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San Francisco, Calif., Jul 20, 2017 / 02:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal judge has ordered over $136,000 in fines after the release of several undercover videos in a series that appeared to implicate Planned Parenthood officials and the National Abortion Federation in the illegal sale of unborn baby body parts.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick III on Monday sanctioned David Daleiden, his Center for Medical Progress, and his criminal defense lawyers for disclosing videos whose release was barred by his February 2016 preliminary injunction. The judge said each of the parties was jointly liable for security and legal costs for the National Abortion Federation, the subject of the videos.

The lawyers said they would appeal the ruling.

The Center for Medical Progress contended that the contempt charge against the attorneys was “just for trying to use the same video evidence in his defense that the California attorney general is using in his prosecution.” In a July 11 Facebook post, the center charged that the action would hinder efforts to provide a fair trial for Daleiden. The center also cited Daleiden’s attorneys’ ongoing efforts to disqualify the judge for alleged bias and links to Planned Parenthood.

The first investigative video release took place in July 2015, appearing to implicate Planned Parenthood in illegal activity and adding to the momentum to defund the United States’ largest performer of abortions.

In 2016, Judge Orrick had granted an injunction barring disclosure of the videos involving two National Abortion Federation meetings in Baltimore and San Francisco that the center’s investigators, including Daleiden, had surreptitiously recorded while posing as fetal tissue purchasers for a non-existent medical supply company.

However, Daleiden's lawyers, former Los Angeles prosecutor Steve Cooley and Brentford Ferreira, posted the videos to their website in May of this year. The release included preview footage of convention attendees casually discussing the skulls, eyeballs and other baby body parts they encounter in abortion procedures.

“An eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross!” one panelist said in the video, to laughter from the crowd.

Planned Parenthood employees also appeared in the footage discussing baby organs that could be provided to biotech firms for money.

“They’re wanting livers,” one abortion provider said. “Sometimes she’ll tell me she wants brain,” another medical director said.

The footage also appears to show a person acknowledging the performance of illegal partial-birth abortions.

The videos had been uploaded to a private YouTube account and were not viewable without a link. One of Daleiden’s attorneys argued that this meant the posting itself was not a violation of the court order. Judge Orrick disagreed, saying that the enjoined materials were shared with a third party, namely YouTube.

The judge said he believed Daleiden had created the preview video and playlist, uploaded it, and forwarded the links to his criminal attorneys “for their use on his behalf.” He said it was reasonable to conclude the videos were uploaded “for the purpose of facilitating the publishing and distribution of those videos, which is what in fact occurred.”

When the videos initially became public, a spokesperson for the attorneys told National Review that the footage was entered into the public record when Calif. Attorney General Xavier Becerra Read filed a public criminal proceeding based on it.

Judge Orrick, however, said the lawyers failed to explain why the links to the videos needed to be published when the California state court judge had a thumb drive with the files, Courthouse News Service reports.

Defending themselves against the contempt charges, the attorneys had told Judge Orrick they aimed to use the videos to help defend their client against 15 felony charges he faced in California state court. They had believed the injunction did not apply to them. The judge said that under federal court rules an injunction also applies to attorneys, Bay City News reports.

The National Abortion Federation had accused Daleiden of creating a three-minute “preview” that identified abortionists by name, called them “evil,” “a baby killer” and “a systematic murderer.” The video asked viewers to share the video to hold Planned Parenthood accountable for “their illegal sale of baby parts.”

Judge Orrick’s ruling sided with the abortion federation, saying that Daleiden had failed to rebut the evidence against him by showing “deafening silence” and refusing to answer questions in his defense. Rather, he cited attorney-client privilege.

The judge said that in his review of the videos he found no evidence that abortion providers agreed to illegally sell fetal tissue, as alleged.

He ordered Daledein and the Center for Medical Progress to turn over all video of the federation’s meetings to the attorneys representing him in the civil lawsuit against him.

In June, a California court dismissed 14 of 15 felony charges against Daledein and a co-defendant Sandra Merritt involving illegal recording of confidential communications for their videos of Planned Parenthood employees, not the abortion federation.

The California attorney general is seeking to reinstate the charges.

In the federal case, Daleiden’s attorneys filed a June 7 motion to disqualify Judge Orrick, claiming the judge was biased in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendant.

The motion cited an affidavit by Daleiden citing the judge’s role as an emeritus board member for a family resource center linked to a Planned Parenthood affiliate that is part of the National Abortion Federation.

Daleiden also cited the social media behavior of the judge’s wife, such as expressions of support for Planned Parenthood in the face of the videos. She also appeared to support stories critical of the Center for Media Progress and Daleiden. The judge’s wife had liked a post on the Facebook page “Keep America Pro-Choice” that supported the Harris County, Texas indictment of Daleiden.

The videos provoked a massive response from Planned Parenthood and its allies. A 2015 grant listing from the Open Societies Foundation, published after a foundations’ computer system was hacked, revealed apparent plans for a $7 to $8 million response campaign.

 

 

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Rome, Italy, Jul 20, 2017 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A member of Pope Francis' commission to protect minors says a new report on the abuse of more than 500 choir boys in Germany points to a current reality in many non-western countries – and that bringing these things to light means progress for everyone.

“It will take time, but this kind of sensitivity that is created by publicly discussing these things of course will push, because people realize what is right and what is wrong, and they realize that they will be questioned if something goes wrong,” Fr. Hans Zollner SJ told CNA July 19.

Fr. Zollner is vice-rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, director of the university's Center for Child Protection (CCP), and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

He spoke following the July 18 publication of a report on an investigation German lawyer Ulrich Weber carried out on the Regensburger Domspatzen, the official choir for the Regensburg Cathedral.

While it was previously thought that only 250 children had been victimized, Weber said the number of children affected is closer to around 500.

According to the report, members of the choir were exposed to physical abuse and 67 suffered sexual abuse from 49 members of the school's faculty, ranging from 1945 until the early 90s. However, most of alleged perpetrators will likely not face charges due to the amount of time that has gone by.

The reported violence ranged from public ridicule, heavy beatings, and sexual abuse, but a significant portion of the documented incidents involved slapping and food deprivation, a legal form of discipline in Bavaria until the 1980s.

Fr. Zollner said the magnitude of the abuse was discovered thanks to the decision of the diocese's bishop to open the archives, allowing a more in-depth investigation to take place.

What came to light was “a horrible and horrendous story” that has been going on for some 70 years, he said, adding that this took place because “in those years and decades people who could have known didn't look at it, people who could have spoken to police didn't do it.”

“This includes of course the Church leadership, but this also includes the parents and relatives of the children,” he said, noting that he himself grew up in the city and had friends who were members of the choir.

Zollner recalled that his friends had talked about getting “beaten up,” but that at the time, “sensitivity to child rights and the violation of these rights was not as high as it is now, and corporal punishment was considered more or less a normal way of education.”

The majority of the excessive discipline in the choir was attributed to Johann Meier, a schoolmaster at one of the boarding schools from 1953 to 1992. However, Benedict XVI's older brother, Georg Ratzinger, who directed the choir from 1964-1994, was accused of turning a blind eye to the abuse.

It also accused Cardinal Gerhard Muller, who oversaw the diocese from 2002-2012, of cover-up.

Fr. Ratzinger said he was unaware of any sexual abuse, but admitted to slapping children, as it was common practice at the time.

In his comments to CNA, Fr. Zollner noted that while societal understanding of abuse has changed in most western countries, there are several in Asia, Africa and some parts of Latin America where such actions are still common practice.

Speaking of a recent visit to Myanmar, where he offered training and workshops on child protection guidelines, the priest said that while there, he was told that parents would often “specifically ask the teachers to beat their children if they do not obey.”

Zollner said that in Myanmar specifically, it is still normal in some Buddhist monasteries to flog the monks publicly if they are disobedient.

“This is the idea that you learn obedience and correct behavior by beating. So this is the idea that at present in the minds and in the context and in the behavior of parents in an Asian country,” he said, noting that he has seen the same scenario in some African and Latin American countries.

However, the government is now “clamping down on that, so they are also changing the law so that in public schools corporal punishment is prohibited.”

In western society the use of corporal punishment is widely recognized as unacceptable, and this is thanks to both a growing awareness and a “owning up” to the consequences of what is now considered as abuse.

The adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of the Child by the U.N. in 1959 and the subsequent formation of the U.N. Committee for the Rights of the Child have both prompted an increase in awareness that “a young person needs formation and education, yes, and also needs limits, but this can never be imposed and should never be imposed by physical violence or psychological violence or humiliation,” Zollner said.

But to make the point across the board, these rights must be explained and repeated, he said. We must also be realistic with the fact that while many, if not all, countries have signed the declaration, “not all have ratified them.”

When it comes to taking punitive action against those who were abusive in the past, believing it to be acceptable as the normal custom of the time, Fr. Zollner said holding them to account for their actions is a tricky question.

In most cases there is a statute of limitations, and “you can only hold people accountable for the time period that the law covers and for all those criminal acts that are punishable.”

“We don't have general measures that would and could punish people for something that has happened decades ago if there is not a legal provision for that,” Zollner said.

A current trend for western charities funding Church or social work is to have the recipient sign up not only to obey the law in their country, but they are also required to sign a child protection/safeguarding policy that the charity maintains.

“People unfortunately are not just doing good things because they want to do it, but sometimes they also need to be forced to do it by such measures that are taken in case you do not follow the norms,” he said.

When it comes to the Church and her role in protecting children from predators, Fr. Zollner said the first thing to do is to learn from the mistakes of the past, particularly bishops and Church leaders as a whole.

This, he said, “gives us the possibility to do at least a little bit of justice to all those who have been harmed in such a terrible way.”

Practical steps include thorough screenings of employees on the part of Church institutions that carry our educational, social or pastoral work, delving into the person's past and present, and looking specifically at their interactions with youth.

It's also necessary that “very clear guidelines and norms” are given, as well as initial and ongoing training for Church workers, which is a task the commission is specifically responsible for.

 

Material from EWTN News Nightly was used in this report. 

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Washington D.C., Jul 20, 2017 / 04:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Father Arne Panula, the former U.S. vicar of Opus Dei, passed away at his Washington, D.C. home on July 19, 2017 after a battle with cancer.

“Father Arne had the firm belief that anything is possible, the imagination to think big, and the drive and energy to make things happen,” said Father Thomas G. Bohlin, U.S. vicar of Opus Dei.

Born in Duluth, Fr. Panula graduated with a degree in English Literature from Harvard University in 1967, before studying theology in Rome. While there, he lived with St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of the personal prelature Opus Dei.

Fr. Panula completed his graduate studies in theology, and in 1973, became a priest. He served as chaplain of The Heights School in Washington, D.C. and later became the U.S. vicar of Opus Dei, a role he served from 1998-2002.

Starting in 2007, Fr. Panula became the director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. The center includes a bookstore and chapel, offering Mass, adoration, confession and spiritual direction, and hosts talks from prolific Catholic speakers.

Under Fr. Panula, the center was expanded to include the Leonine Forum, which aims “to educate men and women early in their careers in the core tenets of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church.”

A wake for Fr. Panula will be held from 4 p.m. July 21 through 8 a.m. July 22 at the Catholic Information Center.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl will celebrate the funeral Mass at 9:30 a.m. July 22 at the Cathedral of St. Mathew the Apostle.

Founded in 1928, Opus Dei was declared a “personal prelature” by St. John Paul II in 1982, meaning it is a structure that is composed of a prelate, clergy, and lay members united in carrying out certain pastoral activities through a specific spiritual path that isn’t limited to geography, but can be lived no matter where its members are.

Opus Dei’s spirituality emphasizes that holiness can be achieved by anyone, and is dedicated to spiritual growth and discipleship among the laity, teaching its members to use their work and their ordinary activities as a way to encounter God.

There are roughly 92,000 members of the prelature, of whom some 2,000 are priests. Apart from the members of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, there are some 1,900 priests who serve in dioceses throughout the world. However, despite the prelature’s many priests, the majority of members are women, who form roughly 57 percent of the prelature.

 

 

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Denver, Colo., Jul 20, 2017 / 05:48 pm (CNA).- When most people hear about a stereotypical “large Catholic family,” they might picture a van that seats six or eight kids. Most wouldn’t think of having so many great-grandchildren that you’ve lost count.

But this is reality for Pat Klingbeil of Centennial, Colorado.

Pat has nearly fifty great-grandchildren (an estimate she gave that was confirmed by one of her more mathematically talented daughters), having given birth to eight children and raised a total of 11.

“Parenting is a career,” she says, “and it has a lot of paybacks.”

One of the many signs and newspaper clippings hanging throughout her house bears the first half of that same message. Another, tucked amid jokes about Irish heritage and a morning prayer hanging above her coffee pot, depicts a mother surrounded by rambunctious children: “Lord, give me the strength to endure my many blessings!”

Interviewing Pat felt like any other conversation – any other conversation we’ve had, that is, given that I live with her. (Pat has for several years traditionally hosted CNA interns in the rooms she rents to boarders.)

And her many blessings, along with the trials in which they have sometimes appeared, are something of which Pat often speaks in these conversations: “See how God works” and other such phrases are constant refrains of hers.

Sitting in our living room during normal office hours while on an assignment from the office, we discussed everything from family, to life and death, to the boarders who have passed through her place.

“It’s certainly been an adventure,” she said of her family. She paused before saying: “It’s what I always wanted to do, since I was old enough to know better. I always wanted to be a mom. So, to be blessed with a large family is just incredible.”

Dinnertimes at Pat’s are rarely low-profile events, as many nights out of a week the kitchen is packed with friends, former boarders, and most of all, her extensive family.

Pat was born in Englewood, near Denver and just north of where she lives now, on St. Patrick’s Day in 1933 to an impoverished family.  

She discussed coming to a knowledge of God’s love, saying it was an awareness that slowly grew in her life, and came largely through her family: “having babies, giving birth, living the wonder of life, of having that experience.”

“I don’t think there was ever an ‘ah-ha!’ moment. I think it just began to develop in me. And as I lived, and as my children grew and all, I began to experience the presence, the presence of God.”



Pat speaks often of this presence of God. Far from being simply a nice Catholic slogan to her, it is something she always turns backs to, not only when talking about the joys of life, but also its sorrows.

“If there is a God, then you believe that he will not abandon you,” she says.

And the stories Pat tells reveal this clearly.

A growing family

Pat raised four of her grandchildren, after their parents (her stepdaughter and son-in-law) were murdered by their father’s older brother after a Fourth of July party in the early 1980s.

Neighbors and even families in Utah filed to take the kids, but only volunteered for one or two. However, the coroner promised Pat that she and her husband, Marvin, would be the ones to raise them.

“When all else fails, God’s still here, and I can still say, ‘Help me,’ and he does. And the best part of that is that he’s always allowed me to see that he’s helping me.”

And so the four grandchildren joined the family, and their grandparents became their mom and dad.

“When I became mamma to them, there was so much that need to be cared for and loved for, that I had to give myself to them,” Pat says.

Sadly, however, another trial waited which God would bear them through. A few years later, in 1988, Marvin received a diagnosis with cancer. The eldest of the adopted grandchildren asked her new mom, “How many of my parents does God want to take away from me?”

Doctors gave him at most 18 months to live.

“And that’s what he took. He took 18 months,” says Pat.

Marvin passed away in a hospital with Pat at his side.

“Everybody in the family, and close friends, all said, ‘What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?’” Pat says.

“Well, you do whatever God sent you. And he takes care of it. If you ask him to take care of it, he takes care of it.”

Decades later, in 2004, Pat was invited by some friends to a Thanksgiving dinner. One of these felt it would be good for her to meet her boyfriend’s brother, Roger.

“We had dinner at their house on Thursday night, and when he walked me to my car, he said, ‘Well, will I see you again? Because I’m going back to Washington on Monday.’”

Pat offered for him to call her sometime.

He did so the next day, asking her to dinner.

After a meal where they both expressed distaste at the food, Roger walked Pat to her car.

“He said, ‘Can I kiss you goodnight?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ I don’t know where I was.”

The next day, Sunday, he came to Pat’s house, and the two simply chatted.

After he returned to Washington, the two stayed in touch over the phone. When Roger came back in town a couple weeks later, Pat invited him to her daughter and son-in-law’s house warming.

“Really and truly, I totally believe it, I’ve always told him: he fell in love with my family, and he wanted to be a part of my family.”

In 2005, Roger moved to Denver, and the next year they set the wedding date for August 13, the day after Pat’s grandson Matt married.

“We really did have a good time,” Pat says of their travelling the country and golfing together.

In 2010, the couple were staying a few nights in Estes Park on the way back from Washington. One day while they were there, Roger pointed out a swell on his stomach to Pat.

The two came home, saw a doctor the next morning, and received an MRI immediately.

It was her second time hearing the news of a spouse’s cancer diagnosis. This time, it was stage 4 liver and gallbladder cancer.

“It was harder because it was so hard for him,” Pat says. “He just cried, and he said, ‘I don’t want you to have to go through this again.’”

The doctors said he might live six months, but more likely around three weeks.

But just like Marvin, Roger lived the full time, passing away six months later on October 28.

“It’s a different experience this time,” Pat says.

She told me Roger’s story sitting in the living room by the backyard patio. When we had wrapped up our chat, she stood up and indicated a Divine Mercy image hanging above the wall. In front of this image, here in that room, she told me, she had prayed for Roger hours before he died in his hospice bed two rooms over.



Difficult circumstances, unexpected blessings

As a young mother while Marvin was serving overseas, Pat became pregnant after being raped by one of her husband’s childhood friends. Marvin managed to secure a re-assignment in the States, and the young family moved to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

There, the family met a priest sympathetic to the situation, who found a couple willing to adopt the child. Pat delivered the child, who was then delivered to his new family.

“It doesn’t matter how that life is in you,” Pat says. “It matters how you nurture that life and allow it to grow in God’s image in likeness, and go on with your life in a proper way.” Pat has in years since given talks to young people which discuss, among other things, the challenges and beauty of adoption.

Around the year 1980, having been given his birth certificate by his adoptive mother, this son of Pat’s, named Joe, began searching for his birth mother. With the advent of the internet, he began using online genealogy tools and was able to hunt down her contact information.

Pat tells the story:

“Late morning, I answered the telephone, and this soft, quiet voice said, ‘This is not a business call, this is a personal call. My name is Joseph John Gongalski. I am calling looking for a Patricia Goggin Klingbeil. I was born at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.”

Pat cut across him at this point: “And you weighed seven pounds, four ounces.”

As Pat tells it, Joe went “blubbery” at this point in the conversation.

They arranged for Joe, along with his wife and one of their sons, Matthew, to come to Pat’s birthday party on March 17, an annual event which draws family from across the country and friends from across the Denver area, packing the house.

Joe and his family arrived a couple of days early, and Pat, in her usual Irish mischief, had an idea.

“I decided that I would pull a trick on him.”

Grabbing Roger’s old cane, she hobbled out the door, bent halfway over, and made her way meekly across the lawn, surrounded by family armed with cameras.

“When we saw the car pull up, I went out across the lawn. He had gotten out of the car and was coming in between the cars on the driveway. And I’m coming across the grass with the cane and I’m bent way over, like a real old lady.”

From her feigned stoop, she could see Matthew over the cars.

“In that one glance, I could see his expression of, ‘Oh my God, look at her.’ It was just horror that was on his face!” she remembers, laughing.

“As Joe came out from between the cars, I threw the cane and ran to him.”

When Joe shows the video to church groups, audiences typically believe they’ve witnessed a miracle.

“I think that was the cream of it all,” says Pat, still laughing.

Joe and his wife Joanna now make regular visits to Pat from where they live in Michigan.



If you started from Pat’s name on a family tree and counted all the members extending below her, you’d count over 100 names. Among them would be kids, grandchildren raised as her kids, great-grandkids not yet born, a whole family rejoined after Joe’s search climaxed on her birthday one year: members lost, and members gained.

“See how God works,” as she says.

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