More than 1,000 Bills and Resolutions Filed for 2024 Legislative Session
Friday, December 1, 2023, marked the first day that Missouri legislators could file bills for the 2024 legislative session. As of December 6, 2023, over 1,000 bills and resolutions have been filed thus far. The MCC staff will be reviewing and tracking legislation of interest and will be reporting on those bills in the coming weeks. Our 2024 public policy priorities will be finalized and published in January, but for now, you can take a look at the public policy priorities from 2023 on our website.
Report Shows Broader FBI Surveillance of Catholic Communities
On Monday the U.S. Senate held a congressional hearing on a new report that indicates the FBI’s surveillance of traditional Catholic Churches extended beyond the organization’s Richmond office, as the Bureau had previously claimed. Although FBI officials have argued that this problem was isolated to one field office, the report found that “the FBI had plans for an external, FBI-wide product based on the Richmond memorandum.”
The full story can be read here on the Catholic News Agency website.
Over 60 Cities Will Pray the Rosary for the Unity of Spain
On December 8, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of Spain, Catholics of over 60 cities in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and the United States, will pray the rosary in public for the unity of Spain, requesting “the intercession and help of the Virgin Mary to avoid the territorial and spiritual dismemberment of the country”.
Last month, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) formed a coalition with left-wing and separatist parties to remain in power. Among said parties are Bildu, the political heirs of the terrorist Basque group ETA, which claimed the lives of more than 800 people over 40 years, and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and Junts per Catalunya, which were responsible for the secessionist coup d’etat in Catalonia carried out in 2017. To secure their support, the PSOE has agreed to an amnesty law that would benefit those who have been convicted for crimes such as terrorism, malfeasance, embezzlement of public money, and assault on police officers, and that has raised concerns among European Union leaders and officials. So far, protests via public expressions of faith in the public square have been met with open hostility by the government.
The full story can be read here.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 8
Catholics around the world will celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 8.
It was not until 1854 that Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Roman Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted between 1851–1853, promulgated the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus (Latin for “Ineffable God”), which defined ex cathedra the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. What is important to note is that the bishops widely consulted the faithful to see what they held to be true. In this sense the dogma of the Immaculate Conception defined by Pope Pius IX is also viewed as a key example of the use of sensus fidelium shared by believers and the Magisterium rather than pure reliance on Scripture and Tradition
On 8 December 1854, Pope Pius IX promulgated the document Ineffabilis Deus, in which the history of the doctrine is summarily traced, and the proclamation:
We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.
The papal definition of the dogma declares with absolute certainty and authority that Mary possessed sanctifying grace from the first instant of her existence and was free from the lack of grace caused by the original sin at the beginning of human history. Mary’s salvation was won by her son Jesus Christ.
