Washington D.C., Mar 19, 2018 / 04:22 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A report calling the practice of abortion in the U.S. a safe procedure was published last week, causing multiple critics to question the accuracy of its findings.
The study, “The Safety … […]
New Orleans, La., Mar 19, 2018 / 03:31 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic culture is everywhere in New Orleans. Mardi Gras is the city’s defining celebration. The city’s cathedral is one of its most well-known landmarks. And in the days leading to March 19, the people of New Orleans take up a Catholic tradition that began in the Middle Ages – they build “St. Joseph altars.”
This year, nearly 60 New Orleans Catholic schools and parishes have constructed devotional altars, as an expression of gratitude to St. Joseph, and as a labor of love for parishioners, friends, and neighbors.
“The original [St. Joseph’s] altar was built by the people of Sicily in thanks for his prayers to bring an end to their famine,” said Sarah McDonald, communications director of Archdiocese of New Orleans.
“Today, they are considered a labor of love. As you are supposed to be working on the altar you are praying to St. Joseph to bless your family and to hear your intentions and pass them on,” she told CNA.
The tradition began in Sicily, where St. Joseph’s intercession is said to have helped the island through a severe famine almost 1,000 years ago. According to legend, people thanked St. Joseph for his prayers by building prayer altars, on which they placed food, pastries, flowers, wine, and, especially, fava beans.
The beans, which are said to pair well with Chianti, were the first crop Sicilians are said to have grown once their drought ended.
The altars became a custom in Sicily. They came to New Orleans during a wave a Sicilian migration in 19th century.
“In New Orleans we have a very large Sicilian immigrant population coming over in the late 18th century/early 19th century, and with the Sicilian immigrants came the tradition … of St. Joseph’s altars,” McDonald said.
McDonald said the altars were first built in people’s homes, for celebration with neighbors and families. They have now moved to parishes and are even found in some businesses, including grocery stores and concert venues.
Constructed over several days, the altars typically are made in the shape of a cross, with three tiers to represent the Trinity. A picture of St. Joseph is placed on the top tier. Altars are typically blessed by a priest.
The altars are covered with baked goods, flowers, candles, fruits, vegetables, and meatless meals. Many of the pastries and cookies have a symbolic meaning: some cookies are shaped as carpenter’s tools or the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The food is an expression of gratitude for the local harvest, McDonald said, noting that after the festival canned goods and money are donated to those in need.
To complete the day, many parishes stage a reenactment of the Holy Family’s search for shelter in Bethlehem, after which a feast is served.
Called “Tupa Tupa” or “Knock Knock,” the custom has children representing the Holy Family knocking on the parish door looking for shelter. Two times the procession is denied shelter, and on the third knock everyone is let in for the feast.
Washington D.C., Mar 19, 2018 / 02:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- St. Joseph is a model of courage for those in political life today, Fr. Carter Griffin told attendees of Monday’s second-annual Gold Mass for Congressional Staff.
The Mass was celebrated… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 17, 2018 / 04:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- What has been Pope Francis’ most notable action so far in his papacy?
A group of some 300 U.S. Catholics was recently asked this question in a recent study conducted by the Pew Research … […]
Columbus, Ohio, Mar 16, 2018 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal judge has blocked a law from taking effect next week which bans abortions after a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome.
After the law was blocked by Judge Timothy Black March 14, the Catholic Conference of Ohio expressed disappointment in decision but also hope that it may be overturned after an appeal by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine.
“We are disappointed, we do think that it was an appropriate first step to point out, specifically, that so many Down syndrome children are aborted,” said Jim Tobin, Associate Director of the Department of Social Justice at the Catholic Conference of Ohio.
“We are still hopeful that there are other appeals that are available here and that we may be able to yet overturn this decision,” he told CNA.
The law, which was due to go into effect March 23, bans abortions solely due to a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis. It imposes criminal penalties on medical professionals, but women procuring abortions are not penalized.
The law was signed by Governor John Kasich in December 2017.
On behalf of Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in February against the Ohio Department of Health, county prosecutors, and members of the state medical board.
Black blocked the law’s implementation as a privacy violation: “It violates the right to privacy of every woman in Ohio and is unconstitutional on its face,” he wrote.
Supporters of the law have questioned Black’s impartiality. He had served as president of Cincinnati’s Planned Parenthood in 1988 and as its director from 1986-1989.
He recused himself from a case involving Planned Parenthood in 2014.
Tobin lamented the blocking of the law, calling it a tragic case disrespectful to human life.
“It’s just tragic that, particularly in the case of Down syndrome, folks would decide that [these babies] are better off aborted than lovingly cared for or placed for adoption,” he said, noting these cases show “a loss of respect for the dignity of all human life and their value.”
In a March 15 statement, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said will appeal Black’s decision.
“I strongly disagree with the district court’s ruling that there is a categorical right to abortion that prevents even any consideration of Ohio’s profound interests in combatting discrimination against a class of human beings based upon disability. We will be appealing.”
Denver, Colo., Mar 16, 2018 / 04:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The history of Catholic America is, in many ways, an Irish story, with immigrant congregations and their descendants putting their stamp on many churches across the country.
“It was … […]
Philadelphia, Pa., Mar 16, 2018 / 04:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the City of Philadelphia announced it has stopped using Catholic Social Services’ foster care program because it does not place children with same-sex couples, the archdiocese has said it hopes to resume a partnership with the city.
On March 15, Philadelphia Councilwoman Cindy Bass introduced a resolution authorizing the city’s Public Health and Human Services to investigate the city’s partnership with organizations that do not place foster children with LGBTQ people, calling it discriminatory.
Due to the resolution, the city’s Department of Human Services ceased new foster care child intakes with Catholic Social Services and with another faith-based agency, Bethany Christian Services. Earlier this month, Philadelphia officials issued a public service announcement expressing the city’s urgent need for 300 foster families.
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s chief communications officer, Kenneth Gavin, told CNA that Catholic Social Services hopes the foster care partnership with the city will resume.
“Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (CSS) recognizes the vital importance of the foster care program in our city and is proud to provide safe and nurturing foster environments to young people in need,” said Gavin. “We hope to continue our productive relationship with the City of Philadelphia to serve those among us in need.”
“CSS is, at its core, an institution founded on faith based-principles. The Catholic Church does not endorse same-sex unions based upon deeply held religious beliefs and principles. As such, CSS would not be able to consider foster care placement within the context of a same-sex union,” Gavin said.
Catholic Social Services provides foster care services to any young person in need of assistance regardless of background and without making inquiry as to their sexual identity or orientation, according to Gavin. “That’s important to note as it is also a deeply held religious belief for us to provide care for all those in need with dignity, charity, and respect,” he explained.
“Given its affiliation with the Archdiocese, CSS cannot provide services in any manner or setting that would violate its institutional integrity, core values, and Catholic beliefs. That fact is a well-established and long-known one in our relationship with DHS,” continued Gavin.
In a CSS annual report released in 2016, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia remarked that “I’ve been blessed on numerous occasions to witness firsthand how Catholic Social Services (CSS) promotes the dignity of the persons they serve, particularly the weak and vulnerable.”
“The long history of CSS foster care and adoption services is replete with stories of their paving the way for new parents to open the doors of their hearts to children,” Chaput continued.
Catholic Social Services will continue to care for the 241 children that it has currently placed in foster arrangements due to child referrals from the city.
Washington D.C., Mar 16, 2018 / 02:26 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A group of 17 American pro-life leaders delivered a letter to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Thursday urging him against repealing the country’s 8th Amendment.
Ireland’s 8th … […]
Washington D.C., Mar 15, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA, oversaw a secret prison in Thailand where US intelligence targets were reportedly subject to waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques.
As Haspel prepares to face Senate questions about her work with the agency, a national debate over whether “enhanced interrogation” techniques amount to torture has reignited.
It is not clear whether Haspel directly participated in the “enhanced interrogation” of intelligence targets. But at the Cat’s Eye, the code-name for the CIA compound Haspel took over in 2002, al-Qaida suspects were subjected to new interrogation techniques implemented shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks. These methods of “enhanced interrogation” included sleep deprivation, humiliation, painful stress positions, and simulated drowning, known as “waterboarding” in an effort to obtain information about terrorist organizations.
Haspel is also suspected of pushing to destroy videotape evidence of “enhanced interrogations” conducted by CIA operatives.
In the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, Pope St. John Paul II taught that torture is “intrinsically evil.” What does that say about the morality of waterboarding or other methods of “enhanced interrogation?”
“When an interrogator in some other way imposes physical or psychological pain, at least significant pain, until the one being interrogated ‘breaks’ and talks, then I think this is clearly torture and morally evil,” Dr. Kevin Miller, a moral theology professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, told CNA.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.”
“I think that this would clearly encompass some things that the US did in the early or mid 2000s, most especially waterboarding, but very likely some of our other ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques also,” Miller said.
Miller clarified that even if these interrogation techniques were not defined precisely as “torture,” the Church would still object to them due to its firm defence of the dignity of each human person created in the image of God.
The theologian referenced Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world: “Whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself…all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed.”
He noted that “attempts to coerce the will itself,” are condemned in the passage, one that Saint John Paul II repeatedly quoted.
“If one is inflicting physical or psychological distress in order to – and to a degree that one thinks will likely succeed in – getting someone to answer questions that he/she would not otherwise agree to answer, then one is engaging in an attempt to coerce the will – whether or not the distress being inflicted rises to the level of torture. And this is intrinsically evil – contrary to both justice and charity,” said Miller.
An intrinsic evil is an evil that is wrong in the chosen act itself, independent of one’s intentions or the surrounding circumstances, Miller explained.
“Returning to Gaudium et Spes,” continued Miller, the “general principle underlying its condemnation of various evil acts is ‘reverence for man,’ grounded in the need to see every human person as one’s brother or sister, with whom one has been offered a communion that is a participation in the Trinitarian communion.”
The U.S. bishops’ conference has condemned the use of enhanced interrogation techniques for years, particularly after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released part of its 2014 report on CIA’s use of interrogation in the years following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“The acts of torture described in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report violated the God-given human dignity inherent in all people and were unequivocally wrong,” stated Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, who was chair of the U.S. bishops’ international justice and peace committee at the time.
In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis on October 2017, Bishop Cantú affirmed American bishops’ support for “legislation to make torture, which some euphemistically refer to as ‘enhanced interrogation,’ illegal.”
President Barack Obama prohibited the CIA and military from using waterboarding and similar interrogation techniques when he took office in 2009. During a debate during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump said that he supported reinstituting the use of waterboarding “and more.”
“Current U.S. law is clear in banning enhanced interrogation techniques. Any nominee for Director of the CIA must pledge without reservation to uphold this prohibition, which has helped us to regain our position of leadership in the struggle for universal human rights—the struggle upon which this country was founded, and which remains its highest aspiration,” said Senator John McCain in a statement released shortly after Trump announced Haspel as his pick for CIA Director on March 13.
“Ms. Haspel needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA’s interrogation program during the confirmation process,” continued McCain.
“The torture of detainees in U.S. custody during the last decade was one of the darkest chapters in American history,” said McCain, who was himself a victim of torture during the Vietnam War.
“In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, our government squandered precious moral authority in a futile effort to produce intelligence by means of torture. We are still dealing with the consequences of that desperately misguided decision,” McCain added.
Pope Benedict XVI spoke out against any type of torture in a 2007 address, “I reiterate that the prohibition against torture ‘cannot be contravened under any circumstances.”
John Paul II presented an even more vivid condemnation in a speech in 1982, “With regard to torture, the Christian is confronted from his childhood with the reading of the passion of Christ. The memory of Jesus stripped naked, hit, mocked while suffering his agony, should always make him refuse to see similar treatment applied to one of his brothers in humanity.”
If confirmed, Haspel will be the first female director in CIA history. At 61, she has had an extensive career within the spy agency, which she has worked for since 1985.
Washington D.C., Mar 14, 2018 / 03:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops have voiced their strong support for a bill protecting individuals and institutions from discrimination by the federal government based on their beliefs about marriage, regardless of what those beliefs are.
“We welcome and applaud the recent reintroduction of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA),” wrote Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville and Bishop James Conley of Lincoln in a March 14 statement. Archbishop Kurtz chairs the US bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty, while Bishop Conley is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage.
“In a pluralistic society, faith-based charitable agencies and schools should not be excluded from participation in public life by loss of licenses, accreditation, or tax-exempt status because they hold reasonable views on marriage that differ from the federal government’s view,” explained the bishops.
“FADA is a modest and important measure that protects the rights of faith-based organizations and people of all faiths and of no faith who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.”
The bill, which was introduced March 8 by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), provides legal protections for individuals or institutions facing federal discrimination based on their definition of marriage or beliefs about premarital sex.
“What an individual or organization believes about the traditional definition of marriage is not – and should never be – a part of the government’s decision-making process when distributing licenses, accreditations, or grants,” said Senator Lee. “And the First Amendment Defense Act simply ensures that this will always be true in America – that federal bureaucrats will never have the authority to require those who believe in the traditional definition of marriage to choose between their living in accordance with those beliefs and maintaining their occupation or their tax status.”
FADA equally protects those with differing views of marriage. For example, “All Federal definitions of marriage are protected under FADA. FADA would protect a liberal institution that promoted gay marriage, just as it would protect a conservative institution that wanted to promote traditional marriage,” according to Senator Lee’s website.
The bill was previously introduced in the Senate in 2015, but did not make it out of committee. However, the current bill no longer includes protections for federal employees and publicly traded for-profit companies.
The 2015 version of the bill would have protected only those who believe marriage to be the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.
Archbishop Kurtz and Bishop Conley wrote a letter to Lee March 12 expressing their gratitude and support for the bill.
“In a climate of increasing intolerance, these protections are urgently needed,” wrote the bishops, “Persons who believe marriage is the union of one man and one woman are increasingly having their religious freedoms jeopardized and even forfeited.”
“The teaching of the Catholic Church about marriage is based on both faith and reason. Using right reason, one can know that given the nature of the human person, created as male and female, marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The leadership of our Church will continue to promote and protect the natural truth of marriage as foundational to the common good,” the bishops concluded.
FADA currently has 22 co-sponsors, including Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Jim Risch (R-ID), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Rounds (R-SD), John Barrasso (R-WY), Ben Sasse (R-NE), John Hoeven (R-ND), John Thune (R-SD), Rand Paul (R-KY), David Perdue (R-GA), Tim Scott (R-SC), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Boozman (R-AR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Jerry Moran (R-KS).
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