St. Mary's Church

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 21, 2024 / 17:50 pm (CNA).

Three states have picked up a lawsuit previously dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over its removal of safety restrictions on abortion drugs. 

In June 2023, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision saying the group of pro-life doctors and organizations who filed the original case lacked standing as they could not show they had been harmed by the abortion drug mifepristone’s widespread availability. 

The states of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho argue in the new lawsuit, filed in the same Texas federal court as the original case, that “women should have the in-person care of a doctor when taking high-risk drugs.”

Since the FDA rolled back its regulations, the states wrote in the filing, abortion drugs have been “flooding states like Missouri and Idaho [where abortion is otherwise regulated] and sending women in these states to the emergency room.”

The plaintiffs describe the FDA’s move to deregulate the drug as “reckless,” noting that the FDA’s own label estimates that about 1 in 25 women who take mifepristone “will visit the emergency room.” Though side effects of the drug include severe bleeding, life-threatening infections, and ruptured ectopic pregnancies, abortion providers are no longer required to report nonfatal complications.

“This elimination was based on past data collected under the originally approved safety standards, not the new deregulated regime,” the states pointed out, calling the deregulation “unreasonable.”

The original FDA requirements for the drug upon its approval in 2000 limited use to 49 days of pregnancy, required three in-person visits, and could only be administered by certified health care providers at a clinic or health care center. In 2016, the gestational limit was extended to 70 days and the number of in-person consultations reduced to a singular visit.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the FDA dropped its consultation requirement altogether and further authorized all certified health care professionals to be able to distribute the drug. Telehealth providers were initially given the temporary ability to distribute the drug via mail that same year. The Biden administration eventually solidified the practice as a norm in 2023. 

Although most of the country requires parental consent for the drug to be prescribed, 18 states — including California, Colorado, Maryland, and Illinois — do not require parental consent for minors to access mifepristone. 

The states also claim in the filing that the FDA “ignored the potential impacts that the removal of commonsense safeguards would have on adolescent girls” and that the administration purposefully categorized pregnancy as a “disease” to avoid having to complete otherwise necessary safety assessments among pediatric patients to approve the deregulations. 

The new filing calls for the drug to be prohibited among patients under the age of 18. 

“The FDA has acted unlawfully,” the states concluded in the amended complaint. “Now, the state plaintiffs ask the court to protect women by holding unlawful, staying the effective date of, setting aside, and vacating the FDA’s actions to eviscerate crucial safeguards for those who undergo this dangerous drug regimen.”

CNA Staff, Oct 21, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).

Weeks after deadly Hurricane Helene dumped record rainfall on western North Carolina, the Diocese of Charlotte is encouraging parishes to band together to create “sister” partnerships for mutual material aid and spiritual support over the next six months.

Bishop Michael Martin noted in an Oct. 10 email to the diocese’s 160 priests that parishes need to be ready to help each other and the community even if they themselves did not suffer serious damage.

“While some of the immediate needs have been cared for, our longer-term walking with the people affected … remains an important ministry of our local Church,” the bishop said as reported by the local Catholic News Herald.

Parishes that are partnered with a “sister” can hold second collections to help offset lost operating revenue in their sister parish, offer monthly Holy Hours to pray for their sister parish, and check in with the parish regularly about the need for pastoral help or volunteers, the bishop noted.

Parishes can sign up for the program and the diocesan chancery will pair up parishes based on their resources and level of need.

Helene made landfall in late September in Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region, bringing a nine-foot storm surge to some areas and knocking out power for millions.

Weakening into a tropical storm over land, it wrought deadly flooding and damaging winds inland in Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas.

The city of Asheville, North Carolina, a gateway to the Smoky Mountains about 125 miles west of Charlotte, was especially hard-hit along with hundreds of smaller communities. Nearly 100 people have died in North Carolina as a result of the storm.

Martin told CNA earlier this month that he and diocesan staff took a trip to several of the harder-hit areas in the Charlotte Diocese to survey the destruction and offer aid to stricken residents, including in the towns of Hendersonville and Swannanoa. 

The diocese has been heavily involved in relief efforts, with the diocese’s first truckload of supplies from Charlotte arriving in Hendersonville 48 hours after the storm. 

The diocese has since, as of Oct. 17, delivered 48 box trucks and 16 pickups and trailer loads of supplies to the communities of Asheville, Boone, Brevard, Hendersonville, Linville, Swannanoa, and Waynesville.

Monsignor Patrick Winslow, vicar general and chancellor of the Charlotte Diocese, recently consulted with pastors who lived through Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana to get advice on how to transition from addressing immediate to long-term needs. 

Donors from “all 50 states and six countries” have donated some $3.8 million as of Oct. 17 to response-and-recovery efforts led by the diocese’s parishes, schools, central administration, and its Catholic Charities agency, the diocese said. 

People can learn how to pray for North Carolina’s recovery and donate financially by visiting this page.

National Catholic Register, Oct 21, 2024 / 14:20 pm (CNA).

Beginning on Sunday, Oct. 27, the Eternal World Television Network (EWTN) will launch a nine-day novena in anticipation of the U.S. election on Nov. 5. Catholics and all people of goodwill are invited to join in the “Novena to the Mother of God for the Nation” to pray for the country and all government officials. (Editor’s note: EWTN is the parent company of CNA.)

“As Catholics, we turn instinctively to our Blessed Mother in times of need,” said EWTN Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer Michael Warsaw.

“In this present moment, when there is so much division and unrest in our country, and when many of the values that formed our nation seem to be at risk, we again need to turn to our Blessed Mother,” Warsaw said. “We need to pray for her intercession, that leaders and all who seek public office will follow the path of truth, guarantee religious liberty, and ensure that all human life is valued and protected, most especially the unborn.”

The Novena to the Mother of God for the Nation concentrates on some central truths and Mary’s unique role in salvation. Each day turns to different times and roles in the Gospel and rosary — days dedicated to themes such as “The Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God Day,” “The Divine Motherhood of Mary,” “The Wedding Feast of Cana Day,” “Mary at Calvary Day,” “The Mystery of Easter Day,” and the “Assumption Into Heaven.”

Even in the earliest times of Christianity, the faithful turned to Mary for her intercession in their times of persecution and great need, as did the Catholics who lived in the new republic of the United States.

In 1792, Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore, the nation’s first Catholic bishop, chose the Blessed Mother as “patroness of the United States,” and he entrusted the new United States of America to her maternal care. On May 13, 1846, 54 years later — on the same month and day she would appear years later at Fátima — the nation’s bishops named Mary under the title of “The Immaculate Conception” as the patroness of the United States.

Once again, the bishops solemnly entrusted the U.S. to the Blessed Mother in 1959, when the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was dedicated in Washington, D.C. 

America’s first president, George Washington, strongly reminded citizens of the need for heavenly help. In his farewell address, he told the nation: “[T]he propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained.”

Many victories throughout history have been credited to the prayers of the Blessed Mother, such as the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Victory of Muret in 1213, the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, the defeat of Soviet Communism in Austria in 1955, the defeat of dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986, and more. 

From those earliest of times of Roman persecutions, Christians would pray the simple yet very powerful “Sub Tuum Praesidium”: “We fly to your patronage, O holy Mother of God; despise not our prayers in our necessities, but ever deliver us from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin.”

The Mother of God for the Nation novena’s introduction reminds the faithful that “in times of crisis, Catholics turn instinctively to the Mother of God to heal our wounds. Now we can all do our part in this national effort by praying the Novena to the Mother of God for the Nation. In this powerful supplication, our voices speak as one asking Mary’s intercession to unite us as one nation under God.” 

Each day of the Mother of God for the Nation novena there is a short Scripture reading related to the day’s theme, a reflection, and a prayer. The novena will be broadcast on EWTN in the morning and evening (see the times listed below). To follow along, and for those who cannot watch at those times, EWTN has a free novena eBook and will send each day’s prayers of the novena directly by email. Requesting it is simple and quick. (See below.) 

If possible, during the novena people are also encouraged to do as many of the following five acts as they can (fully explained in the free novena booklet): 1) Attend Mass and receive holy Communion each day of the novena. 2) Go to confession; receive the sacrament of penance. 3) Read Scripture and pray the rosary each day. 4) Make a donation or do something practical to help the poor. 5) Encourage as many people as possible to make the novena. 

The novena booklet reminds those who join the novena that prayer testifies to the Church’s faith that “Jesus Christ is God and Mary is the mother of God and the mother of Christ’s disciples (John 19:25–27). Her maternal relationship to Christ and to all the members of his body is the foundation of Christians’ confidence in her ability to help her children on earth who face any danger.” 

“Here is a wonderful secret of prayer: Christ wants us to go humbly to his mother in search of his help,” the introduction in the novena booklet states. “This is precisely what we are doing in ‘Novena to the Mother of God for the Nation.’”

Join in prayer

If you would like to receive the Novena to the Mother of God for the Nation, please click here. 

The free eBook is available in English and in Spanish. The printed booklet is only available to ship to homes in the U.S., one per household. For a digital version for everyone who prefers one and those outside the U.S., please click “Send me an eBook.”

Make sure to watch the “Novena to the Mother of God for the Nation” on EWTN TV beginning Oct. 27. Check the broadcast times below. Join us and unite with others in prayer to the Blessed Mother.

Schedule on EWTN: 

(Times shown are Eastern time; adjust for other time zones.) 

• Sunday, Oct. 27, at 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. 

• Monday through Thursday, Oct. 28–Oct. 31, at 9 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. 

• Friday, Nov. 1, at 9:15 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. 

• Saturday, Nov. 2, at 9 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. 

• Sunday, Nov. 3, at 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. 

• Monday, Nov. 4, at 9 a.m. and 9:30 p.m.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register on Oct. 21, 2024, and has been adapted by CNA.

CNA Staff, Oct 21, 2024 / 13:20 pm (CNA).

Catholics in Atlanta plan to fervently pray and make reparation ahead of and during an upcoming “black mass,” a sacrilegious event planned for Oct. 25 by the so-called Satanic Temple. 

Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer of Atlanta in an Oct. 8 memo urged all Catholics to counter the Satanic Temple’s “attack on the faith” through prayers of reparation and penance, calling the planned Friday event “a blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass.”

The Satanic Temple, which, according to its website, denies the existence of God and Satan, is a political activist group known for protesting religious symbolism in public spaces and mocking Christianity by offering “unbaptism” and hosting “black masses.”

In 2014, a planned “black mass” at Harvard University sparked considerable outcry from Catholics, as did another one later that year in Oklahoma City. 

A direct mockery of the Catholic Mass, a so-called “black mass” sometimes entails the desecration of the Eucharist, stolen from a Catholic church. The Satanic Temple website briefly describes the “black mass” as “a celebration of blasphemy, which can be an expression of personal liberty and freedom.”

The Atlanta Satanic Temple is selling tickets to the “mass,” which is set to be held at a performance venue northeast of downtown.

Hartmayer reiterated that Catholics should respond to “this attack to our faith through prayer, penance, and prayers of reparation.” He said he has asked each Atlanta parish to conduct a Eucharistic Holy Hour with Benediction to honor the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, ideally on or before Friday, Oct. 25, at 9 p.m. ET.

“Using a consecrated host they claim they obtained illicitly from a Catholic church and desecrating it in the vilest ways imaginable, the practitioners offer it in sacrifice to Satan,” the archbishop said. 

“This terrible sacrilege is a deliberate attack on the Catholic Mass as well as the foundational beliefs of all Christians. It mocks Our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we Catholics believe is truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist when it has been consecrated by a validly ordained priest.”

“We commend our efforts to the Lord through the loving intercession of Mary, the mother of God,” he concluded.

In recent years, the Satanic Temple has engaged in pro-abortion advocacy, losing the various lawsuits it filed against state pro-life laws in Missouri and Indiana. It also announced last year the creation of an “After School Satan Club” at a Connecticut elementary school.

Critics have long suspected that the group is a hoax or simply exists to “troll” religious people, though the group strongly denies this. 

CNA Staff, Oct 21, 2024 / 12:15 pm (CNA).

The Biden administration announced on Monday that it will require insurance companies to cover over-the-counter contraception in what the White House called the “most significant expansion ... in more than a decade” of access to birth control under federal law.

The new rule requires insurance companies to remove the prescription requirement for coverage of contraception. The administration seeks to expand contraception in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, according to a White House press conference.

“The Biden-Harris administration is advancing the most significant expansion of contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act in more than a decade,” said Jennifer Klein, assistant to the president and director of the White House’s gender policy council, in the White House press briefing.

“For the first time ever, women would be able to obtain over-the-counter (OTC) contraception without a prescription at no additional cost, and health plans would have to cover even more prescribed contraceptives without cost sharing,” Klein said.

The new rule requires insurers to provide OTC contraception to women at no cost without requiring a prescription. The rule also increases the required coverage for prescriptive contraception drugs, requiring one drug per category of contraceptive, such as oral contraceptions or implants.

Following a comment period, the new rule is set to require insurance companies to expand coverage of contraceptives by fully covering multiple methods of birth control including oral contraception, condoms, and “emergency contraception.”

Catholic Church has long condemned artificial contraception

The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls contraception a “morally unacceptable” form of birth regulation, stating that “every action” that “proposes … to render procreation impossible” is “intrinsically evil” (No. 2370).

In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI called “the transmission of human life” a “most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator,” writing that it is “a source of great joy” though it “sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships.”

In the document Paul VI wrote that marriage is designed by God for a husband and wife to develop a union through the “mutual gift of themselves.”

The pontiff condemned “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse is specifically intended to prevent procreation — whether as an end or as a means.” 

“We must accept that there are certain limits, beyond which it is wrong to go, to the power of man over his own body and its natural functions,” the document read.

The only means of “spacing births” that the Church supports is “tak[ing] advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system” through natural family planning (NFP).

Paul VI acknowledged that there are sometimes serious reasons for couples to “decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time,” depending on “physical, economic, psychological, and social conditions.”

However, “every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life,” Paul VI wrote. Union and procreation are “both inherent to the marriage act,” Paul VI continued, making contraceptives “unlawful.” 

Over-the-counter contraceptives could also have negative medical consequences for women, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) noted. 

Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, who heads the USCCB’s laity, marriage, family life, and youth committee, condemned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of OTC contraception in 2023. 

Barron noted that giving OTC hormonal contraceptives “without the supervision of a doctor and contrary to the mounting evidence of many harmful side effects — violates the Hippocratic oath by putting the health of women at grave risk.”

Contraception mandates have also led to legal challenges in the past for religious organizations, including the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The religious sisters spent nine years embroiled in a legal struggle as they appealed for a religious exemption from the Affordable Care Act birth control rule. That rule required employers to provide for contraceptive coverage for employees through their health care plans.

The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of the Little Sisters in 2020.

Belén Perales, una mujer española de 60 años, vivió durante 35 años como atea, alejándose de la fe católica en la adolescencia tras una serie de experiencias traumáticas.

El Cardenal Luis José Rueda Aparicio, Arzobispo de Bogotá y Primado de Colombia, dijo en entrevista con EWTN en Español que en el Sínodo de la Sinodalidad “no se está tomando ninguna decisión en contra del Evangelio ni de la Tradición”.

El P. Marcelo Pérez, sacerdote de la Diócesis de San Cristóbal de las Casas, en el estado mexicano de Chiapas, falleció este 20 de octubre, asesinado por dos hombres que le dispararon después de que celebrara la Misa. Tras conocerse la noticia, fue recordado por su diócesis como un “incansable apóstol de la paz”.

En el Perú, más de 17 millones de personas padecen de inseguridad alimentaria y en muchos casos no saben si tendrán algo que comer en el día o al día siguiente. En medio de esa dramática situación, Cáritas Perú y el Padre Omar son dos grandes ejemplos de la incansable labor de la Iglesia Católica para la lucha contra el hambre.

San Juan Pablo II, el Papa polaco que llevó a la Iglesia al tercer milenio, es conocido por haber sido un gran devoto de la Virgen de Fátima –quien le salvó la vida en 1981– o por sus 104 viajes apostólicos que le valió el título de “Papa peregrino”. Hoy te presentamos 12 momentos que marcaron su vida.