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Celebrations to be presided by Pope November - January

VATICAN CITY (VIS) - The Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff today published the calendar of celebrations to be presided over by the Holy Father between the end of November 2008 and January 2009:

NOVEMBER

 - Saturday 29: At 5 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica, First Vespers for the first Sunday of Advent.

 - Sunday 30: First Sunday of Advent. Pastoral visit to the Roman basilica of San Lorenzo for the 1,750th anniversary of the martyrdom of the deacon saint. Mass at 9.45 a.m.

DECEMBER

 - Monday 8: Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At 4 p.m. in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna, homage to Mary Immaculate.

 - Wednesday 24: Vigil of the Solemnity of the Birth of Our Lord. Midnight Mass in the Vatican Basilica.

 - Thursday 25: Solemnity of the Birth of Our Lord. At midday from the central loggia of the Vatican Basilica, “Urbi et Orbi” blessing.

 - Wednesday 31: At 6 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica, First Vespers of thanksgiving for the past year.

JANUARY 2009

 - Thursday 1: Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God and 42nd World Day of Peace. Mass in the Vatican Basilica at 10 a.m.

 - Tuesday 6: Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord. Mass in the Vatican Basilica at 10 a.m.

 - Sunday, 11: Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. Mass in the Sistine Chapel at 10 a.m., conferment of the Sacrament of Baptism upon a number of children.

 - Sunday 25: Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle. At 5.30 p.m. in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, celebration of Vespers.

Ontario School Board Flip Flops on HPV Vaccine Decision

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

SAULT STE. MARIE, Ontario (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board (H-SCDSB), which last year rejected administering a vaccine for the sexually transmitted disease HPV on school property, has now voted in favor of dispensing the drug to Grade 7 and 8 girls in H-SCDSB schools.

School board trustees voted 5-4 on Oct. 17, 2007, to reject a motion that would allow the provincial government to give out the controversial vaccine at its schools.

At that time Trustee Grace Tridico suggested the board send a letter to the Ministry asking it to “respect our Catholic values and (state) that we don’t want to administer a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease.”

“The HPV vaccine is not an educational issue, it’s a health issue, it does not belong in our schools. I am adamantly opposed to administering any vaccines within our schools, on school grounds. This should of course be between a parent and a medical professional,” she said.

The trustees who voted against the vaccine last year said that schools must affirm the Catholic moral teaching that sex is reserved for marriage and that sexually transmitted diseases are best prevented by abstinence, and should not send a confusing and hypocritical mixed message to students.

Trustees were also concerned about the health risk of the vaccine, known as Gardasil, which, according to Judicial Watch, a non-profit interest group which has monitored the vaccine’s progress, has been linked to 21 deaths of young women, hundreds of hospitalizations and thousands of adverse reactions reports, including 78 outbreaks of genital warts and 10 miscarriages, since the vaccine was made available. (See http://www.judicialwatch.org/search/node/Gardasil)

Yesterday the board voted 5-4 to reverse the previous decision after trustee Laurie Aceti, who last year voted against the vaccine, moved to hold another vote on the issue, based on a survey which purported to show that a majority of parents wanted their daughters inoculated with the vaccine in school.

“After seeing the information come forward from the poll of the parents, it brought everything back to mind,” said Aceti in a Sault Star report.

“I have prayed a great deal over this and in my heart I believe it was the right decision to reconsider it, take a look at it again, and give the parents the choice of deciding what they want to do.”

The vaccine has been available to students outside of schools from the Ontario Ministry of Health through its public health offices.

Trustee Kathleen Rosilius, who has resolutely opposed the vaccine, said she was disappointed in the vote, but had expected the reversal of last year’s decision.

Rosilius told the Sault Star that she opposes the vaccine on moral grounds, questions the vaccine’s safety, and believes too much money - $300 million from the federal government and $117 million from the province - is being spent on the inoculation program.

“When you think one in five kids is going to bed hungry in this country, you think gee (to spend so much money) for behaviour that can be changed,” said Rosilius.

Rosilius introduced a motion at yesterday’s meeting that a brochure published by the pro-life group Alliance for Life be sent to parents along with the vaccine consent form, in order to give a balance to the information provided by the vaccine’s manufacturer.

“Everything that we’ve had previously was based on pro-vaccine and this is something that just cautions you,” said Rosilius.

The motion will be voted on at the board’s next meeting, December 10, 2008.

Vatican Cardinal: “A New World Order is Gaining Ground”

By John-Henry Westen
 
ROME (LifeSiteNews.com) - Speaking at the opening of the 23rd plenary assembly for the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the president of the Council, Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, warned, “The idea of creating a ‘new man’ completely detached from the Judeo-Christian tradition, a new ‘world order,’ a new ‘global ethic,’ is gaining ground.”
 
According to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the cardinal denounced the “dictatorship of relativism,” rampant in Western societies, in which there is a growing “anti-Christian attitude” that makes “attacks on Christians, and particular on Catholics, pass off as politically correct.”
 
Speaking of Christians today he said, “Our true problem is not being a minority, but rather having voluntarily become marginal, irrelevant, because of our lack of courage, so that we will be left alone, because of our mediocrity.”  “For Christians,” Cardinal Rylko added, “the moment has arrived to free themselves from a false inferiority complex … to be valiant witnesses of Christ.”
 
This is, he said, the “hour of the laity,” to take on their “responsibility in the diverse fields of public life, from politics to the promotion of life and family, from work to the economy, from education to the formation of youth.”
 
He warned, however, that such faithfulness would come at a personal cost.  “Whoever wants to live and act according to the Gospel of Christ has to pay a price, even in the highly liberal societies of the West,” he said.

Pontifical Acts 11/20/08

VATICAN CITY, 20 NOV 2008 (VIS) - The Holy Father appointed:
- Msgr. Rosolino Bianchetti Boffelli of the clergy of the diocese of Quiche, Guatemala, vicar general and pastor of the parish of “San Antonio Ilotenango”, as bishop of Zacapa (area 5,066, population 525,000, Catholics 420,000, priests 32, permanent deacons 1, religious 63), Guatemala, and prelate of Santo Cristo de Esquipulas (area 532, population 52,700, Catholics 42,000, religious 39), Guatemala. The bishop-elect was born in Camisano, Italy in 1945 and ordained a priest in 1974.
- Bishop Laszlo Biro, auxiliary of Kalocsa-Kecskemet, Hungary, as military ordinary for Hungary.

Papal Audiences 11/20/08

VATICAN CITY, 20 NOV 2008 (VIS) - The Holy Father today received in separate audiences:
- Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State and of the Governorate of Vatican City State.
- Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, archbishop of Toledo, Spain.

Kasui and Valdes to be Beatified

VATICAN CITY, 20 NOV 2008 (VIS) - The Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff today announced two beatification ceremonies due to take place over coming days:

Servant of God Peter Kibe Kasui, Japanese priest of the Company of Jesus, and 187 companions, killed in Japan between 1603 and 1639; at midday on Monday 24 November in the Nagasaki Big N. Stadium, Japan.

Servant of God Jose Olallo Valdes, Cuban professed religious of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God (1820-1889); at 8 a.m. on Saturday 29 November in the Plaza de la Caridad of Camaguey, Cuba.

Monasteries: Oases of ascetic life

VATICAN CITY, 20 NOV 2008 (VIS) - The Pope today received participants in the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year. The assembly was held from 18 to 20 November.

Having recalled the theme of the meeting - “Monastic life and its significance in the Church and the world today” - the Holy Father indicated that “consecrated persons are a special part of the People of God. Supporting and protecting their faithfulness to the divine call is the fundamental role you play”, he told the members of the dicastery.

Benedict XVI expressed the view that the work of these days, “which focused particularly on female monastic life, may provide useful guidance to monks and nuns who ’seek God”, practising their vocation for the good of the whole Church”. In this context he recalled how during his address last September to the world of culture in Paris, France, he had “highlighted the exemplary nature of monastic life in history, and underlined how its aim is both simple and essential: ‘quaerere Deum’, seeking God and seeking Him through Jesus Christ Who revealed Him, seeking Him by fixing one’s gaze on the invisible truths that are eternal, in the expectation of the glorious manifestation of the Saviour”.

“When consecrated people live the Gospel radically, when people dedicated to an entirely contemplative life profoundly cultivate the nuptial bond with Christ, … then monasticism can, for all forms of religious and consecrated life, become a reminder of what is of essential and primary importance for all the baptised: seeking Christ and placing nothing before His love.

“The way indicated by God for this search and this love is His own Word”, the Pope added, “abundantly present in the books of Sacred Scripture for mankind to reflect upon”.

The recent Synod on the Word of God “renewed its appeal to all Christians to root their lives in listening to the Word of God as contained in Sacred Scripture, and invited religious communities in particular, and all consecrated men and women, to make the Word of God their daily sustenance, especially through the practice of ‘lectio divina’”.

The Holy Father concluded by expressing the hope that “monasteries may increasingly become oases of ascetic life, where the allure of the nuptial union with Christ is felt, and where the choice of the Absolute … is immersed in a climate of constant silence and contemplation”.

Adult stem cell research results in new trachea transplant

Barcelona (CNA) - A June operation at a Spanish hospital has resulted in the first successful trachea transplant operation using adult stem cells.

The operation, performed at Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, was detailed in Wednesday’s online edition of the British medical journal The Lancet.

The 30-year-old female patient from Colombia, named Claudia Castillo, had suffered a left airway collapse as a result of tuberculosis. A stent implanted to reopen the airway failed to work.

Doctors used a trachea provided by an organ donor as a framework for their novel transplant. Stripping the trachea of cells that would have faced immune system rejection in a transplant, they took adult stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow and other cells from the healthy right airway of her trachea.

The cells were then chemically treated in a lab to cause the trachea to regenerate tissue. Since the trachea used the patient’s own stem cells, her body accepted the organ transplant without the use of immune-suppressant drugs.

Dr. Paolo Macchiarini and his colleagues said in a news release that the woman was still doing well four months after surgery, being able to “walk up two flights of stairs, walk 500 meters without stopping, and care for her children.”

“We are terribly excited by these results,” he said, according to WebMD Health News.

Expert commentary accompanying the report of the successful transplant said the results should be “highly regarded” but needed more follow-up.

Adult stem cell research lacks the ethical controversies surrounding embryonic stem cell research, which creates and destroys human embryos to harvest stem cells. Thus far, embryonic stem cell research has failed to produce a single lasting cure, while adult stem research has resulted in scores of cures.

Government-backed mob ransacks Catholic chapel in Hanoi

Hanoi (CNA) - A government-backed mob attacked and ransacked the chapel of Hanoi Redemptorist Monastery on Saturday night in a continuation of the dispute between Catholics and the communist government over confiscated property.

“At 10 p.m. local time, on Saturday night, a delegate of the People’s Committee of Quang Trung precinct came to Hanoi Redemptorist Monastery asking for an urgent meeting with Redemptorists while hundreds of people attacked our Saint Gerardo Chapel,” reported Fr. Joseph Nguyen Van That, vice superior of Hanoi Redemptorist Monastery.

The vice superior believed that the purpose of the meeting was a diversionary tactic to prevent the Redemptorists from rescuing the chapel.

“It was an organized night time attack of the government aiming at Hanoi Redemptorist Monastery,” he said.

Fr. Joseph Dinh Huu Thoai, the secretary of Vietnam’s Redemptorist Province, sent an urgent e-mail to Redemptorists in the nation, reporting the incident and asking for intense prayer for Redemptorists in Hanoi.

Condemning “the government’s organized attack at night time,” Fr. Joseph Dinh explained that Hanoi Redemptorists rang bells to summon nearby parishioners to rescue the monastery. Thousands of Catholics and nearby parish priests rushed to the site to stop the mob from destroying the chapel, J.B. An Dang tells CNA.

Hundreds of police with stun guns prevented Catholics from entering the chapel in what Fr. An Dang calls “an obvious attempt to buy time for the gang to ransack it.”

A parishioner reported that at one point a subgroup of the mob ransacking the chapel ran out to ask police if they could set it on fire.

They were instructed to “wait for an order from higher ranking officials.”

The Saint Gerardo Chapel was previously attacked by a government-backed gang on Sunday, September 21.

In that incident, the chapel was ransacked, its statues destroyed and its books torn to shreds.

Fr. Matthew Vu Khoi Phung, Superior of Hanoi Redemptorist Monastery, wrote to the People’s Committee of Hanoi City and local police agencies saying in the September attack the assailants “yelled, smashed everything on their way, threw stones into our monastery, and shattered the gate of Saint Gerardo Chapel.”

The latest attack prompted thousands of Catholics to gather at the monastery, known as Thai Ha parish, on Sunday afternoon. They rallied support for the Redemptorists, holding special services around the Archdiocese of Hanoi to pray for the parish.

News of the attack spread on Sunday when Catholics gathered at churches to celebrate the Feast of Vietnamese Martyrs.

“It was significant that the government struck Thai Ha parish right on the day Catholics in Vietnam celebrated the Feast of Vietnamese Martyrs,” Fr. Joseph Nguyen said. “This attack reminds people that since its very first outset, the seed of Faith in Vietnam soil was mixed with the abundant blood of the martyrs from all walks of life, from the courageous missionary clergy as well as the local clergy and the Christian people of Vietnam.”

“The Church in Vietnam today is not better or even worse than in the past,” he warned.

“The Catholic Church in Vietnam as a whole is now the subject of Vietnam government’s persecution by definition,” a student of Hanoi University said in reaction to the mob’s assault. “And this attack is a challenge to the conscience of the world,” he asserted.

Bishop Sgreccia: embryo selection and euthanasia are ‘legitimization of an abuse’

Avila (CNA) - The president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Bishop Elio Sgreccia, criticized the practice of embryo selection this week and called it a “legitimization of an abuse,” similar to euthanasia, and said the Church would continue to use “all peaceful means” to “educate society” to keep politicians from assuming the right to decide on matters of life and death.

During a speech at the University of Avila in Spain, Bishop Sgreccia criticized the decision by Italy’s Supreme Court to authorize euthanasia for a 37 year-old woman who is in a vegetative state and whose family wants to disconnect her feeding tube.

He said the court “does not have the authority” to allow the death of Eluana Englaro because “life does not belong to the patient, the doctor, society or the court.” 

He also referred to the case of a Spanish couple that has conceived a child in order to cure their other son his who is sick, saying they “had no right” to do so, and that selecting embryos and creating a baby to help cure another person is “the legitimization of an abuse.”

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