Bishop Peter Liu Cheng-chung of Kaohsiung addresses an interreligious prayer gathering for the World Games.

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan (UCAN) — The Church will provide religious services and information for visitors to the World Games 2009, scheduled to start on July 16 in Kaohsiung city.Bishop Peter Liu Chen-chung of Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan, said his diocese has set up a “Vatican Pavilion” at the World Games Plaza, the event’s social hub which will host cultural activities and various performances.

The Church pavilion is decorated with photos of Vatican City and displays Catholic books for visitors to browse. Church music will also be played here.

In addition, the local government has also agreed to a Church request to include Mass schedules and their locations in the Games brochure.

Bishop Liu said his diocese has invited an Austrian priest, Salesian Father Bernhard Maier, to help train Catholic volunteers and other priests on how to serve the needs of tourists and Games participants.

The priest, who is experienced in such matters, arrived on July 14.

To serve Catholics coming from different countries, the local Church has asked priests in the diocese who can speak English, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean or Spanish to assist in conducting Church services for the athletes and visitors.

Lay Catholics who can speak foreign languages have also been asked to act as guides at some of the Church’s historical sites in the area, said Bishop Liu.Tseng Hua-ming, chairperson of the laity council of the Holy Rosary Cathedral Minor Basilica of Kaohsiung diocese, said he had signed up as a volunteer in response to the bishop’s call that “the Catholic Church should not be absent from the World Games in Kaohsiung.”

Tseng and other Catholics, including some priests and nuns, will distribute information on the Catholic Church as a means of evangelization.

Earlier, on July 4, representatives of several major religions came together in Kaohsiung to pray for the success of the World Games. About 1,000 Catholics attended the event, which was organized by religious communities and the government.

The World Games, first held in 1981, are an international event for sports that are not contested in the Olympic Games, such as body building, squash, netball, water skiing and orienteering. They are held with the patronage of the International Olympic Committee.

World Games 2009, which will run until July 26, is expected to attract around 5,000 people from 105 countries.

BELGAUM, India (UCAN) – Mahadevi Bhadarwadi had no ambition in life until she met a group of tourists from Luxembourg at a Jesuit development center.

“Now, I want to go abroad and earn big money,” says the 23-year-old tribal woman who now works as a nurse in a top hospital in Belgaum, in Karnataka state, southern India.

Bhadarwadi, a Hindu, is among 43 young men and women the tourists had helped to complete professional courses. They did so through the Jana Jagaran (people’s vigilance), a center started by Jesuits in 1985 to help tribal villagers in Belgaum district.

The tourists met Bhadarwadi when they visited the center in 2004 during a holiday in neighboring Goa, India’s top tourist destination.

“The tourists changed our lives,” Bhadarwadi told UCA News. She said at that time she was working in a woolen factory for just 20 rupees (US$0.45) a day.

Father Joseph Chenakala, the founder director of the Jesuit center who invited the visitors, said they volunteered to support Bhadarwadi’s three-year course in general nursing and midwifery.

“Her performance encouraged others in Luxembourg to sponsor more students,” the Jesuit priest told UCA News. He said they named the program the “Mahadevi Project” after their first beneficiary. “Her determination, confidence and joy are exciting,” he said, pointing to Bhadarwadi.

The priest said that under the scheme, each student gets 200,000 rupees (US$4,165) to pursue a professional qualification. Bhadarwadi’s course cost about 265,000 rupees.

Bhadarwadi said she would have married early and led a simple village life if the visitors had not helped her. The Jesuit center had helped her complete 12th grade, but she did not have the means to pursue studies beyond that.

The center has turned the money from the tourists into an evolving fund and uses it to support others. Beneficiaries repay the money in installments after they finish their studies and secure jobs. Some have become nurses, others software engineers, medical representatives and hotel managers.

Father Chenakala said the money is given as an interest-free loan.

Currently, the overseas benefactors are sponsoring 35 students while the Jesuit center is helping another eight.
Sujata N. Doddamani, another sponsored student, said she wants to repay the entire loan so that another deserving person can get an education.

Father Chenakala says he started the project because he is convinced India will progress only if its villagers are empowered. “Most women here spend their entire lives in poverty and illiteracy,” he stated.

The priest says the Mahadevi Project has given new hope to young people. “They can not only dare to dream but also make their dreams come true.”

Jesuit Superior General Father Adolfo Nicolas accepting fruits during a Mass offertory procession on July 12 — Photo by UCAN Philippines

QUEZON CITY, Philippines (UCAN) — Christians have a responsibility to nurture hope and commitment in a superficial world, said Jesuit Superior General Father Adolfo Nicolas during 150th anniversary celebrations of his order’s return to the Philippines.The superior general celebrated Mass on July 12 in honor of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, at Ateneo de Manila High School, a school the order established. The high school is on the university campus.

Christians must keep hope alive through the way they work and live, even when this calls for extreme personal sacrifice, Father Nicolas told the crowd of 3,000 in his homily. “Dying unto oneself” is at the core of Ignatian spirituality, he noted.

Father Nicolas returned to the theme two days later at a Special Academic Convocation on the Ateneo de Manila campus.

He praised five former students and five other leaders in academic and human development work for serving as channels of hope in society today.

He said the stories and work of Ateneans “gave me hope” because these showed “the world can be different.” He noted that the present-day world suffers from “a crisis of meaning,” a problem arising from “a crisis of education.”

While “we have lost all the Christian imagination to be human,” he continued,” Ateneo awardees that evening showed that poverty does not have to be a given, if “Christian imagination” is used “to work for full human integral development.”

Spanish Jesuit missionaries arrived in the Philippines in the 16th century, running the country’s first school until Spain suppressed the order in 1768, expelling Jesuits from all its territories.

The Society of Jesus did not return to the country until 1859, when they founded Ateneo de Manila University, and established the Ateneo de Manila high school six years later.

Father Nicolas, head of the largest order of Religious men in the world, said that the more than 300 Jesuit priests, Brothers and scholastics in the Philippines is a sign of hope for the order.

The Spanish-born priest was in the country for July 12-14 events. He met privately with confreres and addressed gatherings of Religious and lay Jesuit partners.

Since their return to the country, the Jesuits have built a network of nine schools and universities around the country teaching tens of thousands of students a year. Their graduates have become leaders in various sectors, and some volunteer as lay missioners in Jesuit schools and apostolates.

At the convocation, short story and essay writer Gregorio Brilliantes, journalist and screenwriter Jose Lacaba and theatre and cinema scholar and writer Nicanor Tiongson were recognized with the recent Ateneo cultural awards. All studied at the Ateneo in the 1950s and 1960s and lived through martial law days 1972-1981 under Ferdinand Marcos.

Another awarded Atenean, Jesus Palma, served as professor and administrator at the Ateneo de Manila for over 50 years.

The Ateneo also recognized World War II veteran Eriberto Misa, Jr., for his work at the Bureau of Prisons 1949-1959 and 1991-1993. In his response read by his son, wheelchair-bound Misa cited pre-war Jesuit priests who inspired him to work for the humane and Christian treatment of prisoners.

“Caritas in Veritate” Is a Guide For Temporal Life

By Father James V. Schall, SJ

WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 8, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI’s new social encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate,” takes its place in the Church’s on-going effort accurately to state the fundamentals of human living. It is not what our eternal life is about, but what our temporal life is about, seen in the light of our eternal life. We do not de-emphasize one or the other, but take them according to their own truth as related to each other.

Though it repeats many of the matters that were dealt with in “Deus Caritas Est” and “Spe Salvi,” Benedict’s two previous encyclicals, this new document is not really intelligible without the profound analy sis of modern ideology and the last things that were found in the earlier encyclicals on love and hope.

In “Spe Salvi,” the Pope stated that politics could not be politics if it confused itself with eschatology. That is, if we think that our political life is our transcendent life, we in effect lose the proper dimensions of both. In the present encyclical, Benedict XVI basically states what we can and should do in this world seen now as the arena of the actions that form our souls.

The title of this encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate,” is significant. Of the three basic kinds of love — philia, eros and agape — none is safe if it is not pursued according to the truth of things, of the proper object of love. Just as we cannot love something that is not loveable, so we cannot love something unless we know what it is, which is saying the same thing in other words. The separation of truth and love in the name of love or “kindness” is th e characteristic of our times. Love, it is said, covers a multitude of sins. In the modern world, it eliminates them altogether if truth is not a component of love. “Two loves built two cities,” very opposite cities, as Augustine said.

One of the first things to note in this encyclical is that everything is seen against a metaphysical and theological background. Much is made of justice; even more of “gift.” Our very existence is a “gift.” We do not create ourselves, nor does God need to create us for some completion in himself.

The encyclical, distantly following Aristotle on friendship and benevolence, is quite aware that more is needed and expected of us than just what is our “right” or what is “due.” An ancient criticism of Christians was that they were so interested in the next world that they did not have time for this world. This encyclical suggests the opposite is true. Only if we have the next world right will we act rightly and nobly in this one.

The encyclical is also a reflection on Paul VI’s “Populorum Progressio,” written just over 40 years ago. Benedict rethinks the notion of “development,” a word that relates to the old Aristotelian notion of habits and how we acquire them. Benedict XVI follows a fine line that seeks to accept everything in modernity that is good and defensible, while at the same time pointing out its real problems. He is a natural law thinker.

But on the other hand, he always begins from where we are. Whether he speaks of business, finance, tourism, political structures, world poverty or economics, he begins with human beings already having acted in their public lives to make themselves into a certain kind of being based on what they are given to be in nature. Catholic social thought is not utopian, even when it insists that things can and ought to be better.

Particularly pleasing was the way in whic h Pope Benedict finally came to terms with the ambiguity from modern political philosophy in the word “rights.” In many ways, nothing has been more destructive to Catholic social thought than its uncritical use of the word “rights.” Benedict admonishes us that we first begin with “duties.” We can use the word “rights” provided it has a fixed content and does not mean — what it in fact means in modern philosophy — whatever we want or legislate.

When it comes to essentials, “Caritas in Veritate” is frank and to the point — that is, what it means to be “charitable,” what it means to be “truthful.”

— — —

Jesuit Father James V. Schall is a professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University and a prolific author. He most recent book is “The Mind That Is Catholic” (C UA Press).

New Undersecretary of the Society. Father Ralph da Costa, of the Karnataka Province (India) has been appointed under-Secretary of the Society of Jesus. He will replace Father Juan Andrés Llauger, who will return in his home Province of Aragon. Father da Costa is 69 years old, former Rector of De Nobili College in Poona and presently works at Prerana, the Center for Ignatian Spirituality in Bangalore. He will takes office in September.

New Secretary for the Spanish Provinces. Father Luis López Yarto, of the Castile Province has been appointed the Regional Secretary of the South European Assistancy for the Spanish Language, replacing Father Llauger. He will continue his ministry as Spiritual Director at Saint Robert Bellarmine College in Rome.

New ARSI Director. Father Marek Inglot of the South Poland Province is the new director of Archivium Romanum Societatis Jesu (ARSI). He replaces Father José Antonio Yoldi, the director ad interim. Father Inglot will continue to live and teach at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Video-Conferences. The General Curia is testing a video-conferencing system. Father Claudio Barriga, delegate general director of the Apostleship of Prayer and of the Eucharistic Youth Movement (MEG), had a “virtual” meeting with the managers of the five national offices of MEG (Canada, Chile, Egypt, Paraguay, Poland and Rome) to prepare for the 2012 international meeting of the Movement. A few small difficulties were experienced but the “experiment” was deemed a success as Father Bariga tries to coordinate the work of MEG in 43 countries that speak many languages. A room in the General Curia is being equipped for vide-conferences. This will enable Father General and the members of the Curia to participate in “virtual” meetings and consultations with Provincials and others throughout the world.

A response to: “Blessed” G.K. Chesterton?

I wish to comment on the Chesterton article.

The author refers to Chesterton’s cleverness and humor. He certainly had these qualities, but he is much more than that, as the author doubtless knows. I had a great Jesuit teacher of literature many years ago. I never forgot what he said to us one day about Chesterton: He is great, not like Dante and Shakespeare, but like Plato and Aristotle.

To me this came like a bolt of lightning. It is true, I believe, that he has that kind of greatness, … the greatness of encountering and dealing with being and human living. Dante and Shakespeare do this too, but in the manner of images and by way of literary beauty. Chesterton, like Plato and Aristotle, touches these directly.

[…]

Continue on the journey and the Lord will reveal His will.

D. Hinfey, S.J.

Pope Places Charity and Truth at Heart of Debate

By Father Joseph Fessio, SJ
NAPLES, Florida, JULY 7, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI has something for everyone in “Caritas in Veritate” — from praising profit (21) to defending the environment (48). But in these cases, as in all the others, he calls for a discernment and a purification by faith and reason (56) that should temper immoderate and one-sided enthusiasms.

Once again, Pope Benedict shows himself to be a theologian of synthesis and fundamental principles. In the titles of his three encyclicals he has used only five nouns: God, Love, Hope, Salvation, and Truth — the most fundamental of realities. And in the opening greeting of this encyclical he succinctly describes the contents: “on integral human development in charity and truth.”
Note that from this very greeting Pope Benedict has changed the whole framework of the debate on “the social question.” This was expected to be — and is — his encyclical on “social justice.” And indeed “justice” and “rights” find their proper place in a larger synthesis. But the priority is established from the outset, the foundation is laid, with “charity” and “truth.” “Charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine” (2). “Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power” (5).

Another fundamental principle, and a central theme of this pontificate, is the continuity of the Church and her teaching. Surprisingly, the central ecclesiastical text from the past is Pope Paul VI’s “Populo rum Progressio,” and Pope Benedict makes it clear that we do not have “two typologies of social doctrine, one pre-conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: On the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new” (12). This principle of continuity was expressed centrally in Benedict’s first address as Pope on April 20, 2005, and again to the Roman curial cardinals on Dec. 22 of that year.

Within this fundamental material context of charity and truth, and the fundamental formal context of the continuity of the Church’s teaching, Pope Benedict situates the centerpiece of the Church’s social teaching: “integral human development.” And by “integral” he means “it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man” (18, quoting Paul VI). Among the important dimensions of this wholeness, he notes that integral human development must be open to the transcendent (11: “auth entic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension. Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space.”) and it must be open to life (28: “Openness to life is at the center of true development”).

The inclusiveness of this integration is emphatically and perhaps surprisingly exemplified in paragraph 39. There, the Pope states that the “logic of the market and the logic of the state,” i.e., free economic exchange with political oversight and restraint, are not enough to secure human flourishing. There must also be “solidarity in relations between citizens, participation and adherence, actions of gratuitousness” or, as he says in summary, “increasing openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion.” Pope Benedict insists on a “third economic factor” in addition to the market and the state: gratuitousness.

Here is a radiant example of the fundamental, synthetic, and discerning character of Pope Benedict’s formulation of the Church’s social teaching, one which for me is worth the whole encyclical for its clarity, depth, and common sense: “If there is lack of respect for the right to life and a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational system and laws do not help them to respect themselves” (51).

There are times when one is especially proud of the blessing of the Catholic faith. This is one of them.

* * *

Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio is the editor of Ignatius Press and theologian in residence at Ave Maria Univ ersity. Father Fessio is also a former student of Joseph Ratzinger and belongs to Ratzinger’s “Schülerkreis.”

New Undersecretary of the Society. Father Ralph da Costa, of the Karnataka Province (India) has been appointed under-Secretary of the Society of Jesus. He will replace Father Juan Andrés Llauger, who will return in his home Province of Aragon. Father da Costa is 69 years old, former Rector of De Nobili College in Poona and presently works at Prerana, the Center for Ignatian Spirituality in Bangalore. He will takes office in September.

New Secretary for the Spanish Provinces. Father Luis López Yarto, of the Castile Province has been appointed the Regional Secretary of the South European Assistancy for the Spanish Language, replacing Father Llauger. He will continue his ministry as Spiritual Director at Saint Robert Bellarmine College in Rome.

New ARSI Director. Father Marek Inglot of the South Poland Province is the new director of Archivium Romanum Societatis Jesu (ARSI). He replaces Father José Antonio Yoldi, the director ad interim. Father Inglot will continue to live and teach at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Video-Conferences. The General Curia is testing a video-conferencing system. Father Claudio Barriga, delegate general director of the Apostleship of Prayer and of the Eucharistic Youth Movement (MEG), had a “virtual” meeting with the managers of the five national offices of MEG (Canada, Chile, Egypt, Paraguay, Poland and Rome) to prepare for the 2012 international meeting of the Movement. A few small difficulties were experienced but the “experiment” was deemed a success as Father Bariga tries to coordinate the work of MEG in 43 countries that speak many languages. A room in the General Curia is being equipped for vide-conferences. This will enable Father General and the members of the Curia to participate in “virtual” meetings and consultations with Provincials and others throughout the world.

From 11 to 14 July Father General will visit the Philippine Province to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the return of the Jesuits to the country (see further on) and the founding of what is today the Ateneo de Manila University. In 1768, the Jesuits of the Philippine Province, 154 in all, were expelled by order of King Charles III of Spain. They returned almost a hundred years later, in 1859, with the intention of evangelizing the southern island of Mindanao. Besides undertaking this pioneering missionary work, in December of the same year they assumed responsibility for the Escuela Pia, later renamed Ateneo Municipal. The present day Ateneo de Manila University has a student population of over 18.000. The Sesquicentennial Anniversary Eucharistic celebration will be held on July 12; Father General will be the principal celebrant. About 4.000 people, including 200 Jesuits, are expected to participate. The next day Father Nicolás will deliver the keynote address on: “Issues and challenges in Jesuit education today” before a group of Jesuits and their lay collaborators from the five universities, one college and other schools of the Philippine Province. That evening Father General stay at Arrupe International Residence; the international scholasticate houses more than one hundred men in formation, coming from all the provinces of East Asia as well as the novices of the Philippine and Chinese Provinces. On July 14 he will meet Jesuits and lay partners working in spirituality and social centers, seminaries, parishes and chaplaincy programs. Time has been set aside for him to visit friends in Manila: the staff of the East Asian Pastoral Institute, where he was director for six years, and the staff of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania, which he led as president for three years before his election as Superior General of the Society.

On July 15 Father General will leave Manila for Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where he will stay until July 21. From July 16 to 19 he will attend the meeting of the Major Superiors of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia and Oceania, and on July 17 he will meet the “Brothers’ Circle” of the Assistancy who will be having their biannual gathering at that time. The visit will be also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the “modern” Jesuit presence in Indonesia (“modern”, since Saint Francis Xavier had already served in what is today Indonesia in the 16th century). In 1859, two Dutch Jesuit missionaries landed in Batavia (today known as Java). Those humble origins have blossomed into the largest Province of the Assistancy with 348 Jesuits as well as 77 Jesuits in the two dependent regions of Malaysia-Singapore and Thailand. The official celebration of the event will be held on July 20th, and will be presided over by Jesuit Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja, archbishop of Jakarta; The Eucharist will be celebrated in Bahasa Indonesia, the local language, while Father General will deliver the homily in English. The previous evening he will have dinner with nearly 500 Jesuits and friends, family members and collaborators, and will address them on the themes of mission and collaboration. On the evening of July 20th Father Nicolás will meet about 200 Indonesian Jesuits. On July 21st he will meet with the Provincial of Indonesia and his consultors before returning to Rome.