Costumed protesters disrupt Mother’s Day Mass in Los Angeles

Washington D.C., Feb 8, 2019 / 06:38 pm (CNA).- A joint congressional resolution for a “Green New Deal” is the latest effort aiming to apply political solutions to environmental problems. Whatever the merits of the proposal, one theologian says, Christians must think hard about what their faith says about environmental policy.

“To think that the U.S. government can be agnostic about the environment is a little like thinking it’s agnostic about faith: policies will impact the environment, for good or for ill,” Joseph Capizzi, professor of moral theology and ethics at Catholic University of America, told CNA.

“It strikes me that the Christian approach to the environment would require us to think about our policies’ impact on creation. Or, to put it differently, about whether our policies give God his due in their impact on his creation,” said Capizzi, who also directs the Institute for Human Ecology.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., have proposed a joint resolution to recognize “the duty of the federal government to create a Green New Deal.”

The non-binding resolution would not create new programs, but its passage would convey the sense of Congress and provide justification for further legislation.

The new resolution cites the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, which said that a rise in global temperatures must not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Though Capizzi said addressing particular policies is beyond his expertise, he said Christians are a “future-oriented people.”

“We look in hope to the coming of our savior and our reflections on how to live now should always have an eye towards their long-term impact on the world into which, in hope, we bring our children,” he said. “We have justice-based responsibilities to our children to care for the creation God intends for them as well as for us.”

As a theologian, Capizzi said, the specifics of the proposal “are less interesting to me than is the idea that politics must attend to humanity’s relationship with all of God’s creation.”

The political proposal comes as the Trump administration has worked to promote domestic gas, oil and coal production by loosening regulations including environmental protections.

Green New Deal backers cite goals including zero-net greenhouse gas emissions from power production; halting a rise in global temperatures; and de-carbonizing the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. It envisions major infrastructure upgrades to power grids and transportation and upgrading all buildings to maximize energy efficiency, water efficiency, and affordability. Other goals in the resolution include “clean manufacturing”; reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from ranches and farms; and shifting away from nuclear power as well as fossil fuels.

Critics say some efforts against fossil fuels have caused major unemployment and community displacement in parts of the country dependent on the coal industry and other resource extraction.
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., whose state economy is heavily based on coal, criticized the effort, saying it “shuts everybody down.”

The resolution’s many promises include aid for both communities facing the most significant changes from climate change and communities affected by shifts away from fossil fuel use. It promises to ensure high wages and better jobs for workers currently in fossil fuel industries.

The non-binding plan promises a federal jobs guarantee, as well as other Democratic goals like a family wage, adequate family leave, paid vacations and a secure retirement as well as universal health care.

Any proposal is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate. The resolution could play a role in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not give Green New Deal backers the committee leadership they wanted. She told Politico their proposal is “one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive.”

For Capizzi, environmental politics should be motivated by the goodness of creation.

“The starting point for Jewish-Christian approaches to the environment is the Hebrew Bible’s teaching that God created the world, and then, at different stages but before humans are created, we are told he viewed his creation as ‘good’.”

These things that God names “good” include “the creation of land and gathering of waters, the fecundity of the earth, (and) the creation of sea and land and flying creatures.” The creation of humans is “a part of the story of God’s creation of a universe he names as good and within which humanity lives.”

“This is the starting point for Christian reflection,” Capizzi told CNA. To this is added the “classic notion of justice” expressed in the imperative “give to each what he or she is due.”

“We are to give God his due by giving his good creation its due. We do this in our relationships as human beings, but we do this as well in our relationship with the creation of which we are a part – even if a special part.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have an Environmental Justice Program, under the conference’s Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development. It draws from St. John Paul II’s 1990 World Day of Peace message, the U.S. bishops’ Nov. 14, 1991 pastoral statement “Renewing the Earth,” as well as encyclicals such as Pope Francis’ 2015 Laudato si’.

The bishops make some policy recommendations about environmental laws and regulations. They opposed the Trump administration’s June 2017 withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which aimed to combat climate change and global warming through reducing carbon dioxide emissions. They said they objected to a March 2017 executive order from President Donald Trump that rescinded and weakened many environmental protections.

They have backed a national carbon emission standard and other carbon mitigation goals.

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Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug 29, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics who are demoralized, angered, or scandalized by revelations about sex abuse must feel free to talk to clergy and other Catholics, and other Catholics must reach out to them, a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh has said.

“I would invite those who are wavering to be open about their concerns – their anger, their frustration, their questions – so that someone can respond to them,” Father Nicholas Vaskov, executive director of communications for the Pittsburgh diocese, told CNA.

“I would also encourage them to stay close to God in prayer so that he can hear their calls to him and respond with his compassion and love.”

Father Vaskov, who is also administrator St. Mary of Mercy parish in downtown Pittsburgh, reflected on the tendency of some people scandalized by abuse allegations to stop going to Mass. He encouraged Catholic clergy and laity to “be patient with those who are scandalized by the reports.”

“Listen attentively as they share what is on their heart,” he said. “I would also suggest that clergy and laity reach out to those who they know are particularly troubled by what they have learned. Thoughtful conversation can be such an effective way to process what is troubling us.”

On Aug. 14 a Pennsylvania grand jury released its report claiming to have identified more than 1,000 victims of 300 credibly accused priests from 1947 to 2017 across six Pennsylvania dioceses. It presented a portrait of efforts by Church authorities to ignore, obscure, or cover up allegations, either to protect accused priests or to spare the Church scandal.

Approximately two-thirds of the accused priests have died. Due to laws regarding the statute of limitations, nearly every abuse allegation cannot be criminally prosecuted, although two indictments have been filed. One priest named in the report was convicted of sexually assaulting a student in the early 1990s.

Before the report’s release, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh confirmed that some of the priests named in the Pennsylvania grand jury report into sexual abuse remain in active ministry, but stressed that none faced substantiated allegations of child sexual abuse.

Responding to the report, Zubik emphasized that “the Diocese of Pittsburgh today is not the Church that is described in the grand jury report,” and that “it has not been for a long time.” Data from the diocese showed that more than 90 percent of abuse incidents took place before 1990.

The bishop apologized to victims of clergy sex abuse and to “any person or family whose trust, faith and well-being has been devastated by men who were ordained to be the image of Christ.”

The Catholic response is ongoing. The grand jury report could affect the future of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, a previous Bishop of Pittsburgh. Wuerl is already a center of controversy as critics ask what he knew of allegations of sex abuse and sexual exploitation against his predecessor, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.

On Aug. 20 National Public Radio and its member stations had sought comment from listeners, asking, “Have you stopped going to Mass as often, left your church or left the Catholic faith entirely because of these revelations or ones that were previously reported?”

Pittsburgh-area couple Andy and Courey Leer were among those who had responded to NPR about their reaction.

“So it goes beyond just the priests and their superiors,” Courey, 31, told NPR. “It leads me to question entire Catholic communities. Who knew what? And not only why didn’t they expose them, but, how long have people been turning the other way?”

Courey attended part of  Mass with her two-year-old daughter after the report was released but they didn’t stay.

“I think a part of me was thinking I’m going to go to Mass and I’m going to get an okay to leave and not come back,” she said. “And of course that’s not going to happen. Part of me just wanted someone to say ‘we really messed up, it’s all on us, and you guys use your own moral discretion to decide what’s best because we have no moral authority’.”

According to NPR, she said the priest acknowledged the report and “offered little more than prayers.” She stood up with her daughter and left after the homily.

“And I’m thinking ‘is this our last Mass?’ And it’s hard. I can’t fathom when she’s eight years old saying ‘no we don’t go to church, sorry you can’t receive Communion, even though your mom and dad did, your grandparents did, you don’t get to do that’.”

The Leers told NPR that they will miss the sacraments, community dinners, and the music ministry. They said they want to see Church leaders push for more investigations into sex abuse in dioceses around the country.

“They don’t need to be worried about our spirituality right now,” said Andy, 32. “They need to be worried about dealing with the corruption, and dealing with the priests that are out there that need to answer for what they’ve done, and the people that have potentially covered up and withheld information.”

Andy, 32, was a teenager when decades-old claims against his priest, Father Joseph Pease, surfaced. He thought the “bad apple” had been removed. He later watched the movie “Spotlight,” about sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston, but he said the issue “doesn’t really hit until it’s in your backyard.”

The Leers said they don’t know what it will take for them to go back to church.

Father Vaskov cited his experiences with churchgoers who went to Mass in the wake of the latest news. He thought there was an upturn in attendance for the Aug. 15 feast of the Assumption, a holy day of obligation which came a day after the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report.

He also reflected on what churchgoers told him, such as one woman at Mass last Sunday.

“She said that while it was difficult for her to go, she knew that she couldn’t be anywhere else because it is only in the Eucharist that we can be renewed,” the priest said. “Another conversation with a recent convert to the Catholic faith revealed the depth of his love for Christ and His Church and his desire to stay close to the sacraments when he felt his frustration was getting the better of him.”

Fr. Vaskov said that in response to the abuse scandals, many parishes had organized holy hours, days of Eucharistic adoration, discussion groups, and listening sessions. He said he has had “beautiful moments” praying with people for “strength in their lives and in the lives of those who have been harmed by abuse.”

“I have also had some very fruitful conversations with parishioners, friends and strangers over the past weeks because they were willing to open up about their concerns,” the priest said. “That doesn’t mean that every issue is resolved or every suffering is healed, but it is the beginning of an important discussion that needs to happen.”

Participation in Mass on Sundays is “at the heart of the Church’s life”, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, and “participation … in the Sunday Eucharist is a testimony of belonging and of being faithful to Christ and to his Church.”

By attending Sunday Mass the faithful together “testify to God’s holiness and their hope of salvation. They strengthen one another under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,” according to the Catechism.

Participation in the sacrifice of the Mass is the means by which “we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life” and render worship to God.

The Catechism adds that “the institution of the Lord’s Day helps everyone enjoy adequate rest and leisure to cultivate their familial, cultural, social, and religious lives.”

Father Larry Adams, a priest at St. Ursula’s Church in the Pittsburgh diocese, told NPR that he understands the frustration of his fellow Catholics, but the struggle to confront abuse is why he became a priest.

“To a certain extent. I’m kind of a ‘spotlight’ priest — the movie Spotlight,” he said. “When this broke, (it) was kind of the time when I was discerning what my vocation would be. And in a certain way, what has formed me is the desire to be part of this Church, and be part of the solution.”

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Washington D.C., Mar 1, 2021 / 04:20 pm (CNA).- The Senate on Monday voted to confirm President Biden’s nominee for education secretary, who had supported males identifying as transgender females to participate in girls’ athletics.

Miguel Cardona, Connecticut’s education commissioner, was confirmed on Monday by a vote of 64 to 33. At his Feb. 4 confirmation hearing, he said that male athletes identifying as transgender females should be allowed to play girls’ sports.

Questioned by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kent.) about the matter at his confirmation hearing, Cardona repeatedly stated that it “is the legal responsibility of schools to provide opportunities for students to participate in activities, and this includes students who are transgender.”

Several female athletes had sued the state of Connecticut in 2019, over the state’s policy of allowing student-athletes to compete in sports based on their “preferred gender identity” and not their biological sex. The girls alleged that they were discriminated against by having to compete against biological males.

The Trump-era Education Department issued a letter in 2019 stating that “boys can’t compete with girls in sports.” The agency also sided with the girls in the Connecticut transgender athletics case, saying that the state had violated Title IX through its policy.

However, last week the agency reversed course and withdrew its findings in the case. President Biden has already issued an executive order on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.” The order stated that part of the policy of his administration would be to allow students to play sports based on their gender identity.

When asked about the Education Department’s 2019 letter, Cardona would not say if he would continue to enforce the policy.  He answered that he would uphold “the civil rights of all students, and that includes activities they may engage in, in high school or in athletics.”

He later told Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) that it was “non-negotiable to make sure that our learning environments are places that are free of discrimination and harassment for all learners, including our LGBTQ students.” 

The White House has made a number of other appointments to the Education Department including Suzanne Goldberg, a former attorney with the pro-LGBT group Lambda Legal.

Goldberg, appointed to serve as assistant secretary in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, was the founding director of the Columbia Law School’s Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic, and co-director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law. Her university bio lists her as “a leading advocate and attorney for the LGBTQ+ community.”

At Columbia, Goldberg “reaffirmed” policies for students identifying as transgender in 2018, clarifying that students could access bathrooms based on their gender identity and students

She told the New York Times in 2020 that the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling—which extended employment discrimination protections to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity—was “a simple and profound victory for L.G.B.T. civil rights.”

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