Cardinal laments lack of priestly vocations in Florentine archdiocese

New York City, N.Y., Nov 6, 2017 / 04:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- One wealthy activist is continuing to fund coordinated efforts to limit religious freedom and to foster dissent on abortion and LGBT issues within American Christianity and other religious groups.
 
The New York-based Arcus Foundation was founded by billionaire heir Jon Stryker in 2000. Arcus is a partner of the U.S. State Department’s Global Equality Fund, which engages in LGBT advocacy around the world. One of its board members is Darren Walker, the president of the deeply influential Ford Foundation, which gives out about $500 million in grants each year.
 
Since CNA’s February 2015 report on a multi-million dollar campaign against religious freedom protections, the Arcus Foundation has given an additional $2.8 million in grants earmarked for projects aimed at restricting legal protections for religious freedom, especially religious and conscience exemptions in state and federal law.  

Among its recent donations is an ACLU grant designed to “beat back” laws protecting freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.

In fact, a CNA examination of grant listings and other documents has shown that the Arcus Foundation has funded a variety of coordinated projects, focused on limiting religious freedom, redefining religious liberty, and perhaps even shaping religious doctrine itself.

Redefining Religious Liberty

On June 30, 2016, the Arcus Foundation said that “countering religious exemptions to anti-discrimination law in the United States is the aim of grants to the American Civil Liberties Union, Catholics for Choice, and the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia University, all of which are working to reframe religious liberty in inclusive terms, whether through the courts, religious bodies, or policy-making bodies.”

Since 2016, $450,000 in Arcus grants went to the Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s last presidential campaign manager.

The grants funded projects like promoting religious liberty “as a core progressive American value that includes LGBT equality and women’s reproductive health and rights.” The Center for American Progress sponsors a self-described “Religious Exemptions Public Literacy Project” that will oppose “religious exemptions policies that have a negative impact on women, LGBT, and POC (person of color) communities.”

Funding Dissent

Since June 2016, the Arcus Foundation appears to be focusing on controversies at Catholic institutions and schools where staff who publicly support or contract a “gay marriage” have been fired for contradicting Catholic doctrine. Some Catholic institutions have faced lawsuits over such employment decisions and invoke religious freedom protections as a defense.

In an apparent complement to its work on religious freedom limits, the foundation has also been funding some self-described Catholic groups that reject Church teaching on marriage and sexual morality, among them Dignity USA, the Equally Blessed Coalition, New Ways Ministry, and Catholics for Choice.

The Arcus Foundation outlines its strategy in a section on its website. It aims to mobilize “moderate and progressive faith leaders” and to leverage “strategic opportunities in historically resistant faith communities,” including Roman Catholic churches. It said that some resistant communities “still afford opportunities for making limited but significant progress.”
 
“In keeping with the focus on religious exemptions, Dignity USA and the Equally Blessed Coalition are working to combat the firing of LGBT staff and allies, who support marriage equality, at Catholic Institutions,” the foundation’s June 2016 announcement continues.

The Arcus Foundation gave a $250,000, two-year grant to Dignity USA to fund the Equally Blessed Coalition, in order to “ support and give voice to the growing majority of Roman Catholics who support full acceptance and equality for LGBT people.”

A 2017 grant gave $35,000 to New Ways Ministry to help develop the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics and its work “to connect the work of pro-LGBT Catholic organizations in every region of the world.” The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics had engaged in advocacy related to the Church’s Synod on the Family.

In February 2010 Cardinal Francis George, then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, released a statement on New Ways Ministry, which is also part of the Equally Blessed Coalition. Cardinal George rejected the claim that the group presents an authentic interpretation of Catholic teaching and Catholic practice. “Their claim to be Catholic only confuses the faithful regarding the authentic teaching and ministry of the Church with respect to persons with a homosexual inclination,” he said.

In October 2016 New Ways Ministries gave its Bridge Building Award to Father James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large of the Society of Jesus’ America Magazine. The priest’s lecture at the award ceremony was the basis for his book “Building a Bridge,” on Catholic-LGBT relations

In 2016, the Arcus Foundation gave a one-year grant of $125,000 to Catholics for Choice, to fund a coalition of religious leaders to oppose “discriminatory religious exemptions,” as well as a different coalition to oppose “religious intolerance” in southern and eastern Africa.

The U.S. bishops have frequently criticized Catholics for Choice, saying it is not affiliated with the Catholic Church. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, speaking as the bishops’ pro-life chairman in September 2016, charged that it is “funded by powerful private foundations to promote abortion as a method of population control.”

Beyond Catholics

Arcus Foundation grantees have been linked to doctrinal changes within mainline Protestantism as well, including groups that helped split the Anglican Communion. In 2011 and 2012, the Arcus Foundation provided financial support to raise the national profile of Center for American Progress’ expert V. Gene Robinson, whose controversial election as the Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 helped split the Episcopal Church and the global Anglican Communion.

Non-Christian religions are also a focus.

A June 2015 grant of $100,000 to Muslims for Progressive Values suggests religious exemptions sought by some Muslims are also unacceptable to the foundation. The grant listing voiced hope that the group’s advocacy at the United Nations would assist “in asserting that ‘religious exemptions,’ such as reservations on the basis of Sharia law, are unacceptable on matters of human rights.”

CNA took a screenshot of the Arcus Foundation’s grant listing to Muslims for Progressive Values  in mid-2016.  Since that time, the grant listing on the foundation website appears to have been changed to read simply “general operating support,” rather than directly listing advocacy against religious exemptions.  The grant is one of several six-figure Arcus grants to the group, including one given to cultivate LGBT activists among imams and other Muslims

Kevin Jennings, a co-chair of Muslims for Progressive Values, is a former Arcus executive director and Obama Administration official. Reza Aslan, the controversial Iranian-American author of the book “Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” is a consultant for the group, according to its website.

Fighting Religious Exemptions

In 2016, the Arcus Foundation gave the ACLU a $150,000 grant to implement “a national coordinated media and public-education campaign to beat back religious exemptions at federal and state levels.”

This year, the foundation gave a $300,000 grant to the Proteus Fund’s Rights, Faith and Democracy Collaborative. The collaborative brings together wealthy activists who aim to restrict legal protections for religious freedom, in order to advance its vision of reproductive health and LGBT causes. According to CNA’s examination of grant listings and tax forms, the collaborative’s donors and others have spent at least $8.5 million in projects to advance a similar, narrow vision of religious liberty.

The Proteus Fund’s Civil Marriage Collaborative, which worked to recognize same-sex unions as marriages, closed in 2015 after spending more than $153 million over 11 years on various U.S. projects.

The Arcus Fund has given grants totaling $300,000 to Faith in Public Life: one to rally faith leaders to advocate “fair and balanced” religious exemptions, especially in the states Georgia, Florida and North Carolina; and the other for “pro-LGBT public education campaigns” and to organize “moderate clergy to inform state and national policymakers about the negative impact of using religion to deny the civil rights of LGBT people.”

A $125,000 grant from the Arcus Foundation to Columbia University’s gender and sexuality law center backs the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project “to promote progressive and nondiscriminatory views on religious exemptions.” This builds on Arcus’ previous support for the project, whose co-sponsors have included the deeply influential Ford Foundation.

Another $200,000 has gone to the ACLU, including support for its “religious refusals” communications hub and for ongoing research to gauge what it considers to be “the harm of anti-LGBT religious refusals.”

Arcus has also given $200,000 in grants to the D.C.-based Civitas Public Affairs group’s Religious Liberty and Equality Project aim “to advance equality protections and respect for personal autonomy, while dissolving public support for religious carve-outs that go beyond what is already protected in the First Amendment”;  and to “reframe the current debates over religious exemptions by bringing together some of the most experienced thinkers and advocates within the reproductive justice and LGBT movements.” Another $100,000 2016 grant to NEO Philanthropy appears linked to this project, “to counter religious exemptions.”

The Arcus Foundation backs several news media projects, including National Public Radio, The Atlantic LGBT summit in 2015, and a series on LGBT issues for the public radio show Faith Matters. Many of those grants did not list religious freedom specifically, but the foundation did give $200,000 for the University of Southern California-based news site Religious Dispatches’ reporting on religious liberty and LGBTQ issues.

About $450,000 spread across four grants went to the Public Religion Research Institute to create “comprehensive state maps” of public attitudes on religious exemptions and non-discrimination policies. Other funding aims to track public opinion on “religious refusal legislation,” among other topics; and to help develop strategies “to stop the expansion of religious exemptions.”

The Interfaith Alliance was also funded in the amount of $75,000 to explore mapping state laws related to religious exemptions, for policy development, and for training of “skilled messengers to educate state and federal policy makers.”

The Pride Foundation received $150,000 in 2016 to strengthen coordination “among groups opposed to discriminatory interpretations of religious freedom,” and for “emergency-response grants to key public-education initiatives.”

Soulforce, which became prominent for busing LGBT activists to demonstrate at various colleges, received $100,000 to organize students of color in the U.S. South to challenge both “anti-trans policies at conservative Christian schools” and religious exemption statutes.

[…]

Detroit, Mich., Jun 27, 2017 / 10:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Nearly 250 pilgrims made their way through downtown Detroit visiting different churches on Sunday.

What made this a spectacle? They were all riding along on two wheels.

“I love these architectural gems that were gifts to us from prior generations of the faithful. I love biking, I love bringing people together, I love celebrating our heritage as Detroiters,” said event organizer Danielle Center. “So here we are, the marriage of all these things.”

Center told the Detroit Free Press that she expected about 20 people to show up to the event, named “Holy Rollin’.” She had wanted to put on such a gathering for years, but feared that people would be reluctant to bike downtown Detroit, which has been undergoing a process of depopulation for years.

However, her fears turned out to be groundless: though she had expected 20 bikers to show up, more than ten times as many brought their wheels to downtown.

“To have so many people here is pretty special,” Annie Schunior told the Detroit Free Press.

Bikers stopped at four churches after departing from Center’s workplace, Ste. Anne – St. Aloysius, Sts. Peter and Paul, Old St. Mary, and St. Joseph Oratory. At each, bikers got a taste of the art and history of each building.

“In the Catholic church there is a lot of beautiful art but there are not a lot of opportunities for people to tour and see it,” said Schunior.

Fr. Loren Connell gave the group a tour at St. Aloysius, saying he welcomed the chance to let such a group into the church building.

“It’s about hospitality,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “We open our doors to street people and visitors and everyone in between.”

[…]

Nancy and Kelly McKeague of Alexandria, Va., say their Catholic faith provided an “anchor” to their marriage during Kelly’s service in the U.S. Air Force. / Courtesy of Nancy and Kelly McKeague

Boston, Mass., Nov 11, 2021 / 13:00 pm (CNA).

To coincide with Veterans Day, a marriage ministry has launched a free “virtual date night” video series specifically for military couples, providing mentoring and other resources to help spouses strengthen their bonds to one another, to their families and communities, and to God.

The new, three-part series is one of several developed by Witness to Love, a faith-centered marriage ministry based in St. Martinville, La. Founded by a Catholic couple, Mary-Rose and Ryan Verret, in effort to supplement existing church-based marriage preparation programs, Witness to Love provides a “virtues-based, Catechumenate model of marriage renewal and preparation that integrates modern principles of psychology and the virtues to help couples facilitate an authentic dialogue about their relationship,” according to its website.

There is also a date night series tailored to first responders and hospital workers, and a more general program suitable for all couples. 

Daniela Mazzone, vice president of content and leadership development and Spanish support lead at Witness for Love, told CNA that the idea for a date night video series came in response to the fact that so many couples were home together during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve always had in our hearts to do something for military couples, because we know that they also need a lot of support because there are challenges that they face in their own marriages which are much harder and could be different from what the average couple deals with,” especially when spouses are separated during a deployment, Mazzone said.

Couples can register online for free and will have access to Witness to Love’s app where they can see all the videos. It is not necessary to download the app on their mobile devices to see the videos, as they can also be viewed on the organization’s website, Mazzone said.

The military spouses series launches on Nov. 11, but couples will still have access to the videos on the website after that date. You can watch a promo video about the new military date night series below.

The new series features Kelly and Nancy McKeague, an Alexandria, Va. couple with four grown children who share the challenges and successes they experienced in their marriage while Kelly served in the U.S. Air Force.

“While a military spouse may not wear the uniform,” Kelly McKeague told CNA, “they’re going through the same tribulations and trials.”

“I just traveled with him and went along for the ride,” Nancy McKeague quipped. But her husband disagreed.

“I think, to be fair,” Kelly McKeague said, “the military spouse has a very unique role just because of separation, deployments, and what have you, and so in essence, a military spouse really does serve.”

Military life is a “higher calling,” Kelly McKeague said. “It’s a calling of service, but also a sacrifice that takes many, many forms.” 

Nancy McKeague told CNA that “it would seem that whenever Kelly would leave and be gone, something pretty dramatic and traumatic would happen in our life.”

Speaking about a time when their son had an asthma attack in the middle of the night, Nancy McKeague said that she grabbed all her children and went to the emergency room, spending hours there.

She noted that emergencies like her son’s asthma attack happened “quite frequently,” and she just had to remind herself to stay strong for herself and children.

Nancy McKeague said she constantly reminded her children, while her husband was deployed, to “just remember that Daddy is doing this not only for our family, but for our country, and this is a really great thing that he’s doing.”

“I know it’s not easy for him to be gone,” she would say to her children, “but just remember we’re just going to pray for Daddy that he comes safely back home.” 

The video series is not exclusively for Catholic couples. However, the McKeagues, who have been married for more than 37 years, say in their video testimony that their Catholic faith was their “anchor” during Kelly’s military service.

“Having that strong faith connection, in our view, as we present in the video, was so crucial to us, not only surviving as a military family, but thriving as a military family,” Kelly McKeague told CNA.

Staying close to the sacraments was “crucial” in keeping them strong as a couple and as a family, Nancy McKeague added. 

Other presenters in the videos include a Navy couple, Shannon and Kim Walker, who speak about interpersonal relationship; an Air Force couple, Jon and Lea-Ann Virnig, who discuss family and community life; and Father Michael Murphy, the pastor at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Coronado, Colo. Reflection questions and other resources resources are included with each video.

While each of the couples in the series has a unique perspective on the challenges that military spouses face, they also share a common experience, the McKeagues say.

“The thing that I’ve always loved so much about our military life was traveling to new places, getting to meet many new people, building friendships that have lasted since the beginning of our time in the military, and people that we’ve kept in touch with through the years that have made us stronger and have made us grow in our faith more,” Nancy McKeague told CNA.  

“Those relationships and those friendships have been such a huge blessing to both of us,” she said.

“We were all in the crucible together, we were all experiencing the same challenges, and then some of those friends that Nancy talked about are from the chapel community, the Catholic chapel and they were lifelong friendships because they were honed in somewhat less than ideal circumstances, either the place or the situation or the operational tempo,” Kelly McKeague said.

“All of that starts to build a closeness with people who share the same uniform, but also share the same faith. So it’s an added bonus,” he said.

[…]