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Altoona, Pa., Mar 16, 2016 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Three former heads of a TOR Franciscan province in Pennsylvania face criminal charges for their alleged role in enabling a friar who sexually abused more than 100 minors.

The Immaculate Conception province of the Franciscan Friars, Third Order Regular said it is “deeply saddened” to learn of the charges.

“The province extends its most sincere apologies to the victims and to the communities who have been harmed,” the province said in a March 15 statement. It encouraged prayer “for healing and understanding, and for all the priests and brothers who honor their vocations and the Church.”

The Pennsylvania attorney general has announced charges against Fathers Giles A. Schinelli, Robert J. D’Aversa and Anthony M. Criscitelli. From 1986 to 2010, they were the successive leaders of the Franciscan province.

The charges include child endangerment and criminal conspiracy, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

The former provincials supervised Brother Stephen Baker, TOR, who was an athletic trainer at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown, Pa. from 1992 to 2001.

Father Schinelli, 73, allegedly assigned Brother Baker to the high school despite a warning that the friar should not have individual contact with students. Father D’Aversa, 69, allegedly removed the brother due to a credible sexual abuse allegation but reassigned him to another ministry where he had contact with young people. Father Criscitelli, 61, allegedly continued to allow Baker access to children without supervision.

All three priests now live out of state.

According to the grand jury report, there was no indication that administrators at the high school knew of Brother Baker’s offenses.

The charges against the provincials are based on testimony and documents seized from St. Bernardine Monastery, the headquarters of the TOR Franciscan province.

The grand jury said the province knew of at least seven other friars who had sexually assaulted minors dating back to the 1960s. Only one of the friars is still alive. He is 93 years old.

After Brother Baker left his position at the high school, he continued to abuse boys there, the report said. He would routinely lead retreats with young people.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane charged that the provincials “knew there was a child predator in their organization.”

“Their silence resulted in immeasurable pain and suffering for so many victims. These men turned a blind eye to the innocent children they were trusted to protect,” she said.

The province said it cooperated with the investigation “with compassion for the victims and their families” in hopes of shedding light on events that the province “struggles to understand.”

In 2014 the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown reached an $8 million settlement with 88 former Bishop McCort high school students who had made abuse claims involving Brother Baker. The friar had worked in Diocese of Youngstown, which has also made settlements. Brother Baker killed himself in 2013 when the Ohio settlements became public knowledge.

The attorney general’s review of the case resulted in a March 1 grand jury report on the alleged sexual abuse of hundreds of children by more than 50 priests who had served in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown in cases dating back to the 1940s. The report charged that previous bishops put abusive priests back to ministry.

In a March 6 letter Bishop Mark Bartchak of Altoona-Johnstown said that the Catholic response to the grand jury report must be mercy, rightly understood.

“Please do not think for one moment that it simply means to forgive and forget,” he said. “There is a lot more hard work to be done in identifying and responding to the misery of our diocese at this time, including the wounds of all our brothers and sisters.”

He said the grand jury report was “filled with the darkness of sin … I deeply regret any harm that has come to children, and I urge the faithful to join me in praying for all victims of abuse.”


Correction, March 16, 2015: This article originally reported incorrectly that some abuse cases involving Brother Baker were linked to Mount Aloysius College, where he was a volunteer. College officials said that no abuse regarding Brother Baker was ever reported at the school.

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Washington D.C., Mar 16, 2016 / 02:48 pm (CNA).- As Republican frontrunner Donald Trump moves closer to the presidential nomination, Catholics are questioning whether voting for the billionaire-turned-politician is a wise – or even moral – option.

On March 7, dozens of prominent Catholic leaders released an appeal calling Trump “manifestly unfit to be president of the United States.”

“His campaign has already driven our politics down to new levels of vulgarity,” the statement says. “His appeals to racial and ethnic fears and prejudice are offensive to any genuinely Catholic sensibility. He promised to order U.S. military personnel to torture terrorist suspects and to kill terrorists’ families – actions condemned by the Church and policies that would bring shame upon our country.”

“And there is nothing in his campaign or his previous record that gives us grounds for confidence that he genuinely shares our commitments to the right to life, to religious freedom and the rights of conscience, to rebuilding the marriage culture, or to subsidiarity and the principle of limited constitutional government.”        

The statement is signed by more than 30 leading U.S. Catholics, including Robert George, law professor at Princeton University; Mary Rice Hasson, director of the Catholic Women’s Forum at the Ethics and Public Policy Center; and Thomas Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University.

Church teaching does not dictate which party or candidate a Catholic should choose. It does, however, offer guidelines for the faithful to use in making their decision.

In their document, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” the U.S. bishops outline an understanding of political responsibility based upon developing a “well-formed conscience.”

“While Catholics must vote their conscience, the conscience can be in error, and so faithful Catholics must make every effort to ‘educate’ or form their consciences according to the teachings of the Church,” said Dr. Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at The Catholic University of America and one of the signers of the Catholic petition against Trump.

Catholic teaching holds that the “right to life” is paramount. St. John Paul II described it as “the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights.” The bishops’ document stresses that the direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life “is not just one issue among many. It must always be opposed.”

“When a candidate supports abortion rights, or assisted suicide, the Catholic should have no doubt that this is opposed to the teaching of the Church, and should not vote for such a candidate,” said Pecknold.

However, beneath the life issue, “Faithful Citizenship” also lists a number of other moral issues of grave importance that must not be ignored.

“Racism and other unjust discrimination, the use of the death penalty, resorting to unjust war, the use of torture, war crimes, the failure to respond to those who are suffering from hunger or a lack of health care, pornography, redefining civil marriage, compromising religious liberty, or an unjust immigration policy are all serious moral issues that challenge our consciences and require us to act,” the guide states.

Catholics may differ over “how best to respond to these and other compelling threats to human life and dignity,” it adds, but they “are urged to seriously consider Church teaching on these issues.”

It is on many of these issues that Catholics have raised concerns about Trump. While both major Democratic candidates – former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders – are long-time abortion advocates and therefore problematic from a Catholic perspective, critiques of Trump are more nuanced.

For one, Trump’s plan to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants stands in sharp contrast to the U.S. bishops’ repeated call for comprehensive immigration reform that emphasizes family unity and includes an earned legalization program.

The business mogul also gained considerable attention for his assertion that “torture works” and his plan to kill the family members of terrorists. Although he later backtracked on these statements, critics voiced continuing concern over his willingness to commit war crimes and compromise human dignity.

Trump’s casino was the first in Atlantic City to have an in-house strip club. And while the GOP frontrunner says he opposes same-sex marriage, he has attracted criticism from defense-of-marriage groups who note that he has bragged in the past about having affairs with other married women and has made numerous explicit and degrading statements about women.

Furthermore, his proposal for an indefinite ban on allowing Muslims into the U.S. has drawn serious concern from legal experts who say it is a flagrant violation of religious liberty, endangering the fundamental right for other faiths as well.

And while the Catechism teaches that the death penalty should be restricted to cases in which it is the “only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor,” Trump wants to expand the use of capital punishment, making it the mandatory penalty for killing a police officer.

While Trump currently says that he is pro-life, he made strong pro-choice statement in 1999 and 2000. A few months ago, he said that his sister Maryanne Trump Barry would be an ideal Supreme Court nominee, despite her striking down New Jersey’s ban on partial-birth abortions as a judge. Several major pro-life groups have questioned Trump’s commitment to the pro-life cause, saying he “cannot be trusted.”

Other criticisms of Trump include what many see as disparaging comments and actions toward women, immigrants, minorities and Pope Francis.

What is a Catholic to make of all this? Moral theologians refrained from suggesting that Catholics should vote for any specific candidate, but agreed that Trump has supported many seriously troubling causes.

“The evidence is overwhelming that no Catholic who desires to be informed by the Church's teaching can vote for Donald Trump,” said Pecknold.

The case against Trump is two-fold, he continued. First, Trump’s platform is so “devoid” of “concrete or workable policy proposals” that it’s “simply unreasonable” to guess what he would actually do once in office, he said.

Secondly, “when it comes to the conscience,” Trump’s personal character and the persons or causes he has supported or received support from should be unacceptable to Catholic voters, he added.

“This is a man who, before any of his policies can be considered, should be seen as a false friend to the working class, and an enemy to the unborn, racial and religious minorities and the dignity of the human person generally,” Pecknold said.

Catholics should not vote for candidates “that they know will support and promote intrinsically evil acts,” Pecknold stressed. But in the event that both major candidates support intrinsic evils, Catholics must make a choice: take the “extraordinary step” of sitting out the election, vote for a third-party or write-in candidate with the knowledge that they have virtually no chance of winning, or “carefully deliberate about which candidate is less likely to pursue policies which promote intrinsically evil acts, and is more likely to achieve greater good.”

Fr. Thomas Petri, academic dean at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., added that when all available political candidates support intrinsically evil acts, “Faithful Citizenship” makes clear that the faithful are permitted to vote for the candidate whom they believe will “do less damage.”

“Catholics must be careful to understand the very grave and immoral positions that Trump espouses both politically and in his personal life. If they vote for him, it cannot be because of his partisanship or because of those grave immoral positions, but because a Catholic, in good conscience, after reviewing the situation, may believe that Trump is the lesser evil of all possible candidates,” Fr. Petri said.

“In this election cycle, should Clinton and Trump be the two nominees for the presidential election, Catholics must either not vote or choose one after serious and careful consideration,” he continued. “We Catholics are not permitted to vote for either flippantly or as a matter of routine.”

Stephen White, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., warned Catholics against voting for Trump simply to stop pro-abortion Hillary Clinton.

“A Trump presidency would be a disaster for life, the family, and religious freedom, and that’s before we get to Mr. Trump’s poisonous xenophobia,” he stated, adding that “Trump cares not a whit for Catholic concerns on these issues.”

“Trump is also a savvy negotiator,” he added, and could very well use pro-life and other good causes as trade bait in political negotiations with the opposing party.

“It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world…but for Trump?”
 

Photo credit: Christopher Halloran via www.shutterstock.com

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Washington D.C., Mar 16, 2016 / 04:27 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Senate considers a bill protecting unborn human life past 20 weeks of pregnancy, medical experts insist these children do feel pain and must be protected by law.

“We are obligated to protect the undefensible,” stated Dr. Colleen A. Malloy, who teaches in the Neonatology division at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Dr. Malloy said that advances in technology show the “viability” of human life at an earlier age than previously believed.

The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act would prohibit abortions performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy except in cases of rape (the victim must seek counseling or medical treatment), incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake.

It passed the U.S. House of Representatives last May in a historic vote for the pro-life movement, but the bill failed to advance in the Senate, receiving a majority of votes but not the three-fifths required. The Obama administration had already announced its plans to veto the bill if it passed the Senate.

Similar measures are being considered in states around the country, and some states, most recently South Dakota, have already passed bans on abortions after 20 weeks. According to the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, five major polls show a majority of Americans favoring such laws.

The U.S. is one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, testified Angelina B. Nguyen, J.D. of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List. The list of countries includes China, North Korea, and Vietnam.

At issue is whether states have the authority to enact protections for unborn children given that scientific debate differs about when an unborn child is “viable.” There is indeed “new state interest” in this matter, Nguyen said Tuesday on a press conference call. The state’s interest is “fetal pain.”

A child definitely feels pain at 20 weeks, testified Dr. Malloy on Tuesday, and it is certainly “viable.” Because of technological advancements “we have pushed back the gestational age” of when an unborn child “can be resuscitated and resuscitated successfully,” she said.

These children “are moving, reacting, and developing right before our eyes in the neonatal intensive care unit,” she said.

A June 2009 study of over 300,000 babies by the American Medical Association found that, among children aged 20 to 24 weeks post-conception, they had a steadily higher chance of survival with each passing week, ranging from 10 percent at the beginning to 85 percent at the end.

“Given these survival numbers, the NICU commonly cares for infants born in this gestational age range. We can easily witness their humanity, as well as their experiences with pain,” she testified.

“The majority of scientific evidence that’s out there in reports show that children, by at least 20 weeks, do respond to pain,” Nguyen said. One report, by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2005, claims otherwise, she said. But the majority of the evidence says yes, children at this age do feel pain.

“I would definitely agree with that,” Dr. Malloy said, noting that “anesthesiologists, and surgeons” will “use pain medication, because it’s supported by the literature completely.”

“The standard of care for NICUs requires attention to and treatment of neonatal pain,” she said. “There is no reason to believe that a born infant will feel pain any differently than that same infant if he or she were still in utero.”

“I could never imagine subjecting my tiny patients to a horrific procedure such as those that involve limb detachment or cardiac injection.”

Dr. Kathi Aultman, a retired gynecologist, said she had performed both first and second trimester abortions, had an abortion herself, and has a cousin who is an abortion survivor.

After performing second-trimester abortions, she recounted how she had to examine the remains of the unborn child and found “perfectly-formed organs.” While she worked in the neonatal intensive care unit by day and in an abortion clinic by night, her conscience began to be troubled by the fact that she was intent on saving babies in the NICU who were the same age as those being aborted in the clinic.

The callousness of mothers toward their unwanted children further tugged at her conscience, she recalled. Seeing women – including herself – struggle emotionally after their own abortions further affected her.

“I personally didn’t have any concern or remorse about having had an abortion until after I had my first child,” she said. “It was then that I mourned the child that would have been.”

 

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IMAGE: CNS/Stefano Spaziani

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Although he lives a relatively hidden life in a villa in the Vatican Gardens, retired Pope Benedict XVI continues to study modern theological questions and, occasionally, to comment on them publicly.

The attention Pope Francis and many Christians are giving to the theme of divine mercy is a "sign of the times" that shows how, deep down, people still experience a need for God, the retired pope told Belgian Jesuit Father Jacques Servais in a written interview.

"Mercy is what moves us toward God, while justice makes us tremble in his sight," Pope Benedict said in the interview published in mid-March.

Archbishop Georg Ganswein, the retired pope's personal secretary, read Pope Benedict's German text in October at a conference on the doctrine of justification and the experience of God. The retired pope approved the Italian translation of the text, which was published along with other papers presented at the conference.

The doctrine of justification -- how people are made righteous in God's eyes and saved by Jesus -- was at the heart of the Protestant Reformation, which will mark its 500th anniversary in 2017.

In the interview, Pope Benedict said, "For people today, unlike at the time of (Martin) Luther and from the classical perspective of the Christian faith, things have been turned upside down in a certain sense: Man no longer thinks he needs to be justified in God's sight, but rather he is of the opinion that it is God who must justify himself because of all the horrendous things present in the world and in the face of human misery."

The extreme synthesis of such an impression, he said, could be formulated as: "Christ did not suffer for the sins of men, but in order to cancel the faults of God."

"Even if today the majority of Christians would not share such a drastic overturning of our faith, you could say that it indicates a basic tendency," the retired pope said.

Another sign of a strong change in general thinking that challenges at least medieval Christian thought, he said, is "the sensation that God cannot simply allow the perdition of the majority of humanity."

Yet, Pope Benedict said, there still exists a general perception that "we need grace and pardon. For me it is one of the 'signs of the times' that the idea of God's mercy is becoming increasingly central and dominant" in Christian thought.

St. Faustina Kowalska's promotion of the divine mercy devotions in the early 1900s and the ministry and writings of St. John Paul II, "even if it did not always emerge in an explicit way," both gave a strong push to a popular Christian focus on mercy and to theological explorations of the theme.

From his experience as a youth during World War II and his ministry under communism in Poland, St. John Paul "affirmed that mercy is the only true and ultimately effective reaction against the power of evil. Only where there is mercy does cruelty end, only there do evil and violence stop," said the retired pope, who worked closely with the Polish pope for decades.

"Pope Francis," he said, "is in complete agreement with this line. His pastoral practice is expressed precisely in the fact that he speaks continuously of God's mercy."

The fact that so many people are open to that message, Pope Benedict said, shows that "under the patina of self-assurance" and a conviction of self-righteousness, "man today hides a deep awareness of his wounds and his lack of worthiness before God. He is waiting for mercy."

In many ways, he said, the focus on divine mercy is a modern way of speaking about "justification by faith," knowing how important God's mercy is.

The role explicit faith in Jesus plays in one's salvation is an area where "we are before a profound evolution of dogma," Pope Benedict said. "In the second half of the last century an awareness that God cannot allow the perdition of all the nonbaptized was completely affirmed."

"If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were convinced that one who was not baptized was lost -- and that explains their missionary commitment -- in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council that conviction was definitely abandoned," he said.

Theologians are still trying to work out full and valid explanations that would affirm the Christian certainty that salvation comes through Christ without insisting baptism and an explicit profession of faith in him is needed, the retired pope said. In the meantime, though, it is clear that the church -- the entire Christian community -- is the body of Christ and that body must reach out to offer help, healing and an invitation to a deeper relationship with God.

"The counterbalance to the dominion of evil can consist only in the divine-human love of Jesus Christ that is always greater than any possible power of evil," Pope Benedict said. "But we must insert ourselves into this response that God gives through Jesus Christ.

"Even if the individual is responsible only for a fragment of evil," he said, he or she is therefore "an accomplice in its power."

Like Pope Francis, Pope Benedict urged a return to the sacrament of reconciliation. That is where, he said, "we let ourselves be molded and transformed by Christ and continually pass from the side of one who destroys to that of the one who saves."

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Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden.

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