CNS - Catholic News Service | This Week in Origins

This Week in Origins

Editors: Contents of Origins CNS Documentary Service, Vol. 40, No. 13 (Sept. 2, 2010):

-- The rewards and security that employers and society offer workers today for an honest day's work do not reflect the global economy of the 21st century, says Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., in the U.S. bishops' annual Labor Day statement. It's time, he says, for a new social contract.

-- The head of the U.S. bishops' pro-life committee, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, urges support for legislation that would permanently bar federal funding of abortion.

-- Are men's religious orders able to think creatively about consecrated life today? Archbishop-designate Joseph W. Tobin, a U.S. Redemptorist newly named second in command at the Vatican body that oversees religious orders, says the clergy sexual abuse scandal, an aging and reduced membership, and the demands of professionalism may have left the orders unable to comprehend the true nature of their crisis or to envision alternatives and opportunities.

-- Pope Benedict XVI appoints Italian Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, an expert in church law who specializes in religious institutes, to lead a major Vatican-mandated reform of the Legion of Christ.

-- Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone spells out the broad powers of authority Archbishop De Paolis will have in reforming the Legion of Christ.

-- In a letter to members of the Legion of Christ, Archbishop De Paolis says the Vatican's intervention was necessary to save the congregation and encourages its members to hold fast to their dedication to Jesus, saying they should not question their vocation but re-examine it in depth and renew it.