News - December 2021 RSS Feed

The 55th World Peace Day was celebrated yesterday. Pope Saint Paul VI instituted the World Peace Day, which is celebrated on January 1, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. It has become the custom of the Holy Father to provide a message for this occasion that is sent to foreign ministers around the world. In the message for this year Pope Francis states that he wants to promote a dialogue between generations, education, and work because there are tools for building lasting peace. Pope Francis would like to see a new alliance between the young and the elderly to address the problems of isolation and self-absorption heightened by the corona virus pandemic. Pope Francis notes that the wisdom and experience of the elderly is needed by young people. At the same time the young can provide support, affection, creativity, and their dynamism to our senior citizens. He would also like to see a “hearty politics” become the driving force of a new dialog between generations.

The Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours for today quotes from an address that Pope Saint Paul VI gave when he visited Nazareth on January 5, 1964. The Holy Father said on that occasion that Nazareth was a kind of school where we could discover what the life of Christ was like and even to understand his Gospel. At Nazareth we can observe and ponder the simple appeal of the way the Son of God came to be known, profound yet full of hidden meaning.

My mother had a beautiful rose garden in the backyard of our house when I was growing up. When I got to be old enough she would ask me to help her pull the weeds in the rose garden so that the roses would thrive. I didn’t particularly enjoy weeding but I saw that we had to be persistent with it. Otherwise the weeds would overrun the rose garden. I think that this is a good analogy for what we need to do with Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS): keep weeding it out of our lives. It looks like PAS is going to be an issue in the coming session of the Maryland General Assembly. Activists from outside the State will be back again trying to persuade our legislators to pass a Physician-Assisted Suicide bill. On February 28, 2020, I went to Annapolis to testify against the “End of Life Options Act” (Senate Bill 701/House of Delegates Bill 643). Since this issue is likely to be taken up again by the Maryland General Assembly, let me go over some of the reasons why I think physician-assisted suicide is a really bad idea. I am relying on some points provided by the Maryland Catholic Conference to make this point. Here are some things we should consider:

We have experienced many cancelled events and disappointments during this time of pandemic. For the second year in a row Saint Nicholas has had to cancel his customary visit to our parish. He would have been expected to come last Sunday, December 5, the Second Sunday of Advent because it is the day before his actual feast day. Perhaps because Saint Nicholas (known by some by the nickname Santa Claus) had to cancel his travel plans last year and this year as a precaution owing to restrictions in international travel, some of the children of the parish might be asking the question that Virginia O’Hanlon asked the editor of a New York newspaper many years ago. In anticipation of Christmas, which we will celebrate in less than two weeks from now, I want to print what is probably the most reprinted editorial in any newspaper in the English language. In 1897, the New York Sun received a letter to the Editor from Virginia O’Hanlon, who was eight years old and a resident of New York City. Her letter was only a four sentences long:

Last Friday, December 3, we celebrated the International Day of Persons with Developmental Differences. Pope Francis had an important message for those with developmental differences. I want to present today two points that he made in that address and also provide his commentary on those points. My source for this is the Vatican website.