Foster parents join Philadelphia’s Catholic Social Services in discrimination lawsuit

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CNA Staff, Oct 17, 2023 / 11:20 am (CNA).
Facility-based abortions in North Carolina dropped sharply after a restrictive state law went into effect there this past summer, though … […]

Denver, Colo., Jul 18, 2017 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the last 24 hours more than twenty Catholic pages, some with millions of followers, have been blocked by Facebook for unknown reasons.

Of the known affected pages, 21 are based in Brazil, and four are English-language pages, with administrators in the U.S. and Africa. Most of the blocked pages had significant followings – between hundreds of thousands and up to 6 million followers each.

One of the blocked English-language fanpages was “Jesus and Mary”, which had 1.7 million followers. The page’s main cover photo was of the sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Page administrator Godwin Delali Adadzie, a Ghanaian, told CNA he was on Facebook around 8 p.m. Central July 17 when he was asked to upload a photo of himself because his personal account had been “suspected of suspicious activities,” he said.

After several minutes, he was allowed back into his personal account, which had notifications informing him that his “Jesus and Mary” page had been disabled. He said every person who was approved as an editor on his page had to go through the same process.

Adadzie said he reviewed Facebook’s policies “and, honestly, I do not see any that I have violated in order for my page to be withdrawn.”

He has sent two appeals to Facebook but has yet to get a response.

Another blocked English-language page is “Catholic and Proud”, which had 6 million followers. Page administrator Kenneth Alimba of Nigeria told CNA his page was also blocked without explanation.

He has sent appeals to Facebook but is “not optimistic” about a response. He also told CNA that he noticed other Catholic Facebook pages that he runs, with fewer followers, are still online.

Another blocked English-language page is “Fr. Rocky,” belonging to U.S. priest Fr. Francis J. Hoffman, executive director of Relevant Radio, whose page had 3.5 million likes. Fr. Hoffman could not be reached for comment by press time.

Facebook has yet to respond to requests for comment on the blocked pages. Facebook is the largest social network in the world, having recently reached more than 2 billion users.

While it remains unknown why these pages were blocked, some of the page administrators have said they wonder whether they are being censored.

In 2016, Facebook came under fire for allegedly censoring trends to news deemed “conservative.”

On that occasion, Mark Zuckerberg rejected the allegations of censorship, and met with conservative U.S. leaders to assure them Facebook’s neutrality.

In the past, user accounts have also been inadvertently blocked on Facebook due to system glitches, or numerous complaints against the page in a short time period. In these cases, Facebook restored the accounts after reviewing their content.

 

Brantly Millegan contributed to this report.

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Washington D.C., Feb 10, 2021 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Boston “followed the science” and have kept its students safe amid the pandemic, the archdiocesan superintendent told CNA on Wednesday.

 

“I think the Catholic schools, overall, have been vindicated,” said Thomas Carroll, superintendent for the Archdiocese of Boston schools. “A lot of uncharitable things were said when we opened our schools across the country, but it turns out we were right and science was on our side.” 

 

Unlike public schools in the rest of the state, Catholic schools in the archdiocese – the largest district by geographic area and the second-largest school district by population in Massachusetts – opened in the fall for in-person learning. 

 

“When we reopened, I said, my position was not that we’re going to be reopened ‘hell or high water,’” Carroll told CNA. “My position is we’ll be open as long as it’s safe to be open. And we’re literally watching the health data every single day.”

 

Carroll said that if COVID case numbers were to “spin out of control” once again, he would have no problem closing the schools. “But it didn’t spin out of control,” he said. 

 

At the outset of the pandemic, the archdiocese had actually closed its schools to in-person learning before the public schools had shut their doors. 

 

By the end of the 2020 school year, the archdiocese announced in June that 10% of its schools would close. The closures were due in part to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, with families unable to make tuition payments, according to WBUR.

 

Projections were grim for the 2020-21 school year. Initially, the archdiocese was looking at a nearly 17% drop in student enrollment. 

 

That all changed on July 15, when state public school teachers’ unions announced a delayed start to the year followed by remote learning. Parents began moving their children into the area Catholic schools.

 

“So at that moment from July 15th forward to like the third week in October, we gained more than 4,000 students,” Carroll said – a figure that almost entirely made up for the projected drop in enrollment. About 80% of those new students had been previously enrolled at public schools that were no longer meeting in-person. 

 

When Carroll first announced that archdiocesan schools would be opening in-person for the school year, he received a barrage of criticism. Carroll said he was repeatedly asked if he would be attending the funerals of the students who would die of COVID-19. 

 

In fact, he said that out of coronavirus cases in his schools, the vast majority of them have come from the “outside in”—meaning the student was first infected in the community and then brought the illness into the school. The schools themselves were not significant sources of community transmission. 

 

“We have, at the moment, zero active cases of spread,” he said. “We’ve had very few over since inception. We’ve had hundreds of cases since the beginning, but they all cycle out. To my knowledge, nobody’s been hospitalized.” 

 

Unlike in other dioceses, archdiocesan schools have not had to cap student populations due to social distancing measures. In Massachusetts, students are only required to distance about three feet apart from each other – which was essentially the pre-pandemic standard distance between desks. 

 

Carroll credits the strict discipline inherent to Catholic schools for why his district has experienced relatively few cases of COVID. 

 

“The one thing Catholic schools do really well,” he said, “is we get kids to follow instructions.”

 

“So this whole exercise from a public health perspective is having a reasonable set of rules and getting everybody to follow them religiously. Well, that’s what we do,” he said. 

 

Students wear masks, wash their hands frequently, and stay in cohorts, he explained.

 

Some of the aging school buildings have large windows that can be opened to improve ventilation. “The fact that we don’t have enough money for nice new buildings has turned out to be a huge asset,” he said. 

 

Despite the district’s large size and student population, Carroll told CNA there have not been differences of spread with regard to the location or demographics of schools. The archdiocese has schools located in both rural and urban communities, as well as in both affluent and disadvantaged areas. 

 

The archdiocese was recently recognized by Gov. Charlie Baker (R) in his State of the Commonwealth address, for safely resuming in-person classes. Carroll said that the low level of infections in his schools helped to sway governmental policy on future school closings. 

 

Initially, when the state designated geographic areas as “red zones” of community spread, Baker wanted the local schools to shut down automatically. 

 

The archdiocese did not close its schools in the “red zones,” arguing “that the only safe place for the children in a red zone is a school – a school that’s following the (safety) protocols,” Carroll recalled.

 

Carroll said that children in other schools who have had to attend school remotely for months are suffering from it.

 

“It’s going to be catastrophic for these kids, particularly kids from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, homeless kids, kids with special needs,” he said. 

 

Despite the low infection level in the current school year, he still acknowledges that new variants of the virus could force schools to close again. 

 

“I think people should reflect on that and they should reflect on the much larger number of people that are being stranded now and how all of their leaders have completely ignored science and health data,” he said. 

 

Despite the challenges and new protocols, Carroll said that he was “glad we all got back together,” and that he was “astonished” that things are still going well with in-person learning.

 

“And we’re grateful because our kids are doing great,” he said. 

 

[…]