Francis defined bad compassion as the law not to let the child grow in the mother's womb or the law of euthanasia in disease and old age."

Clarifying, he added "I am not saying it is a faith thing, but it is a human thing."

Francis remained adamant that life should not be toyed with "either at its inception or its conclusion."

The Pope's remarks came as he was en route from Marseille to Rome, following a two-day visit to the southern French city.

France on verge of legalising assisted suicide

Francis' comments were made against a background that France is on the cusp of potentially legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia through a contentious legislative proposal.

The parliamentary vote on the matter was been deferred to September 26-28, coincidentally following the Pope's visit to the country.

While Francis did not discuss euthanasia directly with French President Emmanuel Macron during their recent meeting, he emphasised that he had made his stance "unambiguously clear" during Macron's visit to the Vatican last year.

Belgian model

Macron, who had pledged to reform end-of-life care as part of his election campaign, expressed his inclination towards the Belgian model of euthanasia in April 2022.

The Belgian model of 'integral' end-of-life care consists of universal access to palliative care and legally regulated euthanasia.

It was legalised in Belgium in 2002, and permits euthanasia for adults and minors in exceptional cases.

In the ensuing years, euthanasia choice in Belgium has become more liberal.

Earlier this year, a 56-year-old Belgian mother who murdered her five children was euthanised at her own request.

In 2020, the Vatican stripped 15 of the Belgian Brothers of Charity psychiatric institutions of their Catholic status because euthanasia was permitted on their premises.

Advances in pain manaagement

During the course of the plane interview, Pope Francis highlighted the advancements in medical science that allow for effective pain management, reiterating his belief that life is sacrosanct and should not be trifled with.

On May 13, during the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, he lamented the legalisation of euthanasia in Portugal, describing it as "a law that sanctions killing."

Pope Francis has consistently advocated for palliative care as a humane approach to treating those with severe illnesses, stating that while it is essential to accompany people towards the end of their lives, it is not ethical to hasten their death or assist in their suicide.

He has been equally forthright on the topic of abortion, likening it back in 2018 to contracting a "hitman" to dispose of an inconvenient individual.

Sources

• CNA

We could rephrase this in the following different ways:

• Symbols are just symbols - and ignored.
• Symbols no longer speak to us - and we miss what they do in our lives.
• Symbols are just taken as more noise - to which we might listen but which are little more than more words.

This is how the pope explains it in his letter:

Guardini writes, "Here there is outlined the first task of the work of liturgical formation: man must become once again capable of symbols." This is a responsibility for all, for ordained ministers and the faithful alike. The task is not easy because modern man has become illiterate, no longer able to read symbols; it is almost as if their existence is not even suspected (DD, 44).

Romano Guardini (1885-1968)

Francis takes his starting point from one of the great theologians of the first half of the twentieth century: Romano Guardini.

The Italian-born German priest influenced a whole generation of theologians including Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, and Joseph Ratzinger - now more famous as a retired Bishop of Rome.

Guardini also made an important impact on Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

The Argentine Jesuit, now more famous as the current Bishop of Rome, once intended to write about Guardini and his scholarship on the interface between philosophy and theology.

In the course of his work, Guardini realized that human beings live and die by symbols. We are symbol-using animals.

We live by symbols and we do most of our important thinking and communicating through symbols. Without symbols we would have no culture or religion - indeed, we would not be human.

More than signs

Symbols are far more than just signs. A sign is simply a means of conveying information. A symbol, on the other hand, is something we relate to, value, and consider part of us.

Symbols also embrace far more than "facts". That a group of people need some sort of organization is obvious, but that we would then call that our "motherland"/"fatherland" is saying far more than that we have a tax-collection/public works administration.

People hate bureaucracy and paying taxes, but wax eloquently about "La Patria", "Der Vaterland" or "our flag". One is just a fact; the other is a symbol. And symbols have power over us: people will both kill and be prepared to die for them.

Symbols can bring forth our highest wonders as human beings or be manipulated by tyrants so that we become beasts.

Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco - to name some of the symbols-corruptors of just one decade - were all keenly aware of symbols. Symbols were never "just symbols" to them, because they abused them to the full.

Guardini was one of the first to recognize this potential - and to realize that Christian symbols had been eviscerated. They had their value stolen not just in society but even in the liturgy. Hence his call for liturgical reform from the 1920s onwards.

This need for reforming the liturgy was taken up by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and is now being re-affirmed in Pope Francis's apostolic letter.

When symbols become mute

Guardini realized - as we see in the pope's quote - that what was once a means of discovering how God is central to human life, might become no more than a convention. We do not need to look far: the cross was the symbol for Paul:

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:17-8).

But if, for Paul, the cross was "the power of God" - just to think of it was to appreciate the divine love; for many later Christians it just became a religious code, a sign, meaning "religion" or "Christian religion" and could be hi-jacked by people or reduced to a decorative image. The cross had become mute.

The step from a mute symbol to a corrupt symbol is a very short one.

Can we re-discover symbols?

A symbol is never the property of an individual. In this sense, the image of illiteracy is not a good one. There could be a book with much in it but I as an individual am unable to read it - if it is a book in a language I do not understand.

But symbols become mute when they do not convey something precious within a society: the symbol is something shared.

I appreciate it partly because you do - and we are someone united; you appreciate partly because I do. The symbol speaks to me in my depths as an individual, but it is our common property.

We recognize it at once as a family table. It is far more than a bench or a bar or a ledge for food. It is a physical fact - but it is also a symbol. And as a symbol it is real - it could be our table!

If we as Christians are to rediscover symbols as part of our re-discovery of that symbol appointed by the Lord - "do ye this in recollection of me" - which is the Eucharist and which in turn opens up to us the Father's love - then we need to find basic symbols that speak to our humanity.

One very simple case is that of the dining table, the family table, the kitchen table. This is a very good starting point because we celebrate the Banquet of the Eucharist gathered around a table. The Lord's table is our table; our table is the Lord's table.

But do we really experience this?

The table as symbol

"What is on the table?" is the question before a meeting. We want contesting parties to be invited to "roundtable talks". We dream of a happy family table for Christmas, a birthday, or for Thanksgiving. The banquet is deep in our humanity and our longing.

The table is also the place of welcome - we each want to have a place there - and it is our destiny: "People will come from east and west and north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God" (Lk 13:29).

So, part of liturgical renewal is that each of us as individuals needs to rediscover the table as a sacred place - there we become a family, a company of friends, a tiny Church of the baptized, and there we thank God for the creation and our sustenance (saying "grace before meals") and thank God for the enjoyment of the food and the joy of the company at table (saying "grace after meals").

Another part of this renewal is at the level of the community. In our church buildings we need to make our common tables into tables that speak to us as such. Tables we can really gather around and do gather around.

It is not enough to sit or stand and watch the table - in a building or on zoom - and what one of us does there. We have to become table companions.

If the only person actually at the table is the presider (or a few men in Holy Orders) then we are witnessing clericalism expressed by physical location.

Giving good example

Perhaps Pope Francis having given us a letter on symbols, needs now to dispense with his purple-soutaned attendants at some public celebrations of the Eucharist and be seen to be gathered with other members of the baptized - famuli famulaeque - standing beside him at their common table?

If such a celebration happened, it would be great to see a photograph of it.

Such a picture would convey far more insight to far more people about an "ecclesiology of baptism" than many papal letters! One of the basic qualities of symbols is that they are worth more than many thousands of words - and convey what no words can!

This is a table we can gather around. Nothing eviscerates a symbol like talking about doing something (such as 'being gathered at the Lord's table') but then not having it pan-out in an actual deed!

Liturgical renewal must take place where I live - I must value my table. It must also take place where the church to which I belong meets - we must value our table.

Renewal has to be done simultaneously in our homes and in our religious buildings. Then a teeny little bit of the liturgical formation, for which the pope is calling, will take place.

Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

You will be the architects of the future.

Amazing science and technology will open doors we haven't even come to yet.

Hopefully, you will always be guided by what it means to be authentically human, which involves more than what science and technology can tell us. In fact, it also helps us to safeguard against the abuse of science and technology.

I am a fan of Professor Brian Cox.

As a former musician with the British bands D:Ream and Dare, and associate of Monty Python's comedy troupe, Cox presumably believes life is to be enjoyed.

He is right.

As professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, and BBC documentary presenter, he clearly finds the universe cause for great wonder.

It's interesting that science and faith both evoke a sense of wonder and awe.

Science is in wonder at what exists, from its smallest details to its greatest dimensions.

No matter how far back scientists look for the universe's origins, science can only wonder at what exists.

Faith is in wonder that anything exists at all, because God didn't need to create.

We need to find ourselves in wonder at what it means to be part of something that might not have existed. "The world will never starve from want of wonders; it will starve from want of wonder." (G.K. Chesterton.)

I find myself both enchanted and challenged by the history of the universe - 13.8 billion years to the first stars; now billions of stars within each galaxy, and trillions of galaxies, and planets formed by the stars; our planet formed from colliding debris over 4.5. billion years, at just the right distance from the sun for life to develop; distances measured in billions of light-years; gravitational forces that could kick planets into different trajectories; the combination of variables that gave us the world that is, instead of all the others that could have been but never will be…!

And planet Earth is microscopic within our solar system, let alone within the wider universe of other galaxies. But it is also special.

The massive transformations that were part of its geo-history led to further transformations in the development of life in its marvellous and complex forms (bio-history).

Last of all, and very late, human life emerged, and what emerges from human freedom - human history. Each of those histories; a reason for unending awe.

Eventually, out of what had been a vast wasteland of rock, volcanos, lava, gases and acidic seas, someone called Beethoven surfaced, who could pull together the sounds that make a symphony.

At the right time, unlikely raw materials had been transformed into a variety of instruments and delicate sounds that would beautifully blend and move together - moving us and drawing us together.

That's a long way from when the first boulders bashed against each other to form a planet capable of this - and every other wonder like it.

But if the past is mind-boggling, it's the future that really challenges me.

Our planet, scientists say, is destined to end up like the other planets - burned out and dead!

Some scientists surmise that by the time planet Earth dies we will have established ourselves on some other planet(s).

Who knows?

What we do know is that any planet that might have lit up to become our new home had better not count on getting its heat from the sun; it will have been the sun's demise that ensures Earth's demise.

Cruising around from one dying planet to another seems a lot of trouble to go to for unpromising returns.

Brian Cox relishes life; he says life is what gives the universe its meaning.

With sincerity and courage, he asks all the hard questions.

Following the evidence of the sciences, he tells us that in some trillions of years all the other suns will have burned out like our own, and "all life and all meaning" will vanish with them.

Where there was void before our universe came into existence, there will be void again.

I suggest the question of meaning cannot so easily be put aside.

Even if, as some surmise, our universe originated from some previous universe that also came and went, and so on over and over, the question always remains: why is there not just nothing at all?

Of course, time is on humanity's side: the sun is good for another five billion years.

But however long or short the time frame, it matters now because it is our present lives that are either pointless already if they are pointless in the end; or wonderful already if they are on their way to a wonderful future.

The overall direction of evolution has been towards life, with its potential for more wonderful and complex transformations. Can evolution deliver what it seems to promise? Or is it just part of the planet's life and destined to share its fate?

There was one transformation within the life of the planet that was qualitatively different from all others.

It reached right into the life of the planet, but took that life beyond anything evolution could do.

The Incarnation is about God's personal participation in the life of the planet and in human history - surpassing all other reasons for wonder, joy and thanksgiving!

A creation in which God has a stake is a creation with a future!!

Jesus' life - bringing healing, hope, peace, forgiveness and compassion into people's lives ratified human nature's deep hunch that this is what we were made for. And his resurrection confirmed that death does not have the last word.

Those who were witnesses to these things summed them up in their message that all creation is being "made new" - with a newness that creation cannot bring about for itself.

There is much at stake on this claim, because it means our lives will matter forever.

The whole of life is different - already - when we know that:

• all the good fruits of human nature, and all the good fruits of human enterprise,
• we shall find again, cleansed and transfigured. (Second Vatican Council, Church in the World, n.39)

People we love, times that were special, good things we have done, all somehow belong with us in our future.

What is truly precious to us now is never really lost.

The sacrifices we make for what is good and right and just, do count.

The planet Brian Cox has good reason to love, we have even greater reason to love.

So, how does this picture of our future sit with science's claim that our planet will die?

Some believe our spirits go off to Heaven, leaving material creation behind.

That view originates from ancient pagan belief that material things are somehow bad and ultimately don't belong. Christian belief is different, based on the ancient Hebrew belief that God made the whole of creation "good", and human life "very good". Our bodies are part of what it means to be human. It is our human nature, and the whole of creation, that is being "made new".

The early Christians spoke of the risen Christ as the "first fruits" of this new creation.

They emphasised that his resurrection involved his whole human nature.

It was bodily; but was not a return to this life. It belongs to creation "made new".

In this new form they experienced his real presence among them.

Reflecting on their experience, they now realised it was to be expected: "In a little while the world will no longer see me; but you will see me, because I live on, and you too will live" (John 14:19).

God's plan for our future does not discard material creation.

It is the present form of material creation that will pass. It will be transformed in the way that Jesus was transformed through his death and resurrection.

We don't have language for that, because language is based on our experience of the world in its present form.

It hardly matters that the planet in its present form will die.

What matters is that the Incarnation brought about a transformation that continues.

What that leads to is what we call Heaven.

There is more to the Incarnation than Santa Claus at Christmas and chocolate bunnies at Easter.

I indicated at the outset that our participation in the life of the planet and human history needs to be guided by what it means to be authentically human.

Much hangs on this, including how we use the sciences and technology.

So, what does ‘authentic' mean in this context?

In the second century, St Iraneus said we are never more fully alive and true to our own nature than when we "see God".

Pausing to know we are in God's presence sharpens our realisation that God never owed us our existence, or needed to create; we are part of what might never have been.

That's marvellous: it means that God, who didn't need us, wanted us!

When we know that, we become more alive.

That also means our existence is pure gift; so, we are true to ourselves most of all when we are being given, i.e. being there for others - in all the ways required by right relationships, with each other and with all creation.

That is being true to our human nature - "authentic."

It involves loving others the way God loves us: love that isn't owed or measured or needing to be deserved is a circuit breaker - the kind of love that "changes everything, and the only kind that can! Many Religious Orders, and lay movements based on the gospel, were founded to put that kind of loving into action.

Outside the Catholic tradition, it is exemplified in those religious movements which were based on the twin focus of social activism and a spiritual basis - e. g. Methodism, Quakerism, and many others.

Catholic social teachings about the dignity of every person and the sacredness of every life; the common good, including our common home; solidarity and option for the poor, are all premised on it.

It's hardly surprising Pope St John Paul II insisted that "humanity is the route the Church must take".

Being true to our nature - "authentic" - is compromised wherever a narrow focus on our own rights blinds us to our responsibility to be there "for others"; wherever deeper moments for noticing God's presence are crowded out by noise, hurry, and the pressures of modern living; where the fast flow of information displaces understanding and wisdom; wherever superficiality replaces depth - (e.g. where even news programmes are presented through the prism of entertainment, sometimes even called "shows")….

Authenticity involves being counter-cultural.

Knowing this, Pope St John Paul II told the New Zealand bishops to "make a systematic effort in your dioceses and parishes to open new doors to the experience of Christian prayer and contemplation" (Ad Limina visit 1998).

Contemplation means ‘seeing God', noticing God's presence, in the midst of life.

This changes how we think and act.

That is what the gospel means by "repentance" and conversion. It's about how we participate in creation's newness and its future.

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels.

Quarantined in a one-bedroom apartment in New York, I would sometimes imagine my fire escape was a creaky porch in the woods somewhere as I sat outside in the early evenings, listening to my neighbours' cheer and bang pots for the essential workers carrying the city on their backs.

Life felt stuck: no way to plan, nowhere to go, nothing to build toward.

The calendar had been emptied of weddings and dinners and reunions; the comforting rhythms of weeks and seasons disappeared.

I found myself alternately plotting wild adventures and pining for a quiet, communal life.

A professor of mine used to call this kind of musing "Jesuit daydreaming," his description of the rich Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment.

I should pay attention to daydreams, he said, because they can be more revealing than I might first assume.

In this case, I think he is right: My pandemic mind loop was tracing the problem I have come to see as one of the great dilemmas of modern life.

In my work as a religion journalist, I often offer a mental image to explain the importance of the beat to secular colleagues and readers.

While not everyone describes themselves as having faith or even feeling spiritual, everyone has those searching moments in the middle of the night, covers pulled up high as they are lying in bed wondering how to have a good life.

More often than not, people's descriptions of what a good life looks like depends on a single factor: the strength of the community around them.

As a reporter, it is my job to follow along as individuals and communities try to figure out who they want to be and how they want to live.

It is hard to be a man or woman for others in a culture that is dominated by us versus them.

Over the past eight months, however, the path toward a good life has become obscured for many Americans.

As I sat inside my apartment daydreaming about the future, dozens of people

• on my street were getting sick,
• were losing family members or navigating the anxiety of being immunocompromised during a public-health crisis,
• were among many Americans, especially in New York, have spent their last eight months mostly alone, and mostly at home, sometimes unable even to wave hello to loved ones from a distance.
• contributed to the unemployment rate in New York City, which this summer reached 20 percent; many beloved businesses will likely never come back after the shutdown.
• are impacted by the basic ingredients of a good life—decent health, the warmth of family and friends, economic stability—are now out of reach for far more people in our country than at the start of 2020.

But the pandemic has also revealed the extent to which a good life felt elusive for countless Americans far before any of us had heard of Covid-19.

This is not just a matter of money or resources.

In my reporting, I constantly find evidence that Americans feel isolated and unmoored from their communities, unsure of their place in the world.

I am thinking of a Black Southern Baptist-trained pastor who could not stomach taking his kids to church within his denomination anymore because of his fellow church members' reluctance to talk about racism.

A longtime staffer at a major American archdiocese who feels daily rage at the Catholic Church's inability to address the clergy sexual-abuse crisis.

A young woman fired from her job at a conservative Christian advocacy organization because she spoke out against President Trump. A Catholic professor who bitterly wishes the Democratic Party had room for his pro-life views.

These are all examples from the world of religion and politics, but they speak to a deep and expansive truth: In many parts of American life, people feel the institutions that were supposed to guide their lives have failed, and that there is no space for people like them.

The result is a widespread sense of mutual mistrust.

Last year, the Pew Research Center found that fewer than one in five Americans say they can trust the government.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans have a hard time telling the truth from lies when elected officials speak, and even more believe the government unnecessarily withholds important information from the public.

I have encountered plenty of mistrust in the course of reporting stories.

People believe they know my politics, suspect me of bias and assume I will be hostile to religion because of where I work.

Religious leaders may be the most distrusted group of all.

As one influential Catholic businessman in Boston told me a couple of years ago, following the sexual-abuse scandal, "I go to Mass about three or four days a week.

I'm not into Vatican politics. I'm not into Vatican museums. I'm not into people who wear red slippers and fancy robes.

I bought into this as a kid, because of the life of Christ. So I'm in. But I'm not drinking any Kool-Aid."

Nearly two-thirds of Americans have a hard time telling truth from lies when elected officials speak. Continue reading

"Life is a great gift that comes from God … No one achieves life on their own. We all receive it, and we receive it not to keep it, but to multiply it like those talents in the Gospel," Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Vatican's Academy for Life, (pictured) told Crux in an interview.

It is because the life of each unique individual - from its natural beginning to its natural end - is a gift, he said, "that the human person is never a means but always an end. Period."

Referring to the United States' current presidential race, where appeals to religion and life issues have become a core strategy for both President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Paglia said issues of ethics and morality are not solely the concern of one nation, but they have become "a global issue."

Because of this, he said, Christian churches in the U.S. ought to feel "a universal responsibility" toward life, and called for greater engagement on the life issue "in all its dimensions …That is, a perspective of global bioethics, one that engages all the major topics that touch on life, of the individual and of the human family."

"It would do great harm," he said, "if some topic of bioethics is extracted from its general context and put toward ideological strategies. It would do great harm."

"Today we are all called to discover a new alliance that goes beyond politics," he said, describing it as an alliance in which "all believers and all men and women of goodwill commit to saving all the lives of all the peoples who live in this one common home."

"This is why I believe that to instrumentalize some topic for political ends or for laziness [in one's own] horizon" is harmful, he said, voicing hope that the whole of Christianity, not just in the United States, "finds in men and of goodwill an alliance so that the lives of all, particularly the weakest, are defended from the beginning to the end, from the mother's womb until the moment of death." Continue reading

The worldwide human family recently experienced this belief as we watched with bated breath the heart-warming rescue mission of the Thai boys trapped in a cave. How fitting it was that all the boys, soon after their rescue, went to a monastery for a month's retreat as an act of respect for the one who had sacrificed his life saving theirs.

Respect Life Sunday reminds us that every day is an opportunity to reflect on the insight that life, far from being random or an act of self-determination, is in fact a gift

The beautiful gift of parenthood is a collaboration with God in the creation of a new person made in God's image and likeness. It is sometimes said that every child is the fruit of God's love and their parents' love, "given a name".

Sometimes, however, the gift of life is not experienced as this profound communion of love, family and joy. Parenthood can be shattered or tested in a number of ways that cry out for mercy, tenderness, accompaniment and deep understanding. When grief or loss or regret come between a parent and a child - or the hope for a child - we see human nature itself express her pain and anguish.

Today, as shepherds or hepara, we stand close to those of you who carry the heavy pain and grief of an abortion. Sometimes that anguish, when shared, met with a cold detached judgement. That was wrong. We encourage those of you who need the burden of regret lifted, to share your story, and, in the words of Jesus, "find rest for your soul" (cf. Mt 11:29-30).

Others carry the pain and grief of what we might call ‘empty arms' in different ways:

perhaps the result of an inability to conceive;

or the miscarriage of a deeply desired but never held baby;

perhaps a child still-born and held only in death;

or the result of having parented embryos that will never be implanted;

perhaps a child given for adoption, a child given away into the arms of others;

or a child who died prematurely through illness or accident, a child no longer present to be held;

or perhaps a child now estranged or distant whom you entrust to the care of the Saints and the compassion of fellow human beings.

Pope Francis has called for a revolution of tenderness in our world. In that spirit, we offer today not explanations or answers but the assurance of listening hearts and humble prayers: for courage, for healing and forgiveness where needed, and for renewed purpose in our lives.

A burden or pain shared is one that is lightened. For some of you, telling your story to another person will bring forth a kind of sacred space of deep, respectful listening; an encounter in which you will feel God's healing love. We might mourn, we might marvel and above all - for all of us - may we come to experience anew that we are the deeply loved family of God. And may we continue to build parishes where doors are open and all are made to feel at home.

In their letter, they express their awareness of the pain and grief felt by those who have gone through the experience of either being unable to have a child or dealing with the death of a child.

"When grief or loss or regret come between a parent and a child - or the hope for a child - we see human nature itself express her pain and anguish."

This weekend, in the spirit of Pope Francis' call for a ‘revolution of tenderness', the Bishops invite parishioners to share their stories and to listen to others who have experienced loss in the hope of encountering afresh God's healing love.

"May we continue to build parishes where doors are open and all are made to feel at home

Click here to read Bishops' letter

Supplied:
Ko te Huinga Pihopa o te Hahi Katorika o Aotearoa/The New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference

One friend rushes anxiously across, beating the oncoming cars.

Out of self-preservation, another stands steadfast on the curb.

The third fearfully steps backwards.

They look at one another and laugh; they know each other so well. The first took ground, the second held ground, and the third gave ground.

The friends can stand for distinctive stances within us. Do we recognise and befriend these inner stances as the friends did?

While we might have a nodding acquaintance with the stances, often we default to one approach, particularly in a crisis. What is your unconscious preference? Do you take ground, hold ground or give ground?

To exercise true human freedom is to choose how we respond instead of our responses choosing as with the three friends.

While we easily default to a preferred stance, freedom involves choosing not to stay stuck in our default position.

This is not a one-off choice; it is a daily struggle. A tussle to keep returning to a place of interior freedom.

Such freedom invites us to embrace our frail humanity instead of deceptively assuming we can be free from our humanness.

After Jesus resurrected, he appeared to his disciples bearing the wounds from his crucifixion. Jesus was not so much free from his wounds but free within his woundedness.

To experience ongoing resurrection in our life is to find true freedom within our wounded humanity not to seek to be free from our humanness.

• Fr Stephen Truscott SM, PhD is a spiritual director, counsellor and professional supervisor at the Fullness of Life Centre www.fullnessoflife.org. where he provides a dual practice - in person and digital service.He meets with anyone interested in their spiritual journey or online by secure video conferencing.

In contrast to the dogmatism on this subject often seen on both sides of the abortion debate, Stacy was careful not to claim too much.

And as early as 20 weeks they are able to recoil from stressors and undergo an increase in stress hormones. Excessive exposure to stressors in utero can lead to emotional and behavioral problems later in life.

Does this physiological distress amount to the experience of pain? That's not an easy question to answer. This doesn't stop pro-life and pro-choice partisans from offering overly confident answers, though.

Trasancos cites one such overly confident answer on the pro-abortion side: A 2006 article in the British Medical Journal made the unqualified claim that "It is impossible for a fetus to feel pain."

The reality behind this claim is that the perception of pain as pain is not merely a physiological event, but a subjective experience depending not just on physical capacity but also on cognitive development in relation to formative experiences early in life.

Such formative experiences, the argument assumes, occur only in connection with stimuli outside the womb.

In recent years, though, we've learned a lot about just how much more interesting and stimulating an unborn baby's life can be than was once thought or is commonly supposed.

Some examples:

1. Sight and visual preferences. It's been well known for a long time that sounds from the outside world reach babies in the womb — but less well known is that light can reach them too. Sufficiently bright light passes through the abdominal wall; if it's too bright, babies will flinch from it.
2. They don't always flinch from light, though, and sometimes they're more interested in what they see than other times.

We've known for awhile now that newborns demonstrate a preference for looking at faces over other things.

Last year a pioneering study projected light images through the uterine wall — and found that even before they are born babies already prefer face-like images to non-face-like images.
Continue reading

Sources

• National Catholic Register article by Deacon Steven D. Greydanus, film critic for the National Catholic Register
• Image: Raised Vibrations

As she talked about this, I was aware that her body was in advanced labour to give birth to her soul.

I wanted to tell her I believe we have our definitions back to front: our birth is a little death, our souls leaving God to come into incarnation, and what we call death is our true birth.

But that was my understanding, not hers, so I went on praying as she wished. Two weeks before her departure she was still looking for a miracle that would heal her body.

Later, her husband told me that in the last two days, she had been accepting and seemed to be filled with light and peace. So yes, the miracle happened, although not in the way she expected.

Months after her funeral, I wrote a little parable that belongs to us all.

The Prison

When the woman was put in prison, she wailed with grief.

To come from a place of light and freedom and be confined in this small dark cell, seemed intolerable.

Yet the guards were very kind and looked after her well. There was also a small window on the wall.

It let in sunlight and when she looked through it, she could see the place of freedom from which she had come. She spent a lot of time at this window.

Gradually, she got used to the cell.

The guards furnished it for her and made it very comfortable.

There were rugs on the floor, rich wall hangings, a table and chairs and a beautiful blue velvet couch.

She occasionally went to the window to look outside, but now there was a picture over it, that had to be moved.

She found it easier to lie on the couch and admire her possessions.

She thought herself fortunate to be surrounded by so many nice objects.

The woman had been in the prison for many years when she noticed a crack in a wall.

She immediately called one of the guards who brought in plaster and sealed the crack. She was very grateful.

All was well for a short time, then another crack appeared.

This one was bigger.

Again, the guard came in, but the crack took a long time to fill and afterwards, the woman had to shift some of the wall drapes to cover the mark.

After that, she became worried about the walls of her cell.

She inspected them every day to make sure there were no new cracks, and it wasn't long before her fears were realised.

She woke up one morning to find that a section of a wall had fallen away, and sunlight was showing through.

She screamed for the guard.

This time, the guard said the crack was beyond repair.

The woman lay on her blue velvet couch, pulled a blanket over her head, and wept.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

They say rapid advances made in biological research in recent decades are raising questions about what they mean for our wider understanding of life itself and how to define the debate as it evolves.

Whether "new biology" - which stems from developing technologies such as genetic engineering and human enhancement - is leading the life sciences away from a strict Darwinian approach towards a holistic view more compatible with Christian thinking remained open at the end of the conference.

Organisers say the conference goal was not to reach an agreement but for participants to air their diverse views.

Nonetheless, participants did agree on one thing: the growing understanding of genetics — including how genes are turned on or off and how the now mapped genome can be edited to produce desired results — has meant important strides forward in the way science views how genes influence development.

"We realise how much we were missing in the original image without even realising we were missing it," said Donovan Schaefer, an Oxford lecturer in science and religion and co-organiser of the conference.

This naturally has an effect, he said, on "the grander questions about biology, religion, the humanities and evolutionary theory generally".

Source

• RNS
• The Tablet
• Crux
• Image: Religion News Service

Early and late, Tennyson's theme was mortal beauty. In The Princess (1847), when he was scarcely forty, he set it to an enchanting music.

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Later, as an older man, on the Isle of Wight, where he would live with his wife and two sons in his sequestered Farringford, he summoned the theme to honor his old friend and neighbor, Sir John Simeon, who was also a good friend of Cardinal Newman.

Nightingales sang in his woods:
The Master was far away:
Nightingales warbled and sang
Of a passion that lasts but a day;
Still in the house in his coffin the Prince of courtesy lay.

The historian James Anthony Froude spoke for many of his generation when he confessed how "Spiritually [Tennyson] lives in all our minds (in mine he has lived for nearly forty years) in forms imperishable as diamonds which time and change have no power over."

The literary critic George Saintsbury corroborated this when he observed how "no age of poetry can be called the age of one man with such critical accuracy as the later Nineteenth Century is, with us, the Age of Tennyson."

What makes John Batchelor's new life of the poet so admirable is that while it recreates the Victorian Tennyson with meticulous care, it also attends to those aspects of the poet's work that transcend his historical context.

There are not many good biographies of Tennyson—Robert Bernard Martin's Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (1980) is an exception—but Batchelor's life can now be accounted the best. Written with great learning and unusual grace, it will spur new interest in a poet who has much to say to our own contemporaries. Continue reading

Sources

• Article written by Edward Short, the author of Newman and his Contemporaries and Newman and his Family, in The Catholic World Report
• Image: Voices

This announcement came from Pope Francis at the end of the Jubilee of Mercy - a holy year dedicated to forgiveness.

When the holy year concluded on Nov. 20, Pope Francis made permanent the permission that he had provisionally given priests to forgive the sin of "procuring abortion" through the sacrament of reconciliation, more commonly known as "confession."

Numerous questions were raised following the pope's decision: Could priests not forgive abortions already? Or, is the pope softening the Church's stance on abortion?

As a Catholic academic who studies the diversity of global Catholicism, I believe the pope's actions are significant: The pope is ratifying a practice that is already in place in much of the Catholic world; he is also broadening the possibilities for Catholic priests to show care for the laity under their charge.

Abortion in Catholic canon law

The first thing to appreciate is that abortion has a complex place not just in broader Catholic understandings of sin, but in the Church's complex legal codes.

It is also important to understand that in context of abortion the sin is "procuring abortion" - not just "abortion."

It includes, potentially, not just the one who carries out the abortion, but also the woman who obtains the abortion (if she does so as a conscious act, freely, knowing that it is wrong or sinful) and others who aid and abet the process.

Throughout Catholic history there has been periodic debate over when "ensoulment" of the fetus occurs.

For example, and most famously, St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the foremost shapers of Catholic doctrine in the period following the Middle Ages, argued that ensoulment actually occurs for boys at 40 days after conception, and at 80 days for girls.

Nonetheless, abortion itself has been routinely condemned, from early Christian councils in A.D. 305 to the present day.

In 1588 Pope Sixtus V attached the penalty of excommunication to abortion in his "Papal Bull," an official letter from the pope. Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have also all emphasized abortion as among the gravest of sins. Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross, writing in The Conversation
• Image: Newsline

Our senses are the doorways. They may be open to birdsong or the dew in the heart of a rose, clouds sculpted by wind, the touch of cat's fur. In an instant the experience enters us and is transformed.

When we are held in such a moment, we may remember lines from a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 'Earth is on fire with heaven/ and every common bush is charged with God / but only those who see take off their shoes.'

We know the movement as taking off our inner shoes. Not only shoes! The clothing of everyday thoughts and words disappears. Our hearts feel naked, newborn. Our breath seems to mingle with sacred spirit and we feel ourselves becoming infinitely, beautifully vulnerable.

The moment passes leaving us in a slightly different place. It's as though a wave has picked us up, carried us and then receded, leaving us further up the beach.

Later, when we analyse one of these graced moments, we realise God has touched us through something quite ordinary.

What made Moses take off his shoes? Nothing dramatic, not heavens filled with fire, nor earthquake or tsunami, not even a decent sandstorm. Just a little bush filled with the fire of God's presence. That's what Moses saw and it was enough to change a nation.

When we reflect on the gospels we see the same pattern in Jesus' teaching - ordinary things containing extraordinary insights: flowers, seeds, sparrows, weeds, candles, yeast, wine, small coins, little fish, children. In fact, we can't find anything in Jesus' good news that comes from grandeur and great human achievement. It's all about encountering God in the little everyday things around us. All that we need is awareness. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning said, "Only those who see take off their shoes."

Having reflected this far, we begin to see God's presence all around us. We tend to

go beyond divisions and understand that everything that happens to us is inherently right, everything is a teacher.

We also see that spiritual journey is not a matter of "here to there" Every part of it is "here."

At this stage too, we sense the playfulness of Jesus within us. Faith is not hard work. It is more like play. We are children in a playground of love that is to be shared with others. If we fall over, love picks us up and kisses our wounds. If we wander too far, love will embrace us and ask us what we learned from those wanderings.

We know it is impossible to be lost from God's love.

Surely this is what Jesus meant when he said, "Except you become as little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."

The truth seems so simple!

It's extraordinary in its ordinariness.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

But sometimes, a tragic circumstance such as a difficult childhood or the death of a loved one can set us off course. In these situations it takes a special encounter to get back on track and make a full recovery.

The St Vincent de Paul Society (SVP) is a Catholic charity which provides that grace filled encounter for many distressed and suffering people each year.

The 8000 members of the SVP provide friendship to thousands of lonely, isolated and marginalised people at home, in hospital, or in residential homes.

On top of this, 500 volunteers in community support projects around the country provide practical assistance to people in need through community shops, debt and advice centres and furniture stores.

Many of these volunteers have themselves come from difficult circumstances and, determined to ‘give something back', they join the SVP as a means of helping others. What often unfolds is a journey of self-discovery and growth. For them, volunteering with the SVP has transformed their lives.

Nick says volunteering with the SVP literally saved his life. Nick has been helping out at the SVP's Sheffield Furniture store for over ten years.

As a young lad, he would pinch bottles of his grandad's homemade wine and was a serious drinker by the age of 9. By the time he reached his twenties he was an alcoholic.

When his doctor gave him three months to live Nick realised he had to do something about his habit. He entered rehabilitation for drug and alcohol addiction and emerged from rehab with nervous anxiety and depression. He found himself having to put his life back together from scratch with very few resources.

He was given an unfurnished council flat, but without any financial resource, he had no means of buying himself a sofa or a bed. Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic Herald article by Anita Boniface, Media and Communications Officer at The St Vincent de Paul Society England and Wales.
• Image: St Vincent de Paul Wellington Area

The Pontifical Councils for Laity and for the Family will become one dicastery, also a pontifical council.

The new body should begin its work on September 1, but it is still unknown who will head it.

Francis had previously voiced the possibility of a married couple heading this new dicastery.

But the document released on Saturday says it will be headed by a prefect, always a cardinal or an archbishop "unless specified" by "some special law".

It will also have a secretary, "who could be a lay person", and three sub-secretaries, one for laity, one for family and one for life, that "will have to be laity".

Continue reading

A few days ago, I held in my arms my first grandbaby - newly born Faith Annmarie.

Thank God she's healthy and perfectly formed. And as I was looking at her, I reflected how wonderfully she is made - arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet, toes, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, as well as what I couldn't see but was just as real - hundreds of different tissues, dozens of organs including the remarkable brain, and trillions of cells.

And then I reflected on her divinely infused eternal soul.

I marveled at the goodness and awesomeness of our Creator! And I recalled the psalmist praising God with these beautiful words: "You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works!"

Just think of the awesomeness of how human life comes into existence. According to Medline Plus of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (see: http://1.usa.gov/1WRK2rF), when a single male sperm and the mother's egg unite conception occurs. This new single cell known as a zygote contains all of the genetic information (DNA) needed for the new human being to develop throughout life.

Just think about it: Your life started as a single cell zygote. And now look at you!

At around four days, the zygote now consisting of 32 cells becomes known as an embryo. During the next seven and half weeks the human embryo develops all of the body's systems and structures.

According to Alexander Tsiaras, image-maker, mathematician and associate professor of medicine at Yale University, at four weeks in utero the human heart is growing at an astounding rate of 1 million cells per second.

From the eighth week after conception, the baby is known as a fetus. At this point of development, organs like the brain, liver and kidneys start functioning inside the tiny human life. Life support systems continue growing and becoming ever more sophisticated until the baby is able to live outside the mother's protective and nurturing womb.

All of this is truly too miraculous for words. So, take a look at this remarkable video titled "From Conception to Birth" produced by Tsiaras and presented at a TED Talk http://bit.ly/1q0ROQW.

Science is crystal clear that human life begins at conception.

Years ago, while attending a pro-life conference sponsored by Americans United for Life, I asked the late world-renowned French geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune when human life begins. He instantly replied, "At conception of course."

And Dr. Lejeune is not alone here. Far from it (see: http://naapc.org/why-life-begins-at-conception/).

The late professor emeritus of medical genetics at Mayo Medical School, Dr. Hymie Gordon said "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."

In his medical textbook "Human Embryology," the late Dr. Bradley M. Patten, Ph.D states, "Conception marks the initiation of a life of a new individual."

There is never a good reason for killing an unborn human baby.

Let all believers in the God of life tirelessly pray and work for the day when every marvelously created human life is welcomed into the world as the wonderful gift he or she is.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

SPIEGEL: Doctor Gawande, are you beginning to feel your age?

Gawande: Without question. I had to switch bifocals this year. I was always near-sighted and now I'm also far-sighted.

My 19-year old daughter has started beating me at word games because I just don't process like I used to. While playing tennis, I never had to stretch nor worry about injuries. That's over as well. Overall, it's the kind of little aches and pains that make you think: Yes, I'm getting older.

SPIEGEL: In your book "Being Mortal," you describe vividly what happens when we age: Our heart muscle's performance begins to deteriorate at 30, before the age of 40 our brain power starts to decline. At the age of 60, on average, we'll have lost one third of our teeth. Does your own decline scare you?

Gawande: It's an experience that definitely bothers me. The mental image I have of myself is still the person who was 30 years of age rather than the person turning 50 this year.

SPIEGEL: Four years ago, your father passed away at the age of 76. Did the experience of his death magnify your concerns?

Gawande: Surprisingly, no. It actually helped me. Up until the end, my father had things he loved and cared for. We should consider ourselves lucky to become older than the generation before us.

Many of us will become dependent, that's inevitable, but that doesn't mean one can't have a good life. For my book, I talked with a 94-year-old man. Every joint he had was aching. He had to support himself with one of those walkers that had tennis balls on each of the legs. Sometimes, he seemed confused. Yet, he had things he loved about life and that was true of my father as well. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: AnswerCare

For example, medical science and biology can help us defend the lives of unborn children and argue persuasively for an end to abortion.

An unborn child is alive.

An unborn child is demonstrably human.

An unborn child is a unique human life with DNA that is distinct from each parent.

These are scientific facts. The unborn child does not have the potential to be a human life, the unborn child is already a human life. Fact.

Even if one argues that this life in the womb is not yet a person, one need not resort to religion to oppose this claim. After all, a lack of certainty about personhood should not lead to a callous sentence of death, but rather to the urgent preservation of the life.

We have too sordid a history of the powerful declaring the innocent weak as something less than human.

Proclaiming the Good News
At other times, what is needed is precisely the proclamation of the Gospel and trust in the Holy Spirit to convert heart and minds.

Consider this passage from Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:

"The root reason for human dignity lies in man's call to communion with God. From the very circumstance of his origin man is already invited to converse with God. For man would not exist were he not created by God's love and constantly preserved by it; and he cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and devotes himself to His Creator" (GS 19.1 ). Continue reading

• Deacon Michael Bickerstaff is the Editor in chief and co-founder of the The Integrated Catholic Life.

On March 15, 1884, Leo Tolstoy, wrote in his diary:

"I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people."

So he set out to compile "a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people" — aflorilegium five centuries after the golden age of florilegia and a Tumblr a century and a half before the golden age of Tumblr, a collection of famous words on the meaning of life long before the concept had become a cultural trope.

The following year, he wrote to his assistant, describing the project:

"I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers as Socrates, Epictetus, Arnold, Parker. … They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue. … I would like to create a book … in which I could tell a person about his life, and about the Good Way of Life."

Tolstoy spent the next seventeen years collecting those pieces of wisdom.

In 1902, in his late seventies, seriously ill and confronting mortality, he finally sat down to write the book under the working title A Wise Thought for Every Day. Once he sent the manuscript to his publisher, he returned to the diary and exhaled:

"I felt that I have been elevated to great spiritual and moral heights by communication with the best and wisest people whose books I read and whose thoughts I selected for my Circle of Reading." Continue reading

Sources

• brain pickings
• Image: The Telegraph