Boston archdiocese pushes back after Trump says Boston bomber ‘deserves death’

CNA Staff, May 29, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- After the mayor of Washington, D.C., lifted a stay-at-home order on Wednesday, public Masses in the Archdiocese of Washington are expected to resume with a limit of 10 people.

Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C. on Wednesday lifted the city’s stay-at-home order and allowed some businesses and public spaces to begin reopening by Friday.

Bowser still limited public gatherings, indoor and outdoor, to no more than 10 people. The mayor’s office confirmed to CNA on Wednesday that the 10-person limit applied to religious gatherings.

The Archdiocese of Washington said on its website that, starting May 25, all parishes could resume public Masses in areas where local governments had lifted stay-home restrictions; other parishes still subject to a local stay-home order would not offer public Masses until the order would be lifted.

As the archdiocese spans not only D.C. but also several adjacent Maryland counties, some Maryland parishes have already begun offering public Masses. The state began lifting stay-at-home restrictions in mid-May, but two counties bordering the city kept the original restrictions in place.

According to the archdiocesan newspaper Catholic Standard knowledged that parish reopenings remained limited as “the District of Columbia and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties are maintaining limits on the sizes of public gatherings to 10 people.”

On May 15, the archdiocese had released guidance for parishes on reopening, saying it “will continue to reflect the various limitations that those jurisdictions impose on public assemblies.”

The archdiocese has said that a team “has been planning for liturgical celebrations in the future,” but did not respond to requests for comment on a likely timetable for any further action.

The Washington transition out of a stay-at-home order allows for outdoor seating at restaurants, non-essential retail businesses to offer curbside service, barber shops and nail salons to serve customers by appointment only, and certain parks and public spaces to open.

The archdiocese is home to 139 parishes and mission parishes, and 655,000 Catholics. It is also home to major Catholic pilgrimage sites, including the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America. 

Early in the pandemic, a friar at the Franciscan Monastery in the city’s northeast succumbed to the new coronavirus and was the city’s first reported COVID-19 death.

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is not a diocesan church, despite being located within the boundaries of the archdiocese. On March 12, the basilica announced it was continuing public Masses just hours before D.C. Archbishop Wilton Gregory curtailed public Masses in the archdiocese. 

On the next day, March 13, a spokeswoman for the basilica confirmed to CNA that public Masses would still continue at the shrine notwithstanding Archbishop Gregory’s announcement; later on March 13, the basilica said it would suspend public Masses at the instruction of the archdiocese.

On Friday, a spokesperson for the Basilica said the shrine “remains closed to the public.”

“Though the stay at home order was lifted, the state of emergency remains in effect limiting gatherings to 10 people or fewer,” Jacquelyn Hayes, director of communications for the shrine told CNA.

“On this account, we unfortunately are still unable to open to the public.”

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Denver Newsroom, Sep 29, 2020 / 08:50 pm (CNA).-  

Days before Judge Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to the Supreme Court, the website of the People of Praise was hacked, CNA has learned. The hack breached the membership database of the charismatic community, in which Barrett and her family are reportedly members.

“On September 23, 2020, our security staff identified an incident via our website involving unauthorized access to contact information in our membership directory,” Sean Connolly, a spokesman for the group, said Tuesday night in response to questions from CNA about the hack.

“No further details, such as parties that may have initiated this incursion, are known, and we have provided our members with resources should they notice suspicious activity,” Connolly added.

Barrett was nominated to the Supreme Court Sept. 26.

By Sept. 23, the federal judge had emerged as a front-runner for the Supreme Court seat that was vacated when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Sept. 18.

Amid speculation regarding Barrett’s possible appointment, numerous media reports focused on the People of Praise, the Indiana-based ecumenical charismatic community to which Barrett reportedly belongs.

The group was characterized by some pundits as a cult, falsely reported to be the inspiration for a dystopian novel, and erroneously reported to require members to adhere to a secret agreement, which is in fact posted on its website.

People of Praise was also criticized by some pundits because it does not disclose its membership, which defenders say is a common policy among religious organizations.

In that context, sources told CNA that the group’s membership database was hacked, which Connolly confirmed Tuesday night.

While the People of Praise declined to speculate about who might have been responsible for the hack, a source with knowledge of the situation told CNA that some “community members were contacted by national media outlets within 36 hours of the [database] incursion,” which the source called an “alarming coincidence.”

Connolly told CNA that “steps were immediately taken to address the incident, including notifying appropriate federal law enforcement and our members.”

“We take the security and privacy of all members of our community seriously,” he emphasized.

People of Praise was founded in 1971 as part of the era’s “great emergence of lay ministries and lay movements in the Catholic Church,” Bishop Peter Smith, who belongs to an affiliated association of Catholic priests, told CNA in 2018.

The group began with 29 members who formed a “covenant”- an agreement, not an oath, to follow common principles, to give five percent of annual income to the group, and to meet regularly for spiritual, social, and service projects.

Covenant communities- Protestant and Catholic- emerged across the country in the 1970s, as a part of the Charismatic Renewal movement in American Christianity.

While most People of Praise members are Catholic, the group is officially ecumenical; people from a variety of Christian denominations can join. Members of the group are free to attend the church of their choosing, including different Catholic parishes, Smith explained.

“We’re a lay movement in the Church,” Smith told CNA. “There are plenty of these. We continue to try and live out life and our calling as Catholics, as baptized Christians, in this particular way, as other people do in other callings or ways that God may lead them into the Church.”

Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing and a Senate vote on her nomination to the Supreme Court are expected to take place later this month, shortly before the Nov. 3 presidential election.

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 30, 2020 / 02:08 pm (CNA).-  

The head of the Vatican’s communications office told Catholic journalists on Tuesday that Catholic media should focus on promoting unity within the Church, especially amid the global coronavirus … […]