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 WASHINGTON-Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York called on everyone "concerned about the tragedy of abortion" to recommit to a "vision of life and love, a vision that excludes no one" on January 14. His statement marks the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Cardinal Dolan chairs the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"Most Americans oppose a policy allowing legal abortion for virtually any reason - though many still do not realize that this is what the Supreme Court gave us," wrote Cardinal Dolan. "Most want to protect unborn children at later stages of pregnancy, to regulate or limit the practice of abortion, and to stop the use of taxpayer dollars for the destruction of unborn children. Yet many who support important goals of the pro-life movement do not identify as 'pro-life,' a fact which should lead us to examine how we present our pro-life vision to others."

"Even as Americans remain troubled by abortion," wrote Cardinal Dolan, a powerful and well-funded lobby holds "that abortion must be celebrated as a positive good for women and society, and those who cannot in conscience provide it are to be condemned for practicing substandard medicine and waging a 'war on women'." He said this trend was seen recently when President Obama and other Democratic leaders prevented passage of the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act, "a modest measure to provide for effective enforcement" of conscience laws.

"While this is disturbing," said Cardinal Dolan, "it is also an opportunity." Pro-life Americans should reach out to "the great majority of Americans" who are "open to hearing a message of reverence for life." He added that "we who present the pro-life message must always strive to be better messengers. A cause that teaches the inexpressibly great value of each and every human being cannot show disdain or disrespect for any fellow human being." He encouraged Catholics to take part, through prayer and action, in the upcoming "9 Days for Life" campaign, January 16-24. More information on the campaign is available online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJwfcefUiU

He also cited the Year of Mercy called by Pope Francis as a time for women and men to find healing through the Church's Project Rachel post-abortion ministry.

The full text of Cardinal Dolan's message is available online.
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Keywords: Roe v. Wade, anniversary, Pro-Life, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, 9 Days for Life, USCCB, U.S. bishops, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Year of Mercy, Project Rachel, Pope Francis
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Vatican City, Feb 1, 2016 / 03:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The “Pope of Surprises” is at it again. Pope Francis is set to be featured in the upcoming film “Beyond the Sun,” the first Pope in history to play himself in a big screen production.

The idea for the film came from the Holy Father, who approached the filmmakers at AMBI Pictures, asking them to produce a movie that could effectively portray Gospel passages and parables to children.

The movie will be a family adventure story where children from different cultures emulate the apostles while searching for Christ in the world around them, says the film group.

All proceeds from “Beyond the Sun” will go to El Almendro and Los Hogares de Cristo, Argentine charities that provide support for at-risk children and young adults in need.

AMBI co-founders Andrea Iervolino and Lady Monika Bacardi are fully financing and producing the film through their AMBI Pictures banner. Co-producers are Graciela Rodriguez and Gabriel Leybu, and the screenplay was written by Graciela Rodriguez.

Iervolino has been producing films since he was 15, when the church in his hometown of Cassino, Italy, opened their doors and allowed him to shoot his footage inside. He has produced, funded and distributed over 50 feature films including “The Merchant of Venice”, “The Humbling” and “All Roads Lead to Rome.”

He said in a statement that working with the Holy Father will be a highlight of his career.

“Our excitement and gratitude toward His Holiness, Pope Francis participating in this film is beyond words. This is not just a movie for us, it’s a message, and who better to have on your side to deliver an important societal and spiritual message than the Pope.”

Bacardi added that the film will be entertaining and moving for families around the world and a creative way to raise money for worthwhile causes.

Principal photography will begin in early 2016 in Italy. AMBI will oversee worldwide distribution through its Los Angeles-based sales division.

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Cebu, Philippines, Feb 1, 2016 / 04:42 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Massive crowds estimated in the millions took part in the Masses and liturgical processions of the eight-day International Eucharistic Congress which recently concluded in the Philippines.

“We are called to understand, love and assimilate the very love of Jesus… Our lives too must be offered in sacrifice,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said in his Jan. 29 homily.

An estimated 1.5 million people attended a Mass and liturgical procession for the International Eucharistic Congress in the Philippines on Friday. The Mass was held on the grounds of the Cebu Provincial Capitol.

Archbishop Martin said that the Church became present through the Eucharist.

“There is no Church without the Eucharist. The Eucharist constructs the Church,” he said, according to CBCP News, adding that a Eucharistic community must always be a caring one.

Friday’s Mass was concelebrated by hundreds of priests and bishops including Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon, the papal legate to the congress; Archbishop Bernardino Auza, who heads the Holy See’s permanent observer mission to the United Nations; and Archbishop Piero Marini, head of the pontifical commission on the International Eucharist Congress.

Five thousand boys and girls received their first Holy Communion on Saturday at the Cebu City Sports Complex.

 

IEC: 5,000 children receive first communion https://t.co/2cAqSc7DoT pic.twitter.com/UhbBHvQE7K

— CNN Philippines (@cnnphilippines) January 31, 2016  

About 12,000 people took part in the events of the congress itself. The event aims to witness to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and to promote a better understanding of the liturgy and the Eucharist in the life of the Church. The congress is now held every four years.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York was among the congress’ speakers. He spoke on the topic “The Eucharist and Mary.”

He told Vatican Radio that the Eucharistic congress shows “the power of other people.”

“It's the power of seeing them trying their best to live their faith. And I think that's the genius of Catholicism: we're not in this alone.”

In contrast to American individualism, he said, the Catholic faith is both personal and something that is “received and lived out together, in a community, with other people that we call the Church.”

On Sunday at least 1 million more people attended the Statio Orbis Mass, the Stations of the World Mass that closes the Congress. The name of the Mass refers to the global nature of the gathering.

Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon was the closing Mass’ principal celebrant. “The youth of the Philippines is the hope of the Church,” the cardinal said in his homily. “This nation will become light not only to Asia but to the whole world.”

He encouraged Filipinos to have many children, suggesting that Christianity is in a “twilight” in the West but the Philippines could be a “new dawn.”

“Multiply your children. Multiply your missionaries. Go to Europe and America, there they have more cats and dogs!”

The cardinal said that the destruction of the family is “the greatest danger.” He warned against countries whose laws have “started on the path of destroying families.”

“The future of the Church depends on Catholic families,” he said Jan. 31.

He said that young people are a blessing for the Church and that young people deserve “understanding, not judgment” from the Church.

At the close of the Mass, Pope Francis addressed the event in a video message. He encouraged attendees to be “missionary disciples” and bring God’s mercy to everyone.

“At each Eucharist, the table of the Lord’s Supper, we should be inspired to follow his example, by reaching out to others, in a spirit of respect and openness, in order to share with them the gift we ourselves have received,” the Pope said.

Pope Francis announced that Budapest would host the next International Eucharistic Congress in 2020.

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Washington D.C., Feb 1, 2016 / 04:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Kalief Browder was 16 years old when he entered the notorious Rikers Island prison in New York, awaiting trial for allegedly stealing a backpack.

He stayed in solitary almost two years as his family couldn’t pay his bail, enduring beatings by the guards and fellow prisoners and attempting suicide multiple times. He was later released, but last June he committed suicide at age 22.

When President Obama last Monday announced new limits on the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons, he began Browder’s story. The Jan. 28 executive action ending solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons, among other actions, has reflected a growing chorus of religious and political voices asking for the reform of America’s prison system, and of solitary confinement in particular.

Last July, Obama had asked the Justice Department to review the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. The department released its report months later and on Jan. 25 the president announced he would be adopting their recommendations.

Among these recommendations were ending the use of solitary confinement for juvenile inmates, creating special mental health units for inmates with severe mental illness, providing psychologists for inmates requiring segregation, and overall reductions in the time inmates will spend in solitary.

The concept of solitary confinement does vary among prisons, the report acknowledged, and so it used instead the term “restrictive housing.”

There are three general qualifications for restrictive housing in prisons: inmates are set apart from the general prison population, they are alone or with another inmate, and the cell is locked for “the vast majority of the day, typically 22 hours or more.”

Prisoners are put in solitary for various reasons: they pose a security risk to other inmates or guards, they are awaiting execution, they are part of a prison gang that must be split up, they are threatened by other inmates, or they have broken a specific prison rule. Or, as reports allege, they are put in solitary for minor infractions and can be returned to solitary for small offenses.

While the practice must be curbed, it can be necessary as a security precaution, the Justice Department acknowledged in the report. Yet it went on to add that “as a matter of policy, we believe strongly this practice should be used rarely, applied fairly, and subjected to reasonable constraints.”

Ultimately, it is “not rehabilitative,” insisted Anthony Granado, a policy advisor to the United States bishops' conference in an interview with CNA, while acknowledging that there may be a legitimate, yet “very limited,” usage of solitary confinement for security reasons to protect inmates and guards.  

The purpose of punishment is for correction, not retribution, he insisted, citing St. Thomas Aquinas. Thus criminal justice must rehabilitate the prisoner, not dehumanize him.

The bishops’ conference has long advocated that juvenile offenders not be treated as adult inmates when it comes to solitary confinement, Granado said, noting that their concerns have been validated by neuroscientific discoveries. The human brain is not fully developed until about 25 years of age, and solitary confinement, if it is harmful to adults, could wreak even more havoc on the still-developing brain of a teenage offender.

While the Justice Department noted that the precise number of inmates currently in solitary confinement is hard to determine because of data “gaps”, it did refer to a survey conducted by Yale Law School and the Association of State Correctional Administrators in 2015 which showed that in 32 states and the District of Columbia, 6.3 percent of the overall prison population was in restrictive housing on a specific date in the fall of 2014. Extended to the other states that did not reply to the survey, the estimated number would have been 80,000-100,000 inmates.

Some prisoners remain in solitary confinement for weeks, years, or even decades. Members of the “Angola Three,” three prisoners who were placed in solitary confinement in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1972 after the murder of a prison guard, spent anywhere from 29 to 43 years in solitary confinement.

This long-term isolation can prove devastating to a person’s health and sanity.

St. Thomas Aquinas emphasized the “social nature of the human person” in his writings, Granado said. “And when you deprive a person of that sensory experience, that human touch, the human experiences, what happens in solitary confinement … you do really see an adverse impact on persons,” he added.

Numerous accounts of prisoners in solitary confinement reveal they suffered severe psychological problems and the deterioration of mental capacities as a result of prolonged isolation and monotony.

New York City’s former police commissioner Bernard Kerik served time in federal prison for tax fraud and false statements. He spent 60 days in solitary confinement in a 12-foot by 8-foot cell. He was let out three times per week to shower, and was allowed one 15-minute phone call per month.

During his time in solitary, Kerik said he began hallucinating and talking to himself.  “You’ll do anything – anything – to get out of that cell. Anything,” he said at a Heritage Foundation event on prison reform last May. “You’ll say anything, you’ll do anything, you’ll admit to anything.”

Shane Bauer, a journalist who was imprisoned in Iran for 26 months from 2009-11 after he and two others crossed the Iran border while hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan, spent four of those months in solitary confinement.

In a 2012 piece for Mother Jones magazine, he wrote that “no part of my experience – not the uncertainty of when I would be free again, not the tortured screams of other prisoners – was worse than the four months I spent in solitary confinement.”

He actually hoped to be interrogated, he recalled, just to have someone else to talk to.

Bauer’s visit to a “special housing unit” at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison actually reminded him of his confinement in Iran, he wrote. At least he had windows – the cell he was visiting did not. He was allowed a 15-minute phone call during his 26-month stint, but the California prisoners were allowed none.

What are some devastating effects of solitary confinement? “The one you hear most often is just hopelessness,” Maurice Chammah of the Marshall Project, who has written about criminal justice issues like solitary confinement, noted.

“I’ve spoken to people who have been in solitary confinement and they, almost across the board, describe this sense of utter hopelessness that makes it harder for them to kind of climb out of their feelings and find a kind of way forward,” he said. “A lot of times, the suicides actually happen when people are still in solitary confinement.”

In his 2011 testimony before the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, Dr. Craig Haney described the plight of inmates in California’s cells of long-term solitary confinement, saying that “prisoners in these units complain of chronic and overwhelming feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and depression.”

Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist who served on the faculty at Harvard Medical School over 25 years, wrote back in 1993 about the harm of solitary confinement, saying it “can cause severe psychiatric harm” and explaining that it produces a steady decomposition of the mental faculties.

The state of an individual placed in a situation of isolation and monotony can soon become a sort of mental “fog,” he wrote. Then the person becomes oversensitive to things like light and noise. The mind descends into an “inability to focus” and then a sort of “tunnel vision,” an excessive focus often on some negative thought.

“I have examined countless individuals in solitary confinement who have become obsessively preoccupied with some minor, almost imperceptible bodily sensation, a sensation which grows over time into a worry, and finally into an all-consuming, life-threatening illness,” he wrote.

Sleep patterns are disrupted as well, resulting in lethargy during the day and sleeplessness at night.

Many inmates who have spent time in solitary confinement “will likely suffer permanent harm as a result of such confinement,” he added, such as social handicaps that may prove an intractable obstacle to their successful reintegration into society.

If solitary confinement can break and permanently damage a person, and they are released back into society – as 95 percent of prisoners eventually are – it could prove a public safety threat, Granado said.

When it is used for security reasons, there still must be assurance that “these people have access to the care they need,” he added, like psychological counseling for the mentally ill to determine why they are acting out.

Prison wardens and corrections officials, having seen the practical problems that solitary may impose, have tried to humanize the practice by starting rewards programs for inmates who show good behavior. Maurice Chammah has written on this development.

The Alger Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was a trend-setter after it started its own “step-down” program. Chammah, who reported on the program, said the transformation was “incredible.” Prisoners, with a “little bit of hope,” could break the cycle of solitary.

And other prisons are following suit. The executive director of Colorado’s Corrections Department Rick Raemisch, who made headlines for spending 20 hours in solitary in 2014, created a step-down program for the state’s prisons before concluding that it still took too long to move prisoners through the process. So he capped the terms of solitary confinement at one year.

Some prisons in the state of Washington have implemented conflict resolution and anger management classes into their programs for attendees to speed up their confinement period. Prisons in Texas and New Mexico, where prison gang members have been placed in solitary to break up the gang, allow inmates to be released from solitary if they renounce their prison gang.

“I don’t want to overstate the idea that the situation has been fixed,” Chammah said, noting that “across the board, it’s pretty bad.” But overall, he acknowledged, there is “more of an emphasis” on treating mental health problems among inmates in solitary confinement, a significant step forward in prison reform.

And the tide of public opinion is turning against the widespread use of solitary confinement. Although Obama’s executive action on juvenile solitary is more “symbolic” than “practical”, since there are only “dozens” of juvenile inmates in federal prisons, Chammah noted, it still marks a “major capstone” to political momentum against the use of solitary confinement, as well as religious momentum.

More and more Christians are supporting policies of criminal justice reform, such as limits on use of solitary confinement, he said. He used Pat Nolan as an example, a Catholic who served in the California legislature and a leader in the tough-on-crime movement before going to prison for racketeering from a federal sting operation. After his time in prison, Nolan became a loud voice for prison reform.

“A big part of this,” Chammah explained, is the “idea that rehabilitation and Christian ideals of redemption and the ability of an individual to be saved and transform their life can be also part of what prisons do.”

“I’ve gone into a lot of prisons in Texas, in Michigan, in New Mexico – Louisiana definitely is a big one – you hear Christian rehabilitation language everywhere,” he explained. People of faith have come to see prisoners how they used to see addicts and foster children – as people in need of redemption.

“Punishment is just and right, but we don’t want to dehumanize people and make them worse,” Granado said. “They are created in the image and likeness of God.”

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IMAGE: Nancy Wiechec

By Chaz Muth

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Catholic missionaries played a large role in bringing European values and religion to North America in the 18th century.

The role of the Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans and other Catholic religious orders was to set up missions that became economic, political and religious centers.

The mission church hasn't gone away. It's a vibrant part of the U.S. Catholic fabric. It's just evolved during the course of the past few centuries.

The primary function of the 21st-century mission church no longer includes proselytizing the indigenous people, but is aimed at bringing Catholicism to populations throughout the land, regardless of the challenges to do so.

Catholics living in most of the territory of the U.S. are actually shepherded by a Catholic home mission diocese.

So, what is a Catholic home mission?

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops defines a home mission as a "diocese or parish that can't provide the basic pastoral services to Catholics without outside help."

Those basic pastoral services include Mass, the sacraments, religious education, and ministry training for lay ministers, deacons, religious sisters and priests.

"Most of the mission dioceses, if you look at the map it will tell you that they are very rural, very large usually, do not have the resources that our more urban ... dioceses like New York or Los Angeles would have, so we make ends meet with very little," said Bishop Peter F. Christensen, who heads the Diocese of Boise, Idaho, which is a mission diocese.

"That 'little' is subsidized by the work of Catholic Home Missions, which is subsidized by the generosity of our people throughout the country," added the bishop, who is the former chairman of the U.S. bishops' Subcommittee on Catholic Home Missions.

The U.S. bishops established the Catholic Home Missions Appeal in 1998. It's a national collection taken up in parishes throughout the country, usually in April, to help fund the pastoral outreach in the mission dioceses in places such as Alaska, New Mexico, Idaho, the Marshall Islands, Puerto Rico and parts of Texas.

The U.S. Catholic Church has a long history of sending missionaries to serve people in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania, Bishop Christensen said.

Home mission dioceses in the U.S. are in need of the same kind of care, which is why the grants that come from the annual appeal are so vital to Catholics in the mission dioceses, which also include Gallup, New Mexico, and Little Rock, Arkansas, he said.

Salt Lake City, another U.S. mission diocese, consists of 85,000 square miles, which is the entire state of Utah, and some of the Eastern Catholic eparchies, which also are considered Catholic home missions, cover the entire U.S. and consist of millions of square miles.

Bishops, priests, deacons, religious sisters and dedicated lay ministers can put 50,000 miles a year on their cars just to reach the Catholics they are charged with providing pastoral care to, Bishop Christensen told Catholic News Service during an interview in Boise.

The ministry of Father Adrian Vazquez, a priest in his diocese, illustrates the situation. He is charged with the pastoral care of four Catholic communities in eastern Idaho, a parish in St. Anthony and three mission stations located in Rexburg, Driggs and Island Park.

He divides his time between all those locations, driving hundreds of miles a week.

Sometimes the priest relies on the kindness of his parishioners in Driggs and Island Park to put him up for the night, since his residence is at the rectory in far off St. Anthony.

"The travel can be a real challenge, especially in the winter when there is a lot of snow," said Father Vazquez, a native of Mexico. "My parishioners have to be patient with me sometimes if I'm running behind and we just start when I arrive."

The U.S. mission church of the 21st century faces some of the same challenges 18th-century missionaries encountered in that the faith remains poorly established in several parts of the country, including the Rocky Mountain states, the South, areas along the Mexican border and in the Pacific islands, Bishop Christensen said.

In 2014, the national Catholic Home Missions Appeal raised more than $9.3 million and gave out more than $9.1 million in grants and donations to fund programs in the mission dioceses, according to the subcommittee's annual report.

The dioceses received money for programs involving faith formation, cultural diversity, strengthening marriage, repairs to churches, evangelization, prison outreach, as well as priestly and religious vocations.

In recent years, the mission dioceses have seen an increase in religious vocations, which is desperately needed, but that too brings its own set of challenges for financially strapped institutions in those areas.

"To educate a seminarian today costs an average of $37,000," Bishop Christensen said. "That's not small change for a diocese that can't support that.

"There's a (mission) diocese in Texas that has 23 seminarians," he said. "Multiply that out by $37,000 and that gets into some pretty amazing figures."

The permanent diaconate has become an important source of vocations for these dioceses, Bishop Christensen said.

Deacons can provide various pastoral ministries, like preaching, baptizing, witnessing marriages and conducting funeral services, helping alleviate the stress for some priests who are caring for multiple faith communities spread across hundreds of miles.

The Diocese of Juneau, Alaska, has a total of 10 priests who serve a geographic region that is about the size of the state of Florida, said Juneau Bishop Edward J. Burns.

"The communities are small," Bishop Burns told CNS during an interview in Juneau. "We can have just a handful of people who gather for Mass at the kitchen table, because we don't have a chapel or church in some of our villages."

The priests, deacons, religious sisters and lay ministers say it's important to get into the small communities in the far reaches of these mission dioceses, not only to bring them the sacraments, but to help them prepare for marriage, strengthen their relationships, sometimes cope with poverty, morn the dead and become positive models for their children, he said.

Like the missionaries of the 18th century, Bishop Christensen said much of the work in a mission diocese is evangelization.

When he was first appointed bishop of Juneau in 2009, Bishop Burns learned that 10 percent of the mission diocese's population was Catholic and 60 percent didn't identify with any religion.

"I thought to myself, 'What a wonderful challenge this is going to be,'" he said. "It's an opportunity for us to engage in the new evangelization, because it's not like these people have never heard of Jesus Christ, or the Gospel message, or that they've never been in contact with the church. It's just that they choose to be secularists. They have chosen to step aside from their religion or faith.

"For us, it's a wonderful challenge," Bishop Burns said, "to awaken in them a relationship with Jesus Christ."

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Follow Chaz Muth on Twitter: @Chazmaniandevyl.

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