Kansas City, Mo., Dec 4, 2016 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Christmas season approaches, the hit-making community of Benedictine nuns based in Missouri have released an album full of carols with which to greet the newborn Christ. “Our greatest hope is that these songs will truly 'lift up our hearts' to the Infant King, so that we will always be mindful of His humility and mercy,” Mother Cecilia, prioress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, told CNA. The community's new album, Caroling at Ephesus, was recorded in September, and recently released. It can be purchased from the nuns' website at: https://music.benedictinesofmary.org/. Digital versions of the album are available from Amazon and iTunes. “This is one season in which there is such an abundance of music, the only difficulty was in choosing which songs to include on this album,” Mother Cecilia said. “We decided to use many on the lighter side - pieces we would sing around the fire during one of the twelve days of Christmas. They are still sacred in nature, no 'Frosty the Snowman' or anything, but include beautiful carols from around the world.” Sales of Caroling at Ephesus will go toward building a new priory church for the rapidly-expanding community. “The chapel we have been using for the last several years has served us well. But unfortunately, it is not growing with us,” Mother Cecilia explained. “Five years ago, there were 18 Sisters, and with the addition of four more postulants on December 5th, our number will reach 31, with at least two more young women slated to join by next fall. Very soon, there will be neither room for Sister nor guests, who are coming with more and more frequency to our monastery.” She added that the priory is now attracting vocations from outside the United States, including Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands. The album includes 24 songs, in six languages: “most of the pieces are in English, but there are two in Latin, and one each in German, French, Polish and Spanish.” “Along with a little help from my mother, who is Polish by birth, there are enough speakers here of each language now to guide us through the pronunciation. While Latin is easy (we chant in Latin everyday) the others certainly added a challenge to the recording, as we have not ventured into recording any other language before,” she added. Mother Cecilia said that “Among the more recognizable songs are What Child Is This, Good King Wenceslaus, Ukrainian Bell Carol, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, O Holy Night, and O Come All Ye Faithful. It was surprising to find out how old some of these carols actually are. We had a lot of fun trying out new arrangements to these carols, and perk up some others we have been singing for many years.” In addition, the album features an original track: a Christmas poem written by G.K. Chesterton, “Carol of the Christ Child”, was set to music by the nuns themselves. Though the community practices limited enclosure, their music albums have brought them international renown and popularity – they have been Billboard's Best-Selling Classical Traditional Artist several years in a row, and their albums have topped Billboard's Top Traditional Classical Albums. Life in the community is marked by obedience, stability, and “continually turning” towards God. They have Mass daily according to the extraordinary form, and chant the psalms eight times a day from the 1962 Monastic Office.   The nuns also support themselves by producing made-to-order vestments, as well as greeting cards. Read more

Washington D.C., Dec 2, 2016 / 02:11 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a death penalty case that could determine the fate of a man whom lawyers say is intellectually disabled. The legal issue in question, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, is “did Texas violate the Eighth Amendment when it disregarded the national consensus definition” of intellectual disability and “substituted a non-clinical” standard in its place? In Moore v. Texas, the petitioner Bobby James Moore was convicted of robbery and murder in Texas in 1980, after killing a convenience store employee in a robbery attempt. He was convicted again in a retrial in 2001. He is challenging the state’s criminal appeals court’s ruling that he merits the death penalty. His lawyers claim that by clinical standards, he is intellectually disabled and thus protected from capital punishment. The Supreme Court previously ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” protects intellectually disabled persons from being put to death. Texas’ criminal appeals court, however, had ruled that Moore should be judged by the standards that existed at the time of his 2001 conviction, not by the most recent clinical standards. Moore’s disability was determined by the state’s 2004 Briseno decision, which established additional “Briseno factors” to determine if someone was intellectually disabled, and thus ineligible for the death penalty. “For the most part,” Dunham explained, “states simply follow the clinical definitions [of intellectual disability] and then they have their own procedural rules for what evidence you can present and what the standard of proof is.” However, he added, “a number of states” then “came up with very restrictive rules on proving intellectual disability.” And, “in a couple of instances, they deviated from the clinical definitions of intellectual disability in significant ways.” Texas is one of these cases, he argued. The “national consensus” proof of intellectual disability relies on three prongs: a “significantly sub-average intellectual function,” proof of “adaptive deficits,” and whether the “age of onset” was before age 18, Dunham explained. However, with the “Briseno factors” that Texas added to this test, there are additional questions to the three-pronged standard like whether someone’s neighbors or teachers think them to be disabled, if they are able to lie, and if they are able to plan out a crime. Scott Keller, the Texas Solicitor General representing the state before the Supreme Court, told the justices that these questions are not discriminatory, but are meant to provide “more concrete terms” for determining if someone met one of the three prongs – “limitations in adaptive functioning” – of the intellectual disability test.   Dunham, however, claimed that these questions utilize a “non-clinical standard” which asks “a bunch of stereotypical questions a layperson would ask to determine intellectual disability.” Some of the questions are “derived from Lenny of ‘Of Mice and Men,’” a fictional character in a John Steinbeck novel, he added. Ultimately, he claimed, these questions “appear to be a gloss that Texas is placing over the clinical definition” of intellectual disability. Thus, the state is using a non-clinical standard to ultimately determine who will be executed, he said. Both the American Psychological and Psychiatric Associations agree, stating in their brief supporting Moore’s case that “there is a consensus among the mental health professions about how properly to diagnose persons with intellectual disability. Texas’ approach to intellectual disability is inconsistent with this consensus.” In a recent death penalty case, Hall v. Florida, the state of Florida had set an IQ score of 70 as a benchmark in determining if someone was intellectually disabled. However, “the clinical community generally considers an IQ of 75 or below to be a qualifying score,” Dunham noted. Thus, he said, the Supreme Court ruled that Florida “deviated from the established national consensus,” and “did so in a way that allows the execution of individuals who, under clinical practice, would be intellectually disabled,” violating both its ruling in Atkins and the Eighth Amendment. Texas has done a similar thing, he said. In adding this “non-clinical standard” of the Briseno factors as an additional burden of proof that someone is intellectually disabled, “Texas has deviated from the clinical consensus definition of what constitutes an adaptive deficit,” he claimed. He said the state “includes as eligible” for the death penalty “a range of people who would be deemed as intellectually disabled” under the commonly-accepted clinical method. For instance, the state in 2012 used the Briseno factors and determined that Marvin Wilson, a man who scored a 61 on an IQ test, was eligible for the death penalty. And, Dunham added, Texas only uses the Briseno Factors in death penalty cases. For other cases, like with applications for Social Services, Texas relies upon other clinical methods. In October, Texas’ bishops called for “the abolition of the death penalty.” “Catholic teaching unequivocally states that ‘if non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means’,” they stated, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2267. “This simply means if alternatives to the death penalty exist that serve to protect society from violent criminals, society ‘must limit itself’ to these other means. There can be no doubt such means exist today in the United States, including in the State of Texas,” they continued. Clifford Sloan, arguing on Moore’s behalf before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, said the standard upheld by Texas’ criminal court “relies on harmful and inappropriate lay stereotypes.” Justice Elena Kagan remarked to Sloan that “we could say that the Briseno standards are in conflict with the old Atkins standards, as well as the new ones.” “There wouldn't need to be a difference between the old ones and the new ones for you to win this case,” she told Moore’s lawyer, who agreed. The justices then asked tough questions of Keller, wondering if the state was using the Briseno factors to make it harder for someone to prove their disability, and effectively cut down the number of people who are ineligible for the death penalty. The factors “are all grounded in this Court’s precedents,” Keller told the justices. “All of those questions are asking, ‘can someone function in the world?’” Justice Kagan cited one of the additional questions, whether a defendant’s neighbors and friends thought he was disabled, and said “no clinician would ever say that” was a determining factor in whether someone was disabled. “But the Briseno factors made very clear,” she added, “that you're supposed to rely on what the neighbor said and what the teacher with absolutely no experience with respect to intellectual disabilities said.” “So that seems to me a very big difference between the Briseno factors and the clinical view of intellectual disability,” she added. In Hall v. Florida, the Supreme Court did consider that question of what neighbors and teachers said of someone, Keller replied. “And clinicians would also look to those.” Justice Stephen Breyer cited the Briseno opinion which allowed Texas to adopt its additional standards, and asked if, instead of leaving the determination of someone’s disability up to clinical standards, it also let the people of Texas who were not mental health experts decide standards for intellectual disability. “What were they up to in this opinion? Briseno. I think they were up to going back to the citizens of Texas,” he said. “And you tell me if I'm right, wrong or why,” he told Keller. Justices also pressed Keller over whether the ultimate “effect” of Texas’ standards was to limit the number of defendants who are ineligible for the death penalty. The state’s criminal court of appeals “has never said that the purpose of these factors is to screen out individuals and deny them relief,” Keller said. “But isn't that the effect?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked in response. Keller pointed to four cases of persons “granted relief” from the death penalty when the standards were applied. Kagan followed up by claiming that the origin of the state’s standards was to involve the people’s opinion and not just “clinical standards”: “But the genesis of these factors was that the court said the clinical standards are just too subjective and they don't reflect what Texas citizens think, both of those things,” she said. This “suggests that Justice Kennedy is right about how they operate and also how they were intended to operate,” she added.   Justice Sonia Sotomayor referenced Moore’s early life and said that the criminal court only looked at his “adaptive strengths,” or functions that he could perform, rather than his “adaptive deficits,” to determine that he was eligible for the death penalty. She said the “state’s expert would not admit that his obvious deficits as a youth pointed to a disability: “A person who, at 13's, father threw him out because he was dumb and illiterate: Couldn't tell the days of the week; couldn't tell the months of the year; couldn't tell time; couldn't do anything that one would consider within an average, or even a low average, of intellectual functioning, who is eating out of garbage cans repeatedly and getting sick after each time he did it, but not learning from his mistakes. The State's opinion does very little except say those are products of his poor environment; they're not products of his intellectual disability.” Keller replied that the expert saw “limitations” in Moore, but “there has to be significant limitations, and she said that wasn't there.” Sotomayor then pointed to the Briseno opinion’s citation of the character “Lennie” from “Of Mice and Men,” who the 2004 Briseno opinion said was disabled. Keller insisted that the state’s standards were not based off this fictional character, but that Lennie’s example was only “an aside” in the state court’s opinion and that the criminal court “has only once since then ever cited Lennie, and it was in a footnote quoting a trial court.” “The Lennie standard has never been part of a standard. That's one of the most misunderstood aspects of the briefing here,” he said.   Read more

Oklahoma City, Okla., Dec 2, 2016 / 11:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has recognized the martyrdom of Father Stanley Rother, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City who served in Guatemala, making him the first martyr to have been born in the United States. “Servant of God Fr. Stanley Rother has been approved for beatification!” Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City announced on Facebook Dec. 2. “He is the first US born martyr and priest to receive this official recognition from the Vatican! And of course the first from Oklahoma!” Pope Francis had met with Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Dec. 1, approving decrees for several causes of canonization. Together with that of Fr. Rother, the Pope recognized the martyrdoms of Fr. Vicete Queralt Llloret and 20 companions, killed in the Spanish Civil War, and Archbishop Teofilius Matulionis of Kaišiadorys, a Lithuanian killed by the Soviets in 1962. Also acknowledged were a miracle attributed to the intercession of Venerable Giovanni Schiavo and the heroic virtue of eight Servants of God. Fr. Rother was from the unassuming town of Okarche, Okla., where the parish, school and farm were the pillars of community life. He went to the same school his whole life and lived with his family until he left for seminary. Surrounded by good priests and a vibrant parish life, Stanley felt God calling him to the priesthood from a young age. But despite a strong calling, Stanley would struggle in the seminary, failing several classes and even out of one seminary before graduating from Mount St. Mary's seminary in Maryland. Hearing of Stanely’s struggles, Sister Clarissa Tenbrick, his 5th grade teacher, wrote him to offer encouragement, reminding him that the patron of all priests, St. John Vianney, also struggled in seminary. “Both of them were simple men who knew they had a call to the priesthood and then had somebody empower them so that they could complete their studies and be priests,” Maria Scaperlanda, author of The Shepherd Who Didn't Run, a biography of the martyr, told CNA. “And they brought a goodness, simplicity and generous heart with them in (everything) they did.” When Stanley was still in seminary, St. John XXIII asked the Churches of North America to send assistance and establish missions in Central America. Soon after, the dioceses of Oklahoma City and Tulsa established a mission in Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala, a poor rural community of mostly indigenous people. A few years after he was ordained, Fr. Stanley accepted an invitation to join the mission team, where he would spend the next 13 years of his life. When he arrived to the mission, the Tz'utujil Mayan Indians in the village had no native equivalent for Stanley, so they took to calling him Padre Francisco, after his baptismal name of Francis. The work ethic Fr. Stanley learned on his family’s farm would serve him well in this new place. As a mission priest, he was called on not just to say Mass, but to fix the broken truck or work the fields. He built a farmers' co-op, a school, a hospital, and the first Catholic radio station, which was used for catechesis to the even more remote villages. “What I think is tremendous is how God doesn't waste any details,” Scaperlanda said. “That same love for the land and the small town where everybody helps each other, all those things that he learned in Okarche is exactly what he needed when he arrived in Santiago.” The beloved Padre Francisco was also known for his kindness, selflessness, joy and attentive presence among his parishioners. Dozens of pictures show giggling children running after Padre Francisco and grabbing his hands, Scaperlanda said. “It was Father Stanley’s natural disposition to share the labor with them, to break bread with them, and celebrate life with them, that made the community in Guatemala say of Father Stanley, ‘he was our priest,’” she said. Over the years, the violence of the Guatemalan civil war inched closer to the once-peaceful village. Disappearances, killings and danger soon became a part of daily life, but Fr. Stanley remained steadfast and supportive of his people. In 1980-1981, the violence escalated to an almost unbearable point. Fr. Stanley was constantly seeing friends and parishioners abducted or killed. In a letter to Oklahoma Catholics during what would be his last Christmas, the priest relayed to the people back home the dangers his mission parish faced daily. “The reality is that we are in danger. But we don’t know when or what form the government will use to further repress the Church…. Given the situation, I am not ready to leave here just yet… But if it is my destiny that I should give my life here, then so be it.... I don’t want to desert these people, and that is what will be said, even after all these years. There is still a lot of good that can be done under the circumstances.” He ended the letter with what would become his signature quote: “The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom.” In January 1981, in immediate danger and his name on a death list, Fr. Stanley did return to Oklahoma for a few months. But as Easter approached, he wanted to spend Holy Week with his people in Guatemala. “Father Stanley could not abandon his people,” Scaperlanda said. “He made a point of returning to his Guatemala parish in time to celebrate Holy Week with his parishioners that year – and ultimately was killed for living out his Catholic faith.” The morning of July 28, 1981, three Ladinos, the non-indigenous men who had been fighting the native people and rural poor of Guatemala since the 1960s, broke into Fr. Rother's rectory. They wished to disappear him, but he refused. Not wanting to endanger the others at the parish mission, he struggled but did not call for help. Fifteen minutes and two gunshots later, Father Stanley was dead and the men fled the mission grounds. Scaperlanda, who has worked on Fr. Stanley’s cause for canonization, said the priest is a great witness and example: “He fed the hungry, sheltered the homeless, visited the sick, comforted the afflicted, bore wrongs patiently, buried the dead – all of it.” His life is also a great example of ordinary people being called to do extraordinary things for God, she said. “(W)hat impacted me the most about Father Stanley’s life was how ordinary it was!” she said. “I love how simply Oklahoma City’s Archbishop Paul Coakley states it: ‘We need the witness of holy men and women who remind us that we are all called to holiness – and that holy men and women come from ordinary places like Okarche, Oklahoma,’” she said. “Although the details are different, I believe the call is the same – and the challenge is also the same. Like Father Stanley, each of us is called to say ‘yes’ to God with our whole heart. We are all asked to see the Other standing before us as a child of God, to treat them with respect and a generous heart,” she added. “We are called to holiness – whether we live in Okarche, Oklahoma, or New York City or Guatemala City.”  Mary Rezac contributed to this report. Read more