Anglican Church reports synod member to police for tweeting ‘hate speech’

CNA Staff, Oct 13, 2020 / 06:03 pm (CNA).- Opponents of Columbus Day are misguided in their criticism and miss the important message about unity and inclusivity that the holiday continues to offer America, U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia said this week.

“Columbus Day stands for ideals and principles that are woven into the fabric of our nation, and which are as important today as they were on the first Columbus Day in 1892,” he said.

Scalia spoke at Franciscan University of Steubenville on October 12. He reflected on criticisms of Christopher Columbus and the holiday that bears the explorer’s name.

“Columbus Day has been part of our American heritage for more than a century. There are some now who would like to do away with that commemoration. My message is that would be a mistake,” he said.

The labor secretary noted calls for Columbus Day to be re-designated as a day recognizing Native Americans. However, he said, honoring Native Americans can be accomplished without dishonoring the groups who have drawn inspiration from Christopher Columbus over the centuries.

“That first Columbus Day welcomed Catholics and recent immigrants as equal sharers in the American dream, and acknowledged—if only for a day— Native Americans as rightful participants in our national heritage,” he said. “Maligned by progressives today, Columbus Day was an early celebration of something progressives purport to value—diversity and inclusion.”

Numerous acts of vandalism and destruction against statues of Columbus and other historical figures have taken place in recent months, with officials removing other statues to protect them from the threat of mob attacks.

More than 30 statues of Columbus have been or are scheduled to be removed, Scalia said. Other statues across the country have also been torn down, including those depicting “Star-Spangled Banner” author Francis Scott Key, president and Union general Ulysses Grant, and Saint Junipero Serra.

Statues and memorials honoring George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln have also faced calls for removal.

Scalia warned that the activists driving the opposition to these statues “want to fundamentally redefine how we view our nation’s character and legacy,” proposing a vision of America as fundamentally oppressive and discriminatory.

However, he suggested, contemporary Americans can gain valuable insight about the country and its heritage from considering why previous generations revered Columbus.

The early American revolutionaries were inspired by Columbus’ great courage, which opened the door to new opportunities and “boundless possibilities,” Scalia said.

“Through the centuries, Columbus came to represent the spirit of adventure and discovery that we associate with America—our faith in our capacity to seek and find something new and better,” he said. “We have many heroes who personify our political ideals, but no figure so associated with the questing, the entrepreneurialism, the hope in the new that is part of the American spirit.”

Columbus was not perfect, Scalia acknowledged, and in fact had “grave faults.”

“He participated in the slave trade—as did others in his day—and was a harsh, at times inhumane ruler of indigenous people he subjugated.”

Many of the historical figures we admire had serious shortcomings, Scalia said, noting that several of the Founding Fathers owned slaves.

“[W]e know that the Founders did not fully live according to the ideals they espoused. They were sinners; they were fallen—in that respect, they were like all of us here. And they lacked the vision to fully see the implications and promise of what they wrote,” he said. “But they supplied the vision and principles for generations of Americans to forge the freest nation on earth—and they had the genius to craft a Constitution that made fulfilling those ideals possible.”

Heroes in the cause of civil rights embraced the founding era documents, despite the flaws of those who wrote them, Scalia said.

He noted that Frederick Douglass called the Constitution a “glorious liberty document,” and Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note.”

King offers the country today an example of how to embrace what was good in the American founding, while rejecting errors and “calling on America to be even more American—to be ever truer to the Founders’ vision,” Scalia said.

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization engaging in charitable work, was founded in 1882, taking the name of Columbus, Scalia said, citing a historian who said the Knights viewed Columbus as a “hero against American nativism, a symbol providing ‘social legitimacy and patriotic loyalty.’”

When Columbus Day was first celebrated nationally in 1892, it was presented by President Benjamin Harrison as a day of unity, which those from the North and South could celebrate together, the labor secretary said.

Over time, Columbus also came to be honored by immigrants – especially Italian and Irish Catholics – who faced strong discrimination in America, he added.

“[I]n the 19th century, in the face of sharp hostility associated with religion and national origin, Columbus became a powerful symbol of the claim of Italian, Irish, and other Catholic immigrants that they were fully American,” he said.

“The nation’s Protestant elite proudly claimed forebears among the sons and daughters of the Revolution; Columbus was an equally proud answer that Italians and Catholics, also, had roots in the nation’s founding and a claim to be fully American.”

This message of diversity and inclusion offered by Columbus Day is still needed in America, Scalia said.

He recalled the 2018 confirmation hearing of Brian Buescher, a judicial nominee and member of the Knights of Columbus who was told by Senators that the Knights take “extreme positions” and was asked if he was willing to resign his membership in the organization “to avoid any appearance of bias.”

He also pointed to Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett facing scrutiny for her faith and participation the charismatic Christian group People of Praise. Barrett was told by a senator at a 2017 hearing, “[T]he dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

Scalia also said the Department of Labor is working to remove regulations that require religious charitable organizations to warn the people they serve about their religious nature and refer them elsewhere if they object to it.

He added that President Donald Trump signed an order last month prohibiting race and sex scapegoating and stereotyping in federal workplace training programs. Scalia said the order will help fight training programs that tell certain employees that they are racist or morally culpable because of their race or sex.

“Harboring racist views is not the shared heritage of white Americans. For many it’s quite the opposite, as Columbus Day reminds us: Catholics, Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, and others had their own struggles gaining acceptance in American society,” Scalia emphasized.

“Columbus Day is a day about overcoming that; it’s a day that was first set aside to embrace this country’s diversity and welcome all citizens into the American polity, regardless of creed or national origin.”

While there is still work to do in this regard, abandoning Columbus Day does not help achieve that purpose, he continued. Rather, Americans should be inspired by the rich history of Columbus Day to celebrate diversity and work for unity.

“Our nation did not establish Columbus Day to commemorate oppression or discrimination,” he said, “we established Columbus Day to overcome it.”

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Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, speaks at a May 2, 2023, press conference. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/ACI Prensa

Vatican City, Jul 18, 2024 / 10:18 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Thursday added two new vice directors to the s… […]

Bishop James Conley leads a eucharistic procession outside Lincoln’s Cathedral of the Risen Christ, one of the passport pilgrimage sites. / Diocese of Lincoln

St. Louis, Mo., Aug 17, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).

A new initiative from the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, aims to bring pilgrims to every corner of the state to visit its many adoration chapels. 

Dubbed the “Eucharistic Passport Pilgrimage,” the diocesan initiative is modeled after the Nebraska Passport, a project of the Nebraska Tourism Commission designed to encourage exploration of the state’s various attractions. 

“The Nebraska Passport Program has been a very popular way to promote Nebraska and its beautiful sites. It is my hope and prayer that our diocesan Eucharistic Passport Pilgrimage will offer an opportunity for thousands of Nebraskans to make a spiritual pilgrimage across our state,” Bishop James Conley wrote in a recent column announcing the new initiative.

“I pray that this might be an occasion of true encounter with our eucharistic Lord, hidden in the Blessed Sacrament and an opportunity for true renewal and revival for our eucharistic Lord. And, like the Nebraska Passport Program, [that] we might be inspired to travel across our beautiful state in a spirit of prayer and gratitude.”

The Lincoln Diocese encompasses a large and mostly rural swath of southern Nebraska that stretches from the Missouri River in the east to the border with Colorado. Catholics make up about 94,000 of the diocese’s population of 621,000. The diocese spans nearly 25,000 square miles of territory and 134 total parishes, according to the diocese. 

Conley told CNA that in creating the new passport program, he was inspired by his own love of pilgrimages. Over the years, Conley has walked portions of the Camino de Santiago on three different occasions and this summer walked St. Cuthbert’s Way, a Catholic pilgrimage in northern England near the Scottish border. Conley has been open in recent years about the ways that pilgrimages have helped him greatly with his spiritual, emotional, and mental health.

The idea for the passport, Conley said, is to lead pilgrims to 17 designated eucharistic adoration chapels in Nebraska and offer the pilgrims a stamp on their passport to prove that they went there. Conley said they plan to offer a prize of some sort for any pilgrims who visit all 17 locations (though what exactly the prize will be has yet to be determined).

Conley said he hopes pilgrims will visit the adoration chapels and pray specifically for their intentions as part of the National Eucharistic Revival, a three-year initiative by the U.S. bishops that aims to inspire, educate, and unite the faithful in a more intimate relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist. 

Conley said central to the passport project is sharing the importance of visiting and adoring Christ in person. 

“We live in such a digitized virtual world, especially since the pandemic years … Anytime we can get away from our screens and out into God’s beautiful creation, whether it’s on a walking pilgrimage, or up in the mountains, or on the beach, or any time we have contact with the really ‘real,’ it’s a remedy for this world, which is becoming more and more in our head,” the bishop said. 

Father Christopher Eckrich, diocesan master of ceremonies and Conley’s priest secretary, told CNA that they hope to provide pilgrims with a true sense of “adventure” with the passport program. 

“[Visiting all 17 sites] might be harder than people think,” Eckrich said via email. 

“People will have to be strategic as adoration is not offered every day in some places. So, people will only be able to get their stamps on certain days — which will add to the adventure! It’s really about creating a pilgrimage environment for people to discover the beautiful adoration chapels, and churches in our diocese, and go visit places they never would have visited before. And the arduousness adds to the excitement upon its completion.”

The passports debuted after Masses the weekend of Aug. 12-13 throughout the Diocese of Lincoln. The passports include informational literature about the 17 designated sites and a map indicating the locations. 

The passports will remain available for anyone to pick up in the back of churches across the Lincoln Diocese for the next year, Eckrich said. (If a parish runs out, it can request more from the chancery, he said.)

Shannon Mullen contributed to this story. 

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