Pope Francis asks Mary’s protection of Rome against coronavirus

Paris, France, Jun 19, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Catholics walked through Syria’s Wadi al-Nasara, or “Valley of the Christians,” this Pentecost, praying the rosary, alternating between the Arabic and French prayers for each decade.

Their two-day pilgrimage, inspired by the annual Notre Dame-Chartres walk in France, coincided with Pentecost pilgrimages in Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt organized by the French humanitarian organization SOS Chretiens d’Orient as a gesture of prayer and solidarity.

“These few intense days of hiking and prayers will remain engraved in hearts as precious moments when Syrians and French were united by the same Spirit,” Madeleine, a French volunteer for SOS Chretiens d’Orient in Aleppo, Syria wrote on their blog.

“The pride of having traveled the kilometers with bravery, the long discussions shared, the services rendered together have been a reflection of the love that binds our two countries by the grace of God,” she said. “We were in communion with the pilgrimage of Notre Dame de Chretiente in Chartres.”

The Syrian pilgrims and volunteers came from Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo to walk the path along Mediterranean Sea toward the sanctuary of Saint Charbel in the village of Daher Safra.

Athar, a Syrian participant, reflected, “We shared with each other our life with the good times and the bad times. We prayed together. We walked together. It was great because we learned how to accept each other, how to help each other.”

In Iraq, the Pentecost pilgrimage through the Nineveh Plains led to the Rabban Hormizd Monastery in Alqosh, a Chaldean Catholic church founded in the 7th century.

Sistine, a French SOS Chretiens d’Orient volunteer in Iraq, described the experience:

“Arriving at the foot of the monastery, as night begins to fall, our songs to Mary resound magnificently in this calm and wild place. The whole group climbs the remaining few hundred steps in a final burst of energy to reach the small chapel. Finally, after so much effort, prayers, sweat and empty water bottles, we gather here to put all our intentions in Mary’s arms.”

We “gather together to express our prayer intentions, entrusting our lives, vocations, Christians of the East and Iraq to our Heavenly Mother,” she said.

The Notre Dame-Chartres walk, which inspired the pilgrimages in the Middle East, drew more than 14,000 participants this year.

Benjamin Blanchard, director of SOS Chretiens d’Orient, told CNA that each of the pilgrimages in the Middle East used the same book of prayers and hymns used in the Notre Dame-Chartres walk.

Blanchard has led a group of volunteers and staff from the Middle East in the French pilgrimage to Chartres for the past four years.

“We are here to pray and to work with all of the pilgrimage, but we especially pray for the Christians of the Middle East, for all of the volunteers and donors of the organization,” he said.

Johnny Dagaly, a Chaldean Catholic from Iraq, told CNA that walking the pilgrimage in France with 14,000 other Catholics gave him a strong sense of the “Body of Christ” that is the Church.

“It has been a very good experience to be here, and when I come back to Iraq, I will share that with all of my friends, my family, with everyone,” Dagaly said.

“I am praying for peace, for peace in all the world and in my country, in Iraq, because we have not had peace from 40 years ago until now,” he said, adding, “I also prayed for my mom.”

Majd Kassouha, a 26 year-old Syrian Melkite Catholic, told CNA that he walked the 62-mile French pilgrimage with prayers for his country to rebuild, not just the infrastructure lost in the war, but also the hearts of the Syrian people.

“The suffering in the heart and the mind is much more painful than the … physical suffering,”  Kassouha said. He and his family remained in Aleppo throughout the country’s civil war and said he witnessed the death of many of his friends and family.

“When we were attacked and I saw my friends dead … I started to think that without Jesus I can’t continue, so I prayed to Jesus to encourage me, to give me the force to continue,” he told CNA.

“Our country, a beautiful country, deserves a condition better than now. Rebuilding the people because we are all destroyed in our hearts. Everyone has lost a lot of dear people,” he said.

“I hope that Syrian people find peace in their hearts and in the country in general,” he said. “I hope to go back to my home and to see it in peace.”

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Dublin, Ireland, Jan 13, 2019 / 04:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With the dawn of legal abortion in Ireland, the pro-life movement in the country is beginning a fight that their U.S. counterparts have been engaged in since 1973.

For more than 40 years, pro-life Americans have staged marches, prayer vigils, sidewalk counseling, and political protests. Now, pro-life advocates in Ireland must determine how a robust pro-life movement should look in their country when abortion is legal.

Earlier this week, after hearing news of a group of pro-life protesters who gathered outside of a medical center in Ireland for several hours, holding signs with slogans such as “Say no to abortion in Galway,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin urged caution.

While everyone “has a right to make a protest,” he told The Irish Times, General Practitioners perform surgeries for “everybody…for all sorts of reasons.”

He added that he is “not a person personally for protest, what the Church should be doing is strengthening its resolve to help women in crisis and to educate people.”

The word “protest” is a touchy one in the pro-life world. It can conjure up images of angry mobs with torches and pitchforks, so some pro-life people prefer terms like “witness” or “sidewalk counselor,” or simply a faithful person at a prayer vigil.

But for many in the U.S. pro-life movement, it is dialogue and prayer – not protest – that are at the heart of what they do.

Mary Fisher is one of those people.

Fisher had an abortion herself, that caused her deep regret, anger and pain for years. After she found healing through a Bible study, Fisher now works as a regional coordinator for Silent No More, an organization that gives women who regret their abortions a platform from which to tell their stories, and connects women who have had abortions to healing ministries.

While Fisher participates in pro-life activism, she is opposed to the term “protest.”

“Protesting is kind of an anger thing. That’s the way it’s perceived,” Fisher told CNA. “This makes me mad, so I’m going to go out and protest, because it makes me so mad.”

But there is already so much anger from people who are pro-choice or who have had an abortion, that the only way to win them over is with love, Fisher said.

“Our world is so full of anger, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve got this baby inside me that I don’t want, and everybody says it’s just a bunch of cells. So I’m just going to flush it down the toilet.’ And we do it in anger.”

Fisher herself experienced that anger after her own abortion.

“I lived as an angry woman for so many years, that one of my daughters actually moved from Colorado…to New York to get as far away from me as possible, because I was just so angry at everything.”

Fisher said the only thing that will win over those who are pro-abortion is to love them.

That doesn’t mean Fisher does not participate in the pro-life movement. She’s planning on attending her local March for Life, with a sign that says: “I regret my abortion. Ask me why.”

She also participates in 40 Days for Life prayer vigils, she shares her story through talks, and she helps connect women in need of healing from abortion to bible studies or retreats that can help them.

But ultimately, she says, abortion will never change through political protest, because abortion is not fundamentally a political issue.

“Abortion is not a political issue. Abortion is a heart issue. And until we get to the heart, nothing’s going to change,” she said.

“Protest is how we create friction. Just the word protest… just the thought of a protest is angry people, angry people with knives and swords and forks out to fight. This is a fight against principalities. It is not against flesh and blood.”

Shawn Carney is the president and CEO of 40 Days for Life, a popular form of pro-life activism that holds prayer vigils outside of local abortion clinics throughout the United States. The 40-day long campaigns of “prayer, fasting, and peaceful activism” have the goal of “repentance, to seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion,” according to their mission statement.

It’s not a protest, it’s a prayer vigil, Carney told CNA.

“We take the approach of praying in front of the (clinics) because abortion is overwhelming. And it ends the life of a human being and it causes a woman to think she has no other option than to pay a physician to end the life of her child. And so in that great hopelessness, our Lord is the answer. And his joy is the answer, and his mercy is the answer,” Carney said.

The campaign has seen great success in turning the hearts of both abortion doctors and women considering abortions. Since its beginning in 2004, the organization knows of some 200 abortion facility workers who have had a change of heart and left their job, and over 15,000 women who have chosen life, during a 40 Days campaign.

It’s also often an entry point for people who have never participated in any kind of pro-life activism, Carney said.

“We’ve had 800,000 people participate in 40 Days for Life around the world in 50 different countries, and 30 percent of them said this is the first thing they ever did in the pro-life movement,” Carney said. “It has served as a great point of entry because it is peaceful and because it’s effective.”

But there is one word from Archbishop Martin’s comments that Carney does take issue with: caution. “I don’t agree with using the word caution with opposing abortion right now in Ireland,” he said.

“I think they need to do just the opposite…and I think that the Irish have been too timid and a little too cautious with their approach to abortion. Now they have it. And that happened to us here in the United States. Shamefully, we’re the example of this. We were cautious. We were timid. And now we have 61 million children that have been aborted.”

Instead, he said, the Irish should not lost hope, and should cling to God and to their lively Irish heritage, and use that in their advantage to continue to fight legalized abortion.

“The last thing the Irish should do is to throw their hands up in the air…I think they need to get out there. The Irish are a courageous people,” Carney said, adding that he is of Irish descent.

“The Irish aren’t cautious with anything, right? They’re the loudest and they’re the most fun and they like to sing and they have hot tempers. And they take their history and their country seriously,” he said.

“And this, more than any other time in their history, they need to do the same and they need to joyfully go out and witness the love and the hope and the mercy to those women who now think that Ireland is just a free for all to have an abortion.”

There are forms of activism that don’t belong in the pro-life movement, Carney added. Anything violent or with an intent to do harm “aren’t part of the pro-life movement,” he said. He’s seen people driven away from even peaceful forms of pro-life activism after bombings or murders of abortion doctors have taken place, he added.

“And so the archbishop doesn’t want that in their country. Who does?” he said.

“No bishop or no politician or no pro-life advocate in any other country is saying, ‘I want violence in my country to oppose abortion.’ No one’s ever said that, but they all should encourage the peaceful, public opposition to this because abortion is certainly a public issue.”

Even though abortion is a heavy issue, Carney said his message to pro-life Ireland is to hope.

“There’s practical things: there’s 40 Days for Life campaigns they need to do in Ireland. They need to have a March for Life. They need to get to work and we can help them do that,” he said.

“But the bigger picture is looking down, going to your knees in prayer and reflecting: ‘What is going to be my response? What am I going to tell my children and my grandchildren now that I, as an Irish person living in this country that I love, we have abortion now. And what’s going to be my response?’”

“And for that, we need to go to the Gospels.”

 

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Rome, Italy, Oct 4, 2017 / 04:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- It’s well-known that in ancient Rome hundreds of thousands of people would to pile into the stacked layers of stone seating in the Colosseum to watch gladiators fight to their death, cheering on as the warriors met a bloody and often drawn-out end.

However, while being a “gladiator” in modern Rome has mostly become a way pick up extra cash in photo-ops with tourists, there are some who argue that the gruesome nature of the ancient battles, in which people would essentially celebrate and take pleasure in the pain of others, hasn’t gone away, but has rather taken on a new, less obvious form in the digital world: pornography.

When it comes to internet pornography, Dr. Donald Hilton Jr. of the University of Texas Health Science Center said we as a society have to learn to ask the “uncomfortable questions about our culture, why we’re so easily voyeuristic to watch people being harmed.”

While pornography has always been a problem, the new widespread access offered through the digital world has led to a culture that enjoys “watching women being hurt on screen,” he told CNA.

Hilton recalled that in a tour of the Colosseum, his guide explained that throughout the centuries of its of operation, the structure “had up to several hundred thousand animals and gladiators dying in the colosseum with people watching them and enjoying watching their pain.”

Now “I think we have a neon colosseum, a colosseum of screens where far more, now, are watching people being harmed. And people are enjoying it,” he said, adding that in his opinion, “we’re no better than the ancient Romans in that.”

“In fact, in some way I think we’re worse, because at least they did it openly, but we hide behind our screens at night and do it, and tell ourselves it’s okay.”

Hilton spoke as part of a four-day conference on protecting children in a digitally connected and global society. Titled “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” the conference is being held in Rome Oct. 3-6 and is organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin opened the conference as a keynote speaker. Other participants in the congress include social scientists, civic leaders, and religious representatives. Discussion points include prevention of abuse, pornography, the responsibility of internet providers and the media, and ethical governance.

Several leading personalities participating argued that given the easy access children have to the internet, they are increasingly falling prey to an industry that, without the proper protections, can ultimately leave them vulnerable, becoming victims to a wide variety of abuses.

On day two of the conference, Hilton was part of a panel of experts exploring the dangers of internet pornography and its impact on children, specifically the link between pornography and violence, and the effects of porn use on the human brain, particularly among youth.

A celebrated neuroscientist and world-renown surgeon, Hilton examined the scientific changes in the human brain when viewing pornography.

Essentially, he said human beings have “two brains,” one being the cortex, which he called our “thinking brain,” and the other being the brain stem, referred to by Hilton as our “wanting brain.” So while the brain might tell us to do something because it feels good, the cortex will tell us to slow down and think about the consequences.

Between the two is the “reward center” of the brain, he said, explaining that while it is intended to help motivate us, the reward center can be “hijacked and diverted” from this purpose if we take in “powerful rewards indiscriminately.”

In this case, the reward center can “reset the pleasure thermostat of the brain,” and a “new normal” is established, which can quickly become addiction, Hilton said, explaining that the brain structure is impacted by learning, and that “addictive learning sculpts the brain in a very damaging way.”

Referring to a recent study done by medical personnel, he said addictions to food and sex have now been put on par with substance abuse, because the same changes are found in brain studies “and the behaviors are almost identical.”

Children and young adults are particularly at risk from this, he said, because for one, the frontal-lobe control center of the brain don’t fully mature until the person is in their mid-20s. However, most exposure to pornography happens at a young age, leaving children particularly vulnerable to changes in the brain structure.

He said children are also more at risk because the chemicals for processing rewards and addictions are more potent brains that are not yet mature, so “an immature breaking system is essentially paired with an accelerated reward-seeking drive.” He also cited problems with brains systems that identify observers with the “motivational state” of those performing in the program, which in pornography is often linked to violence.

In his comments to CNA, Hilton said porn access at a young age is particularly concerning because since the brain of a child or teenager is not yet developed, it makes a strong imprint and “sets their template” in way that essentially sculpts the brain to prefer what they watch over reality.

Quoting American author, feminist, and political adviser Naomi Wolf, he said “pornified” boys are increasingly led to a mentality that “real women are just bad porn.”

Hilton said that in order to help counter the online porn industry, the issue has to be addressed in a new way. Whereas in the past it has primarily been relegated to the moral realm, he said the issue is wider, and that it’s important to bring the issue up in public settings “without mentioning religion.”

“Can we talk about exploitation not only of youth who are viewing pornography, but of young female performers that are being used up so quickly and exploited by a very powerful industry? Can we leave the religion out of it and talk about it from a public health perspective?” he said.

“This is a vast industry, the internet is a vast industry,” he said, adding that if any other industry had the same amount of disease, emotional health issues, and drug abuse involved, “they would cry out and there would be outrage.

However, “with porn, as long as they take their clothes off and put a camera there, you can do anything you want,” he said, comparing porn to “filmed prostitution.”

“Can we really say that porn is good and that people should view it if the people that make it are being harmed? Is it an ethical product then?” he asked, and noted that according to one study paper, 88 percent of the scenes in the 250 most popular porn movies show aggression toward women.

So when looking at the concrete numbers, “if it’s not ethical to produce it, is it ethical to watch it? What is the price someone is paying to film that?”

Also speaking at the conference was Dr. Mary Anne Layden, a psychotherapist and Director of Education for the University of Pennsylvania, who addressed the link between violence and pornography.

In her speech, she presented various research studies linking the use of pornography to increased aggression toward women. In youth particularly, various studies have proved that exposure to porn at a young age increases the likelihood youth will be promiscuous at an earlier age, and are more prone to partner abuse as they get older.

Porn use also and the misconceived belief that if access is so common, it isn’t harmful, and that women who are treated violently in porn films actually like it, she said.

In comments to CNA after her speech, Layden said pornography is especially dangerous for children because “everything children see is educational,” and since porn is typically the only imagery kids have when it comes to sex, they learn about it from “this toxic form.”

“Now their brains are absorbing this and they are getting these messages, and then they very quickly start to act on that,” she said, explaining that they “will likely start having sex earlier, they will likely think all relationships are sexual, they’ll start to try and get their partner to try and act out things they’ve seen in pornography.”

Pornography also leads to misconceptions about the human body and what constitutes abuse, she said, explaining that many young adults have come into her clinic complaining that their bodies “don’t work” because things don’t happen like they do in movies.

While numerous research studies have proven that performers in pornography films don’t enjoy what they do on-set, many people still believe the opposite, Layden said, because they don’t see the suffering the performers endure.

What most people don’t know, she said is that “on those porn sets there is a doctor, on every porn set,” and “he will give you any drug you can name – he will give you Percocet, he will give you Xanex, he will give you heroine, he will give you anything to get you to go through that scene, take that torture and smile while they’re doing it.”

She said that when children first come into contact with pornography their initial reaction is that “there’s something scary” about it, and even something violent, but that very quickly they start to learn from what they see that “violence is a sex act,” and this notion becomes more normal as they get older.

In terms of protecting children from harmful images, Layden stressed the importance of educating parents on the risks and finding the right software to block problematic content from popping up.

Unfortunately, she said around only 20 percent of parents have actually put protective software on their children’s devices and activated it.

But if parents are looking for a good company, she said “Covenant Eyes” has programs that work very effectively through blocks and accountability software that will send a list of their child’s search history to them at the end of the week.

While it might not be possible bring the porn access to zero, it is possible to reduce it, Layden said.

“The fact that we can’t reduce it to zero doesn’t make us stop anything else,” she said, naming youth smokers and cancer patients as examples. And concrete ways to reduce exposure is to put filters on computers in libraries and at schools, as well as personal devices children own, and to not let them put their computers in their bedrooms.

She also stressed the need to get legislators and governments involved, explaining that pornography sites have finally been legally required to check the age of someone trying to access their web-pages.

“That won’t stop the damage that’s done to adult men,” she said, explaining that pornography first of all does damage to those who use it, “but it will stop with the most vulnerable, which is the children.”

Perpetrators of pornography must also be held accountable, Layden said, because the industry ultimately makes money by “hurting children.”

“This is an absolute scandal, these are child abuse perpetrators, these pornographic websites,” she said, explaining that they ought to be treated as perpetrators and put in jail, because “if you actually enforce law against obscenity, you can actually take all of their profits.”

Doing this would also “send the message to culture that if we’re putting them in jail, this must be a bad thing,” she said. “The permission-giving beliefs that say everyone is doing it, it must be fine, is just one of the biggest damages, and we can start the sending the message that it’s not okay.”

“We’ve got to stop saying ‘boys will be boys,’” and instead begin educating families more effectively on what healthy sexuality entails, she said, because pornography “hurts everyone involved; men, women, children, performers…it hurts everybody that comes close to it.”

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