Kamala Harris proposes federal restrictions on state abortion laws

Denver Newsroom, Aug 10, 2021 / 16:32 pm (CNA).

With five children ages 10 and under to care for, and a pair of goats, a rabbit, chickens and a dog to tend to, Maureen and Matt McKinley rely on a structured routine to keep their busy lives on track.

Chores, nap times, scheduled story hours – they’re all important staples of their day. But the center of the McKinleys’ routine, what focuses their family life and strengthens their Catholic faith, they say, is the Traditional Latin Mass. 

Its beauty, reverence, and timelessness connect them to a rich liturgical legacy that dates back centuries.

“This is the Mass that made so many saints throughout time,” observes Maureen, 36, a parishioner at Mater Misericordiæ Catholic Church in Phoenix.

“You know what Mass St. Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Therese, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Augustine were attending? The Traditional Latin Mass,” Maureen says.

“We could have a conversation about it, and we would have all experienced the exact same thing,” she says. “That’s exciting.”

Recent developments in the Catholic Church, however, have curbed some of that excitement. On July 16, Pope Francis released a motu proprio titled Traditiones custodis, or “Guardians of the Tradition”, that has cast doubt on the future of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) – and deeply upset and confused many of its devotees.

Pope Francis’ directive rescinds the freedom Pope Benedict XVI granted to priests 14 years ago to say Masses using the Roman Missal of 1962, the form of liturgy prior to Vatican II, without first seeking their bishop’s approval. Under the new rules, bishops now have the “exclusive competence” to decide where, when, and whether the TLM can be said in their dioceses.

In a letter accompanying the motu proprio, Pope Francis maintains that the faculties granted to priests by his predecessor have been “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”

Using the word “unity” a total of 15 times in the accompanying letter, the pope suggests that attending the TLM is anything but unifying, going so far as to correlate a strong personal preference for such masses with a rejection of Vatican II.

Weeks later, many admirers of the “extraordinary” form of the Roman rite – the McKinleys among them – are still struggling to wrap their minds and hearts around the pope’s order, and the pointed tone he used to deliver it. 

Maureen McKinley says she had never considered herself a “traditionalist Catholic” before. Instead, she says she and her husband have just “always moved toward the most reverent way to worship and the best way to teach our children.”

“It didn’t feel like I became a particular type of Catholic by going to Mater Misericordiæ. But since the motu proprio came out, I feel like I have been categorized, like I was something different, something other than the rest of the Church,” she says.

“It feels like our Holy Father doesn’t understand this whole group of people who love our Lord so much.” 

McKinley isn’t alone in feeling this way. Sadness, anger, frustration, and disbelief are some common themes in conversations among those who regularly attend the TLM.

They want to understand and support the Holy Father, but they also see the restriction as unnecessary, especially when plenty of other more pressing issues in the Church abound.

Eric Matthews, another Mater Misericordiæ parishioner, views the new restrictions as an “attack on devout Catholic culture,” citing the beauty that exists across the rites recognized within the Church. There are seven rites recognized in the Catholic Church: Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian or Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite, and Chaldean. 

“It’s the same Mass,” says Matthews, 39, who first discovered the TLM about eight years ago. “It’s just different languages, different cultures, but the people that you have there are there for the right reasons.”

Different paths to the TLM

The pope’s motu proprio directly affects a tiny fraction of U.S. Catholics – perhaps as few as 150,000, or less than 1 percent of some 21 million regular Mass-goers, according to some estimates. According to one crowd-sourced database, only about 700 venues – compared to over 16,700 parishes nationwide – offer the TLM.

Also, since the motu proprio’s release July 16, only a handful of bishops have stopped the TLM in their dioceses. Of those bishops who have made public responses, most are allowing the Masses to continue as before – in some cases because they see no evidence of disunity, and in others because they need more time to study the issue.

But for those who feel drawn to the TLM – for differing reasons that have nothing to do with a rejection of Vatican II – it feels as if the ground has shifted under their feet.

Maureen McKinley wants her children to understand the importance of hard work, of which they have no shortage when it comes to their urban farm. After morning prayer, Maureen milks the family’s goats with the help of the children. Madeline (age 10) feeds the bunny; Augustine (7) exercises the dog; John (6) checks for eggs from the chickens; and Michael (4) helps anyone he chooses. 

With a noisy clatter in the kitchen, the McKinleys eat breakfast, tidy up their rooms, and begin their daily activities. They break at 11 a.m. to head to daily Mass at Mater Misericordiæ, an apostolate of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), where they first attended two years ago. 

Matt, 34, wanted to know how the early Christians worshipped.

“The funny thing about converts is they’re always wanting more,” says Maureen, who was, at first, a little resistant to the idea of attending the TLM because she didn’t know Latin. “Worship was a big part of his conversion.” 

Maureen agreed to follow her husband’s lead, and they continued to attend the TLM. What kept them coming back week after week was the reverence for the Eucharist.

“Matt had a really hard time watching so many people receive communion in the hand at the other parish,” says Maureen. “He says he didn’t want our kids to think that that was the standard. That’s the exception to the rule, not the rule.”

Reverence in worship also drew Elizabeth Sisk to the TLM. A 28-year-old post-anesthesia care unit nurse, she attends both the Novus Ordo, the Mass promulgated by St. Paul VI in 1969, and the extraordinary form in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her parish, the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, offers the TLM on the first Sunday of the month. 

Sisk has noticed recently that more people in her area — especially young people who are converts to Catholicism — are attending both forms of the Mass. While the Novus Ordo is what brought many of them, herself included, to the faith, she feels that the extraordinary form invites them to go deeper.

“We want to do something radical with our lives,” Sisk says. “To be Catholic right now as a young person is a really radical decision. I think the people who choose to be Catholic right now, we’re all in. We don’t want ‘watered-down’ Catholicism.”

With the lack of Christian values in the world today, Sisk desires “something greater,” which she says she can tell is happening in the TLM.

Many TLM parishes saw an increase in attendance during the pandemic, as they were often the only churches open while many others shut their doors or held Masses outside. This struck some as controversial, if not disobedient to the local government. For others, it was a saving grace to have access to the sacraments.

The priests at Erin Hanson’s parish obtained permission from the local bishop to celebrate Mass all day, every day, with 10 parishioners at a time during the height of the COVID pandemic.

“We were being told by the world that church is not necessary,” says Hanson, a 39-year-old mother of three. “Our priest says, ‘No, that’s a lie. Our church is essential. Our salvation is essential. The sacraments are essential.’”

Andy Stevens, 52, came into the Church through the TLM, much to the surprise of his wife, Emma, who had been a practicing Catholic for many years. Andy was “very adamantly not going to become Catholic,” but was happy to help Emma with their children at Mass. It wasn’t until they attended a TLM that Andy began to think differently about the Church.

“He believed that you die and then there is nothing, and he never really spoke to me about becoming a Catholic,” says Emma, 48, who was pregnant with their seventh child at the time.

Andy noticed an intense focus among the worshippers, which he recognized as a “real presence of God” that he didn’t see anywhere else. After the birth of their 7th child, he joined the Church.

All 12 of the Stevens’ children prefer the TLM to the Novus Ordo.

“It’s a Mass of the ages,” says their eldest son, Ryan, 27. “I can feel the veil between heaven and earth palpably thinner.” 

A native of Chicago, Adriel Gonzalez, 33, remembers attending the TLM as a child, which he did not particularly like. It was “very long, very boring,” and the people who went to the TLM were “very stiff and they could come off as judgmental” towards his family, he says.

Gonzalez, who also attended Mass in Spanish with his family, didn’t understand the differences among rites, since Chicago was a sort of “salad bowl, ethnically,” he says, and Mass was celebrated in many languages and forms. 

He took a step back from faith for some time, he says, noting that he had a “respectability issue” with the Christianity he grew up with. He watched as some of his friends were either thoughtless in the way they practiced their faith, or were “on fire,” but lacked intentionality. When he did come back to the faith, it was through learning about the Church’s intellectual tradition.

He spent time in monasteries and Eastern Catholic parishes with the Divine Liturgy because there was “something so obviously ancient about it.” He decided to stay within the Roman rite with a preference for a reverent Novus Ordo. 

When he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gonzalez committed to his neighborhood parish, which had a strong contingent of people who loved tradition in general. The parish instituted a TLM in the fall of 2020, when they started having Mass indoors again after the pandemic. 

“If I’m at a Latin Mass, I’m more likely to get a sense that this is a time-honored practice, something that has been honed over the millennia,” he says. “There is clearly a love affair going on here with the Lord that requires this much more elaborate song and dance.”

For Eric Matthews, the TLM feels a little like time travel. 

“It could be medieval times, it could be the enlightenment period, it could be the early 1900s, and the experience is going to be so similar,” he says.

“I just feel like that’s that universal timeframe – not just the universal Church in 2021 – but the universal Church in almost any time period. We’re the only church that can claim that.”

What happens now?

The motu proprio caught Adriel Gonzalez’ attention. He sought clarity about whether his participation in the extraordinary form was, in fact, part of a divisive movement, or simply an expression of his faith.

If it was a movement, he wanted no part of it, he says.

“As far as I can tell, the Church considers the extraordinary form and the ordinary form equal and valid,” says Gonzalez. “Ideally, there should be no true difference between going to one or the other, outside of just preference. It shouldn’t constitute a completely different reality within Catholicism.”

With this understanding, Gonzalez says he resonated with some of the reasoning set forth in the motu proprio because it articulated that the celebration of the TLM was never intended to be a movement away from the Novus Ordo or Vatican II. Gonzalez also emphasized that the extraordinary form was never supposed to be a “superior” way of celebrating the Mass. 

Gonzalez believes the Lord allowed the growth in the TLM “to help us to recover a love for liturgy, and to ask questions about what worship and liturgy looks like.” He would have preferred if what was good was kept and encouraged, and what was potentially dangerous “coaxed out and called out.” 

Erin Hanson, of Mater Misericordiæ, agrees. 

“If [Pope Francis] does believe there is division between Novus Ordo and traditional Catholics, I don’t think he did anything to try to fix that division,” she says. 

Hanson would like to know who the bishops are that Pope Francis consulted in making this decision, sharing that she doesn’t feel that there is any of the transparency needed for such a major document. If there are divisions, she says, she would like the opportunity to work on them in a different way. 

“This isn’t going to be any less divisive if he causes a possible schism,” Hanson says.

According to the motu proprio and the accompanying letter, the TLM is not to be celebrated in diocesan churches or in new churches constructed for the purpose of the TLM, nor should new groups be established by the bishops. Left out of their parish churches, some are worried their only option to attend Mass will be in a recreation center or hotel ballroom. 

Eric Matthews hopes that everyone is able to experience the extraordinary form at least once in their life so they can know that this is not about division.

“I can’t imagine someone going to the Latin Mass and saying, ‘This is creating disunity,’” he says. “There’s nothing to be afraid of with the Latin Mass. You’re just going to be surrounding yourself with people that really take it to heart.”

Maureen McKinley was home sick when her husband Matt found out about the motu proprio. He had taken the kids to a neighborhood park, where he ran into some friends who also attend Mater Misericordiæ. They asked if he had heard the news. 

“I felt disgust at a document that pretends to say so much while actually saying so little and disregards the Church’s very long and rich tradition of careful legal documents,” Matt McKinley says.

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix stated that the TLM may continue at Mater Misericordiæ, as well as in chapels, oratories, mission churches, non-parochial churches, and at seven other parishes in the diocese. Participation in the TLM and all of the activities of the parish are so important to the McKinleys that they are willing to move to another state or city should further restrictions be implemented. 

For now, their family’s routine continues the same as before.

At the end of their day, the McKinleys pray a family rosary in front of their home altar, which has a Bible at the center, and an icon of Christ and a statue of the Virgin Mary. They eat dinner together, milk the goat again, and take care of their evening animal chores. After night prayer, the kids head off to bed, blessing themselves with holy water from the fonts mounted on the wall before they enter their bedroom. 

“The life of the Church springs from this Mass,” Maureen says. “That’s why we’re here—not because the Latin Mass is archaic, but that it’s actually just so alive.”

Editor’s note: Several of the people interviewed here also shared their stories with the CNA Newsroom podcast, and their voices appear on Episode 107: Extraordinary Times for the Extraordinary Form. Click here to listen to the episode.

[…]

Richmond, Va., Jan 30, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- A controversial Virginia bill which would permit abortion during labor will not be moving out of the subcommittee, as the latest attempt to widely expand abortion access falls short.

 

HB 2491, was… […]

CNA Staff, Dec 7, 2020 / 04:37 pm (CNA).- An order shuttering in-person education until Jan. 4 in Kentucky amid rising COVID-19 cases amounts to religious discrimination, the US Supreme Court has been told in amici curiae briefs.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) temporarily halted in-person learning in the state by executive order.

The order, which applies to both public and private schools, allows for elementary schools in “red” zones (counties with 25 or more new coronavirus cases a day) to reopen as long as they are following state public health guidance.

Danville Christian Academy sued over the order.

A federal district judge had ruled Nov. 25 that Beshear’s order could not apply to private religious schools because it infringed on their First Amendment rights. On Nov. 29, a federal appeals court overturned that decision, upholding Beshear’s original order.

Danville Christian Academy has asked the US Supreme Court to temporarily suspend the executive order, while its appeal is pending.

Several groups have submitted amici curiae briefs in the case in support of Danville Christian Academy.

Thirty-eight Republican Senators – including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, both of Kentucky – filed one such brief Dec. 4.

“COVID-19 is undoubtedly a serious health threat, but the Constitution applies even in difficult times. This Court should again remind Governors across the Country that shutdown orders cannot trample Constitutional rights,” the Senators stated in their amicus brief.

The state’s attorney general and treasurer have also indicated their support for Danville Christian Academy.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty submitted an amicus curiae brief, arguing not only “That movie theaters and horse tracks are open for business, but religious schools cannot open, is reason enough to vacate the Sixth Circuit’s stay,” but also that Beshear’s executive order is subject to strict scrutiny because it interferes “with the right of parents under the Free Exercise Clause to direct ‘the religious upbringing and education of their children’”.

Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior counsel, John Bursch, and other ADF attorneys filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of 17 Christian schools in Kentucky.

“The Kentucky governor’s order allows movie theaters, indoor event venues, gyms, childcare centers, and professional offices to operate, but private Christian schools cannot, even when they comply with all recommended public health and safety guidelines. That’s why we are asking (the) high court to put a stop to the governor’s unconstitutional edict,” Bursch said Dec. 4.

“Government discriminatory treatment of religion must end. Now,” the ADF brief in Danville Christian Academy v. Beshear states.

“In the nine months since the COVID-19 pandemic began, state executives have consistently imposed more severe burdens on religious conduct than comparable secular activities. They do so without any showing that religious activities present a greater COVID-19 risk than their secular comparators,” ADF added.

“Instead, governments have consistently favored commerce over religion and—often with a judicial seal of approval—have cloaked their disparate treatment of religious worship and education in terms like ‘emergency police powers’ and ‘substantial discretion.’”

Religious schools and churches have also submitted briefs in support of Danville Christian Academy, while a group of church-state scholars wrote one in defense of Beshear.

Beshear defended his order, citing health risks and the order’s equal treatment of public and private schools. “Kentucky is in the midst of a deadly third wave of the coronavirus. We have taken the necessary actions to slow the growth in cases and save the lives of our fellow Kentuckians,” Beshear said in a Dec. 4 statement, reported by the Courier Journal.

“In the most recent executive order regarding schools, every school is treated equally and each is asked to do its part over a limited period of time to slow the spread of the virus. The effectiveness of these actions requires everyone to take part, and anyone or any entity that tries to be the exception lessens the effectiveness of the steps,” he added.

Bursch pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in late November, which ruled that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s restrictions on religious services during the coronavirus pandemic were a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free religious exercise.

“As the U.S. Supreme Court said in its recent order halting Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order in New York, ‘even in a pandemic,’ the First Amendment is not ‘put away and forgotten,” Bursch stated.

The federal appeals court which ruled to uphold Beshear’s order said that the case was “distinguishable” from Cuomo’s order, since the Kentucky order applied to both religious and public schools, the Courier Journal reported. 

The case also comes shortly after the four bishops of Kentucky announced in late November that they will continue holding in-person Masses, despite Beshear’s order for all places of worship to halt in-person services until Dec. 13.

Schools throughout the United States have grappled with what to do about in-person learning after the coronavirus pandemic caused nationwide shutdowns last March. Though the country saw a dip in coronavirus cases over the summer, recent surges this fall, shortly after classes resumed, have caused some schools to close again, and some states to reinstate lockdowns or stay-at-home orders.

Catholic schools have worked to put extensive health and safety regulations in place, including mandatory masking and social distancing, and virtual options for families who choose to keep their children at home. Some Catholic school leaders and bishops have argued that children have a right to in-person learning, which can help to ensure the quality of their education and to prevent their social isolation.

Some Catholic schools, such as those in Baltimore, have seen spikes in enrollment this fall because they are offering in-person learning more consistently than area public schools.

[…]