Currents News Staff
An eleven-year-old boy in New Jersey found a way to help people during this pandemic. He decided to create care packages and give back to first responders and people less fortunate than him.
Charlie Lettice, the ‘Chief Care Officer’ of “Kids Who Kare” joined Currents News to discuss where his idea to help people came from.
By Cindy Wooden and Currents News Staff
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Especially in a year when the COVID-19 pandemic will rule out many people’s favorite Christmas traditions, they have a right to express their dislike of the decidedly untraditional Nativity scene on display in the center of St. Peter’s Square, said a priest who specializes in catechesis through art.
But it may be more edifying to try to understand it, said Msgr. Timothy Verdon, director of the office of sacred art for the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy, and director of the Florence cathedral’s museum.
First, he said, people need to recognize that dioceses ask the Vatican to feature their Nativity scenes, and the Vatican City governor’s office makes a choice from those offers many months in advance.
“Pope Francis goes out of his way to surprise people, to get them to think, to go to a deeper, more mature understanding of their faith,” Msgr. Verdon told Catholic News Service Dec. 15. So, given the pope’s willingness to embrace a challenge, when the governor’s office chose the ceramic Nativity scene from the town of Castelli, it made sense.
The controversial scene was made by students at a high school specializing in art; the pieces on display at the Vatican are among the 54 pieces students created over a 10-year period beginning in 1965. The town of Castelli, in the mountains of Italy’s Abruzzo region, had a world famous, thriving ceramics industry since the 17th century, but the art — and the town — was dying out. The school was part of an effort to revive the industry and modernize it.
The human figures in the Nativity scene are made of rings of ceramic stacked on top of each other. They are cylindrical, not curvy like a natural human form. And the presence of an astronaut and a knight carries the whole thing to another level of untraditional.
“This is not the sweet, warm nostalgia that Christmas usually generates,” Msgr. Verdon said. “But even in this intimate area of our religious lives, we have to grow in unexpected ways.”
As for adding the astronaut, the monsignor said that definitely is part of tradition. “In Naples, they add political figures, pop stars and, this year, (Diego) Maradona,” the soccer star who died in late November. “Not only shepherds and kings go to the manger, but all humanity makes that pilgrimage in one way or another.”
“But maybe especially this year when the celebration of Christmas is going to be so poor in tradition, when many people will be unable to do the beautiful, warm, tender things” they are used to associating with Christmas, they might not need such a challenging Nativity scene, he said.
And, at least judging from the social media reaction, they did not welcome it.
The vehemence of the reaction may be attributable to “a widespread idea that a lot is going on in the world that is not being explained to us — a maniacal universal plot to deprive humanity of values and traditions,” Msgr. Verdon said. And even if one does not buy into such a conspiracy theory, “everyone is at the limit of his or her patience, so something like the creche in St. Peter’s Square becomes bigger than it should be.”
Angelo Bottone, a native of Abruzzo teaching in Dublin, was one of the few people on Twitter defending the manger.
“There is a sentimental element because it comes from my region,” he told CNS. For example, the scene has a curved neon light behind it. “For a foreigner, that may mean nothing, but I immediately saw that that is the Gran Sasso mountain — it’s a symbol of Abruzzo — where Pope John Paul II used to go skiing.”
The colors used are the traditional colors of Castelli ceramics, he said. But “it’s also traditional in the sense that especially in the south of Italy, we always have contemporary elements in the ‘presepe,'” the Italian word for a creche.
“It’s been a very well-established tradition for centuries. The crib is not historically accurate at all; the Holy Family is surrounded by people of the time the creche was made because the sense is that Jesus is born now, in our world,” Bottone said. “So, when the teenagers from Castelli made it in 1965 and the years following, they included contemporary elements of their own day.”
Those elements included an astronaut after the moon landing in July 1969. “What they did was portray an astronaut offering the moon to Jesus,” Bottone said. “To me, it’s an expression of profound worship.”
Many of the negative reactions are simply the result of not understanding the Nativity scene, Bottone said. Others thought “this was something that Pope Francis commissioned. And obviously, the whole anti-Francis brigade went berserk.”
“It’s important for people to know that this was made by teenagers in 1965; it was not made today by some mad artists,” he said. “If people don’t like it, that’s fine. It’s a piece of art, and we have different tastes.”
Whether St. Peter’s Square was the best place to exhibit the Nativity scene is another question, he said. “But I’m not seeing any effort to go beyond the first reaction and try to express a more charitable judgment.”
By Jessica Easthope
The four candles on an Advent wreath represent the 4 weeks of Advent, but each candle also has a meaning; hope, peace, joy and love.
“Just as we hope for the coming of Christ and Christmas but we all, mankind, are hoping for a time when the vaccine is here and this pandemic is behind us,” said Father Christopher Heanue, who serves as administrator at Holy Child Jesus and St. Benedict Joseph Labre Church in Richmond Hill.
This Advent, Fr. Heanue is partnering with DeSales Media Group, the communication and technology arm of the Diocese of Brooklyn that operates Net TV, to create a digital Advent calendar as part of DeSales’ “Rediscover Christmas” campaign.
“I think it was sort of a natural transition to digitalize the traditional advent calendar, it can reach a lot more people,” Father Heanue said.
The calendar features videos from Father Heanue with a new message for the week’s theme every Sunday, there are also prayers, quotes to reflect on and actions to take – some even let you treat yourself.
“Some of them they are create Christmas ornaments with your family, and some are a little deeper like reflect on five things you are grateful for this year. So I think the Advent Calendar created a good balance of treating yourself, but also remembering what it means to be Catholic this season,” said Caitlin Sakdalan, the Social Media Community Manager at DeSales Media.
Caitlin helped get the digital Advent calendar rolled out —it has nearly 600 daily viewers, and has reached more than 60,000 people on social media.
“This initiative is meant to be a purposeful way for us to reconnect and truly rediscover Christ in Christmas and even though 2020 has been a curveball of a year, Jesus can still be that light for us,” Caitlin said.
Unlike an Advent calendar you can buy at a store, there are no chocolates or sweet treats, but Caitlin says this calendar offers something much more satisfying.
“This one it’s really meant to fill your soul and feed you internally in a different way and fill you with the hope of Christ,” she said.
While this season is missing some tradition, it gives us a chance to bring Jesus back into focus and rediscover Christmas.
Currents News Staff
In 1947, New York City Health Commissioner Israel Weinstein urged all New Yorkers to get vaccinated after an American businessman contracted smallpox during a trip from Mexico and later died in a New York City hospital, where others soon became infected.
“In 1947 there was a small but scary breakout of smallpox in New York City,” said Kent Sepkowitz, doctor and professor of infectious disease at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
The scare launched a city-wide scramble to keep New Yorkers safe from a deadly killer whose presence dates back 3,000 years. Dr. Sepkowitz, an infectious disease expert, studies outbreaks past and present. He says smallpox was an even bigger threat than COVID-19.
“Smallpox was a much more fatal disease if acquired and among survivors, it was quite disfiguring,” he told Currents News. “It could lead to blindness and a lot of other problems.”
Smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the first half of the 20th century alone. Thirty percent of those who contracted the disease died, which prompted the city to spring into full crisis mode.
“It was bad enough that the mayor and the Department of Health both decided that the entire city had to be vaccinated,” said Dr. Sepkowitz. “It was a city of about seven million-plus people at that time in 1947.”
Tens of millions of doses were distributed. Vaccinations were free and a coordinated public education campaign helped spread the word. Archivist Katie Ehrlich with Municipal Archives works with the valuable remnants of New York’s history, they’re pieces that tell the story of the time.
“The vaccination programs that the city implemented around the mid-20th century were really highly organized and kinda all hands on deck,” Ehrlich said. “[They were] setting up free health clinics, setting up points of contact where New Yorkers could go and get these vaccines. It was really targeted to specific populations, in terms of who the city thought was more, perhaps vulnerable, to these specific outbreaks.”
Less than a month later, millions of New Yorkers had been vaccinated – and the public health emergency was declared over. Four to five million people in all – including part of the tristate area – were vaccinated over a two-month period.
“It was something to be proud of, you know,” said Dr. Sepkowitz. “It was New York style. It wasn’t you know, completely everyone behaving, but it was something that is a real achievement.
He said the success was a unifying, American moment.
“‘Let’s do this for America’ moment,” described Dr. Sepkowitz. “We were very much in a ‘taking orders is okay’ moment. That’s how you get things done.”
By Emily Drooby
Kindergarten teacher Ashley Lantz is planning a snow-themed lesson for her class on Dec. 17. It’s perfect for the new kind of snow day the school is going to have.
“We are actually going to still be having school, but obviously remotely,” explained Ashley, who is trying to center all of her activities “around the snow, so we are still having a snow day and we are still learning about the snow and how much fun it could be, but we are learning at the same time.”
In New York City and across the country, snow days are on thin ice. Many schools are switching to online learning during bad weather, instead of cancelling school all together, taking advantage of the remote learning model that the pandemic forced schools to adapt.
This change includes all Catholic Academies and parish schools in the Diocese of Brooklyn. While the buildings will be closed, all schools will revert to their remote learning model. This will help limit time-off during a school year where students have already lost so much time.
Students will also start their long winter break at the end of this week.
“Being able to limit the amount of time that they are losing instruction is really a valuable asset and most helpful to the students,” explained Joan McMaster, the Associate Superintendent for Principal and Teacher Personnel for the Diocese of Brooklyn‘s Office of the Superintendent. “So having this ability to flip to remote and not lose a whole day and not loose instructional time is really a valuable thing.”
Ashley is a teacher at St. Kevin Catholic Academy in Flushing, Queens. The Catholic Academy is trying its best to make this remote-learning snow day extra fun.
Academy Principal Allison Murphy spoke about the students’ experiences.
“They know that a snow day means they don’t have to go to school on another year,” said Murphy. “We are going to try to give them some sense of a typical school day, or typical snow day where they haven’t had a lot of typical days here.”
Some lessons will even get the kids outside.
Of course, many kids are not happy about missing out on a snow day. But as Ashley explained, this is the year when the kids need more school, not less.
Currents News reports secular and religious news from the Catholic perspective.
Some of the top stories on this newscast:
Both New York City’s public schools and the Diocese of Brooklyn’s Catholic academies will be closed tomorrow as the city braces for what could be the biggest winter storm in years.
The Supreme Court once again sides with churches in two states in the fight for religious freedom.
We’ll travel back in time to see how the Big Apple crushed another deadly disease outbreak in just weeks.
Currents News Staff
A shot of hope is what New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called it as frontline healthcare workers began to receive the coronavirus vaccination on Dec. 14 at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens.
Father Radu Titonea is a Catholic chaplain at the Queens hospital, and joins Currents News to talk about the COVID-19 vaccine.
By Emily Drooby
On Tuesday Dec. 15, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout ramped up at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. The same hospital vaccinated the very first person in the United States. Now, their parent company, Northwell Health has vaccinated hundreds of their employees and it’s just the beginning.
“We’ve got a pretty robust plan and we are in full swing,” said Doctor David Battinelli, Senior VP and Chief Medical Officer for Northwell Health.
“There were clear refrigeration and freezer requirements, distribution requirements,” he explained. “Just because you get the vaccines, you have to have the needles, the syringes, all the extra equipment, the staff,” sharing about everything they had to do to prepare for the rollout.
Dr. Battineli says some of the hardest work went into figuring out who would get vaccinated first.
This round mostly went to frontline health care workers, especially those deemed high risk. Most hospitals are staggering how many people in a department get it at one time in case of side effects. Nursing home staff and residents will also get the vaccine soon.
It’s given out in two doses that are administered three weeks apart.
This first round of vaccinations was shipped out to hundreds of hospitals across the country on Sunday Dec. 13, just days after the Pfizer vaccine was authorized by the FDA for emergency use.
72,000 doses were sent to New York City, surrounding areas got about 45,000 doses. In the coming three weeks, New York City is expected to get another 465,000 doses. Nationally it’s estimated that close to 40 million doses will be given out by the end of 2020.
Distributing the vaccine isn’t easy because it has to be stored at negative 94 degrees Fahrenheit. From refrigeration problems to logistical issues, there’s a lot that could derail the delicate process. Top officials say they have contingency plans in place for everything.
While this is an exciting milestone, Dr. Battineli warns people still need to be cautious.
He said, “Although the light is there at the end of the tunnel, it’s several months long at a minimum so people need to make sure they do what they’re supposed to be doing at the same time we are getting the vaccine.”
He added that they’ve gotten innumerable calls from people asking when it’s going to be there turn. But because of limited distribution and that certain high-risk groups will get it first, most Americans won’t be able to get vaccinated until the spring or later.
By Jessica Easthope
“Do you feel like small businesses at this point are being targeted,” Anthony Marsillo, the owner of Gino’s Restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, was asked.
“One hundred percent I feel they are,” he told Currents News. “If you go to Costco or Walmart they’re not doing contact tracing, they’re not taking your information when you go in, they’re not taking your temperature. Why is it all on us,” he said.
Anthony says it’s impossible to comply with New York’s ever-changing city and state guidelines and still make a living.
“It hurts, just as we get the ball rolling we had to stop everything, and these are the two busiest weeks of the year we have coming up,” he said.
The Department of Sanitation issued an alert Tuesday Dec. 15 that was sent to New York City’s restaurants saying that by 2 p.m. on Wednesday, outdoor dining needs to be shut down.
“If you have the kind of outdoor dining setup where you can bring it all in, if you don’t where the restaurant has built something more substantial, they can leave it there but secure everything they can secure,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
For Gino’s all of their furniture will have to come in and the tents will have to be taken down, but with a snow storm on the way, takeout and delivery won’t bring in much business either. More than anything, Anthony feels for his employees, especially this time of year.
“Just for our staff alone that rely on these two weeks to carry themselves over with gifts for their families and to pay their bills, it hurts. It hurts,” Anthony said.
Gino’s has relied on their outdoor dining set up to help them survive the pandemic. Even with that, takeout and delivery and the few months they had limited capacity indoors the restaurant has brought in only a quarter of their normal revenue.
Currents News reports secular and religious news from the Catholic perspective.
Some of the top stories on this newscast:
More help may be on the way soon – the Moderna vaccine is expected to get the green light by week’s end.
A nor’easter is barreling up the coast – and some fear it could disrupt the distribution and delivery of the vaccine.
Meanwhile – the threat of a major snowstorm in New York City is forcing restaurants to roll up their outside dining operations.
President-Elect Joe Biden addresses the nation and takes a swipe at President Trump.