Join Bishop Aquila on a memorable and inspiring pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey to walk in the "Footsteps of St. Paul". What a great privilege for the chance to travel to the lands where the first churches were established with Bishop Aquila, whose very position as bishop in the Church today stems from those early days of Christianity. He will preside over daily Mass and teach together with Jeff Cavins who is accompanying the pilgrimage along with his wife, Emily.

Jeff Cavins is a Bible teacher from the Minneapolis area who has inspired thousands of students to more fully understand their faith through the Great Adventure Bible studies, available through Ascension Press. Jeff has admired Bishop Aquila for his shepherding skills and concern for his flock.  Learn more here.

In an Aug. 28 letter, Most Rev. Samuel J. Aquila, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Fargo, encouraged priests, deacons, religious sisters and parishioners to “become engaged in promoting genuine health care reform” and presented four principles upon which the “moral value and justice of a given plan to provide health care” should be evaluated.

On why health care reform cannot include abortion, Bishop Aquila wrote, “any attempt to provide greater access to health care without safeguarding human life from the moment of conception is inherently inconsistent” and that “the destruction of human life by abortion and other evils can never be a neutral question or one that is promoted by any faithful Catholic.”

Bishop Aquila noted that conscience protection is important for everyone:  health care professionals as well as participants in health care plans. Concerning the general public, he wrote “In no way should taxpayers or policy holders be forced to participate in plans, whether private or public, which fund procedures that violate the moral precepts of the faith.”

Genuine reform, wrote Bishop Aquila, also means access for all. He noted that “finding ways to provide medical care to those who have none is a perennial priority for the Church” and that “we must ensure that the poor, the elderly, the handicapped, legal immigrants and the unborn, together with all citizens of our nation, have access to health care.”

Citing the Church’s teaching on subsidiarity, Bishop Aquila wrote that a diversity of social entities share the responsibility of ensuring access to health care, noting that “these various strands of community life within society build up a strong and cohesive social fabric that is the hallmark of a true communion of persons.” 

At a Sept. 28 Mass which preceded a Eucharistic procession of 1,000 people to the state of North Dakota’s only abortion facility, Bishop Samuel Aquila of the Catholic Diocese of Fargo said Catholics who are “pro-choice” are “pro-abortion and participating in an intrinsic evil and promoting an unjust law.”

Bishop Aquila referred to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae in noting that abortion and other intrinsic evils can never be justified by human law. He quoted the encyclical:  “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it’” (Evangelium Vitae 73). Bishop Aquila then expanded upon the quote. “In other words, if one is truly Catholic and truly faithful to the laws of God, to reason and to faith in Jesus Christ, he or she can never be pro-choice, because, if they are, they are pro-abortion and participating in an intrinsic evil and promoting an unjust law. No Catholic can take a position of pro-choice or vote for a law supporting a so-called right to abortion.”

Second, the bishop said, some say that because we live in a pluralistic society that has many different points of view, people should be free to determine what they will believe and support. “Every human society recognizes that there are certain truths that can never be violated,” Bishop Aquila said. “We cannot use the lie of pluralism to justify intrinsic evils.” Read more.