Washington D.C., Oct 5, 2017 / 05:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- When Monsignor Robert Weiss gathered with parents in Connecticut, after 11 children were killed in a nearby shooting, the room went silent and one person called for prayer.
“And so everyone just fell on their knees or joined hands with each other, or formed a circle,” Monsignor Weiss said. “I think they realized at that point anything else was beyond their control.”
Monsignor Weiss is the pastor of St. Rose of Lima parish in Newtown, Conn. The site of the shooting was Sandy Hook Elementary School, where in December of 2012, 26 people were killed.
Since then, other mass shootings have scarred the American psyche, occurring in places like San Bernardino, Calif., Orlando, Fla., and now Las Vegas, Nev., where on October 1, 58 people were killed. It has been called the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
On Wednesday, almost five years after the Sandy Hook shooting, Monsignor Weiss spoke with CNA about the importance of prayer after such a tragedy. Prayer is a necessary resort for all those affected by such tragedies, he said, when they can’t comprehend the evil and when human consolation can only do so much.
Prayer as a response to tragedies has been denigrated by some as meaningless or secondary, when compared to advocating for policy aimed at preventing gun violence or improving access to mental health care.
The day after a shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. killed 14 on Dec. 2, 2015, the cover of the New York Daily News said “God isn’t fixing this,” in response to politicians and public figures offering their “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of the tragedy, but allegedly taking insufficient action to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future.
Yet, without discounting the role of human action in response to these tragedies, humans can only do so much, Monsignor Weiss told CNA.
“To whom do you go? Do you rely on yourself? Because there’s no way you can individually handle these kinds of experiences. Times like this is when you’re called to be a community,” he said. He recalled professionals telling him in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting that “we can only do so much for these people” to help them heal from the tragedy.
“There is only one place to turn, and it’s to turn to the Lord and find some sort of understanding of this,” he said.
On Sunday evening, 64 year-old Stephen Paddock shot and killed at least 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nev. and wounded almost 500. He shot with high-powered rifles outfitted with “bump stocks” from his 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort, across the street from the Route 91 Harvest Festival outdoor venue.
Paddock was retired and divorced, and had a girlfriend. He owned rental properties and was a frequent gambler at local casinos.
After he shot down at the concert venue, a SWAT team broke into Paddock’s room and found him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Medical and mental health professionals went into action helping victims with physical and psychological wounds.
Dr. Stephen Sharp is a Las Vegas local and a faculty member of Divine Mercy University, a Catholic graduate school of psychology and counseling. Sharp commended the Las Vegas community for its proactive response to the tragedy.
The first responders in Las Vegas had trained for such a tragedy “for a long time,” he said, as authorities had predicted that the city could be a target for such an event. First responders and hospitals were prepared for the rapid influx of trauma patients, he said.
And, he noted, mental health and trauma professionals were able to provide a quick response.
In light of previous shootings, where the perpetrator was later judged to have serious mental health issues, the question of Stephen Paddock’s mental health has been asked in the wake of Sunday’s shooting.
There are reports, like ABC News’ citation of a person briefed on the investigation, that Paddock’s mental faculties had possibly deteriorated in the months leading up to the shooting, with his “increasingly slovenly” appearance and loss of weight, as well as an obsession with his girlfriend’s ex-husband.
Yet no official determination has been made about Paddock’s mental health, and Sharp cautioned against speculation
“To establish a mental health or mental illness issue or a diagnosis requires quite a bit of psychological input and assessment and testing,” he said. “It’s too early to jump to that conclusion, and by making that leap, I truly believe that we would be damaging the mental health community more than we would be helping.”
Rather, Sharp said, focus should be drawn to the provision of long-term mental health care to victims of the shooting and their families. “The effects of this kind of trauma go on for months, if not years, so people need to be in place to help folks for a long time,” he said.
Monsignor Weiss sees a need for professional care in the Newtown community years after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
“We had issues in our schools starting Monday, with the whole thing coming back again,” he said of the Las Vegas shooting. High school students were crying after “they suppressed so much of the fear they experienced [in 2012],” he said. “It’s deadly to suppress the emotion, the grief.”
“You’ve got to get help, you’ve got to find someone you can trust, and you’ve got to talk about this. You just can’t suppress it and say it’s going to go away, because it’s not going away,” he said.
A mass shooting also has a ripple effect, Sharp said, because in addition to the 58 dead in Las Vegas and the hundreds injured, there were thousands of concert-goers who witnessed the atrocity and experienced the trauma of being in the line of fire.
And the many family and friends of the dead and injured are themselves affected by the tragedy, he said: “It’s like a pebble in the pond that creates a tsunami on the other side of the pond, because this will go on for a long time.”
“These lives will never be the same,” he reflected. “The 22,000 people who were at the concert will never be the same. It’s changed their life forever, on some level, that we can’t even predict or know how that’s going to turn out for them.”
Americans should explore the cultural or societal factors behind the number of mass shootings, he said.
“I think it’s more of a societal concern than it is of an individual’s mental health concern,” he stated. “My question is why are we seeing wave after wave of these kinds of events?”
Another issue usually debated in the wake of a mass shooting is access to guns, and gun laws.
Paddock reportedly had 23 guns with him in his hotel suite, and CNN reported he had 50 pounds of explosives and 1,600 rounds of ammunition in his car parked in the hotel lot. He passed gun background checks and did not possess a criminal record.
The U.S. bishops have stated their support for certain gun laws, like in April of 2013, four months after the Sandy Hook shooting, when then-chair of the domestic justice and human development committee Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton wrote members of Congress.
Among the policies Bishop Blaire cited for support were “universal background checks for all gun purchases,” restrictions on civilian purchases of “high-capacity ammunition magazines,” and an “assault weapons” ban. He cited Pope Francis’ call “to ‘change hatred into love, vengeance into forgiveness, war into peace’.”
In their 2000 statement “Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration,” on crime and criminal justice, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops supported certain gun laws in the name of safety.
“As bishops, we support measures that control the sale and use of firearms and make them safer (especially efforts that prevent their unsupervised use by children or anyone other than the owner), and we reiterate our call for sensible regulation of handguns,” the bishops stated.
The bishops have been “clear that gun control policies are part and parcel of the common good,” Professor David Cloutier, a theology professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., told CNA.
In fact, the U.S. bishops have called for gun control measures since at least 1975, when they called for “a coherent national firearms policy responsive to the overall public interest and respectful of the rights and privileges of all Americans.”
Yet how should calls for gun control be interpreted in light of the Church’s recognition of a legitimate right to self-defense? Paragraph 2264 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.”
Just war theory presumes against violence, Cloutier said, but does not prohibit it absolutely, and using guns as a means of self-defense is seen in the same light.
“In terms of using weapons to defend yourself, there’s a presumption of civility,” he said, “that is, there’s a presumption that in a society, you have civil relationships with other people that won’t require violence.”
And this fundamental approach Catholics must have toward society is one of “civil friendship,” he said, which is taught in the Compendium on Social Doctrine of the Church.
Furthermore, he said, access to certain high-capacity or semi-automatic weapons, like those “that were used in Las Vegas,” he said, could be questioned outright.
“It’s hard for me to see what prudential judgement is possible in favor of the broad ownership of such weapons,” Cloutier said. The Compendium of Social Doctrine also states that the proliferation of these types of weapons around the world “exacerbates conflicts” and “encourages terrorism,” he said.
Ultimately, Cloutier said, “a presumption doesn’t indicate that there should be a ban on guns, it doesn’t indicate that there isn’t some sort of right to own certain kinds of guns.”
“It simply suggests that there is a certain vision of society that challenges certain presumptions about why we should own guns.”
[…]
These people are nothing if not evil.
Perhaps grossly misinformed!
Sorry, that’s just not believable. They’ve both been pushing abortion for decades. They know what they are doing, even though they probably lie to themselves about it.
No, evil. Because killing an innocent, defenseless and vilnerable human person is a most heinous and evil act. Those who commit those acts or advocate for them are doing evil.
In total agreement with this insightful comment.
If immoral then good is evil. VP Harris and President Biden purveyors of death for the invasive ideology of death sickening humanity. Sharp increase of abortion in CA since the Roe overturn is by appearance hateful spite.
When moral truth is inverted, evil becomes dominant. Good becomes unjust in every conceivable instance. Reason is that evil perceives no possible ethical alternatives and consequently judge differences of judgment illegal as well as immoral. Yet one wonders how Biden considers himself Catholic, makes the sign of the cross in public when abortion enforcement is announced. Putatively there’s sufficient ambiguity even appearance of endorsement from the Vatican, supported by warm welcoming of Biden and antilife Nancy Pelosi.
Some commenters angrily denounce essayists as cowardly for not imputing heresy. Taken as it stands while not meeting the canonical requirements one might say the consistency of misleading words and actions press the red line. Although if the canons were shelved on the issue a multitude could be conceivably charged with so serious a violation of the faith. Even if a slip up occurred. Fear would hold sway stifling valid deliberation. It’s best for clergy to keep the rule, although it seems valid to apply the term error as morally applicable when incidents of error by offhand word or suggestion are consistent.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
Agreed, by his support for and enthusiastic promoting of the immoral act of abortion, Biden should be banned from receiving communion and excommunicated. He is not a good Catholic, and furthermore if what he is, is acceptable to the Church as evidenced by inaction, it is doubtful that the majority of Catholics in good standing are proud or tolerant to be associated with him. I further state that there is one who is very pleased with him, and his name is satan.
Dismembering babies alive is not a human right.
It’s an inhuman wrong.
Thank you brineyman.
There are anti vivisection groups around the world today but sadly their efforts are only to protect defenseless animals from vivisection, not defenseless infants in the womb. Perhaps we could erect a statue for the human victims to stir the public conscience such as was done in memory of a dog in the early 1900’s :
“In memory of the Brown Terrier Dog done to death in the laboratories of University College in February 1903, after having endured vivisection extending over more than two months and having been handed from one vivisector to another until death came to his release. Also in memory of the 232 dogs vivisected at the same place during the year 1902. Men and women of England, how long shall these things be?”
Yeah that is horrible, it’s no wonder we moved from animals to babies so easily, if we don’t respect all life we soon lose respect for any life✝️🙏🏻😔
Unbelieving pagans .
“Reproductive freedom” for me but not for thee.
George Orwell.
This is just another example of the current twisted thinking being fanned out from Washington; quite recently NPR was outed as an extreme leftist organization (employees’ political makeup) by one of their own managers.
This is the same organization that broadcast the sounds of a MI organization to help Whitmer get her Prop 3 passed.
Outing NPR as an extreme leftist organization is about as shocking as outing the South Pole as a cold and uncomfortable place to live. We kinda knew that already.
Yup, we used to say NPR stood for “National Propaganda Radio” and that’s been decades ago.
obviously, but no one from within their hallowed walls ever said that (in my recent memory) and their broadcasting of a MI abortion to propel Prop 3 is directly related to the anti family message coming out of Washington/the elite and the above article (isn’t NPR headquarters in Washington as well?). I used to listen to their stories on the way home from work but couldn’t take them anymore starting about 15 years ago. any human interest story is very interesting to me but let me listen to them not to the commentator
(don’t forget, we have people who are not from the US reading this – we’re headed to thinking like they do across the pond like where if you breathe in front of an abortion clinic you’ll be thrown in the clink)
“Women are dying”??? In point of fact, pregnancy and giving birth is a normal biological function of women and not an illness or disease. I would like to know if there are statistics about how many women die each year giving birth. Unquestionably, on rare occasion seemingly healthy people die suddenly for no obvious reason. But for someone to conflate the idea “women are dying” with a lack of extreme abortion access, is an outright lie. What this administration is interested in is encouraging women to sleep around no matter the moral damage to themselves and society, and then suggesting the murder of their baby is a “solution” when they end up pregnant. How about not sleeping around to start with?
“I would like to know if there are statistics about how many women die each year giving birth.”
Yes, that’s easy. The number is basically zero. The whole “women are dying” trope is just a dishonest, manipulative lie parroted by progressives.
I was listening to an interview with a nurse midwife who has studied the history of childbirth practices & she said the rates of maternal death following delivery actually rose when childbirth was first medicalized & attended by physicians. The reason being that before the protocols of sanitation & understanding of the spread of infection, doctors would deliver babies right after coming from dissecting a body, amputating a limb, etc. without washing their hands or sterilizing their instruments. And they’d pass on any pathogens present on to the mother.
Thankfully we know better now & pregnancy & delivery are far safer. And as you say, normal processes & not diseases. Fertility’s not a disease either but you’d never know that from the pharmaceutical companies.
100% of women will die. Same with men. We are all of us like the grass of the field.
However, we need not soil our short lives with murder.
And the woman married to the First Gentleman who claims that “women are dying” is Vice President Kamala Harris, who will ascend to the Presidency should, God forbid, Pres. Biden pass away or become incapacitated and unable to fulfil his elected office. God have mercy on our current President and grant him a long life and time to repent of his sin of supporting abortion. And God preserve us from a Harris presidency, or any POTUS who pushes abortion as “women’s health care.”
The Democratic Party is a death cult.
Democrats favor killing children in utero. At any time. For any reason.
And so, entire generations of individuals are canceled from existence.
Roughly one-third of all our offspring.
Think about that.
And for the lucky children who escape that horrific death? Democrats are in favor of sterilizing them.
Again, more generations of human beings erased. Denied by the “choice” of their mothers the chance to exist.
Legalizing drugs; gay “marriage”; the sexualization of children; the green new poverty; the open border fentanyl conduit; the denial of the biologically determined sexes; the racist, divisive CRT curriculum — everything the Democratic Party advocates is aimed at denying life and promoting death.
Death is the Democratic Party’s central tenet.
And the American Catholic Church is wholly responsible for it. One hundred percent.
Because if Catholics had voted the Church’s teachings even once in the past 50 years in a national election, no candidate would ever again advocate for abortion for fear of being swept away by a twenty percent landslide.
Our bishops, our priests, our entire community — we have the blood of more than a Billion innocent children on our souls.
We deserve whatever we get.
Spot on, Brineyman.
We can thank our bishops for Biden. They gave the green light for Catholics to vote for Biden. The likes of McElroy, Cupich, Tobin and others intimidated pro-life bishops to shut up about abortion. And Bergoglio had their backs through it all.
What you say is true, but if you think the corollary is that the Republican Party is on the side of the (good) angels, you are mistaken. The GOP has rushed to reassure Americans that they favor and want to protect and even celebrate IVF, and their opposition to the abortion of more fully-developed babies is both spotty (depending largely on where the politician’s supporters live) and contingent (usually, as with their inevitable nominee, coming with lots of exceptions). A pox on both their houses.
Except that the GOP doesn’t bar pro-lifers from running for office.
Keep in mind, though, that the Republican Party Platform is pro-life, and many Republican Senators, Representatives, GOVERNORS (very important, since the repeal of Roe v. Wade returns the issue to the STATES to decide!), State Senators and Representatives, and Mayors, along with many other local elected officials, are solidly pro-life. Sadly, any Democrats who are pro-life end up blacklisted and driven out of office by their Party (e.g., Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois). Think really hard about voting for an obscure 3rd party just to keep your conscience clear”–they won’t win and chances are good that the votes lost by Republicans will end up resulting in a pro-abortion Democrat winning. But be careful and do your research!–there are Republicans who embrace the basic tenant of the Republican Party, which is less government interference in daily lives of Americans, and therefore almost always support abortion as a right of people to freely choose.
Its a fact that “catholics” vote for legal abortion in the same number as non-catholics or non-believers. That being said, its also a fact that issues other than abortion are hanging in the balance at election time. These are important issues which impact everyday life. Lets say fighting the push to allow transgender surgeries for minor age children,promoting gay and abnormal sexual orientation to minor children in school,inflation which is impacting family life, open borders which present a real mortal danger to our citizens. These and more. Staying home or voting Democrat for ANY office will put the blood of the country on that voter’s hands. We are running out of time, as the march of Marxist agitators on our campuses should tell you.
The most notorious tag team since Sartoro and Michael/Michelle
I remember a book about 30 years ago by a Catholic writer named, if memory serves, Bud McFarlane. In the book there was an imaginary scene of a man who had either performed or promoted abortions trying to get into heaven, only to find his way blocked by all the babies he had killed, and he had to explain to EACH one of them – individually – why he had done what he had done and EACH of them had to be satisfied by what he told him or her before he could get into heaven.
This was 30 years ago and sometimes the memory gets a tad hazy, so – does anyone out there recall his books? I can’t remember the names of the books.
Women are dying?
The same “argument” as the coat hanger “never again” sloganism.
No perceptible evidence of logic, rational thinking.
Canon law specifies that procuring direct abortion or support of the same incurs the penalty of automatic excommunication.
Well, Catholics now know also that JB declared the most important day in Christianity, The Resurrection of the Lord, “Transgender visibility day.”