Justice Samuel Alito to address record-breaking 2024 class at Franciscan University

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 18, 2020 / 12:10 pm (CNA).- After San Francisco’s archbishop called on the city to reopen churches for indoor Masses, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said he should listen to the “science,” but admitted she had recently attended a church service in the city, possibly in violation of public health orders.

“With all due respect to my archbishop, I think we should follow science on this,” Pelosi told reporters at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Friday.

“I don’t know if [San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone] was speaking as our pastor or as a lobbyist—advocate. But whatever it is, I am sure that he must have meant [reopen churches] if it is scientifically safe, rather than jeopardizing people’s health if they want to go to Church,” she added.

Citing a recent Washington Post op-ed by Cordileone, in which the archbishop criticized the “unfairness” of a city health order that currently bars indoor religious services except for funerals, while allowing businesses such as gyms and nail salons to serve customers indoors, Erik Rosales of EWTN News Nightly asked Pelosi, a Catholic elected from a San Francisco district, for comment.

Rosales asked Pelosi on Friday, “Should churches in San Francisco be allowed to reopen with precautions?”

Pelosi’s answer suggested she may have violated standing health regulations herself. The congresswoman said that she had attended church in San Francisco “recently, and I did receive Communion.” She noted that she had to sign up in advance to do so, and “there were probably 12 people” in attendance, observing social distance, in a church that fit around 250 people.

“With all due respect to my archbishop, I think we should follow science on this, and faith & science are sometimes counter to each other” — @ErikRosalesNews asked @SpeakerPelosi whether churches in San Francisco should be allowed to re-open if they adhere to safety precautions. pic.twitter.com/BgXr05fXd7

— EWTN News Nightly (@EWTNNewsNightly) September 18, 2020

San Francisco’s guidance for gatherings currently says that only one person at a time is allowed inside a church “for prayer, individual counseling, to pick up, or drop off items.”

The city’s mayor London Breed announced this week that outdoor religious services with up to 50 people would be permitted beginning Sept. 14, but indoor religious services were still prohibited until Oct. 1, where they would be permitted with a cap at 25 people.

A June 29 cease-and-desist letter from the San Francisco city attorney to the archdiocese said that indoor religious services were not allowed, with exceptions for funeral services with up to 12 people or live-streamed Masses with necessary personnel present for the streaming. 

Speaker Pelosi’s office did not respond to an inquiry from CNA as to the Mass she attended, whether it was a funeral Mass or whether it occurred before the city’s health order.

Pelosi also claimed that “faith and science are sometimes counter to each other. Around here people say to me, ‘you’re a person of faith, why do you believe in science?’”

Science, she said, is “an answer to our prayers.”

Pelosi, a Catholic whose district comprises much of San Francisco, has been an outspoken supporter of abortion and the redefinition of marriage. She has been endorsed by the National Abortion Rights Action League in 2020, and promised that “with the support of NARAL, we will defend Roe v. Wade” and support “a woman’s right to choose.”

Recently, Pelosi promised to withhold the Hyde Amendment from relevant spending bills next year—threatening to end a decades-old policy that has barred taxpayer dollars in the form of Medicaid reimbursements from funding elective abortions.

In June of 2014, Pelosi asked Archbishop Cordileone to cancel his participation in the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C., saying that some supporting groups had pushed “disdain and hate towards LGBT persons.” While noting that “[w]e share our love of the Catholic faith and our city of San Francisco,” she said she respected the archbishop’s “view” of same-sex marriage.

In 2009, Pelosi told Newsweek magazine that she had “some concerns about the church’s position respecting a woman’s right to choose,” as well as “about the church’s position on gay rights.”

“I am a practicing Catholic, although they’re probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith,” she said, adding that “women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.”

In response, then-San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer wrote in a column that her statement included “some fundamental misconceptions about Catholic teaching on human freedom.”

He wrote that it is “entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to the Gospel—racism, infidelity, abortion, theft. Freedom of will is the capacity to act with moral responsibility; it is not the ability to determine arbitrarily what constitutes moral right.”

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Washington D.C., Mar 23, 2020 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- The worldwide outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) is beginning to touch one of the populations in the United States most vulnerable to disease: the incarcerated.

A growing number of prisons in the US have confirmed cases of COVID-19, and most have suspended visits for inmates.

In the face of such precautions, prison chaplains throughout the country have had to adapt their ministry.

Joe Cotton, director of prison ministry in the Archdiocese of Seattle, told CNA that all of his chaplains are currently blocked from entering the facilities where they normally minister.

Seattle has one the highest rates of infection in the United States, with more than 1,600 confirmed cases and more than 90 deaths. Washington State was also the site of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the US.

“So we’re trying to be as creative as we can— some of our chaplains are doing things like developing their reflections and Communion services and programming, working from home and getting ahead, and using this time for getting things ready for when we can go back in, so that they’re well ahead of the game,” Cotton told CNA.

He said his team that normally ministers at a juvenile facility got especially creative, setting up a telephone answering service to forward calls from inmates directly to chaplains’ cell phones, depending on a schedule of chaplains’ availability throughout the week that they set up.

“Tonight’s my night, for example. So between five and nine, I’ll have my cell phone on me, and if the answering service calls me, it means someone on the inside wants to talk to a chaplain over the phone. So that’s one of the creative things that we’re doing to at least make chaplains still available…although that’s not happening in every facility.”

Art Alvarez, who has ministered at Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles for the past 14 years, told CNA that for now, he is still able to go into the facility to minister to the men, but must keep a safe distance to avoid bringing in the virus.

In L.A., chaplains are still able to enter county jails, though that may soon change. In state prisons, all the chaplains’ operations have been canceled.

Alvarez said he has had to adapt to speaking to the men through the doors of their cells through food slots that are no longer used for food, but which are once again serving a purpose.  

He said the inmates are able to have access to the news and have a pretty good idea what is going on.

“They’re concerned about their families on the outside. But on the inside, with the deputies, they feel pretty safe,” he said.

At at least one major prison— Rikers Island in New York— authorities have released dozens of inmates over fears that they may have contracted the virus. Many county jails are doing the same.

At least 38 people at Rikers Island have contracted COVID-19 and dozens more have likely been exposed to it, the Associated Press reports.

Prison officers and staff in states including California and Michigan have tested positive for the virus, and in Wisconsin, 18 inmates at a prison were quarantined last week after a facility doctor tested positive for the virus, according to reporting from the AP. 

In Los Angeles county, which has the largest prison population of any county in the United States, prisoners with non-violent criminal records and who have between two and three months left of their sentences are being released.

Alvarez said he is also continuing to assist with what are known as “extractions”— per state policy, if an inmate refuses to leave his cell, a doctor, a nurse, or a chaplain must be brought in and try to talk the inmate out of his cell before the deputies are allowed to use force.

He said he was recently asked to assist with an extraction whereby the inmate was informed that he was being released, but he didn’t believe that it was really happening.

“This guy didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to leave,” Alvarez said. 

Alvarez said the jail has prepared two entire floors for quarantine, but as of March 21, no inmates are there.

He said the inmates’ attitudes are mixed during this time of uncertainty, and he said the chaplains are trying to reassure the inmates that they are in many ways safer inside than jail

“Some want to stay in, some want to go home and be with their families and protect their families,” he said.

But:

“There’s nothing more that they can say or do.”

In at least two states, Arizona and Minnesota, prison officials have waived copays charged to inmates for medical visits and waived fees for personal hygiene supplies, NPR reports. A California senator is advocating that all low-risk inmates be released nationwide.

In California, prison officials announced that a prisoner at California State Prison, Los Angeles County, has tested positive for COVID-19, and in addition, at least five prison workers have the disease, the LA Times reports.

California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statewide, mandatory stay at home order on March 19 that workers in critical sectors should go to work. Grocery stores, pharmacies, banks and more will stay open, the governor said.

Gonzalo de Vivero, director of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Office of Restorative Justice, told CNA that he has been getting calls constantly from his chaplains, asking whether they can continue to do their ministry.

Every jail makes its own rules, he said, and for now the county jails are still allowing chaplains in.

“The mayor [of Los Angeles] is asking everybody to stay home, unless your work is essential. Well, the work of a chaplain is extremely essential. But on the other hand, we have families…and that’s very hard. And the uncertainties are very hard.”

Even before the governor’s order, a lot of the chaplains’ services have had to be reduced, de Vivero said.

As of last week, they could not have more than 10 people in their services in the jails, including the minister; a chaplain last week held a communion service that normally has 35 people, but this time had only nine, de Vivero said.

In Los Angeles County in 2019, de Vivero said, the archdiocesan prison ministry said over 2,000 Masses in jails, with over 25,000 attendants.

de Vivero said he worries that switching to virtual chaplaincy during this time could cause the jails they serve in to be reluctant to allow chaplains into the jails in person after the pandemic ends. He said many of his chaplains are against broadcasting Mass by videoconferencing, and he called it a “dangerous route.”

“The institutions will be very happy to say that all Masses should be via video from now on,” he warned.

“People need people. We cannot replace going to Church with watching Mass on TV.”

de Vivero related a story of one of his chaplains, who was determined to continue to go and serve inmates in the jails during the pandemic, and whose boss at work threatened to fire him if he continued to do so.

Above all, he said, this situation highlights how difficult it is for Catholics to serve the underprivileged, even in non-crisis times.

“We have two pandemics: the virus, and the fear. And I don’t know which one is more dangerous,” he mused.

“I am very concerned about the long-term effects in our jails, because people are going to get extremely sensitive, be more prone to violence…the enemy would like to use this opportunity to fuel disagreements, arguments, and they turn into altercations, and then fights, and we have more problems that nobody needs right now.”

[…]

CNA Staff, Aug 13, 2020 / 11:58 am (CNA).- Reflecting on the first anniversary of the taking effect of a New Jersey law allowing assisted suicide, Bishop James Checchio of Metuchen has encouraged Catholics to continue in unconditional respect for human life.

“We cannot be complacent and just accept that physician-assisted suicide is the law now in our state,” Bishop Checchio said, according to an Aug. 12 statement from the Diocese of Metuchen. “When any human life, especially the weakest, is devalued by society it promotes a devaluing of all human life.”

The Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act allows competent New Jersey residents deemed by two doctors to have fewer than six months to live to request lethal medication to end their lives. The patient must administer the medication themselves.

The law was approved by the New Jersey legislature in March 2019, and signed into law the following month. It took effect Aug. 1, 2019. It was temporarily halted by a judge in the state, but an appeals court allowed it to take effect while a legal challenge against it was being heard.

According to the state health department, 12 New Jerseyans ended their lives under the law’s provisions in 2019.

“All life is a gift from God and … every person has inherent and inalienable dignity because we are made in God’s image and likeness – young or old, healthy or sick, all human life is precious,” Bishop Checchio reflected.

He added that respect for human life “is the same foundation of our belief and our efforts to eliminate racism from our midst.”

The bishop encouraged Catholics to support the elderly and sick by easing “their physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering.”

“We count on our faithful and all people of good will to join in this effort to make our state one we can be proud to be a part of and we recommit ourselves to join with others in our state to do all that we can to proclaim the truth that every life is sacred.”

He lamented that the temptation to die can have been “exacerbated over recent months by the COVID-19 pandemic,” saying it “has brought a raft of new stressors, including loss of community and social isolation, that have been especially difficult for the elderly and the sick, and for their families. Sadly, some reports indicate a rise in suicides as well as an increase in requests for medically-assisted death.”

“Our need for compassionate care is more important than ever,” said Bishop Checchio. “We are now challenged with finding creative new ways to provide tender accompaniment for those who are sick or near the end of life so that no one feels compelled to choose assisted suicide.”   

The law was signed by New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, a self-described “lifelong, practicing Catholic”.

Murphy said that he was aware of the Church’s opposition to assisted suicide, but that after careful consideration and prayer, “I have concluded that, while my faith may lead me to a particular decision for myself, as a public official I cannot deny this alternative to those who may reach a different conclusion.”

“I believe this choice is a personal one and, therefore, signing this legislation is the decision that best respects the freedom and humanity of all New Jersey residents,” Murphy said.

On the eve of the law’s taking effect, Bishop Checchio condemned assisted suicide as “a grievous affront to the dignity of human life” that “can never be morally justified.”

“Passage of this law points to the utter failure of government, and indeed all society, to care truly, authentically and humanely for the suffering and vulnerable in our midst, especially those living with an incurable disease as well as the frail elderly, the infirm and those living with disabilities,” he said.

In the US, assisted suicide is legal in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia, and in Montana by a court ruling.

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