W. Virginia’s scandal-ridden Bishop Bransfield must make amends for ‘betrayal’

New York City, N.Y., Sep 17, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York issued a statement Monday clarifying that he will not and has never used social media to privately solicit donations. The cardinal made the statement in response to an online scam operation being conducted using his name to solicit funds.

“I’ve heard from some of you you’ve received Facebook or Twitter messages from an account pretending to be me,” said the archbishop on Twitter Sept. 16. “Please know I will never reach out privately on social media to ask for donations.”

Dolan encouraged anyone who had been asked to donate money by an account purporting to be him on Twitter or Facebook to report it to the archdiocese. 

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York told CNA that they had received “several reports” that someone impersonating Cardinal Dolan was requesting money from people, “ostensibly for charitable purposes,” and that this was not the first time something like this has happened.

“Sadly, we’ve seen this scam being used in the past few months with other religious figures – pastors, priests, other clergy – being impersonated, and so wanted to remind people that Cardinal Dolan will never solicit donations in this way,” said Joseph Zwilling, the archdiocese’s director of communications.  

Zwilling added that, “While the internet and social media can be great tools of evangelization, they can also be used by unscrupulous individuals seeking to ‘rip-off’ trusting and generous people.” 

“It’s always a good idea to be cautious, and double or triple check, especially online, that the person is who he or she claims to be!” 

These types of scams are called “phishing,” and are relatively common. A “phisher” will pose as either a known, trusted person or as a website, and request money, passwords, or other protected information. Frequently, phishers will create spoof emails and addresses that look like genuine emails from an organization or person in order to harvest passwords and credit card information from an unsuspecting victim. 

A person can protect themselves from phishing by using security tools like two-factor authentication, and exercising constant vigilance before sending personal information or money electronically. Electronic security experts advise considering if any request is typical policy for an organization, and to take a step back before blindly giving away sensitive info. 

Other safety recommendations include checking the full email or account address to ensure the authenticity of the sender or, in the example of a public figure such as Cardinal Dolan, to see if the social media account is verified as authentic. 

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Washington D.C., Feb 7, 2019 / 12:03 am (CNA).- Access to the birth control pill in the U.S. has increased the births of children outside of marriage, especially among poor and minority women, according to a new study of the contraceptive’s histo… […]

South Bend, Ind., Jan 21, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- A series of murals depicting Christopher Columbus’ life and exploration displayed at the University of Notre Dame will be covered up, the university’s president announced Sunday.

“Painted in 1882-84 … they reflect the attitudes of the time and were intended as a didactic presentation, responding to cultural challenges for the school’s largely immigrant, Catholic population,” Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C., wrote in his Jan. 20 letter announcing the decision.

“In recent years, however, many have come to see the murals as at best blind to the consequences of Columbus’s voyage for the indigenous peoples who inhabited this ‘new’ world and at worst demeaning toward them.”

The murals, painted by Luigi Gregori, are located in Notre Dame’s Main Building. Gregori served for a time as artist in residence at the Vatican, before becoming a professor and artist in residence at the Indiana university.

Gregori was commissioned to produce a series of murals of Columbus by Fr. Edward Sorin, the founder and first president of the University of Notre Dame. One of the murals was the model for the first series of commemorative stamps issued by the U.S., in 1893.

Jenkins said that he has heard in recent years “from students, alumni, faculty, staff, representatives of the Native American community, and others on this complex topic,” and that his decision was made after consulting with the Board of Fellows.

Though a brochure to explain the murals’ context has been provided since the 1990s, “because the second-floor hall of the Main Building is a busy throughway for visitors and members of the University community, it is not well suited for a thoughtful consideration of these paintings and the context of their composition,” Jenkins wrote.

The brochure was created after a group of Native American students called for the murals’ removal in 1995.

The priest said that there will be “a permanent display for high-quality, high-resolution images of the murals in a campus setting to be determined that will be conducive to such an informed and careful consideration.”

The murals themselves will “be covered by woven material consistent with the décor of the space, though it will be possible to display the murals on occasion.”

The university president announced that a committee will be formed “to decide on the place to display the images of the murals and the appropriate communication around the display.”

“The murals present us with several narratives not easily reconciled, and the tensions among them are especially perplexing for us because of Notre Dame’s distinctive history and Catholic mission,” the priest explained.

“The murals were not intended to slight indigenous peoples, but to encourage another marginalized group,” he said, noting that when they were made, the immigrant-dominated population of Notre Dame “encountered significant anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant attitudes in American public life.”

Moreover, Columbus was at the time “hailed by Americans generally as an intrepid explorer.”

“Gregori’s murals focused on the popular image of Columbus as an American hero, who was also an immigrant and a devout Catholic,” Jenkins wrote. “The message to the Notre Dame community was that they too, though largely immigrants and Catholics, could be fully and proudly American.”

The priest then declared that for natives of the Americas “Columbus’s arrival was nothing short of a catastrophe.”

“Whatever else Columbus’s arrival brought, for these peoples it led to exploitation, expropriation of land, repression of vibrant cultures, enslavement, and new diseases causing epidemics that killed millions.”

Jenkins quoted a 1987 meeting of St. John Paul II with the native peoples of the Americas, in which the pope said the encounter “was a harsh and painful reality for your peoples. The cultural oppression, the injustices, the disruption of your way of life and of your traditional societies must be acknowledged.”

The pope continued, in remarks not quoted by Jenkins’ letter: “At the same time, in order to be objective, history must record the deeply positive aspects of your people’s encounter with the culture that came from Europe.”

According to the Jenkins, “the murals’ depiction of Columbus as beneficent explorer and friend of the native peoples hides from view the darker side of this story, a side we must acknowledge.”

Carol Delaney, an emerita professor of anthropology at Stanford University and author of “Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem,” told CNA in 2017 that a popular current narrative around Columbus is tarred by bad history.

“They’re blaming Columbus for the things he didn’t do. It was mostly the people who came after, the settlers,” Delaney said. “He’s been terribly maligned.”

She said Columbus initially had a favorable impression of many of the Native Americans he met and instructed the men under his command not to abuse them but to trade with them; he also punished some of his own men who committed crimes against the natives.

Delaney acknowledged that some Native Americans were sent to Spain as slaves or conscripted into hard labor at the time Columbus had responsibility for the region, but she attributed this mistreatment to his substitutes acting in his absence.

And the Knights of Columbus have said that their namesake “has frequently been falsely blamed for the actions of those who came after him and is the victim of horrific slanders concerning his conduct.”

Leo XIII wrote an encyclical marking the Columbian quadricentennial in 1892, reflecting on Columbus’ desire to spread the faith. In Quarto abeunte saeculo, the pope wrote that Columbus “resolved to go before and prepare the ways for the Gospel” by his exploration.

“When [Columbus] learned from the lessons of astronomy and the record of the ancients, that there were great tracts of land lying towards the West … he saw in spirit a mighty multitude, cloaked in miserable darkness, given over to evil rites, and the superstitious worship of vain gods. Miserable it is to live in a barbarous state and with savage manners: but more miserable to lack the knowledge of that which is highest, and to dwell in ignorance of the one true God. Considering these things, therefore, in his mind, he sought first of all to extend the Christian name and the benefits of Christian charity to the West,” Leo declared.

Jenkins claimed that the goal of covering up the murals is to respect both them “and the reality and experience of Native Americans in the aftermath of Columbus’s arrival.”

“We wish to preserve artistic works originally intended to celebrate immigrant Catholics who were marginalized at the time in society, but do so in a way that avoids unintentionally marginalizing others. The course described above, we believe, honors the University’s heritage, of which we are justly proud, and better respects the heritage of native peoples, who have known great adversity since the arrival of Europeans.”

Jenkins opened his letter saying the announcement was timed to coincide with the feast of Bl. Basil Moreau, founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and “Walk the Walk Week,” a series of events, begun in 2016, at the University of Notre Dame “to help us consider how we – both individually and collectively – might take an active role in making Notre Dame even more welcoming and inclusive.”

The priest concluded his letter saying, “Remembering the legacy of Dr. King and asking in prayer for the intercession of Fr. Moreau, let us renew in our minds and hearts our commitment to respect the dignity of all individuals, their communities, and their cultures, with particular concern for the most vulnerable.”

Eugene F. Rivers, III, founder of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies, wrote in a 2016 column at CNA that proposals to end Columbus Day are divisive, and based on stereotypes. While there were deplorable consequences of colonization, attacks on Columbus “were created in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan as part of a targeted assault on Italians, Catholics, and the Catholic charitable group the Knights of Columbus,” he wrote.

A little more than a year ago, in December 2017, university spokesman Dennis Brown said that the murals “are of historic and artistic value, and the University has no plans to remove them.”

The head of the Native American Student Association of Notre Dame welcomed Jenkins’ decision, and wrote to the South Bend Tribune expressing hope that the administration “will continue to prioritize Native issues on our campus in the coming weeks and months as there is still work to be done.”

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