US bishops extend sympathy at death of Mormon Church president

Washington D.C., Oct 26, 2017 / 04:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- US Vice President Mike Pence’s promises Wednesday of better aid for persecuted Christians and others in the Middle East has drawn praise from Supreme Knight Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus.

Pence addressed In Defense of Christians’ annual Solidarity Dinner for Christians in the Middle East Oct. 25. The vice president said groups such as the Islamic State have singled out Christians for persecution. He noted that Christianity could disappear from some parts of the Middle East.

“Let me assure you tonight, President Trump and I see these crimes for what they are – vile acts of persecution animated by hatred for Christians and the Gospel of Christ,” said Pence.

Pence said that President Donald Trump has told the State Department to stop funding “ineffective” U.N. relief efforts.

“Our fellow Christians and all who are persecuted in the Middle East should not have to rely on multinational institutions when America can help them directly,” he said.

Instead, the U.S. will provide humanitarian assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development, faith-based groups, and private organizations “to help those who are persecuted for their faith.”

“This is the moment, now is the time, and America will support these people in their hour of need,” the vice president said.

Pence charged that the U.N. has often failed to help “the most vulnerable communities, especially religious minorities” and has repeatedly denied funding to faith-based groups with “proven track records.”

“We will no longer rely on the United Nations alone to assist persecuted Christians and minorities in the wake of genocide and the atrocities of terrorist groups,” he said.

Commenting on Pence’s speech, Anderson noted that “A year ago the United States used the right word to describe what was happening to Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. That word was genocide,” said Anderson, referring to a March 2016 State Department declaration.

For Anderson, Pence’s speech meant “those words were put into action.”

“The Knights of Columbus applauds Vice President Mike Pence’s announcement that the Trump administration will begin providing aid directly to religious minority groups impacted by ISIS’ genocide,” he said.

Anderson said a lack of aid to Christians and other religious minorities has been a major problem.

“For almost two years, the Knights of Columbus has warned that Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East have been falling through the cracks in the aid system, and has been urging the United States government to provide aid directly to genocide-targeted communities,” he said. “We are pleased that tonight, the administration has promised to do just that.”

In 2014 the Catholic fraternal organization launched a Christian Refugee Relief Fund that has given more than $13 million in humanitarian assistance, largely in Iraq, Syria, and nearby countries. The group was among those documenting Islamic State group atrocities and advocating on behalf of Middle East Christians and other minorities.

According to Anderson, the impact of Pence’s announcement on the survival of threatened minority communities “cannot be underestimated.”

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CNA Staff, Jun 6, 2024 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
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Denver, Colo., Apr 20, 2019 / 03:00 am (CNA).- Twenty years ago, two teenagers opened gunfire outside Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

Their massacre was premeditated and devastating; the boys also unsuccessfully planned to bomb the school with homemade explosives. They murdered 13 and wounded more than 20 others; finally they shot and killed themselves.

Twelve students and one teacher died the morning of April 20, 1999. The victims included at least four Catholics.

It was the most devastating school shooting in the United States up to that point, and would remain so until April 2007 when a gunman killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech.

Archbishop Charles Chaput, now of Philadelphia, was the shepherd of Denver at the time. More than 1,000 mourners turned out for the first three students’ funerals, over which Chaput presided.

“[Chaput] was very prompt in understanding the need to get to the scene and get to the families, the Catholic families, to provide them with support,” Francis Maier, who was archdiocesan chancellor and special assistant to the archbishop at the time, told CNA in an interview.  

The massacre happened at a time when school shootings were relatively rare, Maier emphasized. Columbine is in an upscale neighborhood, he noted, and it was a place where no one anticipated something like that could happen.

Maier said both secular and Church officials responded well when the shooting happened, but there were some moments at the beginning when people asked: “What do we do? How do we respond?”

“[Chaput] was engaged immediately. [The shooting] caught everyone by surprise, obviously, but he responded very promptly.”

The archbishop stayed in touch with the parents of at least one of the victims for years afterward, thanks to the relationship forged in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Maier said he thought the archbishop was prepared by having been a pastor in the diocese before he was its archbishop, which he had been for 2 years in 1999.

“He had a long-lasting linkage to the event and the families that were involved,” Maier said.

Maier said after the tragedy the Church was often asked how the shooting could be reconciled with the idea of a good and merciful God, and how the perpetrators— two kids— could do something like that?

“Delivering that message of God’s presence and God’s continuing love, obviously, was the archbishop’s task,” Maier said.

“And in the funeral homilies that he preached, the counseling he gave to the families— a lot of counseling in a situation like this is just being present. Because what are you gonna say, you know? You can’t say ‘I know how you feel?’ because you don’t. And I think the archbishop understood that his presence and the presence that it represented as the Church’s concern.”

The Columbine shooting prompted a national conversation about gun control and school safety.  

Chaput testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on May 4, 1999. He addressed violence in media and popular culture— a widely-discussed topic in the wake of the shootings.

“The reasonable person understands that what we eat, drink, and breathe will make us healthy or sick. In like manner, what we hear and what we see lifts us up or drags us down. It forms us inside,” Chaput told the committee.

He noted that “The Matrix,” a film in theaters at that time hugely popular with teenagers, featured a great deal of firearm violence. Chaput wondered if the shooters had seen the film; and if so, he mused that “it certainly didn’t deter them” from committing their violent act.

“People of religious faith have been involved in music, art, literature, and architecture for thousands of years, because we know from experience that these things shape the soul, and through the soul, they shape behavior,” Chaput said.

“Common sense tells us that the violence of our music, our video games, our films, and our television has to go somewhere. It goes straight into the hearts of our children, to bear fruit in ways we cannot imagine until something like [Columbine] happens.”

Chaput emphasized his view that tragedies like Columbine emerge out of a culture in which people are not being taught to value human life.

“When we build our advertising campaigns on consumer selfishness and greed, and when money becomes our universal measure of value, how can we be surprised when our sense of community erodes?” he wondered.

“When we multiply and glorify guns, are we surprised when kids use them? When we answer murder with more violence in the death penalty, we put the State’s seal of approval on revenge.”

“When the most dangerous place in the country is a mother’s womb, and the unborn child can have his or her head crushed in an abortion, even in the process of being born, the body language of that message is that life is not sacred and may not be worth much at all.”

Maier agreed with Chaput’s diagnosis of the problem.

“Young people are not being formed properly in the dignity of life, and older people, adults, are deeply into self-satisfaction and license.”

“The disease needs to be addressed, not the symptoms,” he said.  

“Fixing it is not going to be removing one particular way of committing an evil act. People will find other means to do those things if they are committed to doing evil things. So I think the underlying culture that produces Columbine is still with us, and, if anything, it’s worse.”

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