Jerusalem, Jan 29, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- The proposed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan announced this week is “no solution,” Catholic bishops of the Holy Land said on Wednesday.
“This plan will bring no solution but rather will creat… […]
Milwaukee, Wis., Jan 29, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- A Wisconsin Catholic women’s college has just announced plans to build housing welcoming both single mothers and retired nuns living in a residential community.
The project is a collaboration between Mount Mary University, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, who founded the college over a hundred years ago, and Milwaukee Catholic Home.
Mount Mary President Christine Pharr told CNA that the project will be a “big win-win” for students, single mothers, religious sisters, and campus life. She said the project will empower women of all ages.
Founded in 1913, Mount Mary University is a small, private Catholic college with about 1,200 undergraduates, all of whom are women, and 500 postgraduates, including both men and women.
The school will break ground on the project this summer and plans to complete the initiative by November 2021. The $45 million dollar project will consist of four buildings.
Within three of the buildings, there will be 90 apartments for sisters and other senior citizens, 24 dorm rooms for enrolled single mothers, and 52 assisted living units.
Those buildings will surround a “town center” that features a small clinic, dining services, a hair and nail salon, exercise facilities, and a chapel.
“It’ll have a beautiful two-story chapel in it, and many of the artifacts and the stained glass windows from the current convent will be brought over to this new venture to make sure that the heritage of the sisters is preserved as we go forward,” Pharr said.
One of the dorms will also offer on-site child care with space for 120 children. Pharr said about 10 percent of students at the college are single mothers.
While Pharr was vice-president of College of St Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, she witnessed the success of the college’s single mother dorm. Although she did not supervise the program, she said, she was able to become familiar with its operations and engage closely with the students.
Pharr emphasized the importance of providing mothers with the proper resources to overcome the barriers that prevent them from pursuing higher education. She pointed to statistics that show a growing trend of single mothers in higher education, but with much lower graduation rates than women without children.
“If you’re looking at data over maybe the last 15, 20 years, the number of single mothers returning to college has increased significantly nationally. About 11% of college students are single mothers in the state,” she said.
“There’s about 32,000 single mothers who are college students, and yet their graduation rates are less than half of women without children. The obstacles that they face are rather significant: affordable housing, quality childcare, transportation, [and] just plain financing that can allow them the resources to go to a university and get an education.”
Pharr said that through grant programs, the university has been able to provide academic tutoring, counseling, advising, emergency loans, and food assistance to single mothers.
“This is important because it provides a place for single mothers to get an education in a safe environment. As a small Catholic institution, we provide tremendous resources to our students,” she said.
“I think at this institution, the potential to provide an environment where these women can be successful when they might not be living out in the community commuting, trying to address all of those other issues.”
Pharr said the housing project has been in the development over the past couple years as a response to the order’s declining number of nuns and an increase in retired sisters. When the project was initially under development, she said the order was looking at opening the space to non-religious elderly people.
Pharr had the idea to include single mothers.
Many of the nuns who will live on campus now live in convents elsewhere. Since many sisters had been involved with the school, Pharr said they are excited to come back to campus. She noted the importance the nuns’ presence will have on student life, bringing a light to the mothers, students, and to the sisters themselves.
“I think having the sisters in proximity to students and children will allow them to really stay young and be excited about the kinds of things they see happening on campus. It’ll be a short walk over to seminars. They can take classes; they can participate in events on campus much easier,” Pharr said.
The campus is planning for both serendipitous and planned interactions among the students, families, and nuns, Pharr said. The sisters, besides running into students on campus more, will be able to share meals in the dining room with both students and children. She also said the clinic and day-care center will become a learning opportunity.
“We also have what we call planned interactions. So in other words, intergenerational learning opportunities. We hope that the early childhood education center [will] be a lab school, which will allow for our education majors to actually learn and participate in early childhood education.”
“In addition, we have programs in occupational therapy and nursing and social work and numerous others where we will have onsite clinical opportunities and internships so that the students can learn and be in direct connection with the sisters and the seniors.”
Pharr emphasized the value of the project – which will help mothers, campus life, and the nuns – noting that the project is deeply tied to the beliefs of the sisters.
“This is a great mission fit. The School Sisters of Notre Dame, part of their charism has always been to care for the needs of women and children. Mount Mary, in a similar manner, our vision statement says that we educate women to transform the world,” Pharr told CNA.
“To me, this is just one more way in which we can continue to empower women at all ages, whether they’re sisters, whether they’re seniors, whether they’re children or students.”
Washington D.C., Jan 29, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- In the wake of basketball star and father-of-four-daughters Kobe Bryant’s death, #GirlDad has gone viral on social media with fathers sharing the unique joy of raising daughters. However, in many parts of the world, fewer girls are born than boys today because of sex-selective abortion.
Demographics experts say that “large-scale female feticide” has also occurred in the U.S. in the last decade, in a new analysis published Jan. 27.
“These new data are worrisome, if not alarming—for they demonstrate that large-scale female feticide has been taking place among certain U.S. sub-populations over the past decade,” researchers Nicholas Eberstadt and Evan Abramsky found when they looked at U.S. birth statistics.
“The ‘global war against baby girls’ has opened a front in the United States of America,” they said.
The phenomenon of mass female feticide in Asia over the last 40 years has been driven by easily available or unconditional abortion access, cultural preferences for boys, and inexpensive prenatal gender determination technology, Eberstadt explains.
While the natural biological sex ratio at birth hovers around 103-105 boys born for every 100 baby girls, in China and India the ratios hit 115 and 111 respectively in 2017.
With the sex ratio skewed in the two most populous countries in the world, sex-selective abortion accounts for millions of “missing baby girls” each year.
Eberstadt and Abramsky’s 2020 analysis also found unnatural imbalances in sex ratios at birth in the U.S. among foreign-born mothers from China and India.
Among foreign-born Chinese mothers, more than 110 boys were born for every 100 girls in the U.S. between 2014-2018. For the third child born, this figure jumps to 122.8 for Chinese foreign-born mothers and 115.3 for Indian foreign-born mothers.
The researchers conclude this can be understood as approximately 8,400 “missing” births of newborn girls in the U.S. from Chinese and Indian mothers between 2014-2018, while the exact number of sex-selective abortions that occurred among those sub-population groups is unclear.
Eberstadt and Abramsky said that they found “some measure of reassurance” in that there was no conclusive evidence that the same sex ratio at birth (SRB) exists among Asian-Americans born in the U.S.
The abnormal trend only applies to foreign-born mothers from China and India, countries with “mass female feticide.”
This week over 100,000 people have posted photos of fathers and daughters on Instagram with #girldad in tribute to Kobe Bryant, who was the father of four girls. Bryant and his eldest daughter, Gianna, died in a helicopter accident Jan. 26, along with seven others.
The trend was sparked by ESPN analyst Elle Duncan, who shared a memory of a conversation with Bryant.
She said that she had asked Kobe Bryant if he wanted more children, even if there was a chance of having another girl, and said Bryant replied, without hesitation, “I would have 5 more girls if I could. I’m a girl dad.”
“I would have 5 more girls if I could. I’m a girl dad.”@elleduncanESPN‘s story about how much Kobe loved his daughters is something special. pic.twitter.com/1KJx17QRjY
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 28, 2020
Following the episode of Sports Center, professional athletes posted photos of themselves and their daughters online with #GirlDad, fathers across the globe followed suit.
“This is trending nationwide because there’s no greater or more significant relationship than that of a dad and his daughter(s),” Duncan wrote on Twitter Jan. 28 with a post that linked to the thousands of family photos shared with her in the past few days.
Please if you’re feeling any kind of way, scroll through this feed and look at all these PROUD #girldad ‘s .. this is trending nationwide because there’s no greater or more significant relationship than that of a dad and his daughter(s) .. i hope it eases your blues. ?? pic.twitter.com/DbUQVbVO22
— Elle Duncan (@elleduncanESPN) January 28, 2020
Denver, Colo., Jan 29, 2020 / 10:57 am (CNA).- A Colorado web designer is challenging a state law she says could be enforced against her if she doesn’t create material that promotes same-sex weddings.
“The government shouldn’t threaten a web designer with fines to force her to publish websites that violate her beliefs,” Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Jonathan Scruggs said Jan. 22.
“As Colorado itself admits, Lorie works with all people; she just doesn’t promote all messages. The state must protect, not threaten, the freedom of online speakers and other artists to choose which messages to express through their own projects.”
The religious freedom legal group in September 2016 filed the lawsuit on behalf of Lorie Smith, a web designer who operates the design studio 303 Creative. In September 2019 a federal district court order finalized a ruling dismissing the lawsuit, but the attorneys are appealing.
The case is not a response to government action. Rather, it is a pre-enforcement challenge intended to prevent the use of the law that Smith’s attorneys say affects creative professionals who have religious or moral concerns about creating content that violates their beliefs.
Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act bars creative professionals from expressing views about marriage that suggest someone is “unwelcome, objectionable, unacceptable, or undesirable.” They may not express views that suggest the designer won’t create particular works because of those beliefs, Alliance Defending Freedom said.
Smith’s attorneys say the law violates the U.S. Constitution, including the free speech and free press provisions of the First Amendment. They say courts have questioned the constitutionality of similar laws in Minnesota and Arizona.
On Jan. 22 they filed their brief to appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Failure to secure a court ruling against the law, they say, would force Smith to live under threat of prosecution if she declines to design and publish websites that promote messages or causes that conflict with her beliefs.
“The district court shouldn’t have ‘assumed’ Lorie’s decision to act consistently with her conscience was illegal without any analysis of that question, especially when other courts have upheld free speech rights in similar contexts,” said Scruggs.
The legal brief says Smith “gladly serves everyone no matter who they are” but “she cannot create all content requested—including content that demeans, incites violence, or promotes any conception of marriage other than between one man and one woman.”
The brief says that Colorado officials concede that Smith serves people regardless of status, does not discriminate against LGBT persons, and only refers customers to other businesses on the basis of a requested message.
The brief charges that the state anti-discrimination law would “force Lorie to create websites celebrating same-sex weddings” and to “ban Lorie from posting a statement explaining the content she can create.”
“This attack on Lorie’s faith and editorial freedom targets ‘the fundamental First Amendment rule’—that ‘a speaker has the autonomy to choose the content of (her) own message’,” the brief continued.
At issue is the same law that brought Lakewood, Colo. baker Jack Philips and his business Masterpiece Cakeshop to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, Philips declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, on the grounds that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. His prospective customers filed a complaint, and Philips went before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
The civil rights commission ordered Phillips and his staff to undergo anti-discrimination training and to submit quarterly reports on how he is changing company policies. He had to cease making wedding cakes to continue operating his business according to his conscience while not running afoul of the law.
In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado commission had violated Phillips’ rights.
The 7-2 opinion said the commission “showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection.”
The high court also cited inconsistent treatment of complaints by Colorado authorities. When a man complained that other bakeries refused to create cakes with an anti-gay marriage message, religious imagery and loosely paraphrased Bible passages, state authorities rejected the complaints.
Phillips was then caught up in a controversy when a prospective customer asked him to make a cake to celebrate a gender transition, and he declined citing his religious beliefs. The customer complained to state officials that this constituted discrimination on the basis of gender identity, but this was rejected.
Baghdad, Iraq, Jan 29, 2020 / 10:11 am (CNA).- Four men working in Iraq for the French humanitarian organization SOS Chrétiens d’Orient went missing last week in Baghdad.
The organization works to support Eastern Christians with humanitarian material aid; it has permanent missions in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt.
SOS Chrétiens d’Orient has said four of its employees disappeared Jan. 20 after they made a trip to an appointment by car. The group tried to contact them the following day, unsuccessfully.
“It was clear that they had disappeared” by Jan. 22 “and therefore we immediately alerted the French authorities,” the group said, adding that both French and Iraqi authorities are working to find them.
The missing employees had gone to Baghdad “to renew their visas and the registration of association with the Iraqi authorities and to monitor the association’s operations” in the country.
In a Jan. 24 statement, SOS Chrétiens d’Orient said that “we have received no ransom demand, no information on the fate of our four friends and collaborators. We are of course in close contact with their families. The association and all our teams share their terrible concern.”
Christians in Iraq have suffered persecution in recent years, especially during the invasion of the Islamic State.
Prior to when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, there were about 1.5 million Iraqi Christians. Today, that number is believed to be fewer than 500,000.
Vatican City, Jan 29, 2020 / 04:45 am (CNA).- The beatitudes should be a defining feature of a Christian’s identity because they reveal the way that Jesus lived his life, Pope Francis said Wednesday.
“The beatitudes always bring joy; they are the way to joy,” Pope Francis said Jan. 29.
“It will do us good to take the Gospel of Matthew today, chapter five verses one to eleven, and read the beatitudes — perhaps a few more times during the week — to understand this road so beautiful, so sure of the happiness that the Lord offers us,” he said in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.
Pope Francis said that the beatitudes should be considered “a Christian’s identity card” because they reveal “the face of Jesus himself.”
“There are eight beatitudes,” he said. “It would be nice to learn them by heart to repeat them, to have precisely in mind and heart, this law that Jesus gave us.”
Pope Francis began a new series of catechesis on the eight beatitudes from Matthew’s Gospel. In this series, the pope will reflect on one beatitude per week over the next two months in his Wednesday general audiences.
The pope said that the beatitudes are a message for all of humanity.
“It’s hard not to be touched by these words of Jesus, and it is a just desire to want to understand them and to welcome them more fully,” he said.
Francis clarified that the beatitudes bring one the true joy of being “blessed,” which is different from worldly happiness.
“It is the Easter joy,” the pope said.
In giving himself to us, God often chooses “unthinkable paths” that test our limits, bringing tears or defeat, the pope said. It is the joy of one who “has the stigmata, but is alive, one who has died to himself and experienced the power of God.”
“But what does the word ‘blessed’ mean? The original Greek term makarios does not indicate one who has a full belly or is doing well, but is a person who is in a condition of grace, who progresses in the grace of God,” he said.
The pope noted that Jesus taught the Beatitudes as a part of his “Sermon on the Mount,” adding that the mountain is an allusion to Sinai, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.
“Jesus begins to teach a new law: to be poor, to be meek, to be merciful. These ‘new commandments’ are much more than norms. In fact, Jesus does not impose anything, but reveals the way of happiness,” Pope Francis said.
Pierre, S.D., Jan 29, 2020 / 12:26 am (CNA).- A bill aiming to ban sex-reassignment surgery and puberty-blocking medication for minors in South Dakota cleared a House committee Jan. 22, and is set to be debated in the House of Representatives.
HB 1057… […]
Mexico City, Mexico, Jan 29, 2020 / 12:00 am (CNA).- More than 50,000 Mexican young people made a pilgrimage Saturday to an iconic monument and shrine to Christ the King, situated atop Cubilete Mountain, over 8,000 feet above sea level in the Guanajuato state of Mexico.
The Witness and Hope Movement, which organizes the annual youth pilgrimage, said in a statement that the young pilgrims committed themselves Jan. 25 “to Mexico in these difficult times of insecurity, economic stagnation and the outside pressure it is undergoing.”
Devotion to Christ the King figures largely into Mexican history.
During the 1920’s the country’s government in power initiated a series of repressive measures and outright persecution against the Church. The Mexican government banned religious orders, restricted public worship, and prohibited priests from wearing clerical attire in public.
Allegiance to Christ the King became a hallmark of resistance, as did the cry “Viva Cristo Rey!”
Mexico was consecrated to Christ the King in 1914 and the consecration was renewed in 1924 and 2013.
The Jan. 25 youth pilgrimage focused on the life of Blessed Anacleto González Flores, who was named the patron of the Mexican laity in 2019.
González was arrested, tortured, and killed in 1927 by government forces for his support of the efforts of the National League in Defense of Religious Liberty to resist the persecution of the Church.
According to pilgrimage organizers gave witness “in defense of his faith and love for his homeland, even when such defense cost him his own life.”
The statue of Christ the King atop Cubilete Mountain was erected in 1950, in honor of the martyrs of the Cristero War (1926-1929).
Weighing 80 tons and 65 feet tall, it is the largest bronze statue of Christ in the world. Beneath the statue is an adoration chapel. Pope Benedict XVI visited the shrine in 2012.
The statue was built on the site where a smaller statue of Christ was dynamited in 1928 by the government of President Plutarco Elías Calles.
The Jan. 25 pilgrimage saw “the greatest attendance ever, more than 50,000 young people from all over the country,” the Witness and Hope movement said.
Young people “not only want to announce God’s plan with our witness but also bravely denounce the injustices and outrages that are committed daily in our country, outrages that on many occasions have led to the loss of peace, tranquility and even the lives of thousands of Mexicans,” organizers said.
“We young Catholics of Mexico are tired of the situation our homeland is going through. It’s disturbing to be in a country where the authorities say they are for peace but routinely show their interest in legalizing the assault on the lives of the innocent that are still in their mothers’ wombs,” a spokesman for the movement said.
Young Mexicans “want to publicly take up our role as builders of peace and as defenders of our faith and our principles. We know this is not simple but we’re aware of the urgency of doing this.”
“As Mexican society it’s necessary to combat all those situations of corruption, impunity and illegality that generate violence and reestablish conditions of justice, equality and solidarity that build peace,” the spokesman said.
The organization entrusted its efforts to “Mary of Guadalupe, recognizing her as mother and intercessor of all Mexicans and as Queen of Peace.”
A version of this story was first reported by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Kansas City, Mo., Jan 28, 2020 / 09:31 pm (CNA).- Catholics in Missouri and across the country remembered Fr. Evan Harkins Tuesday as a good priest, and urged prayer for the repose of his soul.
The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph announced the pries… […]
Khartoum, Sudan, Jan 28, 2020 / 04:27 pm (CNA).- According to a local rights group in Sudan, three churches in a town were burnt down in December 2019 and quickly rebuilt, only to be burnt down again earlier this month.
Human Rights and Development Organization said that a Catholic church, an Orthodox church, and a Sudan Internal Church in Bout were burnt down on both Dec. 28 and Jan. 16; the church buildings had been rebuilt in the interim. Bout is the capital of Tadamoun district in Blue Nile state, more than 300 miles southeast of Khartoum.
According to HUDO, the alleged arsons were reported to Bout police each time, “but police did not investigate further or put preventive measures.”
The human rights organization has decried the attack and criticized the government for negligence of religious freedom.
But the Sundanese religious affairs minister, Nasr al-Din Mufreh, has claimed that only one church had been attacked twice.
The Sudan Tribune reported that Mufreh stated “Sudan’s full commitment to protecting religious freedoms.”
“If it is proven that it occurred as a result of a criminal offence, the perpetrators will be identified, pursued and brought to justice,” he said. He added that a suspect had been interrogated, but was released for lack of evidence.
Mufreh added that “The Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Blue Nile state government have committed themselves to build a church with modern materials (…) and taking appropriate measure for its future protection.”
Sudan was listed as a Country of Particular Concern for its religious freedom record by the US Department of State from 1999 to 2019.
In December 2019, it was moved to the Special Watch List “due to significant steps taken by the civilian-led transitional government to address the previous regime’s ‘systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.’”
Sudan had been under the military dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir since 1989, but pro-democracy protests led to his overthrow in April 2019. The country is now led by a transitional government.
According to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, under Bashir the government “actively promoted and enforced a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam and imposed religious-based constraints on Muslims and non-Muslims.”
At least 90 percent of Sudan’s population is Muslim, and sharia is the source of the nation’s legislation. Apostasy from Islam is punishable by the death penalty.
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