Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 10, 2021 / 09:19 am (CNA).
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband left Mass at a church in Rome Saturday evening due to a “security incident,” the church’s rector said.
“You probably heard or saw the commotion. Unfortunately, I guess, there was a security incident and sadly Speaker Pelosi and her husband had to leave,” Fr. Steven Petroff, rector of St. Patrick’s Church in Rome, said in a video posted on social media.
“She was going to do our second reading today, but of course her safety is most important,” he said.
Veteran Rome journalist Joan Lewis told CNA Sunday that she had spoken to Petroff, who told her that the security concerns stemmed from restive demonstrations going on in the streets of Rome Saturday that were moving into the area where St. Patrick’s is located.
“It was Pelosi’s security detail that made her leave Mass for her own safety,” Lewis said in an instant message exchange with CNA. “What Fr. Steve learned after Mass was that a large number of the anti-Green Card protestors were moving in the direction of Via Veneto and they appeared to be violent. This is what led her security team to insist that she leave the church to, we can assume, be moved to a more secure location.”
Lewis emphasized that Pelosi wasn’t the target of heckling, as some news reports suggested. You can watch Petroff addressing the incident during his homily in the Twitter post below.
Pro abortion American politician Nancy Pelosi ‘had to leave’ Mass in Rome today because of a ‘commotion’ and was unable to deliver a scheduled reading as a result. pic.twitter.com/0WYhRW08nw
Pelosi, a leading Catholic politician who has clashed with her local ordinary, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, over her support of abortion, traveled to Rome to give the keynote address at the opening session of the G20 Parliamentary Speakers’ Summit on Friday. On Saturday, she and her husband, businessman Paul Pelosi, met with Pope Francis and other top Vatican officials.
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Supporters of former US President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump attend the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on February 24, 2024. / Credit: Mandel NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Nell O’Leary, managing editor of Blessed Is She. / Therese Westby
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 3, 2022 / 11:01 am (CNA).
When Nell O’Leary sat down with her team to brainstorm a new book for Catholic women, she said they felt drawn to the theme of “identity.”
“This one kept coming back, this idea of identity, of who we are as Catholic women, made in God’s image and likeness,” O’Leary, the managing editor of Blessed Is She, told CNA. This identity, she said, gets battered by the world “with all these lies that you are what you look like, you are your social media following, you are how successful you are, you are how many kids you have.”
Instead, O’Leary says, every woman is unconditionally loved as a “beloved daughter of God.”
This message is central to Made New: 52 Devotions for Catholic Women, a weekly devotional released in December. The book houses personal stories from five writers associated with Blessed Is She (BIS), a “sisterhood” of Catholic women who desire to grow in their faith through prayer and community. Each of the five — O’Leary, Leana Bowler, Brittany Calavitta, Jenna Guizar, and Liz Kelly — focus on a theme under the umbrella of identity: beheld, belong, beloved, believing, and becoming.
While their stories are different, their tone is consistent. Each writer engages the reader with the frank, casual tone of a friend who’s honest about her struggles, hopeful for the future, and, well, confident in her identity.
“I invite you to journey with me, dear sister, to walk through the next fifty-two weeks as we rediscover our value, our worth, and our identity in Our Lord’s eyes,” Guizar, the founder of BIS, writes in the book’s opening. “He is waiting for you and me, and He desires to be in relationship with us. All it takes is a response to His call: yes.”
Each week begins with a short reflection or personal story from one of the writers and concludes with a scripture passage and two questions for the reader to ask herself. Along the way, artwork interrupts the text to greet readers with dusty, muted colors and shapes. The rose-gold cover impresses a feminine touch, along with a pink ribbon bookmark. Leaves and plants adorn the pages, suggesting growth and life made new.
A saint’s calling
If readers come away remembering one thing, O’Leary wants them to believe and remember that “there’s no one way, cookie-cutter way, to become a saint.”
“God is calling you personally, through the circumstances in your life, through the challenges, through the blessings, to grow in holiness in who you are and where you are,” she said. “And to compare yourself to other women and feel like you can’t measure up is simply not where you want to put your energies.”
Instead, she said, God is calling each woman — in her particular, unique life — to become a saint.
Every woman is different, something that the five writers themselves demonstrate. According to O’Leary, they are not all just a “bunch of young moms.” One struggles with infertility, another married later in life, one started a family before marriage, and another has no children.
“I think that however old the reader is, they will find part of their own story,” O’Leary said. “When we write [our stories], we want the reader to actually be able to contemplate and ponder… to kind of find their own story. So you’re not just consuming another person’s content, you’re actually looking at yourself too.”
One story particularly moved O’Leary (even though she compared picking her favorite to “picking a favorite flower”). She pointed to writer Liz Kelly, who shares with readers her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis toward the end of the book.
While Kelly originally “thought that meant her role would become really small,” God “used her in that time and in that diagnosis to broadcast his message even further than she thought,” O’Leary summarized.
She added, “I think the reason I love that story so much is because where we see limitations, God just sees more opportunities for grace.”
Unconditional love
A theme in the book that O’Leary herself touches on is God’s unconditional love — that he loves you as you are right now, regardless of what you do or don’t do, regardless of how your family or friends treat you, regardless of your past or future. He loves you.
“I suppose people in general struggle with the idea of unconditional love because it’s so rarely manifest in our human interaction,” O’Leary said of accepting God’s love. “And so, because the human level of relationship in our lives are fraught with other imperfect people, to really trust in and experience God’s love takes this trust and this faith.”
Her first piece of advice for women who doubt God’s love or think they aren’t good enough is to visit the confessional.
“Get all those embarrassing sins off your chest,” she said. “The priest has heard it all … you can go behind the screen.”
“It’s nothing that’s too embarrassing to bring to the sacrament and really unload yourself of the burden of all those sins and experience God’s grace filling you,” she added. God’s unconditional love can get “so shrouded and clouded by my own, my own humanity, my own mistakes, my own sinfulness.”
Community and Covid
Another topic in the book — and a priority for Blessed Is She as a whole — is community. O’Leary addressed the challenges of community, particularly during the pandemic.
“Living in a global pandemic, so many things being more online, we just see that highlights reel…those drive those envy twinges of, ‘Her life looks perfect. She doesn’t have my struggles,’” she said. “Really puts in wedges in our sisterhood and we need our sisterhood.”
“When we can’t be together, it just starts to look like everyone has it together,” she added. “We don’t.”
O’Leary advised women to read the free daily devotions offered by Blessed Is She. And delete social media apps off of their phones, even if just for the weekend.
“I know that our phones and the internet are wonderful for connecting us, but they’re also really toxic for making it feel more lonely,” she said. “Live the life that’s in front of you.”
The personal
O’Leary talked about her personal life and her own struggle with identity. The fourth of five children, she said she grew up surrounded by high-achieving parents and siblings. While she thought that one day she might have a family, she worked toward becoming an attorney. She ended up marrying her “law school love” and worked as an attorney. Then, she became a stay-at-home mom.
“Realizing that I had hung so much on my identity being what I did, and what the world could see and applaud, that becoming a mom and then eventually staying at home with our kids,” she said. “It’s such a hidden life.”
“The children are not cheering you on, ‘You did a great job!’ there’s no affirmation, there’s no feedback other than the deep satisfaction I guess, that no one went to the ER,” she added.
The experience changed her.
“What I realized that I had to have a big mentality shift from, I’m not what I do and I’m not what I accomplish and I’m not even how my children behave,” she said. “That really, in these hidden moments in prayer with God, to say, ‘I know I’m your beloved daughter. I know I’m made in your image and likeness.’”
Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor. / oag.ok.gov
Denver Newsroom, Nov 17, 2021 / 07:38 am (CNA).
Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor on Monday issued a cease and desist letter to Ascension, after the Catholic healthcare group reportedly suspended an unspecified number of employees who did not receive a COVID-19 vaccine before a Nov. 12 deadline.
Ascension St. John, a hospital in Tulsa, reportedly suspended the employees without pay Nov. 12 despite a state court’s emergency temporary restraining order prohibiting the group from taking action against employees who requested, but were denied, a religious exemption to the hospital’s vaccine mandate.
“It appears that Ascension is determined to trample on the sincerely held religious beliefs of the healthcare heroes it employs despite the court’s clear mandate,” O’Connor said in the cease and desist letter.
“Ascension’s actions will also interrupt patient care and prevent patients from being treated by the provider of their choice.”
Local news reports from Nov. 13 suggested that Ascension St. John temporarily reversed its decision to suspend the employees, before resuming the suspensions the same day.
The mandate required all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and influenza by Nov. 12, 2021 or risk suspension, and eventual termination on Jan. 4, 2022.
“As a healthcare provider and as a Catholic ministry, ensuring we have a culture of safety for our associates, patients and communities is foundational to our work,” the mandate says. Ascension is not affiliated with Ascension Press, a Catholic multimedia publisher based in Pennsylvania.
The attorney general’s letter demands that Ascension “immediately cease and desist its defiance of the court’s temporary restraining order,” allow the attorney general’s office time to investigate allegations of religious discrimination, immediately reinstate all suspended employees who applied for a religious exemption, and place employees on their normal work schedule.
Ascension did not respond to CNA’s request for comment.
Judge William D. LaFortune granted a temporary restraining order in Tulsa District Court on Nov. 12 in response to a lawsuit filed that same day by the State of Oklahoma, which accused Ascension of religious discrimination. Healthcare workers who applied for religious exemption were “flatly rejected by Ascension,” O’Connor contended in a press release on Friday.
One such complainant is Mitchell Duininck, a physician at Ascension St. John in Tulsa, who applied for a religious exemption within the deadlines imposed by Ascension, but his request was repeatedly denied, court documents state.
Duininck, a practicing Christian, says he filed a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights Enforcement after Ascension denied his request on two occasions.
“We will not tolerate any form of religious discrimination against Oklahomans who seek reasonable accommodations from vaccine mandates based on their sincerely held religious beliefs,” O’Connor said.
“No Oklahoman should be forced to choose between a vaccine and their job, when it involves violating their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
O’Connor called the temporary restraining order “a win for religious freedom” in a tweet late Friday. A hearing is set for Dec. 1 to determine if a temporary injunction should be granted while religious discrimination complaints are investigated.
O’Connor has joined 11 other state attorneys general in a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirements for healthcare workers.
Let me ask a question from a position of neutrality: Why should any of us give a hoot about pre-born children when this woman gets hosted by a smiling Vicar of Christ and gets to read Holy Scripture from a Roman pulpit?
Let me re-phrase an answer: The follower of Christ gives all his hoot for pre-born children and no mind (other than prayer and sacrifice) to “this woman” and “a smiling Vicar of Christ.”
To turn away in nausea and disgust from the likes of these two re-writers of the laws and covenant of Christ is to turn the other cheek to them while offering both our cheeks to Christ.
Nancy ought to consider herself akin to the child in the womb. When threats arise to the child’s safety (chemical toxins, showers of saline, surgical suction or curettage threaten the child) is the child free to flee?
No. Nancy instead facilitates funding for more toxin, more saline, more suction and sharper knives. She allows, facilitates and finds ways to enforce further brutality.
Meanwhile, a whiff of a threat sends Nancy and her ‘guardians’ into a flurry of fear, so that she physically leaves the church, abandoning the place where the only person–Jesus the Christ–can save her. Truly she has no faith and does not discern His presence or His power to enforce His law.
Nancy perfectly exemplifies Aristotle’s Law of Noncontradiction: “It is impossible that the same thing can at the same time both belong and not belong to the same object and in the same respect.” Nancy cannot claim to be Catholic while acting against Catholicism’s basic precept.
Nancy will not be saved until and unless she converts and begins to save the innocent, vulnerable, and helpless to counteract the many she’s helped die. Her five alive weigh only so much in the scales of justice.
Nancy cannot be both Catholic and non-Catholic while she collects wages of sin. May God have mercy on such souls.
Maybe she used the commotion as any excuse to leave, because the Pope would not allow her to receive Holy Communion?
She left in order to avoid her own humiliation of being held in obeyance of Catholic teachings to receive communion.
She was invited to attend and participate in the mass and could have taken part of the communion procession, andreceived a blessing instead of communion as a good catholic should who’s not able to receive communion.
She was even invited to do a reading, which goes to show she is still welcomed by the Catholic Church, inspire of her contrary views that prevent her from receiving Holy Communion.
I think she wanted to avoid personal humiliation, and had her security team staged rushing her out for dramatic effect, as if she would not be safe in Vatican City.
If there was any real threat, a security team would have pulled out sooner, cancelled her appearance all together.
Let me ask a question from a position of neutrality: Why should any of us give a hoot about pre-born children when this woman gets hosted by a smiling Vicar of Christ and gets to read Holy Scripture from a Roman pulpit?
Let me re-phrase an answer: The follower of Christ gives all his hoot for pre-born children and no mind (other than prayer and sacrifice) to “this woman” and “a smiling Vicar of Christ.”
To turn away in nausea and disgust from the likes of these two re-writers of the laws and covenant of Christ is to turn the other cheek to them while offering both our cheeks to Christ.
Nancy ought to consider herself akin to the child in the womb. When threats arise to the child’s safety (chemical toxins, showers of saline, surgical suction or curettage threaten the child) is the child free to flee?
No. Nancy instead facilitates funding for more toxin, more saline, more suction and sharper knives. She allows, facilitates and finds ways to enforce further brutality.
Meanwhile, a whiff of a threat sends Nancy and her ‘guardians’ into a flurry of fear, so that she physically leaves the church, abandoning the place where the only person–Jesus the Christ–can save her. Truly she has no faith and does not discern His presence or His power to enforce His law.
Nancy perfectly exemplifies Aristotle’s Law of Noncontradiction: “It is impossible that the same thing can at the same time both belong and not belong to the same object and in the same respect.” Nancy cannot claim to be Catholic while acting against Catholicism’s basic precept.
Nancy will not be saved until and unless she converts and begins to save the innocent, vulnerable, and helpless to counteract the many she’s helped die. Her five alive weigh only so much in the scales of justice.
Nancy cannot be both Catholic and non-Catholic while she collects wages of sin. May God have mercy on such souls.
Maybe she used the commotion as any excuse to leave, because the Pope would not allow her to receive Holy Communion?
She left in order to avoid her own humiliation of being held in obeyance of Catholic teachings to receive communion.
She was invited to attend and participate in the mass and could have taken part of the communion procession, andreceived a blessing instead of communion as a good catholic should who’s not able to receive communion.
She was even invited to do a reading, which goes to show she is still welcomed by the Catholic Church, inspire of her contrary views that prevent her from receiving Holy Communion.
I think she wanted to avoid personal humiliation, and had her security team staged rushing her out for dramatic effect, as if she would not be safe in Vatican City.
If there was any real threat, a security team would have pulled out sooner, cancelled her appearance all together.