Washington D.C., Jan 10, 2018 / 12:52 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) will address the upcoming March for Life, organizers announced on Wednesday. This is the first time Ryan has spoken at the March for Life in person since he was elected speaker in 2015.
The 45th annual March for Life will take place on January 19th in Washington, D.C., and is the country’s largest pro-life protest. The event is held each year near the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States.
Last year, Ryan appeared at the march via a video message, encouraging marchers and thanking them for their passion and courage in fighting for the unborn.
On Twitter, Ryan said that he looked forward to attending the March for Life, and said that he will “march to defend the rights of those who cannot defend themselves.”
We march to defend the rights of those who cannot defend themselves. I look forward to attending the 45th annual #MarchForLife next week. https://t.co/GVz2oVRtsQ
March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said in a press release that she was honored that Ryan would be speaking at the March for Life. Ryan, said Mancini, is an “unwavering champion” for the cause.
“It is an honor to have Speaker of the House Paul Ryan address the 45th annual March for Life. Speaker Ryan has been an unwavering champion for the pro-life cause since taking office, and continues to utilize his post to promote the inherent dignity of the human person at all stages of life,” she said.
Ryan will be joined at the March for Life by his congressional colleagues Reps. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) and Chris Smith (R-New Jersey), along with Tim Tebow’s mother, Pam Tebow, and Sister Bethany Madonna of the Sisters of Life. More speakers will be announced in the future.
The theme of this year’s march is “Love Saves Lives.” Over 100,000 people are expected to attend.
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Exterior of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. / Shutterstock
Boston, Mass., Nov 23, 2022 / 14:30 pm (CNA).
In a 2017 email, a doctor at the transgender clinic at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said she was not aware of any medical studies at the time that supported the irreversible surgeries the clinic had been performing on minors, public records show.
The statement is contained in internal emails, obtained by a private citizen through a public documents request, between Dr. Nadia Dowshen — co-director of the Gender and Sexuality Development Clinic at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — and Dr. Rachel Levine. At the time Levine, a biological male who identifies as a transgender female, was Pennsylvania’s physician general. Today Levine serves as assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Critics of so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries and treatments for young people with gender dysphoria were outraged by the disclosure, which one leading pediatrician says suggests that these procedures amount to “a giant experiment on children” that lack a clear understanding on the part of health care professionals and their young patients of the risks and long-term consequences involved.
But in a statement to CNA, Levine said there was “nothing unusual” about the email exchange and maintained that the “medical validity” of these procedures has been “affirmed.”
In one of the emails, Levine asked Dowshen and another co-director of the Gender & Sexuality Development Clinic, Dr. Linda Hawkins, about what Levine called “gender confirmation surgery” for “young people under 18 years of age,” which Levine said could include “top surgery for trans young men and top and bottom surgery for trans young women.”
“Top” and “bottom” surgery are the common parlance among transgender supporters for major, irreversible surgical changes to make a person appear to be a different sex. These include the removal of women’s breasts and the removal and reconstruction of male sexual organs.
Rachel Levine, then a nominee for assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25, 2021. Caroline Brehman/AFP via Getty Images
“Is there any literature to support this protocol?” Levine asked in the May 4, 2017, email. “Please let me know if you have any references.”
The same day, Dowshen responded and wrote: “Hi Rachel, I’m not aware of existing literature but it is certainly happening. I think we’ve had more than 10 patients who have had chest surgery under 18 (as young as 15) and 1 bottom surgery (17).”
Dowshen said she was currently working with colleagues to “get some pre-post data for top surgeries for youth under 18” and suggested that a research assistant could do a literature search to make sure they were “not missing anything,” to which Levine agreed.
“A lot of our youth are being denied coverage for top surgery if under 18,” Dowshen said.
In a statement to CNA Wednesday, Levine downplayed the significance of the email exchange.
“As physician general of the state of Pennsylvania, I worked to remain aware of the latest science in a number of health areas. This allowed me to offer policy recommendations to the governor, to offer strong managerial oversight on behalf of the people of Pennsylvania, and to coordinate effectively with my peers,” Levine said.
“My question about the existing literature on surgeries for minors was asked in the same spirit as many of the other questions I asked in that role — that of making sure I was aware of the latest and most relevant data on an issue of public interest,” Levine said.
“There was nothing unusual about that exchange, and in the years since it occurred, the medical validity of gender affirming care has only been reaffirmed and strengthened,” Levine said. “It is important to note the standards of care for patients include psychological and medical evaluations and, if necessary, treatment and support for the young person and their family. Children who have not yet started puberty do not receive medical treatment — at that age, care focuses on counseling and being mindful of the needs of the young person, their family, and their school.”
CNA also contacted Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for comment but did not receive a response.
‘A giant experiment on children’
Dr. Quentin Van Meter, president of the American College of Pediatricians — an organization of pediatricians that advocates for children’s health and well-being — criticized the email exchange. He told CNA that it is wrong for any doctor to be doing experimental surgeries when there are no long-term studies to support them.
Van Meter said the result of the doctors doing experimental sex-change surgeries on minors is that “the lives of what will be tens of thousands of children are ruined.”
He said that there are no long-term studies in existence to support sex-change surgeries, whether that be for minors or adults.
“This is a giant experiment on children,” he said. “Medicine cannot be practiced that way.”
Van Meter also took issue with Levine’s response to CNA.
Van Meter said Levine is wrong about transgender surgeries being “affirmed” by science, saying that “it’s actually been torn to shreds by science.”
“It’s the most embarrassing, non-scientific facade in a very scientific environment,” he said.
The original publicizer of the emails, Twitter user Megan Brock, told CNA she gained access to the emails through a Pennsylvania Right to Know Law public document request.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is the latest hospital to come under fire after media exposés have shown that gender transition surgeries on minors have been taking place at medical institutions across the nation.
In August, Boston Children’s Hospital took heavy criticism when news broke that it was offering gender transition treatments and surgeries for kids. The hospital has since updated its website and says that only 18-year-olds qualify for “phalloplasty or metoidioplasty and for vaginoplasty surgeries.”
The website still says that the hospital will perform “chest surgery” on 15-year-olds.
In October, Vanderbilt University Medical Hospital paused gender transition surgeries on children after an investigation into the hospital was called for by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee. Vanderbilt’s surgeries on minors — and the lucrative nature of its transgender surgeries in general — were originally exposed by Matt Walsh, an internet host for The Daily Wire.
Mother Teresa and John Paul II, May 25, 1983. / Credit: L’Osservatore Romano
CNA Staff, Sep 4, 2024 / 16:46 pm (CNA).
Today is the eighth anniversary of Mother Teresa’s canonization. Pope Francis declared her a saint on Sept. 4, 2016 — just over a dozen years after she was beatified by her friend and fellow saint, Pope John Paul II.
St. Teresa of Calcutta, who was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, gained fame around the world for caring for the poorest of the poor and sharing Christ’s love with them. She founded the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order that carries on her work today around the world.
St. John Paul II and Mother Teresa, two of the most famous and consequential Catholic saints of the 20th century, weren’t just friends. As followers of Christ, they complemented each other in profound ways, with Mother Teresa putting into practice so many of the Catholic teachings that John Paul eloquently taught.
“Where John Paul provided the theological and intellectual foundation for understanding human dignity in the face of the great darkness of the 20th century — abortion, euthanasia, atheism, communism, and materialism — Mother Teresa was a living witness to what the pope was teaching,” the editors of the National Catholic Register noted in 2016.
Though Mother Teresa was a decade older than John Paul, they both experienced significant milestones in their faith lives in 1946 — he was ordained a priest that year and Sister Teresa heard a “call within a call” to serve the poor on the streets of Calcutta. Throughout both of their lives, they were deeply devoted to the Virgin Mary and to the rosary.
In 1986, the pope visited Mother Teresa’s hospice center, Nirmal Hriday, which she had founded in 1952 in the heart of the slums in Calcutta. Tens of thousands of sick and forgotten people, who would otherwise have perished on the streets, died a dignified death at the center over the decades.
According to news reports, Pope John Paul was “visibly moved” and even disturbed by what he saw at the hospice, such that he was rendered speechless. He called Nirmal Hriday “a place that bears witness to the primacy of love.”
“Our human dignity comes from God … in whose image we are all made. No amount of privation or suffering can ever remove this dignity, for we are always precious in the eyes of God,” he said in a speech given outside the center.
In Nirmal Hriday, “the mystery of human suffering meets the mystery of faith and love,” the pope continued; there, people ask every day why God would allow such death and suffering.
“And the answer that comes, often in unspoken ways of kindness and compassion, is filled with honesty and faith: ‘I cannot fully answer all your questions; I cannot take away all your pain. But of this I am sure: God loves you with an everlasting love. You are precious in his sight. In him I love you too. For in God we are truly brothers and sisters,’” the pope said.
Mother Teresa later described the day of the pope’s visit as “the happiest day of my life.”
At that meeting and whenever they met afterward, John Paul would kiss the top of the diminutive nun’s head and offer her a blessing, while she fervently kissed his papal ring.
Mother Teresa died in 1997. At her beatification in 2003, an aging John Paul said: “I am personally grateful to this courageous woman, whom I have always felt beside me. Mother Teresa, an icon of the Good Samaritan, went everywhere to serve Christ in the poorest of the poor.”
“Let us praise the Lord for this diminutive woman in love with God, a humble Gospel messenger and a tireless benefactor of humanity. In her we honor one of the most important figures of our time. Let us welcome her message and follow her example,” the pope said of his friend.
“Virgin Mary, queen of all the saints, help us to be gentle and humble of heart like this fearless messenger of love. Help us to serve every person we meet with joy and a smile. Help us to be missionaries of Christ, our peace and our hope. Amen!”
Starbucks coffee shop. / AKS.9955/wikimedia. CC BY SA 4.0
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 28, 2022 / 13:54 pm (CNA).
As some states ban or regulate abortion following the Dobbs decision, numerous companies have announced they will provide financ… […]
2 Comments
How DARE Paul Ryan call himself a Catholic. This is the Catholic Church that I remember.
I remember my outrage when the Catholic Church transferred Cardinal Bernard Laws to the Vatican after he was exposed for transferring pedophile priests in his diocese. I was even more infuriated when the Cardinal could participate in Pope John Paul’s funeral. For the first time in fifty years I questioned my devotion to the Church.
AND THEN I REMEMBERED:
A young black child attending and receiving communion without any fear or hesitation in all-white Catholic Churches in North Carolina and Virginia in the 40’s and 50’s.
Four Catholic nuns who traveled ten miles every Sunday on dirt roads to transport three young black children to Mass who had no other way to get to church.
I remember an elderly Catholic priest who brought communion EVERY Sunday for ten years to my disabled paternal grandmother even though she had nothing to contribute to the Church as she lived on $85.00 a month after my grandfather died.
I remember a big Irish Catholic priest who chose to work with the African-American community in the south in the 1950’s and organized a youth group among a handful of young black Catholics. That priest led this group of “rag tag” students down the main streets of a small southern city to protest segregation. One of those students, Joseph McNeil, went on to A&T State University where he organized and began the sit-down demonstrations at lunch counters in the Woolworth Stores. His actions initiated the integration of public facilities in this country. That lunch counter is enshrined in a museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
I remember that same priest procured full scholarships for several young African-American women to attend the prestigious St. Mary College in South Bend, Indiana in 1959.
I remember requesting from the Josephites (priest’s community) a photo of Father Richard Swift to include in a book that I am writing and being astounded at a short bio included with the photo that chronicled his remarkable life of service.
I remember a wonderful Catholic priest who counseled and consoled me during my years of life with an alcoholic husband and severely asthmatic son.
I remember a jovial, happy priest who provided a full scholarship for my son to attend the local Catholic school when I couldn’t afford the tuition
I remember contacting a quiet Catholic priest, whom I had never met, and asking him to visit my son away in college in the hospital with a broken jaw that he sustained playing college football. Father Thomas Hadden went to visit my son without any hesitation and reported back to me. We became lifelong friends.
I remember a kind and gentle priest who helped me get the diocese to accept my divorces from two unhealthy marriages without any criticism or judgment.
During my second marriage, I had a daughter and I remember a very elderly Monsignor who held my hand, prayed with me, and counseled me when my husband walked out and left me with an eighteen-month-old daughter.
I remember two priests and two nuns who traveled with me to Wake Forest University to see that young lady graduate from college.
I remember a kindly Catholic priest, the son of a Methodist minister, who encouraged and supported a community clinic, food bank, dental clinic, and an unbelievable social outreach that turned no one away: all run by the Sisters of St Ursula and volunteers.
I remember all the Catholic clinics, food banks, and outreach programs sponsored by the Catholic Church throughout this country and the world that are supported by local priests and staffed by dedicated Catholic nuns and lay people.
I remember my years of involvement in all Catholic ministries, from training and assigning lectors to starting the first ever youth program at the St. Mary Cathedral in Wilmington, NC.
I remember a jolly, happy-go-lucky Irish priest obsessed with Notre Dame Football and a quiet, stern, holy priest with a wicked sense of humor; they changed my life forever. Their presence makes heaven a better place!
Pedophile priests should be excommunicated and so should those who continue to protect them. The behavior is unconscionable as young lives are destroyed. I weep when I learn of priests who continue to commit these horrendous acts and, I again, ask myself if I can continue to support the Roman Catholic Church ? THEN I REMEMBER:
How DARE Paul Ryan call himself a Catholic. This is the Catholic Church that I remember.
I remember my outrage when the Catholic Church transferred Cardinal Bernard Laws to the Vatican after he was exposed for transferring pedophile priests in his diocese. I was even more infuriated when the Cardinal could participate in Pope John Paul’s funeral. For the first time in fifty years I questioned my devotion to the Church.
AND THEN I REMEMBERED:
A young black child attending and receiving communion without any fear or hesitation in all-white Catholic Churches in North Carolina and Virginia in the 40’s and 50’s.
Four Catholic nuns who traveled ten miles every Sunday on dirt roads to transport three young black children to Mass who had no other way to get to church.
I remember an elderly Catholic priest who brought communion EVERY Sunday for ten years to my disabled paternal grandmother even though she had nothing to contribute to the Church as she lived on $85.00 a month after my grandfather died.
I remember a big Irish Catholic priest who chose to work with the African-American community in the south in the 1950’s and organized a youth group among a handful of young black Catholics. That priest led this group of “rag tag” students down the main streets of a small southern city to protest segregation. One of those students, Joseph McNeil, went on to A&T State University where he organized and began the sit-down demonstrations at lunch counters in the Woolworth Stores. His actions initiated the integration of public facilities in this country. That lunch counter is enshrined in a museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
I remember that same priest procured full scholarships for several young African-American women to attend the prestigious St. Mary College in South Bend, Indiana in 1959.
I remember requesting from the Josephites (priest’s community) a photo of Father Richard Swift to include in a book that I am writing and being astounded at a short bio included with the photo that chronicled his remarkable life of service.
I remember a wonderful Catholic priest who counseled and consoled me during my years of life with an alcoholic husband and severely asthmatic son.
I remember a jovial, happy priest who provided a full scholarship for my son to attend the local Catholic school when I couldn’t afford the tuition
I remember contacting a quiet Catholic priest, whom I had never met, and asking him to visit my son away in college in the hospital with a broken jaw that he sustained playing college football. Father Thomas Hadden went to visit my son without any hesitation and reported back to me. We became lifelong friends.
I remember a kind and gentle priest who helped me get the diocese to accept my divorces from two unhealthy marriages without any criticism or judgment.
During my second marriage, I had a daughter and I remember a very elderly Monsignor who held my hand, prayed with me, and counseled me when my husband walked out and left me with an eighteen-month-old daughter.
I remember two priests and two nuns who traveled with me to Wake Forest University to see that young lady graduate from college.
I remember a kindly Catholic priest, the son of a Methodist minister, who encouraged and supported a community clinic, food bank, dental clinic, and an unbelievable social outreach that turned no one away: all run by the Sisters of St Ursula and volunteers.
I remember all the Catholic clinics, food banks, and outreach programs sponsored by the Catholic Church throughout this country and the world that are supported by local priests and staffed by dedicated Catholic nuns and lay people.
I remember my years of involvement in all Catholic ministries, from training and assigning lectors to starting the first ever youth program at the St. Mary Cathedral in Wilmington, NC.
I remember a jolly, happy-go-lucky Irish priest obsessed with Notre Dame Football and a quiet, stern, holy priest with a wicked sense of humor; they changed my life forever. Their presence makes heaven a better place!
Pedophile priests should be excommunicated and so should those who continue to protect them. The behavior is unconscionable as young lives are destroyed. I weep when I learn of priests who continue to commit these horrendous acts and, I again, ask myself if I can continue to support the Roman Catholic Church ? THEN I REMEMBER:
“How DARE Paul Ryan call himself a Catholic.”
Huh. Is Paul Ryan a pedophile or a disgraced prelate? Did I miss something? Good grief.