Washington D.C., Jul 11, 2016 / 05:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Archbishop William Lori are once again calling on the House of Representatives to enact the Conscience Protection Act to defend the rights of health care workers.Back in March, the chairmen the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities and the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty sent a letter to the House asking for their support. According to the letter, the Conscience Protection Act would make sure people providing health care would be able to do so  “without being forced by the government to help destroy innocent unborn children.” After three recent examples of the government failing to protect the rights of conscientious objection, a new letter was sent July 7 explaining that federal laws providing protection in theory have not “proved effective in practice.” Since their letter sent in March, the bishops said, “three new developments make the need for immediate action to pass the Conscience Protection Act even more urgent.” On June 21, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the California’s Department of Managed Heath Care could continue covering “elective abortions.” In 2014, the state had mandated all health plans to cover abortions. Though religious employers objected, no changes were made. The New York Department of Financial Services then did the same, ordering all small group employers – including faith-based companies – o cover abortions as of the first of this year. Cardinal Dolan and Archbishop Lori cited the last incident from Washington state. On June 21, the Skagit County Superior Court ordered public hospitals providing maternity care to also provide abortions on-site. The ruling came after Skagit Regional Heath sent women to abortion clinics because its employees did not want to perform the operations. “These disturbing new actions to force healthcare providers to participate in the destruction of human life cry out for an immediate federal remedy,” the chairmen said. Cardinal Dolan and Archbishop Lori explained that a difference in opinion should be respected, writing, “Even those who disagree on the issue of abortion should be able to respect those who wish not to participate in abortion.” “As we continue to bask in the glow of our Forth of July celebrations,” they concluded, “we strongly urge you to uphold the rights to life and liberty which our Founding Fathers wisely asserted as most fundamental to our nation's existence.” Read more

Lincoln, Neb., Jul 11, 2016 / 05:04 pm (CNA).- “I caught one!” Someone screamed this outside of Fr. Ryan Kaup’s rectory window the other night, waking him up at 12:30 a.m. That’s because Fr. Kaup’s parish, Cristo Rey in Lincoln, Neb., is a Pokestop. What’s a Pokestop, you say? It’s part of Pokémon Go, the newest app craze released last week by Niantic Labs. The app - part geocaching, part exercise-tracking, part game - takes users through their real-life neighborhoods in order to “catch them all”. It’s become so popular that just two days after its release last Thursday, the time people spent on the game surpassed time spent on other popular apps like Whatsapp, Snapchat and Instagram. Points, prizes and levels are gained by catching Pokémon and by going to Pokestops - tagged locations in the real world where users can stock up on gear and points for the game. And many of those stops, it turns out, are located at churches. The reason for this? Niantic Labs was once part of Google, and their founder and CEO once worked on the technology that powers Google Maps. That technology was used in Ingress, a geolocation game similar to Pokemon Go. The locations that appear in the game are either famous landmarks, locations based on geo-tagged photos from Google, or locations that were submitted as suggestions by players. Pokemon Go is currently not accepting Pokestop location applications. Still, the phenomenon has some pastors and youth ministers, who are experiencing increased foot and road traffic to their churches, wondering how they can harness the popularity of the game for the good of the Gospel.  #PokemonGO is the first thing that's willingly got me to go into a church in about 10 years. — Calvin (@aurosan) July 10, 2016 “I figured out I lived at a Pokéstop when I downloaded the game,” Fr. Kaup told CNA. “I heard a bunch of kids in the parish talking about the game after Mass, rejoicing in the fact that they had caught a Charmanderzar in the parish hall. After that I had to check it out,” he said. Fr. Kaup’s parish is located in a residential neighborhood, a bit off the path, so it’s not one that people typically stumble upon. But since the breakout of Pokémon Go, Father said he’s noticed several cars slow down as they go by, or pull up into the parking lot for a few minutes to gather their Pokéballs.    He said he explained the game to his secretary, and told her to expect to see some increased traffic around the parish in the coming days and weeks as the game picks up. “I told her that it’s a great opportunity to engage them and invite them in to pray,” he said.  He’s also wondering how he can make his Pokéstop parish more inviting. “Anytime we have an encounter with another human being it is an opportunity for evangelization,” he said. “Cristo Rey being a Pokéstop brings people to our doors who never would have come otherwise...I’m toying with the idea of putting up a sign outside that says ‘Pokéstop. Come in and say hello!’ or something along those lines. Any chance we get to share the Gospel is a good thing.” Phil, who works in Catholic ministry in Denver, told CNA that he thinks the game still has the potential to be too individualistic. People need to be intentional about how they use the app, and churches need to be intentional about welcoming Pokémon “trainers”, as they’re called, for the game to have any real impact, he said. Some Catholics who have used the app said it’s simply a good tool to meet other people in an organic way. I have met more people by playing Pokemon Go than I ever have by just having my personality and being places. — Melissa P. Keating (@AndCompanions) July 11, 2016 Allan Phan, a seminarian at St. Charles Borromeo who is teaching summer catechesis with Totus Tuus this summer, said the game has helped his team bond with each other and with people they’ve encountered. “It can be a good tool to spark a conversation and start a relationship with another human being,” he told CNA. Craig de Aragón, a Catholic who works as the assistant director for a group of radio stations in Denver, told CNA that whether at a church or elsewhere, the game is a good chance for people to connect. “I think Pokemon Go has the potential to connect people. Whether at churches or any random Pokéstop, it's on us Catholics to connect and reach out to others.” The Wardrobe Door, a Christian blog out of Tennessee, even has eight tips for churches that want to capitalize for the Kingdom using their Pokéstops , including putting out signs and having greeters, drinks and snacks available for whoever Poké-stops by. Time will tell how long the game craze will last, but until then, if you see someone wandering around your parish parking lot with a phone in their face, you might want to ask them if they’re hunting some Pokémon. Read more

Wichita, Kan., Jul 11, 2016 / 12:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Diocese of Wichita is offering prayers for a seminarian who is missing after rescuing a woman in the Arkansas River on Saturday.   Brian Bergkamp, age 24, had finished his second year a... Read more

Chicago, Ill., Dec 21, 2016 / 09:13 am (CNA).- Coloring books for adults have exploded onto the bookstore scene in the past two years. What was once considered a hobby for the kids is now all the rage for people who are full-grown. While the most popular books out there feature images of gardens, forests and beautiful patterns, Ave Maria Press and Catholic artist Daniel Mitsui are creating adult coloring books that draw from something else: the tradition of medieval Catholic art. Mitsui, who lives in Chicago with his wife and their three children, specializes in ink drawing and describes his style as very graphic, with “precise edges and sharp outlines.” He’s heavily inspired by Catholic art from the 14th and 15th century, but is also influenced by the graphic elements of Japanese art, particularly with how it treats light and shadow. While Mitsui told CNA that he hadn’t paid much attention to the adult coloring book trend at first, he has done a lot of work in black and white, which works well for the medium. He would print a lot of images in black and white and then color them in to sell as hand-colored images, and he would give his children the extra prints, or the prints that didn’t turn out just right, for them to color. “I would save all of the ones that didn’t pass my quality control, and I would give them to my kids to color at Mass,” he told CNA.   “I have small children who have a hard time paying attention so I would give them some of these coloring sheets. And friends of mine started asking for them and I thought, you know, I should really make this available to the public.” With this in mind, Mitsui started adding the black and white images – usually of saints or other religious images – to his website, so that parents could access them for their kids and leave a little donation. Almost immediately, he was contacted by Ave Maria publishing company about creating a book for adults. His first book features images from the mysteries of the rosary. Mitsui had been privately commissioned for a project on the rosary a few years back, and so he said it was easy to compile those images and create a coloring book with a unifying theme. Faced with quick success, he soon began planning for another book, featuring colorable images of the Saints. While the book includes many of the main players – the Virgin Mary, Sts. Peter and Paul, St. Michael the Archangel – it also includes some more obscure figures like St. Robert of Newminster, St. Gobnait, and St. Hugh of Lincoln. While many of Mitsui's images in the coloring books come from privately commissioned pieces he’s done in the past, some of them also come from images he's created as part of lessons for his children, who are homeschooled. Mitsui added that he finds it unnecessary to divide coloring books into categories for children and adults. Children deserve, and equally enjoy, the beautiful and more intricate images that are often only marketed to adults, he said. “I don’t think that you should say well, we have these really sophisticated coloring books with detailed art, and we’re going to give these to adults, and then we present things that have artwork in them that we don’t really think is that good, and then give those to kids,” he said. “There’s so many children’s picture books that are really beautiful and really sophisticated and intelligent artwork, but they kind of get drowned out by so many ones that are sort of insipid, and I don’t think that that’s right,” he added. “Kids like to see detailed images, they can actually appreciate serious art, and a good way to introduce them to it is to look through what coloring books are being sold for the adults.” The sudden upsurge in the popularity of coloring books for adults has fascinated everyone from researchers to art therapists to yoga and meditation connoisseurs. Mitsui said he’s excited about the trend, because it may mean that more adults are acknowledging their desire to express themselves creatively. “It seems there’s an idea that a lot of adults have that drawing or making art is something that you do when you’re a child, and then unless you become a professional you kind of give it up,” he said. “And I think that’s just sort of a poverty...I don’t know why there’s a reluctance on the part of so many adults to create artwork.” Drawing used to be the fashionable thing for adults to do in the Victorian era, he added. Many adults, particularly women, had their own sketchbooks and honed their drawing skills. Some of these sketchbooks have been preserved, and some of the work is quite good. “I think what that demonstrates is that a lot of what goes into being an artist is skill that is learnable with practice,” Mitsui said. “People have this idea that somehow when it comes to art, you’re given this measure of ability from the beginning and you can never do anything to increase or decrease that, and I don’t think that’s true.” For Catholics in particular, a Catholic adult coloring book is a way to become familiar with the rich tradition of Catholic art in a way that is different than viewing a painting in a museum, he said. “The Catholic church has such a superabundance of wealth in terms of its artistic tradition, that sometimes it can get lost when it’s just sort of viewed as data,” he said. “I’m interested in medieval religious art, and I think the art of that era certainly is very rich in terms of what it can teach you about the Catholic religion in that it’s very precise theologically, it corroborates the writings of the Church fathers, it corroborates the liturgy. So you see all of the Catholic tradition more clearly if you’re familiar with its presentation,” he said. Having a book that you’re able to look at closely, and an image that you’re engaging not just with your eyes but also your hands, forces you to slow down and really concentrate on the image, he added. “It’s a way to train yourself to really look at art and I think to really look at anything,” he said. “That more concentrated vision is something that is quite peculiar to a mass media age.”  This article originally ran on CNA July 10, 2016. Read more

Denver, Colo., Jul 9, 2016 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- A few weeks ago, I put out a little blurb on my personal Facebook wall. It went something like this: “Hi friends! I'm working on a story about whether Catholics tend to over-spiritualize psychological problems, and whether there's a stigma in the Church against those with mental health illnesses. If you have had experience with this and would like to comment, feel free to shoot me a personal message!” Normally my friends on social media are actually pretty good at responding to these sorts of requests, but the response I got to this little Facebook post was overwhelming. So many people either messaged me to share their own experiences, or were able to refer me to professionals they knew. Family, close friends, people I haven't talked to in awhile, friends of friends of friends – I heard from people across the board. The topic has been on a to-do list of features that we have at the office, but it was a particularly personal story for me to work on because depression runs in one side of my family. I also have several close friends who have depression, anxiety and other psychological illnesses. It’s a topic that’s not easy. It’s a topic that required some extra prayers to Mary and the Holy Spirit, pre-and-post-interviews, so that the peace of Christ would reign over these difficult but necessary conversations. An article can only be so long, and can only delve into so much (I've seen the analytics on page views – y'all have short attention spans). So here are some things I learned while working on this piece that couldn't fit into my article.1. If you’re dealing with psychological illness as a Catholic, you're not a failure, and you're not alone. There are so many people who, at sight of a Facebook post, were willing to share their experiences with me. It's also important to remember that despite appearance, nobody has it all together. As Dr. Jim Langley told me: “The most common thing I see is the families that are at the church, and everybody thinks they're just the most wonderful, put together family that’s out there. And I'm seeing half of them in therapy probably because no family is perfect. The problem is when families are so focused on appearances or coming across as this wonderful catholic family that they just don’t want to deal with it.”2. The intention of my first piece was not to de-emphasize the power of prayer. On the contrary, prayer is a very powerful and necessary part of psychological healing. What I meant to emphasize was that just as you wouldn't tell a cancer patient to “just pray it away,” you also should not tell someone with mental illness to “just pray it away.” That said, there are powerful forms of healing and deliverance prayers that I didn't get a chance to mention in my article, but that I have personally seen work small miracles in people's lives – including my own. One of the women that I spoke to for my article shared with me that it was soon after praying a deliverance prayer that she was hospitalized for her depression. She doesn't consider this a coincidence – she considers it the moment when she finally allowed Jesus to enter those places of her life that she hadn't let him enter yet, and through that prayer he led her to the miracle of modern medicine and psychological help that she needed to begin to fully heal. A great source for healing and deliverance prayers is the book “Unbound: A practical guide to deliverance” by Neal Lozano. This is the book (and corresponding ministry) that I have seen most often endorsed by reliable, holy priests. (There are likely other healing books and ministries available as well, but I would ask a trusted priest to review them before engaging with any of them.)   Some parishes are also starting to offer healing Masses specifically for intentions of healing of various kinds, where there are often priests and lay faithful available to pray very intentionally with you, and it seems like the Church is just starting to unlock the power and graces available through these particular Masses.3. If a friend or family member reaches out to you about mental illness, don't dismiss them, love them. Listen to their concerns, talk with them when they are lonely, reach out frequently even if your friend might not always respond or want to go out. “People don't enjoy time spent with depressed and anxious people. Yet we need people to sit with us, to pull us out of the dark mess that is our minds,” one interviewee told me. “That can mean sitting silently during a movie, or reading in the same room, or trying to take me out for a walk and understanding I'm not being a jerk if I don't respond much or seem surly – I'm sick. I need accountability to do the most basic human activities.”   Help them get connected to sources – priests and psychologists – that can offer them expert help. If you're looking for Catholic psychologists, your local diocesan office or Catholic Charities office is a good place to start. But it's also ok to recognize your limits. One person I interviewed said she appreciated it when her friends established clear boundaries for the sake of their own peace of mind and for the sake of the friendship. Being up front about boundaries and establishing them early is the best approach, rather than realizing after the fact that you've crossed a line. It's also important to remember that God, through both prayer and mental professionals, is the ultimate healer. While it's so very important to be like Christ to them, it's ok to recognize that you are not Christ, and will not be their ultimate source of healing or happiness. As a friend with depression once told me, it's not worth dragging other people down with you, so it's perfectly ok to recognize your limits.4. Someone in a comment box asked about whether priests are given sufficient training to deal with these situations. While the psychologists I spoke with had, for the most part, excellent relationships with many local priests, I also spoke with several lay faithful who had less than desirable responses from priests when it comes to mental illness. When I spoke with a recently-ordained friend of mine, he said that most seminaries in his experience have a house counselor who speaks with every seminarian at some point, and does ongoing work with seminarians. He also said that everything in his training has taught him to not overstep his bounds when it comes to psychological issues. So it seems that while the training is there, in practice it does not always play out perfectly. Perhaps ongoing training throughout the priesthood is necessary, as well as more open relationships between Catholic psychologists and priests.5. The prayer life of someone struggling with mental illness might look rather different than someone without mental illness. It's probably going to be rather difficult for someone with severe anxiety to meditate in front of the Blessed Sacrament for long periods of time. Those who have been hurt by the Church may find going to Mass difficult, or sometimes impossible, and the best way that they can love God in their circumstances is to follow what their psychologists have told them. “Sometimes one of the most spiritual things I do in a day is take my anxiety medicine,” an interviewee told me.6. This is an important topic and conversation that needs to continue. Someone I spoke to for this article put it best: “We are so comfortable as Catholics talking about theology of the body and human dignity, but what about theology of the mind? I think Catholics with mental health problems can pave a way to balancing the spiritual and the practical by being vulnerable. The problem I have seen is that we lean one way or the other in our world, and we need both.” Read more