New York City, N.Y., May 6, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- A live, 4D-ultrasound of a 36-week gestation baby was broadcast in Times Square on Saturday, as part of Focus on the Family’s “Alive in New York” celebration.
“Alive in New York” was conducted in partnership with the pro-life organizations And Then There Were None and Save the Storks. The event drew a crowd estimated in the thousands, and it is believed to be the largest pro-life demonstration in New York state history.
In addition to the ultrasound, the event included musical performances and speeches from pro-life advocates.
Times Square, widely seen as the center of the nation’s largest city, was chose as a venue in response to New York state’s passage of the Reproductive Health Act earlier this year. That law deriminalized abortion, while removing almost all restrictions on the procedure in New York.
“Our nation, and our society, is at a crossroads. We can no longer sit on the sidelines. Now is the moment to unite with one voice to proclaim the sanctity of life. The truth will be visible to all in Times Square – at The Crossroads of the World,” said Focus on the Family in a statement released prior to the event.
Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who left the abortion industry to form And Then There Were None, was given an ultrasound as part of the event. Johnson is 36 weeks pregnant with her eighth child.
During the ultrasound, Johnson exclaimed to the crowd “This right here is a baby. It’s not a cat, it’s not a parasite. This is a human being with a heartbeat, with its own DNA that is separate from my body.”
Johnson is also the subject of the new film “Unplanned,” which depicts her story and ideological conversion into the pro-life movement. In the film, she is motivated to leave the abortion industry after witnessing an ultrasound-guided abortion of a second-trimester pregnancy.
New York’s bishops were extremely critical of the Reproductive Health Act as it made its way through the state legislature.
“Words are insufficient to describe the profound sadness we feel at the contemplated passage of New York State’s new proposed abortion policy. We mourn the unborn infants who will lose their lives, and the many mothers and fathers who will suffer remorse and heartbreak as a result,” the bishops of New York state said Jan. 17.
“The so-called ‘Reproductive Health Act’ will expand our state’s already radically permissive law, by empowering more health practitioners to provide abortion and removing all state restrictions on late-term procedures. With an abortion rate that is already double the national average, New York law is moving in the wrong direction.”
The bishops recalled their pledge “to offer the resources and services of our charitable agencies and health services to any woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, to support her in bearing her infant, raising her family or placing her child for adoption. There are life-affirming choices available, and we aim to make them more widely known and accessible.”
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Nell O’Leary, managing editor of Blessed Is She. / Therese Westby
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 3, 2022 / 11:01 am (CNA).
When Nell O’Leary sat down with her team to brainstorm a new book for Catholic women, she said they felt drawn to the theme of “identity.”
“This one kept coming back, this idea of identity, of who we are as Catholic women, made in God’s image and likeness,” O’Leary, the managing editor of Blessed Is She, told CNA. This identity, she said, gets battered by the world “with all these lies that you are what you look like, you are your social media following, you are how successful you are, you are how many kids you have.”
Instead, O’Leary says, every woman is unconditionally loved as a “beloved daughter of God.”
This message is central to Made New: 52 Devotions for Catholic Women, a weekly devotional released in December. The book houses personal stories from five writers associated with Blessed Is She (BIS), a “sisterhood” of Catholic women who desire to grow in their faith through prayer and community. Each of the five — O’Leary, Leana Bowler, Brittany Calavitta, Jenna Guizar, and Liz Kelly — focus on a theme under the umbrella of identity: beheld, belong, beloved, believing, and becoming.
While their stories are different, their tone is consistent. Each writer engages the reader with the frank, casual tone of a friend who’s honest about her struggles, hopeful for the future, and, well, confident in her identity.
“I invite you to journey with me, dear sister, to walk through the next fifty-two weeks as we rediscover our value, our worth, and our identity in Our Lord’s eyes,” Guizar, the founder of BIS, writes in the book’s opening. “He is waiting for you and me, and He desires to be in relationship with us. All it takes is a response to His call: yes.”
Each week begins with a short reflection or personal story from one of the writers and concludes with a scripture passage and two questions for the reader to ask herself. Along the way, artwork interrupts the text to greet readers with dusty, muted colors and shapes. The rose-gold cover impresses a feminine touch, along with a pink ribbon bookmark. Leaves and plants adorn the pages, suggesting growth and life made new.
Interior of Made New. Therese Westby
A saint’s calling
If readers come away remembering one thing, O’Leary wants them to believe and remember that “there’s no one way, cookie-cutter way, to become a saint.”
“God is calling you personally, through the circumstances in your life, through the challenges, through the blessings, to grow in holiness in who you are and where you are,” she said. “And to compare yourself to other women and feel like you can’t measure up is simply not where you want to put your energies.”
Instead, she said, God is calling each woman — in her particular, unique life — to become a saint.
Every woman is different, something that the five writers themselves demonstrate. According to O’Leary, they are not all just a “bunch of young moms.” One struggles with infertility, another married later in life, one started a family before marriage, and another has no children.
“I think that however old the reader is, they will find part of their own story,” O’Leary said. “When we write [our stories], we want the reader to actually be able to contemplate and ponder… to kind of find their own story. So you’re not just consuming another person’s content, you’re actually looking at yourself too.”
One story particularly moved O’Leary (even though she compared picking her favorite to “picking a favorite flower”). She pointed to writer Liz Kelly, who shares with readers her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis toward the end of the book.
While Kelly originally “thought that meant her role would become really small,” God “used her in that time and in that diagnosis to broadcast his message even further than she thought,” O’Leary summarized.
She added, “I think the reason I love that story so much is because where we see limitations, God just sees more opportunities for grace.”
Unconditional love
A theme in the book that O’Leary herself touches on is God’s unconditional love — that he loves you as you are right now, regardless of what you do or don’t do, regardless of how your family or friends treat you, regardless of your past or future. He loves you.
“I suppose people in general struggle with the idea of unconditional love because it’s so rarely manifest in our human interaction,” O’Leary said of accepting God’s love. “And so, because the human level of relationship in our lives are fraught with other imperfect people, to really trust in and experience God’s love takes this trust and this faith.”
Her first piece of advice for women who doubt God’s love or think they aren’t good enough is to visit the confessional.
“Get all those embarrassing sins off your chest,” she said. “The priest has heard it all … you can go behind the screen.”
“It’s nothing that’s too embarrassing to bring to the sacrament and really unload yourself of the burden of all those sins and experience God’s grace filling you,” she added. God’s unconditional love can get “so shrouded and clouded by my own, my own humanity, my own mistakes, my own sinfulness.”
Community and Covid
Another topic in the book — and a priority for Blessed Is She as a whole — is community. O’Leary addressed the challenges of community, particularly during the pandemic.
“Living in a global pandemic, so many things being more online, we just see that highlights reel…those drive those envy twinges of, ‘Her life looks perfect. She doesn’t have my struggles,’” she said. “Really puts in wedges in our sisterhood and we need our sisterhood.”
“When we can’t be together, it just starts to look like everyone has it together,” she added. “We don’t.”
O’Leary advised women to read the free daily devotions offered by Blessed Is She. And delete social media apps off of their phones, even if just for the weekend.
“I know that our phones and the internet are wonderful for connecting us, but they’re also really toxic for making it feel more lonely,” she said. “Live the life that’s in front of you.”
The personal
O’Leary talked about her personal life and her own struggle with identity. The fourth of five children, she said she grew up surrounded by high-achieving parents and siblings. While she thought that one day she might have a family, she worked toward becoming an attorney. She ended up marrying her “law school love” and worked as an attorney. Then, she became a stay-at-home mom.
“Realizing that I had hung so much on my identity being what I did, and what the world could see and applaud, that becoming a mom and then eventually staying at home with our kids,” she said. “It’s such a hidden life.”
“The children are not cheering you on, ‘You did a great job!’ there’s no affirmation, there’s no feedback other than the deep satisfaction I guess, that no one went to the ER,” she added.
The experience changed her.
“What I realized that I had to have a big mentality shift from, I’m not what I do and I’m not what I accomplish and I’m not even how my children behave,” she said. “That really, in these hidden moments in prayer with God, to say, ‘I know I’m your beloved daughter. I know I’m made in your image and likeness.’”
Damage at St. Stephen’s Catholic School in New Orleans / Monsignor Christopher Nalty
Washington D.C., Sep 2, 2021 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
A New Orleans pastor whose parish school was severely damaged in Hurricane Ida is bracing himself for a “big expense,” but hopes classroom life will not be overly disrupted for students this year.
St. Stephen Catholic School, located in Uptown New Orleans, lost the roof of its gymnasium when Hurricane Ida swept through the area on Aug. 29.
“At some point during the early part of the storm, the wind got underneath the vinyl material and then just ripped everything off the roof,” Monsignor Christopher Nalty, pastor of St. Stephen’s church and school, told CNA on Thursday.
The type of roof formerly on the gymnasium “is very prone to getting destroyed,” Nalty explained. And while the full extent of the damage is not yet known, he suspects that the floor of the gymnasium is destroyed as well. He is also waiting to find out how the other wing of the school, with classrooms, fared.
“We’re going to have to replace the roof,” he said. “That’s what we’re working on now.”
In-person classes in the Archdiocese of New Orleans are suspended until after Labor Day, due to the effects of the hurricane. Many areas of the archdiocese still do not have power.
Local media reported on the significant damage at the school.
“Take a look at this. It looks like the roof came off of the school building,” said Travers Mackel, a reporter and anchor at WDSU News in a video surveying the area. “This is by far the worst damage that we’ve seen right here.”
Mackel said that most of the destruction in the surrounding area was to vegetation, and that only St. Stephen Catholic School seemed to have suffered significant property damage.
Pieces of the school’s roof were strewn into nearby trees and in the street. The church building, located next to the school, was largely spared, although part of the steeple was damaged.
Nalty told CNA that he hopes to replace the gym roof with one made out of slatted steel. He said that many Gulf Coast churches have opted to replace their roofs with similar styles after they sustained storm damage.
“I said to [a contractor] ‘That’s what I want on the school,’” Nalty said. “‘Cause I don’t want to fix this again, you know?”
The cost of the repairs is not yet clear, but Nalty told CNA that he does not think it will be cheap. The archdiocese’s insurance policy charges a 3% deductible for any damage done by a named storm, such as Hurricane Ida.
“So 3% of the value of the whole building is the deductible,” he said. “For instance, for my school, my church, I think it’s valued at $15 million. So that means I have a $450,000 deductible before any insurance kicks in.”
For Nalty, the school and its students hold a very special place in his heart, and he hopes that they will be able to return to the school before too long.
“I do a lot of different things in the archdiocese. I teach at the seminary. I’ve got three churches. Quite possibly, the most important thing I do is the school,” he said, blinking back tears.
The school was founded in 1852, and serves students from age two through seventh grade. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, St. Stephen Catholic School became a “central school” that took in students whose schools were destroyed.
“Now our school is about 98% African-American and they are from the poorest demographic of the city,” said Nalty. “My principal is a rockstar and these kids are all on scholarship.”
The school is “such a family,” said Nalty. Students are brought to campus early for breakfast, and stay afterwards for aftercare. For the last four years, every graduate has been admitted into a Catholic high school in New Orleans, with a scholarship.
“They go to school in this family community. We have Mass every Friday,” he said. “The kids are actively engaged. They know their faith.”
The opportunities provided to St. Stephen’s students “means the trajectory of their lives has been changed.”
“Their chances are exponentially different from their neighbors that go to the public schools,” said Nalty. “It’s an incredibly important ministry to me. I just love these kids. They’re just, [the storm damage is] just hard.”
“But anyway, you know, well… We’ll get through it.”
Anyone wishing to support the rebuilding effort can do so here.
Oklahoma City, Okla., Jan 15, 2020 / 12:16 am (CNA).- Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City has announced his support for state legislation that would remove the death penalty from consideration in capital cases.
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