A reliquary containing relics of Blessed Carlo Acutis at the Church of Sant’Angela Merici in Rome, Oct 11, 2021. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Rome Newsroom, Mar 18, 2022 / 06:35 am (CNA).
A relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis’ heart is coming to New York in the first week of April.
Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi will personally take the first-class relic from Italy to New York City on April 3.
The relic is a fragment of Acutis’ pericardium, the membrane that surrounds and protects the heart. It will be present for the U.S. bishops’ National Eucharistic Revival campaign, of which the Italian Blessed is a patron.
In the Catholic Church, relics are physical objects that have a direct association with the saints. Veneration of relics is a Scripture-based tradition practiced in the Church throughout the centuries.
He died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, offering his suffering for the pope and the Church.
Acutis became the first millennial to be beatified by the Catholic Church in October 2020. His tomb is located in the Shrine of the Renunciation, which is part of the Church of St. Mary Major in Assisi.
Pope Francis has said that Blessed Carlo’s “witness shows today’s young people that true happiness is found by putting God in first place and serving Him in our brothers and sisters, especially the least.”
During his visit to the U.S. on April 3-8, Archbishop Sorrentino will offer a Mass with the relic for 2,400 high school students at Saint Anthony’s High School in South Huntington in the Diocese of Rockville Center.
The bishop of Assisi will also lead a holy hour for young people and adults at the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the Diocese of Brooklyn.
“It is a joy for me to bring this relic from Assisi,” Sorrentino said in a March 18 press release from the Diocese of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino.
“My prayer is that the presence of the relic of Blessed Carlo will arouse a desire in our American brothers and sisters, especially young people, not to waste their lives, but to make them a masterpiece, like Carlo chose in our time and St. Francis before him,” he said.
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Paula Scanlan, a women’s sports activist and former teammate of trans-identifying athlete Lia Thomas on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team, speaks to a crowd about her story. Originally only speaking out anonymously, Scanlan has since gone public about the emotional impact of having to share a locker room with a biological male had on her as a sexual assault survivor. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Independent Women’s Forum
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 19, 2024 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
The Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX regulations to offer protection of transgender individuals in women’s sports, educational programs, and school bathrooms has been blocked in half of the states in the country.
The new rule is currently blocked in 26 states as a coalition of states and conservative groups are fighting the rule in court.
Yet, for many of the country’s most populous states — such as California, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania — the rule took effect on Aug. 1. This means that the measure is impacting Americans in many of the country’s largest population centers.
Christiana Kiefer, senior counsel at one of these groups, the Alliance Defending Freedom, told CNA that “the Biden-Harris administration’s radical attempt to redefine sex in Title IX turns back the clock on women’s opportunities, erodes student privacy, and threatens women’s sports.”
“Policies that deny biological truth create real victims — particularly impacting the dignity and safety of women and girls,” Kiefer said. “We are hopeful that the courts will ultimately rule to protect privacy and safety, free speech, and fairness in sports.”
What is the new rule?
In April, the Biden Department of Education redefined the prohibition on sex discrimination in education, enshrined in the 1972 Title IX provisions, to include discrimination based on a person’s “gender identity.”
The new guidelines prohibit any policy and practice that “prevents a person from participating in an education program or activity consistent with their gender identity.” Schools that do not comply risk having their federal funding cut off.
According to May Mailman, director of the Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC), the rule means that any male can now assert that he has been discriminated against based on gender identity and claim a right to use a women’s space.
As IWLC director, Mailman said she has seen the personal impact that forcing schools to allow biological men into women’s sports and private spaces has had on young women. Ultimately, she believes the new rule amounts to “the elimination of women’s spaces.”
“You have Paula Scanlan, who’s an IWF [Independent Women’s Forum] ambassador, she was forced to undress before a fully intact male 18 times a week. And she suffered through it, but how many women would do it? Certainly not all. So, women are going to remove themselves from circumstances that require them to be naked or to do really private activities like urinating in front of males,” Mailman explained.
Scanlan is a women’s sports activist and former teammate of trans-identifying athlete Lia Thomas on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team. Originally only speaking out anonymously, Scanlan has since gone public about the emotional impact of having to share a locker room with a biological male had on her as a sexual assault survivor.
“That is the opposite of what Title IX was created to do, which is to give women opportunities. So, what you’re going to see is Title IX actually being flipped on its head. Women are going to remove themselves from educational programs like sports because it requires such indecency.”
Where is the rule in effect?
A slate of Republican-led states has challenged the rule in court, many arguing that it violates their state laws. As a result, the Biden administration’s changes are currently blocked in 26 states.
The Independent Women’s Forum has published an interactive map showing which states have successfully blocked the rule and in which states it is currently active. The map also shows which states have pending litigation on the rule. Credit: Image courtesy of Independent Women’s Forum.
The Biden Title IX changes are currently blocked in most of the South and Midwest, including Texas, Florida, and Ohio. Because of a Kansas lawsuit that was joined by several other states and conservative organizations, the rule has been blocked in over 3,800 individual schools across the country.
However, the blocks in these states are only considered “preliminary injunctions,” meaning they are temporary, pending further review in the courts. Because of this, the rule could eventually take effect in any of the 26 states where it is currently blocked.
The Biden administration’s Title IX change has already taken effect in 24 states, primarily in Western and Northeastern coastal states, as well as the Great Lakes region.
“It seems like half the country, but it’s actually more than half the country because if you think about population, this is California, this is New York, so for a huge portion of the population, they are now under the Biden regime, where male and female spaces are no longer protected in education programs,” Mailman said.
“In those schools, the Biden administration can absolutely go after a school if it does not police pronouns, if it has male and female locker rooms, if it has male and female bathrooms, if it has male and female scholarships … it affects all education programs that accept federal money.”
What’s next?
On Friday the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously denied the Biden administration’s request to partially enforce the new rule in several states where it has been blocked. Mailman explained in a video posted to social media that while the decision does not change much right now it does signal the Supreme Court may agree that Biden’s changes to Title IX are unconstitutional.
Ultimately, Mailman believes the fate of this rule depends in large part on the presidential election. If elected to the White House, Mailman said that a Kamala Harris administration is “absolutely going to take it further.”
“Judges are something that the president has a huge say in because they nominate them. You can’t be a judge if you don’t have the president,” she said. “So, the types of judges that Kamala Harris is going to put on the courts are the types of judges who are going to say that absolutely, Title IX is some gender identity law, even though it’s not.”
New York City, N.Y., Jan 13, 2021 / 01:49 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York has explained why Catholics are not ashamed of being ‘hung up’ on abortion, especially in the context of the upcoming Biden administration, in a Wednesday column.
Recalling a conversation with a politician who asked him, “why are you Catholics so hung up about abortion,” the Archbishop of New York explained in a Jan. 13 column at Catholic New York that “actually, we’re obsessed with the dignity of the human person and the sacredness of all human life! Yes, the innocent, helpless life of the baby in the womb, but also the life of the death row prisoner, the immigrant, the fragile elderly, the poor and the sick.”
“As a matter of fact,” Cardinal Dolan says, “this is not a uniquely ‘Catholic’ issue at all, but one of human rights. We didn’t learn that abortion was horrible in religion class, but in biology, and in our courses on the ‘inalienable rights’ tradition in American history.”
“How can we sustain a culture that recoils at violence, exclusion, suicide, racism, injustice, and callousness toward those in need, if we applaud, allow, pay for, and promote the destruction of the most helpless, the baby in the womb?”
Cardinal Dolan also writes that “pro-abortionists reassured us forty-eight years ago” that abortion would be kept safe, legal, and rare. “So much for the reassurances! We have hardly gotten used to it. Abortion remains the hottest issue in our politics, with polls showing that most Americans want restrictions on its unquestioned use, and do not want their taxes to pay for it.”
“We’re even more ‘hung up’ now, as our new president, whom we wish well, and who speaks with admirable sensitivity about protecting the rights of the weakest and most threatened, ran on a platform avidly supporting this gruesome capital punishment for innocent pre-born babies.”
“We’re all still cringing from the disturbing violence last week in Washington. This upheaval was made the more nauseating as it was seemingly encouraged by the one sworn to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, and because it trashed the very edifice designed to be a sanctuary of safety, reason, civility, and decorum,” the Cardinal added.
He finally praised President-elect Joe Biden for “reminding us that the rampage we saw was not America,” and concluded by asking if we can hope “that violence will subside,” and that “the sacredness of all life and the dignity of the human person will be revived, and that the sanctuary of the womb will be off-limits to violent invasion.”
Members of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia enjoying a performance of The Hillbilly Thomists at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on Aug. 1, 2022. / Credit: Joe Bukuras/CNA
CNA Staff, Jan 25, 2024 / 17:30 pm (CNA).
Almost all Catholic relig… […]
1 Comment
Would I be mistaken in thinking this is somewhat superstitious, ghoulish?
1 Timothy 4:7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness;
2 Timothy 2:16 But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness,
2 Peter 1:5-8 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Forgive me, but how does this honour our Lord and Saviour?
Would I be mistaken in thinking this is somewhat superstitious, ghoulish?
1 Timothy 4:7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness;
2 Timothy 2:16 But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness,
2 Peter 1:5-8 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Forgive me, but how does this honour our Lord and Saviour?