Washington D.C., Mar 8, 2017 / 03:29 pm (CNA).- As Congress considers a new health care law, the U.S. bishops are calling for a plan that does not fund abortion, but respects conscience rights, while also ensuring universal access to affordable health … […]
Mountain View, Calif., Mar 8, 2017 / 06:06 am (Church Pop).- St. Francis Catholic High School in Mountain View, California recently revealed that it invested just $15,000 in a very early seed round of funding for Snapchat (now known as Snap) back in 20… […]
Austin, Texas, Mar 7, 2017 / 02:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Austin, Texas, like any hipster city worth its organic, non-GMO salt, is known for its food trucks.
There are about 1,000 food trucks that roam the streets of the Texas capital, offering barbecue, breakfast tacos, and gourmet grilled cheese to the masses of Pabst Blue Ribbon-swilling millennials who have recently flocked to the city.
But among them, and before them, there was Alan Graham and Mobile Loaves and Fishes.
Mobile Loaves and Fishes is a Christian non-profit founded by Graham and five other men that delivers about 1,200 meals and essentials from 12 food trucks to homeless people on the streets of Austin every night.
The ministry also recently started a village called Community First!, a place where the formerly homeless, volunteers and those desiring a simpler life live together in a village of tiny homes and recreational vehicles in what Graham calls “an RV park on steroids.”
In his newly released book Welcome Homeless, Graham recalls the story and the people behind his ministries, in his raw, straight-shooting, and often humorous voice.
In October 1996, Graham, a convert to Catholicism, had gone tentatively on a men’s retreat. At first, he was counting down the hours until the “hugs and hand-holding” were over. The retreat was too emotional for his then-very intellectual faith.
But by the end, he experienced a profound change of heart and adopted a philosophy of “just say yes.”
Several yesses and a couple of years later, Graham and his wife, Tricia, found themselves having coffee with a friend who was telling them about an initiative in Corpus Christi, Texas, where multiple churches would pool their resources to provide food for the homeless on cold winter nights.
An entrepreneur at heart, Graham immediately envisioned a catering truck that could deliver meals to the homeless (this was before the food truck boom; at the time ,Graham called them “roach coaches”).
“I woke up the next morning knowing we could franchise it, and bring it to every church, every city, and every state to feed the homeless,” he recalls in his book. “This is how entrepreneurs think: one truck becomes a thousand.”
Through his church group, he recruited six more men to join him and invest in a food truck for the homeless (they started calling themselves “The Six Pack”). One of these men turned out to be an especially key player: Houston Flake.
Socks and popsicles
Houston, who met Graham through the men’s group at St. John Neumann Catholic Church, was poorly educated and illiterate, but understood the Gospel like no one Graham had ever met.
Houston had experienced chronic homelessness throughout his life, and became a key tour guide for Graham and his crew, who were “clueless” about life on the streets as they began their ministry.
During one meeting, the group had discussed how great it would be if they could get phone cards (pre-cellphone times) to hand out to the homeless whom they would meet.
“Houston looked at us and said, ‘That is the dumbest idea on the face of the planet. They don’t need phone cards. No one wants to talk to them. They don’t want to talk to anybody. You need to put socks on that truck,’” Graham recalled.
To this day, socks are the most desired item on the trucks.
Houston also took Graham out to his “conference room” – to meet some of the homeless who were his friends. It changed Graham’s whole perspective on the population he was about to serve.
Not long after Mobile Loaves and Fishes began, Houston was diagnosed with bladder cancer and given mere weeks to live.
For his dying wish, Houston didn’t want to travel or eat a fancy steak dinner – he wanted to deliver 400 popsicles to homeless children on a hot summer day, a treat those kids rarely experienced.
“He wanted them to choose: Pink? Red? Blue? Purple? Green? He wanted to give that which they did not need but might want. He wanted to give them abundance in fruity, tasty, frozen form,” Graham wrote.
That philosophy carried over to the food trucks. The people they serve are given options – PB&J, ham and cheese, tacos? Milk, coffee, orange juice? Oranges or apples? It’s a shift from the scarcity mentality found in soup kitchens founded in the Great Depression, to an abundance mentality that is possible in the most abundant country in the world, Graham explained. They are “the little bitty choices that people who live a life in extreme poverty don’t get to make often.”
The solution to homelessness is not just housing
Since the first truck run, the ministry quickly grew. Hungry people would chase down the food trucks as they saw them making their way through the streets of Austin.
The ministry has now expanded to the cities of San Antonio, Texas; Providence, Rhode Island; New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. To date, Mobile Loaves & Fishes has served over 4 million meals, and with more than 18,000 volunteers, it is the largest prepared feeding program to the homeless and working poor in Austin.
But it didn’t stop there. A little over 5 years into the ministry, Graham envisioned an “RV park on steroids”, with the philosophy of “housing first”, which holds that the homeless need housing before they can solve any of their other problems.
However, Graham knew that mere houses were not enough. What these people need and desire, like everyone, is to be known and loved – they needed community. He envisioned a place where people lived life together, knew and cared for each other, sharing kitchens and gardens and conversation.
“It developed from this idea back in 2004, where we went out and bought a gently used RV and lifted one guy off the streets into a privately owned RV park,” he said.
Because of zoning laws and other issues, it took awhile to get the idea off the ground, but the Community First! Village project was finally able to break ground in 2014.
Today, 110 people, most of them formerly homeless, call the village home. Soon, there will be enough housing for 250 people. There are brightly colored tiny homes that would give HG-TV a run for their money, as well as recreational vehicles and “canvas-sided” homes (sturdy tents with concrete foundations).
The homes provide the basics – they are essentially bedrooms – while everything else is communal. There is a communal kitchen and garden and bonfire, and places everywhere to sit and have a conversation.
A post shared by Mobile Loaves & Fishes (@mobileloaves) on Apr 2, 2016 at 2:21pm PDT
“It’s all centered on Genesis 2:15,” Graham said. “Just after God created the Garden of Eden, he took the man, and centered him in the garden to cultivate and care for it. And so the foundation for our entire philosophy of the community is centered on God’s original plan for us, to be settled, to be at peace with each other, to live in community, to be cultivating with the gifts that he has given us, and to serve him by caring for each other.”
What needs to change
The solution to homelessness, Graham said, is not going to be found in new government policies or agencies, but rather in Christians and other people who choose to take care of each other.
“I believe it’s like the old African adage ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’” Graham said. “We have to step in, the village should step in and care for its own. What we’re doing right now is abdicating that responsibility to our government, which … tries to resolve this issue transactionally, but I believe it’s a relationship issue. Our Kingdom desire is to be wanted by each other, not ‘if you buy me a house I’m going to be happy.’ That’s not where our happiness comes from.”
One of the foundational goals of the ministry is to change the stereotypes that people have about the homeless, so that they are seen as brothers and sisters rather than as other, Graham added.
He recommended that anyone who wants to help the homeless start building relationships with them – say hello, ask their name, shake their hand, give them a sandwich or a gift card to Chick-fil-A. And then find an organization to volunteer with in your city.
“There’s a giant stereotype around the homeless, and we’re very good as Americans at stereotyping, and so the homeless population (is projected) to be drug addicts, mentally ill, criminals; they’re usually depicted as unkempt or that they don’t pay attention to hygiene, so we develop these preconceived notions that won’t even allow us to roll down our windows anymore to say ‘Hello’ or ‘God Bless,’” he said.
“Those things just aren’t true,” Graham said.
“We have five major corporate goals, and goal number one is to transform the paradigm of how people view the stereotype of the homeless. When we change that paradigm, it changes our culture so as to be able to go and love on our brothers and sisters.”
That’s one of his hopes for the book, and the reason he made sure to tell the stories of so many homeless men and women who have directly touched his life.
“What we want to do is spread the kingdom message of a better way to love on our neighbors, so I’m hoping the book will go broad and deep, and people will be inspired to go out there and begin doing what it is that we’re doing, that’s what I hope.”
Because “what’s happening here in Austin, Texas is nothing short of a miracle.”
Minneapolis, Minn., Mar 7, 2017 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Facing over one hundred lawsuits concerning sex abuse claims dating back to the 1950s, the Diocese of New Ulm has filed for bankruptcy and plans a reorganization.
“I have come to the c… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 6, 2017 / 03:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With people fleeing humanitarian crises around the world, President Donald Trump’s new executive order halting refugee admissions is wrong, Catholic bishop and aid groups maintain.
“We remain deeply troubled by the human consequences of the revised executive order on refugee admissions and the travel ban. While we note the Administration’s efforts to modify the Executive Order in light of various legal concerns, the revised Order still leaves many innocent lives at risk,” Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin stated March 6. Bishop Vasquez chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration.
“The U.S. Catholic Bishops have long recognized the importance of ensuring public safety and would welcome reasonable and necessary steps to accomplish that goal,” he said.
“However, based on the knowledge that refugees are already subjected to the most vigorous vetting process of anyone who enters the United States, there is no merit to pausing the refugee resettlement program while considering further improvement to that vetting process.”
Bill O’Keefe, vice president for advocacy and government relations at Catholic Relief Services, said that “with the most refugees in the world since World War II, now is not the time for the world’s leader in refugee resettlement to back down.”
Trump issued a revised executive order on immigration and refugee admissions on Monday, revoking his old order that was blocked by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A 120-day ban on all refugee admissions remains in the revised executive order, and Trump capped the total number of refugee admissions at 50,000 for fiscal year 2017. In contrast, the Obama administration accepted 85,000 refugees in FY 2016, including more than 12,000 from Syria.
35,000 refugees have already been accepted this fiscal year, O’Keefe noted, which means that under the new policy very few refugees will be accepted from March through September.
“Resettling only 50,000 refugees a year, down from 110,000, does not reflect the need, our compassion, and our capacity as a nation,” Bishop Vasquez stated. “We have the ability to continue to assist the most vulnerable among us without sacrificing our values as Americans or the safety and security of our nation.”
There are several humanitarian crises around the world, O’Keefe said. The Syrian civil war, raging since 2011, has already displaced over 11 million and created almost 5 million refugees, but there are also large conflicts in Iraq, Nigeria, and Ukraine. Four famines in Africa and the Middle East are also worsening, he said.
With all this, “the U.S. needs to be increasing our humanitarian assistance and helping people where they are, as well as taking more of the most vulnerable people who are fleeing violence as refugees, and we can safely take.”
Although the order says that the 120-day ban on refugee resettlement gives the administration time to review the security of the program, the process is already secure, O’Keefe insisted.
“Refugees, though, are already subjected to extreme vetting to get here,” he said, adding that the process often takes at least two years and involves the work of 13 federal agencies.
The indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, featured in the first executive order, is not in the new one. Neither is the prioritization for refugee admissions for those of minority religions who suffer religious persecution.
O’Keefe praised the omission of both policies.
“Being a Syrian doesn’t predispose one to any of the things that our vetting system would look out for,” he said of there being no indefinite ban on Syrian refugee resettlement.
Also, religious-based persecution is already one of five criteria of vulnerability for those refugees who are being vetted for admission to the U.S., he noted, adding that some “local church leaders” have said that a special designation “wouldn’t be helpful” and “actually exposes them to greater danger.”
However, some have been pushing for a special refugee status for persecuted religious minorities, especially those in Syria.
Persecuted Christian minorities, including genocide victims, must have a “fair outcome” when looking to resettle elsewhere, Andrew Walther, vice president of communications and strategic planning at the Knights of Columbus, explained to CNA.
“As part of the review of the refugee admissions procedure, the UNHCR referral process for refugees should be closely scrutinized, and the serious inequities in the number of Syrian refugees admitted from communities targeted for genocide should be rectified,” he said. Refugees must first register with the UNHCR to be eligible for resettlement.
Yet although Christians make up only a small percentage of the Syrian population, the percentage of Christian refugees from Syria who are resettled in the U.S. is even smaller, Walther noted.
“The Obama administration policy was to prioritize these groups, but despite this they remain severely underrepresented in U.S. refugee admissions, so it’s clear that a fair outcome is even more important than a stated priority,” he said.
Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch has warned that Christians hoping to be resettled in the U.S. or Canada have never even had the chance.
“I personally heard on several occasions from many of our Christian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, that their applications for refugee visas, either to the USA or Canada, are without any response, if not refused by the consulates of the USA and Canada,” he stated.
Elsewhere in the executive order, a ban on entry by most foreign nationals into the U.S. from six countries is still in effect. The countries are Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan, while Iraq, which was formerly on the list, is now omitted.
Exceptions to the visa ban include refugees already admitted to the U.S., lawful permanent residents, those who received visas before 5 p.m. ET on Jan. 27 – the date of the original executive order – and those travelling on diplomatic visas.
Yemen and Somalia have “developing famines” and their own conflicts, so “it strikes us as cruel, actually, to restrict the number of people who can come,” O’Keefe said.
Catholic Charities, USA, whose affiliates partner with the government to help resettle refugees in the U.S., spoke out strongly against the temporary refugee ban.
“At the heart of the work of Catholic Charities is the Gospel mandate to welcome the stranger and care for the most vulnerable among us,” Sister Donna Markham O.P., president of Catholic Charities, USA, stated on Monday.
“Today’s executive order not only hinders that work, but also effectively abandons, for four months, the thousands of endangered refugees fleeing violence, starvation and persecution,” she said.
The group “is leading an ambitious $8 million campaign to support the work of local Catholic Charities agencies in caring for refugees.”
Orange, Calif., Mar 6, 2017 / 03:39 pm (National Catholic Register).- On Friday, Feb. 17, a rainstorm was raging in Orange County, California. During a lull in the storm, at around 5:00 p.m., Teresa Johnston left to walk an elderly neighbor’s dog.
“She was always like that—making or doing things for our neighbors. She would pick flowers from one neighbor’s garden, and she would give them to another neighbor who was sad, had a trauma, or was sick. That’s why they called Teresa the ‘neighborhood’s sunshine,’” said Teresa’s father, Dr. Roch Johnston, D.C.
When Teresa failed to return home around an hour later, her parents, Roch and Vera, became worried. “She was always like clockwork: leave our house, go to the neighbors, walk the dog for 30 minutes, and be back 40 minutes after she left our house,” says Roch.
After calling the owner of the dog that she was supposed to have been walking, the Johnstons learned that their daughter had never arrived to get the dog. “That’s when our radars went up. Our first concern was that she had been abducted,” he says.
Frantically, the Johnstons searched their neighborhood for Teresa. “One of my sons and I ran through all of the different paths and trails where she walks, and we climbed over the very tree that struck her,” says the father of seven.
Transported to the Hospital
What the Johnstons hadn’t known was that their daughter was already at the hospital. Teresa had walked only a few minutes away from their home when the 60-foot tree struck her. According to a Los Angeles Times article, a neighbor, who had heard the tree fall, came to Teresa’s rescue. While waiting in the rain for emergency response to arrive, the neighbor covered the unconscious girl with a blanket and held an umbrella over her. Firefighters removed Teresa from the scene without having to dig her out or to move any tree branches. Teresa was being transported to the hospital before her family even had an inkling that anything was wrong.
Unsettling Diagnosis
During their hunt for Teresa, Roch flagged down a policeman, who quickly verified that Teresa had been found, but he didn’t tell the Johnstons about the condition of their daughter. “We saw her in the emergency room just before they transferred her to CCU,” he recalls. “I felt faint when I saw her, and when they read the diagnosis, I almost passed out.”
The Johnstons learned that Teresa suffered multiple cranial facial fractures. On their YouCaring page, Misha Johnston, Teresa’s older sister, writes, “The base of her ocular orbit is fractured with possible damage to the optic nerve. There are fractures of her maxillary bone, her zygomatic arch, her mandible, her hard pallet, her clavicle, and possible compressions of her T6, T7, and T8. Also, there is intracranial bleeding in her right frontal lobe and right occipital lobe.”
The outlook looked bleak for Teresa, and she appeared to be declining because of swelling on her brain. The Monday after the accident, doctors took Teresa off the medical coma drugs, so she could undergo a five-hour surgery, which involved removing part of her skull to alleviate intracranial pressure due to excess blood. During the operation, doctors feared that she might have had a stroke—if this was the case, then it was likely that Teresa would never wake up from her deep comatose state.
Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
Most of us have stories proving how God has protected us in our moment of need, so it can be easy to think that prayer will keep us immune from accidents and tragedies. Fr. Alan Benander, O. Praem, Dean of St. Michael’s Prep in Silverado, California, has kept many vigil hours at Teresa’s bedside. Her parents are Third Order Norbertines, so they are particularly close to Norbertine community of St. Michael’s. He told NCR, “Prayer does not make us immune from accidents and tragedies simply because sometimes it is not part of the Will of God that we avoid a given evil. God allows such evils to occur to us in order to bring about a greater good (e.g., the salvation of more souls).”
Fr. Benander continues, “Thus, for example, Our Lord Himself […] asked that the ‘chalice of suffering’ be removed from Him (though adding, importantly, ‘not my will, but Thine be done’). However, this chalice was not removed simply because that was not part of the Divine Will; the Divine Will allowed Christ to suffer in order that a greater good might be obtained, namely, the eventual glorification of Christ, in his Sacred Humanity, in the Resurrection and Ascension, and the redemption of the entire human race.”
Tragedy Becomes Catalyst for Conversions
Within hours after Teresa’s injury, thousands of people all over the of the world—including in Australia, Norway, France, England, Scotland, Czech Republic, Israel, Jordan and Brazil—began praying for the young girl, who is known for her smile and generosity. As messages started pouring in, the Johnstons learned that their daughter’s accident has been the catalyst for conversions. “I have family members who were away from the church for years and have gone to confession. One of my daughter’s teachers sent me a letter saying she had stopped praying because she felt separated from God. Now she’s back praying on her knees for Teresa.”
He continues, “Another lady told us that she got on her knees immediately and started praying for our daughter. She thought of another friend that has cancer and then another friend. Teresa’s accident is causing people to pray for others not just our daughter.”
The consistent presence of the Norbertine Fathers at the hospital has also impacted strangers. “Not only has Teresa been able to receive the graces of priestly blessings and the Sacraments, but, also, other persons, both Catholic and non-Catholic (i.e., other patients, visitors, even hospital staff and media), have had opportunity to receive the Sacraments, blessings, and prayers from us priests, and simply an opportunity to talk to a priest about God and the Catholic Faith,” Fr. Benander explains.
Because the Norbertine priests were there visiting Teresa, they had the opportunity to administer the last Sacraments to dying people in the hospital and console their families. “All these graces have been given to souls there precisely because of the situation involving Teresa,” Fr. Benander says.
Teresa’s mother, Vera Johnston, writes on their YouCaring page, “There have been so many visible touches from above with His grace that bring us peace and consolation through this all. Our little queen is enthroned in the hospital bed, and God is using her now to shower His graces upon us all.”
Asking for the Intercession of Blessed James Kern
The family is asking that people pray for the intercession of Bl. James Kern, so that Teresa may have a complete healing. “At first, I didn’t want to leave anyone out, I wanted to pray to all of the saints for their intercession, but one of the Norbertine priests said that’s the wrong way to think about it. Whenever you pray for the intercession of any particular saint, all of the saints join in especially when this could be a miracle that could raise the canonization process,” Roch explains.
Bl. James Francis Kern (1897-1924) entered the Norbertine Order because he wanted to be a victim soul and to make reparation for a schism.
In 1916, while serving in the Army during World War I, he received a bullet wound in his lung that doctors thought would be fatal. He surprised them by living. Though he was still unwell, he went on to join the seminary of the Archdiocese of Vienna. “About this time, a sad event occurred in the Czech Republic. A group of Catholics separated themselves from Rome and founded the schismatic Czech National Church. Isidore Bogdan Zahradnik, a Norbertine canon of Strahov and a doctor of philosophy, also fell away and became a leader of the schism. […] James was deeply shocked by all this and decided to offer himself in atonement for Isidore,” according to Premontre.org, a Norbertine website.
In 1924, Fr. James Kern ultimately died due to his war injuries. On June 21, 1998, he was beatified by Pope John Paul. He only needs one more miracle to further his cause for canonization.
Eyes Open
As the Johnstons, and tens of thousands of other people, continue to invoke Bl. James Kern, Teresa’s condition has taken a turn for the better.
As of February 27th, Teresa’s sister Misha writes, “Teresa opened her eyes today—she is waking up! And she was moving her legs and arms around a bit (and getting annoyed at the nurse shining lights in her eyes, hitting the flashlight away with her hand)! I spoke to her a bit (telling her the whole world loves her and is praying for her), not sure if she understood any of that, but she is waking up! Thanks be to God!”
To help pay for Teresa’s medical expenses, visit her YouCaring page. As of Feb. 28, 1,154 donors have donated more than $95,000.
This article was originally published by the National Catholic Register.
Washington D.C., Mar 6, 2017 / 10:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Supreme Court will not hear the case of a transgender student’s demand to access public school single-sex bathrooms, instead sending it back to the lower courts for reconsideration.
Announced Monday, the decision to send the case back to a lower court was based on the Trump administration’s recent announcement that it was withdrawing the Obama-era guidance which had stated that students should have access to the facilities of their self-perceived gender identification.
“The first duty of school districts is to protect the bodily privacy rights of all of the students who attend their schools and to respect the rights of parents who understandably don’t want their children exposed in intimate changing areas like locker rooms and showers,” Kerri Kupec, legal counsel for the group Alliance Defending Freedom, stated in response to the Court’s decision.
The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled last April that Gavin Grimm, a transgender student in Virginia’s Gloucester County School District, must be allowed access to public school single-sex male facilities. Grimm was born a girl but currently identifies as a boy, receiving hormone therapy and a name change.
The school district board had decided to allow Gavin access to a unisex bathroom facility at school, after proposing that students in the district had to use locker room and restroom facilities according to their birth gender.
Grimm’s lawyers rejected this policy, saying it would “make him feel even more stigmatized” and that “being required to use separate restrooms sets him apart from his peers, and serves as a daily reminder that the school views him as ‘different.’”
The case was about how transgender persons can “participate in public life” through access to public facilities, Chase Strangio, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, stated in a Feb. 23 conference call with reporters.
Grimm asked for an injunction on the policy, but that was denied by a district court. The Fourth Circuit overruled that decision and sent it back to the lower court, which eventually ruled in Grimm’s favor. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed in October to hear the case.
The Obama administration last year stated that public schools should allow transgender students access to single-sex facilities – like locker rooms and restrooms – of their current gender identity.
However, after a federal court ruled against this guidance, the administration of President Donald Trump refused to challenge that decision, and eventually withdrew the guidance. Based on this action, the Supreme Court sent Grimm’s case back to the Fourth Circuit for reconsideration.
“The Fourth Circuit Court, which will now rehear the case, should allow local schools to find solutions that benefit everyone’s safety and privacy,” said Ryan Anderson, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Kupec praised the Trump administration for rejecting “the faulty directive.”
Furthermore, she added, federal Title IX law doesn’t mandate such access to single-sex facilities for transgender students, as the Fourth Circuit had previously decided. Rather, it “protects boys’ and girls’ privacy in locker rooms, showers, and restrooms.”
“School officials should be free to protect their students’ privacy, safety, and dignity without federal government interference,” she said.
Orlando, Fla., Mar 3, 2017 / 04:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- President Donald Trump visited a Florida Catholic school on Friday, praising the Catholic education system and touting his support for school choice programs.
“You understand how much your students benefit from full education, one that enriches both the mind and the soul. That’s a good combination,” the president told Bishop John Noonan of Orlando at St. Andrew Catholic School March 3.
He toured the pre-K-8th grade school, located in Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood, and spoke with students, who presented him with two cards. He visited a fourth grade class, the Associated Press reports.
President Trump responded to a girl who told him she wanted to own her own business, saying she’s “gonna make a lot of money. But don’t run for politics.”
His tour was followed by public comments attended by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Florida Gov. Rick Scott, various Catholic school officials and Bishop Noonan.
There, President Trump reflected on the contributions of Catholic education.
“St. Andrew’s Catholic school represents one of the many parochial schools dedicated to the education of some of our nation’s most disadvantaged children, but they’re becoming just the opposite very rapidly through education and with the help of the school choice programs,” he said.
He praised the school principal, Latrina Peters-Gipson, for her work, saying, “The love of what you do is really fantastic.”
The visit marked the president’s first official trip to a school since he took office. According to the Washington Post, about 300 of the school’s 350 students are beneficiaries of a Florida tax credit program that funds scholarships for families with limited resources.
Henry Fortier, superintendent of schools in the Diocese of Orlando, said the visit was an “exciting opportunity to share the good news and the work that we do.” He said school choice has also been an important part of his career in previous administrative roles in the archdioceses of New York and Baltimore.
“I know that there’s a lot of controversy about school choice for parents and lots of people have different opinions, but I see it as a partnership,” Fortier said. “It’s not a situation of us versus them, it’s a situation of us providing opportunities to our parents so that they have the right to choose an education that is appropriate for their children.”
“It shouldn’t be for just the wealthy that can afford it,” he said, lamenting that many working class families do not have the opportunity to choose the education for their children.
Fortier said the diocese’s schools work closely with their public school counterparts.
He said 25 percent of students in the Diocese of Orlando are in the state of Florida’s Step Up tax credit scholarship program. Of those 25 percent, 727 graduated in 2016, a graduation rate of 100 percent with a 99 percent placement in college or the military.
The superintendent touted the schools’ higher-than-average school scores on college entrance exams and student tests.
President Trump, repeating a campaign phrase, said education is “the civil rights issue of our time.”
“It’s why I’ve asked Congress to support a school choice bill. We’ve come a long way, I think. We’re ahead of schedule in so many ways when it comes to education.”
He predicted schools like St. Andrew would have “a fantastic relationship” with the Secretary of Education that would create “a lot of good things for your school and for the entire system.”
Bishop Noonan prayed for the president, his family, and everyone present.
“We pray for this day in dialogue that we may share the good news, and the future of our students,” he said.
President Trump thanked the bishop for his “uplifting prayer” and praised the bishop’s support for schools like St. Andrews.
The president’s visit drew criticism from some public school advocates like Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who characterized the president’s visit as a continuation of an “ideological crusade.”
Weingarten said that many voucher programs do not improve students’ academic outcomes and are not transparent in their spending and teaching policies.
Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor at The Catholic Association, said the president’s visit was appropriate given Catholic schools’ “record of success.” She said Catholic high school students are twice as likely as public school students to graduate college and their high school education is half the cost as public schools.
According to Ferguson, Catholic high schools in inner cities have a 99 percent graduation rate.
Paterson, N.J., Mar 3, 2017 / 06:36 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic chapel that has served a New Jersey shopping mall since 1970 has scheduled its final Mass.
St. Therese’s Chapel at the Bergen Town Center in Paramus, N.J. was set to close on As… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 3, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- God commanded it, Jesus practiced it, Church Fathers have preached the importance of it – fasting is a powerful and fundamental part of the Christian life.
But for many Catholics today, it’s more of an afterthought: something we grudgingly do on Good Friday, perhaps on Ash Wednesday if we remember it. Would we fast more, especially during Lent, if we understood how helpful it is for our lives?
The answer to this, say both saints of the past and experts today, is a resounding “yes.”
“Let us take for our standard and for our example those that have run the race, and have won,” said Deacon Sabatino Carnazzo, founding executive director of the Institute of Catholic Culture and a deacon at Holy Transfiguration Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Mclean, Va., of the saints.
“And…those that have run the race and won have been men and women of prayer and fasting.”
So what, in essence, is fasting?
It’s “the deprivation of the good, in order to make a decision for a greater good,” explained Deacon Carnazzo. It is most commonly associated with abstention from food, although it can also take the form of giving up other goods like comforts and entertainment.
The current fasting obligation for Latin Catholics in the United States is this: all over the age of 14 must abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and all Fridays in Lent. On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, adults age 18 to 59 must fast – eating no more than one full meal and two smaller meals that together do not add up in quantity to the full meal.
Catholics, “if possible,” can continue the Good Friday fast through Holy Saturday until the Easter Vigil, the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference adds.
Other Fridays throughout the year (aside from Friday within the Octave of Easter) “are penitential days and times throughout the entire Church,” according to Canon Law 1250. Catholics once abstained from meat on all Fridays, but the U.S. bishops received permission from the Holy See for Catholics to substitute another sacrifice or perform an act of charity instead.
Eastern Rite Catholics, meanwhile, follow the fasting laws of their own particular church.
In their 1966 “Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence,” the National Conference of Catholic Bishops exhorted the faithful, on other days of Lent where fasting is not required, to “participation in daily Mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting.”
Aside from the stipulations, though, what’s the point of fasting?
“The whole purpose of fasting is to put the created order and our spiritual life in a proper balance,” Deacon Carnazzo said.
As “bodily creatures in a post-fallen state,” it’s easy to let our “lower passions” for physical goods supersede our higher intellect, he explained. We take good things for granted and reach for them whenever we feel like it, “without thinking, without reference to the One Who gives us the food, and without reference to the question of whether it’s good for us or not,” he added.
Thus, fasting helps “make more room for God in our life,” Monsignor Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter/St. Cyprian Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. said.
“And the Lord said at the well, with the (Samaritan) woman, He said that ‘everyone that drinks from this well is going to be thirsty again. Why don’t you let me go to work in your life and I’ll give you a fountain welling up to Eternal Life.’”
While fasting can take many forms, is abstaining from food especially important?
“The reason why 2000 years of Christianity has said food (for fasting), because food’s like air. It’s like water, it’s the most fundamental,” Deacon Carnazzo said. “And that’s where the Church says ‘stop right here, this fundamental level, and gain control there.’ It’s like the first step in the spiritual life.”
What the Bible says about it
Yet why is fasting so important in the life of the Church? And what are the roots of the practice in Scripture?
The very first fast was ordered by God to Adam in the Garden of Eden, Deacon Carnazzo noted, when God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17).
This divine prohibition was not because the tree was bad, the deacon clarified. It was “made good” like all creation, but its fruit was meant to be eaten “in the right time and the right way.” In the same way, we abstain from created goods so we may enjoy them “in the right time and the right way.”
The fast is the weapon of protection against demons – St. Basil the Great.
Fasting is also good because it is submission to God, he said. By fasting from the fruit of the tree, Adam and Eve would have become partakers in the Divine Nature through their obedience to God. Instead, they tried to take this knowledge of good and evil for themselves and ate the fruit, disobeying God and bringing Original Sin, death, and illness upon mankind.
At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus abstained from food and water for 40 days and nights in the desert and thus “reversed what happened in the Garden of Eden,” Deacon Carnazzo explained. Like Adam and Eve, Christ was tempted by the devil but instead remained obedient to God the Father, reversing the disobedience of Adam and Eve and restoring our humanity.
Following the example of Jesus, Catholics are called to fast, said Fr. Lew. And the Church Fathers preached the importance of fasting.
Why fasting is so powerful
“The fast is the weapon of protection against demons,” taught St. Basil the Great. “Our Guardian Angels more really stay with those who have cleansed our souls through fasting.”
Why is fasting so powerful? “By setting aside this (created) realm where the devil works, we put ourselves into communion with another realm where the devil does not work, he cannot touch us,” Deacon Carnazzo explained.
It better disposes us for prayer, noted Monsignor Pope. Because we feel greater hunger or thirst when we fast from food and water, “it reminds us of our frailty and helps us be more humble,” he said. “Without humility, prayer and then our experience of God really can’t be unlocked.”
Thus, the practice is “clearly linked by St. Thomas Aquinas, writing within the Tradition, to chastity, to purity, and to clarity of mind,” noted Fr. Lew.
“You can kind of postulate from that that our modern-day struggles with the virtue of chastity, and perhaps a lack of clarity in theological knowledge, might be linked to an abandonment of fasting as well.”
A brief history of fasting
The current fasting obligations were set in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, but in previous centuries, the common fasts among Catholics were stricter and more regularly observed.
Catholics abstained from meat on all Fridays of the year, Easter Friday excluded. During Lent, they had to fast – one meatless meal and two smaller meatless meals – on all days excluding Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. They abstained from meat on Fridays and Saturdays in Lent – the days of Christ’s death and lying in the tomb – but were allowed meat during the main meal on the other Lenten weekdays.
The obligations extended to other days of the liturgical year. Catholics fasted and abstained on the vigils of Christmas and Pentecost Sunday, and on Ember Days – the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the Feast of St. Lucy on Dec. 13, after Ash Wednesday, after Pentecost Sunday, and after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in September – corresponding with the four seasons.
In centuries past, the Lenten abstention was more austere. Catholics gave up not only meat but also animal products like milk and butter, as well as oil and even fish at times.
Why are today’s obligations in the Latin Rite so minimal? The Church is setting clear boundaries outside of which one cannot be considered to be practicing the Christian life, Deacon Carnazzo explained. That is why intentionally violating the Lenten obligations is a mortal sin.
But should Catholics perform more than the minimum penance that is demanded? Yes, said Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., who is currently studying for a Pontifical License in Sacred Theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.
The minimum may be “what is due to God out of justice,” he explained, but we are “called not only to be just to God,” but also “to love God and to love our neighbor.” Charity, he added, “would call us to do more than just the minimum that is applied to us by the Code of Canon Law today, I think.”
In Jeremiah 31: 31-33, God promises to write His law upon our hearts, Deacon Carnazzo noted. We must go beyond following a set of rules and love God with our hearts, and this involves doing more than what we are obliged to do, he added.
Be wary of your motivation
However, Fr. Lew noted, fasting “must be stirred up by charity.” A Catholic should not fast out of dieting or pride, but out of love of God.
“It’s always dangerous in the spiritual life to compare yourself to other people,” he said, citing the Gospel of John where Jesus instructed St. Peter not to be concerned about the mission of St. John the Apostle but rather to “follow Me.” (John 21: 20-23).
In like manner, we should be focused on God during Lent and not on the sacrifices of others, he said.
Lent (is referred to) as a joyful season…It’s the joy of loving Him more.
“We will often fail, I think. And that’s not a bad thing. Because if we do fail, this is the opportunity to realize our utter dependence on God and His grace, to seek His mercy and forgiveness, and to seek His strength so that we can grow in virtue and do better,” he added.
And by realizing our weakness and dependence on God, we can “discover anew the depths of God’s mercy for us” and can be more merciful to others, he added.
Giving up good things may seem onerous and burdensome, but can – and should – a Catholic fast with joy?
“It’s referred to in the preface of Lent as a joyful season,” Fr. Lew said. “And it’s the joy of deepening our relationship with Christ, and therefore coming closer to Him. It’s the joy of loving Him more, and the more we love God the closer we draw to Him.”
“Lent is all about the Cross, and eventually the resurrection,” said Deacon Carnazzo. If we “make an authentic, real sacrifice for Christ” during Lent, “we can come to that day of the crucifixion and say ‘Yes Lord, I willingly with you accept the cross. And when we do that, then we will behold the third day of resurrection.’”
This article was originally published on CNA Feb. 20, 2016.
© Catholic World Report