Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at the Republican National Convention on July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. / Credit: Maxim Elramsisy/Shutterstock

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 14, 2024 / 16:10 pm (CNA).

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Catholic, is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for the key post of U.S. secretary of state.

“Marco is a highly respected leader and a powerful voice for freedom. He will be a strong advocate for our nation, a true friend to our allies, and a fearless warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump announced on Wednesday. 

“I am honored by the trust President Trump has placed in me,” Rubio said in a Nov. 13 post on X. “As secretary of state, I will work every day to carry out his foreign policy agenda,” he continued. “Under the leadership of President Trump we will deliver peace through strength and always put the interests of Americans and America above all else.”

In an interview with EWTN News last week prior to his nomination, the Republican senator said he wants to turn the electoral mandate Trump received “into action so that it becomes a governing coalition in this country that allows us to actually get good things done for America.”

In the senator’s biography, which was included in Trump’s announcement, it states that “Rubio was born in 1971 in Miami as the son of two Cuban immigrants pursuing the American dream. His father worked as a banquet bartender while his mother split time as a stay-at-home mom and a hotel maid. From an early age, Rubio learned the importance of faith, family, community, and dignified work to the good life.” 

Rubio made his first Communion in 1984. He received the sacrament of confirmation and was married in the Catholic Church to Colombian Jeanette Dousdebes, with whom he has four children.

Speaking at length about his faith during his 2016 run for president, Rubio said he is “fully, theologically, doctrinally aligned with the Roman Catholic Church.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

null / Credit: txking/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Nov 14, 2024 / 15:40 pm (CNA).

A pair of Republican and Democratic U.S. senators recently questioned the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Colette Peters, about why several faith-based recidivism reduction programs have been turned down in recent years from working in federal prisons. 

Sens. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, and Gary Peters, D-Michigan, in a Nov. 12 letter reviewed by CNA expressed concern over what they see as a lack of transparency in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) selection process for evidence-based recidivism reduction (EBRR) programs and productive activities (PA).

Lankford and Peters called on the bureau to provide information regarding the its use of outside organizations for recidivism reduction programs, particularly faith-based organizations.

At issue is the First Step Act (FSA), signed into law by President Donald Trump during his first term in late 2018, which provides funding for rehabilitation programs such as education, drug treatment, and vocational training in federal prisons. The law was drafted to reduce rates of recidivism — former inmates reentering prisons for new crimes after they have served their term. The bipartisan act enjoyed support from many Catholics as a way to improve the country’s criminal justice system.

The FSA provides “a diverse range of community-based, private, and nonprofit program options” in federal prisons, including faith-based programs. 

Specifically, it states that policies should be developed for prisons to partner with “nonprofit and other private organizations, including faith-based, art, and community-based organizations that will deliver recidivism reduction programming on a paid or volunteer basis.”

But since the passage of the FSA, the bureau has approved few applications for new EBRR and PA programs, the senators note, observing that the “implementation of recidivism reduction partnerships appears stagnant.” 

“[W]e learned through communication with BOP that since the FSA became law, BOP has received eight external faith-based applications. Of the eight external faith-based applications, five were denied, two were approved, while another remains pending review. To the best of our knowledge, the two that have been approved are PAs, meaning there are currently zero external faith-based EBRRs operating within BOP,” the letter reads. 

“These numbers are concerning, particularly at a time when individuals across the BOP system are on waitlists to participate in EBRR programming.”

Lankford and Peters requested documentation detailing the bureau’s selection criteria, approval, and rejection data for external applicants categorized by entity type; Federal Bureau of Prisons policies regarding the FSA; and the results of a 2023 independent program review.

The senators did not identify which faith-based groups submitted applications that the bureau denied. They set a Dec. 13 deadline for the bureau to send them the information they seek. 

A Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson confirmed to a different publication that it received the senators’ letter but declined to comment further.

Marian Tompson, 94, a founder of La Leche League, resigned over the group’s decision to allow men who believe they are women to participate in the organization’s breastfeeding support groups. / Credit: Author I'm nonpartisan|Wikimedia|CC BY-SA 3.0

CNA Staff, Nov 14, 2024 / 15:10 pm (CNA).

Two leaders of a major global mother’s breastfeeding support group, including one of the organization’s founders, have resigned amid the group’s decision to allow males to participate in meetings that have historically been open only to mothers. 

The international board of La Leche League recently directed all British affiliates to begin accommodating men who believe they are women.

La Leche League was founded in Illinois in 1956 by Marian Tompson and six other women to offer mother-to-mother breastfeeding support, first in the U.S. and then beyond. At the time in the United States, the vast majority of babies were bottle-fed, with many medical experts urging mothers away from breastfeeding in favor of formulas.

Tompson, 94, announced this week that she was resigning from the group’s board of directors after accusing the organization of becoming “a travesty of my original intent.”

Tompson said the group was launched with the aim of “supporting biological women who want to give their babies the best start in life by breastfeeding them.” 

Yet the group’s aim has shifted, she said, “to include men who, for whatever reason, want to have the experience of breastfeeding.” 

LGBT advocates have argued that men who believe they are women are capable of breastfeeding babies by way of taking synthetic hormones and inducing lactation via nipple stimulation. Tompson in her resignation noted that there has been “no careful long-term research on male lactation and how that may affect the baby.”

“This shift from following the norms of nature, which is the core of mothering through breastfeeding, to indulging the fantasies of adults, is destroying our organization,” Tompson wrote. 

She said she had attempted to change the group’s focus as one of its board members but that “it has become clear that there is nothing I can do to change this trajectory by staying involved.”

“Still, I leave the door open to come back when La Leche League returns to its original mission and purpose,” she said. 

Also this week, Scottish breastfeeding advocate Miriam Main announced that she was leaving La Leche League after serving for several years as a lactation counselor and on the council of directors of the league’s Great Britain affiliate. 

Main said her concerns began when she noticed changes being made to official group literature, such as the term “mother” being replaced with “parent” and “breastfeed” being replaced with “chestfeed.”

A “group of zealots from within the organization” propelled further changes, she said, including orders that the group would have to begin accepting “men who wished to breastfeed” into support groups. 

Critics of the decision were “told we were transphobic, and we were compared to racists and Nazis” by organization leaders, Main said. A petition to the La Leche League International Board eventually led to an order for all affiliates in Great Britain to offer breastfeeding support “to all nursing parents, regardless of their gender identity or sex.”

The organization’s leaders have “shown that theoretical male lactation trumps the needs of real women living in the U.K.,” Main said. 

“The grief I feel at losing LLL from my life is huge,” Main said, urging remaining leaders at the organization to “listen to their hearts and decide what to do next.”

Neither Main nor Tompson responded to requests for comment on their respective departures. 

In her book “Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood,” author Sheila Kippley argues that breastfeeding is “an integral part of the vocation of Christian motherhood.”

“God’s breastfeeding plan is simple,” Kippley writes. “Yet this simple plan can have far-reaching effects upon the human race, offering numerous benefits for the baby, for the mother, and for society.” 

“God’s plan is indeed good, and it is therefore good for us to try to follow it,” she says. 

Pope Francis, meanwhile, has several times spoken out in favor of breastfeeding, for instance telling mothers in the Sistine Chapel in 2017: “You mothers, go ahead and breastfeed, without fear. Just like the Virgin Mary nursed Jesus.”

null / Credit: Kanok Sulaiman/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Nov 14, 2024 / 14:40 pm (CNA).

The Ohio Legislature approved a bill on Wednesday that would require students in public K–12 schools to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex rather than their subjective “gender identity.” 

The 74-page S.B. 104 would “enact the Protect All Students Act regarding single-sex bathroom access in primary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education.” 

The Protect All Students Act would require K–12 schools to designate all bathrooms and locker rooms that are accessible by multiple students to be exclusively for use by either male or female students. 

The bill does not allow schools to “knowingly” permit students to use a bathroom designated for the opposite sex.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has previously indicated that he will sign the bill. DeWine declined to comment further until he reviewed the bill in its final form, the governor’s spokesman, Dan Tierney, told CNA.

The Republican-backed bill defines “biological sex” as “the biological indication of male and female … without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender.” The bill points administrators to the individual’s birth record to prove biological sex.

The bill also prohibits multi-gender or non-gender facilities but allows family and single-use bathrooms. The bill does not apply to people who need assistance to use the bathroom, school employees, or emergency situations.

The bill also prevents males from sharing overnight accommodations with females but does not prohibit single-occupancy accommodations at student request.

Jocelyn Rosnick, policy director for ACLU of Ohio, condemned the bill in a statement, saying that it would “create unsafe environments for trans and gender non-confirming individuals of all ages.” 

“We are incredibly disheartened by the Ohio General Assembly’s continuous attacks against transgender and gender non-conforming individuals across Ohio,” Rosnick stated. 

“Senate Bill 104 is a cruel invasion of students’ rights to privacy, which could result in unwarranted governmental disclosures of private, personal information,” she claimed.

David Mahan, the policy director for Ohio’s Center for Christian Virtue, in contrast called the bill’s approval “a huge victory for children and families in Ohio.” 

“Amended S.B. 104 is commonsense legislation that will guarantee the only people entering young ladies’ private spaces are female, not men claiming to be female,” Mahan stated. “We call on Gov. DeWine to sign S.B. 104 into law to protect the privacy of women and young girls.”

State laws for public K–12 schools in more than a dozen states require bathroom use to align with sex. Utah and Florida, meanwhile, require all government facilities to have designated male and female bathrooms with bathroom use based on sex.

null / Credit: AI-generated image created by OpenAI’s DALL-E, generated with assistance from ChatGPT

Vatican City, Nov 14, 2024 / 13:50 pm (CNA).

Catholic cardinals this week donned virtual reality headsets at the premiere of an innovative art exhibit that opened this week for the 2025 Jubilee Year showcasing contemporary art inspired by artificial intelligence.

The exhibit, titled “Interconnected Hearts: Taiwan Contemporary Art Exhibition 2024,” is hosted at the Republic of China’s Embassy to the Holy See, just steps away from St. Peter’s Square. It features art created by three Taiwanese artists using 3D scanning, virtual reality (VR), machine learning, and AI technologies.

Among the first to try out the VR headsets at the exhibit’s premiere on Nov. 11 was 84-year-old Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi, the pope’s special delegate to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, the prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, described the art exhibition as “intriguing and extremely innovative.”

Using VR headsets by META, Tolentino experienced a piece by Hung Yu Hao, which digitally unites architectural elements from Taiwan and St. Peter’s Square in a shared virtual space. 

“The works that are before our eyes today flow from the creativity of human genius, enhanced by the use of artificial intelligence,” the Portuguese cardinal said.

Taiwan’s embassy to the Holy See sponsored the art exhibit as a testament to Pope Francis’ commitment to examining AI’s ethical implications, both in his message for the World Day for Peace 2024 and in the pope’s speech to the G7 in Puglia.

At the exhibit’s opening, Ambassador Matthew Lee highlighted how Taiwan is “at the vanguard of AI technology with advanced ingenuity and human resources.”

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has declared his commitment to transforming Taiwan into an “AI Island.”

The ambassador noted that the exhibit, which will run through Feb. 14, 2025, has been officially added to the jubilee cultural events calendar by the Dicastery for Evangelization.

“The Chinese title of the art exhibition, ‘心信相連,’ expresses that the hearts of the faithful are connected with God, filled with faith to God, and therefore forging an unwavering trust in God,” Lee said.

As the Vatican embraces new technology, the Church remains mindful of AI’s ethical implications. Cardinal Tolentino noted that Pope Franics has described AI’s potential to lead to “a cognitive-industrial revolution. 

Tolentino added that this “new magnificent tool” must “always be at the service of the weakest and most needy and never a tool of domination, domination, and oppression.”

“Only in this way will we humans affirm and strengthen our humanity,” the cardinal said.

A high-tech week for the oldest institution in the world also featured a Vatican collaboration with Microsoft. 

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith unveiled a 3D digital model of St. Peter’s Basilica, developed using advanced AI, which allows virtual visitors worldwide to explore the basilica’s art and history.

“It is literally one of the most technologically advanced and sophisticated projects of its kind that has ever been pursued,” said Smith, who has been a leading partner in the Vatican’s AI-ethics initiatives. 

The Microsoft president also announced the launch of an educational Minecraft game exploring St. Peter’s Basilica expected in January 2025 and a new immersive in-person exhibition on the terrace of St. Peter’s Basilica for the Catholic Church’s jubilee year.

Archbishop John Wilson of Southwark. / Credit: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk

London, England, Nov 14, 2024 / 12:40 pm (CNA).

The bishops of England and Wales continue to urge Catholics to “raise their voices” in opposition to an assisted suicide bill, the text of which was published earlier this week.

Late on Nov. 11, English Labour Member of Parliament Kim Leadbeater published her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill before Parliament members vote on it Nov. 29. This means that members have less than three weeks to prepare to vote on a controversial issue.

Archbishop of Southwark John Wilson said: “As followers of the Lord Jesus, we must be bold in our efforts to uphold, respect, and protect every human life from conception until natural death, because if we don’t stand up and value the dignity of human life, who will?”

“The Catholic Church is clear: Every life is valuable — regardless of a person’s physical or mental state,” he continued.

The archbishop’s words come as the contents of Leadbeater’s controversial bill showed that terminally ill adults who are expected to die within six months would legally be able to seek help to kill themselves provided they receive the approval of two doctors and a judge. 

However, Wilson is concerned that the new bill will communicate the message that the elderly and vulnerable are “nothing but a burden to society.”

“People are being presented as a problem,” he said. “As a burden. A statistic. Something we can deal with through ending their life. Where is the dignity in that? Where is the love in that?”

Reacting to those who say “life has no value,” he said: “We need to raise our voices to say that is not true. We are stewards, not owners, of the life we have received. Life is not ours to dispose of.” 

Leadbeater insisted that her bill contains “robust” safeguards, claiming that coercion would lead to 14 years in jail, but Wilson believes the pressure on sick and vulnerable people to opt for assisted suicide would be “immeasurable.”

“The pressure this would put people under who are suffering illnesses or disabilities is immeasurable. It demeans humanity and deprives people of their right to life. This right is given by God and is for God alone to take.”

The archbishop challenged U.K. Catholics to contact their members of Parliament and pray for the defeat of the bill in obedience to their calling as disciples of Christ. 

Warning that the new bill represents “a very real prospect of assisted suicide becoming law in the U.K.,” he said that “as followers of Christ we must do all we can to support and protect the most vulnerable in our society.” 

Issuing a rally call for Catholics to take action, he said: “Together let’s show that we will not stand idly by while the elderly and people with illnesses and disabilities are treated as if they are nothing but a burden to society or to their family. Let’s be clear that they are made in the image and likeness of God.”

Wilson pointed out that, under the new bill, “assisted suicide … will radically change how our health care practitioners care for us.”  

Catholic U.K. medic Dermot Kearney commented that “most [doctors] still believe that the principle of doing no harm to patients is essential in the provision of authentic health care.” Rather than introducing the bill, Kearney told CNA that a better way of approaching end-of-life care would be “to improve and expand the palliative care and hospice services that are already in existence but have been severely underfunded for so long.” 

Bishop Patrick McKinney of Nottingham backed up Archbishop Wilson’s words, with a focus on the social context of the bill’s introduction. 

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has confirmed his own opposition to the bill, has admitted the U.K. National Health Service is “broken.” 

Palliative care services are also in crisis, while many elderly people have seen the government remove their winter fuel payment. 

Following the publication of the bill, McKinney shared his concerns, saying: “Catholics can never support assisted suicide, but our societal context makes this nill even more alarming: An NHS at [its] breaking point, inadequate social care provision, access to palliative care is patchy and underfunded, [and] winter fuel payments withdrawn from many.”

The archbishop of Southwark urged U.K. Catholics to use the Right to Life UK website to contact their members of Parliament and express opposition to assisted suicide. 

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, called on Catholics in England and Wales to join him and his fellow bishops for a Holy Hour on Nov. 13 “to pray for the dignity of human life” in the light of the upcoming vote on Leadbeater’s bill. 

“We pray passionately that we will not take a step in legislation that promotes a so-called ‘right to die,’” Nichols said.

“That will quite likely become a duty to die and place pressure on doctors and medical staff to help take life rather than to care, protect, and heal,” he said.

Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples, Italy. / Credit: Vincenzo Amoruso via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Vatican City, Nov 14, 2024 / 11:55 am (CNA).

Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples, a late addition to the pope’s roster of new cardinals to be created next month, has commanded headlines for years for his strong stand against organized crime in southern Italy.

Battaglia’s reputation as a “street priest” close to drug addicts and the poor has also led some to view him as Pope Francis’ Italian counterpart, christening him the “Bergoglio of South Italy.”

Pope Francis announced earlier this month that he had added the 61-year-old archbishop to the list of new cardinals he will create in a ceremony at the Vatican on Dec. 7.

When Battaglia, or “Don Mimmo,” as he likes to be called, was tapped at the end of 2020 to lead Naples, one of southern Italy’s most important dioceses, he was already almost four years into leading another Church territory in the Campania region — Cerreto Sannita-Telese-Sant’Agata de’ Goti — with its estimated 88,000 Catholics at the time.

Now he is leading over 1.4 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Naples, where he wasted no time in speaking up against the Camorra, the region’s most prominent organized crime group, after his installation in February 2021.

In a statement published online in October 2021, Battaglia responded to a spate of deadly violence in Naples with an appeal for members of organized crime groups to “be converted.” 

“They are killing Naples! The trail of blood that is crossing the city these days, causing death to young lives and terror and anguish to entire neighborhoods, streets, families, cannot leave us indifferent,” he said.

Battaglia’s anti-Mafia initiatives include hands-on outreach to the city’s most affected districts and an educational project developed with members of civil society and the private sector.

From Day 1 in Naples, Battaglia signaled his priorities for the archdiocese: Before his installation Mass in the cathedral, he made a pilgrimage to visit the impoverished neighborhoods of the city.

In a letter to the people of Naples ahead of his consecration, the cardinal-designate wrote that “it is to the least of these that the Lord entrusts the dream of a Church faithful to the Gospel, which makes us share the salt of every pastoral project, which trusts not in structures and programs, but in the mercy of the Father.”

Battaglia grew up in Italy’s deep south in Calabria — the region from which originates the deeply-rooted ‘Ndrangheta crime group.

As a young priest in the Diocese of Catanzaro-Squillace, where he was ordained in 1988, Battaglia served in a center for addicts, a community he has continued to advocate for in the intervening years.

He is also outspoken in his support of victims of domestic violence, the elderly, and the unemployed.

The soon-to-be cardinal is a good friend of another well-known figure and social activist in the Church in Italy, Father Luigi Ciotti.

The 79-year-old priest of Turin is the founder of the associations Gruppo Abele, which helps people with drug and other addictions, and Libera, which combats the abuses of criminal organizations like the Mafia.

“It is oftentimes easy to live our faith inside a church, inside a temple. It is much more difficult to live the faith outside the door of that temple, inside our homes, in our daily lives,” Battaglia said in a homily in Naples in February 2021.

“But today more than ever we need to return to being credible because only credibility really helps us to live to the fullest the beauty of the Gospel. All together we are called out that door to proclaim the beauty of the Gospel that changes lives, that fills our lives.”

“Faith is the ability to choose, to fight for the human against all that is inhuman,” he continued. “Nothing is more important in life than stooping down so that another by grasping your neck can rise up.”

Stephen Hildebrand, vice president for academic affairs at Franciscan University (left); Deborah Savage, professor of theology at Franciscan University (center); and Father Dave Pivonka, TOR, president of Franciscan University (right), at a panel discussion at the Oct. 24-26, 2024, “Man and Woman in the Order of Creation Conference.” / Credit: Franciscan University of Steubenville

CNA Staff, Nov 14, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).

Plans are underway at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio for the launch of an initiative that will address what it means to be human amid “ever-growing confusion in our world” about gender.

Franciscan University President Father Dave Pivonka, TOR, announced the launch of the Institute for the Study of Man and Woman during the Oct. 24–26 “Man and Woman in the Order of Creation Conference.”

The conference featured scholars from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) including Francis Maier and Dr. Aaron Kheriaty as well as Angela Franks, senior fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute, and other academics.

“Franciscan is excited to be a voice of reason and faith in a discussion that is often lacking in both,” Pivonka told CNA.

Men and women together

“‘What does it mean to be human?’ This question has been asked for millennia, but with the ever-growing confusion in our world, it has taken on greater importance today,” Pivonka said.

The priest said the initiative “isn’t an institute to study gender, or only women, or only men.” 

“To come to understand the human person more deeply, we believe we must take seriously the reality that God created both male and female — and we cannot fully understand man apart from woman nor woman apart from man,” he said.

Inspiration for the institute struck when Franciscan theology professor Deborah Savage saw another Catholic university adding a women’s studies program. 

Savage, a St. John Paul II scholar, told CNA that “the truth is you can’t understand woman apart from man or vice versa. They come as a pair.”

The program is still in its early stages and seeking funding. Savage, who proposed the idea, has been working on the project since last summer. 

Through the institute, Savage hopes to develop a Catholic anthropology of men and women, thereby creating an alternative to the perspectives that are at the root of several cultural issues of the day.

“I follow JPII’s advice that we not concentrate on fighting evil but concentrate on building something good,” Savage explained. “My project has been toward that end: to have an actual robust, fully grounded account of man and woman to offer.”

“Just as men’s identities need to be more fully understood and lifted up, so do women’s,” Savage said, noting that men and women are negatively impacted by “the disaster that’s taking place in our culture as a result of the widespread use of artificial contraception.”

Savage credits birth control as both cutting men out “of the most fundamental aspects of the relationship between men and women” and rejecting women’s “basic gift to humanity, which is her capacity to conceive and nurture life.” 

“You can’t find happiness by being willing to reduce yourself to an object of sexual desire,” she noted. “When you reduce the desire for relationship to sex, as we have done, what you’re seeing in front of us unfold is human beings reducing themselves to the level of animals.” 

The lack of meaning is self-destructive, according to Savage.

“We are hotbeds of meaning, and we work so hard to eliminate any significance or meaning to the sexual act, to free ourselves from any constraint, then we’re really destroying everything that makes us human,” Savage said.

Once established, the institute will have a research and teaching component, including a degree program for students. It will also have an outreach component, designed to share ideas through conferences, workshops, and in Catholic schools.

The institute is designed to be interdisciplinary, with faculty from neuroscience, biology, psychology, sociology, and marriage and family studies as well as philosophy and theology.

Cultural issues

Both through the institute and at the recent conference, Franciscan is responding to gender ideology from a Catholic perspective.

Kheriaty, a physician and director of the EPPC program in bioethics and American democracy, noted at the recent conference that differences between men and women run through all levels of human biology. “Aside from our reproductive organs, the most sexually differentiated organ in the human body is the brain," he pointed out.

In addition, he emphasized that "one mistake that contemporary gender theory or gender ideology makes is the notion that a man with some characteristically feminine traits or interests is really a woman trapped in a man’s body, and vice versa. That is not true.”

“He may be a boy who likes ballet, or she may be a girl who likes football. That’s all,” he argued.

“A failure to acknowledge the full extent of this variation and overlap in gender traits results in overly rigid cultural stereotypes in what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman,” Kheriaty continued.

The masculine and feminine genius 

The Catholic understanding of men and women points to both their unity and their distinct masculinity and femininity, Savage and other academics noted. 

A Catholic understanding of men and women can be found in Genesis, in the creation of Adam and Eve. When looking at the creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2, Savage observed that Eve is made from Adam’s rib, which “links them in a one-flesh union for all of eternity.”

“That doesn't mean just a sexual union,” she continued. “That means that they're meant to collaborate as stewards of creation.”

While men and women need to collaborate, they are also distinct. The creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis shows two different experiences, which Savage calls the masculine and feminine geniuses. 

For Adam, “his first encounter of a reality is of a horizon that only contains lower-ordered creatures,” Savage explained. “The goods of creation, he knows them; he knows them well.”

“A woman's contact with reality is very different,” she added. “Her first contact is with Adam's face. She has never lived in a horizon that did not already contain other persons.” 

Meanwhile, the masculine genius “is very much tied up in his capacity to put the goods of creation at the service of his wife and his family and the community,” Savage said, noting that “men seem to be more ordered toward objects than toward persons.” 

Franks, a theology professor at St. John’s Seminary and senior fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute, added that identity is received from God. 

“If we conceive of identity not as a project but as a received task, then what becomes most important is not discerning what I want or desire or feel…[but rather] what the source of my identity has in mind for me,” she said. 

Sister Clare Crockett. / Credit: Courtesy of Servants of the Home of the Mother

CNA Staff, Nov 14, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Sister Clare Crockett was a young religious sister who died in 2016 at the age of 34 in an earthquake in Ecuador that left hundreds dead. On Nov. 4, the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, her religious community, announced the beginning of her cause for beatification. 

But just who is Sister Clare Crockett? Here are seven things to know about the young sister who left a lasting impact on people around the world:

1. Crockett was born on Nov. 14, 1982, in Derry, Northern Ireland. She was a fun-loving teenager and quickly grabbed the attention of television producers. She voiced the character of Lucy in the children's series "Hi Lucy" on EWTN5. At the age of 15, she was hired to host a show on the British network Channel 4 and at 17 she caught the attention of Nickelodeon. By 18, she was living a life of partying and alcohol.

2. In 2000, a friend of Crockett invited her on a free trip to Spain. Thinking it was going to be a trip filled with parties and time spent on the beach, Crockett went. However, it ended up being a 10-day, Holy Week retreat run by the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, a community founded in 1982 with a focus on the Eucharist, Marian spirituality, and outreach to youth. It was here that Crockett experienced a life-changing conversion.

   It was Good Friday and Crockett began to witness the faithful approach Jesus on the cross, genuflect, and kiss his feet. Crockett had never seen anything like this before so she followed along. When it was her turn, she went up, kissed Jesus’ feet, and left forever changed. 

   “That simple event lasted only 10 seconds. To kiss the cross — something that seemed so insignificant — had such a strong impact on me,” she wrote in her personal testimony.  

   “I do not know how to explain exactly what happened,” she added. “I did not see the choirs of angels or a white dove come down from the ceiling and descend on me, but I had the certainty that the Lord was on the cross, for me.”

   “And along with that conviction, I felt a great sorrow, similar to what I had experienced when I was little and prayed the Stations of the Cross. When I returned to my pew, I already had imprinted in me something that was not there before. I had to do something for him who had given his life for me.”

3. In 2001, just a year after her conversion, Crockett gave her life to God as a candidate in the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother. She took her first vows on Feb. 18, 2006, and her final vows on Sept. 8, 2010.

4. Crockett’s first assignment was at the community at Belmonte in Cuenca, Spain. There she served in a home for girls that came from families dealing with various difficult circumstances. 

5. In October 2012, Crockett received a new assignment that took her to Ecuador. Here she had several assignments taking her to different areas of the country evangelizing the youth. The sisters gave classes in schools in poor areas and hosted retreats and summer camps. They also tended to the poor, bringing them not only the word of God but also food baskets, medicine, and other material items and resources. 

6. Crockett is remembered by many as always carrying her guitar, which was her great companion in evangelization. She always sang, even to the point of losing her voice and despite heat, fatigue, and suffering from migraines. Sisters from her order also remember her great sense of humor and giving of herself completely to others. 

7. On April 16, 2016, a magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck the Ecuadorian province of Manabí, killing at least 600 people, including Crockett. Her story spread around the world, touching the lives of many, and on Nov. 4, her cause for beatification was officially announced.

The opening ceremony of Crockett’s cause will take place on Jan. 12, 2025, at the Cathedral of Alcalá de Henares in Spain. The postulator of the cause is Sister Kristen Gardner of the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother.

null / Credit: DCStockPhotography/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 14, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

A subcommittee in the House of Representatives launched an inquiry into the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after a grant recipient admitted that she concealed findings in a tax-funded study because it failed to show any mental health benefits for children who are prescribed transgender puberty-blocking drugs.

“In light of the NIH grantee’s unwillingness to release the research project’s findings, we ask that you provide documents and information to assist the committee’s oversight of this matter,” Rep. Lisa McClain, the chair of the Oversight and Accountability’s Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services, wrote in a letter to NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli.

Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the leading researcher on the study, told the New York Times three weeks ago that she withheld the study’s results because the findings could bolster criticism of puberty blockers being used on children. The drugs are designed to facilitate a gender transition of a minor by delaying his or her normal development during puberty.

Olson-Kennedy, who works as the medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, told the Times that she did “not want our work to be weaponized” by critics and lawmakers who want to prohibit doctors from prescribing these drugs to children.

The NIH allocated nearly $10 million of taxpayer money for several projects, which included the research led by Olson-Kennedy to give puberty blockers to 95 children who suffered from gender dysphoria and analyze whether the drugs improved their mental health. The average age for a child enrolled in the study was less than 11 and a half years old and the researchers could not find any mental health benefits.

“We are alarmed that the project’s principal investigator, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, is withholding publication of the project’s research findings, which cast doubt on the efficacy of the ‘gender affirming’ model, because she believes the findings could be ‘weaponized’ by critics of transgender medical interventions for children,” McClain wrote in the letter.

McClain also accuses Olson-Kennedy of mischaracterizing the study to the Times by telling the reporter that the mental health of the children was “in really good shape” when the study began, even though the researchers previously reported high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.

“Deliberately mischaracterizing and withholding the results of the … study has serious implications for the health and safety of children who are subjected to ‘gender affirming’ medical procedures, many of which are irreversible and hold lifelong implications despite lacking adequate scientific support for their efficacy or safety,” the letter adds.

“NIH is responsible for overseeing its extramural research projects to ensure supported researchers practice transparency, exemplify scientific integrity, and are proper stewards of taxpayer funds,” McClain wrote.

The subcommittee requested that the NIH provide all research grant applications and summary statements regarding the broader project about transgender youth, including progress reports, unpublished data, and certain communication documents.

Neither the NIH nor Olson-Kennedy responded to CNA’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA that the House’s inquiry into the grants “seems eminently sensible, given NIH policy that specifies that the results and accomplishments of the activities that it funds should be made available to the research community and to the public at large.”

“This public duty constitutes a basic ethical obligation for researchers who are recipients of public funds (more than $9 million in this case) made available through traditional NIH grants,” Pacholczyk added.

Jane Anderson, the vice president of the American College of Pediatricians, which opposes the use of transgender drugs and surgeries on children, told CNA that “it is crucial that all scientific information be released so families and youth can make truly informed decisions, especially when the research is taxpayer funded.”

“The integrity of medicine, not to mention the safety of our patients, is at risk when we ignore scientific facts for political reasons,” Anderson said.

This is not the first time health care professionals have suppressed information related to the effectiveness of gender transitions of children. 

In 2021, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) eliminated proposed age-based guidelines that encouraged doctors to wait until children reach a certain age before giving them hormone-altering medications or providing them with transgender surgical procedures. Rather, the organization forwent any age-based suggestions after facing external pressure from the Biden-Harris administration.

Some studies have raised major concerns about puberty blockers, such as a Mayo Clinic study published earlier this year, which found that boys might suffer irreversible harm from the drugs, such as fertility problems and atrophied testes.

Earlier this year, the United Kingdom halted the use of puberty blockers for children after an independent review failed to find comprehensive evidence to support the routine prescription of transgender drugs to minors with gender dysphoria.

President-elect Donald Trump has called the use of transgender drugs and surgeries on minors a form of “child abuse.” He has vowed to instruct the Department of Justice to investigate “Big Pharma and the big hospital networks” to look into whether they are covering up evidence about the harms of gender transitions.