Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments in New Affordable Care Act Challenge

By Emily Drooby

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Nov. 10 on the latest suit against the Affordable Care Act. Conservative states, led by Texas and supported by the Trump administration, asked the court to strike down the entire 2010 law due to an amendment added in 2017, which got rid of the penalty for not having health insurance.

They argue that because a key provision is now unconstitutional, the whole law should go away.

It was believed the conservative majority on the court would make this a shoe-in.

However, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to signal they could cast aside the challenged mandate, but leave the rest of the act standing.

“I think it’s hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate was struck down,” said Chief Justice Roberts.

While Justice Kavanaugh, speaking later in the oral arguments said, “I tend to agree with you on this, a very straightforward case for severability under our precedents, meaning that we would exercise the mandate and leave the rest of the act in place.”

The law has survived two previous challenges: one in 2012 and one in 2015. But since then, three new conservative judges have been added to the bench. That includes President Trump’s latest pick, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Speaking on Tuesday during the arguments, Justice Barrett said, “You’re asking us to treat it as it functionally has been repealed. But that’s not what Congress did, does that matter?”

President Donald Trump has been outspoken in his desire to get rid of the act – also known as ObamaCare.

Former Vice President and projected winner of the 2020 election, Joe Biden, has been a staunch defender of the ACA. While holding a press conference Tuesday, he promised to protect Americans’ health care.

There is no way of knowing for sure how the vote will go until the official decision is handed down, which is expected to happen towards the end of June.

Melkite Priest Opens Bakery in Syria to Employ, Support Christians in the Region

Currents News Staff

A small miracle is taking place in Syria, thanks to the tenacity of a Melkite priest who lives in Vienna.

Despite the war in Syria and the coronavirus pandemic, Father Hanna Ghoneim managed to build a bakery about 12 miles away from Damascus, Egypt. There, he will employ more than 40 people and produce high-quality bread for about 10,000 families.

“We are very interested that the Christians don’t leave their home, because Syria is the home of Christianity,” explained Fr. Hanna. “Christians in Syria need our help. We can help them through money, to build schools or hospitals, or to [offer] work [to] the youth.”

Through the bakery, he’s given them employment and a chance for a better future. Fr. Hanna uses the revenue from sales to pay his employees’ salaries, and some of the bread produced is given to poor families in the area, be they Muslim or Christian.

“Bread belongs to everyone, and Jesus says, ‘Give them [something] to eat.’ He didn’t say only for a group, but everyone,” Fr. Hanna said.

The bakery will guarantee work and food to the city of Maaruneh and surrounding towns.

As the property belongs to the Melkite parish, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Damascus is sponsoring the project.

The effort is being sustained thanks to hundreds of donations, big and small, from people in Austria, Germany, Hungary and Sweden.

Now that the bakery is open, Fr. Hanna Ghoneim is looking for help to launch an agricultural project that will also offer employment, a future and dignity to many other young Christians in the region.

Analysis: A Reader’s Guide to the McCarrick Report

By Currents News and John L. Allen Jr.

ROME (Crux) – It’s taken far too long to get here, with agonizing delays, chaos, confusion, and reversals of fortune along the way, not to mention accusations of fraud and cover-up. Even now that we have a final result, heated arguments over its meaning and legitimacy probably are only beginning.

That’s not a summary of the 2020 U.S. election, though it easily could be. The reference instead is to the Vatican’s release today of its long-awaited report on ex-cardinal and ex-priest Theodore McCarrick, promised more than two years ago and finally at hand.

The report is scheduled to be released at 2:00 p.m. Rome time, meaning 8:00 a.m. on the East Coast of the United States. It’s said to run to several hundred pages, though exactly how many will depend on the font size and pagination the Vatican chooses to employ.

The formal title is, “Report on the Holy See’s institutional knowledge and decision-making process related to formal Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (from 1930 to 2017).” The span runs from McCarrick’s birth to shortly before charges of sexual abuse and misconduct against McCarrick became public, presumably because by that point the question of what the Vatican knew, and when it knew it, became moot.

Like no other chapter of the clerical sexual abuse scandals, the McCarrick crisis shifted the focus of public attention from the crime to the cover-up.

Most American Catholics were no longer shocked to learn that a cleric had engaged in such behavior, even at McCarrick’s level. The real question was how he’d been able to remain at the pinnacle of power for decades, despite the fact that rumors of suspicious conduct circulated as early as the 1990s.

We’ll know whether the report satisfies that demand for transparency and accountability only after it’s out. In the meantime, here are four cautions by way of calibrating expectations.

Patience

The mantra of election coverage in America for the past week has been, “We have to be patient.” It took time to get enough votes counted to know who’d won, and even know many of those counts are either incomplete or in dispute.

Similarly, it’s going to take time to know exactly which questions this report answers and which it doesn’t, and, ultimately, what it tells us about failures to detect McCarrick’s misconduct and to intervene appropriately. It’ll likely take even more time to drill down into the details and get a sense of how comprehensive the disclosures actually are.

My advice?

Don’t read any insta-analysis of the report from 8:00 a.m. tomorrow until at least a few hours later. Anyone who purports to have digested the whole thing before then isn’t being serious.

Bad Guys and Smoking Guns

There will be a natural tendency to want to identify the bad guys in this report, meaning the popes or cardinals or other top dogs who knew about McCarrick’s behavior and turned a blind eye – because they were bought off, because McCarrick had leverage on them for some other reason, or simply because they didn’t take it seriously. There will also be a push to find proof of personal culpability, meaning key letters or other pieces of evidence.

Yet thinking in terms of bad guys and smoking guns is often a prescription for over-simplifying a more complicated story.

For one thing, it’s important to remember that when rumors about McCarrick circulated pre-2018, they didn’t involve minors but behavior with adult seminarians and priests. There was also an impression that whatever may have happened, it was in the past. Neither justifies ignoring the problem, but they may help explain why there wasn’t the sense of urgency about getting to the bottom of it we would expect today.

Beyond that, we know from the experience of the last thirty years that cases with a “smoking gun” proving conclusively the Vatican knew a given cleric or prelate was an abuser and covered it up anyway are hard to find. More often we’re in the “should have known” arena, meaning they got credible reports and claims and declined to pursue them, usually due to the willful ignorance of a clerical culture.

By “clerical culture,” what’s meant is a culture in which clerics get the benefit of the doubt, and the higher up the food chain you go, the more doubt you get. Further, it’s a culture in which the opinions and instincts of bishops count for more than either lay people or rank-and-file priests – so that if one bishop says another bishop is a great guy, that’s often worth 100 laity or 10 priests warning that something is off.

That culture may be crumbling fast, but it was in place for virtually the entire span of the saga this report seeks to document.

It would be easier, naturally, if what happened could be explained by a couple of cookie-cutter villains, so we knew who to blame. The less satisfying truth may be that an entire culture, skillfully exploited by a charming and resourceful prelate, induced otherwise decent people to ignore clear warning signs of danger.

On that front, it will be fascinating to see what the report may tell us about what was actually in the minds of senior officials in the Vatican, especially at the decisive moments in McCarrick’s career.

Pope v. Pope

There may also be a push in certain circles to politicize the contents of the report by spinning it either as indictment of the St. John Paul II/Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI years or of Pope Francis. In the latter case, that tendency has been turbo-charged by the claim of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò that he personally briefed the new pope about McCarrick in 2013 but Pope Francis not only failed to act but effectively rehabilitated McCarrick after he’d been sidelined under Pope Emeritus Benedict.

We have to wait and see, but it’s possible that here too the report may present a more complicated picture.

The same toxic mix of a lack of indisputable proof, combined with the tendency to take assurances from senior clergy at face value, may well have stamped the responses of all three popes. Certainly things have changed a great deal under Pope Francis, but let’s remember that in 2013, when the exchange with Viganò took place, Pope Francis was still two years away from appointing Juan Barros as the bishop of Osorno in Chile and then stubbornly defending him against abuse charges until the evidence simply became too overwhelming to deny.

Most probably, the report will document failures under all three popes, and any tendency to exonerate one at the expense of another arguably will be a better gauge of the biases of the commentator than of what the evidence actually shows.

Money and Manipulation

One persistent suspicion about why McCarrick was able to evade detection for so long is that he used his legendary fundraising prowess to buy impunity, delivering cash to the Vatican and favorite papal causes.

In a sense, we hardly need a report running hundreds of pages to know that. We already knew, for example, that McCarrick was one of the co-founders of the Papal Foundation while he was the Archbishop of Newark, and that he guided the foundation over the years in providing millions of dollars from wealthy U.S. Catholics to support various papal initiatives. The idea that such largesse didn’t buy McCarrick a degree of favorable regard in Rome defies common sense.

Though presumably the report will look into that aspect of the story, it’s also possible the conclusion will be less that there were direct quid-pro-quo payoffs and more that such activities were part of a larger pattern with McCarrick of obscuring negative reports under an avalanche of good will.

Put differently, money may turn out to have been just one among many ways in which McCarrick skillfully reinforced the blind spots of the clerical system.

Going forward, the real question may well be how to construct firebreaks and safeguards to ensure that master manipulators, even when they’re wearing a cardinal’s red, can’t go undetected, no matter the size of their checkbooks or how many trouble-shooting missions they take on.

Whether the report provides an answer, or at least points to one, remains to be seen. But it’s the best argument I can think of for actually reading the whole thing.

McCarrick Report Summary Cites Lack of Serious Investigations of Rumors

By Michelle Powers and Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Although dogged for years by rumors of sexual impropriety, Theodore E. McCarrick was able to rise up the Catholic hierarchical structure based on personal contacts, protestations of his innocence and a lack of church officials reporting and investigating accusations, according to the Vatican summary of its report on the matter.

To read the full report, click here.

In choosing then-Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of Newark in 2001 to be archbishop of Washington and later a cardinal, St. John Paul II likely overlooked rumors and allegations about McCarrick’s sexual misconduct because of a long relationship with him, McCarrick’s own strong denial and the pope’s experience with communist authorities in Poland making accusations to discredit the church, the summary said.

But, in fact, rumors of McCarrick’s conduct, especially knowledge that he had young adult men and seminarians sleep in the same bed with him when he was bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, led the Vatican to decide it would be “imprudent” to promote him when looking for candidates to become archbishop of Chicago in 1997, New York in 1999-2000 and, initially, of Washington in July 2000, the report said.

One hour before the release Nov. 10 of the “Report on the Holy See’s Institutional Knowledge and Decision-Making Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick,” journalists were given the document’s 14-page introduction, which described the two-year investigation that led to the report’s compilation and gave an “executive summary” of its findings.

In June 2018 the Vatican suspended McCarrick from ministry after an investigation by the Archdiocese of New York found credible a charge that he sexually abused a teenager. McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals in July, and in February 2019, after a canonical process found McCarrick guilty of “solicitation in the sacrament of confession and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power,” Pope Francis dismissed him from the priesthood.

In August 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former nuncio to the United States, called on Pope Francis to resign after claiming that he had informed Pope Francis of McCarrick’s abuse in 2013 and that top Vatican officials knew of McCarrick’s abusive behavior for years.

That claim led Pope Francis to initiate an investigation into how McCarrick was able to continue to rise through church ranks despite the repeated rumors, anonymous letters, allegations and even settlements with alleged victims.

The report summary said, “No records support Vigano’s account” of his meeting with Pope Francis “and evidence as to what he said is sharply disputed.”

Until the allegations about child sexual abuse were made to the Archdiocese of New York in 2017, “Francis had heard only that there had been allegations and rumors related to immoral conduct with adults occurring prior to McCarrick’s appointment to Washington,” it said.

“Believing that the allegations had already been reviewed and rejected by Pope John Paul II, and well aware that McCarrick was active during the papacy of Benedict XVI, Pope Francis did not see the need to alter the approach that had been adopted in prior years,” the summary said.

The introduction to the report said it is based on documents found at the Vatican and the apostolic nunciature in the United States as well as interviews — “ranging in length from one to 30 hours” — with more than 90 witnesses in the United States, Italy and elsewhere. They included survivors, cardinals, bishops and former seminarians.

In a statement issued with the report, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, said the contributions of survivors were “fundamental.” The introduction of the report cautions survivors of abuse that certain sections “could prove traumatizing” and warns that some portions of the document are “inappropriate for minors.”

He also said that over the course of the two years it took to complete the investigation and compile the report, “we have taken significant steps forward to ensure greater attention to the protection of minors and more effective interventions to avoid” repeating errors of the past.

Among those steps, he highlighted “Vos Estis Lux Mundi” (“You are the Light of the World”), Pope Francis’ 2019 document on promoting bishops’ accountability and setting out procedures for handling accusations of abuse against bishops.

According to the summary, St. John Paul’s decisions to name McCarrick bishop of Metuchen in 1981 and archbishop of Newark in 1986 were based on “his background, skills and achievements. During the appointment process, McCarrick was widely lauded as a pastoral, intelligent and zealous bishop.”

The summary also said that, at the time, “no credible information emerged suggesting that he had engaged in any misconduct.”

But in October 1999 Cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York wrote to Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, then nuncio in the United States, summarizing allegations about McCarrick, then-archbishop of Newark. The letter was given to St. John Paul, who asked Archbishop Montalvo to investigate.

The nuncio did so by writing to four New Jersey bishops: Bishop James T. McHugh (Diocese of Camden, 1989-1998); Bishop Vincent D. Breen (Diocese of Metuchen, 1997-2000); Bishop Edward T. Hughes (Diocese of Metuchen, 1987-1997); and Bishop John M. Smith (Diocese of Trenton, 1997-2010).

“What is now known, through investigation undertaken for preparation of the report, is that three of the four American bishops provided inaccurate and incomplete information to the Holy See regarding McCarrick’s sexual conduct with young adults,” the summary said.

In response to Cardinal O’Connor’s accusations, the report said, McCarrick wrote to now-Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, St. John Paul’s secretary, claiming: “In the 70 years of my life, I have never had sexual relations with any person, male or female, young or old, cleric or lay, nor have I ever abused another person or treated them with disrespect.”

“McCarrick’s denial was believed,” the summary said, adding that because of “the limited nature of the Holy See’s own prior investigation, the Holy See had never received a complaint directly from a victim, whether adult or minor, about McCarrick’s conduct.”

“Though there is no direct evidence,” the summary added, “it appears likely from the information obtained that John Paul II’s past experience in Poland regarding the use of spurious allegations against bishops to degrade the standing of the church played a role in his willingness to believe McCarrick’s denials.”

In addition, McCarrick had a relationship with the Polish pope going back to his days as the cardinal of Krakow. The summary said, “McCarrick’s direct relationship with John Paul II also likely had an impact on the pope’s decision-making.”

St. John Paul II “personally made the decision” to name him archbishop of Washington and a cardinal, it said.

The report also concluded that now-retired Pope Benedict XVI did not initiate a formal canonical process against McCarrick or even impose sanctions on him because “there were no credible allegations of child abuse; McCarrick swore on his ‘oath as a bishop’ that the allegations were false; the allegations of misconduct with adults related to events in the 1980s; and there was no indication of any recent misconduct.”

However, after initially asking McCarrick to stay on in Washington for two years past his 75th birthday in 2005, the summary said, new details related to a priest’s allegations about McCarrick’s sexual misconduct emerged and Pope Benedict asked him to step down in 2006.

At the time, the summary said, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then-prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, told McCarrick “he should maintain a lower profile and minimize travel for the good of the church.”

“While Cardinal Re’s approach was approved by Pope Benedict XVI, the indications did not carry the pope’s explicit imprimatur, were not based on a factual finding that McCarrick had actually committed misconduct and did not include a prohibition on public ministry,” the summary said.

Archbishop Vigano, while working in the Vatican Secretariat of State, wrote memos in 2006 and 2008 “bringing questions related to McCarrick to the attention of superiors,” the summary said. The memos referred to allegations and rumors about McCarrick’s “misconduct during the 1980s and raised concerns that a scandal could result given that the information had already circulated widely.”

The archbishop, the report said, noted that “the allegations remained unproven,” but he suggested opening a canonical process to investigate.

Archbishop Vigano, who was appointed nuncio to the United States in 2011, was “instructed” in 2012 to conduct an inquiry into allegations by a priest who claimed he was sexually assaulted by McCarrick, the summary said.

Archbishop Vigano, it continued, “did not take these steps and therefore never placed himself in the position to ascertain the credibility” of the priest’s claims.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, released a statement saying in part, “the release of this report today by the Holy See is a necessary step in helping us to understand the case of Theodore McCarrick. Although I have only had time to review the summary, as I have only just received the report today, I look forward to studying it carefully.” To read Cardinal Dolan’s entire statement, click here.

Trump Files Voting Fraud Lawsuits in Several States as Biden Announces Plans for Covid Task Force

Currents News Staff

Joe Biden, the projected winner of the presidential election, acting presidential on Monday, Nov. 9, addressing the U.S. about the coronavirus pandemic.

“This election is over…it’s time to put aside the partisanship… and the rhetoric designed to demonize one another,” he said.

“Please, I implore you, wear a mask. Do it for yourself. Do it for your neighbor. A mask is not a political statement but it is a good way to start pulling the country together,’ he urged.

But President Donald Trump hasn’t yet conceded the race and doesn’t appear to have any plans to do so anytime soon.

While he was playing golf at his club in Virginia on Sunday, his supporters were out in force in Georgia.

The Trump campaign is moving forward with legal challenges in several states.

“At this point, we’ve got numerous states that are very closely and vigorously contested from Pennsylvania to Georgia, to Arizona, to New Mexico, to Michigan to Wisconsin,” said Senator Ted Cruz. “In all of those states, there are serious disputes about the vote totals.”

Senator Ted Cruz, one of many Republicans speaking out in support of the president is saying that it’s premature to declare a winner in this race. Senator Lindsey Graham says Trump should not concede.

“The Trump team has canvassed all early voters in absentee mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania,” said Senator Graham. “And they found over a hundred people I think were dead, but 15 people that we’ve verified to have been dead, who voted. But here’s the one that gets me … six people registered after they died and voted.”

But officials in states like Georgia that are still counting votes have dismissed accusations of electoral fraud.

“We’ve not had any sort of credible incidents raised to our level yet,” said Georgia’s Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, “and so we’ll continue to make sure that the opportunity to make sure every legal ballot is counted is there, but at this point, we’ve not seen any sort of credible examples.”

How Did Catholics Vote in the 2020 Presidential Election? Crux’s John Allen Looks Into Exit Polls

By John. L. Allen and Currents News Staff

ROME (Crux) – As the dust begins to settle from the tumultuous 2020 presidential election in America, it’s possible that if Biden finally prevails, outside his campaign team no group will emerge as bigger fans of the mail-in ballot than Pope Francis and his allies in the Vatican.

Not only would Biden become just the second Roman Catholic President of the United States, but he’s basically this pope’s kind of Catholic — center-left, broadly humanistic and globalist, not part of what one of the pope’s closest advisors famously described as an “ecumenism of hate” between conservative Catholics and evangelicals in America.

Though exit polls aren’t yet definitive, it’s also possible that Biden received support in part by small but crucial shifts in the Catholic vote in the Rust Belt battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If so, Biden might carry a sense of gratitude into his administration’s relationship with the Church.

If Donald Trump would end up winning the election, as appeared likely late Tuesday as the in-person vote tallies rolled in, the stage would be set for another four years of deep conflict between the world’s leading hard and soft powers. Instead, if Biden wins, Pope Francis will have someone in the White House who shares his dread of what the pope called “myopic, extremist, resentful and aggressive nationalism” in his recent encyclical Fratelli Tutti.

If Biden wins, when his administration looks across the Atlantic, they will have every reason to see Pope Francis as a friend. Although the pontiff certainly didn’t issue a direct endorsement, he found other ways to make his preferences clear; in a recent interview, for example, he went out of his way to praise a 2019 book by an Italian Communist journalist comparing Trump to Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.

Augmenting the odds of bonhomie, the incredibly narrow nature of a Biden’s victory will mean that he would need friends wherever he can find them, and in the triumvirate of center-left cardinals the pope now has created in America — Cardinal Blase Cupich in Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Tobin in Newark and Cardinal-elect Wilton Gregory in Washington — Biden may find that all the pope’s men are inclined to friendliness.

To be sure, all may not be sweetness and light when a possible new Biden administration takes shape. There will be pressure from the Democratic base, for example, to shore up abortion rights in the wake of Trump’s successful eleventh-hour appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, potentially triggering tensions over “life issues.”

Given that Biden on the campaign trail sounded like almost as much of a hawk on China as Trump, Pope Francis’s controversial deal with Beijing on the appointment of bishops may continue to be divisive. It’s also worth noting that most of America’s wars have been waged under Democratic presidents, meaning that Pope Francis as a “peace pope” may also find himself trying to press Biden to back down in some hypothetical future conflict situation.

And yet.

Forty years ago, a pope and a president found themselves kindred spirits, and history changed as a result. St. John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan shared a conviction that Soviet Communism was both a political and a moral abomination, and together they helped set in motion the chain of events that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

It was a dazzling illustration of the possibilities when hard and soft powers are in a full, upright, and locked position together.

John Paul and Reagan, broadly speaking, were both “conservatives.” Now another pope and another president, both broadly considered “progressives,” would share the global stage, and it’s possible they too could forge a partnership. After all, the pope is 83 and Biden 77, so both men have to be conscious that they’re entering the final act of their personal dramas.

Moreover, by all accounts Biden is personally a sincere Catholic and likely would relish the chance to be seen as standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a pope. He’s also no stranger to the Vatican, having visited Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, having led the US delegation for the inauguration of Pope Francis in 2013, and having keynoted a 2016 Vatican conference in which he made an emotional plea for a cure to cancer a year after the death of his son Beau.

What would be the “Evil Empire” this new form of the John Paul-Reagan alliance would combat?

For one thing, the world once again faces an existential threat in the coronavirus pandemic and its disruptive impact not just on the economy and the health care system, but a much wider range of issues including church/state relations. The Pope and Biden could forge a partnership in managing this crisis.

More deeply, there’s a struggle for the geopolitical soul underway today, where Pope Francis and Biden both represent one vision and the Donald Trumps of the world another.

On the one hand is a globalist, multilateral, broadly progressive humanism, as sketched in Fratelli Tutti, premised on a preferential option for the poor and relativizing national borders in favor of global solidarity. It favors dialogue over confrontation and prizes scientific, technical, and institutional expertise in facing challenges.

In the other corner is strong populist nationalism, viewing the world less as a family and more as an arena in which political and economic power struggles require putting the country’s interests first. It’s premised on a need to protect the nation against perceived threats both from within and outside. It’s also premised on national prosperity over global solidarity, and deep skepticism and resentment of elites and establishments.

Over the next few years, if the Democrat prevails, it’s possible Biden and Pope Francis could dedicate their joint energies to making the case for their alternative — and, should they succeed, the world could look very different when they’re done.

No matter what, the mere possibility of such a realignment invests the next four years with an unusual degree of Catholic interest.

Currents News full broadcast for Mon, 11/09/20 (Catholic news)

Currents News reports secular and religious news from the Catholic perspective.

Some of the top stories on this newscast:

Joe Biden is the projected winner of the 2020 election but President Trump says “not so fast” – with legal battles brewing, could it all end up in the Supreme Court?

Students in some Catholic schools in NYC hot spot zones are back in class.

And, some big news on the COVID front – one major drug maker says its vaccine is more than 90 percent effective.

Alex Trebek Dies at 80; Host of ‘Jeopardy!’ Was Educated in Catholic Schools

By Carol Zimmermann

WASHINGTON (CNS) — When the death of Alex Trebek — beloved longtime host of “Jeopardy!” — was announced, celebrities and fans around the country took to social media to express their grief.

Many did this in the form of a question, paying tribute to the format of the game show Trebek hosted for 36 years.

Trebek, a Canadian-born American who was educated in Catholic schools, died of pancreatic cancer at his home Nov. 8. He was 80.

He was consistently described as calm, reliable, intelligent and personable with a dry sense of humor. He was known as a comforting presence in America’s family rooms with a show that always stayed with its simple format.

The iconic host and winner of multiple Emmy awards announced in a video last year that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

A year later, this March, he gave another video update saying there had been “moments of great pain … and massive attacks of great depression that made me wonder if it really was worth fighting on.”

To give up, he said, would have betrayed his friends and family who were helping him survive.

In an interview last year with ABC’s “2020,” he said: “Laughter is one of the greatest cures that we can possibly have. It’s right up there with prayer, believe me.” He also said he wanted to be remembered as a “nice man” who “helped people through his charity work” and was “kind to everybody he encountered.”

Trebek was born in northern Ontario, Canada, and attended Jesuit schools there until age 12 when he went to a boarding school run by an order of women religious.

At first, he pursued a career in journalism, but in 1966, he began hosting a Canadian game show. Seven years later, he came to the United States for various roles hosting TV game shows before settling into “Jeopardy!” In 1998, he became a U.S. citizen.

In early January, Trebek and his wife, Jean, received Fordham University’s Founders’ Award in Los Angeles.

“If there’s one thing I have discovered in the past year, it is the power of prayer,” he said in accepting the Fordham award. “I learned it from the Jesuits when I was a kid. I learned it from the Oblates of Mary Immaculate when I was in boarding school.”

In her remarks, reported by the university’s news site, Jean Trebek said: “We understand how education, and probably more importantly, higher education, is one of the linchpins of society.”

She referenced the scholarship she and her husband established at Fordham about five years ago, explaining that seeing how a scholarship can change a life inspired them.

In 2015, the Trebeks established the Alex Trebek Endowed Scholarship, with a $1 million scholarship for students from the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. In 2019, they added another $1 million to the endowment to aid students from North Harlem and East Harlem.

Jesuit Father Joseph McShane, president of Fordham, called Trebek, who was raised a Catholic, “a brilliant man who is the nation’s schoolteacher.” If people think the “Jeopardy!” host is a good man, “you don’t know the half of it,” the priest said. “He’s better than you think,” calling him a man of “quiet generosity.”

“He teaches us about how to live each day with purpose, with focus, with determination, with love, and without being obsessed with oneself,” he added.

The Trebeks’ two children graduated from Jesuit schools: Emily graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 2015 and Matthew graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill, New York, in 2013.

On Nov. 8, Fordham University tweeted that it “mourns the death of Alex Trebek, Fordham parent, benefactor, and Founder’s Award recipient.”

Comedian Jeremy McLellan tweeted: “You can tell Alex Trebek was trained by Jesuits because he invented a game show where you have to reply to everything with a question.”

And on a more serious note, Justin Trudeau, prime minster of Canada, said: “We have lost an icon. Almost every night for more than three decades, Alex Trebek entertained and educated millions around the world, instilling in so many of us a love for trivia.”

Many former contestants posted photos of themselves with Trebek on social media and one of the more famous contestants, Ken Jennings, who holds the record for the longest winning streak on the show with 74 wins, similarly posted a photo of the two of them.

“Alex wasn’t just the best ever at what he did. He was also a lovely and deeply decent man, and I’m grateful for every minute I got to spend with him,” he tweeted.

“Thinking today about his family and his ‘Jeopardy!’ family,” he added, “which, in a way, included millions of us.”

Six Brooklyn Diocese Catholic Schools to Reopen After Forced Closure Within COVID Hot Spot Red Zone

By Emily Drooby

Joseph Rotondi is back in class for the first time in over a month.

“I’m pretty happy to see all my friends and learn in person again because I didn’t really like online school,’ he told Currents News.

“I feel excited, so we can finally do the stuff we want to do,” agreed Victor Vazquez, another student.

They are two of the many students back in the classrooms at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Academy in Gravesend, Brooklyn. They are one of six Catholic schools in the Brooklyn Diocese closed in early October because of their location within a red zone, which is an area with a high amount of COVID-19 cases.

After meeting New York State requirements of having all students and staff tested, Our Lady of Grace Catholic Academy was able to officially open back up their doors.

“It’s a whole different feeling now that everybody is back. The energy level is up, the kids are excited to be together, we are thrilled to be with them,” said teacher Michele Cirelli while speaking to Currents News at the school.

All schools in the red zone must comply with state guidelines by testing everyone before reopening, followed by weekly random testing on 25% of the population.

Good Shepherd Catholic Academy opened on November 9, Our Lady of Grace Catholic Academy in Brooklyn opened on November 6 and St. Athanasius Catholic Academy opened on November 6.

St. Edmund Elementary School and St. Edmund Preparatory High School are both planning to reopen on November 10, while Midwood Catholic Academy is planning for a November 12 reopening date.

Brooklyn’s red zone was also just changed to an orange zone on Nov. 9.

Our Lady of Grace principal, Kelly Wolf, said despite their proximity to what’s been called a hot spot area, they’ve yet to have a positive case in the building.

While having the students back is a big triumph, school and staff know they need to be prepared for any future closures, ‘and will continue to do our health surveys every morning and live by the core four,” said Principal Wolfe. “But it is that we are in that red zone, we are a red zone school. So, so much of it is out of our hands.”

The core four guidelines are: stay home if you are sick, social distance, cover your face and practice healthy hand hygiene.

Currents News full broadcast for Thurs, 11/5/20 (Catholic news)

Currents News reports secular and religious news from the Catholic perspective.

Some of the top stories on this newscast:

The presidency is still up in the air – as the counting continues and lawsuits are filed in multiple states, protests are erupting all over the country.

How answering God’s call to the priesthood is on the rise in the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Bishop DiMarzio is here to update us on the legal battle for religious freedom in COVID hot spots around the diocese.