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Denver Newsroom, Feb 14, 2021 / 02:00 am (CNA).- Mardi Gras in New Orleans has been canceled only a handful of times, including during World War I and II, and the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. This year will be added to that list, as the mayor of New Orleans has canceled Mardi Gras because of the coronavirus pandemic. But seminarians at Notre Dame Seminary are still planning to celebrate Mardi Gras, in their own way.
“I can’t have everybody go home and then come back again, as we’re trying to keep the virus out of the seminary. Which means everybody has to stay here,” said rector Fr. Jim Wehner. “So we’re going to do our own celebrations.”
Many of the seminarians have pickup trucks, and Wehner said there will be a competition to transform those trucks into Mardi Gras floats. The seminarians will then have their own parade of floats in a space behind the seminary. The seminary invited residents at a nearby Catholic nursing home to sit outside to watch the makeshift parade.
“The whole point of Mardi Gras, one of the points, is to promote community…from the neighborhood, from the city, from the Church,” Wehner said. “This will be a chance for us here to step out of the academic world for a few days and just have some really strong community building.”
“Isn’t that what a pastor does, through the sacramental, spiritual life of the Church, we’re building a parish community and that can involve good social encounters. So we’ll model that here a little bit for those days here.”
Wehner was not always a fan of Mardi Gras. In fact, he remembers being scandalized his first year at Notre Dame Seminary, when he first realized seminarians had several days off for Mardi Gras celebrations.
“Why are seminarians participating in Mardi Gras events? Isn’t this pagan and secular?” Wehner said, recalling his memory of that time. “I was pre-judging what I thought Mardi Gras was, which is debauchery, heavy drinking, drugs. Just, you know, immorality.”
“And that maybe is what a lot of people who aren’t from here, the tourists or outsiders…that would have all of this perception of what Mardi Gras is. And there is an element of that that would be maybe more expressed in the tourist parts of the city, but that was completely not the case.”
“I fell in love with the city and then the culture, the history— and certainly Mardi Gras.”
More than one day
Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans is closed the Friday before Mardi Gras until Ash Wednesday. But Mardi Gras actually begins much earlier— on the Feast of the Epiphany, traditionally celebrated January 6th.
“When we speak of Mardi Gras, it’s not just of course the day itself, but the whole season and the attitudes surrounding that,” said Earl Higgins, a Catholic author and New Orleans native. “On the traditional day of the Epiphany, which is January 6 … we shift from the Christmas season to the beginning of the Carnival season, Mardi Gras.”
January 6 is also the birthday of Saint Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans. One of the first parades of the Mardi Gras season is hosted by a group of women known as the ‘Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc.’ The parade passes through the French Quarter, beginning at the foot of a statue of St. Joan of Arc, gifted to the city by the town of Orléans in north-central France.
“There is actually a procession that is not a liturgical procession, a festival procession that goes from her statue to the cathedral and the rector of the cathedral is waiting,” Wehner said. “The person who’s dressed up on a horse as Saint Joan of Arc reaches out the lance and then…the rector…blesses it. And that’s become the informal unofficial start to Mardi Gras.”
January 6th is also the day New Orleanians traditionally eat their first King Cake of the season.
“We call it La Galette du Roi in French,” said Father Keenan Brown, a priest of the Diocese of Lafayette in southern Louisiana. “That tradition comes from France.”
Lafayette is about a two hour drive north west from New Orleans, but the city has a lot of the same Mardi Gras traditions.
“Traditionally, it’s a brioche batter that’s braided and baked, and it’s topped with this really sweet glaze in the three colors and sometimes sprinkles,” he said, referenced the three colors of Mardi Gras: green, gold and violet. The colors represent the gold, frankincense and myrrh that tradition holds the three kings brought to the baby Jesus.
Originally, a bean or a piece of jewelry was baked into the King Cake. But lately, at least in New Orleans, any tokens have been replaced by small plastic dolls representing the infant Jesus.
From Epiphany to Ash Wednesday, the city of New Orleans and many other cities and towns in southern Louisiana light up with masquerade balls – and, of course, parades.
“These parades always run on the same day, at the same time. So everyone in the city refers to the parade and not the day,” Wehner said.
Notre Dame Seminary sits along the path of Endymion, the largest Mardi Gras parade that runs through the city of New Orleans on the Saturday before Fat Tuesday.
“Leading up to this, the custom here – and everyone respects it – is that several days before each parade, you can reserve your spot,” Wehner said. “If you do it the right way, no one will confiscate it. So it’s a gentleman’s agreement— and it’s spray paint and tape.”
It is also customary for locals to man their spots at least 24 hours before the start of the parade.
“So for two days before Endymion, the seminarians will sleep out during the night and we will protect our spot that we have spray painted,” Wehner said.
During that time, the seminarians are praying the rosary, playing cards. Wehner will even celebrate a sunrise Mass.
“People are very, very respectful of the fact that we’re doing this,” Wehner said. “Of course, we’re in our collars, and we’re not embarrassed of who we are. For the seminarians… this is the perfect time for evangelization.”
One of the last parades of Mardi Gras traditionally begins first thing Tuesday morning. I’m talking before dawn. A group called the Skull and Bones Gang runs through the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans dressed as skeletons.
“They go around and knock on the doors at five o’clock in the morning,” Higgins said. “And say ‘wake up, wake up!’ You don’t know how much time you have. It’s to remind people, ‘Hey, life is short! Get up and party!’”
As Fat Tuesday progresses, the historic French Quarter gets pretty saturated with tourists. Higgins said those tourists bring their own ways of celebrating Mardi Gras.
“The French Quarter is not a place where you want to bring your Aunt Maude, or any anybody with any, shall we say social sensibility because it’s pretty raunchy,” he said.
The partying continues until midnight, when yet another great New Orleans Mardi Gras ritual takes place: clean up.
“At one end of Bourbon Street, a team of the police lines up,” Higgins said. “The chief of police is usually at the head of the procession. And policemen on horses and dogs, and they have bullhorns. Right behind the police and the horses are the cleanup crews…And that marks midnight. Mardi Gras is over.”
Brown remembers the end of Mardi Gras was very clear to him as a child.
“We were very aware that when midnight hit, party’s over,” he said. “The next day, everybody goes to Ash Wednesday [Mass]…and everyone goes in for the ashes to begin the penitential season and to make the fast.”
“Now, the funny thing about that is, they’re not just Catholics that get ashes,” Brown said. “Everybody goes to get ashes. I’ve heard of Jews going to get ashes at the cathedral in New Orleans, because it’s just cultural. For some people, it’s very cultural.”
Higgins remembers a pastor who visited his church many years ago from out of town.
“He says he was amazed at the piety of the people in New Orleans. And the rest of us were kind of looking around. ‘What’s this guy talking about?’,” Higgins laughed. “The churches packed on Ash Wednesday in New Orleans, and by many, many people who are not only Catholic, probably don’t believe in anything. But part of the ritual of being in New Orleans is to get ashes on Ash Wednesday. That’s what you do.”
Celebrating Mardi Gras like a Catholic
Tradition runs deep in New Orleans, especially when it comes to Mardi Gras. These traditions have a Catholic flavor that is accepted and celebrated by everyone, even non-Catholics.
“In New Orleans, the culture and Catholicism are inextricably intertwined. You cannot imagine New Orleans without the Catholic Church. It’s just part of the history and the culture, and it affects everybody,” Higgins said.
Fr. Patrick Broussard is vocations director in the Diocese of Lafayette, and pastor of a parish in the town of Church Point. Broussard grew up in Lafayette, and he remembers going to parades with his family when he was a child. He never really enjoyed the Mardi Gras traditions who grew up with, until he moved away to study in Rome.
“Being so far removed from home, I realized how special South Louisiana is in a number of ways, particularly with the Catholic culture…Just seeing how ingrained the Catholic life is in people, even if they don’t practice it or don’t appreciate it,” he said.
“Everything that we do has that sort of Catholic flavor to it.
Higgins likened it to popular devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico.
“Mardi Gras has always been a mixture of, you know, secular and religious. In a way it’s like the Virgin de Guadalupe in Mexico. That’s just part of their culture, whether people believe in whatever they believe in. That’s just who they are. That’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans.”
Wehner was scandalized when he first heard that his seminarians got time off to join in Mardi Gras celebrations. But by now, he’s learned Mardi Gras isn’t something to be afraid of.
“You know, it can be if you’re in the wrong places, in the wrong spaces in the wrong times. But that’s really not the practice when you’re with parishes, you know, the different local parishes have their parishioners at different parts of the parade route, and it’s an all day cooking out and these types of things,” he said.
Plus, it can be a great opportunity to evangelize.
“We have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water,” Broussard said. “if you think of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, you think of all the kind of scandal and craziness that goes on with it. But there is a lot of good in it too.”
“I think just to say, ‘we should not do Mardi Gras’…I think that would be a mistake because there is so much good tied up in it that we could draw from. And even, it could be very beneficial to us in our proclaiming the Gospel. So, hey, you love Mardi Gras. You know that’s a time of preparation for Lent, right? It’s intimately tied in with the Catholic faith. People may not realize it anymore, but I think that’s our sort of way to re-evangelize them.”
Wehner said celebrating Mardi Gras can be incredibly Catholic.
“I always preach to the seminarians, the Catholic Church is not counter-cultural,” he said. “We can be counter societal. Culture is an expression of God’s design. So we will critique anything that tears down what God wants. Society is what man produces. Culture is an expression of God’s Providence.”
“So we are not counter-cultural, we’re all about culture. We’re about promoting it. And at the heart of that is life. It’s family, and we know how to celebrate life very well, with festivals and food and family. That’s a part of our tradition, even tied into the saints. You go to various parts of the world where the whole town is celebrating that saint that came from their neighborhood. And it turns into a festival.”
“I think Mardi Gras is the same way. We’ve just come from the Christmas season. And in between, before we move into the Lenten season, we’re celebrating. The Gospel that can evangelize culture. And when that happens, everybody wins. And you could see that here in New Orleans, which has its own – like any culture – it has its issues and problems. But when the Christian faith speaks to it, you see the best of people.”
This story originally aired on Catholic News Agency’s podcast, CNA Newsroom. It has been adapted for print. Listen to the episode below.
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Denver Newsroom, Feb 12, 2021 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis is accused in a new lawsuit of covering up abuse allegations in his former diocese of Springfield, MA, which he led from 2014 until last year.
The plaintiff claims he suffered trauma as a result of the diocese’s mishandling of an abuse allegation he brought against Christopher J. Weldon, bishop of Springfield from 1950-1977.
Rozanski has admitted that the diocese mishandled the abuse case, which the plaintiff says he first brought to the diocese’s attention in November 2014.
Pope Francis named Rozanski Archbishop of St. Louis in early June 2020, and he was installed as archbishop that August.
In a lawsuit filed in Hampden County Superior Court in Springfield Jan. 28, an alleged victim named only as John Doe, a former altar boy, alleges that Rozanski and other diocesan officials met his complaint with “deliberate indifference,” which caused him further trauma.
In part, the suit accuses Rozanski of approving a statement to a local reporter which denied that Weldon had been accused of abuse, despite Doe’s statements to the diocesan review board.
The plaintiff alleges that Weldon, along with two priests of the Springfield diocese, repeatedly abused him in the 1960s, and that he first remembered his abuse in 2013. Weldon died in 1982.
Doe also says that while he brought his claim of abuse to two mandated reporters in 2014, those diocesan employees did not bring the allegation to Kevin Murphy— the diocesan investigator— or the local district attorney until 2018.
Doe claims that he told the diocesan review board directly at a 2018 meeting that Weldon had raped him.
At least three witnesses and a letter to Doe from the review board supported Doe’s claim that he told the review board about Weldon in 2018, and that the review board acknowledged that Weldon had abused Doe.
During June 2019, Rozanski commissioned an independent investigation, led by retired Superior Court Judge Peter A. Velis, into the handling of the allegation against Weldon. The 373-page report concluded that Doe’s claim he was molested by Bishop Weldon were “unequivocally credible.”
The suit alleges, however, that public statements by the diocese following the 2018 diocesan review board meeting did not acknowledge the abuse allegation against Weldon.
A contributing factor is a report delivered to the diocesan review board by Murphy, the diocesan investigator, which appeared to state that Weldon had not himself engaged in abuse.
Investigator Murphy wrote several reports— four, according to the suit— on the alleged abuse of Doe following an interview with him.
In two of the four reports, Murphy said the plaintiff “stated that Bishop Weldon never molested him,” but was often present when other priests were abusing Doe, and that Weldon would try to “hug and pull [Doe] within reach.”
The Velis report found that it was this version of the report that was shared with the diocesan review board, despite Doe’s allegation of rape against Weldon at the meeting. The other two reports, which were not shared with the review board, were apparently more clear in accusing Weldon of abusing Doe.
As part of his investigation, Velis was given access to internal diocesan emails, several of which are highlighted in the lawsuit.
In one May 29, 2019 exchange, diocesan communication director Mark Dupont asked Rozanski, review board chairman John Hale, and diocesan lawyer John Eagan for guidance on how to respond to questions from a local reporter.
The reporter, writing for The Berkshire Eagle, had asked why Weldon was not listed among the diocese’s credibly accused clergy, despite Doe’s allegations against him.
According to the emails, Egan recommended that Dupont tell the reporter, in part: “The Review Board has never found that Bishop Weldon engaged in improper contact with anyone.”
Rozanski replied to the suggestion from Egan, saying “Yes, thank you. This is a good response.”
In an email exchange the next day, Egan appeared to advise against acknowledging that Weldon was present at any of the instances of abuse, and also advised that the diocese’s statement to the reporter “lead with an allegation of abuse in the 1960s and the victim didn’t recover his memories until around 2017 or 2018.”
Doe says he first recovered his memories of the incident in 2013.
Dupont subsequently told the Berkshire Eagle: “You should know that there is NO finding of sexual abuse of any person involving Bishop Weldon — NONE.”
For his part, Dupont told CNA last year that the Velis report “had no finding of any cover-up,” and that “our earliest public responses acknowledged Bishop Weldon was allegedly present where the abuse occurred.”
However, Velis said his findings raise questions about whether there was an attempt to conceal the diocesan investigator’s reports about Bishop Weldon from the review board or Bishop Rozanski. It was not the scope of his investigation to determine responsibility for the apparent deceptive practice or “if and when the reports were switched.”
Rozanski told Velis he was not aware of the specifics of Doe’s allegation of abuse by Weldon, and did not know about the different reports about Doe’s allegation produced by the diocesan investigator. Rozanski has said he knew that Weldon was accused of being “present during incidents of abuse that occurred.”
In June 2020, following the report’s release, Rozanski apologized for the “chronic mishandling of the case, time and time again, since 2014.”
“At almost every instance, we have failed this courageous man who nonetheless persevered thanks in part to a reliable support network as well to a deep desire for a just response for the terrible abuse which he endured,” the then-archbishop-designate said at a press conference, one year after he commissioned Velis to conduct the investigation.
Weldon is now named on the Springfield diocese website as a “deceased bishop who was found to have credible allegations of abuse.”
Doe is seeking a jury trial, damages, and court costs.
Both the Archdiocese of St. Louis and the Diocese of Springfield have, to other publications, declined to comment on pending cases.
Washington D.C., Feb 12, 2021 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Members of Congress on Thursday debated abortion funding restrictions in a proposed COVID relief package, with one member comparing abortion coverage to cancer treatments.
“Abortion is health care, and excluding abortion from COBRA coverage makes as little sense as excluding cancer coverage,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) said of an amendment to bar funding of abortion coverage in health coverage subsidies for unemployed workers.
In response, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, tweeted that “[r]eal healthcare in the case of a difficult pregnancy looks like addressing the illness of the mother or unborn child; not eliminating the child. Real doctors heal; they don’t harm.”
Several House committees convened on Thursday to consider and advance measures for a massive COVID-19 relief package. President Biden had proposed nearly $2 trillion in funding of health care and economic relief in response to the pandemic.
Democratic leadership have already signaled that they will pass a coronavirus relief bill with or without Republican support in the House and Senate. Pro-life groups have warned that the relief proposals do not include sufficient pro-life protections—and thus could fund abortions, abortion coverage, and abortion providers in a number of ways.
The House Democrats’ proposal released this week includes $750 million in funding of global health, and billions of dollars for community health centers. It also includes expanded subsidies towards health plans and COBRA coverage.
Within the committee hearings themselves, members debated the ethics of abortion funding.
In the House Energy and Commerce Committee, members discussed the $50 million in additional funding of the Title X family planning program. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) introduced an amendment redirecting the funding to youth suicide prevention, as the Title X funds could go to abortion providers.
The Trump administration in 2019 required Title X grant recipients to neither refer for abortions, nor be co-located with abortion facilities. This resulted in Planned Parenthood withdrawing from the program and forfeiting an estimated $60 million in annual funds, rather than comply with the new mandates.
President Biden has already begun the process of reversing that rule, and some Republicans on the committee thus did not want additional funding of Title X if abortion providers would benefit from the program.
“We know that Title X has been used to fund abortion providers,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) stated.
However, committee Democrats accused Republicans of being anti-contraception and hurting women’s health.
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) defended the access of abortion providers—such as Planned Parenthood—to the Title X program. “For many women, the only doctor they see in a year is someone who works at Planned Parenthood or at another clinic that gets Title X funds,” she said on Thursday.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), a Chaldean Catholic, also opposed the pro-life requirements for the Title X program and said it is about family planning, not abortion.
Eshoo said she often asks new committee members about their families. “I don’t know one member of our committee that has 8, 10, 12, 14 children,” she said. “This isn’t about abortion. This is about family planning.”
Rep. Lesko said that for many pro-life members, their beliefs on life are “part of our faith” and “ingrained in us.”
“So when you say that we’re attacking women, I totally disagree. Because half of the babies that are aborted are going to be women,” she said to fellow members. Lesko’s amendment failed in a 31-26 vote.
During a markup of COVID relief in the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ill.) introduced an amendment to ensure protections against funding of abortions in health coverage.
The relief measure would fund COBRA health insurance premiums for unemployed workers, and Walorski’s amendment would have ensured that federal subsidies could not pay for abortion coverage.
“I believe every human life is precious, and taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the destruction of life,” Walorski said on Thursday. Her amendment failed in committee.
Rep. Chu opposed Walorski’s effort and compared funding abortion coverage with funding coverage for cancer treatments.
In a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) responded to accusations that pro-life members were just trying to “score cheap political points” with their amendments.
“We hold sincere beliefs that life is sacred from the point of conception to natural death, and we truly believe that violating that moral code is a stain on our entire society and our entire world,” Foxx said.
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