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Columbus, Ohio, Mar 10, 2021 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Several pro-abortion protesters who disrupted a pro-life Mass in Columbus, Ohio in January have been charged with misdemeanors and arraigned, with pretrial hearings scheduled for the coming months.
On Jan. 22, more than a half-dozen pro-abortion protesters disrupted the Respect Life Mass at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in downtown Columbus, where Bishop Robert Brennan was presiding at an event marking the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Those involved, masked and holding hand-made signs, chanted slogans such as “Two, four, six, eight, this church teaches hate.” “Fund abortion, not cops,” said one of their signs. “Abortion on Demand. End Hyde Now,” said another, referring to the Hyde Amendment, which bans most federal funding for abortion.
Police and church officials escorted the protesters outside, where some protesters appeared to make obscene gestures at them. The protesters continued to chant at slogans outside the church.
Three of the protesters— two women and one man— were later charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespass, both misdemeanors.
A fourth person, a woman, faces those same misdemeanor charges in addition to a criminal damage charge; she is set to be arraigned March 19.
All three protesters arraigned March 5 pleaded not guilty, and are scheduled for pretrial hearings in March and April, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
No arrests were made on the day of the protest, but the city attorney’s office filed the charges Feb. 18.
“We are…thankful for the proactive concern shown by our city’s leaders in supporting people of faith and their right to worship in peace and free of disruption,” Bishop Brennan said in a statement Monday.
Pro-life groups active in the state also praised law enforcement for taking action against the protesters.
“Even our pro-choice city attorney recognized that the rule of law must always apply and our churches are sacred institutions,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, in a statement.
“Menacing others and yelling vulgarities at a church service at which young children were present is both unlawful and unconscionable…Such displays of irreverence towards women and children practicing their faith is tragic and uncalled for.”.
The charges drew ire from several pro-abortion organizations, who say the protesters’ actions— despite taking place inside the church and taking the form of occasionally vulgar slogans and gestures— were justified.
Several of the pro-abortion organizations likened the disruptive protest that took place in the cathedral to the pro-life witness of religious people outside abortion clinics.
A group called the Ohio Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice— a group aligned with the dissident group Catholics for Choice— said in a statement that they “stand firm in our continued support of the pro-abortion activists” who engaged in what they called “a brief peaceful protest.”
“No church can claim to be an inviolable sacred space when it abuses its power and authority to promote a political agenda and demean those seeking abortion care,” the group claimed, implying that the protest at the cathedral was, in part, retaliation for pro-lifers’ “organized sidewalk harassment at clinics throughout Ohio.”
Pro-abortion groups Women Have Options Ohio, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, and Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity all released similar statements of support for the protesters.
Several of the pro-abortion groups cited a 2019 incident during which a rock was thrown through a window of Toledo’s only abortion clinic as evidence that pro-lifers “attack” women seeking abortions and abortion providers, despite no evidence that the rock was thrown by a pro-life protester.
“After a pattern and practice of spewing vile and hateful insults at patients, following patients to cars, and throwing rocks at a Toledo clinic these extremists claim protesting a public event is harassment,” Women Have Options Ohio said.
Peter Range, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Toledo’s Director of the Office for Life and Justice, disavowed any violence against the abortion clinic and its patients when the rock-throwing incident took place.
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Washington D.C., Mar 10, 2021 / 11:30 am (CNA).- A group of New York state senators is calling on state Gov. Andrew Cuomo to rescind an order requiring group homes for adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities to accept COVID-positive patients.
Cuomo had issued a controversial directive last year requiring nursing homes in the state to accept patients discharged from hospitals with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID. In January of this year, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James said that the state undercounted the number of nursing home deaths by as much as 50%.
The March, 2020 directive on nursing homes was later rescinded in May, but a similar order remains in place for group homes for adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities, three Republican New York state senators told CNA.
New York state Sens. Michael Martucci, Fred Akshar, Anthony Palumbo and James Tedisco recently sent a letter to Dr. Theodore Kastner, Commissioner of New York State Office of People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD), seeking updated data from the governor’s office on all COVID deaths in group homes that care for the disabled.
In an April 10, 2020 directive, the Cuomo administration said that all Certified Residential Facilities in New York “must have a process in place to expedite the return of asymptomatic residents from the hospital.”
“No individual shall be denied re-admission or admission to a Certified Residential Facility based solely on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” the document stated in bold font. The facilities also could not require COVID-19 testing for these residents being admitted or re-admitted.
A spokesperson for OPWDD–the state agency that coordinates services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and the office that issued the directive–said that patients were only discharged from hospitals to group homes once it was deemed “safe” to do so.
The agency stated to CNA that, under the policy, group home residents who are hospitalized for COVID-19 are discharged back to the homes “after being deemed safe to return by the hospital physician, in consultation with the residential provider.”
The policy also says that, if a group home is to deny a patient admission or re-admission, they can only do so based on their “inability to provide the level of care required.”
In interviews with CNA, Martucci, Palumbo, and Tedisco called on the Cuomo administration to release the full data on COVID cases and deaths in group homes, and to rescind the order.
“This governor may have gotten an Emmy for his communication skills, he’ll never get an Emmy for transparency and open government, I can tell you that,” Tedisco said. “And you know, if you want to know if an Emmy can tarnish, all you’ve got to do is look on his mantle.”
In November, Cuomo received the 2020 International Emmy Founders Award “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world.”
Tedisco emphasized that the state providing transparency now is key to fighting future pandemics.
“We need to see what missteps were taken here with another group of our most vulnerable population,” Tedisco added. “We need to know this for the future. Pandemics don’t go away forever.”
Martucci, ranking member of New York Senate Disabilities Committee, said the state’s group homes directive mirrors the nursing home directive.
“They are eerily similar,” Martucci said. “Not only in their language, but even down to their formatting, and almost every point within them.”
Martucci said that their request for data from OPWDD “has been completely stonewalled.”
“At this point we do not have any response from the agency at all,” Martucci said.
Martucci argued that “there’s no question this order needs to be reversed immediately, adding that the families of those in group homes “are trusting our state and are trusting us to make sure their family members are safe.”
“What we need here is transparency, and we don’t have that,” Martucci said.
Palumbo, a member of the New York state Senate Mental Health Committee, said that residents of group homes are an “at risk” population, “and there is no reason for this directive to continue.”
“This deserves an answer and a correction, very simply,” Palumbo said.
Tedisco, who is ranking member of New York’s Senate Mental Health Committee, said he believes that the data will show the group homes directive jeopardized the health of residents. He said he and his colleagues have not yet received the requested data, and expressed a willingness to pursue that information with a lawsuit.
“This governor’s got more angles than a geometry book, every time you show him the facts, there’s another excuse,” Tedisco said.
Tedisco argued that Cuomo–who is also facing a series of sexual harassment allegations–should resign.
“This has got more legs and shoes dropping than a centipede could ever have,” Tedisco said. “you can’t keep track of it from one day to the next.”
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CNA Staff, Mar 9, 2021 / 05:48 pm (CNA).- Following a nearly year-long sabbatical to attend to his mental health, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln explained his experience with depression, seeking help, and his return to his duties as a bishop.
According to Prime Matters, the bishop discussed engagement with mental health in a Zoom interview with Dr. James Link, a Catholic psychologist based in North Dakota.
Link said it is a difficult moment for a person to realize when they require external help with mental health and began the conversation asking the bishop when he decided the time was right to tackle depression.
“What was the pivotal moment where you felt, ‘This is more than I can manage?’ he asked.
Conley said the struggle did not happen all at once, and, instead, he spent about a year-and-a-half trying to soldier through this difficult time.
While his relationship with his family has always been strong and supportive, his father was a WWII veteran and a “self-made man,” he said noting that his sister and he were instilled with a can-do attitude. He said this is how he first encountered the struggle with mental health – “to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
As the McCarrick and the Pennsylvania Grand Jury scandals arose in 2018, he said a “sort of pall fell over the Church.” He then encountered local difficulties – having to remove some priests, undergo investigations into the diocese, close school parishes, and grieve the death of a young priest.
“Because I’m the bishop, I felt like I had to fix all these problems – I was praying, of course – but it was all wearing me down. I took all that pressure and stress upon myself,” he said.
“During the Second Vatican Council, when things were really uncertain in the Church and in the world, Pope St. John XXIII at night would pray, ‘Lord, it’s your Church, I’m going to bed!’ I would always advise people to do the same, but I wasn’t doing it myself. I wasn’t sleeping – and you can only go so long without sleeping. So I decided that I needed to find out what was going on.”
In March 2019, he was diagnosed with major depression disorder at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and soon began counseling and medication. However, he said, trying to pursue help on top of his episcopal duties only further deteriorated his mental state.
Finally, Conely discussed the problems with a familiar group of bishops: Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, and Bishop James Wall of Gallup. He was then convicted to take a break.
“We talked about it, and they convinced me to go talk to the apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, who was present for the meeting. He was wonderful about it. I told him everything … and he said, ‘You need to take a break.’ He was very positive and supportive.”
“So it was really my closest friends – I mentioned some of them, and there was another priest I had talked to a lot – who encouraged me to seek professional help.”
Over the 11-month sabbatical, Conley attended sessions with a Catholic psychotherapist, his spiritual director, a CMA psychologist, and a medical doctor. Additionally, he said, he regularly engaged in exercise, such as golf and hikes, and social interactions with very close friends.
“[My friends] live in Phoenix, and I was at their home about three nights each week. Just sitting down at the table and having dinner with a great Catholic family was so therapeutic,” he said.
“They have great, healthy kids and are very involved at Ville de Marie, a K-through-12 Catholic school that Luke’s parents helped to found. That kept me grounded, and I always looked forward to that,” he further added.
Since Conley returned to his office Nov. 13, 2020, the bishop has continued to pursue self-care practices and make changes in his life to maintain his mental health. He said, when he returned, there was a line out the front door of people with a to-do list.
He said he has been practicing saying “no” to more things and managing his time better. He said he is trying to keep office hours from 10 am to 3 pm so as not to over exhaust himself.
“Right now, I don’t have the energy that I had a couple of years ago. I can’t take on as much as I used to, nor do I want to take on as much as I used to,” he said.
“What this experience of mental illness has taught me is that life is too short to fill every day up from morning to night, even when we’re filling the day up with good things. So, really, finding the right balance – a healthy balance – is an art. I’m still working on the exercise piece.”
The bishop said it is important to be aware of the activities that drain his energy and the roles of a bishop that are life-giving and fulfilling. He said while administrative tasks like emails are tiresome, his spiritual commitment to the community provides him with energy.
“Yesterday, for instance, was a great day. We started Catholic Schools Week, and I went down to a K-12 school in Nebraska City. We had an all-school Mass with adoration and a Eucharistic procession. They managed to fit all the students in the gym, 6 feet apart, and for the procession I took the Blessed Sacrament to the door of each classroom. The students stayed in the room, but they all got down on their knees for the Blessed Sacrament. That was a very beautiful, life-giving event for me,” he said.
© Catholic World Report