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By Mary Farrow/CNA. | LOS ANGELES, Calif. — When *Maya was just 19 years old, ISIS soldiers invaded her home in Baghdad, Iraq, and ordered that she and the rest of her Christian family either convert…
Read MoreVatican City, Mar 5, 2020 / 01:58 pm (CNA).- The International Theological Commission this week published a study into the question of whether two “baptized non-believers” can contract sacramental marriage or whether the absence of faith im…
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Mar 5, 2020 | Catholic News Service, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Italy, News, Rome, Tourism, Vatican, Vatican museums |
The month of March is usually when tourists flock to the Eternal City after the cold winter months and pilgrims come to pray at many holy sites during the Lenten season.
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Mar 5, 2020 | Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, Catholic Church, Catholic News Service, Gender identity, Gender theory, Holy See diplomacy, Holy See Mission to the United Nations, human rights, LGBTQ, News, Religious Freedom, United Nations, Vatican, Vatican diplomacy |
A United Nations report addressing gender-based violence and discrimination connected to religious beliefs “is now attacking the very reality it is called to defend,” a Vatican representative told a U.N. meeting in Geneva.
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Mar 5, 2020 | Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer, Archdiocese of Atlanta, Bishop Appointment, Catholic Church, Catholic News Service, Church in the US, Georgia, News, Savannah |
Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Gregory J. Hartmayer of Savannah, Georgia, to be the archbishop of Atlanta.
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Mar 5, 2020 | Associated Press, Catholic Church, Catholic Schools, Church in the US, Crime, News, St. Louis |
A priest who previously worked at a Catholic school in St. Louis County has been sentenced to two years of probation for stalking a woman and hiding in the bushes outside her home.
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Mar 5, 2020 | Caritas Internationalis, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Featured, News, U.S. & World News |
Catholic aid agencies are protecting their staff’s safety as they increase their worldwide efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19.
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Mar 5, 2020 | International, News |
JERUSALEM — The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem urged its faithful to cooperate with the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health, following its order March 5 to close all schools, universities, mosques and churches, including the Church of the Nativi…
Read MoreBy Shaun McAfee | The urgency for prayer and petition should not begin when we are most desperate. Our prayers for protection and deliverance from evil begin before that. Most of all, because we naturally desire protection:…
Read MoreBy Alexandra Greeley | Southern Fish Soup
A favorite family recipe with stew-like consistency
Serves about 4
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, peeled and diced
¼ cup diced green pepper
1 clove garlic, peeled and…
By Patrick Reilly | Gender ideology has created huge inequities in the world of sports, with men competing on women’s teams and sometimes taking top honors away from outstanding female athletes.
Add to this many other…
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Chicago, Ill., Mar 5, 2020 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- As national pro-abortion groups pour money into a Chicago primary race to unseat one of the last pro-life Democrats in Congress, pro-life groups say they will be fighting back.
Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), an eight-term Catholic pro-life congressman, narrowly defeated pro-abortion primary challenger Marie Newman in a contentious 2018 race in the safely-Democratic district, but now he faces a rematch with a campaign backed by outside pro-abortion groups.
Newman, a Catholic Democrat who supports taxpayer-funded abortion and criticized Lipinski in 2019 for not supporting the Equality Act, raised more than $1.4 million in the 2018 race while focusing on Lipinski’s pro-life record. Having lost to Lipinski last time, she is now eyeing a victory in a 2020 rematch.
During the 2020 cycle, Newman’s campaign has received direct contributions from the pro-abortion groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), Planned Parenthood, and EMILY’s List, a group that works to get pro-abortion women elected to offices around the country.
According to filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), EMILY’s List made the maximum-allowable $5,000 contribution to Newman’s campaign, and in addition has earmarked more than $90,000 in contributions to Newman’s campaign from individuals all over the country.
On Feb. 24, a coalition of pro-abortion groups announced a $1.4 million investment in the race to unseat the “Anti-Choice, Anti-Obamacare” Lipinski. The “independent expenditure” campaign includes direct mail, and both television and digital ads, and is backed by pro-abortion groups including NARAL, EMILY’s List, and Planned Parenthood.
Lipinski told CNA in early January that he had hoped for more support from pro-life groups in a tough primay battle.
“I’ve gotten some support from pro-life groups, but honestly, not as much as I’d like to see,” Lipinski told CNA on Jan. 9.
Now in early March, less than two weeks before the March 17 Illinois Democratic primary, pro-life groups say they will be supporting the embattled Democrat.
FEC filings show that Lipinski’s campaign has received the maximum $5,000 from the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, in December. There are no records of direct contributions from other pro-life groups Democrats for Life of America and National Right to Life.
SBA List also told CNA that they are “bundling” for Lipinski, a practice of collecting various individual donations and orchestrating for them to be sent to the campaign all at once as part of a bundle.
Meanwhile, Democrats for Life of America (DFLA) told CNA they will be working with around 10 to 15 volunteers from the group Students for Life, to canvass for Lipinski in his district in the days leading up to the vote.
Lipinski’s primary race is “Ground Zero for pro-life Democrats,” Kristen Day, executive director of DFLA, told CNA, “because he has just been so, just attacked by our own party, and really just disrespected.”
Some of the group’s members have donated to his campaign, Day said, but “there’s not as much pro-life Democrat money as there is pro-abortion money.”
National Right to Life political director Karen Cross told CNA that the group does not contribute directly to candidates, but rather makes “independent expenditures” such as direct mail campaigns.
NRLC does not usually get involved in primaries, she said, but has made an exception for Lipinski whom they have endorsed and previously supported in 2018.
The group has sent mail to “thousands of pro-life supporters in the district,” while “encouraging them to support him [Lipinski] in this primary,” Cross told CNA.
“Marie Newman is a hardcore, unlimited-abortion-through-birth” candidate, Cross said, noting the difficulty of finding other pro-life Democratic candidates down ballot.
“You’ve got extreme pro-abortion activists actively working in primaries to get a pro-abortion candidate,” she said. “They’re spending, together, almost a couple hundred million dollars in elections to get these candidates through.”
The group CatholicVote.org also said it will support Lipinski. According to records on OpenSecrets.org, the group’s candidate fund made $7,168 in independent expenditures for Lipinski in the 2018 election cycle.
“Dan Lipinski is a pro-environment and pro-labor Democrat. He’s been an outstanding friend of the unborn,” stated Joshua Mercer, editor of The Loop at CatholicVote.org.
His pro-life stance “drives the abortion lobby crazy,” Mercer said, which is why they have rallied behind Newman, “their ‘mini AOC’,” referring to the freshman progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who has endorsed Newman.
However, in the face millions of dollars in negative ads, pro-life supporters of Lipinski will have their work cut out for them before March 17.
Unlike in 2018, Newman is reportedly shying away from emphasizing abortion in her challange this year—she apparently instructed reporters in a 2019 interview that they could only ask one abortion-related question, and clarified that “[t]his campaign is about the income divide, paid leave, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, transportation, and infrastructure jobs, period.”
At the same time, while not talking openly about her faith in interviews, she has referenced her Catholic upbringing in recent online ads to emphasize her roots in the heavily-Catholic district.
In one ad, Newman says she was born at Little Company of Mary hospital in the Evergreen Park neighborhood of south side Chicago, and baptized at nearby St. Barnabas parish—“just a real south side girl,” she is called in the ad.
In another video ad, two Catholic religious sisters gave their endorsement of Newman. Sister JoAnn Persch and Sister Pat Murphy, two Sisters of Mercy based in Chicago, said they would support Newman because of her “incredible power to listen” and because of her presence in the district.
Newman is “touting her Catholic upbringing in an attempt to mask her radical anti-Catholic agenda,” Mercer stated, saying that despite her efforts to snag the endorsements of nuns she “will become a rubber stamp for the radical left-wing.”
“That’s why these groups are pouring millions into this District,” Mercer said of outside pro-abortion groups.
“CatholicVote knows this District well. We helped Dan come up big in 2018, and we’re working overtime to bring him to victory again,” he said.
The hostility to Lipinski from within his own party is yet more evidence of the party’s leftward lurch on abortion, pro-life advocates said.
“I think we’re finally really forcing this issue to the surface within the Democratic Party,” said Terrisa Bukovinac, founder and executive director of Pro-Life San Francisco and a co-leader of Secular Pro-Life.
Bukovinac identifies as an atheist and a Democrat who is “whole life.” Pro-lifers in the Democratic Party “had a place at the table” for a while, she said, “but it was almost just like lip-service, to keep us in line.”
Now, however, presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and DNC chair Tom Perez are saying there is no more room in the party for pro-lifers.
“We see in the 2019 Marist poll that everyone keeps referencing that the majority of Democrats actually want abortion restrictions, but we’ve had the most extreme leadership we’ve ever had,” she said.
The staunch abortion support of progressive candidates such as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders show the desperation of the abortion lobby, she said.
“We want to break that relationship between the abortion industry and the Democratic Party that is the pillar of power for the abortion industry,” she said.
“Once pro-life Democrats really take that power and stop giving aid in the form of a direct vote, we will be able to transform our party.”
By Dave Armstrong | I was asked:
How would you explain monasticism to Protestants who feel Christians should be out in the world, seeking to convert lost souls? To them, monks/nuns are hiding from society’s ills, not helping…
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Mar 5, 2020 | Latest News Releases, News |
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on reactions to U.S. Supreme Court Justices who heard oral arguments on a pivotal abortion-rights case: Everyone knows that Sen. Charles Schumer went off the rails by threatening two sitting Supreme Court…
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Mar 5, 2020 | Episcopal Conferences, News |
‘No More Massacres of Innocent Civilians’
The post Bishops Lead Peaceful Protest March in Abuja, Nigeria appeared first on ZENIT – English.
Read MorePapal nuncio reminds bishops they can be removed if they are not vigilant
Read MoreBy Lauretta Brown | WASHINGTON — As the 2020 general election nears, the second of four polls from EWTN News and RealClear Opinion Research highlights a generational divide when it comes to Catholic…
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Los Angeles, Calif., Mar 5, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- When *Maya was just 19 years old, ISIS soldiers invaded her home in Baghdad, Iraq, and ordered that she and the rest of her Christian family either convert to Islam or pay a heavy fee to stay in their home. If they refused, they would be killed.
The family did not convert, but they tried to pay the fee. It wasn’t enough.
When the soldiers came back, they shot Maya’s brother in front of the family and kidnapped her sister. They warned that they would come back and kill the second daughter if the family did not leave or convert to Islam.
The remaining members of Maya’s family fled to Jordan, and happily learned that their kidnapped daughter had escaped to Australia.
It was stories like Maya’s that inspired Gia Chacon last year to found For the Martyrs, a non-profit organization that raises awareness of the plight of persecuted Christians throughout the world and advocates for religious freedom.
“I was so deeply impacted by the face of this young girl who is only 19, so scared,” Chacon told CNA.
“She had everything ripped from her, and lost family members, and still she had faith and she had hope in God, and she knew that nothing – nothing – was worth renouncing her faith. That Christ would pull her through.”
Through humanitarian work with refugees from Iraq and Syria, Chacon heard many stories like Maya’s, of Christians persecuted for their faith to the point of threats to their life and safety.
But she found that Christians in the West are largely unaware that Christians in 50 countries around the world face high levels of persecution.
Some of the countries with the worst persecution include North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan – countries where extreme ideas like communism or radical Islamism fuel hate towards Christians, she added.
“The Lord placed a heavy burden on my heart for the persecuted church,” Chacon said.
“I wanted to do something in the United States for the people of the West, to not only wake them up to the reality of what’s going on around the world, but also connect them to know that we’re one body of Christ. When one member suffers, we all suffer.”
This May, For the Martyrs will host the first March for the Martyrs on May 9 in Long Beach, California.
Chacon said she hopes the event “starts a movement” of Christians in the West who want to stand in solidarity with persecuted Christians throughout the world, and who want to do all they can through prayer and action to help them.
“In talking to the refugees, the number one thing that they would say is, ‘Thank you for remembering me. Thank you for knowing about my suffering and thank you for your prayers for me,’” Chacon recalled.
“So I think it’s really important for Christians of the West and the people of the West and the United States to know that one of the most important things we can do is just stand in solidarity, be the voice for the voiceless, and use our platform to raise awareness about Christian persecution.”
The march will be immediately followed by a ‘Night of Prayer for the Persecuted’ featuring speakers such as Sean Feucht from Bethel Music, Father Benedict Kiely, and others who will highlight the plight of persecuted Christians and what can be done for them.
“Our purpose for that night is to pray for the persecuted, worship the Lord for victory and for protection over the persecuted, but also to gain insight into the reality of Christian persecution and learn what we can do as a body of Christ in America for our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world,” Chacon said.
The march and night of prayer come at a critical time.
A recent poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates on behalf of Aid to the Church in Need-USA found a 10% decline in the number of US Catholics who say they are “very concerned” about global anti-Christian persecution.
“The softening of the level of concern about Christian persecution among US Catholics is also evident in their ranking of the importance of global issues,” Aid to the Church in Need USA said in a March 4 statement.
“Global Christian persecution is ranked as less urgent an issue than human trafficking, poverty, climate change and the global refugee crisis. Catholics who identify themselves as being very devout are most concerned about the persecution of Christians, but even this group has ranked human trafficking the issue of greatest concern for three consecutive years,” the group added.
This decline in concern is coupled with an uptick in persecution – according to For the Martyrs, the persecution of Christians has increased by 20% in just two years, with more than 260 million Christians worldwide now facing high levels of persecution.
The issue of Christian persecution has gotten scant attention in the mainstream media in the United States, Chacon added. Part of the reason for that, she said, is because of a “misconception that Christians have some sort of privilege.”
“This is something that we hear kind of often. Last year there was a hashtag that was trending that said #Christianprivilege. It was talking about how if you’re Christian, you somehow have this religious privilege or you don’t struggle for your faith,” Chacon said.
“There’s an idea that Christians don’t suffer, when in reality, one-third of the world faces religious persecution and religious oppression, and 80% of that one-third are Christians. So, an overwhelming majority of people around the world are suffering for their faith in Christ,” she said.
That’s why she and For the Martyrs are working so hard to bring this issue back to the forefronts of the minds of Christians in the U.S., she said.
“Never underestimate the power of your voice, and especially joining with the voices of other people who are advocating for the cause of Christians.”
*Name has been changed to protect privacy
The month of March is usually when tourists flock to the Eternal City after the cold winter months and pilgrims come to pray at many holy sites during the Lenten season
The post Preventing pandemic: Vatican takes steps to stop spread of coronavirus appeared first on Catholic Herald.
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