US

Washington D.C., Jul 21, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- While there is talk of criminal justice reform in the U.S., something must also be done about a decades-long spike in female inmates, experts and members of Congress of both parties said.

“We talk a lot about racial disparities in our system, but for some odd reason, we’ve really not focused on women, and it’s been to the detriment of public safety,” Holly Harris, executive director of the Justice Action Network, told CNA.

Harris spoke at the event “Women Unshackled,” sponsored by both the Justice Action Network and the Brennan Center for Justice, and was held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on July 18.

It featured a keynote address by Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma (R) and speeches by members of Congress of both parties, Rep. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Rep. Sheila Jackson lee (D-Tex.), Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah).

“If we as a country value life as much as we say we do, then we value all life, even those who have made mistakes and have went through the incarceration system,” Rep. Collins said in the morning welcome remarks.

“How can we justify a system that takes people who are survivors of trauma, survivors of abuse, and put them on a survivor of sexual trauma to prison pipeline?” asked Sen. Booker, who had said in his address that many women in prison have previously suffered trauma, which may be triggered or exacerbated during their stay in prison.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had addressed the rising numbers of women in prison in their 2000 statement on criminal justice reform “Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration.”

The bishops said that the large increase in the number of women in prison came “largely as a result of tougher drug laws,” that most of the women were incarcerated for non-violent offenses, and that “an equal number have left children behind, often in foster care, as they enter prison.”

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, the numbers of women behind bars have grown more with each decade, especially when the U.S. is compared to other countries on the issue.

The research is “incredibly dated and scarce,” Elizabeth Swavola of the Vera Institute said at the “Women Unshackled” event on Tuesday, but from what information the organization has been able to study, the numbers are striking.

While fewer than 8,000 women were incarcerated in the U.S. in 1970, 110,000 were incarcerated in 2014, the Vera Institute reported, with the sharpest increases coming in small or “midsize” counties. In the U.S.,127 women per 100,000 people are incarcerated. In Canada that rate is just 11 per 100,000.

They make up the “fastest growing segment of the prison population” Harris said. Most of them are mothers, and many, like the men in prison, suffer from drug issues, poverty, and mental illness, and racial minorities make up higher rates of the prison population than in society.

Many women, however, have suffered previous instances of trauma – which can be exacerbated or triggered in prison. Vera reported that “almost a third had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the past 12 months,” and that 86 percent of women in prison have “experienced sexual violence in their lifetime,” along with 77 percent suffering from partner violence.

Eighty percent are also mothers, with some being the primary caretaker for their children, Vera reported. “In many instances,” Cynthia Berry of the Council for Court Excellence said, “children aren’t even told their mother is incarcerated.”

If their mother is their primary caretaker, children may end up in the foster care system as a result, and mothers may not eventually be reunited with their children after they are released from prison.

Most are in prison for low-level or non-violent offenses. “According to the latest available national data, which are now more than a decade old,” Vera reported, “32 percent of women in jail are there for property offenses, 29 percent for drug offenses, and nearly 21 percent for public order offenses.”

For the violent offenders, some are serving sentences for violence committed against people who were violent with them, like women retaliating against abusive husbands or boyfriends.

Why has there been such a sharp increase in the number of women behind bars?

There is “very little out there explaining why,” Swavola said, but from Vera’s findings, “at the very front end, policing practices have come to increasingly focus on low-level, non-violent offenses” like low-level drug possession and disorderly conduct. This would be the result of “broken window” type policing, based on the belief that if smaller infractions are punished, there will be fewer greater infractions.

Because of a “punitive” approach to drug enforcement, she said, there are more women in the prison system.

Yet once they land in prison, they face a system that is hard enough for men to cope with, but one that at least is designed for men. For the women, they face greater threats of abuse and a more severe lack of privacy.

“Women are different from men,” Harris told CNA/EWTN News. “Their needs would be different. So unfortunately right now, women are entering prisons that are programmed for men.”

The result is that, although time in prison may help men become more hardened criminals, women may exit feeling far more degraded and dejected.

“All of these women have completely physically changed,” Harris said. They are visibly lacking self-confidence and staring at the floor. “It’s just clear that they are emotionally and mentally devastated.”

They are more likely to be victimized in prison. For instance, while women accounted for only 13 percent of the local jail population between 2009 and 2011, 67 percent of victims of staff-on-inmate sexual victimization were women, as well as 27 percent of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization, Vera reported.

They may have to endure indignities like male prison officers walking in to their room while they are undressed, Sen. Booker said. Practices common in prison like shackling and searching inmates “can really re-trigger a lot of that trauma,” Swavola said.

Also, women prisoners tend to be poorer, which means that they may have less of a chance of having their bail paid or may not be able to afford expenses in prison like basic health necessities, laundry expenses, or phone calls home.

“Some jails charge inmates a per diem fee during their incarceration,” Vera reported, “which can leave an individual with thousands of dollars of criminal justice debt upon release.”

Prison can be “incredibly destabilizing and disruptive” to a woman’s life, Swavola said, especially in the case of a severely mentally ill woman.

Cash bail and “excessive fines and fees” can “trap women in the system,” she said.

What solutions can be attempted for the problem of women in prisons? States and counties could begin to invest more in drug treatment and prevention programs rather than law enforcement, Swavola said.

“A huge portion of these county and community budgets go toward public safety,” she said, and “oftentimes it’s 70 to 80 percent.” Much of that portion “is to corrections,” she said.

Other programs like diversion programs do not get resources, she said. “I think we really need to rethink how we are using our taxpayer dollars to fund the justice system.”

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin (R) said that her state has put too many women behind bars and is working on decreasing the number of incarcerated.

“For many of our non-violent, low-level offenders, there are alternatives that work better,” she said, like “drug and mental health courts” and “community based treatment, diversion programs, supervision.”

Recidivism is also a large cause of women in prisons, Vera reported.

“It’s no wonder that the female prison population is spiking, because we’re not providing these women with the tools that they’ll need to successfully re-enter society,” Harris said.

“They are not equipped mentally, emotionally, they can’t find jobs, they can’t improve their education, they can’t reconnect with their families, they can’t get adequate housing.”

For instance, CNA spoke with an ex-convict, Casey Irwin, back in April who had been convicted of bank fraud and drug-related offenses.

“I can get a job, but it wasn’t going to pay me any money, and I wasn’t going to ever move up,” Irwin told CNA of her difficulty in finding a job after prison that paid her enough in wages.

Eventually, she was offered a managerial position at a fast food franchise, but said that more opportunities must be available to ex-convicts, who face a myriad of obstacles from employment to obtaining loans.

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Denver, Colo., Jul 20, 2017 / 05:48 pm (CNA).- When most people hear about a stereotypical “large Catholic family,” they might picture a van that seats six or eight kids. Most wouldn’t think of having so many great-grandchildren that … […]

Washington D.C., Jul 20, 2017 / 04:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Father Arne Panula, the former U.S. vicar of Opus Dei, passed away at his Washington, D.C. home on July 19, 2017 after a battle with cancer.

“Father Arne had the firm belief that anythin… […]

San Francisco, Calif., Jul 20, 2017 / 02:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal judge has ordered over $136,000 in fines after the release of several undercover videos in a series that appeared to implicate Planned Parenthood officials and the National Abortion Federation in the illegal sale of unborn baby body parts.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick III on Monday sanctioned David Daleiden, his Center for Medical Progress, and his criminal defense lawyers for disclosing videos whose release was barred by his February 2016 preliminary injunction. The judge said each of the parties was jointly liable for security and legal costs for the National Abortion Federation, the subject of the videos.

The lawyers said they would appeal the ruling.

The Center for Medical Progress contended that the contempt charge against the attorneys was “just for trying to use the same video evidence in his defense that the California attorney general is using in his prosecution.” In a July 11 Facebook post, the center charged that the action would hinder efforts to provide a fair trial for Daleiden. The center also cited Daleiden’s attorneys’ ongoing efforts to disqualify the judge for alleged bias and links to Planned Parenthood.

The first investigative video release took place in July 2015, appearing to implicate Planned Parenthood in illegal activity and adding to the momentum to defund the United States’ largest performer of abortions.

In 2016, Judge Orrick had granted an injunction barring disclosure of the videos involving two National Abortion Federation meetings in Baltimore and San Francisco that the center’s investigators, including Daleiden, had surreptitiously recorded while posing as fetal tissue purchasers for a non-existent medical supply company.

However, Daleiden’s lawyers, former Los Angeles prosecutor Steve Cooley and Brentford Ferreira, posted the videos to their website in May of this year. The release included preview footage of convention attendees casually discussing the skulls, eyeballs and other baby body parts they encounter in abortion procedures.

“An eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross!” one panelist said in the video, to laughter from the crowd.

Planned Parenthood employees also appeared in the footage discussing baby organs that could be provided to biotech firms for money.

“They’re wanting livers,” one abortion provider said. “Sometimes she’ll tell me she wants brain,” another medical director said.

The footage also appears to show a person acknowledging the performance of illegal partial-birth abortions.

The videos had been uploaded to a private YouTube account and were not viewable without a link. One of Daleiden’s attorneys argued that this meant the posting itself was not a violation of the court order. Judge Orrick disagreed, saying that the enjoined materials were shared with a third party, namely YouTube.

The judge said he believed Daleiden had created the preview video and playlist, uploaded it, and forwarded the links to his criminal attorneys “for their use on his behalf.” He said it was reasonable to conclude the videos were uploaded “for the purpose of facilitating the publishing and distribution of those videos, which is what in fact occurred.”

When the videos initially became public, a spokesperson for the attorneys told National Review that the footage was entered into the public record when Calif. Attorney General Xavier Becerra Read filed a public criminal proceeding based on it.

Judge Orrick, however, said the lawyers failed to explain why the links to the videos needed to be published when the California state court judge had a thumb drive with the files, Courthouse News Service reports.

Defending themselves against the contempt charges, the attorneys had told Judge Orrick they aimed to use the videos to help defend their client against 15 felony charges he faced in California state court. They had believed the injunction did not apply to them. The judge said that under federal court rules an injunction also applies to attorneys, Bay City News reports.

The National Abortion Federation had accused Daleiden of creating a three-minute “preview” that identified abortionists by name, called them “evil,” “a baby killer” and “a systematic murderer.” The video asked viewers to share the video to hold Planned Parenthood accountable for “their illegal sale of baby parts.”

Judge Orrick’s ruling sided with the abortion federation, saying that Daleiden had failed to rebut the evidence against him by showing “deafening silence” and refusing to answer questions in his defense. Rather, he cited attorney-client privilege.

The judge said that in his review of the videos he found no evidence that abortion providers agreed to illegally sell fetal tissue, as alleged.

He ordered Daledein and the Center for Medical Progress to turn over all video of the federation’s meetings to the attorneys representing him in the civil lawsuit against him.

In June, a California court dismissed 14 of 15 felony charges against Daledein and a co-defendant Sandra Merritt involving illegal recording of confidential communications for their videos of Planned Parenthood employees, not the abortion federation.

The California attorney general is seeking to reinstate the charges.

In the federal case, Daleiden’s attorneys filed a June 7 motion to disqualify Judge Orrick, claiming the judge was biased in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendant.

The motion cited an affidavit by Daleiden citing the judge’s role as an emeritus board member for a family resource center linked to a Planned Parenthood affiliate that is part of the National Abortion Federation.

Daleiden also cited the social media behavior of the judge’s wife, such as expressions of support for Planned Parenthood in the face of the videos. She also appeared to support stories critical of the Center for Media Progress and Daleiden. The judge’s wife had liked a post on the Facebook page “Keep America Pro-Choice” that supported the Harris County, Texas indictment of Daleiden.

The videos provoked a massive response from Planned Parenthood and its allies. A 2015 grant listing from the Open Societies Foundation, published after a foundations’ computer system was hacked, revealed apparent plans for a $7 to $8 million response campaign.

 

 

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Washington D.C., Jul 20, 2017 / 12:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Grandparents and other family members are temporarily exempt from the travel and refugee bans implemented by President Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court said Wednesday.

The court also said that for the time being, a ban on entry by refugees already working with resettlement agencies may remain.

The Supreme Court did not explain its reasons in a brief order July 19. It said the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals must consider further arguments about who is included in the ban under Trump’s executive order. Supreme Court justices will hear further arguments about the executive order Oct. 10.

The Trump administration had argued that an exemption for close family members should not apply to grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins and brothers- and sisters-in law.

A federal court in Hawaii said that definition of close family was too strict.

The ban bars travel into the U.S. for 90 days by nationals of Somalia, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, and Iran, all predominantly Muslim countries. It halts all refugee resettlement for 120 days. The first version of the ban, which had a broader impact, was announced in January, then blocked in federal court. A revised version was announced in March, then blocked by legal challenges.

In June the Supreme Court restored the ban, while saying those with “bona fide” links to the U.S. were exempted: close family members, employment, university admission, or relationships with other institutions.

Hawaii was among the challengers of the revised ban. It also argued that a refugee organization’s interactions with a refugee qualify as a bona fide relationship. About 24,000 refugees have formal assurances with resettlement agencies for relocation assistance.

However, the Supreme Court rejected that argument, thus allowing the U.S. government to halt efforts to grant entry to these refugees.

The order was not signed, though it stated that Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have granted the Trump administration’s request to put the lower court’s entire order on hold.

Trump had presented his order as a temporary anti-terrorism measure. The Trump administration has also lowered the cap on refugee admissions to 50,000 people per fiscal year. That cap was reached July 13.

In March the U.S. bishops had warned that security concerns could overshadow real human beings.

“Let us not lose sight of the fact that behind every policy is the story of a person in search of a better life,” the bishops said. “They may be an immigrant or refugee family sacrificing so that their children might have a brighter future. As shepherds of a pilgrim Church, we will not tire in saying to families who have the courage to set out from their despair onto the road of hope: ‘We are with you’.”
 
“It is necessary to safeguard the United States in a manner that does not cause us to lose our humanity,” said the March 22 statement from the US bishops’ conference’s administrative committee.

[…]

Washington D.C., Jul 20, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Undocumented young people brought to the U.S. by their parents contribute to American society and deserve continued protections from the Trump administration, said the U.S. Catholic bishops thi… […]

Denver, Colo., Jul 20, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- From a young age, Catholics are taught to pray about and discern their vocations – whether they’re called to marriage, to the religious life, to the priesthood, or consecrated single life.  

This can leave the lay single person feeling that they are in a vocational limbo of sorts, and it’s become a topic of much heated and emotional debate in the Catholic blogosphere: have these people missed their vocation? Is the lay single state, chosen or by default, a vocation?

But actually, at the end of the day – does it matter?

Fr. Ben Hasse is a vocations director for the Diocese of Marquette, Wisc. He said addressing the topic of singleness in the Church can be difficult because of the emotions surrounding the issue.

“I have quite a few friends who would like to be married, so there’s a much more emotional investment in the question because there’s more people who find themselves single” rather than having specifically chosen it, he said.

Recognizing the emotional weight of the topic, Fr. Hasse noted that there are many aspects to addressing the question of vocation and singleness that need to be taken into account, and that it can be difficult – and dangerous – to make generalizations about a population in the Church that is actually very diverse.

Being specific about singleness

Fr. Hasse said that he has found it’s helpful as a pastor to approach singleness very specifically – whether it’s a college student who hopes to marry someday, or a widower who lost her husband last month, being single encompasses a wide variety of people and circumstances.

“Everybody will be single for at least part of their life. Nobody is born as a priest or married to someone or a consecrated religious, so everyone will pass through being single,” he said.

“It’s important to distinguish between people who are single because that’s kind of where you’re at when you’re 16, versus someone who has really felt God calling them to give their life in service to the Church as a single person,” or various other circumstances.

For example, a single 19-year-old college student is probably not necessarily living a vocation of singleness in any settled way, Fr. Hasse said, but a person in their 40s who finds joy in serving Christ in their everyday circumstances of work and life “is not someone I would say lacks a vocation.”

“It would be different from the way we usually use the word because it wouldn’t be defined, and made concrete by vows or promises,” he said.

“But the single accountant or school teacher could certainly live their life and see the work of their hands as something they’re offering to God, and live that in a very spiritually fruitful way, and I wouldn’t say – now here’s a person without a vocation.”

Your vocation is given at baptism

Jason Coito, Coordinator of Young Adult Ministry for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, told CNA that most of the debates surrounding singleness and vocation rely “on a very narrow definition of vocation, or confuses the term with what we refer to as ‘states in life,’” he said.

He said when we become fixated on discerning our state in life, referred to in the Church as the primary vocation, “…we become so focused on the ranking of them, rather than looking at each day or the bigger picture and saying, here are all of these components of my life, now how am I called to live the promise of my baptism and of my life, and how do these things work together?”

It can be helpful instead to refocus these debates and conversations on the universal vocation to holiness that each Christian receives at their baptism, Coito said.

“I think this helpfully reframes the conversation and then asks us, ‘How is God calling me to make a response to Him and to my brothers and sisters from within the state in life in which I find myself?’”

This respects every vocation, because it’s a question anyone can answer on any given day in their life, regardless of their state in life, he said.  

“You do have a vocation. All baptized Catholics are called to live their lives as disciples of Jesus. This is the foundational call of our lives as Catholics,” he said.

“If you feel deeply called to get married, and you have prayerfully discerned and confirmed this call, then until you meet the person you feel called to get married to, you continue to live out your baptismal call, open to the people and circumstances that God puts in front of you each day. For those who are married, we do pretty much the same thing, except that we do this out of the sacramental relationship we have with our spouse,” he said.

In Lumen Gentium, one of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI wrote about the universal call to holiness each Christian has:

“Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society. In order that the faithful may reach this perfection, they must use their strength accordingly as they have received it, as a gift from Christ. They must follow in His footsteps and conform themselves to His image seeking the will of the Father in all things. They must devote themselves with all their being to the glory of God and the service of their neighbor. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history.”

Fr. Hasse reiterated the importance of the baptismal call to holiness, and said that this call is not something to “settle for,” but rather should be the primary focus of our lives as Christians.

“The call to holiness is not some second-string operation,” he said.

“It’s not like – wow I really wish I had something important to work towards, but since I don’t, sanctity will have to tide me over until the beatific vision.”

“So I think a reappropriation of the universal call to holiness, which is deeply, profoundly significant, it’s the one that matters in a sense, and we’re all called to that,” he said.

The big lie: You are incomplete until you’ve made vows

Coito noted that one of the worst patterns of thinking that a Catholic can fall into when thinking about vocation is to believe that they are somehow less-than or incomplete until they are married, or are a priest or in a religious order.

When he taught high school religion, Coito said he would ask his students to recall the famous line from Jerry Macquire, when he tells his love interest (played by Renee Zellweger): “You complete me.”

“I would always tell them that from a Catholic perspective, that’s ridiculous. It wasn’t as though before marriage you were incomplete, or that a priest before his ordination is incomplete. God already made us whole and entire,” he said.

“We’ve been given everything as human beings that God intends us to have, so to begin to think of ourselves as somehow unfinished…we can joyfully be living out our vocation already right now.”

Part of this mentality has seeped in from the culture, he said, which tends to romanticize love and to view marriage as another achievement or milestone in life, rather than as a sacrament.

“I think it’s important to address the mentality that if I’m not married or in a community or ordained that I’m this sort of ‘Catholic arrested development’ or ‘suspended animation,’” he said.

The belief that marriage or religious life will also magically make us completely fulfilled is also a mentality that can set people up for disappointment, he noted.

“It ends up being a Disney sort of (mentality) of happily ever after, but it’s much more Paschal mystery than happily ever after,” he said.   

Finding fulfillment: It’s about self-gift

The reasons that there are more single people in the Church now than in other times in recent history are many and varied – an emphasis on education, a culture that values individualism, higher rates of divorce and economic factors are just some of the many reasons there are more singles in the pews.

But this doesn’t mean that human nature has changed – we are still made for love, self-gift and service, Fr. Ben Hasse said.

“Trying to schedule events in our lives that will make us happy at some point that doesn’t really work,” he said. “Happiness is richest and fullest kind of as a by-product of gifts of love and of service.”

“There’s almost a way where you can attend to the basic dynamics of seeking to live a life of holiness, and that’s the actually the path that’s going to leave you more and more disposed to receive his call,” he said.

In particular, acts of service can be a key way to find fulfillment regardless of one’s state in life, he said.

“Look for opportunities to give of yourself,” he said. “It’s also a good way to meet other people who have a similar disposition…doing that has very real potential to fill one’s heart, and leaves you more and more receptive to (God’s) call.”

Soley utilizing acts of service as a way to find a spouse would be unhealthy, Fr. Hasse added, but serving alongside like-minded people, and finding others who share your values is a good way to find authentic community, in whatever form that may take.

What the Church has to say about single people

Pope John Paul II, who wanted to be known as ‘the Pope of the family’, wrote in his familial document “Familiaris Consortio” that those without a family must be able to find their family within the Church. In fact, the entire final section of this document is dedicated to single people.

This is a subject with which John Paul II would have been intimately familiar – by the age of 20, all of his immediate family on earth had passed away, and he surrounded himself with good friends that essentially became his family.

In the document,he wrote: “For those who have no natural family the doors of the great family which is the Church-the Church which finds concrete expression in the diocesan and the parish family, in ecclesial basic communities and in movements of the apostolate-must be opened even wider. No one is without a family in this world: the Church is a home and family for everyone, especially those who ‘labor and are heavy laden.’”

The Catechism of the Catholic also recognizes “the great number of single persons who, because of the particular circumstances in which they have to live – often not of their choosing – are especially close to Jesus’ heart and therefore deserve the special affection and active solicitude of the Church, especially of pastors.” (CCC 1658).

Practical advice from single Catholics

Still, it can sometimes be difficult for single people to know where they fit in the Church. Parishes are often structured around family life, which can make it challenging for single people to find community.

Judy Keane is a 40-something single Catholic and author of “Single and Catholic,” a book in which she interviewed numerous single Catholics of a wide variety of ages, circumstances and backgrounds about their experiences in the Church.

“Mother Teresa once said that the greatest poverty is loneliness, and feeling discounted by society,” Keane said.

“So I would say (to married people in the parish): approach single people, connect with them, take that initiative to introduce yourself, not make them feel like because they don’t have a spouse and children in the pew with them that they’re no less a member of the parish community,” she said.

MaryBeth Bonacci is a Catholic author and speaker who has often written on the topic of being a single Catholic. She said she loves it when people in her parish help her feel included in their families and lives.  

“Some people would say ‘Oh well she wouldn’t want to go to a 1-year-old’s birthday party.’ Yeah I would!” she said. “We don’t have our exciting singles lives that you think we have, I’m at home eating cottage cheese and watching Simpsons reruns, it’s not that exciting.”

Bonacci said she’s also had a friend at her parish who told her she was invited to her family’s dinner any time. And she didn’t wait to make good on the invitation – she followed up with Bonacci every day.

“She would call me every day at 3:00 and say, am I setting a place for you? And I didn’t go every night…but she actually called every day, and said if you want to come, we’ll set a place for you, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciated that.”

She added that she appreciates when parishes make an effort to create a cohesive community, rather than always segregating people into groups according to their states in life.

Both Bonacci and Keane said that they especially have noticed that there are many single elderly Catholics who are alone, whether they’ve never been married or have since lost their spouse.

“If you’re having a family Sunday dinner, why not try to befriend an elderly single person who may have lost their spouse and say we’re having our family dinner, would you like to join us?” Keane said.  

It’s also important to remember that God acts in unexpected says, and oftentimes frustration with one’s state in life stems from a place of thinking about vocation or God’s will too rigidly, Fr. Hasse noted.

“If I’m talking to someone who says well most of my friends seem to have found their vocation and I haven’t, what do I do? I usually say man, the saints are people that God caught in all kinds of unexpected situations and places,” Fr. Hasse said.

“So there’s lots of precedent for thinking God has passed me by or hasn’t answered my prayers” but then he shows up in unexpected ways, he said.

[…]

Washington D.C., Jul 19, 2017 / 04:41 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid the Gard family’s legal battle in the U.K. to pursue experimental treatment for their infant son, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation granting them permanent residency in the states.

“We just passed amendment that grants permanent resident status to #CharlieGard and family so Charlie can get the medical treatment he needs,” Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) said in a July 18 tweet.  

The amendment was passed after Republican congressmen Trent Franks and Brad Wenstrup proposed legislation in favor of an additional treatment for Charlie, who suffers from a rare mitochondrial disease which paralyzes muscles and causes brain damage.

“Congressman Bradwenstrup and I have proposed legislation to grant lawful permanent status in the U.S. to Charlie Gard and his family, so they can at least pursue their best hope for Charlie,” Rep. Franks told Fox News July 11.

Charlie Gard has made headlines over the past few months as U.K. courts denied his parents the right to transfer him to other hospitals for treatment. The Gard family appealed to the EU court and was denied a hearing.

Claiming that prolonging Charlie’s life would cause unnecessary suffering, British judges had ruled that London’s Great Ormond Hospital could remove life support without the consent of the parents. The hospital granted Charlie an extension on life support so his parents may have a few more moments with him.

During the extension, a team of seven medical experts told the hospital that unpublished data on an experimental drug suggest a treatment which may improve the condition of Charlie’s brain. One of the experts is a neurologist and a researcher located at the Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome – a Vatican hospital who’s request to transfer Charlie to their facility was also recently denied.

Additionally, a U.S. specialist in mitochondrial diseases speculated in a video last Thursday that the experimental treatment, nucleoside therapy, has a success rate of at least 10 percent and a potential high of 56 percent.

Since experts have submitted new data that advocates for Charlie’s possible recovery, the Great Ormond Hospital has asked the courts to reopen the baby’s case that Charlie be transferred to the U.S. for nucleoside therapy, which his parents have successfully fundraised over $1 million for.

Charlie was diagnosed with Mitochondrial Depletion Syndrome – a fatal disease which progressively weakens the muscles and causes brain damage. The genetic disease is very rare, and Charlie is thought to be only one out of 16 people in the world diagnosed with the disease.

Despite Charlie’s low potential for survival, his parents have received U.S. and Vatican support for their right to fight for his life.

A statement was issued July 2 on behalf of Pope Francis, saying that the pontiff “prays for them, wishing that their desire to accompany and care for their own child to the end will be respected.”

[…]

Philadelphia, Pa., Jul 19, 2017 / 10:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A prominent Catholic journal’s critique of American religion and politics got quite a bit wrong, Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said yesterday.

Archbishop Chaput sai… […]

New York City, N.Y., Jul 19, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Religious leaders, not secularists, are often in the best position to persuade violent religious extremists towards peace, the papal nuncio to the United Nations has said in response to an … […]