Queen Maxima of Netherlands speaks during a visit to the Q2 Stadium in Austin, Texas, on September 8, 2022. – The royal visit to Texas is meant to highlight the strong economic partnership between the United States and Netherlands. The visit was hosted by Austin FC Co-Owner and recently announced Honorary Consulate to the Netherlands, Marius A. Haas, as well as Austin FC President Andy Loughnane. / Suzanne Cordiero/AFP via Getty Images
Texas pro-life leaders are challenging Queen Máxima of the Netherlands after she advocated for abortion while meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott in that state.
Unlike the queen’s country, the state of Texas limits abortion in most cases.
“The moral reality is that the Netherlands should in fact follow Texas’ lead when it comes to protecting innocent human life,” Texas Right to Life President Dr. John Seago told CNA. “Not only do they have one of the most extreme pro-abortion laws, but they also have been one of the most aggressive countries pushing for the euthanasia of vulnerable patients.”
His comments come after the queen, together with the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Corporation Liesje Schreinemacher, met with the Texas Republican governor. The queen spoke about abortion, telling press afterward that “we are completely behind that,” according to Dutch outlet NL Times, via news agency ANP, and broadcaster NOS.
Máxima added that her message to Texas women is the same as her message to other women: that they should be able to access abortion, NL Times reported on Sept. 10.
Schreinemacher also called for abortion in Texas.
“There’s one point of concern that I wanted to raise, and that is on the right to safe abortion for women. Obviously, the Netherlands has a strong standpoint in that,” Schreinemacher told Abbott, according to KXAN, a local news outlet in Austin, Texas.
She spoke, KXAN reported, after Máxima talked about how Texas-Netherlands relations benefit both economies. She suggested they work together on abortion, too.
“I was wondering if we could, maybe partner up as counterparts to see what we can do in that [abortion] stance for Texas,” Schreinemacher said.
The Netherlands allows abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy for any reason. After 24 weeks, abortion is permitted for “serious medical reasons.”
Effective Aug. 25, Texas limits abortion in most cases, with exceptions to prevent the death or “substantial impairment of a major bodily function” of the woman.
In response, Abbott advocated for protecting both mother and child.
“One thing we put high importance on here is the safety and health of the mother,” the governor told the Dutch officials, KXAN reported. “But the other thing we put importance on is the safety and health of the baby.”
The pro-life response
Following the queen’s visit, pro-life groups in Texas applauded Abbott as a pro-life governor.
“Gov. Greg Abbott has a long history of supporting policies built on respect for the dignity of all human beings including Texas mothers, their children, and vulnerable patients,” Seago said.
Texas Alliance for Life Communications Director Amy O’Donnell also expressed gratitude for Abbott and stressed that the Netherlands should learn from Texas’ example.
“It is unfortunate that Queen Máxima and Minister Schreinemacher are under the misconception that Gov. Abbott needs schooling on the abortion issue and the ability of women to advance in society,” O’Donnell told CNA. “We have complete confidence that governor and First Lady Abbott can educate the Dutch royals on how Texas successfully protects unborn babies from abortion while providing vast resources for women with unplanned pregnancies.”
Among other things, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network, funded entirely with general revenues from the state of Texas, offers help to mothers and babies by supporting pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and more, CNA previously reported.
O’Donnell added: “Texas proves that women have the ability to achieve economic and social equality without abortion.”
Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values, said that his group agrees with the governor that Texas is a state that supports both women and babies.
“We are the ninth-largest economy in the world, so we can understand that the Netherlands would travel to Texas to learn more about the culture that is the basis for our economic prosperity,” he told CNA.
Queen Máxima was raised Catholic and previously attended the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. She has also met with Pope Francis. The Catholic Church teaches that human life is sacred from the moment of conception and considers abortion — the destruction of a human person — a grave evil.
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Pope Francis meets members of the Centro Femminile Italiane in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall, March 24, 2022. / Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Mar 24, 2022 / 10:05 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said on Thursday that women can help the world change from a logic of power, domination, and war, to one of service and care.
Reflecting on the war in Ukraine and how to end it, the pope said that “the real answer is not more weapons, more sanctions.”
He decried states’ spending on weapons as “insanity,” in the March 24 speech to women from the Centro Femminile Italiane (Italian Women’s Center).
“The real answer, as I said, is not more weapons, more sanctions, more political-military alliances, but a different approach, a different way of governing the now globalized world — not by showing one’s teeth, as right now — a different way of governing international relations,” he said.
Speaking in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall, the pope went on: “Why did I want to reflect on this with you? Because you are an association of women, and women are the protagonists of this change of course, of this conversion. Provided that they are not assimilated into the prevailing power system. As long as they maintain their identity as women.”
Pope Francis read a quote from Pope Paul VI’s 1965 address to women: “The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of woman is being achieved in its fullness, the hour in which woman acquires in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is under-going so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid mankind in not falling.”
“The prophetic force of this expression is striking,” Pope Francis commented. “Indeed, women, by acquiring power in society, can change the system. You can change the system, women can change the system if they succeed, so to speak, in converting power from the logic of domination to that of service, to that of care.”
The pope reminded all Christians about the fundamental need to change, following the lessons on peace taught by Jesus and “the saints of every age, who make humanity grow through the witness of a life spent in the service of God and neighbor.”
He said: “But it is also — I would say above all — the school of innumerable women who have cultivated and nurtured life; of women who have cared for fragility, who have healed wounds, who have healed the human and social wounds; of women who have dedicated mind and heart to the education of new generations.”
The pope said that for women of his generation, who have lived through past wars, it must be “unbearable to see what has happened and is happening in Ukraine.”
The conflict in Ukraine, he added, is the fruit of the old logic of power.
Referring to his past comments about the world living through a third world war “in bits and pieces,” he said that “the basic problem is the same: the world continues to be governed as a ‘chessboard,’ where the powerful study the moves to extend their dominance to the detriment of others.”
“It is now clear that good politics cannot come from the culture of power understood as domination and oppression, but only from a culture of care, care of the person and his dignity and care of our common home. This is proven, unfortunately negatively, by the shameful war we are witnessing,” he said.
Ricky Reyes dribbles the ball up court as now-Father Peter Schirripa follows behind at the national basketball tournament for seminaries in 2022. / Credit: St. John’s Seminary
CNA Staff, Nov 6, 2023 / 14:40 pm (CNA).
Imagine the scene: The alarm clock starts beeping and it’s 4 a.m. Basketball practice starts in an hour. It’s time for a group of bleary-eyed young men to grab their gear, meet their teammates, and begin a one-mile uphill jog in the middle of New England’s freezing weather to the basketball facility.
Once inside the gym, the work begins: stretching, sprints, layups, scrimmaging, shooting, defensive posture, all with one goal in mind — winning.
This type of intense training is all in a day’s work for one team of men in Boston.
No, it’s not the Division I team at Boston College, Boston University, or Northeastern University.
Rather, it’s how a team of seminarians at St. John’s Seminary in Boston trains. And their goal of winning is twofold: victory in the spiritual life and a championship trophy at the national tournament for seminaries, which is held once a year.
But what does playing basketball have to do with priestly formation? Well, according to the seminarians who play for the St. John’s Eagles, quite a lot.
St. John’s Seminary’s basketball team at practice. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
A ‘microcosm of the spiritual life’
When 27-year-old Deacon Marcelo Ferrari, the team’s co-captain, first entered seminary, he saw the game as more of an extracurricular activity, “a good opportunity to spend some time with close friends and maybe build some fraternity.”
“But very quickly it became clear that the basketball team is just a microcosm of the spiritual life,” Ferrari, of Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, said.
Playing the game together imitates the spiritual life in that “you experience a lot of humiliation, especially if you’re not as skilled like me,” said Ferrari, who has more experience in soccer than in basketball.
“But you also just learn a real sense of what sacrifice means,” he said. “Even practice just being at 5 in the morning is enough to demand a lot of the human heart.”
The experience of being on the team aided in Ferrari’s priestly formation in “so many ways,” he said, adding that “it became a critical space for me to recognize especially more of those subtle movements of the heart.”
“There’s nothing like team sports to bring out every part of you,” he said.
An uphill climb
Ferrari had never played organized basketball until he entered St. John’s Seminary. It wasn’t until another seminarian who established the team, now-recently ordained Father Peter Schirripa, asked him to join that he considered it.
“He saw me playing soccer and was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s mildly athletic. Let’s see if we can get him a basketball and see what he can do,’” Ferrari said.
This type of recruiting was par for the course for Schirripa, 30, who grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and had the idea for the team when he first entered seminary more than six years ago.
But Schirripa, who had experience in basketball, track and field, and soccer, credits the founder of the media apostle Word on Fire, Bishop Robert Barron, with the conception of the idea.
Schirripa was visiting his alma mater St. Anselm College during its 2017 graduation ceremony, the spring before his entrance to seminary, when he met Barron, who was giving the commencement address. Barron mentioned to him that there was a national basketball tournament for seminaries and encouraged Schirripa to put together a team from St. John’s.
So, Schirripa brought the idea to his superiors at the seminary and got a green light to start building a team for the national tournament.
Deacon Marcelo Ferrari at one of St. John’s Seminary’s basketball practices. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
“The leadership was like, ‘Sure, you can do it if you can pull it off.’ But I was a first pre-theologian. I’d been there for, like, three weeks,” Schirripa said.
“And let’s just say there was not a robust athletic or even really communal culture at St. John’s at the time. And so trying to inspire guys to do this and play on the team, it was like I was just taking whatever warm body I could get,” he said.
Eventually, enough seminarians wanted in, and Schirripa’s idea came to fruition, which culminated in St. John’s taking a squad of 15 guys to the national tournament at Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois, and winning two games in 2018.
“We went out to it and we won two games, which is crazy because we were so bad,” he said.
He noted that the games were livestreamed and their brother seminarians were watching.
“The whole common room was watching it and I think people couldn’t believe that we did it,” he said.
“And the rest,” Schirripa said, “is history.”
St. John’s has been sending a team to the national tournament ever since. The best they’ve done is third place in a tournament that typically consists of between 12 and 16 teams.
The future of the church
Part of St. John’s success can be attributed to their volunteer coach, Patrick Nee, 44, a practicing Catholic in the greater Boston area who was a Division I basketball player at Brown University in the 1990s.
Nee had coached on the high school level, on travel teams, and even on his young children’s teams, but what made this coaching experience different was the “shock” of being immersed in seminary culture.
“It’s not an experience like I’d ever had before, just being in a gym with 15 seminarians, being on a bus or being on a plane with them and just realizing how good it was,” he said. “And these guys are really holy guys that are just terrific. Getting to know them all, it has just been really inspiring for me.”
Patrick Nee coaches St. John’s Seminary’s basketball team. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
Nee, a high school state champion from St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, said that he stopped practicing his Catholic faith during his college years and didn’t come back to it until his late 20s.
He said that when he returned to the Church it took him on “a journey.” And over the last five years, that journey has “intensified” even more, he said, adding that “this experience has played a role in that.”
Nee said that it’s overwhelming “in the best way” when he is at the tournaments and “every guy you meet is this on-fire guy who’s studying to be a priest.”
One of those men on fire for the faith is Brian Daley, a member of the St. John’s team, Ferrari said. He recalled an incident at practice one day when a newer seminarian began to indulge in “light mockery” of the other teams they would be playing in the tournament.
Ferrari said that Daley reminded his teammate: “No, these men that we’ll be competing against are all giving their lives for Christ and they’re great examples for us.”
Ferrari called it a moment of “deep fraternity” for the team, who were all inspired by the wisdom Daley shared.
The deacon also said that as a team that fire is seen at every practice through prayer.
At every practice, each player is handed a sheet of prayer intentions to offer up their labor on the court so that all of their work is “done with an eye that sacrifice is fruitful.”
Seeing all of the hard work the teams put in for one weekend showed Nee that they care a lot about winning, “but they never lose track of the bigger picture.”
St. John’s Seminary basketball coach Patrick Nee guides his players during the 2022 tournament. Credit: St. John’s Seminary/YouTube May 18, 2023
He said that being a part of the team has strengthened his faith and added that the whole experience inspired him to tell Schirripa that “we need to share this with people.”
“I wish other people could see this. I mean, if you know anyone who is negative about the future of the Church, it’s like, well, walk into this gym for five minutes and you’ll change your mind immediately,” he said.
Nee’s vision for sharing the experience with others became a reality five months ago when St. John’s Seminary released “Souls in the Game,” a documentary that “highlights priestly formation beyond the study of philosophy and theology.”
The 28-minute documentary follows the team’s journey from the early morning practices to the recruiting and training of the seminarians to the final tournament.
“There is no pressure at all. Go out and play. We have brought life to St. John’s Seminary. God has used this team and let’s go out there and show everyone that we love each other, we love our vocations, and we’re going to represent St. John’s,” Schirripa says to his team during a pregame speech in the documentary.
Viewers might be surprised by how competitive the games are, especially in the scene where 6-foot-4 Schirripa is shown slamming it down during the tournament, which resulted in a technical foul for the team.
Despite the penalty, the team was roaring with excitement at Schirripa’s slam dunk, a feat that not many players ever get to experience on a 10-foot hoop.
“We were ready to storm the court,” Ferrari said in excitement in the documentary.
That documentary can be seen below.
Physical exercise such as can be had playing on a basketball team is something that every seminary should “absolutely” have, Schirripa said.
“I think it’s absolutely essential because you need a physical outlet and you need to obviously have a healthy body, mind, and soul. But it also teaches you to work towards something that’s bigger than yourself, which ultimately is the apostolate,” he said.
“And so it’s such a great venue for formation,” he said.
ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 2, 2023 / 13:45 pm (CNA).
The Catholic Church in Spain on June 1 presented the report “To shed light,” which tallies 927 complaints of alleged sexual abuse of minors under 18 y… […]
Whenever these foreign “dignitaries” come to America and start lecturing us, we owe them minimal courtesies. They should be told, with civilness, to book the next flight and go back home.
Unbelievable.
The culture of death is alive and well in the Netherlands. The chutzpah of these women presuming to instruct Texas with their “enlightened” views is off-putting, let’s say.
Memo to da queen – butt out
Disgraceful she would butt in.
Whenever these foreign “dignitaries” come to America and start lecturing us, we owe them minimal courtesies. They should be told, with civilness, to book the next flight and go back home.
God bless Governor Abbott for his witness.
And prayers that the Holy Spirit changes Queen Maxima’s heart on this issue.
Unbelievable.
The culture of death is alive and well in the Netherlands. The chutzpah of these women presuming to instruct Texas with their “enlightened” views is off-putting, let’s say.