Month: October 2020

Denver Newsroom, Oct 14, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).-  

Like many Catholics in the Archdiocese of New Orleans these days, Theresa Truxillo said she was alarmed when she learned Fr. Travis Clark had filmed a pornographic video involving himself and two women atop an atlar in his parish.

The scandal sent shockwaves through the local Catholic community. Clark was removed from ministry, and the altar he desecrated was burned and replaced. The church in which the act took place was reconsecrated. The news came shortly after Fr. Pat Wattigny, a former high school chaplain, came under suspicion for text messaging students, and was removed from ministry for admitting to the sexual abuse of a minor.

“That was just really shocking and upsetting,” Truxillo told CNA.

“My friends and I were just processing it, and I would say our initial reaction was disgust and anger.”

After the initial upset, however, Truxillo said her heart, and the hearts of her friends, turned toward the good priests and seminarians of their diocese, “because they do so much for us, and we became protective of them. We didn’t want the whole world to think that everybody was making those terrible choices, especially our clergy.”

They wanted to do something soon, and they wanted it to be something that would visibly show their support, Truxillo said.

Truxillo and her friend, Sheri Derbes, decided to organize a prayer rally of support outside Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, which took place on Saturday, Oct. 10.

“I was concerned that so much negativity was hovering over us,” she said.

“Sheri and I joked that it felt like a great cloud was hanging over our whole archdiocese, and it felt bad. And (the rally) was an opportunity to stand up and maybe turn that tide – not to forget or gloss over the tragedy that is happening in a few of our parishes, but also to recognize those priests and seminarians and our archbishop who are being good leaders and who are pure and who are probably really hurt by this scandal.”

Just 24 hours after the idea came about, about 200 Catholics showed up – socially distanced – to the prayer rally, praying together for their priests and seminarians, Truxillo said, and hoping to encourage them.

Everyone was asked to bring a small rock from their garden with a cross or other religious symbol drawn or painted on it. Participants held the rocks while they prayed the rosary and other prayers, and then left the rocks on the steps of the seminary, so that they could be distributed among the seminarians as physical reminders of the prayers offered for them.

“We very specifically prayed for our seminarians and our priests and our archbishop, who we believe are the successors of Peter, who Jesus built his Church on,” Truxillo said.

Fr. James Wehner, rector of Notre Dame Seminary, told CNA that Truxillo had asked him for permission for the prayer rally, and he told the seminarians to expect “three or four people” to show up on Saturday to pray the rosary. Then he left for a parish mission for the day.

“I came back and there were over 160 people…and I thought, what happened here? And I think word was getting around,” he said.

Wehner said he was “inspired” that this prayer rally was completely lay-initiated. He added that the seminary has held meetings about the recent scandals, to ensure that seminarians are receiving the best formation, so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

“The seminarians were very humbled by the role of the laity in offering this spiritual support,” he said.

“I think in some sense, we preach to seminarians, so we’re embarrassed by this criminal, Satanic behavior of both of these priests,” Wehner added.

The rector said it’s been inspiring and humbling “to see people looking past that, to say, the faith of the Church, the faith of the priests, and the faith of Jesus Christ cannot be undermined by the power of evil.”

Wehner added that this year, Notre Dame Seminary has seen its highest enrollment in its 97-year history.

“So for me to see young men who should be very discouraged by the infidelity and the scandalous behavior of clergy, they look beyond that and still want to respond to God’s call…I’m inspired by their commitment to solid priestly formation.”

Truxillo and Derbes are both students of a lay program at the seminary, but since the pandemic struck in March, they have been unable to resume their regularl classes, or see their seminarian friends.

Coronavirus has been especially rough on seminarians, Truxillo said, because they live and study in the same place, and thus have been more restricted than most people during the pandemic.

“COVID has separated the seminarians specifically from the lay people because they live on campus and so they have been in a different lockdown than the rest of us,” Truxillo said.

“I’m allowed to go to the office now, I’m at least interacting with people. My children have gone back to school in person now – but they haven’t. And they commented to me that it was meaningful to know that we were there praying and to have just a small rock they could keep on their desk and remember that their vocation is valued and is important to the people. So that was really nice to hear.”

Jordan Haddard, the director of the lay programs at Notre Dame Seminary, told CNA that while he was not at the rally, he was grateful for the lay-led initiative.

The participants have a “deep love for our priests and recognize that the awful actions of a few do not in any way change who we are as a Church, and doesn’t change what our mission is. And it also doesn’t impugn the good reputation and the good work that the rest of our priests, deacons, our Archbishop does on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

“We draw closer together to one another in difficult times like this, because we’re really hurting and suffering in the Archdiocese right now by these scandals. And when one member suffers, we all suffer,” he added.

Truxillo said one of the most moving parts of the prayer rally was when she noticed the parents of priests were there.

“When I saw the father of Father Steve, and then I saw Deacon Martin, whose son is Father Andrew, and I saw another lady whose son is a priest, I got a lump in my throat because I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, if I’m hurting, think about how these people must be hurting. They’ve given their son to God and to feel that attack must have really been heavy,’” she said.

Truxillo said there are other events being organized in the archdiocese in reparation for the recent scandals. A Mass of Reparation, advertised on the Notre Dame Seminary website, has been postponed, but is expected to take place soon.

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CNA Staff, Oct 13, 2020 / 06:03 pm (CNA).- Opponents of Columbus Day are misguided in their criticism and miss the important message about unity and inclusivity that the holiday continues to offer America, U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia said this week.

“Columbus Day stands for ideals and principles that are woven into the fabric of our nation, and which are as important today as they were on the first Columbus Day in 1892,” he said.

Scalia spoke at Franciscan University of Steubenville on October 12. He reflected on criticisms of Christopher Columbus and the holiday that bears the explorer’s name.

“Columbus Day has been part of our American heritage for more than a century. There are some now who would like to do away with that commemoration. My message is that would be a mistake,” he said.

The labor secretary noted calls for Columbus Day to be re-designated as a day recognizing Native Americans. However, he said, honoring Native Americans can be accomplished without dishonoring the groups who have drawn inspiration from Christopher Columbus over the centuries.

“That first Columbus Day welcomed Catholics and recent immigrants as equal sharers in the American dream, and acknowledged—if only for a day— Native Americans as rightful participants in our national heritage,” he said. “Maligned by progressives today, Columbus Day was an early celebration of something progressives purport to value—diversity and inclusion.”

Numerous acts of vandalism and destruction against statues of Columbus and other historical figures have taken place in recent months, with officials removing other statues to protect them from the threat of mob attacks.

More than 30 statues of Columbus have been or are scheduled to be removed, Scalia said. Other statues across the country have also been torn down, including those depicting “Star-Spangled Banner” author Francis Scott Key, president and Union general Ulysses Grant, and Saint Junipero Serra.

Statues and memorials honoring George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln have also faced calls for removal.

Scalia warned that the activists driving the opposition to these statues “want to fundamentally redefine how we view our nation’s character and legacy,” proposing a vision of America as fundamentally oppressive and discriminatory.

However, he suggested, contemporary Americans can gain valuable insight about the country and its heritage from considering why previous generations revered Columbus.

The early American revolutionaries were inspired by Columbus’ great courage, which opened the door to new opportunities and “boundless possibilities,” Scalia said.

“Through the centuries, Columbus came to represent the spirit of adventure and discovery that we associate with America—our faith in our capacity to seek and find something new and better,” he said. “We have many heroes who personify our political ideals, but no figure so associated with the questing, the entrepreneurialism, the hope in the new that is part of the American spirit.”

Columbus was not perfect, Scalia acknowledged, and in fact had “grave faults.”

“He participated in the slave trade—as did others in his day—and was a harsh, at times inhumane ruler of indigenous people he subjugated.”

Many of the historical figures we admire had serious shortcomings, Scalia said, noting that several of the Founding Fathers owned slaves.

“[W]e know that the Founders did not fully live according to the ideals they espoused. They were sinners; they were fallen—in that respect, they were like all of us here. And they lacked the vision to fully see the implications and promise of what they wrote,” he said. “But they supplied the vision and principles for generations of Americans to forge the freest nation on earth—and they had the genius to craft a Constitution that made fulfilling those ideals possible.”

Heroes in the cause of civil rights embraced the founding era documents, despite the flaws of those who wrote them, Scalia said.

He noted that Frederick Douglass called the Constitution a “glorious liberty document,” and Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note.”

King offers the country today an example of how to embrace what was good in the American founding, while rejecting errors and “calling on America to be even more American—to be ever truer to the Founders’ vision,” Scalia said.

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization engaging in charitable work, was founded in 1882, taking the name of Columbus, Scalia said, citing a historian who said the Knights viewed Columbus as a “hero against American nativism, a symbol providing ‘social legitimacy and patriotic loyalty.’”

When Columbus Day was first celebrated nationally in 1892, it was presented by President Benjamin Harrison as a day of unity, which those from the North and South could celebrate together, the labor secretary said.

Over time, Columbus also came to be honored by immigrants – especially Italian and Irish Catholics – who faced strong discrimination in America, he added.

“[I]n the 19th century, in the face of sharp hostility associated with religion and national origin, Columbus became a powerful symbol of the claim of Italian, Irish, and other Catholic immigrants that they were fully American,” he said.

“The nation’s Protestant elite proudly claimed forebears among the sons and daughters of the Revolution; Columbus was an equally proud answer that Italians and Catholics, also, had roots in the nation’s founding and a claim to be fully American.”

This message of diversity and inclusion offered by Columbus Day is still needed in America, Scalia said.

He recalled the 2018 confirmation hearing of Brian Buescher, a judicial nominee and member of the Knights of Columbus who was told by Senators that the Knights take “extreme positions” and was asked if he was willing to resign his membership in the organization “to avoid any appearance of bias.”

He also pointed to Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett facing scrutiny for her faith and participation the charismatic Christian group People of Praise. Barrett was told by a senator at a 2017 hearing, “[T]he dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

Scalia also said the Department of Labor is working to remove regulations that require religious charitable organizations to warn the people they serve about their religious nature and refer them elsewhere if they object to it.

He added that President Donald Trump signed an order last month prohibiting race and sex scapegoating and stereotyping in federal workplace training programs. Scalia said the order will help fight training programs that tell certain employees that they are racist or morally culpable because of their race or sex.

“Harboring racist views is not the shared heritage of white Americans. For many it’s quite the opposite, as Columbus Day reminds us: Catholics, Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, and others had their own struggles gaining acceptance in American society,” Scalia emphasized.

“Columbus Day is a day about overcoming that; it’s a day that was first set aside to embrace this country’s diversity and welcome all citizens into the American polity, regardless of creed or national origin.”

While there is still work to do in this regard, abandoning Columbus Day does not help achieve that purpose, he continued. Rather, Americans should be inspired by the rich history of Columbus Day to celebrate diversity and work for unity.

“Our nation did not establish Columbus Day to commemorate oppression or discrimination,” he said, “we established Columbus Day to overcome it.”

 

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Washington D.C., Oct 13, 2020 / 05:13 pm (CNA).-  

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was pressed on Tuesday for her position on abortion, marriage, and health care, during her first day of questioning by members of the Senate Judiciary Comm… […]

Denver Newsroom, Oct 13, 2020 / 03:54 pm (CNA).- A group of activists near San Francisco on Monday defaced a statue of St. Junipero Serra on private property with red spray paint before tearing it from its foundation.

Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan priest and missionary, is viewed by some activists as a symbol of colonialism and of the abuses that many Native Americans suffered after contact with Europeans. However, historians say the missionary protested abuses and sought to fight colonial oppression.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Tuesday decried the “mob rule” that led to the statue of the saint being “mindlessly defaced and toppled by a small, violent mob.”

“This kind of behavior has no place in any civilized society. While the police have thankfully arrested five of the perpetrators, what happens next is crucial, for if these are treated as small property crimes, it misses the point: the symbols of our faith are now under attack not only on public property, but now on our own property and even inside of our churches,” Cordileone said Oct. 13.

The riot that led to the statue’s destruction took place Oct. 12 at Mission San Rafael Arcángel in San Rafael, CA, north of San Francisco Bay.

Though Serra himself did not found Mission San Rafael, it owes its existence to Serra’s legacy, as he founded the first nine missions in what would become California.

The hourlong protest, organized by members of the Coast Miwok tribe, marked Indigenous People’s Day, the holiday that some cities and states – including California – have designated to replace Columbus Day.

A church maintenance worker had covered the statue in duct tape before the protest to protect it from graffiti, and boarded up windows at the mission. Numerous statues of the saint have been vandalized or destroyed this year, most of them in California.

The masked rioters peeled off the duct tape and sprayed red paint in the statue’s face.

“This is a continued reminder of the impact of colonization and genocide of our people,” Dean Hoaglin, chair of the Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin, told Fox2.

The protestors tried to prevent local news cameras from filming the toppling, but Fox2 captured the statue’s fall on video. At least five people can be seen pulling on the statue’s head with nylon cords and ropes.

The tape appears to show the statue falling on one of the protestors, though there have not been any injuries reported.

Police arrested five women in connection with the incident and charged them with felony vandalism, Fox2 reported.

“We cannot allow a small unelected group of lawbreakers to decide what sacred symbols we Catholics or other believers may display and use to foster our faith. This must stop,” Cordileone said.

“Attacking the symbols of faith of millions of Catholics, who are as diverse in ethnicity as any faith in America, is counterproductive. It’s also simply wrong.”

Mike Brown, spokesman for the San Francisco archdiocese, told local news media that the protestors had not asked the mission to take down the statue prior to Monday’s demonstration.

Catholics in San Francisco are planning a peaceful prayer demonstration at the statue site Tuesday evening, Brown told CNA.

Cordileone noted that the protest against the statue began peacefully, but soon descended into violence. He encouraged people to learn more about Serra.

“There is no question that the indigenous peoples of our continent suffered under Europeans who came here and their descendants, especially after the mission era ended and California entered into the United States. But Fr. Serra is the wrong symbol of those who wish to address or redress this grievance,” Cordileone contended.

“Fr. Serra and his fellow Franciscans renounced all worldly pursuits to give their lives to serving the native peoples and so protected them from the abuses of their fellow Spaniards.”

Experts have disputed claims that Serra was in any way involved in genocide, and in contrast, there is evidence that Serra advocated for the rights of the indigenous people in the face of mistreatment by the Spanish military.

A California archeologist, who has studied the missions for over 25 years, told CNA earlier this year that it is clear from Serra’s own writings that he was motivated by a missionary zeal to bring salvation to the native people through the Catholic faith, rather than by genocidal, racist, or opportunistic motivations.

“Serra writes excitedly about how he had finally found his life’s calling, and that he would give his life to these people and their salvation,” Dr. Ruben Mendoza, an archeologist and professor at California State University-Monterey Bay, told CNA.

Born on the island of Petra Mallorca in Spain in 1713, Serra joined the Franciscans and quickly gained prominence as both a scholar and professor.

He chose to give up his academic career to become a missionary in the territory of New Spain, in which Spanish colonizers had already been active for over two centuries.

Traveling almost everywhere on foot and practicing various forms of self-mortification, Serra founded mission churches all along the coast— the first nine of the 21 missions in what is today California.

Many of the missions would form the cores of what are today the state’s biggest cities— such as San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

In many ways, the missions were a communal venture between the friars and Native leaders, Mendoza said. Soldiers were typically housed in a garrison just off-site from the compound. The compound itself would include work areas, such as a blacksmith’s shop and places for crafts and weaving.

The Europeans taught the Natives new agricultural techniques, as well as instruction in the faith, performing thousands of baptisms.

“Unlike many of us today, Serra was a man on a mission,” Mendoza said.

“He was absolutely determined to engage the salvation of indigenous communities. And while for some that may be seen as an intrusion, for Serra in his time, that was seen as one of the most benevolent things one could do— to give one’s life over to others, and that’s what he did.”

Serra specifically advocated for the rights of Native peoples, at one point drafting a 33-point “bill of rights” for the Native Americans living in the mission settlements and walking all the way from California to Mexico City to present it to the viceroy.

Mendoza said the worst abuses against the Native Americans in California took place after the age of the missions ended, when the Spanish government ceased sending funding to the 21 sites and to the Spanish military.

The soldiers, without the support of their faraway benefactors, began to prey on the missionaries and the Natives. Many more Natives died during this time than had in the 60 years that the missions were operational.

Mendoza said there was a time during the transition to the American era when indigenous people were more vulnerable to attacks by settlers and white authorities if they were not Christian. The fact that the missions had converted many Native communities to Christianity actually helped them survive later European abuses, he said.

By the 1820s— nearly four decades after Serra’s death— friars at the now mostly destitute missions were writing letters of grievance to the American and Mexican governments, advocating for better treatment for the Natives, Mendoza said.

The California gold rush in the 1840s saw hundreds of thousands of European settlers come to the area, with little to no protections afforded to the Natives.

While many Native peoples did suffer horrific abuse, Mendoza said many people conflate the abuses the Natives suffered long after Serra’s death with the period when Serra was alive and building the missions.

Pope Francis canonized Serra in 2015 during a visit to the United States.

“Junípero sought to defend the dignity of the native community, to protect it from those who had mistreated and abused it,” the pope said in his homily at the Mass of canonization.

Statues of the saint have this year become focal points for protests and demonstrations across California, with images of the saint being torn down or vandalized in protest of California’s colonial past.

A statue of the saint was torn down in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, on June 19 by a crowd of about 100 people, and on the same day a statue of the saint was torn down in Los Angeles.

Rioters pulled down and defaced a statue of Serra in Sacramento on July 4, inspiring a local Catholic to set up a makeshift shrine to Serra on the statue’s empty plinth July 5, and lead other Catholics in cleaning graffiti from the site.

Some California institutions, such as the University of San Diego, have put their statues of Serra in storage to protect them.

The San Rafael arson is the latest in a spate of attacks against Catholic churches across the country.

On July 11, an arson attack gutted the 249-year-old Mission San Gabriel in Los Angeles, a mission church founded by St. Serra.

That same morning, a man crashed a minivan through the front door of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Ocala, Florida. He then set the church aflame while parishioners inside prepared for morning Mass.

Police arrested Stephen Anthony Shields, 24, of Dunnellon, Florida later that day. He has been charged with attempted murder, arson, burglary, and evading arrest.

Also in July, an as-yet unidentified assailant beheaded a statue of Christ the Good Shepherd at a parish in the Archdiocese of Miami, in Southwest Miami-Dade County.

In 2019, the co-cathedral of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee was damaged by fire, with several of the chairs in the sanctuary set ablaze using an accelerant. A 32-year-old man with a history of mental illness was later arrested in connection with the arson.

On July 10, the Diocese of Brooklyn announced that New York City police were investigating the vandalization of a statue of the Virgin Mary at Cathedral Prep School and Seminary in Queens. The next day, local police in Boston confirmed that a statue of the Blessed Virgin, located outside the church of St. Peter’s Parish, had been set on fire and suffered damage.

In September, a man broke at least six windows, beat several metal doors, and broke numerous statues around grounds of a Louisiana parish in a late-night vandalism attack that lasted over two hours. The assailant has since been arrested and confessed to the crime.

Also in September, a vandal entered the sanctuary of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in El Paso, Texas and destroyed a nearly 90-year-old statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Eighty-three percent of Catholic likely voters are concerned about attacks on churches in recent months, according to a poll conducted Aug. 27 – Sept. 1 by RealClear Opinion Research in partnership with EWTN News.

 

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