Month: August 2020

Denver Newsroom, Aug 21, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- The University of Notre Dame on Tuesday announced a two-week hiatus from in-person class instruction, amid a growing number of COVID-19 infections on campus. Some alumni, students, and faculty are callin… […]

CNA Staff, Aug 20, 2020 / 05:35 pm (CNA).- After some caucus meetings at the Democratic National Convention omitted the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, the Knights of Columbus told CNA the words represent a fundamental American belief, and said the group is proud of its role in their addition to the pledge.

“The Knights of Columbus is proud of our instrumental role in persuading Congress to add the words ‘under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954,” Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson told CNA Aug. 20.

“Those words express a fundamental belief that we have held as a nation since our founding, that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights,” Anderson added.

Anderson’s remark came amid reports that at meetings held as part of the Democratic National Convention, delegates omitted the words “under God” as they led the Pledge of Allegiance. The omissions came during meetings of the DNC’s Muslim caucus and LGBTQ caucus.

The Pledge of Allegiance in its modern form was composed in 1892, and officially recognized by Congress in 1942. The Knights of Columbus were instrumental in encouraging that the words “under God” be officially adopted into the Pledge of Allegiance in the early 1950s.

Along with other groups, the Knights of Columbus advocated for inclusion of the phrase, and in early 1954, Congress passed a bill to do so. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill into law on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.

“In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war,” Eisenhower said at the time.

The United States Flag Code contains the official text of the Pledge of Allegiance, and contains norms regarding the etiquette for display and care of the U.S. flag.

For his part, Anderson said the phrase reminds Americans of “a fundamental belief that we have held as a nation since our founding, as expressed by President John F. Kennedy in his Inaugural Address that our rights as Americans ‘come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.’”

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CNA Staff, Aug 20, 2020 / 04:20 pm (CNA).- After its statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was beheaded, a California parish asked Catholics to pray for the vandal who desecrated the statue, along with another monument at the parish.

“It is heartbre… […]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 20, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Netflix has apologized after a poster advertising an upcoming film was accused of normalizing pedophilia. But one theologian told CNA that an apology for the image is not enough, and that the film itself sexualizes children.

The promotional material for the film provoked widespread criticism overnight on Aug. 19, with many claiming that the film’s promotional material appeared to sexualize children.

“We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties,” Netflix’s official Twitter account tweeted on Thursday, August 20. 

“It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which premiered at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description,” said Netflix. 

The film, whose original French title “Mignonnes” was translated to “Cuties” for its American release, was released on April 1, 2020 in France. It is set to premiere on Netflix on September 9. 

The initial Netflix description of the film was “Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.” 

The French-produced film features pre-teen girls involved in groups that perform sexualized dance routines.  

Twerking is a style of sexually provocative dance involving thrusting hip movements and suggestive stances. The dance style has been banned at several American high schools. 

The description has since been updated to “Eleven-year-old Amy starts to rebel against her conservative family’s traditions when she becomes fascinated with a free-spirited dance crew.” 

The “free-spirited dance crew” in the film is the titular “Cuties.” In the film, Amy is a Senegalese Muslim who lives with her mother and younger brothers in Paris. 

The original poster featured Amy, who is played by tween actress Fathia Youssouf, in a low squat position with her legs spread. She, and the other young actresses in the film, are pictured wearing dance costumes consisting of spandex “booty shorts” and cropped tops, and are all posed in a suggestive manner. 

The poster for the film has since been changed to an image of Youssouf looking over her shoulder. The original poster that accompanied the French release of the film featured the preteen actresses fully clothed. 

Dr. Chad Pecknold, a professor of theology at the Catholic University of America and the father of a six-year-old daughter, told CNA that he was disturbed by the initial advertisements for the film. 

“I was utterly shocked to see young girls just a bit older than my daughter in sexually suggestive poses,” said Pecknold.

“But my moral revulsion at what can only be the normalization of pedophilia only increased when I realized the producers claim to be criticizing the sexualization of children by, in fact, sexualizing children,” he added.

The director of the film, Maimouna Doucouré, said that she was inspired to make Cuties after noticing that some “very young girls” had hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. 

“There were no particular reasons [for the number of followers], besides the fact that they had posted sexy or at least revealing pictures: that is what had brought them this ‘fame,’” she said in an interview in August with CineEuropa.

“Today, the sexier and the more objectified a woman is, the more value she has in the eyes of social media. And when you’re 11, you don’t really understand all these mechanisms, but you tend to mimic, to do the same thing as others in order to get a similar result,” she said. 

She told CineEuropa that it is “urgent” that this matter be discussed, and that she thinks “a debate be had on the subject.” 

Pecknold disagrees that “Cuties” is the proper way to conduct a discussion on anything. 

“This is a rationale that only Jeffrey Epstein could love,” he told CNA.

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Denver Newsroom, Aug 20, 2020 / 03:13 pm (CNA).- Ukrainian Catholics in the US have donated more than $136,000 to assist the victims of the floods that have devastated western Ukraine.

The fundraising effort has been coordinated by Bishop Andriy Rabiy, auxiliary bishop of the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Philadelphia.

Flooding in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi oblasts in late June hit some 300 towns, with at least as many miles of road damaged or destroyed. Gas supplies to some 10,000 people were disrupted.

“There is very little or no help received from the government. People really appreciate help they get from Caritas and our contributions and are amazed how quickly they receive that what they need,” Bishop Rabiy stated.

“In the Gospel, we hear the story of how Jesus multiplied the fishes and the loaves. He took five loaves and two fish, blessed, multiplied this small offering and fed over 5000 people. So it is with us. What we offer, Our Lord will bless and multiply to provide for the needs of those suffering from the destruction of this tragic flood,” said Bishop Rabiy, according to the statement.

“Your generous support will make a big difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in need. Thank you to each and every one of you for your contribution to this flood relief effort. We are most grateful and appreciative of your sacrificial giving.”

Bishop Rabiy told CNA that many people in the country already struggle with finances and poverty. He said the affected region in particular survives off of farming, or migration to other cities or countries.

“Overall in the country, they do have a huge economic hardship, but this region, in particular, that was hit by floods and mudslides, it’s a very poor region. There are very few jobs that people can find. They basically have to travel abroad or into other major cities in Ukraine to find a job and actually support their families,” he said.

Bishop Rabiy said that following the heavy rains, a majority of people have had their basements flooded, wiping out a large portion of their food supplies. He also said strong currents have forced large boulders onto people’s properties, which will need to be removed before farming continues.

He said it will be sometime before property owners can return to normal. It has been a high point of distress for the victims, he said, noting that farmers had taken out loans to fund their agriculture but now have no means to pay it back.

“For the occupants of the mountains, that’s where many mudslides took place, and basically that’s dirt with stones, sometimes as high as three, four feet, it actually came into people’s gardens,” he told CNA.

“Whatever they were growing this year, it’s all gone. It is going to take several years before they actually get back to normal,” he added. “I hear human stories how people try to commit suicide because they took on a loan … and now that everything is gone. That’s a very sad story and that happens too.”

He said the donations are issued on a person by person basis, trying to connect the individuals with the help they need to survive. He said the donations may go toward food, water, medicine, but it may also offer people grants to buy buildings supplies, furniture, and bedding prior to winter. He said families are entered into a database and organized by the greatest need.

Funds were given to the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Ivano-Frankivsk, and its suffragan eparchies of Chernivtsi and Kolomyia.

Bishop Rabiy expressed the importance of acts rooted in charity: “It is a part of our Christian matrix, I believe this is who we are, even if we open up the letters of Saint Paul, there he was asking people … to start putting something away because on the way back to Jerusalem he is going to take the gifts … for the starving people down in Jerusalem,” he told CNA.

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CNA Staff, Aug 20, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- President Donald Trump tweeted late Wednesday night that he was honored by a video describing him as “the most pro-gay president in American history.” The video stands in contrast to praise from the U.S. bishops for administration decisions related to the issues of transgenderism and conscience protection, and from the characterization of the president among many pro-LGBT groups.

The pro-LGBT group Log Cabin Republicans tweeted a video on Wednesday morning calling Trump “the most pro-gay president in American history,” to which Trump responded on Twitter that night, saying it was “My great honor!!!”

President @realDonaldTrump made history for #LGBT Americans — and nobody knows that better than @RichardGrenell. #GetOUTspoken pic.twitter.com/HJhY5kSuh0

— LogCabinRepublicans (@LogCabinGOP) August 19, 2020

Ric Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence and former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, appeared in the video endorsing Trump’s re-election. Grennel, who identified himself as “America’s first openly gay cabinet member,” said that the incumbent president “has done more to advance the rights of gays and lesbians in three years than Joe Biden did in 40-plus years in Washington.”

Before donning a rainbow-colored “Make America Great Again” hat, Grennell said in the video that “Donald Trump is the first president in American history to be pro-gay marriage from his first day in office.”

Biden, who officiated a same-sex wedding in 2016 while he was vice president, publicly assented to same-sex marriage in 2012, after he had already been vice president for four years, prodding President Barack Obama to do the same just days later. 

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexual acts are “sins gravely contrary to chastity,” those who identify as gay or lesbian should “be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

The Church also teaches that marriage is an institution of natural law and exists between one man and one woman. 

In 2003, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explained that “The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

During Biden’s decades in Congress, he supported the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” which excluded men and women identifying as gay or lesbian from the U.S. military. He also voted for the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed into law by President Clinton, which recognized legal marriage as between one man and one woman. 

While Biden was vice president, however, the Justice Department stopped defending Section 3 of DOMA in court, and Obama signed a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

In the video on Wednesday, Grenell criticized Biden’s changing stances on marriage, saying that “now that we’ve made progress, Joe Biden has changed his mind.” Meanwhile, he called Trump “the strongest ally that gay Americans have ever had in the White House.”

On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump said that people should be free to use whatever public bathroom they wish to, regardless of their biological sex. Shortly after his election as president, he said he was “fine” with same-sex marriage as the law of the land.

In his 2019 speech to the UNGA, the president said that the U.S. stands in “solidarity with LGBTQ people who live in countries that  make homosexual activity a crime.

Grennell said that Trump “publicly challenged the 69 countries who make being gay a crime” in his 2019 speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). He also cited the U.S. fight against the Lebanese Shi’ite Islamic party Hezbollah, recognized by the U.S. as a terror organization and which Grenell called “homophobic and barbaric.” He also noted the administration’s hardline stance against the Iranian regime, known for its public executions of people with same-sex attraction.

Contrasting the assessment of the Log Cabin Republicans, the head of the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign has called Trump the “worst president ever” on LGBT issues.

Trump’s health department has rolled back the Obama-era mandate that doctors provide gender-transition surgery upon request; a federal judge put a temporary halt on implementation of the rule on Monday. That decision was praised by the U.S. bishops’ conference.

In June, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch—nominated by Trump—sided with the Court’s majority and ruled that federal protections against sex discrimination also apply in cases of someone’s sexual orientation and gender identity. After the Court handed his administration another defeat, this time on the DACA immigration program, Trump blasted the “horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court.”

Pope Francis has spoken out repeatedly against gender theory and ideology. Speaking at the United Nations in 2015, the pope urged world leaders to embrace a consistent stance on respect for life and the created world and “recognize a moral law written into human nature itself, one which includes the natural difference between man and woman, and absolute respect for life in all its stages and dimensions.” 

The pope has also called gender theory “evil” and “dangerous,” saying blurring and erasing the natural distinctions between men and women would “destroy at its roots” God’s creation of humanity in “diversity, distinction.” 

“It would make everything homogenous, neutral,” Francis was quoted saying in a book published earlier this year. “It is an attack on difference, on the creativity of God and on men and women.”

On June 10, the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education released a document which included a sweeping denunciation of so-called gender theory and the “radical separation between gender and sex, with the former having priority over the later.”

“In all such [gender] theories, from the most moderate to the most radical, there is agreement that one’s gender ends up being viewed as more important than being of male or female sex,” the Congregation for Catholic Education wrote in the document entitled “Male and Female He Created Them.”

“The effect of this move is chiefly to create a cultural and ideological revolution driven by relativism, and secondarily a juridical revolution, since such beliefs claim specific rights for the individual and across society.”

Trump’s administration has also not filled a special envoy position at the State Department tasked with advising the secretary on promoting LGBT ideology abroad; the Obama administration was the first to create such a position at State, and Biden has said he will “immediately appoint” a special envoy.

In 2017, Trump issued an executive order on promoting religious freedom as a policy of his administration. Later that fall, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued guidance for other federal agencies, identifying various statutory religious freedom protections. The U.S. bishops’ conference “commended” the administration for its conscience protections in that case.

In one prominent case of a religious freedom claim versus an anti-discrimination measure—Fulton v. City of Philadelphia—the Justice Department sided with the Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, saying the U.S. “has a substantial interest in the preservation of the free exercise of religion.”

In that case, the city terminated its contract with Catholic Social Services unless it agreed to match foster children with same-sex couples. The administration, in its friend-of-the-court brief in June, said the city’s rules “reflect unconstitutional hostility toward Catholic Social Services’ religious beliefs.”

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Denver Newsroom, Aug 20, 2020 / 01:57 pm (CNA).- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has denied wrongdoing following allegations that Muslim detainees at a Miami facility are regularly forced to choose between spoiled halal meals and eating pork in violation of their religious beliefs.

“By habitually serving Muslim detainees pork and spoiled, expired, and cold halal meals, ICE officers at Krome have violated Muslim detainees’ rights under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” says an August 19 letter to officials at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The letter was sent by attorneys for Americans for Immigrant Justice, Muslim Advocates, and King & Spalding LLP.

The groups say they have received “alarming reports” of Muslim detainees at the Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, Florida being repeatedly served pork throughout the coronavirus pandemic. For the several dozen Muslims housed at the facility, eating pork is forbidden.

The prepackaged halal meals offered as an alternative are expired and rotten, posing a health risk, the advocacy groups say.

“In recent months, Muslim detainees who have eaten those spoiled halal meals have reported experiencing stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhea,” they say in their letter.

An ICE spokesman denied the allegation, telling CNA in an August 20 email, “Any claim that ICE denies reasonable and equitable opportunity for persons to observe their religious dietary practices is false.”

“ICE’s Performance Based National Detention Standards cover all aspects of detention, to include reasonable accommodation of religious dietary practices,” the spokesman said, pointing to the agency’s national detention standards, which include policies on religious diet accommodations.

Those policies state, “All facilities shall provide detainees requesting a religious diet a reasonable and equitable opportunity to observe their religious dietary practice, within the constraints of budget limitations and the security and orderly running of the facility, by offering a common fare menu. While each request for religious diet accommodation is to be determined on a case-by-case basis, ICE anticipates that facilities will grant these requests unless an articulable reason exists to disqualify someone for religious accommodation or the detainee’s practice poses a significant threat to the secure and orderly operation of the facility.”

However, the immigrant advocacy groups say they have received reports that the practice of offering only inedible, cold, and expired halal meals is widespread at the Krome facility.

“Substituting pork for inedible, expired food is offensive and constitutionally impermissible,” their letter charges.

It says the problem of offering expired halal meals has been ongoing since 2017, but has been made worse by the coronavirus pandemic. While detainees could previously choose their meals at a cafeteria, the facility has now moved to all pre-plated meals. About 2-3 times per week, these meals contain pork, which the Muslim detainees cannot eat, the letter says.

It also charges that staff members at the facility have failed to respond to detainees’ complaints about the problem.

“In the face of the Krome staff’s indifference and inaction, Muslim detainees are left with three choices during this pandemic: eat meals that contain pork, eat meals that are spoiled, or eat nothing at all. Consequently, Muslim detainees have been forced to choose between their sincere religious beliefs and their health.”

The letter requests a response within 14 days. The immigrant advocacy groups threatened to pursue further legal action if they do not receive a response.

“As part of ensuring that Muslim detainees are provided with safe to eat, religiously compliant meals, immigration authorities must serve unexpired halal plates to Muslim detainees at Krome and all other ICE facilities,” the letter says.

“Barring the availability of halal meals, ICE must ensure that each meal at each ICE-run facility includes sufficient plates without pork or contaminated by pork so that each Muslim detainee can exercise their constitutional and statutory rights to adhere to a diet consonant with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The advocacy groups are also calling for greater personnel training on religious freedom and accommodations.

“ICE and DHS must more effectively monitor their staff to ensure that COVID-19 does not become license for ICE to violate the religious rights of its Muslim detainees,” their letter says.

Montse Alvarado, executive director of religious liberty law firm Becket, said the claims against ICE, if true, are an example of the problems that arise “when people think freedom of worship is the same as freedom of religion.”

“The American promise of freedom of religion is more than that, and religion happens outside of the four walls of a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque all the time– as we have witnessed in this pandemic,” Alvarado told CNA in an email.

“You bring your conscience with you wherever you go; it’s part of who you are no matter what situation you are in. The Constitution protects the right to the free exercise of religion, and the government has an obligation to respect that.”

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