VOLUME 1, ISSUE 31  •  AUGUST 1, 2015

Table of Contents

Copyright Notice

VATICAN NEWS

Vatican ropes in global leaders to fight climate change, modern slavery

Pope Francis: Let Jesus satisfy your hunger for God

With a tap on an iPad, Pope Francis registers for World Youth Day 2016

‘Shadow council’ speaker pushes Church acceptance of contraception, gay sex

Pope Francis to handpick new doctor ahead of Cuba, U.S. trip

Will Vatican officials face term limits?

Vatican bails on questionable anti-human trafficking initiative

A new step in thawing relations between China and the Holy See?

WORLD NEWS

How Laudato Si is being put into practice in India

African leaders counter Obama’s ‘ideological colonization’ in Kenya

The ‘Francis effect’ takes hold at a notorious Bolivian prison

Asia Bibi’s case shows need for interreligious dialogue in Pakistan, priest says

Catholics in India mourn Abdul Kalam, the much-loved ‘people’s president’

Could ‘British values’ push jeopardize Catholic education in the U.K.?

Religious sisters sue Colombian TV network for ‘false’ depiction of saint’s life

Help from above: Priest in a helicopter exorcises Italian town

U.S. NEWS

What you think you know about human trafficking is probably wrong

Long-serving Cardinal Baum lived a generous response to God

High price tags and ugly secrets – how surrogacy preys on poor women

Will religious Boy Scout troops be tolerated when ban on gay leaders ends?

Knights of Columbus unveil new campaign to aid Middle East Christians

How an anti-discrimination bill could end up discriminating

Exclusive: ‘Essure’ victims plan hunger strike in front of FDA during Pope’s visit

Why this former rock journalist authored a book about chastity

LGBT grant-maker wants to win religious liberty fight within three years

‘Women Betrayed’ by Planned Parenthood speak out against abortion giant

Cardinal Dolan slams Trump’s ‘virulent’ immigration remarks

Bishop advises cautious optimism for a Catholic future in Boy Scouts

Make friends with your congressman – and you just might get to see the Pope

Cardinal O’Malley denounces Planned Parenthood for disrespecting human dignity

How knowing your fertility can catch diseases early

Promote the common good and give workers a raise, Catholic leaders tell Congress

FEATURES

‘Paper Towns’ movie review

The Death of God and the Loss of Human Dignity

‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’

‘Vacation’ — a sleazier, sloppier version of the original

Newest ‘Mission Impossible’ flick confusing but enjoyable

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Sunday • August 2, 2015

Monday • August 3, 2015

Tuesday • August 4, 2015

Wednesday • August 5, 2015

Thursday • August 6, 2015

Friday • August 7, 2015

Saturday • August 8, 2015

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Volume 1, Issue 31 • August 1, 2015

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VATICAN NEWS

Vatican ropes in global leaders to fight climate change, modern slavery

by Ann Schneible (CNA/EWTN News) • July 26, 2015

Pope Francis speaks at the climate change and modern slavery workshop in Rome, Italy on June 21, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Drawing dozens of mayors from major cities worldwide to discuss the link between slavery and climate change, this week’s Vatican conference showed how secular leaders are responding to Pope Francis’ lead in protecting the environment – and, more importantly, the vulnerable.

“The Church has a role to protect the vulnerable, and if we follow the words of the Pope, we actually bring into account those who create the suffering of others,” said Kevin Hyland, United Kingdom Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and one of the speakers at the gathering.

In an interview with CNA, Hyland said the pontiff has shown his leadership in bringing together the themes of slavery and climate change, as demonstrated by his ability to draw together international leaders to confront the issue.

“Pope Francis talks about it in a way that people understand. He’s talking about it in the terms of human lives: That fact that we are exploiting not just people now, but the future, and if we don’t act now in this current time, we are destroying the world for the future generation.”

Hyland was one of the speakers in the July 21 workshop in the Vatican entitled “Modern Slavery and Climate Change: the Commitment of the Cities,” during which dozens of mayors from around the world were invited to present on the theme of climate change and slavery.

Vulnerable people, he explained, become targets of slavery when they are unable to sustain themselves, be it the result of conflict or disasters – including those brought about by climate change.

These individuals, he said, “then become the very commodity that criminals that exploit people through modern slavery target.”

“Climate change and modern slavery are very much linked because it is the climate change that is creating the environment for criminals to actually find their commodity, which is human beings who are displaced because of the climate change.”

Tuesday’s workshop was part of a July 21-22 symposium sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PAS), titled “Prosperity, People and Planet: Achieving Sustainable Development in Our Cities.”

The theme of the conference represents the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences’ current review of ”Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs), a project in which Hyland is taking part.

He is also a member of the Santa Marta Group, launched by Pope Francis in 2014, which is an alliance of international police chiefs and bishops from across the world who work together with civil society to eradicate human trafficking and provide pastoral care to victims.

On Tuesday, Pope Francis addressed the participants, touching on various themes such the issue of human trafficking, which he said can be a “rebound effect” of environmental degradation. The Pope will address the United Nations during his tour of the United States in September.

Remarking on the pontiff’s address, executive director of the C40 cities climate change group Mark Watts, told CNA he was struck by the connection drawn between climate change and slavery.

“I think it was that message of: if you want to make the world a better place right now, and you want to tackle climate change, there is one thing you have to do, which is tackle inequality,” Watts said.

The Pope in his speech showed how “the effects of climate change that we are already experiencing is causing a big increase in migration as people flee areas where life is no longer sustainable,” Watts said.

“Those people are often the ones that fall into the trap of slavery and are exploited.”

The two-day symposium gathered some 65 mayors world wide, as well as other leaders, in light of the difficulties which urbanization brings to cities and rural areas alike.

Speaking on climate change, the Mayor of San Jose, Sam Liccardo, told CNA the reasons he is following the lead of the Pope – a spiritual leader – on matters which pertain to science.

“It seems to me that this is an issue where we critically need leadership from Pope Francis,” he said. “In order to spur the political will, we need him.”

“The science is largely undisputed at this point. There is a broad consensus among scientific experts. What lacks is political will, and we need leaders that are able to inspire people, to be able to make tough decisions, critical decisions for us for the future.”

Fellow Californian, governor Jerry Brown, who took part in the meetings, told CNA that this week’s conference was an important step bringing global awareness to the issue of climate change.

“This conference is important as a call to action for mayors here, and for mayors and governors and presidents throughout the world,” Brown said.

“The big point is that the magnitude of the problem that climate change represents is juxtaposed with the complacency, the indifference, and the lack of real understanding,” he added.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis: Let Jesus satisfy your hunger for God

by CNA/EWTN News • July 26, 2015

Pope Francis at the Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on May 27, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — Jesus Christ’s miraculous multiplication of the loaves shows that he offers “fullness of life for hungry man,” Pope Francis said Sunday. He encouraged everyone to offer what little they have to God so that God can multiply their gifts and good deeds.

“Jesus satisfies not only material hunger, but the most profound of hungers, the hunger for meaning in life, the hunger for God,” the Pope said in his remarks before the Angelus July 26.

“The powerful mercy of God acts in Him,” the Pope said, adding that God’s mercy heals every evil.

Pope Francis reflected on the Sunday reading from the Gospel of John in which a vast crowd follows Jesus, but lacks enough food to eat.

In seeking to feed the crowd, Jesus’ disciple Philip calculated that there was not enough to feed them all. The Pope said this shows the disciples reasoning in terms of the market. Jesus, however, substitutes the logic of buying with “another logic: the logic of giving.”

While one boy could give five loaves and two fishes, these appear not to be enough to feed the crowd. Jesus took them, gave thanks to God and distributed them. There was enough food left over to fill twelve baskets.

This miracle anticipates the Last Supper, the Pope noted, in which “the bread of God is Jesus himself.”

In making Communion with Jesus, Pope Francis said, “we receive his life in us and we become children of the heavenly father and brothers with each other.”

“We meet with Jesus really alive and risen!” he said.

“To participate in the Eucharist means to enter into the logic of Jesus, the logic of gratuitousness, of sharing,” he explained. Communion allows Christians to draw from Christ the grace which makes them capable of sharing with others what they have.

Pope Francis encouraged Christians to draw from the example of the boy who gave so little food, which ended up feeding thousands.

“In the face of suffering, loneliness, poverty and difficulties of so many people, what can we do?” the Pope asked. “Complaining does not solve anything, but we can offer what little we have. We certainly have a few hours of time, some talent, some expertise.”

“Who among us does not have his or her ‘five loaves and two fish’?” he continued. “If we are willing to put them in the hands of the Lord, we will bring a little more love into the world a bit ‘more love, peace, justice and joy. God is able to multiply our small gestures of solidarity and make us partakers of his gift.”

After the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis appealed for the release of the Italian Jesuit Father Paolo Dall’Oglio. The priest was kidnapped in Syria almost two years ago. He also remembered everyone else in captivity, especially the Greek and Syriac Orthodox archbishops of Aleppo who were kidnapped in Syria in 2013.

“With affection and participation in their suffering, we want to remember them in our prayers,” he said, voicing a prayer to the Virgin Mary.

On Sunday Pope Francis also opened registration for World Youth Day 2016. Flanked by a young man and a young woman, he became the first registrant for the global Catholic youth event by clicking on an iPad.

The Pope invited all the youth of the world to Krakow, calling it a “moment of grace” for their communities.

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VATICAN NEWS

With a tap on an iPad, Pope Francis registers for World Youth Day 2016

by CNA/EWTN News • July 26, 2015

Pope Francis with two World Youth Day volunteers looks over St. Peter’s Square July 26, 2015. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis has invited the youth of the world on pilgrimage to World Youth Day 2016 — and on Sunday he became the first pilgrim to register himself.

“Today we open registration for the thirty-first World Youth Day, to be held next year in Poland,” he said. “I invite the youth of the world to live this pilgrimage that will be going to Krakow.”

The youth will be “participating in this moment of grace for their communities,” he said.

The Pope spoke from the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square after praying the Angelus July 26. With a young man and a young woman at his side, he used an iPad to become the first registered pilgrim for the next World Youth Day.

“Look, I enrolled in the Day as a pilgrim through this electronic device,” Pope Francis said.

St. John Paul II instituted the international gathering in 1985 to bring together young people to pray and worship and to celebrate their Catholic faith. The events are held every 2-3 years and have drawn crowds of up to 5 million people. World Youth Day 2016 will be held in Krakow, Poland from July 26-31.

Pope Francis attended the 2013 World Youth Day with millions of people in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

About 2.5 million people are expected to attend the 2016 event, including about 30,000 from the United States.

The Pope on Sunday said the next World Youth Day will be “a jubilee of youth” who are called to reflect on its biblical theme, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

The official World Youth Day Krakow website is krakow2016.com.

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VATICAN NEWS

‘Shadow council’ speaker pushes Church acceptance of contraception, gay sex

by Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • July 29, 2015

Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, where the May 25 secretive gathering was held. (Luigi Santoro via Wikimedia Commons)

Rome, Italy — Yes to contraception, homosexual acts, and Communion for the divorced and remarried – all considering the circumstances. No to understanding any acts as intrinsically evil.

These are the positions advocated by speakers at the May 25 “shadow council“ which gathered prelates and theologians, led by the German bishops, at a Jesuit university in Rome.

That day 50 specially chosen representatives of the the German, Swiss, and French bishops conferences gathered at the Pontifical Gregorian University for a closed-door meeting, with the aim of reflecting on the biblical and theological bases of the family, and of discussing their goals for the Synod on the Family which will be held at the Vatican this October.

Only a few journalists were invited to participate in the meeting, and under the condition that they would not attribute by name what they heard there. One participant told CNA they were barred from granting interviews, as “confidentiality has been requested about the discussions at stake.”

But on July 17, nearly two months after the fact, the German bishops conference released the text of the meeting’s interventions, in French, German, and Italian. Missing, however, was the final speech from Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising.

The document’s introduction explained that the convention was divided into three parts: a reflection on Christ’s words regarding marriage and divorce; on sexuality as an expression of love and “a theology of love”; and on the gift of life and “a narrative theology” – theology based on personal experience.

This “narrative theology,” based on individual experiences – and the consequences of adopting it – is the real news of the ‘Shadow Synod’ convention.

Fr. Alain Thomasset, SJ, introduced it in his speech at the secretive meeting. Fr. Thomasset, a Belgian, is professor of moral theology at Centre Sevres, a Jesuit university in Paris.

His paper was titled “Taking into consideration the history and biographical developments of the moral life and pastoral care of the family,” and in it he rejected the notion that any act can be intrinsically evil.

He maintained that “the interpretation of the doctrine of acts known as ‘intrinsically evil’ is seemingly one of the principal fonts of the difficulty currently encountered in the pastoral care of families, as it determines to a large extent the condemnation of artificial contraception, of sexual acts by the divorced and remarried and by homosexual couples, even when they are stable.”

This understanding of some acts as intrinsically evil, he said, “seems incomprehensible to many and seems pastorally counterproductive.” He added that while it “justly insists on points of reference as the targets of the moral life, it neglects precisely the biographical dimension of existence and the specific conditions of each personal journey.”

He claimed a “narrative and biographical perspective obliges one to believe that moral evaluation does not cover isolated acts, but rather human acts included in a story,” and that thus “one should not be too quick to qualify a sexual or contraceptive act as intrinsically evil!”

Fr. Thomasset relied on a particular understanding of the primacy of conscience, saying that “the objective ethical references provided by the Church are just one item (essential, certainly, but not the only item) of moral discernment that must be operated within the personal conscience.”

“How are we to take into account the difference between an act of adultery and sexual relations within a stable couple of remarried persons?” he asked.

He commented that “it would be of great benefit to the elaboration of moral norms and of pastoral measures if there was a increased listening to the experience and the sensus fidei of couples who are seeking to best live out their call to holiness,” adding that “divine communication and its reception on the part of the individual believer are co-originating.”

Fr. Thomasset then proposed an interpretation of human moral acts “remaining within the context of Catholic tradition, which would bear various consequences.”

The first of these consequences, he said, is that “in certain cases, because of particular circumstances, the sexual acts of remarried couples would not longer be considered as morally guilty. This would open their access to the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist.” In support of this he cited a 1972 essay by then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, which has long since been retracted and repudiated by its author.

The other consequences: the use of contraceptives would not be morally wrong, as long as the couple were married and “remain open” to welcoming life; and the “subjective moral responsibility” of sexual acts between homosexuals in a stable and faithful relationship would be “diminished or eliminated.”

“It’s about helping people live the humanly possible in a path of growth toward the desirable,” Fr. Thomasset wrote.

The first part of the “shadow council” included interventions by the theologians Anne-Marie Pellettier and Thomas Soeding, both of whom advocated “development” of the Church’s understanding of marriage as indissoluble.

Pellettier stressed that Christ’s words on divorce in Matthew 19 (“from the beginning it was not so”) must be contextualized in the Jewish world to which he was speaking, and must be read through the lens of anthropology rather than as a juridical statement.

“Catholic tradition on indissolubility is actually based on a disciplinary interpretation of this text, despite its kerygmatic content,” she charged – that is, “the conjugal bond, in the terms in which Jesus expresses it, is strictly linked to the vocation of those who, with baptism, will be immersed in Christ’s death and resurrection.”

The French theologian stressed that today’s challenges “are a prolongation of the experience of the Catholic Church in the course of a history in which it has not ceased to firmly watch over indissolubility, while customs widely dismissed the principle accepted by Christian societies.”

She suggested that the current anthropological situation of secularization is “totally new” and “probably requires” a theological “development.”

Pellettier referred to the fruit of the 1980 Synod on the Family, St. John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio, which noted that “spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross.”

She added, however, that “the Paschal Mystery should not appear to have failed when Christian couples live a laceration,” and that a new challenge is presented by those baptized who “undertake – for reasons inseparable from their stories, and always unique – a second union.”

“The truth is that conjugal life is full of stumbling blocks, far more than those which are admitted by the theology of marriage,” she maintained.

Soeding then stressed that while marriage is indissoluble, the Synod on the Family being held in October should “develop, in fidelity to the will of Jesus, the doctrine, morality, and law of marriage. The key lives in a theology of marriage and of the family which renews the link between faith and love, grace and freedom, ethics and law. The more clear and attractive the Christian model of marriage becomes, the sooner will it be possible to find ways for those persons who cannot celebrate such a marriage to be able to live within the Church as a happy couple.”

Eberhard Schokenhoff, professor of moral theology at the University of Freiburg, spoke about the “theology of love”, and proposed a clearly sociological view, with quotes from the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm and the Marxist sociologist Theodor Adorno.

In his speech, he focused on the difficulty of living a Christian life in today’s society, as there is no more space for transcendence. “In the first place, it should be admitted that love can indeed end,” he advocated. “If two persons make the definitive decision of a common project of life, this does not mean they cannot review their choice.”

The irrevocability of the choice to marry is, according Schockenhoff, “founded on what love in fact wants,” and “the indissolubility of marriage is not a prescriptive aspect which is brought from outside; it is rather a request that spouses make to themselves, when they trust in their love.”

François-Javier Amherdt, a professor from Fribourg, stressed that a sexual act that happens outside the context of marriage “remains incomplete” and that “fecundity is needed to fully exercise sexuality.” So, what to do with “sexual relations that fall outside the marriage covenant?”

Amherdt answered that one must discern “according to the situation … we must sound a word of call rather than of condemnation, according to a pastoral care of accompaniment.” He urged that not all situations of cohabitation are the same, and that “on a moral and pastoral view” these relations cannot be “completely discredited,” as “their deficiencies, moreover, in some cases are due to pressures of context and to the lack of references to the education of sentiments.”

The “Theology of Biography” was further developed by the theologian Eva-Maria Faber. She wrote that the Church has traditionally focused on marriage as a life of communion, “which sometimes leads to the spouses being considered only as a couple. The individual person with his respective individual biography is likely to remain excluded.”

Faber instead focused on individuals and their personal ambitions beyond the marriage, and emphasized that “it is deplorable that even the theology of marriage of the Church often does not permit sufficient attention given to the individuality of spouses in marriage.”

She suggested therefore a “biographical view of marriage, adapted to real situations and leading toward a corresponding spirituality of the marital state, which would also inform the language of the Church.”

Such a biographical view would mean that “the doctrinal and normative framework cannot enter into the merits of all individual situations; rather it must remain open to the dignity and uniqueness of individual persons and situation,” Faber claimed. She also asked that there be developed “a practice of acknowledging also couples” who “do not meet the norm” of marriage’s indissolubility.

In the discussion which followed the presentations, it was emphasized that “it is incorrect” to call remarriage a “permanent sin” and that reconciliation is “irrenounceably a path for all men and for all situations of life.”

“The fact that for the divorced and remarried … who are also sexually active, there is no possibility of reconciliation, is a dead end,” the group concluded. “This situation must be overcome, in order not to further endanger the credibility of the Church when it speaks of the importance of reconciliation.”

The meeting’s participants also emphasized that the Eucharist’s role as “therapy and consolation” should not be overshadowed and hampered by its “symbolism of the unity of the Church.”

In the end, the proposal of the German bishops, and those who stand with them, is one of a human-centered theology: changing with the spirit of the times, and affirming all situations and choices which become widespread.

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VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis to handpick new doctor ahead of Cuba, U.S. trip

by CNA’s Vatican Observer Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • July 29, 2015

Pope Francis at the Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on June 3, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Vatican City — As the five-year term for Pope Francis’ personal doctor comes to an end, the Pope is expected to choose a new one soon who will accompany him during his upcoming visit to Cuba and the United States.

Patrizio Polisca, doctor to Benedict XVI and president of the medical commission for the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, was until recently the Pope’s personal doctor and head of the Vatican City State’s healthcare services.

Francis decided at the end of May not to renew Polisca’s term as papal doctor and head of the Vatican’s healthcare services, leaving his position open as of Aug. 1.

The Pope is expected to select a new doctor in September, before his visit to Cuba and the United States at the end of that month.

Appointed as head of the Vatican’s health care services in 2010, Polisca, a cardiologist, has been Benedict XVI’s personal doctor since 2009. He will continue caring for the retired Pope, and will also maintain his post in the Congregation for the Cause of Saints.

In comments to journalists July 27, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi laid to rest rumors circulating in Italian media that Francis had ousted the doctor from his position, and from the Vatican.

“I want to clarify that Patrizio Polisca ended in July the five year term mandate as director of Health Care Services. A replacement must be considered customary according to the Regulation for the Lay Managers of the Holy See and of the Vatican City State,” the spokesman said.

Fr. Lombardi also affirmed that Polisca will continue live within the Vatican City State. He remarked that the doctor “is very highly considered in the Vatican,” and the fact that he is still Benedict XVI’s personal doctor is of great importance.

It’s been customary since St. John Paul II’s pontificate that the position as director of the Vatican City State’s healthcare facilities was tied to the post of the Pope’s personal doctor. However, it is likely Pope Francis will make a different decision, and that his new personal doctor will not be in charge of the Vatican healthcare system.

Patrizio Polisca, born in 1953, has worked for the Vatican since the 1980s, starting as a summer medical guard in the Papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo.

In 1994 he became one of the doctors of the Vatican medical corp, and in 1997 was asked by Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, St. John Paul II’s personal doctor, to be a medical support during the Pope’s historic trip to Cuba in 1998.

Since the 1998 trip to Cuba, Polisca served as a supporting medical doctor on every long trip St. John Paul II took, since the Pope’s health was worsening each year.

After Benedict XVI’s election he continued to serve as a Vatican medical official. In 2009, Benedict XVI appointed him his personal doctor, and in 2010 Polisca had become the head of the Vatican health care.

Polisca is also a member of the Vatican Security Committee. As president of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints medical commission, the doctor assists in examining cases of healings, and decides whether the healing is the result of a miracle or not.

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VATICAN NEWS

Will Vatican officials face term limits?

by CNA’s Vatican Observer Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • July 30, 2015

A view of the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica from the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Feb. 14, 2015. (Lauren Cater/CNA)

Vatican City — A fixed term mandate for Vatican officials serving in the Roman Curia was among recent proposals for the Vatican’s ongoing reform process, and will likely be discussed at the Sept. 14-16 meeting of the Council of Cardinals.

It’s still unclear whether the fixed term mandate refers to all Vatican officials – that is, those who hold an office of the Roman Curia – or if it would just apply to the clergy.

According to the prominent Italian journalist Marco Tosatti, “the idea is to give a term – a five year term, to be eventually renewed for another five year term – to the mandate of the Curia officials, which are the priests who make up the bulk of the jobs in the various Congregations and Pontifical Councils.”

So if a priest is called to serve in the Roman Curia, he would return to his home parish after five years. On the other hand, there are many lay Vatican officials: would the fixed term mandate apply to them as well?

According to data, out of the nearly 2,700 people working in the Holy See, there are 780 priests, 330 religious brothers and sisters and 1,600 lay people.

Lay people are close to double the number of priests serving in the Holy See. If the five year mandate is applied to them, what will be their fate? How would they provide for their families?

“These are some of the critical issues of the proposal. Another one is that people continually on the move would have no time to develop the special expertise which has characterized the Holy See personnel until now,” a source working within a Vatican congregation told CNA July 29.

However, the fixed term mandate would not apply to diplomatic ranks, which would continue with the current system.

The Holy See diplomatic Corp is nurtured in the Ecclesiastical Academy – the Vatican ‘school for ambassadors’ of sorts. After getting their diploma, the future nuncios are sent to serve with different ranks at Holy See nunciatures all over the world.

If the papal ambassadors-in-training go all the way, they usually receive the rank of a papal nuncio after some 16-17 years of diplomatic service. However, the Pope may appoint as papal nuncio whoever he wants.

Among the most known nuncios who did not attend the Ecclesiastic Academy is the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, who in 1996 was elevated to the rank of nuncio from his previous post of Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants.

The current nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Charles J. Brown, is also among those who did not attend the academy. Before his selection as a Vatican ambassador, Brown had previously served as an official in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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VATICAN NEWS

Vatican bails on questionable anti-human trafficking initiative

by Catholic News Agency’s Vatican Observer Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • July 30, 2015

Pope Francis speaks at a conference in Rome on the link between climate change and human trafficking, July 21, 2015. (Daniel Ibanez/CNA)

Vatican City — Faithful to its commitment against human trafficking, the Holy See has left the board of an initiative it helped to found, as questions have been raised around both its effectiveness and its chairman’s possible use of the Pope to raise funds.

Together with Anglican and Muslim leaders, the Vatican launched the Global Freedom Network in March 2014, hoping to eradicate human trafficking by 2020.

But it has been noticed in recent days that the Global Freedom Network’s representative from the Holy See, Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, had left the group’s executive board.

A July 27 program of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) drew attention to Archbishop Sánchez’ resignation from the initiative. The program focused on Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire businessman and philanthropist who chairs the network.

Archbishop Sánchez, who is chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, confirmed the news July 29 and said, “the Holy See does not want to be instrumentalized. A businessman has every right to make revenues, but not by exploiting the Pope.”

The archbishop did not go into detail, but his decision to leave Forrest’s organization was made some time ago, and without fanfare. Accessing Global Freedom Network’s website through “Wayback Machine,” an internet archive, reveals that Archbishop Sánchez was listed on its board on Feb. 15, but had left by May 1.

Forrest has dedicated much of his charitable work to combat human trafficking, and set up the Walk Free Foundation to this end in 2010. CNA has previously reported the Walk Free Foundation’s goals as including securing government endorsements of the Global Fund to End Slavery and business’ commitments to eliminate slavery from their supply chains.

However, the approach of his Global Freedom Network and the Walk Free Foundation has been criticized by experts in the field. Anne Gallagher, a human trafficking expert at the United Nations, told ABC that “the trouble with the approach of Walk Free and of the Global Slavery Index is that it assumes this problem can be fixed by pushing governments, by getting a lot of young people to sign up to petitions that go to corporations.”

Besides the criticism regarding how his charities fight human trafficking, Forrest may have fallen out of the Vatican’s good favor for reasons linked to financial difficulties.

As Archbishop Sánchez did not give details about why the Vatican has left the board of the Global Freedom Network, his mention of “exploitation” of the Pope can lead one to surmise a misuse of the Holy See’s involvement to help fund raise for Forrest’s charitable efforts.

The ABC program also discussed the financial loss Forrest’s charities have had to face. According to ABC, “the Minderoo Foundation, the umbrella body for Andrew Forrest’s charities, has watched its wealth fall by around $50 million — representing around 50 percent of its total investments — over the past 12 months.”

The charity is linked to Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group (FMG): some 40 percent of the charity’s investments are in the form of shares in the company. With the fall in iron ore’s price, FMG’s share price has fallen too, and the charity’s value has fallen in its turn, from about $103 million one year ago to $53 million today.

According to ABC “about half the fall is a direct result of the declining value of Fortescue’s shares.”

A source who works in the Vatican told CNA July 30 that given the fall in the charity’s value, “it is likely that Forrest had used the name of the Pope to convince donors to replace what was lost and to invest in his initiatives.”

The Global Freedom Network’s homepage currently features two prominent images of Pope Francis. Near the top of the page is a video of the Pope and other religious leaders signing its Declaration Against Slavery on Dec. 2, 2014. Below the video is found a series of tweets, the most prominent of which are one from Pope Francis, and one which includes a photo of him at the December event.

The Global Freedom Network has been lauded by such prominent figures as the Clintons, Bill Gates, Bono, and Tony Blair, but while speaking with ABC, the UN expert Anne Gallagher added, “we have someone who’s got a lot of money, who’s got access to global power, who can actually do things, but while his understanding of the problem is so basic, so unsophisticated, that power, that money is not being used how it should be.”

Janie Chuang, who teaches at Washington College of Law, commented during the ABC program that “it’s frustrating to see the rise of this organization that seems not to know what it’s doing, yet captures media headlines left and right with its grandiose claims.”

CNA has reported the Global Freedom Network’s work as including mobilizing faith communities, examining business supply chains to ensure ethical products, more care for victims and survivors of slavery, legal reforms and better enforcement, and more education about the crimes.

The publicity surrounding the Vatican’s decision to leave the Global Freedom Network comes as the World Day against Trafficking in Persons is celebrated. The event was observed at the Vatican last year with a conference co-hosted by the Global Freedom Network and the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences.

While the Holy See has ended its relationship with Forrest’s organization, it remains committed to ending human trafficking, which has been a priority for Jorge Bergoglio since he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, where he established an annual Mass for its victims. The International Labour Organization estimates that nearly 21 million persons are victims of forced labor worldwide.

At his first address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, in December 2013, Pope Francis said it is a disgrace that persons “are treated as objects, deceived, assaulted, often sold many times for different purposes.”

In November 2014 the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences held a workshop on ‘Trafficking in Human Beings: Modern Slavery,” which resulted in proposals for media, religious institutions, civil organizations, and the business sector to work together in order to combat human trafficking.

This was followed by an April conference on the trafficking of children, co-hosted by the pontifical academy and by Sweden’s embassy to the Holy See.

And earlier this month, Archbishop Sánchez chaired a meeting of worldwide mayors to examine the link between human trafficking and climate change.

Archbishop Sánchez told CNA last year that Pope Francis had personally emphasized that his pontifical academy should focus on the issue of human trafficking.

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VATICAN NEWS

A new step in thawing relations between China and the Holy See?

by CNA’s Vatican Observer Andrea Gagliarducci (CNA/EWTN News) • July 31, 2015

(Buzz via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Vatican City — In a tiny victory for Vatican-Chinese rapprochement, China’s government now recognizes seminary studies and allows seminarians to continue their education in a state university should they leave.

The Bachelor of Arts diploma young men receive in the seminary is now recognized as being a state title by the Chinese government. With the recognition it is now possible for seminarians who decide to quit their priestly formation to continue their education in a state university.

The news came in a brief July 23 article by Fides, the press agency for the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

The piece focused the close of the Academic Year for China’s six authorized seminaries. In total, 79 seminarians earned their Bachelor of Arts degree, ending their first cycle of studies. They have now been sent to work in parishes and ecclesiastical communities.

Work for the future parish priests will prove difficult in China, where there are mixed signals that on one side suggest an improvement in relations between China and the Holy See, while on the other hand show that the topic of religious freedom is still crucial.

One sign of improved in relations is that Chinese president Xi Jinping, who has held office since March 2013, has shown interest in improving Holy See-Beijing relations.

The president allowed Pope Francis’ plane to fly over China while the Pope was en route to the Philippines in January. He also responded to the telegram Francis sent to him while flying through Chinese airspace.

On Jan. 21, 2015, Hua Chunying, a spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said China’s government is “willing to have constructive dialogue with the Vatican based on relevant principles.”

On the other hand, there are also areas of division between Chinese Catholics and the Chinese central government. One of them is the current demolition of buildings and crosses in the province of Zhejiang.

According to the government, the demolition plan – which began in early 2014 and has already affected more than 400 buildings and crosses – is part of the government’s effort to tear down illegal buildings.

However, the decision has been interpreted as a persecution campaign against Chinese Christians.

Last week Msgr. Vincent Zhu Weifang of Wenzhou, close to 90, took the streets together with 26 priests from his diocese to call for an end of the demolition of crosses. It was the fourth time the Catholic community in Wenzhou has publicly protested against the destruction.

Another division came out with the protests of “Occupy Central,” a civil disobedience campaign that took place in Hong Kong last year, calling for democracy and protesting against electoral reforms proposed by the Chinese government, seen as highly restrictive.

The movement was backed by many Catholics, including Cardinal Joseph Zen, archbishop emeritus of Hong Kong, who publicly protested alongside members of the movement.

Xi Jinping likely referred to these facts when in late May he warned that “religions in China must be free from foreign influence” and incorporated into Socialist Chinese society.

The president’s declarations, however, didn’t deter the Holy See from moving forward toward a first, diplomatic rapprochement.

Although the time hasn’t come for a papal nuncio to China, there’s a possibility of an agreement between the Vatican and China. If an agreement is reached, it could lead to a first, historic step: the appointment of a Vatican resident representative in China, though without the rank of an ‘ambassador.’

Diplomatic relations between the Holy See and China were cut in 1951, two years after the Chinese Communist party seized power. The Holy See has tried to keep some channel of dialogue open ever since, with increasing concern for Catholics in the country.

The restoration of ties between the two has been slow, and characterized by moments of freeze and sudden thaws.

Diplomatic talks for a final rapprochement are still at an early stage, but Xi Jinping’s policy on religious issues might help to overcome the difficulties.

First among the difficulties is the situation of the Church in China, which is often described as divided between an ‘official’ Church – the Patriotic Association linked to the government – and an underground Church, persecuted and whose episcopal appointments frequently go unacknowledged by Chinese authorities.

A source from the Congregation for the Evangelization of People told CNA July 27 that the situation is even more nuanced than this.

“For years, priests of Chinese communities and faithful have been working to overcome the divide between ‘clandestine’ and official Church,” the source maintained.

He added that “the more the ‘Cultural Revolution’ gets farther in time, the fewer the differences between Patriotic and underground Church are.”

This happened thanks “to the work of Chinese bishops and Vatican officials who had patiently entertained relations in order to gain the hoped, and yet not achieved, twofold recognition of all the current bishops by China and the Holy See.”

Nowadays, the source concluded, “there is the clear perception that the Chinese Church has never been schismatic, though it endured lacerations and compromises.”

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WORLD NEWS

How Laudato Si is being put into practice in India

by Antonio Anup Gonsalves (CNA/EWTN News) • July 25, 2015

Boatmen in Guwahati Assam, India. (Michael Foley via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Miao, India — The diocese of Miao, India sits in rich, mountainous forest terrain on the edge of the Himalayas. Most of its residents are tribal artisans whose livelihood is solely dependent on the local natural resources and the forest’s produce.

So the release of the Pope’s recent encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, hit particularly close to home for the diocese, which falls in India’s furthest northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

In recent years, the diocese has already been promoting eco-initiatives focused on raising awareness and protecting forests. One part of the effort encourages gifting plant saplings instead of flower bouquets during celebrations. Other efforts emphasize preserving cultural heritage and customs, or fighting the exploitation of the forest that sometimes comes with development.

Now, the people of Miao are looking at other ways to put the Pope’s words into practice.

A total of five study days in July were selected to examine the concrete application of the Pope’s encyclical in the specific circumstance of the diocese, Fr. Felix Anthony, the Miao diocese’s head of communications, told CNA July 22.

To begin, a workshop was held at the diocesan center in Miao, attracting some two dozen priests and religious.

Addressing participants at the initial workshop, Bishop George Pallipparambil emphasized, “The world is our Common Home and we must all work for its care and protection.”

The Miao bishop warned against a general insensitiveness to environmental issues throughout the region.

“God has created the world and gave it to us to till it and keep it, and not to use it for selfish motives, driven by profit and greed,” he said.

Care for the environment “does not just mean planting trees … caring for our common home means protection of the Earth and all it contains, especially the needy and the poor,” Bishop Pallipparambil continued.

He challenged the participants to be open to the teachings of Pope Francis in order to help the faithful in the parishes understand the teachings of the Church.

Other seminars were planned for various parts of the diocese, including Kumari, Tezu, Roing, and the remote township Khonsa in the Tirap District of east Arunachal Pradesh.

Fr. Anthony said that the sessions have opened up thought-provoking insights on environmental issues and discussions on concrete solutions.

“I feel very happy that I was able to attend the one of the study days of Laudato Si, as this has helped me to understand our Holy Father’s concern for our common home,” said participant Fr. Shoby of the Changlang Parish of the diocese. “I’ll go back to the mission with determination to protect our common home, and I will also help people understand the importance of its care.”

The Diocese of Miao was established in 2005, and Pope Benedict XVI appointed Bishop Pallipparambil, a Salesian, as its first bishop. It is estimated that the total diocesan population is roughly 500,000, with Christians – most of them Catholic – comprising some 19 percent of the population.

The diocese is home to 83,500 Catholics across an area of nearly 17,000 square miles.

The largest religious group is Hindus, with large minorities of Buddhists and traditional religions, as well as small numbers of Muslims, Sikhs, and Jains. Some regional parts are still rooted under animistic religious rituals and practices.

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WORLD NEWS

African leaders counter Obama’s ‘ideological colonization’ in Kenya

by CNA/EWTN News • July 28, 2015

U.S. president Barack Obama speaks at Georgetown University, May 12, 2015. (Matt Hadro/CNA)

Nairobi, Kenya — U.S. president Barack Obama has come under fire from African politicians and Church leaders after advocating for gay rights in Kenya this weekend – a practice Pope Francis has referred to as “ideological colonization.”

“Even if people don’t like us for it, our Church has always said homosexuality is unnatural and marriage is between a man and a woman,” Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Abuja told the News Agency of Nigeria July 26.

He stressed that “there is no question of the Catholic Church changing its positions on this matter.”

Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle of Accra, a Ghanaian, also weighed in on the U.S. president’s comments, emphasizing that for the Church, homosexual activity is both contrary to the law of God and “anti-human,” Breitbart News reports.

He said that although the Church respects homosexual individuals since they are created in the image and likeness of God, it cannot support homosexual acts and is committed to upholding “the fundamental truth about marriage and family life.”

Cardinal Onaiyekan and Archbishop Palmer Buckle’s comments fell the day after Obama advocated for gay rights during his two-day visit to Kenya, after which he travelled to Ethiopia.

In his July 25 speech at a joint news conference with his Kenyan counterpart, President Uhuru Kenyatta, Obama spoke out about the importance of gay rights, despite requests from Kenya’s leaders to not address the issue. Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya, as well as several other African countries.

“With respect to the rights of gays and lesbians, I have been consistent all across Africa on this,” Obama said. “I believe in the principle of treating people equally under the law and that they are deserving of equal protection under the law and that the State should not discriminate against the people based on their sexual orientation.”

Prior to Obama’s visit, 700 evangelical pastors wrote an open letter asking the president not to use the trip as an occasion to push the homosexual agenda.

Mark Kariuki, who leads of an alliance of 38,000 churches and 10 million Kenyan Christians, was the primary author of the letter.

“We do not want (Obama) to come and talk on homosexuality in Kenya or push us to accepting that which is against our faith and culture,” Kariuki wrote.

In response to Obama’s comments, Kenyatta noted that while the U.S. and Kenya hold many values and goals in common, such as democracy and entrepreneurship, gay rights is not one of them.

“It is very difficult for us to be able to impose on people that which they themselves do not accept. This is why I repeatedly say for Kenyans today, the issue of gay rights is generally a non-issue. We want to focus on other areas.”

Both Kenya’s deputy president, William Ruto, and the speaker of its National Assembly, Justin Muturi, spoke publicly against same-sex marriage in the day’s leading up to Obama’s visit.

Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Oyo, who is Nigerian, responded to Obama’s advocacy saying, “Most Africans care about religious values, about the family, about the complementary nature of man and woman and the culture that makes us Africans. Why can we not choose what ‘benevolence’ to accept from the West? Why can we not just be helped to fight corruption, terrorism, unemployment disease and illiteracy?”

“Nobody should be killed for private wayward or immoral behaviors that do not compromise other people’s lives,” the bishop affirmed, “but that does not mean all kinds of exotic sexual adventure must be foisted on other nationalities in the name of rights.”

“America claims to be a great democracy and the proof of that fact will be found in her capacity for sincere dialogue and readiness to respect the legitimate values and world view of other peoples,” Bishop Badejo concluded.

The negative response to Obama’s advocacy come amid other responses to what Pope Francis has called the “ideological colonization” of poorer countries by wealthy Western nations.

Pope Francis has frequently spoken out against aid and humanitarian organizations which make support of gay rights, abortion, and birth control a condition for receiving assistance. Speaking in Manila Jan. 16, the Pope decried the “new ideological colonization that tries to destroy the family,” warning against efforts “to redefine the very institution of marriage.”

A few days later, Pope Francis again cautioned against this new form of colonialism: “A people enters with an idea that has nothing to do with the nation … and they colonize the people with an idea that changes, or wants to change, a mentality or a structure,” he said Jan. 19 during a press conference on his return flight to Rome from the Philippines.

The Pope’s statements have been echoed by bishops across the developing world.

At the beginning of July, the Nigerian bishops conference issued a statement reacting to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Ireland and the U.S.

In their statement, the bishops re-emphasized that “marriage is the sacred union of one man and one woman for the begetting and care of children.”

The Nigerian bishops voiced concern that countries such as Canada, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Ireland, and the U.S., which have approved such unions and which hold profound influence over Africa, will begin to influence people’s opinion on the matter.

These countries, they noted, “also give generous humanitarian aid to various establishments and projects in our country and continent.”

Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila has noted that foreign aid given to the Philippines is oftentimes is linked to some measures that the receiving country is somehow forced to accept … some of the conditions for the aid seem to be an acceptance or a welcoming of some views regarding marriage, or sexuality, or what, which could be alien to the vision of the receiving country or culture.”

And Bishop Badejo, the Nigerian who chairs communications for the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), said in a February interview with Aleteia that the U.S. has made its help in fighting the radical Islamist group Boko Haram contingent on the Nigeria’s support of homosexual acts.

“The United States actually said it would help Nigeria with Boko Haram only if we modify our laws concerning homosexuality, family planning and birth control,” he said.

“It’s very clear that a cultural imperialism exists. In fact, I think that Africa is suffering greatly from a cultural imperialism that threatens to erode our cultural values.”

Bishop Badejo called the U.S. decision “criminal,” saying that if the West boasts of the value they place on human freedom, they shouldn’t try to impose values on Africa with which its people do not agree.

“It is part of human freedom … if the West cherishes freedom for gays and homosexual unions and abortion and contraception, suppose Africans are not wired that way,” he said.

“There is a diminishing sense of the respect for the sanctity of life. And all of this is to be imposed on Africa, at whatever cost: we think that it is immoral and that it is unjust.”

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WORLD NEWS

The ‘Francis effect’ takes hold at a notorious Bolivian prison

by Alvaro de Juana (CNA/EWTN News) • July 28, 2015

Pope Francis at the Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on June 17, 2015. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

La Paz, Bolivia — Pope Francis’ July 10 visit to a prison in Bolivia was just one of several dozen events over the course of the recent papal trip to Latin America.

But for many of the inmates and workers present at the notorious Palmasola Prison in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, the Pope’s visit was a turning point and an invitation to make a new start.

“The man who is standing before you is one who has been forgiven. A man who was and is saved from his many sins,” Pope Francis told the prisoners that day.

Father Leonardo da Silva Costa, the National Coordinator for Prison Ministry in Bolivia, said many of the prisoners took the Pope’s words to heart.

“It was a thrill to see him at ease and speaking his native language. I was moved by his expression when he saw the statue of the Virgin of Copacabana on the way between the women’s section, the prison administration offices, and the men’s section,” the priest recounted to CNA.

After the Pope departed, Fr. Da Silva – who was in charge of the visit – said he noted that the inmates were talking among themselves. “They wanted to tell about what they heard, what moved them, how they felt, what they were thinking and how life would be going forward.”

“People cried together, and their eyes were filled with joy and hope. Some of them wondered how it could be possible that the representative of Christ on earth would come to see them,” the priest explained. “The police, the security guards, came away from the meeting with a joy that was unusual, brotherly, a smile unlike any other … it was a revolution of love. Even non-Catholics were saying, ‘What a grace!’”

Even so, it was not an easy encounter. Three of the prisoners offered their testimony to the Pope, speaking about the rough prison conditions and the government’s prison policy.

Palmasola Prison is a maximum security facility notorious for its corruption, bribery and gang activity. Security guards are stationed only outside the facility; the inside is a “prison village,” run by gangs of prisoners themselves. Might makes right for the 3,000 inmates who are able to move about freely in the facility. Securing one’s own prison cell costs money, as do blankets, decent food, and protection from other prisoners. Two years ago, a riot killed more than 30 people, most of them burned to death.

“This is real life in the prisons in Bolivia. I even think they really toned down their complaints. They didn’t tell everything,” Fr. Da Silva said of the testimonies.

“All the authorities that have the power to manage, administer, decide upon and implement prison policy in the whole country were there,” he continued. “They didn’t hear anything new or surprising. It was a cry for help, aid, relief, to the point of desperation, taking advantage of the Pope’s presence to bring about structural change.”

While those in the prison are separated from society, “they haven’t lost their ability to analyze reality, to provide thoughtful contributions, knowing prison conditions from the inside with the goal of improving them,” the priest said.

Asked whether they were afraid of reprisals or if they had received any warning, he replied, “I still believe in democracy, in good intentions, in an ethical conscience, in morality and in the recovery of the values that are dormant in everyone. They asked the Pope to ‘be their spokesman and to make known the constant violations of fundamental rights.’”

Now, a few weeks after the Pope’s visit, Fr. Da Silva said, “it’s expected that there will be an evaluation of everything that was organized, articulated and experienced with the representatives of the inmates, the authorities and the Church.”

He voiced hope that all of those present for the encounter with the Pope will not merely return to their everyday routine.

“We want to get the most we can out of this pastoral visit, reducing the bars, going forward with restorative justice, reducing the walls, and closing up the open wounds,” he explained. “(W)hat we have to do now is publish the Pope’s messages, re-read them, listen to them over and over again, pray, give thanks, form committees and working groups.”

Concerning possible changes in the country’s prison ministry, Fr. Da Silva said, “We have to keep on listening, show them love, and set in motion actions to improve the system and the lives of the prisoners.”

This requires “pastoral ministry with a prophetic visibility, involving comprehensive evangelization, proclamation, condemnation (of evil), witness, and commitment, with the feelings, thoughts and actions of Jesus Christ.”

Additionally, “we’re going to need to help the authorities respond with greater sensitivity to the prison problem, revising the inconsistencies in legislation, addressing social inequalities, poverty and violence, and working on prevention, not just rehabilitation,” he said.

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WORLD NEWS

Asia Bibi’s case shows need for interreligious dialogue in Pakistan, priest says

by CNA/EWTN News • July 28, 2015

The interior of Lahore’s Badshahi Mosque. (Guilhem Vellut via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Lahore, Pakistan — A Dominican priest in Pakistan has praised the nation’s Supreme Court for suspending the death sentence of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman charged with blasphemy, and has emphasized the importance of dialogue between Muslims and Christians.

“The Supreme Court of Pakistan has made a great move as her death sentence was put aside,” Father James Channan said in a July 23 interview with the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. “I firmly believe that justice will be done, that she will be proven innocent and that she will be released.”

“The blasphemy law was used (in Bibi’s case) to settle a personal score – the accusation was an act of revenge,” the priest continued.

Asia Bibi had been on death row for nearly five years due to an accusation that she insulted Islam’s prophet Muhammad during an argument. Bibi denies the accusation, and has stated her accusers were acting out of a personal vendetta.

Last week the Supreme Court of Pakistan suspended Bibi’s execution, and will soon hear her appeal. However, many Pakistanis have spoken out against the court’s decision and have said they would carry out the execution even if she is deemed innocent. Fr. Channan commened that “fanatics are determined to kill once someone is accused, regardless of the legal outcome of a particular case … our people need to be educated and come to respect decisions of the courts of law.”

Bibi’s trial is one of many over charges of blasphemy in Pakistan. The nation’s blasphemy laws have often been misused for personal reasons or gain, and the accusations are often false, Fr. Channan warned.

He estimated some 130 Christians are currently being tried under Pakistan’s blasphemy law, and that 950 Muslims are being held under the law.

“The misuse of the law should be stopped, such as its use to settle personal scores or to further business purposes,” he said.

Fr. Channan called for Pakistan’s government to revise its constitution, removing provisions that relegate Christians and other religious minorities to the status of second-class citizens. He also called for provisions to be put into place to punish those who falsely accuse others of blasphemy – an idea which he said is “also being supported by a growing number of Muslims, including some top leaders.”

The priest said interreligious dialogue will also help prevent malicious accusations of blasphemy. Fr. Channan directs the Dominican-run Peace Center in Lahore, which works to build ties with Pakistan’s Muslim majority.

Fr. Channan praised several key Muslim religious leaders who are taking part in Christian-Muslim dialogue including Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chairman of the Pakistan Ulama Council, and Maulana Abdul Khabir Azad, grand imam of Lahore’s Badshahi Mosque.

“Without dialogue there is no future of the Church in Pakistan,” Fr. Channan cautioned. “Today … Christians live in a state of fear because of all the recent violence. We need to somehow find a way to work with the Muslim majority … building bridges between the communities is of vital importance, however long it takes.”

“Pakistan’s Catholic Church is on the forefront of this process,” he said.

Pakistan’s state religion is Islam, and around 97 percent of the population is Muslim. The nation has adopted blasphemy laws which impose strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad.

The blasphemy laws are said to be often used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities; while non-Muslims constitute only three percent of the Pakistani population, 14 percent of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.

Many of those accused of blasphemy are murdered, and advocates of changing the law are also targeted by violence.

In 2011 the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, a Muslim critic of the blasphemy laws, was assassinated. Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic and the only Christian in Pakistan’s cabinet, was also assassinated the same year by militant supporters of the blasphemy laws.

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WORLD NEWS

Catholics in India mourn Abdul Kalam, the much-loved ‘people’s president’

by Antonio Anup Gonsalves (CNA/EWTN News) • July 29, 2015

APJ Abdul Kalam, the former Indian president who died July 27, speaks at Tulane University on Oct. 26, 2009. (Tulane Public Relations via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

New Delhi, India — Catholics in India have joined their confreres in paying tribute to and praying for APJ Abdul Kalam, who served as the nation’s president from 2002 to 2007 and was beloved by Indians across religious and cultural divides.

Kalam died July 27 of cardiac arrest, collapsing while addressing university students in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya state in India’s northeast.

“All the Catholic youth and the entire Catholic community is in solidarity with the nation in mourning the death of a great son of India who was a statesman, a scientist, a visionary and a great motivator,” Bishop Henry D’Souza of Bellary told CNA July 28.

“There is a somber mood in the country due to the passing away of Bharat Ratna Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, who endeared himself to all sections of people.”

The Catholic prelate recounted his having met Kalam on several occasions, and added that “he had a great appeal to children and youth – he aimed to ‘ignite young minds’. He fired their imagination.”

Bishop D’Souza also noted that Kalam completed his college education at a Catholic college, and often mentioned of the influence of Father T. N. Sequeira on his life.

Kalam took great pride in recounting anecdotes of his alma mater, St. Joseph’s College, Tiruchirappalli, and his gratitude to the principal priest for mentoring him with moral science education which pushed his “urge to strive to foster a value-based society and world.”

“He made a deep impression on people, especially the youth of India,” Bishop D’Souza reflected. “His friendly ways and congenial life style will continue to be a legacy to be followed and imitated – may his soul rest in peace!”

Kalam was born in 1931 into a poor Muslim family in Tamil Nadu, in India’s extreme southeast. He started working at a young age to help support his family, and went on to study physics at a Catholic college, and then aerospace engineering at at Madras Institute of Technology.

He had a lengthy career in rocket science, becoming head of India’s civilian space and missile defense programs.

In 2002 he won India’s presidential election, with the backing of both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Indian National Congress, the opposition party. While the Indian president is head of state, it is largely a ceremonial role, and the prime minister is the acting head of government. Kalam, however, used his position to reach out to Indians, especially the youth, about the importance of new energy sources, and internet access for rural populations.

“Dr. Kalam was such a great person, and I am glad I was able to see him at close quarters. May his soul rest in peace,” Bishop Thomas Dabre of Poona told CNA July 28.

Bishop Dabre recounted that he had the privilege to encounter Kalam a few times, both in Delhi and Surat, and also discussed the keen interest of the scientist-president in the issues of peace and progress in society.

“Some of us representing various religious communities in India founded an association of various religions for the promotion of peace, unity, and harmony,” the bishop said. “And Dr. Kalam was the patron. Dr. Kalam personally guided the proceedings at a meeting in Surat, when we of various religions signed the Surat Declaration for peace and development.”

Bishop Dabre added that “on another occasion, we discussed the problem of communal riots and the responsibility of religious leaders for healing the situation. Dr. Kalam listened to us intently and offered his perceptive suggestions.”

Bishop George Palliparambil of Miao told CNA that “Abdul Kalam will be remembered forever as a great scientist, the missile man of India, the 11th president, and so on … but as I see him, he will forever be an icon for the youth of India, a trend setter, as well as a model for every Indian – his demise is a great loss to the country.”

“He was not a product of political patronage, but a true patriot,” Bishop Palliparambil added. “Despite the many billionaires and ‘successful’ men and women, there are hardly any role models we can present to the youth – Dr. Kalam stands out as a very modern role model, and his words are always inspiring.”

The bishop said that “the first thing about him was that he was truly an Indian – he was not a Tamilian, not a Muslim, nor any of those restricted groups – he was an Indian through and through. He spoke of India, especially of a future where the youth of India will play a role.”

“We hear a lot of political jargons and slogans these days,” Bishop Palliparambil said. “Dr. Kalam did not indulge in any of those and he used plain words that sprung from the heart of an Indian, who grew to the greatest heights in India through hard work and unstinted perseverance.”

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WORLD NEWS

Could ‘British values’ push jeopardize Catholic education in the U.K.?

by Kevin J. Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • July 30, 2015

Houses of Parliament in London, England. (Karim von Orelli via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

London, England — Some Catholics in Great Britain are concerned the government’s push for “British values” in schools, meant to counter Islamist extremism, could instead harm sincere religious believers and burden Catholic schools.

In a July 20 speech at Ninestiles school in Birmingham, the British prime minister, David Cameron, said, “We believe in respecting different faiths but also expecting those faiths to support the British way of life. These are British values … Our freedom comes from our Parliamentary democracy.”

The speech was intended to lay down his administration’s strategy for tackling Islamist extremism in the country, but could be construed so as to limit the ability of any religious believer to exercise their freedoms of speech and religion.

“The government needs to avoid classing anyone who takes their religion or faith seriously, especially Christians, as potentially harmful extremists. Catholics must not be forced to act against their religious conscience either in schools or in the workplaces,” Caroline Farrow, a member of Catholic Voices UK and a columnist for the Catholic Universe newspaper, told CNA July 24.

She said Cameron, who is leading the anti-extremism push, should remember to protect freedom of speech.

“He needs to take care that the British way of life does not come to mean that those of a religious persuasion are silenced out of fear.”

The British government has begun to require the promotion of “British values” in all schools. The actions follow reports that extremist Muslim groups were trying to infiltrate schools.

In his July 20 speech the prime minister spoke about “the threat of extremism and the challenge of integration.”

Cameron specifically addressed the “far right” and Islamist extremism, though he also acknowledged the “profound contributions” of non-extremist Muslims.

He did not limit his speech to attacking violent extremism. He also criticized non-violent support for “certain intolerant ideas which create a climate in which extremists can flourish.” He listed ideas “which are hostile to basic liberal values such as democracy, freedom and sexual equality,” and ideas “which actively promote discrimination, sectarianism and segregation.”

Farrow voiced concern that some definitions of British values can pose problems for Catholics.

“While Catholics believe in the equality of the sexes, the term ‘sexual equality’ is also applied to matters of sexuality. This could be applied so broadly that it could include things that Catholics do not agree with, such as for example, the country’s recent redefinition of marriage which allows for same-sex weddings.”

She noted that the promotion of “British values” has already posed risks for Catholic schools. These schools face censure by the U.K. schools’ inspectorate Ofsted “if Catholic teaching, especially on sexuality and marriage, is deemed to be undermining British values and promoting so-called extremism,” Farrow said.

The high-performing St Benedict’s Catholic School in Suffolk was downgraded because its students allegedly were not aware of the dangers of extremism. The school was “blacklisted” for failing to promote British values, according to Farrow.

The Catholic Education Service of the Bishops’ Conference in England and Wales demanded an apology for the move. The school said parents complained that the inspectors asked children as young as ten about homosexual acts and transsexualism, the Catholic Herald reports.

The British Department for Education has implemented requirements for teaching “fundamental British values.” The department’s November 2014 guidance added stronger language that requires schools actively to promote what it sees as British values. The rules require all schools to promote equality and diversity, as defined by the education department’s guidance. This requirement includes “challenging opinions or behaviors in school.”

Farrow voiced concern for the future of Catholic schools.

“Catholic schools will be increasingly singled out for criticism and potential closure if they fail to uphold and promote British values in direct contravention of their faith,” she warned. “We have already seen the closure of the Catholic adoption agencies in the U.K. for failing to conform to government-imposed ideals and values; it is not inconceivable that schools could be subject to the same pressure.”

Farrow noted that some religious denominations which do not agree with gay marriage or women clergy are already portrayed as extremists.

“A failure to give approval to, or validate certain ideas is interpreted as ‘harmful’ or ‘intolerance’ and certain secular special interest lobby groups already campaign that certain religious beliefs ought therefore to be outlawed or suppressed.”

She faulted the prime minister for expecting religions to uphold “the British way of life” without having explicitly defined it.

“The British way of life could be interpreted as supporting a number of practices and beliefs which run wholly contrary to the Catholic faith, such as for example, the supposed right to abortion on demand. Faiths cannot reasonably be expected to alter their doctrine to fall into line with the view of the prevailing political party,” she said.

Farrow suggested a definition of British values based on the “the intrinsic dignity and value of every human life.” She said this principle ought to be something that finds unanimous agreement, and it is also a “core principle” of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

At the same time, she saw some merit in the prime minister’s speech.

“David Cameron is at least recognizing that our society has become incohesive due to a lack of shared faith and accompanying values,” she said.

“The problem is that this is an inadequate response: people’s moral values cannot simply be imposed by diktat from central government. By attempting to define what constitutes British values, David Cameron is effectively imposing a set of moral values on the British population regardless of whether or not they subscribe to them.”

She said it is understandable that the government would work to curb violent religious extremism.

“The uncomfortable truth is that it is a particular type of Islamic extremism which gives rise to violence and therefore the government is using rather a broad brush to tackle a problem which could have undesirable repercussions, not only for Catholics but for a pluralistic society as a whole,” she said. “Rather than focus on values such as sexuality or what is taught in schools, the government would do much better to engage with Muslim communities and scholars.”

She said a better indication of radicalized, violent extremism come from measuring expressions of hatred towards Jewish and Christian communities and western civilization in general.

Other Catholics have commented critically on the British government’s values advocacy.

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury in his Easter Sunday homily said the effort to regulate British values has left many people uneasy, and that “our values cannot be arbitrarily formulated by any passing generation of politicians even if they have the best intentions.”

Citing the words of Pope Francis and Benedict XVI, Bishop Davies said secular rationality and religious belief are both necessary to secure “the good of our civilization.”

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WORLD NEWS

Religious sisters sue Colombian TV network for ‘false’ depiction of saint’s life

by CNA/EWTN News • July 31, 2015

St. Laura Montoya. (Public domain image)

Bogotá, Colombia — An order of religious sisters in Colombia is suing a national television network for producing a series that it says twists the facts about the life of the order’s founder, the first Colombian saint.

Saint Laura Montoya Upegui is the subject of a new series on Caracol Television, entitled “Laura: an extraordinary life.” The first of 25 episodes was broadcast on July 29.

In a statement released July 24, the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate and Saint Catherine of Sienna announced that they were suing Caracol over the series. The congregation was founded by St. Laura, who is the first Colombian to be canonized.

“The trailer and promotional videos depict false scenes,” the press release states. It says that promotional materials describe Saint Laura as “renouncing the love of her life,” participating in romantic relationships, and being present for conversations in poor taste. In reality, the statement says, these things did not happen.

“(T)he result is that the TV viewers, those following the above mentioned series, will think that the incidents described here are true and real.”

Consuela Benjumea, the lawyer for the sisters, told the Colombian newspaper La Republica that Caracol Television did not have authorization from the congregation.

“(W)e’re sure that it’s not going to be a program that conforms with reality … in order to get higher ratings, they’re going to distort aspects (of the saint’s life), and the congregation is worried about this.”

The heads of the order said that the congregation had approached Caracol Television when they heard of the project, in order to see what was in the script, but Caracol’s programmers would not speak with them.

They added that “the congregation has not authorized Caracol to use the expression Laura and/or the name Mother Laura or Mother Laura Montoya.”

National newspaper El Tiempo contacted Caracol Television for a statement, but Caracol said it would not comment on matters currently under litigation.

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WORLD NEWS

Help from above: Priest in a helicopter exorcises Italian town

by CNA/EWTN News • July 31, 2015

(Matthew Peoples via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Rome, Italy — A priest has performed an aerial exorcism of the Italian seaside town of Castellammare di Stabia in response to a spree of church-targeted thefts and vandalism in the area.

At the urging of a local prayer group, a priest took to a helicopter to perform a minor exorcism over the entire town, according Italian papers.

“If Satan exists, he has taken control of Castellammare di Stabia,” the group said in a statement. “There was nothing left but to try the exorcist.”

Carried out July 9, the exorcism was announced by the prayer group a week later.

The area has long been plagued with violence from organized crime, but a series of thefts from churches, desecration of graves, crosses being turned upside down and statues of Mary being tossed over cliffs led locals to believe that something more sinister was at work.

Locals are hoping that this act, along with increased devotion among the locals, will help turn around the town that has been in moral and economic decline for some time.

Although the help of the helicopter is unique, it’s not the first time an exorcism has been performed over an entire city – or country.

In May faithful in Mexico gathered for a nationwide exorcism, carried out quietly in the cathedral of San Luis Potosí by Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, the archbishop emeritus of Guadalajara.

High levels of violence, as well as drug cartels and abortion in the country, were the motivation behind the special rite of exorcism, known as “Exorcismo Magno.”

The closed-door May 20 ceremony was the first ever of its kind in Mexico.

Spanish demonologist and exorcist Father José Antonio Fortea, attended the exorcism. He told CNA in an interview that “the exorcism performed in San Luís Potosí is the first ever carried out in Mexico in which the exorcists came from different parts of the country and gathered together to exorcise the powers of darkness, not from a person, but from the whole country.”

He also spoke on how an entire country can become infested by demons to the point that it’s necessary to resort to an Exorcismo Magno.

“To the extent sin increases more and more in a country, to that extent it becomes easier for the demons to tempt (people),” he said.

He warned that “to the extent there is more witchcraft and Satanism going on in a country, to that extent there will be more extraordinary manifestations of those powers of darkness.”

During the 12th annual conference for the International Association of Exorcists (AIE), held in Rome Oct. 20-25, 2014, the organization’s spokesman, Dr. Valter Cascioli, explained that occult activity has been on the rise in recent years.

He said an increasing number of bishops and cardinals asked to participate in the conference due to an increase in demonic activity.

“It’s becoming a pastoral emergency,” Cascioli told CNA. “At the moment the number of disturbances of extraordinary demonic activity is on the rise.”

The rise in demonic activity can be attributed to a decreasing faith among individuals, coupled with an increase in curiosity and participation in occult activity such as Ouija boards and séances, he added.

“It usually starts out of ignorance, superficiality, stupidity or proselytizing, actively participating or just watching,” he said, but “the consequences are always disastrous.”

Many countries have voiced a need for more exorcists, including the Philippines. According to National Public Radio (NPR), the Philippine Office of Exorcism, headed by Father Jose Francisco Syquia, opened in 2006 to address a growing number of cases.

Trained in Rome, the exorcist said that he has been expelling demonic spirits from people for more than 12 years, and has seen a steady increase in cases in the past decade, with 200 already this year.

With only five exorcists managing all of the incoming cases, Syquia recently sent a letter to the Philippine bishops conference asking for one resident exorcist to be sent to each of the country’s 86 dioceses.

The majority of Philippine dioceses “do not have exorcists or a team of exorcists that deal with these kinds of cases. Therefore many of the Filipinos tend to go to the occult practitioners, what we call the faith healers, spiritists, etc.,” he said.

The priest expressed his belief that the occult healers are responsible for the increased number of demonic possessions, saying that the healers leave a person with “spiritual openings” which allow demons to latch on.

In addition to the nationwide exorcism of Mexico, there has also been talk of diocesan-wide exorcisms within the United States.

Msgr. John Esseff, a priest for 62 years in the Diocese of Scranton, Pa., and an exorcist for more than 35 years, told the National Catholic Register that exorcisms such as the one done in Mexico “have helped bring awareness that there is such a thing as sin influenced by Satan.”

“The devil has much to do with (influencing people in) breaking the law of God,” he said, but stressed that an exorcism over the United States would be unlikely.

Rather, such actions can be done by each individual diocese, he said, and encouraged bishops to do so.

“Every bishop is the chief exorcist of his own diocese. Anytime anyone with the authority uses his power against Satan, that is powerful. Every priest and bishop has that power.”

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U.S. NEWS

What you think you know about human trafficking is probably wrong

by CNA/EWTN News • July 25, 2015

(Claus Tom Christensen via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — Human trafficking. It’s been called “modern-day slavery” and a “silent epidemic.” It affects tens of millions every year and yet remains largely in the shadows – even within the United States.

Much remains to be done in fighting the scourge of human trafficking, say experts and survivors. And that starts with a better understanding of what trafficking really looks like.

But while initiatives based on awareness, prevention and recovery are taking place at different levels throughout the country, a key part of efforts to combat the practice may be at risk.

“The way you’re thinking about trafficking isn’t the reality,” said Tina Frundt, a survivor of human trafficking and founder of Courtney’s House, a survivor-run program offering help and support to survivors in the Washington D.C. area.

Frundt spoke at a July 9 conference on human trafficking. Held at The Catholic University of America the event was entitled, “Answering Pope Francis’s Call: An American Catholic Response to Modern-Day Slavery.”

Human trafficking takes various forms: Victims are recruited, transported, or harbored under coercion, threats or use of force. They are exploited through forced labor, sexual coercion or removal of organs.

Globally, the International Labor Organization estimates that over 20 million people – men, women, and children – are currently victims of human trafficking: trapped in jobs or services they were deceived or forced into joining and which they cannot leave freely.

According to the U.S. Department of State, between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year, while the Department of Justice estimates that more than 17,000 people are trafficked into the United States itself.

The Department of Justice also has identified 83 percent of victims in confirmed sex trafficking incidents as U.S. citizens. Meanwhile, 67 percent of labor trafficking victims, the department says, are undocumented immigrants, with an additional 28 percent consisting of documented immigrants.

Frundt explained that many U.S. victims of sex trafficking do not fit the stereotypes many associate with vulnerable populations, but instead come from a wide variety of racial and economic backgrounds.

“We think this only affects the people who are poor,” she said, but in reality, the wealthy are also targeted.

And it is not just girls who are victims of trafficking, but boys as well, she said, adding that members of all ethnicities are targeted for exploitation.

Victims do tend to have one trait in common: youth. “It’s easy to manipulate kids,” Frundt said, pointing to the average age of entry into sex trafficking between 11 and 14.

“Trafficking sounds like this: ‘I just met him in my neighborhood’,” she said. Many times, parents are not even aware that their child has met a trafficker, because “kids only tell you things when it gets real bad.”

“You have to think of pimps as marketers,” Frundt stressed. “They’re so smart they convinced the world they didn’t exist.” Oftentimes, they access to young people by gaining their trust, embedding fears into their target, and generally staying away from initiating sexual advances, in order to avoid suspicion from adults.

The strategic actions of pimps and handlers are a key reason for the misunderstandings about who the victims of trafficking are, she said. Many expectations in popular culture are so different from the reality of trafficking, that “when a survivor comes to you and says this happened to them, you don’t believe them.”

These misconceptions about human trafficking also exist when it comes to labor trafficking, said Gerardo Reyes Chavez, leader and organizer for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an organization representing tomato farmers in south Florida. “There’s many connections that we forget exist.”

One observation that may surprise people: for many victims of labor trafficking, exploitation initially resembles common working practices for wage laborers, such as wage retention. “Slavery is nothing more than the continuation of the poor working conditions that we allow to continue,” Reyes Chaves said.

These poor working conditions “devalue our humanity” for all workers who are mistreated, he said, but also make recognizing more grievous practices – such as the chaining and imprisonment of workers, or violence against them – much more difficult to detect.

“Slavery doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Many times we live in denial.”

Today, many common food items, like lettuce and tomatoes, are harvested by trafficked workers, Reyes Chaves said, because companies are allowed to disregard whether all their workers are there of their own free will. The market, in this case, is a two-edged sword, that “is helping to create these problems” but can also be used as part of the solution.

The key to achieving that solution? Companies and consumers who are willing to stand up and put pressure on the processes in place.

“We need to recognize that we are connected,” he said. “We’re not talking about someone who’s that far away from us.”

Amy O’Neill Richard, senior advisor to the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, explained that the federal government and non-profits also have a role to play in stopping human trafficking both at home and abroad.

Federal government officials work to not only prosecute violators of human trafficking laws, but also protect victims and prevent trafficking from happening in the first place, through a variety of government initiatives and partnerships – including with Catholic charities and organizations.

Catholic Relief Services and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are two of the prominent Catholic groups that have partnered with the State Department in its anti-trafficking work. With their broad reach and large number of people on the ground in various areas, the religious groups have been hailed as an important partner in the fight against trafficking.

Such partnerships could soon be at risk, though.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last month announced that groups seeking anti-trafficking partnership grants must offer abortion counseling or else ensure that such counseling is provided by a third party.

The policy shift quietly expands on an earlier policy change from 2011. That change said that “strong preference” for grants would be given to organizations offering referrals for the “full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care.”

That year, the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services failed to win a grant renewal, after years of being a grant recipient to provide food, housing, medical services and other aid to trafficking victims in more than 44 states.

Consistently given excellent ratings, the U.S. bishops’ group even met criteria to be given special preference, based on its experience and ability to serve underserved populations in a variety of locations, including those with high incidences of trafficking.

However, the group does not offer abortions or contraception. After the change in instructions, it did not win the grant renewal, which was instead given to two other groups that “scored so low they did not make the cutoff when evaluated by an independent review board,” according to a U.S. bishops’ spokesperson.

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U.S. NEWS

Long-serving Cardinal Baum lived a generous response to God

by CNA/EWTN News • July 25, 2015

A cardinal’s biretta rests on an empty chair. (Alan Holdren/CNA)

Washington, D.C. — Cardinal William W. Baum, a past Archbishop of Washington and the longest-serving American cardinal, died on Thursday at the age of 88. His death prompted outpourings of thanksgiving for his life and a special telegram from Pope Francis.

“As we grieve our loss we also thank God for his ministry,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington said July 24. “Cardinal Baum was a joy-filled priest with a firm personal commitment to serve the Lord, which he did faithfully for 64 years of ordained life.”

Pope Francis in a July 25 telegram to Cardinal Wuerl commented the cardinal’s soul to “God the Father of mercies.”

“I offer my heartfelt condolences, together with the assurance of my prayers, to you and to all the faithful of the Archdiocese,” the Pope said.

Cardinal Baum passed away July 23 in the District of Columbia. He was Archbishop of Washington from 1973 to 1980 and was a cardinal for 39 years.

The future cardinal was born in Dallas, Texas Nov. 21, 1926 to a Presbyterian father and a Catholic mother. His family moved to Kansas City, where he began to serve as an altar boy at age ten. He took the last name of his Jewish stepfather, who died when he was twelve, the Washington Post reports.

He studied at Glennon College and Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He was ordained a priest in May 1951. He served in Kansas City-area parishes and taught at several high schools and colleges. He studied in Rome at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas, earning a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology, the Archdiocese of Washington says.

Pope John XXIII named him a monsignor in 1961. During the Second Vatican Council, he served as an advisor to Kansas City Bishop Charles Helmsing. The Holy See later named him a “peritus,” an expert, for the council. In that role he served under the Secretariat for Christian Unity. He participated in the drafting process of “Unitatis Redintegratio,” the council’s decree on ecumenism.

Cardinal Baum was a leader in ecumenical and interreligious work. He served on several joint groups and committees between the Catholic Church and bodies like the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation.

In February 1970, Pope Paul VI chose Msgr. Baum to become Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, a Missouri diocese. He chose as his episcopal motto “Ministry of Reconciliation.” In March 1973, the Pope named him Archbishop of Washington.

He had several leadership roles in the U.S. bishops’ conference. He was chancellor for the Catholic University of America and a delegate to the World Synod of Bishops in 1971.

He was named a cardinal in 1976. He would serve in three papal conclaves and in several Vatican congregations.

Cardinal Baum served as Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education and was Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican department which oversees issues involved with the forgiveness of sins. He was on the commission that drafted the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis’ telegram to Cardinal Wuerl praised Cardinal Baum’s “long service” to the Holy See.

Cardinal Wuerl thanked God for “the generosity with which Cardinal Baum responded with a quiet but firm and enduring yes to God’s call.”

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U.S. NEWS

High price tags and ugly secrets – how surrogacy preys on poor women

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • July 26, 2015

(Chris Martino via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — Women from a poor demographic have become an increasing interest in the multi-billion dollar surrogate industry, with most mothers being forced or coerced into volunteering as a surrogate.

“Surrogacy depends in many cases on the exploitation of poor women, because it’s the poor who have to sell and the rich that can afford to buy,” Christopher White told CNA July 23.

White, who serves as the Director of Research and Education at the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, said that frequently in countries from the developing world like India and Thailand, where the surrogacy market is booming, the women hired as surrogates “are forced into the practice due to patriarchal structures.”

“They are given very little consent in the matter, or these women feel as if it’s their only choice and one of the few ways they can contribute to their household income. So they go, very often hesitantly and unwillingly, and enter into this practice.”

India and Thailand are among the most common international destinations for couples seeking surrogacy due to low costs and loose regulations. White also named Mexico, Nepal and Ukraine as other countries where the market is growing.

Attention has mounted the past few days over a recent surrogacy case in Thailand in which a surrogate mother refused to allow the American couple who hired her to take their child out of the country when she found out that they were homosexual, Reuters News reports.

Although the woman in the case, Patidta, is not the child’s biological mother, under Thai law the birth mother is recognized as being the mother of the child, and commissioning parents have no automatic legal rights over the child born.

Apparently Patidta believed she would be giving the baby to a heterosexual couple, but only learned they were homosexual when the couple came to pick the child up. She then refused to let them take the baby.

Such a lack of transparency in the surrogacy industry is not uncommon.

Alana Newman, founder of the Anonymous Us Project, told CNA July 24 that “there is definitely enormous deception being used from every angle.”

“Egg providers and surrogates are being lied to about the health consequences of the hormones they take. They are being sold a fantasy that every intended couple that walks through the doors of fertility clinics will make loving, wholesome homes when in fact there are no incentives whatsoever for fertility industry professionals to vet and reject customers with troubling profiles.”

Newman’s project gathers stories of individuals who have either willingly or unwillingly participated in reproductive technologies such as surrogacy, with the goal of fostering truth and transparency in the industry.

She said that as far as surrogacy goes, there is no guarantee of integrity of the gamete providers, and that sperm donors “can and do say whatever they think the woman wants to hear – just like they would at a bar.”

“There are pedophiles hiring surrogates and egg donors. There are gamete providers and fertility industry workers lying on paperwork about donor profiles to sell more specimen.”

Keeping such anonymity, she said, “lets them maintain a warm fantasy.”

The controversy is the latest in Thailand after numerous cases surfaced last year, including accusations that an Australian couple abandoned their Downs Syndrome baby, leaving him with the birth mother and taking only his healthy twin sister back home.

Surrogacy laws in Thailand have changed following last year’s scandals, banning foreigners from receiving surrogacy services. However, the new law doesn’t go into effect until July 30 of this year, making the couple’s request legal.

The American couple that hired Patidta have another child born through surrogacy in India, but went to Thailand after India changed their laws last year allowing only heterosexual couples to seek surrogates.

White explained that although the majority of couples looking for a surrogate mother are currently heterosexual, recent years have seen a spike in the number of homosexual couples looking for assisted reproductive services.

He said the recent push for marriage equality has also given rise to the idea of “family equality,” in which the couples insist on their right to form their own families “without any type of restriction, and should be granted access by insurance benefits and other means to acquire the family of their desires.”

Although concrete statistics on the exact number of homosexual couples now seeking third party reproductive services are hard to find, White said it’s enough to go to any surrogacy website and look at their marketing.

On any major surrogacy site “you’ll find that they are particularly marketing toward the demographic of gay men,” he said.

“These agencies have special programs for gay men, they have special conferences such as ‘Families through Surrogacy,’ (and) ‘Families by Design,’ all targeted toward this population.”

White also noted the various health risks associated with surrogate pregnancies, for both the woman and the child.

Due to surrogacy’s high costs and the desire for brokers and agencies to boost their success, usually numerous embryos are implanted in the surrogate mother, which White said can lead to an increased risk of cesarean sections and longer hospital stays.

The child born through surrogacy also faces greater risks, he said, including the increased chance of low birth rates, pre-term births, fetal abnormalities and high blood pressure.

Emotional and psychological health is also a concern due to the severing of the mother-child bond that is usually encouraged during pregnancy, but which is cut off in cases of surrogacy.

“It’s a human rights tragedy,” White said. “The entire practice just shows the way in which we’ve commodified the human body.”

“It subjects these women and children that are born by this practice to risks that are unnecessary, but we’ve commercialized the body. It undermines both these women’s health and their dignity.”

He explained that women who serve as surrogates are frequently disregarded after the birth of the child, and that it’s rare to see a surrogate mother come back to do it again.

Instances of war or natural disaster can complicate the situation, such as in the case of Ukraine and the recent earthquakes in Nepal, White observed.

“Any time there’s a stressful situation or heightened drama around the surrogate pregnancy, what’s quickly revealed is the fact that these surrogate mothers are looked upon simply as employees of the agencies rather than mothers or patients,” he said.

Rather than being treated the same as a mother delivering her own child in the hospital, these women “are being monitored and supervised because someone’s dollar value is on the line. There’s a price tag attached to that transaction.”

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U.S. NEWS

Will religious Boy Scout troops be tolerated when ban on gay leaders ends?

by Kevin J. Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • July 27, 2015

(Mass Comm. Spec. Nat Moger/U.S. Navy)

Washington, D.C. — The Boy Scouts of America is moving to change its leadership standards in order to allow openly homosexual adult leaders and volunteers. While the organization promises that individual church-affiliated councils can choose their own leaders, at least one critic warns the move will expose churches to further pressure.

“This change allows Scouting’s members and parents to select local units, chartered to organizations with similar beliefs, that best meet the needs of their families,” the Boy Scouts of America said July 13. “This change would also respect the right of religious chartered organizations to continue to choose adult leaders whose beliefs are consistent with their own.”

The proposal drew criticism from Richard John Matthews, former general counsel for the Boy Scouts of America, who now serves as general counsel for Trail Life USA, an alternative scouting organization formed after previous policy changes.

In a July 22 memorandum, Matthews said the policy change means it is “only a matter of time” until the Boy Scouts of America incorporate LGBT teachings into its programs and merit badge instructional material that deal with family life, relationships, and sex education.

The change also creates “numerous legal ramifications” for the Boy Scouts of America and religious organizations that charter local troops, he said.

“The church-chartered troop will likely be sued the moment it tries to revoke the membership of the homosexual member who wears his uniform to the Gay Pride Parade, revokes or denies membership to an adult who publicly gets married to someone of the same sex, or denies membership to the girl who believes she is actually a male,” said Matthews.

According to the text of the Boy Scouts of America’s July 13 executive committee resolution, no adult employee applicants or non-unit-serving volunteer who otherwise meets the organization’s requirements “may be denied registration on the basis of sexual orientation.” The resolution says sexual relations between adults should be “moral, honorable, committed and respectful.” It says it recognizes the right for each chartering organization to select its leaders, and bars local councils from denying a charter to a unit that is following its religious beliefs.

The scouting group’s National Executive Board met July 27 and was expected to ratify the resolution.

In a July 8 memo, the Boy Scouts of America said its policy barring adult homosexuals from leadership is “no longer legally defensible.” It warned of staggering costs of litigation, the threat of overly-broad court decisions, an increase in anti-discrimination laws and policies, and the federal government’s “use of executive power to deter private action.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision will accelerate these trends, the memo said.

“Several conservative states have retreated from religious freedom legislation – most recently Indiana and Arkansas – due to the business community wanting to avoid appearing anti-gay,” the Boy Scouts’ memo noted.

The scouting organization no longer holds the position that homosexuality is “immoral and unclean,” a position the organization successfully defended before the Supreme Court in a 2000 lawsuit that sought to force the organization to change its moral standards.

Many local councils, leaders, and supporters now openly disagree with the leadership standard barring active homosexuals from leadership, the Boy Scouts of America noted.

The organization promised to “steadfastly defend the right of religious chartered organizations to select leaders whose beliefs are consistent with those of the religious organization.”

It advocated moving towards a policy that “accepts and respects different perspectives and beliefs.”

The Boy Scouts of America referred to a memo from the Hughes, Hubbard & Reed law firm that said Boy Scout units which are not chartered by religious organizations could not exclude homosexuals from leadership.

The memo said religious-sponsored Boy Scout groups could face the risk of a lawsuit from a homosexual activist seeking admission, but that any lawsuit challenging a religiously-chartered scouting unit would be “unlikely to succeed or even make much progress” due to existing religious freedom protections, such as a 2012 Supreme Court decision which recognized constitutional protections for religious organizations to choose their own leaders.

The memo also predicted a low likelihood of success for a lawsuit seeking to force the Boy Scouts of America to end a relationship with a religiously-chartered organization because it does not include homosexual adults.

The memo said the Boy Scouts of America would “not seek to exert pressure on any religious chartered organization” but would “help safeguard the religious chartered organizations by defending their protected expression and religious liberties.”

Matthews, however, predicted the policy change will cause problems for churches that do not condone homosexual acts.

“Even if you believe the BSA’s statement that it will bear the costs of defense, the disruption of having to deal with the litigation process, the adverse publicity and the likely intimidation of donors and church members will likely be detrimental to the overall mission of churches and religious organizations,” he said.

Religious-chartered organizations will be vulnerable to legal challenges under state laws governing public accommodations, he added.

“Granting the use of facilities to the BSA – with its acceptance of homosexuality – by religious organizations could result in the loss of their legal protection to deny facility use to other ‘gay-friendly’ or homosexual advocacy groups.”

A church-chartered council will still be under the guidance of local, state, and national Boy Scout groups that now allow homosexuals in leadership positions, Matthews said.

“It is difficult to see how a court will uphold a religious organization’s claim that allowing homosexual adult leaders violates its religious beliefs, when that same religious organization is sending its unit to activities, events and facilities under the leadership of homosexuals,” he said.

Matthews argued the Hughes, Hubbard & Reed memo was incorrect to hold that Supreme Court decision that allows religious schools to set moral and religious standards for teachers will apply to scout leaders. Scout leaders are “rarely involved in ministerial activities or religious instruction.” They teach camping and other outdoor skills, not religion, he said.

The Boy Scouts of America has faced significant corporate and political pressure to change its moral teachings and its membership policies. The organization announced it would allow openly homosexual members, but not leaders, in May 2013.

CNA contacted the National Catholic Committee on Scouting for comment, but did not receive a response by deadline.

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Knights of Columbus unveil new campaign to aid Middle East Christians

by CNA/EWTN News • July 27, 2015

A young refugee rests after having fled from ISIS and arrived in Ankawa in the northern part of Erbil, Iraq. (ankawa.com)

New Haven, CT — As Christians continue to face unprecedented persecution – especially in the Middle East – the Knights of Columbus have announced a new campaign to send humanitarian aid and raise awareness about their plight.

“Pope Francis has urged the international community to take action to help Christians in the Middle East, and as an organization that has long supported victims of religious persecution, the Knights of Columbus is responding by asking our own members, and the public at large, to help us save the lives of people who are being persecuted simply because of their Christian faith,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said in a July 24 press release.

The details of the new program will be announced at an Aug. 4-6 international convention in Philadelphia, but for now, a television commercial has begun airing nationally to raise awareness about the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

The Knights launched their Christian Refugee Relief Fund last August with a $1 million matching fund, but the need for support still remains great today. To date, the organization and its members have given over $3 million in support of the cause.

In her July 22 article for The New York Times Magazine, “Is This The End of Christianity in the Middle East?” Eliza Oswold cited a Pew study which said that Christians are now facing more persecution “than at any time since their early history.”

Mr. Anderson voiced his concern over the lack of attention given to the issue saying, “Christians in the Middle East are facing a dire situation – and even extinction – while the response from the international community has been woefully inadequate.”

Those who wish to help the Knights of Columbus in providing assistance to persecuted Christians can make a donation on their website, christiansatrisk.org or send a check or money order payable to Knights of Columbus Charities at P.O. Box 1966, New Haven, CT 06509-1966. The memo portion should indicate that the check is for Christian Refugee Relief.

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How an anti-discrimination bill could end up discriminating

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • July 28, 2015

Protestors outside of the Supreme Court in Washington DC during the courts ruling in favor of legalizing gay marriage on June 26, 2015. (Addie Mena/CNA)

Washington, D.C. — A bill in Congress that brands itself as fighting discrimination might end up doing the exact opposite, said legal experts last week.

“The whole thing is an overreach,” said Ryan Anderson, the William E. Simon senior research fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation.

The Equality Act has over 150 co-sponsors in the House and dozens of co-sponsors in the Senate, none of them Republican, thus making it unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled House and Senate.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley have endorsed the bill, and supporters herald it as the continuation of the historic Civil Rights Act.

The Equality Act would extend anti-discrimination protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, two phrases that critics argue are so broad that they can be abused by rejecting instances in which it is appropriate to recognize differences between sexes.

The proposed law would apply to not just employment, but other areas like housing, jury duty, credit, and education. It would also specify facility access for transgendered persons, such as access to male and female bathrooms.

In addition, it could endanger religious protections, particularly for those who believe marriage to be the union of one man and one woman. Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the government cannot impose a “substantial burden” on someone’s religious belief unless it can prove that it is using the “least restrictive means” of furthering a “compelling government interest.”

These standards have historically allowed for broad religious freedom protections. But that could change under the Equality Act – those who disagree with same-sex marriage could be viewed as “discriminating” against a same-sex couple, essentially stripping away RFRA protections to express this belief.

It is important to protect all persons from unjust discrimination, said Professor Robert Destro of The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law.

“There’s a lot of good stuff in this bill,” he told CNA. For example, it would prevent housing discrimination against a same-sex couple who meets the basic housing rental standards of cleanliness, peace, order, and paying their rent on time, he said, adding that there wouldn’t be any real reason for a landlord to deny the housing in this case.

“Nobody argues that anybody shouldn’t be treated in accordance with their equal human dignity,” said Destro, who served for 16 years on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

However, cases like this are few and far between, Anderson cautioned. “The type of discrimination that we all oppose really isn’t happening that much.”

The problem with the bill – and it is a big one – the commenters said, is that it is so vast and in many areas vague, that it could easily be used to stop the free exercise of religion of those who are morally opposed to the same-sex lifestyle.

For instance, Destro said, the bill prohibits things like exclusion, unfair treatment, and harassment. While this may sound good in theory, those subjects are so broad, “every one of those you could write a treatise on,” he said.

The definition of something like “sexual harassment” could easily be stretched to include saying “something that makes someone feel bad,” Destro said, like someone expressing their moral opposition to same-sex weddings or using the “wrong” pronoun to refer to a transgendered person.

“If you start looking at all this in light of traditional civil rights stuff, then the question is how far are they [the government] going to take this?” he said.

Anderson agreed. It is “unclear what constitutes ‘discrimination’” under this bill, he said. For instance, a facility having only male and female bathrooms could be seen as discriminatory. A bakery choosing only to serve weddings between a man and a woman could be seen as discriminatory. And the bill as written does not appear to offer religious accommodations to for-profit businesses.

Basic moral disagreements with lifestyle could bring about discrimination lawsuits. “As night follows day, it will,” Destro insisted.

Even if the bill tries to end public speech opposing the LGBT lifestyle, the important questions on the matter are not going to vanish from the public square, Destro continued. The bill will not end the diversity of opinion regarding same-sex marriage and like topics, he said.

Regarding education, which is one of the areas covered in the bill with anti-discrimination protections, the law only applies to public schools, not private schools. Public school administrators could still be faced with tough decisions, Anderson said.

For instance, if a fourth-grade teacher gets a sex-change operation over winter break, a principal could be faced with an employment discrimination lawsuit if he transfers the teacher because he deems it inappropriate for fourth graders to experience the idea of a teacher changing from one sex to another.

The bill is ultimately a gambit for activists to push social change and not just “equality,” Destro and Anderson said.

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, established around the time of the Civil Rights Act to enforce the law, will do its part to enforce the Equality Act as well if it becomes law, Destro warned.

The EEOC already signaled that it supports the basis of the bill in a recent ruling that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits not only employment discrimination on basis of sex, but also on basis of sexual orientation.

In the Supreme Court case Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, the commission had told a church that it couldn’t promote its own mission norms through its employment decisions. The commission “said you have to act the way we want you to act,” Destro explained. They will do their part to advance the new “social construct” of sexuality.

In building upon the advances of the Civil Rights Act, activists believe that opposition to same-sex marriage is akin to the old opposition against interracial marriage, Anderson said.

The bill will be used to “marginalize” defenders of traditional marriage and “treat them in law” like the “racists” that the Civil Rights Act was passed to counter, he added.

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Exclusive: ‘Essure’ victims plan hunger strike in front of FDA during Pope’s visit

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • July 28, 2015

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Building in Silver Spring, MD. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration via Wikipedia Public Domain)

Washington, D.C. — Last month, it looked like the thousands of women who have suffered detrimental side effects from the birth control device “Essure” were finally being heard.

After receiving a thousands of complaints about the device, the FDA announced June 24 that it would add additional risks and complications to Essure’s label. The FDA also scheduled a meeting on Sept. 24 with the women of “Essure problems,” a facebook group of nearly 20,000 women who have experienced the negative side effects of the device and want it off the market.

It looked like a win.

That was until the “Essure problems” women realized who else would be in town Sept. 24. On that same day, Pope Francis will give the first-ever papal address to the United States Congress – an event likely to draw all media attention away from the FDA-Essure meeting.

“I was born and raised Catholic, and to use the Pope against us? That’s not ok,” Angela Desa-Lynch, an administrator for the Facebook group “Essure Problems,” told CNA July 24.

A mom of three who had her Essure coils removed after severe complications, Desa-Lynch said the conflict with the Pope’s visit seemed intentional, since visits with heads of state are usually planned months, if not years, in advance.

When asked whether the meeting was deliberately scheduled to be overshadowed by the Pope, the FDA denied any intentional conflicts.

“The meeting was not timed in any way with the Pope’s address to Congress,” Deborah Kotz, a press officer for the FDA, told CNA in an e-mail interview.

“As an FYI, FDA announced the meeting date for Essure on June 24, and the Vatican announced the Pope’s itinerary for his U.S. visit on Tuesday, June 30.”

However, according to CNA reports, the Pope’s Sept. 24 address to Congress was announced to the public as early as Feb. 5 of this year.

Bayer, the manufacturer and distributor of Essure, deferred comment on the meeting to the FDA.

Desa-Lynch said in earlier meetings with some members of the group, the FDA has made it clear that they have no intentions of considering pulling the device from the market, despite the five reported deaths it has directly caused. Other side effects of the device include: perforated organs, coil migration, fetal disfigurement and death, nickel poisoning, chronic pain, and depression.

But the women of “Essure Problems” are not going to let the papal address overshadow their demands to pull Essure off the market.

“We’re not willing to leave without an absolute,” Desa-Lynch said.

And that’s why a group of women and doctors who support the recall of Essure are planning a hunger strike outside of the FDA after their meeting in September.

“Hunger strikes have a 100 percent success rate,” Desa-Lynch said. “It’s our only chance.”

It’s a drastic, last-ditch effort that worked for women’s suffrage in the early 20th century, and for Guantanamo detainees in the 2000s who demanded better conditions.

“I’ve never been more ready and willing to go to jail or die for that matter. It’s sad that women’s health and safety is still not equal in 2015,” Desa-Lynch said.

“Besides,” she added, “a hunger strike will show the FDA on the outside what their lack of action is already doing to our health on the inside.”

It is impossible to know the exact percentage of women who’ve been implanted with Essure and experienced complications. Both Bayer and the FDA know that 750,000 devices have been sold worldwide.

However, sometimes women will be implanted with multiple Essure devices, despite labels that specifically state that only one coil per tube should be used. One woman may also submit multiple complaints, making the exact number of women with complications difficult to pinpoint.

“From Nov. 4, 2002, Essure’s approval date, through May 31, 2015, the FDA received 5,093 Medical Device Reports related to Essure. Starting in mid-2013, there has been an increase in the number of reports received related to Essure,” Kotz said.

“The majority of reports received since that time have come from voluntary reporters, mostly from women who have had received Essure implants. Because some adverse events may go unreported to FDA, and because the precise number of implants is not known, FDA cannot provide a percentage to calculate the incidence of these events.”

Among those who will be present to show their support for the Essure hunger strike (though they will not be participating) include Erin Brokovich, the legal clerk and single mother made famous from a 2000 film about her life. Brockovich has a website dedicated to filing complaints against Essure and has joined the women in the legal fight against the device. There are several other people and interest groups hurt by the FDA who are joining the “Essure problems” women as well.

“(This) isn’t just about Essure anymore. This is about anyone that’s fallen a victim or been hurt by a faulty FDA process, bad laws and lack of oversight,” Desa-Lynch said. “The FDA has to much blood on its hands to continued to be ignored.”

“I will stay there, I don’t care if I’m the last one there,” she added. “I’m not leaving until they listen to us.”

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Why this former rock journalist authored a book about chastity

by Maggie Lawson (CNA/EWTN News) • July 28, 2015

The Thrill of the Chaste cover image. (Dawn Eden)

Washington, D.C. — One day, when Dawn Eden was 31 years-old, she ventured into the section of a bookstore that she had never visited before.

This journey into the store was somewhat out of character for Eden, who preferred listening to rock music instead of delving into books. Even more rare was the part of the bookstore she found herself in, because she had never been interested in what it had to offer – until her recent conversion to Christianity.

It was a shelf of how-to books on living with sexual purity.

Eden, who was an agnostic Jew for most of her life, used to spend her days as a rock journalist interviewing Harry Nilsson and hanging out with Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys, living her nights bouncing from one New York nightclub to the next.

It was surprising then that she, with her well-seasoned experiences, would find herself flipping through page after page of books searching for the meaning of chastity.

To her disappointment, the stores she ventured into only offered books for teens, which aimed at frightening them into not having sex rather than offer a truthful explanation on why living a chaste lifestyle was important for every human being.

When her quest proved fruitless, Eden decided to write a book of her own for adults who were looking for more than just the thrill of the chase. She hoped that there would be others out there like her – and hoped that she could give them the book that she herself had searched for.

After her conversion to Christianity in 1999, Eden published what she calls “a chastity book for grown-ups” in 2006, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding fulfillment while leaving your clothes on.

Not long after its publication, Eden converted to Catholicism. Armed with this new world view, she re-wrote the original edition of her book through the new lenses of her Catholic faith, which was published in 2015.

Fellow author Colleen Carroll Campbell hailed the new Catholic edition for its humor and brutal honesty, as well as drawing on “the depth and insights of the saints, Church Fathers, and Catholic teaching in a way that the original did not.”

Besides including various elements of her new-found Catholic faith, Eden also inserted a few additions to the Catholic version: it now catered to a male audience, who had expressed a need for a book like hers, and also addressed those individuals who were discerning a celibate life.

“In this new edition, I take a different approach – I give people practical advice not on dating, but on living, because the real question of our lives is not ‘How am I going to find a spouse’? but the real question is ‘How am I going to be happy whether I have a spouse or not’?” she told CNA.

“If we are just thinking that we have to find the right person to be happy, then we are really missing the point of life in Christ, and risking the possibility that we will never be happy – because if you put your happiness in a human being, then sooner or later you are going to be disappointed,” she said.

In writing her book, Eden wanted to address the person she had been before her conversion – the person who was searching for ways to fill her hurting, lonely heart. She wanted to offer hope and healing to the other men and women who had also been hurt by past experiences.

Eden wasn’t the only one out there who felt the harrowing, sweeping feeling of loneliness – she found that it was becoming an increasingly popular sentiment. However, that lonely feeling wasn’t always a negative thing, she recalled.

“I have come to realize that hunger and loneliness are not bad things: they are signs that I am made for something better and higher than this world, signs that I am meant to make room for God.”

“We are all made with a God-shaped vacuum in our heart that can only be filled by the love of God in and through Christ,” Eden reflected.

The ex-rock journalist wanted to impress upon her readers that their lives have meaning – here and now – and that they don’t have to wait until marriage or a romantic relationship to feel fulfilled. But how could this be achieved in an age of growing existential loneliness?

“As I began to let Jesus enter more deeply into my heart and entire life, then I learned how to let other people enter into me in a deeper way,” she asserted, acknowledging that her pledge to purity helped her become a better friend, daughter, and woman.

Chastity proved to surprise Eden. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t the denying admonishment that she had anticipated.

In fact, Eden points out in her book that chastity does not deny love, but rather, shows men and women how to love more fully.

“Our chastity is how we become personally integrated, body and soul, so that we can really love fully in every relationship, in the manner that is appropriate to that type of relationship,” she explained.

Although written as the “Catholic edition,” Eden believes that everyone, even non-Catholics, can glean something from the Catholic Church’s stance on sexuality, purity, and chastity.

“Everyone needs the good news and the Church’s sexual teachings are part of the good news,” she stated, saying that too often Catholics take for granted the treasury of Church teachings on the matter, seeing them as bitter pills rather than beautiful truths.

“To live a life of chastity is to live in the truth – the truth of the dignity that you and those you encounter have from being made in the image of God,” she explained.

Eden ends her chastity book for grown-ups with a beautiful description of how chastity changed her life and worldview. Not only did it enhance the quality of her relationships, but it has also drawn out the beauty of other people.

“The world is no longer my meat market – it stopped being that for me years ago – and it is no longer my waiting room,” Eden wrote.

“It is my cathedral, and every human being is a tabernacle of Christ.”

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LGBT grant-maker wants to win religious liberty fight within three years

by Kevin Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • July 29, 2015

(Zack McCarthy via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — A leader in LGBT grant-making has told business leaders that he wants to shut down the political fight for religious freedom exemptions in the U.S. within three years.

And these words are not empty rhetoric. A CNA investigation has found that millions of dollars have been poured into efforts to combat religious freedom exemptions in the United States.

“We are at a crossroads where the choices we make will mean we will fight religious exemptions for two to three years or have a protracted twenty year struggle on our hands,” Tim Sweeney told leading business executives and others attending the Out & Equal Workplace Advocates executive forum, held in San Francisco in late March 2015.

Sweeney is a former program director of the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and a former president and CEO of the Gill Foundation, which he left in 2013.

Both non-profit foundations are involved in funding LGBT advocacy, including gay marriage, and have begun to target religious freedom. A CNA examination of public grant listings and tax forms has found at least six foundations and funds have made grants totaling about $4.8 million to target religious freedom, especially as it is exercised by objectors to gay marriage.

The San Francisco-based Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund is one of the major funders. It is a private family foundation with half a billion dollars in assets. It has made at least $685,000 in grants opposed to a broad understanding of religious liberty, the fund’s grant database shows.

In 2014 the fund made two separate grants totaling $150,000 to the northwestern U.S.-based Pride Foundation in order to “lead a project to ensure that ‘religious liberty’ claims do not erode gains in marriage equality and nondiscrimination protections.” In 2015 it made another $200,000 grant for the same purpose.

The Berkeley, Calif.-based Pacific School of Religion received a $125,000 grant to support the Umoja project. The fund’s grant listing said the grant was intended to “engage African American clergy in preventing ‘religious liberty’ claims from eroding gains in marriage equality and nondiscrimination protections.” A $60,000 grant with the same aim went to the D.C.-based organization Many Voices.

A 2015 grant of $50,000 helped fund the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation to target religious liberty claims.

The Haas Jr. fund’s grant listings also show a $100,000 grant to the Gill Foundation in 2014 to support the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBT advocacy think tank. The grant funded work including “research to develop messaging around gay rights and ‘religious liberty’ issues.”

The Colorado-based Gill Foundation is both a recipient of grants and a maker of grants that target religious freedom. The foundation’s tax forms show it made a $100,000 grant in 2013 to give general support to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and to support a “religious exemptions project” at the foundation.

The Colorado-based Gill Foundation had over $234 million in assets at the close of 2013. It was founded by the politically savvy former businessman Tim Gill. He has worked to increase the number of funders of LGBT advocacy. He has also pursued a long-term political strategy of advancing LGBT causes by targeting donations to local and statewide political campaigns to stop his political opponents at the start of their careers.

Another grantmaker involved against religious freedom protections is the Massachusetts-based Proteus Fund. It has dedicated at least $825,000 to support “special litigation efforts and work on use of religious exemptions to attempt to justify the undermining of full marriage.” This litigation and work is part of its Civil Marriage Collaborative project, which backs “gay marriage.”

Its funding on religious exemptions work, as listed on its website, includes a $200,000 grant in 2014 and $75,000 in 2015 to the Oregon-based Basic Rights Education Fund to work on “religious exemptions public education work.” The fund is the political action fund of Basic Rights Oregon, which led opposition to a proposed religious freedom law in the state.

Other 2015 grants related to countering religious liberty exemptions include $300,000 in separate grants to ACLU groups in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas; and four grants totaling to $250,000 to other organizations in Arizona, California North Carolina and Texas.

A fourth foundation involved in the grant making is the David Bohnett Foundation, whose website lists a May 2014 grant of $150,000 over two years to the Columbia Law School’s Public Rights / Private Conscience Project, run by the law school’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

The project gathers together scholars to oppose religious exemptions. It has been particularly critical of versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), including the legislation originally passed by the Indiana legislature in March 2015. After vocal opposition from LGBT activists and pressure from large businesses, the Indiana legislature changed the law in a way that drew harsh criticism from many religious freedom advocates.

The Columbia Law School project has also criticized legal efforts to protect employers with objections to mandated insurance coverage for contraception and efforts to protect individuals with religious objections to recognizing same-sex unions as marriages.

While the David Bohnett Foundation’s grant listing described the project as the “Public Value / Private Conscience Project,” Katherine Franke, director of the law school’s Center For Gender & Sexuality Law, confirmed to CNA May 22 that the grant went to the Public Rights / Private Conscience Project. The project’s backers include the Ford and Arcus foundations, which have given at least $900,000 to support it.

Bohnett has been an outspoken critic of religious groups who are not aligned with LGBT advocacy. In an Oct. 9, 2009 acceptance speech for the GLSEN Lifetime Achievement Award, he characterized Catholic, evangelical and Mormon leaders as “among our greatest adversaries” and said that “evangelical and fundamentalist groups that teach homosexuality is a sin” are those who “stand in the way of fairness and equality.”

The new discoveries add to CNA’s February 13, 2015 report that the Ford Foundation and the Arcus Foundation have committed over $3 million in combined spending to target religious exemptions and other protections for religious freedom. That spending has supported LGBT activist groups, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for American Progress and Planned Parenthood, among others.

Sweeney’s March 2015 remarks to the Out & Equal Executive Forum contended that LGBT advocates “face a new set of threats around religious exemptions to laws that protect us and our families.”

Sweeney contended that laws like Religious Freedom Restoration Acts and decisions like the 2012 Hobby Lobby case are “all about using ‘religious liberty’ as an excuse to discriminate against LGBT people and others.”

At one point in his remarks, Sweeney said he appreciated “that many people on the other side sincerely believe that their religious freedom is under attack – but if I believed that I would definitely be on the other side of the table because safeguarding religious liberties is a core value of mine and many of us.”

He called on his allies to set up a national narrative that “questions the notion of an ‘attack’ on religious freedom” and “clarifies how discrimination affects gay people, women, religious minorities and other communities.”

Sweeney praised the failure of legislatures to pass religious freedom laws, saying “We exposed the discriminatory intention behind the Indiana and Arkansas RFRA laws, and limited some of the damage in these unnecessary and harmful measures.”

In an announcement released before the executive forum, Out & Equal said the forum would be attended by 50 “high-ranking and emerging” LGBT corporate leaders at business giants like Bain & Company, Comcast, Dell, Freddie Mac, Hilton Worldwide, Oracle, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The event’s presenting sponsors were the Walt Disney Company and Wells Fargo, while other leading sponsors included Deloitte, Hewlett-Packard, Intuit and the media company Thomson Reuters.

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‘Women Betrayed’ by Planned Parenthood speak out against abortion giant

by Adelaide Mena (CNA/EWTN News) • July 29, 2015

Student-organized ‘Women Betrayed’ rally against Planned Parenthood at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. on July 28, 2015. (Addie Mena/CNA)

Washington, D.C. — Hundreds of women – along with scores of men – gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to protest what they see as betrayal of the nation’s women at the hands of Planned Parenthood.

“I have a lot of young women friends, and I’m very concerned about how Planned Parenthood might exploit them, how Planned Parenthood might exploit me if I had an unplanned pregnancy,” Christina Yao, a student at UMBC in Maryland, told CNA.

“There are women being betrayed and profited off of when they’re in crisis situations, when we should be giving them help,” added Lisa Twigg, social media coordinator for Life Matters Journal, an anti-violence and consistent ethic-of-life magazine.

“I think this is offensive, to me as a feminist,” she told CNA.

Yao and Twigg were among hundreds of participants at the “Women Betrayed” rally in front of the U.S. Capitol, protesting Planned Parenthood’s tactics and calling for an end to federal funding of the organization.

The Washington, D.C. rally was one of more than 60 demonstrations held across the country in protest of Planned Parenthood and its taxpayer funding. The demonstrations followed videos that have surfaced in recent weeks of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the procuring of body parts from aborted babies in exchange for money.

The rally also coincided with the release of a third undercover video from the citizen journalist group Center for Medical Progress. The video, released as part of a three-year investigative study of Planned Parenthood, interviews a former procurement technician that worked for a clinic which received organs from Planned Parenthood clinics.

In addition, the video shows one of the undercover investigators in the back room of an abortion clinic examining an aborted patient, speaking to Planned Parenthood doctors who discuss “how much we can get out of it.”

Previous undercover videos showed senior Planned Parenthood officials discussing the pricing of “donated” body parts of aborted babies for “reasonable” compensation, as well as a graphic description of how fetal organs are extracted from aborted babies. In one of the videos, a Planned Parenthood doctor also suggested the possibility of altering an abortion procedure in order to have a better chance at extracting intact organs.

Planned Parenthood has defended its actions in the videos, saying that it is not making significant or illegal profits from the process, and that it receives appropriate consent from mothers.

Federal law generally prohibits the selling of human tissue but allows for the donation of tissue with “reasonable payments” for the “transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.” It explicitly prohibits the sale of tissue for “valuable consideration.”

In the first two videos, Planned Parenthood officials were careful to articulate that the organization is not looking to make a significant profit from the transfer of body parts to procurement companies.

The Senate’s Health and Human Services panel has started an investigation into Planned Parenthood over the allegations, as have two committees in the House of Representatives.

From 2013-2014, Planned Parenthood received over $528 million in grants from the federal government. The organization also reported a profit of $127 million for the same time period.

Michele Hendrickson, regional director for Students for Life of America, which organized the nationwide rallies, spoke about the need for protest.

“Planned Parenthood is targeting young women,” she said, pointing to the undercover videos, and the practices described in them. “Women are definitely being betrayed.”

“They’re not there to help women- they’re out there for money,” Hendrickson continued, adding that some 94 percent of the pregnancy services provided at Planned Parenthood are related to abortion. “They push abortion to make money off of it.”

Meg McDonnell, communications director for Women Speak For Themselves, a grassroots organization of women across the country, spoke at the rally, calling for the defunding of the abortion giant and criticizing what she called Planned Parenthood’s exploitation of women.

“For decades, women have gone to Planned Parenthood seeking help while in a vulnerable and desperate place,” McDonnell said. “And for decades, we have been told that Planned Parenthood is for women and women’s health. Planned Parenthood’s response to these women’s desperation, the killing of the child in her womb, has only caused more suffering and pain.”

The undercover videos show “that Planned Parenthood exploited these women even more” – potentially at the risk of the health of the mother, she continued, noting the willingness of the officials in the videos to alter abortion procedures in order to aid in organ harvest, “even if the altering of the procedure is more dangerous to the woman.”

“This is not freedom. This is women betrayed yet again.”

Alison Howard, director of alliance relations for pro-life legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, questioned Planned Parenthood’s business practices. “The idea of negotiating prices is really scary for Americans to see,” Howard said, adding that undercover videos “showed the business model behind Planned Parenthood and how they profit off of people’s pain.”

“Planned Parenthood is profiting off of our taxpayer money,” she continued, criticizing the heavy federal funding of the organization and their multi-million dollar profits. “I think this idea of defunding is so they can function like other non-profits do.”

Twigg argued that “Planned Parenthood isn’t doing a very good job of protecting women.

The organization lacks adequate resources for pregnancy and adoption at their clinics, and tells “women that the solution to their problems, be they economical, or getting out of a bad relationship is to kill their child,” she said.

She also criticized Planned Parenthood’s resistance to regulations that would bring the clinics in line with surgical standards. “They’re performing surgical procedures, why shouldn’t they have to meet that standard?”

“I support the rights of women, but I don’t think that means we should be required to secure our liberation from the blood of our children,” Twigg said.

She explained that being a pro-life feminist is nothing more than “the radical notion that both women and children are people and we need to be helping both of them.”

Amanda Cosby, a demonstrator who woke up before sunrise to get to the rally in Washington, D.C., told CNA that as an adoptee, she found the issue of opposing abortion “very close to my heart.”

Cosby said she found the prevalence of abortion and Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of organs “disgusting,” and wanted the organization to stop hiding “behind this facade that what they do is help women when actually they are just pushing the big corporate agenda.”

Instead, she offered, people “should stand up and demand that this be investigated, that their rights are protected, and that they are held accountable for what they’re doing.”

“We allow children who are not born, who can’t speak for themselves, to be slaughtered in the millions,” Cosby remarked. “Who is looking out for the people who have no voice?”

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Cardinal Dolan slams Trump’s ‘virulent’ immigration remarks

by CNA/EWTN News • July 29, 2015

Cardinal Timothy Dolan (left) and Donald Trump (right). (Archdiocese of Boston via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0 and Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0, respectively)

New York City, N.Y. — For Cardinal Dolan, the “virulent strain” of American nativism is not a thing of the past – it’s alive, well and seeded in presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent remarks on the topic of immigration.

“Nativists believed the immigrant to be dangerous, and that America was better off without them,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said in a July 29 guest column for New York Daily News.

“All these poor degenerates did, according to the nativists, was to dilute the clean, virtuous, upright citizenry of God-fearing true Americans.”

Cardinal Dolan’s column is in response to several offensive comments made on multiple occasions by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump about Mexican immigrants.

The cardinal recalled how before becoming a bishop he taught American religious history to university students, dedicating a portion of the class to “the ugly phenomenon called nativism.”

He offered a brief outline of nativism in America, noting its appearance in the 1840s and 1850s under the popular political party “the Know-Nothings.” It appeared again, he observed, in the 1870s as the American Protective Association and in the 1920s as the KKK.

Finally he pointed to post-World War II America, naming the Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State group as nativists.

Although his students might argue that the days of bigotry and belief that immigrants are nothing more than “dirty, drunken, irresponsible, dangerous threats to clean, white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon America” are gone, the cardinal begs to differ.

“I wish I were in the college classroom again, so I could roll out my ‘Trump card’ to show the students that I was right. Nativism is alive, well – and apparently popular!”

Trump, in his speech launching his presidential campaign, had said that “the U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. And these aren’t the best and the finest.”

“When Mexico sends its people they’re not sending their best, they’re sending people that have a lot of problems … they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some I assume are good people.”

“I speak to border guards, and they tell us what we’re getting. And it only makes common sense. They’re sending us not the right people,” he said, adding that these immigrants don’t only come from Mexico, but also from South America and likely the Middle East.

In a June 28 interview with CNN Trump spoke of making Mexico build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, saying that a wall is needed in certain areas.

He said he would force Mexico to build the wall “because we give them a fortune. Mexico makes a fortune because of us. A wall is a tiny little peanut compared to that. I would do something very severe unless they contributed or gave us the money to build the wall.”

In his column, Cardinal Dolan described nativism with the same words as scholar and author Ray Allen Billington, calling it “organized, white, Protestant antagonism toward the Catholic immigrant.”

He said that he is not telling anyone who they should vote for, but stressed that as a Catholic “I take seriously the Bible’s teaching that we are to welcome the stranger, one of the most frequently mentioned moral imperatives in both the Old and New Testament.”

The cardinal then pointed to two attitudes toward immigrants described by various American historians, the first being the nativists.

These people “sadly … (view) the unwashed, ignorant, bothersome brood as criminals and misfits who threaten ‘pure America,’ and are toxic to everything decent in the United States.”

However, the second, “more enlightened and patriotic” approach sees the immigrant as a gift to the nation, realizing that Native Americans are the only citizens whose ancestors were not immigrants.

The second group still recognizes the need for border control, fair regulation and prudent policies, but “we are wise to consider the immigrant as good for our beloved nation,” the cardinal said.

“To welcome them is virtuous, patriotic and beneficial for the economic and cultural future of our country.”

As a Catholic, the cardinal admitted to being “a bit biased” toward immigrants, and expressed his eagerness to share the work Catholic Charities in New York is doing to assist immigrants with Pope Francis during his September visit to the United States.

American patriotism and Catholicism have always been slightly at odds with each other in the United States, he said.

Dolan referred to how poet Walt Whitman called his predecessor Archbishop John Hughes a “mitred hypocrite” for an American, due to his defense of his “poor Irish immigrant flock – the Mexicans of his day – from the nativists.”

He then noted how Whitman himself referred to immigrants as “these dregs of foreign filth, refuse of convents, scullions from monasteries.”

“Thank God Walt Whitman stuck to poetry, and did not run for President.”

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Bishop advises cautious optimism for a Catholic future in Boy Scouts

by Kevin J. Jones (CNA/EWTN News) • July 30, 2015

(Anne via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Charleston, S.C. — A leading bishop in Catholic scouting says Catholics should continue to be involved in the Boy Scouts and work to ensure good youth outreach and consistency with Church teaching in response to a national policy change that allows gay leaders.

“We’re willing to see how this policy can work and how we can remain consistent with our Catholic teaching and continue to charter troops with the Boy Scouts of America. We think we can do that,” Bishop Robert Guglielmone of Charleston told CNA July 28.

Bishop Guglielmone is a former chaplain for Catholic scouts worldwide, and an executive board member of the National Catholic Committee on Scouting. The committee advises the Boy Scouts of America and works to strengthen the relationship between the Church and the scouting organization.

“Perhaps our approach as a Church should be one [of] cautious optimism, hoping that we will be able to use the programs of the Boy Scouts of America for our youth ministry, but that we would be able to do so in a way that is consistent with the teachings of the Church,” the bishop explained.

The Boy Scouts of America on July 27 approved a rule that no adult employee applicants or non-unit-serving volunteer who otherwise meets the organization’s requirements “may be denied registration on the basis of sexual orientation.” The resolution says sexual relations between adults should be “moral, honorable, committed and respectful.”

The resolution also recognizes the right for each chartering organization to select its leaders, and bars local councils from denying a charter to a unit that is following its religious beliefs.

The scouting leadership cited several reasons to change the policy barring openly homosexual leaders and volunteers. These reasons included continued legal and political pressures, social changes, and a lack of agreement within the Boy Scouts.

The National Catholic Committee on Scouting said July 27 that it is “not entirely clear” how the new policy will work in practice, but that the policy appears to respect the needs of Catholic-chartered organizations.

The committee expressed “strong concern” about the resolution’s practical implications, and whether the concept of sexual orientation will be “correctly understood and applied” in reference to sexual inclination, and not conduct.

The committee also voiced concern that the resolution “does not make clear that sexual behavior should be reserved to a husband and wife in marriage.”

The committee encouraged a continued Catholic presence in scouting.

“If you are like us, you joined scouting to make a difference in the lives of others. Our youth don’t want to leave scouting. Catholic scouters like you are still very much needed,” it said.

Bishop Guglielmone similarly advocated Catholic participation in the Boy Scouts.

He said Catholic-chartered scouting units are “the only way we can have a direct influence” on Catholic youth involved in scouting.

At the same time, the bishop acknowledged there is no way Catholics can control the material in Boy Scout programs, merit badge material, and its Boys’ Life magazine.

“According to the discussions that we’ve had with the Boy Scouts of America, we’re looking to leave the areas of sexuality, sexual conduct, et cetera, in the hands of parents and churches,” he stated.

“We’re just going to have to see how that all plays out. Certainly, we hope that that’s exactly what they will do.”

Bishop Guglielmone voiced hope that as the Boy Scouts deal with such issues they will act in a way consistent with Catholic teaching. If the scouting organization does not, he said, then Catholics will have to address such situations.

Critics of the new policy include Richard John Matthews, a former general counsel for the Boy Scouts of America who is now general counsel for Trail Life USA, an alternative scouting organization formed after previous policy changes.

Matthews, writing in a July 22 memorandum, said that it was “only a matter of time” until the Boy Scouts of America incorporate LGBT approaches. He said the change creates “numerous legal ramifications” that would put religious-chartered troops and the churches which host them at risk of losing anti-discrimination lawsuits.

Bishop Guglielmone said he did not have the legal expertise to evaluate religious freedom concerns over whether Catholic-chartered groups will have constitutional legal protections from lawsuits and government action.

“I’m going to have to leave that to the experts both in the BSA, and certainly dioceses are going to have to do this with their own legal counsels,” he said. He thought that individual dioceses and churches will have to review the legal questions.

“We are hopeful that this can work,” he said.

At the same time, the bishop recognized that religious liberty has become a major issue in the U.S.

“Who’s to tell where all of this can go? Not only this issue, but look at all of the issues we are dealing with as a Church with regard to religious liberty.”

The group Scouts for Equality, which backed legal challenges to the previous Boy Scouts policy, said July 27 they have reservations “about individual units discriminating against gay adults.”

The Boy Scouts of America referred to a memo from the Hughes, Hubbard & Reed law firm that said that church-sponsored troops face a low risk of a lawsuit from homosexual activists seeking admission against church standards.

Boy Scout units which are not chartered by religious organizations could not exclude homosexuals from leadership, the law firm’s legal memo said. However, the Boy Scouts have pledged to support troops chartered by religious organizations.

According to Bishop Guglielmone, the policy change does not mean that leaders and volunteers in non-church chartered scout organizations and activities will be openly affirming same-sex relationships and behavior.

“According to Boy Scout policy, this may be the way they live their lives but they certainly shouldn’t be affirming these relationships and promoting the approach to these relationships,” the bishop said. “That would be contrary to Boy Scout policy. To have a same-sex attraction and to do what one is doing in one’s private life is one thing. But if they are promoting it or affirming it, that is contrary to what the policy states.”

The bishop also responded to the idea that the policy change could increase the risk of sexual abuse.

“I certainly can’t predict the future on this,” he said. However, he praised the Boy Scouts’ and the Church’s efforts to prevent sex abuse. The scouts’ child protection policies are “stellar,” he said. “I would trust very much the child protection situation.”

He also commented on concerns that an adult’s sexual attraction itself is a risk for abuse. He added: “because someone may have a same-sex attraction does not necessarily mean that the person would be a predator.”

There were about 2.4 million Boy Scouts members in 2014, though membership has been in decline. About 70 percent of Boy Scout troops are run by religiously-affiliated organizations, some of which do not reject homosexual behavior as immoral.

An earlier Boy Scouts of America policy change, which allowed the admission of homosexual scouts, contributed to the 2013 founding of the Troops of Saint George, a Catholic alternative scouting organization.

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Make friends with your congressman – and you just might get to see the Pope

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • July 30, 2015

Pope Francis waves to the general audience on April 1, 2015 in St. Peter’s Square. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Washington, D.C. — The final plans are set for the public’s chance to watch Pope Francis’ Sept. 24 address to Congress live at the U.S. Capitol.

Tickets will be extremely hard to come by, though. Only about 50 tickets will be distributed through each House of Representatives office for the public to watch a live broadcast of Francis’ address via jumbotrons outside the West Front of the U.S. Capitol.

“While a clear line-of-sight cannot be guaranteed for all attending the West Front broadcast, the space provides an opportunity for your constituents to be part of the event,” stated a July 29 letter to members of Congress from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Fifty lawn tickets and one terrace ticket will be available through each office. One additional ticket per office will be for a broadcast of the address in the Cannon House Office Building.

There is no word yet on whether tickets will be available through Senate offices, but 50 lawn tickets for 435 representatives would yield less than 22,000 seats for people to watch the address on the West Front of the Capitol.

Those who do attend will get to experience an “inauguration-like setting” for Pope Francis, as Speaker Boehner’s office announced earlier in July. Additionally, Pope Francis has expressed his wishes to appear briefly on the West Front after he speaks to Congress, so attendees could possibly see him in person.

Speaker Boehner called the papal visit to the Capitol building “unprecedented” and a “historic moment for the country” in a July 8 press release, when plans for the address were officially announced. In March 2014, he had invited Pope Francis to come to the U.S. Capitol, and the Vatican accepted the invite in February 2015.

“In the spirit of the namesake of San Francisco, St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis’ universal message of love and compassion speaks to millions around the world,” Rep. Pelosi stated on July 8.

“In a time of global upheaval, the Holy Father’s message of compassion and human dignity has moved people of all faiths and backgrounds. His teachings, prayers, and very example bring us back to the blessings of simple things and our obligations to one another,” Speaker Boehner stated.

Francis’ address to the joint session of Congress will come in the middle of a whirlwind tour of Cuba and the U.S. from Sept. 19-27. He will arrive in Washington, D.C. on the evening of the 22nd.

He will meet privately with President Obama at the White House on Sept. 23 and then pray with the U.S. Catholic bishops at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Later on the 23rd, he will celebrate the canonization Mass of Bl. Junipero Serra at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

He will address Congress the following morning. After that, he will visit about 150-200 persons with disabilities at St. Patrick Catholic Church in downtown Washington, D.C. and appear at Catholic Charities, D.C. for their weekly St. Maria’s Meals program for the homeless.

Monsignor John Enzler, the head of Catholic Charities, D.C., previously told CNA that he thinks Pope Francis is making a statement by going directly from addressing the powerful – the nation’s lawmakers – to visiting the most vulnerable.

Francis has always placed an emphasis on serving the poor, Msgr. Enzler continued, and is acting on his words by ending his Washington, D.C. tour with a visit to them.

Catholic Charities, D.C. is his last stop before leaving for New York City to address the United Nations on the 25th and then to Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families on Sept. 26-27.

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Cardinal O’Malley denounces Planned Parenthood for disrespecting human dignity

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • July 30, 2015

(Vera Kratochvil CC0 1.0)

Washington, D.C. — The Archbishop of Boston on Wednesday lamented the harvesting of fetal organs, which is at the center of a series of videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the practice, as a failure to respect human dignity.

“The recent news stories concerning Planned Parenthood direct our attention to two larger issues involving many institutions in our society,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley said July 29. “The first is abortion itself: a direct attack on human life in its most vulnerable condition. The second is the now standard practice of obtaining fetal organs and tissues through abortion.”

“Both actions fail to respect the humanity and dignity of human life. This fact should be the center of attention in the present public controversy.”

His comments come as a new undercover video shows a senior Planned Parenthood physician talking about the harvesting of organs from babies delivered before an abortion was performed at the clinic.

“Sometimes, if we get, if someone delivers before we get to see them for a procedure, then we are intact, but that’s not what we go for. We try for that to not happen,” Dr. Savita Ginde, vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in the new video, of providing tissue procurement companies with “intact” body parts of aborted babies.

Cardinal O’Malley decried the practice described in the videos as part of the “throwaway culture” condemned by Pope Francis.

He also referred anyone who suffered “revived trauma” from previous abortions in watching the videos to the Church’s Project Rachel, a healing ministry for mothers who have had abortions.

The group releasing the videos, Center for Medical Progress, claims Planned Parenthood could be violating federal law if they performed abortions on second trimester babies born alive. They do not use drugs like dioxide to abort the child in those cases, the group maintained.

Later in the video, Ginde appears in a clinic lab poking through body parts in a petri dish. “Another boy!” a Planned Parenthood medical assistant announces as the body parts are spread around the dish.

The video is the latest in a series of reports on “Human Capital” by the citizen journalist group. It is the result of a three-year investigative study of Planned Parenthood and its transfer of body parts of aborted babies for money.

Previous videos showed top Planned Parenthood officials casually discussing the donation of body parts of aborted babies at the clinic to tissue procurement companies for “reasonable” compensation. In one instance, a doctor also floated the idea of altering the abortion procedure to have a better chance at extracting the organs intact, which could be a violation of federal law.

CMP has charged that Planned Parenthood has violated federal law banning the sale of body parts. Planned Parenthood has defended its practice, saying it is not making illegal profits and that it receives appropriate consent from mothers before offering the dead babies to procurement companies for research.

Federal law generally prohibits the selling of human tissue but allows for the donation of tissue with “reasonable payments” for the “transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.” It explicitly prohibits the sale of tissue for “valuable consideration.”

In the first two videos Planned Parenthood officials were careful to articulate that the organization is not looking to make a significant profit from the transfer of body parts to procurement companies.

On the July 26 edition of ABC’s This Week, the organization’s president Cecile Richards insisted that Planned Parenthood has not broken the law. “We have the highest standards. The care and health care and safety of our patients is our most important priority,” she said.

In the third video, Ginde appeared saying that financial compensation “per item” rather than per baby would be better so “we can see how much we can get out of it.”

Ginde also talks at length in the latest video about ensuring the offering of body parts are offered for research and not as a business transaction.

“The only other thing that I would sort of be concerned about is are the other Planned Parenthoods doing this through research or are they just doing it as a stand alone contract,” she told the actors posing as members of a human biologics company. “Because, even though we’re doing it through research, if it comes up that someone else is doing it, just doing it as a business sort of venture, it puts a different spin on it.”

Listing the transfer for research also gives Planned Parenthood “an overhang over the whole thing,” she continued.

The organization’s lawyers have been building layers of legal protection for Planned Parenthood, she added, and she has been working to ensure the different affiliates have a unified narrative in offering the body parts to companies.

“We don’t want to get called on, you know, selling fetal parts across states,” she said. “How do we protect ourselves from that.”

The video is the fourth in an ongoing series from the Center for Medical Progress. The first video was released July 14 and showed the organization’s senior director of medical services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing in gruesome detail the practice of extracting the fetal organs from aborted babies.

The second video showed the president of Planned Parenthood’s medical directors council, Dr. Mary Gatter, flippantly discussing and joking about prices for body parts of aborted babies with actors posing as prospective buyers. “I want a Lamborghini,” she joked.

The third video featured testimony by a former technician for StemExpress, a fetal tissue procurement company, on her dealings with Planned Parenthood to obtain fetal tissue.

Congress has subsequently taken action against Planned Parenthood, with two House committees and a Senate panel investigating the organization for any violation of the law. The Senate has introduced a bill to prohibit any federal dollars from going to the organization and its affiliates, which will be voted on next week.

Rallies to defund Planned Parenthood, titled “#WomenBetrayed,” were held in over 60 cities on Tuesday, coordinated by the pro-life college outreach group Students for Life.

The organization’s 68 affiliates received over $500 million in federal funds in fiscal year 2013 according to its annual report, or 41 percent of the overall revenue of Planned Parenthood for America and its clinics.

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How knowing your fertility can catch diseases early

by Adelaide Mena (CNA/EWTN News) • July 31, 2015

(Julia Caesar via Unsplash CC0 1.0)

Washington, D.C. — When Maggie was in high school, she stayed after class to talk to ask a teacher what to do about a very personal concern she felt her physician was not taking seriously. What she learned led to the discovery of a brain tumor, and treatment for the growth which had been affecting the teen for years. The tools she needed to find and treat this growth came from an awareness of her fertility and natural cycles.

“It wasn’t so much that I was trying to avoid pregnancy or get pregnant – it’s that there was something legitimately wrong with my body,” Maggie told CNA.

By the time she was in her late teens, Maggie had noticed that her cycles had never regulated, and had no idea what that meant except that it wasn’t normal. While for the first years after a young woman begins to menstruate her cycles are of varying length and heaviness, they typically regulate within a few years. But several years after her own cycles began, Maggie was concerned that they never had settled into a normal pattern – in fact, she sometimes would have as few as one cycle a year. In addition, she also faced rounds of headaches.

One day, Maggie approached her college-level biology teacher, who also happened to be a practicing Catholic, looking for an explanation for her concerns and asking what to do. The teacher told her to ask her pediatrician, but also put her in touch with her church’s fertility instructor to see what could be done.

Maggie said her pediatrician immediately assumed that she was pregnant: an impossibility, because she was not sexually active. When the pregnancy tests came back negative, the doctor responded, “‘I don’t know what your problem is’ and brushed me off,” she recalled.

Meanwhile, the local parish’s natural family planning (NFP) instructor saw the teen’s distress and put her in touch with a Catholic fertility physician who could teach Maggie tow to observe and chart the signs of her fertility.

Understanding Fertility

“A sign of health in a woman is a normal, regular cycle,” Dr. Lorna Cvetkovich, a gynecologist and obstetrician at Tepeyac Family Center in Fairfax, Va., explains. “We know what a normal cycle looks like,” she continued, “so at any time the parameters fall outside of those, then that’s a clue that maybe they’re not ovulating, they may have a luteal phase defect, they may have fibroids. It can show you all sorts of things.”

For women whose cycles fall within a normal range, normal bodily processes present themselves in a predictable pattern.

In the first part of a woman’s cycle, called the follicular phase, hormonal signals from the pituitary gland trigger the follicles (egg-containing structures within the ovaries) to prepare an egg for ovulation and to secrete estrogen into the woman’s body. This rise in estrogen levels triggers changes in the kind of fluid the cervix secretes, as well as thickening the uterine lining, making them more able to support the conception process.

After ovulation a woman’s body secretes progesterone, which causes a sharp increase in a woman’s basal, or resting, body temperature, as well as a preparation of the uterine lining for possible implantation. If a pregnancy occurs, the basal body temperature and hormone levels may continue to rise, whereas if pregnancy does not happen, the resulting dip in hormones triggers a drop in temperature, menstruation, and the beginning of a new cycle.

In a healthy woman who is not pregnant, this cycle will repeat every 21-35 days.

These changes can be observed by any woman, and can be used by married couples as a valid method to achieve or delay pregnancy, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, which teaches that it is immoral to disrupt this natural cycle with the use of contraceptive pills, implants, barrier methods, or by having incomplete intercourse. Using these observations to help in the discernment of family size is known as natural family planning.

However, the same observations and data – commonly collected into charts for easier analysis – can be used to help diagnose gynecological issues such as ovarian cysts and growths in the uterus, called fibroids, as well as hormone deficiencies and other abnormalities affecting bodily functions. The information can also be essential in pinpointing issues surrounding pregnancy, such as the exact date of conception, infertility, and miscarriages.

This information is such a valuable insight into a patients health and symptoms – and an invaluable tool for doctors practicing reproductive medicine. “I just think it’s invaluable, and I don’t really know how people practice [gynecology] without having the charting,” said Cvetkovich. “There’s just so many uses, and it adds so much to your evaluation of the patient.”

Cycles and Diagnosis

Disorders in other bodily systems – such as the endocrine system – can manifest in a woman’s menstrual cycle and her chart. “Thyroid plays a role in almost every function of the body, so it may show up as a sign in the cycle,” explained Cvetkovich.

For Christine, charting her bodily signs helped her to catch an issue with her thyroid that might otherwise have been missed. After charting for four years, she started noticing that some months there was no ovulation that could be detected by temperature or with chemical tests for the hormones that trigger ovulation.

“I had what looked like a really long cycle, and then eventually, what to the uninformed observer would look to be a light period. But because I knew I hadn’t peaked, I was able to identify it as estrogen breakthrough bleeding and not a real cycle,” she explained.

“It seemed like my body was trying to ovulate, and not really getting there.”

She approached her doctor, explaining she was not ovulating and that she would like to find the cause for something that was out of the ordinary. The doctor then ordered comprehensive blood tests, and found that some of her thyroid-stimulating hormone levels were elevated beyond normal – in fact, her levels were twice as high s they had been a year ago.

After receiving treatment, her cycles returned to their normal pattern.

“I didn’t have a lot of signs or symptoms of hypothyroidism, aside from missing ovulation,” Christine noted, saying she wouldn’t have picked up on the disorder had she not been charting. “ I wouldn’t have realized there was an issue,” Christine she added, reflecting on the fact that she probably would not have even received the treatment she needed.

“Whenever I’m sharing my experience with NFP with somebody, I’m always quick to point out not only all of the standard benefits, but that it enabled me to know my body and know there’s a problem that so many people wouldn’t be aware of.”

How Fertility Awareness Helped to Find a Tumor

After a local NFP instructor put Maggie in touch with physicians familiar with fertility awareness, she became more aware of what was going on in her own body. She learned to observe her basal body temperature and cervical fluid signs – and noticed that while sometimes she had a more typical menstrual cycle and her chart showed the usual peaks and dips of a healthy young woman, at other times her cycle was irregular and her temperature was more elevated.

Even though she was not sexually active, “my body was acting like it was pregnant,” Maggie said. The doctors at the Catholic fertility clinic sent Maggie out for blood work, which showed a high level of prolactin – a hormone present during pregnancy and breastfeeding. She took this information back to her pediatrician, and then to an endocrinologist, who ordered an MRI scan of her brain.

“There was a tumor pressing into my pituitary, pressing into my frontal cortex,” Maggie explained.

“When I first heard the word ‘tumor’ I freaked out,” she related, but thankfully, “it wasn’t cancerous,” but a benign growth which explained both her irregular cycles and some of her headaches.

Maggie received the treatment she needed to shrink the tumor, and told CNA that “things are pretty much normal now.” While the tumor is still there – “it’ll never really go away, unless I get surgery – “what’s happened at this point is that it’s checked.”

While since receiving treatment she has no need to monitor as rigorously all of her signs and symptoms, knowledge of her fertility and its signs has given Maggie tools she can use use if the tumor starts to grow again.

“I have this, and I know these are indicators to know [if] something is wrong with my prolactin.”

Fertility – ‘A Public Health Issue’

Cvetkovich suggested this level of awareness can be useful for any woman looking to take care of their health.

“I think that anytime you put someone more in tune with your body, they’re just going to know that things are wrong earlier. I think that’s what it’s all about, knowing what’s normal for you, and being in tune with it.”

She commented that many of her fellow physicians, as well as the general public, have grown accustomed to relying on hormonal contraceptives to address disorders, a practice she said “makes people very distant from their bodies and from their cycles.”

“We’ve lost the idea that having a normal monthly cycle is health – that’s normal. Being fertile is normal. I think that’s where NFP brings us back to, really: to reality.”

Maggie agrees, saying that some of her initial struggle in receiving treatment was a result of people “missing the point that fertility isn’t sort of an accessory to being a human woman – it’s an integral part of how our bodies work.” Awareness of how women’s bodies work- and how to tell when they’re not working correctly, is important for everyone.

“It’s a public health issue.”

Maggie is not the first patient’s real name, which has been changed to protect her privacy.

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Promote the common good and give workers a raise, Catholic leaders tell Congress

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • July 31, 2015

(fsecart via Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Washington, D.C. — Catholic leaders are calling on Congress to raise the minimum wage, for the good of low-wage workers and their families.

“An economy thrives only when it is centered on the dignity and well-being of the workers and families in it,” stated a letter to members of Congress from Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami and Sister Donna Markham, OP, president of Catholic Charities USA. Archbishop Wenski chairs the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

The current federal minimum wage is not enough for a father working full-time to raise a child out of poverty, the letter said. Furthermore, the wage is static and only increases when Congress raises it – it is not tied to inflation, meaning that in real terms, its falls every year.

“This leads to increased demand for Charities’ services and reliance on the social safety net to make ends meet,” the letter added.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, enacted in 2009 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. President Obama has repeatedly pushed for Congress and businesses to raise the minimum wage, most recently calling for it to be hiked to over $10 an hour. In February, 2014 he signed an executive order raising the wage to $10.10 for federal contract workers.

Minimum wage increases have sparked a debate about their influence on businesses and low-wage workers. Supporters argue that according to studies employment is not significantly affected by moderate wage increases, and that pay hikes benefit workers far more than any subsequent drop in employment rates may hurt them.

Opponents claim that mandatory wage hikes disproportionately affect small businesses who may not have the resources to increase wages that big businesses have, and thus must cut low-wage jobs. Many low-wage workers are not fathers with children, they argue, but are younger, less experienced workers who would lose valuable work experience if their jobs were cut because of a wage increase.

Certain businesses have already increased their minimum wages without any law being passed first. For example, the CEO of Seattle-based Gravity Payments made headlines earlier this year by taking a pay cut down to $70,000 a year from $1 million and giving all his employees a pay raise.

In their letter to Congress, Archbishop Wenski and Sister Markham referenced St. John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus, which was written on the 100-year anniversary of the landmark social encyclical Rerum Novarum, on capital and labor.

They quoted the encyclical that “society and the State must ensure wage levels adequate for the maintenance of the worker and his family, including a certain amount for savings.”

“This requires a continuous effort to improve workers’ training and capability so that their work will be more skilled and productive, as well as careful controls and adequate legislative measures to block shameful forms of exploitation, especially to the disadvantage of the most vulnerable workers,” the encyclical continued.

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‘Paper Towns’ movie review

by Carl Kozlowski • July 27, 2015

Nearly everyone has one huge crush or outright love interest that got away. But what if that person came back into your life one night, and you were single and available, and seemed to be giving you another chance? Would you take it?

That’s the sweeping romantic question that kicks off the new movie “Paper Towns,” the second film based on the books of mega-popular Young Adult fiction writer John Green. Following on the smash hit success of last year’s “The Fault In Our Stars” – which depicted the tragic romance of two teens afflicted with cancer, and the grace and hope with which they handled it – the new movie is a lighter, more adventurous and fun road-trip movie.

But it is still resonant enough to give hope that Hollywood has found another teen master like John Hughes (“Pretty in Pink,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) in Green. And any teen film that rises above an obsession with sex, ala the trashy “American Pie” trilogy of a decade ago, is something to commend.

The movie follows a boy nicknamed Q (Nat Wolff), who is shown as a young boy meeting and developing a friendship with a new mysterious girl named Margo (played as a teen by Carla Delavigne). She is always far more adventurous than he is, and when he becomes a study-driven teenager and she stays always in mischief, they grow distant.

Then one night, she climbs in his bedroom window and asks him to sneak out in his parents’ car and drive her on a series of nine pranks in one night. The pranks are built around revenge on her boyfriend for sleeping with her best friend, and their friends who covered up the affair from her.

Against his initial thoughts, but with his youthful feelings for her restoked, Q agrees to help her and they embark on a series of mildly destructive yet comically portrayed pranks. These involve sneaking into their targets’ houses and include spray painting “M” for Margo on the wall of each house, but in general they are ridiculous and not serious enough to take great moral outrage over, aside from scaring her old boyfriend into jumping out a window naked from her best friend’s house and snapping a picture of him from behind as he runs away.

The night veers nearly into romance by its end, with Margo saying she can’t wait to see Q the next day and his assuming they are now going to date. But instead she disappears, leaving a trail of mysterious clues that culminate with her saying she’s run off to a “Paper Town” - a fake town that exists only on a map to protect a map designer’s copyright. Margo believes that her hometown of Orlando is also a paper town in its own way – a pretty surface with no true meaning behind it, and her life is a quest for meaning through various adventures.

The rest of the movie becomes a very fun and often moving road trip, as Q and his buddies, plus one of their girlfriends and the girl whose car was Saran wrapped by Margo, all team up to follow clues to go find Margo at her paper town in New York state. Along the way, they wrestle with the fact that they are about to graduate and split off from each other’s lives for the first time ever while at college.

Unfortunately, this intriguing mystery involving smart, mostly moral and appealing teens is somewhat weakened by a couple of scenes involving sex talk – with each guy either goading each other to have sex or sharing fake stories of conquests they falsely claim to have already made. This ultimately culminates in one boy and his girlfriend deciding to break their decision to have sex for the first time on prom night, as they have sex while sleeping on the trip overnight, and then the boy smirks and gloats to his friends the next day.

Adults should certainly have no problem handling that content, and certainly shouldn’t dismiss “Paper Towns” as a mere flick for teens. Its sweeping sense of comic adventure and romance – the main couple stays chaste – might awaken the sense of joy and wonder that these young people maintain as they face the transition to college and adult life. And perhaps that’s a good reminder of the simple joys and pleasures to be found in life during an age when everything in society seems far too rushed and only looks good on paper.

Carl Kozlowski has been a professional film critic and essayist for the past five years at Pasadena Weekly, in addition to the Christian movie site Movieguide.org, the conservative pop culture site Breitbart.coms Big Hollywood, the Christian pop culture magazine Relevant and New City newspaper in Chicago. He also writes in-depth celebrity interviews for Esquire.com and The Progressive. He is owner of the podcasting site radiotitans.com, which was named one of the Frontier Fifty in 2013 as one of the 50 best talk-radio outlets in the nation by talkers.com and will be relaunching it in January 2014 after a five-month sabbatical. He lives in Los Angeles.

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The Death of God and the Loss of Human Dignity

by Bishop-elect Robert Barron • July 28, 2015

I am sure by now that many of you have seen the appalling hidden-camera videos of two Planned Parenthood physicians bantering cheerfully with interlocutors posing as prospective buyers of the body parts of aborted infants. While they slurp wine in elegant restaurants, the good doctors – both women – blandly talk about what price they would expect for providing valuable inner organs, and how the skillful abortionists of Planned Parenthood know just how to murder babies so as not to damage the goods. One of the doctors specified that the abortion providers employ “less crunchy” methods when they know that the organs of a baby are going to be harvested for sale. Mind you, the “crunchiness” she’s talking about is a reference to the skull-crushing and dismemberment by knife and suction typically employed in abortions. For me, the most bone-chilling moment was when one of the kindly physicians, informed that the price she was asking was too low, leered and said, “Oh good, because I’d like a Lamborghini.”

Now it is easy enough to remark and lament the moral coarseness of these women, the particularly repulsive way that they combine violence and greed. But I would like to explore a deeper issue that these videos bring to light, namely, the forgetfulness of the dignity of the human being that is on ever clearer display in our Western culture. One has only to consider the over 58,000,000 abortions that have taken place, under full protection of the law, in our country since Roe v. Wade in 1973, or the ever more insistent push toward permitting euthanasia, even of children in some European countries, or the wanton killing going on nightly in the streets of our major cities. The figures in my home town of Chicago typically surpass those recorded in the battle grounds of the Middle East.

What makes this sort of startling violence against human beings possible, I would submit, is the attenuation of our sense of God’s existence. In the classical Western perspective, the dignity of the human person is a consequence and function of his or her status as a creature of God. Precisely because the human being is made in the image and likeness of the Creator and destined, finally, for eternal life on high with God, he is a subject of inalienable rights. I use Jefferson’s language from the Declaration of Independence on purpose here, for the great founding father knew that the absolute nature of the rights he was describing follows from their derivation from God: “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights …” When God is removed from the picture, human rights rather rapidly evanesce, which can be seen with clarity in both ancient times and modern. For Cicero, Aristotle, and Plato, a cultural elite enjoyed rights, privileges, and dignity, while the vast majority of people were legitimately relegated to inferior status, some even to the condition of slavery. In the totalitarianisms of the last century - marked in every case by an aggressive dismissal of God - untold millions of human beings were treated as little more than vermin.

I realize that many philosophers and social theorists have tried to ground a sense of human dignity in something other than God, but these attempts have all proven fruitless. For instance, if human worth is a function of a person’s intelligence or creativity or imagination, or her capacity to enter into friendship, then why not say that this worth disappears the moment those powers are underdeveloped, weakened, or eliminated altogether? Or if respect for human dignity is related to the strength of one’s feeling for another person, then who is to say that that dignity vanishes once one’s sentiments change or dry up? My suspicion is that if we interrogated people on the street and asked them why human beings should be respected, some version of this argument from sentimentality would emerge. But again, the problem is that feelings are so ephemeral, shifting and changing like the wind. If you doubt me, read some of the accounts of the officers and soldiers in the Nazi death camps, who, after years of killing, lost all feeling for those they were murdering, seeing them as little more than rats or insects.

For the past two hundred years, atheists have been loudly asserting that the dismissal of God will lead to human liberation. I would strenuously argue precisely the contrary. Once the human being is untethered from God, he becomes, in very short order, an object among objects, and hence susceptible to the grossest manipulation by the powerful and self-interested. In the measure that people still speak of the irreducible dignity of the individual, they are, whether they know it or not, standing upon Biblical foundations. When those foundations are shaken - as they increasingly are today - a culture of death will follow just as surely as night follows day. If there is no God, then human beings are dispensable - so why not trade the organs of infants for a nice Lamborghini?

Bishop-elect Robert Barron is an auxiliary bishop-elect of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the founder of the global ministry Word on Fire (wordonfire.org). He is the creator of two award-winning documentary series, Catholicism and Catholicism: The New Evangelization.

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‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’

by Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. • July 29, 2015

“Light of the World,” a nineteenth-century painting by the Englishman, W. Holman Hunt, perhaps best captures the human narrative.

The Painting and Its Symbolism

In this unconventional and highly personal work of art, Jesus, crowned with thorns, stands outside a door and knocks. He is asking for permission to enter. The door can’t be opened from the outside because it has no handle on it. The rusty nails and hinges are overgrown with ivy and weeds, presumably because the door hasn’t been opened in years or perhaps never opened.

The sealed door represents the human heart choked by cares, which prevent one from opening it. For the artist, the door symbolizes “the obstinately shut mind.”

Shown in the painting are two lights. The one inside the lantern symbolizes the light of conscience, and the halo around Jesus’ head, the light of peace and hope of salvation. The painting illustrates two verses: one from the Johannine Gospel: “I am the light of the world,” and the other, from the Book of Revelation: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and dine with you and you with me” (8:12; 3:20).

The Battle from Within

Jesus standing as priest, prophet, and king, is the sole figure in this painting. Still the focus of attention lies outside the picture. Behind the door stands every man or woman as a hidden presence. What might this individual feel, think, desire, fear as he or she decides on a response. What to do, if anything?

What we say to ourselves is far more important than what we say to others. Thus begins the inner combat with sparring. Quid volo? What do I desire? What do I really desire? What are my options? Ignore the knock? Call out: Go away? Not now, later? If I open the door, what will I be getting myself into?

Discipleship? How much will discipleship cost me? Peter too asked this question. The Lord’s reply? ‘Lose your life, and you will find it.’

These nagging thoughts provoke other thoughts by day, by night.

The Decision

Without reservation, I will choose to follow the Lord as his companion and ardent disciple. Taking a deep breath, I unlock the door, turn the knob and open. My vision is transfixed with sheer wonder. I see before me the glorious Lord of the universe. In fact, I am standing in the presence of all the saints, headed by Mary and Joseph, all my loved ones, all my role models who are prompting me to join their company. And how many are there who, one century after another, have brought a little light and joy to others through their talents?

My Prayer …

In the presence of this esteemed company, I recall what I have received. I thank God for having created me … for having redeemed me … for so many personal gifts! For all that I have been given, what ought I return to God? In the spirit of overflowing gratitude and love, I pray:

TAKE, LORD, into your possession,

my complete freedom of action,

my memory, my understanding and my entire will,

all that I have, all that I own: it is your gift to me.

I now return it to you.

It is all yours to be used simply as you wish.

Give me your love and your grace.

It is all I need.

God Living in All Things

I see God’s imprint everywhere: in matter, giving it existence; in plants, giving them life; in animals, giving them consciousness; in men and women, giving them intelligence.

God lives in me, giving me existence, life, consciousness, intelligence. More, He makes me his temple, since I have been created wearing the divine image and likeness.

Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord. Bless the Lord, my soul; never forget all that he has done for you.

God at Work in All Things

Nothing happens by chance. I think of God energizing all things, as though he were at work in every created reality, in the sky, in matter, plants and fruits, animals, and in me. By acting in every event, God’s inscrutable will is in play. He heals me, and through each event, challenges me to grow. All creation is in the hands of Providence.

As a disciple, I am called on to cooperate with the divine plan in building a compassionate world according to my gifts and limitations.

All Good Gifts from Above

I realize that all gifts and benefits come from above. My ability and gifts come from a loving God. They come down like sunbeams from the sun or streams from their source. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

By choosing to be a companion of the Lord, my life is modeled after the Master. This human-divine relationship, real though unequal, this great exchange may sometimes bring exciting and joyful moments, even dull or painful moments, but life with the Lord is always meaningful. I conclude with a favorite prayer or simply an Our Father.

– Paraphrase of the “Contemplation for Obtaining Love” in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. His feast day is celebrated on Friday, July 31st.

Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Brentwood, NY, holds degrees in philosophy (Ph.L.), musicology (Ph.D.), theology (M.A.), and liturgical studies (Ph.D.). She has taught at all levels of Catholic education and writes with a particular focus on a theology of beauty and the sacred arts. Her e-mail address is jroccasalvo@optonline.net.

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‘Vacation’ — a sleazier, sloppier version of the original

by Carl Kozlowski • July 29, 2015

There’s an old saying that “You can’t go home again,” meaning that there’s no point in reliving and regretting past glories. But judging by the terribly conceived new reboot of the 1983 Chevy Chase comedy classic “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” the new movie “Vacation” (out today) shows that, at least in this case, you can’t relive a great vacation again either.

While the original Chase version was rated R, it was relatively tame for the rating and maintained a sweetly goofy charm throughout even its naughty moments. But the new movie wallows in moral muck from start to finish, making the movie’s few genuinely funny and clever clean moments feel like an afterthought.

The movie follows Rusty (Ed Helms), who has grown up to be a pilot for the cheap airline Econo Air and has no self-esteem about himself and his career status. He does love his family, however, but when neighbors tell his wife (Christina Applegate) about their glamorous trip to Paris, he realizes that his annual family trip to a lake cabin just won’t cut it anymore.

Instead he decides to take them on a cross-country road trip to Walley World, the amusement park his dad took him to as a boy in the original 1983 movie. While that movie was R-rated, it was relatively tame for the rating, while this movie unfortunately spends about 60 percent of its attempts at comedy on extremely offensive or gross attempts at humor that go too far and fall flat.

There’s no real point to detailing the plot in depth, as it unfolds in episodic fashion. Because he decided to take the trip last minute on Memorial Day week, Rusty is stuck with an Albanian car that has seemingly endless bizarre features that make it a nightmare to drive. The fact that the movie’s writer-directors, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, come up with some truly funny and inventive moments with a car from Albania shows that they do have talent and know better than to wallow in comic muck.

But sadly, scatological or outright sexual humor overwhelms the movie. The family smears themselves in what they think is healing mud while wading in a spring, only to find that they’re covered in raw sewage. The younger son unleashes terrible profanity against both his brother and parents, while also attempting to humiliate him at every turn.

The mom is revealed to have been legendarily promiscuous and an alcohol abuser while in college, and then gets drunk and vomits in front of her sons when she’s accused of having become too sedate as a mom. And the parents stumble across a large group of people waiting to have sex on the Four Corners National Monument, just as they are about to try to do so.

There you have the examples that can be mentioned in a Christian family site – it actually has worse moments. And the movie’s central role of Rusty is badly miscast: not only would Will Ferrell look much more plausible as original star Chevy Chase’s son, but he would have had the same goofy spirit as Chase.

Instead, Helms is alternately too sad-sack or flat-out creepy in many of the scenes, as the movie’s most cringe-inducing moments have him making wildly inappropriate comments by accident to his son as he tries to give him advice on sex or tries to make him look good to a girl, failing disastrously. Instead of being a caring dad, he comes off almost like a pedophile with his comments.

Despite her gross moments, Christina Applegate delivers the movie’s strongest performance and gets some real laughs in the cleaner moments of the movie. The boys who play their sons are also funny at moments, though the parents of the younger actor should perhaps be investigated by child protection authorities for letting a preteen say some truly terrible dirty talk.

There is a brief scene with Chevy Chase when the family visits him and original movie wife/mom Beverly D’Angelo, but both of these actors from the original movie have so little to do their roles are pointless. And the strangest moment comes at what should be the movie’s comedic climax, when the action stops abruptly and cuts to the aftermath without remotely touching on the climax’s full laugh potential.

Despite all the trashy moments, the Griswolds do stay together and are brought closer by their trip, so the movie does ultimately endorse the strength of family. However, it comes across too little too late, and any Catholic viewer would know this limited lesson anyway without having to be taught by the movie.

Anyone with comic or moral taste is advised to take a vacation away from any theater showing this movie.

Carl Kozlowski has been a professional film critic and essayist for the past five years at Pasadena Weekly, in addition to the Christian movie site Movieguide.org, the conservative pop culture site Breitbart.coms Big Hollywood, the Christian pop culture magazine Relevant and New City newspaper in Chicago. He also writes in-depth celebrity interviews for Esquire.com and The Progressive. He is owner of the podcasting site radiotitans.com, which was named one of the Frontier Fifty in 2013 as one of the 50 best talk-radio outlets in the nation by talkers.com and will be relaunching it in January 2014 after a five-month sabbatical. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Newest ‘Mission Impossible’ flick confusing but enjoyable

by Carl Kozlowski • July 31, 2015

We’re turning the corner on August, with only a month left in the year’s most fun movie season. So this week, I’m going to let everyone know about the new “Mission Impossible” movie, while giving a quick recommendation to both “Pixels” and “Ant-Man” as exciting and funny fun for the whole family. They’re rated PG-13, but mostly for the cartoon-style action violence found within.

But let’s dig into the new “Mission”, which is the fifth in the series of movies starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, the lead agent of the USA’s top secret Impossible Mission Force. This edition continues the trend that producer J.J. Abrams wisely established when he took over the series with the third film, by making Cruise truly be part of a team rather than egomaniacally trying to act like he alone can save the world.

This time, a senator played by Alec Baldwin has decided he’s had enough of the IMF team’s mysterious globe-trotting adventures, and winds up disempowering and defunding the team just as Hunt has survived a surprise gas attack, kidnapping and torture at the hands of evil Eastern Europeans. Hunt refuses to submit quietly, determined to find out who the mysterious gunman was who shot a fellow female agent dead before his eyes and unleashed a roomful of poison gas upon him.

The rest of his team – played enjoyably again by Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames – spring into illicit action with him, discovering that the baddies who captured Hunt were part of a secret criminal syndicate that could be the most dangerous the world has ever known. And thus, another globe-trotting adventure begins, with the IMF team leaping from Paris to Havana to Vienna and much more in an effort to prevent the Austrian leader’s assassination and eventually a much more nefarious scheme.

To go into much more detail on a “Mission Impossible” movie’s plot is pointless, both because it’s fun to know as little as possible and then be wowed by the amazing surprises thrown at you throughout the two hour running time, and because the plots are always so convoluted that in the end they barely make sense anyway.

You don’t see these movies for great writing, but rather dashing performances and amazing stunts. We are living in a golden era again in movies, one in which modern technology allows nearly every action series with ambition – particularly the “Fast & Furious,” James Bond and “MI” series – constantly top each other.

This movie features Hunt jumping onto the side of an airplane and hanging on for dear life by his hands as it races into the sky at takeoff – and that’s just in the opening scene! Among the film’s other amazing action centerpieces are a stunning motorcycle chase, a daring heist that requires Hunt to dive fearlessly into a narrow tunnel amid a torrent of water and having to hold his breath for three minutes to stay alive while attempting even more stunts, and in the movie’s best scene, attempting to foil two assassins while suspended above a packed crowd at an opera house.

That opera sequence is a wordless wonder that’s nearly 12 minutes long, with fistfights, kicking and shooting all taking place on a series of rising and falling scaffolds above the stage in an opera house packed with unsuspecting audience members. I don’t use the word Hitchcockian lightly, but the filmmaking team behind this pull off a lengthy sequence that would make even the Master Of Suspense slackjawed with envy.

As always, this “MI” film keeps it clean, with no sex or nudity and little or no profanity. It’s PG13 comes from the wall to wall action, which is always tense and exciting without being bloody or gruesome.

The movie’s only weakness comes in its final 20 minutes or so, when all the doublecrosses wind up confusing more than entertaining the viewer, but a final humorous twist sends audiences home with a big laugh of wonder and appreciation. Amid the dog days of summer, what more can you ask for?

Carl Kozlowski has been a professional film critic and essayist for the past five years at Pasadena Weekly, in addition to the Christian movie site Movieguide.org, the conservative pop culture site Breitbart.coms Big Hollywood, the Christian pop culture magazine Relevant and New City newspaper in Chicago. He also writes in-depth celebrity interviews for Esquire.com and The Progressive. He is owner of the podcasting site radiotitans.com, which was named one of the Frontier Fifty in 2013 as one of the 50 best talk-radio outlets in the nation by talkers.com and will be relaunching it in January 2014 after a five-month sabbatical. He lives in Los Angeles.

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SUNDAY • AUGUST 2, 2015

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Ex 16:2-4, 12-15; NRSVCE)

The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.

“I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.”

Second Reading (Eph 4:17, 20-24; NRSVCE)

Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Gospel Reading (Jn 6:24-35; NRSVCE)

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

MONDAY • AUGUST 3, 2015

Monday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Nm 11:4b-15; NRSVCE)

The Israelites wept again, and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its color was like the color of gum resin. The people went around and gathered it, ground it in mills or beat it in mortars, then boiled it in pots and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. When the dew fell on the camp in the night, the manna would fall with it.

Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, all at the entrances of their tents. Then the Lord became very angry, and Moses was displeased. So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors’? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once — if I have found favor in your sight — and do not let me see my misery.”

Gospel Reading (Mt 14:13-21; NRSVCE)

Now when Jesus heard about the death of John the Baptist, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

TUESDAY • AUGUST 4, 2015

Memorial of Saint John Vianney

First Reading (Nm 12:1-13; NRSVCE)

While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman); and they said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth. Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them came out. Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forward. And he said, “Hear my words:

When there are prophets among you,

I the Lord make myself known to them in visions;

I speak to them in dreams.

Not so with my servant Moses;

he is entrusted with all my house.

With him I speak face to face — clearly, not in riddles;

and he beholds the form of the Lord.

Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed.

When the cloud went away from over the tent, Miriam had become leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned towards Miriam and saw that she was leprous. Then Aaron said to Moses, “Oh, my lord, do not punish us for a sin that we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like one stillborn, whose flesh is half consumed when it comes out of its mother’s womb.” And Moses cried to the Lord, “O God, please heal her.”

Gospel Reading (Mt 14:22-36; NRSVCE)

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side of the sea, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. After the people of that place recognized him, they sent word throughout the region and brought all who were sick to him, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

WEDNESDAY • AUGUST 5, 2015

Wednesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Nm 13:1-2, 25 – 14:1, 26a-29a, 34-35; NRSVCE)

The Lord said to Moses, “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites; from each of their ancestral tribes you shall send a man, every one a leader among them.”

At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea, and along the Jordan.”

But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.” So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night.

And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying: How long shall this wicked congregation complain against me? I have heard the complaints of the Israelites, which they complain against me. Say to them, “As I live,” says the Lord, “I will do to you the very things I heard you say: your dead bodies shall fall in this very wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.” I the Lord have spoken; surely I will do thus to all this wicked congregation gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die.”

Gospel Reading (Mt 15: 21-28; NRSVCE)

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

THURSDAY • AUGUST 6, 2015

Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord

First Reading (Dn 7:9-10, 13-14; NRSVCE)

As I watched,

thrones were set in place,

and an Ancient One took his throne,

his clothing was white as snow,

and the hair of his head like pure wool;

his throne was fiery flames,

and its wheels were burning fire.

A stream of fire issued

and flowed out from his presence.

A thousand thousands served him,

and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.

The court sat in judgment,

and the books were opened.

As I watched in the night visions,

I saw one like a human being

coming with the clouds of heaven.

And he came to the Ancient One

and was presented before him.

To him was given dominion

and glory and kingship,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion

that shall not pass away,

and his kingship is one

that shall never be destroyed.

Second Reading (2 Pt 1:16-19; NRSVCE)

We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Gospel Reading (Mk 9:2-10; NRSVCE)

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

FRIDAY • AUGUST 7, 2015

Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (Dt 4:32-40; NRSVCE)

Moses said to the people, “For ask now about former ages, long before your own, ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of heaven to the other: has anything so great as this ever happened or has its like ever been heard of? Has any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire, as you have heard, and lived? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, while you heard his words coming out of the fire. And because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants after them. He brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, driving out before you nations greater and mightier than yourselves, to bring you in, giving you their land for a possession, as it is still today. So acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. Keep his statutes and his commandments, which I am commanding you today for your own well-being and that of your descendants after you, so that you may long remain in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.”

Gospel Reading (Mt 16:24-28; NRSVCE)

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

SATURDAY • AUGUST 8, 2015

Memorial of Saint Dominic

First Reading (Dt 6:4-13; NRSVCE)

Moses said to the people, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

“When the Lord your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you — a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant — and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.”

Gospel Reading (Mt 17:14-20; NRSVCE)

A man came to Jesus, knelt before him, and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”