Sister, soldier, surgeon, speaker: Catholic sister to address Republican convention

August 24, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

CNA Staff, Aug 24, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- A surgeon, retired army officer, missionary, and Catholic religious sister is among the featured speakers at this week’s Republican National Convention. The convention, which takes place over four days this week, will officially nominate President Donald Trump for reelection.

Sr. Deirdre “Dede” Byrne, POSC, was announced as a speaker by the Trump campaign on Sunday, and she has one of the most unique resumes of any speaker to address the convention. A retired colonel in the U.S. Army and a member of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Byrne has served overseas as a soldier and a missionary.

Raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., as one of seven children, Byrne graduated from Virginia Tech before starting medical school at Georgetown. While there, she entered the Army as a way to cover her tuition and ended up serving for 29 years as both a doctor and a surgeon.

Following medical school, she worked from 1982 until 1985 in the field of family medicine and was a full-time Army officer from 1982 until 1989. After that, she went on to serve as a missionary from 1989 until 1990, while remaining in the Army reserve, and she completed a second residency in general surgery in 1997 – the same year in which she met Mother Teresa. Byrne was tasked to be on standby for any medical needs that might occur during the future saint’s visit to Washington.

During her time in the military, she discerned a religious vocation, a call she has said she felt she always had, and was encouraged by a priest to find a religious order that would not require her to give up her work in the medical field.

Her discernment led Byrne to the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, an Italian pontifical institute founded in the late 19th century with the primary apostolates of teaching and medical care, and present in Washington since 1954.

Byrne entered formation with the Little Workers in 2002, and professed her first vows in 2004. While in formation, she was still a member of the Army Reserve, and was deployed three times. After a deployment to Afghanistan in 2008, her order requested that she retire from the military, which she did in 2009, before professing her final vows in 2011.

Bryne is scheduled to speak on day three of the Republican convention and Trump has praised her work in the military and medical fields in the past. In his July 4, 2019, address called the “Salute to America,” the president featured a reference to Byrne.

“From our earliest days, Americans of faith have uplifted our nation. This evening we’re joined by Sister Deirdre Byrne. Sister Byrne is a retired Army surgeon who served for nearly 30 years,” said Trump.

“On September 11, 2001, the sister raced to Ground Zero, through smoke and debris, she administered first aid and comfort to all. Today Sister Byrne runs a medical clinic serving the poor in our nation’s capital. Sister, thank you for your lifetime of service. Thank you.”

According to a profile from the GIVEN Institute, she is presently the superior of the Washington house of the Little Workers, and works at a medical clinic.

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Catholic thinker Michael Novak remembered with gratitude

February 17, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Feb 17, 2017 / 02:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The theologian, philosopher and Catholic commentator Michael Novak died Friday, drawing remembrances for his insights and influence on religion in public life.

“We are immensely grateful that he could end his academic life as he began it, as a member of our community,” Catholic University of America president John Garvey said, calling Novak a man of “great intellectual honesty.”

“Unlike some scholars, Michael Novak made it a point to reflect on new and different topics, always with a fresh and dynamic perspective,” Garvey said.

Novak died Feb. 17 at the age of 83.

He was a student at Catholic University of America in 1958 and 1959. In 2016 he was named a visiting fellow at the university’s The Arthur and Carlyse Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship. He taught special topics in management and lectured on human ecology.

The center’s director, Andreas Widmer, stressed Novak’s pioneering role in considering the intersection of faith and economics. He said he and his colleagues were touched by Novak’s “kindness and humility,” his generosity with his time, and his encouragement for others.

“You would never have known from working with him that this was a man who had counseled popes and changed the course of history,” Widmer said.

St. John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan, and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher considered Novak a friend, Catholic University of America said.

Novak was the author of numerous books, most prominently the 1982 work The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. He contended that democratic capitalism is “neither the Kingdom of God nor without sin,” but better than all other known systems of political economy.

“Such hope as we have for alleviating poverty and for removing oppressive tyranny — perhaps our last, best hope — lies in this much despised system,” he said.

The book was published around the world and had a particular impact among anti-communist dissidents in Eastern Europe. The book was illegally distributed in Poland by the Solidarity movement, the Washington Post reports.

His other books include Tell Me Why: A Father Answers His Daughter’s Questions About God, a 1998 work he co-authored with his daughter Jana.

Novak wrote on human rights, economic systems, the history of labor unions, U.S. ethnic history, and the role of churches in the modern world.

He was born to a Slovak-American family in Johnstown, Pa. on Sept. 9, 1933. His studies for the priesthood took him to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and he was ordained for the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1960. Within months of his ordination, he left the priesthood and was later laicized.

He received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Stonehill College, a Bachelor of Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, and a master’s degree in history and the philosophy of religion from Harvard.

Novak worked as a journalist in the early 1960s, writing for the National Catholic Reporter and Commonweal before working for Time Magazine in Rome during the Second Vatican Council. He would go on to serve as an editor at Commonweal and Christian Century magazines, religion editor for National Review, a contributing editor for First Things magazine and editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine.

According to Novak’s website, his political work included the 1968 campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy and speechwriting for Democratic vice presidential nominee Sargent Shriver during Sen. George McGovern’s unsuccessful 1972 presidential campaign. He became an opponent of the Vietnam War after initially supporting intervention.

He would turn away from left-wing politics and the Democratic Party to join the Republican-trending neoconservative school of thought. Under President Ronald Reagan, he was named as U.S. Ambassador to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations and served on the Board of International Broadcasting that oversaw Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Liberty.

He served in multiple academic positions, teaching at Harvard, Stanford, Notre Dame, and Ave Maria University. In the early 1970s, he helped design a new humanities program for the Rockefeller Foundation of New York.

He joined the American Enterprise Institute think tank in 1978, where he worked as a scholar until his retirement in 2010.

Among Novak’s many achievements were his work to launch many academic institutes and seminars, including the Tertio Millennio Seminar that aimed to bring together North American and Eastern European students to discuss Catholic social teaching.

George Weigel, one of Novak’s collaborators, wrote in the National Review that “both Church and nation have lost one of their most imaginative and accomplished sons.”

Weigel remembered Novak “first and foremost” as a teacher, who “offered a model of patient counseling and courteous listening that our students will long remember.”

Novak’s honors include the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

Ahead of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Novak went to the Vatican to argue that the war would be justified on the grounds of self-defense against Iraq’s then-leader Saddam Hussein. His remarks tried to counter some high-level Vatican critics of a war on Iraq.

Though Novak was careful not to criticize him personally, opponents of the war included St. John Paul II.

At the time, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Jim Nicholson had brought Novak to Rome for an embassy-sponsored lecture series, but Nicholson stressed that Novak did not represent the U.S. government or its embassies.

Novak is survived by three children and four grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife Karen Laub-Novak.

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