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CNA Staff, Nov 6, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- House Republicans scored an upset victory this week in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, as a pro-life, Latino candidate unseated the Democratic incumbent and former HHS secretary who served in Bill Clinton’s administration.

Maria Salazar, a Cuban-American journalist endorsed by the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, has been declared the victor in Florida’s 27th congressional district race. As of Friday afternoon, she was leading Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala by more than 9,000 votes.

The Cook Political Report predicted Salazar’s race to be a “likely Democratic” victory. Cook rated the district D+5—or five percentage points more Democratic than the U.S. average district.

According to a candidate questionnaire circulated by the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, Salazar said she opposed taxpayer funding of abortions; she gave no response on repealing the death penalty.

Salazar also supported limiting the rate on consumer credit loans to 36%, preserving the state option to expand Medicaid in the future, universal background checks for guns, a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants, and funding renewable energy.

Salazar’s victory follows a trend of mostly unexpected Republican success among Latino voters in the general election. President Donald Trump carried the state by more than 300,000 votes as of Friday afternoon. The neighboring 26th congressional district of Southwest Florida also flipped to Republican.

The 27th District includes Miami Beach, Little Havana, and other portions of Miami-Dade County, is more than 70% Hispanic, according to Ballotpedia.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade County by nearly 30 points. However, Democratic nominee and current leader in the presidential race Joe Biden was winning the county by only seven points as of Friday afternoon, according to AP.

Born in Miami’s Little Havana to Cuban emigrants, Salazar graduated from the University of Miami and received a master’s in public administration from Harvard University.

Her victory on Tuesday is one of several House districts that were flipped from Democratic to Republican by GOP women candidates. Republicans have flipped eight House seats so far, for a net gain of six, and women endorsed by the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund won eight of those races.

In addition, the group says that 11 Republican pro-life incumbents won their races, and that the number of pro-life women in the House has more than doubled.

While Salazar’s website does not list abortion among her issues, she did oppose taxpayer funding of abortion in her questionnaire for the state’s Catholic bishops conference, and ran on “pro-life values” in 2018, according to the University of Miami student newspaper.

In 2018, Salazar lost to Shalala by more than 15,000 votes. Shalala served as the Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton.

In 1995 and 1996, Shalala had to take responsibility amid criticism that the Clinton administration’s pick for surgeon general, Dr. Henry Foster, had performed far more abortions than had initially been reported.

Shalala also defended the administration’s position in support of partial-birth abortion as “emergency medicine” and something that “ought to be there to save a woman’s health or to save her life.”

In Congress, she cosponsored legislation to roll back the Trump administration’s religious exemption granted to the Little Sisters of the Poor and others who opposed the HHS contraceptive mandate. She also supported legislation to thwart some state regulations of abortions, as well as to open up coverage of abortions in taxpayer-funded Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP programs.

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Denver Newsroom, Nov 6, 2020 / 03:02 pm (CNA).-  

The Vatican is set to release next week a comprehensive report of the misdeeds of disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who last year was laicized for serial sexual abuse of both minors and adults.

One clerical abuse survivor and advocate told CNA that while it will be hard to read the McCarrick Report next week, she plans to read it all.

“All Catholics will be grieving. I’m in a place of grief myself right now, just anticipating. I know it’s going to be very, very hard,” Teresa Pitt Green, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by priests, told CNA.

“No matter what is in the report, I will go through a depth of grief that is as deep as anything I went through in recovery. Because that’s what being triggered is, and this report will put me and a lot of survivors through hell…I guarantee that survivors are already in profound grief. We’re going to have to walk through it all again, and so are all Catholics, not just survivors.”

The expected report comes after a Vatican review of documents and witness accounts spanning McCarrick’s 40-year episcopal career, after he was accused of serial sexual crimes related to minors and seminarians in 2018.

The Vatican confirmed Nov. 6 that the report would be released the following week, on Nov. 10 at 2pm Rome time.

Green works to bring healing dialogue to the Church through her organization, Spirit Fire.

She said although she fully believes the truth about McCarrick ought to come out, and that the report must be truthful, she also expects that “everyone is going to be in profound grief.”

“Spirit Fire survivors will continue to engage in healing friendships, person to person, with a core of lay ministers and clergy who integrate our survivor recovery experience into healing the whole Church,” she said.

“Maybe the report will break through the cynicism and fear and complacency that enables abuse.”

According to the Vatican, the McCarrick report’s scope will encompass the years 1930-2017— virtually McCarrick’s entire lifespan.

Green said she hopes reading the full report “and going through the hell of it” will enable her to walk with other survivors of abuse who want to read the report as well.

“I’m sure the report will break my heart and the hearts of many. It will hurt like hell because these are the ravages of sin,” Green commented.

She said she has already heard from many survivors who are concerned and worried about what the report might contain. She plans to listen to and accompany them.

“We must remember that the most vile corruption in human institutions has no bearing on God. Even if it hurts so much that you recoil from the Church, run without fear to God, because Jesus is victor,” she said.

“I live for that truth. I survived because of it and I live to bring it to others. Even with the report coming out, whether it’s great or terrible, I know that God is the victor in this. It will hurt, it will be awful; I am concerned about people who are close to suicide already because of COVID. But I know that we heal because Jesus is the victor.”

Reports of McCarrick’s history of sexual abuse were made public in June 2018, when the Archdiocese of New York announced that a sexual abuse allegation against the then-retired McCarrick, received in 2017, was “credible and substantiated.”

McCarrick was a priest and auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of New York, before he became in 1981 the Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, then Archbishop of Newark, and then Archbishop of Washington, DC, where he retired in 2006.

He became a cardinal in 2001, but resigned from the College of Cardinals after it emerged that he had been credibly accused of sexually assaulting a minor. Allegations of serial sexual abuse of minors, seminarians, and priests soon followed, and McCarrick was laicized in February 2019.

The report is expect to answer questions about how McCarrick rose through the ecclesiastical ranks despite apparently widespread rumors of sexual misconduct over the years, and could also address McCarrick’s financial dealings with the Vatican and other senior churchmen, and his reputation for gift-giving and participation in so-called “envelope culture” at the Vatican.

The report could implicate those who knew about McCarrick’s abuse before 2017. There is evidence that the Vatican received as early as 2000, when McCarrick was appointed Archbishop of Washington, a complaint of McCarrick sharing a bed with seminarians.

One official who has seen the report described it to CNA as “lengthy.”

“The version I saw was more than 600 pages,” the official told CNA. “I don’t know if it will all go out in the end, or answer everyone’s questions, but it says a lot.”

One source close to the Washington archdiocesan chancery told CNA that “a roomful of boxes” had been sent to Rome as part of the document review.

The U.S. bishops are set to convene their Fall General Assembly on Nov. 16. The annual gathering, usually held in Baltimore, will take place online this year due to the coronavirus.

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CNA Staff, Nov 6, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- The Fall General Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will be held in two live-streamed sessions on November 16 and 17.

The meeting is set to commence six days after the long-awaited release of the Vatican’s investigation into disgraced former archbishop Theodore McCarrick. The report is set to be released almost exactly one year after Cardinal Sean O’Malley told the USCCB’s 2019 fall meeting that the report would be released “soon.” 

The bishops will also learn the results of the committee chairman elections, and hear addresses from the apostolic nuncio and the National Review Board.

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, who was elected president of the USCCB at last fall’s assembly, will give his first address as the conference’s president, after the spring general assembly, scheduled to occur in June, was canceled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

According to the USCCB, the meeting will “include dialogue by the bishops on a pastoral response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a pastoral response to racism.” Additionally, the bishops will vote on the strategic priorities of the 2021-2024 Strategic Plan, the renewal of the Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, and the budget for the upcoming year. 

Due to the pandemic and the virtual nature of this year’s assembly, the bishops were provided with mail-in ballots to vote in the upcoming conference election. Typically, the votes would occur at the assembly, in-person. 

The bishops will be voting for the chairmen-elect of seven committees: Priorities and Plans, Catholic Education, Communications, Cultural Diversity in the Church, Doctrine, National Collections, and Pro-Life Activities. 

The winners of these elections will serve one year as “chairman-elect” before they take over as chairman at the 2021 Fall General Assembly. Once elevated to chairman, the bishop will serve in that role for a three-year term. 

The bishops will also vote for a chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty, which is currently being led by acting chairman Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami. 

At the Fall 2019 General Assembly, Wenski tied a vote with Bishop George Murry, S.J. of Youngstown following the resignation of Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville due to medical reasons. Murry was older than Wenski, and was declared the victor of that election. 

The position of chairman became vacant once again following Murray’s death on June 5 after a relapse of leukemia. Wenski agreed to assume the role on an acting basis. 

The bishops will also be voting for a new general secretary, who will serve a five-year term. 

The current general secretary is Monsignor Brian Bransfield, a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Also up for election will be new board members of Catholic Relief Services. 

The results of the election will be announced during the virtual assembly.

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Washington D.C., Nov 6, 2020 / 12:15 pm (CNA).- As ballots are still being counted to determine key House races, Democrats are projected to hold control of the chamber—but by a smaller margin. The shift could impact the Democrats’ priorities in the coming years.

As of Friday afternoon, ABC News had projected Democrats with 214 House seats and Republicans with 202.

House Republicans had gained a net total of six seats in the House and are looking to flip several more, in states such as New York, Iowa, and California where districts are either still counting ballots or may hold a recount. While Republicans had flipped eight seats, Democrats flipped two in Raleigh and Greensboro, North Carolina.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) survived his re-election bid after he switched parties in 2019 and opposed the House impeachment of President Trump. He ended up signing a pro-life House petition on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection bill.

Pro-life women candidates were responsible for much of the Republican gain on Tuesday. The number of pro-life women in the House has now “more than doubled,” said Mallory Quigley, vice president of communications for the Susan B. Anthony List, on EWTN Pro-Life Weekly on Thursday. The group’s 501(c)(4) had endorsed a number of women for 2020 House races.

Maria Elvira Salazar won in South Florida’s Miami-Dade County, Ashley Hinson flipped a district in Northeast Iowa, Yvette Herrell unseated a Democratic incumbent in Southern New Mexico, Nancy Mace won in coastal South Carolina, and Michelle Fischbach defeated Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) in Western Minnesota.

Peterson was known as a sometimes “pro-life Democrat” and was endorsed by Democrats for Life of America, although Susan B. Anthony List says his record was mixed.

Ballots are still being counted in other races around the country, and other GOP women candidates could continue to flip districts red. Mariannette Miller-Meeks holds a narrow lead of several hundred votes in Iowa’s second district, where a recount is expected. Claudia Tenney is ahead in New York’s 22nd district race.

As part of its overall campaign with Women Speak Out PAC, Susan B. Anthony List spent $52 million to target more than 8 million voters in 10 battleground states, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and running digital ads.

“I think this is a repudiation of Speaker Pelosi’s radical pro-abortion agenda,” Quigley told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly of the House gains. “Pro-life is a winning issue.”

The Republican gain comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had predicted a double-digit gain of seats for House Democrats as part of an electoral sweep.

Now, with a slimmer majority, Democrats might reconsider some of their policy priorities—especially if Republicans hold on to control of the Senate.

As of Friday morning, Republicans were poised to hold 50 seats in the chamber with two runoff races in Georgia expected in January to determine ultimate control.

If Democrats were to expand their House majority and gain control of the Senate, along with winning the White House, a number of pro-abortion and pro-LGBT policies were expected to be considered. With a clear Democratic majority, the Senate would possibly be able to abolish the filibuster, requiring only a 50-vote majority to pass legislation. The chamber would also be able to move to expand the Supreme Court and negate any perceived Republican advantage there.

Now, with a more competitive House and a possible Republican Senate, that landscape may be altered. Speaker Pelosi and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had both promised to repeal the Hyde Amendment and allow for taxpayer funding of elective abortions, but that measure might be much harder to pass through a Republican Senate.

Other more-controversial measures such as court-packing might now be dead-on-arrival, said National Review senior editor Rammesh Ponnuru on EWTN Pro-Life Weekly.

Pro-lifers, he said, “will be in striking distance” of a House majority and could obtain it by 2022.

Tuesday’s results also foreshadow a possible fight amongst House Democrats over policy priorities and messaging for the next two years—as well as a potential challenge to Speaker Pelosi’s leadership.

In a call with fellow House Democrats on Thursday, Pelosi reportedly insisted that Democrats had won and were given a “mandate” by voters. “We didn’t win every battle, but we won the war,” she said.

However, some Democrats on the call emphasized that the party must moderate its message. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) who represents a suburban district rated R+6 by the Cook Report and who is projected to survive her first re-election battle, insisted that the party change its tone especially on emphasizing issues such as “socialism” and “defund the police.”

Other young progressive congresswomen, however, said that the party need not abandon liberal priorities such as Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted on Friday that liberal policies were not the problem for Democrats.

Thursday’s call—and the ensuing debate—is a snapshot of a possible conflict among House Democrats in the next two years.

The issue of abortion is wrapped up in this fight. Proposals for Medicare-for-All would cover elective abortions in taxpayer-funded plans. Progressive House Democrats such as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) have led efforts in recent years to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which bars taxpayer funding of elective abortions in health care appropriations bills.

The Equality Act, which the House passed in 2019, would set up sexual orientation and gender identity as protected legal classes; critics have said that the bill would infringe on the religious freedom of individuals and groups opposed to the LGBT agenda, and could possibly force health care workers to participate in abortions.

Other House races in doubt on Friday include heavily-Catholic districts in New York. Republicans could gain the state’s first and third districts on Long Island and Staten Island, while Catholic Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) could survive a challenge in his district on Long Island’s north shore. Suozzi has had an 100% rating from the pro-abortion group NARAL in the most recent Congress.

Suozzi helped bring Bishop Robert Barron to Capitol Hill last year to speak to legislators. He called Barron “a remarkable man who has inspired me and my wife and my family for many years.”

In Pennsylvania’s 17th district in the Pittsburgh suburbs, Catholic Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) is expected to win re-election over a Catholic Republican challenger, Sean Parnell. Lamb said in 2018 that on abortion, Catholics “believe that life begins at conception,” but “as a matter of separation of church and state, I think a woman has the right to choose under the law.” He said he would vote against a 20-week abortion ban.
 

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CNA Staff, Nov 5, 2020 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- The Catholic Diocese of Fresno has taken out a restraining order against a priest and launched an investigation of him after he was accused of drug use, physical abuse, threatening behavior and gang links.

Bishop Joseph Brennan of Fresno said Mass last Sunday at St. Joseph’s Church in Selma, Calif. and announced that Father Guadalupe Rios, the parish administrator, has been put on administrative leave while the diocese conducts an investigation.

Cheryl Sarkisian, the diocese’s chancellor, confirmed that the priest has been placed on paid administrative leave while the investigation is pending.

“This is a matter of an internal investigation and the confidentiality and privacy of all concerned parties will be respected and upheld,” Sarkisian told The Fresno Bee Nov. 3.

The restraining order, approved by a Fresno County Superior Court judge Oct. 30, specifically protects the church building, the diocese offices, the church secretary, her daughters, the church bookkeeper, a supervisor of the priest, and Bishop Brennan, Action News of ABC 30 Fresno reports.

Under the order, the priest may not come within 100 yards of the church or any of the people or properties named. The diocese served the order to Rios at its offices.

Several parishioners told Action News the priest was either in a gang or affiliated with one. Alleged gang links are mentioned in the diocese’s application for a restraining order.

“The Diocese of Fresno feels this matter is a difficult one for all concerned parties, but one that had to be addressed in a timely and forthright manner due to the issues that were brought to the attention of the Diocese of Fresno,” the diocese told Action News, according to its Nov. 2 report.

“This matter does not concern misconduct or sexual abuse of a minor,” the diocese said. “Due to the sensitivity of these matters we do not feel it is appropriate to comment further other than that which is already stated by those parties protected in the court documents.”

According to the Fresno Bee, the court documents requesting the restraining order say of the priest: “He is a past gang member or associate and still maintains friendship with gang members.”

Parishioners said they were afraid to be interviewed, telling Action News the priest has posted social media photos of himself with guns, identified as an AK-47, an AR-556, or a .357 Magnum. Selma police seized both of his weapons, the AR-556 and the .357 Magnum, from church grounds.

The diocese has accused Rios of physically and emotionally abusing the 41-year-old church secretary. She said she had a physical and romantic relationship with Rios for five years, which she ended last summer. In her own declaration supporting the restraining order, she alleged that the priest was habitually under the influence of marijuana and alcohol, and this would make him suicidal.

She alleged that in February the priest brandished a gun at her and made threats against her life and his own life.

“Mr. Rios and I were in his rectory when he put a gun to his head in front of me,” she wrote in her declaration. “As I started to cry in shock, I asked him what he was doing and he said to me. ‘Either I’m going to die or you are or we both are.’ Due to his past as a gang member and the gangster friends he hangs out with, I’m afraid for my safety and for my family.”

She said his guns are “accessible” and he has previously threatened to kill her. She said she feared “retaliation” when “he finds out about the diocese knowing the truth about him.”

A court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 25. However, Selma police said they have not received any crime reports related to the restraining order.

In November 2019, an 800-year-old relic of St. Albertus Magnus disappeared from the church Rios led sometime between two Sunday morning Masses.

CNA contacted the Diocese of Fresno, which declined to make further comment.

Rios’ name came up in police reports regarding child pornography allegations against another priest, Father Robert Gamel. According to a police report, Gamel told Rios that he had seen nude photographs on the internet showing a boy at the church. Rios warned him that such photos were considered child pornography and looking at them had legal consequences, the Bakersfield, Calif.-based Eyewitness News television show reported in March 2016.

Rios is not otherwise mentioned in news reports about the case.

Gamel was arrested in 2014 and in 2016 he pleaded no contest to one felony count of possession of child pornography on his computer. Gamel allegedly contacted the boy while at the church, gave him money for clothes and instructed him on what kind to wear.

There are about 1.2 million Catholics in the Fresno diocese, out of about 2.9 million people, including over 140 diocesan priests.

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CNA Staff, Nov 5, 2020 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- A Catholic church in downtown Portland, Oregon – known for helping the area’s poor – suffered shattered windows during a riot Wednesday night that saw nearly a dozen protestors arrested.

The Multnomah Co… […]

CNA Staff, Nov 5, 2020 / 02:52 pm (CNA).-  

The Archbishop of New York said Thursday that a long-awaited Vatican report on the career of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick could be a “black eye” for the Church. The report is expected … […]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 5, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- On average, diocesan priests take about six years to complete seminary formation. For Dominican priests, it is seven. Jesuits study for over a decade. David Pinto, however, has them all beat.

P… […]

CNA Staff, Nov 4, 2020 / 07:29 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland discussed the meaning of suffering – and how Catholics should respond to it – in a recent video reflection.

“We’ve been suffering through this pandemic. We’re suffering through these terrible divisions in our country and the remnants of evils, such as racism [and] social unrest. Here in Oregon, we’ve had these terrible wildfires,” he said October 23 on his weekly video program, Chapel Chat.

“Even though we know suffering is always there, it’s a little bit in our face right now more so perhaps than in the usual course of things. It’s important for a Christian to understand the meaning of suffering.”

Suffering is a mystery, the archbishop said, but the Christian faith helps us understand that suffering does have purpose. He said the question of how an all-good and all-powerful God can allow suffering is particularly important to answer in today’s culture.

God did not create evil or suffering, the archbishop said. Rather, evil entered the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve and brought with it suffering and damage to creation.

“This fallen world has resulted in alienation of the human person from nature even, and certainly that alienation between persons. So things like these natural disasters and diseases and those sorts of things that aren’t the result of human action are part of a fallen world,” he said.

“That may be hard to kind of grasp, but it wasn’t just human beings that were affected by that sin, but this perfect harmony and beauty and goodness that God put in his original creation, all of that has been wounded by that great sin of disobedience.”

But Christ’s sacrifice on the cross has reclaimed suffering and given it value, the archbishop continued. In Christ, suffering is given a new meaning and hope, and it is no longer void of purpose, as Christians can unite their suffering to that of Christ.

“This suffering has been redeemed by Christ … Suffering has value. I know that sounds crazy to people, but Christ has given meaning to human suffering. It’s no longer just an evil that has no purpose, no relation to anything else,” he said. “Now in Christ, it takes on a whole redemptive meaning because we now participate in the redemptive act of Christ.”

By participating in Christ’s passion, we are also able to join in his resurrection, Sample said. He noted that Christ’s sufferings were not merely physical, but that he embraced spiritual suffering as well, as he shouldered the “total reality of sin, of evil, taking it to the cross.”

“Then this means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ’s cross,” the archbishop said. “[T]o suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open to the working of the salvific powers of God, offered to humanity in Christ. In him, God has confirmed his desire to act, especially through suffering.”

While this understanding does not remove suffering, Sample said, “it takes on a whole new meaning because we see it in the light of Christ’s redemptive act.”

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