Currents News for Thursday, October 24, 2019

On the newscast: Bishop DiMarzio convenes a major summit on Catholic education in the Brooklyn Diocese. He’s looking at great accomplishments and the future; Christianity could vanish from Syria and Iraq. The warning is coming for a top papal charity. New research on a drug that’s being called historic and could help manage Alzheimer’s disease; An American hero had been missing since World War Two. Now he’s been found.

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Diocesan Summit on Education Highlights Value of Catholic Schooling

By Tim Harfmann

On October 23, young musicians showed off their talents with skills made possible because of a Catholic education.

The performance took place as Bishop DiMarzio convened a major summit to highlight the value of Catholic schooling.

“It shows that we’re alive, and we’re working and it’s working very well. We’re raising money from other people that are supporting,” Bishop DiMarzio said.

Through that support and the scholarships that are created from it, the building blocks for the future Catholic education are laid, ensuring that a great classroom experience endures for students.

Tom Chadzutko, the superintendent of schools in the Brooklyn Diocese, appreciates the hard work of the many people who help students, especially Futures in Education.

“We’re giving them heart, mind, soul education. it’s all in one. We meet the individual needs of all the children, and we work together to really make sure that they have all those components in their lives,” he said.

Altogether, over $7 million in scholarships are handed out to 4,500 students each year.

31 percent of the families helped by Futures in Education live at or below the poverty line. The average household income for recipients is $30,000.

Darla Romfo is another person making a difference for students, providing tuition help through her group the Children’s Scholarship Fund.

Darla speaks with many parents who are hoping for more than what’s offered in New York City’s public schools.

“We hear it from parents that come to us for scholarships. They’re kind of horrified by what’s going on in our public schools, and they are really looking for something different. They expected something different, and they find it in Catholic schools,” she said.

For Schmeiderlyn Ulysse, an eighth grader at Saints Joachim & Anne Catholic Academy in Queens, academics are important but so is her faith.

“With my Catholic education, I want to help others know the true meaning of what it means to spread the Good News and how to be a good Catholic, and knowing that God will always be by your side,” Schmeiderlyn said.

Learning her faith while learning her lessons is just one example of why a Catholic education equals excellence.

Catholic Students Strengthen Faith With Youth Prayer Rally

By Emily Drooby

On October 24, buses arrived at Holy Family Church in Fresh Meadows, Queens carrying hundreds of Catholic middle school students.

Kids poured inside the church for a prayer rally as part of a special afternoon spent building their relationship with God into something that will withstand the test of time.

Holy Family’s youth minister, Rachel Burgos, knows just how important events like this can be for faith formation.

“I used to go to these types of events and they really meant a lot to me. When I was a part of it I would get excited. I would love meeting new people, and it helped me grow deeper in my relationship with God to go to these events,” she recalled.

That deep relationship inspired her to become a youth minister, helping others grow closer to God like the students at the rally.

“Events like this helps to strengthen their faith because it takes Jesus out of a textbook and makes it a real person somebody they can have a relationship with,” said Paul Morisi, the director of Youth and Young Adult Formation for the Brooklyn Diocese.

“And the more of these things that we can do that help the church come alive in a real and meaningful way to them, the better off our church is and the lives of these young people will be,” he added.

Event leaders explained how these events especially target the youth through worship, a faith discussion by youth minister Lauren Gentry and adoration.

“Studies are showing that people are leaving the church at younger ages, so gatherings like this help to mold young people into good Catholics,” said Morisi, noting that especially for middle school students, that’s around the age kids begin questioning their faith.

Students also practiced the Catholic value of loving thy neighbor by bringing donations for a homeless outreach program.

“The message is very simple: that they’re made to be loved by God and their vocation is to love others in the same way,” said Father Sean Suckiel, pastor of Holy Family Church.

Indigenous Leaders Call for New ‘Amazonian Rite’ in Final Days of Synod

By Melissa Butz

For nearly a month, a daily topic in the synod hall has been a new “Amazonian Rite” for the Catholic Church. As the final document is currently being drafted, Synod fathers and indigenous peoples are debating how to make it a reality.

”Like all the churches that are part of the Christian faith, including the churches in Latin America, we need to be able to express our faith in our own schemes,” explained Father Eleazar López Hernández, an indigenous Catholic priest from Mexico.

Yet, two leaders from ethnic groups in the Amazon regions who are representatives at the Synod say this idea is nothing new.

“We already celebrate our own spirituality and live out our traditions, cultures, values. We live starting with evangelization and we are the result of evangelization,” argued Sister Mariluce Dos Santos Mesquita of Brazil’s Barassana ethnic community.

“From here, I see you restless. Perhaps you don’t understand what the Amazon really needs. We have our own cosmology and way to see the world, which brings us closer to God and nature,” added Delio Siticonatzi Camaiteri of Perù’s Ashaninca community.

These ethnic leaders say they are not asking for a new church or a different religion. They are

desiring that harmony — with nature, people and God — be incorporated into their spiritual life in a way that addresses the multi-ethnic and linguistic reality present in the Amazon basin.

The representatives from these ethnic groups said they want to be recognized by the Holy Father, but that like all Christian faiths, their main goal is for Christ to be at the center of it all.

Church in Syria and Iraq Could ‘Vanish’ if Islamic State Regroups, New Report Claims

By Charles Collins

LEICESTER, United Kingdom (Crux) — A new report says Christians are faring better in conflict-ravaged regions in the Middle East, but the precarious situation means the Church could vanish in places like Syria and Iraq if the Islamic State mounted another campaign in the region.

Produced by the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the annual report – called ‘Persecuted and Forgotten?’- was as launched on Oct. 23 at the UK Parliament in London.

The report found that the persecution of Christians in core Middle East countries such as Syria and Iraq declined greatly in 2017-2019 following a period of genocide earlier in the decade, but warned the situation was fragile and warned the Church in the region “could vanish if radical Islamists were to mount another attack on vulnerable communities.”

The report said there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq before 2003 but by mid-2019, they had fallen to well below 150,000 and perhaps even less than 120,000 – a decline of up to 90 percent within a generation. In neighboring Syria, Christian numbers have fallen by two thirds since the conflict began in 2011.

However, the conditions have slowly improved after the Islamic State group was largely dismantled in the country.

“An Aid to the Church in Need fact-finding trip to Syria in February 2019 revealed that in many parts of the country extreme poverty had supplanted persecution as the main problem facing Christians,” the organization said in a statement.

“Hence, this is the first edition of ‘Persecuted and Forgotten?’ since 2011 in which Syria does not appear among countries selected for special consideration in this report,” it said.

However, officials at ACN are concerned the recent Turkish incursion into Kurdish area of Syria – home to a large Christian community – could be catastrophic.

“The current crisis poses the distinct threat that Daesh [the Islamic State group] fighters may be freed in the chaos of any fighting,” said ACN’s Fionn Shiner.

Kurdish militias have been holding thousands of captured Islamic State group fighters, and it is unclear what is happening as the Turkish military advances.

Shiner said the release of Islamic State group fighters poses an “existential threat” to Christians in the region.

“Daesh’s actions during the Syrian civil war were widely regarded as genocidal,” he told Crux.

“It’s not just the first-hand atrocities – rape, murder, torture, etc. – but the increased exodus their revival would lead to. Many Christians would understandably leave,” he explained.

“If they were able to regroup it could literally spell the end of Christianity in Iraq. Daesh fighters attempted to eradicate any sign of Christianity in the region. There is no reason to doubt that they would do the same again,” Shiner said.

Although ACN is aware of the dangers in the region, it still trumpeted the main good news in the report: Islamist violence has steeply declined in Iraq and Syria, and Christians are being able to return to their homes is some areas of both countries.

The report noted that by June 2019, 9,130 Christian families were back in Nineveh, 46 percent of the total in 2014.

“The defeat of Daesh was a victory for Christians in the region and has led to a huge decline of persecution,” Shiner told Crux, but he warned “the effects of the genocide – migration, security crises, extreme poverty and slow recovery – leaves Christians in a perilous position.”

The 2019 report noted that although the scale of violence against Christians is much reduced, the evidence suggests that the retreating Islamic State fighters left behind a legacy of increased hostility towards Christians among sections of the local community.

“Church leaders described how the militants have kindled a caliphate mentality, which brands Christians as unwelcome outsiders in spite of the fact that their presence in the region pre-dates the coming of Islam,” the report says.

“In general terms, military victory over Daesh has failed to stem the flow of Christians fleeing Syria. ACN interviews with Christian refugees in neighboring Lebanon and Jordan show the faithful have little appetite to return. Although moderate Muslims did indicate a wish for Christians to stay, ACN reports highlight a growing marginalization of Christians in society, with increasing discrimination in the workplace and in public,” the report explains.

In 2018 alone, ACN provided around $15 million in support for the Church in Syria and Iraq, including the construction of churches, emergency aid, training of priests, and providing Bibles to the Christian population.

“In Iraq, ACN’s focus is on areas not covered by other aid agencies. For example, the reconstruction of churches and ecclesiastical institutions, monasteries, schools, kindergartens, rectories and parish centers,” Shiner said.

The pontifical charity also established the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee – working along with the Syrian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox and Chaldean Catholic Churches – which is attempting to persuade refugees to settle back in the Nineveh Plains.

“Another positive development is the increase in international concern for Christian persecution. The Bishop of Truro’s review was a boon in the UK, whilst Trump’s administration has put money into the region, as have Hungary with their Hungary Helps campaign,” Shiner added.

Anglican Bishop Philip Mounstephen of Truro was asked by the UK Foreign Office to write a report on the persecution of Christians around the world, which came out in the summer.

ACN also highlighted the fact that both the UK and European Union recently an official envoy for international religious freedom as a sign that the world leaders are waking up to the problem of Christian persecution.

“The international community could to preserve Christianity in the Middle East. As the report writes: If security can be guaranteed there is every indication that Christianity could survive in Nineveh and Erbil,” Shiner told Crux.

“In many ways Christians in the Middle East are at a crossroads: Will the international community mobilize itself enough to secure their future? There is certainly hope. The threat of a Daesh resurgence is exactly that: A threat. If it does not come to fruition – God willing – and if families continue to return to their homes, then Christians could begin the slow process of rebuilding.”

Democratic Presidential Candidates Proposing Universal Basic Income

Currents News Staff

The Democrats who are running for president are all talking about how to help poorer people pay their bills.

One idea, called a universal basic income, is to give every adult in America free money.

Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang is a big supporter of this idea, saying that the free money would help reach the Christian goal of loving one’s neighbor.

Saint John’s University economics professor Charles Clark also argues that a government-funded income for all would be good, and joins Currents News to discuss the risks and benefits of this idea, as well as how such a redistribution of wealth would function through a Catholic lense.

Currents News for Wednesday, October 23, 2019

On the newscast: President Trump says he’s brokered a permanent ceasefire in Syria and gotten a vow from Turkey to protect people of faith; Joe Biden is apologizing in an about-face after he blasted the President for calling impeachment a lynching; Giving away money to everyone. The idea is picking up steam, but is it moral? An expert joins us; And, why a priest is so excited about tonight’s World Series game.

Watch weeknights at 7:00 pm EST on NET-TV in the New York City area on Spectrum, Optimum, and Fios. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive notifications about new content.

Deacon Helps Priests Bring New Life to Churches in Brooklyn Diocese

By Tim Harfmann

As the business manager at Saint Augustine Church in Park Slope, Deacon Dean Dobbins is a busy man.

He’s on the job thanks to Brooklyn’s Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who put in place a program that frees up priests from office work so that they can better minister to their people.

“We’re trying to relieve the priests of the administration, get them to do more of the pastoral work; so that’s basically the aim of, I think, for the future,” said Bishop DiMarzio.

With a business background, Deacon Dean deals with the day-to-day operations so priests can bring new life to the church.

Now he is taking on managing a second Brooklyn Church: Saint Catharine of Alexandria in Borough Park.

“I didn’t think about it. I accepted it because I know what I could do here, I can bring there,” he explained.

“I think we need to evangelize more and bring in more people to our church. We have some beautiful churches in Brooklyn and Queens, and you know we have a lot of churches in Brooklyn and Queens; and the pastors do a great job, but we continue to need to bring more people back,” he added.

Father Thomas Brosnan says that Bishop DiMarzio’s program is working, and that Deacon Dean is making a big difference.

“After being a pastor for 25 years, I can relax in a sense, and just devote myself to the pastoral needs here at St. Augustine,” he said.

The business-managing deacon is also noticing that both Mass attendance and donations are up.

“The collections at St. Augustine just went up almost a thousand dollars a week, due to just a letter we sent out to parishioners asking for help,” said Deacon Dean.

Jonathan Fenelon, who works at St. Augustine’s rectory, is also grateful that Deacon Dean is there.

“At the end of the day, we all know what we have to do; so that makes it easier on everybody,” he said.

Cardinal Says Synod Seeks to Give Women Greater Role in Church Governance

By Melissa Butz and Christopher White, The Tablet’s National Correspondent

ROME — Catholic bishops are not fully utilizing Church law to maximize the role of women in decision making capacities, Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai said on Oct. 23.

While acknowledging that women are unable to hear confession, say Mass, or administer confirmation, “she can do practically everything else,” said Cardinal Gracias. “Women can even be in charge of a parish according to Church law.”

Cardinal Gracias’s remarks came during a press briefing as the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon nears its final conclusion this week, where the role of women in the Church has been a repeated theme as the Church considers how to better respond to the pastoral needs of the Amazon region.

“We must use all of this,” he added, noting that Pope Francis “very [much] wants decentralization,” and for bishops to enact changes where they can already do so without the permission of the Holy See.

In addition to being the archbishop of Mumbai, Cardinal Gracias serves on Francis’s Council of Cardinal Advisors.

The role of women in the Church dominated much of Wednesday’s press conference with several of the other representatives from the Amazon speaking for the need for concrete and tangible action, while steering clear of addressing the question of women’s ordination to the diaconate, which is anticipated to be addressed in some form in the Synod’s final document.

Bishop Ricardo Ernesto Centellas Guzmán of Potosí, Bolivia, who heads the country’s bishops’ conference, also called for a change in “mindset” when it comes to women in the Church.

“We all have to change our mentality to make sure participation of women becomes authentic and that is equitable and fair,” he said.

At present, he said the role of women who are involved in decision-making power is “very low,” adding that in some places it is “almost invisible.”

“Things must change by starting with the smaller things,” he said, noting that work in the parish level and local communities is the place to start. He specifically called out pastoral councils that only give women consultation status, without any real decision making abilities.

A walking Church, he said, included “walking together and deciding together,” adding “otherwise we will be limping together, not walking.”

Sister Roselei Bertoldo, a nun from Brazil who works in human trafficking, echoed his words, telling reporters that the structure of the Church is often focused on men when it comes to questions of authority.

“We want to become the protagonist in this process,” she said. “We will not keep silent. We want space, and we will start building a space.”

Also a part of Wednesday’s discussion was the theme of inculturation and how to best adapt the practices of the faith to the Amazon region in a specific way that is mindful of local customs and traditions.

Inculturation, said Cardinal Gracias, “flows from the Incarnation. Our Lord became incarnated.”

Historically, he said when discussion of inculturation has been raised, the focus has been on questions of liturgy, which he deemed to be a “mistake” in its singular scope.

He argued for the need for greater consideration of question of inculturation when it comes to priestly formation, seminaries, and their staffs.

The Synod of Bishops on the Amazon is set to conclude with a Mass on October 27.

On Saturday, the bishops will vote on the final document, which on Wednesday, Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, said would not be the end result of the Synod, but rather a “tool” that “everyone can use to take steps forward.”

Group Advocates for Women’s Ordination on the Sidelines of the Synod

By Christopher White, The Tablet’s National Correspondent

ROME — As the Vatican’s meeting on the Amazon draws to a close this week, one group is using the occasion to seek new roles for women in leadership, hosting a prayer vigil on Oct. 23 in support of women’s ordination to the priesthood and the diaconate.

“Without women there would be no Catholic Church in the Amazon region,” said Miriam Duignan, a spokeswoman for Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW), the organizing umbrella group that organized the event.

The gathering took place along the banks of the Tiber River, just steps away from where on Oct. 21 two individuals had created a frenzy in Rome after raiding a Roman church to steal a statue of a naked pregnant woman which has been used in several of the synod’s ceremonies and tossed it in the river.

Critics of the statue have accused the Synod’s organizers of supporting a pagan symbol, while the Vatican has insisted the statue is a representation of life and fertility.

“We want to remind everybody that women are already working in priestly ministry and diaconal ministry across the Amazon region,” Duignan told reporters before a group of seven women recited a series of prayers and joined together in singing, “Sister, Carry On.”

Holding a banner stating “Empowered women will save the Earth; Empowered women will save Church,” the individuals donned bright purple and green attire, noting that not only are they the colors of the suffragette movement, but green was chosen to be in solidarity with the ecological justice movement and purple is the traditional color of the women’s ordination movement.

As Pope Francis has convened bishops from the region to consider how the Church can more effectively respond to pastoral needs of the Amazon – where in some remote villages, a shortage of priests has led to Catholics only receiving the Eucharist once or twice a year – the proposal to ordain viri probati, established men within the community, some of whom are married, has dominated much of the headlines.

Participants of Tuesday’s gathering said they wanted the Holy Father not to “skip straight to organizing yet more men,” which they said would “supplant” the women who are already “doing the work” of pastoral ministry in the region.

“It is a matter of urgent justice that the role that women are playing is recognized,” said Duignan, adding that they would like for Francis not only to green light women’s ordination to the diaconate – a discussion he expressed openness to since establishing a committee to study the topic in 2016 – but also women’s ordination, a debate which the pope has previously said the Church has closed the door.

Earlier this year, he said the commission couldn’t come to a conclusion, and encouraged the members to continue to study the question.

Those on hand on Oct. 22 argued that the women in the Amazon region are already serving that function and pleaded for Francis and the synod’s participants to formally recognize it.

“Now we as a church must finally deliver justice for women and ordain women,” Duignan said, adding that the Church must stop “quibbling over medieval, manmade, technical differences between what the sacramental rite can and should be and what men and women can and should be and how they’re different.”

“They are not different when it comes to allowing women to do the work,” she said.

The Synod of Bishops on the Amazon is set to conclude on Oct. 27, and the final document is widely expected to recommend some form of ordination for married priests and to include some reference to women deacons.

After the first reports from the Synod’s small groups were released, the various working language groups appeared to be divided on the question of women deacons in the region, with one group deeming it “necessary and urgent” and others calling for more study on the question.

“Start in the Amazon,” Duignan concluded her remarks. “It will go elsewhere, but it has to start somewhere.”