Washington D.C., May 11, 2018 / 03:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy for illegal entry into the U.S. is inhumane and will split up families seeking safety, a Catholic analyst of migration policy warned.
“If implemented this will lead to a drastic increase in forcible family separation at the border,” Ashley Feasley, director of policy for Migration and Refugee Services at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told CNA May 10.
“Most importantly it is inhumane and goes against our Catholic values and the sanctity of the family,” she said.
The policy change means prosecution of people who illegally cross the southwest border and the separation of many children from their parents.
Feasley stressed that entering the border with one’s child is not automatically an instance of child smuggling.
“Many of these families are willingly turning themselves over to Border Patrol. They are not hiding. They are asking for protection, they are vulnerable and looking for safety,” she said.
“[The policy change] will also erode judicial efficiency, taking away resources to prosecute the most dangerous, in favor of prosecuting every parent,” she said. The new policy could cost up to $620 per night to detain a family of one parent and two children.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed law enforcement officials in Arizona and California in two May 7 speeches.
“If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple,” Sessions said, according to National Public Radio. “If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you. If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don't like that, then don't smuggle children over our border.”
Border agents detained close to 40,000 unauthorized immigrants on the Mexico border each in March and April alone. They include 5,000 to 10,000 families and underage minors traveling alone.
The Department of Justice will send 35 more prosecutors and 18 more immigration judges to handle the caseload, Sessions has said.
The attorney general said there is now “zero tolerance” for illegal border crossings. The goal is for “100 percent” of all people who cross the border illegally to face charges of “improper entry by an alien,” which can result in up to six months in prison. Alleged violators will be referred to federal prosecutors through the Department of Homeland Security.
Thousands more migrants could be held in detention facilities or children’s shelters. Families with juveniles will be separated and the minors will be sent to separate facilities.
Under previous practice, people caught illegally crossing the border were returned to Mexico after a guilty plea and a brief detention. The violation is a misdemeanor under federal law.
Sessions said the Department of Justice would take up as many referrals from DHS “as humanly possible.”
However, Feasley warned that there are many dangers of family separation. It is “extremely traumatic” for children to experience, especially after a lengthy, stressful trip to the U.S. Very young children have been separated and left with strangers, many of whom do not speak their language.
“Then these children are put into shelter facilities which are confined spaces. The experience is doubly traumatizing,” Feasley continued. “The American Academy of Pediatrics has cautioned against the long lasting emotional trauma and harm that separation can cause children.”
Some migrants have tried to challenge their treatment under U.S. authorities.
One Honduran woman, Olga George, was charged with illegal entry and separated from the four young children accompanying her. She has retained lawyers who charge that the Justice Department is discriminating against her for being a Central American.
A Congolese woman who sought asylum was detained and separated from her young daughter for months until DNA testing during court proceedings confirmed their identities.
If immigrants detained at the border have valid asylum claims, they could still receive federal criminal convictions on their record regardless if they are judged to have a right to stay in the U.S., CNN reports. However, there are no special arrangements under the current plan for those who claim asylum when they are detained.
Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen officially enacted a “zero-tolerance” policy on Friday May 3.
Nelsen has said that families are separated only for the children’s safety or when family relationships can’t be proven. Under federal law and court decisions, children must be released from detention quickly. Previously, this meant entire families were released rather than separated.
DHS has already referred over 30,000 illegal entry cases to the Department of Justice, an increase of 61 percent over Fiscal Year 2017.
Feasley said the new policy will not address “the pervasive root causes of migration.” Migrants are fleeing state- or community-sanctioned violence, poverty, lack of educational opportunity, forced recruitment into gangs, and domestic abuse, among other grave problems that compel children and families “to take the enormous risks of migration.”
“These are the factors that must be addressed as we look to repair our broken immigration system,” she said.
Feasley also had particular recommendations for Catholics.
“Catholics should try to remember the human dignity of all families and children who arrive and look to assist these families in productive ways that help them comply with our immigration laws–ensuring that they know their rights and responsibilities in this country,” she said. She suggested helping migrants get legal counsel, accompanying them to legal proceedings, and “welcoming and praying with and for these families in our parishes.”
“As Pope Francis says, they are not a problem or a burden but an opportunity for encounter,” she told CNA.
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“What’s the Eucharist?” Kent Shi, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate student, asked that question when he attended eucharistic adoration for the first time. The answer put him on a path to conversion. / Julia Monaco | CNA
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Apr 16, 2022 / 09:03 am (CNA).
One convert’s journey to Catholicism began with an invitation to an ice-cream social.
Another says he instantly believed in the Real Presence the moment someone explained what the round object was that everyone was staring at during eucharistic adoration.
For a third, the poems of T.S. Eliot — and a seemingly random encounter with a priest on a public street — led to deeper questions about truth and faith.
Their paths differed but led them to the same destination: St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they are among 31 people set to be fully initiated into the Catholic Church during the Easter vigil Mass on Saturday, April 16.
That number of initiates is a record high for St. Paul’s, a nearly century-old Romanesque-style brick church whose bell tower looms over Harvard Square.
A scheduling backlog caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is partly responsible for the size of this year’s group of catechumens (non-baptized) and candidates (baptized non-Catholics.) But Father Patrick J. Fiorillo, the parochial vicar at St. Paul’s, believes there’s more to it than that.
“There’s definitely a significant segment of people who started thinking more deeply about their lives and faith during COVID-19,” Fiorillo said. “So, coming out of Covid has given them the occasion to take the next step and move forward.”
Fiorillo is the undergraduate chaplain for the Harvard Catholic Center, a chaplaincy based at St. Paul’s for undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard University and other academic institutions in the area. This year, 17 of the 31 initiates are Harvard students.
“Everybody assumes that, because this is the Harvard Catholic Center, that everybody here is very smart and therefore has a very highly intellectual orientation towards their faith,” Fiorillo told CNA.
“That is definitely true of some people. But I would say the majority are not here because of intellectually thinking their way into the faith. Some are. But the majority are just kind of ordinary life circumstances, just seeking, questioning the ways of the world, and just trying to get in touch with this desire on their heart for something more,” he said.
Fiorillo says welcoming converts into the Church at the Easter vigil is one of the highlights of his ministry.
“It’s an honor. It gives me hope just seeing all this new life and new faith here. So much in one place,” he said.
“When I tell other people about it, it gives them hope to hear that many young people are still converting to Catholicism, and they’re doing it in a place as secular as Cambridge.”
Prior to the Easter vigil, CNA spoke with five of St. Paul’s newest converts. Here are their stories:
‘This is what I’ve been looking for’
Katie Cabrera, a 19-year-old Harvard freshman, told CNA that she was excited to experience the “transformative power of Christ through his body and blood” at Mass for the first time at the Easter vigil.
A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, she said she was baptized as a child and comes from a family of Dominican immigrants. Her father, who grew up in an extremely impoverished area, lacked a formal education, but always kept the traditions of the Catholic faith close to him in order to persevere in difficult times.
Her father’s love for her and his Catholic faith deeply inspired Cabrera, and served as an anchor for her faith throughout her life.
Growing up, however, Cabrera attended a non-denominational church with her mother. Because she felt the church’s teachings lacked an emphasis on God’s love and mercy, Cabrera eventually left.
“Even though I Ieft, I always knew that I believed in God,” Cabrera said. “So, I was at a place where I felt kind of lost, because I always had that faith, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“There was a void that existed in my heart,” says Katie Cabrera, a Harvard undergraduate student. She discovered what was missing when she started to get involved with the Harvard Catholic Center. Courtesy of Katie Cabrera
After she arrived at Harvard, she accepted a friend’s invitation to attend an ice-cream social at the Harvard Catholic Center — “and that was like, sort of, how it all started,” she told CNA.
Once she was added to the email list for the center’s events, she felt a “calling” that she “really wanted to officially become Catholic” after many difficult years without a faith community.
Catholic doctrine about the sacraments was no hurdle for Cabrera, as she credits Fiorillo with explaining the faith well.
“There was a void that existed in my heart,” she said. “As soon as Father Patrick started teaching about marriage and family, theology of the body, and the sacraments, I was like, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for my whole life.’”
‘What’s the Eucharist?’
“What is that thing on the thing?”
Kent Shi laughs when he recalls how perplexed he was the first time he attended eucharistic adoration at St. Mary’s of the Assumption in Cambridge.
Someone helpfully explained that what Shi was looking at was the Eucharist displayed inside a monstrance.
“What’s the Eucharist?” he wanted to know.
For many non-Catholics considering entering the Catholic Church, the Real Presence can be a major obstacle. But Kent Shi, a Harvard graduate student, says that once the Eucharist was explained to him, he instantly believed. Julia Monaco | CNA
For many non-Catholics considering entering the Catholic Church, the Real Presence can be a major obstacle.
Not Shi. He says that once the Eucharist was explained to him that day, he instantly believed.
Shi, 25, told CNA that he considered himself an agnostic for most of his life, meaning he neither believed nor disbelieved in God.
Between his first and second years as a graduate student in Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, however, he accepted Christ and started attending services at a Presbyterian church.
One day in the summer of 2021, a crucifix outside St. Paul’s that Shi says he “must have passed multiple times a week for months and never noticed” caught his eye, and deeply moved him.
Shortly after, he accepted a friend’s invitation to attend eucharistic adoration at St. Mary’s even though he “didn’t know what adoration meant.” Unaware of what he was about to walk into, Shi asked a friend what the dress code was for adoration. His friend replied, “Respectful.”
And so, respectfully dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, Shi sat in the front row with his friend, only a few feet from the monstrance. That’s when the questions began.
It wasn’t long after that encounter that Shi began attending Mass at St. Paul’s and the parish’s RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) program. Shi asked CNA readers to pray for him and his fellow RCIA classmates.
“There’s a lot of prodigal sons and daughters here, so we would very much appreciate that,” he said, “especially me.”
Poetry and art opened the door
For Loren Brown, choosing to attend a secular university like Harvard proved to be “providential.”
The 25-year-old junior from La Center, Washington, said he comes from a “lapsed” Catholic family and wasn’t baptized.
He didn’t think much about the faith until the spring semester of his freshman year, when, he says, Catholic friends of his “began to question my lack of commitment to faith.”
Later, when students were sent home to take classes virtually due to the pandemic, he had time to reflect and began to read some of the books they’d recommended to him. The poetry of T.S. Eliot (his favorite set of poems being “Four Quartets”) and the “Confessions” by St. Augustine, in particular, “pulled me towards the faith,” he said.
Brown describes his conversion as a “gradual process” which backed him into a “logical corner.” But a chance meeting with a priest also played a pivotal role.
One day in the summer of 2021 while walking back to his dormitory he encountered a man wearing a priestly collar outside St. Paul’s Church on busy Mount Auburn Street.
It was Father George Salzmann, O.S.F.S., graduate chaplain of the Harvard Catholic Center.
“He asked me how I was doing, what I was studying, and we immediately found a common interest in St. Augustine,” Brown told CNA.
“You know, there’s this great window of St. Augustine inside St. Paul’s and you should come see it,” Brown remembers the gregarious priest telling him. Salzmann wound up giving Brown a brief tour of the church, which was completed in 1923.
Harvard undergraduate student Loren Brown describes his conversion to Catholicism as a “gradual process” which backed him into a “logical corner.” But a chance meeting with a priest also played a pivotal role. Courtesy of Loren Brown
The next week, Brown found himself sitting in a pew for his first Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s. He hasn’t missed a Sunday since, a routine that ultimately led him to join the RCIA program that fall.
Brown says he now realizes that coming to Harvard was about more than majoring in education.
“What I wanted out of Harvard has completely changed,” he said. “Instead of an education that prepares me for a job or a career, I want one that forms me as a moral being and a human.”
‘I can’t do this alone. Please help me.’
Verena Kaynig-Fittkau, 42, is a German immigrant who came to the U.S. 10 years ago with her husband to do her post-doctoral research in biomedical image processing at Harvard’s engineering school.
The couple settled in Cambridge, where they had their first child. Two subsequent pregnancies ended in miscarriage, however. That second loss was overwhelming for Kaynig-Fittkau, who says she was raised as a “secular Lutheran” without any strong faith.
“It broke me and a lot of my pride and made me realize that I can’t do things by myself,” she told CNA.
She found herself on knees one Thanksgiving, pleading with God. “I can’t do this alone,” she said. “Please help me.”
She says God answered her prayer by introducing her to another mother, who she met at a playground. She was a Christian who later invited Kaynig-Fittkau to attend services at a Presbyterian church in Somerville, Massachusetts.
In that church, there was a lot of emphasis on “faith alone,” she said. But Kaynig-Fittkau, who now works for Adobe and is the mother of two girls, kept questioning if her faith was deep enough.
A YouTube video about the Eucharist by Father Mike Schmitz sent Verena Kaynig-Fittkau on a path toward converting to Catholicism. Courtesy of Verena Kaynig-Fittkau
Then one day she stumbled upon a YouTube video titled “The hour that will change your life,” in which Father Mike Schmitz, a Catholic priest from the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota, known for his “Bible in a Year” podcast, speaks about the Eucharist.
Intrigued, she began watching similar videos by other Catholic speakers, including Father Casey Cole, O.F.M., Bishop Robert Barron, Matt Fradd, and Scott Hahn, each of whom drew her closer and closer to the Catholic faith.
Familiar with St. Paul’s from her days as a Harvard researcher and lecturer, she decided to attend Mass there one day, and made an appointment before she left to meet with Fiorillo.
When they met, Fiorillo answered all of her questions from what she calls “a list of Protestant problems with Catholicism.” She entered the RCIA program three weeks later.
Recalling her first experience attending eucharistic adoration, she said it felt “utterly weird” to be worshiping what she describes as “this golden sun.”
A conversation with a local Jesuit priest helped her better understand the Eucharist, however. Now she finds that spending time before the Blessed Sacrament is “amazing.”
“I am really, really, really excited for the Easter vigil,” Kaynig-Fittkau said. “I can’t wait, I have a big smile on my face just thinking about it.”
The rosary brought him peace
Another catechumen at St. Paul’s this year is Kyle Richard, 37, who lives in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston and works in a technology startup company downtown.
Although he grew up in a culturally Catholic hub in Louisiana, his parents left the Catholic faith and joined a Full Gospel church. Richard said he found the church “intimidating,” which led him eventually to leave Christianity altogether.
When Richard was in his mid-twenties, his father battled pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he expressed a wish to rejoin the Catholic Church. He never did confess his sins to a priest or receive the Anointing of the Sick, Richard recalls sadly. But years later, his non-believing son would remember his father’s yearning to return to the Church.
“I kind of filed that away for a while, but I never really let it go,” he said.
While Kyle Richard’s father was dying from pancreatic cancer, he returned to the Catholic faith, which made a lasting impression on his non-believing son. Courtesy of Kyle Richard
Initially, Richard moved even farther away from the Church. He said he became an atheist who thought that Christianity was simply “something that people used to just soothe themselves.”
Years later, while going through a divorce, he had a change of heart.
Feeling he ought to give Christianity “a fair shot,” he began saying the rosary in hopes of settling his anxiety. The prayer brought him peace, and became a gateway to the Catholic faith.
Before long, he was reading the Bible on the Vatican’s website, downloading prayer apps, and meditating on scripture.
A Google search brought him to St. Paul’s. Joining the RCIA program, he feels, was a continuation of his father’s expressed desire on his deathbed more than a decade ago.
“I think he would be proud, especially because he was born on April 16th and that is the date of the Easter vigil,” he said.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, with Sister Mary Bosco of the Sisters of Mercy, a 100-year-old Irish nun who taught him to “love and serve the Lord.” / Credit: Photo courtesy of Cardinal Dolan
Denver Newsroom, Feb 25, 2021 / 12:45 am (CNA).- The co-writer and star of a new film chronicling the courtroom drama of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case said in a recent interview that the film aims to be a truthful and historically accurate ac… […]
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“However, Feasley warned that there are many dangers of family separation. It is ‘extremely traumatic’ for children to experience, especially after a lengthy, stressful trip to the U.S. Very young children have been separated and left with strangers, many of whom do not speak their language.”
Then, as Attorney General Sessions quite rightly pointed out, the parents should not try to smuggle their children, or themselves, over the border. What’s next? “Well, yes, my wife and I did rob that bank, but, hey, we have children, and it would be wrong to separate us, so you can’t put us in jail”?
“Feasley said the new policy will not address ‘the pervasive root causes of migration.’ Migrants are fleeing state- or community-sanctioned violence, poverty, lack of educational opportunity, forced recruitment into gangs, and domestic abuse, among other grave problems that compel children and families ‘to take the enormous risks of migration.’ ‘These are the factors that must be addressed as we look to repair our broken immigration system,’ she said.”
The United States cannot possibly solve all of the problems of the world (and in fact left-wingers, who tend to be the ones saying “open the borders” would have hysterical fits if the US intervened in any of those countries). Nor can it possibly take in all of the people who are suffering from “state or community sanctioned violence, poverty, lack of educational opportunity, forced recruitment into gangs, and domestic abuse…”
No small number of the illegal aliens who have slithered into the country are members of violent gangs and are bringing their evil with them. Control of the borders will help eliminate that.
Illegal aliens make it more difficult for poor Americans to find jobs, and drive down wages. How is it that helping illegal aliens should override providing for our own citizens, not to mention those immigrants who have patiently followed the rules?
“’Catholics should try to remember the human dignity of all families and children who arrive and look to assist these families in productive ways that help them comply with our immigration laws–ensuring that they know their rights and responsibilities in this country,’ she said.
Feasley is severely impaired in her ability to recognize irony. “Help them comply with our immigration laws,” huh? Like, maybe, the law that you are not allowed to smuggle yourself or anybody else into the country?
“Responsibilities?” Like following the established procedures and not trying to jump ahead of those who have?
Again…..if your going to live near usa poor ( usa ghetto murder rate is 31 per 100,000) then your wife and children would be safer in Mexico ( murder rate 17 per 100,000). Avoid Sinaloa, Nogales, Juarez, etc etc and the murder rates are still lower than 17….and there’s no language problem. Or are usa welfare checks and food stamps and free schools and emergency wards….leading Central Americans to risk usa ghetto murder rates for money reasons. That doesn’t seem Christlike of them or their talking head support network.
“However, Feasley warned that there are many dangers of family separation. It is ‘extremely traumatic’ for children to experience, especially after a lengthy, stressful trip to the U.S. Very young children have been separated and left with strangers, many of whom do not speak their language.”
Then, as Attorney General Sessions quite rightly pointed out, the parents should not try to smuggle their children, or themselves, over the border. What’s next? “Well, yes, my wife and I did rob that bank, but, hey, we have children, and it would be wrong to separate us, so you can’t put us in jail”?
“Feasley said the new policy will not address ‘the pervasive root causes of migration.’ Migrants are fleeing state- or community-sanctioned violence, poverty, lack of educational opportunity, forced recruitment into gangs, and domestic abuse, among other grave problems that compel children and families ‘to take the enormous risks of migration.’ ‘These are the factors that must be addressed as we look to repair our broken immigration system,’ she said.”
The United States cannot possibly solve all of the problems of the world (and in fact left-wingers, who tend to be the ones saying “open the borders” would have hysterical fits if the US intervened in any of those countries). Nor can it possibly take in all of the people who are suffering from “state or community sanctioned violence, poverty, lack of educational opportunity, forced recruitment into gangs, and domestic abuse…”
No small number of the illegal aliens who have slithered into the country are members of violent gangs and are bringing their evil with them. Control of the borders will help eliminate that.
Illegal aliens make it more difficult for poor Americans to find jobs, and drive down wages. How is it that helping illegal aliens should override providing for our own citizens, not to mention those immigrants who have patiently followed the rules?
“’Catholics should try to remember the human dignity of all families and children who arrive and look to assist these families in productive ways that help them comply with our immigration laws–ensuring that they know their rights and responsibilities in this country,’ she said.
Feasley is severely impaired in her ability to recognize irony. “Help them comply with our immigration laws,” huh? Like, maybe, the law that you are not allowed to smuggle yourself or anybody else into the country?
“Responsibilities?” Like following the established procedures and not trying to jump ahead of those who have?
Again…..if your going to live near usa poor ( usa ghetto murder rate is 31 per 100,000) then your wife and children would be safer in Mexico ( murder rate 17 per 100,000). Avoid Sinaloa, Nogales, Juarez, etc etc and the murder rates are still lower than 17….and there’s no language problem. Or are usa welfare checks and food stamps and free schools and emergency wards….leading Central Americans to risk usa ghetto murder rates for money reasons. That doesn’t seem Christlike of them or their talking head support network.