January 4, 2024

Catholic News

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - A record number of college-age students, priests, bishops, religious brothers, sisters, and more are attending this week’s SEEK24 conference in downtown Saint Louis with anticipation already building for 2025’s conference, set to be held in Salt Lake City. The conference, which is being held by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) for a second straight year in Saint Louis, has attracted nearly 20,000 young people for presentations and talks related to the Catholic faith from world-renowned speakers as well as opportunities for Mass, confession, and Eucharistic adoration. As of Tuesday evening, the conference had 19,707 paid attendees registered, a 28% increase over last year. The keynote address Tuesday evening, presented in the former NFL stadium attached to the convention center, was delivered by Monsignor James Shea and Sister Mary Grace, SV. The conference continues all this week, wrapping up with a closing Mass on Friday morning. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256438/seek24-continues-in-st-louis-with-an-eye-to-salt-lake-city-in-2025 The Vatican’s doctrine office issued a response on Thursday to “clarify the reception of Fiducia Supplicans” amid widespread international backlash to the Vatican’s recent declaration on same-sex blessings. Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), published a five-page press release on January 4 that refers to Fiducia Supplicans as “perennial doctrine” and underlines that pastoral blessings of couples in irregular situations should not be “an endorsement of the life led by those who request them.” Fernández said that the responses he has received from bishops’ conferences around the world to the declaration highlight “the need for a more extended period of pastoral reflection” and that what is expressed in these bishops’ statements “cannot be interpreted as doctrinal opposition because the document is clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality.” The clarification was published two and a half weeks after the December 18 publication of Fiducia Supplicans, which prompted strong backlash from bishops in several African and Eastern European countries as well as confusion and division from other parts of the world. Some bishops have welcomed the declaration, some are approaching it with caution, and others are refusing to implement it. The press release did not mention anything about cases in which priests have already violated the terms stipulated in the Fiducia Supplicans declaration, which requires that blessings be spontaneous and cannot be a “blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion.” https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256439/vatican-responds-to-widespread-backlash-on-same-sex-blessing-directive Today, the Church celebrates Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, foundress and first superior of the Sisters of Charity in the United States. Elizabeth Ann Seton was beatified in 1963 and she was canonized on September 14, 1975. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-elizabeth-ann-seton-105