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News Bytes for Your Parish Bulletin
- Byzantine Faithful Welcome Apostolic Visitor to Spain
- Heroic Media Launches Pro-life, Pro-family News Service
Heaven and the Priest
St. John Vianney famously stated, "Only in heaven shall we know what a priest is. If we were to know this on earth, we would die, not of grief, but of love." And why is that? "The answer is simple," according to Dominican Father Romanus Cessario. In a homily delivered at a Mass celebrating the jubilee anniversary of the ordination of fellow Dominican Peter John Cameron, editor in chief of Magnificat, Father Cessario said, "Heaven discloses in a vision the graces that a priest mediates on earth: the truth he preaches, the transformation he enables, the lives he changes."
The Business of Ethics
Benedict XVI's secretary of state says that ethical business leaders face the great challenge of aiming at a goal higher than profit, while not rejecting profit. Such leaders are those who "see their activity as a task and a vocation," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told a Vatican-sponsored conference on business ethics. "Nowadays business leaders who want to take the Church's social teaching seriously will need to be more daring, not limiting themselves to socially responsible practices and/or acts of philanthropy -- positive and meritorious though these may be -- but striking out into new territories."
Stem Cell Partners
The Pontifical Council for Culture is collaborating with a U.S. company dedicated to research on adult stem cells. Father Tomasz Trafny, director of the council's Science and Faith department, said that the partnership with NeoStem must focus on two considerations. "The first one relies on the fact that we share the same sensitivity toward those ethical values that are centered on the protection of human life at all stages of its existence," he said. "The second concerns interest of investigation into cultural consequences that scientific discoveries in the field of adult stem cells research and their application in regenerative medicine will cause."
The Task Ahead
The Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization has its work cut out for it, says Benedict XVI. In an address to council members at the conclusion of their first plenary assembly, the Pope observed that modern man "is often distracted and insensitive." Thus, he said, "the new evangelization must try to find ways of making the proclamation of salvation more effective." On an optimistic note the Pontiff added: "The Holy Spirit which prompted [the apostles] to open the doors and made evangelizers of them is the same Spirit which today moves the Church to a renewed proclamation of hope."