#U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

[beardedmrbean]

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer apologized for a social media video in which she wore a Harris-Walz campaign hat and fed Doritos to a kneeling podcast host in what some critics said made a mockery of a sacred Christian rite.

The Democrat was seen in the clip taking a Doritos chip out of a bag and placing it into the mouth of a kneeling liberal podcaster Liz Plank, before the video panned to the governor wearing a camouflage Harris-Walz hat. While Whitmer said the video was intended to spotlight the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act that allocated nearly $53 billion towards efforts to bring semiconductor supply chains back to the U.S., religious leaders saw it as a spoof of the sacrament of Holy Communion.

MICHIGAN GOV FEEDS KNEELING FEMALE PODCAST HOST DORITOS WHILE WEARING A HARRIS-WALZ HAT

"It is not just distasteful or ‘strange;’ it is an all-too-familiar example of an elected official mocking religious persons and their practices," Michigan Catholic Conference (MCC) President and CEO Paul A. Long said in a statement representing the views of Catholic leaders in the state.

The video was made as part of a viral TikTok trend where one person feeds another person, who is acting sexually, with the song "Dilemma" by Nelly and Kelly Rowland playing in the background before the first person stares uncomfortably into the camera.

MICHIGAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS CONDEMN WHITMER'S DORITOS VIDEO STUNT AS OFFENSIVE

Former Trump advisor Tim Murtaugh, for example, posted, "Let’s be clear what’s happening in this video. Gov. Whitmer of Michigan is pretending to give communion to an leftist podcaster on her knees, using a Dorito as the Eucharist while wearing a Harris-Walz hat. Do they want ZERO Catholic votes for Harris?"

Following the backlash, Whitmer apologized for the video and emphasized that the video was not meant to mock people of faith.

"Over 25 years in public service, I would never do something to denigrate someone's faith," the governor said in a statement to Fox 2. "I’ve used my platform to stand up for people’s right to hold and practice their personal religious beliefs."

"My team has spoken to the Michigan Catholic Conference," she continued. "What was supposed to be a video about the importance of the CHIPS Act to Michigan jobs, has been construed as something it was never intended to be, and I apologize for that." ________________________

[pscottm]

Today marks an important step on the road to medical transparency.

A new Colorado law has now gone into effect, requiring all hospitals to tell the public up front what procedures they won’t perform for non-medical reasons. That’s especially important for Catholic hospitals, which now have to be open and honest about the limitations of their offerings.

Here’s why this matters.

Suppose you’re giving birth and having a C-section. You might decide that you’re also done having kids and you’d like to have your tubes tied so there are no unplanned pregnancies in your future.

The doctor is already performing surgery, so performing a tubal ligation actually lets you kill two birds with one stone. It’s a safe procedure. Medical professionals even say that if you want to get your tubes tied, doing it during a C-section is a good idea because it doesn’t require an additional surgery. Nearly 30% of married adult women in the U.S. have had the procedure done. Not a big deal!

But what if you’re at a Catholic hospital?

Doctors there will perform a C-section, no problem, but they will not perform a tubal ligation. Why not? Because their directives don’t come from medical professionals, but rather the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. And since anything involving contraception is forbidden in the faith, even a normal procedure like tubal ligation isn’t permitted. This rule applies even if future pregnancies would put the woman’s life in danger.

By and large, and with very few exceptions, the USCCB does not allow Catholic hospitals to perform any procedures that violate Catholic doctrine. Hospitals that violate those rules risk getting shut down. Even if the doctors and nurses who work there know that a procedure is necessary for the health of the patient, their expertise takes a backseat to the whims of religious leaders.

Fucking Christian version of the Taliban.

[cheerfullycatholic]

Entire article;

For the first time in almost a year, Pope Francis held a press conference aboard the papal airplane this past Friday. During the conference, he was asked to offer guidance to United States voters in the upcoming presidential election as they are “faced with a candidate who supports ending a pregnancy and another who wants to deport 11 million migrants.” Pope Francis responded that both candidates “are against life: the one that throws out migrants and the one that kills children.” He added, “ I can’t decide; I’m not American and won’t go to vote there.”  went on to say, “One must vote. And one must choose the lesser evil. Which is the lesser evil? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know; each person must think and decide according to their own conscience.” Here he reiterated Church teaching that, in a situation where both candidates hold views that are opposed to Catholic beliefs, each person must vote in accordance with his faithfully formed conscience. He also emphasized the importance of voting and said, “In political morality, it is generally said that not voting is ugly, it’s not good.” (Courtney Mares’s article “Pope Francis: U.S. presidential election a choice between 'the lesser evil'" offers a more detailed summary of the conference and highlights the other topics that Pope Francis addressed.) While the Pope’s words are likely disappointing to supporters of both candidates who would have preferred a more direct endorsement, they follow the Church’s precedent of leaving the act of voting in the hands of the faithful. His words also align with the document of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on voting, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, which highlights multiple issues that voters should consider when determining how to vote.  These include abortion, migration, the right to fair living wages, the right to join unions, euthanasia, racism, international relations, gun violence, climate change, protection of and support for the family, and limits of governmental power. Each of these issues falls under one of the interrelated categories of Human Dignity of the Person, The Common Good, Solidarity and Subsidiarity. The document, which last underwent a major revision in 2015, also recognizes that voters “must consider not only candidates’ positions on these issues, but their character and integrity, as well.” This, too, is a very serious and often underappreciated consideration, which must be submitted to the prudence of an informed conscience. In its new November 2023 introduction to the document, the USCCB suggests that the faithful should approach this election with the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bound the wounds of his enemy thus forming social bonds and connections. The bishops admonish American Catholics to forego fear and hostility and to instead show mercy to one another while engaging in open and honest dialogue. They suggest that voters take time away from social media and news channels that tend to fuel anger and division. Instead, they ask voters to spend their time in prayer, service for others, adoration, reflection on the Bible and the study of Church teachings – all of which will help to strengthen and form conscience. Fittingly, they close their introduction to the document with the following prayer: “May God bless you as you consider and pray over these challenging decisions. May God bless our nation with true wisdom, peace, and mutual forgiveness, that we may decide together, through our democratic processes, to uphold the dignity of life and the common good.”

[mariacallous]

ELBASAN, Albania — Isaac Herzog’s visit to Albania Thursday marked the first time an Israeli leader set foot in the only European country that ended World War II with more Jews than it started with.

Albania’s role in saving Jews during the Holocaust was a key theme of the Israeli president’s brief visit, which included a ceremony at the Holocaust memorial in Tirana as well as meetings with descendants of some of the 75 Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox Christians listed by Israel’s Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles — those who risked their lives to save Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps following Germany’s occupation of Albania in September 1943.

“Albanians hid Jews without regard to where they came from, or whether they were rich or poor,” Petrit Zorba, head of the Albanian-Israeli Friendship Association, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Elbasan, a small city about one hour’s drive south of the capital Tirana.

Zorba estimated that up to 3,000 foreign Jews found refuge in Albania during World War II. “Only 100 meters from here lived the Kurmaku family, one of the families that protected Jewish people,” he said. “These houses have lately become tourist attractions visited by Israelis and others.”

Yet youths in this once-Marxist nation of 2.6 million know nearly nothing of that unique legacy, according to Florenca Stafa, director of the Albanian and Balkan Research Center at the University of Elbasan, Albania’s largest and oldest teaching college. 

“During communism, nobody spoke about the Holocaust. The topic was never taught in school,” said Stafa, 41, whose father was jailed for two years in the late 1960s simply for complaining there was no bread to eat. “Even after the regime collapsed, in the 1990s, it was still an unknown concept. So for me, as a professor, it’s important for us to do something about this.”

To that end, Stafa helped organize a conference for 25 teachers last week in Elbasan. The five-day event was co-sponsored by the Albanian History Teachers Association and The Olga Lengyel Institute, or TOLI, a New York-based nonprofit that promotes Holocaust education throughout the United States and Europe.

Oana Nestian-Sandu , TOLI’s international program director, said Albania is the 14th country outside the U.S. to host a TOLI seminar for teachers since 2012, and the only one among the 14 where antisemitism — rampant across much of Eastern Europe — has hardly been an issue.

“Because we are educators, we have to study what’s the best way to present this immense topic to our students,” she explained. “For them, it’s something that happened almost 100 years ago. But research has shown that through diaries, students can connect, and they become not only interested in it but committed to learning more — even in their free time — and be inspired by it.”

Albana Ndoja, 47, is a longtime history teacher and vice-director of the Kolë Idromeno High School in Shködra, a predominantly Catholic city. She first heard about the Shoah during a 2016 week-long group visit to Yad Vashem that was organized by Albania’s Ministry of Culture.

“We taught about World War II and the ancient world, but never about the Holocaust,” said Ndoja, a Muslim. She noted that in her hometown, the family of Agostin and Gysepina Çiftja sheltered a Jewish family for one year, even though their house was next to a Nazi garrison.

“The bishops of Shködra gave them Catholic identities, but they never tried to convert them. After a year, they got new passports and helped them go to Macedonia. Along with my students, I’m trying to gather all the histories of families in our city who did this,” she said, adding that “if we don’t learn from the past, we cannot learn how to protect ourselves in the future.”

Klodeta Cane, an Albanian Jew and Holocaust educator, said Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf,” has enjoyed strong sales in Albania of late. When she recently discovered a copy of the notoriously antisemitic book in the car of a municipal official in Vlora and asked him about it, the official responded: “We were just curious and wanted to read it.”

Cane added that Hitler exploited Germany’s economic devastation following the First World War to scapegoat Jews. She worries that sentiment could also shift in the Balkans, where “the radicalization of Islam is growing, and organizations are paying money to buy their souls” — that is, worshippers are offered cash incentives to attend mosques.

Gadi Luzzetto-Voghuera, director of Italy’s Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea, agrees with that assessment—especially after Oct. 7 and the dramatic rise in anti-Zionist and pro-Hamas sentiments throughout the West, and among intellectuals. 

Some of the speakers and participants cited frequent and harsh criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza in the Albanian media.

“Antisemitism is not an important issue for Albanian society, but it is important politically for the entire world, especially in Europe,” said Luzzetto-Voghuera, a speaker at the Elbasan event. “It’s being used as a political tool, even in countries like Albania where few Jews live.”

Elda Dermyshi, 54, has been teaching high-school history in Elbasan for 32 years. She said the Holocaust has recently become “a very sensitive issue” in Albania due to the conflict in Gaza.

“Everyone on TV is talking about this war and they connect it to the Holocaust and antisemitism. Back then, it was the Jews who were persecuted. Now the Jews themselves are accused of being the persecutors,” Dermyshi said, declining to discuss her own views. “What I understand from this conference is that we must treat the Holocaust as a multidimensional issue strongly related to human rights and cultural diversity, to refuse to accept stereotypes, and to practice tolerance.”

Today, the formerly Marxist dictatorship is home to perhaps 60 Jews—nearly all of them in Tirana—though its government is quite pro-Israel. Prime Minister Edi Rama, who met with Herzog during his visit, is currently overseeing the construction of two museums honoring Jewish history and Albania’s wartime rescue of Jews: one in Tirana, and the other in Vlora.

Alket Shehaj, 39, was one of the few male attendees at the TOLI conference. A middle-school history and geography teacher from the southern town of Fier, Shehaj acknowledged the rise of violent extremism in the Balkans but said education and a stable family life can counter that.

“Albanians have shown throughout history that we are a nation which embraces values and traditions, and we’ve always sought peaceful relations with our neighbors,” Shehaj said. “We have heard about the Holocaust since we were little. This is a subject we need to study in depth.”

Each teacher attending the TOLI conference received three books: “Flower of Vlora: Growing Up Jewish in Communist Albania,” an autobiography by retired Florida dentist Anna Kohen; an Albanian translation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “Izraelitët në Shqipëri” (“Jews in Albania”) by Josef Jakoel. 

Felicita Jakoel is the daughter of Josef Jakoel, the patriarch of what was then a 300-member Jewish community that emigrated en masse to Israel in 1991 after the fall of communism.

“My father was worried that because we were living in a closed country, it would be forgotten that a Jewish community once thrived here. He loved history, he was an economist, and he spoke many languages, so it was his moral duty to write the history of Jews in Albania,” she said.

Jakoel, who has lived in Israel since 1991, told teachers that the Jewish presence in Albania dates back 2,000 years — as evidenced by the ruins of an ancient synagogue in Saranda, along the country’s Adriatic coast near the Greek border. Jews also flourished in Berat and Elbasan, but enjoyed their strongest presence in Vlora, where a merchant class thrived until the Italian occupation in 1939. 

Yet the Albanian people’s determination to hide Jews from the Nazis at enormous personal risk paid off. By the war’s end, the Nazis had killed only one Albanian family out of a native Jewish population of 300 and perhaps thousands of refugees from neighboring countries. In contrast, of the 2,000 or so prewar Jews who lived on the Greek island of Corfu—just off Albania’s coast—only 187 survived. The rest were all deported to Auschwitz.

‘What happened here in Albania didn’t happen in any other country in Europe,” said Jakoel, 67. “In Denmark, Danish Jews were saved. But in Albania, so were Jews who came from other countries. This is a very important topic to be integrated in schools. We should teach new generations about what we did during the Holocaust.”

TOLI’s Nestian-Sandu said she hopes to make the seminar an annual event in this country, and next year to include Albanian-speaking teachers from neighboring Kosovo as well.

“It’s not enough just to tell the story of these wonderful people who saved so many Jews,” she said. “It’s equally important to inspire students to be active citizens and help those around them.”

[coochiequeens]

An older article but worth sharing in light of an overrated white man who thinks his opinion means something because he's good at sports

By Kate Stringer March 25, 2018

March is National Women’s History Month. In recognition, The 74 is sharing stories of remarkable women who transformed U.S. education.

A self-described young, stuttering child, Joe Biden credits a group of women for building his confidence and giving him 12 years of education that would lead him to become vice president of the United States. “You have no idea of the impact that you have on others,” Biden told a group of Catholic nuns on a social justice tour of the United States in 2014.

Biden is just one of millions of Americans, many of them underprivileged, educated in Catholic schools, a system that would have been impossible if not for the generations of dedicated religious female educators. Working for very low wages, these women changed lives, moving large immigrant communities into the middle class and — though too often given short shrift by the male-dominated Catholic Church — opened doors to higher education for women.

“Teaching is a critical part of the sisters’ mission of education because we believe, in short, that education can save the world,” said Sister Teresa Maya, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. “It empowers people, it broadens horizons, it deepens values, it engages conversation between faith and culture.”

Catholic schooling in the U.S. dates back as far as the early 1600s, as priests and nuns arrived in the colonies and established schools, orphanages, and hospitals. John Carroll — elected the first U.S. bishop in 1789 — pushed for religious schools to educate American Catholic children living in a predominantly Protestant country. As priests and brothers began creating schools for boys, it was left to the nuns to teach girls.

Elizabeth Ann Seton, recognized in the Catholic Church as the first native-born U.S. saint, started the Sisters of Charity, an order that opened separate parochial schools for families of poor and wealthy girls, in the early 1800s. Some consider these the first Catholic parochial schools in the U.S.

By the middle of the century, Catholics from Ireland, Italy, and Poland began immigrating to the United States and swelling the ranks of local churches, and in the early 1900s, bishops called for every parish to educate its children — a response to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment, a need to help Americanize the new arrivals, and a desire for an alternative to public schools where children prayed the Protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer and read the King James version of the Bible.

Most of this work was carried out by the nuns, who took vows of poverty and could teach children for very low wages.

“Without the nuns, you could not have had the parochial school system that this country has had,” said Maggie McGuinness, professor of religion at La Salle University.

Catholic schools were also invaluable in alleviating overcrowded public schools as populations surged in major cities, and giving immigrants a boost up the economic ladder, said Ann Marie Ryan, associate professor of education at Loyola University Chicago.

“(The nuns) moved entire groups of people into the middle class, which is a substantial feat in and of itself,” she said.

Still, anti-Catholic sentiment proved pervasive. As Catholic groups tried to obtain public funding for their schools in the late 1800s, states began passing Blaine amendments, which restricted state legislatures from using funds for religious schools. Today, 37 states have these laws.

Oregon even instituted a law, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, that prohibited students from attending Catholic school. The U.S. Supreme Court struck this down in Pierce vs. The Society of Sisters in 1925.

As the sisters fought for their students’ rights to be educated in Catholic schools, they also found themselves fighting against the church patriarchy for their own pursuit of higher education. As Ryan wrote, “The Catholic Church’s hierarchy in the USA was worried about the movement toward increased independence for women in this era.” To fill a need for higher education among Catholic-educated girls, more nuns began seeking Ph.D.s so they could lead Catholic colleges for women. But this pursuit of independence didn’t sit well with their governing bishops, and they pushed back.

For example, in the 1930s and ’40s, the archdiocesan board of Chicago mandated that nuns could not travel outside a convent or school without being accompanied by another woman, and even went so far as to tell the president of a neighboring college that nuns should not show up to their classes without a female companion. They were also not to go outside after sunset.

Mission statements of all-girls Catholic schools reflected the sisters’ challenge of balancing what the church considered the natural role of women with many young women’s desires for independence, Ryan wrote. When the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary established Mundelein College in 1930 in Chicago, they crafted goals that showed these dual perspectives: “(Mundelein education is) practical, preparing the student for successful achievement in the economic world,” but also “conservative, holding fast to the time-honored traditions that go to the fashioning of charming and gracious womanhood.”

“(The nuns) highlighted and equally lauded their graduates’ choices to marry, seek employment, enter a religious community, or attend college,” Ryan wrote.

In her research, Ryan found Catholic high school yearbooks that revealed what this opportunity meant to young women. At Chicago’s Catholic Mercy High School in 1927, the students published quotes from Tennyson’s poem The Princess: “Here might we learn whatever men are taught…knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed.” Sixty percent of Mercy’s graduates around this time attended college (nationally, female enrollment in higher education was 44 percent).

At a time when women were barred from many universities, nuns became their advocates. Catholic sisters established 150 religious colleges for women in the United States, starting in the late 1800s. Before coeducation of men and women became the norm, more women were earning degrees from Catholic colleges than those run by other religious groups, according to The Boston Globe. And the nuns’ own pursuit of higher education broke glass ceilings: The first woman to obtain a Ph.D. in computer science was a nun: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, in 1965.

“They were role models,” McGuinness said. “If you went to Trinity University in D.C. in 1897 and had teachers who had doctorates, maybe you think, ‘I could do that, too.’”

Maya certainly experienced that when an older nun, Sister Rosa Maria Icaza, told her what she had to go through to earn her doctorate from Catholic University. Because enrollment was limited to men, the nun had to sit outside the classroom, near the door, rather than inside with her male classmates. “I thought, ‘Thanks to a woman like this, I could get a Ph.D.,’” Maya said.

Today, however, the number of religious leaders in the Catholic Church is declining, including nuns. From 1965 to 2017, the number of sisters decreased from 179,000 to 45,000, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. And even in the face of this decline, the women who join the religious life are still finding themselves under fire from within their own church. As recently as 2012, American nuns were accused by the Vatican for being radical feminists.

The loss of nuns as a teaching force is one reason running Catholic schools is more financially challenging than ever before, Maya said. Catholic school enrollment peaked in the 1960s and has dropped significantly since then. In 1965, about 5 million children attended Catholic elementary and secondary schools. In 2017, enrollment was just under 2 million. The number of Catholic schools was cut in half, from 11,000 to 6,000, during that same time period.

Catholic schools today have been experimenting with different business models to survive, from the Cristo Rey schools that utilize student work study to help pay for tuition to Philadelphia Catholic schools that have been using tax-credit scholarships and voucher programs to pay tuition for poor families.

And their students no longer come primarily from their local church — many see Catholic schools as a better alternative to poor-performing urban schools. “In many major cities, Catholic schools are a parent’s best hope for both Catholic and non-Catholic kids,” McGuinness said.

Maya said she is proud of the work Catholic schools are continuing to do to reach the children who need it most.

“The sisters were always teaching the populations in the margins,” Maya said. Without these women, “I don’t think the U.S. Catholic education system would exist the way we know it.”

[airasilver]

Paris Olympic organizers apologized Sunday to people offended during a tableau of the opening ceremony that critics said mocked "The Last Supper."

During Friday's ceremony, there was a moment on the Debilly Bridge over the Seine when the camera cut to French DJ and producer Barbara Butch, who describes herself as a "love activist." Butch wore a blue dress with a silver headdress and as the camera panned out, she was flanked by drag queens on both sides. Later appeared a nearly naked man painted in blue, on a dinner plate surrounded by food. He then sang as the people around him danced, and it turned into a runway scene where models walked across.

The scene has been met with backlash as people say it mocked "The Last Supper," the famous painting from Leonardo da Vinci that shows Jesus Christ with his 12 apostles at his last supper, where he announced that one of the apostles would betray him.

Several Christian and Catholic organizations around the world have denounced the moment since then. The French Bishops’ Conference, which represents the country's Catholic bishops, said in a statement that the scene was a "mockery and derision of Christianity" and it was thinking of religious followers who were "hurt by the outrageousness and provocation of certain scenes." Well-known Bishop Robert Barron in Minnesota said in a video that it mocked "a very central moment in Christianity."

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said on social media that it was "shocking and insulting" to Christian people.

Telecommunications provider C Spire also said it was pulling all of its advertising from the Olympics as a result of the scene.

What did Paris Olympic organizers say about controversial segment?

Thomas Jolly, the opening ceremony’s artistic director, said at the International Olympic Committee's daily briefing at the Olympic Games on Saturday that the moment was not meant to "be subversive or shock people or mock people." During the opening ceremony, the official Olympic Games social media account said the blue person, played by French singer and actor Philippe Katerine, portrayed the Greek god Dionysus − known as the god of wine-making, vegetation, fertility and ecstasy − and it "makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings."

Jolly also said on French TV station BFMTV on Sunday, "The Last Supper" was "not my inspiration" for the segment, and he also spoke about the meaning of Dionysus.

"The idea was to have a pagan celebration connected to the gods of Olympus. You will never find in me a desire to mock and denigrate anyone," he said.

Still, Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps apologized on Sunday for those offended by the scene.

"Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. On the contrary, I think (with) Thomas Jolly, we really did try to celebrate community tolerance," Descamps said. “Looking at the result of the polls that we shared, we believe that this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offense, we are, of course, really, really sorry.”

The IOC said on social media that it took note of the apology from Paris 2024.

The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Paris Olympic organizers apologize after 'The Last Supper' backlash

They are only sorry because they need to be. They aren’t actually sorry.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost:

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has formally apologized for the church’s role in inflicting trauma and abuse on generations of Native American children and families through its participation in Indian boarding schools. By a 181-2 vote, the conference on Friday approved a 56-page document titled “Keeping Christ’s Sacred Promise: A Pastoral Framework for Indigenous Ministry.” In it, the bishops lamented that “many Indigenous Catholics have felt a sense of abandonment” by church leaders who don’t understand “their unique cultural needs.” The bishops also acknowledged the role the church played in running Indian boarding schools.

“The Church recognizes that it has played a part in traumas experienced by Native children,” the bishops said. Elsewhere in the document, they said, “We apologize for the failure to nurture, strengthen, honor, recognize, and appreciate those entrusted to our pastoral care.” For nearly a century, from 1869 through the 1960s, the U.S. government removed hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children from tribal lands and forced them into boarding schools to assimilate them into white culture. Children endured abuse and violence and even died at these schools, all the while being cut off from their families. Most of the more than 500 Indian boarding schools were run by the U.S. government, but the Catholic Church operated more than 80 of them.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issues a formal apology for the American Catholic Church’s role of forcibly assimilating indigenous peoples and abusing them for generations upon generations.

[brown-little-robin]

hey I saw your post involving refugee resettlement orgs, would you mind sending me a list? I’m a Catholic law student hoping to work in immigration law next summer

Oh, awesome! Here you go!

Here's an overview of resettlement partners from UNHCR (The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), the single most important force for refugee resettlement in the world: https://www.unhcr.org/us/us-resettlement-partners

And here's an overview from the USA Office of Refugee Resettlement: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/grant-funding/resettlement-agencies

I advise looking for resettlement agencies in the area you want to work in, if you have a specific location you want to be in, since the agencies don't all cover the entire United States.

Resettlement Agencies in the US

Bethany Christian Services (BCS) (Christian)

Church World Service (CWS) (Christian)

Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (Christian)

Ethiopian Community Development Council (non-religious)

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (Jewish)

Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service (LIRS) (Christian)

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (Christian)

World Relief (WR) (Christian)

International Rescue Committee (IRC) (non-religious)

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (non-religious)

So, I may have had a wrong fact in my last post. There's ten agencies here, and six of them are Christian. I haven't looked into this, but I think either the IRC (International Rescue Committee) or the USCRI (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) are not technically US resettlement agencies. I got the "6 out of 9" fact from a seminar on refugee resettlement that I took three months ago, so there you have it. Anyway, hope this is helpful!

[spiritualdirections]

The USCCB is working on a document about youth and young adult ministry. The Pillar interviewed one of the committee staff members who was involved in drafting this "pastoral framework", which will be voted on by the Bishops' Conference next month. I have been working in young adult ministry for most of my priesthood, and even before that. I've been a college chaplain and a college professor. I was recognized by my diocese for my work with young adults. And yet, I'd never heard of anything from the USCCB on this topic. So I was interested to read about this document.

The theme of the document will be "listen, teach, send". The reporter notes that this sounds very much like the FOCUS model of "win, build, send". Well, sniffs the staff member, "the threefold FOCUS perspective did come up, but that did not inspire [the document's] paradigm."

I have worked closely with FOCUS (the Felllowship of Catholic University Students) for years. It is one of the largest Catholic apostolates in the country, and it specializes in young people--people coming into colleges, people in college, people recently out of college. They have been thinking about and studying this demographic for years. They try lots of things, they learn what works, and they change what doesn't. They have 25 years of practical experience in working with young people, and they are very effective.

And so I ask, Why wouldn't the bishops conference want to start from what FOCUS has learned? Why would anyone think that the committee staff members have a better idea of how to do youth ministry than this gigantic and effective youth ministry organization?

[There's actually an answer to this question! The committee members can be found here: https://www.usccb.org/topics/youth-and-young-adult-ministries/bishops-working-group-youth-and-young-adults. Scrolling to the bottom, one finds a list of the consultants and staff members. The staff member who is in charge of Youth and Young Adult Ministries last worked directly with young adults in 2006, before the first smartphone. (Things have changed with America's youth since then!) The consultants include two people who work for the National Institute on Ministry with Young Adults and the USCCB National Advisory Team on Young Adult Ministry. These seem to be the same thing. The second organization does not have a functioning website, but simply redirects to the first organization's website, which seems barely to have been updated since 2021. (Young people use the web!) The other consultants seem to be specialists in outreach to minority communities. Objective conclusion: Nobody on the team has anything like the practical experience with young adults that FOCUS has.]

But that sort of argument is ad hominem--it might not matter who a person is if his ideas are great. My goal is not to disparage administrators and bureaucrats--Administration is one of the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit! Everyone's life is better when the bureaucrats are good at their job! But when we turn to the ideas... they do not seem so great.

The USCCB Committee seems commited to the idea of "accompanying the youth,"--one of its consultants wrote an article on "accompaniment" for Accompany Magazine-- which I think helps explain why they thought that the first step in dealing with young adults is to "listen" to them. I'm not opposed to listening to young people, but I prefer FOCUS' idea that the first step is to win them. If I ask an indifferent and poorly formed freshman in college what he wants out of the Church, I'm not sure he'll tell me anything worthwhile. That's because he hasn't thought about the Church. He's never wondered, "What is it about the Church that is keeping me from being a holy person with a deep interior life?" So, listening to him will not help me figure out that answer. The difference between "listening" and "winning" is that you can only listen to someone's needs if he or she can articulate them. Many young people don't know what they want from the Church. They need to be shown the Church in all its richness, so that they can respond to it. That's what FOCUS' idea of winning does.

The USCCB draft document proposes that the Church meet the young people "where they're at". The problem with this is that the Church is bigger than young people understand; basing our apostolic approach upon what they understand about the Church is to falsify the Church. The better move is not to shrink the Church to fit in the confines of a teenage intellect, but to make the teenager want to learn more about this cool and ancient Church. Impress them, don't coddle them.

Another difference between the "listen, teach, send" model and the "win, build, send" model of FOCUS: Listening and teaching are at the level of the intellect. But for many young adults, it's their wills that need to change before they are open to learning. I'm a professor, and I'm a big believer in teaching. But it's basically pointless to try to engage an unwilling student. FOCUS trains their missionaries in how to win young people over in a variety of ways, and they apply their intelligence to find new ways to reach the each generation of students. Once they've become engaged, that's when they start to thirst for the kind of teaching I'm more than happy to give.

Finally, it looks like the USCCB document will be focused on parishes as the locus of youth and young adult ministry.* FOCUS makes the small group the place where young people are principally formed. That is clearly the superior model, both for winning people and for building them up intellectually and humanly to be able to go out and spread the Gospel themselves. Sunday Mass is essential to the spiritual life, but it is not optimized for formation.

If the USCCB wants to listen to young people, I'd recommend that it listen to the young people in FOCUS. And in St. Paul's Outreach, in the World Youth Alliance, NET ministries, and other extremely effective apostolates working with young adults.

* The USCCB committee has as a major initiative to get young people to "actively participate" in the Mass on the Feast of Christ the King each year--see the 13:30 mark of this video. This is a meh idea, one that starts with a theological mistake: Active participation in the liturgy is a term used by Sacrosanctum Concilium #14, which means to be spiritually active--to pay attention at Mass and to pray along with the liturgy, rather than zoning out or praying the rosary while the priest prays the Mass. Active participation does not mean to participate as an usher or a lector or a greeter or some other physically active role. Obviously, youth and young adults are not engaged in the Mass unless they are spiritually engaged. Sometimes, those who are spiritually engaged also volunteer to be lectors. The Committee puts the cart before the horse.

[hummussexual]

Published 2023/04/01 18:05 (EDT)

A large coalition of Catholic nuns has issued a public letter supporting transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive individuals – and “implicitly rebuking recent statements from the U.S. Catholic hierarchy,” the Religious News Service reported Saturday.

The letter was issued by a wide range of Catholic communities representing more than 6,000 religious orders across 18 states, RNS reported.

As members of the body of Christ, we cannot be whole without the full inclusion of transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive individuals,” the letter reads.

It goes on to argue that “we will remain oppressors until we — as vowed Catholic religious — acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people in our own congregations. We seek to cultivate a faith community where all, especially our transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive siblings, experience a deep belonging.”

The letter had been in the works since a wave of bills targeting trans people swept across state legislatures, one of its authors –Sister Barbara Battista, congregation justice promoter for the Sisters of Providence, St. Mary-of-the-Woods – told RNS.

But she added that release of the letter was “jump-started” by an anti-trans statement by Catholic Church leaders.

“The nuns’ effort comes in the wake of a doctrinal statement published earlier this month by a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which discouraged Catholic health care groups from performing various gender-affirming medical procedures, arguing doing so does not respect the “intrinsic unity of body and soul,” RNS reported.

The nuns were explicit about their disagreement with legislators and church leadership.“Battista noted that many of the bills working their way through state legislatures revolve around the health care needs of trans people, an issue that hits home for her as a licensed physician’s assistant in Indiana.

"She described her work as “participating in the healing ministry of Jesus,” rooted, she said, in a “sacred trust” between patients and providers.“ But Catholic leaders and government officials, she argued, have tried to “insert themselves into the private, very personal and intimate conversations and decisions made between the health care provider

[muddypolitics]

(via Sue's News: A Round-Up of Screw Yous)

Fuck you to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for calling on the rest of the field to commit to pardoning Trump if he’s convicted of stealing classified documents.

Fuck you to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for voting to start the process of revising their religious directives for Catholic hospitals in order to ban gender-affirming care.

Fuck you to Wisconsin Republicans for voting at 2:30 am to end childcare subsidies. Very cool.

Fuck you to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for saying that the Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett aren’t conservative enough for him and that, if elected, he’d want to nominate more people like the disgusting brothers, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Fuck you to two Alabama Republican lawmakers for claiming that the Alabama Department of Archives and History is promoting a “liberal political LGBTQ agenda.”

Fuck you to House Republicans for trying to sneak a ban on telemedicine abortion into an FDA funding bill.

Fuck you to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for expanding a ban on transgender athletes playing sports in high school to now include public colleges and universities.

Fuck you for the billionth time to North Carolina Rep. Tricia Cotham (R) for saying that she never had an abortion, despite making a big speech about it, and claiming it was a regular miscarriage.

Fuck you to the Florida Department of Education for trying to bully the College Board into removing discussions of “gender and sexual orientation” from its Advanced Placement (AP) psychology course. The College Board said it won’t change any courses but doesn’t know if the state will ban them in retaliation.

Fuck you to former New York City mayor and 2020 presidential candidate (lol) Bill DeBlasio for appearing to blame his notorious dropping of a groundhog that later died on his advance team.

Fuck you to actress Cheryl Hines for enabling her anti-vaxxer husband and Democractic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by spouting off some vaccine-skeptic nonsense in a new profile.

And, finally, fuck you to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for voting not to confirm ACLU voting rights lawyer Dale Ho as a federal judge, saying he’s “extreme left.” The Senate confirmed Ho anyway, but what the hell, man?

[beardedmrbean]

The priest paused after finishing a prayer, looked at someone off to his side and scratched his forehead.

“We had something happen,” he told the congregation.

The Rev. Joseph Crowley paused again, video shows.

“It’s hard to say, actually,” he added.

What happened, some at the Connecticut parish now say, was a miracle: During Communion, a bowl holding the hosts — the wafers that Catholicism teaches are transformed into Jesus Christ’s body during the Mass — began to run out. And yet, Crowley said, the bowl never emptied.

The possibility that the receptacle may have refilled itself during a March 5 service has kindled fascination among the faithful. It has also inspired the Archdiocese of Hartford to launch an investigation, which has since been sent to the highest echelons of the church hierarchy for review. If the Vatican finds that the reported increase in Communion hosts defies rational or scientific explanation, the conclusion could bolster Catholics’ belief in the teaching that the sacramental wafers literally become Jesus.

The probe could take months or years, so the parishioners of St. Thomas Church are relying for now on the proclamation of their pastor. Standing before his congregation in the 7,400-person town of Thomaston, Conn., Crowley said the reported miracle was evidence that God provides.

“Very powerful, very awesome, very real, very shocking — but also, it happens. It happens,” he said moments after the incident. “And today, it happened.”

The multiplication of hosts, if verified, would bolster efforts by the U.S. bishops to renew Catholics’ belief in the “daily miracle” of the wafers becoming Jesus’s body during the Mass, the archdiocese said.

“Through the centuries this daily miracle has sometimes been confirmed by extraordinary signs from Heaven, but the Church is always careful to investigate reports of such signs with caution, lest credence is given to something that proves to be unfounded,” the archdiocese said in a statement.

Ken Santopietro, a religious education teacher at St. Thomas, attended the Mass where the potential miracle occurred and was interviewed by representatives of the archdiocese. He recalled telling them that the people distributing Communion huddled with the priest afterward as if something unusual were happening.

Moments later, Crowley announced that the hosts had multiplied.

“I immediately believed in what he said he saw because of the reaction of not only him, but because of the group of people who were there — his ministers,” said Santopietro, who directs the Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference. “I immediately believed in what he said he saw because of the reaction of not only him, but because of the group of people who were there — his ministers.” Ken Santopietro, worshiper

Miracles are foundational to Catholicism, which teaches that Jesus was God in human form, worked miracles during his life and then died for humanity’s sins before rising from the dead. As the church defines it, a miracle is a sign or wonder that can only be attributed to God — “a glimpse into heaven,” said the Rev. Dorian Llywelyn, incoming director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Loyola Marymount University.

When the church acknowledges a miracle, believers flock to the site to see evidence and reinvigorate their faith. Millions of Catholics each year travel to Fátima, Portugal, and Lourdes, France — both places where the Virgin Mary has reportedly appeared to people — among other locations.

St. Thomas would probably also attract visitors if it were declared the site of a miracle, said Michael O’Neill, author of “Science and the Miraculous: How the Church Investigates the Supernatural.” If the Vatican finds the multiplication claim to be credible, he said, they would encourage the church to display the leftover hosts in a small shrine.

The parish distributed some of the remaining wafers after the occurrence but saved others, Crowley told his congregation. He did not respond to an interview request from The Washington Post.

For the Catholic Church, investigating a supposed miracle is a rigorous process that often solicits input from scientists, doctors and other experts in their fields. The church relies on the technology available at the time, and experts said some occurrences deemed miracles years ago might not be understood that way if they were investigated today.

In Connecticut, the case of the multiplying hosts has parallels to the biblical story of loaves and fishes, in which Jesus is said to have used five loaves of bread and two fish to feed 5,000 men. The probe probably centers on the testimony and credibility of witnesses — the person distributing Communion from that bowl and anyone else who may have seen what happened.

Church officials will be interested in whether some could have refilled the receptacle without the distributor noticing or whether that person may have not seen how many hosts were there in the first place, Llywelyn said. They will try to ensure that any witnesses are of sound mind and not seeking publicity.

Church officials may also review any available video and test the remaining wafers for differences in composition between them and other Communion hosts, O’Neill said.

The Archdiocese of Hartford was the first to investigate the potential miracle; whether it drew a conclusion is unclear. Elliott told the Catholic publication OSV News that the probe was led by the archdiocesan judicial vicar, who is tasked with judging spiritual matters. Dioceses will draw from their communities if they need people with specific expertise to help with an investigation, O’Neill said.

The Vatican’s department for doctrine and matters of belief, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is reviewing the Hartford archdiocese’s investigation. They will involve theologians and canon lawyers — people with expertise in internal church law — in discussing the archdiocese’s reports and mulling whether rational explanations have been thoroughly considered, Llywelyn said.

Experts who testify about possible miracles before the Vatican are paid for their time, said hematologist and historian Jacalyn Duffin, who was questioned by church representatives about a potential miracle in the 1980s. Additional scholars are also brought in to offer feedback on experts’ testimony. Firsthand witnesses are not paid, since money could bias their testimony.

“At one level, there’s a hope that this will be an attested miracle, so there’s a degree of emotional involvement in that,” Llywelyn said. “The canonical process wants to take a step back from that fervor and not to get swayed by emotion, even good emotion.” “At one level, there’s a hope that this will be an attested miracle. … The canonical process wants to take a step back from that fervor and not to get swayed by emotion, even good emotion.” The Rev. Dorian Llywelyn, incoming director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Loyola Marymount University.

The Vatican ultimately will advise the Archdiocese of Hartford about whether it considers the possible multiplication of hosts definitely, maybe or absolutely not a miracle. The local bishop will then make and announce a final decision.

Even if the church decides that the event has a rational explanation, Catholics are free to believe personally that it was a miracle. Conversely, Catholics are not obligated to believe it was a miracle if the bishop declares it.

“Even in the most famous cases of modern miracles, you can walk away and ignore them if you find them annoying or distracting,” O’Neill said. These Black and White churches began worshiping together during the pandemic and haven’t stopped

The Vatican questioned Duffin, the hematologist, about a potential miracle when the church was considering canonizing Marguerite d’Youville, who later became the first Canadian-born saint. Duffin recalled church officials asking her how a patient with aggressive acute leukemia had gone into remission after relapsing — then a virtually unheard of outcome.

The church representatives seemed wary of seeing a miracle where one might not exist, Duffin said. Still, she told them she could not think of a scientific reason for the patient’s survival.

“They wanted me to explain it,” said Duffin, author of “Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints and Healing in the Modern World.” “And that really impressed me because I was naive about what the church did when it looks at these kinds of things. They are quite open to scientific explanation.”

Other types of miracles involve apparitions, stigmata — wounds that appear on parts of the body corresponding with the crucifixion of Jesus — and corpses that are said to be incorruptible, meaning they don’t decay as expected. In Missouri, pilgrims are converging on a monastery for religious sisters as word has spread that the exhumed remains of the order’s founder appear to have been miraculously preserved.

The church has recognized roughly 100 miracles involving Communion throughout its history, said O’Neill, who maintains a database of miracles acknowledged by the church. None have involved multiplying hosts, nor have any happened in the United States.

In some instances that the church has found credible, Communion hosts appear to bleed or develop an image resembling Jesus crowned with thorns. The church has deemed miracle claims unfounded in other cases, including when a red substance that appeared on a host in Utah was determined to be mold.

Some have speculated that the potential miracle in Connecticut could bolster the sainthood cause of Michael McGivney, a 19th-century pastor at St. Thomas and founder of the Catholic fraternal service organization Knights of Columbus. Another miracle attributed to him would precipitate his canonization.

Communion miracles, however, are infrequently relied upon in canonization efforts because the ease of comparing medical records from before and after makes healing miracles simpler to investigate. Attributing the possible Connecticut miracle to McGivney also would require someone to have prayed to him for something of its kind to happen.

Crowley told his congregation that neither he nor the person who distributed Communion had been praying for a multiplication of hosts. He asked his parishioners to tell him if they had been asking McGivney for help.

“Maybe Blessed McGivney interceded for us and God allowed this big thing to take place and to be made visible, to be made known,” Crowley said.

The Knights of Columbus, which pushes for sainthood for McGivney, did not respond to requests for comment on whether they might cite the occurrence at St. Thomas in their advocacy.

To some, whether the alleged multiplication is deemed a miracle is only important insofar as it strengthens people’s faith. Llywelyn said whether there’s a rational explanation for the apparent increase in Communion hosts is less important to him than whether people are more loving, tolerant and interested in justice because they believe the occurrence was a miracle.

“I’m not dissing the materiality, because the increase in faith has to be based in something,” Llywelyn said. “But I’m as interested, if not more interested, in the aftereffects.”

[cheerfullycatholic]

Two days after the U.S. bishops approved a proposal to consider Adele Brise's cause for canonization, the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage arrived at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion June 16. The shrine is home to the Marian apparitions that Brise experienced in 1859. The timing of both events did not escape Green Bay Bishop David L. Ricken, who presented the proposal June 14 during a consultation at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Spring Plenary Assembly in Louisville, Kentucky. "You can't plan that sort of thing," Bishop Ricken told OSV News after celebrating Mass with an estimated 2,000 people and completing a 1.7-mile Eucharistic rosary procession around the shrine grounds. ... "We are going to take the Lord around this beautiful (place) and we should be saying, 'Lord, manifest yourself, manifest your power,'" said Bishop Ricken. Referring to the church's declining membership, he said, "The Lord is here to begin to claim his people and his territory back." "There are so many lost souls, people wandering around depressed, discouraged, locked in their homes, looking at their devices all day long," he continued. "So let's pray for one another. Seeing so many of you being here today is such great testimony to your faith. It gives me great hope that the Lord is touching your life and you want to make a difference; for yourself, your family, your parish, your community."

[apesoformythoughts]

“‘Researchers have identified a pattern in the molestation crisis afflicting the Roman Catholic Church: most of the victims are older boys.’

So begins an article by Rachel Zoll from March of last year. Hardly a surprising finding, you might think, but that’s because you’re not in the sex-abuse industry. The Vatican’s recent symposium on child abuse delivered the ‘state of the art information’ that—wait for it—‘the majority of cases in the American crisis involve adolescent males victimized by adult gay priests.’ And the concern we should have as a consequence of these discoveries is increased protection for vulnerable boys, right? Wrong again. ‘“What I’m afraid of is we’re going into this witch hunt for gays,” said the Rev. Stephen Rossetti, psychologist and sex abuse consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.’

Rossetti, the former CEO of the St. Luke Institute, is the author of the article mentioned below in support of ‘reintegrating pedophiles.’ He was invited to address the bishops in Dallas this year, and had a ringside seat at the Vatican symposium in question. Surprised? Neither am I.” [4/7/03]

“Perhaps [child molesters’] presence in society can ultimately be healing for us. They challenge us to face an unconscious and primal darkness within humankind. Our inability to face this darkness causes us to stereotype and banish all who embody our estranged dis-passions. In the past, this process spawned Molokai and a host of other human prisons. Today, we are banishing the child molester.

From ‘The Mark of Cain: Reintegrating Pedophiles’, America, September 9, 1995. The Rev. Stephen Rossetti of the St. Luke Institute is one of the three or four experts who have taught the U.S. bishops most about child abuse.” [4/11/03]

— Paul Mankowski, SJ, in Diogenes Unveiled

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Christians condemn insurrectionists in the US and Brazil – call for participants and organizers to be held accountable.

Excerpt from the pastors at the Word and the Way...

https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/christian-nationalism-invades-brazil

[...] Much like Trump and Bolsonaro received advice from shared political figures (like Steve Bannon), they’ve also been helped by their shared religious supporters. Like Lou Engle. The Pentecostal preacher peddled claims of “voter fraud” after the 2020 presidential election, casting the results showing Trump lost as proof of demonic forces at work. But Engle doesn’t just evangelize in the United States. He’s held large “The Send” prayer rallies across the country, but also in Brazil.

With more than 140,000 people attending the 12-hour “The Send” event in Brazil in 2020, then-President Bolsonaro came on stage to talk about his faith in Jesus. That led journalist Jon Ward to wonder about the impact of such religious movements on this week’s political scene in Brazil.

“Is there any self-reflection going on among Christian leaders who have supported Trump and Bolsonaro?” Ward wrote in his Substack newsletter Border-Stalkers yesterday. “Twice now, political leaders who were elected in no small part because of evangelicals have refused to acknowledge their losses, and their supporters have waged violent assaults on their country’s own government, law enforcement, and journalists. Is there any self-assessment inside evangelicalism among the many Christian leaders whose support enabled both these men to get elected and to nearly topple their respective democracies?”

The Catholic Church in Brazil quickly condemned Sunday’s violence. A statement from the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil argued, “These attacks must be immediately stopped, and their organizers and participants must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Citizens and democracy need to be protected.”

It’s a good first step. Christian leaders must condemn the violence. But then Christians must also consider how pastors and churches helped inspire the attack on the government. And Christians in the U.S. need to evaluate our role in the violence of Jan. 6 and Jan. 8. We must stop going therefore to make disciples of all nations as we baptize them into the gospel of insurrection.

______________________________

Lou Engle (born October 9, 1952) is an American Charismatic Christian leader, best known for his leadership of TheCall, which holds prayer rallies. ... Engle strongly supports criminalization of abortion, and encouraged his audiences to ... vote for anti-abortion political candidates. Engle maintains that issues such as abortion and homosexuality should remain at the center of the evangelical movement.

Engle was described by Joe Conason as a "radical theocrat". The Southern Poverty Law Center says he can occasionally "venture into bloodlust."

______________________________

On multiple occasions, Jair Bolsonaro has publicly endorsed physical violence as a legitimate and necessary form of political action. In 1999, when he was 44 years old and a representative in the Brazilian Congress, Bolsonaro said during a TV interview that the only way of "changing" Brazil was by "killing thirty thousand people, beginning with Fernando Henrique Cardoso" (then President of Brazil).