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Dubuque, Iowa, Dec 8, 2016 / 03:28 pm (National Catholic Register).- When Archbishop Michael Jackels lifted the chalice during the consecration at a memorial Mass on Oct. 8 in Dubuque, Iowa, many hearts were filled with emotion.

It was the first time this chalice had been used since the 7 a.m. Mass aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma docked in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The chalice belonged to Navy chaplain Father Aloysius Schmitt. The Mass at Christ the King Chapel at Loras College was being held in memory of this heroic chaplain, who died saving others during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

After 75 years, his remains were finally identified this year and brought back to Iowa for burial in Christ the King Chapel.

“It was an amazing gift to receive from that chalice,” said concelebrant Father Daniel Mode, director of plans and operations for the Chief of Chaplains Office of the Navy. “That chalice was found 16-18 months later, when they raised the Oklahoma from Pearl Harbor.”

Father Mode, the author of The Grunt Padre about Servant of God Father Vincent Robert Capodanno, spotted the sacred vessel in the case at Christ the King Chapel displaying Father Schmitt’s effects before the memorial Mass and asked if it could be used.

“That actually set the tone for the service,” said Father Schmitt’s grandnephew Steve Sloan. After the Mass, the casket with Father Schmitt’s remains was taken outside for full military honors and then interred in the chapel, which was built in 1946-47 and dedicated to him. No one has ever forgotten what their graduate and Iowa’s native son did that Dec. 7 so long ago.

75 Years Ago

Father Schmitt had just finished celebrating the 7 a.m. Mass when the first wave of Japanese planes swooped into the harbor at 7:48 a.m. They hit the Oklahoma with eight torpedoes, then later a ninth. The commanding officer reported the initial five explosions happened within about 70 seconds — and within eight to 10 minutes, the ship rapidly rolled over about 135 degrees.

During those frantic minutes, as men scrambled to escape the capsizing ship, 32-year-old Father Schmitt began pushing men through a small porthole to safety. One was sailor Bob Burns.

Interviewed years ago for a documentary called For God and Country, Burns vividly remembered that Father Schmitt “recognized my voice and said, ‘Over here!’ There were two gentleman topside pulling, and he was pushing people through — he pushed me out.” Burns had served at Mass that morning.

“He was one of the finest men I had ever known,” Burns said of the chaplain. “It was an honor knowing him.”

Once Chaplain Schmitt got the 12 out safely, the dozen men tried pulling him through the porthole. He was partly through when he heard men behind him and insisted the freed men push him back into the ship so that he could help the trapped men.

He never got out.

The heroic priest was among 429 sailors and Marines who died aboard the Oklahoma — one of the two ships losing the most men at Pearl Harbor. He was also the first Catholic chaplain — in fact, the first of any chaplain — to die in World War II.

Now, in time for the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, he came home to where he grew up and where he has never been forgotten.

Hometown Priest

On Oct. 5, Father Schmitt’s flag-draped coffin arrived for a memorial Mass at his home parish, St. Luke Church in St. Lucas, a two-hour drive from Dubuque.

Born on Dec. 4, 1909, he grew up the youngest of 10 children in a farm family in the rural community and attended Catholic schools. After graduating from Loras College, then called Columbia College, he studied for the priesthood in Rome and was ordained on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8, 1935. In 1939, his archbishop permitted him to enlist as a Navy chaplain.

Father Schmitt’s nephew Del Schmitt, now 82 years old, was only 5 the last time he saw his uncle. “It was hard on my dad and the family,” he said, when they learned of the death of “Father Al,” as he was affectionately known. “People that knew him said he was a great guy. Everybody liked him. Now, there’s satisfaction they did bring him back.”

Schmitt and his brother and sister presented “the gifts for the Mass,” he said of the special Mass.

Another lifelong St. Luke parishioner, Leander Stammeyer, led the Rosary at the Oct. 8 Mass and also prayed an Our Father and Hail Mary in German “to show how he [Father Al] learned the Rosary at his mother’s knee.”

Stammeyer, a spry 95-year-old, remembers Father Schmitt well. “I served at his first Mass when he was ordained,” he said. “I played checkers with him when I was a little boy, and he was 10 years older than me.”

During vacations from school, Stammeyer stayed with his grandmother in St. Lucas, and Father Al was home from college. His grandmother told him to play checkers with Father Al in the evening. They would play for at least two hours.

“I always looked up to him. He gave a good example,” Stammeyer recalled. Stammeyer himself went to seminary in Milwaukee before going “into the service because Uncle Sam called me.” He entered the Navy in 1942.

All of these years later, Stammeyer still has vivid memories of Father Al. “He was a kind of a mentor, as far as I was concerned,” he said. “I looked up to him. He had a real smile on his face and was a real friend to all people.”

Another Generation

Sloan, himself a graduate of Loras, never met his great-uncle, but heard much about him from the family.

“I was fortunate enough to know the sister that was closest to him age-wise — Sister Germaine Schmitt — who was a Franciscan sister and would spend holidays with us growing up,” Sloan explained. “Not a holiday passed when we didn’t have a discussion about Father Al in our household. It was a common discussion.”

Sloan recalled how Sister Germaine would always say, “We knew what he did, but when he left that porthole and said, ‘I’m going to check on some other men and bless them,’ we don’t know what happened to him.”

Sloan added, “I look forward to the day when I have the opportunity to talk to Father Al and ask him what really did happen that day.”

Finally an Identification

Work on the ship after the attack uncovered the remains of the 429 killed on the Oklahoma, but only a small number could be identified. Attempts over the years failed to identify about 388 men. They were reburied in Honolulu in 1950. Then came DNA identification and the U.S. Department of Defense’s determination to return as many as possible to their families.

Sloan explained that a forensic genealogist working for the department used mitochondrial DNA, a stronger form from the female side of the family tree, for the identification. In September, military representatives came to Iowa to tell relatives that they identified Father Schmitt’s remains. The Sloans were overjoyed.

This was not the first time the Navy had come to town. In 1944, the Navy presented the Archdiocese of Dubuque with a 24-inch-tall crucifix made from the Oklahoma’s teakwood deck, with the corpus of Christ shaped from the ship’s metal in honor of Chaplain Schmitt.

The Witness, the Catholic weekly in Dubuque, carried a Dec. 14, 1944, front-page article on the presentation by the chief of chaplains, 8th Naval district, who recalled Father Al’s “zeal in the service of others, coupled with a sincere and winning personality.” Mentioning his college motto — Pro Deo et Patria (“For God and Country”) — he added, “When he realized the hour had come for him to follow in the footsteps of his Master, he might well hold his head high, as he went forward a worthy bearer of the motto of the alma mater.”

Continuous Remembrance

When Christ the King Chapel was dedicated in Father Schmitt’s honor in 1947, both Cardinal Samuel Stritch of Chicago and Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during World War II, were there.

A display added in the chapel contains several of Father Schmitt’s personal effects that were recovered from the Oklahoma, plus other items like his medals and a rosary made from the ship’s wood. The personal items include his chalice and prayer book; the ribbon, still in place, held in place prayers for the following day, Dec. 8, which would have been the sixth anniversary of his ordination.

As a Loras undergraduate walking into the chapel, Father Kyle Digmann always saw those mementos. Today, he is pastor of Christ Our Hope Cluster of parishes, which includes St. Luke’s. “Everybody knows about Father S. He is part of the history around here.”

And that history was made more poignant with the memorial Mass.

“It was indeed an honor to represent the chaplain corps at that funeral,” Father Mode said while looking at a photo of himself by Father Al’s casket.

“It truly made me realize the sacrifice that he made 75 years ago never dissipated. It’s linked to Christ’s sacrifice; it’s eternal. Even 75 years later, it has the same awe. That was an amazing witness, not only to what Chaplain Schmitt was, but the essence of what sacrifice is.”

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, concelebrated the memorial Mass. He told the Register that Father Schmitt’s witness continues to reverberate: “The burial of the earthly remains of Father Al Schmitt, whose heroism is so typical of Catholic chaplains’ commitment to be men for others, reminds us of his valor immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago. Just like the Lord, whom he loved and served, Father Schmitt gave up his life, so that others might live. I pray that his selflessness might inspire all people to imitate his concern for others and his commitment to life.”

 

Reprinted with permission from the National Catholic Register.

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Brasilia, Brazil, Dec 8, 2016 / 04:34 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pointing to the example of the United States and other Western countries, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that abortion cannot be penalized legally during the first three months of pregnancy.

The court's controversial ruling was issued Nov. 29, after reviewing the habeas corpus petition of five employees of a clandestine abortion clinic in the town of Duque de Caxias, in Rio de Janiero.

Bishop Antonio Carlos Rossi Keller of Frederico Westphalen said that the ruling amounts to a death sentence for the unborn.

“(T)he Supreme Court exists to ensure compliance with the Constitution,” the bishop said on his Facebook page, adding that “the Brazilian Constitution establishes that in Brazil there is no death penalty.”

Bishop Rossi Keller went on to say that “a society which rightly protects the eggs of turtles, but allows abortion, is at a minimum a society in which hypocrisy prevails.”

According to the justices, criminalizing abortion during the first three months of pregnancy in Brazil's Penal Code violates the fundamental rights of women to their autonomy, physical and psychological integrity, and their sexual and reproductive rights, as well as gender equality.

They also said that “democratic and developed countries” do not criminalize abortion in early pregnancy, and cited examples including the United States, Germany and France among others.

In the early hours of Nov. 30, the House of Representatives announced at a full session that they would set up a special commission to review the Supreme Court decision on abortion.

Representative Evandro Gussi stated that the ruling “is a flagrant affront to the Constitution which establishes the separation of powers and provides that deliberations of this order shall be made within the Legislative Branch.”

Gussi underscored: “it's the Criminal Code that determines abortion to be a crime against life.”

“The Penal Code never talked about legal abortion,” he added, explaining that punishment is only excluded in specific case: pregnancy resulting from rape, when there is risk to the life of the mother or a fetus with microcephaly.

Those voting in favor of decriminalizing abortion were judges Luis Roberto Barroso, Rosa Weber and Edson Fachin, creating a precedent for decisions by other judges in Brazil.

 

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Washington D.C., Dec 8, 2016 / 04:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Following Democratic claims that a House panel investigating Planned Parenthood has found no wrongdoing, pro-life leaders have fired back that this assertion is unfounded.

“The panel minority is making some very strong assertions in the summary of their report, and in the conclusion of their report. But those assertions are nowhere backed up by any kind of quality evidence within the body of the report,” David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress stated to CNA.

On Monday, Democratic members of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, a House panel charged with investigating the fetal tissue trade, released a 112-page report on the panel.

“Fifteen months and more than $1.5 million taxpayer dollars later, the American people deserve an accurate accounting of what the Select Panel has learned,” they stated.

Among other claims, they said that Planned Parenthood, the abortion provider at the center of the fetal tissue trade controversy, and their partnering tissue procurement companies, had not been found guilty of illegal profits in the transactions.

The Select Investigative Panel was created after a series of undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress exposed Planned Parenthood’s role in the trade of fetal tissue from aborted babies. Planned Parenthood doctors were shown on camera discussing prices for body parts of aborted babies with actors posing as representatives of a fetal tissue procurement company.

The group alleged that Planned Parenthood affiliates were profiting from the sale of tissue of aborted babies. Federal law allows for “reasonable” compensation in the transfer of tissue of aborted babies, with the mother’s consent. The compensation is to cover operating and transfer costs, but must not be for “valuable consideration.”

Planned Parenthood’s transaction model involves “minimizing” their “cost while maximizing the fees and profits it can receive for high-quality body parts,” the Center for Medical Progress has alleged.

The group also claimed that tissue procurement companies were profiting from the transactions. For instance, they said, according to IRS documents the non-profit Advanced Bioscience Research netted $1-1.5 million per year in fetal tissue transactions. The company StemExpress “charges $595 per fetal tissue specimen and had a yearly revenue of $2.2 million in 2014,” CMP claimed.

Last October the Select Investigative Panel was created to “gather information” on abortion clinics and tissue procurement companies and their roles in the trade.

More funding for the panel was approved last week by the House.

“For most of us, it is nothing short of an outrage that Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics supplement their budgets by selling human fetal tissue from aborted babies,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the panel’s chair, stated Dec. 1.

“The work of our Panel is specifically focused on protecting the integrity of research, scientific advancements, and voluntary organ donation in America,” she continued. “Evidence we have uncovered reveals that the unethical and potentially unlawful practices of some bad actors may be putting important research at risk.”

Democrats on Monday slammed the panel and its tactics, however, saying the panel had not “found wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood.”

In particular, they said the panel’s work was adversely affecting the amount of fetal tissue procured for medical research that is “indispensable…in advancing our understanding and treatment of a staggering array of conditions” like Alzheimer’s disease, HIV/AIDS, and Zika fever.

A panel spokesman told CNA that “our Panel was tasked with investigating the facts and completing a report by the end of the 114th Congress, which we plan to release in the coming weeks. After a year of diligent work, we look forward to sharing our findings with the American people.”

When the bill funding the panel was being considered by the House, Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) said on the House Floor last week that “since the panel’s investigation, we have uncovered alarming revelations,” and added that “because of this, there have been criminal and regulatory referrals” bringing about “numerous investigations around the nation.”

The panel referred Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to the Texas attorney general for a criminal investigation after it “learned that Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast violated both Texas Law and US Law when it sold baby body parts to the University of Texas.”

Also, the panel said it had “discovered that the University of New Mexico was violating their state’s Anatomical Gift Act by receiving tissue from a late-term abortion clinic,” and the matter had been “referred to the Attorney General of New Mexico.”

A “forensic accounting analysis” had found that StemExpress – the California-based tissue procurement company featured in the undercover videos that procured fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood clinics – had profited from the fetal tissue trade. The Department of Justice and the local district attorney are investigating the matter.

The panel also asked the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate their finding that “StemExpress and certain abortion clinics were violating the HIPAA privacy rights of vulnerable women for the sole purpose of increasing the harvesting of fetal tissue to make money.”

There are several other examples the panel has given of abortion clinics, tissue procurement companies, and other entities allegedly breaking state or federal law in the fetal tissue trade.

“The minority report claims that they have proven not only that Planned Parenthood didn’t profit, but they’ve proven that Planned Parenthood lost money off of the transfer of fetal tissue. You won’t find a single shred of evidence, no documents, no testimony, nothing in the entire report that backs up that conclusion,” Daleiden said.

Rather, they relied “a statement from someone who wasn’t even connected to Planned Parenthood from over a year ago” for that “assertion,” he added.

“The bottom line is that this is not an actual report from the panel minority, this is not an actual analysis of the evidence,” he said.

“This is a propaganda piece that’s meant to try and do some very desperate eleventh hour public relations on the part of Planned Parenthood before the really, really damning evidence that I think we can expect to see in the numerous criminal referrals that the panel majority has made to different law enforcement agencies, and of course the final end-of-the-year reports from the panel are revealed for all the world to see.”

Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, Ph. D., director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, has also written about the serious ethical and moral concerns with fetal tissue procurement from aborted babies, in a 2015 column “Consenting to the Unconscionable.”

The use of human tissue in medical research can be morally acceptable in certain circumstances, he said, but may never be procured from an aborted baby, even with good intentions like using the tissue for medical research.

“Sometimes these tissues and organs can be obtained after routine surgeries like gall bladder removal from adults or foreskin removal during the circumcision of newborns,” he noted, and “the use of such tissues and organs can be morally acceptable if the patient (or the parents of the newborn) provide informed consent.”

Also, in cases of “a natural miscarriage,” he said, “the use of cells and tissues from fetuses can also be morally acceptable” when the consent to do so is given by the parent of the dead baby.

However, using fetal tissue of aborted babies “raises significant moral concerns,” he added.

Although the law allows for fetal tissue procurement from aborted babies done with the consent of the mother, this “consent” is essentially “void,” Fr. Tad explained, “because she [the mother] would have already categorically demonstrated that she does not have the best interests of her child in mind, having arranged for the taking of that child’s life.”

And the use of remains of aborted babies for research is “unconscionable,” he added, because “in the absence of proper informed consent, taking organs or tissues from the corpse would represent a further violation of the integrity of the child’s body and constitute a failure to respect the remains of the dead.”

“Thus, the tissues and organs of the directly aborted child should not be utilized for research, transplantation or the development of therapies, but instead should be given a proper and respectful burial,” he added.

Democrats on the panel also claimed that Planned Parenthood clinics “lose money” in fetal tissue transactions. Planned Parenthood has claimed that any compensation incurred from the transactions covers operating, storage, and transfer costs from giving the tissue to harvesters, who then sell it to researchers.

However, former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson testified before the Texas Senate Health and Human Services committee last year that in her experience with Planned Parenthood, her clinic profited from such transactions.

According to her former clinic’s studies, they “generally” received a compensation of $200 per baby that they sent to tissue procurement companies, Johnson said.

“I can assure you that there is no additional charge for collection, preservation, or storage of fetal tissue. The only additional expense would be shipping, and that’s between five to ten dollars per specimen. Not $200. That is sheer profit for Planned Parenthood.”

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Krakow, Poland, Dec 8, 2016 / 05:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Marek Jedraszweski has been named the new shepherd of Poland's Krakow archdiocese by Pope Francis, following the retirement of Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz.

The appointment was announced by the Vatican on Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Archbishop Jedraszewski succeeds the long-serving Cardinal Dziwisz, who was a personal friend and close collaborator of Saint John Paul II.

The archbishop was born in 1949 in Poznan, Poland and was ordained a priest for that archdiocese in 1973. He later continued his studies in philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University, earning his doctorate.

In 1997, Jedraszewski was named auxiliary bishop of Poznan. Since 2012, Archbishop Jedraszewski has been serving as archbishop of Lodz as well as vice-president of the Polish Episcopal Conference. He holds several positions in the Council of European Bishops' Conferences.

Cardinal Dziwisz had served as Archbishop of Krakow since 2005. He was born in Raba Wyzna, about 45 miles south of Krakow, in 1939. In 1963 he was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Krakow by St. John Paul II, who was then an auxiliary bishop of the city. Soon after Wojtyla was appointed archbishop the following year, then-Fr. Dziwisz became his secretary – a role in which he served until the Pope's death in 2005.

In 1998 he was consecrated a bishop, again by St. John Paul II. He was appointed Archbishop of Krakow shortly after his mentor's death, and remained in that position until his retirement on Thursday at the age of 77. He had been elevated to the cardinalate in 2006.

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