US

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 12, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- As thousands of protesters prepared to march against racism in Washington, D.C. last Saturday, Louis Brown helped organize a rosary procession on Capitol Hill.

Lay Catholics joined Dominican friars, nuns, and priests of the Washington archdiocese in prayer for justice and healing. As tens of thousands of Americans have been actively protesting racism and police brutality, Brown, who is an African-American and Catholic, told CNA he chose to focus on prayer.

The present moment demands both prayer and action against injustice, he told CNA. “It’s a both-and.”

“Ultimately this is a problem of the heart,” Brown said. “Our country desperately needs God and the love of God to heal these wounds.”

“We are not the ultimate protagonists of the story,” he added. “Jesus Christ is the ultimate protagonist.”

Brown spoke of acute pain within the African-American community, caused by the recent deaths of young African-Americans at the hands of police or fellow citizens—most notably George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor— which, he said, are just the latest in a centuries-long history.

“As an African-American, the pain of going back into that history is so painful, and is so gut-wrenching, and it’s so hard to deal with,” he said.

“Part of it is just the fear,” he said, of being pulled over in a “routine traffic stop” that could end in a tragedy—“or something could get pinned on me.”

“It’s an anger, it’s an anxiety, and it’s also a fear of it happening again, and a pain of seeing what others have gone through,” he said.

Video of George Floyd’s May 25 arrest in Minneapolis showed him calling out “I can’t breathe” and “mama” as police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck. Floyd later died at a hospital, and Chauvin has since been fired and charged with second-degree murder in Floyd’s death.

“Whether you’re black or white, you can’t help but see that person as our brother and as a child of God,” Brown said of Floyd crying out.

Yet protests against injustice, he emphasized, must be rooted in “the right to life” for all and not be “hijacked” by the culture of death.

“The rioting, the looting, is only making it more likely that a black man like me will be a victim of police misconduct, or a victim of bias and stereotypes,” Brown said.

Other Catholics around the country told CNA that they attended recent protests against racism and police brutality in cities, suburbs, and towns—in California, New York City, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, West Virginia, and Tennessee.

Most who talked to CNA of their experiences were lay men and women, although both a priest and a religious sister—Fr. Brent Shelton of the diocese of Knoxville, and Sister Mumbi Kigutha CPPS, of the Sisters of the Precious Blood—said they too attended local protests against racism.

Some Catholics said it was their first protest; others said they had attended a pro-life march before, but now felt the need to march against racism. Some marched with fellow Catholics and Christians, others attended larger marches by themselves.

All involved all had one thing in common—they felt that they had to do something to stand against injustice.

“To me it’s simple. People need help and we help them. That’s all,” said Jenne O’Neill of Wahoo, Nebraska.

And many of those who talked to CNA said they prayed at the rallies and protests.

Peter Nixon, a parishioner at Saint Bonaventure Church in the Diocese of Oakland, said his pastor led a Eucharistic procession at the tail end of a march in Clayton, California.

“The presence of the Blessed Sacrament had a powerful impact on many at the demonstration,” Nixon said. “Some police and firefighters crossed themselves as we passed. Others genuflected when passing in front of the monstrance.”

On June 1, the evening before President Donald Trump visited Washington, D.C.’s St. John Paul II Shrine, the president stood outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. holding a Bible in front of cameras. The Washington Post reported that federal police shot gas canisters and grenades with rubber pellets to dispel protesters in the area shortly before the president arrived outside the church.

Protesting in Lafayette Square that night was Anna Fitzmaurice, a 2019 graduate of the Catholic University of America. Fitzmaurice prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet in the square, but left shortly before police dispersed the protesters. She attended a protest of the president’s visit to the shrine on the morning of June 2.

“As he [Trump] was going to visit my church, I felt a moral responsibility to tell him what we believe in terms of the dignity of the suffering and the oppressed. Instructing the ignorant and admonishing the sinner are both spiritual works of mercy,” she said.

Jenn Morson, a writer and parishioner at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church in Crofton, Maryland, said she prayed the rosary to herself “in between chants initiated by the organizer” at a local march with around 350 people.

Not all Catholics who talked to CNA marched in protests. Some have been conducting outreach in their communities, or trying to foster constructive conversations about race.

Kathy Redmond, of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Castle Rock, Colorado, told CNA that she has organized around 450 people in her local “very white, affluent community” involved in community outreach.

Redmond said she saw injustice first-hand when a black family moved in four houses down from her and their cars were tagged immediately. “It was very unnerving for me,” she said. “It was in my face at that point.”

“As people of faith—as people of a Christian faith—we should be front and center on this,” Redmond said.

Catherine Perry, of Atlanta, Georgia, founder of the InwardBound Center for Non-Profit Leadership, has organized workshops of cross-race conversations on “Racism in America: What is Mine to Do?”

Her workshops are not shaming sessions, she said, but rather help participants to reflect, dialogue, and reconcile with each other, ending with them making a “uniquely personal to-do list” such as prayer, listening to voices they may not agree with, or talking to a boss about subtle discrimination in the workplace. A new workshop will be offered online beginning on June 25.

As Catholics, she said, “one of the great things about our institution is we talk about difficult things” such as abortion and the death penalty. “We understand this is mysterious stuff, and it’s emotional work, and it’s not easy sometimes,” she said.

“Well let’s take on race. Why not?” she asked. “We’ve been silent on race too long.”

[…]

Denver Newsroom, Jun 12, 2020 / 12:02 am (CNA).- Peyton and Connor Plessala are brothers from Mobile, Alabama. They’re 18 months— one school grade— apart.

Despite the occasional competitiveness and squabbles that many brothers experience growing up, they’ve always been best buds.

“We’re closer than best friends,” Connor, 25, told CNA.

As young men— in grade school, high school, college— much of their lives centered around the things you might expect: academics, excurriculars, friends, girlfriends, and sports.

There are many paths the two young men could have chosen for their lives, but ultimately, last month, they arrived at the same place— lying face down in front of the altar, giving their lives over in service to God and the Catholic Church.

The brothers were both ordained to the priesthood May 30 at Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile— in a private Mass, because of the pandemic.

“For whatever reason, God chose to call us and he did. And we were just fortunate enough to have had the foundations from both our parents and our education to hear it and then to say yes,” Peyton told CNA.

Peyton, 27, says he is most excited to begin helping out with Catholic schools and education, and also to begin hearing confessions.

“You spend so much time in seminary preparing to be effective one day. You spend so much time in seminary talking about plans and dreams and hopes and stuff that you’ll do one day in this hypothetical future…now it’s here. And so I can’t wait to begin.”

‘Natural virtues’

In Southern Louisiana, where the Plessala brothers’ parents grew up, you’re Catholic unless you declare otherwise, Peyton said.

Both Plessala parents are medical doctors. The family moved to Alabama when Connor and Peyton were very young.

Though the family was always Catholic – and raised Peyton, Connor, and their younger sister and brother in the faith – the brothers said they weren’t ever a “pray the rosary around the kitchen table” kind of family.

Apart from taking the family to Mass every Sunday, the Plessalas taught their children what Peyton calls “natural virtues”— how to be good, decent people; the importance of choosing their friends wisely; and the value of education.

The brothers’ consistent involvement in team sports, encouraged by their parents, also helped to school them in those natural virtues.

Playing soccer, basketball, football, and baseball over the years taught them the values of hard work, camaraderie, and setting an example for others.

“They taught us to remember that when you go and play sports, and you have the Plessala name on the back of your jersey, that represents a whole family,” Peyton said.

‘I could do this’

Peyton told CNA that despite going to Catholic schools and getting the “vocation talk” every year, neither of them had ever really considered the priesthood as an option for their lives.

That is, until early in 2011, when the brothers took a trip with their classmates to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life, the nation’s largest annual pro-life gathering in the U.S.

The chaperone for their group from McGill-Toolen Catholic High School was a new priest, fresh out of seminary, whose enthusiasm and joy made an impression on the brothers.

The witness of their chaperone, and of other priests they encountered on that trip, moved Connor to begin considering entering the seminary straight out of high school.

In the fall of 2012, Connor started his studies at St. Joseph Seminary College in Covington, Louisiana.

Peyton also felt the call to the priesthood on that trip, thanks to the example of their chaperone— but his path to the seminary was not quite as direct as his younger brother’s.

“I realized for the first time: ‘Man, I could do this. [This priest] is so at peace with himself and so joyful and having so much fun. I could do this. This is a life that I could actually do,’” he said.

Despite a tug toward the seminary, Peyton decided he would pursue his original plan to study pre-med at Louisiana State University. He would go on to spend three years there in total, dating a girl he met at LSU for two of those years.

His junior year of college, Peyton returned to his high school to chaperone that year’s trip to the March for Life— the same trip that had started the tug toward the priesthood several years earlier.

At one point in the trip, during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Peyton perceived God’s voice: “Do you really want to be a doctor?”

The answer, as it turned out, was no.

“And the moment I heard that, my heart felt more at peace than it had in… Maybe ever in my life. I just knew. In that moment, I was like, ‘I’m going to go to seminary,’” Peyton said.

“For a moment, I had a life’s purpose. I had a direction and a goal. I just knew who I was.”

This newfound clarity came at a price, however— Peyton knew he would have to break up with his girlfriend. Which he did.

Connor remembers the phone call from Peyton, telling him he had decided to come to seminary.

“I was shocked. I was excited. I was extremely excited because we were going to be back together again,” Connor said.

In the fall of 2014, Peyton joined his younger brother at St. Joseph Seminary.

‘We can rely on each other’

Though Connor and Peyton had always been friends, their relationship changed— for the better— when Peyton joined Connor at the seminary.

For most of their life, Peyton had blazed a trail for Connor, encouraging him and giving him advice when he got to high school, after Peyton had been learning the ropes there for a year.

Now, for the first time, Connor felt in some ways like the “older brother”— being more experienced in seminary life.

At the same time, although the brothers were now pursuing the same path, they still approached seminary life in their own way, with their own ideas, and approaching challenges in different ways, he said.

The experience of taking on the challenge of becoming priests helped their relationship to mature.

“Peyton’s always done his own thing because he was the first. He was the oldest. And so, he didn’t have an example to go follow then, whereas I did,” Connor said.

“And so, the idea of breaking from: ‘We’re going to be the same,’ was tougher for me, I think…But I think in that, in the growing pains of that, we were able to grow and really realize each other’s gifts and each other’s weaknesses and then rely on each other more…now I know Peyton’s gifts a lot better, and he knows my gifts, and so we can rely on each other.”

Because of the way his college credits transferred from LSU, Connor and Peyton ended up in the same ordination class, despite Connor’s two year “head start.”

‘Getting out of the way of the Holy Spirit’

Now that they’re ordained, Peyton said their parents are constantly bombarded with the question: “What did y’all do to have half of your children enter the priesthood?”

For Peyton, there were two key factors in their upbringing that helped him and his siblings grow up as committed Catholics.

First, he said, he and his siblings attended Catholic schools— schools with a strong faith identity.

But there was something within the Plessala’s family life that, for Peyton, was even more important.

“We ate dinner every single night as a family, regardless of the logistics required to make that work,” he said.

“Whether we had to eat at 4 p.m. because one of us had a game that night that we were all going to go, to or whether we had to eat at 9:30 p.m., because I was getting home from soccer practice late in high school, whatever it was. We always made it an effort to eat together, and we would pray before that meal.”

The experience of gathering every night as a family, praying and spending time together, helped the family cohere and support each member’s endeavors, the brothers said.

When the brothers told their parents that they were entering the seminary, their parents were extremely supportive— even if the brothers suspected their mother might be sad that she would likely end up having fewer grandchildren.

One thing Connor has heard his mother say several times when people ask what the parents did right is that she “got out of the way of the Holy Spirit.”

The brothers said they are extremely grateful that their parents always supported their vocations. Peyton said he and Connor occasionally encountered men at the seminary who ended up leaving because their parents did not support their decision to enter.

“Yeah, parents know best, but when it comes to your children’s vocations, God’s the one who knows, because God’s the one calling,” Connor commented.

‘If you want to find an answer, you have to ask the question’

Neither Connor nor Peyton ever expected to become priests. Neither, they said, did their parents or siblings expect or predict that they might be called that way.

In their words, they were just “normal guys” who practiced their faith, dated throughout high school, and had a lot of varied interests.

Peyton said the fact that they both felt an initial tug to the priesthood is not all that surprising.

“I think every young guy who really practices their faith has probably thought about it at least once, just because they’ve known a priest and the priest probably said, ‘Hey, you should think about this,’” he said.

Many of Peyton’s devout Catholic friends are married now, and he’s asked them if they ever considered the priesthood at some point before discerning marriage. Almost all, he said, told him yes; they thought about it for a week or two, but it never stuck.

What was different for him and Connor was that the idea of the priesthood didn’t go away.

“It stuck with me and then it stayed with me for three years. And then finally God was like, ‘It’s time, man. It’s time to do it,’” he said.

“I would just encourage guys, if it really has been a while and it just sticks with you, the only way you’ll ever figure that out is to actually go to seminary.”

Meeting and getting to know priests, and seeing how they lived and why, was helpful to both Peyton and Connor.

“The lives of priests are the most helpful things in getting other men to consider priesthood,” Peyton said.

Connor agreed. For him, taking the plunge and going to seminary when he was still discerning was the best way for him to decide whether God was really calling him to be a priest.

“If you want to find an answer, you have to ask the question. And the only way to ask and answer that question of priesthood is to go to the seminary,” he said.

“Go to the seminary. You will not be worse off for it. I mean, you’re starting to live a life of dedicating prayer, of formation, diving into yourself, learning who you are, learning your strengths and weaknesses, learning more about the faith. All those are good things.”

The seminary is not a permanent commitment. If a young man goes to seminary and realizes the priesthood is not for him, he won’t be worse off, Connor said.

“You’ve been formed into a better man, a better version of yourself, you’ve prayed a whole lot more than you would have if you were not in seminary.”

Like many people their age, Peyton and Connor’s paths to their ultimate vocation was a winding one.

“The great pain of millennials is sitting there and trying to think of what you want to do with your life for so long that your life just passes you by,” Peyton said.

“And so, one of the things I like to encourage young people to do if you’re discerning, do something about it.”

 

 

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 11, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- A federal appellate court has dismissed a second lawsuit filed by a member of the Satanic Temple against Missouri’s informed consent abortion law, rejecting the argument that the law established Catholic religious belief by stating that life begins at conception.
 
“Any theory of when life begins necessarily aligns with some religious beliefs and not others,” said U.S. Circuit Judge David R. Stras in a June 9 decision from the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Under the plaintiff’s theory, the decision said, “Missouri’s only option would be to avoid legislating in this area altogether.”
 
State law requires abortion providers to distribute a booklet from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services which includes the statement: “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”
 
A woman going by the pseudonym Judy Doe filed suit against the law, claiming it violated her religious freedom as a member of the Satanic Temple. The group does not believe in a literal Satan. Its philosophical and religious beliefs are somewhat flexible, but it tends to reject supernatural belief and to promote rationalism, individual liberty, secularism and “Enlightenment values.” It claims to oppose tyranny and to identify with Satan’s putative outsider role.
 
Doe’s lawsuit also claimed that Missouri law violated her Satanist beliefs by requiring her to certify that she had received the informed consent booklet and that she had a chance to view an ultrasound at least 24 hours before the abortion. Her beliefs forbid her to comply with a law “serves no medical purpose or purports to protect the interests of her human tissue.” The plaintiff cited the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which bars excessive burdens on religious beliefs.
 
The appellate court said the lawsuit made no argument that the informed consent law is “anything other than ‘neutral’ and ‘generally applicable’.” The law in question must only pass a “rational-basis review,” with a defense showing it rationally related to a legitimate government interest.

The decision cited the generally pro-abortion rights Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which itself said that informed consent laws represent “the legitimate purpose of reducing the risk that a woman may elect an abortion, only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that her decision was not fully informed.”
 
Doe’s own description of the Satanic Temple said its membership includes both “politically aware Satanists” and “secularists and advocates for individual liberty.”
 
“Arguably, her own description raises the possibility that her beliefs about abortion may be political, not religious,” the court’s decision said. “Nevertheless, we assume, but do not decide, that she has done enough by alleging that her beliefs are ‘religious’ and that she is a member of an organization that includes ‘Satanists’.”
 
W. James MacNaughton, a New Jersey lawyer, represented Doe. He told Courthouse News Service the ruling was not a surprise, claiming the appellate court panel was “very conservative” and “ignored the issue as others have done.”
 
MacNaughton repeated claims that Catholicism influenced the law.
 
“It violates the establishment clause because it adopts the Catholic dogma that life begins at conception,” he said.
 
According to the Pew Forum Religious Landscape Survey of 2014, 77% of Missouri residents identify as Christian, but only 16% are Catholic. Evangelical Protestants make up 36% of the Missouri populace.
 
“The state has no business telling people what to believe,” the attorney continued. “The state has no business telling us that life begins at conception. We can decide that for ourselves.”
 
Dennis Hudecki, a philosophy professor at Brescia University College in London, Ontario, told Courthouse News Service that there are “big arguments about when life begins,” and some can argue for the belief that life begins from conception without a religious basis.
 
“They go back all the way to Aristotle and that the essence of a human doesn’t change once it’s formed from the beginning. It just gets older, but its essence doesn’t change,” said Hudecki, whose expertise includes abortion ethics. “I think the state’s view that life begins at conception is on a rational basis and while there is rational disagreement, just because there’s rational disagreement doesn’t mean each side isn’t being rational.”
 
MacNaughton could appeal for an en banc hearing before the full court, and has 14 days from Tuesday to do so.
 
Judy Doe’s lawsuit was rejected by a federal district judge last year.
 
A different self-professed Satanic Temple adherent in Missouri, who went by the name Mary Doe, had challenged the provisions under state law, including the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

MacNaughton also argued her case.
 
She cited Satanic Temple tenets professing a belief that a woman’s body is “inviolable and subject to her will alone” and a belief that health decisions are made “based on the best scientific understanding of the world, even if the science does not comport with the religious or political beliefs of others.” The complaint said a pregnancy is “human tissue” and “part of her body and not a separate, unique, living human being.”
 
While the Missouri Court of Appeals thought the Mary Doe case raised “real and substantial constitutional claims,” the Missouri Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in a 2019 decision.
 
Chief Justice Zell M. Fischer, writing in a concurring opinion, said that the U.S. Supreme Court “has made it clear that state speech is not religious speech solely because it ‘happens to coincide’ with a religious tenet.”
 
Controversy over the Satanic Temple has been ongoing for years, with critics arguing it is a political-cultural stunt. Temple founders have repeatedly asserted that it is a religion and not merely a hoax or performance, but the group’s history sometimes contradicts their claims.
 
The group held a January 2013 demonstration at the Florida state capitol appearing to support Republican Gov. Rick Scott from a Satanist position. Legislation backed by the then-governor would allow school districts to have policies allowing students to read “inspirational messages” of their choice at school assemblies and sports events.
 
The demonstration featured an actor in the role of a satanic high priest. Several would-be minions and spokesman Lucien Greaves were also at the rally, saying the law would allow students to distribute Satanic messages. In the same month, Greaves was the contact listed on a casting call for an apparent mockumentary “about the nicest Satanic Cult in the world.”
 
In a 2013 interview with Vice, Lucien Greaves revealed himself to be a man named Doug Mesner. He said a friend had conceived the Satanic Temple as “a ‘poison pill’ in the Church-State debate” to help expand the idea of religious agendas in public life.

Mesner has said the group planned to leverage the Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby religious freedom decision, which cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to advance “a women’s rights initiative.”

While the group now backs pro-abortion rights causes under its latest public tenets about bodily inviolability, previous statements of belief lacked that tenet. According to a March 2013 cache of the Satanic Temple website, hosted at the Internet Archive, it previously claimed “all life is precious in the eyes of Satan” and “the Circle of Compassion should extend to all species, not just humans.”
 
It later crowdfunded expenses to help pay for a Missouri woman’s abortion. It has also crowdfunded its “reproductive rights” campaign, gathering over $45,000 by July 2015.
 
The group has collaborated with other Satanic and occultist groups, though some early collaborators have distanced themselves from the group and accused it of exploiting Satanism.
 
The Satanic Temple was behind a reputed attempt to hold a black mass on the campus of Harvard University in May 2014, but the event was moved and then cancelled after intense outcry from Catholics and others who saw it as a grave sin against God, deliberate provocation of Catholics, or a violation of basic norms of civility and respect.
 
The event was reported to be held under the aegis of the Cultural Studies Club of the Harvard Extension School. A spokesperson for the Satanic Temple initially told media outlets that a consecrated Host would be used, although the temple and the Cultural Studies Club both later denied this, insisting that only a plain piece of bread would be used.
 
An October 2017 story at Vox portrayed the Satanic Temple as “equal parts performance art group, leftist activist organization, and anti-religion religious movement.” It claimed that though it began as “internet trolling going mainstream,” the organization is becoming “more serious” and “more complicated” to outline.
 
In April 2019, the group said it received recognition as a church from the Internal Revenue Service.

 

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 11, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- The president of the United States’ Conference of Catholic Bishops has appointed four new members of the National Review Board, a lay advisory body to the bishops on the protection of minors.

The new members are Vivian Akel, James Bogner, Steven Jubera, and Thomas Mengler. A June 10 statement from the conference said they are experts in social work, law enforcement, Catholic education, and legal counsel.

Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the USCCB, announced the new members who will help advise the bishops’ Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People.

“The National Review Board plays a vital role as a consultative body assisting the bishops in ensuring the complete implementation and accountability of the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People,” said Gomez.

Akel has spent 21 years as a social worker for the New York City Department of Education. Having received her master’s degree in Social Work from Hunter College School, she began outpatient psychotherapy to individual patients and families at the Community Mental Health Center in Brooklyn. She is a facilitator for pre-Cana consultation and volunteers as the Safe Environment Coordinator for the Maronite Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn.

Bogner is a retired Senior Executive Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He has more than 35 years of law enforcement experience. He graduated from the FBI’s National Executive Institute and has a master’s degree in Administration of Justice. Bogner has also served as president of his parish council, providing data analysis and strategic planning. He currently serves as a member of the Archdiocese of Omaha’s Advisory Review and Ministerial Misconduct Boards.

Jubera, a former Marine, is an Assistant District Attorney for Mississippi’s 17th Judicial District. He earned his law degree from the University of Mississippi. He has been involved with Healing Hearts Child Advocacy Center in Southaven and has spoken for child safety at One Loud Voice conference in Mississippi. He also serves on the Diocese of Jackson’s review board.

Mengler, president of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, is a board member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and he served as association’s chair from 2018-2020. He has also served as a Co-Chair of the Lay Commission on Clergy Sexual Abuse of Minors in the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

The National Review Board is composed of 13 laymen and women. The review board was organized after allegations of clergy sexual abuse and subsequent cover-up by bishops and Church officials surfaced nationwide in 2002.

The bishops passed the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People shortly after the allegations of abuse arose in 2002. It was set up as a process for bishops to deal with abuse allegations against priests.

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 11, 2020 / 04:50 pm (CNA).- India has barred U.S. representatives from investigating the county’s reported violations of religious freedom, continuing what critics call a trend of Hindu nationalism that threatens religious minorities in India.

The investigation, called for by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), followed reports of the abuse of Chistians, Muslims, and other religious minorities in India. The reports prompted USCIRF to delegate India a “country of particular concern” (CPC) in its 2020 annual report. India joined a list of 13 other CPCs in the report, including North Korea and China.

“We see no locus standi for a ‘foreign entity/government’ to pronounce on the state of our citizens’ constitutionally protected rights,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, according to a report by IndiaToday. He said India is a “pluralistic society with a longstanding commitment to tolerance and inclusion.”

Although India’s constitution protects the freedom of religion, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has manipulated the constitutional stipulation that religious freedom is “subject to public order,” using the clause to promote Hindu nationalism, according to the USCIRF report.

One such instance of Hindu nationalism is a new policy that would fast-track the citizenship of non-Muslim migrants by treating them as refugees fleeing religious persecution. The same status would not be conferred on 100 million other migrants, potentially making them illegal residents of India.

This policy incited violent riots in northeastern Delhi in February, killing 27 and injuring over 200, according to a CNA report. The riots saw Hindu mobs attacking unarmed people and especially targeting Muslims.

Reports indicate that Indian Hindus, who make up nearly 80% of India’s population, have systematically targeted Muslims in lynch mobs for slaughtering or eating beef– a practice that Hindus consider to be a religious offense. Since the BJP came to power in 2014, there have been over 100 lynch mob attacks in India, which often originate on social media. The law enforcement is known to arrest the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of these attacks.

Religious discrimination and violence has also been directed toward Christians in recent years.

In January, Hindu groups attempted to prevent the building of a huge statue of Jesus in Bangalore. They claimed a Hindu god lives on the hill where the local Catholic archdiocese was planning to erect the statue.

In 2008, Hindu nationalists organized attacks on Christian homes, schools, and churches in Karnataka, physically beating hundreds of Christians. The Saldhana Report, an independent report on the attacks released in 2011, revealed that the attacks were backed by India’s highest government authorities.

Dozens of Catholics in the same region were attacked in 2019 while conducting a Marian pilgrimage, resulting in the arrest of six Hindu Nationalists.

The USCIRF’s delegation of India as a CPC, which precipitated the investigation, was not unanimous. Gary Bauer, the president of American Values who serves as a USCIRF commissioner, dissented from the majority opinion, along with two other USCIRF commissioners.

“The trend line on religious freedom in India is not reassuring. But India is not the equivalent of communist China, which wages war on all faiths; nor of North Korea, a prison masquerading as a country; nor of Iran, whose Islamic extremist leaders regularly threaten to unleash a second Holocaust,” said Bauer. “I am confident that India will reject any authoritarian temptation and stand with the United States and other free nations in defense of liberty, including religious liberty.”

[…]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 11, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The Georgia state coordinator for Democrats for Life of America has called for renewed solidarity in the pro-life cause, following the death of George Floyd.

Rev. Harriet Bradley said Wed… […]

CNA Staff, Jun 11, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- The interim bishop of Buffalo paid tribute to a Catholic peace activist who was hospitalized after an encounter with police last week.

“We stand with all who demonstrate peacefully and speak out ag… […]

Denver, Colo., Jun 11, 2020 / 09:16 am (CNA).- A Catholic marriage ministry will host a virtual retreat this month to help couples experience joy in their marriage, especially during the current coronavirus pandemic.

Damon and Melanie Owens, founders of Joyful Ever After, have organized the 2020 Catholic Marriage Summit, a virtual encounter taking place June 11-13. More than 20,000 people have already registered for the digital event.

The summit will include over 65 presenters, including Chris Stefanick, host of EWTN’s Real Life Catholic; Franciscan University of Steubenville professor Dr. Scott Hahn; and Catholic author Matt Fradd. The presenters will be speaking alongside their spouses.

Damon Owens said the witness of these couples is profoundly moving and beautiful. He said the testimonies will offer a variety of perspectives – from newly married couples to those who have been together for 50 years, and some couples who have been separated and come back together.

“We’ve got over 65 presenter couples who will be sharing a witness about their marriage, and it’s easier said than done. So it’s a really beautiful, transparent invitation that these presenter couples are offering the attendees,” Owens told CNA.

Registration is free for the event, which runs Thursday at 3 p.m. through the end of Saturday. Videos will be laid out on the website by different topics of interest, including prayer, intimacy, communication, children, finances, and suffering loss.

For $49 per couple, the ministry is also offering an all-access pass, which will allow couples to view more content and engage more with speakers. It will also include a number of giveaways such as masterclasses, books, and additional talks.

“All access really allows the individual speakers to share more about what they do. We have live events throughout the weekend that are part of this all-access pass. My wife Melanie and I will be interviewing some of the speakers to dive a little bit deeper [and] answer live questions over zoom and Facebook live,” Owens said.

He said the idea for the summit began in March as the couple analyzed the ups and downs of their own marriage. Even the best of marriages can tend toward times of isolation, where one spouse is trying to live the marriage alone, he said.

“We looked at our own marriage, Melanie and I, what were the times where we really flourished?…There was always at least one other couple, often two or three couples, that we were really in deep friendship with,” he said. “So Joyful Ever After is founded on this idea that we need to begin to do the hard work, but the joyful work of building trusted friendships to journey in our marriages.”

“The Catholic parish summit is our first real engagement to bring couples into the broader and direct community to see their marriages, not in isolation, but as a sacramental community.”

Owens hopes that the summit will raise the bar for marriage and particularly help couples who are struggling during the quarantine.

“We’ve seen in some of the news reports, where couples are spending so much time together now that it’s bringing to the surface marriage issues, parenting issues, school issues,” he said. With family members spending less time at work and school – and more time together at home – many are realizing that they struggle to live together joyfully.

The summit is for couples who want to live their marriage with joy, but also for those preparing for sacramental marriage, or those discerning marriage. Owens said it is important to show all the good, bad, and ugly experiences of marriages to help individuals prepare for the sacrament.

During the initial planning phases of the retreat, he said, engaged couples showed a great interest in a community that shared their marital experiences.

“So that just confirmed for us that gathering this wisdom is a great gift for anyone, whether you’re repairing, discerning, or even thinking about marriage, to get a real glimpse about what it takes to live God’s plan for joyful marriage,” he said.

 

[…]

Denver Newsroom, Jun 11, 2020 / 07:28 am (CNA).-  

President Trump on Wednesday tweeted that he was honored by a letter written to him by former apostolic nuncio Archbishop Carlo Viganò, which warned the president against secular and ecclesiastical agents of an atheistic globalist new world order.

The president’s tweet is the latest in a series of events that have kept the archbishop in the headlines for much of the last two years, a period in which he has become a polarizing figure in the Catholic Church, and morphed in the public eye from a whistleblowing diplomat to a prognosticator of impending doom amid a spiritual and political battle for world domination.

“So honored by Archbishop Viganò’s incredible letter to me. I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it,” Trump tweeted June 10, linking to Vigano’s recent open letter addressed to the president.

 

So honored by Archbishop Viganò’s incredible letter to me. I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it! https://t.co/fVhkCz89g5

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 10, 2020

 

Viganò’s missive to Trump is one of several open letters and interviews the archbishop has published in recent weeks, which make apocalyptic claims about a looming spiritual battle and a globalist conspiracy pursuing a one-world government, alongside a denunciation of the Second Vatican Council, claims about the third secret of Our Lady of Fatima, the charge that some bishops are “false shepherds,” and encouragement that at least some Catholics disobey their bishop.

The June 6 letter said “it appears that the children of darkness – whom we may easily identify with the deep state which you wisely oppose and which is fiercely waging war against you in these days – have decided to show their cards, so to speak, by now revealing their plans.”

“They seem to be so certain of already having everything under control that they have laid aside that circumspection that until now had at least partially concealed their true intentions,” Vigano wrote.

“The investigations already under way will reveal the true responsibility of those who managed the Covid emergency not only in the area of health care but also in politics, the economy, and the media. We will probably find that in this colossal operation of social engineering there are people who have decided the fate of humanity, arrogating to themselves the right to act against the will of citizens and their representatives in the governments of nations,” he added.

Viganò claimed that “just as there is a deep state, there is also a deep church that betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God.”

The archbishop praised Trump, claiming that “both of us are on the same side in this battle, albeit with different weapons,” and adding that criticism of Trump’s June 2 visit to the National Shrine of St. John Paul II is part of an “orchestrated media narrative” against the president.

Viganò added that some bishops, including Washington’s Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who criticized Trump, are “subservient to the deep state, to globalism, to aligned thought, to the New World Order which they invoke ever more frequently in the name of a universal brotherhood which has nothing Christian about it, but which evokes the Masonic ideals of those want to dominate the world by driving God out of the courts, out of schools, out of families, and perhaps even out of churches.”

The archbishop did not offer proof to support the claims in his letter.

Nor has Viganò offered proof to support the claims of his recent letter on the coronavirus pandemic.

On May 7, Viganò published an open letter written principally by himself but signed by several Church leaders, which said the coronavirus pandemic had been exaggerated to foster widespread social panic and undercut freedom, as a willful preparation for the establishment of a one-world government.

That letter lamented social distancing and stay-at-home orders issued to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting they were contrived mechanisms of social control, with a nefarious purpose.

“We have reason to believe, on the basis of official data on the incidence of the epidemic as related to the number of deaths, that there are powers interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and of tracking their movements,” the letter said.

“The imposition of these illiberal measures is a disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control,” it added. (bold original)

The letter did not identify the “powers” in question, or the source of Viganò’s information.

Among the letters signatories were three cardinals and one sitting U.S. diocesan bishop, as well as Fr. Curzio Nitoglia, a priest of the Society of St. Pius X, a traditionalist group in “irregular communion” with the Church. Nitoglia is the author of “The Magisterium of Vatican II,” a 1994 article that claims that “the church of Vatican II is therefore not the Apostolic and Roman Catholic Church instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of a Vatican dicastery, was originally listed as a signatory to the letter, but distanced himself from the letter after it was published. 

CNA asked Bishop Joseph Strickland, the U.S. bishop who signed the letter, to explain its claims, but the bishop declined to do so.

CNA asked Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Strickland’s metropolitan archbishop, whether he had concerns about the bishop’s endorsement of the claim that the coronavirus pandemic was a pretext to “allow centuries of Christian civilization to be erased under the pretext of a virus, and an odious technological tyranny to be established, in which nameless and faceless people can decide the fate of the world by confining us to a virtual reality.”

The cardinal did not respond.

Weeks before that letter, in April, Viganò gave an interview in which he declared that the Vatican has been for decades concealing the third secret of Fatima, despite the publication in 2000 of the third part of Mary’s message from the apparition at Fatima, by order of Pope St. John Paul II, and despite an accompanying theological commentary written by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI.

Speculation that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI lied about releasing the message of Fatima is a common topic among Catholic sedevacantists and other conspiracy theorists.

Kevin Symonds, author of a book on the third part of the Fatima message, wrote subsequently that Viganò’s “grasp of the details is not very precise,” and, under scrutiny, “quickly breaks down.”

“Archbishop Viganò’s remarks indicate a lack of knowledge on the history of the third part of the secret of Fátima. The archbishop faces a grave danger: uninformed statements undermining his credibility,” Symonds added.

Having discussed both Fatima and the coronavirus pandemic already, in June Viganò penned his missive on Trump, and a letter on the Second Vatican Council.

That letter criticized ecumenical and interreligious efforts of Pope St. John Paul, claiming that pope’s Assisi prayer gatherings “initiated a deviant succession of pantheons that were more or less official, even to the point of seeing Bishops carrying the unclean idol of the pachamama on their shoulders, sacrilegiously concealed under the pretext of being a representation of sacred motherhood.”

The archbishop also criticized specific documents of the Council, calling them “root causes” of contemporary issues.

“If the pachamama could be adored in a church, we owe it to Dignitatis Humanae [Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom]…. If the Abu Dhabi Declaration was signed, we owe it to Nostra Aetate [Vatican II’s Declaration on non-Christian religions].”

Listing his concerns about Church in the modern world, including  “the democratization of the Church,” “the demolition of the ministerial priesthood,” “the demythologization of the Papacy,” and “the progressive legitimization of all that is politically correct: gender theory, sodomy, homosexual marriage, Malthusian doctrines, ecologism, immigrationism,” Viganò attributed each of them to the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

“If we do not recognize that the roots of these deviations are found in the principles laid down by the Council, it will be impossible to find a cure: if our diagnosis persists, against all the evidence, in excluding the initial pathology, we cannot prescribe a suitable therapy.”  

Most significantly, Viganò suggested that the Second Vatican Council catalyzed a massive, but unseen, schism in the Church, ushering in a false Church alongside the true Church.

“It is undeniable that from Vatican II onwards a parallel church was built, superimposed over and diametrically opposed to the true Church of Christ. This parallel church progressively obscured the divine institution founded by Our Lord in order to replace it with a spurious entity.”

The claim that there can be distinguished a pure form of the Church distinct from the Catholic communion of sacraments, magisterial teaching, and hierarchical governance is described by some theologians as a kind of donatism, a heresy addressed by St. Augustine in the 5th century.

Vatican II, Viganò claimed, has led to a “serious apostasy to which the highest levels of the Hierarchy are exposed.”

The archbishop did not specify those Church leaders whom he believes are “exposed” to apostasy, which is the total repudiation of the Catholic faith.

In a June 3 letter, however, Viganò singled out Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who the day before had criticized Trump. Gregory’s Archdiocese of Washington, Viganò wrote, “has been and continues to be deeply afflicted and wounded by false shepherds whose way of life is full of lies, deceits, lust and corruption. Wherever they have been, they were a cause of serious scandal for various local Churches, for your entire country and for the whole Church.”

Viganò also urged Washington, DC Catholics to disobey Gregory.

“Do not follow them, as they lead you to perdition. They are mercenaries. They teach and practice falsehoods and corruption,” Vigano wrote, without offering additional or specific information.

No U.S. bishops have yet spoken publicly about Viganò’s recent letters, a fact that some critics have attributed to an aspect of clerical culture in which bishops are reluctant to criticize one another in public.

Viganò, however, has not been reticent to criticize fellow bishops in recent years.

The archbishop made international headlines in August 2018, when he published an 11-page “testament” accusing several senior bishops of complicity in covering up the sexual abuse of McCarrick, claiming that Pope Francis knew about sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI, but chose to repeal them.

In the months that followed, some aspects of Viganò’s claims were vindicated, though in some cases it became clear that Vigano’s language was imprecise or exaggerated. Other aspects of his claims are likely to be unverifiable unless the Vatican addresses them in its comprehensive report on McCarrick, whose release has been anticipated for months.

But Viganò’s original missive also called for the resignation of Pope Francis, and made allegations about the sexual orientation and activities of numerous church leaders, suggesting a homosexual “current” or network of bishops who assured mutual promotion and protection of one another.

When his first letter was published, numerous bishops, including leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference, called for investigation into the claims made by Vigano about McCarrick. Several U.S. bishops vouched for the archbishop’s integrity, while others called aspects of his letter into question.

Viganò subsequently went into “hiding,” apparently in response to threats against his life. The archbishop is believed by some to be living with family members in the United States. He makes himself available only to selected media outlets, and, apart from additional open letters and selected interviews, does not usually respond to questions about his claims.

The archbishop released a second letter the month after his first, criticizing the pope’s response to his initial letter, and suggesting that certain Church leaders, including Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, had information that would corroborate his claims.

After exchanging additional public and polemical correspondence with Ouellet, Viganò began releasing letters on varied topics, including the conclave that elected Pope Francis, 2019’s pan-Amazonian synod, and other issues. While the archbishop continued to write, his letters did not continue to attract the level of attention that his initial correspondence had, and took on increasingly apocalyptic tones.

Cardinal Gerhard Muller, former prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has criticized Viganò’s letters, noting that “attacks” like Viganò’s letter “end up questioning the credibility of the Church and her mission.”

“No one has the right to indict the pope or ask him to resign!” Muller added.

Viganòs letters were initially met with a great deal of public support among lay and clerical U.S. Catholics, sparking even a line of coffee mugs and t-shirts which declared their owners part of “Team Viganò.”

By late 2019, however, Viganò’s new letters attracted attention mostly among traditionalist Catholic websites or supporters of his call for the resignation of Pope Francis. He did again not garner considerable mainstream Catholic attention again until controversy surrounding a disagreement with Cardinal Sarah over his coronavirus letter, and his subsequently released letters, including the one addressed to Trump.

Viganò, 79, is retired from any official ecclesiastical position. A longtime member of the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, he worked in positions in the government of the Vatican City State before, in 2011, he became apostolic nuncio, or papal representative, to the U.S. He held that position until 2016.

Viganò is accused, during his time as nuncio, of mishandling an investigation into former St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt, although Vigano denied charges that he ordered the investigation closed prematurely, and Bishop Andrew Cozzens, an auxiliary bishop in the Twin Cities, said in 2018 those charges were a misunderstanding.

Before he went to the U.S., Viganò was embroiled in controversy surrounding allegations of corruption in the Vatican City State, and was also involved in a family legal battle with his brother, also a priest, over the management of their father’s estate. Viganò was charged with withholding portions of a family inheritance from his brother, although family members have offered conflicting reports of the archbishop’s role in the affair.

For his part, Trump has faced criticism himself from some Catholics in recent weeks.

The president was criticized June 9 after he suggested on Twitter that Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old activist who was hospitalized after being pushed to the ground by Buffalo police officers, might have been an “ANTIFA provocateur.” Gugino is active in the Catholic Worker Movement founded by Servant of God Dorothy Day.

On June 2, Trump made a visit to the St. John Paul II National Shrine amid controversy over his response to George Floyd protests Archbishop Gregory roundly condemned the visit, which in turn prompted Viganò’s denunciation of Gregory.

At the same time, the president’s June 2 signing of an executive order on international religious liberty has drawn praise from bishops and religious freedom advocates in some parts of the world.

Viganò’s letter to Trump has attracted attention in the QAnon community, a social media based group of conspiracy theorists who believe that Trump is under attack by the “deep state” in an apocalyptic war of good against evil, in which Trump is using the presidency to wage a secret war against a global ring of Satanic pedophiles.

Since Trump’s tweet about Viganò, some figures in the QAnon community have characterized Viganò’s letter as a confirmation of the group’s theories.

No U.S. bishops have yet responded to Trump’s tweet of Viganò’s letter, or to the letter itself.

 

[…]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 10, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- As public Masses remain suspended in New York City, per public health orders, the city health department has issued advice to residents on how to have “safe sex” with strangers duri… […]