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Month: October 2020

ASP’s Brian Carroll squares off in third-party debate

Posted by | Oct 10, 2020 | , |

Denver, Colo., Oct 10, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).-  

Pro-life third-party candidate Brian Carroll squared-off with other third-party presidential candidates in a debate Thursday evening in Denver, with much of the discourse focusing around the difficulties that third-parties often face in gaining traction in U.S. presidential races, as well as issues surrounding education, surveillance, and drug policy.

Carroll is the presidential nominee of the American Solidarity Party, a third-party founded in 2011 and based largely on Catholic social teaching.

Carroll, an evangelical Christian and a retired history teacher from California, told CNA ahead of the debate that in his view, many Christians prioritize politics over faith, looking for a political messiah in the major parties instead of looking to Christ as savior.

“We also have to keep in mind that the political outlet is not the ultimate outlet. The goal is not to elect a president, the goal is not even to eliminate specific ills in our society. The goal is to give testimony to the part that Jesus plays in our life on a daily basis,” he told CNA.

The American Solidarity Party has attracted attention among some Catholics since a 2016 essay in First Things by philosopher David McPherson. During the 2020 election season, moral theologian Charlie Camosy, who was once a board member of Democrats for Life but quit the Democratic Party because of its abortion extremism, has been a proponent of the party.

The Free and Equal Elections Foundation, which hosted the Oct. 8 debate, is a non-profit non-partisan organization founded in 2008. Thursday’s debate is the second that the group has hosted for third-party candidates this year.

In the debate, Carroll advocated protection for investigative journalists against large corporations, mentioning the case of David Daleiden, a pro-life investigative journalist who last year was ordered to pay Planned Parenthood $870,000 in punitive damages for secretly recording meetings with abortion doctors and staff to expose their business practices.

Several of the candidates, including Carroll, decried the death penalty and called for its repeal. One candidate mentioned the recent case of Lezmond Mitchell, a Navajo man who was federally executed in August despite the objections of his tribe.

In responding to a question about mandatory vaccinations, Carroll said he supports vaccines, but not vaccine mandates. He also noted that some vaccine research does involve aborted fetal tissue, sometimes curated and sold by abortion providers, which is an issue that pro-life people ought to speak about.

“Once you’re killing one human being for the health and safety of another human being, you’ve got enormous ethical problems,” he said during the debate.

The American Solidarity Party began in 2011 as the Christian Democracy Party USA. Mike Maturen, a Catholic, ran for president on the party ticket in the 2016 election.

Though the American Solidarity Party is not explicitly religious, its platform rests on several principles which the Church has developed as part of Catholic social teaching. Subsidiarity— the Catholic idea that emphasizes the importance of local authorities in decision-making— is a tenet of the ASP’s platform. Carroll told CNA in June that he believes smaller scale, local approaches to handling the pandemic are best, rather than one-size-fits-all pandemic restrictions.

Carroll said the pandemic has exacerbated the divide between large corporations, such as Amazon, which have profited greatly since the start of the crisis, and small businesses which have struggled to stay afloat or have already had to close.

“If we had a Congress that was more sympathetic to distributism, the [relief] bills that they put together would have favored the little guy,” he said.

Abortion is a key issue for members of the ASP. The party platform calls for an end to legal protection for abortion, and it supports social services for mothers in need.

The party says pro-life convictions must also include opposition to euthanasia, assisted suicide, embryonic stem cell research and the death penalty. Carroll said if he is elected, he would push for a constitutional amendment to define “personhood” as beginning at conception.

In addition, Carroll and the ASP consider steps to address climate change and pollution, as well as racial justice and reconciliation, to be a part of their pro-life convictions.

Distributism, the favored economic theory of the party platform, is a model championed by notable Catholics such as G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.

The model calls for a broader system of ownership to create a more “local, responsible, and sustainable” economy. The ASP favors a rewrite of regulations and tax incentives to favor small businesses and family farms, rather than major corporations.

The party describes distributism as “an economic system which focuses on creating a society of wide-spread ownership…rather than having the effect of degrading the human person as a cog in the machine.”

Carroll says he had never heard the word “distributism” until he joined the ASP, but as soon as he read the description, it clicked for him.

He said he encounters many people, particularly non-Catholics, who like him were not familiar with the vocabulary of the ASP, but who appreciate the platform once they understand the principles behind it. 

“All those things are things people everywhere want to see. They may not understand our vocabulary, they may not understand our immediate logic, but everybody, I think, is going to be in favor of the general goals.”

Like most political candidates, Carroll’s in-person campaigning efforts have been severely curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic. But he says he has engaged with potential voters and those interested in the party via social media.

As a historian, Carroll said he appreciates that the ASP platform is rooted not just in history, but also in political theory, theology, economics, and ecology.

“There’s an amazing amount of intellectual talent in the party, and all of it goes into the platform,” he commented. 

Carroll admits that his chances of actually winning the presidency are remote. The ASP will be on the November ballot in eight states, and a certified write-in option in two dozen others.

He says he is excited by the party’s growth, and says party members are already eying local races for 2022, particularly in Texas.

Like any U.S. third party, Carroll said the ASP hopes to draw converts who typically vote Democrat, Republican, or neither.

“We hope to take an equal number from each party, and then even more so we hope to bring in a lot of people that have simply given up and stopped voting,” Carroll told CNA ahead of the debate.

Carroll said he frequently hears the criticism that a third-party vote in a U.S. presidential election is essentially wasted, or a vote “against” a pro-life candidate with a reasonable chance of winning.

But Carroll said he hopes to provide an opportunity for serious Christians to vote their consciences, rather than choosing between “the lesser of two evils.”

“If you vote for something that you don’t want and you win, have you really won? I don’t think so…Democracy works best when people identify what they want, and then vote for it,” he said.

Carroll said one accusation he hears frequently against the ASP is that it is a “debating society”— that it is made up of mostly well-educated people discussing impractical theory. But Carroll said many of the ASP’s positions have been tried in various places, including in Europe and in certain local areas of the United States.

Carroll said he suspects that the more people learn about the American Solidarity Party and its positions, a wide range of voters— Christian and otherwise— are likely to find it attractive.

“In the privacy of the voting booths, there will be some pro-life atheists and humanists that will vote for us, even if they won’t publicly endorse us,” he predicted.

“My personal goal is for everyone, whether they love us, they hate us, or are completely indifferent and think we’re a joke, at least will have heard of us by November 3, and that the people who want to vote their conscience have at least that opportunity,” Party chairman and vice presidential candidate Amar Patel told CNA in March.

He said he suspects that many Christians and Catholics often end up voting for a candidate who they believe will defend one specific aspect of Christian morality, rather than looking for “ideal candidates who will actually defend the Christian message in total.”

Patel, like Carroll,  said he hears a lot about “wasted votes” when it comes to third parties. But in states where a Republican or Democratic victory is all but assured, such as California, even if millions of voters switched to a third party, it would be unlikely to change the outcome, he said.

If that happened, however, the “entire face of American politics would have changed,” because people would be talking about the third-party candidate who garnered millions of votes.

For his part, Carroll said that as a Christian he hopes to encourage people not only to vote their conscience, but to make their politics an outflow of their religious beliefs, rather than the other way around.

“We do have to be paying attention to national politics, but we also need to be protecting our own hearts. We have to be looking at advancing Christ’s Kingdom, not as a theocracy, but as in everybody looking out for their neighbor, and keeping our eyes up, because we don’t know when Jesus is coming back,” he said.

“We have to keep Christ front and center in our lives, or we’re lost.”

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The miracle attributed to Carlo Acutis’ prayers

Posted by | Oct 10, 2020 | , |

CNA Staff, Oct 10, 2020 / 10:15 am (CNA).-  

The beatification of Carlo Acutis took place Oct. 10 after a miracle attributed to his prayers and the grace of God. In Brazil, a boy named Mattheus was healed from a serious birth defect called an annular pancreas after he and his mother asked Acutis to pray for his healing.

Mattheus was born in 2009 with a serious condition that caused him difficulty eating and serious abdominal pain. He was unable to keep any food in his stomach, and vomited constantly.

By the time Mattheus was nearly four years old, he weighed only 20 pounds, and lived on a vitamin and protein shake, one of the few things his body could tolerate. He was not expected to live long.

His mother, Luciana Vianna, had spent years praying for his healing.

At the same time, a priest friend of the family, Fr. Marcelo Tenorio, learned online about the life of Carlo Acutis, and began praying for his beatification. In 2013 he obtained a relic from Carlo’s mother, and he invited Catholics to a Mass and prayer service in his parish, encouraging them to ask Acutis’ intercession for whatever healing they might need.

Mattheus’ mother heard about the prayer service. She decided she would ask Acutis to intercede for her son. In fact, in the days before the prayer service, Vianna made a novena for Acutis’ intercession, and explained to her son that they could ask Acutis to pray for his healing.

On the day of the prayer service, she took Mattheus and other family members to the parish.

Fr. Nicola Gori, the priest responsible for promoting Acutis’ sainthood cause, told Italian media what happened next:

“On October 12, 2013, seven years after Carlo’s death, a child, affected by a congenital malformation (annular pancreas), when it was his turn to touch the picture of the future blessed, expressed a singular wish, like a prayer: ‘I wish I could stop vomiting so much.’ Healing began immediately, to the point that the physiology of the organ in question changed,” Fr. Gori said.

On the way home from the Mass, Mattheus told his mother that he was already cured. At home, he asked for French fries, rice, beans, and steak – the favorite foods of his brothers.

He ate everything on his plate. He didn’t vomit. He ate normally the next day, and the next. Vianna took Mattheus to physicians, who were mystified by Mattheus’ healing.

Mattheus’ mother told Brazilian media she sees in the miracle an opportunity to evangelize.

“Before, I didn’t even use my cell phone, I was averse to technology. Carlo changed my way of thinking, he was known for talking about Jesus on the Internet, and I realized that my testimony would be a way to evangelize and give hope to other families. Today I understand that everything new can be good, if we use it for good, ” she told reporters.

 

A version of this story was first reported by ACI Digital, CNA’s Portugese-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

 

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Beatification of Carlo Acutis: The first millennial to be declared Blessed

Posted by | Oct 10, 2020 | , |

Assisi, Italy, Oct 10, 2020 / 09:46 am (CNA).-  

With the beatification of Carlo Acutis in Assisi Saturday, the Catholic Church now has its first “Blessed” who loved Super Mario and Pokémon, but not as much as he loved the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

“To be always united with Jesus, this is my life program,” Carlo Acutis wrote at the age of seven.

The young Italian computer whiz, who died of leukemia at 15 offering his suffering for the pope and the Church, was beatified Oct. 10 in a Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

Born in 1991, Acutis is the first millennial to be beatified by the Catholic Church. The teen who had an aptitude for computer programming is now one step away from canonization. 

“Since he was a child … he had his gaze turned to Jesus. Love for the Eucharist was the foundation that kept alive his relationship with God. He often said ‘The Eucharist is my highway to heaven,” Cardinal Agostino Vallini said in his homily for the beatification.

“Carlo felt a strong need to help people discover that God is close to us and that it is beautiful to be with him to enjoy his friendship and his grace,” Vallini said.

During the beatification Mass, Acutis’ parents processed behind a relic of their son’s heart which was placed near the altar. An apostolic letter from Pope Francis was read aloud in which the pope declared that Carlo Acutis’ feast will take place each year on Oct. 12, the anniversary of his death in Milan in 2006.

Masked pilgrims spread out in front of the Basilica of St. Francis and throughout the different piazzas in Assisi to watch the Mass on large screens as only a limited number of people were allowed inside.

Acutis’ beatification drew an estimated 3,000 people to Assisi, including people who personally knew Acutis and many other young people inspired by his witness.

Mattia Pastorelli, 28, was a childhood friend of Acutis, who first met him when they were both around the age of five. He remembers playing video games, including Halo, with Carlo. (Acutis’ mother also told CNA that Super Mario and Pokémon were Carlo’s favorites.)

“Having a friend who is about to become a saint is a very strange emotion,” Pastorelli told CNA Oct. 10. “I knew he was different from others, but now I realize just how special he was.”

“I watched him while he was programming websites … He was truly an incredible talent,” he added.

In his homily, Cardinal Vallini, the pontifical legate for the Basilica of St. Francis, hailed Acutis as a model of how young people can use technology at the service of the Gospel to “reach as many people as possible and help them know the beauty of friendship with the Lord.”

For Carlo, Jesus was “the strength of his life and the purpose of everything he did,” the cardinal said.

“He was convinced that to love people and do them good you need to draw energy from the Lord. In this spirit he was very devoted to Our Lady,” he added.

“His ardent desire was also that of attracting as many people to Jesus, making himself herald of the Gospel above all with the example of life.”

At a young age, Acutis taught himself how to program and went on to create websites cataloguing the world’s Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions.

“The Church rejoices, because in this very young Blessed the Lord’s words are fulfilled: ‘I have chosen you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit.’ And Carlo ‘went’ and brought the fruit of holiness, showing it as a goal reachable by all and not as something abstract and reserved for a few,” the cardinal said.

“He was an ordinary boy, simple, spontaneous, likeable … he loved nature and animals, he played football, he had many friends of his age, he was attracted by modern means of social communication, passionate about computer science and, self-taught, he built websites to transmit the Gospel, to communicate values ​​and beauty,” he said.

Assisi is celebrating the beatification of Carlo Acutis with more than two weeks of liturgies and events Oct. 1-17. During this time images of a young Acutis standing with a giant monstrance containing the Eucharist can be seen in front of churches all around the city of St. Francis and St. Clare.

 

Images of Carlo Acutis are everywhere you turn in Assisi this weekend ???‍?? pic.twitter.com/fTB91fJrtj

— Courtney Mares (@catholicourtney) October 9, 2020

 

People stood in line to pray before the tomb of Carlo Acutis, located in Assisi’s Sanctuary of the Spoliation in the Church of St. Mary Major. The church extended its hours until midnight throughout the beatification weekend to allow as many people as possible to venerate Acutis, with the social distancing measures in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Fr. Boniface Lopez, a Franciscan Capuchin based at the church, told CNA that he noted that many people who visited Acutis’ tomb also took advantage of the opportunity to go to confession, which is being offered in many languages throughout the 17 days when Acutis’ body is visible for venation.

“Many people are coming to see Carlo to ask for his blessing … also many young people; they come for confessions, they come because they want to change their lives and they want to come near God and really experience God,” Fr. Lopez said.

At a youth vigil the evening before the beatification, pilgrims gathered outside of the Assisi’s Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels while priests heard confessions inside.

 

Prayer vigil in Assisi on the eve of Carlo Acutis’ beatification. ? ?

People gathered outside of the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels while priests heard confessions inside.

“Let’s prepare our hearts for tomorrow’s celebration,” Bishop Paolo Martinelli said. pic.twitter.com/VIOkM95YCU

— Courtney Mares (@catholicourtney) October 9, 2020

 

Churches throughout Assisi also offered additional hours of Eucharistic Adoration to mark Acutis’ beatification.

Lopez said that he had also encountered many religious sisters and priests coming on pilgrimage to see Actutis. “Religious come here to ask his blessing to help them to cultivate a greater love for the Eucharist.”

As Acutis once said: “When we face the sun we get a tan … but when we stand before Jesus in the Eucharist we become saints.”

 

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Friend’s New Book on Mary

Posted by | Oct 10, 2020 | , , |

My friend William Albrecht has just published a new book entitled “The Definitive Guide for Solving Biblical Questions about Mary: Mary among the Evangelists.” I provided this endorsement for the book, “Why another book on Mary? First, Mary and Marian studies are fascinating and often controversial; they never exhaust our interest. Second, this book answers questions […]

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Fr. Frank Pavone’s List: The President Has Kept His Promises – And More

Posted by | Oct 10, 2020 | , , |

We are proud to thank President Donald Trump for the numerous accomplishments of his first term, too many to list here, but including the following. See more at PromisesKept.com and ProLifePresident.com. Satisfaction with the state of the nation reached a 15-year high according to Gallup, and nearly twice the number of people think it’s heading in […]

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