Washington D.C., Oct 25, 2015 / 04:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Saul Green wanted to turn his life around. Green was caught stealing out of a subway station vending machine and charged with larceny 24 years ago. After the judge tossed out the case, he was later sentenced to prison on a crack cocaine conviction. Following his year in prison, he found employment as a concierge for three months in Washington, D.C. But when his employer wanted to move him to a security guard position, they found out about his prison term and then parted ways with him. “Ever since that time, it’s been hard,” he told CNA in an interview. He lost his apartment and had to take everything he owned to the streets. Green currently lives in a men’s shelter in Washington, D.C. and is still waiting for calls back from employers after more than 125 interviews for potential jobs. Green's story is one example of the struggles ex-prisoners face when they look for a job. For years, Catholic leaders have been calling for criminal justice reform to help avoid similar situations, which can result in homelessness, drug abuse, gang activity, or a return to crime.   Now, the U.S. bishops believe that a new Senate bill is a good first step to achieving reform. “Our Catholic tradition supports the community's right to establish and enforce laws that protect people and advance the common good,” stated a recent letter from Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami and Sister Donna Markham, OP. “But our faith also teaches us that both victims and offenders have a God-given dignity that calls for justice and restoration, not vengeance,” they continued. Archbishop Wenski chairs the U.S. bishops’ committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. Sister Donna Markham is the president and CEO of Catholic Charities, USA. Their letter, sent to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), ranking member of the committee, applauds the Senate’s Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act. It hails the bill as a “modest bipartisan first step” in criminal justice reform, praising it overall while finding the addition of some new mandatory minimum sentences “problematic.” The bill is “comprehensive,” according to Anthony Granado, a policy advisor to the U.S. Bishops Conference on issues involving civil rights and the death penalty. “We need to move away from this mentality of punishment for its own sake and look at smarter sentencing, smarter ways of doing incarceration that in the end, not only protect society, but also lift up human life and dignity,” he told CNA. Reform of the criminal justice system has now become a thoroughly bipartisan initiative. Presidential candidates from both parties have talked about the issue. The new Senate bill enjoys three co-sponsors from each party. Some reform advocates believe that a push for tougher stances on crime in the 1980s and ‘90s culminated with a legal system that houses too many prisoners for too long a time and at unnecessary expense to society. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s overall population but 25 percent of the prison population. The federal prison population has seen a 790 percent increase since 1980, according to the Congressional Research Service. And minorities are more likely to be behind bars, another reason why advocates insist upon reform of the justice system. One in nine black children has a father in prison, according to 2009 statistics from The Pew Charitable Trusts. Over a third of young black males without high school diplomas are in jail. One in three black males born now will at some point serve time in jail. “Really, I think, what the bishops have been saying for quite a while now is it’s a long-overdue conversation in our country about how to fix our broken criminal justice system,” Granado said, “one that promotes mass incarceration, particularly for poor individuals, minorities.” “This (bill) is a step in the right direction,” he added. As a first step in a reform initiative, the Senate bill addresses sentencing reform but also anti-recidivism programs and solitary confinement reform. The bill cuts some mandatory minimum sentences for many non-violent and low-level drug offenders, while at the same time adding other mandatory minimums. Some of the mandated sentences stretch to 15 or even 25 years. Debi Campbell, a Virginia resident who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the bill on Monday, argued that she deserved jail time for using and selling methamphetamine with her husband in the 1990s – but not almost 20 years, which was her sentence. One of her clients had gone to the police, and Campbell was charged with conspiracy to sell 10 kilos of meth. “I never even saw that much drugs, much less sold it,” she said in her written testimony, but she was being charged for both her own crimes and those of her clients, plus for their allegations made against her. Campbell pled guilty in 1994 and received a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence, plus an extra sentence of almost 10 additional years. Her client received probation in return for being an informant. “I needed to go to prison because I desperately needed a wake-up call,” she said in her testimony. “But I did not need nearly 20 years in prison to learn my lesson.” “The worst part was not being able to be with my four daughters,” she said. “I had already failed them once, and now they were growing up in the foster care system.” Mandatory minimums “don’t really take into account” the particular circumstances of a person’s case, Granado said. “They’ve been applied so disproportionately, particularly for non-violent offenses.” The bishops oppose “one size fits all” laws like that because they don’t deal with the “subsidiarity” of taking each human case as it comes, he added. The proposed bill also expands “safety valves” to give judges more flexibility in determining whether a defendant merits less than the mandatory minimum sentence. Those with a serious drug offense or a violent offense would not be eligible. In addition, the bill reduces the penalty in the federal three-strike law from life imprisonment to 25 years for drug offenders. The three-strike law applies when a person is convicted of a “serious violent felony” and has been previously convicted twice in federal or state court of a “serious violent felony” and another offense, which can be a “serious drug offense.” The legislation also encourages prisoners to participate in “anti-recidivism programs” which can reduce their sentences. These programs would include job-training, mental health counseling, and drug treatment, which Granado argues helps get to the root of the problem of why they’re in prison. Preventing recidivism – a return to prison for someone who has been released – is critical, Granado insisted. However, it is “very difficult for these persons to find jobs,” he said. Unemployment is the biggest cause of recidivism, maintains Judith Conti of the National Employment Law Project. She advocates for persons who cannot get a job because of their previous criminal record. The best-case scenario for a former inmate who is unemployed, she says, is that he receives public benefits. The worst-case scenario – and all too common – is that he reverts back to crime. “They’ve paid their debt to society,” Granado said. “It makes no sense to return a person to the community with no assistance, just so they can go back and commit crime.” Yet despite support from churches, friends, and organizations, such assistance may not be enough for an ex-inmate to land a job, as exemplified by the story of Saul Green. Reform advocates say serious efforts are needed to turn things around. On another note, the proposed Senate bill contains “strong regulations and restrictions” on solitary confinement for juveniles, Granado said. Bernard Kerik, former police commissioner for New York City who pled guilty to tax evasion and fraudulent statements in 2009 and served three years in prison, spent 60 days in solitary confinement. “That 60 days, to me, was like 10 years,” he described it in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in May. Kerik said that during his time in solitary, he started hallucinating and talking to himself. To pass the time he would count everything – “the number of bedsprings, steps, cracks in the walls, lines and mudsplats on the windows.” He said that after spending time in solitary, someone will “admit to anything…to get out of that cell.” The proposed Senate bill enacts “modest” reform, and Granado says that this should be rooted in the “Golden Rule” of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which Pope Francis referenced before Congress: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. (Mt. 7:12).” When so many are tempted to say of prisoners “lock them up and throw away the key,” we must treat them as we would want to be treated, he insisted. The teaching “goes back to the classical Greek thought of Aristotle, it’s been a part of the Church’s social teaching going back to day one.” Pope Francis “reminds us that we’re all capable of committing grave sin and evil, but at the end, we’re redeemed by Christ’s love,” Granado added, “through the Cross and the Resurrection.” Photo credit: Fresnel via www.shutterstock.com   Read more

Washington D.C., Oct 24, 2015 / 06:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The number of Central American migrants to the U.S. might be down this year, but their problems at home have grown worse, said Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso before the United States Congress on Wednesday. “It is clear that now that the situation is worse and that over the last year violence has increased in communities in the countries of the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras,” Bishop Seitz stated in his Oct. 21 written testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. He advises the U.S. bishops' conference migration committee, and is on the board of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. The U.S. can and must do more to address this refugee crisis, the bishop insisted. “If we cannot respond justly and humanely to this challenge in our own backyard, then we relinquish our moral leadership and influence globally, where much greater crises are being experienced,” he said. The surge of migrants coming to the U.S. from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras peaked in fiscal year 2014, when more than 67,000 children were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border according to government data. Many of the migrants are women with children, or unaccompanied children The numbers were significantly lower in the first half of 2015, although a rise in unaccompanied child migrants in August surpassed the month’s 2014 totals, according to numbers cited by Bishop Seitz.   Many migrants have relied on smugglers to bring them north, suffering horrific abuses along the way. Mothers are also vulnerable, many having suffered physical or emotional trauma and abuse. The root causes of the migration are many, including economic hardship, gang violence, domestic abuse, and death threats from gangs in the home countries. U.S. bishops have insisted that those fleeing violence be treated as refugees and given asylum. “The violence is the difference,” Bishop Seitz said, explaining why the migrants come from those three particular countries, which have some of the highest murder rates in the world. El Salvador benefitted from a gang truce a few years ago, but as that fell apart the murder rate there skyrocketed and is on pace to surpass Honduras, which has the worst in the world. More than 60 percent of the migrants “had legitimate asylum claims” according to a United Nations report, Bishop Seitz said in his testimony. And although the numbers of migrants to the U.S. are down this fiscal year, that does not mean the overall number of migrants is down, he added. The Obama administration claims its efforts to persuade people against migrating have been successful, but the reality is that a “large part” of the drop is due to Mexico, he explained. More migrants are now going to neighboring Central American countries, or tried to enter Mexico but were stopped and turned back by authorities. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the bishop said, Mexico has sent back 70 percent more migrants this fiscal year than the previous year, and six times the number of child migrants. “We have transferred the responsibility of this crisis to others, and in so doing, perhaps we’ve abdicated our own,” the bishop stated. The U.S. must heed the plea of Pope Francis to see the humanity in migrants, he noted. In his Sept. 24 address to a joint meeting of Congress, the Pope said that “on this continent, too, thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities.” “We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal,” he continued. He cautioned Americans not to “discard whatever proves troublesome” but to “remember the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Mt 7:12). The U.S. must also intervene in these Central American countries to address the root causes of migration, Bishop Seitz insisted. Its aid must focus more on protection and migration and less on enforcement. First, Congress should approve President Obama’s request for $1 billion in  foreign aid to the region for fiscal year 2016, he said. Legislators should also work to improve the administration’s Central American minors program, which allows child residents of the three countries to apply to enter the U.S. as refugees or on humanitarian parole without having to make the journey north. Currently only 19 of 120 applicants have been approved, Bishop Seitz noted, much less than the U.N.’s figure of 60 percent of migrants having “legitimate asylum claims.” He said there should also be investment in the region’s groups and projects directly helping the migrants like the Youth Builders project of Catholic Relief Services-El Salvador and other organizations, which provides youth threatened by gangs and unemployment with job training and life skills to be leaders in the community.   In fact, the bishop noted, some of the best programs are the individual youth programs at every Catholic parish in the region. “They have some incredible youth ministry going on,” he said. “I think there might be some way to connect with these organizations.” The U.S. should make changes to border policy including having a child welfare expert present at processing stations, allowing child migrants a better chance to fully express why they migrated and the abuses they suffered along the way should they be eligible for asylum. “One of Jesus’ first experiences as an infant was to flee for his life from King Herod with his family to Egypt. Indeed, Jesus Himself was a child migrant fleeing violence,” Bishop Seitz stated in his written testimony. “The Holy Family is the archetype of the refugee families we see today, both at our border and around the world.” Read more

Phoenix, Ariz., Oct 23, 2015 / 04:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- When his wife Angela died of colon cancer in 2012, Chris Faddis knew he had to commemorate her life with something big – not because she had died from cancer, but because he had witnessed the shocking reality of malnutrition in his own wife and in other chronically ill patients. “With Angela’s cancer, we knew it was terminal and there wasn’t that much that could be done - except keep her alive as long as possible. And nutrition was a very important part of that,” Faddis told CNA. “When we left the hospital to go to hospice, I noticed a woman walking out of the dining room with a bag of food… there was a whole slew of patients who couldn’t cook for themselves, so when they came in for treatment, they would take food with them and freeze it until they came back again,” he said. That is when Faddis decided to found Bene Plates, an organization that provides nutrient-rich meals to chronically ill patients across the country, delivering the prepared food right to their front doors. During the several years of research that followed, Faddis found that a whopping 85 percent of cancer patients suffer from malnutrition, and 40 percent end up dying from malnutrition rather than from the disease itself. “We needed to do something - we needed to provide food for these people,” Faddis decided, encouraged by his dying wife and a good friend, who was also a nutritionist. A nationally known Catholic speaker, entrepreneur and author, Faddis took on the challenge of providing nutrition for the sick in 2012. It’s been three years in the making, but in November, his team will officially launch the Bene Plates meal delivery program nationwide. “It’s been a long process of research - our nutrition guide that we have developed for our company is 130-pages long,” Faddis noted, saying that years of delving into scientific evidence and nutrition have helped in perfecting the vision behind Bene Plates. In addition to Faddis, the Bene Plates team includes Dr. John Oertle, who is the director of nutrition, and Fr. Leo Patalinghug, who serves as menu advisor and chef. Fr. Leo is best known for hosting the television show, Savoring our Faith, which airs on EWTN. Bene Plates focuses its menu on clean, toxin-free foods with a micro-nutrient dense foundation and no processed ingredients. Its meals also include a variety of spices and fresh herbs, which not only add flavor, but also have significant health benefits. “Truly, God gave us everything that we need. Spices and herbs are anti-inflammatory, so they are going to help reduce inflammation in patients,” Faddis said. Even though Bene Plates has designed a general menu of nutrient-rich, healthy foods, the company also wants to cater the meal plan to every individual’s specific needs, providing gluten-free and vegetarian options as well. “Every patient is different,” Faddis noted, saying they are trying to ensure “that the patient is able to eat the food, that it tastes good for them, and that we are giving them what they need at that time in their disease.” “The way it would work is that the patient would see a nutritionist – we have a credentialed nutritionist on our team – and have a full evaluation of everything, looking at their diagnosis and disease stage,” he explained. From there, blood tests would be taken to gauge the patient’s nutrient and antioxidant levels - giving the nutritionist and chef the information necessary to plan the patient’s diet, according to their own individual nutritional requirements. After that, the food is prepared, packaged, and shipped out – delivering anywhere between 7-21 meals per week, depending on each patient’s specifications. Because Bene Plates is FDA-certified, it is able to ship to any home in the United States. Bene Plates has already launched its nutrition program and will officially begin delivering meals to the patients who have subscribed next month. The company has also started a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds and awareness leading up to the launch, offering special deals and rewards for supporters. Moving forward, Faddis has big plans for the growth of his food revolution. The first phase is focused on home delivery. “The goal, our initial goal, is to be serving about 1,000 patients every month. From there, we will see where we grow – we might have to open another kitchen,” he said. In the future, Faddis wants to move Bene Plates into specific facilities, such as nursing homes, where they could minister to the elderly or to patients who suffer from Alzheimer's. In addition, a cold-pressed juice menu and even a food truck are on the back-burner for Bene Plates. Faddis would also like to provide nutritious meals for the patients who can’t afford them. “We are going to begin the Angela Faddis Foundation, so anyone who needs this food but cannot afford it would be able to apply for a grant,” he explained. Additionally, Faddis is working with Fr. Leo Patalinghug to provide meals for hospice patients who are facing the end of the lives. “We might have patients who are at the end of their life,” Faddis reflected, “and all they are getting out of food is comfort and just some sense of dignity or possibly enjoyment.” More information about Bene Plates and its 'food revolution' can be found on its KickStarter page.   Read more

Washington D.C., Oct 23, 2015 / 04:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid continuing controversy over fetal tissue harvesting at abortion clinics, the U.S. House of Representatives voted Friday to defund Planned Parenthood and to reroute funding to community health centers. “Women have the most to gain from congressional action to reroute these tax dollars to community and rural health centers, which provide comprehensive health care services to women, but do not abort the lives of unborn children and harvest their body parts,” the pro-life political action committee the Susan B. Anthony List said Oct. 23. The bill also guts key parts of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, including the repeal of the law’s individual health insurance mandate and the employer health insurance mandate. This ultimately drew the opposition of Democratic pro-lifers. "We fully support reallocating Planned Parenthood’s Title X funding to the 13,000 community health centers and rural health care clinics,” said Kristen Day, president of Democrats for Life of America. However, she objected that linking the defunding of Planned Parenthood to gutting the health care law “will cost votes and defeat the bipartisan effort to prevent federal funds from going to the largest abortion provider in the nation.” The Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015 passed the House Friday on a party line vote, 240-189. Only one Democrat, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, voted for it. The act is a budget reconciliation bill that temporarily blocks any mandatory funding of abortion providers while the House continues to investigate Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. The bill would also block any Medicaid dollars from going to Planned Parenthood affiliates. Planned Parenthood receives over $500 million in public funds per year. Most of this funding comes through Medicaid payments and funds from Title X, a federal health program for low-income Americans. The House bill also invests $235 million into community health centers, touted by pro-life advocates as a women’s health care alternative to Planned Parenthood. For example, many federally qualified health centers offer mammograms that Planned Parenthood clinics do not. These health centers do not perfrom abortions. There are around 9,000 federally qualified health centers in the U.S. that serve almost 23 million patients yearly, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List. There are also 4,000 rural health centers across the country. Planned Parenthood has become embroiled in controversy after the release of a series of undercover investigative video reports by the citizen journalist group Center for Medical Progress. They showed Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the offering of fetal body parts of aborted babies to harvesters for compensation. The series of videos showed Planned Parenthood doctors in California, Colorado, and Texas discussing how clinics partnered with different tissue harvesters. Those producing the videos claimed the transactions were illegal under laws that allow only a “reasonable” compensation to cover operational expenses incurred in fetal tissue harvesting. Planned Parenthood has denied that it broke any laws and accepted illegal compensation. The organization has announced that it would no longer accept any compensation for fetal tissue from harvesters. Kristen Day said that support for Planned Parenthood funding declines “once people know the truth, that Planned Parenthood will continue to harvest body parts from aborted babies.” In a Reuters poll released in August, support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood fell 20 percentage points after poll respondents heard a description of the videos. About 54 percent of respondents initially supported federal funding of Planned Parenthood. According to the Reuters poll, after respondents heard about the videos only 34 percent said federal funding should continue. Another 39 percent backed an end to government funding. Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, argued that even if Planned Parenthood clinics close because of lack of funding, the federal health centers will easily handle an influx of their clients. At present, federally qualified health centers serve almost 23 million people per year, while Planned Parenthood serves under three million, Donovan said. If the organization lost its federal money and a proportional number of clinics had to close, the federal health centers could still easily handle the influx of women patients, he continued. Also on Friday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced the members of a special panel to investigate Planned Parenthood. Two House committees have already launched separate investigations into the organization but have not concluded that it took part in illegal activity. The Select Investigative Panel includes Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), Diane Black (R-Tenn.), Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.), Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.), Andy Harris (R-Md.), Vicki Hartzler (R-Mo.), and Mia Love (R-Utah). Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser praised the panel, saying it includes “all-star” pro-life members. “This select panel is an encouraging restart to an investigative process that is long overdue,” she said. “We are encouraged to see such passionate and articulate pro-life women and men – including doctors and a nurse – lead the charge to expose the abortion industry’s exploitative practices.” Read more