From the Catechism Archives - Catholic Digest catholicdigest.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from catholicdigest.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(Benvenuto Tisi, “Ascension of Christ”/Wikimedia Commons Images)
By Gina Christian • Posted May 13, 2021
A somewhat “overlooked” holy day of obligation is actually “pivotal” for an understanding of eternal life, said an archdiocesan priest.
The Solemnity of the Ascension (celebrated today in Philadelphia and five other ecclesiastical provinces, and on May 16 in the rest of the U.S. for the year 2021) marks the “definitive entrance of Jesus’ humanity into God’s heavenly domain,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
Without the Ascension, the Easter mysteries would remain incomplete, said Father Dennis Gill, director of the archdiocesan Office for Divine Worship and rector of the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul.
Father Kenneth Doyle
By Father Kenneth Doyle • Catholic News Service • Posted May 13, 2021
Q. When the Holy Father and Ayatollah al-Sistani met recently, at the end they stood facing each other and seemed to be talking without an interpreter. What language did they use in order to communicate? (Powhatan, Virginia)
A. According to the website of the Jesuit magazine America there was, in fact, an interpreter present. America said in its report on the March 6 meeting that “the two leaders of Christianity and Shia Islam sat beside a small wooden table and spoke with the assistance of the pope’s Palestinian-born translator.”
(Andrey Popov/iStock)
A meeting on Jan. 29 between Pope Francis and members of the Roman Rota, the Vatican’s highest judicial tribunal, raised an issue that Francis has returned to several times in his pontificate: annulment reform. The pope said that since 2015, when he tried to streamline the annulment process and make it less costly, he has received “much resistance” to his reforms.
“Almost all of them were lawyers who were losing clients. And therein lies the problem of money,” said Pope Francis. “In Spain, there is a saying, ‘
Por la plata baila el mono’ ‘Monkeys will dance for money.’” (Now filed under: “Things no other pope would ever say.”)
Mexico City, Mexico, May 11, 2021 / 14:19 pm (CNA).
Fr. Hugo Valdemar, canon penitentiary of the Archdiocese of Mexico, said that the blessing that priests and pastoral workers gave May 10 to homosexual couples in Germany “is a truly sacrilegious act” and a “diabolical act of pride and immorality.”
The blessing of homosexual couples in Germany “is not only an act of indiscipline and rebellion against the pope and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), it is a truly sacrilegious act,” said Valdemar.
Priests and pastoral workers of the Church in Germany blessed homosexual couples in a May 10 event called “Love Wins,” held in more than 100 locations throughout the country with the support of several bishops, including the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg.