Los Angeles, Calif., Nov 30, 2017 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, CA has encouraged Catholics in the U.S. to advocate for an extension to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program before the spring deadline.
“As you know, the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will expire on March 5, 2018 unless Congress acts to make the DACA protections permanent,” stated Archbishop Gomez.
“Now is the time for you to contact your Representative in the House… urge your representatives right now to tell the House Leadership – Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy – to do the right thing and make the DACA protections permanent,” Gomez continued.
In Sept. 2017, the Trump Administration announced that it would be phasing out the DACA program.
Showing its support for the DACA program, the Archdiocese of LA created a website to make it easier for individuals to contact their legislators, encouraging Congress to make the DACA protections permanent.
The website links users with their representatives, and prompts them to email or call with a message to make DACA protections permanent by the end of the year.
More than 800,000 people rely on the DACA program, a U.S. immigration policy that makes allowances for undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors to receive a work permit and deferred action from deportation.
Most of the people who are part of the DACA program have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years and were brought into the country by their parents.
“These are the people that live next door. They go to work and we sit next to them at church on Sunday,” Gomez said.
There are 12 business days left for Congress to take action in 2017, but the official deadline is March 5, 2018.
“This is an urgent moment. If we do not reach out to our House members, nobody else is going to,” Gomez said.
“May God bless you for your concern for these DACA recipients and their families.
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“Abortion isn’t wrong because the Catholic Church says it’s wrong,” Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin, pointed out. “The Catholic Church says it’s wrong because it’s inherently wrong.” / Credit: “EWTN News Nightly”/Screenshot
CNA Staff, Jul 6, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).
As the 2024 U.S. presidential election heats up, a Wisconsin bishop is calling on President Joe Biden to consider “the dignity of life” while other Wisconsin Catholics are also voicing their support for the pro-life cause.
“Our goal is certainly that every one of our parishes has people equipped, informed to receive, to welcome, to accompany, and to really practically help both women and men that find themselves in crisis pregnancy or crisis parenthood,” Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin, told EWTN News correspondent Owen Jensen.
When asked what he would say to Catholic president Biden, Hying responded: “I would say, Mr. President, we invite you to look at what the Church says about the dignity of life.”
“It’s important to point out that abortion isn’t wrong because the Catholic Church says it’s wrong,” Hying continued. “The Catholic Church says it’s wrong because it’s inherently wrong.”
Wisconsin pro-life advocates are awaiting a state court decision on an 1849 abortion law protecting unborn children. The legislative director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, Matt Sande, voiced concern about the Wisconsin State Supreme Court’s current makeup, calling the court, which has a liberal majority of 4-3, “radicalized.”
“Not only are we looking at them ruling 940.04, our abortion ban, unenforceable, overturning it, they could be looking to find a right to abortion in our state constitution,” he told Jensen on “EWTN News Nightly.”
Tom Usle, the northern regional manager of Students for Life, noted that now is the time to “step up” for the right to life.
“It’s a battleground state, to be sure,” Usle said. “But we also see just more and more people are really coming to the realization that it is on us now to step up.”
“We no longer have the excuse of: ‘Roe’ is in the way, we can’t do anything about abortion,” he said. “Now is the time that we really do have the power.”
A pro-life student in Milwaukee credited adoption with saving her life from abortion.
“All glory be to God that I was kept and able to live given the chance at life,” Isabelle Thompson told Jensen.
Thompson, who is Catholic, gave advice for expectant mothers who may be considering abortion.
“A pregnancy that you’ll go through is nine months of your life, and that’s hard to give that up, even if you’re not going to keep that child — especially if you’re not going to keep that child,” she said. “That’s a hard nine months to give of your life, but that’s nine months as opposed to a child’s entire life that could be gone.”
To her biological mother who put her up for adoption years ago, Thompson said: “Just thank you. Not only for giving me life, but you gave my parents a child, something that they couldn’t have. Adoption is one of their greatest blessings.”
Ray Kapaun, the nephew of Servant of God Father Emil Kapaun, and his wife, Lee, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Wichita, Kansas, on the day of Father Kapaun’s funeral. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Ray Kapaun
CNA Staff, Nov 11, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
As a new film about U.S. military chaplains was released in theaters on Nov. 8, the nephew of heroic priest and chaplain Servant of God Father Emil Kapaun spoke about his uncle’s virtue and sense of mission during the Korean War.
“Fighting Spirit: A Combat Chaplain’s Journey” tells the story of former Army chaplain Justin Roberts as he travels to the funeral of Kapaun. Along the way, Roberts is inspired by the lives of the 419 other U.S. military chaplains who have given their lives in service. The documentary explores the stories of several of these chaplains, including the beloved Catholic priest.
Kapaun was a priest of the Diocese of Wichita, Kansas. Ordained on June 9, 1940, he began training in the U.S. Army Chaplain School at Fort Devens four years after his ordination. In January 1950, he was sent to Japan as a chaplain in the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. In July 1950, he was then sent to Korea, where he brought the sacraments to troops, tended to the injured, and prayed with soldiers in the foxholes. At times he celebrated Mass on the battlefield using the hood of a jeep as a makeshift altar.
Ray Kapaun receives the remains of his uncle, Father Emil Kapaun, and places them on the gurney to transport him out of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in Hawaii. Credit: Photo courtesy of Ray Kapaun
During the Battle of Unsan, Kapaun was captured along with other soldiers and taken to a Chinese-run prison camp in Pyoktong, North Korea. While there, he regularly stole food for his fellow prisoners and tended to their spiritual needs despite a prohibition on prayer.
After being taken to what prisoners called the “death house,” Kapaun died on May 23, 1951, after months of malnutrition and pneumonia.
His cause for sainthood is being promoted by the Diocese of Wichita and is currently being reviewed by the theological committee for the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in Rome.
A nephew of the heroic priest, Ray Kapaun, told CNA that growing up he heard stories about his uncle from his grandmother. He recalled hearing about his uncle’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and how his vocation to the priesthood was clear from a young age: He would stack cardboard boxes on top of one another, throw a towel over them, and pretend to say Mass at his makeshift altar.
“He was the most unselfish person I think I’ve ever heard of,” Ray Kapaun said. “He just always put everybody else ahead of his own needs.”
One story that Ray remembers was told to him by his father. Shortly before Father Kapaun was about to head out to the Korean War, he went to visit his family in his hometown of Pilsen, Kansas. He pulled Ray’s father aside and told him: “I don’t think I’m going to be coming back from this one.”
“Dad was like, ‘No, don’t talk like that. You can’t,’” Ray recalled. “And he said, ‘I’m not telling you that to make you sad or feel sorry for me,’ he said, ‘I just have that feeling that I’m not coming back from this one.’”
Ray believes it was this feeling that allowed his uncle to “do the things he did to help the guys in the prison camp, to run out across the battlefield when bombs were exploding — he knew that is exactly where he needed to be and he did it with compassion, but he didn’t do it with fear. He did it with a knowing that God was going to take care of him and that was exactly where he needed to be.”
In March 2021, after 70 years, the skeletal remains of Father Kapaun were identified among 866 other unknown Korean soldiers buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. These remains were handed to American forces in 1954 by North Korea.
Ray said receiving the call that his uncle’s remains had been found was something he “never ever envisioned.” He called it truly “miraculous” that when Father Kapaun’s casket was opened for his body to be identified, “his [skeletal] remains were 98% intact.”
“They actually sent us a photo of the remains laid out as the skeleton and he was just missing a couple of fingertips, one of his toes, and the kneecap was all he was missing. So that in and of itself was pretty much a miracle” he said.
Father Kapaun’s funeral Mass was held on Sept. 29, 2021, at Wichita’s Hartman Arena, where over 5,000 people came together to remember him.
The entire Kapaun family at the dedication of the statue of Father Emil Kapaun in Pilsen, Kansas, on June 23, 2001. Credit: Photo courtesy of Ray Kapaun
In the days leading up to the funeral, Ray and his wife hosted two of the POWs (prisoners of war) who spent time with Father Kapaun in the prison camp and are the last two still alive.
Ray shared “an incredible moment” with the POWs: They were taken to the mortuary to have a moment alone with Father Kapaun and before entering, one of them, Col. Michael Dowe, turned to Ray and asked: “Am I going to get the chance to hold Father in my arms just one last time?”
“So, we had opened up the casket, and Mike is there, and he just starts crying and he was talking to Father and he’s like, ‘When they came to take you away we just didn’t stand up enough for you, we just didn’t stand up enough,’” Ray recalled.
“I know Father had his hands on his shoulders then as he did in the camp and I know he told him, ‘Oh, it’s OK Mike. You just gotta let me go. I’m where I wanted to be. So it’s OK,’” Ray said. “Those moments were probably the most memorable, the most touching for me.”
When asked how Father Kapaun can be a source of inspiration for not only chaplains but also for everyone, Ray said: “Father gives hope, and Father gives a meaning to find the right in the world, Father always looked for the good in the world.”
“I think especially now with all the division and all the hate and all the things going on in this world, he only saw the person. It wasn’t that you needed to be Catholic; he saw the person, he saw what their soul was and how they treated others.”
He added: “He saw the compassion that was needed, he saw somebody needed help and he would help them at whatever sacrifice to his own health.”
As for what he hopes people will take away from the new film about his uncle, Ray said he hopes people would “see others and not judge others” and that “you don’t have to do anything grandiose to do kind and great things in this world.”
Prayer can move mountains.
But not with my money, anymore, thank you very much.