CNA Staff, Jul 24, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Pro-life leaders are sounding the alarm against efforts in the House to undermine pro-life protections in federal spending bills.
On Friday, the House passed a “minibus” bill outlining funding of various federal agencies, including the State Department and foreign operations. Pro-life groups, however, have warned that the legislation would undermine the Mexico City Policy, which bars foreign groups that promote or provide abortions from receiving U.S. assistance.
In the legislation, H.R. 7608, the section on global health activities—Sec. 7068—ensures that “none of the funds made available by this Act” for the State Department and foreign operations “shall be made available to implement the Presidential Memorandum on Mexico City Policy dated January 23, 2017.”
The Mexico City Policy was first established by the Regan administration and has been rescinded by the Clinton and Obama administrations, while being reinstated by the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
The Trump administration expanded the policy into its Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy, extending the pro-life protections to more than $8 billion of U.S. global health assistance.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus, spoke out in defense of the policy in his Floor remarks on Thursday.
“Many countries throughout the world have been besieged by aggressive and well-funded campaigns to overturn their pro-life laws and policies,” Smith said, noting that the Mexico City Policy “mitigates U.S. taxpayer complicity in global abortion.”
“I believe we must increase access to maternal and prenatal care and ensure access to safe blood and better nutrition for all women—especially those living in poverty,” he said.
Friday’s bill, passed by a vote of 224-189, also funds the UN’s population fund (UNFPA), which the Trump administration has refused to fund since 2017 because of its partnership with China’s family planning program. The administration says China’s two-child-per-family policy is enforced through forced abortions and sterilizations.
Democrats have also inserted amendments into other funding bills to overturn the Hyde Amendment, which was first introduced by former congressman Henry Hyde in 1976. It is passed each year as a “rider” attached to spending bills, and prohibits public funding of abortions through Medicaid reimbursements.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus’s Abortion Rights and Access Task Force, introduced an amendment on Thursday to repeal Hyde in the funding bill covering the federal agencies of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, along with other agencies.
“The Hyde Amendment is a racist, discriminatory policy that has perpetuated inequity and injustice in our nation for far too long,” she said. Pressley introduced her amendment along with Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, criticized the efforts to undermine the pro-life protections on Friday.
“More than 2.4 million Americans are alive today because of the Hyde Amendment – but Joe Biden, Ayanna Pressley, and fellow extremist Democrats have pledged to eliminate Hyde and other crucial pro-life policies, forcing taxpayers to fund abortion on demand through birth, Dannenfelser said.
Hyde has come under increased attack from Democrats in recent years, following the 2016 DNC platform which called for the repeal of the policy. Last summer, Pressley made a last-minute attempt to insert an amendment undoing the policy into a funding bill for Health and Human Services, but the amendment was rejected as a violation of House procedure.
Former senator and vice president Joe Biden, a long-time supporter of the policy, reversed his support last year in the face of opposition from some in the party. All the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates supported taxpayer-funded abortion during the primary season.
Last September, Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) attempted to repeal the Mexico City Policy and the Title X Protect Life Rule in funding bills.
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Boston, Mass., Sep 30, 2021 / 17:07 pm (CNA).
Legalized assisted suicide in Massachusetts would disproportionately impact the poor, disabled, and communities of color, said a group of physicians and disabili… […]
“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.
Minneapolis, Minn., May 11, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- Not everyone who goes to high school will go to college, the founders of a new Minnesota high school say, but everyone should be prepared for leadership, service, and virtuous lives.
Preparation for a good life, no matter what comes after graduation, is the goal of Unity High School set to open this fall in Burnsville, Minnesota.
The school was founded by Matt Birk, a retired football player who played with the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Ravens, and Tom Bengtson, the owner of a small publishing company.
“At Unity, we are sure a lot of kids will go into college, some will go into the workforce, some will go into the military, some will discern religious vocations, and we think there is equal dignity in all of those things,” Birk told CNA.
“We are college prep but we are not only college prep. Not everybody is a candidate for college, people choose different paths and we believe that there is equal dignity in any of these paths. We are happy to prepare kids for post high school life regardless of what it looks like,” Bengtson added.
Birk has been involved with education programs in underprivileged communities since 2002, when he was playing professional football. As the father of eight, he said he knows that not all kids thrive in a competitive academic environment, noting that a “high-stakes” test-taking culture is not for everyone.
“If you look back at the genesis of the American education system, I think the original charter says the goal of education is to teach knowledge and develop character. As the U.S. keeps falling on the global list of test scores, we just keep focusing more and more on the testing,” he said.
“Character has been pushed out of mainstream education because it is all about the test now,” he added.
Birk said that because public school funding is tied to test scores, education models focus on test-taking skills, instead of adapting to the needs of each learner.
Birk added that while not every student is meant for college, but every person can be formed for success.
“If we are only doing it to show how well we can take a test, what’s the point?” he asked.
“If you go to an Ivy League schools is that a guarantee to a great life? No, no it’s not. I would say the most important thing to me … is that they would have a firm foundation in their Catholic faith, that would be number one, and then, number two, I would say to be equipped with some skills to be able to help them with whatever path they choose.”
Birk added that digital technology has been detrimental to some areas of ingenuity – communication, team work, and social and emotional intelligence. As a result of increased technology and media influence, he said students are suffering more narcissism and depression and incurring less empathy and abilities to handle anxiety.
Unity will aim to address those issues.
It will open this fall at Mary, Mother of the Church Parish in Burnsville. At first, the school will only teach high school freshmen, but it plans to add a new grade each year, until the first incoming class graduate as seniors.
The school will start small. It has about a dozen students enrolled right now, and its founders hope to bring in around 25 for the first year. It is also working to be recognized as an officially Catholic school in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Unity will focus on practical opportunities for students to develop skills in academics, character, leadership, and service.
Birk said the school will “be vigorously Catholic,” including opportunities for students to engage with an instructor who can foster “interior life and their personal relationship with Jesus.”
The former NFL center’s own faith is central to his life, he said. He is especially active in pro-life work. In 2013, after Birk’s team won Super Bowl XLVII, he declined to attend a reception at the White House.
“I have great respect for the office of the presidency, but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said, ‘God bless Planned Parenthood.’ Planned Parenthood performs about 330,000 abortions a year. I am Catholic, I am active in the pro-life movement and I just felt like I couldn’t deal with that. I couldn’t endorse that in any way,” Birk said.
He said he hopes Unity School will form students who are committed to faithful Catholicism.
“We really want the faith to be alive, to really be a part of the kids’ lives, not just taking a religion class,” said Birk.
Citing the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, Birk said, the Catholic faith has a great framework for building character. To foster character development, the school will be involved with long term service projects, like monthly outings to nursing homes, where the teens can get to know the people they are serving.
A major component of the school will be its “Real World Wednesdays.” On those days, the students will take “life skills” classes and character development, including opportunities to listen to guest speakers and undergo field trips and service projects.
The teens will learn entrepreneurship, leadership, interview techniques, resumes, and financial literacy. The students will also be exposed to trades, through courses and workshops in auto maintenance, metal or wood shop, or home economics.
The school will also partner with an organization called Pursuit Academy, which teaches ethical enterprise, encouraging students learn to become entrepreneurs, to plan and manage their future goals, and to be leaders in their communities. Among other things, the teens will learn about engaging with peer pressure, managing risk, and public speaking.
Birk said a focus of the “Real World Wednesdays” will be developing what Birk calls “the-other-people-matter” mindset.
By identifying the good in themselves and in other people, students will establish better relationships in the community and a better relationship with God, he said.
Developing leadership skills and character “might not necessarily help them get an A on a test or score higher on their SAT, but they are going to be equipped with skills that they can use in their lives, whether it is in the careers or their marriages or as parents or as communities members.”
“Let’s get them some of that stuff,” he added.
In light of the school’s emphasis on both academic and practical skills, Unity has chosen two patron saints: John Paul II and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. These saints are not only modern figures for students to model after but fantastic examples of the school’s goals, Bengston said.
“John Paul II had all this rich philosophy of the dignity of the human person, which we will be teaching at Unity High School, including Theology of the Body,” said Bengston. “Then you got someone like Mother Teresa who took that theology and put it into practice – reached out to the poorest of the poor and saw dignity in folks who were in extremely dire circumstances.”
“In my mind, I seem them as both the hands and the heart at work together,” he added.
Bengston said the school is convenient financially and geographically. Tuition will be $6,500 for the first year, which is half or even a third of the prices at other Catholic schools, Bengston said. He also said the school will fill a neighborhood need in the southern metro area of the Twin Cities.
“It’s a large geographic area with 10 Catholic grade schools, through eighth grade, who collectively are graduating 300 students per year. Most of those students will go into public schools,” he said.
“About 75 students will stay in the Catholic school system and they have to travel quite a distance to Catholic high school.”
The lower price does mean there will be tradeoffs, Bengston said, noting that the school will have to improvise for a gymnasium, science lab, and auditorium. However, the school will have a thoroughly Catholic culture, he said, with Mass three times a week and a holy hour once a week, which is not offered at all Catholic schools.
Birk expressed enthusiasm for the new venture.
“We are still very much like a typical school in a lot of ways, but we are tweaking the model. I don’t know where this goes, but hopefully it will show people that there is a better way to do it.”
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