The Catholic Church’s pioneer of electronic evangelization, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, was a missionary of the modern age, bringing the Church into millions of homes and giving a sometimes obscure faith an approachable, contemporary face.

After appearing frequently on “The Catholic Hour” radio show from 1930 to 1950, his hit television series “Life Is Worth Living” drew millions of followers through the 1950s, won him an Emmy and landed him on the cover of Time magazine.

“My Uncle Fulton Sheen” by
Joan Sheen Cunningham and
Janel Rodriguez. Image courtesy
of Ignatius Press

The combination of Sheen’s personal holiness and tremendous popularity made him a perfect candidate for sainthood after his death in 1979. But his road to canonization was abruptly and indefinitely halted last December.

“He was a very holy, holy man and he deserved to be beatified,” said his niece, Joan Sheen Cunningham, in an email interview. She is the author of a new recollection, “My Uncle Fulton Sheen.” She added, “I’m disappointed that it was cancelled.”

In 1951, a year before his television program first aired, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of New York after being named national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, charged with promoting evangelization in the United States.

“He became a missionary extraordinaire without having to leave the studio,” Cunningham wrote in her book, which allowed him to raise “record-breaking funds for the missions worldwide.”

Cunningham, 92, who was close to Sheen from the age of 10 until two days before his death, relates her uncle’s “foolproof two-part formula” for living out his priestly vocation, centered around Eucharistic adoration (praying before the sacrament) and a special devotion to the Virgin Mary.

She also portrays Sheen as a man with “a ready sense of humor and the most infectious belly laugh,” who had proudly taught his dog, Chumley, to put his paws together in order to say grace before meals.

The Diocese of Peoria, where Sheen was raised and started his ministry, began the necessary paperwork for beatification in 2002 and sent it to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican department charged with vetting saints. Several years later a miracle was attributed to Sheen, a necessary requirement for sainthood.

In September 2010, a baby in Goodfield, Illinois, was born showing no vital functions for more than an hour. The child’s parents prayed for Sheen’s intercession for their son, who was miraculously revived. The parents named the child James Fulton Engstrom, and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints attributed the miracle to the famed televangelist.

Pope Francis approved the miracle last November, which paved the way for the canonization process. The beatification ceremony was scheduled to take place Dec. 21, but only two weeks before the ceremony, the Diocese of Peoria announced that it was postponed.

“The Holy See decided to postpone the date of Beatification, at the request of a few members of the Bishop’s Conference who have asked for further consideration,” a Dec. 2 statement from the diocese read.

“We were all packed and ready to go and then I got the call that it was canceled,” Cunningham said. “I was very, very upset. As is the whole family.” The Vatican gave no further explanation.

Some Catholic experts tie the decision to issues regarding Sheen’s time as bishop of Rochester, New York, from 1966 to 1969. The diocese has been entangled in numerous clergy sex-abuse cases. In September, the diocese filed for bankruptcy after state legislation extended the time victims of sexual abuse crimes have to file lawsuits.

“I’m hoping in August maybe the Vatican will look at it again and have the beatification,” Cunningham said.

Source: Religion News Service

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source

Easter is known as the holiday where churches see their highest worship attendance numbers, but concerns over the spread of coronavirus have led most congregations to cancel in-person services.

This doesn’t mean resources are not available. Many resources have been made available online for people who are interested in observing Holy Week and Easter Sunday.

Here, in no particular order, are four resources readily available for Christians under quarantine to use to observe Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

A virtual Stations of the Cross

For Good Friday, the Ohio-based Christian ministry the Missio Alliance has provided an online resource for those wanting to remember the crucifixion while in quarantine.

Last week, the Missio Alliance posted a guide that included both podcast and written meditations, based on the “14 Stations of the Cross,” which go from Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane to His burial after the crucifixion.

“Because most of us are not able to physically go to a church or monastery to walk the stations of the cross this year, I hope that these meditations will serve as a beautiful companion to you as we draw closer to Easter,” wrote Deb Gregory of Missio.

Focus on the Family resources

The conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family posted a group of resources for families staying home on Easter Sunday because of coronavirus concerns.

This includes a compilation of six articles on various topics surrounding Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus, apologetic works on evidence for the Gospel story.

The web page also included links to three broadcasts, one about teaching children about Easter and two about comprehending the importance of the Resurrection.

“During Holy Week and for Resurrection Sunday, we want to provide you and your family with great resources to celebrate our Risen Savior while at home,” said the Colorado-based group.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Gryboski

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source

The influenza pandemic of 1918, the deadliest outbreak of disease in modern times, exacted a terrible toll, and not just in lives. Much like the coronavirus today, it strained the bonds holding society together.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that at least 50 million people died during the influenza outbreak — more than during World War I — including about 675,000 in the U.S. Some epidemiologists think the death toll could have been as high as 100 million, John M. Barry wrote in The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

In Philadelphia, one of the hardest-hit cities in America, “fear came and stayed,” Barry wrote. “Death could come from anyone, anytime. People moved away from others on the sidewalk, avoided conversation; if they did speak, they turned their faces away to avoid the other person’s breathing. People became isolated, increasing the fear.”

How some Christians responded to the 1918 pandemic

Although health officials have avoided comparisons between the outbreaks, the impact of influenza 100 years ago on community life, such as church services, seems eerily familiar today.

In Providence, Rhode Island, evangelist Billy Sunday held a crusade, with one newspaper reporting that 10,000 people “grasped Mr. Sunday’s hand.” Although he vowed to “pray down” the epidemic, people in the crowd, sick with the flu, collapsed. The influenza canceled three weeks of his nightly services.

Government officials around the country called a halt to public meetings such as church services for safety’s sake, just like during the coronavirus outbreak. With no place to meet, pastors sent their sermons to local newspapers to print. One pastor in Los Angeles had Boy Scouts deliver Sunday school lessons to his church members. Other pastors encouraged their flocks to meet in homes, like the Apostles did.

In Ennis, Texas, a man said that he wouldn’t be able to attend worship services for the first time in 12 years. But he told the Gospel Advocate, “We had three funerals here Sunday.”

Some churches protested restrictions on indoor services. Others got around them by meeting outside. At the First Baptist Church of San Francisco, the theme of one such Sunday service was “The Spanish Influenza, One of the Last Plagues.”

Stepping over corpses

Wartime conditions contributed to the spread of the virus.

Soldiers, jammed into barracks at home and trenches at the front, moved from base to base and from America to Europe. One of the worst outbreaks came at Camp Devens near Boston. Built to hold 36,000 men, Devens held 45,000 in September 1918.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Steve Yount

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source

A judge has barred Gordon College from using a “ministerial exception” defense in a lawsuit brought by a former professor who claims she was denied a promotion over her opposition to the evangelical institution’s policies on sexuality.

Judge Jeffrey T. Karp of the Massachusetts Superior Court ruled last week that Gordon College can’t avail itself of a legal doctrine that exempts religious institutions from employment discrimination laws.

The college, which was founded in 1889, was sued by former associate professor Margaret DeWeese-Boyd in 2017. Deweese-Boyd began working as an assistant professor with Gordon’s Social Work Department in the fall of 1999 and was later promoted to associate professor.

She claims that Gordon College Provost Janel Curry and President D. Michael Lindsay denied her promotion to full professorship in February 2017 even though the promotion was recommended by the faculty senate. She claims the denial came because of her advocacy against school policies related to LGBT individuals and extramarital sex.

In her lawsuit, the former professor argues that the school committed “associational and gender discrimination” in violation of the state’s Civil Rights Act in addition to breaching the “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.” DeWeese-Boyd claimed that Lindsay and Curry aided and abetted “interference with her civil rights.”

The college filed a motion seeking a summary judgment from the court to determine whether the ministerial exception clause — as affirmed by the Supreme Court in its Hosanna-Tabor ruling from 2012 — barred Deweese-Boyd from suing on the basis of employment discrimination.

The ministerial exception is an affirmative defense grounded in the First Amendment that prevents the government from interfering with employment relationships between religious institutions and their ministerial employees.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Samuel Smith

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source

A day after the Franklin Graham-led Samaritan’s Purse revealed they were stepping back from work on a second field hospital to be housed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Mount Sinai Hospital, which was leading the effort, informed the cathedral Thursday that they will no longer be using the church’s space.

“We were notified this morning that Mount Sinai will not be pursuing its plans to build a field hospital at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine at this moment. Our commitment to Mount Sinai and to the city, our longtime partners, stands firm, and we will do whatever is in our power to aid the medical workers heroically putting themselves on the front line to help the sick,” a statement from the cathedral to The Christian Post said Thursday.

“As we continue to stand ready to support all in this crisis, we reaffirm our core mission and staunch belief in the worth and dignity of all people, and open our virtual doors to all those who want to participate in Holy Week services,” the church added.

The decision comes as Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that New York state was continuing to see a slowdown in the rate of hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions as social distancing efforts being taken to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus continued to work. Thursday saw the state’s lowest hospitalization rate yet with a 200-patient net increase in hospitalizations and 64-patient net increase in ICU admissions.

The state, however, also saw its highest number of deaths in a single day. A total of 799 people died of complications from the coronavirus in 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths to 7,067. More than 149,000 infections have been confirmed in the state and nearly half of those are in New York City.

In an interview with CP on Wednesday, Melissa Strickland, Samaritan’s Purse’s senior director of communications, said they would be pausing work on the field hospital as they were not sure if it would be needed.

“At this point we have taken a pause on the work as we assess whether this is a needed site or not,” Strickland said. “We are looking at very large tents that we would be putting up and so that would be a lot of manpower and a lot of work if we have to take it back down. And so we’ve taken a pause at this point in doing that. And that’s not for any reason except that we’re wanting to make sure this is even a needed expansion before we move forward.”

Prior to this development, there had been concerns about possible tensions in the proposed partnership between Mount Sinai and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine stemming from Samaritan’s Purse being introduced as a partner on the project.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, which is located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. The Episcopal Church, which has about 1.6 million members nationwide, is an LGBT inclusive denomination. Samaritan’s Purse is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization whose staff adhere to biblically based Christian beliefs and values.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source

Last week, together with my Orthodox Jewish colleague Jonathan Feldstein, I addressed the vile claims of evangelical newscaster Rick Wiles, namely, that COVID-19 was a divine judgment against Jews who do not believe in Jesus. But that’s not the only group Wiles singled out. He also claims that the virus was sent as a divine plague on the LGBT community. I kid you not.

Pointing to the virus-related death of attorney Richard E. Weber, Wiles said, “He was a senior lawyer for the LGBT Bar Association of New York. The lawyers who sue churches, the lawyers who sue ministries … one of their senior lawyers for the gay rights movement died today in New York City of the coronavirus. There is a judgment, I’m telling you, a plague is underway.”

I wonder if Wiles would point to the fact that the first COVID-19 fatality in Miami was a gay man who apparently was infected at a dance party on the beach. Would this “prove” his theory about the coronavirus being a divine judgment on gays?

But what would Wiles say about pastors, elders and bishops who have died of the virus? Or infants who have died? Was this divine judgment on them?

The first coronavirus casualty in Oklahoma was a Pentecostal pastor, presumably a man who viewed homosexual practice as sinful and certainly a believer in Jesus. Why, then, did he die?

The first fatality in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a Baptist pastor “described as a ‘big teddy bear’ with a passion for Jesus.” Did God send a plague on him?

A pastor who attended John MacArthur’s recent leadership conference in California has apparently died of the virus. Yet he, too, presumably opposed LGBT activism and was obviously a believer in Jesus.

SOURCE: Charisma News

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is ramping up its courtship of Catholic voters ahead of a likely November matchup against a Catholic Democrat, former Vice President Joe Biden.

The campaign previewed its message at a Thursday night launch of a “Catholics for Trump” coalition, touting the president’s religious freedom record and anti-abortion policies. In a sign of how significantly the coronavirus has upended the presidential race, the event also featured Trump backers promoting his response to the pandemic — with one describing it as aligned with Catholic teaching about solidarity.

Ahead of a general election where Catholics could prove to be vital swing voters, particularly in the Midwest, the coalition launch indicates that Trump doesn’t plan to limit his faith-based outreach to evangelicals, who have long been a key part of his base. But Biden, who’s frequently invoked his faith on the Democratic primary trail, could bring a unique advantage with Catholic voters to this fall’s contest.

At the heart of the competition for Catholic votes in November is the question of how many in the faith view abortion as the primary driver of their political engagement. Pope Francis has urged Trump to adopt an immigration stance consistent with his “pro-life” identity, and progressive Catholics have decried Trump’s approach to issues from health care to climate change as inconsistent with their church’s teachings.

Trump’s campaign, however, billed his embrace of anti-abortion policies prominently in its materials on its Catholic outreach kickoff. The event featured the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, a staunch anti-abortion advocate who displayed an aborted fetus in a 2016 online video that discussed his support for Trump.

Pavone said in an interview that while Trump is “trying to protect the right to life,” the president is acting on other issues in ways “completely consistent with Catholic teaching.”

“He’s protecting our people by strengthening borders, not to stop immigration but to stop crime, to protect families, to protect neighborhoods,” Pavone said.

Also joining the Thursday kickoff were Mercedes Schlapp, a senior communications adviser to the campaign, and husband Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and a co-chair of the new Catholic outreach effort.

Mercedes Schlapp, a former White House communications adviser, described Biden as “an extremist” on abortion during the event. Republicans saw an opening to peel off Biden’s Catholic support last year when the former vice president, who often talks about his Catholic school upbringing, ended his decades-long support for limiting federal funding of abortion.

The campaign is poised to get outside help in its work to turn out churchgoing Catholic voters from the nonprofit CatholicVote.org, which is investing in mobilizing that bloc with a pro-Trump message.

The group’s senior political adviser, former Kansas GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp, is also a member of the Trump campaign’s Catholic outreach project. Huelskamp accused Biden of failing to live out his faith, while “you’ve got a non-Catholic in Donald Trump who’s delivering on Catholic social teaching and principles.”

Source: Religion News Service

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source

They live secluded lives in a stone abbey near a privately owned forest in a rural part of eastern Iowa.

But the Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey are not closed off from the world’s troubles.

Last week, in response to the coronavirus, the 22 monks living in the abbey, about 13 miles from Dubuque, decided to offer pine caskets to financially strapped families with members who have died from Covid-19.

So far they have not advertised beyond the Trappist Caskets website, and the orders have just begun to trickle in.

On Thursday (April 2), a family that lost five members to the virus asked for caskets. On Friday, five more requests came in.

The monks decided early on to close their guest house and church so as not to contribute to the spread of the disease.

But they wanted to do more. The men, who range in age from their late 30s to early 90s, had been offering free child caskets for years. Now they decided to offer adult pine caskets as well. (Shipping costs are not included.)

“Our traditional mode of showing hospitality has come to a halt,” said Abbot Mark Scott. “By offering these caskets to people in need, it’s another way to extend traditional monastic hospitality.”

The near-national shutdown has taken an especially tough toll on minorities and people with low incomes. More than 6.6 million people filed for unemployment from March 22 to 28, according to the Department of Labor.

With deaths mounting — more than 6,000 have died in the U.S. alone, and experts expect thousands more — the need is only expected to grow.

Source: Religion News Service

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source