Angelus News | January 14, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 1

NATION
■ No change at the border, bishop says
A leading voice among the U.S. bishops on immigration
said little has changed for migrants at the U.S. southern
border despite promises from the Biden administration.
El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz visited migrants along the
border Dec. 20, 2021, two weeks after the administration
reimplemented the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy.
The Biden administration was ordered to reinstate the
Trump-era policy by a Texas judge last August. Officials
claimed they would conclude immigration cases within
six months of the migrants’ return to Mexico and provide
COVID-19 vaccinations to eligible migrants.
But Bishop Seitz said that the migrants are telling a
different story, one where “they’re still being treated like
criminals” and where promises of humane conditions and
vaccines have gone unfulfilled.
“They’ve lost everything in their home place,” Seitz said.
“They can’t go forward and if they stay, they’ll be staying in
a place that has so many social problems right now and they
will continue to be at risk.”
■ No, NASA hasn’t hired theologians
Migrants from Haiti
cross the Rio Bravo
near El Paso, Texas,
to turn themselves
in to U.S Border
Patrol agents to
request asylum on
Jan. 3. | CNS/JOSE
LUIS GONZALEZ,
REUTERS
“NASA just hired 24 theologians to assess how the world
would react if we discovered alien life.”
That was the claim that gained viral popularity on social
media in the waning days of 2021. According to an Associated
Press fact check, the claim is not completely true — or
false.
Though the space agency has not hired theologians, NASA
did make a grant in 2015 to Princeton University’s Center of
Theological Inquiry (CTI) to support a study to “assess societal
implications for NASA’s astrobiological and search for life
efforts.” The NASA-funded part of the research concluded
in 2017.
“Individuals who receive grant funding from NASA are
not employees, advisers, or spokespersons for the agency,”
a NASA spokesperson told AP. “Thus, the researchers and
scholars involved with this study were not hired by NASA,
but instead received funding through CTI to conduct this
work.”
■ New York Times uncovers problems
with popular prenatal tests
Pro-life advocates say a groundbreaking report from The
New York Times on faulty prenatal genetic tests further
illustrates the injustice of abortion.
Basing their findings on interviews and combined studies,
the Times found that five of the most common prenatal
tests for genetic disorders provide false positives around
85% of the time, and that some companies advertise these
tests as “reliable” and “highly accurate” despite the false
positive rates.
Catholic activist Jeanne Mancini, president of the March
for Life, decried the poor regulation of the tests, telling
Catholic News Agency that children who test positive for
a genetic disorder in utero are “disproportionately targeted
for abortion.”
“It is a travesty that women and families are making life-altering
decisions based on misleading information and that
children with disabilities are deemed unworthy of life,”
said the American Association for Pro-Life Obstetricians
and Gynecologists in a statement.
Top billing for the Bible — A billboard spotlighting “The Bible in a Year” was
seen from mid-December until Jan. 9 in New York’s Times Square to celebrate
the surprise success of the daily podcast, which leads listeners through the Bible’s
narrative. It became the No. 1 podcast in all categories in the U.S. within 48 hours
of its Jan. 2021 launch, remained the No. 1 podcast in religion and spirituality
for most of the year, and was expected to have 170 million downloads and 4
billion total listening minutes by the end of 2021. The billboard featuring host
Father Mike Schmitz also encouraged people to read the Bible in 2022. | CNS/
COURTESY ASCENSION
January 14, 2022 • ANGELUS • 5