Should Catholics attend ‘pride’ events?

June 14, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Denver, Colo., Jun 14, 2019 / 03:50 pm (CNA).- On June 1, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence tweeted that Catholics should not attend Pride events during the month of June, which is commemorated as “Pride Month” throughout the United States.

“A reminder that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ ‘Pride Month’ events held in June,” Tobin tweeted. “They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.”

By the following day, the bishop issued another statement after widespread backlash against his original tweet.

“The Catholic Church has respect and love for members of the gay community, as do I,” Tobin said, adding that “individuals with same-sex attraction are beloved children of God and our brothers and sisters.” While the bishop expressed regret that some people took offense at his tweet, he did not apologize for or retract any of the content of his original statement.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly teaches what Tobin tweeted: that people with same-sex attraction must be treated with love and respect, and that the promotion of same-sex sexual relationships is contrary to faith and morals, and God’s plan for human sexuality.

Given these two teachings, what should a Catholic do if invited to participate in “Pride” events?

How Pride month started

The commemoration of June as “Pride Month” was officially established by President Bill Clinton in 1999, but it was already being unofficially celebrated for decades prior to that.

Pride Day, which eventually grew to be Pride Month, has been commemorated since June 1969, during the Stonewall Uprising, when activists and other New Yorkers took to the streets to protest against police raids at the Stonewall Inn, a popular bar and lounge at the time for people identifying as gay and lesbian.

Today, Pride Month is celebrated throughout the U.S. with parades, parties and concerts celebrating the gay rights movement and celebrating the LGBT lifestyle.

CCC 2358

Chris Stefanick, a Catholic author, speaker and lay minister at Real Life Catholic, said in a video posted to his Facebook page that he would not be attending “Pride” events, and that he also discouraged other Catholics from doing so, especially with children.

“The Catechism of the Catholic Church is really clear about this,” Stefanick said. He cited the Catechism’s paragraph 2358, which states that people with same-sex attraction “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

Stefanick noted in his video that “Pride” events, in their origin, were largely about speaking up against just that – unjust discrimination and harsh treatment towards LGBT people.

“I agree with the Catechism on that because I’m a devout, card-carrying Catholic. If that’s all that ‘Pride’ parades were about, I would show up, I would march in one, and I would have a t-shirt that said ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2358.’ Right? Because it would be a Catechism of the Catholic Church 2358 parade!” he said.

But “Pride Parades” today encompass a much larger agenda than anti-discrimination, Stefanick said.

“They’re largely funded by, supported by, attended by, the secular LGBT agenda. And while one sliver of what they’re standing for and pushing against in society is upholding the dignity of the person, which I would agree with, there’s a whole lot more that they’re pushing for that’s directly against my faith,” he said.

In follow-up comments to CNA via email, Stefanick said that that video cost him a donor, who accused Stefanick of being unloving for his opposition to attending Pride events. In a subsequent email to that donor, Stefanick reiterated that he was attempting to approach the issue out of love for all people, and in line with his faith.

“So much confusion exists around this issue,”  Stefanick said.

“And that confusion is often perpetuated by people in Church leadership who add to the world’s perception that anything said with clarity is hateful and hurtful and bigoted. It’s perpetuated by people who refuse to clarify which aspects of the LGBT movement we agree with, and which ones we have to absolutely reject…not because we’re moralists, but because Jesus Christ is the fulfillment and happiness we’re looking for, and nothing else will do!”

How to love without compromise

Courage is a Catholic organization for people with same-sex attraction and for those who love them. It supports them in leading a chaste life and building community and deep friendships with others in the Church who support them.

Courage is active in about two-thirds of the Catholic dioceses of the U.S., as well as in multiple other countries, with more than 150 Courage Chapters and just under 100 Encourage Chapters. Encourage is the apostolate for relatives and loved ones of people who identify as LGBT.

Fr. Philip Bochanski, the executive director of Courage, told CNA that Catholics should keep in mind that Pride events “were originally meant to draw attention to unjust discrimination and harsh and sometimes even violent treatment against people because of their sexual attractions and their understanding of their sexual identity.”

“And so the idea that we ought to call that out and condemn it is simple. That’s something that The Church is fully in agreement with,” he said, also referencing CCC 2358.

“And a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith from 1986 goes even further and says: ‘It’s deplorable that homosexual people have been and are the object of violence malice in speech and in action, and that such behavior deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors whenever it occurs,’” Bochanski added.

“The Church has always been in agreement that people who are living with these experiences should not be discriminated against unjustly and should not be treated with malice or violence,” he said.

But the Church also teaches that the answer to the unjust treatment of people identifying as LGBT “is not to change the Church’s teaching or to say that homosexual relationships are good or moral, but the answer really should be to teach the truth more clearly about the dignity of the human person, and call all of our brothers and sisters to a life in holiness which always includes the virtue of chastity, among the other virtues,” he said.

Bochanski added that he has some Catholic friends, many of whom are involved in the Courage apostolate, who attend Pride events — though not as participants or marchers.

“They’re there along the route offering words of encouragement about God’s love and the inherent dignity of every person, talking about the virtue of chastity, offering people friendship and support and if they’d like to know more about what the Catholic Church teaches about same-sex attraction, offering them support if they want to understand what chastity means and how to embrace it.”

Still, he said, while it may be good for some people to attend Pride events in order to witness to God’s love and the teachings of the Church, it would be “foolish to ignore the reality” that sometimes, at some of these events, some people display “images that can be lewd and in some cases offensive and scandalous and especially for younger people.”

“(Catholics) have to be very prudent and careful about that reality and not expose ourselves to situations we can’t control that are offensive or obscene, or raise issues that a person is too young to understand,” he noted.

Bochanski said that Catholics can love those who identify as LGBT by being willing to listen seriously to them, and by accompanying them on a path of holiness.

“I think that trying to welcome and accompany people as Jesus would do really starts with a willingness to listen to where people are coming from and what they’re going through,” he said.  

“So, I often say, a person who wants to spread the Good News and lead people to understand God’s plan for sexuality and relationships and virtues like chastity…(should) say, first of all, ‘I love you very much,’” to such a person, he said.

“Second, ‘I believe that God has a plan for your life and for your relationships and for sexuality, and if you follow that plan, it’s going to lead you to be happy.’ And third, ‘I want to hear your story so that we can see your story in light of the Gospel story and we can walk together as we see that path that God has marked out for us,’” Bochanski added.

He also said that it’s important to present the fullness of the truth of God’s plan for sexuality, which is a Church teaching that cannot change: “that’s always going to be true, because it comes from the Word of God.”

Bochanski emphasized loving people with same-sex attractions as full persons, and helping them to see that their identity does not lie solely within their sexuality. This is the reason the apostolate typically uses the terms “people with same-sex attractions” rather than “gay” or “lesbian,” for example.

“(A)s we’re striving to love someone, we shouldn’t label them or encourage them to label themselves according to their sexual attractions, saying ‘this is who I am and how God made me,’” he said, “because it’s not telling the whole truth about the nature of the human person and the nature of God’s plan for our bodies, our sexuality, our relationships.”

 

Bea Cuasay and Michelle McDaniel contributed to this report.

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Vatican Secretary of State marks 25 years of diplomatic relations with Israel

June 14, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Rome, Italy, Jun 14, 2019 / 06:56 am (CNA).- Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin marked the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel Thursday by calling for a shared commitment to religious freedom and combatting anti-Semitism.

“The peace process and the future of the region are in the heart of the pope and the Holy See,” Parolin said June 13 at a ceremony commemorating the anniversary in the Great Synagogue of Rome.

“The Holy See and the State of Israel are called to join forces to promote religious freedom — of religion and of conscience — as an indispensable condition to protect the dignity of every human being, and to work together to combat anti-Semitism,” he said.

Parolin said that the special nature of the relationship between Israel and the Holy See emerges from the unique character of the Holy Land.

“Jerusalem, the city of peace, is at its heart, the common heritage for all the faithful of the three great monotheistic religions and of the whole world,” he said.

“Our religious and political commitment favors the city’s vocation to be a place of reconciliation and encounter between religions, as well as a symbol of respect and peaceful cohabitation,” the Secretary of State continued.

To mark the anniversary, Pope Francis invited all believers and non-believers to dedicate “a minute of peace,” a minute of prayer and reflection for “a more fraternal world,” Parolin said.

The Holy See established full diplomatic relations with Israel with the Fundamental Agreement signed in December 1993, which set forth a common commitment to cooperate in combaing anti-Semitism, the promotion of academic exchanges, and cooperation in encouring Christian pilgrimages.

Diplomatic missions in Tel Aviv and the Vatican opened on June 15, 1994. Each of the following popes visited Israel since the signing of the agreement. Saint Pope John Paul II in 2000, Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, and Pope Francis in 2014.

In his speech to the Ambassador of Israel to the Holy See Oren David and the Israeli diplomatic corp, Cardinal Parolin highlighted the prayer meeting between Israeli and Palestinian presidents hosted by the Vatican in June 2014 and Pope Francis’ address to international conference on combatting anti-Semintism in 2018.

“The Church wishes to extend its hand. We want to remember and walk together … mindful of the heritage shared in common with the Jewish people, driven not by political reasons, but by religious evangelical charity, we deplore the hatred, persecution and all manifestations of anti-Stemitism directed against the Jewish people at any time and from anyone,” Pope Francis said.

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Pinterest suspends pro-life group’s account, citing ‘health misinformation’

June 13, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

San Francisco, Calif., Jun 13, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Pinterest, a social media site with 300 million active users, has banned pro-life activist group Live Action from its platform, just days after a whistleblower revealed documents that purport to show active suppression of pro-life and Christian content by Pinterest.

Alison Centofante, Live Action’s director of external affairs, posted a screenshot June 11 of an email from Pinterest informing Live Action that their account was “permanently suspended because its content went against our policies on misinformation.”

“We don’t allow advice on Pinterest that may have immediate and detrimental effects on a Pinner’s health or on public safety,” the communication read.

Live Action founder Lila Rose shared a second email from Pinterest support that said the account was suspended because of “medically inaccurate information and conspiracies that turn individuals and facilities into targets for harassment and violence.”

“What exactly is Pinterest attempting to block? Inspirational messages to pregnant mothers, ultrasound images showing the science of prenatal development, medically accurate information on the abortion procedure, and images saying women deserve better than abortion industry leader Planned Parenthood,” Rose said in a June 11 statement.

“Pinterest has targeted Live Action, I believe, because our message is so effective at educating millions about the humanity of the preborn child and the injustice of abortion…Pinterest users deserve to know the truth and our messages deserve to be treated fairly. If Planned Parenthood can promote their message on Pinterest, then Live Action should be able to as well.”

Despite Live Action’s suspension for purported “immediate and detrimental” health effects of their pro-life materials, pins linking to websites that offered “20 Best Ways to Induce a Miscarriage Naturally at Home” were still active and available on Pinterest June 13.

Before Live Action’s total ban, documents released Tuesday by former software engineer-turned whistleblower Eric Cochran show that Live Action was intentionally marked as a “pornographic” site, thus suppressing users’ ability to link to LiveAction.org’s content.

The documents also allege that Pinterest employees labeled Christianity-related terms like “christian easter” and “bible verses” as “sensitive” search terms, meaning those terms would not show up in autocomplete search results on the site.

Cochran released the documents via the activist group Project Veritas, and says he was subsequently fired from his job at Pinterest.

“Because ‘LiveAction.org’ was added to the list of pornographic sites, the [whistleblower] showed that users cannot create pins that link to ‘LiveAction.org.’ Live Action has received complaints from supporters over the last few months that they have had difficulty pinning content from ‘LiveAction.org,’” Live Action said in a June 11 statement.

“After testing the website, Live Action was unable to create pins from our own website but was able to create pins to other pro-life websites and create pins to pro-abortion websites like Planned Parenthood.”

The whistleblower at Pinterest also revealed, Live Action says, that Pinterest added “David Daleiden/Planned Parenthood” to a list of “conspiracy theories” it monitors.

David Daleidan is a journalist and activist who used hidden camera footage to reveal Planned Parenthood executives and staff negotiating the sale of fetal body parts in 2015.

In another June 11 email, also shared by Rose, a Pinterest spokesperson said Live Action’s account was suspended because of “misinformation related to conspiracies and anti-vaccination advice, not porn,” and that the platform’s “internal tools” were “named years ago to combat porn” and had not been updated.

A media inquiry from CNA to Pinterest, enquiring what specific pins posted by Live Action the platform flagged as containing “misinformation” and how they vetted the information in question, went unanswered as of press time.

Twitter has barred Live Action from purchasing paid advertisements on their site, and the pro-life group has also alleged detrimental treatment from Google and YouTube.

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Christians must sow hope among the poor, pope says

June 13, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Jun 13, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis challenged Catholics to be a source of hope for those in poverty, especially in the face of divisions in wealth and a throw-away culture.

The Pope released Thursday his message for the third annual World Day of the Poor, which will take place Nov. 17.

In the June 13 text, he drew a comparison between the financial disparities of people the Old Testament and current social injustices. As present-day people are trapped in new forms of slavery, he said, it is the Catholic’s obligation not only to provide the poor with relief services, but with spiritual hope.

“‘The hope of the poor will not perish forever’ These words of the Psalm remain timely. They express a profound truth that faith impresses above all on the hearts of the poor, restoring lost hope in the face of injustice, sufferings and the uncertainties of life,” the pope said.

“I ask all Christian communities, and all those who feel impelled to offer hope and consolation to the poor, to help ensure that this World Day of the Poor will encourage more and more people to cooperate effectively so that no one will feel deprived of closeness and solidarity,” he added.

As during the time of the Psalms’ development, there is now economic prosperity, he said. But he added that financial success has also led to an inequitable distribution of wealth. There are a privileged few, he said, but there are also millions of people who are exploited.

He said this exploitation is a type of bondage and enforces new forms of slavery. He said this abuse can be recognized in the displaced immigrants compelled to leave their homes, orphans and women forced into human trafficking, and young adults barred from employment.

“As in a hunt, the poor are trapped, captured and enslaved. As a result, many of them become disheartened, hardened and anxious only to drop out of sight,” he said. “They become for all effects invisible and their voice is no longer heard or heeded in society. Men and women who are increasingly strangers amid our houses and outcasts in our neighborhoods.”

These struggles may seem hopeless, he said, but it is the vulnerable and poor who will bear witness to God’s faithfulness. He said, even if the poor are dismissed and turned away, it will not be like that forever.

“Scripture constantly speaks of God acting on behalf of the poor. He is the one who ‘hears their cry’ and ‘comes to their aid’; he ‘protects’ and ‘defends’ them; he ‘rescues’ and ‘saves’ them… Indeed, the poor will never find God indifferent or silent in the face of their plea.”

He said it is the obligation of the Christian to care for those who are vulnerable, because Christ identifies with those in poverty. He gave the example of Jean Vanier, a Canadian Catholic humanitarian who died last month. Vanier founded L’Arche, an international organization of communities dedicated to people with disabilities.

“God gave Jean Vanier the gift of devoting his entire life to our brothers and sisters with grave disabilities, people whom society often tends to exclude. He was one of those saints ‘next door’” he said.

“His witness changed the life of countless persons and helped the world to look differently at those less fortunate than ourselves. The cry of the poor was heard and produced an unwavering hope, creating visible and tangible signs of a concrete love that even today we can touch with our hands.”

In this culture of waste, he said it is difficult to spread Christian hope. Francis said charity must go beyond the distribution of physical necessities and it must become an authentic concern for the person, inspiring that individual to hope and compassion.

“The poor acquire genuine hope, not from seeing us gratified by giving them a few moments of our time, but from recognizing in our sacrifice an act of gratuitous love that seeks no reward,” he said.

This act of kindness requires consistent commitment and a joyful individual who will listen and identify the true needs of each person, he said. It may seem illogical to the world, but charity extends beyond statistics, he further added.

“I encourage you to seek, in every poor person whom you encounter, his or her true needs, not to stop at their most obvious material needs, but to discover their inner goodness, paying heed to their background and their way of expressing themselves, and in this way to initiate a true fraternal dialogue,” said Pope Francis.

“For once, let us set statistics aside: the poor are not statistics to cite when boasting of our works and projects. The poor are persons to be encountered; they are lonely, young and old, to be invited to our homes to share a meal; men women and children who look for a friendly word. The poor save us because they enable us to encounter the face of Jesus Christ.”

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Who’s responsible for the USCCB’s Twitter?

June 13, 2019 CNA Daily News 3

Baltimore, Md., Jun 13, 2019 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- Over the course of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ spring general assembly, questions arose online: what was going on with the suddenly-chatty USCCB Twitter account? Did they give an intern, or perhaps a particularly hip young priest or enthusiastic new convert the password? Had the account been hacked?

As it turns out, none of those were true. The account is run by Connie Poulos, a 31-year-old content and marketing coordinator at the USCCB. She’s not an intern – and has worked for the conference since 2017, originally as a digital media specialist – and she’s not a convert, and she’s definitely not a priest. She’s married, and she and her husband are in the process of adopting a son from China.

Poulos sat down with CNA in an emptying ballroom at the hotel hosting the general assembly to discuss what prompted the USCCB’s new online persona. Apparently, this strategy was part of a larger plan to attempt to present a more humanizing look at the bishops of the conference, and better to engage with the account’s 156,000 Twitter followers.

“When I first started in 2017, we didn’t engage on this level, but we did engage,” she explained. “Then, McCarrick happened.”

After the actions of the now-laicized former Archbishop of Washington came to light, Poulos said the conference decided to take a step back when it came to their online presence. About a year later, that mentality has shifted, even as a new crop of scandals begin to emerge.

“We just kind of decided, ‘look, all bets are off. We’re just gonna be us, we’re going to use this account to engage,’” said Poulos. She said that she received instructions to “be bold” on the internet.  

“Then I took that and ran with it,” she added, beginning with her tweets at the spring general assembly.

As a way to expand upon what was being discussed at the general assembly, the USCCB tweeted a picture of Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles with the caption “If you are a young Catholic who is still Catholic, what has made you stay?” At the time of the tweet, Barron was speaking about how half of all young people who leave the Catholic Church become religiously unaffiliated.

The tweet received thousands of replies, including one from Dr. Taylor Patrick O’Neill, a professor of theology at Mount Mercy University. O’Neill tweeted, “Not sure if I am young anymore, but when I was young, the thing that made me stay (or rather return), was finding out that there was a rich intellectual and spiritual REASON (or Logos) behind the felt banners and superficial platitudes which initially pushed me away.”

Then, Poulos, on the USCCB account, responded to this tweet with “Beautifully said. I’m … not sure anyone likes the felt banners.”

Beautifully said.

I’m… not sure anyone likes the felt banners.

— US Catholic Bishops (@USCCB) June 11, 2019

 

This tweet “blew up,” so to speak, and was liked over 700 times. After that tweet, people began to take notice of Poulos’ new approach to the account and started to interact more with the USCCB’s Twitter presence.

For what it’s worth, Poulos insists she’s “ambivalent” on the topic of felt banners.

“If you look at the actual wording of the tweet, I was carefully non-committal,” she said. “I was like ‘I’m not sure anybody likes them.’ It wasn’t a statement,” she said, laughing. She did, however, appreciate the jokes people made, such as one saying “anathema felt!” and others who said the USCCB has spoken out against felt banners.

As a self-described “true millennial” working for the USCCB, Poulos said she is aware of how the organization is viewed by others her age. By engaging on social media with other Twitter users, Poulos said she is trying to be “accessible” and “take away some of the mystery” of the conference of bishops. She said the reaction to her tweets have been “overwhelmingly positive,” even if some of her older coworkers were initially concerned someone unauthorized had accessed the account.

Poulos said her supervisors at the USCCB were entirely supportive of this new approach to engagement on social media, although some other USCCB workers were not so sure about it in the beginning.

“I think they were encouraged when they saw the positive reaction,” said. She hopes that she will be able to keep up the engagement on the USCCB social media accounts after the general assembly concludes.  

For Poulos, this approach to online engagement is a fulfilment of the vision she first had when she started working at the USCCB in 2017.

“To put a human face on the bishops is important, I think, and to be a presence (online),” she said. “Just as they say ‘Christ has no hands, but yours,’ Christ has no Twitter account, but yours.”

“This is where people are, we need to meet them there.”

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