#president of the u.s. conference of catholic bishops | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mariacallous · 2 months ago

Text

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.”

6 notes · View notes

coochiequeens · 6 months ago

Text

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.”

#The Catholic church #Women’s education #Nuns in education #Joe Biden wouldn't have had the career he has if it wasn't for nund and other educated women #Elizabeth Ann Seton #Sisters of Charity #Blaone amendments which restricted state legislatures from using funds for religious schools #Pierce vs. The Society of Sisters #The first woman to obtain a Ph.D. in computer science was a nun: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller in 1965

3 notes · View notes

howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 2 years ago

Text

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).

#insurrection #Donald Trump #Jair Bolsonaro #Lou Engle #violence #steve bannon #Brazil

2 notes · View notes

dankusner · 3 days ago

Video

youtube

Sinead hidden track

CATHOLIC CHURCH

Bishops: Share Vatican’s teachings

‘Dignitas Infinita’ promotes protection of life, singles out harms

BALTIMORE — Several U.S. Catholic bishops on Wednesday encouraged the church to boldly share Vatican teachings on a range of hot-button issues, including the condemnation of abortion, euthanasia, surrogacy and gender-affirming surgery.

The prelates acknowledged theirs is often a countercultural view.

“We have been too apologetic for too long,” said Bishop Robert Barron, a media-savvy cleric who leads the Winona-Rochester diocese in Minnesota.

“And we shouldn’t be cowed by the celebrities and so on in the culture who are preaching something that’s deeply problematic.”

The remarks came during the bishops’ annual fall meeting and a presentation on a Vatican declaration released in April.

“Dignitas Infinita,” or “Infinite Dignity,” clarifies church teaching that promotes the dignity of all people and the protection of life from its earliest stages through death.

“The goal is to apply the lessons of ‘Dignitas Infinita’ to our American society,” Barron said.

The 20 pages of “Infinite Dignity” were five years in the making and single out a range of harms, including forced migration and sexual abuse.

In it, the Vatican labels gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy as violations of human dignity, comparing them to abortion and euthanasia.

Pope Francis has reached out to LGBTQ people throughout his papacy, and the document was a disappointing setback, if not unexpected, for transgender people and supporters of their rights.

It comes during an election year in the United States where there has been a conservative backlash to transgender rights.

Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane, Wash., spoke to the meeting about how Catholic schools can be a vehicle for educating young people about Catholic sexual ethics.

“We want our students to see the church’s teaching on sexuality as an expression of this deeper understanding of the human person and not simply just a set of rules that stand in opposition to our popular culture,” Daly said.

Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Va., who is finishing a term as chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops committee on pro-life activities, expressed gratitude to the Vatican and called the declaration “incredibly timely.”

“Sadly, many states continue to enshrine abortion in their state constitutions,” he told the gathering, referencing recent state ballot initiatives.

“We know we still have so much work to do.”

In his opening address, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the USCCB, laid out a vision of proclaiming church teaching, even when it’s not popular or convenient.

“We never backpedal or renounce the clear teaching of the Gospel. We proclaim it in and out of season,” Broglio said.

“We must insist on the dignity of the human person from womb to tomb, be unstinting in our commitment.”

#youtube

0 notes

cavenewstimes · 3 days ago

Text

Catholic bishops say they will defend migrants if Trump violates rights

BALTIMORE (RNS) — Gathering in Baltimore on Tuesday (Nov. 12), just a week after former President Donald Trump won reelection, leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops promised to defend immigrants and poor people in the coming years. “As the successors of the Apostles and vicars of Christ in our dioceses, we never backpedal or renounce the clear teaching of the Gospel. We proclaim it…

View On WordPress

0 notes

chicagocatholicman · 9 days ago

Text

U.S. Bishops’ President Calls for Prayers and Unity Following Presidential Election

0 notes

christianpureofficial · 10 days ago

Text

Bishops urge ‘charity, respect, and civility’ after historic 2024 election

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, speaks at the USCCB fall plenary assembly Nov. 14, 2023. / Credit: USCCB video CNA Staff, Nov 6, 2024 / 15:15 pm (CNA). The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is calling for respect and civility after the 2024 U.S. elections concluded with Donald Trump winning a second term as president. Trump won the…

0 notes

pipelinelaserraygun · 8 months ago

Text

youtube

MUST 👁️👁️ ⬆️ SEE‼️

The harrowing of hell means, 👿 "sending lucifer into his HIGHEST levels of distress."

youtube

MANY are they who begin poorly, but are transformed later THROUGH developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

An 🔚 is MORE important than its beginnings.

youtube

⬆️ Holy Saturday, after ✝️ burial, is a somber occasion: We are currently living in a time of UNENDING 😕 SOMBER occasions.

🇺🇸👺 biden is unwavering when supporting a 👺 nazi governing body, in ukraine, ALL while cutting 📴 support for Judeo-Christian causes.

hamas CANNOT be allowed to regroup.

demo-🐀 RATS: 👺👺 Their evil actions/inaction speak a LOT 🗣️📢 LOUDER than their words.

youtube

demo-🐀 RATS: 👺👺 Their evil actions/inaction speak a LOT 🗣️📢 LOUDER than their words.

🤡💩 biden could have easily picked any OTHER day to honor female impersonators: THIS was done on purpose.

What was Holy Week about? Jesus Christ VOLUNTARILY laid HIS life down ✝️, for us.

NO ❤️ GREATER LOVE.

0 notes

theologyforthelayman · 8 months ago

Text

Archbishop Broglio Consecrates and Blesses Sacramental Oils at Chrism Mass

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Monday evening, March 18, His Excellency, the Most Reverend Timothy P. Broglio, J.C.D., Archbishop for the Military Services, USA, and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), blessed and consecrated sacred oils for sacramental use over the coming year in Catholic communities on U.S. Military sites worldwide, and in the nation’s VA Medical…

View On WordPress

#archbishop broglio #archdiocese of military Services #catholic #catholic church #chrism #church #faith #sacraments

0 notes

urbanhermit · 10 months ago

Text

0 notes

whatisonthemoon · 2 years ago

Text

Clergy Condemn the Insurrection in Brazil

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.

#christian nationalism #politics #brazil #south america #latin america #brazilian politics #christianity #religion #far right politics #right wing #right wing politics #clergy

0 notes

automatismoateo · 2 years ago

Text

WPost: The Spread of Catholic hospitals limits reproductive care across the U.S.: Religious doctrine restricts access to abortion and birth control and limits treatment options for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies via /r/atheism

By Frances Stead Sellers and Meena Venkataramanan

The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion is revealing the growing influence of Catholic health systems and their restrictions on reproductive services including birth control and abortion — even in the diminishing number of states where the procedure remains legal.

Catholic systems now control about 1 in 7 U.S. hospital beds, requiring religious doctrine to guide treatment, often to the surprise of patients. Their ascendancy has broad implications for the evolving national battle over reproductive rights beyond abortion, as bans against it take hold in more than a dozen Republican-led states.

The Catholic health-care facilities follow directives from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that prohibit treatment it deems “immoral”: sterilization including vasectomies, postpartum tubal ligations and contraception, as well as abortion. Those policies can limit treatment options for obstetric care during miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, particularly in the presence of a fetal heartbeat.

“The directives are not just a collection of dos and don’ts,” said John F. Brehany, executive vice president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center and a longtime consultant to the conference of bishops. “They are a distillation of the moral teachings of the Catholic Church as they apply to modern health care.” As such, he said, any facility that identifies as Catholic must abide by them.

The role of Catholic doctrine in U.S. health care has expanded during a years-long push to acquire smaller institutions — a reflection of consolidation in the hospital industry, as financially challenged community hospitals and independent physicians join bigger systems to gain access to electronic health records and other economies of scale. Acquisition by a Catholic health system has, at times, kept a town’s only hospital from closing.

Four of the nation’s 10 largest health systems are now Catholic, according to a 2020 report by the liberal health advocacy organization Community Catalyst. The 10 largest Catholic health systems control 394 short-term, acute-care hospitals, a 50 percent increase over the past two decades. In Alaska, Iowa, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin, 40 percent or more of hospital beds are in Catholic facilities.

With Roe v. Wade overturned, the legality of abortion has been left to the states. Some worry that access to certain types of contraception could be next. (Video: Julie Yoon, Hadley Green, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)

“It’s all about market share,” said Lois Uttley, a senior adviser to the hospital equity and accountability project at Community Catalyst. Uttley, who has been tracking hospital mergers and acquisitions since the 1990s, said that with fewer choices, patients today face more difficulty obtaining reproductive services.

In Schenectady, N.Y., Ellis Medicine is in talks with the multistate Catholic giant Trinity Health. Last month, in Quad Cities, Iowa, Genesis Health System signed a letter of intent to enter a partnership with MercyOne, also part of Trinity Health. And this semester, Oberlin College had to find a new provider to prescribe contraceptives after outsourcing student health services to a Catholic system that would not provide them.

In rural northeast Connecticut, residents are protesting the prospect of their 128-year-old hospital becoming part of a Catholic system and the potential impact on reproductive services.

“It would be very troubling to see cutbacks in a state like Connecticut,” said Ian McDonald, a stonemason who opposes the proposed deal between Day Kimball Healthcare in Putnam and Massachusetts-based Covenant Health.

Kyle Kramer, chief executive of Day Kimball Healthcare, said the proposed affiliation with Covenant Health would rescue the financially challenged 104-bed hospital.

“Obviously it has connotations,” Kramer said of the proposed move to faith-based ownership. The Catholic directives would “provide guidance,” he said in an interview, while insisting that “the services that we have provided in the past are the same services that we will continue to provide in the future.”

Kramer did not answer questions in a follow-up email about how contraception and elective sterilizations could continue to be provided under Catholic doctrine if their primary purpose is for birth control. Nor did he specify how emergency obstetric care that could result in terminating a pregnancy might be affected.

Covenant Health spokeswoman Karen Sullivan said in an email that as part of the regulatory process, the Catholic health system is drafting a public response to questions by the state’s Oct. 23 deadline. The system, she said, is committed to “ensuring that the Ethical and Religious Directives are applied thoughtfully and with empathy, compassion and respect for every person we serve.”

Catholic hospitals and providers are accredited and held to the same standards as their secular equivalents, according to the Catholic Health Association of the United States, which lobbies on behalf of Catholic hospitals.

But reproductive rights advocates say there has been a steady erosion of services in both Republican- and Democratic-led states because of the growing dominance of Catholic hospitals.

Many patients are unaware of the restrictions because hospital administrators typically don’t outline the services they do not offer, said Sister Simone Campbell, a lawyer who until recently led the liberal-leaning NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.

“Many hospitals have dealt with this by being pretty quiet. Dobbs has made it more of a question,” Campbell said, referring to the case that led to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Catholic facilities may not “promote or condone” contraception, according to the directives — a stance that is not widely shared by the public. Just 4 percent of U.S. adults think contraception is immoral, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll. Among Catholics who attend weekly Mass, only 13 percent say contraception is morally wrong, and 45 percent find it acceptable.

The directives, developed in the late 1940s by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, were updated in 2018, largely to ensure that Catholic doctrine prevails after mergers and acquisitions, according to Amy Chen, a lawyer with the National Health Law Program. They limit options for referring patients to secular facilities, saying employees must not “manage, carry out, assist in carrying out, make its facilities available for, make referrals for, or benefit from the revenue generated by immoral procedures.”

Interpretation of the directives varies among hospital ethics committees. But decisions ultimately rest with the local bishop, who is to be kept informed, the directives say, if “a Catholic health care institution might be wrongly cooperating with immoral procedures.”

“Bishops have a great deal of authority in their dioceses,” Brehany said. “A bishop should ensure that a Catholic organization is abiding by the directives.”

A 2018 survey published in the journal Contraception found that more than one-third of women who go to Catholic hospitals for reproductive care are not aware of the facilities’ religious affiliation. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California at San Francisco, called for increased transparency among hospitals to raise awareness that patients’ options may be limited at institutions with religious ties.

“Even people who had a very wanted pregnancy are at the mercy of policies not driven by their personal values or by the best interests of their health,” said Debra Stulberg, the chair of family medicine at the University of Chicago and one of the researchers in the 2018 survey.

April King, 40, said she wanted to have her tubes tied immediately after giving birth to her second child in December 2020. The Los Angeles talent agent had suffered three miscarriages and knew her family was complete.

Then she learned she could not get a tubal ligation at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, where she planned to deliver.

“I was just surprised that [the hospital] could decide that for us,” said King, who ultimately elected to go ahead with her delivery at Providence Saint John’s because of the care she had received there in the past.

Doctors, too, face surprises — and can even be reported to hospital ethics committees for following standards of care.

In Washington state, where 41 percent of beds are Catholic-run, legislators passed a law last year to prevent hospitals from interfering with a doctor’s ability to provide medically necessary care to a pregnant patient whose health or life is at risk.

Annie Iriye, a retired OB/GYN who used to work for a Catholic hospital in Olympia, Wash., testified in support of the bill. In a recent interview, Iriye described wanting to administer medication to hasten a woman’s delivery to stave off infection after her water broke at 18 weeks, before fetal viability. Even though the woman was in active labor, Iriye said other staffers refused to follow her direction as the attending physician because a heartbeat had been detected.

By the time the woman delivered, she had a fever and needed antibiotics. Staffers reported Iriye to the hospital ethics committee.

“I was flabbergasted,” Iriye said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, come on guys. Can’t we just practice medicine and give good care?’ ”

Patients say there appears to be little consistency in how hospital staffers interpret religious directives, with doctors sometimes having to make decisions on the fly.

Whitney Marshall, 29, learned only after waking up from exploratory surgery for endometriosis in 2019 at Ascension Crittenton in Rochester Hills, Mich., that her IUD had not been replaced. Marshall, who uses the device to reduce the pain associated with the condition, had to undergo a second procedure in her gynecologist’s office to have the IUD reinserted. The spokesman for Ascension Crittenton did not respond to requests for comment about the case.

“Some women cannot afford surgeries” to treat endometriosis, Marshall said. “So their only form of recourse is to try to regulate their hormones by using contraceptives.”

Catholic hospitals’ tradition of serving women and children in the neediest neighborhoods is “rooted in our reverence for life,” said Brian Reardon, spokesman for the Catholic Health Association. But the lack of choice has been felt keenly in rural and low-income communities where patients cannot easily transfer to secular institutions, reproductive rights advocates say.

Hospitals operating under Catholic restrictions are “the sole community providers of short-term acute hospital care” in more than 52 communities across the country — up from 30 in 2013, according to Community Catalyst.

In Putnam, Conn., residents have relied on Day Kimball Healthcare, the town’s only hospital, for more than a century.

Kramer, the chief executive, said the hospital has been exploring partnerships with larger systems over the past decade to ensure its long-term survival.

The proposed arrangement with Covenant Health requires the approval of Connecticut’s Office of Health Strategy, which has been examining how services might be affected.

The need to preserve access to reproductive health services can bring an end to negotiations. In 2012, the investor in a proposed joint venture with two hospitals in Waterbury, Conn., one of which was Catholic, pulled out after reproductive health advocates and the local archbishop raised opposing concerns about creating a “hospital within a hospital” to provide reproductive services — a workaround that had been successful elsewhere.

Access to reproductive services has shrunk recently around Day Kimball after the 2020 closure of Planned Parenthood in nearby Danielson.

Like many hospitals, Day Kimball does not provide elective abortions, according to documents filed with the state. But it has provided other care prohibited by Catholic directives, including elective sterilizations.

Those services are key to preventing unwanted pregnancies, said Lee Wesler, an internist who has been affiliated with Day Kimball for a decade.

“Any unwanted pregnancy is a potential abortion,” Wesler said.

Members of the group Save Day Kimball Healthcare said that in conversations, Kramer and other representatives of the hospital have sought to be reassuring. “They say, ‘Everything will be fine,’ ” said Margaret Martin, a retired social worker and member of the group.

Kramer, who said he intends to stay on if the Covenant deal goes through, repeated those assurances to The Washington Post. “What we have been we will still be,” he said, while declining to describe how contraceptives could be offered for the sole purpose of birth control.

In a Q&A posted in September on the Day Kimball website, Kramer suggests that other justifications could be found for using “tools” such as oral contraceptives, including “to maintain health and wellness, to address a medical condition, prevent disease, and mitigate cancer risk.”

Bruce Shay, a member of the Save Day Kimball Healthcare steering committee, says he worries doctors may leave if they have to abide by the directives — or might evade them by making “a sketchy diagnosis.”

Nandini Seshadri has ...

Full article available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/10/abortion-catholic-hospitals-birth-control/

Submitted December 31, 2022 at 03:17PM by bitemy (From Reddit https://ift.tt/C2cLeKN)

#reddit

0 notes

keywestlou · 2 years ago

Text

CRANBERRIES…..THE IRRELEVANT RELEVANT

CRANBERRIES…..THE IRRELEVANT RELEVANT - https://keywestlou.com/cranberries-the-irrelevant-relevant/The huge Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. Each and every part already running through my head. The anticipation part of the holiday joy for me. For many, this year's meal is plagued by its cost. Thanksgiving dinner twice as much this year as last year. With one exception. Cranberries! Buy more, eat more, enjoy more! Cranberries this Thanksgiving season are 13 percent cheaper. The reason production is up 4 percent. Cranberries normally an irrelevant part of the holiday meal. This year has relevancy. The National Catholic Reporter (NPR) calls them as it sees them when it comes to the Catholic Church. A recent article re the U.S. Bishops' Conference Annual Meeting reflects its independent position. The NPR reported "the U.S. Bishops' decline into irrelevance will continue." The U.S. Bishops' organization is not pro Rome. Nor is it pro Francis. Far from it. The group sides with U.S. evangelicals, the far right, Trump and MAGA. They are influenced by the likes of Steve Bannon and Newt Gingrich. A new president was elected at the Conference. Anti-Francis. The new President is Archbishop Timothy Broglio. He is considered a "culture warrior." In the 1990's, he lacked sympathy for victims of clergy sex. He fought efforts by U.S. bishops to confront the crisis. He failed to confront the COVID-19 pandemic. Neither the Bishops' Conference nor Broglio are friends of Biden. Biden is a practicing Catholic. Yet no plans are in the works for the group and Biden to meet. Nor is such a meeting expected to be arranged. The gulf is distinct. Neither side is interested in one. Elon Musk continues to amaze me. As does how he became a billionaire. He appears committed to destroying Twitter. Though he does not appear aware. Last week, he reinstated Trump to use Twitter. Yesterday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene is thrilled. She vowed to test "every limit of free speech on Twitter." May Musk, Trump, Greene and Twitter fail. Washington Post columnist George Will in a recent column wrote: "Now the GOP can repent for the Trump era by denying him the nomination." Will the U.S. ever really have gun control? Biden's success a few months ago the first piece of significant gun legislation in 30 years. Not enough, however. Killings continue. Massacres common place. The nation cries out for more control. Stiffer control. Effective control. A few days ago, killings and injuries were inflicted at a LGBTQ night club in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Yesterday, a Virginia Walmart shooting where 6 were killed and more injured. The last day for hurricane season is next week on November 30. Key West has a tradition. The Conch Republic conducts a hurricane flag burning ceremony on November 30. This year's will be conducted at USCGC Ingham at Truman Waterfront Park. Live music at 4, the burning at 5. Syracuse lost last night to St. John's in the Championship Game of the Empire Classic in Brooklyn. In overtime, 76-69. For me. the game a strange one. It began at 9:30. I am asleep by 9:30 most evenings. I made it last night till about 10 minutes left in the game. Syracuse winning by 10. The game an excellent one till I fell asleep. St. John's came out with a tough brutal in your face defense. Syracuse quickly adapted. Game close. Syracuse up 5-6 points at half time. Joe Girard scored 31 points the night before. Last night, he was scoreless the whole first half. I think his total was 4-5 points all night. It was not St. John's defending him that caused his low production. He just did not have it. He appeared exhausted the whole game. Always a step behind. His shots off. When I dropped off to sleep, Syracuse was ahead 50-40. When I woke, the teams were already into the overtime. What I did not see was a 16-2 run by St. John's while I slept. Turned the game around. St. John's outscored Syracuse in the overtime 11-4. What I did see clearly indicated Syracuse's ass was dragging. Sloppy ball. Poor ball handling. Forget scoring. St. John's was not affected by tiredness, though they had the same reasons as Syracuse to be. From what I saw during the game, Syracuse's defense was outstanding. Dramatically improved from the night before. I am not down on the team.....yet. They are young. Several freshman. Have the makings of a quality team. Time will tell. Enjoy your day!

0 notes