God’s people need time to unwind mystery of liturgy

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – God’s people need time to unwind the mystery of the liturgy, both during Mass and over time, said Cardinal Godfried Danneels during a lecture at Boston College April 17.

Cardinal Danneels, the of -Brussels, , was co-author of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (“”), approved by the . It called for the translation of the Mass from Latin to the vernacular.

The document, promulgated Dec. 4, 1963, ordered an extensive revision of worship so that people would have a clearer sense of their own involvement in the Mass and other rites.

The cardinal spoke at the annual Canisius Lecture, sponsored by the university’s Jesuit Institute. His talk was titled “The Sacred Liturgy: Revisiting ‘Sacrosanctum Consilium’ Forty Years After Vatican II.” “The liturgy needs time to deliver its riches,” he said to students, faculty and priests.

The faithful need time and space to enter into the event and to leave the chaos of the world behind, and to do that they also need silence, according to the cardinal. The current length of the Mass makes the liturgy an “unstoppable succession of words” with little time for reflection, he said. If the liturgy is too focused on the intellectual, it will fail to reach many of the people who participate in it, he said.

The liturgy also calls for repetition because it reveals its significance over time, Cardinal Danneels said.

“Our contemporaries often conceive understanding as the ability to grasp something at first hearing,” he said. “Many changes in the liturgy in order to make it understandable have been inefficient because they focus too much on the immediate cognitive informative aspect of understanding. “They wanted to explain everything immediately to provide the commentary and to analyze. They never lead to the reality of the liturgy,” he said.

What can be grasped immediately is cognitive understanding, he said, but the divine reality cannot be realized so easily. The realities of love, death and joy cannot be understood all at once upon first inspection, he said. Cardinal Danneels also spoke about the major changes the liturgy has undergone in the last 40 years.

“It must be very difficult to imagine for those who have not experienced it for themselves, just how much liturgical practice has changed in the last half century,” he said.

Prior to the renewal of Vatican II, there was a divide between the priest celebrating the Mass and the faithful gathered, he added.

“It being frequently the case that priests celebrated official liturgy while at one and the same time, the people set about their personal devotions,” he said. “The people assisted, of course, but took little time or little or no part in the liturgy itself.”

The aim of the liturgical movement, which originated in Belgium, was to initiate active participation for laypeople. With the use of the vernacular, the Mass became more transparent, but problems still existed, he said.

The Bible uses language from a “bygone era,” the cardinal said, and verses speak of shepherds and their flocks, which are no longer the realities of daily life.

Rather than change the symbols used in texts, the symbols must be explained within their historical context, he said, and in the same way words like Easter, Resurrection and the Eucharist cannot be replaced. They, like some words in the liturgy, must be learned, he said.

Since cannot be known from human experience alone, it demands catechesis, he said. The instruction must be done outside of the liturgy so that participants can experience the liturgy and then have it explained to them in greater depth, he said. Although reform was needed to invite the laity into full participation in the liturgy, there can be a “shadow side,” the cardinal added. The changes can lead to a “taking possession of the liturgy,” he said.

“In some cases, this can lead to a sort of liturgical coup in which the sacred is eliminated, the language trivialized and the cult turned into a social event or a piece of theater,” he said.

In these situations, the real subject of liturgy is no longer Christ, he said. Participants at Mass need to be oriented toward God with an attitude of receptivity, self-giving, praise and prayer. The liturgy is a “loving entering in,” he said.

At the liturgy’s core is a mystery that must be accepted through openness and faith, he said, a mystery that God, through the Church, offers all people.

“I see even in the secularized world we live in, the attention for liturgy and for symbols is growing and growing and growing,” he said. “Many people are looking for something more profound.”

Chicago archdiocesan foster care program to end

CHICAGO – of the Archdiocese of Chicago has begun dismantling its foster care program after announcing that it will stop providing foster care services as of June 30.

The decision, which Catholic and state welfare officials called “tragic,” came after Catholic Charities was unable to get liability insurance for its foster care program.

Catholic Charities and other private agencies recruit and train foster parents to be licensed by the state, place children with the foster parents they have trained, and provide monitoring, casework and social services to the children.

When the closure was announced April 16, about 900 children were in the program, said April Specht, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities. More than 150 staff positions are to be cut as well.

The decision came after Catholic Charities was unsuccessful in finding liability insurance to cover the program. Its current carrier agreed to continue providing coverage of all of Catholic Charities’ services except foster care.

The agency approached 25 providers besides its current carrier; 24 turned it down, and one did not respond, Ms. Specht said.

The insurance company’s decision came after Catholic Charities settled a lawsuit over the alleged abuse of three children in a foster home in the 1990s for $12 million.

The insurance company capped its liability at $10 million, and Catholic Charities had a $1 million retention fund, said Walter Ousley, Catholic Charities’ director of operations. That left the agency scrambling to come up with the rest of the money.

Catholic Charities and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services both have formed transition teams to transfer the children and their foster parents to either the state agency or other private agencies that continue to work in partnership with the department, said Kendall Marlowe, spokesman for the state agency.

Catholic Charities hopes that some of its foster care workers also can move to the agencies that will work with their young charges, in essence moving children, parents and workers together as a block, Mr. Ousley said.

Mr. Marlowe acknowledged that such a process would be ideal, providing the least disruption to the children, but said the agency cannot make any such guarantees.

“DCFS recognizes that there is a great deal of skill, expertise and a high level of qualifications among the outgoing staff,” Mr. Marlowe told The Catholic New World, Chicago archdiocesan newspaper. “We wouldn’t want to lose the skill, care and love those people bring to child welfare.”

Erwin McEwen, the acting director of the state agency, said it was a sad day in the history of child welfare in Illinois. “The reputation of Catholic Charities is excellent,” he said. “Their performance has been exemplary.”

Staff members reacted to the news that the program would close with grief and shock, Mr. Ousley said, and with concern, above all, for the children. “They were concerned about the kids first,” he said. “Even though this is their livelihood.”

Catholic Charities has been providing substitute care for children since 1921, and was among the agencies that advocated for the creation of the state’s Department of Children and Family Services in 1963. It has continued to advocate for the welfare of the state’s most vulnerable children since then, Mr. Marlowe said.

In the meantime, Mr. Marlowe said, his agency will continue to work with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago to continue to provide services to children who live with their parents.

The state is not worried about absorbing the foster children from Catholic Charities’ program into other programs. The number of children in residential or foster care in the state is about 16,000, down from a high of about 52,000 in 1998, so the state’s child welfare agencies have the capacity to take in these children.

The drop in the number of children in foster care was the result of a concentrated effort and changes in federal law in the late 1990s to keep families together when possible, and to return children to their parents or make them eligible for adoption more quickly when they were taken into foster care.

But while state law indemnifies the state agency from lawsuits, private agencies have no such protection in Illinois, one of only two states that do not protect private child welfare agencies working under contract to the government from lawsuits, Mr. Ousley said.

Catholic Charities’ insurance carrier – whom Mr. Ousley would not name – provides coverage for foster care in 48 other , but none of them are vulnerable because they operate under different state laws.

What happened to the first act?

My family attended the Celebration of the Arts (CR, April 12) because I had an eighth- grade son who was performing with the Representation Band. This was my first experience with this evening and I was very amazed at the talent portrayed on the stage. I was blown away by how wonderful the young middle schoolers sounded. They didn’t play like children and having driven my son to many practices, I know how hard they worked.

I am very disappointed however that the only pictures that appear in the paper and online are of the events after intermission. The children in the first act worked hard, as did the dancers and musicians/singers, yet barely even got a mention in the paper. What happened to the first act of the show? Thank you for your attention.

Review misses out on middle schoolers

I attended the Celebration of the Arts on Monday, and it was truly a wonderful opportunity for the students of our Catholic schools to display their talents. I was very happy to see the Catholic Review devote so much attention to the event.

My children were among the performers for the evening. They worked very hard to achieve their performance and sacrificed much to make it possible. And yet, there was not one word about them – the middle school representational band that performed the first act of the evening – in your article. Thanks for ignoring their efforts!

Parish work helped priest recognize calling

Jumping into life at Ss. Philip and James in Baltimore helped convince Father Joseph Cosgrove he might be called to the priesthood.

Whether it was bringing communion to the sick and shut-ins, serving on the pastoral council, reading the scriptures as a lector or reaching out to the poor through the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Father Cosgrove said he felt drawn to the priestly life. The personal relationships he cultivated in his ministry also helped steer him in the direction of the seminary, he said.

“You begin to realize it’s something God’s calling you to and God will help you through it,” said Father Cosgrove, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Edgewater. “I think there’s a point when you feel that this is the right thing. I realized that that was the kind of work that gave me happiness.”

A Boston native who earned a master’s degree in history from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Father Cosgrove entered St. Mary’s Seminary in Roland Park when he was 39. His background in mediaeval history exposed him to the great thinkers of the church and the role of the church in the development of civilization, he said.

“I think the calling to the priesthood comes from prayer,” said Father Cosgrove, former pastor of St. Peter in Hancock and St. Patrick in Little Orleans. “But I think it’s also very important that others encourage you.” The example of several priests, including William C. Newman, Monsignor Martin R. Strempeck and Monsignor Charles F. Meisel inspired him, Father Cosgrove said.

Many men who consider the priesthood go into it focused on what they can offer, said Father Cosgrove said. They sometimes forget that there is also much to gain in the ordained life.

“I say to anyone thinking of becoming a priest that great friendships await them in the priesthood,” said Father Cosgrove, a former altar boy who called it a “great privilege” to celebrate Mass and minister to people.

“Priesthood is one way of getting closer to Christ,” he said.

For those considering religious life, Father Cosgrove said it is important “not to be bashful” and to get involved in parish life as a way of testing their possible vocation.

“It’s hard to know all the wonderful things until you experience them,” he said. “Give it a try.”

Audrey Santo, inspiration to many, dies

WORCESTER, Mass. – In silence, Audrey Santo witnessed to the world, preachers and participants said at an April 17 wake for her at St. Paul Cathedral in Worcester and at her funeral Mass there the following day.

Santo, 23, who died April 14 at home, was in a comalike state, unable to move or speak, because of an accident when she was 3 years old, but people had flocked to her bedside at her family’s home, where she was cared for. Unexplained phenomena that seemed to happen in her presence drew thousands of visitors over the years. Many felt she could heal others. More than 100 people attended her wake and about 300 were at her funeral. People came from several states, including California, said John Clote, spokesman for the family. Media included ABC’s “20/20” and the local television news.

The main celebrant of the funeral Mass was Father John J. Foley, pastor of Christ the King Parish in Worcester, the family’s parish. Worcester Bishop Robert J. McManus and his predecessor, retired Bishop Daniel P. Reilly, attended the Mass, as did a dozen priests, a couple of and several members of religious orders. Burial was private.

Santo fell into her family’s pool Aug. 9, 1987, at age 3. She was overmedicated at the hospital, lapsed into a coma that lasted three weeks and was left in a state called “akinetic mutism,” according to information from the Apostolate of a Silent Soul, which since 1996 had coordinated activities involving her.

After her accident, strange phenomena reportedly occurred in her presence. These included what some described as a faint scent of roses, and the oozing of oils and blood from religious statues and, on at least one occasion, from the Eucharist. Some people also claimed to have been healed of physical illnesses or handicaps after seeing the girl.

Annual events for the anniversary of her accident drew people from around the United States and overseas to Christ the King Parish and her home, known as the “ministry house.” Some considered her a “victim soul” who suffered for others.

In 1998 Bishop Reilly, then head of the Worcester , established a commission to investigate the phenomena. The first phase ended with a January 1999 report that did not substantiate any miraculous happenings, but Bishop Reilly said the family’s dedication to Audrey was “the most striking evidence of the presence of God in the Santo home.”

“We may never fully understand the causes of various paranormal events which have been reported to have occurred in their home,” Bishop McManus said in a statement about the young woman’s death.

But he said everyone who visited was touched by “the unswaying commitment to life” family, friends and volunteers exhibited daily and that her mother “never treated her as any less a member of the family.”

“Every one of my children and grandchildren is a gift,” Linda Santo, Audrey’s mother, said in a statement. “People need to understand they can’t lose their faith when tragedies like Audrey’s accident happen. … I don’t blame God for the accident. I don’t believe God did this, but I do believe God used this event.”

“Audrey in flesh and blood presents the world with an inescapable either/or choice” – either every person is loved by God and possesses intrinsic value, or all are of no account, Melkite Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy said in the funeral homily. As humanity decides the value of the least, it decides its own temporal and eternal future, he said.

“Audrey, never speaking a word, speaks a prophetic and salvific word that reaches to the end of the earth,” he said.

He praised the witness of her family, who prayed and rearranged their lives to care lovingly for someone the world would discount – a handicapped child with “no production value.”

“Audrey helped many people in her own way, sometimes just by her presence,” Father Foley said in his homily at the wake.

Sometimes God works when people are weakest, he said.

“We come with a heavy heart – the Santos have lost a daughter 23 years old,” and her death “will leave a very large hole in their lives,” he said. But he said God will give them what they need through the congregation’s prayers. Terrorism based on real grievances

ROME – Heightened security and military preparedness alone cannot prevent acts of terrorism, because terrorism is born of real grievances twisted by hatred, said Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers.

Cardinal Martino spoke at the opening of an April 23-27 seminar the council was holding with Catholic airport chaplains to discuss ways to promote dialogue and respond to terrorist threats and fears of terrorism among airport workers and passengers.

While there is no excuse for terrorism, the cardinal said, the threat cannot be eliminated until the causes are.

“Legal measures and being armed are not enough to fight it,” he said. “It is necessary to respond also with cultural instruments capable of offering nonviolent alternatives to redress genuine grievances.”

Religious leaders have a particular responsibility to publicly condemn terrorist acts committed in the name of religion, he said.

They must be clear and vocal “in proclaiming that spreading hate and violence is antithetical to authentic religion, thus denying terrorists any form of religious or moral legitimacy,” Cardinal Martino said.

Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave the keynote address at the seminar, offering the chaplains an overview of philosophical and theological considerations of the existence of evil.

While international terrorism is an obvious example of evil, he said, evil, like goodness, is around and within each person.

“In the face of this phenomenon, man always has exercised his reason in order to understand the meaning and origin of evil and to find solutions aimed at limiting its devastating effects on individuals and communities,” he said. In the Christian viewpoint, the archbishop said, “evil depends on human freedom, human responsibility and human awareness of transgressing divine law.”

“Sin, therefore, is the first cause of evil,” he said.

But, at the same time, people cannot deny that natural disasters and illness also are forms of evil, and there usually is no human responsibility behind them, the archbishop said.

“The teaching of the church on the presence of evil requires from us faith in God, lord of the world and of history, accompanied by a conviction that the ways of his providence often remain unknown to us,” Archbishop Amato told the chaplains.

“In faith, in communion with the one true Lord of the world, we have been given the ‘armor of God,’ with which we, together with the entire body of Christ, can oppose these powers” of evil, he said.

Battling evil requires defending truth, acting righteously, forming consciences and promoting respect, he said.

But it also requires help from God, which is why the Lord’s Prayer includes the line, “Deliver us from evil,” the archbishop said.

Pope calls St. Augustine ‘model of conversion’

PAVIA, Italy – Paying homage to one of the most important figures of the church, Benedict XVI prayed at the tomb of St. Augustine and called him a “model of conversion” for Christians of all ages.

Although conditioned by the passions of youth and the habits of his time, St. Augustine sought the truth – and that led him inevitably to faith, the pope said at a Mass April 22 in the northern Italian city of Pavia.

The pope’s two-day visit to Pavia and Vigevano, south of Milan, was packed with events: outdoor Masses in both cities, brief encounters with young people, a visit to a hospital and medical center, a university address and a prayer service in the church where the relics of St. Augustine are preserved. It was Pope Benedict’s most extensive pastoral visit in Italy, and tens of thousands jammed the streets in each of the small cities to catch their first in-person glimpse of the German pontiff.

For the pope, it was above all a personal pilgrimage to the final resting place of a theologian who inspired his own thinking. As a young priest in 1953, the pope wrote his doctoral thesis on St. Augustine’s teachings.

More recently, he has cited St. Augustine frequently in papal discourses and documents, and a key theme of his pontificate – the need to appreciate and return God’s love – reflects St. Augustine’s statement that Christ came “mainly so that man might learn how much God loves him.”

In a homily to some 15,000 people gathered at a riverside park in Pavia, the pope explained why he found the so inspiring and such a good example for modern people. Born in North Africa in the fourth century, St. Augustine for many years ignored the counsel of his Christian mother and led a hedonistic lifestyle before converting and being baptized in Milan at the age of 33.

The pope said St. Augustine’s spiritual awakening was not an overnight event but a continual process, which was ultimately successful because he never stopped trying to find out “where we come from, where we are going and how we can find the true life.”

The pope said a second stage of his conversion came when, after his ordination as a priest, St. Augustine was called upon to preach publicly – a development that required him to translate his “sublime thoughts” into the language of the simple people.

A third phase of the conversion came even later when, as a bishop, St. Augustine revised and corrected his previous works, a sign of his own humility, the pope said.

At an evening liturgy in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia, the pope stood in prayer before a crystal urn that holds the 226 bone fragments of St. Augustine. Then he lit a new votive lamp for the tomb.

In a sermon, the pope said St. Augustine had his eyes opened by an awareness of God’s love, which is “the heart of the Gospel, the central nucleus of Christianity.” It was also the theme of his own encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est” (“God Is Love”), which owes much to the thought of St. Augustine, the pope said.

Serving Christ, the pope said, is essentially a question of returning God’s love through acts of charity, with special attention to the material and spiritual needs of others.

He said the church exists to educate people in love and bring them to spiritual maturity.

“The church is not a simple organization of collective events nor, on the contrary, the sum of individuals who live a private religiosity,” he said. “The church is a community of people who believe in the God of Jesus Christ and who commit themselves to implement in the world the commandment of charity which he left them,” he said.

The pope began his trip with a three-hour stop in Vigevano, a city that had waited nearly 600 years since the last papal visit. Greeting young people before the Mass in the town square, the pope urged them to find a friend in Jesus Christ.

“Don’t hesitate to trust in him: meet him, listen to him and love him with all your heart. In your friendship with him, you will experience the real joy that gives meaning and value to existence,” he said.

At the Mass in Vigevano, the pope said family values represented the foundation of society and the key to social reform. His remarks were greeted with long applause, prompting him to add, “I see we’re in agreement.”

Vigevano is a shoemaking center, and local industrialists made a gift of 15,000 pairs of shoes for the pope to send to poor countries. They added something for the pope himself – a pair of deep red loafers.

When he arrived in Pavia the evening of April 21, the pope was thronged by well- wishers as he rode his popemobile to the town square to address young people. Chants of “Benedetto” rang out in the singsong that Italian young people had often cheered his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Pope Benedict’s visit, however, was mostly a series of quieter moments. He stopped outside San Matteo hospital in Pavia, where he greeted sick people at the end of a public ceremony, blessing them and whispering a few words to each.

In a speech, the pope said scientific and technological progress in health care must be accompanied by respect for human life in all its phases.

“The hospital is a place we could, in a sense, call ‘sacred,’ where the fragility of human nature is experienced, but also the enormous potential and the resources of human ingenuity and technology in the service of life,” he said.

Speaking at the University of Pavia, one of Italy’s oldest and most prestigious centers of learning, the pope said St. Augustine’s work testified to the importance of the interaction between faith and culture and of the dialogue between faith and reason.

He asked the university’s teachers and students to contribute to the “cultural project of Christian inspiration” that the church is promoting in Italy and in Europe. The pope and other church leaders have waged a campaign for greater awareness and recognition of Europe’s Christian heritage. Limbo reflects ‘restrictive view of ’

VATICAN CITY – After several years of study, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission said there are good reasons to hope that babies who die without being baptized go to heaven.

In a document published April 20, the commission said the traditional concept of limbo – as a place where unbaptized infants spend eternity but without communion with God – seemed to reflect an “unduly restrictive view of salvation.”

The church continues to teach that, because of , is the ordinary way of salvation for all people and urges parents to baptize infants, the document said.

But there is greater theological awareness today that God is merciful and “wants all human beings to be saved,” it said. Grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect Christ’s special love for “the little ones,” it said.

“Our conclusion is that the many factors that we have considered … give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision,” the document said. “We emphasize that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge,” it added.

The 41-page document, titled “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized,” was published in Origins, the documentary service of Catholic News Service. Pope Benedict XVI authorized its publication earlier this year.

The 30-member International Theological Commission acts as an advisory panel to the Vatican, in particular to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Its documents are not considered expressions of authoritative church teaching, but they sometimes set the stage for official Vatican pronouncements. The commission’s document said salvation for unbaptized babies who die was becoming an urgent pastoral question, in part because their number is greatly increasing. Many infants today are born to parents who are not practicing Catholics, and many others are the unborn victims of abortion, it said.

Limbo has never been defined as church dogma and is not mentioned in the current Catechism of the , which states simply that unbaptized infants are entrusted to God’s mercy.

But limbo has long been regarded as the common teaching of the church. In the modern age, “people find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness,” the new document said.

Parents in particular can experience grief and feelings of guilt when they doubt their unbaptized children are with God, it said.

The church’s hope for these infants’ salvation reflects a growing awareness of God’s mercy, the commission said. But the issue is not simple, because appreciation for divine mercy must be reconciled with fundamental church teachings about original sin and about the necessity of baptism for salvation, it said.

The document traced the development of church thinking about the fate of unbaptized children, noting that there is “no explicit answer” from Scripture or tradition.

In the fifth century, St. Augustine concluded that infants who die without baptism were consigned to hell. By the 13th century, theologians referred to the “limbo of infants” as a place where unbaptized babies were deprived of the vision of God, but did not suffer because they did not know what they were deprived of.

Through the centuries, and church councils were careful not to define limbo as a doctrine of the faith and to leave the question open. That was important in allowing an evolution of the teaching, the theological commission said.

A key question taken up by the document was the church’s teaching that baptism is necessary for salvation. That teaching needs interpretation, in view of the fact that “infants … do not place any personal obstacle in the way of redemptive grace,” it said.

In this and other situations, the need for the sacrament of baptism is not absolute and is secondary to God’s desire for the salvation of every person, it said.

“God can therefore give the grace of baptism without the sacrament being conferred, and this fact should particularly be recalled when the conferring of baptism would be impossible,” it said.

This does not deny that all salvation comes through Christ and in some way through the church, it said, but it requires a more careful understanding of how this may work.

The document outlined several ways by which unbaptized babies might be united to Christ:

– A “saving conformity to Christ in his own death” by infants who themselves suffer and die.

– A solidarity with Christ among infant victims of violence, born and unborn, who like the holy innocents killed by King Herod are endangered by the “fear or selfishness of others.”

– God may simply give the gift of salvation to unbaptized infants, corresponding to his sacramental gift of salvation to the baptized. The document said the standard teaching that there is “no salvation outside the church” calls for similar interpretation.

The church’s magisterium has moved toward a more “nuanced understanding” of how a saving relationship with the church can be realized, it said. This does not mean that someone who has not received the sacrament of baptism cannot be saved, it said.

Rather, it means that “there is no salvation which is not from Christ and ecclesial by its very nature,” it said. The document quoted St. Paul’s teaching that spouses of Christians may be “consecrated” through their wives or husbands. This indicates that the holiness of the church reaches people “outside the visible bounds of the church” through the bonds of human communion, it said.

The document said the church clearly teaches that people are born into a state of sinfulness – original sin – which requires an act of redemptive grace to be washed away.

But Scripture also proclaims the “superabundance” of grace over sin, it said. That seems to be missing in the idea of limbo, which identifies more with Adam’s sinfulness than with Christ’s redemption, it said.

“Christ’s solidarity with all of humanity must have priority over the solidarity of human beings with Adam,” it said.

Liturgically, the motive for hope was confirmed by the introduction in 1970 of a funeral rite for unbaptized infants whose parents intended to present them for baptism, it said.

The commission said the new theological approach to the question of unbaptized babies should not be used to “negate the necessity of baptism, nor to delay the conferral of the sacrament.”

“Rather, there are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible to do for them that what would have been most desirable – to baptize them in the faith of the church and incorporate them visibly into the body of Christ,” it said.

The commission said hopefulness was not the same as certainty about the destiny of such infants.

“It must be clearly acknowledged that the church does not have sure knowledge about the salvation of unbaptized infants who die,” it said. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, was president of the commission and head of the doctrinal congregation when the commission began studying the question of limbo in a systematic way in 2004. U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada now heads the commission and the doctrinal congregation. Cardinal Levada met with the pope to discuss the document Jan. 19 and, with the pope’s approval, authorized its publication.

Pastor says ‘words are not enough’

BLACKSBURG, Va. – Words are not enough to comfort grieving parents, said a priest who spent time with the parents of several of the slain Virginia Tech students when they first learned their son or daughter was dead.

In the early hours after the murder rampage on campus that left 33 dead, Father James Arsenault, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Blacksburg, was at Montgomery Regional Hospital with those who were wounded and their families.

Then he went to the Inn at Virginia Tech, a hotel on campus where parents seeking information about their children were asked to gather. He said he left the parish at 8:30 that morning and did not get back until 1:30 the following morning.

In a brief interview in his rectory late April 18 – after three full days of seeing to the pastoral care of victims, families and students – Father Arsenault said that approaching parents who had just heard their child was dead, he would simply say something like, “Words are not enough to express how sad we are. I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” and then try to wrap them in a big hug.

When he hugged them, they would break down and cry, he told Catholic News Service.

After staying with them a while, he would pray the Our Father and Hail Mary with them and lead them in prayers for the dead, he said.

Mia Ortega, a 26-year-old graduate student who also works for the university in student affairs, said in a phone interview April 19 with CNS that she was receiving “a lot of support from my family and my friends” to help her cope with the tragedy. She said she has had messages of prayers and support from all over, including from friends she worked with last summer as a Jesuit volunteer in Dublin, Ireland.

In an e-mail to friends early April 18, Ortega wrote, “It is hard to believe that it has only been two days. The days are long here in Blacksburg. “I am doing my best to get by. I slip from being numb to uncontrollable crying. Sometimes I forget about the whole thing, and sometimes reality slaps me hard in the face. … In some ways, I am expecting to wake up. It is like walking through a lucid nightmare.”

“It is also difficult to imagine the magnitude of the situation,” she added. “People on the news have been calling this a massacre. Massacre at Virginia Tech. I even have trouble saying the word aloud.”

She said Ryan “Stack” Clark, a resident assistant at West Ambler Johnston Hall who was killed there trying to come to the aid of the first student slain, was a friend of hers. “He was an incredible man, with a very big heart. … I miss his jokes, his smile and his beautiful spirit,” she wrote. “He died serving his community, doing what he loved best. I’m very proud of him, and I’m missing him.”

By phone Ortega said she is still numb and has not been able to sleep more than two hours at a time since the tragedy.

She said that ever since she saw the images on TV that the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, had sent to NBC the morning of the killings, she has not been able to turn out the lights in her apartment. If a room goes dark, she said, she sees the vivid image shown on TV of Cho with both arms raised holding the guns he used in the slaughter. “I feel bombarded by that image.” “A lot of us here are struggling” to understand what has happened, she said, but those images have not helped.

“Before that, we were demanding answers,” she said. “Now I know that any answer we are going to get is not a good one.”

She said her friends and colleagues were also very disturbed by the release of Cho’s images and many of them have stopped going to the major news Web sites because they know they will have to see those images again.

To help people cope with the fear that the Virginia Tech tragedy may provoke, the U.S. branch of the Christian Family Movement, a network of parish- or neighborhood-based groups of families that meet to support one another in Christian living, has posted a “Living Without Fear” program on its Web site, http://cfm.org. (The “Living Without Fear” link takes visitors to a section called “Special Meetings”; the program is No. 8.)

The nine-page program, which can be downloaded, provides a structured guide for a group meeting to reflect on fear, how it arises and how it affects people, and to discuss ways to face it from a Christian perspective. It begins with Scripture readings and several statements by individuals or organizations, including the U.S. and the Department of Homeland Security, about living with fear and overcoming it.

The guide for group discussion follows the “observe, judge, act” pattern that the Christian Family Movement uses as a way of moving from reflection and understanding to concrete actions dealing with an issue constructively in one’s own life.

– – – Contributing to this story were Jerry Filteau in Washington and Paul Haring in Blacksburg.

World must do more to support Iraqi refugees

ROME – The international community must do more to welcome and support the thousands of refugees daily fleeing the “horrific violence” in Iraq, a Vatican official said.

“The world is witnessing an unprecedented degree of hate and destructiveness in Iraq,” which not only destroys the “social tissue and the unity of Iraq,” but is exerting “a widening deadly impact” on the whole Middle East, said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi.

The Vatican’s representative to U.N. and other international organizations in Geneva spoke there April 17 at an international conference addressing the humanitarian needs of Iraq’s refugees and internally displaced people. Catholic News Service in Rome obtained a copy of his text.

The archbishop said history has shown that the international community can be effective in creating “durable solutions” to the massive displacement of peoples.

Now nations must help Iraq’s refugees and internally displaced people by providing “a coordinated, effective and generous response,” he said.

“This is not the time to look at technical definitions of a refugee,” he said. More countries need to open their doors to greater numbers of displaced Iraqis “so that pressure within the region may be alleviated on a short-term basis.”

Some 2 million Iraqis are displaced within their country, while nearly 2 million more people have fled the country since the U.S.-led war started in 2003. Between 40,000 and 50,000 Iraqis are leaving their homes each month, according to U.N. statistics.

At present, Jordan and Syria have absorbed much of the wave of Iraqi refugees, resulting in increasing pressure and strain on their own economies and social structures. The International Catholic Migration Commission also participated in the April 17-18 conference, sponsored by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. This migration commission works with migrants, refugees and other uprooted people in 30 countries around the world.

The Catholic commission echoed the Vatican’s calls for nations to increase support of humanitarian aid to those displaced by the conflict and to guarantee refugees protection from being involuntarily sent back to their home countries if their lives or freedoms would be at risk.

The commission also called on the United States and Europe to welcome more Iraqi refugees for resettlement in their countries and asked that all Iraqis be guaranteed the right to “genuine access” to asylum processes. The commission’s policy director, John Bingham, told Catholic News Service by phone April 18 that Chile and France opened their doors “to the many (Iraqi) refugees knocking outside.”

He said conference participants widely agreed that, while a political solution was needed for the long term, greater security and continued humanitarian aid were urgent to save lives and improve the dire living conditions inside Iraq and for Iraqi refugees.

Archbishop Tomasi said it was time for more countries to work together to “make conditions in Iraq and in the whole region conducive to a decent and sustainable coexistence among all its citizens.”

The ethnic and religious cleansing against Christians and other religious minorities by radical groups in Iraq calls for special attention, he said.

In the face of increased threats, large numbers of Christians have been abandoning their homes, but religious and ethnic diversity in communities must be protected, he said. He added that such diversity contributes to “a democratic experience” and can link the community to the rest of the world. While some of the threats Christians face involve kidnappings and direct violence, others are more subtle, according to an April 18 news report by AsiaNews, a Rome- based missionary agency.

For example, Chaldean Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad, Iraq, told the news agency that many Christian churches are now being forced to remove the crosses from church domes. It is just one of the newest ways Christians are being pressured to hide their faith or convert to Islam, AsiaNews reported.

Another worrisome development, said the agency, is U.S. troops’ recent occupation of the Pontifical Babel College for Philosophy and Theology in Baghdad. The university buildings had been empty since January after a lack of security and increasing violence in the city prompted church officials to move the college and its seminary to northern Iraq.

The U.S. military decided to “forcibly occupy” the buildings for use as an observation outpost, AsiaNews said, although U.S. officials reportedly said their presence there would be temporary.

T.O.R.C.H. support group keeps home school fire lit

Anita DiGregory hasn’t an inkling on how to pronounce any of the Latin words in her son’s lessons, but that doesn’t prevent the mother of four from continuing her call to home school.

“I absolutely love home-schooling and I wouldn’t do it any other way,” said Mrs. DiGregory. “It is so rewarding. I get to be the one who sees the light on their faces when they start reading. I get to be the one to grade their papers. I get to be with them all the time.”

The St. Peter the Apostle, Libertytown, parishioner has enriched and strengthened her relationship with her children, she said, by teaching them for the past six years. Although she admits the process can be incredibly difficult as she juggles various curriculum balls for three of her children, reprieve for Mrs. DiGregory arrives in the form of a support group called T.O.R.C.H. (Traditions of Roman Catholic Homes) designed for Catholic home-schooling parents.

Under the umbrella of the national T.O.R.C.H., the chapter home-based at St. Peter’s has existed for 13 years. “We were simply looking for a support system for the moms,” said one of its founders, Stephanie Rubeling, “and a group of kids that our home-schooled kids could interact with.” Both mothers claim T.O.R.C.H. is responsible for forming solid friendships within the circle of parents and among the kids.

“The friendships that evolve from this are so great and so moving,” said Mrs. DiGregory who attends the monthly meetings. “I can’t describe what a blessing this group is. We are a wonderful support to each other and bounce things off of each other.”

Centered around the Catholic faith, many of the extracurricular activities planned for the 50 or so families include a May procession, holiday parties, boys’ and girls’ clubs, community outreach, art and music classes, sports, and a current theatre production of The Wizard of Oz.

“As the group has developed and grown,” said Mrs. Rubeling, 43, “we have seen the beauty of it help to encourage our young people (and the entire family) in their faith.” Mrs. Rubeling and her husband Gary are about to graduate the first of their nine home-schooled children in June. “We have solid friendships that are pure and call on each other in holiness, instead of dragging us down into so many of the things that are typical in today’s young people. For this we are grateful!”