Catholic News 2

Portland, Ore., Feb 13, 2017 / 02:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An Oregon bill on advanced medical directive rules could allow patients who suffer from dementia or mental illness to be starved or dehydrated, opponents warned.

“These are patients who are awake, can chew and swallow and want to eat, even though in some cases they may need help in delivering food to their mouths,” Gayle Atteberry of Oregon Right to Life said Jan. 31. “Current safeguards in Oregon’s law protect these patients from this type of cruelty. This bill take away these safeguards.”

The legislation, S.B. 494, would create an appointed committee empowered to make changes to the advance medical directive governing end-of-life decisions.

According to Oregon Right to Life, the bill was drafted in response to the case of Ashland, Ore. resident Nora Harris, who suffered from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She lost the ability to communicate and the fine motor skills needed to feed herself. She would eat and drink only with assisted spoon feeding.

Harris’ husband had filed a suit to stop the spoon feeding but lost his case in July 2016. Harris herself was represented by a court-appointed attorney, who said that that refusing to help Harris eat would be against state law. The law and Harris’ advance directive authorized only the withdrawal of artificial means of hydration and nutrition. Jackson County Circuit Judge Patricia Crain agreed, the Medford Mail-Tribune reports.

Oregon Right to Life objected to efforts to change the advance directive system.

“If the bill passes, it could allow a court to interpret a request on an advance directive to refuse tube feeding to also mean you don’t want to receive spoon feeding,” the group said. “This is not tube feeding or an IV – this is basic, non-medical care for conscious patients.”

It charged that the process “could easily result in further erosion of patient rights.”

“End of life decisions are very difficult,” Atteberry added. “Families suffer emotionally as they make decisions such as to use or withdraw feeding tubes, possibly place do-not-resuscitate orders, or use heroic treatments. Most of these decisions, however, involve patients in comatose situations, and most of them are free of moral implications. Most of them, also, are end-of-life decisions.”

Those affected by this bill would not be at an end-of-life stage.

“The problem is, for some, especially insurance companies, they are not dying fast enough,” Atteberry said.

She said that current requirements that patients be spoon-fed help reassure families of Alzheimer’s patients that their loved ones are receiving good care.

“Some comfort can be derived from the knowledge that their loved one will be receiving attentive and kind care while in these facilities. Should this bill pass, that peace would vanish.”

 

 

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Madrid, Spain, Feb 13, 2017 / 04:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Josefa Rodríguez and Amaro Pesquero were not expecting to receive a letter from Pope Francis.

But that's exactly what happened last September, when the Pope himself thanked them in his own handwriting for the donation they had made for the persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

Josefa and Amaro are a married couple from Fuenlabrada, Madrid, Spain, who made a pilgrimage to Rome on the occasion of the Holy Year of Mercy in August 2016.

“My wife bought a prayer book on Divine Mercy and got in contact with this apostolate so they could send her more books so she could to give them away to others. Then they informed her that there was going to be a pilgrimage to Rome and we signed up,” Amaro Pesquero told CNA.

But in addition to going on pilgrimage for the Jubilee, the retired couple brought a gift that they had gathered together with a lot of effort and that they wanted to give to the Holy Father: a sum of money they wished to donate for the persecuted Christians.

“We wanted it to be for the persecuted Christians of the Middle East, because we thought that they're the ones who need it the most right now,” Amaro said.

At the general audience in Saint Peter's Square, they gave the envelope with the letter and the money to their fellow pilgrim who was going to greet Pope Francis on behalf of the entire group and who was able to personally hand it to the pontiff.

It was a sum of money that they never thought would get a response, but Pope Francis replied to them in his own handwriting, thanking them “for this gesture of concrete charity” along with two holy cards with prayers to Saint Joseph and Saint Therese of Lisieux.

Amaro explained that “the letter was late in  arriving because it didn't come by ordinary mail, but in the diplomatic pouch of the Diocese of Getafe.”

“Someone at the Diocese came to our house, but we weren't there and when we returned, our neighbor told us we needed to go there to pick up something important,” he said. “We went and it was from the Holy Father.”

In his letter the Pope told them: “I have received your letter of this past Aug. 2 with the donation included…to help the persecuted Christians, particularly in the countries of the Middle East.”

“I thank you from the heart for this gesture of concrete charity and ask the Lord to abundantly reward you. I ask you, please, to not forget to pray for me so that I can be faithful to the Lord in this ministry. May Jesus bless you and the Holy Virgin care for you.”

However, this is not the first time that a pontiff wrote to this couple from Fuenlabrada – Saint John Paul II also thanked them for a similar gift.

As the couple told CNA, “we were able to greet Pope John Paul II in person, we shook hands with him and gave him a donation. He replied to us through his secretary and he also sent us a small card showing his thanks in his own handwriting.”

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Springfield, Ill., Feb 13, 2017 / 04:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic advocacy group is warning the governor of Illinois that he will face massive political opposition if he signs an abortion funding bill into law.

“Let me be clear. If Governor Rauner signs the bill as written, we will urge our members along with every pro-life voter in the state to support an alternative candidate – or to abstain from voting for his re-election. And we won’t be the only group doing so,” Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, stated on Monday of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R).

The Illinois H.B. 40 would allow for the state’s Medicaid recipients to have their abortions covered, as the program currently pays for abortions done in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

Illinois Right to Life has estimated that abortions in the state could increase by 12,000 per year.

The bill would also repeal the state’s “trigger” law, which was enacted shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision and which stated that if Roe were ever overturned, the state’s policy would revert to its pre-Roe law outlawing abortion.

If H.B. 40 were signed into law and Roe was overturned by the Supreme Court, the state would still have legal abortion.

The bill will still have to pass the state House and Senate and have the signature of the governor. It has the support of the state’s ACLU chapter.

According to Catholic Vote, Rauner promised “to remain neutral on social issues,” and the group maintained he should honor that promise by vetoing the bill if it passes the state legislature.

“He repeatedly said he does not have a social agenda yet is already defending himself in a lawsuit for breaking this promise,” Burch stated, referring to lawsuits against the governor over a state law requiring pregnancy centers and physicians to inform clients about abortion as an option or where they can obtain an abortion.

Burch said that an “overwhelming consensus” of pro-life groups in the state will oppose Rauner if he signs H.B. 40 – or any such abortion-funding bill – into law.

“The state owes $10 billion in unpaid bills, with tens of billions more in unfunded liabilities,” he stated. “Yet now politicians want to spend scarce state resources to pay for abortions. Rauner’s support of this reckless bill would rip apart the Republican Party and destroy any chance of his re-election.”

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Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2017 / 06:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Objectors to abortion need stronger conscience protections in federal law, the U.S. bishops have said in a letter to Congress supporting a bill being considered by Congress.

“While existing federal laws already protect conscientious objection to abortion in theory, this protection has not proved effective in practice,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said. They said the proposed Conscience Protection Act of 2017 is essential to protect health care providers’ fundamental rights and ensure that they are not “forced by government to help destroy innocent unborn children.”

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Archbishop William Lori, who chairs the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom, backed the legislation in a Feb. 8 letter to Congress.

They said the bill would benefit the “great majority” of obstetricians and gynecologists who are unwilling to perform abortions. They said Catholic and other religious health care providers are “especially at risk” of coercive policies related to abortion.

The bishops also invoked medical ethics traditions such as the Hippocratic Oath, which rejected abortion and, in their words, helped define medicine as “an ethical vocation dedicated to the life and well-being of one’s patients.”

The conscience protection bill is sponsored by U.S. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Reps. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.).

Lankford said the legislation “will ensure that health providers have the ability to defend their religious or moral beliefs without fear of discrimination.”

“This bill is needed to give health care providers the right to provide medical care without violating their deeply held beliefs,” the senator said Feb. 3. “Americans have very different views about abortion, but we should not force anyone to participate in it or provide coverage.”

The U.S. bishops said the bill will “address the deficiencies that block effective enforcement of existing laws” and would establish a private right of civil action that would allow “victims of discrimination to defend their own rights in court.”

They said mandating involvement in abortion would undermine health care providers’ civil rights and limit health care access for everyone.

Backers of the bill said organizations that are compelled by state laws to provide abortion coverage at present only have one line of recourse: filing a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights.

This process has sometimes failed.

In 2014, the State of California required that health care plans cover abortions. The requirement lacked religious exemptions for Catholic and other religious organizations with objections to abortion.

The California requirement came in response to the efforts of two Catholic universities, Santa Clara University and Loyola Marymount University, which had sought health care plans that did not include elective abortion coverage. However, some faculty members objected to the exclusion of the coverage and their allies sought state intervention.

In June 2016 the HHS ruled that California’s requirement was permitted, a ruling that critics said violated federal law like the Weldon Amendment, which bars the government from discriminating against health care entities that refuse to participate in abortion.

The ruling drew strong objections.

“Forcing organizations and individuals to violate their religious convictions is a threat to fundamental human liberties,” Edward Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, said June 22, 2016.

The Conscience Protection Act of 2017 would provide another remedy for those coerced into performing abortions or providing coverage for abortions in health plans, backers of the bill said.

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By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Satan is a liar and a cheat who promises people everything then leaves them with nothing, Pope Francis said at his early morning Mass.

In his homily Feb. 10, Pope Francis contrasted the way Eve interacted with the serpent in the garden of Eden and the way Jesus reacted to the devil after spending 40 days in the desert.

With Eve, "the father of lies" demonstrates how he is a specialist in tricking people, the pope said. First, he makes her feel comfortable, then he begins a dialogue with her, leading her "step by step" where he wants her to go.

"He's a trickster," the pope said. "He promises you everything and leaves you naked," like he left Adam and Eve.

Jesus, on the other hand, does not enter into a dialogue with the devil, but responds to his temptations by quoting Scripture, Pope Francis said.

"The serpent, the devil, is astute," he said, but "you cannot dialogue with the devil."

"We all know what temptations are, we all know because we all have them -- temptations of vanity, pride, covetousness, greed," he said.

Instead of listening to the devil and hiding from God, the pope said, when one feels tempted, the best thing to do is pray, "Help me, Lord, I'm weak. I don't want to hide from you."

Such a prayer is a sign of courage, he said. "And if we are tricked because of our weakness in the face of temptation, may we be granted the courage to stand up and move forward," asking God's forgiveness.

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By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A nation's health care system cannot be run simply as a business because human lives are at stake, Pope Francis said.

"If there is a sector in which the 'throwaway culture' demonstrates its most painful consequences, it is the health care sector," the pope told patients, medical professionals, pastors and volunteers attending a meeting sponsored by the Italian bishops' national office for health care ministry.

Anticipating the celebration Feb. 12 of the World Day of the Sick and marking the 20th anniversary of the bishops' office, the pope said Catholics obviously give thanks for the advances in medicine and technology that have enabled doctors to cure or provide better care for the sick.

He also praised medical personnel who carry out their work as "ministers of life and participants in the affectionate love of God the creator. Each day their hands touch the suffering body of Christ, and this is a great honor and a great responsibility," he said.

But, the pope said, any public policy or private initiative regarding health care that does not make the dignity of the human person its central concern "engenders attitudes that can even lead to exploitation of the misfortune of others. And this is very serious."

"Indiscriminately adopting a business model in health care, instead of optimizing resources," he said, risks treating some of the sick as disposable. "Optimizing resources means using them in an ethical way, with solidarity, and not penalizing the most fragile."

Protecting human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death means that "money alone cannot guide political and administrative choices" in health care, he said. And the increasing lack of health care "among the poorest segments of the population, due to lack of access to care, must leave no one indifferent."

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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Migration welcomed a federal appeals court ruling that upheld a temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump's travel ban on refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries that also temporarily suspended the country's refugee resettlement program.

"We respect the rule of law and the American judicial process. We remain steadfast in our commitment to resettling refugees and all those fleeing persecution," Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas, said in a statement Feb. 10.

"At this time we remain particularly dedicated to ensuring that affected refugee and immigrant families are not separated and that they continue to be welcomed in our country," the statement said.

The bishop pledged that church agencies would continue to welcome people "as it is a vital part of our Catholic faith and an enduring element of our American values and traditions."

In a decision issued late Feb. 9, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the government's argument to lift the freeze on the president's order and maintained that the court had jurisdiction in the case as a check on executive power.

Trump had argued that his order was a matter of national security and that the courts had no claim to decide the issue.

The panel ruled otherwise saying that such an argument "runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy."

Further, the judges said, "although courts owe considerable deference to the president's policy determinations with respect to immigration and national security, it is beyond question that the federal judiciary retains the authority to adjudicate constitutional challenges to executive action."

The administration is expected to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump said in a posting on Twitter minutes after the ruling was released: "SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!"

He later told reporters that the judges had made "a political decision."

The case was filed by the state of Washington, which argued that Trump's order was unconstitutional because it discriminated against Muslims and that state agencies were harmed because students and employees were barred from re-entering the country. The state of Minnesota subsequently joined the lawsuit.

U.S. District Court Judge James Robart of Seattle halted Trump's travel ban Feb. 3 by granting a temporary restraining order.

Several lawsuits have been filed challenging Trump's Jan. 27 executive order that suspended the entire U.S. refugee resettlement program for 120 days and banned entry of all citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries -- Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia -- for 90 days.

Another clause in the order established religious criteria for refugees, proposing to give priority to religious minorities over others who may have equally compelling refugee claims.

In its 29-page ruling, the appeals court said the administration's lawyers had provided no evidence that refugees from the seven countries named in the ban posed a national security threat through terrorism.

The judges also wrote that the government had not shown Trump's order provides any avenue for those restricted from traveling to the U.S. to appeal the decision or seek a hearing to present their reasons for entering the country. The decision said that earlier court cases had determined that the protections established under the due process clause in the Constitution's Fifth Amendment "apply to all 'persons'" within the U.S. including aliens whose presence is "lawful, unlawful, temporary or permanent" as well as to people attempting to reenter the U.S. after traveling.

The court also considered the public's interest in the case and determined that the public "has an interest in the free flow of travel, in avoiding separation of families and in freedom from discrimination."

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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Christians and all people in the Middle East need the solidarity of the U.S. Catholic Church, said the chairmen of three committees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the head of the Catholic Relief Services board.

"A concern for our Christian brethren is inclusive and does not exclude a concern for all the peoples of the region who suffer violence and persecution, both minorities and majorities, both Muslims and Christians," said a Feb. 10 statement from four bishops.

"To focus attention on the plight of Christians and other minorities is not to ignore the suffering of others," the statement said. "Rather, by focusing on the most vulnerable members of society, we strengthen the entire fabric of society to protect the rights of all."

The group included Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty; Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, New Mexico, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace; Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas, chairman of the Committee on Migration; and Bishop Gregory J. Mansour of the Eparchy of St. Maron of Brooklyn, New York, chairman of the board of Catholic Relief Services.

The group pointed to the findings of a recent USCCB delegation to Iraq, which confirmed that Christians, Yezidis, Shiite Muslims and other minorities had experienced genocide at the hands of the Islamic State group.

"It is important for Syrians and Iraqis of all faiths to recognize this as genocide, for that recognition is a way to help everyone come to grips with what is happening and to form future generations that will reject any ideology that leads to genocidal acts and other atrocities," the bishops said in their statement.

The bishops called on Americans to accept "our nation's fair share" of vulnerable families, regardless of religion and ethnicity, for resettlement as refugees. They called for special consideration of the victims of genocide and other violence.

They urged the U.S. to encourage the Iraqi government and the regional government in Irbil, Iraq, to "strengthen the rule of law based on equal citizenship and ensure the protection of all."

U.S. aid should assist local and national efforts to improve policing and the court system and encourage local self-governance, the bishops said. Similar efforts are needed in Syria as well, they said.

The U.S. also can provide "generous" humanitarian and development assistance to refugees, displaced people and Iraqi and Syrian communities as they rebuild, the statement said. Such funding can be directed in part to "trusted faith-based nongovernmental agencies" such as Catholic Relief Services and local Caritas agencies, the bishops said.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/courtesy Maria Dominguez

By Nancy Wiechec

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (CNS) -- An immigrant teacher and White House honoree fears President Donald Trump is undermining the community she has fought to lift up.

"It's only been two, three weeks since he was sworn in and I can see the fear and uncertainty in my students and their undocumented parents," said Maria Dominguez, who teaches first grade at Rodriguez Elementary School in Austin, Texas.

"A couple of parents that I've met with this week have mentioned that they're afraid of what's going to happen to their children if (the parents) were to be deported," she said in a phone interview with Catholic News Service.

Dominguez said some fear that their children could be placed in foster care and they would not know where they are or how they are doing. Her first-grade students have expressed their own anxieties.

"My kids tell me that they don't want to go to Mexico," she said. "They were born here, and most of them have never even traveled to their parent's home country."

She said the U.S. is all they know.

"It's devastating to see how much fear there is right now," Dominguez said. "I'm surrounded by people who could be hurt by what's happening, and that breaks my heart."

Trump's immigration actions include a substantial expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He called for adding 10,000 ICE agents to the 20,000 currently responsible for enforcing immigration laws and for the removal of unauthorized aliens.

Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin warned that the president's orders on detention and deportation "will tear families apart and spark fear and panic in communities."

Writing as the U.S. bishops' point man on migration, Bishop Vasquez has repeated the bishops' call on "comprehensive, compassionate and common-sense" immigration reform.

"We see traumatized children in our schools and in our churches," he said, adding that Trump's actions "will only further upend immigrant families."

According to a Pew Research Center analysis, about 3.9 million public and private school students in kindergarten through 12th grade -- 7.3 percent of the total student population -- were children of unauthorized immigrants in 2014, the latest year for which these statistics are available. About 725,000 students -- 1.3 percent of the total -- were unauthorized immigrants themselves.

Dominguez said she believes nearly all of her students were born in the U.S., but around half of them have at least one parent who is an unauthorized immigrant.

Dominguez understands the concerns of her students and their families. For all but the first eight years of her life, she has lived in Texas as a Mexican immigrant without legal permission to be in the U.S.

"It never hit me that I was undocumented until I was in middle school," Dominguez told CNS. "I saw my mom working two jobs, and I really wanted to help her."

Dominguez had an opportunity to apply for a summer work program in the eighth grade. But the application asked for a Social Security number that she could not provide.

She recalled her mom saying: "They're asking for a Social Security number. You don't have (one), you can't work. And, I don't want you to get in trouble because we're here undocumented."

Although disappointed, Dominguez said she remained positive, worked hard in school and became involved in extracurricular activities, including ROTC.

After graduating from high school, she went on to earn undergraduate and master's degrees in education.

Dominguez also began teaching Sunday religion classes at her Catholic parish. She still had no authorization to get a regular job.

"That was the closest I was going to get to becoming a teacher," she said of her years as a catechist. "For me that was a way of practicing my profession."

In 2012, she applied for and was among the first eligible immigrants to receive DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, status. Initiated by the Obama administration, DACA gives temporary protected status to select immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children without legal permission.

DACA allowed Dominguez to receive work authorization, and she began teaching at Rodriguez Elementary in 2013.

Her journey to becoming a teacher was born of tragedy.

When Dominguez was 8, her father died in a car accident in Texas, where he was legally working as a welder. Her mother and her four children traveled from their home in Guanajuato, Mexico, to Austin to collect benefits that were owed them as a result of her dad's death.

Their plan was to go back to Guanajuato after her father's affairs were settled, Dominguez said.

"I guess my mother realized that there was an opportunity for us to go to school, get an education," she said. "I began fourth grade. By that time, I was 9."

Her mother continued to tell her and her siblings that they would eventually return to Mexico. But the family never did.

In 2015, the Obama White House recognized Dominguez and eight other educators with DACA status for their outstanding contributions to their students and communities. They were honored as "Champions of Change."

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to revoke DACA. But he has yet to formally address the programs and the more than 800,000 immigrants it now protects.

The paradox of one White House administration honoring the success of immigrants and another potentially stripping it away is not lost on Dominguez.

She said her proudest moment was in 2015 when she entered the White House with her mother. Visiting as unauthorized immigrants was something they "could have only dreamed about," she said.

"Walking into the White House and being guests and then being honored and having my mom next to me and making her proud was amazing," Dominguez recalled.

She said it showed that her work to raise up children to be respectful, dedicated and productive members of American society was "being noticed and appreciated."

In a 2015 interview about the honor, Dominguez said it is her students who motivate her.

"At the end of the day, everything is worth it when I see my students' academic and personal achievements," she said. "I love to hear my students say, 'I got it!' during a math lesson. I love seeing them struggling to read and seeing them become fluent readers at the end of the school year."

After a year and a half of paperwork, interviews and processing, Dominguez received permanent residency status in January. She was sponsored for residency by her husband, a U.S. citizen.

Although she now has authorization to work and live in the U.S., she worries for her mother and her siblings as well as other DACA recipients who have made positive contributions to U.S. society but remain aliens in the eyes of the U.S. government.

"A lot of organizations, churches and people of faith -- the community of people that I am surrounded by -- are fighting for immigrant rights," she said. "We have to worry, but at the same time we're going to do something about it. This is our chance to come out and not let other people take control of our lives."

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn

By Mark Pattison

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A massive donation of Ethiopian religious manuscripts to The Catholic University of America in Washington makes the school one of the largest holders of such texts outside Ethiopia.

The value of the donation, by Gerald and Barbara Weiner of Chicago, is estimated to be more than $1 million. The collection includes more than 215 Islamic manuscripts, 125 Christian manuscripts, and 350 so-called "magic" scrolls with prayers to protect the owner or reader from particular illnesses.

What makes the manuscripts valuable is that they're handmade, according to Aaron Butts, an assistant professor of Semitic languages and literature at Catholic University. What makes them rare, he added, is that such texts are rarely seen outside Ethiopia, and that the East African nation's rainy season often renders the books and scrolls unusable or illegible after repeated use. That so many texts -- most of which date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, with a few even older -- still survive, and in a usable condition, he told Catholic News Service, is "amazing."

"Every one of them is a treasure," Butts said.

The donation makes Catholic University the holder of the fifth largest collection of Ethiopian Christian manuscripts in the United States, and the largest collection of Ethiopian Islamic manuscripts outside of Ethiopia.

Butts said Gerald Weiner had hoped to collect holy books from Ethiopian Judaism, but "when he realized how few were available, he started collecting books from Ethiopian Christianity and Islam."

Although modern bookbinding techniques exist in Ethiopia, the nation's religious leaders still greatly prefer to use handmade books. Their makers use the skins of sheep, goats and cattle to make the books; even the "parchment" pages come from these animal hides.

Each book's contents also must be written by hand with ink. Frequently, there are illustrations in the books -- and definitely on the scrolls -- making the production of even one book a prolonged and relatively costly venture.

Butts explained that the scrolls are not regarded as official prayer texts by Ethiopian Christian leaders, "but the people who use them use them as prayers." The prayers ask for divine help for any number of maladies, headaches among them, he said, but some focus on pains only experienced by women, such as they experience with menstruation and childbirth. "This may be why religious leaders have not thought of them as official," he added.

The edges of some pages of the books are so dark they look like they had been burned. Rather, Butts said, "it's dirt from the hands" of the user. Some books have "illuminated" illustrations that display their brilliance despite the passage of time, and contain writing underneath the illustration legible to a sharp reader.

Included in the donation were a trio of Ethiopian Christian liturgical texts featuring Gospel passages on one page, and homilies from saints on the next. The tomes are massive in size, each likely containing 200 or so pages with generous margins bordering each page "as a symbol of the wealth" of the religious figure who commissioned the three-volume set, Butts said, adding "Imagine how many animals, how much ink was used" to complete the set, with the writing of each book taking at least several months to complete.

Butts told CNS that the Weiners wanted to make sure the recipient of the gift would be able to provide access to the collection. Catholic University will be able to provide not only scholars and students with access, but also Washington's Ethiopian-American community.

The Washington area is rivaled only by the much larger Los Angeles metropolitan area for the size of its Ethiopian community. There is a particular concentration of Ethiopian restaurants and shops -- including an Ethiopian evangelical church -- along the border of Washington with the suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland, and many Ethiopian-American men make their living as taxi drivers.

The donated books and scrolls are still being assessed for their relative durability after two or three centuries. When the assessment is complete, which Butts hopes will be sometime in the spring, Catholic University will invite the Weiners to attend a reception marking the donation.

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Follow Pattison on Twitter: @MeMarkPattison.

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