St. James the Less Catholic Parish

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 6, 2024 / 18:37 pm (CNA).

Ryan Burge, a leading researcher on religion and politics, recently compiled data indicating that “cafeteria Catholicism” is rampant in the United States. Specifically, the country’s Catholics express widespread disagreement with the Church’s teaching on abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty.

The term “cafeteria Catholic” refers to a Catholic who picks and chooses which Church teachings he or she affirms and adheres to. Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory recently used the term to describe President Joe Biden, who as president has advocated for unrestricted abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

Burge found that only 0.9% of Catholics agree with Church teaching on all three of the issues.  His conclusions were based on 2022 data collected by the Global Social Survey (GSS) and compiled by the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA). Burge told CNA that the 0.9% number is an all-time low since GSS started collecting data in 1972.

“It’s not just many Catholics who disagree with the teachings of the Church — in fact, if you look at the data, it’s nearly all of them,” said Burge, who teaches political science at Eastern Illinois University. 

This coincides with an overall 12% decline in Church attendance among Catholics over the last two decades, as found by Gallup.

Abortion

Despite the Catholic Church’s clear teaching that abortion is gravely immoral, Burge said, there is “clear majority support for elective abortion in almost every circumstance.”

Over 50% of Catholics support abortion when the mother’s health is at risk, the child is the result of rape, if there is a “strong chance of serious defect in the baby,” and when the family or mother either does not want or cannot support another child. 

Nearly 90% of Catholics support abortion in such cases in which the mother’s health is at risk. Over 80% of Catholics support abortion in cases of rape, and close to 80% of Catholics support abortion for serious defects. 

ARDA also reports that 17.7% of Catholics believe abortion should be illegal in all cases. 

Euthanasia 

Regarding euthanasia, which the Church teaches is morally unacceptable, and suicide, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “contrary to love for the living God,” most Catholics again are not in agreement with the Church’s teaching. 

According to the data, 70% of Catholics support euthanasia, defined in the survey as a person’s ability to commit suicide in the case of an incurable disease. As pointed out by Burge, Catholics’ support for euthanasia and assisted suicide has been growing since the 1980s. 

Death penalty 

In recent decades, the Church has been increasingly voicing its opposition to the death penalty. In 2018, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was revised to reflect that opposition.

The catechism acknowledges that in the past “recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.”

“Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption,” the catechism indicates.

The catechism goes on to quote Pope Francis in stating that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

Despite this, ARDA found that 61% of Catholics are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers. Support for the death penalty among Catholics has waned in recent decades after reaching a high of 81% in 1990. 

‘A lot of work to do’

Monsignor Charles Pope, a Catholic author and pastor of Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian Church in the Archdiocese of Washington, told CNA that the 0.9% number does not accurately represent Catholics’ “buy-in” to the faith. 

Pope called the study “very unfair” and said it is “bringing things together which need to be analyzed separately.” He pointed out that the Church is clear in its teaching that abortion is intrinsically evil, while there is more leeway when it comes to the death penalty, which he described as a “prudential” rather than a “doctrinal” matter. 

He agreed, however, that there is still a disconnect between Church teaching and what many Catholics believe. This, he thinks, is due to what he called “the politicization of moral issues.” 

“Politics, sadly, is driving the conversation more than faith, because we are very worldly in our outlook,” he said. “So, if there’s one positive thing to take from this study it’s that we certainly have a lot of work to do to convince our own faithful of our teachings.”

“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it doesn’t mean our teachings are wrong,” he went on. “It’s not the job of the Church to reflect the public opinion polls of our people, it’s the job of the Church to say: ‘Here’s what Jesus says.’”

The Diocese of Pittsburgh's Gismondi Job Training Program helps those in need. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 6, 2024 / 17:40 pm (CNA).

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh is expanding its social services offered to people who are homeless and those in poverty with a newly created “Compassion Corner” opening in August. 

The nonprofit charity group is renovating a former office building located in downtown Pittsburgh to provide health care services, mental health services, job training programs, a place for the homeless population to eat, and a variety of other resources. The nearly 45,000-square-foot building is located at 111 Boulevard of the Allies, next to The Red Door (run by the Catholic Divine Mercy Parish), which provides services such as food for people who are homeless.

“I believe this is all divinely led,” Christopher Scoletti, a board member of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh and previous president of the board, said during an official launch last week. 

“I believe God is working and channeling the love that we all have for our communities, for our neighbors, for one another,” Scoletti added. “I believe God is channeling the pride that we have for the City of Pittsburgh to enforce a powerful change for a better future.”

Susan Rauscher, who serves as the charity’s executive director, told CNA that the new building will allow Catholic Charities to provide more medical and dental care, which it offers to those in poverty for free. She said this expansion will allow for more dental chairs and more medical services, among other things. 

“[We’re] really excited about the increase in the number of people who can get health care services,” Rauscher said. 

According to Rauscher, the added space will allow the nonprofit to provide mental wellness services, which will include anger management and therapy. The group will also provide job training services, which will include a free 12-week telecommunications course, and connect them with employers with whom the charity has existing relationships. The job programs will include training for five certifications. 

“Moving into the new building gives us some additional space to move into new areas that help us bring holistic solutions to our clients,” Rauscher added.

Because of the Compassion Corner’s proximity to The Red Door, Catholic Charities will create a spot for people who are homeless to eat inside. Rauscher noted that those people will also receive access to these services. 

“[Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh is] pushing toward not only providing that emergency assistance and those basic needs but also incorporating case management and that long-term stability,” Rauscher said.

More than 100 elected officials, community leaders, and business leaders attended the official launch of the Compassion Corner, according to the diocesan Catholic Charities. This included Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, who praised the work of the nonprofit and said Christians “can’t just read the Bible and teach the Bible” but need to show their faith in Christ through the “works and deeds that we do.”

“That falls on all of us to do,” Gainey said during a speech at the launch. “It doesn’t just fall on government [and] nonprofit [organizations]. It falls on us.”

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh has raised about $12 million in donations for its Campaign for Compassion Corner to provide these services, which is more than 70% of its goal of $17 million. The group is trying to raise $13 million for Catholic Charities and $4 million for its partner, Gift of Mary, an emergency women’s shelter. 

Rauscher told CNA that 100% of the staff at the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh has personally contributed to the fundraising effort. She praised the work of the staff, saying: “They can squeeze every penny out of every dollar that’s entrusted to us and turn it into solutions for the people they serve.”

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Pittsburgh serves about 20,000 people annually, according to Rauscher. She said the nonprofit served about 23,000 people last year.

President Joe Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 3, 2024. / Credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

CNA Staff, May 6, 2024 / 16:15 pm (CNA).

Katie Ledecky, Olympic swimmer, devout Catholic, and winner of 10 Olympic medals, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Friday. 

“Thank you Mr. President for this honor, and thank you to everyone at the White House for an incredibly special day!” Ledecky wrote in a post on X.

Since she began her Olympic career in 2012 as a 15-year-old in the London Olympics, Ledecky has earned seven Olympic gold medals and three silver medals. She also earned 26 world championship medals, 21 of which are gold, and she currently holds two world records in the 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle events. 

Ledecky finds herself among other iconic athletes including gymnast Simone Biles, golfer Tiger Woods, and baseball star Babe Ruth in receiving the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom.

But between the excitement of the Olympics, Ledecky is a regular parishioner of the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Maryland.

Raised in Washington, D.C., she attended Catholic high school and practices her faith by praying before her meets, according to her local diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Standard.

Ledecky was a student at the all-girls Catholic school Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart when she flew to London for her first Olympic competition. The Olympian has since returned to Stone Ridge to visit with the students and share her gratitude for the community’s support for her.

She’s not the only Catholic to receive the medal this year. Jesuit priest Father Gregory Boyle, who founded a rehabilitation program for gang members, was one of 19 who received the Medal of Freedom this year.

Biden also extended the award posthumously to Jim Thorpe, who in 1912 became the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal, as well as to his political allies such as former speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrat Party leaders.  

President Joe Biden is himself Catholic, though he has received criticism from Church leaders for his pro-abortion stance. 

Ledecky will compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics, which will begin July 26, while her memoir, “Just Add Water: My Swimming Life” is set to be released on June 11.

Abortion pill reversal seeks to counter the effects of the first progesterone-blocking abortion pill, providing an opportunity to save the unborn child. / Credit: Shutterstock

CNA Staff, May 6, 2024 / 14:57 pm (CNA).

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday filed a lawsuit against multiple pregnancy resource centers and a pro-life group over what the prosecutor alleged were misleading statements about abortion pill reversal. 

James said in the filing that the defendants — the group Heartbeat International and 11 crisis pregnancy centers affiliated with the nonprofit — have engaged in “repeated and persistent misleading and/or false claims” regarding the medical procedure of abortion pill reversal. 

The abortion pill is a two-step procedure in which a pregnant woman first ingests the drug mifepristone, which cuts off the unborn baby’s supply of the hormone progesterone, leading to the baby’s death. 

The woman then takes a second drug, misoprostol, which causes the uterus to contract, eventually expelling the baby’s body. 

Abortion pill reversal works by administering progesterone in high doses after a woman has ingested mifepristone; the hormone is meant to counteract the effects of the abortive drug. Several surveys have found evidence that the drug can be effective at halting a medicated abortion. 

Downplaying that evidence by pointing to scientific disputes over the studies in question, James in her filing alleged that there is “no competent and reliable scientific evidence” to support the abortion pill reversal procedure. 

The defendants “distort the evidence and mislead New Yorkers” with claims about the effectiveness and safety of abortion pill reversal, James argued. 

The filing asks that the defendants be ordered to “remove from their websites, social media accounts, and other promotional materials” their claims about abortion pill reversal, that they be fined thousands of dollars for their purported violations of state law, and that they be prohibited from making similar claims in the future about abortion pill reversal. 

In a statement announcing the filing, James claimed that abortions “cannot be reversed.”

The state “must protect pregnant [women’s] right to make safe, well-informed decisions about their health,” she argued in the press release. 

This is not the first time that abortion pill reversal has been targeted by pro-abortion politicians and government officials. 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta in September 2023 sued five pro-life pregnancy centers and Heartbeat International, accusing them of utilizing fraudulent and misleading statements when advertising the abortion pill reversal drug.

In April 2023, meanwhile, Colorado enacted several new pro-abortion laws including a ban on abortion pill reversal treatments.

A mother-and-daughter team of Catholic nurse practitioners brought suit against the Colorado law in October in order to be allowed to continue their ministry helping women reverse unwanted chemical abortions.

A judge quickly issued an injunction against the reversal ban, allowing the women to continue their medical practice while the lawsuit plays out in court. 

The Vatican announced on May 6, 2024, that Pope Francis has appointed Monsignor John McDermott as the bishop of the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont. / Credit: Diocese of Burlington, Vermont

CNA Staff, May 6, 2024 / 11:52 am (CNA).

Pope Francis has appointed Vermont priest John McDermott as the bishop of the Diocese of Burlington in that state, the Vatican announced Monday.

The Burlington bishopric was previously headed by Bishop Christopher Coyne, whom Pope Francis named as coadjutor archbishop of Hartford, Connecticut, last year and who on May 1 took over as archbishop there.

McDermott has been serving as administrator of the Burlington Diocese since October of last year.

The bishop-elect was born in New Jersey in 1963. He attended Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina and obtained a master’s degree in divinity, as well as a master’s in theology and Scripture, from Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland. He also holds a licentiate in canon law from the Catholic University of America.

He was ordained to the priesthood in the Burlington Diocese in 1989. He has served a variety of pastoral and administrative roles in the diocese since then, including as chaplain at Middlebury College. He has also held the positions of both vice chancellor and chancellor of the diocese, as well as diocesan vicar general and moderator of the curia.

McDermott is one of 10 siblings, according to the Diocese of Burlington. He was named a Prelate of Honor in 2012, granting him the title Monsignor. 

The Burlington Diocese is the only diocese in the state of Vermont. It consists of approximately 75 parishes of about 100,000 Catholics. 

Solar panels on the affordable housing Bishop Valero Residence in Astoria, Queens. / Credit: Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens

CNA Staff, May 6, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Catholic dioceses around the U.S. are setting ambitious goals and launching environmental programs inspired in part by the Pope Francis-led effort to make ecological care a priority for the global Church.

The Holy Father has made environmentalism a major focus of his pontificate. His 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ was heralded at the time of its publication as a revolutionary papal document for its emphasis on Catholic ecological responsibility and for its call for “swift and unified global action” in the “care for our common home.”

In October of last year, Francis published a new apostolic exhortation titled Laudate Deum, meant as a further call to address what he called the “global social issue” of climate change. The pope said that in the eight years since Laudato Si’ was published, “our responses have not been adequate” to address ongoing ecological concerns.

‘Our brothers and sisters around the world are impacted by this’

In the Diocese of San Diego, the diocese’s Creation Care program says it seeks to “spread the Catholic teaching” concerning “our duty to be good stewards of our common home.”

Christina Slentz, the director of the program, told CNA that the diocese launched Creation Care in 2022 using the pastoral guidelines of “See, Discern, Act” to guide its undertakings. 

Among its offerings, the program promotes the movie “The Letter” — a 2022 film that “tells the story of a journey to Rome of front-line leaders” to discuss Laudato Si’ with Pope Francis. 

Slentz said the San Diego program has offered workshops on the film and also offers twice-yearly workshops that present “the ecclesial context, the science, and the eco-spirituality of Laudato Si’.”

The diocese further gives “Laudato Si’ Action Planning Hands-On” workshops at which “parishes, schools, families, businesses, and universities” are guided through “the Vatican’s online platform for taking action to lessen your impact” on the earth. 

Slentz said the diocese also hosts an annual Feast of St. Francis Tree Festival at which saplings are distributed for planting. “I think we planted 730 acorns last year,” Slentz told CNA with a laugh. She noted that the overall program is “not about just some abstract love for trees.” 

“This is love of neighbor at a global scale,” she said. “Our brothers and sisters around the world are impacted by this so much more seriously than any of us.”

‘Excited and encouraged by Laudato Si‘’

Laudato Si’ has had a major effect on Catholic environmental awareness around the world and in the U.S. The Archdiocese of Seattle, for instance, last month announced the launch of a new Care for Creation Ministry that will be based on the Vatican’s Laudato Si’ action platform. 

That initiative, launched by the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, promotes seven goals that “provide guidance on urgent and immediate actions each one of us can take in the care of our common home.” Among those goals is the “adoption of sustainable lifestyles,” the promotion of “ecological spirituality,” and a “response to the cry of the poor.” 

Terri Nelson, the director of the Seattle Archdiocese’s Integral Human Development and the new leader of the creation ministry, said last month that the archdiocese would “use the foundation of the Laudato Si’ action platform … so that our parishes, schools, and the people of God can learn more about this urgent crisis and take action.”

The initiative will “develop and execute a strategic plan to educate and inspire people to act — at home, in their communities, workplaces, parishes, and more.”

Similar programs have been launched in the Archdiocese of Washington, the Archdiocese of Atlanta, the Diocese of Syracuse, and other bishoprics around the country.

‘Not just environmentally sound but financially so’

In New York, meanwhile, Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens is using its affordable housing portfolio to develop green energy infrastructure in line with the Church’s environmental goals. 

The diocese said the effort works to reduce carbon footprints and provide affordable and energy-efficient homes to low-income seniors and families.

Tim McManus, the senior vice president of the charity’s Progress of Peoples Development Corporation, which oversees the affordable housing program, told CNA that several years ago the charity “created a sustainable nonprofit entity [the Laudato Si’ Corporation] that is under the housing arm, from which we are launching and leading the sustainable initiatives.”

David Downs, the director of the Laudato Si’ Corporation, told CNA that the mission-aligned sustainability program is currently “utilizing our existing portfolio of affordable multifamily housing in Brooklyn and Queens by leveraging public financing resources to create new forms of renewable energy for our residents and New York City as a whole.”

About 75% of the charity’s portfolio is senior housing, typically subsidized voucher programs that assist elderly residents with rent. The charity also offers supportive housing for individuals coming from facilities such as shelters; the portfolio also includes traditional family housing. 

McManus said he and Downs “had always been looking at figuring out how to work [environmental care] into the affordable housing work we do.” 

The developers said making more of their properties environmentally friendly also coincided with increased green requirements in New York City itself. “We were trying to identify strategies and get ahead of new building requirements,” McManus said. 

Much of the effort, Downs said, is “really focusing on retrofit work on existing buildings.” 

“We’re thinking about solar,” he said. “We’re also really excited about exploring adding battery or backup power options with those solar arrays. That’s something we’ve not done to this point.”

“The goal here is producing income, credits from the solar itself — that money and those proceeds help to keep self-investing in the project as it grows,” he said. 

Then-Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio said in 2021 that the affordable housing initiative “rests upon the Church’s teaching and reflects the dignity of the human person and the value of the family,” while the new environmental initiative “reflects our commitment to the planet and our future.”

McManus said it was clear when the program launched that the newest green energy measures were not just environmentally sound but financially so. “From a bottom line perspective, some of these technologies started to really pencil out across our portfolio,” he said.

The Church’s new vigorous devotion to the environment underscores the sustainability work, McManus said.

“We were very excited and encouraged by Laudato Si’, to see the pope and the Catholic Church recognize and acknowledge the importance of bringing sustainability efforts to the people we serve,” he said.

The CatéGPT logo. / Credit: CatéGPT

CNA Staff, May 6, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

If you have a question about a teaching of the Catholic Church in 2024, where do you go for a solid answer? You can crack open the catechism yourself, ask a trusted personal source like a priest or theologian, or you can delve into that famously infallible repository of knowledge — Google.

A friendly arms race of sorts has arisen among Catholics around the world to provide Catholics with another option, however — one based around artificial intelligence (AI). In the past year or so, several online AI tools have been released that generate authoritative-sounding answers about Catholic teaching based on users’ questions.

You may also have heard about one recent and unfortunate misfire: an AI “priest” created and unveiled last week by the California-based apologetics apostolate Catholic Answers, which was criticized by some users for its video game-like priestly avatar.

Moreover, at least one user managed to goad the character into providing “absolution,” prompting a statement from the apostolate in which it promised to replace the priest character with a lay character named “Justin.” Catholic Answers’ leaders have expressed optimism about the project, despite the initial public setback. 

Meanwhile, Catholics looking for AI-powered answers have other, avatar-less options, like CatéGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot designed to provide accurate and thorough answers to questions about Catholic teaching by drawing on authoritative documents. 

Nicolas Torcheboeuf, a 31-year-old Swiss engineer and a Catholic, developed CatéGPT in his spare time and launched it in the late spring of 2023. (“Caté” is French for catechism, and the name is also a play on the name of the groundbreaking secular chatbot “ChatGPT.”) 

The simple online tool accepts a user’s question related to the Church’s teaching — “Why is baptism necessary?” for example — and provides a succinct summary of the answer, citing sources and categorizing the sources by type, making distinctions between encyclicals, Scripture, canon law, various writings of popes and Church Fathers, and other authoritative Catholic sources. 

This concept might sound familiar — Torcheboeuf concocted the idea for CatéGPT around the same time that the similar U.S.-based Magisterium AI made its debut. Also in the online ether is Catholic.chat, an interactive platform that allows users to engage with the catechism in a natural, conversational format. The similarities between the various projects, Torcheboeuf said, “goes to show that our intuition was right and meets a real need.”

Despite the free tool’s impressive ability to summarize answers to complex questions about the Church’s teaching, Torcheboeuf said his invention primarily aims to encourage Catholics to read the relevant Church documents for themselves. 

“In addition to providing clear answers, [CatéGPT provides] a list of reference documents to encourage the user to read them,” he explained.

“The main aim is above all to invite the user to rediscover the wealth of documents that the Church has produced over the course of its existence, and which constitute a formidable heritage for understanding the world in which we live,” Torcheboeuf said. 

Torcheboeuf presented his invention, which is available in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, and Portuguese, at the 58th World Day of Social Communications at the Vatican in February. He said the project was initially “born out of the craze surrounding ChatGPT,” OpenAI’s powerful chatbot that burst onto the scene in late 2022. 

“I was quickly impressed by the power of artificial intelligence and the number of tools that could be developed using this technology,” he said. 

Tinkering with the tech, he started creating chatbots that used customized databases to provide answers within specific fields. 

“That’s when I came up with the idea of creating a chatbot that uses the teachings of the Catholic catechism and the texts of the magisterium: These texts exist completely freely and don’t change too much over time, which means that the answers are reliable and stable over time,” he noted. 

The idea for CatéGPT, which is kept afloat entirely by donations, didn’t come out of nowhere — Torcheboeuf said his motivation for the project “corresponds to a concern I’ve had for a long time.” He said the area where he lives in Switzerland, while economically prosperous, lacks a vibrant practice of the Catholic faith. 

“I’ve noticed that young Catholics today have a fairly low level of education; we’re often called upon to debate fairly complex social issues, and unfortunately we don’t have enough intellectual knowledge to do so properly,” Torcheboeuf said. 

“Before trying to reform everything, we need to rediscover the fundamental texts of the Church. When we read these texts, we realize that many of the questions we ask ourselves are answered in encyclicals and catechisms.”

Torcheboeuf’s tool isn’t infallible, of course — no AI is. But the fact that CatéGPT makes use of publicly available documents on the Vatican website means that its curated sources are virtually guaranteed to be solid, and also that the tool’s database is far less complex than a massive AI like ChatGPT, which might be called on to opine on any topic imaginable.

Still, if the idea of asking an AI for guidance on the Church’s teaching makes you wary, you’re not alone — Catholic Answers’ AI, though well-intentioned, was less than favorably received. 

Catholic Answers’ “Father Justin” — clearly an attempt to give a Catholic AI a more pastoral, human face — may have misfired, at least in its initial form. But the idea of making AI more pastoral is one that Torcheboeuf endorses. After all, he said, AI in its current form can be great as a training tool, but “it won’t be able to fully assist the Church in the way that priests, religious, or people fully invested in the Church can.” He said he is in the process of integrating video clips from “Catholic influencers” into CatéGPT’s answers in an attempt to “put a human face behind the theoretical answers.”

The Church under Pope Francis has been engaging with the idea of AI long before the release of ChatGPT. The pontiff, on numerous occasions, has called for the ethical use of the technology and is scheduled to speak at the G7 summit in June in Italy about the ethics of artificial intelligence, amid much talk in the wider world about the threats that AI could pose to humanity.  

The explosion of generative AI tools and applications in recent years constitutes a revolution, Torcheboeuf said — and like any revolution, “it can be dangerous.” 

Still, Torcheboeuf is quick to point out that “artificial intelligence is only intelligent if there’s a real human intelligence behind it.”

“I think that rather than being afraid of this technology, let’s try to be a player in this field and exploit its positive aspects. Right now, this technology is in full expansion, and there are places [for it] to be taken while remaining careful of course.”

Torcheboeuf said he expects that CatéGPT users will be surprised by the answers they get, in the sense that they will realize, perhaps for the first time, that “the Church has already asked itself most of the contemporary questions and answered them, with great wisdom and coherence.”

“Little by little, we hope that with the help of the references given at the end of the answers, they will read the fundamental texts of the Church and come to understand and reappropriate this heritage,” he said. 

In an aerial view, the cargo ship Dali sits in the water after running into and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024, in Baltimore. / Credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

ACI Prensa Staff, May 5, 2024 / 14:00 pm (CNA).

Bishop Brendan Cahill of Victoria, Texas, is inviting Catholics throughout the United States to join the May 22 “National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Sailors and People of the Sea,” which this year will include a special prayer in memory of those affected by the catastrophic March 26 Baltimore bridge collapse. 

“Each year, we pray for those who work on the high seas and the ports. In a special way this year, we remember those who have been impacted by the collapse of the Key Bridge, particularly the six construction workers who perished in the bridge collapse, and for their families as they mourn the loss of their loved ones,” Cahill said.

On March 26, the container ship Dali suffered a power failure and collided with one of the bridge pillars, causing the collapse of most of the bridge while a group of eight construction workers were doing maintenance work on the structure. The six fatalities were immigrants to the United States from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Immediately following the tragedy, the Stella Maris network of port chaplains and volunteers mobilized to provide pastoral care and support to crew members of the Dali and for crew members of other vessels in the Port of Baltimore.

Cahill, who is also the bishop promoter of the Apostleship of the Sea “Stella Maris,” solicited prayers “for the captain and crew of the cargo ship and for the countless people who have been working in the aftermath of the tragedy.” He also remembered the longshoremen and those who depend on the Port of Baltimore to make a living.

Around the world, Cahill noted, “there are countless men and women who labor on the high seas for their livelihood. Let us seek the intercession of Our Lady, Stella Maris, that she protect and guide us,” he emphasized.

As part of this commemoration, a Mass will be celebrated on May 18 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., at 12:10 p.m. local time.

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

Mother Marla Marie stands on the front porch of the sisters’ Mother of the Light convent in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. / Credit: Joe Bukuras/CNA

Boston, Mass., May 4, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

It was 1983, in the last years of the Cold War, when 21-year-old Marla Lucas’ eyes filled with tears at the sight of a political cartoon prepared to be printed in the Washington Post criticizing then-Pope John Paul II during his activism against communism in Poland.

Lucas, who is now known as Mother Marla, was fresh out of college at the time and had recently experienced a reversion to her Catholic faith and was “on fire” for Christ, she told CNA on April 22.

What hurt Mother Marla the most about the drawing was her own perceived involvement in its creation. She was a research assistant for the cartoonist who drew it, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and “unrepentant liberal,” the late Herbert Block, commonly known as “Herblock.”

“I felt like an accomplice,” she said.

It wasn’t only Block’s criticism of Pope John Paul II that bothered Mother Marla, it was also his cartoons in support of abortion. 

“I wanted to be a journalist to spread the truth. Mr. Block was a kind person and personable, but I just felt like this was against my faith,” she said.

Before the cartoon of the pope, Mother Marla had been discerning religious life and spent a day visiting the Daughters of St. Paul at their convent in Alexandria, Virginia.

After that day, her decision was made. She was going to apply.

But a short time following the application process, Mother Marla received news that she was not admitted by the Daughters of St. Paul because she is deaf in one ear. 

“The provincial’s reasoning was that she didn’t want to jeopardize my good ear with the work that I would be doing,” Mother Marla said.

A friend then suggested Mother Marla look into the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate where, months later, she would say goodbye to her position at the Post and enter religious life in December 1983.

Recounting her last days at the newspaper in the fall of that year, Mother Marla said she went to her boss, Block, and his assistant and said she had some news to share. 

Mother Marla recounted their response: “‘You’re getting married?’” 

“Well...” Mother Marla said back to them. “Sort of. I’m marrying Jesus.”

She said both of their jaws “dropped open” and they looked at her with “almost horror and disbelief.”

“And that last month at the Post was agony because all of a sudden, whatever they had against the Catholic Church, I was absorbing it. They didn’t throw me a going away party,” she said with a chuckle.

She made her first vows in 1986 and her final vows in 1993. 

Mother Marla “loved the life” in her religious community and had several assignments on the East Coast including in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. The Parish Visitors are a New York-based congregation that has the charism of being contemplative-missionaries to the home.

But it was during her time in Pennsylvania she began deepening her awareness and affection for her Lebanese heritage as a Maronite Catholic.

Mother Marla was always aware of her Maronite roots. Her mother was from Lebanon and her father’s parents were from Lebanon. There wasn’t a Maronite church near her childhood home in Poughkeepsie, New York, so her family attended a Latin-rite parish. But a Maronite priest would make his way up to the Lebanese community there a few times a year to minister to them. 

During her assignment in Pennsylvania, Mother Marla attended a series of Lenten talks in Scranton at a Maronite church. The speaker for the week was Maronite priest Father Gregory Mansour.

“I was very impressed with his spiritual teachings and I said, ‘This is a man of prayer. This man really practices his priesthood.’ And we struck up a friendship that God used,” she said.

The two would occasionally cross paths and keep in touch over the years. Mother Marla sent Mansour a note of congratulations in 2004 when Pope John Paul II appointed him as bishop for the Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn.

Mother Marla and Mansour wouldn’t reconnect again until a few years later, in Washington, D.C., where Mother Marla spent a year taking classes at the Dominican House of Studies. 

Twenty-four years a nun at this point, Mother Marla was not on an assignment at a particular parish, so she chose to attend Mass at the Maronite church in the city, Our Lady of Lebanon Parish.

The priest at the parish approached Mother Marla and asked her if she would head the parish’s religious education program. In her previous assignment, she served as a director of religious education for several years.

“And I said, ‘Oh Father, I’m here for other reasons.’”

But the priest insisted, so Mother Marla took it to prayer, and with the permission of her superior, discerned that God was asking her to head the program. 

She then asked the rector of the Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Seminary, adjacent to the parish, if she could take some classes to learn more about Maronite spirituality and liturgy to help her with catechesis.

He agreed.

Just a few weeks after she accepted the position, Mother Marla again crossed paths with Bishop Mansour while the prelate was visiting the parish. 

Mansour was happy to hear that Mother Marla was heading the program. But the next thing he said to her would change the course of her life forever.

“He said to me, ‘Sister Marla Marie, would you help me found a Maronite congregation of sisters for our Church?”

“And it was just like that. He just said, ‘Hello, it’s nice to see you. How are you?’ And then the next thing was, ‘Would you found a religious community?’”

Mother Marla was “startled.” But at the same time, she felt “a deep abiding peace.”  

“It was the same peace I had 25 years prior, when I realized my call to be a religious,” she said.

Mother Marla told Mansour she would take his request to prayer and discernment. In time, she agreed and requested leave from her congregation to pursue this vocation.

On June 1, 2008, Sister Marla became Mother Marla Marie, foundress of the Maronite Servants of Christ the Light.

The sisters were founded to “radiate Christ’s love and light to our people,” Mother Marla said. “Our life is rooted in Eucharistic prayer and devotion to the Mother of God."

Fast approaching the community’s 16-year anniversary — or “sweet 16” as Mother Marla calls it — the sisters are involved in a variety of ministries including facilitating conferences and parish missions, teaching catechism classes, leading youth and young adult ministry, bringing solace and prayer to those with grief, and accompanying those passing to the next life.

Sister Therese Touma, 40, joined the congregation in 2010 and Sister Emily Lattouf, 29, joined in 2019.

The sisters encounter and serve more than 1,000 people each year, including hundreds of children and young adults in their several ministries, Mother Marla said. Last year the sisters visited 10 parishes for missions across the Maronite Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn, which spans from Maine to Florida. 

Sister Emily, who took her first vows in 2023, said that “Mother Marla Marie is an amazing and courageous woman.”

“I admire her courage to leave the world she knew in her previous community to begin this new foundation. I am blessed to have her as a mother-servant, friend, and formator,” she said.

The Maronite Servants are now located in suburban Dartmouth, Massachusetts, located in close proximity to several Maronite parishes and dozens of Roman Catholic parishes where they serve in ministry.

“I keep looking at my life and thinking, ‘Wow, that happened to me?’ Isn’t it amazing how God works? And he does that in your life too, and in everybody’s life. If people stop to look and be attentive, we can see that the Holy Spirit is always acting. We just have to give him room,” Mother Marla said.

Father Roger Landry, Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, discusses the protests at Columbia University in New York City on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo” on May 2, 2024. / Credit: EWTN News The World Over / Screenshot

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 3, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).

Father Roger Landry, a Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, said on Thursday that the protests making national headlines at the New York City school are being organized in part by “explicitly communist” outside forces. 

“There is an instrumentalization of what’s going on in Gaza to advance an agenda,” he said. “And that is to deconstruct our present world order at which the United States is considered the top of that order.”

Speaking on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo,” Landry said that he had been walking through the encampment nearly daily, conversing with student protesters and other “outside agitators.” 

While he said he believes that many of the protesters were genuinely concerned for Gazan civilians, there was a sizable percentage of whom were “explicitly in favor of Hamas” and “definitely antisemitic by their language and their actions.” 

What is going on at Columbia?

The Columbia demonstration began on April 17 when a large group of students set up dozens of tents to occupy the university’s main quad. Protesters at the encampment said they were standing against Israel’s “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. 

Many videos circulated online of protesters shouting antisemitic chants and calling for the destruction of Israel, and some Jewish students have reported being threatened by protesters. 

Clad in riot gear, officers from the New York City Police Department cleared the encampment in a Wednesday raid that resulted in several hundred arrests. 

Similar protests and encampments on campuses across the country, many of which are still ongoing, have taken place since the demonstration at Columbia began. 

Marxist ideology at heart of protest

According to Landry, nearly half of the approximately 300 protesters arrested were non-student activists. 

He said these outside forces are “explicitly communist groups” who have been distributing Marxist materials attacking the state of Israel since the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack. 

Landry said that these materials attempt to justify the Hamas attack “out of this neo-Marxist, ‘oppressor versus oppressed’ ideology that says whatever somebody in the category of ‘oppressed’ wants to do against a so-called ‘oppressor’ is justified, even killing way more than a thousand innocent people at a party.” 

“This divide and conquer class warfare that comes from Marx and Lenin is the exact antithesis of what Jesus Christ himself taught,” he continued. “So, I try to get the Catholic students aware of that problem so at least they’re inoculated to that intellectual virus.” 

Catholic students act as peacemakers 

Landry said he was proud of the many Catholic students who have “stepped up” to be peacemakers amid all the hatred on campus.   

He said that student Mass attendance has increased on campus. A Catholic student group sent symbolic olive plants to both Jewish and Muslim leaders at Columbia to show the “solidarity and peace of Christ,” he said. 

“Transcending the moment but also incarnating ourselves in the moment, [we] are trying to bring the peace we have received from Christ that our world and our campus very much need,” he said.

Watch the full interview with Landry on “The World Over” below.