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Satisfying the ‘hungry heart’: an interview with Bishop Barron 

In addition to the spiritual maladies of the times, Bishop Robert Barron says he also sees opportunities for both evangelization and renewal in the Church. / Credit: Screenshot/EWTN News in Depth

CNA Newsroom, Mar 16, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, provided both diagnoses of and prescriptions for the most pervasive spiritual maladies of our times in an interview with EWTN News Rome correspondent Colm Flynn.

One of the most popular bishops in the United States and founder of the Word on Fire evangelization ministry, Barron told Flynn the spiritual crisis of our age is stoked by “the immanentism, the materialism, the secularism that has taken hold of much of our culture.” 

“Nothing in this world can satisfy the hungry heart. You can deceive yourself for a while,” he explained. “But the heart knows otherwise and will rebel against that sort of immanentism.” 

Barron told Flynn he also sees hopeful signs and opportunities for the Church. 

He has observed that even “some of the most popular podcasts in the world” that were secularized 10 years ago are now using “spiritual language.”

“I’m aware of that, kind of in the zeitgeist, there’s this moment of new spiritual interest,” he said. “Let’s take advantage of it … the Church should move into that space to say boldly, but lovingly, we have the answers. You’ve now experienced the hunger. We got the bread of life, that will satisfy you.”

Barron said that within the Church itself, another hopeful sign is the renewed focus on the Eucharist, which in the United States will culminate this year in the National Eucharistic Congress that will take place July 17–21 in Indianapolis.

Asked what he hopes will be the fruit of the country’s Eucharistic Revival, the bishop answered: “A keener sense of the importance of Jesus Christ … so that I hope it awakens people’s faith.”

Christendom College women’s basketball wins national title

The Christendom College Women's Basketball team wins the 2024 USCAA DII National Championship. / Credit: Paul Aguilar

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 17:45 pm (CNA).

The Christendom College women’s basketball team has made school history — bringing home the school’s first national title in women’s basketball. Christendom defeated Johnson & Wales Charlotte 76-65 in the USCAA DII National Championship in Petersburg, Virginia, on March 13. 

Christendom College is a Catholic liberal arts college founded in 1977 in Front Royal, Virginia.

According to the college’s press release, the team was ranked No. 7 going into the tournament and had major upsets against the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 seeds. 

After earning their first trip to the USCAA National Championship Tournament last season, the team had even higher expectations for themselves this season. They went 23-5 during the regular season, which was also a school record. 

Mary Pennefather, a freshman, and Catherine Thomas, a junior, led the USCAA in points per game with 24.6 and 27.3 points per game respectively, and total points scored, with 566 and 601. 

Christendom beat No. 2 Penn State Beaver and No. 3 Central Maine in the quarterfinals and semifinals — landing them their spot at the championship game against the No. 1 seed. Roughly 100 Christendom students made the trip to support and cheer their team to victory. 

The championship game was hard fought with Christendom losing the lead several times but pushing each time to gain it back, the release said. The women came out of the game strong in the second half and extended their lead to 56-40 to close the third quarter. With less than three minutes left in the game, they had gained a lead of 72-49. Johnson & Wales gave a strong last effort during those final minutes, but it wasn’t enough to beat the Crusaders.

Thomas was named tournament MVP for her outstanding performance over the course of four games, including setting tournament records in single-game points scored and three-pointers made in the quarterfinals. Pennefather, Regina Bonvissuto, and Miranda Keller were all named to the All-Tournament team as well.

Photos of the win can be found on the college’s web site.

Virginia diocese offers to assist with burial of unborn baby found in pond

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CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).

Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, this week announced that his diocese is willing to help with the burial of the body of an unborn baby discovered in a local pond. 

Police in Leesburg, Virginia, announced this week the “discovery of a deceased late-term fetus in a pond” about 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C.  

“The investigation is being treated with the utmost seriousness and sensitivity,” the police said, with Leesburg Police Chief Thea Pirnat calling the discovery “a deeply tragic situation.”

In a statement on the Diocese of Arlington’s website, Burbidge said it was “with great sorrow that I learned today of the unsettling discovery of the body of an unborn baby described by police as a ‘late-term fetus,’ found in a pond in Leesburg.” 

“The Diocese of Arlington has made it known that we are willing to assist with the proper burial and committal of the remains,” Burbidge said.

The bishop “urge[d] the faithful of the diocese and all people of goodwill to join me in prayer for the child’s mother and for anyone involved in this incident.”

Burbidge said the Diocese of Arlington “encourages all women who find themselves in unexpected or difficult pregnancies to seek assistance” through Catholic Charities or the Gabriel Project, a pregnancy support group. 

The Leesburg police department did not immediately respond to a query on Friday regarding the status of the investigation. 

Burbidge, who was installed as the bishop of Arlington in 2016, is also the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

This story was updated on Friday, March 15, at 6:30 p.m. to clarify that the Diocese of Arlington has offered to assist in the burial of the infant's body.

Riley Gaines, other female athletes, sue NCAA for allowing transgender competitors

Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines is sworn in during a House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services hearing on Capitol Hill on Dec. 5, 2023, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 14:45 pm (CNA).

Riley Gaines and more than a dozen other female athletes filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) on Thursday alleging that allowing men to compete in women’s competitions denies women protections promised under Title IX. 

In a post on X, Gaines, a former swimmer with the University of Kentucky, announced the suit.

“It’s official. I’m suing the NCAA along with 15 other collegiate athletes who have lost out on titles, records, and roster spots to men posing as women. The NCAA continues to explicitly violate the federal civil rights law of Title IX. About time someone did something about it,” Gaines posted.

The athletes’ lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, alleges that “harm” is done to women due to “NCAA’s radical departure from Title IX’s original meaning.” This harm included “subjecting women to a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.”

“Title IX was enacted by Congress to increase women’s opportunities; therefore, no policy which authorizes males to take the place of women on women’s college sports teams or in women’s college sports locker rooms is permissible under Title IX,” the complaint read. 

Through the lawsuit, the athletes hope “to secure for future generations of women the promise of Title IX.”

The lawsuit comes in the wake of a controversy where Gaines made headlines for speaking out after being forced to compete against Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete. Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win a women’s national championship. 

“The secret of Thomas’ meteoric ascendance and dominance in NCAA women’s swimming was retained male advantage,” the complaint read.

The plaintiffs, 16 female athletes, accused the NCAA in the lawsuit of imposing a “radical anti-woman agenda” on college sports, defining women “as a testosterone level,” and “permitting men to compete on women’s teams.”  

Georgia Tech University, the University of Georgia, and the University of North Georgia were also named as defendants in the lawsuit. 

The athletes also accused the NCAA of “destroying female safe spaces in women’s lockers by authorizing naked men possessing full male genitalia to disrobe in front of non-consenting college women and creating situations in which unwilling female college athletes unwittingly or reluctantly expose their naked or partially clad bodies to males, subjecting women to a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.” 

The lawsuit further alleges that the NCAA “has aligned with the most radical elements of the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda” on college campuses in order to increase its “campus approval ratings” and ultimately further what the lawsuit calls “the NCAA’s relentless drive to monetize collegiate sport, and diverting attention from the financial exploitation of college athletes.”

The athletes alleged that this happens “all at the expense of female student-athletes.”

A milestone for unity: First Norwegian Catholic Bible edition launched

The new Norwegian translation of the Bible, published March 15, 2024. / Credit: Norwegian Bible Society

CNA Newsroom, Mar 15, 2024 / 14:00 pm (CNA).

For the first time in Norway’s history, the Norwegian Bible Society has announced the publication of a Catholic edition of the Bible.

French bishops condemn Macron’s assisted suicide bill

French President Emmanuel Macron during a meeting with Governor of Spain at the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris on March 21, 2022. / Credit: Victor Velter|Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 13:30 pm (CNA).

Several French Catholic bishops this week roundly condemned a recently announced proposal by the country’s government to legalize the practice of assisted suicide.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced last week that the French Parliament in May would examine a proposal to legalize “aid-in-dying” throughout the country. Macron in an interview with the Catholic newspaper La Croix described the measure as “a law of fraternity” that “reconciles the autonomy of the individual and the solidarity of the nation.”

The law “opens the possibility of asking for help in dying under certain strict conditions,” the president said. 

Reims Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort condemned the president’s proposal in an interview with La Croix.

“Calling a text that opens the door to both assisted suicide and euthanasia a ‘law of fraternity’ is a deception,” the archbishop told La Croix. “Such a law, whatever one may desire, will shift our entire health care system toward death as a solution.”

Tours Archbishop Vincent Jordy likewise criticized Macron’s description of the proposed law, arguing that fraternity “means taking care of others, it means supporting them until the end, especially when they are weak and fragile.” 

The bishop told the Catholic weekly Famille Chrétienne that “despite the use of terminology which avoids the terms euthanasia and assisted suicide,” the proposal risks bringing about those practices.

In a statement posted to X, meanwhile, Lille Archbishop Laurent Le Boulc’h warned that assisted suicide could hasten the death of individuals who see themselves as burdens upon others. 

“Does it not risk further increasing the depressed character of our society in loss of hope?” he wrote. “Does it not risk weakening so many people who see themselves as a weight that has become unbearable for those around them?”

Macron in describing the proposal said that individuals seeking assisted suicide “will have to be capable of full discernment” before being permitted to undergo it. 

Patients “with psychiatric diseases or neurodegenerative diseases that alter discernment, such as Alzheimer’s,” will not be offered help in killing themselves, he said. 

The president urged those who disagree over the proposal to nevertheless “have a debate at the right level.” 

“The nature of the subject is intimidating enough for respect to set in, even between people who are in deep disagreement,” he argued. 

Pornhub disables website in Texas rather than comply with state’s age verification law

Pornhub website logo. / Credit: Kate Krav-Rude/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 11:25 am (CNA).

Pornhub, one of the largest pornography websites in the world, has ceased offering its website in Texas rather than comply with the state’s recently implemented age verification law.

State Attorney General Ken Paxton said on X on Thursday that Pornhub “has now disabled its website in Texas.” 

The porn website pulled the service after a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last week that declared Texas’ pornography site age verification law, passed in 2023, could stand. 

Texas visitors to Pornhub’s website on Thursday were greeted with a message stating that the state was “requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website.”

“Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’ stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors,” the website claims. 

Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub’s parent company Aylo, told media on Thursday that the age verification rule is “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.” 

“Not only will it not actually protect children, it will inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it,” Kekesi said.

Paxton, meanwhile, argued on X that pornography sites such as Pornhub “are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children.” 

“We recently secured a major victory against Pornhub and other sites that sought to block this law from taking effect,” Paxton said. “In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, good riddance.”

Pornhub has faced increasing scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers in recent years. The European Union in December announced that Pornhub must comply with major age verification and safety laws passed in 2022 by the governing body. 

Age verification laws that passed bipartisan legislatures and were signed by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, meanwhile, have lately led Pornhub to cease offering its videos in Mississippi, Utah, Virginia, and multiple other states.

Pope Francis, meanwhile, in 2022 called pornography “a permanent attack on the dignity of men and women” and “a threat to public health.”

Word on Fire to launch master’s program in evangelization with St. Thomas-Houston

Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire, which announced on March 13, 2024, that its institute will partner with the University of St. Thomas, Houston, to launch a master’s program in evangelization and culture this summer. / Credit: Word on Fire

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Word on Fire and the University of St. Thomas, Houston, announced on Wednesday that they are launching a master’s program in evangelization and culture this summer.  

Set to begin in June, the program will be an “accredited and academically rigorous” master of arts degree in evangelization and culture, said Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute.

Founded by Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Word on Fire is a nonprofit global media apostolate founded to evangelize and educate with an emphasis on contemporary media. 

The master’s program is a natural outgrowth of the Word on Fire Institute, which offers live seminars, courses, and opportunities to interact with professors and fellows to its almost 24,000 members, Petrusek said.

“It’s rooted in the same inspiration we have to provide the Church with the best formed evangelists that we can possibly provide,” he told CNA. “And so now we’re doing so in a way that includes a professional degree.”

Petrusek said the institute has “long wanted to provide” members with “a means to get properly and fully and comprehensively formed in the Word on Fire Institute ethos in a way that’s accredited.”

“But up until this point, we didn’t have an outlet for those who really wanted to take it to the next level and to receive a degree,” he said. “And so, thanks be to God, that’s what we’re able to do now in partnership with the University of St. Thomas, with our M.A. program.”

Word on Fire Institute has been in conversation with University of St. Thomas, Houston, for more than two years in building out the program, Petrusek said, noting that the university “has long been doing very good work in providing an authentically Catholic, faithfully Catholic education.”

“We were really excited to have the opportunity to work with them, to build on the strengths that they already have, and to work on our own strengths,” he said. “So the partnership was a natural one, and we look forward to building it as we move into the future.”

The courses, offered live online, will include the Theology of Bishop Robert Barron, Biblical Studies for Evangelists, and Christology for Evangelists as well as a course on the Evangelical Legacy of Vatican II and practical evangelization, among others.

The master’s program includes an optional intensive summer program in person at St. Thomas. 

The program will also offer courses such as Evangelization and Anthropology, Art and Architecture for Evangelists, and Dante for Evangelists. 

“We’re seeking to [evangelize] in a way that’s highly culturally competent,” Petrusek explained. 

Petrusek said that one pillar of Word on Fire that’s “especially important” for this initiative is “looking for the ‘seeds of the word’ in the culture.” 

“Now, this is something that goes back to the very beginning of the Church,” he said. “It’s speaking in ways that are intelligible to people wherever they are, across the different dimensions of the culture.”

“The culture,” he noted, is an “umbrella term” that includes entertainment, politics, art, architecture, literature, and technology.

“We want our students to be able to speak to individuals in all those different niches of contemporary culture,” he said but noted that Word on Fire is not looking to “accommodate secular culture.” 

“We’re looking at points of contact where we can get a foothold in, to have conversations, and ultimately, to open the door to possible conversions to the relationship with Christ and his Church,” he explained. 

Word on Fire Institute hopes to not only form “culturally competent” students but also students who have “thick skin.”

Petrusek said that over the past 40 to 50 years, the Church “in many degrees, has grown timid, especially in the West.” 

“And so we’re seeking to overcome that timidity and to go out into the different facets of the culture, recognizing that it’s not going to be easy — it’s sometimes going to be hostile,” he said. “It will very commonly be indifferent and skeptical, and that’s fine. Those aren’t going to be barriers for us to move into those spaces.”  

This evangelization is also “high-spirited,” Petrusek explained.

“Moving out into the culture, as [you’re] truly manifesting joy, which does not mean always having a goofy smile on your face,” he said. “It means knowing who you are and what you’re for, being grounded in Christ.”

The program costs $600 per credit hour and is taught live online.

The faculty will include faithful scholars and leaders in Catholic thought, including Word on Fire Institute professors. 

Barron is closely involved in the program and may teach, Petrusek noted.

“To what degree he’ll be teaching is something that we’re still working on long-term,” he said, adding: “But he will certainly be a part of it.” 

Word on Fire has had “tremendous interest already” after Wednesday’s launch, Petrusek said.

“There’s been a great response,” he said, but noted that a small class size is important for the program.  

“We are committed to keeping our classes at a level where conversation is not only possible but encouraged,” he said.

“Another thing that’s a highlight of our program, that we’re very proud of, is we don’t do canned content,” Petrusek continued. “So no recorded lectures and no sort of asynchronous passive content. It’s really incarnational to the extent that that’s possible online.”

Family, community, are key to overcoming secularism, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Faced with decades of rising secularism, the Catholic Church must invest in families and in strengthening other forms of community to transmit the faith, Pope Francis said. 

"The big issue before us is to understand how to overcome the rupture that has been established in the transmission of faith," the pope told members of the Dicastery for Evangelization's section for new evangelization March 15. "To that end there is an urgent need to recover an effective relationship with families and formation centers." 

Developing faith in Christ "requires a meaningful experience lived in the family and in the Christian community as a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ in order to be transmitted," he wrote in his message to members of the dicastery during their plenary assembly. "Without this real and existential encounter, one will always be subject to the temptation to make faith a theory and not a testimony of life."

Pope Francis poses for a photo with members of the Dicastery for Evangelization.
Pope Francis poses for a photo with members of the Dicastery for Evangelization's section for new evangelization during a meeting for their plenary assembly at the Vatican March 15, 2024. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

As he has done at several meetings in past weeks, the pope had an aide, Msgr. Filippo Ciamanelli, read his speech to the group. 

In his message, the pope wrote that the secularism of recent decades "has created enormous difficulties" for the church, "from the loss of a sense of belonging to the Christian community to the indifference regarding the faith and its contents." 

As a result, he wrote, it is time for the church to "understand what effective response we are called to give to young generations so that they may recover the meaning of life."

He noted that lure of personal autonomy, "promoted as one of the pretenses of secularism, cannot be thought of as independence from God, because it is God himself who grants the personal freedom to act."

And while technological advances offer many ways for humanity to progress, including through developments in medicine and methods of protecting the environment, they also can create a "problematic" vision of humanity that fails to satisfy "the need for truth that dwells in every person," he wrote.

Pope Francis greets a member of the Dicastery for Evangelization.
Pope Francis poses for a photo with members of the Dicastery for Evangelization's section for new evangelization during a meeting for their plenary assembly at the Vatican March 15, 2024. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Pope Francis urged members of the dicastery to develop a "spirituality of mercy" as the foundation of their work in evangelization. People are more receptive to evangelization when done with a "style of mercy," he wrote. By communicating mercy, he added, "the heart opens more readily to conversion." 

The pope thanked the dicastery for its work in developing resources for catechists, referencing the latest "Directory for Catechesis" published by the dicastery in 2020, and praised the support they have given to those who serve as catechists. 

"I hope that bishops will know how to nurture and accompany vocations to this ministry especially among young people," he wrote, "so that the gap between generations and may be reduced and the transmission of the faith may not appear to be a task entrusted only to older people."

The pope also discussed plans for the Holy Year 2025, which he has asked the dicastery to organize. The theme for the holy year is "Pilgrims of Hope."

"This theological virtue has been seen poetically as the 'little sister' of the other two, faith and charity, but without it these two do not move forward, they do not express the best of themselves," he wrote. "The holy people of God has such a great need" for hope. 

Bishop Zaidan Prays for and Expresses Solidarity with the People of Haiti and Calls for U.S. and International Support

WASHINGTON – Expressing his steadfast solidarity with the people of Haiti suffering amid an intensification of violence and social disorder, Bishop A. Elias Zaidan of the Maronite Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon called for immediate and long-term solutions. As the chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the bishop called for the U.S. government and the international community to address the challenges faced by Haiti:

“As the social, political, and security situation in Haiti continues dangerously to deteriorate, I would like to express my steadfast solidarity with my brother bishops and the people of Haiti. I would like to commend especially the heroic efforts of Haitian and international aid workers, including our own Catholic Relief Services, who are working tirelessly to provide vitally necessary assistance to the people of Haiti.

“Since the tragic 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti has been experiencing an acute intensification of violence—including rampant murders and kidnappings—social disorder, and an unclear path towards the restoration of the rule-of-law. This is an unlivable situation for the people of Haiti, where families are unable to provide basic necessities for their loved ones.

“I commend the United States Government for its recently stated commitment to provide $300 million in support for an emerging plan to address the rampant instability in the country. Beyond the immediate and pressing objectives, I urge our government and the international community actively to continue to seek ways to address the long-term challenges the country is facing.

“As chairman of the Committee, I heartily join our Holy Father Pope Francis in his expression of concern and support for the people of Haiti and who recently invited us to pray for the people of this land through the intercession of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Patroness of Haiti that violence cease, and peace and reconciliation in the country be realized with the support of the international community.”

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