Organizations again labeled ‘hate groups’ over beliefs on marriage

Oklahoma City, Okla., May 18, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The remains of Venerable Stanley Rother were exhumed last week and moved to a chapel in Oklahoma City in preparation for the beatification Mass of the first US-born martyr.

“The witness of Father Rother’s life and death has been a source of encouragement and inspiration to me as a seminarian, priest and now as a bishop. I consider it a great gift to be entrusted with overseeing the continuation of his cause for beatification and canonization begun by Archbishop Beltran,” Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City said after the May 10 service.

“His beatification is an unexpected blessing for Oklahoma and for the United States as we celebrate this ordinary man from humble beginnings who answered the call to serve an extraordinary life. His witness will continue to inspire us for generations.”

The body of Fr. Rother, who served as a priest in Guatemala, was taken from Holy Trinity Cemetery in his home town of Okarche, Okla., to the chapel at Resurrection Cemetery in Oklahoma City.

Before his body was exhumed, his family led a prayerful procession to the gravesite. Fr. Rother’s remains were later removed form the vault, and examined by medical professionals and verified, as required by the process of beatification.

The martyred priest’s body was then placed in a new casket with golden vestments, along with a document signed by those in attendance. A ribbon was wrapped around the casket, sealed with the archdiocese’s seal in wax.

The Salve Regina was sung as the casket was re-interred, and a prayer service followed.

“It was a holy day. Father Rother’s presence was felt by many, and we are blessed as the Catholic Church in Oklahoma to present Father Rother’s life to the world,” Archbishop Coakley commented.

A temporary sign now marks Fr. Rother’s original gravesite in Okarche, located about 40 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, where the original vault and casket have been re-buried, and a permanent memorial marker is planned.

Fr. Rother’s Mass of Beatification will take place Sept. 23 at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City. It will be said by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and concelebrated by Archbishop Coakley.

Fr. Rother was born March 27, 1935 in Okarche and entered seminary soon after graduating from Holy Trinity High School.

Despite a strong calling, Rother would struggle in the seminary, failing several classes and even out of one seminary before graduating from Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa in 1963.

He served for five years in Oklahoma before joining the Oklahoma diocese’s mission in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, a poor rural community of mostly indigenous persons where he would spend the next 13 years of his life.

The work ethic Fr. Rother learned on his family’s farm would serve him well in this new place. As a mission priest, he was called on not just to say Mass, but to fix the broken truck or work the fields. He built a farmers’ co-op, a school, a hospital, and the first Catholic radio station.

Over the years, the violence of the Guatemalan civil war inched closer to the once-peaceful village. Disappearances, killings, and danger soon became a part of daily life, but Fr. Rother remained steadfast and supportive of his people.

In 1980-1981, the violence escalated to an almost unbearable point; Fr. Rother was constantly seeing friends and parishioners abducted or killed.

In January 1981, in immediate danger and his name on a death list, Fr. Rother did return to Oklahoma for a few months. But as Easter approached, he wanted to spend Holy Week with his people in Guatemala.

The morning of July 28, 1981, three Ladinos, the non-indigenous men who had been fighting the native people and rural poor of Guatemala since the 1960s, broke into Fr. Rother’s rectory. They wished to disappear him, but he refused.

Not wanting to endanger the others at the parish mission, he struggled but did not call for help. Fifteen minutes and two gunshots later, Father Stanley was dead and the men fled the mission grounds.

Though his body was buried in Okarche, Fr. Rother’s heart was enshrined in the church of Santiago Atitlan where he served.

Fr. Rother’s cause for beatification was opened in 2007, and his martyrdom was recognized by the Vatican in December 2016, which cleared the way for his beatification.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 5, 2024 / 15:10 pm (CNA).
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley this week warned the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to not destroy federal record… […]

CNA Staff, Jul 21, 2020 / 11:05 am (CNA).- The New York affiliate of the nation’s largest abortion provider said Tuesday it will remove the name of its founder, Margaret Sanger, from its Manhattan building because of her support for eugenics.

“The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color,” said Karen Seltzer, Board Chair at Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) in a press release on the organization’s website.

The building will now be known as the “Manhattan Health Center.”

PPGNY is the largest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country.

“Margaret Sanger’s concerns and advocacy for reproductive health have been clearly documented, but so too has her racist legacy,” said Seltzer, adding that there was “overwhelming evidence” that Sanger was a believer in eugenics.

Eugenics is the theory that quality of life for the human species can be improved by discouraging people from having children if they have genetic defects or traits deemed socially undesirable, even through coercion. The Catholic Church has repeatedly condemned eugenic policies and philosophies.

Seltzer said Tuesday stated that eugenics “runs completely counter to our values at PPGNY,” and that “removing (Sanger’s) name is an important step toward representing who we are as an organization and who we serve.”

In addition to removing Sanger’s name from the building, PPGNY is seeking to change a street sign that designates the area by the clinic as “Margaret Sanger Square.”

Planned Parenthood performed 345,672 abortions in the United States in 2018, according to the organization’s annual report. The organization said it received $616 million in government grants and reimbursements that year.

In 2016, the Guttmacher Institute found that Black women had 28% of the nation’s abortions, while African-Americans constitute approximately 13% of the U.S. population.

In New York, Planned Parenthood has recently faced accusations of systemic racism made by employees. The CEO of PPGNY recently left the company following a series of complaints that she mistreated Black employees and had a “Trumpian” style of leadership.

Sanger had a history of speaking to racist and extremist organizations in support of birth control, including the Ku Klux Klan, which Planned Parenthood acknowledged in a fact sheet in 2016. The sheet attempted to offer counter arguments to Sanger’s beliefs, arguing in part that she was a product of her time and that her views were widespread and accepted.

The Planned Parenthood founder once said that “before eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for birth control. Like the advocates of birth control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.”

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