Month: November 2020

CNA Staff, Nov 4, 2020 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- Voters in Nebraska sided with efforts to limit payday loans, passing an initiative Tuesday that the Nebraska Catholic Conference had endorsed as a means to protect the poor from becoming trapped in debt.

Over 80% of Nebraskan voters backed Initiative 248, which caps payday loans at a 36% annual percentage rate, the Lincoln Journal-Star reports. Previously, the legal lending rate was set at 400%.

Sixteen other states have similar limits, or prohibit payday lending altogether.

The Nebraska Catholic Conference was among the supporters of the initiative.

“Payday lending too often exploits the poor and vulnerable by charging exorbitant interest rates and trapping them in endless debt cycles,” Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha said Oct. 7. “It’s time for Nebraska to implement reasonable payday lending interest rates. The Catholic bishops of Nebraska urge Nebraskans to vote for Initiative 428.”

Nebraskans for Responsible Lending was another backer of the ballot initiative, which was placed on the ballot after receiving over 120,000 signatures in support. Foes of high payday lending rates tried to pass similar limits through legislation, then turned to the ballot measure when that path proved unsuccessful.

Religious leaders, veterans groups, the American Association of Retired Persons, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, and other social welfare groups backed the initiative, the Journal-Star reported.

Critics of the measure said the caps will block credit from people who cannot get loans anywhere else and put the businesses that serve them out of business.

Tom Venzor, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, explained the need to cap payday loans in an Oct. 9 statement.

“In 2019 alone, payday lenders have extracted more than $30 million in fees from borrowers,” Venzor said. Those who seek payday loans tend to lack a college degree, rent rather than own a home, earn under $40,000 a year, or are separated or divorced. African Americans also disproportionately seek payday loans.

“They turn to payday loans to cover basic living expenses like utilities, rent or mortgage payments, food, or credit card bills,” said Venzor.

The Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance’s 2019 annual report on payday lending practices said the average borrower was charged 405% at an annual percentage rate on a $362 loan, and took 10 loans in a single year.

“When borrowers are unable to repay their loan after two weeks, they usually have no choice but to take out a second loan to repay their first,” Venzor added. “This inability to repay a loan can lead to a vicious ‘debt cycle’ which can continue for years.”

Venzor explained that Catholic teaching rejects exploitative loans.

“Catholic social teaching is very clear on this issue,” he said. “It recognizes that it is both morally acceptable to earn reasonable and equitable profits in economic and financial activities, and morally reprehensible to lend money at unreasonably high rates of interest (a practice also known as usury).”

Venzor noted that the Catechism of the Catholic Church rejects usury as a violation of the commandment ‘Thou shall not steal’. St. John Paul II, in a Feb. 4, 2004 general audience, denounced usury as “a scourge that is also a reality in our time and has a stranglehold on many people’s lives.”

In February the Montana Catholic Conference backed federal limits on payday and car title loans. It encouraged voters to ask their Member of Congress to back the Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act of 2019. The bill that would limit the interest rate on payday and car title loans. The bill would expand the 2006 Military Lending Act rate cap – which only covers active military members and their families – to all consumers. It would cap all payday and car-title loans at a maximum of a 36% APR interest rate.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have backed the bill.

In July the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency overseeing consumer protections, revoked federal restrictions on payday loans, drawing objections from the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops. The rules were announced in 2017, but the bureau said their legal and evidentiary bases were “insufficient.” The bureau said removing the rules would help “ensure the continued availability of small dollar lending products for consumers who demand them.”

The industry collects between $7.3 and $7.7 billion dollars annually from the practices that would have been barred, the bureau said.

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ domestic justice committee, objected in to the changes in a July 10 letter that characterized payday lending as “modern day usury.”

The Church has consistently taught that usury is evil, including in numerous ecumenical councils.

In Vix pervenit, his 1745 encyclical on usury and other dishonest profit, Benedict XIV taught that a loan contract demands “that one return to another only as much as he has received. The sin rests on the fact that sometimes the creditor desires more than he has given. Therefore he contends some gain is owed him beyond that which he loaned, but any gain which exceeds the amount he gave is illicit and usurious.”

In his General Audience address of Feb. 10, 2016, Pope Francis taught that “Scripture persistently exhorts a generous response to requests for loans, without making petty calculations and without demanding impossible interest rates,” citing Leviticus.

“This lesson is always timely,” he said. “How many families there are on the street, victims of profiteering … It is a grave sin, usury is a sin that cries out in the presence of God.”

[…]

CNA Staff, Nov 4, 2020 / 12:35 pm (CNA).- On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a Pennsylvania adoption case, as senior U.S. bishops warned of the case’s potential consequences for religious freedom and the role of Catholic welfare agencies in American public life. 

Fulton v. City of Philadelphia concerns the right of religious individuals to serve as foster carers while holding religious views about the definition of marriage. In 2018, the city of Philadelphia notified Catholic Social Services with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia that their policies of not working with same-sex couples on foster care placements were discriminatory; the city stopped contracting with both services. 

Sharonell Fulton and Toni Simms-Busch, who have fostered more than 40 children and who partnered with Catholic Social Services, brought the case against the city that is currently before the Supreme Court.

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, Archbishop Nelson Perez said that the city’s intransigence was excluding Catholics from living out a vocation of service, and leaving the most vulnerable children without a loving home.

“Essentially, we are being told that the Catholic Church must leave its faith at the door if it wants to serve those in need,” Nelson said. “But our faith compels us to do this work, and we have a right to conduct ourselves according to the tenets of our faith.”

“Each of our families is an agent for peace and healing, not just in the lives of the children they so generously bring into their homes, but in the neighborhoods they help to build up one person at a time,” he said.

“We do much more than temporarily fill a gap in the lives of vulnerable children in need of a loving home. We work to empower individuals seeking to restore their communities by making a difference in the lives of young people.”

On Wednesday morning, justices and attorneys both brought up the city’s relationship with Catholic Social Services, probing whether the arrangement was a contract or a license.

If it was merely contractual, attorneys for the city argued, then the city could be free to set the requirements without having to balance its interests with the rights of religious agencies.

However, if the city were effectively granting foster care licenses to prospective partners, then it could be accused of discriminating against Catholic Social Services as the religious beliefs of the ministry disqualified it from the program.  

“What the city is asking Catholic Social Services to do here is to certify, validate, and make statements that it cannot make,” Lori Windham argued for the plaintiffs. The Catholic organization could not in conscience “evaluate, assess, and approve” a same-sex couple for foster care placements, as required by the city.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who heard arguments in her first major religious freedom case at the court since her confirmation last week, asked if an entity could even participate in foster care without a contract with the city.

Lawyers argued for the city that contracts were essential because the city has a lawful interest in overseeing the entire foster care system. “This is about the city’s own kids,” the court was told.

Barrett posed a hypothetical scenario of a city overseeing its health care system, and a Catholic hospital being required to provide abortions to contract with the city. She asked if the situation was a licensing or a contracting scenario, given that the hospital could not participate in health care without abiding by the requirement.

Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh both had strong language for the city’s attempts to impose compliance on Catholic Social Services, with Kavanaugh referring to the city’s position as “absolutist and extreme.”

The case, Alito said, is not about the city ensuring opportunities to be foster parents but rather shows its disdain for beliefs in traditional marriage. He said “the city can’t stand the message” of Catholic Social Services “continuing to adhere to the old-fashioned view about marriage.”

Kavanaugh said that it “seems like” Philadelphia was “looking for a fight” in requiring the ministry to contradict its religious beliefs on marriage even though it had not denied a same-sex couple the opportunity to be foster parents.

“I fully appreciate the stigmatic harm” of same-sex couples denied opportunities to adopt, he said, adding that “we need to find a balance that also respects religious beliefs.”

“This is a system that has worked effectively and worked well for many years,” he said of Catholic Social Services.

New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan also weighed in on the successful history of social service to wider American society. 

Writing in USA Today on Nov. 4, Dolan noted the long history of Catholic agencies and individuals in America working to alleviate suffering and need, especially in times of crisis like the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“Most of the Church’s ministry was established in the face of crises and epidemics, much like what we are experiencing today,” said Dolan. “And yet our charitable work seemingly never escapes the ageless adage that “no good deed goes unpunished.” 

Noting the more than 8,000 faith-based adoption agencies working with government bodies across the U.S., “not to mention the countless thousands of Catholic soup kitchens, homeless shelters, prison ministries, immigration legal services, and other social services supported by the Catholic Church.” 

“The Church serves these children without discriminating on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, religion, or race.” 

“Indeed,” Dolan said, “the only discrimination to be found is that of Philadelphia officials who target our ministries because they disagree with what the Church believes.” 

“Our nation has slowly but surely rooted out such bigotry. It should finish the job.”

[…]

CNA Staff, Nov 4, 2020 / 11:30 am (CNA).- Longtime Tennessee state representative, civil rights champion, and pro-life Democrat John DeBerry lost his reelection bid on Tuesday evening. DeBerry was standing as an independent after he was removed from the Democratic primary ballot earlier this year, in part due to his pro-life views.

Torrey Harris, 29, overwhelmingly won the election in House District 90, garnering 77% of the vote to DeBerry’s 23%. Harris is a community organizer who previously lost to DeBerry in the 2018 primary. House District 90 is located in Memphis. 

Harris, alongside newly-elected state representative Eddie Mannis (R-Knoxville), are the state’s first two openly-LGBT congressmen. Harris identifies as bisexual. 

In a statement after declaring victory, Harris said that he hopes “to be someone you look to as a real representative. Someone who will listen, empower, not just some, but all Tennesseeans in all the state.” 

Harris stated that while in Nashville, he was “going to do all that I possibly can just to make sure that they get what they went and voted for — they get somebody who is going to advocate for public education, for healthcare, women’s rights, for LGBT rights and for criminal justice reform.” 

DeBerry represented House District 90 in the Tennessee House of Representatives since 1994. He was a member of the Democratic Party until May 2020, when the Tennessee Democratic Party removed him from the House District 90 primary ballot. 

DeBerry was criticized for his support of pro-life legislation, school-choice programs, and other policy positions typically favored by Republicans. 

DeBarry ran in the general election as an independent. In a statement to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, DeBerry stated that his views had not changed since the 1960s, and that he was a victim of party politics. 

“The fact that I had to be removed from the ballot and run as an independent… It says a lot about where things are right now,” DeBerry said on Tuesday night. 

“The district had a choice and they made one, so we will live with it.” 

In September, DeBerry told CNA that he had no regrets about holding firm to his pro-life beliefs, despite the consequences from with the Democratic Party.

“My work in Nashville as a legislator is nothing more than an extension of my work as a child of God, as a Christian,” DeBerry told CNA.

“And I take to heart Ephesians chapter 6, ‘We wrestle not against flesh and blood’—people are not the enemy,” he said, but “there are those who make laws that are blasphemous of God’s law.”

“I have always made my focus staying in accordance to the laws of God, even when my votes are made,” said DeBerry, who is also a minister in the Church of Christ.

During his time in office, DeBerry supported the state’s fetal heartbeat bill, which would ban abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat, usually when an unborn baby is around six to eight weeks old. 

He also opposed the redefinition of marriage, and supports the “right” and responsibility of parents to educate their children and make choices for them.

In addition to DeBerry’s pro-life positions, he is also a life-long civil rights activist. As a child, he attended civil rights marches with his father. 

In a passionate speech on the Tennessee House Floor in August, during the second extraordinary session of the state’s general assembly, DeBerry contrasted the peaceful nature of the protests he witnessed and participated in as a youth with riots in U.S. cities in the last few months.

“I am one of those individuals who walked in back doors because the law said I had to,” he said in his speech Aug. 12, while recalling the bravery and dignity of the civil rights movement.

“I saw men and women stand with courage and integrity and class, and they changed the world,” he said. “They marched peacefully, and Dr. King stood for that which was peaceful.”

“They didn’t beg for anything. They didn’t beg for citizenship–they demanded it,” he said. “They did it by standing like men and women of integrity.”

In the wake of civil unrest in many U.S. cities, DeBerry condemned what he called defenses of rioting, looting, and violence in the name of anti-racism during his August speech. 

“You’re telling me that somebody has the right to throw feces and urine in the faces of those that we as taxpayers pay to protect us? And that’s okay?” he asked. 

“What has happened to us?”

[…]

CNA Staff, Nov 4, 2020 / 10:55 am (CNA).- Voters in Nevada on Tuesday repealed a 2002 measure that defined marriage in the state constitution as a union of one man and one woman.

The Associated Press reported that 61.2% of voters voted to strike the c… […]

CNA Staff, Nov 4, 2020 / 08:15 am (CNA).- Republicans looked on track Wednesday morning to keep control of the Senate, offsetting a loss in Colorado with a gain in Alabama. The upper chamber is set to consider several key bills on abortion funding and … […]