CNA Staff, Mar 27, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Democratic Party’s extreme support of abortion will damage its chances at the ballot box this fall, one outgoing pro-life Democratic congressman says.
“The Democratic Party asserts that its hi… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 27, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- The pro-life ministry 40 Days for Life may have ended its public vigils outside abortion clinics, but it is urging its members to still pray and fast for an end to abortion.
“The contemplative alw… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 27, 2020 / 07:30 am (CNA).- Members of Congress are asking the U.S. health department to clarify that states cannot ration patient care for coronavirus on the basis of disability.
A group of 25 members of the House and five senato… […]
Chicago, Ill., Mar 26, 2020 / 03:38 pm (CNA).- As homeless shelters have been limited by the coronavirus, the Clerics of Saint Viator will help fund an initiative to house homeless people amid the pandemic.
The religious order based in Arlington Heights, a Chicago suburb, has donated $63,000 to help over 60 homeless people stay at two hotels in the city. The initiative will last for at least three weeks, but it will likely be extended.
The religious order partnered with Journeys: The Road Home in Palatine to help homeless people have a place to quarantine during this pandemic. As of March 25, over 1,800 cases of the coronavirus have occurred in Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reported.
As the organization has also received donations from numerous other religious organizations in the area, the hotels were able to house 81 people last night with 10 more clients who will be checked-in today.
Suzanne Ploger, Journey’s director of development, told CNA that it is essential to help homeless people protect themselves from the virus as they are unable to self-quarantine.
Not only has the pandemic caused public facilities and businesses to close, but it has closed homeless shelters. Because of the pandemic, the organization’s services and volunteers have been limited. She said a majority of the volunteers for the homeless ministry are elderly people, who also need to be kept safe from the outbreak.
Experts are urging people to “ stay indoors, and then all the restaurants are closing and all the public facilities are closing,” she said.
“If you don’t have a home to shelter in place, where are you supposed to be? That’s where we were struggling with how we can provide the best services to our clients and keep them safe as well as be able to keep our staff and our volunteers healthy too.”
She said the clients have been chosen by those who are most at risk of COVID-19. She said the organization has prioritized 100 people who normally use their shelters and ranked them in terms of those with advanced age, families, or health issues.
“As we have secured the hotel room and we have secured the amount of funding to house that person in that hotel room for three weeks, then we house them and then we’d go down to the next rank on the list,” she said.
The organization will also help feed the clients in the hotel with a meal delivery system.
“We’re packing up food pantry bags, we’re packing up meals, some people are donating food again, and we’re starting that system of delivering meals to the hotels. Right now we’re doing it almost every day,” she said.
The Journey is a homeless service agency that partners with 21 religious organizations that provide emergency shelter. It began 30 years ago and, under normal circumstances, will house about 100 homeless people each night.
Besides the hotel, the organization will keep open a limited number of services including a food pantry, clothing closet, mail services, and emergency case management.
Father Daniel Hall, the provincial superior for the Viatorians, said, without living assistance, this pandemic may cause dozens of homeless people to get sick. He said this project should be important to Catholics and encouraged parishioners to donate.
“This is in line with our mission as a Catholic religious community,” said Hall, according to the Daily Herald. “This crisis could lead to between 60 to 80 men, women and children on the verge of living on the streets, and even more vulnerable to the coronavirus.”
“It is my hope that you join us in this commitment to care for our most vulnerable sisters and brothers during this crisis.”
Washington D.C., Mar 26, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- The Department of Justice said Tuesday that biological males who identify as women should not be classified as girls when it comes to athletics.
Attorney General Bill Barr and several other Depart… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 26, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- The Senate passed a massive relief package Wednesday night to counter the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The measure passed unopposed, and contained provisions excluding abortion pro… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 26, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- Despite the closure of churches and lockdowns in place in many areas of the United States due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, many social service agencies are ramping up their efforts to feed the poor, while at the same time taking unprecedented precautions to avoid getting their guests sick.
“The neighbors are mostly just thankful that we have not shut down. Many, many pantries have shut down,” Sister Stephanie Baliga of the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels in Chicago told CNA.
“In good news, most of the pantries that are associated with either a Catholic or Protestant church have not shut down.”
The Mission normally serves around 1,000 families a month, and each month processes around 70,000 pounds of food. The food pantry is set up like a grocery store to allow guests to “shop” for the items they need.
Now, to reduce the potential for contamination, the Mission has switched to a bag-based to-go pantry, distributed outside.
Sister Stephanie said they served 260 families last Tuesday, with the local police delivering boxed food to homebound seniors.
“We weren’t spending a lot of time talking to people, as you might guess. We were kind of just like: ‘Here’s your food, I wish we could spend time with you!’ It was kind of a very fast ‘Here’s your food, thanks be to God,'” Sister Stephanie laughed.
Sister Stephanie said her community is blessed to be able to continue to attend Mass and is praying for all those who cannot currently do so.
Volunteers harder to come by
Many food pantries depend on seniors as their most reliable volunteers. But since the eldery are more susceptible to COVID-19, most are staying home.
The Father McKenna Center, a Catholic day shelter for homeless men in Washington DC, normally acts as a drop in center for homeless men where they can get a meal, do laundry, and avail themselves of case management and other aid.
The center normally has 55 regularly scheduled volunteers from the community, but none are now able to come. Besides a small staff, a Jesuit Volunteer Corps volunteer and a Franciscan Missions volunteer are all who remain.
“This is not what they signed up for, but they’re jumping in,” Kim Cox, president of the center, told CNA.
Following guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services, the FMC has had to suspend its case management and ask most of the men who come to the center to go elsewhere.
DC’s homeless shelters that house people at night have changed their hours to be open all day, so the homeless can remain there and shelter in place.
The only homeless men that are left at the McKenna Center are a group of ten men who sleep at the center during the hypothermia season, which is coming to a close as spring arrives.
“I think that this is actually a really good opportunity. These guys are more than happy to help us,” Cox said.
In addition to scrubbing and deep cleaning the center’s kitchen, the homeless men have been helping to make masks out of fabric to help stem the spread of COVID-19.
“And they felt good about that…these guys that are currently homeless, it really enhances their dignity for them to do something constructive.”
There are about 120 low-income seniors who live within five blocks of the center, Cox said. The homeless men in the hypothermia program are helping to bag groceries to distribute to the center’s neighbors.
The Capital Area Food Bank asked the McKenna Center to ramp up its food distribution by becoming a community hub, handing pre-made bags of groceries to DC residents who show up, with appropriate precautions taken for social distancing.
“To prepare the first 100 bags of groceries…the men in our hypothermia program helped make that happen,” Cox said.
“They helped to bag the groceries and move them where we need them…it’s terrific that they have this desire to help other people, and that we have this opportunity to give them something to do.”
“We’ve ramped up our services tremendously”
Walter Ritz, director of HOPE Community Services in New Rochelle, New York, told CNA that the center typically runs a soup kitchen, almost five days a week, and food pantry open every other week.
That was until New Rochelle became a relatively early epicenter of the virus in the United States. Most churches in the area had to suspend services nearly three weeks ago when Governor Andrew Cuomo on March 10 instituted a one-mile radius “containment zone” to try to stop the spread of the virus beyond a local synagogue.
Though the number of new COVID-19 cases has slowed since the restrictions were implemented, like in most parts of the country, places of worship— which typically provide many volunteers and donations for HOPE— remain shuttered.
“One of the biggest changes we’ve done is ramp up our services tenfold, in terms of our food pantry,” Ritz said.
“We went from serving every other week to serving three times a week so that people have much more opportunity to come to us in this time of great need….Food insecurity is a major concern, and it’s the last thing people need to be concerned about at this moment.”
Instead of operating the food pantry once a day, like usual, HOPE is now serving every weekday, because other soup kitchens in the area had to close down.
“We’ve ramped up our services tremendously…we’re fortunate to have the national guard here to help out, but it’s just been a tremendous change for us.”
The second drastic change has been doing everything outdoors. The pantry and the kitchen are both outside, serving in to-go containers.
“HOPE’s volunteer base has always been seniors. A large portion of our volunteers are seniors, and we made a call a while back when this started hitting New Rochelle that for the safety of our volunteers, we asked that anyone who was in the high-risk category, for their own safety, not to come into HOPE,” Ritz said.
“So that, right off the bat, reduced our ability to have as much help as we normally do. Even our pantry manager, who typically coordinates how our pantry restocks and goes out, we haven’t been able to have her in. So this has all been done with a skeleton crew here, and we’re certainly feeling the pinch. It’s been very difficult to support the community, but we are still committed to doing it for as long as we can.”
“We certainly don’t have enough to sustain the level of giving that we have been doing. And we feel that we are going to have to ramp it down very shortly,”
At this time, what HOPE needs most are donations, Ritz said. One major impact on their organization— and on other nonprofits— is that their annual gala, which is a major fundraiser for them each year, has been pushed back to October.
“It’s cost us a fairly dependable revenue stream that we’ve always been able to utilize during the spring and summer,” Ritz said.
“We are working more, with less, at the moment. We’re committed to our community, and again, we are going to be here as long as we can.”
CNA Staff, Mar 25, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- The funeral of the former head of the United States bishops’ conference and archbishop emeritus of Cleveland will take place behind closed doors. A Mass of Christian burial will be said for Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk in Cincinnati’s Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains on Friday.
The funeral arrangements were announced by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati on Wednesday, and the Mass will be celebrated by Archbishop Dennis Schnurr on March 27 at 11 am.
“Due to the current pandemic, the Mass will be private,” a statement from the archdiocese said. “However the clergy and faithful of the archdiocese are encouraged to join in prayer for Archbishop Pilarczyk by joining in the Mass that will be live-streamed to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati website. A memorial Mass open to the clergy and faithful of the Archdiocese will be held at a later date.”
A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati told CNA on Wednesday that the burial would take place privately and the archbishop would not be interred at the cathedral.
Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory said on Monday that he was deeply disappointed that the current pandemic conditions prevented him from attending the Mass.
“If this were an ordinary moment, I would plan to attend Archbishop Pilarczyk’s funeral in Cincinnati,” Gregory said via Twitter.
“He was a dear friend & mentor for me. His wit and wisdom were legendary and will be missed. Alas his funeral liturgy will be private. I pray the Lord reward him with peace.”
Pilarczyk died on Sunday at the age of 85. Ordained a priest in 1959, Pilarczyk was consecrated auxiliary bishop of Cincinnati in 1974, serving also as the vicar general for the archdiocese.
In 1982, he became the archbishop of Cincinnati, succeeding Joseph Bernardin, who was appointed Archbishop of Chicago. At the time of his retirement in 2009, Pilarczyk was then the longest-tenured archbishop in the U.S., having served for 27 years.
During that time, he also served as vice president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, now the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, from 1986 until 1989. That was followed by a three-year term as president of the conference until 1992, as the U.S. prepared to host its first World Youth Day in Denver in the summer of 1993.
While archbishop, Pilarczyk was also rector of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology, also called the Athenaeum of Ohio.
On Sunday, Archbishop Schnurr said that Pilarczyk would be remembered as a “teacher.”
“Some seminarians told me they thought he was stern, but I explained he never forgot to be the teacher, always in control, tolerating no nonsense and always ready to correct,” Schnurr said.
“He was regarded by his fellow bishops as an intellectual, a scholar. He was one of the few bishops who could carry on a conversation in Latin,” said Schnurr.
CNA Staff, Mar 25, 2020 / 02:17 pm (CNA).- The New York State Catholic Conference on Monday indicated its opposition to a bill that would legalize the sale and use of recreational marijuana.
“New York’s medical, education and law enforcement communities have urged the state to reject recreational marijuana legalization, and so does the New York State Catholic Conference,” the conference said in a March 23 memo.
The Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act is currently in committee, and has been supported by Gov. Andrew Cuomo as part of his proposed budget. The governor has said it would generate $300 million in tax revenue.
“There are many policy issues that I laid out back in January and we’re going to pursue all of them,” he said, according to The Post-Star.
Medical marijuana has been legal in New York since 2014.
The Catholic conference noted that the state is now “in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic, and said that “it would be the height of irresponsibility for the state to legalize a substance designed to be inhaled deeply into the lungs of the user at this time in particular.”
“Science has not told us yet the impact of marijuana smoke on coronavirus patients. Our health care system is poised to be flooded with patients; we must not take any action that could potentially increase bad outcomes for those who are sick.”
The conference also pointed out that coronavirus has led to the closure of the capitol to visitors.
“To pass controversial legislation on major social issues at such a time when public hearings cannot be held and advocates cannot make their case would give the impression that the voice of opposition has been silenced,” it said. “This is too important an issue for government officials to determine in the absence of full and open debate.”
The memo referred also to the arguments in its 2019 statement opposing plans to legalize recreational marijuana.
At that time, the bishops said egalization would be disastrous, and accused the state of “encouraging destructive behavior” to raise tax revenue.
Legalizing marijuana for recreational use would be akin to opening a “Pandora’s Box that will have multiple deleterious effects on individuals, families, and all of society,” said the statement.
“Vice is not an appropriate economic development engine for a state that prides itself as a national progressive leader,” said the bishops. “Our state motto is Excelsior (ever upward), but policies that exploit addiction instead lead us ever downward.”
The bishops said that no increase in state revenue would be worth the “increased teenage and childhood usage, harmful effects on developing brains, addiction, natural progression to harder drug use, increased impairment-related transportation accidents and deaths, and other potential public health and safety issues.”
Richmond, Va., Mar 25, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Virginia governor Ralph Northam has made it a criminal offense to attend church services of more than 10 people. An executive order went into effect in the commonwealth on Tuesday, March 24, making any non… […]
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