Archive for catholic news service

“Young Franciscan Author Says Getting to Know God is Like Dating”

Posted in Dating God Book, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on April 3, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

The following is a Catholic News Service (CNS) article that was published on the CNS wire on 2 April 2012.

Young Franciscan author says getting to know God is like dating

By Beth Griffin, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — Getting to know God is akin to entering a dating relationship, according to Franciscan Brother Daniel P. Horan.

When two people already like one another, they devote copious amounts of time and energy to learning everything they can about each other and joyfully anticipate spending time together, he explained.

“Dating requires intentionality, planning and effort,” Brother Horan said.

Brother Horan, a member of the Order of Friars Minor, is the author of “Dating God: Live and Love in the Way of St. Francis.” At 28, he is not very far removed from the more traditional understanding of dating.

The oldest of four boys, Brother Horan attended Catholic schools and was an altar server, lector, eucharistic minister and sacristan at Our Lady of Lourdes in Utica, in the Diocese of Syracuse. He felt drawn to the priesthood in high school and studied theology and journalism in the honors program at St. Bonaventure University, a Franciscan school in Olean.

“Over the course of four years, I got to know the friars’ intellectual traditions and spiritual life and develop personal relationships with the friars themselves,” he said in an interview with Catholic News Service.

In college, Brother Horan ran a photography business, specializing in sports and news coverage. He called it “a hobby that got out of control.” His freelance clients included CNS, Associated Press and Getty Images.

After graduation in 2005, Brother Horan entered the Franciscans. He is one of five men from his parish who became Franciscans.

Brother Horan earned a master’s degree in systematic theology at Washington Theological Union and will complete a master’s in divinity in May. He expects to be ordained May 19 in Silver Spring, Md. After a summer assignment to St. Francis of Assisi Parish on Long Beach Island, N.J., he will begin studies for a doctorate in systematic theology.

The dating imagery occurred to him during a Franciscan workshop on the writings of Sts. Francis and Clare during his novitiate. “Their expressions of their relationship with God, while not quite love letters, evoked images of the tenuousness, ambivalence, excitement, energy and passion of dating,” Brother Horan said.

“Like other images for the human-divine interrelationship, it won’t be helpful for everybody. Any language to talk about our relationship with God always falls short, but this one is shocking and startling enough to get people thinking about their relationship with God in a new way,” he said.

Traditionally, God has been referred to as parent, companion, friend, even lover, in the Song of Songs, Brother Horan said. “I like the dating metaphor, because it’s an active verb,” he said.

Dating has a romantic connotation, which works for the metaphor, Brother Horan said, because the beginning of a romantic relationship is a more rarified, focused and intense version of the beginning of all healthy relationships.

“Christian tradition has always emphasized making a date with God, but you won’t find it in the Gospels that way. It’s a focus on solitude and the distinction between loneliness and being alone. The idea that we would set aside time to be alone with someone in order to get to know them better and allow ourselves to be known” is common to both dating and prayer, he said.

Brother Horan reflected on the connection during a five-day hermitage experience. A self-described extrovert, he said it is easy to get distracted by noise and technology, rather than acknowledge the merit of quiet and solitude. Many people are afraid of silence and equate being alone with depression, sadness and boredom. Seeing it as being alone with God changes the dynamic, he said.

“We can learn about who we are and our relationship to God by looking at our relationships with people. This is off-putting to some who want to make God removed from creation,” Brother Horan said.

“We bring our entire selves to all our relationships,” including fears, joys, emotions, anxieties and happiness, he said.

All relationships require work, Brother Horan said. Early on there is energy, intensity and effortlessness “and you might change because of the other person,” he said, but the ease does not continue. Friends, couples and believers need to devote time to reconnect and be alone with one another in shared experiences.

“We still need to go on dates with God. There has to be an intentionality to our prayer life,” he said. “Going to church once a week in a crowd doesn’t cut it. It’s good, but it’s not enough. You can’t have a relationship if you don’t spend time alone together.”

He cautioned the dating image is only a starting point for a new way to see things.

In addition to his studies and service as a deacon, Brother Horan delivers talks on topics as diverse as Franciscan spirituality and “The Digital Christ: Communion in a Technological Era.” And he knows he must make the time himself to maintain his relationship with God.

Brother Horan is eagerly anticipating his ordination and recommends that other young people consider whether they have a religious vocation.

“I love this way of life and I would encourage others to give it a try,” he told CNS. “There’s so much competition for our attention that religious communities get drowned out by the noise. I’m grateful that the spirit has led me to this way of life and I’d encourage others not to write it off.”

Photos: CNS/Bob Roller

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New Vatican Document on Economy Released (Updated)

Posted in Social Justice, The Papal Watcher, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on October 24, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

While the text is not yet available online [UPDATE: Link to full text!], news reports outline the new text titled, “Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority,” drafted by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Here is a brief overview published by Catholic News Service this morning.  For more information, see the links below.

VATICAN CITY — A Vatican document called for the gradual creation of a “world political authority” with broad powers to regulate financial markets and rein in the “inequalities and distortions of capitalist development.”

The document said the current global financial crisis has revealed “selfishness, collective greed and the hoarding of goods on a great scale.” A supranational authority, it said, is needed to place the common good at the center of international economic activity.

The 16-page text was titled, “Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.” Prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, it was released Oct. 24 in several languages, including a provisional translation in English.

The document cited the teachings of popes over the last 40 years on the need for a universal public authority that would transcend national interests. The current economic crisis, which has seen growing inequality between the rich and poor of the world, underlines the necessity to take concrete steps toward creating such an authority, it said.

One major step, it said, should be reform of the international monetary system in a way that involves developing countries. The document foresaw creation of a “central world bank” that would regulate the flow of monetary exchanges.

The document also proposed:

– Taxation measures on financial transactions. Revenues could contribute to the creation of a “world reserve fund” to support the economies of countries his by crisis, it said.

– Forms of recapitalization of banks with public funds that make support conditional on “virtuous” behavior aimed at developing the real economy.

– More effective management of financial “shadow markets” that are largely uncontrolled today.

Such moves would be designed to make the global economy more responsive to the needs of the person, and less “subordinated to the interests of countries that effectively enjoy a position of economic and financial advantage,” it said.

In making the case for a global authority, the document said the continued model of nationalistic self-interest seemed “anachronistic and surreal” in the age of globalization.

“We should not be afraid to propose new ideas, even if they might destabilize pre-existing balances of power that prevail over the weakest,” it said.

The “new world dynamics,” it said, call for a “gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world authority and to regional authorities.”

“In a world on its way to rapid globalization, the reference to a world authority becomes the only horizon compatible with the new realities of our time and the needs of humankind,” it said. Helping to usher in this new society is a duty for everyone, especially for Christians, it said.

Additional Reports about new Vatican document.

UPDATE: Link to full text.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

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Franciscans Work for Justice Along US Border

Posted in Franciscan Spirituality, Social Justice, Uncategorized with tags , , , , on October 23, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

A recent Catholic News Service article, written by Joseph Kolb, tells the story of Franciscan sisters who work in the US desert near the border with Mexico, serving the poor and immigrant. Following today’s First Reading from the Book of Exodus, which discusses God’s command that people do not harm or abuse the immigrants in their midst, it seems most fitting to pass along this story of heroic service to God’s people. In an age when certain folks are revved up over their “right” to “defend” an arbitrary national border (God has no border!), harming the lives and families of people in the meantime, we are wise to pause and reflect on what God has said to us in Scripture about just this issue and look at the model of Christian discipleship presented to us by these sisters as they strive to live in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi.

The compact car lifted a trail of dust as it traveled slowly along the 18-foot-tall chain-link fence, attracting the attention of the U.S. Border Patrol agent sitting in his green and white SUV.

When the vehicle stopped and two women got out, he was concerned contraband might be tossed over the fence into the United States to the waiting vehicle. Instead, the women began throwing items into Mexico.

The two women were Franciscan Missionaries of Mary who come to the fence periodically and toss whatever they can get to give the needy families of Puerto de Anapra, one of the poorest and most violent suburbs of Ciudad Juarez.

“The agent said it was OK for us to be here, but only for a short time,” said the older nun, who identified herself as Sister Marie. Her companion on the goodwill venture into this remote area of the fence — where Texas, New Mexico and Mexico converge — was Sister Karen. Both sisters requested their last names not be disclosed.

“It’s sad, they are so poor,” said Sister Marie. “It breaks my heart see them have to live like this and how they live in such fear.”

The presence of the sisters attracted nearly 20 people, who rushed down dirty, garbage-strewn alleys to make it to the fence to receive their gifts.

As the children pressed their faces against the tight fence, Sister Karen pushed the licorice through the narrow spaces to the tiny fingers of the children. The small spaces make it much more difficult for migrants to get a good footing to cross into the United States.

Continue reading CNS Story Here…

Photo: File

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Franciscan Friars and other Catholics Protest Oil Pipeline

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on September 2, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

You may have first heard about the Keystone XL pipeline right here on the Dating God Podcast‘s first installment of our “Social Justice Report,” during which Br. Steve DeWitt explained why the transnational oil pipeline should be opposed. Today, Catholic New Service published an article about the protest and the same story was the lead story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” program this evening. Among those who have protested and risked arrest for purposes of peaceful civil disobedience are counted two of my Franciscan brothers, associate pastors of St. Camillus Parish in Silver Spring, MD. Read the story below for more information, including the mention of both of them.

Catholics join hundreds in arrests over oil pipeline

By Dennis Sadowski, CNS

WASHINGTON — Maryknoll Father Jim Noonan hopes the five or so hours he spent in jail recently will be noticed by President Barack Obama.

A staff associate in the Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns, Father Noonan, 77, was among 65 people arrested Aug. 20 during the first day of a planned two-week protest to call attention to the environmental dangers he believes are posed by a proposed 1,711-mile pipeline to carry Canadian crude oil to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas.

Through Aug. 30, nearly 600 people had been arrested.

“I wanted to do anything I possibly could to be a voice,” Father Noonan told Catholic News Service three days after his arrest for participating in the first sit-in. “I wanted to ask the president please do not authorize this pipeline because your children and your grandchildren will rue the day that this was authorized.” Read more »

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Listening to the Church of Today: Youth and Young Adults

Posted in The Papal Watcher, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on August 18, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

This reflection is now available in Daniel P. Horan, OFM’s book Franciscan Spirituality for the 21st Century: Selected Reflections from the Dating God Blog and Other Essays, Volume One (Koinonia Press, 2013).

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CNS Cites “Dating God” in Article

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on May 4, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

While this is a short quote from one of the later postings on the subject of Osama Bin Laden (perhaps not the quote I would have personally selected), it is an honor to be referenced in a Catholic News Service article that ran this afternoon on the wire. It is a particular honor to be included among such excellent commentators also cited in the piece. Here is the full text:

Bin Laden killing poses questions for moral debate


A worker looks over memorial items left on a fence at the former World Trade Center site in New York May 3. The Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attack on the trade center’s towers killed 2,752 people. (CNS/Mary Knight)

By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — As word got out that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a Navy SEAL strike team in Pakistan, television and the Internet quickly began to feature images of spontaneous celebrations outside the White House and at ground zero in New York.

Just as quickly, blogs and social media pages such as Facebook began to rage with debates: about the morality of bin Laden’s killing and how it was accomplished and about the appropriateness of the celebratory atmosphere. Others questioned the meaning of the “justice” described by President Barack Obama in announcing bin Laden’s death.

“We must be clear what we understand when President Obama says ‘justice has been done,’” said Gerard Powers, director of Catholic Peacebuilding Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, in an exchange of emails with Catholic News Service.

“Justice has been done in that the killing of bin Laden was necessary to defend the common good against terrorism,” Powers wrote. “Justice has not been done if we revel in his killing as an act of revenge for 9/11. It is unclear if justice has been done in the sense of holding bin Laden legally accountable for his past crimes against humanity, especially the 9/11 attacks.”

Also unclear was whether bin Laden could have been captured and brought to trial, Powers said. “If it was possible to capture bin Laden and he was killed anyway, then justice was not done.”

Bishop Paul S. Loverde of Arlington, Va., whose diocese includes the Pentagon, wrote that bin Laden’s death brings back painful memories for many in the community, which requires a note of caution.

Read more »

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Vatican Response: “A Christian Never Rejoices”

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on May 2, 2011 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

The Catholic News Service has reported that the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, has released the following statement on the occasion of the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden:

Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions for this purpose.

In the face of a man’s death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion  for the further growth of peace and not of hatred.

May we live these words and take them to heart. So many people, including very dedicated religious men and women, are allowing themselves to be swept up by the fervor of the ostensible catharsis in the killing of Osama Bin Laden. I agree with Fr. Jim Martin, SJ, “I am glad he has left the world.  And I pray that his departure may lead to peace.” Yet, both he and I also agree in his closing words, echoing the words of the Vatican today: “But as a Christian, I am asked to pray for him and, at some point, to forgive him.  And that command comes to us from Jesus, a man who was beaten, tortured and killed.  That command comes from a man who knows a great deal about suffering.  That command also comes from God.”

It is not easy. But we must constantly recall our vocation as those Baptized into the Body of Christ and not lose sight of what it means to be human beings created in the Image and Likeness of God.

Photo: Stock

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Pope Says ‘Universal Healthcare an Inalienable Human Right!’

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on November 18, 2010 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

This just in from Catholic News Service…

Pope, church leaders call for guaranteed health care for all people


(CNS/Paul Haring) 

 

By Sarah Delaney
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI and other church leaders said it was the moral responsibility of nations to guarantee access to health care for all of their citizens, regardless of social and economic status or their ability to pay.

Access to adequate medical attention, the pope said in a written message Nov. 18, was one of the “inalienable rights” of man.

The pope’s message was read by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, to participants at the 25th International Conference of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry at the Vatican Nov. 18-19.

The theme of this year’s meeting was “Caritas in Veritate – toward an equitable and human health care.”

The pope lamented the great inequalities in health care around the globe. While people in many parts of the world aren’t able to receive essential medications or even the most basic care, in industrialized countries there is a risk of “pharmacological, medical and surgical consumerism” that leads to “a cult of the body,” the pope said.

“The care of man, his transcendent dignity and his inalienable rights” are issues that should concern Christians, the pope said.

Because an individual’s health is a “precious asset” to society as well as to himself, governments and other agencies should seek to protect it by “dedicating the equipment, resources and energy so that the greatest number of people can have access.”

“Justice in health care should be a priority of governments and international institutions,” he said, cautioning that protecting human health does not include euthanasia or promoting artificial reproductive techniques that include the destruction of embryos.

Care for human life from conception to its natural end must be a guiding light in determining health care policy, the pope said.

In his own written statement, Cardinal Bertone had strong words in support of the need for governments to take care of all citizens, especially children, the elderly, the poor and immigrants.

“Justice requires guaranteed universal access to health care,” he said, adding that the provision of minimal levels of medical attention to all is “commonly accepted as a fundamental human right.”

Governments are obligated, therefore, to adopt the proper legislative, administrative and financial measures to provide such care along with other basic conditions that promote good health, such as food security, water and housing, the cardinal said.

Private health insurance companies, he said, should conform to human rights legislation and see to it that “privatization not become a threat to the accessibility, availability and quality of health care goods and services.”

Cardinal Bertone recommended that government leaders in poor countries use their limited resources wisely and for the good of their citizens.

The governments of richer nations with good health care available should practice more solidarity with their own disadvantaged citizens and help developing countries promote health care while trying to avoid a “paternalistic or humiliating” way of assisting, the cardinal said.

Cardinal Bertone warned of the “war of interests” between pharmaceutical companies and developing nations who have little access to medicines because they can’t pay for them. He said that those manufacturers should not be driven by “profit as the only objective” in the creation and distribution of medicines.

Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, said in opening remarks that to have good health “is a natural right” recognized by international institutions.

Despite such recognition, he said, great imbalances persist and developing nations find themselves with inadequate structures and without the ability to provide basic medicines to their people. Wealthier countries, on the other hand, have a “technical” approach to the sick, which ignores “the sick person in his entirety and dignity,” Archbishop Zimowski said.

The council, created by Pope John Paul II 25 years ago, will continue the church’s mission to serve the sick and promote health for all, the archbishop said.

END

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Angels: The New “American Idol?”

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on November 4, 2010 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Angels we have heard on high…or something.

This article by the Catholic News Service has recently come to my attention. Apparently there are some people who have turned angels in to idols, elevating interest and veneration of God’s messengers to a place of undeserved status. The Vatican is concerned with this group of rogue faithful and the unfolding of this ongoing saga is interesting — whether you believe in angels or not.

Vatican warns on splinter group devoted to angels
By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican’s doctrinal office has asked the world’s bishops to be vigilant over the activities of a “wayward movement” of members of the Opus Angelorum church association.

The Vatican said the splinter movement was trying to revive practices banned 18 years ago, including liturgical ceremonies that focus on angels.

The organization, whose name is Latin for “work of angels,” was reformed after a 1992 Vatican decree and today is a “public association of the church in conformity with traditional doctrine and with the directives of the Holy See,” wrote Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, the congregation’s secretary.

The group “spreads devotion to the holy angels among the faithful, exhorts them to pray for priests, and promotes love for Christ in his Passion and union with it,” said the letter sent to the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences.

The letter, dated Oct. 2, was released to journalists Nov. 4 and was published the same day in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

The letter said that after its successful normalization, Opus Angelorum is in communion with the church, and “there are no remaining obstacles of a doctrinal or disciplinary kind which would prevent local ordinaries from receiving this movement into their dioceses and prompting its development.”

But it said bishops should be aware that there are a certain number of members, including priests who left or were expelled from the Order of Canons Regular of the Holy Cross, who “have not accepted the norms given by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and seek to restore what, according to them, would be the ‘authentic Opus Angelorum.’”

The splinter movement “professes and practices all those things which were forbidden” by earlier Vatican documents, it said.

The congregation said that “very discrete propaganda in favor of this wayward movement, which is outside of any ecclesial control, is taking place, aimed at presenting it as if it were in full communion with the Catholic Church.”

For that reason, it said, it was urging bishops to be “vigilant with regard to such activities, disruptive as they are of ecclesial communion, and to forbid them if they are present within their dioceses.”

The organization was founded in Innsbruck, Austria, and stems from the alleged 1946 private revelations received by Gabriele Bitterlich. She reported visions of the world of angels in which their individual names and specific tasks were revealed.

In 1983, the doctrinal congregation released a letter ordering the group to end some of its practices and beliefs. However, the letter’s orders “were not interpreted and executed correctly,” the congregation said in a follow-up decree released in 1992.

The 1992 decree said that the angel beliefs and practices of the organization “are foreign to Holy Scripture and tradition and therefore cannot serve as a basis of spirituality and for the activities of a church-approved association.”

Theories springing from the “presumed revelations” of Mrs. Bitterlich “can be neither taught nor in any way utilized, explicitly or implicitly,” by Opus Angelorum, it said.

“The different forms of consecration to the angels practiced by Opus Angelorum are prohibited,” the 1992 decree said, adding that the group was to follow strictly all liturgical laws, especially relating to the Eucharist.

Other prohibitions included the practice of exorcisms that did not follow church rules and the administration of sacraments from a distance.

A Vatican-appointed delegate was named to oversee compliance of the 1992 decree and to regularize the relationship between Opus Angelorum and the Order of Canons Regular of the Holy Cross.

In 2000, the doctrinal congregation approved the formula of a consecration to the Holy Angels for Opus Angelorum and the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life approved the statutes of the Opus Sanctorum Angelorum.

Opus Angelorum is under the direction of the Order of Canons Regular of the Holy Cross, whose central government was named by the Vatican in 1993 and was able to elect its own superior general and general council members in 2009.

The Bishop of Innsbruck approved the Constitutions of the Sisters of the Holy Cross.

The group is active in Austria, Germany, Brazil, Portugal and the United States.

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