#U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Food does not contain aborted fetuses, but the total lack of existence of such a product hasn’t stopped one Texas Republican from trying to regulate it.

Ahead of the opening of the Texas state legislature last week, Republican state Sen. Bob Hall introduced a bill to mandate that food containing “human fetal tissue” be “clearly and conspicuously labeled.” If passed, this bill would also apply to food that is “manufactured using human fetal tissue,” or “derived from research using human fetal tissue.” Medical and cosmetic products that have links to fetal tissue would also be subject to these requirements. 

Fetal tissue, according to the bill, is “tissue, cells, or organs obtained from an aborted unborn child.”

To be clear, food with fetal tissue in it? Not a thing. It doesn’t exist.

“There are no conditions under which the FDA would consider human fetal tissue to be safe or legal for human or animal consumption,” an FDA spokesperson told VICE News in a statement. Eating food with fetal tissue would also likely constitute cannibalism, which is typically frowned upon.

Cannibalism has found its way into the news quite a bit lately. Prominent conspiracy theory movements like QAnon hold (falsely) that elite Democrats are running a cannibalistic, Satan-worshiping, child sex-trafficking ring. QAnon’s beliefs are linked to antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ tropes that hold that Jewish and LGBTQ people are trying to hurt children, and even drink their blood. These conspiracies, which have flourished partly through lockdown isolationism and election denialism, have radicalized a stunning number of Americans and torn families apart.

Although food would not be impacted if Hall’s bill became law, medicine and science could be, since fetal cell lines can be used to develop and test drugs. These lines can be collected from a single miscarriage or abortion, then replicated in labs, over and over again, for decades. (Cell lines derived from aborted fetal tissue can be preferable, both because it’s easier to collect and because fetal tissue derived from a miscarriage may carry whatever genetic or chromosomal problem may have caused the miscarriage in the first place.) Fetal cell lines have led to development of many major vaccines, such as the vaccines against chickenpox and Hepatitis A.

After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, a split erupted in the anti-abortion community over the morality of taking COVID vaccines that may have been developed or tested using fetal cell lines. The Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines do not include any fetal cells, although fetal cell lines were sometimes used in the development stages.

Hall’s office did not immediately return a VICE News list of questions about the bill. However, his office told HuffPost in a statement, “Unfortunately, many Texans are unknowingly consuming products that either contain human fetal parts or were developed using human fetal parts.”

“While some may not be bothered by this, there are many Texans with religious or moral beliefs that would oppose consumption or use of these products,” the statement continued.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has previously said that, although vaccines with links to fetal cell lines can cause “a problem of conscience for some Catholic parents,” they can take them in service of the greater good of public health. In 2020, the conference urged people to get vaccinated against COVID.

“A well-informed consumer can make whatever choice they decide on purchasing a product so long as they have all of the information in hand to make the choice,” Hall told HuffPost.

So far, Hall’s bill has not been assigned to a committee.

[coochiequeens]

An older article but worth sharing in light of an overrated white man who thinks his opinion means something because he's good at sports

By Kate Stringer March 25, 2018

March is National Women’s History Month. In recognition, The 74 is sharing stories of remarkable women who transformed U.S. education.

A self-described young, stuttering child, Joe Biden credits a group of women for building his confidence and giving him 12 years of education that would lead him to become vice president of the United States. “You have no idea of the impact that you have on others,” Biden told a group of Catholic nuns on a social justice tour of the United States in 2014.

Biden is just one of millions of Americans, many of them underprivileged, educated in Catholic schools, a system that would have been impossible if not for the generations of dedicated religious female educators. Working for very low wages, these women changed lives, moving large immigrant communities into the middle class and — though too often given short shrift by the male-dominated Catholic Church — opened doors to higher education for women.

“Teaching is a critical part of the sisters’ mission of education because we believe, in short, that education can save the world,” said Sister Teresa Maya, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. “It empowers people, it broadens horizons, it deepens values, it engages conversation between faith and culture.”

Catholic schooling in the U.S. dates back as far as the early 1600s, as priests and nuns arrived in the colonies and established schools, orphanages, and hospitals. John Carroll — elected the first U.S. bishop in 1789 — pushed for religious schools to educate American Catholic children living in a predominantly Protestant country. As priests and brothers began creating schools for boys, it was left to the nuns to teach girls.

Elizabeth Ann Seton, recognized in the Catholic Church as the first native-born U.S. saint, started the Sisters of Charity, an order that opened separate parochial schools for families of poor and wealthy girls, in the early 1800s. Some consider these the first Catholic parochial schools in the U.S.

By the middle of the century, Catholics from Ireland, Italy, and Poland began immigrating to the United States and swelling the ranks of local churches, and in the early 1900s, bishops called for every parish to educate its children — a response to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment, a need to help Americanize the new arrivals, and a desire for an alternative to public schools where children prayed the Protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer and read the King James version of the Bible.

Most of this work was carried out by the nuns, who took vows of poverty and could teach children for very low wages.

“Without the nuns, you could not have had the parochial school system that this country has had,” said Maggie McGuinness, professor of religion at La Salle University.

Catholic schools were also invaluable in alleviating overcrowded public schools as populations surged in major cities, and giving immigrants a boost up the economic ladder, said Ann Marie Ryan, associate professor of education at Loyola University Chicago.

“(The nuns) moved entire groups of people into the middle class, which is a substantial feat in and of itself,” she said.

Still, anti-Catholic sentiment proved pervasive. As Catholic groups tried to obtain public funding for their schools in the late 1800s, states began passing Blaine amendments, which restricted state legislatures from using funds for religious schools. Today, 37 states have these laws.

Oregon even instituted a law, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, that prohibited students from attending Catholic school. The U.S. Supreme Court struck this down in Pierce vs. The Society of Sisters in 1925.

As the sisters fought for their students’ rights to be educated in Catholic schools, they also found themselves fighting against the church patriarchy for their own pursuit of higher education. As Ryan wrote, “The Catholic Church’s hierarchy in the USA was worried about the movement toward increased independence for women in this era.” To fill a need for higher education among Catholic-educated girls, more nuns began seeking Ph.D.s so they could lead Catholic colleges for women. But this pursuit of independence didn’t sit well with their governing bishops, and they pushed back.

For example, in the 1930s and ’40s, the archdiocesan board of Chicago mandated that nuns could not travel outside a convent or school without being accompanied by another woman, and even went so far as to tell the president of a neighboring college that nuns should not show up to their classes without a female companion. They were also not to go outside after sunset.

Mission statements of all-girls Catholic schools reflected the sisters’ challenge of balancing what the church considered the natural role of women with many young women’s desires for independence, Ryan wrote. When the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary established Mundelein College in 1930 in Chicago, they crafted goals that showed these dual perspectives: “(Mundelein education is) practical, preparing the student for successful achievement in the economic world,” but also “conservative, holding fast to the time-honored traditions that go to the fashioning of charming and gracious womanhood.”

“(The nuns) highlighted and equally lauded their graduates’ choices to marry, seek employment, enter a religious community, or attend college,” Ryan wrote.

In her research, Ryan found Catholic high school yearbooks that revealed what this opportunity meant to young women. At Chicago’s Catholic Mercy High School in 1927, the students published quotes from Tennyson’s poem The Princess: “Here might we learn whatever men are taught…knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed.” Sixty percent of Mercy’s graduates around this time attended college (nationally, female enrollment in higher education was 44 percent).

At a time when women were barred from many universities, nuns became their advocates. Catholic sisters established 150 religious colleges for women in the United States, starting in the late 1800s. Before coeducation of men and women became the norm, more women were earning degrees from Catholic colleges than those run by other religious groups, according to The Boston Globe. And the nuns’ own pursuit of higher education broke glass ceilings: The first woman to obtain a Ph.D. in computer science was a nun: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, in 1965.

“They were role models,” McGuinness said. “If you went to Trinity University in D.C. in 1897 and had teachers who had doctorates, maybe you think, ‘I could do that, too.’”

Maya certainly experienced that when an older nun, Sister Rosa Maria Icaza, told her what she had to go through to earn her doctorate from Catholic University. Because enrollment was limited to men, the nun had to sit outside the classroom, near the door, rather than inside with her male classmates. “I thought, ‘Thanks to a woman like this, I could get a Ph.D.,’” Maya said.

Today, however, the number of religious leaders in the Catholic Church is declining, including nuns. From 1965 to 2017, the number of sisters decreased from 179,000 to 45,000, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. And even in the face of this decline, the women who join the religious life are still finding themselves under fire from within their own church. As recently as 2012, American nuns were accused by the Vatican for being radical feminists.

The loss of nuns as a teaching force is one reason running Catholic schools is more financially challenging than ever before, Maya said. Catholic school enrollment peaked in the 1960s and has dropped significantly since then. In 1965, about 5 million children attended Catholic elementary and secondary schools. In 2017, enrollment was just under 2 million. The number of Catholic schools was cut in half, from 11,000 to 6,000, during that same time period.

Catholic schools today have been experimenting with different business models to survive, from the Cristo Rey schools that utilize student work study to help pay for tuition to Philadelphia Catholic schools that have been using tax-credit scholarships and voucher programs to pay tuition for poor families.

And their students no longer come primarily from their local church — many see Catholic schools as a better alternative to poor-performing urban schools. “In many major cities, Catholic schools are a parent’s best hope for both Catholic and non-Catholic kids,” McGuinness said.

Maya said she is proud of the work Catholic schools are continuing to do to reach the children who need it most.

“The sisters were always teaching the populations in the margins,” Maya said. Without these women, “I don’t think the U.S. Catholic education system would exist the way we know it.”

[brown-little-robin]

hey I saw your post involving refugee resettlement orgs, would you mind sending me a list? I’m a Catholic law student hoping to work in immigration law next summer

Oh, awesome! Here you go!

Here's an overview of resettlement partners from UNHCR (The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), the single most important force for refugee resettlement in the world: https://www.unhcr.org/us/us-resettlement-partners

And here's an overview from the USA Office of Refugee Resettlement: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/grant-funding/resettlement-agencies

I advise looking for resettlement agencies in the area you want to work in, if you have a specific location you want to be in, since the agencies don't all cover the entire United States.

Resettlement Agencies in the US

Bethany Christian Services (BCS) (Christian)

Church World Service (CWS) (Christian)

Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (Christian)

Ethiopian Community Development Council (non-religious)

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (Jewish)

Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service (LIRS) (Christian)

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (Christian)

World Relief (WR) (Christian)

International Rescue Committee (IRC) (non-religious)

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (non-religious)

So, I may have had a wrong fact in my last post. There's ten agencies here, and six of them are Christian. I haven't looked into this, but I think either the IRC (International Rescue Committee) or the USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) are not technically US resettlement agencies. I got the "6 out of 9" fact from a seminar on refugee resettlement that I took three months ago, so there you have it. Anyway, hope this is helpful!

[mariacallous]

Spread of Catholic hospitals limits reproductive care across the U.S.

Religious doctrine restricts access to abortion and birth control and limits treatment options for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies

The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion is revealing the growing influence of Catholic health systems and their restrictions on reproductive services including birth control and abortion— even in the diminishing number of states where the procedure remains legal.

Catholic systems now control about 1 in 7 U.S. hospital beds, requiring religious doctrine to guide treatment, often to the surprise of patients. Their ascendancy has broad implications for the evolving national battle over reproductive rights beyond abortion, as bans against it take hold in more than a dozen Republican-led states.

The Catholic health-care facilities follow directives from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that prohibit treatment it deems “immoral”: sterilization including vasectomies, postpartum tubal ligations and contraception,as well as abortion. Those policies can limit treatment options for obstetric care during miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, particularly in the presence of a fetal heartbeat.

“The directives are not just a collection of dos and don’ts,” said John F. Brehany, executive vice president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center and a longtime consultant to the conference of bishops. “They are a distillation of the moral teachings of the Catholic church as they apply to modern health care.” As such, he said, any facility that identifies as Catholic must abide by them.

The role of Catholic doctrine in U.S. health care has expanded during a years-long push to acquire smaller institutions — a reflection of consolidation in the hospital industry, as financially challenged community hospitals and independent physicians join bigger systems to gain access to electronic health records and other economies of scale. Acquisition by a Catholic health system has, at times, kept a town’s only hospital from closing.

Four of the nation’s 10 largest health systems are now Catholic, according to a 2020 report by the liberal health advocacy organization Community Catalyst. The 10 largest Catholic health systems control 394 short-term, acute-care hospitals, a 50 percent increase over the past two decades. In Alaska, Iowa, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin, 40 percent or more of hospital beds are in Catholic facilities.

“It’s all about market share,” said Lois Uttley, a senior adviser to the hospital equity and accountability project at Community Catalyst. Uttley, who has been tracking hospital mergers and acquisitions since the 1990s, said that with fewer choices, patients today face more difficulty obtaining reproductive services.

In Schenectady, N.Y., Ellis Medicine is in talks with the multistate Catholic giant Trinity Health. Last month, in Quad Cities, Iowa, Genesis Health System signed a letter of intent to enter a partnership with MercyOne, also part of Trinity Health. And this semester, Oberlin College had to find a new provider to prescribe contraceptives after outsourcing student health services to a Catholic system that would not provide them.

In rural northeast Connecticut, residents are protesting the prospect of their 128-year-old hospital becoming part of a Catholic system and thepotential impact on reproductive services.

“It would be very troubling to see cutbacks in a state like Connecticut,” said Ian McDonald, a stonemason who opposes the proposed deal between Day Kimball Healthcare in Putnam and Massachusetts-based Covenant Health.

Kyle Kramer, chief executive of Day Kimball Healthcare, said the proposed affiliation with Covenant Health wouldrescue the financially challenged 104-bed hospital.

“Obviously it has connotations,” Kramer said of the proposed move to faith-based ownership. The Catholic directives would “provide guidance,” he said in an interview, while insisting that “theservices that we have provided in the past are the same services that we will continue to provide in the future.”

Kramer did not answer questions in a follow-up email about how contraception and elective sterilizations could continue to be provided under Catholic doctrine if their primary purpose is for birth control. Nor did he specify how emergency obstetric care that could result in terminating a pregnancy might be affected.

Covenant Health spokeswoman Karen Sullivan said in an email that as part of the regulatory process, the Catholic health system is drafting a public response to questions by the state’s Oct. 23 deadline. The system, she said, is committed to “ensuring that the Ethical and Religious Directives are applied thoughtfully and with empathy, compassion and respect for every person we serve.”

Catholic hospitals and providers are accredited and held to the same standards as their secular equivalents, according to the Catholic Health Association of the United States, which lobbies on behalf of Catholic hospitals.

But reproductive rights advocates say there has been a steady erosion of services in both Republican- and Democratic-led states because of the growing dominance of Catholic hospitals.

Many patients are unaware of the restrictions because hospital administrators typically don’toutline the services they do not offer, saidSister Simone Campbell, a lawyer who until recently led the liberal-leaning NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.

“Many hospitals have dealt with this by being pretty quiet. Dobbs has made it more of a question,” Campbell said, referring to the case that led to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Catholic facilities may not “promote or condone” contraception, according to the directives — a stance that is not widely shared by the public. Just 4 percent of U.S. adults think contraception is immoral, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll. Among Catholics who attend weekly Mass, only 13 percent say contraception is morally wrong, and 45 percent find it acceptable.

The directives,developed in the late 1940s by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, were updated in 2018, largely to ensure that Catholic doctrine prevails after mergers and acquisitions, according to Amy Chen, a lawyer with the National Health Law Program. They limit options for referring patients to secular facilities, saying employees must not “manage, carry out, assist in carrying out, make its facilities available for, make referrals for, or benefit from the revenue generated by immoral procedures.”

Interpretation of the directives varies among hospital ethics committees. But decisions ultimately rest with the local bishop, who is to be kept informed, the directives say, if “a Catholic health care institution might be wrongly cooperating with immoral procedures.”

“Bishops have a great deal of authority in their dioceses,” Brehany said. “A bishop should ensure that a Catholic organization is abiding by the directives.”

A 2018 survey published in the journal Contraception found that more than one-third of women who go to Catholic hospitals for reproductive care are not aware of the facilities’ religious affiliation. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California at San Francisco, called for increased transparency among hospitals to raise awareness that patients’ options may be limited at institutions with religious ties.

“Even people who had a very wanted pregnancy are at the mercy of policies not driven by their personal values or by the best interests of their health,” said Debra Stulberg, the chair of family medicine at the University of Chicago and one of the researchers in the 2018 survey.

April King, 40, said she wanted to have her tubes tied immediately after giving birth to her second child in December 2020. The Los Angeles talent agent had suffered three miscarriages and knew her family was complete.

Then she learned she could not get a tubal ligationat Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, where she planned to deliver.

“I was just surprised that [the hospital] could decide that for us,” said King, who ultimately elected to go ahead with her delivery at Providence Saint John’s because of the care she had received there in the past.

Doctors,too, face surprises — and can even be reported to hospital ethics committees for following standards of care.

In Washington state, where 41 percent of beds are Catholic-run, legislators passed a law last year to prevent hospitals from interfering with a doctor’s ability to provide medically necessary care to a pregnant patient whose health or life is at risk.

Annie Iriye, a retired OB/GYN who used to work for a Catholic hospital in Olympia, Wash., testified in support of the bill. In a recent interview, Iriye described wanting to administer medication to hasten a woman’s delivery to stave off infection after her water broke at 18 weeks, before fetal viability. Even though the woman was in active labor, Iriye said other staffers refused to follow her direction as the attending physician because a heartbeat had been detected.

By the time the woman delivered, she had a fever and needed antibiotics. Staffers reported Iriye to the hospital ethics committee.

“I was flabbergasted,” Iriye said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, come on guys. Can’t we just practice medicine and give good care?’ ”

Patients say there appears to be little consistency in how hospital staffers interpret religious directives, with doctors sometimes having to make decisions on the fly.

Whitney Marshall, 29, learned only after waking up from exploratory surgery for endometriosis in 2019 at Ascension Crittenton in Rochester Hills, Mich., that her IUD had not been replaced. Marshall, who uses the device to reduce the pain associated with the condition, had to undergo a second procedure in her gynecologist’s office to have the IUD reinserted.The spokesman for Ascension Crittenton did not respond to requests for comment about the case.

“Some women cannot afford surgeries” to treat endometriosis, Marshall said. “So their only form of recourse is to try to regulate their hormones by using contraceptives.”

Catholic hospitals’ tradition of serving women and children in the neediest neighborhoods is “rooted in our reverence for life,” said Brian Reardon, spokesman for the Catholic Health Association. But the lack of choice has been felt keenly in rural and low-income communities where patients cannot easily transfer to secular institutions, reproductive rights advocates say.

Hospitals operating under Catholic restrictions are “the sole community providers of short-term acute hospital care” in more than 52 communities across the country — up from 30 in 2013,according to Community Catalyst.

In Putnam, Connecticut, residents have relied on Day Kimball Healthcare, the town’s only hospital, for more than a century.

Kramer, the chief executive, said the hospital has been exploring partnerships with larger systems over the past decade to ensure its long-term survival.

The proposed arrangement with Covenant Health requires the approval of Connecticut’s Office of Health Strategy, which has been examining how services might be affected.

The need to preserve access to reproductive health services can bring an end to negotiations. In 2012, the investor in a proposed joint venture with two hospitals in Waterbury, Conn., one of which was Catholic, pulled out after reproductive health advocates and the local archbishop raised opposing concerns about creating a “hospital within a hospital” to provide reproductive services — a workaround that had been successful elsewhere.

Access to reproductive services has shrunk recently around Day Kimball after the 2020 closure of Planned Parenthood in nearby Danielson.

Like many hospitals, Day Kimball does not provide elective abortions, according to documents filed with the state. But it has provided other care prohibited by Catholic directives, including elective sterilizations.

Those services are key to preventing unwanted pregnancies, said Lee Wesler, an internist who has been affiliated with Day Kimball for a decade.

“Any unwanted pregnancy is a potential abortion,” Weslersaid.

Members of the group Save Day Kimball Healthcare said that in conversations, Kramer and other representatives of the hospital have sought to be reassuring. “They say, ‘Everything will be fine,’ ” said Margaret Martin, a retired social worker and member of the group.

Kramer, who said he intends to stay on if the Covenant deal goes through, repeated those assurances to The Washington Post. “What we have been we will still be,” he said, while declining to describe how contraceptives could be offered for the sole purpose ofbirth control.

In a Q&A posted in September on the Day Kimball website, Kramer suggeststhat other justifications could be found for using “tools” suchas oral contraceptives, including “to maintain health and wellness, to address a medical condition, prevent disease, and mitigate cancer risk.”

Bruce Shay, a member of the Save Day Kimball Healthcare steering committee, says he worries doctors may leave if they have to abide by the directives — or might evade them by making “a sketchy diagnosis.”

Nandini Seshadri has seen that happen.

The 40-year-old Latham, N.Y. resident received a copper IUD after delivering her first child at a secular hospital that Trinity is in the process of acquiring. She was denied the device after giving birth to her second child at a Catholic hospital now affiliated with Trinity.

“I remember laughing and saying, ‘What? Seriously?’ ” Seshadri recalled. “I didn’t know that Catholic hospitals still did that.”

She was even more surprised when her nurse-midwife offered her a hormonal IUD instead, on the grounds that she needed it to stabilize her menstrual cycle.

“I didn’t have that problem,” Seshadri said. To give her the contraception, she said, the nurse “was essentially falsifying my medical record.”

[odinsblog]

JOE BIDEN WORKED TO UNDERMINE THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’S COVERAGE OF CONTRACEPTION

In ’94 Biden boasted to have voted against federal funding for abortion “on no fewer than 50 occasions;” among those was a vote in 1977 against allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions for victims of rape and incest. When that bill succeeded anyway, Biden voted to remove the exceptions again in a separate bill, passed in 1981, that NBC calls “the most far-reaching ban on federal funds ever enacted by Congress.” That same year, Biden supported the constitutional amendment empowering states to overturn Roe. Two years later, in 1983, Biden opposed allowing insurers to cover all abortions for federal employees, except if the mother’s life was at-risk.

For decades, Mr. Biden supported the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion under programs like Medicaid. As recently as June 5th 2019, he said he still did.

As vice president, Joe Biden repeatedly sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, working in alliance with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to push for a broad exemption that would have left millions of women without coverage.

With an anti-abortion president, Ronald Reagan, in power and Republicans controlling the Senate for the first time in decades, social conservatives pushed for a constitutional amendment to allow individual states to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that had made abortion legal nationwide several years earlier.

The amendment — which the National Abortion Rights Action League called “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights” — cleared a key hurdle in the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 1982. Support came not only from Republicans but from a 39-year-old, second-term Democrat: Joseph R. Biden Jr.

— Joe Biden argued that mandating contraception coverage through Obamacare would alienate swing-state Catholic male voters

[spiritualdirections]

The USCCB is working on a document about youth and young adult ministry. The Pillar interviewed one of the committee staff members who was involved in drafting this "pastoral framework", which will be voted on by the Bishops' Conference next month. I have been working in young adult ministry for most of my priesthood, and even before that. I've been a college chaplain and a college professor. I was recognized by my diocese for my work with young adults. And yet, I'd never heard of anything from the USCCB on this topic. So I was interested to read about this document.

The theme of the document will be "listen, teach, send". The reporter notes that this sounds very much like the FOCUS model of "win, build, send". Well, sniffs the staff member, "the threefold FOCUS perspective did come up, but that did not inspire [the document's] paradigm."

I have worked closely with FOCUS (the Felllowship of Catholic University Students) for years. It is one of the largest Catholic apostolates in the country, and it specializes in young people--people coming into colleges, people in college, people recently out of college. They have been thinking about and studying this demographic for years. They try lots of things, they learn what works, and they change what doesn't. They have 25 years of practical experience in working with young people, and they are very effective.

And so I ask, Why wouldn't the bishops conference want to start from what FOCUS has learned? Why would anyone think that the committee staff members have a better idea of how to do youth ministry than this gigantic and effective youth ministry organization?

[There's actually an answer to this question! The committee members can be found here: https://www.usccb.org/topics/youth-and-young-adult-ministries/bishops-working-group-youth-and-young-adults. Scrolling to the bottom, one finds a list of the consultants and staff members. The staff member who is in charge of Youth and Young Adult Ministries last worked directly with young adults in 2006, before the first smartphone. (Things have changed with America's youth since then!) The consultants include two people who work for the National Institute on Ministry with Young Adults and the USCCB National Advisory Team on Young Adult Ministry. These seem to be the same thing. The second organization does not have a functioning website, but simply redirects to the first organization's website, which seems barely to have been updated since 2021. (Young people use the web!) The other consultants seem to be specialists in outreach to minority communities. Objective conclusion: Nobody on the team has anything like the practical experience with young adults that FOCUS has.]

But that sort of argument is ad hominem--it might not matter who a person is if his ideas are great. My goal is not to disparage administrators and bureaucrats--Administration is one of the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit! Everyone's life is better when the bureaucrats are good at their job! But when we turn to the ideas... they do not seem so great.

The USCCB Committee seems commited to the idea of "accompanying the youth,"--one of its consultants wrote an article on "accompaniment" for Accompany Magazine-- which I think helps explain why they thought that the first step in dealing with young adults is to "listen" to them. I'm not opposed to listening to young people, but I prefer FOCUS' idea that the first step is to win them. If I ask an indifferent and poorly formed freshman in college what he wants out of the Church, I'm not sure he'll tell me anything worthwhile. That's because he hasn't thought about the Church. He's never wondered, "What is it about the Church that is keeping me from being a holy person with a deep interior life?" So, listening to him will not help me figure out that answer. The difference between "listening" and "winning" is that you can only listen to someone's needs if he or she can articulate them. Many young people don't know what they want from the Church. They need to be shown the Church in all its richness, so that they can respond to it. That's what FOCUS' idea of winning does.

The USCCB draft document proposes that the Church meet the young people "where they're at". The problem with this is that the Church is bigger than young people understand; basing our apostolic approach upon what they understand about the Church is to falsify the Church. The better move is not to shrink the Church to fit in the confines of a teenage intellect, but to make the teenager want to learn more about this cool and ancient Church. Impress them, don't coddle them.

Another difference between the "listen, teach, send" model and the "win, build, send" model of FOCUS: Listening and teaching are at the level of the intellect. But for many young adults, it's their wills that need to change before they are open to learning. I'm a professor, and I'm a big believer in teaching. But it's basically pointless to try to engage an unwilling student. FOCUS trains their missionaries in how to win young people over in a variety of ways, and they apply their intelligence to find new ways to reach the each generation of students. Once they've become engaged, that's when they start to thirst for the kind of teaching I'm more than happy to give.

Finally, it looks like the USCCB document will be focused on parishes as the locus of youth and young adult ministry.* FOCUS makes the small group the place where young people are principally formed. That is clearly the superior model, both for winning people and for building them up intellectually and humanly to be able to go out and spread the Gospel themselves. Sunday Mass is essential to the spiritual life, but it is not optimized for formation.

If the USCCB wants to listen to young people, I'd recommend that it listen to the young people in FOCUS. And in St. Paul's Outreach, in the World Youth Alliance, NET ministries, and other extremely effective apostolates working with young adults.

* The USCCB committee has as a major initiative to get young people to "actively participate" in the Mass on the Feast of Christ the King each year--see the 13:30 mark of this video. This is a meh idea, one that starts with a theological mistake: Active participation in the liturgy is a term used by Sacrosanctum Concilium #14, which means to be spiritually active--to pay attention at Mass and to pray along with the liturgy, rather than zoning out or praying the rosary while the priest prays the Mass. Active participation does not mean to participate as an usher or a lector or a greeter or some other physically active role. Obviously, youth and young adults are not engaged in the Mass unless they are spiritually engaged. Sometimes, those who are spiritually engaged also volunteer to be lectors. The Committee puts the cart before the horse.

[hummussexual]

Published 2023/04/01 18:05 (EDT)

A large coalition of Catholic nuns has issued a public letter supporting transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive individuals – and “implicitly rebuking recent statements from the U.S. Catholic hierarchy,” the Religious News Service reported Saturday.

The letter was issued by a wide range of Catholic communities representing more than 6,000 religious orders across 18 states, RNS reported.

As members of the body of Christ, we cannot be whole without the full inclusion of transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive individuals,” the letter reads.

It goes on to argue that “we will remain oppressors until we — as vowed Catholic religious — acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people in our own congregations. We seek to cultivate a faith community where all, especially our transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive siblings, experience a deep belonging.”

The letter had been in the works since a wave of bills targeting trans people swept across state legislatures, one of its authors –Sister Barbara Battista, congregation justice promoter for the Sisters of Providence, St. Mary-of-the-Woods – told RNS.

But she added that release of the letter was “jump-started” by an anti-trans statement by Catholic Church leaders.

“The nuns’ effort comes in the wake of a doctrinal statement published earlier this month by a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which discouraged Catholic health care groups from performing various gender-affirming medical procedures, arguing doing so does not respect the “intrinsic unity of body and soul,” RNS reported.

The nuns were explicit about their disagreement with legislators and church leadership.“Battista noted that many of the bills working their way through state legislatures revolve around the health care needs of trans people, an issue that hits home for her as a licensed physician’s assistant in Indiana.

"She described her work as “participating in the healing ministry of Jesus,” rooted, she said, in a “sacred trust” between patients and providers.“ But Catholic leaders and government officials, she argued, have tried to “insert themselves into the private, very personal and intimate conversations and decisions made between the health care provider

[muddypolitics]

(via Sue's News: A Round-Up of Screw Yous)

Fuck you to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for calling on the rest of the field to commit to pardoning Trump if he’s convicted of stealing classified documents.

Fuck you to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for voting to start the process of revising their religious directives for Catholic hospitals in order to ban gender-affirming care.

Fuck you to Wisconsin Republicans for voting at 2:30 am to end childcare subsidies. Very cool.

Fuck you to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for saying that the Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett aren’t conservative enough for him and that, if elected, he’d want to nominate more people like the disgusting brothers, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Fuck you to two Alabama Republican lawmakers for claiming that the Alabama Department of Archives and History is promoting a “liberal political LGBTQ agenda.”

Fuck you to House Republicans for trying to sneak a ban on telemedicine abortion into an FDA funding bill.

Fuck you to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for expanding a ban on transgender athletes playing sports in high school to now include public colleges and universities.

Fuck you for the billionth time to North Carolina Rep. Tricia Cotham (R) for saying that she never had an abortion, despite making a big speech about it, and claiming it was a regular miscarriage.

Fuck you to the Florida Department of Education for trying to bully the College Board into removing discussions of “gender and sexual orientation” from its Advanced Placement (AP) psychology course. The College Board said it won’t change any courses but doesn’t know if the state will ban them in retaliation.

Fuck you to former New York City mayor and 2020 presidential candidate (lol) Bill DeBlasio for appearing to blame his notorious dropping of a groundhog that later died on his advance team.

Fuck you to actress Cheryl Hines for enabling her anti-vaxxer husband and Democractic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by spouting off some vaccine-skeptic nonsense in a new profile.

And, finally, fuck you to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for voting not to confirm ACLU voting rights lawyer Dale Ho as a federal judge, saying he’s “extreme left.” The Senate confirmed Ho anyway, but what the hell, man?

[beardedmrbean]

The priest paused after finishing a prayer, looked at someone off to his side and scratched his forehead.

“We had something happen,” he told the congregation.

The Rev. Joseph Crowley paused again, video shows.

“It’s hard to say, actually,” he added.

What happened, some at the Connecticut parish now say, was a miracle: During Communion, a bowl holding the hosts — the wafers that Catholicism teaches are transformed into Jesus Christ’s body during the Mass — began to run out. And yet, Crowley said, the bowl never emptied.

The possibility that the receptacle may have refilled itself during a March 5 service has kindled fascination among the faithful. It has also inspired the Archdiocese of Hartford to launch an investigation, which has since been sent to the highest echelons of the church hierarchy for review. If the Vatican finds that the reported increase in Communion hosts defies rational or scientific explanation, the conclusion could bolster Catholics’ belief in the teaching that the sacramental wafers literally become Jesus.

The probe could take months or years, so the parishioners of St. Thomas Church are relying for now on the proclamation of their pastor. Standing before his congregation in the 7,400-person town of Thomaston, Conn., Crowley said the reported miracle was evidence that God provides.

“Very powerful, very awesome, very real, very shocking — but also, it happens. It happens,” he said moments after the incident. “And today, it happened.”

The multiplication of hosts, if verified, would bolster efforts by the U.S. bishops to renew Catholics’ belief in the “daily miracle” of the wafers becoming Jesus’s body during the Mass, the archdiocese said.

“Through the centuries this daily miracle has sometimes been confirmed by extraordinary signs from Heaven, but the Church is always careful to investigate reports of such signs with caution, lest credence is given to something that proves to be unfounded,” the archdiocese said in a statement.

Ken Santopietro, a religious education teacher at St. Thomas, attended the Mass where the potential miracle occurred and was interviewed by representatives of the archdiocese. He recalled telling them that the people distributing Communion huddled with the priest afterward as if something unusual were happening.

Moments later, Crowley announced that the hosts had multiplied.

“I immediately believed in what he said he saw because of the reaction of not only him, but because of the group of people who were there — his ministers,” said Santopietro, who directs the Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference. “I immediately believed in what he said he saw because of the reaction of not only him, but because of the group of people who were there — his ministers.” Ken Santopietro, worshiper

Miracles are foundational to Catholicism, which teaches that Jesus was God in human form, worked miracles during his life and then died for humanity’s sins before rising from the dead. As the church defines it, a miracle is a sign or wonder that can only be attributed to God — “a glimpse into heaven,” said the Rev. Dorian Llywelyn, incoming director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Loyola Marymount University.

When the church acknowledges a miracle, believers flock to the site to see evidence and reinvigorate their faith. Millions of Catholics each year travel to Fátima, Portugal, and Lourdes, France — both places where the Virgin Mary has reportedly appeared to people — among other locations.

St. Thomas would probably also attract visitors if it were declared the site of a miracle, said Michael O’Neill, author of “Science and the Miraculous: How the Church Investigates the Supernatural.” If the Vatican finds the multiplication claim to be credible, he said, they would encourage the church to display the leftover hosts in a small shrine.

The parish distributed some of the remaining wafers after the occurrence but saved others, Crowley told his congregation. He did not respond to an interview request from The Washington Post.

For the Catholic Church, investigating a supposed miracle is a rigorous process that often solicits input from scientists, doctors and other experts in their fields. The church relies on the technology available at the time, and experts said some occurrences deemed miracles years ago might not be understood that way if they were investigated today.

In Connecticut, the case of the multiplying hosts has parallels to the biblical story of loaves and fishes, in which Jesus is said to have used five loaves of bread and two fish to feed 5,000 men. The probe probably centers on the testimony and credibility of witnesses — the person distributing Communion from that bowl and anyone else who may have seen what happened.

Church officials will be interested in whether some could have refilled the receptacle without the distributor noticing or whether that person may have not seen how many hosts were there in the first place, Llywelyn said. They will try to ensure that any witnesses are of sound mind and not seeking publicity.

Church officials may also review any available video and test the remaining wafers for differences in composition between them and other Communion hosts, O’Neill said.

The Archdiocese of Hartford was the first to investigate the potential miracle; whether it drew a conclusion is unclear. Elliott told the Catholic publication OSV News that the probe was led by the archdiocesan judicial vicar, who is tasked with judging spiritual matters. Dioceses will draw from their communities if they need people with specific expertise to help with an investigation, O’Neill said.

The Vatican’s department for doctrine and matters of belief, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is reviewing the Hartford archdiocese’s investigation. They will involve theologians and canon lawyers — people with expertise in internal church law — in discussing the archdiocese’s reports and mulling whether rational explanations have been thoroughly considered, Llywelyn said.

Experts who testify about possible miracles before the Vatican are paid for their time, said hematologist and historian Jacalyn Duffin, who was questioned by church representatives about a potential miracle in the 1980s. Additional scholars are also brought in to offer feedback on experts’ testimony. Firsthand witnesses are not paid, since money could bias their testimony.

“At one level, there’s a hope that this will be an attested miracle, so there’s a degree of emotional involvement in that,” Llywelyn said. “The canonical process wants to take a step back from that fervor and not to get swayed by emotion, even good emotion.” “At one level, there’s a hope that this will be an attested miracle. … The canonical process wants to take a step back from that fervor and not to get swayed by emotion, even good emotion.” The Rev. Dorian Llywelyn, incoming director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Loyola Marymount University.

The Vatican ultimately will advise the Archdiocese of Hartford about whether it considers the possible multiplication of hosts definitely, maybe or absolutely not a miracle. The local bishop will then make and announce a final decision.

Even if the church decides that the event has a rational explanation, Catholics are free to believe personally that it was a miracle. Conversely, Catholics are not obligated to believe it was a miracle if the bishop declares it.

“Even in the most famous cases of modern miracles, you can walk away and ignore them if you find them annoying or distracting,” O’Neill said. These Black and White churches began worshiping together during the pandemic and haven’t stopped

The Vatican questioned Duffin, the hematologist, about a potential miracle when the church was considering canonizing Marguerite d’Youville, who later became the first Canadian-born saint. Duffin recalled church officials asking her how a patient with aggressive acute leukemia had gone into remission after relapsing — then a virtually unheard of outcome.

The church representatives seemed wary of seeing a miracle where one might not exist, Duffin said. Still, she told them she could not think of a scientific reason for the patient’s survival.

“They wanted me to explain it,” said Duffin, author of “Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints and Healing in the Modern World.” “And that really impressed me because I was naive about what the church did when it looks at these kinds of things. They are quite open to scientific explanation.”

Other types of miracles involve apparitions, stigmata — wounds that appear on parts of the body corresponding with the crucifixion of Jesus — and corpses that are said to be incorruptible, meaning they don’t decay as expected. In Missouri, pilgrims are converging on a monastery for religious sisters as word has spread that the exhumed remains of the order’s founder appear to have been miraculously preserved.

The church has recognized roughly 100 miracles involving Communion throughout its history, said O’Neill, who maintains a database of miracles acknowledged by the church. None have involved multiplying hosts, nor have any happened in the United States.

In some instances that the church has found credible, Communion hosts appear to bleed or develop an image resembling Jesus crowned with thorns. The church has deemed miracle claims unfounded in other cases, including when a red substance that appeared on a host in Utah was determined to be mold.

Some have speculated that the potential miracle in Connecticut could bolster the sainthood cause of Michael McGivney, a 19th-century pastor at St. Thomas and founder of the Catholic fraternal service organization Knights of Columbus. Another miracle attributed to him would precipitate his canonization.

Communion miracles, however, are infrequently relied upon in canonization efforts because the ease of comparing medical records from before and after makes healing miracles simpler to investigate. Attributing the possible Connecticut miracle to McGivney also would require someone to have prayed to him for something of its kind to happen.

Crowley told his congregation that neither he nor the person who distributed Communion had been praying for a multiplication of hosts. He asked his parishioners to tell him if they had been asking McGivney for help.

“Maybe Blessed McGivney interceded for us and God allowed this big thing to take place and to be made visible, to be made known,” Crowley said.

The Knights of Columbus, which pushes for sainthood for McGivney, did not respond to requests for comment on whether they might cite the occurrence at St. Thomas in their advocacy.

To some, whether the alleged multiplication is deemed a miracle is only important insofar as it strengthens people’s faith. Llywelyn said whether there’s a rational explanation for the apparent increase in Communion hosts is less important to him than whether people are more loving, tolerant and interested in justice because they believe the occurrence was a miracle.

“I’m not dissing the materiality, because the increase in faith has to be based in something,” Llywelyn said. “But I’m as interested, if not more interested, in the aftereffects.”

[apesoformythoughts]

“‘Researchers have identified a pattern in the molestation crisis afflicting the Roman Catholic Church: most of the victims are older boys.’

So begins an article by Rachel Zoll from March of last year. Hardly a surprising finding, you might think, but that’s because you’re not in the sex-abuse industry. The Vatican’s recent symposium on child abuse delivered the ‘state of the art information’ that—wait for it—‘the majority of cases in the American crisis involve adolescent males victimized by adult gay priests.’ And the concern we should have as a consequence of these discoveries is increased protection for vulnerable boys, right? Wrong again. ‘“What I’m afraid of is we’re going into this witch hunt for gays,” said the Rev. Stephen Rossetti, psychologist and sex abuse consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.’

Rossetti, the former CEO of the St. Luke Institute, is the author of the article mentioned below in support of ‘reintegrating pedophiles.’ He was invited to address the bishops in Dallas this year, and had a ringside seat at the Vatican symposium in question. Surprised? Neither am I.” [4/7/03]

“Perhaps [child molesters’] presence in society can ultimately be healing for us. They challenge us to face an unconscious and primal darkness within humankind. Our inability to face this darkness causes us to stereotype and banish all who embody our estranged dis-passions. In the past, this process spawned Molokai and a host of other human prisons. Today, we are banishing the child molester.

From ‘The Mark of Cain: Reintegrating Pedophiles’, America, September 9, 1995. The Rev. Stephen Rossetti of the St. Luke Institute is one of the three or four experts who have taught the U.S. bishops most about child abuse.” [4/11/03]

— Paul Mankowski, SJ, in Diogenes Unveiled

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Christians condemn insurrectionists in the US and Brazil – call for participants and organizers to be held accountable.

Excerpt from the pastors at the Word and the Way...

https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/christian-nationalism-invades-brazil

[...] Much like Trump and Bolsonaro received advice from shared political figures (like Steve Bannon), they’ve also been helped by their shared religious supporters. Like Lou Engle. The Pentecostal preacher peddled claims of “voter fraud” after the 2020 presidential election, casting the results showing Trump lost as proof of demonic forces at work. But Engle doesn’t just evangelize in the United States. He’s held large “The Send” prayer rallies across the country, but also in Brazil.

With more than 140,000 people attending the 12-hour “The Send” event in Brazil in 2020, then-President Bolsonaro came on stage to talk about his faith in Jesus. That led journalist Jon Ward to wonder about the impact of such religious movements on this week’s political scene in Brazil.

“Is there any self-reflection going on among Christian leaders who have supported Trump and Bolsonaro?” Ward wrote in his Substack newsletter Border-Stalkers yesterday. “Twice now, political leaders who were elected in no small part because of evangelicals have refused to acknowledge their losses, and their supporters have waged violent assaults on their country’s own government, law enforcement, and journalists. Is there any self-assessment inside evangelicalism among the many Christian leaders whose support enabled both these men to get elected and to nearly topple their respective democracies?”

The Catholic Church in Brazil quickly condemned Sunday’s violence. A statement from the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil argued, “These attacks must be immediately stopped, and their organizers and participants must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Citizens and democracy need to be protected.”

It’s a good first step. Christian leaders must condemn the violence. But then Christians must also consider how pastors and churches helped inspire the attack on the government. And Christians in the U.S. need to evaluate our role in the violence of Jan. 6 and Jan. 8. We must stop going therefore to make disciples of all nations as we baptize them into the gospel of insurrection.

______________________________

Lou Engle (born October 9, 1952) is an American Charismatic Christian leader, best known for his leadership of TheCall, which holds prayer rallies. ... Engle strongly supports criminalization of abortion, and encouraged his audiences to ... vote for anti-abortion political candidates. Engle maintains that issues such as abortion and homosexuality should remain at the center of the evangelical movement.

Engle was described by Joe Conason as a "radical theocrat". The Southern Poverty Law Center says he can occasionally "venture into bloodlust."

______________________________

On multiple occasions, Jair Bolsonaro has publicly endorsed physical violence as a legitimate and necessary form of political action. In 1999, when he was 44 years old and a representative in the Brazilian Congress, Bolsonaro said during a TV interview that the only way of "changing" Brazil was by "killing thirty thousand people, beginning with Fernando Henrique Cardoso" (then President of Brazil).

[wozziebear]

Despite Benedict's many investigations into theologians, theology flourished | National Catholic Reporter

For all Benedict's theological angst, perhaps no modern movement caused him more concern than the push for women's equality and its influence on theology in the 1980s. And perhaps no one had a more dramatic clash with Benedict's drive to curb the emergence of feminist theology than St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, whose application for tenure at the Catholic University of America Ratzinger personally obstructed in 1987.

As a pontifical university, Catholic University of America's applications for tenure in the field of theology required approval by the CDF. Ratzinger sent Johnson a list of 40 questions, focused particularly on an article she had written that questioned the church's image of Mary as humble and obedient. Her responses to the questionnaire did not satisfy Ratzinger, so he took the extraordinary measure of calling every cardinal in the U.S. to fly to Washington, D.C., to personally interrogate her.

In the end, Johnson became the first women to receive tenure at Catholic University of America. But it wouldn't be her last tangle with the church's hierarchy.

In 2011, Johnson's 2006 book Quest for the Living God was criticized by the U.S. bishops' conference, whose doctrinal committee declared that the book "completely undermines the Gospel and the faith of those who believe in God."

Its feminist themes were a particular sticking point for the nine-man committee, which argued that the titles that the church uses for God cannot be supplanted "by novel human constructions" aimed at "promoting the socio-political status of women."

The incident was a glaring example of the way in which the Vatican had empowered local doctrinal committees to investigate theologians who were working within their dioceses.

"Under Benedict's pontificate, the doctrinal committee of the local episcopal conference soon became the pivotal committee in the local hierarchy," said Massingale.

It became a "super committee," Massingale said, that "contributed to a chilling effect and even lack of creativity when it came to taking on neuralgic issues of sexuality, gender and contraception."

[meandmybigmouth]

you would think the sexual abuse of children by priests would be at the top of the list!

[squaresoneastasia]

Catholicism in South Korea

By Elizabeth Mueller

At this point in my East Asian studies, I have read much about Korea’s unique embrace of Western influence. Unlike its neighbors China and Japan, Korea embraced the West as an exemplar of human rights, democracy, equality, and freedom. A country’s culture is often reflected in its religions, and about 27% of the Korean population is Christian. Only about 4% of the Asian population is Christian, but Catholicism has successfully penetrated Korea, a land dominated by traditional religions such as Shamanism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Korea is known as one of the most Christianized non-Western countries in the world. Raised Catholic myself in a prominent Catholic city (San Antonio, TX), I was curious how the Church existed in a different sphere of the world.

Korea was first introduced to Catholicism in 1784 through contact with Western missionaries in China. Korean travelers to China brought back atlases and scientific instruments made by priests. Most early converts to Catholicism were aristocratic scholars with use for these tools and education. Eventually, Catholicism’s teachings of equality and life after death became attractive to common people too. The early Church’s role was one of economic, political, and social modernization. Missionaries were the first to establish a complete system of education, including lessons on modern science.

The first missionaries were subjected to severe persecution. In class, we learned that Korea was a proud Neo-Confucian country, with rigid, dogmatic institutions that bound political, social, and religious life. There are similarities in the level of dogma expected by Korean Neo-Confucianism and Catholicism, but that is where the similarities end. The first Korean Catholics might have believed Confucianism and Catholicism were compatible, but Korean Non-Confucians believed Catholicism threatened their values from the beginning. Confucianism views individuals as part of a larger universal community. Confucians worried that Catholic doctrines of forgiveness and salvation were rooted in selfish orientation towards the individual. If Catholicism spread, individuals would turn their back on family, friends, community, and ultimately government. This clash of fundamental morals fueled persecutions throughout the nineteenth century.

In May 1984, Pope John Paul II canonized many Korean martyrs from the nineteenth century persecutions.

Surviving underground until the early to mid-twentieth century, Catholicism is currently the third largest religion in Korea with nearly four million followers. The number of Catholics in Korea has increased by 48% in the past two decades and today accounts for more than 11% of the population.

Pope John Paul II arrives for Sunday Mass at Youido Plaza in Seoul, South Korea . More than 700,000 people attended the service in 1989.

There has been a push for increased visibility of the Church since 2000 due to several factors: year-to-year growth has slowed to less than 1% (compared to 3% in 2002), the Catholic population in Korea is ageing, Sunday Mass attendance has declined by 10 percentage points (29.5% to 18.3%), Korean missionaries have increased more than 200% in this same time period (356 in 1999 to 1,083 in 2018). These factors have caused the Catholic Pastoral Institute of Korea to urge a reflection on missionary work and reconsider more domestic evangelization.

This video shows how the Catholic Bishops Conference of Korea is promoting the Church.

This trend of declining attendance and an ageing population affects the U.S. Catholic population as well. COVID greatly decreased participation and I know that my parish back home has not recovered to pre-COVID numbers. I believe the Catholic Church will have to adjust to the new era if they want to attract young people. The big question for most people is, What can the Church do for me? And when paired with images and stories such as the predatory scandals released recently, people are increasingly suspicious of the institution.

Sources I used and that may provide further information:

[swamyworld]

Ruing past boarding-school abuses, US Catholic bishops approve new outreach to Native Americans

U.S. bishops on June 14 approved new guidelines for ministering to Indigenous Catholics, a long in-the-works effort to reinvigorate the ministry and assure those communities that they don’t need to feel torn between their Native identity and their Catholic one. “You are both. Your cultural embodiment of the faith is a gift to the Church,” states the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document.…

[christianpureofficial]

U.S. bishops gear up for spring gathering in Louisville, Kentucky

Source U.S. bishops gather in Baltimore for their spring assembly in 2019. / Credit: Kate Veik/CNA Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 12, 2024 / 10:15 am (CNA). The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will be meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, from June 12–14 for their 2024 spring plenary assembly. During the assembly’s public sessions, beginning June 13, the bishops will vote on…