St. Mary's Church

Un obispo libanés propuso a San Charbel, santo patrono del Líbano, como ejemplo de escucha de la Palabra de Dios durante una homilía ante los participantes del Sínodo de la Sinodalidad.

El Sínodo de la Sinodalidad, que se concibió como un momento de encuentro y diálogo para la Iglesia universal, ha proporcionado también un lugar para que los obispos católicos de China continental y Taiwán se reúnan.

CNA Staff, Oct 8, 2024 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

A charter school in Oklahoma is aiming to be the first publicly-funded religious charter school in the United States after it appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday after lower courts ruled against it this summer.

St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School and Oklahoma’s charter school board filed separate petitions Oct. 7 with the Supreme Court after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled last summer that the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board could not authorize a charter with a Catholic school.

The court in its ruling said that extending public funding to a religious school would be a “slippery slope” that could lead to “the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention.”

The court subsequently ordered the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to rescind the school’s contract.

St. Isidore petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Oklahoma decision on the basis of Supreme Court precedent and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment on Monday. The school was represented by the Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic of Notre Dame Law School, a teaching law practice that trains Notre Dame law students.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal nonprofit that defends First Amendment rights, filed a petition the same day on behalf of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board.

In the Oct. 7 petition, ADF argued that the Oklahoma Supreme Court had ruled contrary to the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court, which “has repeatedly struck down states’ attempts to exclude religious schools, parents, and students from publicly available benefits based solely on their religion.”

For instance, a 2022 Supreme Court ruling found that Maine couldn’t exclude religious schools from a tuition aid program because it violates the free exercise clause.

Michael Scaperlanda, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and chairman of the board of St. Isidore, said that a mission of Catholic education “is to serve the whole community by building new learning opportunities so that every child can thrive in a school that suits her own needs.”

“Too many children in our state don’t have that chance,” Scaperlanda said in an Oct. 7 statement. “We want to help solve that problem by opening a school for children who find the available options unable to meet their needs and who lack the resources to consider other choices.”

Oklahoma ranked 49th in education in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, with 84% of its eighth graders testing “not proficient” in math and 76% of its fourth graders “not proficient” in reading.

“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more choices, not fewer. There’s great irony in state officials who claim to be in favor of religious liberty discriminating against St. Isidore because of its Catholic beliefs,” ADF senior counsel Phil Sechler said in an Oct. 7 statement. “The U.S. Constitution protects St. Isidore’s freedom to operate according to its faith and supports the board’s decision to approve such learning options for Oklahoma families.”

Sechler said the case is about “bolster[ing] religious freedom across Oklahoma.”

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 8, 2024 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

A group of 10 scientists is suing the publisher that retracted their studies showing the health risks associated with abortion drugs.

The suit against Sage Publications, filed on Oct. 3 in the Superior Court for Ventura County, California, alleges that the researchers’ studies were retracted simply because of the scientists’ pro-life views.

At the center of the lawsuit are three studies that Sage published in the scientific journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology (HSRME) in 2019, 2021, and 2022.

One of the articles was cited heavily in the recent Supreme Court case AHM v. FDA in which a coalition of doctors from the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and several other groups sought to compel the FDA to revoke its approval of the abortion drug mifepristone because of its associated dangers to women’s health and well-being.

The scientists argue that while their studies were peer-reviewed and had previously been praised for their academic rigor, the publisher retracted them in bad faith for political reasons.

The scientists are being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom and Consovoy McCarthy PLLC.

What did the chemical abortion study say?

The 2021 study cited in AHM v. FDA said that emergency room visits “are at greater risk to occur following a chemical rather than a surgical abortion.”

It showed that in a study cohort of 423,000 women undergoing chemical abortions between 1999 and 2015, there were 121,283 subsequent emergency room visits occurring within 30 days of the procedure.

The study concluded that “the incidence and per-abortion rate of ER visits following any induced [chemical] abortion are growing, but chemical abortion is consistently and progressively associated with more postabortion ER visit morbidity than surgical abortion.”

The study also said that there is a “distinct trend of a growing number of women miscoded as receiving treatment for spontaneous abortion in the ER following a chemical abortion.”

Why were the studies retracted?

As AHM v. FDA was working its way through the courts in 2023, Chris Adkins, a professor at the South University School of Pharmacy in Savannah, Georgia, submitted a concern to Sage in which he accused the scientists associated with the three studies of exaggerating their findings and misrepresenting the data in ways that were “grossly misleading.”

States Newsroom, which first reported on Adkins’ accusations, reported him saying of the researchers: “I can’t prove that there was intent to deceive, but I struggled to find an alternative reason to present your data in such a way that exaggerates the magnitude.”

States Newsroom also reported that Adkins was worried about the legal status of abortion after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

“I now have a daughter that is born in a world where there is no Roe v. Wade, no federal recognition that women have the right of bodily autonomy,” Adkins said, adding: “I’m going to support her in whatever way I can.” 

After learning of Adkins’ concerns Sage discovered that all but one of the article’s authors had an affiliation with one or more of the pro-life organizations the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Elliot Institute, and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Sage claimed that this presented a conflict of interest regarding the studies concerning abortion.

Sage also conducted a post-publication peer review in which they claimed to have identified “fundamental problems with the study design and methodology, unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions, material errors in the authors’ analysis of the data, and misleading presentations of the data.”

Sage concluded that the studies demonstrated a “lack of scientific rigor” that “invalidate[s] the authors’ conclusions in whole or in part.”

Scientists respond

In their lawsuit, the studies’ authors claim that they “complied with all submission guidelines and all requirements in Sage’s publishing agreements.”

The suit said that “following each submission, HSRME conducted a double-blind peer review of each article, which Sage claims is thorough and rigorous” and that “after peer review, HSRME accepted all three articles for publication.”

According to the suit, the authors’ attempts to respond to the accusations and to prove the scientific validity of their studies were rebuffed and ignored by Sage.

In addition to retracting the studies, the lead researcher associated with the articles, Dr. James Studnicki, was removed from the board of the HSRME without any prior notice and with no explanation other than his association with the retracted articles.

The researchers allege that Sage intentionally sought to discredit them and ruin their reputations because of their pro-life views.

“Sage’s wrongdoing,” the suit states, “has been causing enormous and incalculable harm to the authors’ professional reputations, as Sage intended.”

Phil Sechler, a senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement announcing the suit that “politics should never sway science, especially when that science is vital for saving and protecting lives.”

“Sage punished these highly respected and credentialed scientists simply because they believe in preserving life from conception to natural death,” he continued. “These actions have caused irreparable harm to the authors of these articles, and we are urging Sage to come to the arbitration table — as it is legally bound to do — rescind the retractions, and remedy the reputational damage the researchers have suffered at the hands of abortion lobbyists.”

CNA Staff, Oct 8, 2024 / 14:30 pm (CNA).

A Los Angeles Catholic church has been vandalized four times in the past two months.  

St. Francis de Sales in Sherman Oaks was damaged from graffiti and arson attacks on four occasions, beginning in August and continuing through September, said Father Michael Wakefield, the parish’s pastor. 

On Aug. 7, the parish’s beloved statue of St. Francis de Sales — the patron saint of the parish — was vandalized with yellow paint. The statue stands in front of the main doors of the church in the San Fernando Valley. 

Just over a week later, on Aug. 16, a window at the rectory where Wakefield lives was set on fire. The bottom-right corner of the window was set on fire, and the fire burned through the inside, scorching the interior venetian blinds, Wakefield recounted. 

“Fortunately, the fire burned out before any additional damage was caused,” he told CNA. 

Just over a month later, on Sept. 20, the St. Francis de Sales statue was vandalized a second time. “The ... letters ‘chomo’ are slang for ‘child molester,’” Wakefield explained. This vandalism is being treated as a “hate crime” by local police, he said.

A week later, on Sept. 8, the statue was vandalized a third time with black spray paint, though nothing was written on it. 

“Our maintenance person has cleaned the statue twice and is in the process of cleaning it a third time,” Wakefield said.

Wakefield notified the LAPD Van Nuys Division each time and said the parish plans to install additional security cameras this week. 

“Officers arrived and took my statement and completed a report leaving us the incident number,” he said. “The fire of the rectory window triggered a visit from the police officers as well as arson investigators.”  

“It is dispiriting and unnerving,” Wakefield said when asked for his reaction to the events. “Our churches are places of peace where God’s love is proclaimed.”

“I feel sad for the person or persons who are in such torment to do such acts,” he continued. “Our religious images, whether in marble or plaster or wood, point to the holy person each represents. Therefore an attack on a religious image is an act of desecration.” 

“But, we go forward confident of the intercession of the all-holy Mother of God and of St. Francis de Sales,” he noted. “God’s love is always more powerful than anything the human can produce.”  

A local report noted that there have been many cases of vandalism in the area in recent months, including arson, window-smashing, and break-ins at local businesses, according to KTLA 5.

The City of Los Angeles Public Record Reports did not respond to a request for police reports by the time of publication. 

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 8, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).

The U.S. bishops issued a statement praising the Biden administration’s decision last week to expand the U.S. refugee resettlement program and commended the role of Catholic organizations in partnering with the government to resettle refugees.

President Joe Biden signed the Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2025 on Sept. 30, setting the refugee admissions target at 125,000. This comes after the administration has made several changes and expansions to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and resettled over 100,000 refugees into the U.S. in 2023, the highest number since 1994.

A “refugee” is defined under U.S. law as a person who is “unable or unwilling” to return to his or her country because of “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is one of 10 “national resettlement agencies” that partner with USRAP to take in and assist these refugees.

The bishops said that dioceses and local Catholic Charities agencies “play an essential role in helping refugees to integrate successfully into their new communities.”

Bishop Mark Seitz, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Migration Committee, applauded Catholic organizations’ contributions to the refugee resettlement program, saying that “from lifesaving protection for refugee families to the economic renewal they offer receiving communities, this is part of what it means to ‘love thy neighbor.’”

“My brother bishops and I could not be more grateful for the witness of faithful Catholics across our country who have, for many decades now, committed themselves to accompanying refugees as a visible sign of Christ’s love in the world.”

Seitz thanked the Biden administration for its efforts to “reassert and grow our nation’s proud tradition of welcoming refugees” as well as the “bipartisan support of Congress,” which he said “has played a vital role in the success of the resettlement program since its inception.”

“Resettling 100,000 refugees is a significant achievement, given the all-time low number seen in 2021 and some of the challenges facing American communities at this time, including a nationwide shortage of affordable housing,” Seitz said. “Guided by the Gospel and faithful to our national values, the U.S. Catholic community will continue doing its part to carry this endeavor forward.”

After being established through the bipartisan Refugee Act of 1980, USRAP has generally enjoyed wide support across the political spectrum.

While he has been sharply critical of many of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and policy expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, told CNA that “of all the things that the Biden-Harris administration is doing to facilitate the entry of people who don’t have visas to come to the United States, this is far and away the least objectionable.”

He said that though 125,000 is “high compared to prior years” it is still “well within” the limits set by the law.

Arthur emphasized that the refugee resettlement program differs greatly from the U.S. asylum system.

“We know from past experience that individuals who make asylum claims generally never follow through on them,” he said. “But when you’re talking about refugees, those are individuals who have already been adjudicated. They’ve already been determined to be refugees before they’re brought here. They’ve already been vetted abroad before they come here. So, the danger that they pose to national security is lower; it’s not zero, but it is lower.”

La Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano (CEM) hizo un “llamado urgente” a la pacificación y a la justicia tras el “brutal” asesinato de Alejandro Arcos, alcalde de Chilpancingo, Guerrero, el último domingo.

Un importante análisis desentraña los simbolismos que “esconde” la imagen del Señor de los Milagros, conocido también como el Cristo Moreno, una de las devociones más grandes del Perú.

La Conferencia Episcopal Boliviana comunicó que el sacerdote Otto Strauss, de 84 años, fue absuelto tras un proceso penal que durante cerca de dos años lo investigó por el presunto delito de abuso deshonesto.

El Vaticano ha compartido la lista definitiva con los nombres que conforman la comisión de redacción del documento final del Sínodo de la Sinodalidad.