From cancer to healing: A pilgrim’s journey to the National Eucharistic Congress

St. Louis, Mo., Jul 18, 2019 / 03:01 am (CNA).- With a law banning abortions after roughly eight weeks of pregnancy and one remaining abortion clinic whose licensure is being debated in court, Missouri has been described as a state “hostile” to abortion.

“The state makes it extremely hostile for an abortion facility to remain open,” Ushma Upadhyay, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California San Francisco, told Vox for a story on the last abortion clinic in the state.

While the state may be increasingly restricting abortions, it has numerous programs that provide a wealth of resources and support to thousands of women in need each year who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant, pro-life advocates told CNA.

“Our aim is for those moms who want to give life to their baby, we provide them with all sorts of alternatives (to abortion),” Michael Meehan, Executive Director of Good Shepherd Children and Family Services in St. Louis, told CNA.

Good Shepherd is one of eight agencies operated through Catholic Charities in St. Louis that are available to pregnant women in need, and provide them with a variety of resources and support, including housing, education classes and scholarships, counseling, and substance abuse recovery.

Good Shepherd itself has a maternity shelter and transitional living program for teen and young adult moms, who may otherwise be homeless, that can accommodate 14 mom and 20 babies, for just a few days or up to a year or longer, depending on the needs of the moms and children, Meehan said.

Besides group and individual counseling, on-staff nurses, and classes on life skills, parenting, and child development, completing a high school education is a requirement for moms in the program, Meehan told CNA.

“That’s a mandatory part of being here is re-engaging in your education. It opens and closes the single biggest bunch of doors for independence,” Meehan said. Thus, Good Shepherd has a full-time education advocate who is a certified teacher, and helps any mom who has not yet completed high school or gotten her GED.

There is also a home visitation program for women who have housing but need other kinds of support throughout their pregnancy, Meehan said. Good Shepherd provides those women with case management, crisis management for problems such as domestic violence, connection to good health care, and referrals to additional needed resources.

And because abuse and neglect prevention is a core part of Good Shepherd’s program, they can continue providing support through home visits until the youngest child in the home is three years old, he added.

“We want to ensure that moms and babies get the best possible start in life,” Meehan said.

They also have foster care and adoption services for women who feel that they are unable to parent their child but still want to provide a better life for them, Meehan said.

“We’re hopeful that we can get the word out that adoption is an option for women who might otherwise consider abortion,” he said.

When asked if he had noticed an increase in women seeking services from Good Shepherd in light of there being one remaining abortion clinic in the state, Meehan said that they have noticed an increase, but that they are unsure whether it is directly connected to the closing abortion clinics.

According to data from 2005 from the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice organization, the top three reasons that women seek abortions are: having a child would interfere with education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%).

Knowing these statistics, Meehand said that it is Good Shepherd’s goal to help women remove as many of these obstacles as possible so that they can keep their babies.

“We are about removing perceived obstacles,” he said, “which typically isn’t a baby. It’s a violent relationship, it’s pending homelessness, it’s deep and desperate poverty, it’s a perception that this is impossible, I’m just not going to be able to do it, the baby would be better off not being brought into the world.”

In recent years, Meehan said, Good Shepherd has done even more work to “get the word out” about their services so that women know what resources are available to them.

“The message is that the Church wants to control women, the Church doesn’t care about women, the Church only cares about women until they’re born and then couldn’t care less,” Meehan said. Those messages are easily proved false, he said, “if anybody bothered to look a smidge more deeply.”

And it’s not just the Catholic Church, or even religious organizations, that are providing life-affirming help to women and children in the St. Louis area.

Birthright of St. Louis is a secular non-profit that does not accept state or federal government funding. The goal of the agency is to provide women with the care and support that they need to be able to handle unexpected pregnancies, and to offer life-affirming alternatives to abortion.

“We just focus on the woman one-on-one,” Maureen Zink, the executive director of Birthright in St. Louis, told CNA.

“Our focus is that you have to be a quiet place where women can come where they don’t feel like you have an agenda and just talk about why this pregnancy is so hard for them,” she said.

Birthright provides a variety of services to women free of charge, Zink said, including professional counseling, pregnancy testing, and financial aid and scholarships for women who are still in school.

They also have a program called Melissa Smiles, which supports mothers whose children are disabled and connects them to the resources that they need, she said.

“Pretty much anything a woman needs, we’ll work with her,” Zink said. “We love to be able to take care of the women, so that they can take care of their babies. The goal is that they’ll be able to provide a loving, safe, and nurturing healthy home for their babies.”

Every service provided by Birthright is free, Zink said, but women do not necessarily have to demonstrate a financial need to seek out help from the agency.

“There’s college women that find out that they’re pregnant and they’re overwhelmed and they need help sorting it out,” Zink said.

Zink said that she has not noticed an uptick in women seeking services from Birthright in light of the closure of all but one abortion clinic; things have remained “pretty steady.”

“I think our services will always be needed no matter what the laws are,” she added.

Mary Varni, program manager with the Respect Life Apostolate of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, sent CNA a list of resources, both Catholic and secular, that they use to help connect women facing unexpected pregnancies with the resources that they need.

Varni noted that while many women in crisis pregnancies are poor, financial stability is often not the only thing they need.

“Based on our experience, if a woman is pregnant and concerned about her financial situation, she may also be concerned about the safety of the residence or neighborhood in which the child will grow up, the education the child will be able to receive, the child’s health care, or even basic needs like food and shelter,” she said.

“There is help to address all of these concerns, and by sharing the resources we know can help with the women we serve, we hope they will see that life is the right choice.”

Besides Good Shepherd, Catholic Charities in St. Louis also operates three additional shelters, Varni said: the Queen of Peace Center, which offers family-centered behavioral health care for women (and their children) who are overcoming substance use disorders; the St. Patrick Center, which helps people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless; and Marygrove, which offers an independent housing program that provides shelter and services to pregnant teens and young adults.

Furthermore, the Respect Life Apostolate offers the Blessed Theresa of Calcutta fund, which offers financial aid to expectant or recent parents within the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

There is also Our Lady’s Inn, which shelters and supports homeless women and their babies, and Thrive St. Louis, a women’s clinic that provides pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, parenting and life-skills classes, and referrals for housing, medical care, counseling, utility assistance, food and more.

The Society of St Vincent DePaul in St. Louis also provides food and financial resources, such as assistance with housing and transportation, to those in need, Varni said. They are also currently considering a closer partnership with Good Shepherd to more directly assist pregnant women and families in need.

Varni said that when a woman comes to the apostolate or the archdiocese for help, their first job is to listen to what those women are struggling with.

“We let them know they are not alone in their struggles, which is why there are so many resources available to assist with their needs, and alternatives to abortion that can help support a healthy life for their baby,” she said.

“We remind them that their pregnancy is a gift from God, and that He chose them to carry their baby for a reason He knows better than all of us—and that because He loves them, there is always hope. They will be able to overcome the challenges they are facing.”

The licensure of Missouri’s last operating abortion clinic, a Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, is still being debated in court. The next hearing over the clinic’s license is not until October, and a judge has ruled that the clinic can still offer abortions through that hearing.

But despite some of the hand-wringing over what could be the closure of the last abortion clinic in the state, Meehan said it would be a good thing – and that women will still get the help that they need, through the many services available in the state.

“People lose track of the fact that…we’re talking about well over 600,000 babies dying every year (from abortion),” he said. “That’s a lot.”

“If Planned Parenthood disappeared today, the need of our population could be met, that’s not an issue. They’re not nearly as indispensable as they would have us believe.”

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The tabernacle belonging to St. Bartholomew the Apostle Catholic Church in Katy, Texas, was stolen May 8, 2022. / Screenshot from YouTube video

Houston, Texas, May 14, 2022 / 15:03 pm (CNA).
A suspect has been charged with burglary in connectio… […]

Denver Newsroom, Aug 25, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Catholics are joining Native American leaders in calling for mercy for a Navajo man who is sentenced to die in a federal execution this week. The Navajo Nation objects to the execution. 

Lezmond Mitchell, 38, who committed a double murder in 2001 on tribal land, is scheduled to be executed in Terre Haute, Ind., Aug. 26. The federal government resumed executions in July 2020, the first since 2003.

A Navajo lawmaker told CNA that traditional Navajo beliefs forbid the use of capital punishment.

“We believe that life is sacred, and that killing is kind of an unholy and inhuman act, full stop,” Carl Slater, a representative in the Navajo Nation Council, told CNA in an Aug. 25 interview.

“So it’s not something we should use as a form of punitive justice,” he said, adding that the Navajo justice system is based more on a model of rehabilitative and restorative justice practices.

The Navajo Nation is a sovereign entity, with a distinct government, that extends into three states— New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.

In addition to serving in the nation’s legislative body, Slater also serves as Vice-Chair of the Health, Education, and Human Services committees of the Navajo Nation. He said under the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act, the federal government must have the Native American tribe’s consent to seek a death penalty prosecution of a Native American citizen.

The Navajo Nation, citing the need to protect life, or “iina,” has consistently objected to Mitchell’s death sentence, requesting he instead receive life imprisonment.

“Punitive justice, as expressed by western and United States’ influences, does not create harmony and serves to primarily reinforce discord within society,” a proposed Navajo Nation Council resolution reads.

To date, only one out the nearly 600 Native American tribes across the country have chosen to opt-in to federal death penalty prosecutions.

The federal government’s planned execution of Mitchell— who is the only Native American on federal death row— is “a profound insult to Navajo sovereignty,” Slater wrote in an Aug. 19 op-ed in the New York Times.

“It’s very important to the Navajo Nation because [we] never opted into this, and it will be precedent-setting in that the federal government will seek to get its objective no matter the wishes and commitments made to the Nation under law,” Slater told CNA.

Mitchell, who is Navajo and was 20 years old at the time of the 2001 crime, stabbed a 63-year-old Navajo woman several dozen times, stole their car and drove it into the mountains before slitting the throat of her nine-year-old granddaughter.

Mitchell’s co-defendent— whom the prosecutor reportedly acknowledged was the primary assailant— was a juvenile at the time of the murder, and is currently serving a life sentence.

It was initially widely reported that a family member of the victims had publicly objected to the death penalty conviction. But in recent days, lawyers representing the 9-year-old’s parents have said that Mitchell’s attorneys do not speak for the victim’s family. The lawyers have not publicly clarified the family’s position on the matter.

Mitchell was convicted over 17 years ago on several counts, including murder, kidnapping, and carjacking resulting in death— the latter of which is a federal offense. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit determined that the carjacking charge constituted a “crime of nationwide applicability,” and thus constituted an exception whereby the federal prosecutors could seek the death penalty without the tribe’s consent.

Though the federal government says Mitchell confessed to the murders, court documents suggest that Mitchell’s confession— obtained after multiple weeks of interrogation— was not taped, and was not written in his handwriting.

In addition, Mitchell had signed a waiver of his Miranda rights— which includes the right to an attorney, and the right to remain silent— which a prominent Navajo lawyer recently said may have been due to a key cultural component at play.

“In Native cultures, it is considered honorable to tell the truth, so Natives accused of crimes might confess or plead guilty right away and without a lawyer,” Raymond Austin, a former justice of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, told AZCentral.

Mitchell’s lawyers have accused federal prosecutors of exploiting “loopholes” in order to put Mitchell to death, despite the tribe’s wishes. They also criticized the fact that only one member of Mitchell’s jury was a member of his tribe; the rest were white.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, in a July letter to U.S. President Donald Trump, strongly criticized the federal government’s decision to go ahead with the execution, saying that in addition to violating Navajo beliefs, Mitchell’s execution would undermine tribal sovereignty.

The Navajo Nation Council, of which Slater is a part, has also written to Trump to ask him to commute Mitchell’s sentence.

Slater said it is still unclear whether the Trump administration will accept Mitchell’s plea for clemency. Byron Shorty, communications director for the Navajo Nation Office of the Speaker, told The Republic on Tuesday that it has not received any direct response from the White House.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the death penalty “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

Bishop James Wall of Gallup is leading a virtual prayer vigil on the afternoon of Aug. 26 ahead of the scheduled execution.

The idea of the prayer vigil, Wall told CNA, is to pray for Mitchell’s conversion, for healing for the victims’ family, and for conversion of the hearts of the executioners.

The vigil was organized by the Catholic Mobilizing Network, a Catholic group which works to end the death penalty. Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, CMN’s executive director, told CNA that so far about 500 people have signed up for the virtual vigil.

“Catholics need to be aware of the fact that the execution of Lezmond Mitchell, above all, is an unnecessary and avoidable attack on human dignity,” Murphy told CNA.

“This concern about human dignity is not only held by faithful Catholics, however. The Navajo Nation also professes a belief in the sanctity of human life, which grounds its objection to the execution of Lezmond Mitchell as well as its overarching opposition to the use of capital punishment.”

Murphy noted that in their 2018 pastoral letter against racism, the bishops of the United States addressed past harms committed against Native Americans, writing of “colonial and later U.S. policies toward Native American communities were often violent, paternalistic, and were directed toward the theft of their land…These policies decimated entire communities and brought about tragic death.”

“Catholics should care about the federal government’s violation of tribal sovereignty because it is, at its core, a manifestation of the of violence, oppression, and racism inflicted upon Native Americans for centuries in the United States,” Murphy said.

Murphy encouraged Catholics to pray and advocate for an end to the death penalty.

“These acts of state-sanctioned violence hold us back as a nation from honoring the God-given dignity of our brothers and sisters, even those who have committed grave harm,” she said, noting that during the government’s 17-year hiatus from executions, 10 states outlawed capital punishment and “public support for the practice has fallen to a historic low.”

Wall said the leaders of the Navajo largely agree with the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life, from conception to natural death.

“God is the author and giver of all human life, and we’re called to be good stewards of that life,” the bishop told CNA.

Advances in the prison system allow the state to keep people safe from criminals without the use of the death penalty, which also gives those offenders and opportunity to genuinely repent, Wall said.

“It provides an opportunity for true contrition, true conversion of heart, and that opportunity to embrace Christ and the Gospel. And whenever we do something like this, when we take a life, what we also do is we don’t provide that person the opportunity to repent. And everyone has to be given that opportunity.”

The last scheduled federal execution this year is set for Aug. 28.

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