Members of Congress want a vote to protect abortion survivors – will they get one?

Aultman in her first year of private practice, outside her office, which was under construction. / Kathi Aultman

Denver Newsroom, Oct 14, 2021 / 12:26 pm (CNA).
Kathi Aultman was six weeks postpartum when she returned to work at an abortion clin… […]

A view from in St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California. / Credit: St. Michael’s Abbey

CNA Staff, Jan 9, 2024 / 10:30 am (CNA).

An abbey in California launched a consulting and fundraising firm that its leaders say is helping “serve and nourish the Church during a very unique moment in her history.”

The Abbey Group was launched at St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California, in 2020 after the priests saw major success with a capital campaign to build a new monastery there. 

The abbey, of the Norbertine order, launched the campaign in 2006 but it stalled after “a decade of fits and starts,” Gregory Clark, the strategic planning director of the Abbey Group, told CNA. The abbey’s leadership consequently assembled “a small, internal team of confreres to rethink the project,” hiring R. Shane Giblin in the process. 

Within short order the abbey had secured over $150 million in commitments, more than doubling earlier projections of $60 million. The team also found “creative ways to immediately pay off all their bank debt in the same year it opened.”

St. Michael’s Abbey Father Prior Chrysostom Baer told CNA the project had transformed to the point that it was “no longer about what the abbey needed but rather the opportunity the benefactors had to do something of great consequence for themselves and the Church.” 

“This not only fit with our calling as religious, but it was simply more effective,” Baer said. 

The major success of that campaign led people to seek out both Giblin and the Norbertine Fathers “asking for strategic counsel on how to move forward with their own projects,” Clark said. 

Giblin and the abbey’s Father Justin Ramos “began offering pro bono counsel for about 18 months until they saw there was a real need in the Church that wasn’t being met.” The Abbey Group was launched as a result. 

‘Not dissimilar from what St. Norbert encountered 900 years ago’

St. Norbert established the Canons Regular of Prémontré in Prémontré, France, in 1121. The order’s task was in part to revitalize both clergy and lay faithful that had become dissolute in the faith at the time. 

The Abbey Group “exists to help serve and nourish the Church during a very unique moment in her history — not dissimilar from what St. Norbert encountered 900 years ago,” Clark told CNA. 

The initiative “provides strategic counsel and direction to faithful Catholic religious communities, educational institutions, and apostolates around the world,” Clark said, with a focus on institutions that have “ambitious apostolic endeavors and strong leadership but are in need of the financial and temporal resources to accomplish their objectives.”

The Abbey Group team has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for worthy Catholic projects, though it does not engage in any formal marketing. The group intentionally eschews online marketing, avoiding the common business practice to “saturate the internet with messages” of self-promotion. 

Giblin, now serving as CEO and co-founder of the Abbey Group, said this is intentional. “All of our clients come to us through unsolicited word of mouth,” he said. “So our reputation is all we have — if we don’t do good work we won’t exist — and we shouldn’t exist.”

The group has already developed “a queue of clients” — it takes on just four projects at any one time, vigorously vetting each proposal for its fidelity to the Catholic Church as well as the leadership guiding the project in question.

The majority of the staff are drawn from the laity, and the Norbertine Fathers offer “spiritual guidance” to the team and play a role in the governance of the organization.

Altogether the effort is directed toward “providing worthy Catholic projects with the strategy and resources they need to fulfill what God is calling them to accomplish,” Clark said. 

Giblin said he was fortunate to have had “a front-row seat to see the way Father Abbot and Father Justin were able to work with a special group of people from all over the country to courageously support this unique project.” 

“I saw people grow spiritually through this process and I realized this was just as much an opportunity for them as it was for the abbey,” he said. “It is an authentically Catholic approach to fundraising — one that is desperately needed in our Church during this moment in her history.”

Co-founder of the Abbey Group Father Ramos, meanwhile, said the endeavor’s work “is rooted inexorably in faith and charity, and in Christ.” 

“We’re aiding in discernment,” Ramos said, “to allow generous souls to participate in the renewing of the Church.”

[…]

Montpelier, Vt., Sep 28, 2018 / 02:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the attorney general of Vermont investigates allegations of abuses at Catholic institutions, the state’s bishop has announced that the diocese is waiving nondisclosure agreements for abuse victims.

Attorney General T.J. Donovan announced Sept. 11 an investigation of allegations surrounding St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington.

“The allegations include murder, for which there is no statute of limitations, as well as abuse and sexual abuse,” the attorney general’s office stated. “The Burlington Catholic Diocese, which operated St. Joseph’s Orphanage, has expressed willingness to fully cooperate with the investigation.”

The orphanage, founded in the mid-1800s, was operated by the Sisters of Providence, and overseen by Vermont Catholic Charities. It closed in 1974.

The allegations were described by Christine Kenneally in an Aug. 27 article in BuzzFeed News.

“I wish to inform all survivors of abuse who entered into a Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA) with the Diocese of Burlington as part of a legal settlement that the Diocese waives that agreement and they are now free to tell the story of what happened to them as they see fit,” Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington said Sept. 28.

He noted that this applies only “to NDAs that were signed with the Diocese and not any other Church entity such as a religious community or school.”

“Out of respect for those who asked for an NDA so as to maintain their own personal privacy in these matters, the Diocese will continue to maintain the agreement.”

The bishop added that the Diocese of Burlington has not required nondisclosure agreements on the part of survivors since 2002.

“It is my hope that this past action as well as the present one will allow the truth of what happened to survivors and their families to be heard,” Bishop Coyne wrote. “I pledge to you, as the bishop of Burlington, that I will do everything that I can to make sure this never happens again and to work for healing and reconciliation with those who were so badly abused by clergy.”

Alleged abuses at St. Joseph’s Orphanage were the subject of lawsuits brought by former residents in the 1990s. Some of the cases were dismissed, and some reached settlements.

VTDigger reported Sept. 26 that Donovan’s investigation will include Weston Priory, a Benedictine monastery. Michael Veitch has said he was sexually abused by a visiting priest at the priory around 1970, when he was 15 years old.

Msgr. John McDermott, vicar general of the Burlington diocese, told VTDigger that the diocese will cooperate with Donovan “in any way … If the Vermont Attorney General decides to expand the investigation we will cooperate to the best of our ability.”

Veitch has said that memories of his alleged abuse were triggered by reports of sexual abuse of minors in Pennsylvania.

In August, a Pennsylvania grand jury report found more than 1,000 allegations of abuse at the hands of some 300 clergy members in six dioceses in the state. It also found a pattern of cover up by senior Church officials.

The report has prompted questions nationwide on the Church’s response to abuse claims.

Since then, numerous state attorneys general have announced investigations into abuse by clerics, including those in Michigan, Nebraska, New York, New Jersey, Missouri, New Mexico, and Illinois.

[…]