Month: June 2020

Denver Newsroom, Jun 2, 2020 / 12:42 am (CNA).- Bishop Thomas Zinkula of Davenport, Iowa has written a letter to the local homeland security chief asking for the release of three detained immigrants from Guatemala.

The bishop says that the three men are non-violent offenders who pose little risk to the community.

“The present COVID-19 pandemic places immigrants being detained in a very vulnerable situation,” he says in the letter, addressed to Michael Hindman, Homeland Security Chief of Cedar Rapids.

Zinkula told CNA that he read about the situation of the three men and their families in the local press and in emails from the Iowa City Catholic Worker House.

Jose Cerillo and his two brothers-in-law, Jacinto Cuyuch-Brito and Juan Daniel Cuyuch-Brito, were arrested March 4 in a Cedar Rapids immigration raid, according to local media. They were charged with possessing false work documents or entering the country illegally.

Jose’s wife, Juana, spoke at a May 6 press conference in Cedar Rapids. She said that law enforcement officers knocked on the door of their apartment shortly before 7 a.m. on March 4. The officers broke down the door, and searched their clothes and phone contacts, she said, according to The Catholic Messenger.

Juana said she was questioned for more than two hours. At the May 6 press conference, said she was worried about her husband, who is being held in Linn County Jail, which has seen at least two confirmed cases of the coronavirus.

Jose has a serious heart condition, his wife said, making him more likely to experience serious or fatal complications from COVID-19.

“We’re just here to work. We come here because we have to, out of need,” Juana said, according to the Des Moines Register. “If one of us gets it and we ended up dying, we won’t get to see each other again.”

Jacinto Cuyuch-Brito’s wife, Rosa, is also struggling with her husband’s absence. She and her baby boy – who was just two months old at the time of the arrest – have moved into the local Catholic Worker House, because they cannot afford to pay rent with her husband detained.

Bishop Zinkula said he was struck by Rosa’s story and wanted to see if there was a way that he could help. While writing a letter is a simple action, he said he thought “maybe given my role, I could give it a little more attention.”

The letter argues in favor of allowing the men to return home to their families while the await their court proceedings.

“Providing less restrictive sanctions will reduce the risk of exposure to the coronavirus for these three nonviolent individuals, those who are in jail for legitimate public safety reasons, and jail staff continuing their frontline essential public safety work,” the bishop writes.

Zinkula said his proposal would help protect the vulnerable and honor family unity without compromising public safety.

“These are basic principles of [Catholic] Social Teaching – the dignity of each and every human life,” Zinkula told CNA. “We’re all children of God, and everyone should be treated with respect. This is just an application of that principle. Here’s this real-life situation, where it doesn’t seem like that’s happening.”

He noted a CDC analysis in April which found that among correctional and detention facilities reporting statistics, 86% of jurisdictions had inmates testing positive for coronavirus. Because social distancing is difficult in prison environments, jails throughout the country have become hotspots for the virus.

Zinkula has not received a response to his letter, which was sent May 7, but is still hopeful that the three men will be released from detention.

The bishop encouraged the faithful to “look at the situation through a Catholic lens rather than a political lens. Remember, we’re Catholic before we’re members of a particular party.”

“Immigrants are fellow human beings, brothers and sisters in Christ and they need to be treated with dignity and respect,” he said. “They are here, and no matter how they got here, they are fellow human beings and so we need to treat them like they are.”
 

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Denver Newsroom, Jun 1, 2020 / 06:00 pm (CNA).-  

The Center for American Progress, a longtime critic of religious freedom protections, has claimed churches seeking equal treatment under coronavirus public health rules have been “distorting… […]

Washington D.C., Jun 1, 2020 / 05:45 pm (CNA).- During a speech from the Rose Garden on June 1, President Donald Trump pledged to deploy the U.S. military if state governors do not move to activate their National Guards to stop violent protests.

The president then walked across a square that moments before had been filled with protestors forcibly removed by police units, and visited a historic Episcopalian church that had been on fire the night before.

“I am mobilizing all federal resources–civilian and military–to stop the rioting and looting. To end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of all law-abiding citizens,” said Trump during his speech.

The president said that it was his “first and highest duty as president” to protect the country and the American people, and added that all Americans were “rightly sickened and revolted by the brutal death of George Floyd.”

Floyd, 46, died after a Minneapolis police officer held him on the ground during an arrest, his knee on Floyd’s neck, even after the man said he could not breathe. The officer has been charged with murder. Throughout the country, protests and riots have been ongoing for the past week in response to Floyd’s death. Some of the protests have turned violent.

U.S. bishops have largely expressed support for peaceful protestors, and have condemned racism, police brutality, and the violent riots tha have gripped cities across the country.

“The killing of George Floyd was senseless and brutal, a sin that cries out to heaven for justice. How is it possible that in America, a black man’s life can be taken from him while calls for help are not answered, and his killing is recorded as it happens?” U.S. bishops conference president Archbishop Jose Gomez said in May 31 statement.

“We should all understand that the protests we are seeing in our cities reflect the justified frustration and anger of millions of our brothers and sisters who even today experience humiliation, indignity, and unequal opportunity only because of their race or the color of their skin. It should not be this way in America. Racism has been tolerated for far too long in our way of life,” Gomez added.

“It is true what Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, that riots are the language of the unheard. We should be doing a lot of listening right now. This time, we should not fail to hear what people are saying through their pain. We need to finally root out the racial injustice that still infects too many areas of American society.”

“But the violence of recent nights is self-destructive and self-defeating. Nothing is gained by violence and so much is lost. Let us keep our eyes on the prize of true and lasting change,” the archbishop added.

In his June 1 speech, Trump stated that “justice will be served” and that Floyd “will not have died in vain.”

The president referred to himself as “your president of law and order,” and “an ally of all peaceful protestors.”

“But in recent days, our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others,” he said.

Earlier on Monday, Trump spoke to the governors of states, and he stated that he believed many of them had failed on a statewide level to protect their citizens. He said he ordered them to “dominate the streets” with the National Guard, and to have an “overwhelming” law enforcement presence to prevent further violence.

”We are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country. We will end it now,” said Trump.

Appearing to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, the president said that if governors refused to activate their National Guard units, he would “deploy the US military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked was during the Los Angeles riots in 1992.

The president faced criticism, and a conflict with Twitter, last week for a May 29 tweet that again suggested the possibility of military action, and said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Trump later said his tweet was not intended as a threat against protestors or rioters.

On Monday, Trump cited various acts of violence and vandalism that have occurred during the protests and riots, including the desecration of war memorials, beatings of people, the shooting death of a law enforcement officer in California, and the attempted arson of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. A fire was set in the basement of the church, which has been attended by every U.S. president.

Some protestors across the country have said that while violence and looting is unacceptable, some peaceful protests have turned violent only when police have fired tear gas or non-lethal projectiles at demonstrators. Trump’s speech did not addess that charge.

“These are not acts of peaceful protests. These are acts of domestic terror,” Trump said.

“America needs creation not destruction; cooperation not contempt; security, not anarchy. Healing, not hatred. Justice, not chaos. This is our mission, and we will succeed 100%,” said Trump. “We will succeed. Our country always wins.”

Following the speech, the president walked from the Rose Garden to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo with members of his cabinet. The president did not enter the church, but returned to the White House after the photograph.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 1, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Catholic churches and cathedrals in several cities were among the buildings damaged in the protests and riots that occurred nationwide over the past week.

Church buildings in California, Minnes… […]

CNA Staff, Jun 1, 2020 / 04:11 pm (CNA).- Blessings of homosexual couples in the Catholic Church would only obscure knowledge of what is important and good about persons with same-sex attraction, according to the director of Courage International.

“We need to have hope that some, perhaps many, of the people who propose things like these liturgical blessings for same-sex couples are motivated by good intentions. They do not want anyone to feel excluded by the Church, and so they look for ways to honor and recognize members of the parish in public ceremonies,” Fr. Philip Bochanski told CNA May 26.

Courage International provides pastoral support, prayer support, and fellowship for people with same-sex attraction who want to live chaste lives according to Catholic teaching.

“The Benediction of Same-Sex Partnerships” is a recently published, German language book which considers how homosexual couples might receive a formal, liturgical blessing of their union in the Church.

According to the book’s author, it was written in response to a request from the liturgical committee of the Austrian bishops’ conference.

Fr. Bochanski explained that pressing for blessings of same-sex couples “restricts rather than expands our understanding of what is good and important about our brothers and sisters.”

“To suggest that without a recognized sexual relationship (marriage or something like it), we are expecting people to live lonely, loveless lives, overlooks the fact that there are many kinds of love — charity, affection, friendship, to name a few — that are real, vital loves in their own right and not consolation prizes for people who aren’t married. We appreciate love less, not more, by insisting on same-sex unions.”

The Church, he said, should “speak the truth in love to them as we call them to pursue chaste friendship in its fullness rather than a sexual relationship that is missing essential elements of its meaning and purpose. It is not always an easy discussion to have, but it is an invitation to deep, authentic love, rather than an imposition that restricts someone’s freedom or fulfillment.”

Fr. Ewald Volgger, the principal author of the German language book, has said that through the blessing the Church would express “the obligation of fidelity and the exclusiveness of the relationship.”

Fr. Bochanski noted that “life-long fidelity and total exclusivity are two of the essential characteristics of conjugal union — that is, the qualities that make marriage what it is,” along with complementarity and openness to procreativity.
If each of these four characteristics are present, “you have an intimate relationship according to God’s plan,” he said. “If one or more of them is missing, then the relationship is outside of God’s plan — it is immoral.”

“The life-long fidelity and total exclusivity that are essential elements of marriage” are directed to erotic love, he said, and they thus tend “toward sexual union.”

“To say that people of the same sex ought to…pursue a permanent, exclusive relationship based on eros and not have a sexual union is unrealistic. But to tell them that in their pursuit of a permanent, exclusive relationship they can and should have a sexual union that by its nature excludes complementarity and procreativity is immoral.”

He added that “we find our fulfillment by following God’s plan for our lives. The clear teaching of the Church is that sexual intimacy between people of the same sex is always immoral. To tell our brothers and sisters who are attracted to the same sex that the way to find happiness and fulfillment, in this world and in eternal life, is to pursue a relationship that is contrary to God’s plan is a dangerous lie.”

Rather than pushing for blessings of homosexual couples, Catholics should begin outreach with accompaniment and listening, Fr. Bochanski stated.

“Our pastoral approach to people in same-sex unions who are seeking deeper participation in the life of the Church ought to start with a real willingness to ask for and listen to their stories.  Pope Francis says that ‘we ought to accompany them starting from their situation,’ and that when we welcome people with mercy and a willingness to take them where they are, ‘the Holy Spirit inspires [us] to say the right thing.’”

He said that “as we get to know the people who are coming to us, we begin to understand what they’ve been through, what they’re looking for, and whether they’re finding it.” Then a conversation about “what Christ and his Church desire for each member of the Body of Christ” can be had.

“We should invite people to talk frankly about what they understand of the Church’s moral teaching, whether they are living it, and what makes it easy or difficult for them to do so,” he said. “In this way we can enter a long-term dialogue in which we can lead them, step by step, to understand the teaching more clearly, and embrace it more fully.”

Celibates have a particular role in this, the Courage director said: “We ought to testify by our words and our lives the joy that we find in sacrificing one type of relationship — the sexually intimate relationship of marriage — and diving deep into loving relationships with friends, family and parishioners….joyful, faithful celibates can give a powerful witness and encouragement to those who are being called to embrace chastity in the form of an intentional single life.”

Fr. Bochanski also noted that the Church’s teaching on sexual morality is based on both scripture and the nature of the human person. It is found in the opening chapters of Genesis, and is reiterated by both Christ and St. Paul, and is written “not only in the human heart, but on the human body: we can look at how men and women’s bodies are different and related, and understand a great deal about God’s plan for intimate sexual union.”

“Our understanding and evaluation of same-sex intimate relationships is simply an application of these broad principles to a particular question, and it is in harmony with the teachings on sexuality and chastity that apply to every person and to every relationship,” he reflected.

“We can and should always be looking for ways to make these teachings understandable, to speak them clearly in ways that modern people can…grasp the beautiful realities that the doctrine expresses,” Fr. Bochanski advised. “We find new ways to present the age-old teachings because of where they come from. The Word of God and the nature of the human person are unchanging and unchangeable, and so the truths they teach us simply cannot change.”

He called it “extremely distressing” that some German prelates “speak as if the Church’s teaching can and ought to change. On the contrary, teaching that is part of the revealed Word of God and is consistently taught by the magisterium of the Church is held to be infallible and must be accepted with the assent of faith. This is particularly the obligation of priests, bishops and cardinals, who take an Oath of Fidelity at their ordinations in which they swear to hold these teachings firmly, teach them clearly, and shun anything contrary to them.”

The Courage director concluded, quoting from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons: “Departure from the Church’s teaching, or silence about it, in an effort to provide pastoral care is neither caring nor pastoral. Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral. The neglect of the Church’s position prevents homosexual men and women from receiving the care they need and deserve.”

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