El Paso, Texas, Jan 3, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Bishop of El Paso is urging the Trump administration to extend a temporary residency program for Salvadoran migrants for the sake of keeping families together, as a deadline looms for the Dep… […]
Manassas, Virginia, Jan 2, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Three years ago, a medical office in Manassas, Virginia was one of the area’s largest abortion clinics. Today, it is a free medical clinic for the poor, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin … […]
Washington D.C., Dec 31, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- With a gift of more than 600 handmade leather manuscripts earlier this year, The Catholic University of America is now home to one of the most important collections of Ethiopian religious manus… […]
Phoenix, Ariz., Dec 27, 2017 / 04:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- You’ve probably heard of Bruce Jenner.
Now referred to as Caitlyn Jenner, the high-profile Olympic athlete with a famously dramatic family had a very high-profile transition from male to female – including mutilple surgical alterations, a cover on Vanity Fair magazine and the now-canceled docu-series “I am Cait.”
You probably haven’t heard of Bruce Reimer.
Bruce and his twin brother Brian were born in Canada in the 1960s. At the age of seven months, the otherwise healthy boys were circumcised. But the doctors used a new method of circumcision, involving an electric cauterizing needle, on Bruce. An accident occurred, completely burning off the little boy’s penis.
Brian’s operation was canceled, but his parents were devastated.
The Reimers decided to take Bruce to Dr. John Money, a psychologist and sexologist at Johns Hopkins they had seen on T.V.
Dr. Money had a theory that aside from reproductive and urinary functions, gender was a social construct. Until the Reimer twins, he had largely worked with intersex cases – children born with ambiguous genitalia or abnormal sex chromosomes.
But the Reimer twins – otherwise healthy and biologically normative – were the perfect experiment on which to test his theory of gender fluidity. Brian would be raised as a boy, and Bruce would from now on be called Brenda, and raised as a girl.
The Reimers agreed, and insisted on girl’s clothes and socialization for Brenda throughout childhood. They never told the twins about the accident, or about Brenda’s biological sex.
The twins were brought in for a yearly observation with Dr. Money, who dubbed the case a wild success by the time the twins were nine years old.
“No-one else knows that she is the child whose case they read of in the news media at the time of the accident,” he wrote.
“Her behavior is so normally that of an active little girl, and so clearly different by contrast from the boyish ways of her twin brother, that it offers nothing to stimulate one’s conjectures.”
What the Doctor didn’t tell
Deacon Dr. Patrick Lappert is two things you wouldn’t necessarily expect to occur in tandem – a plastic surgeon, and a deacon for the Roman Catholic Church.
These two roles give him a unique understanding of the human person, both physically and metaphysically. They’ve also given him a unique perspective on transgendered persons, and the current cultural movement to support surgical sex changes.
Dr. Lappert was asked to speak at this year’s Truth and Love conference for Courage in Phoenix. He included the case of the Reimer twins during his talk, “Transgender Surgery and Christian Anthropology.”
The on-paper success of Brenda Reimer as a lovely and well-adjusted little girl did not match the lived reality of the child, Dr. Lappert said. Brenda Reimer was a rambunctious tomboy – shunned by the boys for wearing dresses, and by the girls for being too wild.
“She was very rebellious. She was very masculine, and I could not persuade her to do anything feminine. Brenda had almost no friends growing up. Everybody ridiculed her, called her cavewoman,” Brenda’s mother, Janet, recalled in an interview with BBC News.
“She was a very lonely, lonely girl.”
During the twins’ yearly checkup and observation, Dr. Money would force the twins to strip naked and engage in sexual play, posing in positions that affirmed their respective genders. On at least one occasion, this sex play was photographed.
By their teenage years, the twins were strongly opposed to going to their checkups with Dr. Money.
By age 13, Brenda was suicidal.
By 15, the Reimers stopped taking the twins to Dr. Money and revealed the truth to Brenda – he was biologically male. He fully embraced his male identity, chose the name David, and began hormone therapy and a surgical genital reconstruction. He dated and married a woman, whose children he adopted.
But the wounds of his traumatic childhood were deep for both David and his brother. Both suffered from depression. After 14 years, David’s wife divorced him. Then Brian died from a drug overdose. Not long after, in May 2004, David committed suicide. He was 38 years old.
Despite everything, Dr. Money never printed any retractions of his studies, or added any corrections.
“He never said a word, never took any of it back,” Dr. Lappert said.
Which is hugely problematic, because this study is still frequently cited as a successful gender transition by the medical community at large, including the society of plastic surgeons to which Dr. Lappert belongs, he said.
“I put this case out there as an example, to show you the foundation – the sand upon which this whole thing is built,” Dr. Lappert said.
“We have to understand this as we’re talking about the human person as a unity of spirit and form, that there is an integrity to the maleness and femaleness with which we are made.”
One of the biggest problems with transgender sex change surgeries is that they are permanent and irreversible in any meaningful way, Dr. Lappert said.
“There’s nothing reversible about genital surgery – it’s a permanent, irreversible mutilation of the human person. And there’s no other word for it,” he said.
“It results in permanent sterility. It’s a permanent dissolution of the unitive and the procreative functions. And even the unitive aspect of the sexual embrace is radically hindered if not utterly destroyed,” he said, because of the inevitable nerve damage that occurs during the surgery, and because the brain will always register the genital nerves as coming from their organ of origin.
In other words, nerves connected to a vagina will always register with the brain as a vagina, even if they are now part of a surgically constructed penis, and vice versa.
Another major issue is that sex change surgeries seek to solve an interior dysfunction with an external solution.
“Underneath it all, you’re trying to heal an interior wound with exterior surgery,” Dr. Lapper said.
This article was originally published on CNA Jan. 19, 2017.
New Orleans, La., Dec 22, 2017 / 04:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Venerable Henriette DeLille, born a “free woman of color” before the Civil War, had all the makings of a life of relative ease before her.
Born in 1812 to a wealthy French father and a free Creole woman of Spanish, French and African descent, Henriette was groomed throughout her childhood to become a part of what was then known as the placage system.
Under the placage system, free women of color (term used at the time for people of full or partial African descent, who were no longer or never were slaves) entered into common law marriages with wealthy white plantation owners, who often kept their legitimate families at the plantations in the country. It was a rigid system, but afforded free women of color comfortable and even luxurious lives.
Trained in French literature, music, dancing, and nursing, Henriette was prepared to become the “kept woman” of a wealthy white man throughout her childhood.
However, in her early 20s, Henriette declared that her religious convictions could not be reconciled with the placage lifestyle for which she was being prepared. Raised Catholic, which was typical for free people of color at the time, she had recently had a deep encounter with God, and believed that the placage system violated Church teaching on the sanctity of marriage.
Working as a teacher since the age of 14, Henriette’s devotion to caring for and educating the poor grew. Even though she was only one-eighth African and could have passed as a white person, she always referred to herself as Creole or as a free person of color, causing conflict in her family, who had declared themselves white on the census.
In 1836, wanting to dedicate her life to God, Henriette used the proceeds of an inheritance to found a small unrecognized order of nuns, the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her non-white heritage had barred her from admission to the Ursuline and Carmelite orders, which only accepted white women at the time.
This group would eventually become the Sisters of the Holy Family, officially founded at St. Augustine’s Church in 1842. Like Henriette, the other two founding sisters had denounced a life in the placage system.
The Sisters taught religion and other subjects to the slaves, even though it was illegal to do so at the time, punishable by death or life imprisonment.
They also encouraged free quadroon women (women of one-fourth African descent) to marry men of their own class, and encouraged slave couples to have their unions blessed by the church.
The Sisters also established a home to care for elderly women, many of them likely former slaves. It was the first nursing home of its kind established by the Church in the U.S., and it was there that the early Sisters cared for the sick and the dying during the yellow fever epidemics that struck New Orleans in 1853 and 1897.
Homes for orphans and eventually schools were also established by the order, which continued to grow and spread its mission throughout the South.
Henriette Delille died in 1862 at the relatively young age of 50, probably of tuberculosis. At the time of her death, the order had 12 members, but it would eventually peak at 400 members in the 1950s.
The Sisters of the Holy Family are still an active order in Louisiana today, with sisters working in nursing homes and as teachers, administrators and other pastoral positions.
In 1988, the Mother Superior of the order at the time requested the opening of Henriette Delille’s cause for canonization. She was declared a Servant of God, and then was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI on March 27, 2010. A miracle through her intercession is needed for her beatification, the next step in the process before canonization.
Throughout her life, Henriette was inspired by this prayer, which she wrote in one of her religious books when she first founded her order: “I believe in God, I hope In God. I love. I want to live and die for God.”
This article was originally published on CNA Feb. 12, 2017.
Nashville, Tenn., Dec 22, 2017 / 02:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- You’ve heard it said that beardliness is next to Godliness.
Well, maybe you haven’t heard exactly that. But there’s something about holiness and hairiness that have had the … […]
Chicago, Ill., Dec 21, 2017 / 04:13 am (CNA).- Coloring books for adults have exploded onto the bookstore scene in the past few years. What was once considered a hobby for the kids is now all the rage for people who are full-grown.
While the most popular books out there feature images of gardens, forests and beautiful patterns, Ave Maria Press and Catholic artist Daniel Mitsui are creating adult coloring books that draw from something else: the tradition of medieval Catholic art.
Mitsui, who lives in Chicago with his wife and their three children, specializes in ink drawing and describes his style as very graphic, with “precise edges and sharp outlines.” He’s heavily inspired by Catholic art from the 14th and 15th century, but is also influenced by the graphic elements of Japanese art, particularly with how it treats light and shadow.
While Mitsui told CNA that he hadn’t paid much attention to the adult coloring book trend at first, he has done a lot of work in black and white, which works well for the medium. He would print a lot of images in black and white and then color them in to sell as hand-colored images, and he would give his children the extra prints, or the prints that didn’t turn out just right, for them to color.
“I would save all of the ones that didn’t pass my quality control, and I would give them to my kids to color at Mass,” he told CNA.
“I have small children who have a hard time paying attention so I would give them some of these coloring sheets. And friends of mine started asking for them and I thought, you know, I should really make this available to the public.”
With this in mind, Mitsui started adding the black and white images – usually of saints or other religious images – to his website, so that parents could access them for their kids and leave a little donation. Almost immediately, he was contacted by Ave Maria publishing company about creating a book for adults.
His first book features images from the mysteries of the rosary. Mitsui had been privately commissioned for a project on the rosary a few years back, and so he said it was easy to compile those images and create a coloring book with a unifying theme.
Faced with quick success, he soon began planning for another book, featuring colorable images of the Saints. While the book includes many of the main players – the Virgin Mary, Sts. Peter and Paul, St. Michael the Archangel – it also includes some more obscure figures like St. Robert of Newminster, St. Gobnait, and St. Hugh of Lincoln.
While many of Mitsui’s images in the coloring books come from privately commissioned pieces he’s done in the past, some of them also come from images he’s created as part of lessons for his children, who are homeschooled.
Mitsui added that he finds it unnecessary to divide coloring books into categories for children and adults. Children deserve, and equally enjoy, the beautiful and more intricate images that are often only marketed to adults, he said.
“I don’t think that you should say well, we have these really sophisticated coloring books with detailed art, and we’re going to give these to adults, and then we present things that have artwork in them that we don’t really think is that good, and then give those to kids,” he said.
“There’s so many children’s picture books that are really beautiful and really sophisticated and intelligent artwork, but they kind of get drowned out by so many ones that are sort of insipid, and I don’t think that that’s right,” he added.
“Kids like to see detailed images, they can actually appreciate serious art, and a good way to introduce them to it is to look through what coloring books are being sold for the adults.”
The sudden upsurge in the popularity of coloring books for adults has fascinated everyone from researchers to art therapists to yoga and meditation connoisseurs.
Mitsui said he’s excited about the trend, because it may mean that more adults are acknowledging their desire to express themselves creatively.
“It seems there’s an idea that a lot of adults have that drawing or making art is something that you do when you’re a child, and then unless you become a professional you kind of give it up,” he said. “And I think that’s just sort of a poverty…I don’t know why there’s a reluctance on the part of so many adults to create artwork.”
Drawing used to be the fashionable thing for adults to do in the Victorian era, he added. Many adults, particularly women, had their own sketchbooks and honed their drawing skills. Some of these sketchbooks have been preserved, and some of the work is quite good.
“I think what that demonstrates is that a lot of what goes into being an artist is skill that is learnable with practice,” Mitsui said. “People have this idea that somehow when it comes to art, you’re given this measure of ability from the beginning and you can never do anything to increase or decrease that, and I don’t think that’s true.”
For Catholics in particular, a Catholic adult coloring book is a way to become familiar with the rich tradition of Catholic art in a way that is different than viewing a painting in a museum, he said.
“The Catholic church has such a superabundance of wealth in terms of its artistic tradition, that sometimes it can get lost when it’s just sort of viewed as data,” he said.
“I’m interested in medieval religious art, and I think the art of that era certainly is very rich in terms of what it can teach you about the Catholic religion in that it’s very precise theologically, it corroborates the writings of the Church fathers, it corroborates the liturgy. So you see all of the Catholic tradition more clearly if you’re familiar with its presentation,” he said.
Having a book that you’re able to look at closely, and an image that you’re engaging not just with your eyes but also your hands, forces you to slow down and really concentrate on the image, he added.
“It’s a way to train yourself to really look at art and I think to really look at anything,” he said. “That more concentrated vision is something that is quite peculiar to a mass media age.”
This article originally ran on CNA July 10, 2016.
Denver, Colo., Dec 19, 2017 / 03:17 pm (CNA).- There are five five shopping days before Christmas. Are you still searching for a few last-minute presents? CNA has gift-giving advice from some thoughtful Catholic gift givers:
Archbishop Samuel Aquila, Archbishop of Denver:
One great Christmas tradition I have witnessed in several families is to forego Christmas gifts altogether in favor of gathering together donations for a chosen charity. In a family with several siblings, maybe a different sibling choses the charity each year, and together they are able to make a substantial gift. Even among a group of friends this could be done. What a beautiful testimony this practice is to our young people!
Lauren Ashburn, EWTN News Nightly with Lauren Ashburn
My favorite Christmas gift to give this year is from My Saint My Hero. The ”wearable blessings” company is run by a Catholic woman I interviewed this fall for EWTN News Nightly with Lauren Ashburn. She pays women in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to make necklaces and bracelets. Their mission is simple: to bring faith, hope and purpose to everyday life. Plus, for the fashionista in me, they come in a gazillion colors!
Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap, Archbishop of Philadelphia
Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas is a marvelous collection of daily seasonal readings from Romano Guardini, C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many other Christian authors. It’s a wonderful gift that has permanent value. Mars Hill Audio Journal, produced by Ken Myers, and First Things magazine, edited by R.R. Reno, also make great Christmas presents that keep enriching the mind and spirit throughout the year.
Jeanette De Melo, Editor-in-Chief, National Catholic Register:
Try a gifting a subscription to the National Catholic Register for Christmas. I recently received a wonderful letter from a new Register reader. He said “If, dear sir, it was your intention to keep me rooted in my favorite chair, enjoying my favorite pipe while enthralled by extraordinary substance in your paper, your mission was accomplished.” The first issue he’d read was our 90th anniversary special edition, and he remarked that the only difficulty with this paper was that it had set the bar so high. “But considering you’ve been doing this for 90 years, I’m not too concerned! Here’s to many more years of the Register!” I hope many more people could enjoy a leisurely pace and thoughtful read with our newspaper. And we’ll be celebrating 90 years all year long!
JD Flynn, Editor-in-Chief, Catholic News Agency
I’ve given Archbishop Chaput’s Strangers in a Strange Land, George Weigel’s Lessons in Hope, and Fr. Thomas Joseph White’s The Light of Christ to a lot of people on my list this year. They’re some of the more interesting and important books I’ve read in 2017. I’ve also given donations on behalf of friends and family to Christians in the Middle East, through the Christian Near East Welfare Association. But if you want to give the best possible gift to your family, turn off your phone on December 23rd, and don’t turn it on again until the 26th. They’ll appreciate it more than you realize, and so will you.
Leah Libresco, Catholic Author and Speaker
I’d recommend The Little Oratory by Leila Marie Lawler & David Clayton to a household of any size. My husband and I have been reading the practical, tender guide to expanding your prayer habits at home all year, and we’ve gotten a lot out of it (an icon wall, a cross in the kitchen to kiss when exiting, etc.). We’re planning to spend some time over the holidays to figure out what we might take on/receive from God next! Plus, of course, if you know someone who’s tentatively exploring Catholicism, you can always get them my Arriving at Amen, about learning to pray as a convert from atheism, and embracing faith as a second language.
Curtis Martin, Founder and CEO, FOCUS
In our family we have minimized the gift giving by working together with Cross Catholic International. As a family, we sit down and evaluate various projects and determine together, who we would like to support. It has been a blessing to provide a well and fresh water, or education and care for children with special needs, or food for the hungry.
Chris Stefanick, Real Life Catholic
Two things:
1. My book, Joy to the World! It’s short meditations on the best news ever, and the best gift ever: God’s unmerited, unconditional love for us. And it’s the perfect evangelistic stocking stuffer.
2: Homemade candy. Because nothing communicates love like sweetness. 🙂
Michael P Warsaw, Chairman of the Board and CEO, EWTN Global Catholic Network
I suppose it’s not surprising that I would recommend Mother Angelica on Prayer and Living for the Kingdom as the perfect Christmas gift. This book brings together, for the very first time, Mother’s timeless advice on how to deepen your prayer life and achieve your ultimate purpose— eternity in Heaven with Jesus. With some of Mother Angelica’s own original prayers, this makes a wonderful gift that someone can take with them to adoration or a Holy Hour. It’s a gift that delivers eternal rewards!
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Author
I’d suggest giving Matthew Levering’s fine book, An Introduction to Vatican II as an Ongoing Theological Event: the perfect gift for Catholics across the spectrum of opinion, and especially for those under fifty for whom the Council has, at best, a murky image. Levering puts Christ back at the center of the Council, which is what the Council Fathers intended, as too few understand, or do, today.
Pittsburgh, Pa., Dec 18, 2017 / 04:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite the long efforts of Catholics and others who have sought to prevent mandatory employer health care coverage of contraception, a federal judge in Pennsylvania has placed a temporary injunction on the Trump administration’s new rules granting a broad religious or moral exemption.
“The Pennsylvania court’s decision harms faith-based nonprofits and others who have fought for over half a decade to correct the serious injustice caused by the HHS Mandate,” said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty.
Judge Wendy Beetlestone granted the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s request for a preliminary injunction on Dec. 15. She said the commonwealth could suffer “serious and irreparable harm” from the rules, Politico reports.
In the decision granting the injunction, Beetlestone wrote that a lack of cost-effective contraception would mean that women would either forgo contraception or choose less effective methods and result in “individual choices which will result in an increase in unintended pregnancies.” This would create economic harm for the commonwealth because “unintended pregnancies are more likely to impose additional costs on Pennsylvania’s state-funded health programs.”
The 2010 Affordable Care Act, and resulting rules issued by the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services mandated that employer health plans cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that can cause abortion. The mandate drew opposition from Catholics and others.
On Oct. 6, the Trump administration established new rules, allowing companies with religious or moral objections to contraception to opt out of the mandate.
Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh was the lead plaintiff in one of the lawsuits challenging the Obama-era rule. He challenged the rule on behalf of Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh. The lawsuit was settled Oct. 17, with Zubik declaring the settlement as a restoration of First Amendment guarantees.
Ann Rodgers, communications director for the Pittsburgh diocese, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “We have asked our attorneys to study the decision but we understand it should have no impact on the previous resolution of our case.” A permanent injunction was granted to the Diocese of Pittsburgh and related entities in 2013.
“We expect and pray that the courts reviewing this decision will uphold the government’s new regulations that protect religious liberty,” said Kurtz.
Chicago, Ill., Dec 18, 2017 / 03:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Peruvian officials have charged Chicago area resident Jeffrey Daniels with abuse that occurred while he was part of the Catholic group Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in Peru.
Daniels, who has been living in the U.S. since 2001, was charged along with three other men “with conspiracy to commit sexual, physical and psychological abuse,” according to Peruvian court documents obtained by the Chicago Tribune.
Among the men charged is Luis Fernando Figari, the founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), as well as Virgilio Levaggi and Daniel Murgui.
The SCV is a society of apostolic life which was founded in 1971 in Peru, and granted pontifical recognition in 1997. Alejandro Bermúdez, executive director of CNA, is a member of the community.
The community has been under investigation after the publication of a book by journalists Paola Ugaz and Pedro Salinas, chronicling years of alleged sexual, physical and psychological abuse by members of the SCV. In addition to Peru, the community operates in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, and Italy.
In February of this year, a team of independent investigators commissioned by the Sodalitium reported that “Figari sexually assaulted at least one child, manipulated, sexually abused, or harmed several other young people; and physically or psychologically abused dozens of others.”
The report also identified Daniels as a serious offender, accused of abusing at least 12 minors between 1985 and 1997.
The report concluded that “between 1975 and 2000 and once in 2007, five members of Sodalitium, including Figari, sexually abused minors.”
Figari stepped down as superior general of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in 2010. In February 2017, the Vatican’s congregation for religious life issued a decree forbidding him from any contact with the religious community, and banning him from returning to Peru without permission from the current superior of the Sodalitium. Figari was also forbidden to make any public statements.
According to reports obtained by the Chicago Tribune, Daniels has confirmed his connection with the SCV but has denied any wrongdoing, and the details of his life in the U.S. remain largely unknown.
U.S. officials have said that Daniels has no criminal record or known allegations in the U.S., but that they have established contact with him and will cooperate with the ongoing investigation.
Peruvian Congressman Alberto de Belaunde said in a statement released to the Tribune that Daniels took advantage of his proximity to minors during his time in the SCV to abuse them, and “has been silent and has chosen to forget. But the victims do not forget and neither will a country with dignity. In addition to ensuring that justice is served, it is important to ensure that there are no more victims.”
A criminal investigation against the four accused men began in January 2017. Last week, a Peruvian prosecutor requested incarceration for the men while the investigation continues. Peruvian law permits judges to remand suspects of criminal activity to incarceration while they are being investigated, if they are considered flight risks, or a risk to pose grave danger.
Travel restrictions have also been requested for Ricardo Treneman and Oscar Tokumura, two other members of the community.
© Catholic World Report