Philadelphia, Pa., May 10, 2017 / 03:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic bishops of Pennsylvania will dedicate each Catholic diocese and eparchy in the state to the Virgin Mary later this year.
“What prompted the proposal was the intent for the… […]
Oklahoma City, Okla., May 9, 2017 / 05:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The governor of Oklahoma vetoed a bill that would have drastically increased the interest rates of payday loans, joining the fight of the bishops around the country who have pushed back on similar legislation.
“House Bill 1913 adds yet another level of high interest borrowing without terminating or restricting access to existing payday loan products,” Governor Mary Fallin said in her veto statement last week.
The bill was vetoed May 5, with Fallin voicing her concern that the loans created by the bill would be “more expensive than the current loan options.”
Bishops throughout the U.S. have decried the use of payday loans, and have backed legislation which would restrict the effect these loans on have on the borrowers – communities who are often targeted for their lack of education and immediate need. Catholic Charities has even opened organizations which may assist those in need or struggling with high interest loans.
Payday loans are a small amount of money with a high interest level. Often times these loans are taken out for situations such emergency doctor appointments or car troubles. The name of payday loans derives from the understanding that the loan would be paid back within the next paycheck, but the high interest rates usually suffocate the costumer who is struggling to make ends meet.
Payday loans have led people into a circular trap in which they can only pay the high monthly interest or roll over fees continue to add up and become unmanageable.
HB 1913 would mean that loan companies could increase the monthly interest rate to 17 percent, which is three to four times greater than Oklahoma’s current laws. The annual percentage rate would be about 204.
According to OKpolicy.org, in 2014 nearly 950,000 dollars was taken out in payday loans and 1.2 million in “B” loans, averaging 77 loans per 100 Oklahoman adults.
Bishops and Catholic leaders throughout the U.S. have fought similar legislation like HB 1913 and backed bills that restrict loan sharks.
Regulations have been passed in order to limit the amount of times lenders are allowed to charge borrower’s fees or how many times loan companies can access a person’s bank account before overdraft fees stack up. Legislation has also been passed that enforced lenders to evaluate whether the borrower has sufficient means to pay back the loans.
These loans will affect people in the middle-class, but they are well known to be marketed towards people who may not understand the full consequences.
In a 2015 interview with The Dallas Morning News, the pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Parish in Arlington said “it seems that every week another member of my parish tells me a horror story about one of these loans. They debilitate our families. People take out loans without fully understanding the terms.”
The Texas Catholic Conference analyzed the situation across the state, talking to both lenders and borrowers. Jennifer Allmon, associate director of the Texas Catholic Conference, said that the stores were located in areas where a loan may be more attractive or that the lenders misled borrowers with misinformation.
She said the contracts will often only be in English, but advertising and conversation in the shop would be conducted in Spanish “so oftentimes the borrower has no idea what they’re signing,” and the interest rate would be significantly hirer than what the borrower had expected.
The Kansas Loan Pool Project, in a partnership with Sunflower Bank, has assisted over 120 people who have struggled under predatory debt, and $80,000 has been refinanced since its establishment in 2013. The program provides the borrower with a more traditional loan in order to cover the payday loan. Then they will help the person develop the financial skills to budget to pay back the lower interest loan.
Catholic Charities in Kansas has also begun a program in order to provide small, low interest loans, with a maximum of a $1000, so that people who do have an immediate need are able to receive the proper funding.
Denver, Colo., May 9, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In the centenary year of Our Lady of Fatima, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students has decided to consecrate its mission to the Virgin Mary in perpetuity.
“It was the natural thing… […]
Peoria, Ill., May 8, 2017 / 10:10 am (National Catholic Register).- Today is a good day to join more than 1,000 priests and an even greater number of the faithful in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in remembrance of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen … […]
New York City, N.Y., May 7, 2017 / 04:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- “I remember it as well as I do last night.” Those were the words of an aged Irish immigrant named John Curry in 1940s New York, who had seen the apparitions at Knock, Ireland when just a boy.
Now, his remains will be re-interred at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in New York City.
“Like most of the witnesses, John Curry went on to live out his life in a quiet way, never highlighting what he experienced in Knock, unless asked to speak about it,” Father Richard Gibbons, rector of Ireland’s Our Lady of Knock Shrine, told CNA. “This shows a quiet, humble kind of faith which was characteristic of the Irish people.”
“He served Mass everyday right up until before his death and had an unwavering devotion to Our Lady and said that she never refused him anything that he asked for,” the priest said.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York will celebrate an 11 a.m. Mass of Thanksgiving May 13, followed by Curry’s reburial on the church’s grounds in Manhattan.
The apparition took place on the evening of Aug. 21, 1879 in the presence of fifteen men, women, and children, mainly from the village of Knock in County Mayo. They ranged in age from 5 to 74 years old.
Some of the witnesses reported figures that appeared to be the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and St. John at the parish church’s gable wall. Amid luminous lights, they saw the figure of a lamb and a cross on an altar.
Curry’s older cousin, Patrick Hill, was at the vision too. He placed the young boy on his shoulders so he could see.
In the pouring rain, the witnesses stayed, praying the rosary.
When the Church launched an official inquiry in October 1879, young John Curry’s testimony was among the fifteen official witness testimonies. His first account is brief.
“The child says he saw images, beautiful images, the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph,” said the document, posted on the Knock shrine’s website. “He could state no more than that he saw the fine images and the light, and heard the people talk of them, and went upon the wall to see the nice things and the lights.”
Years later, in a 1936 letter to Fr. Dan Corcoran, who was then curate of Knock Parish, Curry said of the event: “I remember it as well as I do last night.”
Curry reaffirmed his testimony before a second Church inquiry held in New York in 1937. He described the figures:
“It appeared to me that they were alive, but they didn’t speak. One of the women there, Bridget Trench, kissed the Blessed Virgin’s feet and tried to put her arms around the feet but there was nothing there but the picture. I saw her do that. The figures were life-size and I will remember them till I go to my grave.”
Fr. Gibbons said the apparition took place at a troubled time for Ireland. Land reform efforts had provoked heated controversy and even violence, while scattered famines recalled the fearful times of Ireland’s Great Hunger.
This is the background of the traditional prayer: “Our Lady of Knock, Queen of Ireland, you gave hope to your people in a time of distress and comforted them in sorrow.”
“Our Lady of Knock was, and continues to be an icon of hope, forgiveness and compassion for all,” Fr. Gibbons said, calling the reburial “a wonderful opportunity” to recognize Curry.
“He, like many others at the time, was forced to emigrate in search of work and was unable to travel home again.”
Curry had emigrated to New York in 1897 at the age of 25, then was in London in 1900 before returning to the U.S. in 1911. He worked as railway laborer near Milwaukee, then moved to New York in the 1920s and worked an attendant at the City Hospital on what is now New York’s Roosevelt Island.
He never married.
When his health began to decline, he moved to live with the Little Sisters of the Poor on Long Island.
Not until shortly before the second inquiry began did he tell the sisters that he was one of the witnesses to the apparition at Knock.
Late in life, Curry would recount the stories of the apparition and of serving Mass for Archdeacon Bartholomew Cavanaugh, the parish priest of Knock. Just before the apparition began, the priest had completed a series one hundred Masses for the souls in Purgatory whom the Virgin Mary wished to be released.
Curry died in the care of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Manhattan in 1943, aged 69. He was buried in an unmarked grave at Pine Lawn Cemetery in Long Island. Curry’s cousin, Patrick Hill, passed away in Boston in 1927 at the age of 60.
The modern-day rector of the shrine, Fr. Gibbons, spoke about Curry’s unmarked grave to Cardinal Dolan when the cardinal led a 2015 pilgrimage to Knock.
Initially, he asked the cardinal to help bless the grave when a gravestone was provided. The cardinal then offered to bring Curry’s remains to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. When this proved impossible, the grounds of the historic cathedral was chosen.
Fr. Gibbons said Knock is extremely grateful to the cardinal for his support and encouragement. In an unusual reversal, 130 pilgrims will be flying from Knock to New York City. Their numbers include some of Curry’s relatives.
Tom Beirne, a New York resident who is co-chairing the reburial committee, told CNA the reburial means that Curry “will finally get the recognition that he so greatly deserves at this point.”
He suggested that the reburial and focus on Our Lady of Knock would increase Marian devotion, combined with the centenary of the Marian apparition known as Our Lady of Fatima.
Beirne said Our Lady of Knock has continuing significance to Irish-Americans. He pointed to the St. Patrick’s Day Mass with Cardinal Dolan at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, when the singer Cathy Maguire sang “an amazing rendition” of Dana Rosemary Scallon’s song “Our Lady of Knock”, which went viral on the internet.
Beirne said that St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral is “hugely significant” to the Irish community and the Irish-American Catholic fraternity the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which is assisting in the reburial.
“Archbishop John Hughes, ‘Dagger Hughes.’ called on the Ancient Order of Hibernians to physically defend St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on a couple of occasions against the planned destruction by Nativists and the ‘Know Nothings’,” he said.
The group and its counterpart, the Ladies’ Ancient Order of Hibernians, host an annual pilgrimage to the Our Lady of Knock Shrine in East Durham, New York.
Today, Knock is the National Marian Shrine of Ireland and hosts the largest pilgrimage in the country. The shrine is surrounded by gardens with five churches.
“Pilgrims often comment on the great sense of peace that they experience here,” Fr. Gibbons said.
The National Novena to Our Lady of Knock takes place Aug. 14-22 every year, bringing guest speakers, workshops for pilgrims, and a candlelight rosary procession around the shrine grounds each evening.
Washington D.C., May 5, 2017 / 01:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Debate continues over the Democratic Party’s acceptance of pro-life members, voters and politicians, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made comments signaling that she is open to them.
The San Francisco Democrat cited her own childhood in a “very Catholic family” in an Italian-American sector of Baltimore.
“Most of those people – my family, extended family – are not pro-choice. You think I’m kicking them out of the Democratic Party?” she told the Washington Post May 2.
She said that the Democrats were united by “our values about working families,” suggesting that Democrats’ perceived rigidity on issues like gay marriage and abortion helped elect Republican Donald Trump as president. She cited the fact that the passage of the 2010 health care law was possible only after securing assurances it would not fund abortion.
About three in ten Democrats think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, the Pew Research Center has said.
Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America criticized Rep. Pelosi, telling the Washington Post “encouraging and supporting anti-choice candidates leads to bad policy outcomes that violate women’s rights and endanger our economic security.”
Hogue praised the 2016 Democratic Party platform, saying “it didn’t just seek to protect abortion access – it sought to expand it.” She said the party “can’t back down” if it wants to regain power.
Support for pro-life Democrats became a subject of debate within the party in mid-April, when former Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez publicly supported the Democratic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Neb., Heath Mello.
Pro-abortion rights activists criticized the endorsements, noting Mello’s support for abortion restrictions in the Nebraska legislature and his opposition to some taxpayer funding of abortion.
The abortion rights advocacy group NARAL harshly criticized Perez and Sanders, calling their support for Mello “politically stupid.”
Amid the controversy, Mello said that as a Catholic his faith “guides my personal views” but “as mayor I would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care.”
In response to the political debate, Perez said there was no place for pro-life advocates in the party.
“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” he said, adding “this is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”
Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, told CNA in late April that Perez’s move was “stunning to see.”
“Pro-life Democrats are deeply concerned about this extreme position that the Democratic Party has taken and this non-negotiable position,” she said.
In her recent interview, Pelosi told the Washington Post she thought abortion is “kind of fading as an issue.”
At the same time, she pointed to U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. (D-Penn.), who ran as a pro-life Democrat.
“Bob Casey – you know Bob Casey – would you like him not to be in our party?” she said.
While Casey has described himself as pro-life, he has also opposed an end to funding abortion provider Planned Parenthood through federal contraception programs.
His father, Bob Casey, Sr., was a governor of Pennsylvania who was denied a speaking spot at the 1992 Democratic National Convention when he sought to present a report critical of the party’s platform on abortion that declared “reproductive choice” to be a fundamental right.
Ahead of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, then-Speaker of the House Pelosi attempted to justify her position in favor of abortion on Catholic grounds. Her attempt was rebuked by then-Archbishop of Denver Charles J. Chaput.
Kansas City, Kan., May 5, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas announced this week a halt to their involvement with Girl Scouts USA, and an eventual transfer of their support to alternative scouting programs.
&ldq… […]
Merrimack, N.H., May 5, 2017 / 12:05 am (National Catholic Register).- Anthony Esolen, the prolific Catholic scholar and author known for his distinctly Catholic worldview and translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, has accepted a teaching posi… […]
Washington D.C., May 4, 2017 / 06:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- “Life is winning in America,” U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told attendees at a pro-life gala on Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C.
“Life is winning through the steady adv… […]
Washington D.C., May 4, 2017 / 01:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Religious freedom advocates credited President Donald Trump with taking a “first step” toward protecting religious freedom with an executive order he signed on Thursday, but stressed that there is still more work to be done.
“I thought the executive order was a great step forward,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. told CNA. “[Trump] himself says this is the first step. But it’s the beginning, and we’ve waited a long time for it.”
President Donald Trump signed a religious freedom executive order on Thursday in the White House Rose Garden, on the National Day of Prayer, with religious leaders – including Cardinal Wuerl – standing around him.
The executive order instructs government agencies to consider issuing new regulations to address conscience-based objections to federal HHS mandate, which requires employers to offer health insurance plans that fund contraception, sterilizations and some drugs that can cause early abortions.
It also calls for a loosening of IRS enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits religious ministers from making endorsements of political candidates from the pulpit to retain the tax-exempt status of churches.
Congressional action is required to formally repeal the law, but the executive order is an important move in ensuring that religious entities can weigh in on political issues without losing their tax-exempt status.
Attending the signing of the executive order were the Little Sisters of the Poor, plaintiffs in one of the HHS mandates case against the federal government. Trump honored two of the sisters who were present in the Rose Garden, calling them “incredible nuns who care for the sick, the elderly, and the forgotten.”
“I want you to know that your long ordeal will soon be over,” he told the sisters of their years-long HHS mandate case, and saying that his order would protect them and other religious organizations from the mandate.
“We are grateful for the president’s order and look forward to the agencies giving us an exemption so that we can continue caring for the elderly poor and dying as if they were Christ himself without the fear of government punishment,” said Mother Loraine, Mother Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
For years, the HHS mandate has been the subject of heated legal debates. It originated in the Affordable Care Act’s rule that health plans include “preventive services,” which was interpreted by President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to include mandatory cost-free coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-causing drugs in health plans.
After a wave of criticism, the government offered an “accommodation” to religious non-profits who conscientiously objected to complying with the mandate – they would have to notify the government of their objection, and the government would directly order their insurer to provide the coverage in question.
However, dozens of religious charities, schools, and dioceses still sued, saying that even with the “accommodation,” they would still be required to cooperate with – and possibly even to pay for, indirectly – the objectionable coverage. EWTN is among the organizations that have filed lawsuits. CNA is part of the EWTN family.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has defended a number of the groups suing the government over the HHS mandate, explained that the order will empower federal agencies to ensure protections for religious organizations in mandate cases.
“The agencies have everything they need to review these rules and make sure groups like the Little Sisters are protected,” Lori Windham, senior counsel with the Becket Fund, told reporters.
“We will engage with the Administration to ensure that adequate relief is provided to those with deeply held religious beliefs about some of the drugs, devices, and surgical procedures that HHS has sought to require people of faith to facilitate over the last several years,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston-Galveston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated on Thursday.
“We welcome a decision to provide a broad religious exemption to the HHS mandate, but will have to review the details of any regulatory proposals,” he added.
The new order also declared that “It shall be the policy of the executive branch to vigorously enforce Federal law’s robust protections for religious freedom” and instructed the Attorney General to “issue guidance interpreting religious liberty protections in Federal law.”
Still, many religious freedom advocates felt that the order did not go far enough. For example, it does not offer protections for health care workers and facilities that decline to perform abortions, or adoption agencies that place children only in homes with both a mother and a father.
“Today’s executive order is woefully inadequate,” Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation stated in The Daily Signal, saying it “does not address the major threats to religious liberty in the United States today.”
It is narrower than the previous draft of a religious freedom executive order that had earlier been leaked to The Nation, but was ultimately scrapped in February. That draft had outlined religious freedom exemptions for not only religious organizations, but also closely-held for-profit businesses in many different areas, like education, health care, and employment.
Religious freedom advocates – including over 50 members of Congress, in an April 5 letter to President Trump – had hoped for broader religious protections in a new executive order.
Cardinal DiNardo noted that “in areas as diverse as adoption, education, healthcare, and other social services, widely held moral and religious beliefs, especially regarding the protection of human life as well as preserving marriage and family, have been maligned in recent years as bigotry or hostility – and penalized accordingly.”
“We will continue to advocate for permanent relief from Congress on issues of critical importance to people of faith,” he added.
Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, told CNA that the order was “an important first step” toward protecting religious freedom, but more must be done.
“The substance of the order is certainly a win for groups like EWTN, Notre Dame, the Little Sisters of the Poor, but it is not everything that we hoped for,” he told CNA. “And therefore I describe it as a work in progress, in terms of the fight for religious liberty. We didn’t get into this mess in one fell swoop, and we’re not going to get out of it in one clean solution.”
He stressed the need for “protections for faith-based groups on the issue of marriage, on gender, the right of the Catholic Church to carry out its social services when they receive federal grants.”
Burch also pushed for legislative action, like the First Amendment Defense Act and the Conscience Protection Act.
The administration also needs to be staffed with the right people in federal agencies who will be friendly to religious freedom, Professor Robert Destro of Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law told CNA.
“Personnel is policy,” he said, and Trump still needs to make hundreds of hires in these regulatory agencies that interpret existing law, including the agencies that will be dealing with HHS mandate protections for religious organizations.
Trump signed the executive order on the National Day of Prayer, and after he met with Cardinal Wuerl and Cardinal DiNardo.
“We had an opportunity to thank him first of all, for this executive order on religious liberty which is so important,” Cardinal Wuerl said of the meeting.
He also hoped the conversation was a starting point for further dialogue on many other topics. “One of the things that we need, I think, just to continue to talk about, the whole range of human value issues,” Cardinal Wuerl said. “He is certainly supportive of the life issues, supportive of religious liberty. And so we have to continue now to talk about other areas where we might find a place to work together.”
The White House also announced Thursday that Trump would be traveling to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican. Cardinal Wuerl said that the president “was also very, very, I thought, focused on this trip he’s going to take that will include a visit to the Vatican. So it was a very good meeting.”
© Catholic World Report