Washington D.C., Jun 2, 2018 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A proposal introduced earlier this year aims to expand the practice of surrogacy within the U.S. in an effort to include same-sex couples as surrogate parents and to loosen state supervision ove… […]
Washington D.C., Jun 1, 2018 / 04:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Fifty years after the sexual revolution promised female empowerment through casual sex “without consequences,” scholars are looking into the far-reaching social effects of that revolution.
“Unlike our forerunners in 1968, those of us living today now have access to something they didn’t — 50 years of sociological, psychological, medical, and other evidence about the revolution’s fallout,” said author and scholar Mary Eberstadt in the opening speech at a conference entitled, “The #MeToo Moment: Second Thoughts on the Sexual Revolution.”
“The time has come to examine some of that evidence,” said Eberstadt.
Eight female scholars presented research on birth control, infertility, the hook-up culture, sexually transmitted diseases, pornography, surrogacy, and sex trafficking at the May 31 conference, co-sponsored by the Catholic Women’s Forum and Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture.
“The #MeToo movement has forced us to confront the reality that when it comes to sexual politics, women remain very much at risk,” said Dr. Suzanne Hollman, a professor of clinical psychology at George Washington University.
Seventy-eight percent of women said they regretted their most recent hookup encounter, according to a 2012 study cited by Hollman.
When Dr. Monique Chireau was in medical school at Brown University training to be an obstetrician-gynecologist 20 years ago, cases of venereal warts were extremely uncommon.
“Now it is a common disease,” said Chireau, who discussed the rise in sexually transmitted diseases and their lasting effects. Sexually transmitted diseases have reached an all-time high in California, according to data released by the California Department of Public Health earlier this month, which showed more than 300,000 cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in 2017. These sexually transmitted diseases can lead to infertility, explained Chireau.
“Women spend [their] 20s trying to avoid pregnancy and their 30s trying to become pregnant,” said Dr. Marguerite Duane, an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University in her discussion of research on birth control versus fertility awareness based methods.
“The explosion of sexual activity thanks to the pill has also been accompanied by levels of divorce, cohabitation, and abortion never seen before in history,” observed Eberstadt. “It has also, as the #MeToo movement shows, contributed to a world in which 24/7 sex is assumed to be a sexual norm to the detriment of those who resist any advance for any reason.”
“The belief that sex is a casual, non-intimate, recreational, adversarial behavior” and pornography use among men are two of the main predictors of sexual violence against women, said another psychologist, Mary Anne Layden, who has treated both rapists and rape victims in her cognitive therapy practice.
Pornography provides the “perfect learning environment” to train men to force sex on women, deafening their ability to perceive consent, according to Layden, who directs the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
She cited multiple studies that have found that pornography’s overwhelmingly violent content leads to violence against women.
One study of students 18 to 21 years old found that the earlier the male child was exposed to pornography, the more likely it is that he will engage in non-consenting sex as a young adult.
“The libertarian conceit that pornography is a victimless crime is over,” said Eberstadt, who called pornography “the sexual revolution’s bastard son.”
The sexual revolution empowered “the already strong and makes the weaker parties more vulnerable than before. This is true, for example, of the young women who were recruited for and demeaned by egg harvesting,” continued Eberstadt. “It is true of the women and children exploited in the frightening rush to normalize prostitution.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found an 846 percent increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking online in a period of only five years, said Professor Mary Leary, who specializes in criminal law and human trafficking and teaches at The Catholic University of America.
Women are also being exploited in the surrogacy industry, another arena in which “bodies are commodified,” explained Jennifer Lahl, the founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl has testified at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on surrogacy and egg trafficking.
“The global fertility industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar a year industry,” said Lahl. “Earlier this week, Market Watch announced this industry will reach $30 billion dollars by 2023.”
“As the years go by we have larger sample sizes and more studies being published, we are learning more and more about the very real harms to women who serve as surrogates or egg donors and also the children that were born of these technologies,” Lahl explained.
“Bodies of women in particular are valued for their reproductive capacities — their eggs, their wombs. Children become objects of design and manufacture when highly desirable eggs are sought from women of certain intelligence, features, capabilities are brought together with carefully picked sperm and often gestated by another woman, even a stranger in another country, a third world country,” she continued.
“This is the largest social human experiment of our time — we are learning as we go of the harms to women and children. Where else in medicine do we allow such things to happen?” asked Lahl.
Gendercide is another global consequence of the sexual revolution’s promotion of abortion, said Mary Eberstadt. “Around the planet millions more unborn girls are killed every year than boys. They are killed because they are girls.”
“This grotesque outcome could not have been foreseen half a century ago, but we see it now. It is as anti-female as it is possible to be,” she continued.
In responding to the victims of the sexual revolution, the Church must remember that “our responsibility is healing,” said Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. in a keynote address.
The cardinal encouraged Catholics to reach out to reach out through encounter and “accompaniment of this generation.”
“Our task is not only to have clear in our mind the teaching, but to be able to reach out to them in a way that they begin to hear us,” he said.
Youngstown, Ohio, Jun 1, 2018 / 02:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop George V. Murry, S.J., of Youngstown, Ohio was released from the Cleveland Clinic Tuesday evening, following a month of intensive chemotherapy treatment, the diocese said.
“Diagno… […]
Des Moines, Iowa, Jun 1, 2018 / 11:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An Iowa judge is temporarily blocking the state’s newly-signed “heartbeat bill” from going into effect, he announced on Friday.
Judge Michael Huppert issued a temporary injun… […]
Portland, Maine, May 31, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the Maine Council of Churches changed its decision-making process earlier this year, the Bishop of Portland was forced to withdraw from the group, the Portland Press-Herald reported Tuesday.
The council had previously required unanimous agreement before advocating on a public policy issue, but in February adopted a simple majority vote. This meant that continued membership in the group could have forced the Diocese of Portland to be represented by views at odds with Catholic teaching.
Bishop Robert Deeley wrote to Bonny Rodden, president of the Maine Council of Churches, to announce the withdrawal of the Portland diocese, Gillian Graham wrote in the Portland Press-Herald May 29.
“As the Bishop of the Diocese I find this unfortunate, but I see no alternative. Our continuing participation could result in me advocating for two different, and even contradictory, positions,” Bishop Deeley wrote, according to the Press-Herald.
“What I advocate for cannot be simply determined by a majority vote. It is expected that my advocacy is grounded in the teachings of the Church. Any other position would be contrary to my responsibility as the bishop of Portland.”
The bishop added that “As we do with the many activities of our parish communities and, of course, the tremendous good done by Catholic Charities, we will be working to serve the needs of the poor, the disadvantaged and the migrants among us, and keep before the people of our state the need to serve the common good through our care for one another.”
The members of the Maine Council of Churches, found in 1938, “act as one voice to advocate for the disenfranchised, the downtrodden and the protection of God’s creation,” according to the organization’s website.
The Maine Council of Churches currently says it has seven member denominations: Episcopal, Unitarian Universalist, United Church of Christ, United Methodist, Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Quakers.
The Diocese of Portland had joined the council in 1982. The Press-Herald reported that its membership will officially end June 30.
Jane Field, executive director of the Maine Council of Churches, told the Portland Press-Herald that the decision to change the council’s decision-making process came amid disagreements over LBGTQ issues. Field is a minister at a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
During debates over same-sex marriage, the council would not take a stand, “in order to keep everyone at the table,” she said. “When it came to certain areas, in particular issues affecting the LGBTQ community, they would invoke this practice (of staying silent)”.
In a March 14 letter to the editor in the Portland Press-Herald, Field wrote, in her capacity as executive director of the Maine Council of Churches, that “Sexual orientation and gender identity are a gift from God – not a condition that needs treatment, not a choice that needs conversion, not something broken that needs repair.”
Field said there is a “deep sadness” over the Portland diocese’s decision to leave the council, “but at the same time, I feel the council still has a vital role to play in the state. I believe we will find ourselves side by side with the diocese on certain issues like hunger and human trafficking.”
The Catholic Church is the largest religious institution in the state. In 2010, the Diocese of Portland included 203,000 persons, while there were nearly 94,000 mainline Protestants in Maine.
St. Paul, Minn., May 31, 2018 / 02:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Announcing a $210 million agreement with sexual abuse victims, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of Saint Paul and Minneapolis said he hopes the settlement will mark a new beginning for abuse survivors and the local Church.
“With the settlement today, we reaffirm our efforts to protect children and vulnerable adults,” Archbishop Hebda said at a May 31 press conference.
“Even in this moment of taking another step toward providing justice to survivors of abuse, we know our work in this regard is not complete,” he said. “Our Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment team will continue its work on demonstrable actions to ensure that our churches, schools and communities are safe places for all.”
He noted that the December 2015 child safety policies established by the archdiocese – which include training every volunteer and employee who works with children about how to recognize and prevent abuse – continue to be the national standard for maintaining safe environments.
Thanking the victims who have come forward to share their stories, he offered an apology on behalf of the Church.
“I recognize that the abuse stole so much from you – your childhood, your innocence, your safety, your ability to trust, and in many cases, your faith,” he said, voicing hope that the settlement, which comes after more than two years of deliberation, will bring closure for victims and allow them to take the next step in the healing process.
The agreement announced by the archdiocese Thursday includes a plan for abuse compensation as well as for bringing the archdiocese out of bankruptcy.
The amount of the settlement is $210 million, said Tom Abood, chair of the Archdiocesan Finance Council, who negotiated the agreement. This is an increase of more than $50 million from the proposal that the archdiocese had originally submitted.
In January 2015, the archdiocese had filed for bankruptcy, saying many abuse claims had been made possible under Minnesota legislation that opened a temporary window for older claims to be heard in civil court.
The initial plan proposed by the archdiocese included $156 million for survivors who filed claims. That plan would have drawn about $120 million in insurance settlements and $30 million from the archdiocese and some of its parishes. Victims’ attorneys said it was inadequate and did not include insurers and parishes sufficiently.
In January 2018, a federal bankruptcy judge ordered a return to mediation for all the parties involved.
Under the final plan, the majority of the money – about $170 million – comes from insurance carriers for the archdiocese and individual parishes. The other $40 million is from diocesan and parish sources, such as cash-on-hand and the sale of interests in land.
Details of the final plan will be released in the coming days, Abood said.
Sources close to the archdiocese told CNA that between 33 and 40 percent of the settlement amount is likely to be consumed by plaintiffs’ attorney fees.
According to attorney Jeff Anderson, whose firm represents the abuse survivors, this is the largest settlement ever reached in a Catholic abuse case.
Anderson said that 450 survivors were included in the bankruptcy reorganization case, and 91 offenders were exposed and listed as credibly accused offenders who had never before been listed and exposed.
Jim Keenan, who was sexually abused by a priest at age 13, called the settlement “an absolute triumph” for victims.
He emphasized the need for continued vigilance in preventing abuse, but added, “I do believe we have made the world safer in terms of the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis.”
Marie Milke, another victim, spoke about the power of healing that renewed her desire to be alive.
“We’re all aware of bad priests, but I have to acknowledge a few good priests,” she added, pointing to her uncle, who is a priest, and two other priests who fight for victims. “I think it’s important to know that there are still good priests, I want to thank you for not being afraid and to keep fighting for us.”
Abood noted that this settlement will bring a resolution to all pending abuse litigation against the archdiocese, parishes, and other Church entities.
Archbishop Hebda said he hopes that the settlement, which will also complete the archdiocese’s bankruptcy process, can mark a new beginning and allow for atonement, healing and restoration of trust.
“I sure hope, for those who have been harmed in the past, that this brings closure for them,” he said, stressing that the Church wants to be partners in healing, and not adversaries.
“I ask that we enter this new day together, in hope and in love,” he said.
Philadelphia, Pa., May 31, 2018 / 02:31 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Over the past 25 years, Sharonell Fulton has been a mother to more than 40 children through foster parenting in Philadelphia.
She has opened her heart and home to children who have suffered … […]
St. Paul, Minn., May 31, 2018 / 12:23 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After more than two years’ deliberation, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis and abuse survivors have agreed to a plan for abuse compensation as well as for bringing the archdiocese out of bankruptcy.
A statement released on Thursday by Jeff Anderson & Associates law firm, which represents the abuse survivors, called the settlement the “largest settlement ever reached in a Catholic bankruptcy case”, though they did not at the time disclose a dollar amount.
A source close to the archdiocese told CNA May 31 that the settlement amount reached was $210 million.
In the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, adopted by the U.S. Bishop’s Conference in 2002, the bishops committed to full transparency on abuse settlement amounts. The charter notes that dioceses “are not to enter into settlements which bind the parties to confidentiality unless the victim/survivor requests confidentiality and this request is noted in the text of the agreement.”
Sources close to the archdiocese told CNA that between 33 and 40 percent of the settlement amount is likely to be consumed by plaintiffs’ attorney fees.
Anderson and abuse victims are holding a press conference, and the archdiocese is expected to do so shortly.
In January 2015 the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy, saying many abuse claims had been made possible under Minnesota legislation that opened a temporary window for older claims to be heard in civil court.
The committee representing abuse survivors composed a plan at the time calling for tougher settlements with insurance companies and much larger contributions from the archdiocese. The archdiocese, parishes and insurance companies objected to the plan, saying its effect would be “liquidating” the archdiocese.
From the archdiocese came a proposed plan that included $156 million for survivors who filed claims. The plan would draw about $120 million in insurance settlements and $30 million from the archdiocese and some of its parishes. Victims’ attorneys said it was inadequate and did not include insurers and parishes adequately.
In January 2018, a federal bankruptcy judge ordered a return to mediation for all the parties involved.
Denver, Colo., May 31, 2018 / 03:09 am (CNA).- Earlier this year, a 25-year-old man smashed his rental van into innocent pedestrians in downtown Toronto on a Tuesday, killing 10 and injuring more than a dozen.
The driver was not part of the usually-suspected terrorist networks. Instead, he was found to be part of the “incels” – short for involuntary celibates – an obscure online community of mostly men who blame women and society for their lack of a sex life. They believe the distribution of sex in the world to be unfair – particularly to them.
Their once dark and largely-unknown corner of the internet has since garnered some attention following the attack, prompting New York Times columnist Ross Douthat to posit that sex robots will be society’s answer to the incels – the logical way to pacify their lust before they turn more vans on innocent civilians.
“Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter,” Douthat wrote. “But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.”
A subsequent cover story on sex robots featured in New York Magazine noted that some research has predicted that by 2050, sex robots will not just be for the angry incels, but for society at large. People will have – and possibly prefer – intimate relationships to sex robots than to people, the story predicted.
Are we more than an orgasm?
Sr. Mary Patrice Ahearn is a psychologist and a religious sister with the Religious Sisters of Mercy in Alma, Michigan.
Ahearn said that the rise in communities like incels and the prospect of relationships with sex robots points to the fact that society has forgotten God, or the transcendental aspect of the human experience.
“I think what they’re both pointing to, which nobody talks about, is the transcendental desire or part of each of us,” she said. “(W)hen we take out this transcendental part, or dare I say faith or God, you have to fill that void with something.”
People need to seriously grapple with the transcendental ache and longing that they feel in their lives, and come to terms with what that might mean, rather than looking to fill the void with sex robots or other technology, she said.
“So I would ask the question: Is the deepest desire in your heart to be sexually satisfied, to have an orgasm? Is that the deepest desire of my heart? And people have to seriously ask those questions,” she said.
“Everyone has this desire for sex,” Ahearn said, “but so do the cows we drive by on the road, we all have that.”
Not only is society increasingly irreligious and unwilling to acknowledge the transcendental, but humanity is also losing some of the basic bonds of family and friendship to technology, bonds which used to allow people to experience intimacy outside of sexual relationships, she added.
“We’re more connected than ever if you think of technology and all the ways that we can communicate,” she said. But it doesn’t always lead to deeper human relationships because it’s “this constant checking with their devices, just constant restlessness with it.”
The rise of the incels and the sex robot seem to be indications (albeit extreme ones) of another societal problem – we’re really, deeply lonely.
The loneliness problem
Recent research has shown that Americans are lonelier than ever, and technology may be the biggest culprit. A 2016 study found a strong correlation between amounts of time spent on social media and depression in young adults – the longer one lingered on sites like Facebook and Instagram, the more depressed they were.
Last year, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy began warning of a loneliness epidemic, a public health crisis he says has gone largely ignored but that nonetheless has detrimental impacts on people’s physical and emotional well-being.
Just last month, a survey of Americans conducted by Cigna insurance company also found that people are lonelier than ever – especially the young. At least half of the survey respondents identified themselves as lonely, and the average American scored a 44 on the UCLA-created “loneliness” scale, qualifying them as, well, lonely. The Cigna survey also found that how people used social media mattered – those who used it to reach out and make real connections were less lonely than those who just passively scrolled through feeds.
Cristina Barba is the founder and executive director of The Culture Project, an organization which sends teams of young people to high schools and youth groups to “proclaim the dignity of the human person and the richness of living sexual integrity, inviting our culture to become fully alive.”
In their work with young people, Barba said they have found that technology is exacerbating the already-emerging problems of social isolation in American culture to the extreme. Not only are young people more lonely, she said, they often do not know how to make authentic, real-world connections.
“It’s a combination of a lot of things,” Barba told CNA. “The breakdown of family and marriage, families move far apart from each other, people not even having their parish worship communities like they used to…those are all broader societal issues.” “But I think what is most pervasive and most recent is technology,” she added. “Technology has just taken this to the next level, much more quickly.”
Barba’s findings match up with what researcher and psychologist Jean Twenge found among what she calls iGen, the generation after Millennials that grew up never knowing a world without the internet and smartphones.
“Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation,” Twenge said in a September 2017 article for The Atlantic. “Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements ‘A lot of times I feel lonely,’ ‘I often feel left out of things,’ and ‘I often wish I had more good friends.’ Teens’ feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since,” Twenge said.
The Culture Project itself started out as a community of friends that came together, bonding over the fact that they had tried the culture’s path to happiness in various ways and had found it wanting, Barba noted.
Instead of “sitting around and moaning” about it, Barba said that group of friends decided to do something to make a difference. They started living in community, and forming the mission of The Culture Project, which gives talks to teens throughout the country about chastity and living lives of sexual integrity.
But while community has been a “key pillar” for The Culture Project, they’ve found that technology has made it so that teens today do not know how to form community or even friendships among themselves, let alone romantic relationships.
“We’ve had parents coming to us and say, ok it’s great that you’re talking about virtue and dating, but my kids don’t even know what it means to have a friend. Can you talk about friendship?”
Today’s teens are a generation that has been raised on the internet and social media, Barba said, which means that their idea of friendship equates to that of a follower.
“It’s like a show that you’re putting on,” she said, “it’s people that follow you and people that you follow. It’s not an interaction, the only interaction is to make others jealous, or to be cooler than or to prove yourself. There isn’t actually a meeting of common interests, or someone you do stuff together with, someone you care about. All of those things are lost through social media at a young age.”
‘Encounter’ as a solution
Culture Project missionaries address the friendship crisis in multiple ways throughout their encounters with teens, Barba said. One of the most effective ways to address this crisis has been simply modeling authentic, healthy friendships among the Culture Project teams.
“It’s actually them seeing the interactions of our missionaries – a couple guys who are normal, fun, attractive young men and women who are a little bit older than them…and they see these people interacting and it’s a beautiful, healthy, normal dynamic of friendship,” she said. “What we model in our interactions is what is profound and shocking to them.”
They also take the time to address social media, and bring to their students’ attention how much time they are probably spending on social media, and how it could be impacting their relationships.
Pornography and sexting – major pitfalls for young adults in a technology driven world – are also important to address.
The idea is not to bash technology, which is a neutral tool, Barba said, but to raise awareness of how addicted they have likely become to their devices, and to offer practical tips to counter that with more human interaction in their lives.
“We just bring to their attention – what are the ways that we use this? And wow, how many hours a day am I really on that?”
The challenge students to do media fasts – whether that’s an hour a day, or even a week, that they don’t use social media, and see how they feel during that time.
They also challenge them to fill that time with real human interaction – and they’ve had to come up with basic friendship guidelines to teach students how to do this.
“We’re literally making suggestions – and I just have to laugh – it’s the way people need dating guides right now, but it’s like friendship guides,” Barba said. “Like what do friends do? You could meet and go to the mall. You could meet and go to the movies. You could meet and go for a walk. I’m not even kidding.”
While the problem is not one that is easily fixed, Barba said she and her missionaries have found that little efforts can make a big difference.
“I think even just providing a space for young people, whether its a physical space or an event, but providing activities they can do together,” she said.
“It’s so basic, just basic human things, like families and parents spending time together. Or basic community, what parish life used to be or should be – people living near each other, that care about each other, that worship together, that have fun together, that have meals together, things like that,” she said.
Washington D.C., May 30, 2018 / 05:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An unprecedented 66 million people worldwide have been forced from their homes by conflict and violence, according to a report released Wednesday the Center for Strategic and International Stud… […]
© Catholic World Report