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News Briefs

Scranton diocese: ‘No credible evidence’ against Msgr. Rossi

June 12, 2020 CNA Daily News 10

Washington D.C., Jun 12, 2020 / 12:36 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Scranton released a statement Friday regarding Msgr. Walter Rossi, rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The statement said that after an exhaustive investigation, investigators found no credible evidence to support allegations of misconduct against Rossi.

“The investigation of allegations of personal misconduct was led by outside counsel assisted by a retired  FBI agent with over thirty years of investigative experience. The investigation included interviews with numerous witnesses who have known Monsignor Rossi throughout his years in ministry,” the statement, released June 12, said.

“These witnesses included current and former Basilica employees, former CUA students, and current and former members of the clergy who were assigned to the Basilica or who worked with Monsignor Rossi.”

The statement said that “several witnesses were critical of Monsignor Rossi, including his managerial style at the Basilica, but none were aware of or could provide first-hand knowledge of sexual impropriety.”

The diocese also said that some of the witnesses “merely re-stated unsupported and unsubstantiated  rumors that  previously appeared in certain publications.” 

“The investigator attempted unsuccessfully to interview many additional witnesses and searched diligently for witnesses who could possibly support the rumors against Monsignor Rossi, but found none. The investigator also tried to locate the unnamed ‘sources’ for the critical articles, but could not.”

“The purpose of the Diocese’s investigation was to seek out credible  evidence of sexual impropriety and, if found, to determine an appropriate response,” said the statement. “At the conclusion of its comprehensive investigation, the Diocese of Scranton found no such credible evidence.”

Rossi had been variously accused of directing young men to a priest friend who was accused of harassing them by phone and text message, and, in accusations made by former apostolic nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, of sexual contact with male students at the nearby Catholic University of America.

A second statement, released Friday Archbishop Wilton Gregory, chairman of the national shrine’s board, said that an investigation into shrine finances “found no improprieties and confirmed sound fiscal management of the Basilica.”

“During the course of investigation, numerous individuals were interviewed, including those responsible for fiscal administration at the Basilica. Additionally, the accounting experts performed an in-depth review of expenditures, general ledgers, credit card statements, receipts, invoices, capital budgets, bank and investment account statements as well as certain investment account reconciliations and other financial worksheets,” the shrine said.

That investigation “found no unreasonable or inappropriate expenditures or significant issues in the financial administration of the Basilica. The investigations did assist in suggesting certain improvements in management and policy enhancements that will benefit the Basilica and will be implemented.”

Rossi was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1987, and remains incarnated in that diocese. He has lived in Washington since 1997, where he served first as the national shrine’s associate rector and director of pilgrimages, before being promoted to rector of the basilica and made a monsignor in 2005.

The investigation was opened in August 2019, after concerns were raised about Rossi to Archbishop Wilton Gregory Aug. 13, during a question-and-answer session at a Theology on Tap, held at the Public Bar Live in the Dupont area of Washington.

A participant at the August event told Gregory that Rossi has been accused of directing young men to Fr. Matthew Reidlinger, a priest friend of Rossi’s who is alleged to have sexually harassed them in phone calls and text messages. That accusation was first made in 2013.

Gregory said he was unfamiliar with that allegation and called for an independent, forensic investigation. The following day, on Aug. 14, Rossi’s home diocese of Scranton told CNA that Bishop Joseph Bambera had “commenced the process of launching a full forensic investigation” and that it would work “jointly and cooperatively” with the Archdiocese of Washington on a “comprehensive investigation.”

Beyond the allegations mentioned at the Aug. 13 Theology on Tap, additional accusations had also been leveled against Rossi.

In an interview in June, 2019, Archbishop Vigano alleged that the nunciature in Washington had received “documentation that states that Msgr. Rossi had sexually molested male students at the Catholic University of America.”

Vigano also said that both the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and former Washington archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl were “well aware of the situation,” and that Rossi had previously been proposed for promotion to bishop and been blocked.

In September 2019, The Catholic University of America announced that Rossi had taken a leave of absence from the university’s board of trustees, of which he was a member by virtue of his role at the basilica.

 

 

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

For justice and healing: Catholics explain why they marched

June 12, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 12, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- As thousands of protesters prepared to march against racism in Washington, D.C. last Saturday, Louis Brown helped organize a rosary procession on Capitol Hill.

Lay Catholics joined Dominican friars, nuns, and priests of the Washington archdiocese in prayer for justice and healing. As tens of thousands of Americans have been actively protesting racism and police brutality, Brown, who is an African-American and Catholic, told CNA he chose to focus on prayer.

The present moment demands both prayer and action against injustice, he told CNA. “It’s a both-and.”

“Ultimately this is a problem of the heart,” Brown said. “Our country desperately needs God and the love of God to heal these wounds.”

“We are not the ultimate protagonists of the story,” he added. “Jesus Christ is the ultimate protagonist.”

Brown spoke of acute pain within the African-American community, caused by the recent deaths of young African-Americans at the hands of police or fellow citizens—most notably George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor— which, he said, are just the latest in a centuries-long history.

“As an African-American, the pain of going back into that history is so painful, and is so gut-wrenching, and it’s so hard to deal with,” he said.

“Part of it is just the fear,” he said, of being pulled over in a “routine traffic stop” that could end in a tragedy—“or something could get pinned on me.”

“It’s an anger, it’s an anxiety, and it’s also a fear of it happening again, and a pain of seeing what others have gone through,” he said.

Video of George Floyd’s May 25 arrest in Minneapolis showed him calling out “I can’t breathe” and “mama” as police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck. Floyd later died at a hospital, and Chauvin has since been fired and charged with second-degree murder in Floyd’s death.

“Whether you’re black or white, you can’t help but see that person as our brother and as a child of God,” Brown said of Floyd crying out.

Yet protests against injustice, he emphasized, must be rooted in “the right to life” for all and not be “hijacked” by the culture of death.

“The rioting, the looting, is only making it more likely that a black man like me will be a victim of police misconduct, or a victim of bias and stereotypes,” Brown said.

Other Catholics around the country told CNA that they attended recent protests against racism and police brutality in cities, suburbs, and towns—in California, New York City, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, West Virginia, and Tennessee.

Most who talked to CNA of their experiences were lay men and women, although both a priest and a religious sister—Fr. Brent Shelton of the diocese of Knoxville, and Sister Mumbi Kigutha CPPS, of the Sisters of the Precious Blood—said they too attended local protests against racism.

Some Catholics said it was their first protest; others said they had attended a pro-life march before, but now felt the need to march against racism. Some marched with fellow Catholics and Christians, others attended larger marches by themselves.

All involved all had one thing in common—they felt that they had to do something to stand against injustice.

“To me it’s simple. People need help and we help them. That’s all,” said Jenne O’Neill of Wahoo, Nebraska.

And many of those who talked to CNA said they prayed at the rallies and protests.

Peter Nixon, a parishioner at Saint Bonaventure Church in the Diocese of Oakland, said his pastor led a Eucharistic procession at the tail end of a march in Clayton, California.

“The presence of the Blessed Sacrament had a powerful impact on many at the demonstration,” Nixon said. “Some police and firefighters crossed themselves as we passed. Others genuflected when passing in front of the monstrance.”

On June 1, the evening before President Donald Trump visited Washington, D.C.’s St. John Paul II Shrine, the president stood outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. holding a Bible in front of cameras. The Washington Post reported that federal police shot gas canisters and grenades with rubber pellets to dispel protesters in the area shortly before the president arrived outside the church.

Protesting in Lafayette Square that night was Anna Fitzmaurice, a 2019 graduate of the Catholic University of America. Fitzmaurice prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet in the square, but left shortly before police dispersed the protesters. She attended a protest of the president’s visit to the shrine on the morning of June 2.

“As he [Trump] was going to visit my church, I felt a moral responsibility to tell him what we believe in terms of the dignity of the suffering and the oppressed. Instructing the ignorant and admonishing the sinner are both spiritual works of mercy,” she said.

Jenn Morson, a writer and parishioner at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church in Crofton, Maryland, said she prayed the rosary to herself “in between chants initiated by the organizer” at a local march with around 350 people.

Not all Catholics who talked to CNA marched in protests. Some have been conducting outreach in their communities, or trying to foster constructive conversations about race.

Kathy Redmond, of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Castle Rock, Colorado, told CNA that she has organized around 450 people in her local “very white, affluent community” involved in community outreach.

Redmond said she saw injustice first-hand when a black family moved in four houses down from her and their cars were tagged immediately. “It was very unnerving for me,” she said. “It was in my face at that point.”

“As people of faith—as people of a Christian faith—we should be front and center on this,” Redmond said.

Catherine Perry, of Atlanta, Georgia, founder of the InwardBound Center for Non-Profit Leadership, has organized workshops of cross-race conversations on “Racism in America: What is Mine to Do?”

Her workshops are not shaming sessions, she said, but rather help participants to reflect, dialogue, and reconcile with each other, ending with them making a “uniquely personal to-do list” such as prayer, listening to voices they may not agree with, or talking to a boss about subtle discrimination in the workplace. A new workshop will be offered online beginning on June 25.

As Catholics, she said, “one of the great things about our institution is we talk about difficult things” such as abortion and the death penalty. “We understand this is mysterious stuff, and it’s emotional work, and it’s not easy sometimes,” she said.

“Well let’s take on race. Why not?” she asked. “We’ve been silent on race too long.”

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

‘God chose to call us’: The story of two brothers ordained Catholic priests on the same day

June 11, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Denver Newsroom, Jun 12, 2020 / 12:02 am (CNA).- Peyton and Connor Plessala are brothers from Mobile, Alabama. They’re 18 months— one school grade— apart.

Despite the occasional competitiveness and squabbles that many brothers experience growing up, they’ve always been best buds.

“We’re closer than best friends,” Connor, 25, told CNA.

As young men— in grade school, high school, college— much of their lives centered around the things you might expect: academics, excurriculars, friends, girlfriends, and sports.

There are many paths the two young men could have chosen for their lives, but ultimately, last month, they arrived at the same place— lying face down in front of the altar, giving their lives over in service to God and the Catholic Church.

The brothers were both ordained to the priesthood May 30 at Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile— in a private Mass, because of the pandemic.

“For whatever reason, God chose to call us and he did. And we were just fortunate enough to have had the foundations from both our parents and our education to hear it and then to say yes,” Peyton told CNA.

Peyton, 27, says he is most excited to begin helping out with Catholic schools and education, and also to begin hearing confessions.

“You spend so much time in seminary preparing to be effective one day. You spend so much time in seminary talking about plans and dreams and hopes and stuff that you’ll do one day in this hypothetical future…now it’s here. And so I can’t wait to begin.”

‘Natural virtues’

In Southern Louisiana, where the Plessala brothers’ parents grew up, you’re Catholic unless you declare otherwise, Peyton said.

Both Plessala parents are medical doctors. The family moved to Alabama when Connor and Peyton were very young.

Though the family was always Catholic – and raised Peyton, Connor, and their younger sister and brother in the faith – the brothers said they weren’t ever a “pray the rosary around the kitchen table” kind of family.

Apart from taking the family to Mass every Sunday, the Plessalas taught their children what Peyton calls “natural virtues”— how to be good, decent people; the importance of choosing their friends wisely; and the value of education.

The brothers’ consistent involvement in team sports, encouraged by their parents, also helped to school them in those natural virtues.

Playing soccer, basketball, football, and baseball over the years taught them the values of hard work, camaraderie, and setting an example for others.

“They taught us to remember that when you go and play sports, and you have the Plessala name on the back of your jersey, that represents a whole family,” Peyton said.

‘I could do this’

Peyton told CNA that despite going to Catholic schools and getting the “vocation talk” every year, neither of them had ever really considered the priesthood as an option for their lives.

That is, until early in 2011, when the brothers took a trip with their classmates to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life, the nation’s largest annual pro-life gathering in the U.S.

The chaperone for their group from McGill-Toolen Catholic High School was a new priest, fresh out of seminary, whose enthusiasm and joy made an impression on the brothers.

The witness of their chaperone, and of other priests they encountered on that trip, moved Connor to begin considering entering the seminary straight out of high school.

In the fall of 2012, Connor started his studies at St. Joseph Seminary College in Covington, Louisiana.

Peyton also felt the call to the priesthood on that trip, thanks to the example of their chaperone— but his path to the seminary was not quite as direct as his younger brother’s.

“I realized for the first time: ‘Man, I could do this. [This priest] is so at peace with himself and so joyful and having so much fun. I could do this. This is a life that I could actually do,’” he said.

Despite a tug toward the seminary, Peyton decided he would pursue his original plan to study pre-med at Louisiana State University. He would go on to spend three years there in total, dating a girl he met at LSU for two of those years.

His junior year of college, Peyton returned to his high school to chaperone that year’s trip to the March for Life— the same trip that had started the tug toward the priesthood several years earlier.

At one point in the trip, during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Peyton perceived God’s voice: “Do you really want to be a doctor?”

The answer, as it turned out, was no.

“And the moment I heard that, my heart felt more at peace than it had in… Maybe ever in my life. I just knew. In that moment, I was like, ‘I’m going to go to seminary,’” Peyton said.

“For a moment, I had a life’s purpose. I had a direction and a goal. I just knew who I was.”

This newfound clarity came at a price, however— Peyton knew he would have to break up with his girlfriend. Which he did.

Connor remembers the phone call from Peyton, telling him he had decided to come to seminary.

“I was shocked. I was excited. I was extremely excited because we were going to be back together again,” Connor said.

In the fall of 2014, Peyton joined his younger brother at St. Joseph Seminary.

‘We can rely on each other’

Though Connor and Peyton had always been friends, their relationship changed— for the better— when Peyton joined Connor at the seminary.

For most of their life, Peyton had blazed a trail for Connor, encouraging him and giving him advice when he got to high school, after Peyton had been learning the ropes there for a year.

Now, for the first time, Connor felt in some ways like the “older brother”— being more experienced in seminary life.

At the same time, although the brothers were now pursuing the same path, they still approached seminary life in their own way, with their own ideas, and approaching challenges in different ways, he said.

The experience of taking on the challenge of becoming priests helped their relationship to mature.

“Peyton’s always done his own thing because he was the first. He was the oldest. And so, he didn’t have an example to go follow then, whereas I did,” Connor said.

“And so, the idea of breaking from: ‘We’re going to be the same,’ was tougher for me, I think…But I think in that, in the growing pains of that, we were able to grow and really realize each other’s gifts and each other’s weaknesses and then rely on each other more…now I know Peyton’s gifts a lot better, and he knows my gifts, and so we can rely on each other.”

Because of the way his college credits transferred from LSU, Connor and Peyton ended up in the same ordination class, despite Connor’s two year “head start.”

‘Getting out of the way of the Holy Spirit’

Now that they’re ordained, Peyton said their parents are constantly bombarded with the question: “What did y’all do to have half of your children enter the priesthood?”

For Peyton, there were two key factors in their upbringing that helped him and his siblings grow up as committed Catholics.

First, he said, he and his siblings attended Catholic schools— schools with a strong faith identity.

But there was something within the Plessala’s family life that, for Peyton, was even more important.

“We ate dinner every single night as a family, regardless of the logistics required to make that work,” he said.

“Whether we had to eat at 4 p.m. because one of us had a game that night that we were all going to go, to or whether we had to eat at 9:30 p.m., because I was getting home from soccer practice late in high school, whatever it was. We always made it an effort to eat together, and we would pray before that meal.”

The experience of gathering every night as a family, praying and spending time together, helped the family cohere and support each member’s endeavors, the brothers said.

When the brothers told their parents that they were entering the seminary, their parents were extremely supportive— even if the brothers suspected their mother might be sad that she would likely end up having fewer grandchildren.

One thing Connor has heard his mother say several times when people ask what the parents did right is that she “got out of the way of the Holy Spirit.”

The brothers said they are extremely grateful that their parents always supported their vocations. Peyton said he and Connor occasionally encountered men at the seminary who ended up leaving because their parents did not support their decision to enter.

“Yeah, parents know best, but when it comes to your children’s vocations, God’s the one who knows, because God’s the one calling,” Connor commented.

‘If you want to find an answer, you have to ask the question’

Neither Connor nor Peyton ever expected to become priests. Neither, they said, did their parents or siblings expect or predict that they might be called that way.

In their words, they were just “normal guys” who practiced their faith, dated throughout high school, and had a lot of varied interests.

Peyton said the fact that they both felt an initial tug to the priesthood is not all that surprising.

“I think every young guy who really practices their faith has probably thought about it at least once, just because they’ve known a priest and the priest probably said, ‘Hey, you should think about this,’” he said.

Many of Peyton’s devout Catholic friends are married now, and he’s asked them if they ever considered the priesthood at some point before discerning marriage. Almost all, he said, told him yes; they thought about it for a week or two, but it never stuck.

What was different for him and Connor was that the idea of the priesthood didn’t go away.

“It stuck with me and then it stayed with me for three years. And then finally God was like, ‘It’s time, man. It’s time to do it,’” he said.

“I would just encourage guys, if it really has been a while and it just sticks with you, the only way you’ll ever figure that out is to actually go to seminary.”

Meeting and getting to know priests, and seeing how they lived and why, was helpful to both Peyton and Connor.

“The lives of priests are the most helpful things in getting other men to consider priesthood,” Peyton said.

Connor agreed. For him, taking the plunge and going to seminary when he was still discerning was the best way for him to decide whether God was really calling him to be a priest.

“If you want to find an answer, you have to ask the question. And the only way to ask and answer that question of priesthood is to go to the seminary,” he said.

“Go to the seminary. You will not be worse off for it. I mean, you’re starting to live a life of dedicating prayer, of formation, diving into yourself, learning who you are, learning your strengths and weaknesses, learning more about the faith. All those are good things.”

The seminary is not a permanent commitment. If a young man goes to seminary and realizes the priesthood is not for him, he won’t be worse off, Connor said.

“You’ve been formed into a better man, a better version of yourself, you’ve prayed a whole lot more than you would have if you were not in seminary.”

Like many people their age, Peyton and Connor’s paths to their ultimate vocation was a winding one.

“The great pain of millennials is sitting there and trying to think of what you want to do with your life for so long that your life just passes you by,” Peyton said.

“And so, one of the things I like to encourage young people to do if you’re discerning, do something about it.”

 

 

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Would-be Satanists again fail to make case against Missouri abortion law

June 11, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

CNA Staff, Jun 11, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- A federal appellate court has dismissed a second lawsuit filed by a member of the Satanic Temple against Missouri’s informed consent abortion law, rejecting the argument that the law established Catholic religious belief by stating that life begins at conception.
 
“Any theory of when life begins necessarily aligns with some religious beliefs and not others,” said U.S. Circuit Judge David R. Stras in a June 9 decision from the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Under the plaintiff’s theory, the decision said, “Missouri’s only option would be to avoid legislating in this area altogether.”
 
State law requires abortion providers to distribute a booklet from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services which includes the statement: “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”
 
A woman going by the pseudonym Judy Doe filed suit against the law, claiming it violated her religious freedom as a member of the Satanic Temple. The group does not believe in a literal Satan. Its philosophical and religious beliefs are somewhat flexible, but it tends to reject supernatural belief and to promote rationalism, individual liberty, secularism and “Enlightenment values.” It claims to oppose tyranny and to identify with Satan’s putative outsider role.
 
Doe’s lawsuit also claimed that Missouri law violated her Satanist beliefs by requiring her to certify that she had received the informed consent booklet and that she had a chance to view an ultrasound at least 24 hours before the abortion. Her beliefs forbid her to comply with a law “serves no medical purpose or purports to protect the interests of her human tissue.” The plaintiff cited the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which bars excessive burdens on religious beliefs.
 
The appellate court said the lawsuit made no argument that the informed consent law is “anything other than ‘neutral’ and ‘generally applicable’.” The law in question must only pass a “rational-basis review,” with a defense showing it rationally related to a legitimate government interest.

The decision cited the generally pro-abortion rights Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which itself said that informed consent laws represent “the legitimate purpose of reducing the risk that a woman may elect an abortion, only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that her decision was not fully informed.”
 
Doe’s own description of the Satanic Temple said its membership includes both “politically aware Satanists” and “secularists and advocates for individual liberty.”
 
“Arguably, her own description raises the possibility that her beliefs about abortion may be political, not religious,” the court’s decision said. “Nevertheless, we assume, but do not decide, that she has done enough by alleging that her beliefs are ‘religious’ and that she is a member of an organization that includes ‘Satanists’.”
 
W. James MacNaughton, a New Jersey lawyer, represented Doe. He told Courthouse News Service the ruling was not a surprise, claiming the appellate court panel was “very conservative” and “ignored the issue as others have done.”
 
MacNaughton repeated claims that Catholicism influenced the law.
 
“It violates the establishment clause because it adopts the Catholic dogma that life begins at conception,” he said.
 
According to the Pew Forum Religious Landscape Survey of 2014, 77% of Missouri residents identify as Christian, but only 16% are Catholic. Evangelical Protestants make up 36% of the Missouri populace.
 
“The state has no business telling people what to believe,” the attorney continued. “The state has no business telling us that life begins at conception. We can decide that for ourselves.”
 
Dennis Hudecki, a philosophy professor at Brescia University College in London, Ontario, told Courthouse News Service that there are “big arguments about when life begins,” and some can argue for the belief that life begins from conception without a religious basis.
 
“They go back all the way to Aristotle and that the essence of a human doesn’t change once it’s formed from the beginning. It just gets older, but its essence doesn’t change,” said Hudecki, whose expertise includes abortion ethics. “I think the state’s view that life begins at conception is on a rational basis and while there is rational disagreement, just because there’s rational disagreement doesn’t mean each side isn’t being rational.”
 
MacNaughton could appeal for an en banc hearing before the full court, and has 14 days from Tuesday to do so.
 
Judy Doe’s lawsuit was rejected by a federal district judge last year.
 
A different self-professed Satanic Temple adherent in Missouri, who went by the name Mary Doe, had challenged the provisions under state law, including the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

MacNaughton also argued her case.
 
She cited Satanic Temple tenets professing a belief that a woman’s body is “inviolable and subject to her will alone” and a belief that health decisions are made “based on the best scientific understanding of the world, even if the science does not comport with the religious or political beliefs of others.” The complaint said a pregnancy is “human tissue” and “part of her body and not a separate, unique, living human being.”
 
While the Missouri Court of Appeals thought the Mary Doe case raised “real and substantial constitutional claims,” the Missouri Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in a 2019 decision.
 
Chief Justice Zell M. Fischer, writing in a concurring opinion, said that the U.S. Supreme Court “has made it clear that state speech is not religious speech solely because it ‘happens to coincide’ with a religious tenet.”
 
Controversy over the Satanic Temple has been ongoing for years, with critics arguing it is a political-cultural stunt. Temple founders have repeatedly asserted that it is a religion and not merely a hoax or performance, but the group’s history sometimes contradicts their claims.
 
The group held a January 2013 demonstration at the Florida state capitol appearing to support Republican Gov. Rick Scott from a Satanist position. Legislation backed by the then-governor would allow school districts to have policies allowing students to read “inspirational messages” of their choice at school assemblies and sports events.
 
The demonstration featured an actor in the role of a satanic high priest. Several would-be minions and spokesman Lucien Greaves were also at the rally, saying the law would allow students to distribute Satanic messages. In the same month, Greaves was the contact listed on a casting call for an apparent mockumentary “about the nicest Satanic Cult in the world.”
 
In a 2013 interview with Vice, Lucien Greaves revealed himself to be a man named Doug Mesner. He said a friend had conceived the Satanic Temple as “a ‘poison pill’ in the Church-State debate” to help expand the idea of religious agendas in public life.

Mesner has said the group planned to leverage the Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby religious freedom decision, which cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to advance “a women’s rights initiative.”

While the group now backs pro-abortion rights causes under its latest public tenets about bodily inviolability, previous statements of belief lacked that tenet. According to a March 2013 cache of the Satanic Temple website, hosted at the Internet Archive, it previously claimed “all life is precious in the eyes of Satan” and “the Circle of Compassion should extend to all species, not just humans.”
 
It later crowdfunded expenses to help pay for a Missouri woman’s abortion. It has also crowdfunded its “reproductive rights” campaign, gathering over $45,000 by July 2015.
 
The group has collaborated with other Satanic and occultist groups, though some early collaborators have distanced themselves from the group and accused it of exploiting Satanism.
 
The Satanic Temple was behind a reputed attempt to hold a black mass on the campus of Harvard University in May 2014, but the event was moved and then cancelled after intense outcry from Catholics and others who saw it as a grave sin against God, deliberate provocation of Catholics, or a violation of basic norms of civility and respect.
 
The event was reported to be held under the aegis of the Cultural Studies Club of the Harvard Extension School. A spokesperson for the Satanic Temple initially told media outlets that a consecrated Host would be used, although the temple and the Cultural Studies Club both later denied this, insisting that only a plain piece of bread would be used.
 
An October 2017 story at Vox portrayed the Satanic Temple as “equal parts performance art group, leftist activist organization, and anti-religion religious movement.” It claimed that though it began as “internet trolling going mainstream,” the organization is becoming “more serious” and “more complicated” to outline.
 
In April 2019, the group said it received recognition as a church from the Internal Revenue Service.

 

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Archbishop Gomez names four new members of National Review Board

June 11, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

CNA Staff, Jun 11, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- The president of the United States’ Conference of Catholic Bishops has appointed four new members of the National Review Board, a lay advisory body to the bishops on the protection of minors.

The new members are Vivian Akel, James Bogner, Steven Jubera, and Thomas Mengler. A June 10 statement from the conference said they are experts in social work, law enforcement, Catholic education, and legal counsel.

Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the USCCB, announced the new members who will help advise the bishops’ Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People.

“The National Review Board plays a vital role as a consultative body assisting the bishops in ensuring the complete implementation and accountability of the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People,” said Gomez.

Akel has spent 21 years as a social worker for the New York City Department of Education. Having received her master’s degree in Social Work from Hunter College School, she began outpatient psychotherapy to individual patients and families at the Community Mental Health Center in Brooklyn. She is a facilitator for pre-Cana consultation and volunteers as the Safe Environment Coordinator for the Maronite Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn.

Bogner is a retired Senior Executive Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He has more than 35 years of law enforcement experience. He graduated from the FBI’s National Executive Institute and has a master’s degree in Administration of Justice. Bogner has also served as president of his parish council, providing data analysis and strategic planning. He currently serves as a member of the Archdiocese of Omaha’s Advisory Review and Ministerial Misconduct Boards.

Jubera, a former Marine, is an Assistant District Attorney for Mississippi’s 17th Judicial District. He earned his law degree from the University of Mississippi. He has been involved with Healing Hearts Child Advocacy Center in Southaven and has spoken for child safety at One Loud Voice conference in Mississippi. He also serves on the Diocese of Jackson’s review board.

Mengler, president of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, is a board member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and he served as association’s chair from 2018-2020. He has also served as a Co-Chair of the Lay Commission on Clergy Sexual Abuse of Minors in the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

The National Review Board is composed of 13 laymen and women. The review board was organized after allegations of clergy sexual abuse and subsequent cover-up by bishops and Church officials surfaced nationwide in 2002.

The bishops passed the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People shortly after the allegations of abuse arose in 2002. It was set up as a process for bishops to deal with abuse allegations against priests.

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News Briefs

India denies visa to US religious freedom investigators

June 11, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

CNA Staff, Jun 11, 2020 / 04:50 pm (CNA).- India has barred U.S. representatives from investigating the county’s reported violations of religious freedom, continuing what critics call a trend of Hindu nationalism that threatens religious minorities in India.

The investigation, called for by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), followed reports of the abuse of Chistians, Muslims, and other religious minorities in India. The reports prompted USCIRF to delegate India a “country of particular concern” (CPC) in its 2020 annual report. India joined a list of 13 other CPCs in the report, including North Korea and China.

“We see no locus standi for a ‘foreign entity/government’ to pronounce on the state of our citizens’ constitutionally protected rights,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, according to a report by IndiaToday. He said India is a “pluralistic society with a longstanding commitment to tolerance and inclusion.”

Although India’s constitution protects the freedom of religion, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has manipulated the constitutional stipulation that religious freedom is “subject to public order,” using the clause to promote Hindu nationalism, according to the USCIRF report.

One such instance of Hindu nationalism is a new policy that would fast-track the citizenship of non-Muslim migrants by treating them as refugees fleeing religious persecution. The same status would not be conferred on 100 million other migrants, potentially making them illegal residents of India.

This policy incited violent riots in northeastern Delhi in February, killing 27 and injuring over 200, according to a CNA report. The riots saw Hindu mobs attacking unarmed people and especially targeting Muslims.

Reports indicate that Indian Hindus, who make up nearly 80% of India’s population, have systematically targeted Muslims in lynch mobs for slaughtering or eating beef– a practice that Hindus consider to be a religious offense. Since the BJP came to power in 2014, there have been over 100 lynch mob attacks in India, which often originate on social media. The law enforcement is known to arrest the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of these attacks.

Religious discrimination and violence has also been directed toward Christians in recent years.

In January, Hindu groups attempted to prevent the building of a huge statue of Jesus in Bangalore. They claimed a Hindu god lives on the hill where the local Catholic archdiocese was planning to erect the statue.

In 2008, Hindu nationalists organized attacks on Christian homes, schools, and churches in Karnataka, physically beating hundreds of Christians. The Saldhana Report, an independent report on the attacks released in 2011, revealed that the attacks were backed by India’s highest government authorities.

Dozens of Catholics in the same region were attacked in 2019 while conducting a Marian pilgrimage, resulting in the arrest of six Hindu Nationalists.

The USCIRF’s delegation of India as a CPC, which precipitated the investigation, was not unanimous. Gary Bauer, the president of American Values who serves as a USCIRF commissioner, dissented from the majority opinion, along with two other USCIRF commissioners.

“The trend line on religious freedom in India is not reassuring. But India is not the equivalent of communist China, which wages war on all faiths; nor of North Korea, a prison masquerading as a country; nor of Iran, whose Islamic extremist leaders regularly threaten to unleash a second Holocaust,” said Bauer. “I am confident that India will reject any authoritarian temptation and stand with the United States and other free nations in defense of liberty, including religious liberty.”

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