Greensburg, Pa., Apr 13, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic liberal arts college in Pennsylvania is hosting its seventh biennial Catholic Arts Competition and Exhibition to move artists and buyers towards diverse, original, and beautiful Chri… […]
Washington D.C., Apr 13, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After a record-high year of death sentences implemented around the world in 2016, a new report released by Amnesty International shows an overall decrease in capital punishment during 2017.
Ho… […]
Abuja, Nigeria, Apr 12, 2018 / 09:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With 15-year-old Leah Sharibu still in captivity under the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram for not renouncing her Christian faith, Nigeria’s president has said efforts to save her are … […]
Buenos Aires, Argentina, Apr 12, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- Before discovering their vocations, Fr. Javier Olivera and Sister Marie de la Sagesse were engaged and planning their wedding. God had other plans.
Speaking to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, Fr. Olivera said that they both grew up in Catholic families and that “our parents knew each other when they were young.” They saw each other frequently when they were children.
“I had really left the practice of religion. When I was 19, I came back from a back-packing trip to Peru and I met her. I asked her if she believed in virginity until marriage, because for me this was kind of an invention by the Church. She laid out the principles so well about purity, from faith and reason, that it impacted me. I met a woman who knew how to defend what she believed and who was at the same time very intelligent,” Olivera commented.
Soon after that conversation, they began dating. At that time both of them were studying law. He was at the National University at Buenos Aires and she was at the National University at La Plata.
Fr. Olivera said that “it was like any other courtship but we tried to take advantage of cultural life through music, literature and philosophy. We read books together, we’d go out for coffee. We had a group of friends with whom we attended conferences of Argentine Catholic authors.”
“I started to practice the faith, to pray, to go to Mass on Sundays. All in large part thanks to her, to God mainly, but to her as an instrument,” said the priest. He added that they also prayed the rosary together.
For her part, Sister Marie de la Sagesse, whose baptismal name is Trinidad Maria Guiomar, told ACI Prensa that what she most appreciated about her then-boyfriend was “his sincere search for the truth without fearing the consequences.”
The couple got engaged when they were 21 and decided to get married after college, two and a half years away.
The discovery of a vocation
One day Trinidad Maria’s older brother broke the news that he would be entering the seminary, and she remembered, “we were reeling from it because we weren’t expecting that.”
“I had a car and with my fiancée we decided to take him to the seminary, which was in San Rafael, Mendoza Province,” she said. They both decided to stay in the area a few days so Javier could visit some friends who were in the seminary, and Trinidad Maria could visit some friends in the convent.
“When we got back, we talked about how crazy all that was, that her brother had left everything, the possibility of having a family, an important career. We began to ask ourselves, ‘What would happen if God called us to the religious life?’ The first thing we said was ‘no’ and that that was crazy because we were having a really beautiful engagement and we were already buying things to get married,” Fr. Olivera recounted.
Weeks went by “there was this constant thought in my soul about what would happen if God called me, if I had to leave everything, why not be a priest? How to know if the best way to get to heaven for me is the priestly life or the married life? Where can I do the most good?”
After so many doubts he decided to tell his fiancée about his vocational concerns, who confessed to him that she “was thinking the same thing” after her brother entered the seminary.
However, neither one of them made a decision. “Since we still had two years before finishing law school, that was a great excuse to not yet enter the seminary or the convent,” Fr. Olivera said.
They had “a very prudent monk” as a spiritual adviser, who told them: “Look, that is an issue between each one of you and God. No one can interfere with souls.”
For her part, Sister Marie de la Sagesse told ACI Prensa that “it was a long period of discernment, at least two years, until God clearly showed me the consecrated life, and I could not doubt that he was asking of me this total surrender.”
After finishing their studies, both embraced their vocations. In 2008, when they were 31, he was ordained a priest in the Diocese of San Rafael, and she made her final vows in the congregation of the Sisters of the Merciful Jesus.
Fr. Olivera is currently a university professor and has a blog called “Que no te la cuenten” (Find out for yourself). He has written a book on vocational doubts entitled “¿Alguna vez pensaste? El llamado de Cristo” (Have you ever thought about it? The Call of Christ).
Sister Marie de la Sagesse lives in southern France and has an apostolate in Saint Laurent Parish in the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon.
Regarding their story, she said that “I consider it a special grace that both of us were called almost at the same time. So kind and thoughtful of Divine Providence, who doesn’t miss a detail . And what I really appreciate is that we’re still friends and not just us, but our families too.”
This story was originally published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister agency. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Katherine Asjes just learned that the Reign of Gay is the new Dark Ages. […]
Washington D.C., Apr 12, 2018 / 04:23 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Inspired by recent student walkouts over gun control, hundreds of high school and college students across the US took part in a pro-life walkout on Wednesday.
According to pro-life group Students for Life of America (SFLA), more than 400 students and student organizations told SFLA that they planned on participating in the April 11 walkout, though the actual number is likely higher, as students did not have to register with the group to participate.
“Across the country, pro-life students and groups stood up for the 321,384 babies killed by Planned Parenthood every year, against the violence of abortion, and in support of pregnant and parenting students,” SFLA president Kristan Hawkins said in a statement.
“In pictures worth millions of words, we saw students walking out, praying, and chalking pro-life messages to bring attention to the fact that one-fourth of our generation has been snuffed out of existence because of legalized abortion,” she added.
Participants were encouraged to use #Life and #ProLifeWalkout to document their participation on social media. Like the March for Our Lives walkout, the pro-life walkout lasted 17 minutes, during which time students mourned the 10 babies who would be killed by abortion within that time frame.
So proud of the more than 60 students who participated in the #ProLifeWalkout from my high school. We are the #ProLifeGeneration. @Students4LifeHQ pic.twitter.com/qgmN88lFlh
— Blake Barclay (@blakebarclayusa) April 11, 2018
The idea for the pro-life walkout came from Brandon Gillespie, a student at Rocklin High School in Rocklin, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento.
Gillespie said in March that the idea for the pro-life walkout came to him after his history teacher, Julianne Benzel, discussed the national gun control walkouts in her classroom. Benzel asked her students whether the same privileges would be afforded to students if they wanted to walk out over issues like abortion, or if a double standard existed. She was then placed on paid administrative leave following complaints about her discussion of the issue.
“If you’re going to allow students to get up and walk out without penalty, then you’re going to have to allow any group of students that wants to protest,” Benzel told Fox & Friends.
After hearing of Gillespie’s plan to hold a pro-life walkout, Students for Life created a website promoting the idea to schools throughout the nation.
“I also want to thank Brandon Gillespie at Rocklin High School for inspiring this national walkout and for not letting his school intimidate him out of hosting his walkout. The tremendous, truly grassroots interest we have seen in the walkout is further proof that the Pro-Life Generation is the majority and is strong and growing,” Hawkins said.
The website for the walkout included a list of high schools and colleges that registered with SFLA for the walkout, which included public and private schools from throughout the United States.
Proud to stand with Morality High School students during their time of silence for the their classmates lost to abortion and women hurt at during the #ProLifeWalkout! pic.twitter.com/CJekGhuGFr
— Bethany Janzen (@BethanySFLA) April 11, 2018
“…it’s time for the #ProLifeGen to stand up and say ‘Enough is Enough!’ We will no longer tolerate legal abortion in our nation, which has killed more than a fourth of our generation,” the walkout website stated.
“We will no longer watch as our leaders in Washington continue to fund our nation’s largest abortion vendor, Planned Parenthood, with more than $500 million of our taxpayer dollars. We will no longer permit Planned Parenthood and their allies in the abortion industry to target our peers for their predatory business cycle.”
Hawkins added that SFLA was notified of several students who reported that they faced discrimination for participating in a pro-life walkout, while the gun control walkout was given special accommodations by many schools.
Life Legal Defense Foundation, a non-profit that defends pro-life clients, sent a letter to Gillespie’s high school, notifying the administration that they could face legal ramifications if they interfered with the pro-life walkout and treated participating students differently than those who participated in the gun control walkout.
SFLA and Life Legal have offered to provide legal assistance to any students who faced discrimination for their participation in the pro-life walkout.
Toronto, Canada, Apr 12, 2018 / 03:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archdiocese of Toronto is joining other Canadian dioceses withholding funds from the international development agency sponsored by the Canadian bishops’ conference.
The Canadian Cath… […]
Vatican City, Apr 12, 2018 / 02:41 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Following the publication of Pope Francis’s third apostolic exhortation, bishops in the English-speaking world have applauded Gaudete et exsultate for challenging Catholics to strive for holiness.
The exhortation, dated March 19, is on the call to holiness in today’s world.
Bishop James Conley of Lincoln termed Gaudete et exsultate “a pro-life call”, writing in his April 13 column for the Southern Nebraska Register that what he has read of it already “is wise, direct, and encouraging.”
“The idea that every single person, without exception, is created in the image of God means just that: that every human life has value and dignity, and that our choices must always endeavor to respect, protect and uphold that unique dignity,” the Nebraska bishop wrote.
“Again, as a long-time pro-life activist, I want to be clear: commitment to ending abortion will never justify blatantly disregarding the dignity of all people, especially those subject to injustice.”
The good news, he continued, is that “in decades of pro-life work, I have rarely, if ever, encountered Catholics who only take seriously the lives of the unborn. When I encounter pro-life people in this country, I notice that they are also the people running parish food pantries, giving sandwiches to the homeless even while they are praying at abortion clinics, adopting foster children, and caring for their neighbors.”
“The pope is right: we cannot uphold the sacredness of life for the unborn while disregarding it for those who are born. I thank God that the pro-life people I have met have not exhibited this attitude – that instead, they have been witnesses of charity and generosity.”
Pope Francis’ description of the Church as a field hospital is apt because there, “those who are closest to death are usually the first to be seen. This is not a rejection of the dignity of all, or a denial that all deserve to be treated with mercy and love, it is an affirmation of the extraordinary gift of human life,” the bishop wrote.
Bishop Conley noted that Francis is “right to call to accountability political leaders who profess support for the unborn, but do not exhibit compassion for other people suffering injustice. We need to insist that our politicians work to end abortion, and, at the very same time, that they work to protect the sovereignty of families, the rights of immigrants and laborers, and the dignity of the poor and the vulnerable. We ask our politicians to be consistent in their commitment to human dignity, which is why blind partisanship is inconsistent with our faith.”
Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh noted April 9 that in the exhortation, Pope Francis has reinforced the Second Vatican Council’s “essential teaching” of the universal call to holiness.
“The publication of today’s Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Francis is a great opportunity for all of us, lay, ordained and consecrated, to refocus our lives on what is the central point of our faith in Jesus,” Archbishop Martin stated.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the US bishops’ conference, wrote that “The mission entrusted to each of us in the waters of baptism was simple – by God’s grace and power, we are called to become saints.”
Pope Francis is in the exhortation clearly urging “every Christian to freely, and without any qualifications, acknowledge and be open to what God wants them to be – that is ‘to be holy, as [God] is holy.’”
Cardinal DiNardo pointed out that the Pope is encouraging this pursuit of holiness through the challenges of daily life.
“The Holy Father describes how holiness comes through the daily struggles each of us face. In the ordinary course of each day, the Pope reminds us, ‘We need to recognize and combat our aggressive and selfish inclinations, and not let them take root.’”
Other American pontiffs, like Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, and Bishop Joseph Bambera of Scranton, have also stressed the importance of undertaking practical holiness through ordinary events.
Archbishop Gomez, in his April 10 column at The Angelus, called Gaudete et exsultate “a beautiful and practical reflection on the meaning of our Christian lives.”
“All of us, every baptized Catholic, need to understand how important we are, what our lives mean in the eyes of God, in the light of his beautiful plan for creation. The meaning of our lives is to be saints, to be holy,” the Los Angeles archbishop wrote.
“Pope Francis also wants us to know that holiness is personal, but it does not isolate us from others,” he added.
In the Arlington Catholic Herald, Bishop Burbidge wrote that the pursuit of holiness is a constant battle against the false promises of sin, which must be counteracted with a renewed commitment to prayer and the sacraments. He also said Catholics must foster works of mercy, joy, and community.
Pope Francis, he said, “invites all of us to examine and discern the concrete ‘risks, challenges and opportunities’ which we experience as we attempt to answer the call to holiness. He confidently and joyfully reflects on the places in our everyday lives where this call to holiness is tested, including our families, communities, Church, and use of digital media.”
Bishop Bambera agreed, adding that Pope Francis is encouraging Catholics to share compassion with the most vulnerable.
“The Holy Father calls all of us to bear witness to God in our everyday lives and in all that we do, in particular by treating everyone we encounter with dignity and respect, especially the most vulnerable and those in need of our compassion and assistance – the unborn, the poor and destitute, migrants and refugees,” he said in an April 10 statement.
Washington D.C., Apr 12, 2018 / 01:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new law aims to make it easier to prosecute websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking, such as Backpage.com.
President Donald Trump signed the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017” into law April 11.
Under the new law, the government will be able to prosecute the owners or operators of websites which knowingly assist, support, or facilitate “the prostitution of another person,” or who act with reckless disregard for the fact that their conduct contributed to sex trafficking. Users and victims will be able to sue those sites.
The new law clarifies that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which previously protected the operators of websites from legal liability for content posted by third parties, cannot be used as a defense to shield sites that knowingly promote sex trafficking and prostitution.
“[Section 230] was never intended to provide legal protection to websites that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution and websites that facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims,” the law reads.
Before the bill became law, federal authorities on April 6 seized Backpage, a massive classified ad site used largely for selling sex, which hosted ads depicting the prostitution of children. Ads posted on the site, which took in an estimated $135 million in annual revenue in 2014, were reportedly responsible for nearly three quarters of all cases submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The site was the subject of an extensive Senate report into its practices of promoting prostitution and the trafficking of minors, which was released in January 2017.
The Department of Justice on April 9 announced the charging of seven individuals, including Backpage’s founder Michael Lacey, in a 93-count federal indictment which detailed the site’s reported practices of facilitating prostitution and money laundering. The indictment alleges that the defendants knew that the majority of the website’s “adult” ads involved prostitution, and that the site would “sanitize” the ads by removing “terms and pictures that were particularly indicative of prostitution” but continuing to run the ads.
Backpage also allegedly had a policy for several years that involved deleting words in an ad denoting a child’s age, and publish the revised version, which created a “veneer of deniability” for those trafficking the children.
“This website will no longer serve as a platform for human traffickers to thrive, and those who were complicit in its use to exploit human beings for monetary gain will be held accountable for
their heinous actions,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a release from the DOJ. “Whether on the street or on the Internet, sex trafficking will not be tolerated.”
Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO) introduced the bill, and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) added language to expand the scope of the bill to include advertisements for all forms of prostitution. In areas of the country where prostitution is legal, that fact can be taken into account in court as an affirmative defense.
Prostitution is currently illegal in all of the United States except in a few rural Nevada counties, but some estimates suggest there are over half a million people in the country in prostitution.
After the bill passed the Senate 97-2 with bipartisan support on March 21, a number of websites began to take down explicit content and online communities that promote pornography or prostitution. Craigslist shut down their Personals page on March 23, and Reddit removed several fora that users previously used to seek and advertise escort services and casual sexual encounters.
Critics of the law, including deputy Attorney General Stephen A. Boyd, voiced concern that some of its language – which would allow punishment for conduct that occurred before it was enacted – may be unconstitutional. Others have argued that it could have a chilling effect on free speech on the internet.
Santa Clara University Law Professor Eric Goldman said, in testimony to Congress in November 2017, that an amendment to Section 230 could lead to sites self-censoring any and all content that could be construed as sex trafficking, or, alternatively, dial down moderation so that they could less reasonably be accused of “knowing” that sex trafficking content existed on their site.
“If failing to moderate content perfectly leads to liability, some online services will abandon their efforts to moderate user content or even shut down,” Goldman said during the hearing.
“I really do fear the chilling effects,” said Mary-Rose Papandrea, a University of North Carolina Law Professor, during a symposium on April 6. “Because imagine you run a platform, and imagine now you are exposed to liability for everything a third-party posts on your website as soon as you’re told about it. What are you going to do? You’re going to take it down.”
“I worry this isn’t the end,” she continued. “We can carve out sex trafficking, and we can debate that…but my concern is what’s next.”
However, Mary G. Leary, law professor at The Catholic University of America, rejected this idea. She told CNA in an interview that the amendment to Section 230 is narrow enough that it only removes a website’s immunity if they knowingly enter into a venture with human traffickers, or if they intentionally promote prostitution.
“That is a very narrowly tailored, common sense bill. I think that any argument it will impair speech is just alarmist and misplaced,” she said.
Leary emphasized that criminal acts, such as prostitution and human trafficking, are not considered speech and have “never been protected by the First Amendment.”
“The Supreme Court has been quite clear that offers to engage in illegal activities are not protected speech,” she said.
Leary said testimony given to the Senate during the creation of the law singled out sites that are clearly “bad actors,” like Backpage, as opposed to the majority of websites that are “law abiding, good corporate citizens who want to end sex trafficking.” She said it is unlikely that most companies will simply look away and choose not to moderate content that promotes sex trafficking.
“That argument has not been proven by history,” she says. “There are many industries that, sadly, are places where sex trafficking takes place…hotels, travel and tourism, shopping areas, foster care facilities…these are places that have never had immunity. We have not seen them as an industry look the other way or pretend it doesn’t happen.”
In fact, she said, groups like the hotel industry have put together best practices to deal with illegal activities that take place on their premises. The new law does not require websites to police all content, but rather clarifies the purpose of Section 230, she said. There will be little effect for law abiding companies, because the law sets a high bar for prosecutors to prove that the company was knowingly and intentionally facilitating sex trafficking.
“What we will see are no longer companies out in the open, allowing and partnering with sex traffickers to sell women and children, with not only impunity but with absolute protection,” Leary said.
Some online groups, such as the Women’s March, claim that the shuttering of sites that are used by people who are not being trafficked will drive the already shady business of prostitution even further underground, and make conditions worse for people who choose to sell sex for a living. Advocates in favor of prostitution have already created several new websites that are hosted overseas, in countries like Austria, to avoid the alleged self-censorship of American-hosted sites.
Critics, however, challenged the idea that prostitution is a profession of choice for women.
“Nobody says when they’re a little girl, ‘I want to grow up to be a prostitute,’” said Dr. Grazie Christie, Policy Advisor for The Catholic Association, speaking on EWTN’s Morning Glory.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a Washington D.C.-based group that supports the new legislation, has compiled a site detailing resources available to current workers in the sex industry to provide “housing, food, referrals, and other short-term emergency assistance.”
“We are also concerned for those who turned to prostitution out of despair, lacking any other financial resources, and who now do not know where to turn,” said Dawn Hawkins, executive director of NCOSE, in a statement. “We encourage the public to share these resources widely so that survivors of commercial sexual exploitation can seek healing and support.”
Washington D.C., Apr 12, 2018 / 12:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As President Trump considers airstrikes in Syria in response to a chemical attack that killed dozens of people, including women and children, Pope Francis has called for peace in the region.
President Trump has said that he will consider initiating military action against Syria within days. The president has sent several tweets hinting at iminent military action, but on Thursday he walked these back with a tweet saying he “never said” when the United States would be attacking.
“Could be very soon or not so soon at all,” said Trump, noting that the United States has done a “great job” at removing Islamic State militants from the country.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our “Thank you America?”</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/984374422587965440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 12, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
On Tuesday, Russia vetoed a US-sponsored proposal in the United Nations, which would have launched an independent investigation into the April 7 chemical attack. The veto garnered broad condemnation from US allies.
Russia has also said that its military will retaliate for any airstrikes against Syria, meaning that US-military action could prompt a large global conflict.
Since March of 2011, Syria has been engaged in a bloody civil war, with rebel groups engaged in conflict against the Syrian army. Syria, led by President Bashar al-Assad, is allied with Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia.
The situation on the ground in Syria has been disastrous for the country’s tiny Christian population. Prior to the start of the war, Christians made up about 11 percent of the population. Since then, many have been forced from their homes, particularly when the Islamic State was active in the region, and many of the country’s churches have been destroyed in the war. An estimated one-third of the country’s Christian population has fled.
However, many Christians in the country find themselves supporting Assad’s regime. In a March 2016 interview, Aleppo’s Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo said that he believed a full “80 percent” of the country’s Christians would support Assad in an election. Furthermore, the bishop said that the Syrian government was not actively persecuting Christians, and that Christians and Muslims had for years lived together peacefully prior to the start of the war.
The rebel groups fighting Assad are mostly Islamic-based and have attacked Christian villages.
There have been at least 200 reported chemical attacks in Syria, the medical care group UOSSM has reported. In April 2017, at least 70 people, including children, were reportedly killed in Syria by a deadly gas attack, reportedly perpetrated by Assad’s forces.
“The chemical attack in Syria on April 4, [2017], shocks the soul. The many innocent lives targeted by these terrible tools of war cry out for humanity’s protection,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said last year in response to that attack.
During his April 1 Urbi et Orbi message, Pope Francis prayed for peace in Syria.
“We implore fruits of peace upon the entire world, beginning with the beloved and long-suffering land of Syria, whose people are worn down by an apparently endless war. This Easter, may the light of the risen Christ illumine the consciences of all political and military leaders, so that a swift end may be brought to the carnage in course,” the pontiff said.
The pope condemned the recent chemical attack during Mass April 8 in St. Peter’s Square, saying that “nothing can justify” the use of chemical weapons on “defenseless people and populations.”
“There is no such thing as a good war and a bad war,” he said.
© Catholic World Report