Houston, Texas, Aug 26, 2017 / 12:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The arrival of Hurricane Harvey in Texas is a time for prayer, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston has said.
“Please join me and pray for all of those affected by the storm and in need of assistance during this natural disaster,” the cardinal said Aug. 26. “In addition, I ask the faithful to also keep the emergency response personnel and volunteers in your prayers. For those residing in our Archdiocese, in Texas and along the Gulf Coast, be safe and may God have mercy on those affected by Hurricane Harvey.”
He said there has already been “substantial property damage” in the southern counties of the archdiocese.
The storm arrived at about 10 p.m. local time Friday as a Category 4 hurricane, bringing strong winds, heavy rains and flooding.
Fatalities were feared in the coastal town of Rockport, Texas, where about 5,000 residents remained, CNN reports. Walls and roofs had collapsed on some people.
Late Saturday morning, the storm was still a Category 1 storm with sustained winds of 75 mph and a coastal storm surge of 13-feet-tall. Some parts of Texas could receive up to 40 inches of rain.
Voicing gratitude for police, medical personnel and other first responders working during the storms, he advised the faithful to follow the instructions of civil authorities and to “stay together, and pray.”
Before the storm made landfall, Bishop Michael Mulvey of Corpus Christi voiced gratitude for police, medical personnel and other first responders working during the storms. He advised the faithful to follow the instructions of civil authorities and to “stay together, and pray.”
He recommended they should think on the many Gospel passages about the waters, like Christ calming troubled seas. The bishop encouraged Catholics to have “that same faith that Peter had” during the storms.
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“Wheel of Fortune” host Pat Sajak attends a taping of the show’s 35th anniversary season at Epcot Center at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in 2017. / Credit: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images
Boston, Mass., Sep 3, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pat Sajak, the longtime host of the popular television game show “Wheel of Fortune,” will be retiring after this upcoming season.
After more than 40 years in that role, Sajak is like a member of the family for the show’s millions of fans.
A lesser-known fact about the Emmy winner is that he’s the chair of the board of trustees at Hillsdale College, a small Christian, classical liberal arts school in southern Michigan that is often branded as “conservative” and which one magazine has even described as being “at the heart of the culture wars.”
Founded by Freewill Baptist slavery abolitionists in 1844, Hillsdale defines itself as “nonsectarian Christian.” But Sajak’s many Catholic fans might be interested to know that Hillsdale has a thriving Catholic community of students and faculty — and has become something of a hub for converts to the Catholic faith.
An average of about 15 students from Hillsdale convert to Catholicism each year, Kelly Cole, a staff member from the local St. Anthony Catholic Church, which ministers to the students, told CNA.
Additionally, in recent years certain Catholic prelates have made visits to campus including Winona-Rochester Bishop Robert Barron, who gave the college’s graduation commencement address in May, and German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, who offered a lecture on campus in 2021.
Is Pat Sajak Catholic?
Sajak declined an interview with CNA. While his religious affiliation isn’t clear, a 1993 article from the Los Angeles Times reported that Sajak received an annulment from the Catholic Church. Sajak’s first marriage was with Sherril Sajak, but after they divorced, he married Lesly Brown, his current spouse of over 30 years, according to Hollywood Life.
People magazine reported that Sajak married Brown at a Catholic church in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1989. Outsider reported that this church was St. Mary’s.
A Chicago native, Sajak, who called himself an “unapologetic conservative” in a 2012 interview with the Hoover Institution, has Polish roots and described his upbringing as blue-collar. A Vietnam veteran, he served as a television weatherman before his time at “Wheel of Fortune.”
“Wheel of Fortune” host Pat Sajak speaks at the Hillsdale College graduation ceremony on May 17, 2019, in his first year as chairman of the board of trustees at the college, located in Hillsdale, Michigan. Credit: YouTube/Hillsdale College
Since 2019, Sajak, who is 76 according to the History Channel, has been serving as chairman of the board for the school. But he’s been involved with the school long before he was the chair, serving as the vice chairman of the board of trustees beginning in 2003.
He said in his interview with the Hoover Institution that he came to Hillsdale as a result of his relationship with the school’s president, Larry Arnn, whom Sajak met when he served on the board of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.
In that interview, he praised the school for not taking government funding, something that Hillsdale prides itself on.
The school was included in the Princeton Review’s 2024 edition of the nation’s best colleges, earning a No. 3 ranking of “most conservative students,” a No. 2 ranking of “most religious students,” and a No. 2 ranking of having the “friendliest students.”
A Great Books curriculum
Why is Catholic life at Hillsdale so vibrant?
On Hillsdale’s website, the school prides itself on a core curriculum that “considers the spiritual and intellectual inheritance of the Western Tradition and provides a fuller perspective on the world and its workings.”
From the school’s longtime English professor David Whalen’s perspective, the college’s “traditional, Great Books-heavy curriculum” inevitably brings students into contact with many ideas that are influenced by the Catholic faith.
The Great Books curriculum consists of literature courses mandatory for every student.
Professor David Whalen has been teaching English at Hillsdale College for almost 30 years. Credit: YouTube/Catholic Diocese of Lincoln
Whalen, a Catholic who is also the school’s associate vice president for curriculum, said that the amount of Catholic conversions each year is a result of “grace” but “also the natural consequence of young people reading deeply in the Western intellectual and spiritual tradition and reflecting on their own beliefs.”
While the “great majority” of Hillsdale’s faculty and students are not Catholic, Whalen said that the atmosphere on campus is “highly collegial” and the Catholic community flourishes at the school.
“There are enough Catholic students, faculty, and staff to sustain a quite vibrant Catholic community and, at the same time, integrate with the campus as a whole,” he said. “This makes the college attractive to Catholic students, as does its traditional curriculum and strong academics.”
Being a minority on campus, Catholics would do well to brush up on their faith, Whalen said.
“This is a highly intelligent place, and people with different beliefs are going to be articulate and thoughtful about them. So, the Catholics here need to be so as well,” he said.
Taking Catholicism seriously
Cole, who converted to Catholicism the year she graduated from Hillsdale in 2002, said that she took Whalen’s literature course and it had a major impact on her conversion.
But it wasn’t just the literature classes that pushed her to convert, it was mainly the history courses, she said.
“And my history courses were taught by Protestants; it wasn’t Catholics that were teaching this or anything,” she noted.
Kelly Cole, who is seen in this photo with two of her seven children William (right) and Alex (left), graduated from Hillsdale College and converted to Catholicism in 2002. Credit: Kelly Cole
Cole, 43, said that “trying to faithfully engage with history and the history of Christendom and talking about our Judeo-Christian heritage just led to me feeling like I needed to take Catholicism seriously.”
Earlier this year, the Diocese of Lansing posted a video highlighting the 2023 Easter Vigil at St. Anthony’s in which 24 people, 22 of them Hillsdale students, were received into the Catholic Church.
Today, Cole, her husband, Lee Cole — a professor at the college — and her seven children all reside in Hillsdale, where she serves on staff at the city’s St. Anthony Catholic Church, where she was received when she converted more than 20 years ago.
Defenders of the faith
Just as it did then, St. Anthony is the sole institution providing the sacraments to students on campus. But the church works hand in hand with the school’s “Catholic Society,” a student-led club that organizes social events and opportunities for students to receive the sacraments and brings speakers to campus.
Noah Hoonhout, a 2023 graduate who led the school’s Catholic student organization, said that the Catholic Society is “the most active” club on campus.
Among the recent speakers the society has sponsored are German Cardinal Gerhard Müller and American theologian George Weigel, both of whom drew large crowds, according to Hoonhout.
Noah Hoonhout, 22, a 2023 graduate, was the president of Hillsdale’s Catholic Society in his senior year. Credit: Noah Hoonhout
According to the Hillsdale Daily News, the school’s president called Weigel and Müller “ardent defenders of the immemorial teachings of the Christian faith and of the liberty of the human soul before God that Hillsdale College holds so dear” following their lectures in 2021.
Whalen told CNA that when Müller visited campus he was invited to say a few words at a dinner in his honor at the school’s president’s house.
Whalen said that Müller “gave an extemporaneous short talk that was both brilliant and beautiful. It was a great moment.”
The Catholic Society points students toward St. Anthony’s many ministries, one of which is specifically established for Hillsdale students called “The Grotto.”
The Grotto is a house located near campus where students can come and pray before the Blessed Sacrament.
Each week, the Grotto offers Mass, confession, eucharistic adoration, the recitation of the rosary, formation events, and social gatherings for the students, such as “convivium,” where dozens of students will gather for dinner at the house on Thursday nights and hear a talk on the Catholic faith from a professor at the school.
Hoonhout, 22, said that the Grotto is one of the “centers of Catholic culture” on campus.
What’s next?
In Sajak’s long tenure at “Wheel of Fortune,” he has earned several awards, including a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2019, Guinness World Records deemed him to have “the longest career as a game show host for the same show,” which was 35 years and 198 days at the time, according to abc.com.
Although not much is known about what Sajak will do following retirement from “Wheel of Fortune,” Hillsdale has said that he will continue serving in his role as chairman of its board of trustees.
His role at the game show will be taken over by celebrity host Ryan Seacrest. Sajak’s longtime co-host, Vanna White, reportedly will remain with the show.
“Well, the time has come. I’ve decided that our 41st season, which begins in September, will be my last,” Sajak tweeted on June 12. “It’s been a wonderful ride, and I’ll have more to say in the coming months. Many thanks to you all.”
Pope Francis delivers his Angelus address at the Vatican, Feb. 27, 2022. / Vatican Media.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 27, 2022 / 11:04 am (CNA).
Pope Francis spoke Feb. 27 about the human tendency to focus on the faults of others, rather tha… […]
CNA Staff, Oct 1, 2020 / 01:07 pm (CNA).- A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a Tennessee law that requires doctors to inform patients seeking medical abortion that the procedure could be reversed if the patient acts quickly.
The law, which was signed by Gov. Bill Lee in July, requires abortion providers to notify patients that medical abortions can be reversed; a procedure that is becoming more common among pro-life doctors, but which has not yet been evaluated by the FDA.
Medical abortions made up around 40% of at U.S. abortions in 2017, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. The FDA allows the two-pill regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol to be used until 10 weeks gestation.
Tennessee’s law required the physician to offer notification of the possibility of reversal at least 48 hours before the abortion, again in writing after the first pill of the regimen has been administered, and written on “conspicuously” displayed signs in private offices, ambulatory surgical treatment centers, facilities, and clinics that have provided more than 50 abortions in the previous calendar year, CNN reported.
Tennesee’s five abortion clinics, along with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, filed suit against the law in August.
The federal judge, William Campbell, wrote that he was “unable to assess fully the competing expert opinions as to whether the mandated message is ‘truthful and not misleading,’ in the absence of the experts’ testimony,” but also that the plaintiffs had demonstrated “a strong or substantial likelihood” that the mandate violates the First Amendment.
The judge’s block on the law will last until Oct. 13.
Several other states, including Oklahoma, North Dakota, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska have passed laws requiring abortion providers to inform patients about abortion pill reversal. A district judge granted a preliminary injunction against North Dakota’s requirement during Sept. 2019.
In July, a federal judge overruled FDA requirements that women visit with a doctor in-person before they can be prescribed a medical abortion.
Since 2000, the FDA has placed the chemical abortion protocol of mifepristone and misoprostol under its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy list, requiring it to be prescribed in-person in a hospital, clinic, or medical office. The patient must sign a form acknowledging that she has been adequately informed of the risks.
Pro-abortion groups, however, have pushed for the pill to be dispensed remotely via telemedicine during the coronavirus pandemic, due to apparent difficulties women could face traveling to a clinic in-person.
The first drug, mifepristone, effectively starves the unborn baby by blocking the effects of the hormone progesterone. The second drug, misoprostol, is taken up to two days later and induces labor.
Side effects that women suffer from the pills, such as heavy bleeding, abdominal pain, or severe infections, are usually treated at emergency rooms, which are not required to report the incidents to the FDA.
After the federal judge’s decision, pro-life leaders and senators asked the FDA to remove the abortion pill from the market altogether by classifying it as a public health hazard. Nearly two dozen pro-life leaders said that pro-abortion groups were “using the coronavirus pandemic as a ruse” in their efforts to deregulate the pills.
A 2018 study, published in Issues in Law and Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal, examined 261 successful abortion pill reversals, and showed that the reversal success rates were 68 percent with a high-dose oral progesterone protocol and 64 percent with an injected progesterone protocol.
Both procedures significantly improved the 25 percent fetal survival rate if no treatment is offered and a woman simply declines the second pill of a medical abortion. The case study also showed that the progesterone treatments caused no increased risk of birth defects or preterm births due.
The study was authored by Dr. Mary Davenport and Dr. George Delgado, who have been studying the abortion pill reversal procedures since 2009. Delgado also sits on the board of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The Abortion Pill Rescue Network, which Delgado serves as a medical advisor, has claimed to have saved over 500 babies from abortion. The network is a program of Heartbeat International, a longstanding network of pro-life pregnancy assistance.
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which tends to oppose abortion regulations, has criticized the scientific claims behind abortion pill reversal.
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