Franklin, Texas, Apr 17, 2019 / 11:04 am (CNA).- Bishops in the United States are offering their prayers and condolences after a powerful storm system moved through the southern United States last weekend, claiming several lives along the way.
“… […]
Omaha, Neb., Apr 17, 2019 / 03:01 am (CNA).- Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio have blessed mankind with stunning works of art. They gave themselves ample space to create: For Michelangelo, it was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For Rembrandt … […]
Washington D.C., Apr 16, 2019 / 12:06 am (CNA).- A bipartisan bill introduced in Congress last week would allow inmates in federal and state prisons to be eligible for Pell grants, to pay for college classes while they are in jail.
Known as the “REAL Act,” the bill would repeal a 1994 Clinton-era ban on prisoners’ eligibility for the grants.
The Senate bill was introduced April 9 by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). The corresponding House bill was introduced by Congress members Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), and French Hill (R-Ark.), and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).
A press release from Senator Schatz’s office pointed to a report finding that inmates who take part in correctional education while in jail are 43 percent less likely to commit future crimes than those who do not participate in such education, and 13 percent more likely to find a job after their release.
“When we give people in prison an opportunity to earn an education, our communities are safer, taxpayers save money, and we can end the cycle of recidivism,” Schatz said.
“The REAL Act is an important part of providing opportunity to federal offenders and reducing recidivism,” Senator Lee added.
The legislation was applauded by Prison Fellowship, a nationwide Christian nonprofit group that facilitates classes, mentorship, Bible studies, and support for inmates and their families, as well as advocates for justice reform.
Craig DeRoche, senior vice president of advocacy and public policy for Prison Fellowship, said the organization is “thrilled to see this bipartisan effort to ensure that people won’t return to crime, but instead, can come home as good citizens trained to start a job and support their families.”
“The REAL Act won’t change the day on which someone is released from prison, but it can dramatically change the person who is coming home,” said Heather Rice-Minus, the organization’s vice president of government affairs.
“By unlocking second chances through access to education, we recognize the human dignity and potential of our brothers and sisters behind bars and will realize safer communities as a result,” she continued.
The legislation also drew a statement of support from FAMM, a nonprofit organization that advocates for sentencing reform.
“It’s critically important that people in prison have access to educational opportunities considering that 94 percent will come home someday,” said FAMM President Kevin Ring.
“Reinstating Pell Grants is a great next step in the federal push for criminal justice reform,” he said, pointing to education as an effective means of reducing recidivism.
“FAMM thanks the bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators who introduced this bill and urges Congress to support the full restoration of Pell Grants to those in state and federal prisons,” he said.
Lansing, Mich., Apr 15, 2019 / 05:14 pm (CNA).- A Michigan state representative is considering opening articles of impeachment against the state’s attorney general over comments that he says demonstrate an anti-Catholic bias.
State Rep. Beau LaFave told CNA in an interview that he had been worried about various public statements made by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
But the final straw was when Nessel publicly suggested that she thinks retired Judge Michael Talbot, a Catholic who has previously worked with the Diocese of Saginaw, is unfit to help Michigan State University overhaul its Title IX hearing procedures.
“There’s a clear pattern of anti-Catholic religious bigotry coming out of our attorney general, and somebody needs to do something about it,” LaFave told CNA.
The lawmaker said Nessel’s past statements characterizing faith-based adoption agencies as “hate mongers” concerned him when Nessel was running for office.
In addition, Nessel said during state investigations into allegations of abuse in the Diocese of Saginaw: “If an investigator comes to your door and asks to speak with you, please ask to see their badge and not their rosary.”
LaFave said he wanted to give Nessel the benefit of the doubt after those statements, because “perhaps she made a poor choice of words.” But Nessel’s stance regarding Talbot led him to issue a statement asking her to apologize.
Michigan State University and Judge Talbot
Michigan State University is overhauling its procedures for dealing with sexual assault the wake of a sexual abuse scandal involving former Olympic gymnastics coach Larry Nassar.
Talbot was working with the Diocese of Saginaw last year as special independent delegate as the diocese faced allegations of covering up clerical sexual abuse. Last March the home of Saginaw’s late bishop Joseph Cistone was raided by police, along with the diocesan chancery and cathedral rectory.
Saginaw County’s assistant prosecutor at the time criticized the diocese for failing to cooperate in police investigations; police said the raid was executing a search warrant believed to be related to allegations of sexual abuse made against two priests of the diocese.
Talbot reportedly disagreed with the Saginaw County prosecutor on whether it was necessary to raid the home of the late bishop, who was battling cancer at the time. The prosecutor filed a formal complaint against Talbot with the Attorney Grievance Commission (AGC), which handles allegations of lawyer misconduct in Michigan.
The complaint, which alleged that Talbot’s conduct was “inappropriate and bordered on obstruction of justice,” was quickly dismissed as lacking merit. Nevertheless, a spokeswoman for Nessel publicly released the record of the allegation.
LaFave said Nessel “broke court rules and committed an ethics violation” by publicly releasing a sealed record of the complaint against Talbot, especially since the complaint was dismissed.
Social media statements
The Lansing State Journal wrote an article in March with the headline “Retired judge with ties to [former Michigan Governor John] Engler, Catholic Church will help [Michigan State University] set new Title IX policy.”
A Twitter user had tweeted the link to the article, quipping that “MSU can’t mess this up any worse than they already have” but going on to imply that by hiring a Catholic judge, they had made the situation worse. Nessel retweeted the user’s comments, adding: “What [she] said.”
LaFave said he sees Nessel’s endorsement of the user’s comments as evidence of anti-Catholic sentiment against Talbot.
“By extension, and to cut through all the middle stuff, she was saying that because he’s a Catholic, he’s not qualified or is disqualified to do his job of crafting Title IX rules at Michigan State University because of his ties to Catholicism,” LaFave explained.
Nessel took to Twitter to respond, saying her statements against Talbot have to do with his qualifications and handling of previous cases, not his religion.
“Judge Talbot repeatedly demonstrated he is not fit to evaluate Title IX claims. His representation of the Saginaw Diocese was a playbook on how NOT to handle sexual assault cases,” she wrote.
LaFave isn’t buying it.
“How in the world is the former chief judge of the court of appeals for 20 years not qualified to make Title IX due process rules in administrative proceedings at a university?” LaFave said.
“That is patently, on its face, false. And a bunch of nonsense.”
LaFave issued a statement earlier this month asking Nessel to apologize for her comments.
“Believing that a distinguished judge cannot do his job because of his religion is delusional. The judge’s faith has nothing to do with his role in crafting rules protecting students’ rights during university proceedings,” LaFave wrote April 1.
“First she tells the press that Catholics shouldn’t pray to their rosaries because they don’t do anything, and now she quips that a judge cannot do his job because he is Catholic. What now has become clear is that there is a disgusting pattern of anti-Catholic discrimination emerging from our attorney general,” he said.
An op-ed published this week in the Detroit News pointed out that in 2015, Nessel seemed to refer to Catholic adoption agencies and their supporters as “hate mongers.”
Nessel responded to the op-ed on her Twitter page, saying that her 2015 reference to “hate mongers” was “directed at those who believe discrimination against LGBTQ people in adoption using public tax dollars is ethical,” which she said does not apply to “the vast majority of Catholics.”
“Saying that one who believes Talbot has no business handling MSU’s Title IX issues makes them anti-Catholic is akin to saying that one who believes Stephen Miller should not be dictating immigration policies is anti-Semitic. It’s utter nonsense,” she wrote.
Nessel also criticized the author of the op-ed and the Detroit News, saying, “It is you who are the hate mongers.”
“So now she’s attacking the free press, because they’re accurately quoting her,” LaFave commented.
Nessel in March of this year barred state funds from adoption agencies that won’t place children with same-sex couples, after reaching a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union and same-sex couples who approached a Catholic agency and another Christian agency.
The settlement means the state must enforce non-discrimination provisions in contracts. Agencies may not turn away otherwise qualified LGBT individuals and must provide orientation or training, process applications, and perform a home study, the Associated Press reported March 25.
A previous 2015 law, passed with the backing of the Michigan Catholic Conference, had prevented state-funded adoption and foster agencies from being forced to place children in violation of their beliefs. At the time, a quarter of Michigan’s adoption and foster agencies were faith-based.
The law protected them from civil action and from threats to their public funding, while requiring agencies that decline to place children with same-sex couples to refer the couples to other providers.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit in 2017 on behalf of two same-sex couples and a woman who was in foster care in her teens. At the time the Michigan Catholic Conference described the ACLU’s lawsuit as “mean-spirited, divisive and intolerant,” and “yet another egregious attack on religious faith in public life.” The 2015 law was needed to “promote diversity in child placement” and to maintain a public-private partnership to stabilize adoption and foster care, the conference said.
LaFave is now considering introducing articles of impeachment against Nessel if she continues to target people of faith.
“As one of only 110 people that can draft articles of impeachment against Michigan’s elected officials and civil servants, I think it’s incumbent upon me and my other 109 lawmakers to consider at all times whether or not that’s an appropriate response, so I will consider it,” he told CNA.
“We do have a pretty high bar in the Michigan constitution for impeachment proceedings, but that is something to be considered at all times,” he added.
“I really wish I didn’t have to do this,” LaFave conceded.
“But if the attorney general were going after Muslims, or Judaism, I think that the world would have their eyes on her, and would be demanding that she resign or at least apologize. But because it’s Catholic, hardly anyone but me has said a word about it. And I think that’s wrong. I think religious bigotry in all forms needs to be called out.”
Trenton, N.J., Apr 15, 2019 / 03:45 pm (CNA).- New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill to authorize medically assissted suicide into state law on Friday.
Murphy signed the Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act into law on April 15, as one … […]
Lincoln, Neb., Apr 14, 2019 / 04:06 pm (CNA).- According to the Gospel of Matthew, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” This June, priests will gather in Lincoln, Neb., to “serve” their fellow brothers with their tennis skills.
The International Tennis Championship for Priests will be held June 28-30, gathering clerics and seminarians for exercise, friendly competition, and fraternity.
The event this year is organized by Father Brian Connor, pastor of North American Martyrs parish in Lincoln, and will include about 40 priests from around the world.
“I’m happy to do this for the priests and for the sport, both of which I love very much,” Connor told CNA. “It’s a chance to compete, burn some calories, and enjoy friendship with other people,” he added.
The tournament began in Poland in 2012 and occurred again in 2013 and 2018. Connor said the competitions in Poland included options for food and live music, for example an orchestra that played the anthems of the priests’ different nationalities.
With a majority of priests coming from Poland and the Philippines, Connor expressed hope that the tournament’s placement in the United States would spark a greater interest in the participation from clerics in the Americas.
The event has several competitions: open, +45, +55, and +65. The contest will also include doubles and a consolation tournament for the eliminated players. Seminarians, priests, deacons, and bishops are all welcome to participate.
At the event, the contestants will attend daily Mass together at a variety of parishes. The priests will also explore some of eastern Nebraska’s tourist attractions, including the Holy Family Shrine, the Strategic Air Command Museum, Eugene T. Mahoney State Park, and the Henry Doorly Zoo.
Connor has played tennis since he was young, and competed during high school. Since numerous priests have likewise played tennis throughout their childhood, he said the event is an opportunity for nostalgic fun, fitness, and fraternity. Plus, it allows priests to experience new cultures and countries, he said.
“The goal of the tournament is to build a fraternity of the priesthood and to give a goal of practicing and proving yourself, which of course means health, conditioning, [and] your skills in the game,” he said.
Fr. Matthew Eickhoff, pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Benkelman and St. Joseph Parish in Stratton, and Father Thomas MacLean, a chaplain for four state prisons in Nebraska, are two other priests from the Diocese of Lincoln who will once again try their hand at the tournament.
Although neither competed in a tournament until they entered the international event in 2013, both priests grew up playing tennis. Now, they are looking forward to be “playing hard and praying hard.”
Before Eickhoff joined the first competition, he began driving an hour from Omaha to participate in a weekly lesson for six months. In preparation of this upcoming contest, he has continued with a couple review lessons and occasionally plays with the priests from Lincoln.
“The priesthood is the greatest fraternity on earth,” he said, noting that the event is an excellent opportunity to strengthen this community. He said the friendships develop quickly because of the solidarity of their vocation.
“Generally, we priests enjoy recreating together because we have an appreciation for the challenges each of us face in our priestly ministry on a daily basis, so we know how valuable a break from the work really is and we appreciate being able to refresh our minds, bodies and souls together,” Eickhoff said.
Although he does not get to play tennis as often as he would like, he said tennis and the tournament promotes a well-balanced life: recreational and spiritual.
“Bishop [Glennon] Flavin, who ordained me, encouraged us priests to ‘work hard, pray hard and play hard’ so as to keep a healthy balance of work, prayer and recreation in our lives,” he said. “Tennis continues to be one piece of the puzzle that helps provide balance in my life.”
Similarly, MacLean said the event is an opportunity for fun, but he said it is also a “pretty serious” competition. Having already lost nine pounds from training, he said he is ready to return to the court to redeem himself from last year, when he lost during the first round.
Besides the fierce competition, Maclean said he is looking forward to the spiritual companionship. He said the priests will enjoy more than just court rivalry, but times in Mass and prayer as well. He said the priests have a strong love for tennis but, primarily, the men share a deeper, sacred bond.
“I think spiritually celebrating the sacraments and the Eucharist with our brother priests is a great way to start our day before the competition begins. We are priests first so we are rooted in the sacrifice of our Lord and that’s the bed rock. I guess you could say that tennis is the icing on the cake.”
Washington D.C., Apr 13, 2019 / 04:53 pm (CNA).- With the arrival of Palm Sunday, Catholics across the globe will soon be handed spiky leaves as they walk into church. Some might fold them into elaborate little crosses. Kids will poke each other with them. But it’s safe to say most won’t know where they came from.
The feast commemorates Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem the week before his passion and crucifixion. The Gospels attest that as Jesus entered the city, crowds lay down palm branches and cloaks as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.
For centuries, Christians have commemorated the feast day that begins Holy Week by waving branches of either palm or another local tree, as well as with liturgical processions and other celebrations.
In the U.S. alone, nearly 18,000 Catholic parishes will celebrate Palm Sunday by blessing and distributing palm branches to the faithful. That makes millions of palm leaves each year – and that doesn’t include all of the Protestant churches that observe the tradition.
Where do all those palms come from? While many Catholics know the final destination of their palms – they are burned to become ashes for next year’s Ash Wednesday – the origin of the leafy branches is less well known.
Credit: Klara Sasova / Unsplash
The journey from tree to church begins with the harvesters around the world who cut and prepare the leaves for their role in worship. The work needed to provide palms for Palm Sunday is so immense that it actually constitutes a full-time year-round job for some harvesters.
Thomas Sowell is one such palm harvester from Florida who has been helping to supply parishes with fresh palm leaves for more than five decades. Sowell began harvesting wild palm leaves from trees as a child to earn extra money in the springtime. Over the past several decades, he has grown his business into a palm supplier that ships the leafy branches to all 50 states and Canada.
Despite the growth in his business, Sowell says he tries to maintain his focus on the purpose behind it all.
“We try to do the best job that we can,” he told CNA. “Every bag that we send out to churches, every individual bag has been examined, cleaned – we go to extreme measures to make sure that everything we do for these churches is done in the honor of Jesus Christ.”
While there are more than 2,600 different species of palm that grow across the world, palm plants cannot survive outside of tropical and subtropical climates. Historically, parishes that could not source palm locally would instead substitute branches of another local tree such as olive or willow, although modern churches also have the option of sourcing palm fronds from other regions of the world.
In the United States and Canada, most parishes seek out suppliers who deliver fresh palms shortly before Palm Sunday, said Fr. Michael J. Flynn, Secretariat of Divine Worship for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Many of these parishes contact church goods suppliers such as Peter Munley of Falls Church, Virginia, who helps provide parishes year-round with supplies like candles and sacramental wine, along with palms for Holy Week.
Munley told CNA that in preparation for Palm Sunday, he works to deliver palms from their source to different parishes that place orders around the country. In addition to Florida, palms are sourced from Texas, California and elsewhere in the Southern United States, he said.
While nearly all of the palms Munley sells are individually pre-cut, church goods suppliers also helps to source decorative palms for altar centerpieces and larger palm fronds as well. Dealers also work to ensure that palms get burnt and ground into ashes for Ash Wednesday, for parishes that cannot burn the palms for ashes themselves.
Munley also stressed that although many American-based palm sources are not labeled as “eco-friendly,” the practices of many major U.S. palm harvesters are indeed environmentally sustainable.
“Our guys don’t kill the palm,” he said, adding that by sourcing palms from American harvesters as opposed to internationally-certified “green” farmers, they help to reduce the ecological impact of shipping and transportation.
Credit: Bohumil Petrik/CNA.
Sowell said that the palm trees he works with “are 100 percent wild.” He works with local ranchers and landowners to remove palmetto leaves from trees that grow naturally on local farmland.
Some of the trees Sowell harvests from have been producing palm leaves since he first started gathering palm leaves to sell as a boy.
“I know that there are trees that are still being cut today that I cut when I was twelve,” he said.
Originally, Sowell cut everything himself. Over the years, however, his growing cooperation with the caretakers who supply palm led him to focus more on preparing palms for church supply dealers and for shipment.
Cooperation with ranchers and landowners is critical. Sowell says the process of cutting, cleaning and preparing the strips of palm is incredibly labor intensive, and he could not complete it without local partnerships. “There’s no way that you could grow this much palm and just do it (alone). It’s hard.”
The work is so intensive that the Palm Sunday celebrations require an entire year’s work. “We work twelve months out of the year, in one aspect or another, for one day,” Sowell said.
He also supplies palm leaves for Eastern Orthodox Churches, which use a different calendar for Easter and Lent. After the celebration of Palm Sunday in the Catholic Church and other Western churches, “we’ll turn around in a couple of weeks and gather more palms so they’re fresh for the Orthodox,” he said.
The participation of Christians in Palm Sunday celebrations not only provides work and a living for Sowell and his employees, but financial support for the local ranchers who work with him.
“There are so many families that help us that can earn money in a way that otherwise they couldn’t.”
Ultimately, Sowell sees his job harvesting and preparing palm leaves – and the service he is able to offer to parishes across the country – as a blessing.
“There would have been no way we could have done this if it hadn’t been for God helping us,” he said.
This article was originally published on CNA March 16, 2016.
Washington D.C., Apr 12, 2019 / 05:54 pm (CNA).- Students at Georgetown University voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to pass a referendum that would create a new student fee each semester in order to create programming benefiting the descendants of the … […]
Winona, Minn., Apr 12, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- The once Christian culture of the West has forgotten its roots, Archbishop Charles Chaput said Friday, warning that basic principles of human dignity and freedom are now at risk.
The leader of the Philadelphia archdiocese told an April 12 gathering of priests, seminarians, and lay people at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary in Winona, Minn., that it is the sacred responsibility of the Church to be actors in history, steering society back to the path toward God.
“We need to understand that, increasingly, the main moral principles of the Declaration of Independence – things about which the Founders could say, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’ — are not at all self-evident or permanent to many of our intellectual and political leaders,” Chaput said, while he received the 2019 Immaculate Heart of Mary Award at the seminary’s annual Bishops and Rector Dinner.
“The natural rights that most of us Americans take for granted mean nothing if there’s no such thing as a permanent human nature – a nature which many of those who seek to rule us, or already rule us, already reject. And that has consequences.”
The archbishop noted an increasing public hostility to the values of natural law and said that “secular inquisitors” seek to enforce a new orthodoxy which rejects basic human truths.
“Sex is their weapon of choice,” Chaput said, “a kind of Swiss Army knife of gender confusion, sexual license, and ferocious moralizing against anything that hints of classic Christian morality, purity, modesty, fertility, and lifelong fidelity based on the sexual complementarity of women and men.”
“To put it another way: The real enemies of human freedom, greatness, imagination, art, hope, culture, and conscience are those who attack religious belief, not believers.”
Chaput said that American society increasingly rejects the faith in God which was once its distinctive trait, calling faith the lost source of American “decency and vitality.”
“Unbelief– whether deliberate and ideological, or lazy and pragmatic – is the state religion of the modern world. The fruit of that orthodoxy is the starvation and destruction of the human spirit, and a society without higher purpose.”
“Whatever our nation once was, today it risks becoming more and more obviously a new Rome with all of the inhuman flaws that implies,” he said.
The archbishop said that Christians are not called to be passive witnesses to the times. He reminded Catholics that each person is both the subject and author of their place in history.
Christians, he said, have the duty to remake society in the image of Christ by standing in firm contradiction to the prevailing culture, remembering that each person’s actions have consequences.
“To the degree we try to fit into a culture that’s more and more hostile to what Catholics have always believed – which is what we’ve been doing for decades now – we repudiate by our actions what we claim to hold sacred with our words,” Chaput said.
“No person, and no Church, can survive for long with divided loyalties.”
Chaput told the audience that Catholics had the duty to “serve the truth by telling the truth as joyfully and persuasively as we can.”
“Our faith changed the course of history and gave meaning to an entire civilization. And in the Risen Christ, God is now calling us, right now, starting with those of us here tonight, to do the same.”
The archbishop said that it was through faith in God that society appreciated the dignity of human nature and the freedom of the human soul. If American Catholics no longer know their faith, or their privilege of discipleship, or their call to mission, then “we have no one to blame but ourselves,” he said.
“The problem in American Catholic life is not a lack of money or resources or personnel or social influence,” Chaput said.
“The central problem in constructing a Christian culture is our lack of faith and the cowardice it produces. We need to admit this. And then we need to submit ourselves to a path of repentance and change, and unselfish witness to others.”
“Your diocese, your wonderful seminary, and each of your lives, needs to be an engine of that renewal. That’s our purpose. That’s our vocation. That’s why God made us and put us here.”
Lansing, Mich., Apr 12, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- A farmer is suing the city of East Lansing, Michigan, after he was prohibited from selling organic apples at the city’s farmer’s market in what he claims is discrimination against his rel… […]
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