »

« We encourage further U.S. and global strengthening of diplomatic climate policy solutions that answer the urgent cries of our common home and the people most affected by climate change, » Jose Aguto, Catholic Climate Covenant executive director, told OSV News.

Speaking ahead of the new resolution’s adoption March 29, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres reported that the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that humans were responsible for virtually all the global temperature increases over the last 200 years.

« The IPCC report shows that limiting temperature rise to 1.5-degree(s) is achievable, but time is running out. The window is rapidly closing to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, » Guterres told the General Assembly, adding that countries which contributed the least to the climate crisis were « already facing both climate hell and high levels of sea waters. »

« For some countries, climate threats are a death sentence, » he said, noting that the new resolution « would assist the General Assembly, the U.N. and member states to take bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs. »

Hours after its March 29 adoption, Vanuatu Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau called the resolution « a win for climate justice of epic proportions. »

« Vanuatu sees today’s historic resolution as the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate cooperation, one that is more fully focused on upholding the rule of international law, and an era that places human rights and international equity at the forefront of climate decision-making, » he told reporters at the U.N.

Asked about the new resolution, the Sovereign Order of Malta — a Catholic religious lay order which has permanent U.N. observer status and bilateral diplomatic relations with 120 countries worldwide — said « what that resolution stands for, we stand for. »

« We view this as a step in a direction which is focused on sharing, » Ambassador Paul Beresford-Hill, the Order of Malta’s permanent U.N. observer, told OSV News at the U.N. March 30.

« Some people might look at it as compensation, at the end of the day, if you are an island state, and you’re facing the possibility of the extinction of your island and the transhumance (necessary migration to higher ground) of your population, » the ambassador said.

Anita Okuribido, an environmentalist and climate activist from Nigeria, told OSV News the new U.N. resolution made her happy.

« It really goes a long way because there is some legality about it, » said Okuribido, who works to provide poor communities in Nigeria with climate-friendly renewable energy sources and small, women-run agribusinesses.

Now that the ICJ is involved, the resolution is « not just that kind of decision that doesn’t have a stamp on it, » she said. Okuribido added the « landmark » resolution echoed her personal beliefs as a practicing Catholic as well as the principles laid out in Pope Francis’ encyclical « Laudato Si.’« 

« The earth is our common home, » she said, « and we need to protect our common home. »

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Father Innocent – The Voices in Our Lives

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Saying he wanted to protect the…

Saying he wanted to protect the rights of members of religious orders facing expulsion, Pope Francis made small changes to canon law, giving them more time to appeal their dismissals.

The changes, announced by the Vatican April 3, apply to both the Code of Canon Law for Latin-rite Catholics and to the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.

Even when a serious reason motivates the dismissal of a member of a religious order, canon law gives that person a right to know the reasons, to offer a defense and to appeal a decision.

The current Latin-rite code said that for a decree of dismissal to be valid, it « must indicate the right which the dismissed possesses to make recourse to the competent authority within 10 days from receiving notification. »

A similar paragraph in the code for Eastern-rite Catholics gave a period of 15 days for the person to appeal.

Francis ordered the change of both codes to give a person 30 days to appeal. The change goes into effect May 7.

The Synod of Bishops in 1967 drew up a list of principles that should guide the Code of Canon Law, which was being rewritten at the time, insisting that the rights of individuals in the church be defined and guaranteed.

Ordering the lengthening of the period to submit an appeal, Francis wrote that efforts to guarantee the rights of individuals « becomes relevant especially in the most delicate events of ecclesial living, such as procedures concerning the legal status of persons. »

The Latin code’s 10-day period and the Eastern code’s 15 days, he said, « cannot be said to be congruent with the protection of the rights of the person. »

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Father Innocent – Having Radical Trust in the Father

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