‘Catechism in a Year’ podcast tops the charts: ‘It has a beauty that speaks to the heart’

Washington D.C., Sep 20, 2017 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A research paper that depicts the growth of Catholic health care as a threat to reproductive health ignores the attraction of Catholic hospitals and downplays the ethical concerns about procedures like abortion and sterilization, one commentator has said.

The number of hospitals that are Catholic-sponsored or Catholic-affiliated has increased 22 percent from 2001 to 2016, including through mergers or changes of ownership. This growth is the focus of a September 2017 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Medically Necessary but Forbidden: Reproductive Health Care in Catholic-owned Hospitals.”

“The ‘problem’ that the authors of this study are examining results from the fact that Catholic hospitals and Catholic healthcare systems have been remarkably successful in America’s competitive market,” Edward Furton, an ethicist with the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA Sept. 18.

“Catholic hospitals tend to be better managed, are governed by a sense of social duty, perform greater amounts of charitable care, and have strong ethical safeguards in place to protect their patients.”

Furton attributed the growth of Catholic healthcare to patients’ appreciation for these features.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is an  influential domestic policy think tank based in Cambridge, Mass. Its working paper estimated that the expansion of Catholic hospitals reduces by 30 percent the annual rates per-bed of inpatient abortions. The rates of tubal ligations or sterilizations drop 31 percent.

Elaine Hill, a co-author of the working paper, is a professor of health economics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. She said access to procedures is part of how to “reduce unwanted pregnancy.”

“Policies addressing the ways in which ownership of hospitals might impede access could be very beneficial to the population of women affected,” she told STAT, a health, medicine and scientific research publication from Boston Globe Media.

Furton, however, said the working paper was written by “a group of economists, not healthcare workers.” He questioned the paper’s use of the phrase “medically necessary but forbidden.”

“Neither abortion nor permanent sterilization can be properly described as a medical necessity. They are typically chosen for reasons other than maintaining health,” he said.

“Often times, studies such as this are designed to highlight supposed impediments to health care access within Catholic institutions. In other words, they suffer from an inherent bias,” he added. “In this case, the authors assume that all Americans want unlimited access to abortion and sterilization. That is obviously not true.”

He also defended the presence of Catholic ethics in health care.

“Many people see the reduction in abortion and sterilization as positive goods. The authors assume that denying access to these ‘services’ represents a moral failing of some sort, but not many people would agree,” he said.

“Abortion is obviously of great concern to most people, and few among the general public are fooled by the claim that the lack of sterilization procedures in Catholic hospitals is going to affect contraceptive use among American women,” said Furton. “Contraception is widely available and the refusal to offer permanent sterilizations in Catholic hospitals is not going to change that fact.”

The study estimated that there are about 9,500 fewer tubal ligations each year because Catholic hospitals do not perform them. It charged that this represents “a substantial cost to women, who must subsequently rely on other, more inconvenient suboptimal forms of contraception.”  It claimed that black and Hispanic women were disproportionately affected by these restrictions.

The same working paper found that Catholic hospitals showed no statistically significant increase in complications from miscarriages or sterilization procedures.

Data used in the study came from the states of Arizona, Florida, New Jersey, California, New York, and Washington.

The study said that Catholic ethics are not always followed or it would have found a 100 percent reduction in abortions and sterilizations.

Furton said it is regrettable that not all Catholic hospitals follow Church teaching. However, he suggested that some of the procedures cited in the paper’s data could reflect actions that would not violate Catholic ethics.

“For example, some of what the authors of this paper would call abortions are in fact actions in which the child is unavoidably lost while the medical team is performing a procedure that has some hope of saving either the child, the mother, or both. These should not be classified as abortions. They are justifiable under the principle of double effect.”

Some opponents of the expansion of Catholic hospitals that operate according to Catholic teaching include the American Civil Liberties Union and the group the MergerWatch project. They co-authored a 2013 report that claimed the growth of Catholic hospitals was a “miscarriage of medicine.”

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Image from page 155 of “Young Folks’ History of the United States” (1903). / Public Domain

St. Louis, Mo., Nov 24, 2022 / 08:00 am (CNA).

In 1621, lacking both the skills and the resources necessary to survive in the harsh territory of New England, European pilgrims encountered a miracle: a Native American who not only spoke English but who also used his skills and knowledge to help the Pilgrims adapt to their environment and survive the brutal winter. 

This was Squanto, a man who occupies a special place in the hearts of many people who celebrate Thanksgiving because of his willingness and ability to help the newcomers to his land. 

Squanto’s full name was Tisquantum, and he was a member of the Patuxet tribe, which lived in and around modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. He was probably born around 1585 in the area that is now Boston. 

Little is known about Tisquantum’s early life, but what is known is that he was abducted from his homeland as a slave by an Englishman, Thomas Hunt, in 1614. He ended up in Malaga, Spain, where a group of Franciscans bought him in order to free him. It is apparently thanks to these Franciscans that he received baptism and became Catholic, though it is not clear to what extent he was catechized and practiced his new faith. 

Damien Costello, a Catholic historian and theologian, told CNA that the historical record portrays “a very skillful agent” in Tisquantum who was able to change his situation and engage with European culture. He was able to find employment as a translator in England and later convinced a wealthy financier to fund an expedition back to his homeland. 

When Tisquantum finally made it back to where his tribe lived in present-day Massachusetts, his life took a tragic turn. He found that his entire tribe, while he was in Europe, had been wiped out by disease — he was the sole survivor.  

The Pilgrims arrived in New England in 1620 and were far from the first Europeans to set foot on those shores — this was many years after Jesuit missionaries had started missionary activity in the area but hadn’t settled. When the Pilgrims arrived in what had once been Patuxet territory, the empty land made a good place to settle. Tisquantum, no doubt mourning the loss of his people, was nevertheless able to deftly reinvent himself as an intermediary between the Pilgrims and Native leaders. 

In March 1621, the chief of the Wampanoag confederation, Massasoit, went to meet with the Pilgrims and brought Tisquantum along to translate. After negotiations fell apart, Tisquantum stayed with the Pilgrims and helped to facilitate what we now know as the first Thanksgiving — a meal between the Pilgrims and the Natives of the area. Tisquantum died the next year, in 1622.

So, was Tisquantum a Catholic? Costello says it is likely he was baptized and thus, theologically, he was indeed a Catholic. Native American culture was very spiritual, and Costello said he doesn’t think it unlikely that Tisquantum saw his baptism as a positive spiritual experience. 

“Catholicism was a crucial ingredient in Squanto’s resiliency, the regenerative principle that gave spiritual power to sustain the disjunction of being a global citizen in a world forever turned upside down,” Costello later wrote in an article for U.S. Catholic. 

As to whether Tisquantum continued to practice his Catholic faith for the rest of his life, there’s little evidence to say for sure. In a very real sense, God only knows. 

his article was adapted from an episode of Catholic News Agency’s award-winning storytelling podcast, CNA Newsroom. You can listen to that episode here.

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The House of Mary community poses for a photo on Dec. 8, 1994, in St. Peter’s Square, the first time they brought their blue banner with the words “The Immaculate Conception will Triumph” to the Angelus with Pope John Paul II. The group has continued to bring the banner to every Sunday Angelus for 29 years. / Credit: Comunita Casa di Maria

Vatican City, Dec 8, 2023 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

“The Immaculate Conception will triumph”: These are the words displayed, in Italian, on a blue banner held every week in St. Peter’s Square during the Angelus — a prayer honoring Mary — for 29 years.

The banner’s declaration recalls the Marian spirituality of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who had a special devotion to the Immaculate Conception.

Since the feast of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8, 1994, members of the Casa di Maria (“House of Mary”) community have held the sign “L’Immacolata Vincerà” at the pope’s Angelus on Sundays and Marian feast days.

“Every time we hold the banner in the square we affirm that life is a struggle and the Christian’s joy is a victory … the joy not of those who pretend that all is well but the exultation of those who believe that evil does not have the last word because God is greater,” Father Michele Reschini told CNA via email.

The priest, who oversees the community’s youth formation, said the House of Mary is inspired to be present at the Angelus every Sunday as a sign of its filial affection for the pope and support for his magisterium and apostolate. 

“Moreover, this banner is meant to be a small sign of a great hope,” he explained. “In such an ecclesial place and moment as the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square we want to express that Our Lady is present in the heart of the Church.”

There are frequently tens of thousands of people in attendance at the Sunday Angelus with Pope Francis.

The custom of popes publicly praying the Angelus at midday on Sundays goes back to 1954, when Pope Pius XII was convinced to do so by his friend, Italian Catholic doctor and lay leader Luigi Gedda.

The House of Mary community, founded in 1990, was supported in its early days by Cardinal Andrzej Maria Deskur, a Polish cardinal working in the Vatican and a friend of St. John Paul II from his seminary days.

Originally a Marian prayer group, the community is made up of priests, consecrated women, families, and young adults.

Deskur had written about St. Maximilian Kolbe and his Marian spirituality in a meditation for a novena to the Immaculate Conception in 1987.

“The Mariology of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe could be summarized in the phrase frequently repeated by the saint in the face of the difficulties he encountered: ‘The Immaculate Conception will triumph,’” the cardinal wrote. 

Deskur invoked the phrase again in a March 25, 1994, audience with John Paul II, to whom he presented the House of Mary community and its founder, Father Giacomo Martinelli.

“The Immaculate Conception will triumph” became the unofficial motto of the House of Mary, and almost nine months later, on Dec. 8, 1994, the group brought their blue banner, for the first time, to the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square.

At an Angelus the following month, Pope John Paul II pointed to the sign and said, “I, too, am convinced that the Immaculate Conception will triumph!”

Over the years, the group has also brought its banner on some of the pope’s apostolic trips within Italy, estimating that it has traveled more than 96,000 miles to over 38 cities.

Pope Francis has also been supportive of the group and its presence at his Sunday Angelus.

“The House of Mary is a community that wants to live the Gospel in faith and to witness to the Gospel through fraternal life in a world that increasingly loses the gift of belief and the gift of fraternity,” Reschini said.

“Our Lady has always been present in the life of Jesus, from the manger to Calvary. So she is always present in the life of the Church, from its beginning to its end,” he continued. “This faithfulness of hers gives us hope, this presence of hers is a guarantee of victory. It impels us to believe that his faithfulness is stronger than our infidelities, and in this faithfulness the Church can always find herself faithful to Jesus Christ.”

“Inside the storms of modern times; in the midst of the icy winds of secularism, modernism, and relativism; under the threats of apostasy and idolatry, the Church remaining with Mary will triumph, will triumph because like Mary and with Mary, it is faithful to Christ to the end.”

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