Category: News

 

SURFSIDE, Fla. (CNS) – After girding themselves with eucharistic adoration, rosary, songs and reflections, the teens, young adults and parish community of St. Joseph stepped out into the night air to solemnly walk to Surfside’s new ground zero.

For three hours – and all the way until midnight – the participants in the June 26 prayer vigil, organized in response to the Champlain Towers South partial collapse, turned their thoughts heavenward: 12 parish families were affected by the tragedy, eight of whom remain missing.

As of June 30, 16 people were confirmed dead and about 145 others were still missing as search and rescue efforts entered their seventh day.

The death toll from the tragic collapse could end up on par with that of the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City if few or no more victims are rescued from the dismal scene of rubble being televised around the world. In that earlier tragedy, after a two-week rescue effort ended, the fatalities numbered 168.

Fires, winds and intermittent heavy rains have hampered an already logistically challenging rescue effort after the collapsed towers’ floors piled up on themselves in a pancakelike fashion.

On June 27, St. Joseph Parish released a list of registered members who had lived in Champlain Towers South, and church leaders pointed out that many others who lived there were likely informally associated with the parish.

The area is popular with tourists and international visitors to Miami Beach, Florida.

“This was definitely a shock, but it is bringing people together in prayer; there has been a lot of people coming here to donate things,” said George Sanchez, parish youth ministry leader and a resident of the Allapattah neighborhood in Miami.

“Our pastor (Father Juan Sosa) wanted the youth to be present and of course we responded with generosity, and we put together the best we could since this is the parish nearest the disaster and it is a place where people can come and pray and be with others who support them,” Sanchez said. “It is just a space we are creating for anyone who wants to come and pray for their loved ones and to incite hope.”

Judith Montalvan, another of the parish youth leaders and a pilgrim to Panama’s Worth Youth Day event in 2019, said the young people publicized the prayer vigil on Instagram and every other social media platform they could think of “so that it would get to the people who need it most at this time.”

“We do know that families from our parish are (missing), so we are just praying and hoping still to have faith that they might be (OK),” Montalvan told the Florida Catholic, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Miami.

“This is a kind of supervised space for people to come and be with God,” she said. “I think in these moments when disasters happen, the one thing we know for a fact is that God is with us, and providing those spaces for people to come feel closer to him in a moment when we feel so alone and scared and all these negative emotions.”

The youth brought with them items and symbols of the fire and rescue, law enforcement and medical communities and placed them around the altar along with donations of flowers.

Carrie Barillas, a member of the pastoral staff at St. Joseph who helped organize the event, said the parish has been inundated with calls of support and people wishing to assist in some way.

“We have had an outpouring of calls over the last three days of people wanting to know about the families and asking what they can do; the parish community has really responded very well,” Barillas said.

“There is so much chaos, if you will, with so many calls and trying to get everything organized and provide spiritual support for those who need it,” she added. “It is an experience you don’t want to have to go through because it is sad, but at the same time you live the joy that Jesus gives us (and) the strength to console and comfort others.”

St. Joseph Parish’s grounds are serving as a kind of hub for both the media and the emergency crews parking their vehicles here. The area is experiencing a constant and growing presence of the curious passing by outside along with law enforcement trying to manage the situation.

Noting the ongoing outreach of St. Joseph Church and neighboring St. Patrick Church, Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski said June 29 that the Catholic Church is “trying to be a consoling and comforting presence in the midst of great pain.”

Making the comments June 29 on the “Conversation with Cardinal Dolan” show on SiriusXM’s The Catholic Channel, the archbishop said that “funerals are being scheduled even as we speak. … Our Catholic cemeteries are working closely with the parishes and the families.”

He added that one of Miami’s archdiocesan priests who was an EMT with the Miami-Dade Fire Department also was “onsite and visiting with people who were his co-workers at one time.”

The best part of the June 26 prayer vigil was the participation of the parish youth, according to Father Juan Rumín Domínguez, parochial vicar at St. Joseph who helped lead the prayers.

“We want to say to our community that Christ is our light, the light of hope in the middle of this difficult situation,” the priest said. “We will pray for the victims and their families and especially we want to transmit our faith and hope in this situation; it is the thing we have to do as Catholics.”

“The rescue workers are working there but this is our language: prayer, and we are praying for them,” Father Dominguez added.

Deacon John Ermer also helped lead the eucharistic adoration. He gave a reflection in which he said the community should keep in mind those individuals who may question their faith as a result of the tremendous crisis.

“Some will find a loss of faith in the situation, wondering how could God let something like this happen, and that is a natural question for us,” he told the congregation June 26.

“We know that God challenges us with hardships throughout our lives. I think we need to pray twice as hard for people who ask that question because it is times like this, facing such tremendous loss, we have to make a decision,” Deacon Ermer said.

“For those of us who are weak, we may turn away from God and be lost forever,” he said. “Let’s pray especially for those people tonight whose faith is under tremendous pressure and who are questioning their faith.”

 

WASHINGTON (CNS) – House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and several other Republican leaders in the House asked their Democratic counterparts June 22 to take up a measure introduced by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., that would make the long-standing Hyde Amendment permanent.

Smith’s bill is called the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2021, or H.R. 18. It has 166 co-sponsors.

The Hyde Amendment, which first became law in 1976, prohibits use of federal Medicaid dollars for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the woman would be endangered. Named for the late Rep. Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican, the amendment is renewed every year as part of spending measures.

It was excluded, however, in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act signed into law March 11 by President Joe Biden, a Catholic. It also was not part of the proposed federal budget Biden released May 28.

A day before the House GOP leaders issued their call for Democrats to make Hyde permanent, a coalition of 22 state attorneys general, led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, asked Congress to keep the Hyde Amendment in the federal budget “after it was conspicuously removed by the Biden administration.”

Joining McCarthy in calling for unanimous consent for H.R. 18 to go forward were House Whip Steve Scalise R-La.; Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., chair of the GOP House Conference; and Smith and the other three co-chairs of the House Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, Reps. Andy Harris, R-Md., Michelle Fischbach, R-Minn., and Kat Cammack, R-Fla.

“Lives have been saved by the Hyde Amendment,” said Smith, a Catholic, who has supported the measure for over four decades. “Over 2.4 million people who would have been aborted instead survived and their mothers benefited from prenatal health care and support.

“Furthermore, polling consistently shows that a majority of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion — early 6 in 10 according to a Marist poll released earlier this year.”

In a statement June 22 and in comments on the House floor June 23, Smith pointed out that years ago, then-Sen. Biden “wrote to constituents explaining his support for the Hyde Amendment and said it would ‘protect both the woman and her unborn child.’ He said: ‘I have consistently — on no fewer than 50 occasions — voted against federal funding of abortions … those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.’ I totally agree.”

Ahead of the November 2020 election, Biden said he no longer supported the Hyde Amendment. He and his running mate, now-Vice President Kamala Harris, also vowed to support congressional efforts to codify Roe in the event that Roe is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Growing numbers of Americans continue to be shocked to learn that the methods of abortion include dismemberment of a child’s fragile body including decapitation, and that drugs like RU-486 starve the baby to death before he or she is forcibly expelled from the womb,” Smith said on the House floor.

“The multibillion-dollar abortion industry cleverly markets the sophistry of choice while going to extraordinary lengths to ignore, trivialize and cover-up the battered baby-victim,” he continued.

“By reason of their age, dependency, immaturity, inconvenience, fragility and/or unwantedness, unborn children have been denied justice — and the most fundamental of all human rights, the right to life,” Smith said.

“The right to life is for everyone,” he added, “not just the planned, the privileged or the perfect.”

Harris, who also is Catholic, said in a June 22 statement: “At a time when this commonsense and historically bipartisan amendment faces serious threats from congressional pro-abortion Democrats — with the support of the Biden administration — it is more important than ever to stand up and push back on the radical pro-abortion agenda.”

As a member of the House Appropriations Committee and co-chair of the Pro-Life Caucus, he said he strongly opposes using “taxpayer funding for abortion” and that he “will continue to advocate for protecting the Hyde Amendment.”

Like Smith and Harris, Scalise, Stefanik and Fischbach also are Catholic.

In addition to making the Hyde Amendment permanent, H.R. 18’s provisions also would, among other things:

— Permanently prevent the federal government from funding abortions.

— Ensure the Affordable Care Act conforms with the Hyde Amendment.

— Codify the Smith Amendment, which prohibits federal employee health care plans from funding abortion.

— Prohibit federal funding of abortion in several other federal programs throughout government agencies.

In the June 21 letter addressed to House and Senate leaders and signed by 22 attorneys general, Alabama’s Marshall wrote: “The decision by President Biden to reject the Hyde Amendment and attempt to force states to fund activity that is violative of their own laws and policies is an affront to state sovereignty. … Congress should resist following President Biden down this path and should instead maintain the Hyde Amendment language in the budget it ultimately passes.”

“Fighting for the freedom of conscience has been a hallmark of state attorneys general. We have a unique interest in the Hyde Amendment as an important protection for the consciences of the millions of Americans who oppose public funding of abortion,” he said.

The letter was sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Tom McClusky, president of March for Life Action, said June 23 that supporting the Hyde Amendment “is not only the right thing to do, but the majority of Americans also support such pro-life protections.”

“We applaud Rep. Chris Smith, Rep. Kat Cammack, Rep. Michelle Fischbach and so many others, who are seeking to make these protections permanent,” he said.

In separate statements issued the day Biden released his budget without the Hyde Amendment, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Mercy Sister Mary Haddad, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, acknowledged the president’s budget proposal included several provisions to help vulnerable Americans.

But, they said, it was remiss in leaving out Hyde, which protects the most vulnerable — the unborn.

In March, when Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act into law, Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the chairmen of six USCCB committees in a joint statement praised its “positive provisions” to help people in “extremely desperate situations” because of the pandemic.

However, they called it “unconscionable” that Congress passed the bill without the Hyde Amendment.

Diocesan Respect Life coordinators in Catholic dioceses and the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities at the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops are encouraging Catholics to speak out in support of the Hyde Amendment and to sign a petition at telling Congress to keep the amendment intact. The petition can be found at https://bit.ly/3qnupu8