The Romeike family fled from Germany in order to homeschool their children, and now faces deportation from the U.S. / Credit: The Romeike Family
CNA Staff, Oct 6, 2023 / 17:10 pm (CNA).
A group of congressional representatives this week urged the Biden Department of Justice to refrain from deporting a German family who emigrated to the U.S. more than a decade ago seeking asylum in order to home-school their children.
In the letter, addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the 32 representatives — all Republicans — urged the Department of Justice to reject the “unconscionable” deportation of the Romeike family, who arrived here 13 years ago after the German government forbade them to home-school their children.
The Romeikes are evangelical Christians and had eschewed public schooling due to conflicts with their religious beliefs. In 2013 they were granted deferred action status by the Obama administration, allowing them to remain in the U.S. indefinitely. But the Biden administration last month signaled that it might deport them in October of this year.
In their letter this week, the representatives said the looming deportation “is as inexplicable as it is unconscionable.”
“By all accounts, the Romeikes are model citizens,” the letter states. “Since their arrival to the United States, the members of the Romeike family have successfully assimilated into their local community and the fabric of American life. Uwe, the father, works at a Christian university. The youngest two children were born and raised here. The older Romeike children have even gotten married and have had their own children.”
The representatives said the Romeike family “has lived peacefully and in our country for over a decade” and that “to force this refugee family to suddenly return to Germany, with a government that once forcibly removed their children from their home simply for observing their deeply-held religious beliefs, is immoral and indefensible.”
The politicians noted that both Garland and Mayorkas possess the power to grant asylum to those seeking it in the United States.
“We … respectfully ask that you use this power given to you by Congress to grant the Romeike family asylum,” they wrote.
The current status of the Romeike family in the U.S. is unknown. Their report date for their possibly final meeting with immigration officials is sometime this month.
Kevin Boden, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has provided the Romeikes with legal help over the course of their time in the U.S., told CNA last month that the family “[didn’t] know if they’re going to be forced to leave … [or] if they’re going to be taken into custody” at this month’s meeting.
Boden did not respond to a query on Friday about the family’s status. Last month he said HSLDA was “working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” among other approaches, to try to secure their stay in the U.S.
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Denver, Colo., Jan 21, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A man who lost his own child to abortion believes men have important things to say on the issue, and their voices need to be heard.
“We are told that men shouldn’t talk about abortion,” but it’s an issue that affects them too, Jason Jones told CNA in a recent interview. “It’s a man’s issue and it’s a woman’s issue.”
“As a man, I have something in me that wants to protect the vulnerable from violence. That is what men do,” he said.
Jones, a national pro-life advocate, said when he speaks frankly in those terms, men respond to him, because “we need to say the truth.”
“When men speak about abortion, it is very effective,” he added.
It might seem natural to think that women are better pro-life “spokespersons,” or that men should have a diminished role, Jones said. But “men have their place” in the discussion.
“Men share their stories, and their stories are sorrowful. Men who are scared, and manipulated or coerced into having an abortion. Men who can be humble and say ‘I coerced my daughter or my girlfriend or my wife into getting an abortion.’ We need to hear those stories.”
When men tell the truth about their own experience with abortion, “it changes people,” he said. “No one has a happy abortion story. When people tell the truth, it influences people.”
Jones, who often shares the story of his own child’s abortion, told CNA he was 17 when he and his girlfriend Katie found out they were pregnant. Still in high school, they planned to hide the pregnancy while he dropped out and joined the army so he could take care of the baby. He was excited to be a father, he said.
However, while still in basic training and during their third trimester, Jones got a call from his girlfriend’s father saying their “secret” had been discovered and “taken care of.” He was devastated.
An atheist who didn’t fully understand what abortion was, Jones said he realized his daughter, whom they had already named Jessica, had been murdered.
“That was it for me. It horrified me. It was unbelievable,” he said. “I had never been to church a day in my life, I knew nothing about politics. I was just a kid who was last in his class in high school, who to me, school was just something I had to do to play football.”
However, since the moment he found out that his daughter had been aborted, he says he has committed his life “to protecting women and children from the violence of abortion.”
Jones, 46, is now a film producer, author, and human rights worker known for his pro-life activism. He remained an atheist for years, though his contact with Christian organizations and study of political philosophy eventually led him, in 2003, to the Catholic Church.
In his comments to CNA, Jones, who is now married with seven children, said that it can be hard to discuss abortion because the friends and loved ones of someone who has had an abortion often become defensive, saying that to condemn abortion is to condemn a person they care about.
“The irony is that you know your sister had an abortion because she called you crying about it, with a broken heart. And then when that person stumbles upon a pro-life activist, they get angry because they think you are calling their sister a bad person.”
“We need to help people understand that when a woman gets an abortion it’s…an act of desperation,” he said. “She’s a victim just like the child.”
Jones said the pro-life movement needs an “apologetic” that is able to get the truth about abortion across in a simple way, and which teaches men to defend women and children.
“You do not need sophisticated arguments to tell a man: you don’t pay a stranger to kill your baby. As a man, you defend your child from violence … you defend the woman carrying your child from violence…it’s just very simple.”
He said that much of the language used in the pro-life movement is designed for women and to talk to women who are in a crisis situation, but men interact differently and need to be approached in a different way.
“When I talk to men about abortion, I talk to them as a man. I talk to them plainly,” he said. “I talk to them as a man that has lost his child.”
Many people can be cavalier and insensitive about abortion, he said, explaining that he can become passionate and wants to remind people that “we are victims in this too.”
When speaking about abortion, he says men should just be themselves: “Don’t talk about abortion differently that you talk about everything else, don’t put it off to the side. You are allowed, as a man, to talk about an issue like a man.”
Jones said his message to people who might be in a state of fear or crisis because of an unexpected pregnancy, said his message to them would be “what are you afraid of?”
“I had that experience, I became a teen parent,” but looking back, “what was I afraid of? … Being a father is such a beautiful gift … there is no more beautiful thing in the world than being a father.”
Melinda Gates. / Russell Watkins. Department for International Development (CC BY SA 2.0).
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 3, 2021 / 17:01 pm (CNA).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will begin a push for increased access to contraceptives ov… […]
Douglas Ernst’s “Soulfinder” series of graphic novels follows the adventures of combat vets-turned-exorcists. / ICONIC Comics
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 20, 2022 / 05:00 am (CNA).
Father Patrick Retter kept his wits about him as he faced the giant, red-eyed cobra slithering out of the possessed woman’s mouth.
“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,” he chanted the Sign of the Cross in Latin, as he thrust a bottle of holy water at the demon.
The woman bit his hand with her teeth — emitting a loud crunch — but the priest kept going. Clutching his wooden cross, he declared, “I cast you and every satanic specter out — in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ! It is he who commands you.”
So begins one of the many action-packed scenes in the “Soulfinder” graphic novel series about a fictional “special forces of exorcists” within the Catholic Church.
“‘Soulfinder’ is about a major order of combat veteran exorcists who are recruited to engage in spiritual warfare with a demon called Blackfire until the end of time,” Douglas Ernst, the writer and creator of the seriestold CNA.
The 42-year-old writer began the series to fill a void in today’s comic-book world — and in the culture.
“The heroes that I grew up reading are often unrecognizable because the creators at Marvel and DC are activists posing as serious storytellers,” he explained. “I created ‘Soulfinder’ because I wanted to give people solid stories and artwork that also imparts something good, true, and beautiful.”
Together with a team of artists — Timothy Lim, Brett R. Smith, Matthew Weldon, and Dave Dorman, to name a few — Ernst brings to life characters who dedicate themselves to serving God after serving their country. They apply their experience of fighting in the physical world to, now, battling in the spiritual realm.
The series is already saving souls, both inside and outside of its pages.
“I love it when someone writes me and says that reading the books brought them back to the Catholic Church after they drifted away,” Ernst revealed. “Perhaps they haven’t gone to Mass in years, but something in the stories rekindled the flame of faith.”
Stories of selfless service
A Catholic veteran himself, Ernst shares something in common with his protagonists. He served as a mechanized infantryman in the ‘90s, leaving before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He saw many of his friends go to war — and never return.
Ernst brings this background to his books, which follow the adventures of Retter (an Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran), Father Reginald Crane (a Vietnam veteran), and Detective Gregory Chua.
“My hope is that I’ve done right by the military community,” he said. “Selfless service and the willingness to lay down one’s life for another is a crucial component of the series.”
Ernst, who previously worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., now splits his time between Reno, Nevada, and Missoula, Montana, while focusing on his graphic novels.
His first two — “Soulfinder: Demon’s Match” and “Soulfinder: Black Tide” — greet readers with vivid colors and rich Catholic symbolism. The second book, available in hardcover, shimmers with gilded pages — and even a glow-in-the-dark monster.
“Where are the Catholic creators who will attempt to pick up where G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien left off?” asks Douglas Ernst, the creator of the “Soulfinder” graphic novels. ICONIC Comics
There is a dramatic reality at the core of these works of fiction. The series illustrates Catholic priests not only as courageous heroes but also as imperfect human beings — men who may fall, but always pick themselves back up, driven by a desire to do the right thing. Along the way, their personality (and sense of humor) shines through the narrative.
Available through ICONIC Comics, the first two volumes also appear on AmazonKindle. In January, both made No. 1 on Amazon’s list of new releases in “Religious Graphic Novels.”
Inspired by Catholic writers
Ernst — who learned to read by devouring the adventures of Spider-Man, Iron Man, Daredevil, and Captain America as a boy — began his series after encountering mainstream comic books filled with moral relativism.
“Where are the Catholic creators who will attempt to pick up where G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien left off?” he asked. “That’s a tall task, but the culture will continue to drift into dangerous waters if Catholic writers and artists do not enter as many creative places as possible.”
Ernst shared what he did to prepare for the books, to ensure that they were theologically sound.
Being a “cradle Catholic” helped, he admitted, in addition to consulting with other Catholics, including a priest. His stories, he said, have been inspired by the works of St. Francis de Sales, Father Gabriele Amorth, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catherine of Siena, and others.
Ernst began the series after organizing a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign. He also credits his success to working with talented artists and to Word on Fire, Bishop Robert Barron’s media ministry, which has featured his work in blog and YouTube interviews.
A ‘PG-13’ advisory
Teenagers and adults seeking classic storytelling with “good vs. evil” seem to enjoy Soulfinder, Ernst said of his series, which he rates as “PG-13.” This is because, among other things, the series addresses a dark subject matter.
In his first book with artist Timothy Lim, also a practicing Catholic, a black mass scene involves a naked woman.
“She is nude, but there’s shadows where there needs to be shadows,” Ernst pointed out the strategic shading over her body. “It’s also shown as a bad thing.”
While the series is for more mature readers, it offers content for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
“Most Catholic characters in modern comics and in Hollywood tend to be cartoonish version of the Faith,” he said.
His series, he emphasized, is different.
“It makes me incredibly happy when readers who are not Catholic say that these stories show a side of our faith that they have never encountered before.”
Third book on the way
Ernst told CNA the third installment of the series is in production.
“‘Soulfinder: Infinite Ascent’ takes our heroes to the other side of the world to apprehend a rogue member of the CIA who has evaded capture through supernatural means,” Ernst told CNA. “The U.S. government was so impressed with Father Retter and his friends regarding their success in ‘Soulfinder: Black Tide’ that it returns to them once again to clean up a global network of occultists.”
While there is no official release date yet, Ernst expects the book to be colored and lettered in March. From there, it will be sent to the printer.
“The story, at its core, focuses on the loss of loved ones, grief, and the need for forgiveness,” Ernst hinted. “The key to saving the day hinges on one character’s ability to forgive others for their trespasses against him.”
The volume will include a bonus story, “Soulfinder: War Cry,” which takes place at Arlington Cemetery.
In the end, Ernst hopes that these books will bring him, and his readers, closer to heaven.
“I know that one day I will stand before my Creator and I’ll have to give an account of what I’ve done with the talents I’ve been given,” he said. “I hope that my creative team has done its small part in saving souls while simultaneously entertaining readers.”
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