Washington D.C., Sep 4, 2018 / 04:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh began Tuesday. Before Kavanaugh could utter a word, Senate Democrats repeatedly interrupted the proceedings and attempted to delay the hearing, and multiple protestors were escorted from the room.
While the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing began at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 4, opening statements did not begin for more than an hour. Senate Democrats said that they had not been given enough time to review the thousands of documents released on Monday by the White House, and that the hearing should therefore be moved to another date. Senate Democrats also argued that they did not have access to documents from Kavanaugh’s time working for President George W. Bush.
Those files were not released as the White House claimed executive privilege.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that refusing to move the hearing violated the Iowa senator’s “sense of fairness, decency, and the commitment [he] made to transparency.”
Grassley said that on the contrary, this was the “most open” production in U.S. history, and that he had gone through 15 previous Supreme Court nomination processes without this kind of scene occurring.
Senate Democrats were not the only ones attempting to disrupt or move the hearing. The Women’s March, as well as Code Pink, took credit for several vocal protests that repeatedly interrupted the hearings, and multiple people were removed from the hearing room. Kavanaugh’s two young daughters were escorted out of the room after protests turned heated.
In an emailed statement, Rachel O’Leary Carmona, chief operating officer of the Women’s March, said that the reason people were disrupting Tuesday’s hearing because their “lives are at risk” and that “women will die if Kavanaugh is confirmed.”
O’Leary Carmona also said that politicians who refuse to stop Kavanaugh will be made to “pay” this November and in 2020, saying, “if you’re a Democrat, we’ll primary you – if you’re a Republican, your seat will be flipped.”
There is significant concern among abortion-rights proponents that Kavanaugh would work to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion throughout the United States. Kavanaugh has said he believes Roe to be “settled law.”
Prior to being nominated to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Kavanaugh served on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals since 2006. Before that, he was a secretary in the George W. Bush administration and was a clerk for Justice Kennedy.
In prepared remarks, Kavanaugh described himself as a “team player” who would work alongside others on the “team of nine.”
“A good judge must be an umpire—a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy,” said Kavanaugh.
“I don’t decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.”
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The Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, says it has received allegations of child sexual abuse against Father Walter Lewis, a retired priest. / Powhatan County Sheriff’s Office
The Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, says it has received allegations of child sexual abuse against a retired priest, with law enforcement investigating the claims as the priest remains removed from public ministries.
The Richmond Diocese — the larger of the two in the state in front of the Diocese of Arlington — said in a July 1 press release that it had “received a recent report of alleged child sexual abuse against Father Walter Lewis.”
“The allegation reports that the abuse took place in the 1980s while Father Lewis was serving as pastor of St. Anne Catholic Church, Bristol,” the diocese said. “The allegation has been reported to law enforcement.”
Bristol is located in the extreme southwestern part of the state near the Tennessee border. Lewis served at the parish from 1983–1995.
Bishop Barry Knestout “immediately prohibited Father Lewis from any public ministry in the diocese” for the duration of the investigation, the press release said, adding that diocesan officials would not “reach any conclusions regarding this allegation until the investigation concludes.”
Lewis has denied the allegations, the diocese said. He retired from active ministry in May of this year.
The priest in 2017 pleaded guilty to a drunk driving offense, his second in less than 10 years. Pulled over after driving erratically, Lewis blew .11 on a breathalyzer test, above the legal limit of .08. He received a 12-month sentence, with all but 10 days in prison suspended. He had previously been found guilty of drunk driving in 2011.
The diocese did not immediately return a request for comment on the investigation, which was launched earlier this month.
In 2019 Knestout released a list of any diocesan priests who have “a credible and substantiated claim of sexual abuse against a minor.”
Twenty-three priests are currently on the list; Lewis has not yet been added. Three other lists include priests “alleged to have committed abuse in the present-day territory of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond” who were “later incardinated to the Catholic Diocese of Arlington” as well as priests from outside the diocese alleged to have committed abuse there and clergy who worked in the diocese but who have been accused of abuse outside of it.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 11, 2023 / 12:40 pm (CNA).
A retired 91-year-old New Orleans priest who was removed from ministry in 2018 was indicted Thursday afternoon on felony charges related to al… […]
Michelangelo’s The Creation of Eve, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, c. 1510. / null
Denver, Colo., Nov 15, 2022 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Michelangelo’s artistic masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel broke new ground in portraying the dynamic creative acts of God, but his work also depicts the combined importance of men and women through all of sacred history, art historian Elizabeth Lev has said.
“The spirit of artistic adventure led the artist to experiment with a completely new vision of creation,” Lev said Nov. 12. “He took a book that had been painted, sculpted, mosaiced, and illuminated over and over again in the history of art and created something completely new.”
She spoke at the closing keynote Saturday evening at the fall conference of the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Lev teaches at the Rome campus of Duquesne University and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Her speech, “Creation, Complementarity, & St. John Paul II in Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling,” focused on one of the key artistic treasures of Vatican City.
The 16th-century Florentine artist Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and the upper section of its walls. This was the artist’s focus from 1508 to 1512. He later finished the Last Judgment above the chapel altar from 1535 to 1541.
The ceiling frescoes show the creation of the heavens and the earth, the creation of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the great flood, and the rebirth of humankind through Noah.
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s description of Michelangelo’s work in his poem “Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel.”
“It is the book of the origins — Genesis,” the pope said. “Here, in this chapel, Michelangelo penned it, not with words, but with the richness of piled-up colors. We enter in order to read it again, going from wonder to wonder.”
Lev reflected on the first three panels depicting the creation of the world. These show “the mighty dynamic figure of God the Father at work.”
“It’s not what God creates, it’s that God creates,” she said. Michelangelo broke ground in portraying God as “physically engaged in creation.” For Lev, this offers “a preview of the Incarnation.”
Turning to Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Creation of Adam, Lev noted that the artist depicts “just God and the creature formed in his likeness.” Adam is shown as “somewhat listless” in contrast with God’s energy. Adam is “sentient and awake but he has no will or strength or purpose to rise,” she said. “He looks completely passive and dependent despite that incredibly beautiful form.”
“It’s God who reaches towards man,” she continued. For Lev, the outstretched finger of God makes the viewer “almost lean forward in his seat waiting for that final Act of Creation, the divine spark, the Breath of Life that will release that latent energy and allow Adam to take his place as the greatest of creations.”
“This is the joy in humanity that permeates the Renaissance,” Lev said.
Michelangelo’s The Fall and Expulsion from Paradise from the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel (1508-12).
There is academic debate over a female figure shown in the Creation of Adam. As God the Father stretches out one arm to Adam, his other arm curls around a female figure. Some have identified this figure as Wisdom, some as Mary.
Lev suggested it is best to identify this figure as Eve, both because the figure provides visual balance to Adam and because her gaze “connects her more intimately with Adam.”
The creation of Eve from Adam, depicted next on the chapel ceiling, shows Eve emerging from Adam’s side with her hands clasped in prayer, an image of the Church and the personification of Mary, the “Second Eve.”
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s 1999 homily inaugurating the newly restored Sistine Chapel, after centuries of grime and soot were removed. The pope called the chapel the “sanctuary of the theology of the human body,” alluding to his catecheses offered from 1979 to 1984. The pope suggested that Michelangelo allowed himself to be guided by the Book of Genesis’ depiction of mankind in Eden: “the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.”
Before the fall, Lev commented, Michelangelo depicted Adam and Eve in the state of grace as “two of his most beautiful figures.”
“They are filled with dynamism. They’re buoyant. They’re luminous,” Lev said, adding that their bodies “suggest immortality.” After the fall, however, both of their bodies “lose their luminosity” and appear heavier, like a burden. Adam’s shoulder seems to force Eve into the background, “subjugating her.”
For Lev, the artistic depiction of the genealogy of Jesus Christ also deserves attention. The portrayal of the ancestors of Jesus Christ shows “a genealogy of men and women struggling from generation to generation.” These figures seem “more approachable” and “much more similar to candid family photographs.” Even though 22 women in Jesus’ genealogy are not named, Michelangelo pairs them with their husbands.
Lev noted that Michelangelo broke with artistic convention both by including mothers and by showing them as busy, everyday women “tending to toddlers, toilettes, and tasks.” His style of painting them with “incredible immediacy” adds observations of human nature: Eleazar’s wife holds the purse strings and the key to the house, and her husband looks “startled” as she surveys their son. Other depictions are “tender and intimate,” like the portrayal of the wife of Manasseh, who cradles a swaddled son while rocking an infant’s cradle.
Here, Lev drew on John Paul II’s 1995 “Letter to Women.” He wrote that womanhood and manhood are complementary at the physical, psychological, and even ontological level.
“It is only through the duality of the masculine and the feminine that the human finds full recognition,” the pope said. “To this unity of the two, God has entrusted not only the work of procreation and family life but the creation of history itself.”
Lev noted that the passing of generations “necessarily emphasizes the begetting of children.” This means that the complementarity of the sexes is essential for a population to form and for creation to continue.
In Michelangelo’s portrayal of the Last Judgment, the artist still looks back to creation but also breaks new ground. He placed Mary next to Christ, as “a foil to Christ’s sternness.”
“She is the picture of mercy gazing down towards the elect, placed by the wound in Christ’s side whence the Church sprang,” Lev said. “Mary is transfigured into the Bride of Christ, for whom he gave his life and to whom he cannot say no. She is the conduit to Christ, as Eve was the link between God and man in the creation of woman.”
For Lev, the Sistine Chapel shows the “incredible gift of creation” from the beginning of the world down through the generations, “through which all of us today are a part of that continuation of creation.”
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