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National Catholic Register, Aug 8, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

A Massachusetts mayor is going to bat for including statues of two Catholic saints on the city’s new public safety building, saying he picked them because of their importance to police and firefighters and accusing opponents of harboring “‘negative attitudes’ toward Catholicism.”

But lawyers for local residents who object to the planned 10-foot-high bronze statues of St. Michael and St. Florian say the mayor is making non-Catholics “feel like second-class citizens” because of the statues, which they say violates the Massachusetts Constitution by favoring one religion over another.

The two sides exchanged pointed arguments in court papers filed recently in a state lawsuit brought earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Thomas Koch, a practicing Catholic and the mayor of Quincy, a city of about 100,000 just south of Boston, wants to install on the façade of a forthcoming $175-million, 120,000-square-foot public safety building statues of St. Michael the Archangel (the patron saint of police officers) and St. Florian (the patron saint of firefighters). The statues are expected to cost about $850,000.

“I selected the statutes of Michael and Florian for installation on the public safety building due to their status as symbols in police and fire communities worldwide. The selection had nothing to do with Catholic sainthood but rather with an effort to boost morale and to symbolize the values of truth, justice, and the prevalence of good over evil,” Koch said in an affidavit filed last month.

“If Michael and Florian did not have significance in the police and fire service, respectively, I would not have selected them for installation,” the mayor added.

The mayor is asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed May 27 in Norfolk County Superior Court in Dedham.

But lawyers for the plaintiffs, who are 15 residents of Quincy who object to the mayor’s plan, described the statues earlier this week as “icons with unmistakable religious significance,” noting: “Saints in general, and patron saints specifically, are prominent within certain sects of Christianity, especially Catholicism.”

An “objective observer,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued, would see the statues as “permanent installations that will invoke and convey, on an ongoing basis, the city’s preference for Catholic religious doctrine.”

“The primary effect of the statues will be to advance religion over non-religion, and Catholicism over other Christian and non-Christian sects and denominations,” a motion filed Aug. 4 states.

The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction from the state Superior Court judge preventing the city from installing the statues when the public safety building opens, which is scheduled for October.

A court conference in the case has been scheduled for Aug. 12.

A question of Massachusetts law

The legal wrangling is over the Massachusetts Constitution, not the U.S. Constitution. Residents who object to the statues have appealed primarily to state law.

During colonial times and in the early decades of independence, the Massachusetts government favored the Congregational Church over other denominations, forcing property owners to support their local Congregationalist minister with their property taxes whether they belonged to the church or not.

In 1833, the state disestablished the Congregational Church, declaring in an amendment to the state constitution approved by a state constitutional convention that “no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.”

On occasion, disputes over that language make it to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, as the Quincy statues’ case might.

In 1979, the state’s highest court upheld the ability of both the state Senate and state House of Representatives to hire and pay a part-time chaplain for each chamber — both of whom at the time happened to be Catholic priests — in a case called Colo v. Treasurer & Receiver General. 

In that same case, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court adopted for the state the so-called Lemon test after a 1971 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court stated three standards for determining whether a law that affects religious entities passes constitutional muster: whether it has “a secular legislative purpose,” whether “its principal or primary effect … neither advances or inhibits religion,” and whether it fosters “excessive entanglement between government and religion.”

In June 2022, after years of expressing skepticism about the Lemon test, the U.S. Supreme Court formally disavowed it in a case involving prayers offered by a high school football coach in Washington state called Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

In the Quincy statues case, the city solicitor, James Timmins, argued in court papers filed July 30 that since the U.S. Supreme Court has disavowed the Lemon test, “that test can no longer govern in Massachusetts, either.”

But the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which is the ultimate interpreter of the state constitution, hasn’t heard a case on that point since then.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in Quincy argue in court papers that since the state’s highest court hasn’t walked away from the Lemon test, then lower state courts must apply it — plus a fourth standard the state Supreme Judicial Court added in the 1979 Colo case: whether a “challenged practice” has “divisive political potential.”

Under those criteria, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argue, the state Superior Court judge must deny the city’s motion to dismiss and issue an injunction preventing the statues from being installed.

However the Superior Court judge rules, if the Quincy case makes the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on appeal, it will provide the justices a chance to revisit the Lemon test, including how the state constitution applies to disputes involving religion.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 8, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

According to Father Francisco Javier Calvo, Pope Leo XIV’s recent announcement that St. John Henry Newman will be declared a doctor of the Church represents “enormous hope,” because his figure is called to “illuminate the paths of the Church in the 21st century.”

Calvo is a member of the research committee of the John Henry Newman Chair at the Catholic University of Ávila in Spain.

The expert told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that it is no coincidence that Pope Leo XIV decided to name him a doctor of the Church, since St. Augustine was the prime source of the English saint’s theology.

“It is very significant that he is the first doctor of the Church proclaimed during his pontificate. As an Augustinian, Leo XIV recognized in Newman one of his own. Both share a spirituality centered on an interior encounter with God, on conscience as the place of dialogue with the Lord,” he explained.

St. John Henry Newman, Calvo noted, was a great scholar of the Church Fathers, especially St. Augustine.

In fact, the best-known aspect of Newman’s theological and philosophical work is his commitment to a “moral and upright conscience, which he defines as the natural sphere of encounter with the voice of God and is one of the central themes of his theology.”

“This connects deeply with the Augustinian tradition, from the “Confessions” to the “Soliloquies,” he noted.

Calvo also lauded Newman as a man “of profound truth and profound faith,” whose conversion to Catholicism in 1845 was the result of a journey marked by docility in the light of the Holy Spirit.

“Everything he did in his life — including his journey of conversion — he lived with absolute moral integrity. He himself said that he asked the Lord not for light for his entire life but for the next step, and the strength to take it,” the priest emphasized.

This attitude of constant discernment, Calvo added, is particularly inspiring in a time like the present, where there is an urgent need to recover a spirituality guided by listening to God and not by one’s personal pet projects. 

After his conversion he was viewed by Catholics as an ‘infiltrator’

Following his conversion, St. John Henry Newman faced both misunderstandings from the Anglican world and misgivings in the Catholic world, where he was even seen as an “infiltrator” or “a kind of Trojan horse.” Despite this, “Pope Leo XIII dispelled those suspicions by appointing him a cardinal,” Calvo explained.

One of Newman’s greatest legacies was his firm commitment to the formation of the laity. As rector of the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin, he promoted not only the training of good professionals but, above all, of “good Christians who would bear witness to their faith in their environment,” the expert explained. This vision, which seems obvious today after the Second Vatican Council, was profoundly innovative at the time.

Newman was also ahead of his time and had to face the challenge of responding to rationalist schools of thought and English empiricism, represented by figures such as Hume and Locke. “He knew how to respond from a deeply reasoned faith, taking up the philosophical presuppositions of modernity, but rooted in Augustinian spirituality,” Calvo emphasized.

But beyond his intellectual brilliance, Newman was, above all, a witness to holiness. “Being a Christian is a personal encounter with Christ that transforms one’s entire life. Newman understood it that way, drawing inspiration from the radical commitment of the early Christians, the witness of the martyrs, and the example of the saints,” he noted.

In this regard, Calvo recalled Newman’s motto, “Cor ad cor loquitur” (“Heart speaks to heart”), and said: “Faith is transmitted from person to person, through the attractiveness of a person’s life. It is not treatises but witnesses that evangelize.”

Newman’s proclamation as a doctor of the Church not only recognizes his holiness but also proposes his thought as a sure guide for believers today.

“We learn from his life, but also from his writings,” Calvo noted. “His intellectual journey, his theological and philosophical discernment, are a clear light for Christians to grow in their faith in this complex world, which so desperately needs authentic teachers and true saints.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Birmingham, Ala., Aug 8, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Edith Stein, the Jewish woman who would become St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was murdered in the gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp on Aug. 9, 1942. How did a brilliant Jewish philosopher not only manage to find Christ but also become a Discalced Carmelite nun, a martyr, and possibly — if the Carmelite order has its way — a doctor of the Church?

Find out when EWTN premieres “The Paths of Edith Stein: Father Mitch Pacwa’s Investigation” at 7 p.m. ET on Friday, Aug. 8, and 9 a.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 9.

Pacwa’s half-hour program is followed by Father Charles Connor’s one-hour program “Edith Stein: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross,” which airs at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 9, and 2 a.m. ET on Sunday, Aug. 10.

The journey begins as Pacwa shows viewers around the city of Wroclaw, Poland, and explains the significance of different venues to the life and spiritual journey of this intriguing woman. Viewers learn that Stein’s father died when she was just 2 years old, leaving behind his wife and 11 children, with Edith being the youngest.

Viewers also learn that Mrs. Stein was able to keep and even improve the family business because she was not only a strong and intelligent woman who had worked with her husband but also because she truly loved him.

To drive home the latter point, Pacwa shows viewers a photo of the Stein family and challenges the audience to find the oddity. Looking closely, viewers see that the photo of Mr. Stein has been cut out of another picture and pasted into the family photo. That’s because Mr. Stein had died years before the family photo was taken.

Pacwa concludes that while Edith learned from her mother that she had to show her family that she could take care of them after their father’s death, she also wanted them to see that he was still part of the family. Pacwa notes that Edith had a romantic desire for a love like her mother and father, but she found it in Christ.

Both Pacwa and O’Connor also discuss the love that mother and daughter had for each other and explain the life-changing impact that Edith’s “chance” reading of St. Teresa of Ávila’s autobiography had on the budding saint, who, after reading it in one sitting, famously declared: “This is the truth.”

Pacwa notes that even after her conversion, Edith Stein joined her family at synagogue to pray and to observe the great fast of Yom Kippur. He says: “This has been my experience with a number of other Jewish people who became Catholic. They didn’t see their Catholicism as a rejection of Judaism. … They found … they could understand their Judaism even more in the light of Jesus Christ.”

But that doesn’t mean this wasn’t hard for her mother. O’Connor says Edith was aware that while her mother hugged her newly Catholic daughter warmly as she left the house, she didn’t come to the window as she customarily did to watch her depart.

O’Connor tells viewers that Edith would spend eight years living with Dominican nuns in Speyer, Germany, where she taught at St. Magdalena’s. While that meant she put aside the rigors of her scholarly life, it gave her an intimate knowledge of convent life “and she began to grow more and more attracted to the idea that she might someday give herself to … religious life.”

While the future St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross never lost her love for St. Benedict, as evidenced by the religious name she took in Carmel, it was her love of St. Teresa of Ávila, and later St. Thérèse, that attracted her to the Carmelite order.

O’Connor then shares something about Edith’s journey that can help anyone who is struggling to make a decision.

“[Edith’s] desire to enter Carmel was growing with each passing day, but she was very much concerned with the effect that it would have on her mother and on her family. But finally, she thought to herself, ‘While I’m very concerned with it, I cannot wait the rest of my life. I have to make a decision … I have to do something.’ She was 42 years old. She knew that life did not go on forever. If she was going to make this move … she had better do it, and she had better do it soon, and so she decided that she would indeed enter Carmel.”

Her conviction that she shouldn’t put her decision off forever was somewhat prescient, since the Nazis murdered the saint on Aug. 9, 1942, at the age of 50.

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Rome Newsroom, Aug 8, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).

The first image to greet visitors to the basilica containing the tomb of St. Dominic in Bologna, Italy, is a mosaic of the saint next to a dog carrying a flaming torch in its mouth.

This is not a depiction of a pyromaniacal game of fetch but a reference to a dream that foretold the 13th-century preacher’s mission in the world — to be the bearer of divine fire across Europe, illuminating the darkness of heresy and sin with truth and charity.

“When St. Dominic’s mother, Blessed Jane of Aza, was pregnant, she had a dream of a dog with a torch in its mouth running around the world and setting everything on fire. She went to the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos and asked a monk what it meant. He replied that the child in her womb would be a great preacher who would set the world ablaze with the fire of his words,” Dominican Father Ezra Sullivan, professor at the Angelicum University in Rome, told CNA.

“In fact, the word ‘Dominican’ is a play on the Latin, Domini canes, which means ‘dogs of the Lord,’” Dominican Father Thomas Petri, former dean and vice president of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., explained.

Throughout history St. Dominic has been depicted in paintings and statues standing beside a canine companion.

“One source recounts that the dog Blessed Jane saw in her vision was a greyhound. That seems right to me,” Petri said. “St. Dominic should be associated with breeds that are fast and useful for herding.”

“Imitating Christ himself, St. Dominic is a hound nipping at your heels to bring you to God,” he added.

“In the early 13th century, the Church was experiencing increasing devotion among the lay faithful that was unmatched by the clergy. At a time when bishops, priests, and monks were living extravagantly and rarely preaching, St. Dominic came to see that the Church needed priests who lived in poverty but who were also preachers of grace and truth, especially in the face of heretical cults that were leaching the faithful away from the Church of Jesus Christ,” Petri explained.

St. Dominic Guzman was born in Caleruega, Spain, on Aug. 8, 1170. Throughout his life, he is said to have converted some 100,000 people through his preaching missions. He spread the devotion to the rosary and played a key role in doctrinal debates combating the Albigensian heresy, a revival of Manichaeism, which had taken hold in southern France.

Dominic founded the Order of Preachers — known as the Dominicans — in France in 1216, adapting the Rule of St. Augustine in obedience to the pope with an emphasis on study and community life in poverty. He died in Bologna, Italy, after several weeks of illness on Aug. 6, 1221.

Pope Benedict XVI said in February 2010 that St. Dominic “reminds us that in the heart of the Church, a missionary fire must always burn.”

“St. Dominic was given the grace not only to have a fervent zeal and love for Jesus Christ, especially Christ crucified, but also the wisdom to preach the Gospel with force and conviction,” Petri said.

Sullivan noted: “It was also said that ‘he always spoke either about God or to God,’ and therefore his words were like fiery darts that always hit their targets.”

St. Catherine of Siena, a third order Dominican, is frequently quoted as saying: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

However, Petri explained that a more accurate translation of what St. Catherine wrote in a letter in her dying days is: “If you are what you ought to be, you will set fire to all Italy, and not only there.”

She wrote this to her follower Stefano Maconi because she was “concerned that he was tepid in his devotion and pleaded with him to go to Rome to light the fire of divine charity there amid the turmoil of schism and infidelity the city was experiencing,” Petri said.

St. Catherine of Siena spoke of cultivating the “divine fire” as “cultivating the charity of God in one’s soul,” he explained.

“The way we cultivate charity is by committing ourselves to be with Christ in prayer, in study, at work, in the home, and at every other moment in our day,” he said.

“Most especially, however, such communion with Christ is nourished and strengthened by receiving the sacrament of charity — the holy Eucharist — in which the One who is charity itself comes into us and lights our souls aflame in love for him and for our neighbor.”

This story was first published on Aug. 8, 2019, and has been updated.

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