Archdiocese of Washington announces major cutbacks, layoffs

Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2020 / 12:20 pm (CNA).- A Democratic congressman grilled a Catholic female law professor on her beliefs about contraception during a congressional hearing for a pro-abortion bill on Wednesday.

During a committee hearing on the Women’s Health Protection Act—a bill that could threaten existing state abortion regulations—73 year-old Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C) questioned law professor Teresa Stanton Collett about her stance on “contraception as a means of birth control.”

“Where are you on contraception?” Butterfield asked the female professor.

“I am post-menopausal, Congressman, so that’s really not a relevant question to me,” Collett answered.

Collett teaches at law at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is director of her law school’s Prolife Center. She has served on the Pontifical Council for the Family: she was first appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, and Pope Francis subsequently renewed her mandate.

In 2013 she was also a delegate to the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) for the Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.

On Wednesday, she testified at the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the Women’s Health Protection Act (H.R. 2975) (S. 1645).

The bill was introduced by Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). It seeks to expand legal abortion by subjecting state regulations of it to increased legal scrutiny.  

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, called the legislation a “radical and egregiously misnamed” law that would allow for “abortion on demand through [to] birth.”

The bill could be used to overturn state abortion regulations, such as safety laws for clinics and abortionists, informed consent provisions, parental notification laws, and restrictions on abortions after 20 weeks.

At the hearing Wednesday, committee chair Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) also brought up contraception. She noted that the lack of large families among her fellow members of Congress suggested t her that widespread provision of contraception is “working.”

“Very little is being said about contraception,” Eshoo, a Catholic, said while arguing for the effectiveness of contraceptives in reducing abortions.

“There are very few here that have 11, 12, and 15 children, so something is working somewhere,” she said, looking around the hearing room.

In addition to possibly overturning state abortion laws, the bill in question—which has 215 cosponsors in the House and 42 cosponsors in the Senate— could also override conscience protections for medical professionals. The bill would require a health care entity to provide abortions, if any delay to do so is deemed unsafe by a doctor or nurse, or the mother—without sufficient protections for conscience or religious-based objections.

Additionally, the bill would “supercede” all federal laws “notwithstanding” the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), meaning that health care professionals or hospitals that object to providing abortions on religious or conscience grounds would not have recourse to religious freedom protections like RFRA.

The bill’s text does allow for states to defend their safety regulations of abortion, but demands that the evidence must be “clear and convincing” that the state law “significantly advances the safety of abortion services or the health of patients.” Also, it requires that patient safety “cannot be advanced by a less restrictive alternative measures or action.”

The Charlotte Lozier Institute says the bill would impose “a heightened burden of proof” on state laws that even the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute has termed “unusually strict.” 

In addition to Collett, witnesses who testified before the committee on Wednesday was Georgette Forney, president of Anglicans for Life and co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.

Forney highlighted the work of groups serving post-abortive women, who often experience nightmares, depression, eating disorders, suicidal feelings or attempts, addiction, and low self-esteem, he said, calling their suffering a testament to the destructive nature of abortion. She singled out the work of Rachel’s Vineyard, which provides more than 1,000 retreats for post-abortive women each year in 49 states and 70 countries.

“If abortion is no big deal, why are all these people going through healing programs?” Forney asked.

While abortion supporters might argue that state and local laws are reducing the number of abortion clinics statewide, Collett said that 54% of counties in the U.S. have no hospitals with obstetric services.

“That is an outrage. If you were really concerned about women’s health, that would be your primary concern,” she said.

The bill says abortion is “central to women’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States.”

Yet abortions have declined by more than 50% from 1991-2016, she said, as the participation of women in the workforce has been “largely steady.”

“Women are succeeding in this society while abortion rates are falling rapidly,” she said.

[…]

Nell O’Leary, managing editor of Blessed Is She. / Therese Westby

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 3, 2022 / 11:01 am (CNA).

When Nell O’Leary sat down with her team to brainstorm a new book for Catholic women, she said they felt drawn to the theme of “identity.”

“This one kept coming back, this idea of identity, of who we are as Catholic women, made in God’s image and likeness,” O’Leary, the managing editor of Blessed Is She, told CNA. This identity, she said, gets battered by the world “with all these lies that you are what you look like, you are your social media following, you are how successful you are, you are how many kids you have.”

Instead, O’Leary says, every woman is unconditionally loved as a “beloved daughter of God.”

This message is central to Made New: 52 Devotions for Catholic Women, a weekly devotional released in December. The book houses personal stories from five writers associated with Blessed Is She (BIS), a “sisterhood” of Catholic women who desire to grow in their faith through prayer and community. Each of the five — O’Leary, Leana Bowler, Brittany Calavitta, Jenna Guizar, and Liz Kelly — focus on a theme under the umbrella of identity: beheld, belong, beloved, believing, and becoming. 

While their stories are different, their tone is consistent. Each writer engages the reader with the frank, casual tone of a friend who’s honest about her struggles, hopeful for the future, and, well, confident in her identity.

“I invite you to journey with me, dear sister, to walk through the next fifty-two weeks as we rediscover our value, our worth, and our identity in Our Lord’s eyes,” Guizar, the founder of BIS, writes in the book’s opening. “He is waiting for you and me, and He desires to be in relationship with us. All it takes is a response to His call: yes.”

Each week begins with a short reflection or personal story from one of the writers and concludes with a scripture passage and two questions for the reader to ask herself. Along the way, artwork interrupts the text to greet readers with dusty, muted colors and shapes. The rose-gold cover impresses a feminine touch, along with a pink ribbon bookmark. Leaves and plants adorn the pages, suggesting growth and life made new. 

A saint’s calling

If readers come away remembering one thing, O’Leary wants them to believe and remember that “there’s no one way, cookie-cutter way, to become a saint.”

“God is calling you personally, through the circumstances in your life, through the challenges, through the blessings, to grow in holiness in who you are and where you are,” she said. “And to compare yourself to other women and feel like you can’t measure up is simply not where you want to put your energies.”

Instead, she said, God is calling each woman — in her particular, unique life — to become a saint. 

Every woman is different, something that the five writers themselves demonstrate. According to O’Leary, they are not all just a “bunch of young moms.” One struggles with infertility, another married later in life, one started a family before marriage, and another has no children.  

“I think that however old the reader is, they will find part of their own story,” O’Leary said. “When we write [our stories], we want the reader to actually be able to contemplate and ponder… to kind of find their own story. So you’re not just consuming another person’s content, you’re actually looking at yourself too.”

One story particularly moved O’Leary (even though she compared picking her favorite to “picking a favorite flower”). She pointed to writer Liz Kelly, who shares with readers her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis toward the end of the book.

While Kelly originally “thought that meant her role would become really small,” God “used her in that time and in that diagnosis to broadcast his message even further than she thought,” O’Leary summarized. 

She added, “I think the reason I love that story so much is because where we see limitations, God just sees more opportunities for grace.”

Unconditional love

A theme in the book that O’Leary herself touches on is God’s unconditional love — that he loves you as you are right now, regardless of what you do or don’t do, regardless of how your family or friends treat you, regardless of your past or future. He loves you.

“I suppose people in general struggle with the idea of unconditional love because it’s so rarely manifest in our human interaction,” O’Leary said of accepting God’s love. “And so, because the human level of relationship in our lives are fraught with other imperfect people, to really trust in and experience God’s love takes this trust and this faith.”

Her first piece of advice for women who doubt God’s love or think they aren’t good enough is to visit the confessional.

“Get all those embarrassing sins off your chest,” she said. “The priest has heard it all … you can go behind the screen.”

“It’s nothing that’s too embarrassing to bring to the sacrament and really unload yourself of the burden of all those sins and experience God’s grace filling you,” she added. God’s unconditional love can get “so shrouded and clouded by my own, my own humanity, my own mistakes, my own sinfulness.”

Community and Covid

Another topic in the book — and a priority for Blessed Is She as a whole — is community. O’Leary addressed the challenges of community, particularly during the pandemic.

“Living in a global pandemic, so many things being more online, we just see that highlights reel…those drive those envy twinges of, ‘Her life looks perfect. She doesn’t have my struggles,’” she said. “Really puts in wedges in our sisterhood and we need our sisterhood.”

“When we can’t be together, it just starts to look like everyone has it together,” she added. “We don’t.” 

O’Leary advised women to read the free daily devotions offered by Blessed Is She. And delete social media apps off of their phones, even if just for the weekend.

“I know that our phones and the internet are wonderful for connecting us, but they’re also really toxic for making it feel more lonely,” she said. “Live the life that’s in front of you.”

The personal 

O’Leary talked about her personal life and her own struggle with identity. The fourth of five children, she said she grew up surrounded by high-achieving parents and siblings. While she thought that one day she might have a family, she worked toward becoming an attorney. She ended up marrying her “law school love” and worked as an attorney. Then, she became a stay-at-home mom. 

“Realizing that I had hung so much on my identity being what I did, and what the world could see and applaud, that becoming a mom and then eventually staying at home with our kids,” she said. “It’s such a hidden life.” 

“The children are not cheering you on, ‘You did a great job!’ there’s no affirmation, there’s no feedback other than the deep satisfaction I guess, that no one went to the ER,” she added.  

The experience changed her.

“What I realized that I had to have a big mentality shift from, I’m not what I do and I’m not what I accomplish and I’m not even how my children behave,” she said. “That really, in these hidden moments in prayer with God, to say, ‘I know I’m your beloved daughter. I know I’m made in your image and likeness.’”

[…]

A He Gets Us ad in Washington, D.C. / Credit: He Gets Us

Washington D.C., Feb 12, 2023 / 09:34 am (CNA).
Super Bowl viewers this Sunday may be surprised to see two ads that don’t seem to have anything to do with Christianity until the end when … […]