I was a guest on The Station of the Cross (WLOF-FM) in Buffalo, talking about our efforts to block Gov. Cuomo's radical abortion expansion bill.

Use the Catholic Action Network of the New York State Catholic Conference and contact Gov. Cuomo and your elected state legislators, and urge them to stop the abortion expansion bill. 

The attack on unborn human life is again being waged in Albany. It is time for faithful Catholics, and all who know that human life begins at conception, to stand up and be heard.

In his January 2013 State of the State address, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared that he would “fight for the passage of a reproductive rights act.” This radical abortion expansion proposal is the one point of his 10-point Women’s Equality Agenda that everyone with a pro-life conscience must oppose.

A Catholic who is faithful to Church moral teaching can support much of the governor’s women’s equality agenda. Who could argue against pay equity for women, closing the wage gap between women and men? (Women in New York make only 84 percent of what males with similar jobs are paid.) Who would question that stronger laws against sexual harassment and human trafficking are long overdue, as is more effective protection for victims of domestic violence? Catholic moral teaching advocates for these initiatives.

 

At the Invest In Education rally at the First Niagara Center in Buffalo on Apr. 10, 2013, I shared some facts and figures regarding investments the Catholic Church is making in the education of children in Western New York. The diocese and the BISON Scholarship Fund have contributed a combined $21 million in tuition assistance to families whose children attend Catholic elementary schools. Watch my remarks and to learn more about the rally visit: Invest in Education 

Gracious God, we praise and thank you for the gift of life and newness of life in Christ Jesus. We thank you for the Resurrection of Jesus, your son, and for the life and light that shines on in the darkness of the world. We are all burdened in these recent days because of the plant explosion in Texas and the horrific bombing in Boston.

We ask especially Lord for your healing grace upon those who are grieving. We ask your healing love upon those who are injured still and recovering and upon medical personnel who are treating them. We ask you to bless those wonderful women and men, first responders and so many others, who walked into a very dangerous situation to come to the aid of their brothers and sisters. And we ask you Lord to give eternal rest to those whose lives were taken from them.

In all of this we pray, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

In my years as bishop of Portland in Maine, I had the privilege of participating in three World Youth Days, those electrifying encounters of young people from around the world with the Holy Father. I traveled with groups of young adults and teens from Maine to Cologne, Germany, Sydney, Australia, and Madrid, Spain. 

It was in Cologne in August 2005, four months after Pope Benedict XVI was elected, that I spotted a large sign posted on a protestant church. “Habemus Christum” it proclaimed – we have Christ. My first thought: this is a rather ecumenically insensitive retort to the famous “habemus papam” – we have a pope – that rang out in St. Peter’s Square that April 19 to announce the election of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.

Who among us has not known the bittersweet experience of spending special time with someone we love and, upon parting, feeling that small, aching sense ofseparation...aching because you know yourself in that person's presence to be somehow more fully the person you are meant to be? That ache of loss is magnified a thousand times when the separation has to it the mark of finality, as in death. I remember it well at the bedside of my mother at the moment when intuition nudged me to begin haltingly the final prayers for the dying minutes before she breathed her last. I remember, too, how strong was that feeling ofloss during the dark hours of those first few nights.