St. Benedict Catholic Church, Duluth, MN

As we all know, the priesthood is a pretty unique profession. From the faith perspective, we call it a vocation, because that is what it is — a calling from God. From a secular perspective, it is a very unique job for many reasons, one of which I am sure we hardly give thought to: Other than maybe teachers, who speak to their students following a particular curriculum, Catholic priests are one of the very few professions that speak to an audience every day.

Father Richard Kunst

Our Catholic faith rightly demands that we protect innocent human life and therefore that we oppose abortion and oppose laws permitting abortion. This is a straightforward matter of justice in service to the common good.

In our complex form of government, as our nearly 50 year battle to undo the damage caused by Roe v. Wade shows, doing this is no easy task when some of our fellow citizens disagree with us vehemently and when many more of them are conflicted and ambivalent. That’s why Catholic teaching, for instance Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical on the Gospel of Life, make it clear that we can pursue this goal of protecting the unborn incrementally, step by step.

Bishop Daniel J. Felton send the following memo to priests and deacons of the diocese in response to Pope Francis’s letter today regarding the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass:

July 16, 2021