CARDINAL TOBIN OF NEWARK

New Cardinal Attacks Catholics Who Support Trump

July 8, 2017

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

When USCCB’s “Convocation Of Catholic Leaders” adjourned on July 4, some observers cheered that the event was happily nonpolitical.

Well, that didn’t last long. Just hours after the conference adjourned in Orlando, America’s newest cardinal used the occasion to insult tens of millions of Americans with whom he disagrees politically.

Conference attendees were sent forth “to convey ‘the joy of the Gospel’ to the peripheries,” but Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., made it perfectly clear that Trump supporters need not apply.

In an interview with La Croix, a widely read French Catholic newspaper, Cardinal Tobin commemorated Independence Day by condemning what he called “an exaggerated patriotism in the United States,” resonating the tone of Barack Obama’s denunciation of America’s “aggressive nationalism” just two days before.

The cardinal used the interview to broadcast his sustained vilification of voters who opposed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “I think President Trump is appealing to the dark side of Americans,” he insists. In fact, his disdain goes so far that, just after the election, he detoured from his text at Notre Dame pointedly to mock personally the evangelical faith of Vice President Mike Pence, a fallen-away Catholic.

At least one can appreciate Cardinal Tobin’s candor: Before Pope Francis, he explains, the backward leaders of the American Church “were very marked by John Paul II,” and as a result “many Americans have moved away from the Catholic Church or do not find the meaning they seek because they perceive it as rigid.”

After this curious interpretation of post-Vatican II history, America’s newest cardinal lost no time making it clear just what peripheries he was open to in what his fans at The New York Times cheered as the “shifting church.” In May, he convened a special celebration to welcome “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Catholics” to his cathedral.

One wonders: Does this outreach really mean that “all are welcome”? Not necessarily; in fact, some Trump supporters might be downright irredeemable. America’s “exaggerated” patriots are “idolaters,” Cardinal Tobin insists — but, after dabbling in what one might call his own “dark side,” he quickly pivots, insisting that his unfettered scorn has a bright side.

In the interview, the cardinal magnanimously dismisses any notion of rancor for those he condemns. After all, he says, “as disciples of Jesus, we have to be careful not to exclude others.”

(As we go to press, we learn that others were indeed excluded: Michael Voris from Churchmilitant.com reports that his news team was thrown out of the conference by the USCCB’s chief of security less than a minute after their arrival. Voris’ network defends Humanae Vitae, the integrity of the sacraments, and the Ten Commandments, which the bishops intentionally left off the agenda to be “inclusive” — except, of course, when they weren’t being inclusive.)

Hichborn Reports
On USCCB Funding

Michael Hichborn, founding president of the Lepanto Institute, recently delivered a significant address to Catholics in Front Royal, Va. The intrepid pro-life investigator delivered a fact-filled presentation that was stunning in its findings.

“For all intents and purposes,” Hichborn explained, “the USCCB is little more than a political lobbying organization that implements certain government-funded civic projects. The vast majority of its actions are directed at obtaining government grants for social projects, and lobbying Congress [to influence] its funding and legislative decisions.”

Hichborn’s interest in the USCCB began years ago, when the late Francis Cardinal George, OMI, was conference president. As soon as the cardinal discovered that Hichborn was investigating radical groups funded by the bishops, he erupted: “There it is. You view the USCCB as your enemy. Let me tell you something…if you view the USCCB as your enemy, it will view you as its enemy.”

The reader should note that this subliminal hostility came from one of the most charitable, able, and orthodox princes of the American Church. Yes, Cardinal George was an “organization man,” but also a gentleman, so he agreed to meet with Hichborn in person in Chicago. Apologizing for being late, Cardinal George explained that he had just gotten off the phone with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, discussing the Obamacare legislation that she was about to ram through the all-Democrat House majority.

In fact, Hichborn recounted, from January of 2009 through May of 2010, the USCCB issued over 70 letters to Congress, action alerts to Catholics, bulletin inserts, backgrounder papers, prayer petitions, and public statements pushing for the passage of Obamacare.

“The end result of the USCCB’s efforts was to create a massive amount of momentum from Catholics across the country in support of the Affordable Care Act, only to slam on the brakes at the 11th hour because they didn’t get the abortion neutral language they hoped for,” he said.

The Wanderer reported at the time that the bishops, smug in their assurance that Obama wouldn’t lie to them, had diverted their efforts from health care to a national campaign advocating amnesty for illegal aliens, a high priority for Obama and an important ingredient in the revenue that the bishops received from the government every year.

The campaign was designed to reach down to the level of every parish in the country — so Obama’s betrayal on health care caught them flat-footed and, in Washington’s political vocabulary, they were “rolled.”

And They’re Still Rolling. . . .

Obamacare would never have passed, had the bishops firmly opposed it. Once it passed, and the faithful were burdened by the vile “HHS Contraceptive Mandate,” the bishops realized they hadn’t taught Humanae Vitae for decades. Timothy Cardinal Dolan, who succeeded Cardinal George as conference president, admitted to The Wall Street Journal that bishops had had “laryngitis” on Humanae Vitae since the 1960s.

So the bishops, bereft of moral arguments, did not even once object to Obamacare’s expansions of coverage for contraception.

Hichborn then bored into the particulars of the federal government’s billions of dollars of support for population control, focusing on the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a USCCB subsidiary that receives two-thirds of its funding from the taxpayer — well over half a billion dollars a year. The taxpayer money comes from the Agency for International Development (AID), the “foreign aid” agency that is the most diehard pro-abortion, anti-life agency in the entire federal government, no matter what party is in power.

The dependence on federal funding explains why the bishops who supposedly run CRS are so reluctant to criticize its funding of contraceptives, abortifacients, and abortions (the latter funding has been terminated by the Trump administration). Doing so would amount to “biting the hand that feeds them,” and diehard radical bureaucrats can get very testy when challenged on moral grounds about how they spend other people’s money (known in Washington as OPM).

Hichborn’s research sheds a new light on why CRS and USCCB officials have mounted a sustained attack on President Trump’s proposed budget, which includes serious reductions for foreign aid, abortion, and population control. The Catholic welfare agencies insist that their only goal is to “help the most vulnerable,” but in fact their leaders privately admit that the cuts would mean laying off thousands of bureaucrats, “experts,” and welfare workers that staff church agencies.

“If you view the USCCB as your enemy, it will view you as its enemy,” warned Cardinal George. Today, the USCCB is totally dependent on its indispensable lifeblood of federal funding. It thus views President Trump’s budget cuts, and thus President Trump, as “the enemy.”

The president has reversed Obama’s HHS Mandate, canceled Obama’s billions for abortion internationally and Planned Parenthood domestically, has reversed Obama’s attacks on religious freedom, has appointed a brilliant constitutional expert to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, and has saved Catholic education from the savage attack that Hillary Clinton had planned to direct, using her “Catholic” Vice President, Tim Kaine, as her stooge.

Are the bishops grateful? You decide.

http://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/frontpage/new-cardinal-attacks-catholics-who-support-trump/

Pete BaklinskiFollow Pete

• Thu Jul 6, 2017 – 11:59 am EST

[ Emphasis and {commentary} in red type by Abyssum }

High-ranking priest caught in cocaine-fueled gay orgy in Vatican apartment

Amoris Laetitia ,  Catholic ,  Francesco Coccopalmerio ,  Gay Mafia ,  Holy See ,  Luigi Capozzi , Pope Francis ,  Vatican

ROME, July 5, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — A high-ranking Vatican monsignor who is a secretary to one of Pope Francis’ closest collaborators {Cardinal Coccopalmerio} was arrested by Vatican police after they caught him hosting a cocaine-fueled homosexual orgy in a building right next to St. Peter’s Basilica. {The raid on the apartment FORMERLY occupied by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger probably took place on GOOD FRIDAY, 2017, which combines blasphemy with sacrilege to the sex orgy.}

Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, 49, was caught by Vatican gendarmerie in a raid some two months ago that took place in the former Palace of the Holy Office.

While the top Vatican officials have been mute about the raid, Italian media broke the story last week after receiving inside information.

Vatican police allegedly caught the monsignor, whom Italian media called an “ardent supporter of Pope Francis,” after tenants in the building complained repeatedly about constant comings and goings of visitors to the building during all hours of the night. The building is currently being used by various high-ranking churchmen, including prefects, presidents, and secretaries to the Roman Curia.

Capozzi, who on his LinkedIn page calls himself an “expert in canon law and dogmatic theology,” managed to evade suspicion from Italian police by using a BMW luxury car with license plates of the Holy See, which made him practically immune to stops and searches. This privilege, usually reserved for high-ranking prelates, allowed the monsignor to transport cocaine for his frequent homosexual orgies without being stopped by the Italian police.

Italian news service Il Fato Quotidiano wrote that the building’s separate entrance into Vatican City from outside the Vatican walls made it “perfect” for clandestine activity.

“Its main entrance, in fact, opens out directly onto the piazza of the Holy Office that is already Italian territory and is outside of the control of the Swiss Guard and of the Gendarmerie. Anyone, by day and by night, can freely enter into the Vatican by this entry without undergoing any inspection and without, of course, being put on record. A perfect location to enjoy the privileges of extraterritoriality but without having to be subject either to the inspections of the Italian State or to those of Vatican City,” the news service wrote.

At the time of the arrest, Capozzi was allegedly so high on cocaine that he was hospitalized for detoxification for a short period in the Pius XI clinic in Rome. He is currently in an undisclosed convent in Italy undergoing a spiritual retreat, Italian media reported.

“One thinks one is dreaming: in the most deplorable of ways, the Rome of today seems to have fallen lower than the Rome of the Borgias,” reported Riposte Catholique.

Capozzi’s arrest comes on the verge of him being appointed a bishop on the recommendation of his superior Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, the Vatican’s top canonical official.

Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legal Texts, is one of Pope Francis’ closest collaborators and ardent supporters.

Earlier this year, the Vatican’s own publishing house released a book by the Cardinal with much fanfare that defended Francis’s 2016 Exhortation Amoris Laetitia as allowing civilly-divorced-and-remarried Catholics living in adultery as well as unmarried cohabiting Catholics living in fornication to receive Holy Communion. Coccopalmerio maintained that the book was his own personal reflection on the matter and carried no legislative weight.

The Cardinal later defended his interpretation of Amoris, even though it contradicted perennial Catholic teaching, stating that what he wrote was no different from conversations he had had with the Pope on the subject.

“I spoke with the Pope at other times about these questions, and we always thought the same,” he said.

Coccopalmerio’s book was later praised by U.S. Cardinal Blase Cupich, who, in a foreword to the English edition of the book, said that it “fully complies with traditional Church teaching on marriage but is also in conformity with accepted standards of a pastoral approach that is positive and constructive.”

The fact that it was Coccopalmerio’s trusted secretary who was behind the orgies makes the Cardinal’s past declarations on the “positive elements” of gay couples take on pressing significance.

In a 2014 interview with Rossoporpora, the Cardinal said that while homosexual relationships are deemed “illicit” by the Church, Catholic leaders, such as himself, must “emphasize” the “positive realities” that he said are present in homosexual relationships.

“If I meet a homosexual couple, I notice immediately that their relationship is illicit: the doctrine says this, which I reaffirm with absolute certainty. However, if I stop at the doctrine, I don’t look anymore at the persons. But if I see that the two persons truly love each other, do acts of charity to those in need, for example … then I can also say that, although the relationship remains illicit, positive elements also emerge in the two persons. Instead of closing our eyes to such positive realities, I emphasize them. It is to be objective and objectively recognize the positive of a certain relationship, of itself illicit,” he said at that time.

When the interviewer noted that some attendees at the Synod on the Family were tending in such a direction towards homosexuals, Coccopalmerio agreed. He then immediately went on to criticize those who feared that “valuing the positive elements” of homosexual relationships would be “undermining” the Church’s doctrine on marriage and sexuality, saying such a conclusion was “problematic.”

Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan highlighted in a talk given in Washinton D.C. last October the moral principle that “heresy” always goes hand-in-hand with an “unchaste life.” Where there is heresy, there is also sexual immorality, he said.

Michael Hichborn, president of the U.S.-based Lepanto Institute, said he highly suspects Coccopalmerio knew of the orgies.

“Given the monitoring and whispering that goes on in the Vatican, it is unlikely to the point of absurdity that Cardinal Coccopalmerio was unaware of Msgr. Capozzi’s disgusting activities. In fact, when we consider the 300-page document on the homosexual lobby that was handed to Pope Benedict XVI just before he resigned, the probability is that many who work in the Vatican were fully aware of what Capozzi was doing, and that such activities are taking place among other clergy as well,” he added.

The 79-year-old Cardinal is well beyond the age of retirement, set at 75. Despite this, Pope Francis has kept him at his post. This fact becomes all the more interesting given Pope Francis’ recent removal of the 69-year-old Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, from his post last week. Muller, unlike Coccopalmerio, has taken an orthodox stand from the beginning of Francis’ pontificate, opposing a liberal interpretation of Amoris Laetitia favored by Francis-supporters.

LifeSiteNews reached out to the Holy See Press Office for comment on a homosexual orgy happening inside a Vatican building by a high-ranking prelate, but received no reply.

Hichborn said that the homosexual orgy happening right next to St. Peter’s reveals a “mass apostasy” that is currently happening within the Catholic Church at the highest levels.

“The Vatican is now ground zero for a mass apostasy that is happening right now within the Catholic Church,” he told LifeSiteNews.

It is interesting to note that despite Capozzi’s arrest months ago, he is still listed as an active staff member on the website of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legal Texts.

Hichborn said that the Church’s enemies are now trying to destroy her from within.

“We know for a fact that Communists and homosexuals were specifically recruited as far back as the 1920’s to infiltrate seminaries. It was a concerted effort to destroy the Church from within. What we are seeing is the culmination of nearly 100 years worth of this effort playing itself out,” he said.

Hichborn said that faithful Catholics must not abandon their Mother, the Church, in the face of such evil.

“In times such as these, many will be deeply scandalized and tempted to leave the Church. But it is imperative for Catholics to remember that Holy Mother Church is completely blameless, despite the terrible things done by men who represent Her. What Capozzi was caught doing is absolutely vile, but his crime was as much against the Church he claims to serve as it was against the faithful who are affected by his actions,” he said.

“But if we remember that our Faith had its beginnings in the Death of Our Lord, then we can look forward to the Glory which follows the Passion of His Mystical Bride, Holy Mother Church,” he added.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Edward Pentin

According to reports in the mainstream media, Vatican police broke up a drug-fueled homosexual debauched party in an apartment of the Holy Office, but how true is it?

The news first broke in a June 28 article in Il Fatto Quotidiano: the Vatican gendarmerie raided a flat in the same building as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith where they discovered hard drugs and a group of men engaged in homosexual activity. A number of prominent secular English-speaking media outlets have subsequently published extensive details of the Il Fatto Quotidiano report.

The article claims the occupant of the apartment was the secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, the Church’s most important canon law office.

The report further claims that the area of the building was reserved not just for monsignors but senior curial officials, suggesting that the secretary had influential friends in high places to secure such a prestigious apartment.

Others residing in the Holy Office reportedly complained about a steady stream of young male visitors and of noisy parties in the secretary’s apartment — complaints that prompted the police raid. Further suspicions were also raised when others saw the secretary, a monsignor from the diocese of Prenestina near Rome, had access to a luxury car with Vatican plates which allegedly allowed him to bring drugs into the Vatican without ever being stopped by the Vatican police.

The article goes on to say that after the police bust, the secretary was taken to the Pio XI clinic in Rome where he underwent detoxification treatment for cocaine use. He was then sent away to a monastery at an unknown location in Italy.

The article’s author, Francesco Antonio Grana, says Pope Francis, whose Santa Marta residence is just 500 yards from the Holy Office, was aware of the raid and knew of the monsignor’s capture. Grana also points out that the main entrance to the Holy Office opens onto Italian territory and so is out of the control of the Swiss Guard and the Vatican police.

“Anyone, day and night, can enter the Vatican freely through this entrance without being subjected to any check,” Grana observed, adding that it made the Holy Office “a perfect location to enjoy the privileges of extraterritoriality without having to undergo checks of either the Italian State or those of Vatican City.”

He also revealed that Cardinal Coccopalmerio had reportedly recommended, unsuccessfully, that the secretary be made a bishop.

The Vatican is refusing to discuss the lurid story. Laura Signore, secretary to the commander of the Vatican police, Domenico Giani, told the Register June 30 that “as usual” the police commander “cannot issue any kind of statement or interviews.”

She added that the article is “seriously lacking in truth” and recommended we contact the Holy See Press Office for further information.

Vatican won’t confirm

Holy See spokesman Greg Burke made it clear he would not confirm the orgy allegations, and did not comment when asked if he could not confirm all, or just parts, of the account reported in Il Fatto Quotidiano. Asked later if the Vatican would comment when the story had received global attention, Burke continued to remain silent.

On July 6, the Register called the secretary in question on his cell phone, but he instantly refused to speak when told he was speaking to a journalist, mumbling words to the effect: “Look, I cannot talk,” and hanging up.

In the meantime, a reliable senior member of the curia has told the Register that he has heard from “multiple sources” that the story is true, including from another senior curial figure.

He said the extent of homosexual practice in the Vatican has “never been worse,” despite efforts begun by Benedict XVI to root out sexual deviancy from the curia after the Vatileaks scandal of 2012.

A Vatican official who used to greet Cardinal Coccopalmerio’s secretary from time to time, told the Register he had noticed he hadn’t seen him for at least two months, and before he disappeared, had become very thin.

The Register also contacted Cardinal Coccopalmerio June 6 directly via email, asking if he was able to confirm the story, but he has so far not responded.

The precise details of the reported events in the CDF therefore remain open to question, but the substance of the story appears to be true. If so, many would find such behavior taking place in the Holy Office not only unconscionable but also highly sacrilegious.

The Holy Office building, which today is also home to some religious sisters as well as the CDF, dates back to the 16th century. From 1908 to 1965, the CDF was officially known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and its purpose was to “spread sound Catholic doctrine and defend those points of Christian tradition which seem in danger because of new and unacceptable doctrines.”

Since Benedict XVI’s pontificate, the Vatican dicastery has also been responsible for handling clerical sex abuse cases, although it should be stressed this scandal appears to have had nothing to do with the Congregation.

Pope Francis has addressed the issue of homosexuality in the Vatican before, and in particular the existence of a gay lobby. Returning from World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, he said he had yet to find “anyone who can give me a Vatican identity card with ‘gay’ [written on it]. They say they are there.”

After saying all lobbies are bad, he cited the Catechism’s teaching against marginalizing homosexual persons, saying, “If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them?”

Last year, Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, a close adviser to Pope Francis, acknowledged the presence of a “gay lobby” in the Vatican and said that “little by little the Pope is trying to purify it.”

Elmar Mäder, a former commander of the Swiss Guard from 2002 to 2008, said last year “a network of homosexuals” exists within the Vatican after a series of claims about homosexual priests working in the curia. “I cannot refute the claim that there is a network of homosexuals,” he said. “My experiences would indicate the existence of such a thing,” he told the Swiss newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag.

Even demons are repulsed

In light of the latest scandal and the current situation, one former official urged readers to recall the warningsof the Lord on homosexual acts, especially between priests, as explained by St. Catherine of Siena in her Dialogues written as if dictated by God Himself.

The medieval mystic, co-patron of Rome and Doctor of the Church, relayed the words at a time when a number of clergy had fallen into grave sin.

Such priests, the Lord told St. Catherine, not only fail from resisting their fallen nature, “but do even worse as they commit the cursed sin against nature [homosexual acts].”

“Like the blind and stupid having dimmed the light of the understanding, they do not recognize the disease and misery in which they find themselves,” the Lord continued, adding that it not only causes God “nausea, but displeases even the demons themselves, whom these miserable creatures have chosen as their lords.”

He added that “this sin against nature is so abominable that, for it alone, five cities were submersed, by virtue of the judgement of My Divine Justice, which could no longer bear them.” The Lord told St. Catherine that even the demons are “repulsed upon seeing such an enormous sin being committed.”

As a remedy, St. Catherine recounted the Lord saying:

“Never cease offering me the incense of fragrant prayers for the salvation of souls, for I want to be merciful to the world. With your prayers and sweat and tears, I will wash the face of my bride, Holy Church. I showed her to you earlier as a maiden whose face was all dirtied as if she were a leper. The clergy and the whole of Christianity are to blame for this because of their sins, though they receive their nourishment at the breast of this bride.”

CRISIS MAGAZINE

Tagged as Democratic Party, political rhetoric, progressives, The Left

By Stephen M. Krason

Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” column appears monthly (sometimes bi-monthly) in Crisis Magazine. He is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies and associate director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is also co-founder and president of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. He is the author, most recently, of The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic (Transaction Publishers, 2012), and editor of three volumes: Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Child Protective System (Scarecrow Press, 2013) and The Crisis of Religious Liberty(Rowman and Littlefield, 2014); and most recently, Challenging the Secular Culture: A Call to Christians (Franciscan University Press). His next book is Catholicism and American Political Ideologies (forthcoming this fall from Hamilton Books). He is also the author of a new novel, American Cincinnatus.

How much should parents beat themselves up when kids leave the Church?

 Katrina Fernandez |

Alex Kosev | Shutterstock

Keep the communication going but remember: the journey of faith is your child’s to make.

There are few things more heartbreaking for a Catholic parent then to watch their children abandon their faith and leave the Church. When I addressed this issue in my last column the response from parents going through this very ordeal was overwhelming.

What if you do everything right — parochial school, family rosaries, take the children to adoration, never miss a Mass, pray together all the time, serving at the altar, all of it — and they still decide to leave the Church? Then what?

Please parents, forgive yourselves. Stop carrying around the pain of blame. If you spend too much analyzing everything you think you did wrong or could have done better your own mental and spiritual peace will be negatively affected. Refuse to become the victim and let your heartbreak consume you to the point of self absorption.

Realize that this journey is your child’s to make. We all have our own stories of how we came to be where we are in within the Church. I ran the gauntlet of disbelief and doubt before I found myself converting to Catholicism at the age of 30. My grandmother came back to the Church on her deathbed and my mom returned after a 40-year absence from the sacraments.

The problem with youth is that it believes itself to be all-knowing and invincible. I remember my own strong headed youth and later my struggle to find something substantial to believe in. When I think of all that I went through to get where I am today I recall the series of paintings by Thomas Cole called The Voyage of Life.

Youth is strong and vibrant with the world laid out before them, leaving little room for the certainty of mortality and the eternal consequences of feckless spiritual wandering.

Parents, try to remember your own youth and have patience with your children. Have forgiveness and patience for yourself and try your best to embrace this as an exercise in faith and trust.

While writing this I researched the various advice written on this subject. Many suggested not to nag or force the conversation, suggesting for parents to just back off. While well-intentioned (and perhaps effective advice in some circumstances or families) I wonder would the same advice be applicable to a child with a serious drug habit. What parent wouldn’t aggressively intervene to save their child’s life? Therefore, I cannot condone a passive approach to such a grave matter.

How lacking our Church would be if St. Monica, for fear of losing the relationship with St. Augustine, didn’t cry and beg prayers all over town and follow her son to Rome and Milan?  St. Monica very aggressively intervened for her son’s salvation. When people suggest St. Monica as a model to parents of wayward children they usually just mean to model her example of ceaseless prayer. But she also climbed on a boat, crossed the sea, and chased her son across Italy. Her example is completely contrary to the “don’t nag, back off” advice more accepted and practiced.

Read more: Prayer to St. Monica: Help my child turn to Christ!

Storm the heavens in prayer. Ask for saintly intercession. Have Masses offered for their conversion. But at the same time, don’t shy away from having those conversations that need to be had. Voice your concern and disappointment. As parents would we not do the same for anything else harmful we saw our children doing? Why is there this exception made for matters of faith, which have far more serious everlasting consequences?

Start asking those tough thought-provoking questions. Initiate an earnest conversation with your adult children, talking to them about their decision to leave the Church and see if you can determine the root cause of their decision. Did they stop going to Mass because they believe you can still be a good person and not go to Church or because they are plagued by spiritual doubt? Do they not fully understand the nature of sin and its consequences? Knowing the “why” can help determine the “what next.”

Maybe they simply don’t realize that faith is a gift, and that they can ask for it.

Invite them to Mass with you and if they have children, invite your grandchildren to Mass. If it weren’t for my Abuela I wouldn’t have set foot inside a Catholic Church until I was in my twenties.

Be a joyful Catholic, set that example, put your faith and trust in the Lord, and pray without ceasing — but at the same time let your children know that you love them more than anything on this earth and that you’ll never give up fighting for them.