Angelus News | January 26, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 2
On the cover: High school student Atticus Maldonado smiles between classes at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy in Downey. On Page 10, Angelus contributor Steve Lowery has the incredible story of how Maldonado’s school community rallied behind him in prayer — and why his unlikely recovery from a rare cancer may not even be the story’s biggest miracle.
On the cover: High school student Atticus Maldonado smiles between classes at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy in Downey. On Page 10, Angelus contributor Steve Lowery has the incredible story of how Maldonado’s school community rallied behind him in prayer — and why his unlikely recovery from a rare cancer may not even be the story’s biggest miracle.
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ANGELUS<br />
FIGHTING<br />
CHANCE<br />
How his school’s<br />
‘prayer force’<br />
took on cancer —<br />
and won<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> <strong>Vol</strong>. 9 <strong>No</strong>. 2
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong><br />
<strong>Vol</strong>. 9 • <strong>No</strong>. 2<br />
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ON THE COVER<br />
VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
High school student Atticus Maldonado smiles<br />
between classes at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy<br />
in Downey. On Page 10, <strong>Angelus</strong> contributor Steve<br />
Lowery has the incredible story of how Maldonado’s<br />
school community rallied behind him in prayer — and<br />
why his unlikely recovery from a rare cancer may not<br />
even be the story’s biggest miracle.<br />
THIS PAGE<br />
VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
The St. Charles Choir performed a free concert at St.<br />
Charles Borromeo Church in <strong>No</strong>rth Hollywood on Jan.<br />
14 with a musical prayer for peace in the Holy Land.<br />
The choir was originally scheduled to perform in the<br />
Holy Land during its pilgrimage, but the Hamas’ attack<br />
on Israel on Oct. 7 canceled the trip.<br />
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Always Forward - newsletter.angelusnews.com
CONTENTS<br />
Pope Watch............................................... 2<br />
Archbishop Gomez................................. 3<br />
World, Nation, and Local <strong>News</strong>...... 4-6<br />
In Other Words........................................ 7<br />
Father Rolheiser....................................... 8<br />
Scott Hahn.............................................. 32<br />
Events Calendar..................................... 33<br />
14<br />
16<br />
18<br />
20<br />
24<br />
<strong>26</strong><br />
28<br />
30<br />
After visiting Auschwitz, LA teacher brings her experience back to students<br />
Here are some <strong>2024</strong> California laws that Catholics should know about<br />
Imprisoned Nicaraguan bishop is freed, along with other jailed priests<br />
Infertility isn’t a Catholic problem. But are there Catholic answers?<br />
Charlie Camosy: What’s behind the ‘deplorable’ tragedy of surrogacy<br />
Robert Brennan asks: Am I the only one who doesn’t have a podcast?<br />
‘Poor Things’: Award season favorite mistakes provocative for interesting<br />
Heather King: LA Natural History Museum’s ‘100 Carats’ exhibit is a jewel<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 1
POPE WATCH<br />
Hoping hell is empty<br />
While a pope can resign, Pope<br />
Francis said it is not something he is<br />
thinking about or worrying about now.<br />
“It is neither a thought, nor a worry,<br />
nor even a desire; it is a possibility,<br />
open to all popes. But for the moment<br />
it is not at the center of my thoughts,<br />
my worries, my feelings,” he said in an<br />
interview on Italian television Jan. 14.<br />
“As long as I feel I still have the capacity<br />
to serve, I will go on,” the 87-yearold<br />
pope said. “When I can no longer<br />
do it, it will be time to think about it.”<br />
Francis made the comments in an<br />
interview lasting more than 50 minutes<br />
on the program “Che Tempo Che Fa”<br />
on Italy’s <strong>No</strong>ve channel.<br />
He also said that “in August I have<br />
to make a trip to Polynesia” and that<br />
sometime after that, he hopes to go to<br />
Argentina for the first time since his<br />
election in 2013.<br />
Francis was asked how he imagines<br />
hell if he really believes God forgives<br />
everyone who asks.<br />
“It’s difficult to imagine it,” the pope<br />
said. “What I would say is not a dogma<br />
of faith, but my personal thought: I like<br />
to think hell is empty; I hope it is.”<br />
The pontiff was also asked about his<br />
approval of Fiducia Supplicans (“Supplicating<br />
Trust”), the Dicastery for the<br />
Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration that<br />
a priest can offer informal blessings<br />
to gay couples as long as it is clear the<br />
Church is not equating their union to<br />
marriage.<br />
“The Lord blesses everyone who is<br />
capable of being baptized, that is, every<br />
person,” said Francis. “But then people<br />
must enter into conversation with the<br />
Lord’s blessing and see what path the<br />
Lord is proposing for them.”<br />
The pastoral work of the Church, he<br />
said, is to “take them by the hand and<br />
help them to go down that road, not<br />
condemn them from the start.”<br />
“I always tell confessors: Forgive<br />
everything and treat people as kindly<br />
as the Lord treats us. And then if you<br />
want to help people, you can talk and<br />
help them move on, but forgive everyone,”<br />
he said.<br />
Fabio Fazio, the program’s host, asked<br />
the pope about the phrase in the classic<br />
Act of Contrition: “I detest all my sins<br />
because of thy just punishments.”<br />
“Sin deserves punishment,” the<br />
pope said. But he said he believes<br />
the “literary expression” in the classic<br />
version of the prayer “is too harsh given<br />
God’s love. I prefer to say, ‘Because by<br />
sinning I have saddened your heart.’ ”<br />
Francis said that in his 54 years of<br />
priesthood, he’s only denied forgiveness<br />
in confession once, because of the<br />
person’s “hypocrisy.”<br />
“I’ve always forgiven everything even<br />
when I knew the person could fall<br />
again, but the Lord forgives us. He<br />
helps us not to fall or to fall less, but he<br />
always forgives.”<br />
Asked what worries him, Francis<br />
responded that “some things do scare<br />
me. Some things frighten me. For example,<br />
this escalation of war frightens<br />
me.”<br />
With nuclear weapons stockpiled, he<br />
said, one wonders “how will we end<br />
up, like <strong>No</strong>ah’s ark? That scares me,<br />
the capacity for self-destruction that<br />
humanity has today.”<br />
Reporting courtesy of Catholic <strong>News</strong><br />
Service Rome bureau chief Cindy<br />
Wooden.<br />
Papal Prayer Intention for <strong>January</strong>: We pray that the Holy<br />
Spirit may help us to recognize the gift of different charisms<br />
within the Christian community and to discover the richness<br />
of different traditions and rituals in the Catholic Church.<br />
2 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
NEW WORLD OF FAITH<br />
ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ<br />
OneLife LA — 10 years on<br />
Ten years ago, we founded<br />
OneLife LA with the hope of<br />
starting a new conversation and<br />
encouraging a new way of thinking<br />
about the right to life and the cause of<br />
human dignity in our city and in our<br />
nation.<br />
At that time, Roe v. Wade was the<br />
law of the land. The lives of millions<br />
of unborn children were being taken<br />
in the womb each year as the result of<br />
that 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling,<br />
which claimed to find a “right” to<br />
abortion in the federal constitution.<br />
Catholics and other concerned<br />
citizens had long taken to gathering<br />
on Jan. 22, the anniversary of Roe v.<br />
Wade, to peacefully march for an end<br />
to abortion and advocate for public<br />
policies that support women, children,<br />
and families.<br />
The pro-life movement is one of the<br />
most diverse and significant initiatives<br />
for nonviolent social change and civil<br />
rights in our nation’s history, and it<br />
is a coalition of conscience rooted in<br />
the prayers and sacrifices of countless<br />
ordinary Americans from every race<br />
and walk of life.<br />
Our aim with OneLife LA is to help<br />
support and broaden this movement<br />
by raising awareness of the beauty and<br />
dignity of every human life, from conception<br />
to natural death. We also want<br />
to recommit ourselves, as Catholics, to<br />
our duty to work for the beautiful Gospel<br />
vision of a culture of life and love.<br />
The Church has always defended the<br />
unborn child’s right to life, since the<br />
first century.<br />
We still believe that abortion is a<br />
grave evil and social injustice, because<br />
it attacks life itself and targets the<br />
weakest, most defenseless members of<br />
our community. We also believe, as the<br />
popes teach, that the right to life is the<br />
foundation of every other human right.<br />
Sadly, even beyond abortion, we see<br />
everywhere in our society the spreading<br />
of an anti-human spirit, a disregard<br />
for the sacredness of human life.<br />
In many ways, our society is forgetting<br />
the beautiful vision of Jesus and the<br />
Church.<br />
Jesus brought into the world a profound,<br />
radically new idea about the<br />
human person.<br />
He taught that everyone is created for<br />
a reason by the Father, who from before<br />
the world’s foundation knows us and<br />
loves us and has a plan and purpose for<br />
our lives.<br />
Every person, from the moment of<br />
conception, is created in God’s own<br />
image to be his own beloved son or<br />
daughter.<br />
Jesus told us that we are so precious<br />
that every hair on our head is numbered,<br />
and that God gives every child an<br />
angel in heaven, to guard and guide<br />
that child.<br />
And to show us how much we are<br />
loved, Jesus offered his own life on the<br />
cross for the redemption of all men<br />
and women, again, without exceptions.<br />
Even secular historians recognize that<br />
these Christian truths marked a “revolution”<br />
in human thought and shaped<br />
the foundation of Western civilization,<br />
changing how we think about women,<br />
children, the family, the poor, and<br />
more.<br />
These truths are the basis of our<br />
country’s founding belief that all men<br />
and women are created equal, with<br />
God-given rights and freedoms, and<br />
that the purpose of government is to<br />
safeguard these rights and freedoms.<br />
OneLife LA is about proclaiming<br />
these truths and restoring this vision of<br />
the human person in our society.<br />
America has changed in these past 10<br />
years. Thanks be to God, Roe v. Wade<br />
has been overturned.<br />
But abortion remains widespread and<br />
threats to unborn life have multiplied<br />
— through embryo research, “surrogate”<br />
motherhood, and a host of new<br />
“reproductive” technologies.<br />
We still face the challenge of building<br />
a society and economy that supports<br />
marriages and families, where every<br />
woman has the help she needs to bring<br />
her child into this world in love.<br />
More than that, we need to keep<br />
working for a society where no one is a<br />
stranger and there is no life that is not<br />
worth living, no life that can be left<br />
behind or thrown away.<br />
That means resisting the growing<br />
pressures for assisted suicide and<br />
insisting that the elderly and disabled<br />
be cared for with true compassion, as<br />
children of God.<br />
That means serving the homeless<br />
and the mentally ill, the immigrant,<br />
and the prisoner. It means confronting<br />
racial and economic injustices, and the<br />
crises of drugs, family breakdown, and<br />
human trafficking.<br />
We need to keep working for a society where no<br />
life can be left behind or thrown away.<br />
Ten years on, OneLife LA continues<br />
to be a dream worth living for. It is the<br />
dream of the world as God intends it<br />
to be.<br />
Pray for me and I will pray for you.<br />
And let us ask our holy Mary, the<br />
mother of life, to help us to build a<br />
world where every life is precious and<br />
sacred, where every person is treated<br />
as a child of God, and where we love<br />
every person as Jesus loves us.<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 3
WORLD<br />
■ Lebanon: Bishops warn of larger war ‘time bomb’<br />
As Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza continues, Lebanon’s Maronite Catholic<br />
bishops are sounding the alarm about the risk of a larger war in the region.<br />
National and international authorities must “take serious steps and adopt the<br />
necessary diplomatic and political measures to free Lebanon from this burden that<br />
weighs on its demography, its economy, and its balance,” wrote the bishops in a<br />
nine-point statement Jan. 3.<br />
The bishops focused primarily on conflicts along the Israel-Lebanese border, exacerbated<br />
by Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, citing casualties and injuries in the<br />
region. They called on Israel to announce “a final ceasefire,” and for negotiations<br />
for a two-state solution in its ongoing war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.<br />
The bishops also warned about a yet-unfelt threat from Syrian refugees in the<br />
country.<br />
“The searches carried out by the military and security forces have shown that the<br />
displaced people are in possession of ammunition and sophisticated weapons,”<br />
the statement said. “This is a time bomb that poses a real threat to the Lebanese<br />
people.”<br />
A nation’s hunger — People displaced by fighting between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State<br />
militants are pictured in a file photo carrying boxes of food aid given by the United Nations World Food Program<br />
at a refugee camp in Ain Issa. The U.N. said it would end its main food assistance program in <strong>January</strong> across<br />
war-torn Syria, where more than 12 million people lack regular access to sufficient food. | OSV NEWS/ERIK DE<br />
CASTRO, REUTERS<br />
■ African bishops say no<br />
to new blessing rules, with<br />
Rome’s thumbs up<br />
The bishops of Africa announced they<br />
would not permit blessings for homosexual<br />
couples within the continent, in<br />
response to the Dec. 18 Vatican declaration<br />
allowing priests to bless couples<br />
in irregular marriages.<br />
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of the<br />
Democratic Republic of Congo, president<br />
of the Symposium of Episcopal<br />
Conferences of Africa and Madagascar,<br />
issued a Jan. 11 letter which described<br />
itself as a synthesis of all the African<br />
bishops’ opinions.<br />
He said that, while the bishops “have<br />
strongly reaffirmed their communion<br />
with Pope Francis,” they believe<br />
enabling the blessings proposed by<br />
the Vatican “cannot be carried out in<br />
Africa without exposing themselves to<br />
scandals.”<br />
“The African Bishops’ Conferences<br />
emphasize that people with homosexual<br />
tendencies must be treated with<br />
respect and dignity, while reminding<br />
them that unions of persons of the<br />
same-sex are contrary to the will of<br />
God and therefore cannot receive the<br />
blessing of the Church,” the letter read.<br />
Ambongo told Catholic <strong>News</strong> Agency<br />
that the letter “received the agreement”<br />
of Pope Francis and Cardinal Victor<br />
Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery<br />
for the Doctrine of the Faith.<br />
■ Knights to help renovate<br />
Rome’s most famous canopy<br />
After almost 400 years, the famous 100-foot-tall canopy<br />
standing over the main altar of St. Peter’s will be getting<br />
some much-needed repairs.<br />
Known as a baldachin, Baroque master Gian Lorenzo<br />
Bernini’s 17th-century masterpiece will be covered in scaffolding<br />
for an estimated 10 months.<br />
The project is estimated to cost 700,000 euros ($766,000)<br />
and will be entirely funded by the Knights of Columbus,<br />
which has funded 17 other Vatican restoration projects.<br />
“We’re in union with the Holy See, with the successor of<br />
St. Peter, and so these kinds of projects are very much in<br />
keeping with who we are and our mission,” Patrick Kelly,<br />
supreme knight, told Catholic <strong>News</strong> Service.<br />
Bernini’s baldacchino in St. Peter’s Basilica. | CNS/LOLO GOMEZ<br />
4 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
NATION<br />
■ White House to gut conscience protection rules<br />
The Biden administration announced plans to reverse a 2019 rule that would<br />
have enforced conscience protections for certain health care providers.<br />
The old Trump-era rule, which never took effect due to lawsuits, would have<br />
stripped federal funding from facilities that required workers to provide any service<br />
they objected to, such as abortions, contraception, gender-affirming care, and<br />
sterilization.<br />
The new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rules are scheduled<br />
to go into effect March 11. The HHS said the old rules sometimes undermined<br />
“the balance Congress struck between safeguarding conscience rights and protecting<br />
access to health care.”<br />
Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the Conscience Project, told Catholic <strong>News</strong><br />
Agency that the change doesn’t change legal protections for health care workers<br />
with conscience, but makes them harder to enforce.<br />
“[The White House] is incapable of erasing those rights,” she said. “But it looks<br />
like they’re going to do all in their power to make people think that they don’t have<br />
them.”<br />
Martin Scorcese in the 2021 PBS show “The Oratorio:<br />
A Documentary with Martin Scorsese.” | PBS<br />
■ Scorsese sets his<br />
sights on Jesus (again)<br />
Martin Scorsese said he wants to get<br />
rid of the stigma around organized<br />
religion — so he’s making an 80-minute<br />
film about Jesus.<br />
“Right now, ‘religion,’ you say that<br />
word and everyone is up in arms<br />
because it’s failed in so many ways,”<br />
Scorsese told the Los Angeles Times.<br />
“But that doesn’t mean necessarily<br />
that the initial impulse was wrong.<br />
Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it.<br />
You may reject it. But it might make a<br />
difference in how you live your life.”<br />
The director said he has finished a<br />
screenplay, set mainly in the present<br />
day, with writing collaborator Kent<br />
Jones based on “A Life of Jesus” by<br />
novelist Shusaku Endo. This will be<br />
Scorsese’s second adaptation of an<br />
Endo book, following the 2016 film<br />
“Silence.”<br />
Scorsese directed the 1988 film “The<br />
Last Temptation of Christ,” which was<br />
heavily criticized by Catholics at the<br />
time for its depiction of Christ and<br />
rated “morally offensive” by the U.S.<br />
Conference of Catholic Bishops<br />
Scorsese cited meeting with Pope<br />
Francis in 2023 as the inspiration for<br />
the film, which is set to be shot this<br />
year.<br />
■ Illinois teen’s fundraiser to save<br />
Catholic school has unlikely success<br />
A Catholic grade school in Ingleside, Illinois, was brought back from the brink of<br />
insolvency thanks to one high-school-aged alumna.<br />
Susan Lutzke, a 17-year-old who attended St. Bede School as a child, learned<br />
last December that the school was facing closure due, in part, to decreased state<br />
funding. The next morning, she started a GoFundMe campaign.<br />
By Jan. 13, the campaign had raised $380,000 of the $400,000 needed to close the<br />
budget gap.<br />
“It’s pretty crazy. I don’t think I ever really expected it to get where it is,” Lutzke said.<br />
As of press time, neither the school nor the Archdiocese of Chicago had made any<br />
definitive statement about St. Bede’s fate.<br />
Opening a new chapter — Boston Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley greets Carlos Metola, postulator for the sainthood<br />
cause for Servant of God Carmen Hernández, co-initiator of the Neocatechumenal Way, at a Jan. 7 event in<br />
Boston to officially introduce the English translation of a book of Hernández’s diaries. Hernández’s sainthood<br />
cause was opened officially in December 2022. Metola confirmed that a medical committee is studying two<br />
reported medical “favors” attributed to Hernandez’s intercession that have occurred in the U.S. since her death in<br />
2016. | OSV NEWS/GREGORY L. TRACY, THE PILOT<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 5
LOCAL<br />
Walking for change — The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet were among many other religious sisters, supporters,<br />
and advocates who participated at the <strong>2024</strong> LA Walk for Freedom to End Human Trafficking on Jan. 13.<br />
Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood hosted the event and was the starting location for the two-mile walk. |<br />
SISTERS OF ST JOSEPH OF CARONDELET<br />
■ Are you ready? LA Congress lineup announced<br />
A local filmmaker will headline the <strong>2024</strong> Los Angeles Religious Education Congress<br />
in Anaheim, set for Feb. 15-18.<br />
Congress keynote speaker Jessica Sarowitz is the founder of Miraflores Films and<br />
executive producer of the 2023 documentary, “With This Light,” on the life of<br />
Maria Rosa Leggol.<br />
This year’s workshop speaker lineup also includes Cardinal Robert McElroy,<br />
who will speak about the Synod on Synodality, <strong>Angelus</strong> contributor John L. Allen<br />
Jr., Archbishop Joseph Nguyen of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Auxiliary Bishop José<br />
Arturo Cepeda of Detroit, and Victims Assistance Ministry Coordinator Heather<br />
Banis for the Archdiocese of LA.<br />
Youth Day on Feb. 15 will include a workshop on “Gaming, God, & the Heroic<br />
Life” and another titled “Awkward: When Following God Gets Uncomfortable.”<br />
Get more information and register at recongress.org.<br />
■ Abbots in Orange<br />
County launch Catholic<br />
fundraising firm<br />
St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange<br />
County has launched a consulting<br />
and fundraising firm to help Catholic<br />
institutions make progress on their<br />
projects.<br />
The firm, the Abbey Group, will<br />
help religious organizations, educational<br />
institutions, and leaders with<br />
“ambitious apostolic endeavors and<br />
strong leadership but are in need of<br />
the financial and temporal resources<br />
to accomplish their objectives,”<br />
Gregory Clark, the strategic planning<br />
director of the Abbey Group, told<br />
Catholic <strong>News</strong> Agency.<br />
The idea for the firm came after the<br />
abbey’s success in raising more than<br />
$150 million for a capital campaign to<br />
build a new monastery.<br />
The Abbey Group doesn’t market its<br />
services but instead relies on word-ofmouth<br />
to allow for effectively vetting<br />
of the organizations and projects it<br />
pursues. The group said they take on<br />
only four projects at a time.<br />
“It is an authentically Catholic<br />
approach to fundraising — one that<br />
is desperately needed in our Church<br />
during this moment in her history,”<br />
said R. Shane Giblin, CEO and<br />
co-founder of the Abbey Group.<br />
Y<br />
■ USC Catholic students attend SEEK Conference in St. Louis<br />
USC students and local seminarians were<br />
among the thousands at the <strong>2024</strong> SEEK Conference<br />
in St. Louis, Missouri, this month.<br />
Organized by FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic<br />
University Students), SEEK featured guest<br />
speakers, daily prayer, Eucharistic adoration,<br />
workshops, and live music, plus additional<br />
ways to evangelize, including seminary formation,<br />
missionary opportunities, and volunteer<br />
work.<br />
Guest speakers at the Jan. 1-5 conference<br />
included Father Mike Schmitz, the host of the<br />
popular podcast “The Bible in a Year,” Tim<br />
Glemkowski, CEO of the National Eucharistic<br />
Revival, and Sister Mary Grace, SV.<br />
Next year’s event will be Jan. 1-5 in Salt Lake<br />
City, Utah.<br />
USC students from the Caruso Catholic Center with women religious at<br />
this year’s SEEK conference. | USC CARUSO CATHOLIC CENTER<br />
6 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
V<br />
IN OTHER WORDS...<br />
Letters to the Editor<br />
After Fiducia Supplicans, nothing may be the same<br />
In his article “Explaining to do” in the Jan. 12 issue, John L. Allen Jr.<br />
takes a cautious approach in explaining why Fiducia Supplicans may<br />
be less consequential than media reaction to it might seem. I disagree with this<br />
assessment.<br />
As Allen himself notes, the fact that the prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine<br />
of the Faith had to “clarify” that this document was not “heretical” or “blasphemous”<br />
is unprecedented, and is a clear sign that we have entered a new era in<br />
the Church. The Vatican can now issue purposely ambiguous declarations on<br />
doctrinal matters, issue multiple “clarifications” in the media, and get away with<br />
it. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.<br />
I still don’t know if Fiducia Supplicans is meant to lay the groundwork for<br />
changes to doctrine in the future, or if it’s Pope Francis’ way of trying to keep the<br />
Church together in a difficult time. But let’s not pretend the debate over same-sex<br />
blessings will go away quietly in the future.<br />
— James Stance, East Los Angeles<br />
What about the synod?<br />
I found it concerning that the end-of-2023 summary on <strong>Angelus</strong><strong>News</strong>.com (by<br />
OSV <strong>News</strong>) did not highlight the global Church synodal process, one of the most<br />
significant Church happenings since the Second Vatican Council.<br />
— Barbara Born<br />
Y<br />
Continue the conversation! To submit a letter to the editor, visit <strong>Angelus</strong><strong>News</strong>.com/Letters-To-The-Editor<br />
and use our online form or send an email to editorial@angelusnews.com. Please limit to 300 words. Letters<br />
may be edited for style, brevity, and clarity.<br />
Catholicism in color<br />
Amy Rodriguez is a digital artist from Pasadena. Rodriguez spoke with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on how digital<br />
media can help connect Catholics with God, while not ignoring the in-person relationship with him. Watch Amy’s and<br />
all #LACatholicsStory videos at lacatholics.org/stories. | ADLA<br />
To view this video<br />
and others, visit<br />
<strong>Angelus</strong><strong>News</strong>.com/photos-videos<br />
Do you have photos or a story from your parish that you’d<br />
like to share? Please send to editorial @angelusnews.com.<br />
“This is John Steinbeck,<br />
‘Grapes of Wrath,’ stuff.”<br />
~ Father Dennis Kriz, pastor of St. Philip Benizi<br />
Church in Fullerton, in a Jan. 11 Orange County<br />
Register article on three Catholic churches starting<br />
a mini-loan program to keep people from going<br />
homeless.<br />
“That is our mission: to<br />
give people a taste of the<br />
Gospel even in secular<br />
landscapes.”<br />
~ Msgr. Georg Austen of the German Catholic<br />
charity group “Bonifatiuswerk,” which supported<br />
the December 2023 opening of the northernmost<br />
Trappist monastery church in the world in <strong>No</strong>rway,<br />
in a Jan. 13 National Catholic Register article.<br />
“What the researchers<br />
need to figure out is where<br />
stupidity is harmful.”<br />
~ Selma Šabanović, Indiana University Bloomington<br />
roboticist, in a Jan. 4 Wired article on designing<br />
robots to help people with dementia.<br />
“It’s not an exaggeration to<br />
say behavior on the road<br />
today is the worst I’ve ever<br />
seen.”<br />
~ Capt. Michael Brown, a state police district<br />
commander in Michigan, in a Jan. 10 New York<br />
Times article on why American drivers are so<br />
deadly.<br />
“Even if I have struggled<br />
with these sins for years,<br />
it is never too late to break<br />
free from them, and even if<br />
I fall, Jesus will keep loving<br />
me through it.”<br />
~ Elizabeth Gedra, a sophomore at Auburn<br />
University, in an interview with “The Pillar” on her<br />
experience at the FOCUS SEEK <strong>2024</strong> conference in<br />
St. Louis this month.<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 7
IN EXILE<br />
FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI<br />
Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father<br />
Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual<br />
writer; ronrolheiser.com<br />
Piety and humor<br />
Piety is the enemy of humor, at<br />
least whenever something less<br />
than piety is masquerading as<br />
piety. Here’s an example: I once lived<br />
in community with an overly serious<br />
man who, after someone would tell<br />
a colorful joke, would bring us back<br />
to earth with the question, “Would<br />
you tell a joke like that in front of the<br />
Blessed Sacrament?” That not only<br />
deflated the joke and its teller, but it<br />
also took the oxygen out of the room.<br />
There’s a response I would have<br />
liked to have given to his question,<br />
namely, a joke my Oblate novice<br />
master used to tell, one whose irony<br />
exposes false piety. The joke runs<br />
this way: A young woman was getting<br />
married and her family could not<br />
afford a venue for a reception for the<br />
wedding. The parish priest generously<br />
offered them the foyer at the<br />
entrance of the church, telling them<br />
they could bring in a cake and have<br />
a reception there. The father of the<br />
bride asked whether they might also<br />
bring in some liquor. “Absolutely<br />
not,” the priest replied, “you can’t<br />
drink liquor in a church!” “But,” protested<br />
the bride’s father, “Jesus drank<br />
wine at the wedding feast of Cana.”<br />
“But not in front of the Blessed Sacrament!”<br />
replied the priest.<br />
Admittedly, humor can be impious,<br />
crass, offensive, dirty, but whenever<br />
that’s the case the fault normally lies<br />
more in the aesthetics than in the<br />
content of the joke. A joke isn’t offensive<br />
because it is about sex or religion<br />
or any other area we surround with<br />
sacredness.<br />
Humor is offensive when it crosses<br />
a line in terms of respect, taste, and<br />
aesthetics. Humor is offensive when<br />
it is bad art. Bad art crosses a line in<br />
terms of respect, either vis-à-vis its<br />
audience or its subject matter. What<br />
can make a joke offensive or dirty is<br />
when it is told, or how it is told, or to<br />
whom it is told, or the tone in which<br />
it is told, or lack of sensitivity to what<br />
is being told, or the color of the<br />
language as it is being told. Whether<br />
or not it can be told before the<br />
Blessed Sacrament isn’t a criterion.<br />
If a joke shouldn’t be told in front of<br />
the Blessed Sacrament it shouldn’t be<br />
told in front of anyone. There aren’t<br />
two standards of offensiveness.<br />
Still, bad piety is the enemy of<br />
humor. It’s also the enemy of robust,<br />
earthy living. But, that is only the<br />
case for bad piety, not genuine piety.<br />
Genuine piety is one of the fruits<br />
of the Holy Spirit and is a healthy<br />
reverence before all of life. But it’s<br />
a reverence that, while healthily<br />
respectful, is not offended by humor<br />
(even robust, earthy humor) providing<br />
the humor isn’t aesthetically<br />
offensive — akin to nudity, which<br />
can be healthy in art but offensive in<br />
pornography.<br />
False sensitivity that masks itself<br />
as piety also strips all spirituality of<br />
humor, save for the most pious kind.<br />
In doing that, in effect, it makes Jesus,<br />
Mary, and the saints humorless,<br />
and thus less than fully human and<br />
healthy. One of our mentors at our<br />
Oblate novitiate told us young novices<br />
that there is not a single incident<br />
reported in Scripture of Jesus ever<br />
laughing. He told us this to dampen<br />
our natural, youthful, rambunctious<br />
energy, as if this was somehow a<br />
hindrance to being religious.<br />
Humorous energy is not a hindrance<br />
to being religious. To the<br />
contrary. Jesus is the paragon of all<br />
that is healthily human, and he, no<br />
doubt, was a fully healthy, robust,<br />
delightful human person, and none<br />
of those words (healthy, robust,<br />
delightful) would apply to him if he<br />
hadn’t had a healthy, indeed earthy,<br />
sense of humor.<br />
For 15 years I taught a course<br />
entitled The Theology of God to<br />
seminarians and others preparing<br />
for ministry. I would try to cover all<br />
the required bases asked for in the<br />
curriculum — biblical revelation,<br />
patristic insights, normative Church<br />
teachings, and speculative views from<br />
contemporary theologians. But, inside<br />
all of this, like a recurring theme<br />
in an opera, I would tell the students<br />
this: In all your preaching and teaching<br />
and pastoral practices, whatever<br />
else, try not to make God look stupid.<br />
Try not to make God look unintelligent,<br />
tribal, petty, rigid, nationalistic,<br />
angry, or fearful.<br />
Every homily, every theological<br />
teaching, every ecclesial practice,<br />
and every pastoral practice ultimately<br />
reflects an image of God whether<br />
we want it to or not. And if there is<br />
something less than healthy in our<br />
preaching or pastoral practices, the<br />
God who underwrites it will also<br />
appear as unhealthy. A healthy God<br />
does not undergird an unhealthy theology,<br />
ecclesiology, or anthropology.<br />
Hence, if we teach a Jesus who is<br />
humorless, who takes offense at the<br />
earthiness of life, who is uncomfortable<br />
hearing the word sex, who<br />
flinches at colorful language, and<br />
who is afraid to smile and chuckle at<br />
irony, wit, and humor, we make Jesus<br />
appear as rigid and uptight, a prude,<br />
and not the person you want to be<br />
beside at table.<br />
8 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
THE MIRACLE ON<br />
GARDENDALE STREET<br />
A year ago, Atticus Maldonado was facing stage 4 cancer and low odds<br />
of survival. Then his school community’s ‘prayer force’ stepped in.<br />
BY STEVE LOWERY<br />
Atticus Maldonado with St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy<br />
president Christian De Larkin (left) and school principal Claudia<br />
Rodarte during his first week back at school this month<br />
since his cancer diagnosis. | VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
10 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
Miracles are nice but, truth be<br />
told, all Atticus Maldonado<br />
really wanted for Christmas<br />
was to be just another kid.<br />
Though it’s wonderful to know he’s<br />
been on so many people’s minds —<br />
and in their prayers — now all he wants<br />
is to blend back into the St. Pius X-St.<br />
Matthias Academy (PMA) community<br />
that helped to sustain him and his<br />
family for more than a year.<br />
“I’m good with not being in the<br />
spotlight,” he said. “I’d like to be just a<br />
regular student again.”<br />
In December 2022, Maldonado was<br />
diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a<br />
rare and unusually aggressive form of<br />
cancer of the soft tissue.<br />
What was more, and worse, doctors<br />
told him that he was at stage 4 of the<br />
disease, a stage with about a 20% rate of<br />
survival.<br />
The news of his illness spread quickly<br />
through the tightknit community of St.<br />
Pius X-St. Matthias in Downey. Masses<br />
were offered for his health. Friends<br />
made visits. Gifts were given. And an<br />
unknowable amount of time was spent<br />
thinking about him, his family, and<br />
what their struggle meant for the rest<br />
of us.<br />
In that time, he went from the sweet<br />
kid who loved baseball, Hot Wheels,<br />
and being an altar server, to a young<br />
man a whole lot of people were praying<br />
for, rooting for, and shedding tears for.<br />
His fight was theirs now.<br />
“There were moments when I was so<br />
angry about why this happened to my<br />
child, that I couldn’t pray,” his mother<br />
Evelyn Ochoa said. “And when I<br />
couldn’t pray for my own child, they<br />
did. This tribe that came together for<br />
us. I birthed him but, through that<br />
time, he was ours.”<br />
Anna Granados, in many ways the<br />
leader of that tribe, said that whenever<br />
the prayer group she helped found<br />
would turn their attention to Maldonado,<br />
“he became everybody’s kid.”<br />
Fitting since, before his diagnosis,<br />
Maldonado was as typical a Catholic<br />
kid as one could imagine — save for an<br />
exceptionally developed level of faith.<br />
Evelyn admitted her son’s faith has<br />
“always been greater than mine,” and<br />
said that when informed of his cancer<br />
diagnosis “it felt like my whole world<br />
came tumbling down. All I had was<br />
questions, no answers. You know, why?<br />
Why my kid? He’s such a good kid.”<br />
And yet, moments after the diagnosis,<br />
she looked at her son to find him<br />
smiling, seemingly as unconcerned as<br />
if he’d just been diagnosed with a cold.<br />
Confused, she asked him how he was<br />
feeling to which he replied, “OK. God<br />
loves me.”<br />
Around the same time, Granados had<br />
helped start the Parents in Prayer group<br />
Maldonado works during<br />
class. | VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
at PMA, having felt a calling from the<br />
Blessed Virgin Mary to do so.<br />
“These times are hard for kids, for<br />
our families,” she said. “The rosary is a<br />
weapon for these times. Our youth is<br />
going through so much and we felt the<br />
need to help out, especially because we<br />
are so close here.”<br />
With a student population that hovers<br />
around 500, PMA is the kind of place<br />
where students know not just one<br />
another, but one another’s families,<br />
too. Many arrive in packs from local<br />
parishes and have known one another<br />
since they were young children. <strong>No</strong>t<br />
only is Maldonado friends with Anna’s<br />
kids, but her husband, Jaime, coached<br />
him in sports at a local park.<br />
The prayer group would always dedicate<br />
the first mystery of the rosary to<br />
Maldonado. Anna, whose own mother<br />
was battling cancer, was always there,<br />
rain or shine, along with about 17 core<br />
members of the group. Sometimes<br />
they were joined by Evelyn, who found<br />
herself both strengthened and overwhelmed<br />
by the group’s devotion to her<br />
son and family.<br />
“Many of these women were just<br />
people I’d said hello to and now they<br />
had become a force, a prayer force,”<br />
she said. “Praying for my son like it was<br />
their son.”<br />
<strong>No</strong>ne of which surprised PMA’s president,<br />
Christian De Larkin. Along with<br />
Parents in Prayer, a student campaign<br />
to send Maldonado direct messages got<br />
underway so that he knew he had not<br />
been forgotten. When it was mentioned<br />
how much he missed baseball, he was<br />
invited to sit in the dugout during a<br />
PMA game. When it was discovered<br />
that he was a serious collector of Hot<br />
Wheel cars, Christine Godoy, part of<br />
the prayer force and whose daughter<br />
Eva is a classmate of Maldonado,<br />
mentioned that her husband actually<br />
worked for Hot Wheels.<br />
“So he put together this really cool<br />
collection of limited edition cars and<br />
we took it over to Atticus and when he<br />
saw what it was he almost burst into<br />
tears,” De Larkin said. “This is what<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 11
Maldonado with his mother, Evelyn<br />
Ochoa, and school chaplain Father<br />
Sam Ward at a special school Mass<br />
last September for Childhood Cancer<br />
Awareness Month. | SEMAJ SANDERS<br />
you sign up for in Catholic education.<br />
“You show how much you love each<br />
other, the whole person, including<br />
the spiritual, in tough times and good.<br />
That’s what this wonderful group of<br />
people did, created all these moments<br />
of grace as Atticus went through this<br />
crazy time.”<br />
And during that crazy time, Atticus<br />
remained pretty much Atticus. Evelyn<br />
described him cracking jokes throughout<br />
the process, “making me laugh<br />
while he’s vomiting from the chemo,”<br />
her son sustained by a faith she said she<br />
wishes she could “bottle and drink from<br />
every day.”<br />
His faith was such that he believed<br />
he could not only survive but serve<br />
through his illness. He volunteered to<br />
be part of a rhabdomyosarcoma study.<br />
Though his mom thought he had<br />
enough to worry about just getting better,<br />
the kid who wanted to be an altar<br />
server since he was 7, and had more<br />
recently taken to training younger servers<br />
at his home parish of St. Gertrude<br />
Church in Bell Gardens, said he was<br />
just following a divine plan for him.<br />
“I felt maybe this was a sign from<br />
God, a way I could help others so<br />
that another kid wouldn’t have to go<br />
through what I did,” he said. “This can<br />
help a kid from experiencing the same<br />
speed bump I did, maybe save another<br />
kid’s life.”<br />
Evelyn showed up at the PMA Christmas<br />
Tree Lighting ceremony Dec. 1,<br />
2023, to share the news that her son<br />
was now cancer-free and was now in<br />
the maintenance phase of treatment,<br />
which will continue for another six<br />
months. She thanked all those who<br />
did everything they could to make that<br />
happen. Some people started calling it<br />
the Miracle on Gardendale Street, the<br />
street the school is located on.<br />
Maldonado, of course, was just happy<br />
it meant that he could go back to<br />
school. He did so for the first time in<br />
a long while on Jan. 8, as PMA went<br />
back after Christmas break. He said he<br />
was a little nervous about being able to<br />
keep up with school and homework,<br />
but by the end of the day felt like he<br />
was back in the flow of things.<br />
“He arrived in uniform wearing a<br />
beanie to cover his head and joined us<br />
for our morning assembly,” De Larkin<br />
said. “There he sat among his peers in<br />
the junior section of the<br />
gym and began his first<br />
day of school as a normal<br />
student. It was a beautiful<br />
sight to see.”<br />
Maldonado agreed it was<br />
nice. He said he thought<br />
there might be a lot of<br />
questions from classmates<br />
about what he’d gone<br />
through, but none ever<br />
came.<br />
“<strong>No</strong> one really asked me.<br />
It was pretty good to not<br />
talk about it.”<br />
So perhaps he can find his way back<br />
to normal sooner than later, though<br />
always with a faith his mother calls “out<br />
of this world,” a faith that combines the<br />
innocence of a child with the strength<br />
of a survivor.<br />
“I guess I just feel like if something<br />
bad happens, I’m going to get through<br />
it,” he said. “It’s just a speed bump. Me<br />
and God, I feel like we have a pretty<br />
good connection.”<br />
Steve Lowery is a veteran journalist<br />
who has written for the Los Angeles<br />
Times, the Los Angeles Daily <strong>News</strong>,<br />
the Press-Telegram, New Times LA, the<br />
District, Long Beach Post, and the OC<br />
Weekly.<br />
Maldonado with friends at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy earlier this month. | VICTOR ALEMÁN<br />
12 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
Andi ium endam fuga. Nemperiora<br />
qui aceptas pellitatatur alit<br />
eatet eumquis cipiet pos mo<br />
omnim rem. Xero tem invendantio<br />
estium ut officto modipsanis ex elit,<br />
omnimusda aciatur, conecabo. Bor as<br />
ercium re debitis nate erit abo. Nemperfero<br />
blaborum eres siminci andicit<br />
landenimolut optatus minciti aerata<br />
non et harchitatium int in res eum<br />
fuga. Itature pror acepe volest aliciet<br />
optatatecto to magniet expelibus sit<br />
estiorumquid quunt aborupti sum,<br />
volorepudi cori tempori tatur, omnis<br />
sunt volent.<br />
Lorehenihit, que nem re, ipsaepr<br />
atibus voluptat a ped que dit as sunt ea<br />
quam fugiam apient facipsae iureium,<br />
namusam, experspel id quam alisci<br />
occum quos aut etus, to maioriatemo<br />
Credit<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 13
ABSORBING AUSCHWITZ<br />
After seeing the Holocaust site close-up, an<br />
LA-area Catholic school teacher is bringing her<br />
experience back to students.<br />
Michelle Herrera poses outside of<br />
the Polin Museum of the History of<br />
Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, during<br />
a trip as part of the Auschwitz Legacy<br />
Fellowship. | MICHELLE HERRERA<br />
BY NATALIE ROMANO<br />
Catholic school teacher Michelle<br />
Herrera never had a<br />
Jewish friend, never stepped<br />
inside a Jewish synagogue, and never<br />
learned much about the Jewish faith.<br />
But after noticing a rise in antisemitism<br />
in recent years, Herrera thought<br />
it was time to better inform herself<br />
and her students. So she joined the<br />
Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship, a<br />
unique program that gives American<br />
teachers academic-focused tours of<br />
the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial<br />
and Museum in Poland. Herrera knew<br />
seeing the concentration and extermination<br />
camps was going to be difficult,<br />
but it was tougher than expected.<br />
“That first night I prayed the most,”<br />
she said. “I wasn’t ready for the emotions<br />
that came up … nothing can<br />
prepare you for it.”<br />
The Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship<br />
is a yearlong intensive education on<br />
the Holocaust, antisemitism, and<br />
Auschwitz-Birkenau, the network of<br />
Nazi-run camps where more than<br />
1 million people, mostly Jews, were<br />
murdered. The Auschwitz-Birkenau<br />
Memorial Foundation (ABMF)<br />
launched the initiative in 2022 so<br />
younger generations would be taught<br />
not only the history of the Holocaust<br />
but its social relevance today.<br />
This year, the ABMF, with partners<br />
like Holocaust Museum LA, invited<br />
teachers from California to apply to<br />
the fully funded program. It includes<br />
in-person and online classes as well as<br />
a weeklong tour of historical sites in<br />
Poland. Herrera, who teaches theology<br />
at Ramona Convent Secondary<br />
School in Alhambra, was one of 20<br />
educators chosen from Southern California<br />
and the only Catholic school<br />
teacher.<br />
“I felt a certain responsibility with<br />
that,” Herrera said. “I thought about<br />
what this history teaches us about<br />
14 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
our faith and how do we enter the<br />
conversation.<br />
“I wanted to receive what I was there<br />
for.”<br />
Herrera visited Poland in 2016 for<br />
World Youth Day, but the mood of<br />
this trip was quite different. As soon<br />
as she arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau,<br />
she felt a “heaviness” in the air. Rain<br />
and gray skies added to the gloominess.<br />
The fellows, accompanied by<br />
representatives like Sarah Klein from<br />
Holocaust Museum LA, toured prisoner<br />
barracks and what remains of the<br />
deadly gas chambers. Herrera had no<br />
words for the latter except to say she is<br />
now a “witness” to atrocity.<br />
Especially chilling, she said, were the<br />
exhibits of personal items seized from<br />
prisoners — including shoes, eyeglasses,<br />
and even a collection of hair that<br />
had been removed to curb the spread<br />
of lice.<br />
“Seeing the amount of hair that was<br />
shaved off people’s heads — that alone<br />
got me,” said Herrera. “I just had to<br />
walk out alone under my umbrella.<br />
I just needed a moment to gather<br />
myself.”<br />
Although nothing could erase those<br />
cruelties from her mind, Herrera<br />
said she found solace in the courage<br />
shown by prisoners like St. Maximilian<br />
Kolbe. In 1941, the Catholic priest<br />
was arrested for hiding Jews from the<br />
Nazis, and while serving his sentence<br />
in Auschwitz-Birkenau, he willingly<br />
accepted another prisoner’s death sentence<br />
so that man could live. Decades<br />
later, Polish-born St. Pope John Paul II<br />
placed a paschal candle in St. Kolbe’s<br />
prison cell.<br />
“That was cool to get to see with my<br />
own eyes,” Herrera said. “I didn’t know<br />
the candle was still there. I think I<br />
needed that in the midst of so much<br />
darkness and intensity.”<br />
The Montebello native said even<br />
though the experience was deeply<br />
emotional, she never forgot why she<br />
was there: her students.<br />
“My teacher hat was definitely on,”<br />
Herrera said. “I took notes, tried to put<br />
it all together for myself, and think<br />
about how I’m going to teach this.”<br />
After the tour, Auschwitz Legacy<br />
Fellows were given school lesson plans<br />
on how to explain the Nazis’ brutality<br />
and the antisemitism that led to it.<br />
Herrera takes on those difficult topics<br />
in her theology classes and allows her<br />
students to weigh in.<br />
“That’s what stuck out to me, how<br />
things evolve over time,” said Iana Anikalumibao,<br />
a sophomore at Ramona.<br />
“(Bias) doesn’t just drop out of the sky.<br />
We should be spreading peace instead<br />
of blind hate.”<br />
Herrera also shares with her students<br />
how imprisoned Jews secretly drew<br />
pictures, wrote poems, and documented<br />
what was happening to them. The<br />
students say hearing those accounts<br />
made the Holocaust more real.<br />
“You could really connect with their<br />
stories,” said Madelyn Macias, a sophomore<br />
at Ramona. “It wasn’t just numbers<br />
you would read in a textbook. You<br />
could tell they were real people.”<br />
Herrera, a product of Catholic<br />
schools herself, has been teaching for<br />
about five years at Ramona, an all-girls<br />
high school sponsored by the Sisters<br />
of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.<br />
She’s also the campus minister.<br />
Ramona officials say by participating<br />
in the Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship,<br />
Herrera is opening her students’ eyes,<br />
and others’ too.<br />
“Michelle is very committed to what<br />
she’s doing here, particularly in the<br />
theology department,” said Sister<br />
Kathleen Callaway, SNJM, president<br />
of Ramona. “She took the initiative to<br />
do this, to enrich her experience as a<br />
teacher. I also hope some of the other<br />
participants were enriched by having<br />
her Catholic perspective.”<br />
Herrera and others involved with<br />
the Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship<br />
are closely following<br />
the ongoing conflict<br />
between Israel and<br />
Hamas militants in<br />
Gaza.<br />
The Oct. 7 attack on<br />
Israel and the retaliatory<br />
strikes in Gaza<br />
have given rise to hate<br />
crimes in the United<br />
States with both Jews<br />
and Muslims being<br />
targeted. Klein noted<br />
the current crisis and<br />
its fallout are exactly<br />
why the fellowship<br />
program exists.<br />
“I want to make it<br />
clear that hatred for American Jews is<br />
never OK and blaming them for the<br />
activity of the Israeli government is an<br />
old anti-Jewish trope,” said Klein, senior<br />
manager of museum education at<br />
Holocaust Museum LA. “The Jewish<br />
people persevere, not only persevere<br />
but thrive. A lot of that, I think, comes<br />
from remembering who we are, our<br />
past, and then using that to create a<br />
better future so we can live in peace<br />
and safety.”<br />
As an Auschwitz Legacy Fellow and a<br />
Catholic, Herrera feels called to help<br />
with that effort.<br />
“I feel a change and a transition from<br />
the experience,” Herrera said. “As<br />
people of faith, we are called to be<br />
witnesses, allies, and advocates when<br />
we see hate rising, especially with<br />
our Jewish brothers and sisters with<br />
whom we share a common spiritual<br />
heritage.”<br />
Herrera also wants to empower her<br />
students to act as “bridge builders”<br />
who can change the world for the<br />
better.<br />
“I feel called to invest into this next<br />
generation of faith leaders and particularly<br />
here at Ramona, young female<br />
faith leaders,” said Herrera. “I really<br />
love my students.”<br />
Natalie Romano is a freelance writer<br />
for <strong>Angelus</strong> and the Inland Catholic<br />
Byte, the news website of the Diocese of<br />
San Bernardino.<br />
Madelyn Macias, left, and Iana Anikalumibao are both<br />
sophomores at Ramona Convent Secondary School<br />
in Alhambra, where Michelle Herrera is helping teach<br />
her students about the Holocaust and antisemitism. |<br />
VERONICA FERNANDEZ<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 15
The California State Capitol<br />
building. | SHUTTERSTOCK<br />
LETTERS OF THE LAW<br />
Many new California laws for <strong>2024</strong> will leave Catholics<br />
in the state either satisfied or concerned.<br />
BY ANGELUS STAFF<br />
With <strong>2024</strong> underway, several<br />
new California laws have<br />
taken effect — or will soon<br />
— that would be of interest to Catholic<br />
residents in the state and beyond.<br />
Here are just some of the hundreds<br />
of laws being put into action in <strong>2024</strong>.<br />
Read or search for all bills at leginfo.<br />
legislature.ca.gov.<br />
ABORTION<br />
Several bills related to abortion were<br />
signed into law by California Gov.<br />
Gavin <strong>News</strong>om. Said <strong>News</strong>om: “The<br />
right to an abortion is enshrined in<br />
California’s Constitution. We will<br />
continue to protect women and health<br />
care workers who are seeking and<br />
providing basic care.”<br />
SB 345: Crafted by state Democrat<br />
Sen. Nancy Skinner, this law would<br />
protect health care professionals who<br />
perform or provide abortions and<br />
gender-affirming care in California<br />
from punishment by states where these<br />
procedures are illegal. The bill would<br />
also safeguard any out-of-state patients<br />
who came to California to receive this<br />
care.<br />
AB 352: The bill would require<br />
companies and institutions that<br />
manage electronic health records from<br />
protecting, separating, and shielding a<br />
patient’s data as it relates to abortion,<br />
contraceptives, and gender-affirming<br />
care. The bill, authored by state<br />
Democrat Assemblywoman Rebecca<br />
Bauer-Kahan, would also prohibit<br />
healthcare providers from releasing<br />
medical information that would identify<br />
someone who received those specific<br />
services. Companies need to comply<br />
by July 1.<br />
SB 385: State Senate President Pro<br />
Tem Democrat Toni Atkins generated<br />
this bill that would allow physician<br />
assistants to be trained beyond their<br />
normal instruction to perform certain<br />
abortions without the supervision of a<br />
physician or surgeon. The goal of the<br />
bill is to expand the number of health<br />
care providers who have the ability to<br />
perform abortions.<br />
HEALTH<br />
Several bills increased health care<br />
services and health-related leave for all<br />
California residents, including more<br />
for undocumented immigrants. Said<br />
<strong>News</strong>om: “We’re making it known that<br />
the health and well-being of workers<br />
and their families is of the utmost importance<br />
for California’s future.”<br />
Expanding Medi-Cal to immigrants:<br />
With this new bill, California made<br />
history, becoming the first state in the<br />
U.S. to provide health care coverage<br />
to undocumented immigrants of all<br />
16 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
ages. The state had already provided<br />
coverage to those under <strong>26</strong> years old<br />
and for immigrants over 50. This law<br />
is expected to cost $4 billion annually,<br />
but a new bill has already been<br />
introduced attempting to repeal it. The<br />
move brings California closer to its<br />
goal of providing health care coverage<br />
to all of its residents.<br />
SB 616: California Democrat Sen.<br />
Lena Gonzales initiated this bill that<br />
would guarantee eligible workers in<br />
the state receive at least five days of<br />
paid sick leave. After five days, employers<br />
can control how many more days<br />
the employee could accrue. The new<br />
law increased the minimum number<br />
of sick days from the three that were<br />
approved in 2015. “Too many folks are<br />
still having to choose between skipping<br />
a day’s pay and taking care of themselves<br />
or their family members when<br />
they get sick,” <strong>News</strong>om said.<br />
SB 848: Under this new law, an employee<br />
would be granted up to five days<br />
of leave for a “reproductive loss,” which<br />
includes miscarriages, in vitro fertilization,<br />
or failed adoption or surrogacy.<br />
The bill, sponsored by state Democrat<br />
Sen. Susan Rubio, would apply to both<br />
parents.<br />
HOUSING<br />
SB 4: It’s no secret that California<br />
has continually fallen short in creating<br />
housing for its growing population,<br />
especially affordable housing. Several<br />
bills were passed in the latest legislative<br />
session meant to spur housing construction<br />
by removing some of the red<br />
tape. SB 4, dubbed the “Yes in God’s<br />
Backyard” bill, is one of those laws,<br />
allowing religious institutions, colleges,<br />
and universities to build affordable<br />
housing on their land without having<br />
to go through lengthy rezoning processes<br />
and environmental reviews.<br />
A church, for example, could have<br />
unused land that it could develop for<br />
affordable housing, and would have<br />
the ability to build the project “by<br />
right” — without needing a discretionary<br />
approval process.<br />
The bill does have restrictions on affordable<br />
housing — requiring a 55-year<br />
commitment for rentals and a 45-year<br />
commitment on owned units — and<br />
distance from industrial or refinery<br />
sites.<br />
“The era of saying no to housing is<br />
coming to an end,” said state Democrat<br />
Sen. Scott Wiener, who authored<br />
the bill. “We’ve been planting seeds<br />
for years to get California to a brighter<br />
housing future.”<br />
A pro-abortion rally in downtown<br />
Los Angeles on May 14,<br />
2022. | SHUTTERSTOCK<br />
LGBT<br />
California continues to introduce<br />
policies for those who identify as<br />
“LGBT” that <strong>News</strong>om said “will help<br />
protect vulnerable youth, promote<br />
acceptance, and create more supportive<br />
environments in our schools and<br />
communities.”<br />
AB 5: Dubbed the “Safe and Supportive<br />
Schools Act,” state Democrat<br />
Assemblyman Rick Zbur authored this<br />
bill, which would require the California<br />
Board of Education to develop an<br />
online training curriculum to support<br />
LGBT cultural competency training<br />
for teachers and other certificated<br />
employees, starting with the 2025–<strong>26</strong><br />
school year. At least one hour of<br />
training would be required annually for<br />
teachers of students in grades 7-12.<br />
SB 760: Introduced by state Democrat<br />
Sen. Josh Newman, this law would<br />
require schools to provide at least one<br />
gender-neutral bathroom by July 1,<br />
20<strong>26</strong>. The law applies to all public<br />
and private schools with students in<br />
grades 1-12. The bill does not apply to<br />
transitional kindergarten or kindergarten<br />
classes.<br />
MISCELLANEOUS<br />
SB 2: Controversial, and already challenged<br />
in court, the law would prohibit<br />
someone from carrying a firearm into<br />
specific locations, including places of<br />
worship, schools, and other “sensitive<br />
areas.” The law, authored by state<br />
Democrat Sen. Anthony Portantino,<br />
would also amend several requirements<br />
to allow a person to carry a concealed<br />
firearm. A federal appeals court<br />
had allowed for the law to go into effect<br />
on Jan. 1, but a special appellate panel<br />
blocked it on Jan. 6 until the case can<br />
be heard again in April. Beyond the<br />
law, <strong>News</strong>om has previously called for<br />
the U.S. Constitution to be amended<br />
to include gun safety measures.<br />
AB 645: Introduced by state Democrat<br />
Assembly Members Laura Friedman<br />
and Phil Ting, this bill allows<br />
six California cities — including Los<br />
Angeles, Glendale, and Long Beach<br />
— to install “speed cameras” near<br />
schools or areas where high-velocity<br />
incidents have occurred. Drivers will<br />
receive a warning in the first 60 days of<br />
installing the cameras and then fines<br />
ranging from $50-$500 will be assessed<br />
depending on how far over the speed<br />
limit. The law is a pilot program that<br />
will last until Jan. 1, 2032.<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 17
FREE BUT<br />
IN EXILE<br />
In a surprise<br />
development, a<br />
Nicaraguan bishop<br />
and several other<br />
churchmen were<br />
sent to Rome thanks<br />
to some behindthe-scenes<br />
Vatican<br />
diplomacy.<br />
BY DAVID AGREN<br />
MEXICO CITY (OSV <strong>News</strong>)<br />
— Bishop Rolando Álvarez<br />
of Matagalpa was released<br />
from prison after more than 500 days<br />
of detention and sent into exile along<br />
with 18 imprisoned churchmen as the<br />
Nicaraguan government expelled its<br />
most prominent critic, whose presence<br />
behind bars bore witness to the<br />
Sandinista regime’s descent into totalitarianism,<br />
along with its unrelenting<br />
persecution of the Catholic Church.<br />
Vatican <strong>News</strong> confirmed Jan. 14 that<br />
with the exception of one priest who<br />
remained in Venezuela, all released<br />
priests, including Álvarez and Bishop<br />
Isidoro Mora of Siuna, have arrived in<br />
Rome “in the last few hours” and are<br />
“guests of the Holy See.”<br />
Photographs circulated on X,<br />
formerly Twitter, showed the two<br />
freed bishops concelebrating Mass in<br />
Rome and the churchmen meeting<br />
with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican<br />
secretary of state.<br />
Independent Nicaraguan media<br />
reported Jan. 14 that the churchmen<br />
had departed Nicaragua on a flight for<br />
Rome after the government reached<br />
an agreement with the Vatican for<br />
their release and exile. Auxiliary<br />
Bishop Silvio José Báez of Managua<br />
— who left the country in 2019<br />
— also confirmed the news at his<br />
weekly Mass in Miami, and was visibly<br />
moved.<br />
“This is the power of the people of<br />
God’s prayers,” he said. “The criminal<br />
Sandinista dictatorship of [President]<br />
Daniel Ortega has not been able to<br />
defeat the power of God.”<br />
The Nicaraguan government acknowledged<br />
the churchmen’s release<br />
in a Jan. 14 statement, which “deeply<br />
thanked” Pope Francis and Parolin<br />
“for the very respectful and discreet<br />
coordination carried out to make possible<br />
the Vatican trip of two bishops,<br />
15 priests, and two seminarians.”<br />
The statement continued: “They<br />
have been received by Vatican authorities,<br />
in compliance with agreements of<br />
good faith and goodwill, which seek to<br />
promote understanding and improve<br />
Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa<br />
walks outside a Catholic church in Managua in 2022.<br />
Álvarez, who had been the Nicaraguan government’s<br />
most prominent critic, was flown to Rome along with<br />
18 other imprisoned churchmen on Jan. 14. | OSV<br />
NEWS/MAYNOR VALENZUELA, REUTERS<br />
communication between the Holy See<br />
and Nicaragua, for peace and good.”<br />
The statement struck an unusually<br />
respectful tone — far from the<br />
government’s frequent accusations of<br />
terrorism and coup mongering against<br />
Church leaders, who attempted to<br />
unsuccessfully facilitate a national<br />
dialogue after mass protests erupted<br />
demanding Ortega’s ouster. The Nicaraguan<br />
government also severed relations<br />
with the Vatican and expelled<br />
the nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar<br />
Stanislaw Sommertag, in 2022. The<br />
Vatican subsequently closed its embassy<br />
in March 2023.<br />
“We recognize the chance for direct,<br />
18 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
Photos circulated on social media showed Bishop Rolando Álvarez and Bishop Isidoro Mora<br />
celebrating Mass and being greeted by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin. | X.COM<br />
prudent, and very serious dialogue, a<br />
responsible and careful dialogue,” the<br />
government statement said.<br />
The release of 19 churchmen — including<br />
Mora and more than a dozen<br />
priests detained during a wave of<br />
detentions over the Christmas period<br />
— provoked reactions of joy among<br />
Nicaraguans in exile, along with statements<br />
of defiance.<br />
“ ‘Get up quickly.’ The chains fell<br />
from his wrists,” Báez said on X, quoting<br />
Acts 12:7.<br />
“With great joy, I thank God that my<br />
brother bishops, priests, and seminarians<br />
are out of prison. Justice has<br />
triumphed. The power of the prayer of<br />
God’s people has been displayed.”<br />
Ambassador Brian A. Nichols, assistant<br />
secretary for Western Hemisphere<br />
Affairs in the U.S. Department of<br />
State, said on X that the regime “expelled<br />
19 unjustly detained Catholic<br />
clergy, including Álvarez.”<br />
“We are reassured to see the release<br />
of these religious leaders. All people<br />
have the right to worship at home and<br />
abroad. We continue to call for the<br />
release of all those unjustly detained<br />
and the restoration of the fundamental<br />
freedoms of the Nicaraguan people,”<br />
Nichols emphasized.<br />
Álvarez has become the face of resistance<br />
in Nicaragua, raising his voice<br />
against the increasing intolerance of<br />
the Sandinista regime, which has subdued<br />
the business community, forced<br />
the free press out of the country, and<br />
attempted to control the Catholic<br />
Church.<br />
The bishop spent more than 500 days<br />
in custody after police arrested him in<br />
August 2022 during a pre-dawn raid<br />
on his diocesan curia, where he had<br />
been holed up protesting the seizure<br />
of Catholic media outlets. In February<br />
2023, he was sentenced to <strong>26</strong> years in<br />
prison on charges of conspiracy and<br />
spreading false information — one day<br />
after he refused to leave the country.<br />
Álvarez refused subsequent attempts<br />
at exiling him — as expulsion or refusing<br />
priests reentry to the country after<br />
traveling abroad became a common<br />
tactic.<br />
“The dictatorship feels safer or more<br />
comfortable with religious people<br />
outside the country than inside the<br />
country,” Arturo McFields Yescas, a<br />
former Nicaraguan diplomat in exile,<br />
told OSV <strong>News</strong>.<br />
“When they are inside [the country]<br />
they consider them a threat, a danger,<br />
a counterweight to their official<br />
narrative. And when they are outside,<br />
[the regime] feels that they no longer<br />
have that critical voice, or that voice of<br />
truth, which spoke to the people and<br />
people listened to,” he said.<br />
David Agren writes for OSV <strong>News</strong><br />
from Mexico City.<br />
What’s next?<br />
The release and exile of Bishop Rolando Álvarez and<br />
18 other churchmen from Nicaragua to Rome was<br />
a welcome surprise for those who have been praying<br />
and pleading for his release.<br />
But the news has done little to relax concerns about violations<br />
against religious freedom in the country, and left the<br />
Catholic Church there in a weakened state.<br />
Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported Jan. 15 that<br />
among those exiled by the Ortega government were two<br />
priests from Álvarez’s Diocese of Matagalpa, who had been<br />
kidnapped by police over the Christmas holidays, later<br />
released, and then again detained and taken to Managua’s<br />
airport to be flown away with the other exiles.<br />
“Matagalpa is left without ecclesiastical authorities,”<br />
tweeted Nicaraguan human rights activist Yader Morazan<br />
in response to the news.<br />
The government continues to threaten priests who speak<br />
out publicly against the Ortega regime with arrest or expulsion.<br />
There are still believed to be several Catholic priests<br />
in custody, and an estimated 15% of Nicaragua’s Catholic<br />
clergy are believed to be in exile.<br />
— Pablo Kay<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 19
SHUTTERSTOCK<br />
SEARCHING IN THE DESERT<br />
Infertility isn’t a<br />
Catholic problem. But<br />
as it becomes more<br />
common, a growing<br />
number of couples are<br />
turning to the Church<br />
for help.<br />
BY ELISE URENECK<br />
Cassie Taylor and her husband,<br />
Michael, were married in<br />
2016. She was 27 and in the<br />
midst of a reversion to the faith; her<br />
husband, 31, had discerned out of<br />
religious life because he felt a strong<br />
desire to be a husband and father.<br />
Two years into marriage, Cassie was<br />
diagnosed with ovarian and uterine<br />
cancer and had to undergo a hysterectomy.<br />
“From the time we found out I was<br />
sick to the time of the surgery, it was<br />
only three months,” Cassie remembered.<br />
“We had to come to terms very<br />
quickly with the reality that we were<br />
never going to have our own biological<br />
children.”<br />
Her oncologist proposed getting a<br />
surrogate. Friends asked if she wanted<br />
to freeze her eggs. Cassie wanted to explain<br />
her commitment to the Church’s<br />
position against the use of technology<br />
which separates procreation from<br />
sexual intercourse and endangers<br />
embryonic life, but the pressure to find<br />
any solution was palpable.<br />
“There’s only so much you can do to<br />
defend the faith from the exam table,”<br />
she laughed. Then her tone turned<br />
somber. “At that point, I just wanted a<br />
place to talk about my grief.”<br />
***<br />
“Like every young Catholic couple<br />
… we thought we were going to look at<br />
each other and get pregnant,” Matthew<br />
Marcolini shared in a video reflection<br />
for the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia.<br />
20 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
After months of failed pregnancy tests,<br />
surgery, and the reality of infertility<br />
setting in, his wife, Elizabeth, experienced<br />
a spiritual desolation.<br />
“It’s hard to believe that a God who<br />
loves you wouldn’t want to give his<br />
daughter everything that she’s asking<br />
for,” she confided in a friend.<br />
Matthew struggled watching his wife<br />
suffer such profound disappointment.<br />
The couple thought back to a conversation<br />
they had in marriage prep in<br />
which they both shared they were open<br />
to adoption. “That was a hypothetical<br />
conversation, but a providential one,”<br />
Elizabeth said.<br />
Five years into marriage, after prayers<br />
and pilgrimages in search of peace,<br />
they got a phone call from a friend who<br />
had heard an announcement at daily<br />
Mass: a local woman was two weeks<br />
away from giving birth and looking<br />
for adoptive parents for her child with<br />
medical needs.<br />
Matthew told his wife that someone<br />
had found their baby.<br />
***<br />
Catholic couples like the Taylors<br />
and Marcolinis are used to hearing<br />
about the need to be “open to life” and<br />
forsake personal comfort for having a<br />
larger family than the social ideal.<br />
But a growing number are struggling<br />
with the opposite: not being able to<br />
conceive or bear children at all.<br />
They are part of a statistically significant<br />
number of people across the<br />
world experiencing infertility, broadly<br />
defined as the inability to conceive<br />
after one year of unprotected sex for<br />
women under 35 and six months for<br />
women 35 and older.<br />
According to a report issued by the<br />
World Health Organization, 1 in 6 people<br />
worldwide — between 60 and 80<br />
million couples — experience infertility<br />
during their reproductive years.<br />
In the U.S., 1 in 5 married women between<br />
the ages of 15-49 with no prior<br />
births have difficulty conceiving. Miscarriage<br />
moves that rate up to 1 in 4.<br />
Common causes of infertility include:<br />
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which<br />
impedes ovulation; improper functioning<br />
of the thyroid, pituitary gland, and<br />
hypothalamus; structural abnormalities<br />
or growths in reproductive organs;<br />
endometriosis, in which uterine lining<br />
grows outside of the uterus; poor sperm<br />
quality and count; and sexually transmitted<br />
infections.<br />
Additionally, delayed childbearing<br />
is driving up rates. More women are<br />
waiting until their mid-late 30s and<br />
early 40s to try to conceive.<br />
According to Caroline Gilbert, a certified<br />
nurse practitioner at University<br />
of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Divine<br />
Mercy Women’s Health, “Fertility<br />
drops a little after 30 but takes a nose<br />
dive after 40.”<br />
“I don’t think a lot of women want<br />
to be getting married later, especially<br />
my Catholic female patients,” she said.<br />
“But that’s just the way the world is.”<br />
The default assumption within the<br />
medical community is that individuals<br />
and couples will use artificial means of<br />
procreation — from donor gametes to<br />
IVF to surrogates — to have biologically<br />
related children. Insurance companies<br />
today are more likely to provide<br />
coverage for these services but not for<br />
alternative treatments. And the proliferation<br />
of celebrities using these means<br />
of reproduction is shifting cultural perceptions<br />
about everything from success<br />
rates to moral acceptance.<br />
***<br />
The challenge the Church faces is to<br />
help an increasing number of Catholics,<br />
many who suffer in silence, to<br />
discern God’s plan for their marriage<br />
and pursue avenues to be fruitful that<br />
respect God’s plan for life and love.<br />
Therese Bermpohl, director of the<br />
Office of Family Life for the Diocese<br />
of Arlington, Virginia, said she was<br />
receiving call after call from priests<br />
asking what they could do for couples<br />
in their parishes who felt unseen and<br />
needed support.<br />
“I think as a Church we tend to minimize<br />
the loss and grief associated with<br />
infertility and miscarriage.”<br />
Her office launched Our Fruitful<br />
Love, a website that “provides practical<br />
resources, testimonials, Church teaching,<br />
and a community that stands with<br />
people in their sorrow and grief.”<br />
One of their<br />
most popular<br />
initiatives has<br />
been an annual<br />
novena<br />
concluding on<br />
A doctor is pictured in a<br />
file photo preparing eggs<br />
and sperm for an attempt<br />
at artificial insemination. |<br />
OSV NEWS/ALESSANDRO<br />
BIANCHI, REUTERS<br />
the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.<br />
Bishop Michael Burbidge, who leads<br />
the diocese, offers a private Mass for<br />
participants at its conclusion.<br />
While she encourages participants to<br />
pray for miracles, she’s always moved<br />
when people let her know it helped<br />
them come to “complete peace” about<br />
God’s plan for their marriage.<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 21
Bermpohl established a mentorship<br />
program which pairs up more experienced<br />
couples with those new to<br />
grief, expectation, and disappointment.<br />
“Community is key,” she said.<br />
Chris O’Neill, director of the Office<br />
of Marriage and Family Life for the<br />
Diocese of New Orleans, said his team<br />
tries to address infertility in marriage<br />
preparation.<br />
“We try to emphasize how a child is a<br />
gift,” he said. “We share with couples<br />
that you love each other and attend<br />
to a life that you share together, and<br />
that life starts to bear fruit. It may<br />
or may not include children. The<br />
commitment is not to build the life<br />
you want — it’s to love each other with<br />
everything you have and to let the marriage<br />
take the shape that God grants.”<br />
How and when the Church speaks<br />
about infertility is a topic which Melissa<br />
Moschella, associate<br />
professor of philosophy at<br />
The Catholic University of<br />
America, thinks a good deal<br />
about.<br />
“The places where the<br />
Church talks most directly<br />
about infertility are in documents<br />
concerning ethical<br />
issues about reproductive<br />
technologies,” she noted,<br />
citing Donum Vitae (“The<br />
Gift of Life”) and Dignitas<br />
Personae (“The Dignity of<br />
the Person”).<br />
Moshcella believes there<br />
are limitations to that<br />
treatment, because infertility<br />
is never explored as its<br />
own topic. And while the<br />
Church expresses sympathy<br />
for couples who desire to<br />
have a child, it has not yet<br />
offered a comprehensive<br />
theological look at marital<br />
fruitfulness outside of<br />
forming a family through<br />
procreation or adoption.<br />
In her courses exploring<br />
the ethics of reproductive technologies,<br />
Moschella has begun presenting students<br />
with information about fertility<br />
awareness-based methods of family<br />
planning. “Most of my female students<br />
have never heard of these. Most don’t<br />
understand how their cycles work or<br />
what the signs of fertility are,” she said.<br />
“The fact that things can actually be<br />
treated is new to them.”<br />
***<br />
The good news is that Catholic physicians<br />
have been advancing treatment<br />
for infertility for decades.<br />
Gilbert is a part of a health care practice<br />
that specializes in Naprotechnology,<br />
an approach to fertility pioneered<br />
by Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, the director<br />
of the Saint Paul VI Institute for the<br />
Study of Human Reproduction and the<br />
National Center for Women’s Health<br />
in Omaha, Nebraska.<br />
With colleagues at the St. Louis<br />
University and Creighton University<br />
Schools of Medicine, he developed<br />
what is known as the Creighton Model<br />
FertilityCare System. Beyond helping<br />
to address infertility, this method<br />
is used to treat repeat miscarriage,<br />
postpartum depression, premenstrual<br />
symptoms, and preterm birth.<br />
Unlike mainstream endocrinology<br />
and fertility medicine, which uses a<br />
standard 28-day cycle to evaluate hormonal<br />
imbalances in women, Naprotechnology<br />
looks at each individual<br />
woman’s biomarkers to create what<br />
Gilbert calls a “total hormonal profile.”<br />
“Standard fertility medicine will<br />
spend three months prescribing<br />
medicine to strengthen ovulation and<br />
then move onto IVF,” Gilbert said.<br />
“Naprotechnology seeks to restore<br />
fertility by getting to the root cause of<br />
the problem.”<br />
The practice involves an analysis of<br />
all of the hormones involved in a women’s<br />
cycle (not only those related to<br />
ovulation), robust testing of the thyroid,<br />
surgical interventions, and identifying<br />
causes of inflammation or insulin<br />
resistance.<br />
Gilbert noted that physicians are starting<br />
to acknowledge that the Western<br />
diet and lifestyle is contributing to the<br />
issue.<br />
“As far as male infertility is concerned,<br />
alcohol, drugs, high blood<br />
pressure, and cholesterol can all contribute,”<br />
she said. “For women, there<br />
are a lot of endocrine disruptors<br />
in our diet, cosmetics,<br />
and the containers we drink<br />
and eat out of.”<br />
Gilbert says the widespread<br />
prescription of the birth<br />
control pill to girls, who<br />
often stay on it until they<br />
are ready for childbearing, is<br />
contributing to the problem.<br />
Some studies indicate<br />
that the pill interferes with<br />
the production of cervical<br />
mucus, which is important<br />
for fertilization.<br />
But a bigger issue is that the<br />
pill is widely prescribed to<br />
relieve painful symptoms of<br />
menstruation, which are often<br />
indicative of underlying<br />
issues like endometriosis. Because<br />
the condition advances<br />
even when symptoms are<br />
Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, ameliorated, women come<br />
director of the Pope Paul off the pill after a decade or<br />
VI Institute on the Study of more to find that they had<br />
Human Reproduction. | CNS been unknowingly masking<br />
an underlying condition.<br />
While not all of her<br />
patients conceive, Gilbert finds satisfaction<br />
that almost all of them say that<br />
they are thankful to have “found someone<br />
to take them seriously, listen to<br />
them, and give them a real diagnosis.”<br />
***<br />
Many women report that they simply<br />
want someone to acknowledge they<br />
22 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
exist and to hear what it feels like to<br />
have their body fail them.<br />
A turning point for Cassie Taylor<br />
was registering for an online retreat<br />
focused on infertility and grief, hosted<br />
by a ministry called Springs in the<br />
Desert. She was relieved to hear they<br />
were “Christ-focused, not conception-focused.”<br />
Springs in the Desert was born from<br />
the personal experience of Ann Koschute,<br />
who began to observe common<br />
feelings about identity, vocation,<br />
and isolation in her conversations with<br />
other Catholic women experiencing<br />
infertility.<br />
“We’re all kind of hidden,” she said.<br />
“The ministry started out of necessity,<br />
because we needed accompaniment.”<br />
Springs in the Desert has become<br />
one of the leading ministries for<br />
Catholic couples experiencing infertility,<br />
offering retreats, educational and<br />
pastoral resources, a podcast, small<br />
groups, and online events.<br />
Taylor now manages its social media<br />
accounts and hosts its podcast. The<br />
demand is increasing, evidenced by<br />
the growing body of podcast listeners,<br />
engagement with social media, and<br />
the number of dioceses promoting its<br />
work.<br />
Koschute hopes they can help facilitate<br />
some changes in the way Catholics<br />
approach the topic and those<br />
affected by it.<br />
“Within the Catholic space, there is<br />
often an idolizing of the child and the<br />
big Catholic family, which is the flip<br />
side of the contraceptive mentality and<br />
a culture focused on self-fulfillment.<br />
But it can create a culture that says the<br />
way to holiness is producing children.<br />
“We need to be reminded that our<br />
marriages are life-giving, that they are<br />
powerful witnesses in a world where<br />
people so easily give up on theirs<br />
because they don’t get what they want<br />
or don’t feel personally fulfilled,” she<br />
said.<br />
Her ultimate hope for the ministry is<br />
that couples will better come to know<br />
Christ as the wellspring in what she<br />
calls the “desert of infertility.”<br />
Marcolini wishes Catholics would<br />
refrain from making assumptions<br />
about childless couples, couples with a<br />
small number of children, or couples<br />
who have adopted, saying that it’s impossible<br />
to know what anyone is going<br />
Dr. Anne <strong>No</strong>lte, right, a family physician with the<br />
National Gianna Center for Women’s Health and<br />
Fertility in New York, follows Catholic teaching and<br />
guidelines for health care in her practice. | CNS/<br />
GREGORY A. SHEMITZ<br />
through or what has gone into their<br />
discernment.<br />
<strong>No</strong>w a mother of two adopted<br />
daughters, Zelie, 2, and Gianna, 6<br />
months, Elizabeth said her experience<br />
“has been a deeper invitation into the<br />
mystery of divine love since we are all<br />
adopted sons and daughters of God.”<br />
She and her husband share their story<br />
with other couples preparing for marriage<br />
in their diocese.<br />
When asked what she would say to<br />
others facing infertility, Elizabeth said<br />
to pray for what you desire, but not to<br />
spend your marriage and life waiting<br />
for something that is not promised.<br />
“Receive what God has for you today.<br />
God is a God of the present, not of the<br />
past or the future,” she said. “So live<br />
right now.”<br />
Elise Italiano Ureneck is a communications<br />
consultant writing from Rhode<br />
Island.<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 23
OF WOMBS<br />
AND WOUNDS<br />
Pope Francis’ recent condemnation of<br />
surrogacy was needed. But can we talk<br />
more about what’s driving the practice?<br />
BY CHARLIE CAMOSY<br />
In his annual foreign policy address<br />
to diplomats accredited to the Holy<br />
See, Pope Francis this month made<br />
some striking remarks on a topic not<br />
typically associated with foreign policy.<br />
“The path to peace calls for respect<br />
for life, for every human life, starting<br />
with the life of the unborn child in the<br />
mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed<br />
or turned into an object of trafficking.<br />
In this regard, I deem deplorable<br />
the practice of so-called surrogate<br />
motherhood, which represents a grave<br />
violation of the dignity of the woman<br />
and the child, based on the exploitation<br />
of situations of the mother’s material<br />
needs. A child is always a gift and never<br />
the basis of a commercial contract.<br />
Consequently, I express my hope for an<br />
effort by the international community<br />
to prohibit this practice universally. At<br />
every moment of its existence, human<br />
life must be preserved and defended;<br />
yet I note with regret, especially in the<br />
West, the continued spread of a culture<br />
of death, which in the name of a false<br />
compassion discards children, the<br />
elderly, and the sick.”<br />
The Holy Father often tries to do two<br />
things at once: (1) hold fast to traditional<br />
doctrine (if often in ways that<br />
are intentionally and helpfully nonpolitical)<br />
and (2) emphasize the pastoral<br />
value of mercy. This is evident in his<br />
description of the Church as a field<br />
hospital which tries to stabilize deeply<br />
wounded people.<br />
It is striking and can be disorienting<br />
when he does one without the other, or<br />
when certain people or groups emphasize<br />
one without the other. Here, when<br />
it comes to his engagement on surrogacy,<br />
he emphasizes Church teaching<br />
without referencing mercy — as he<br />
does in so many other contexts, including<br />
abortion and irregular relationships.<br />
SHUTTERSTOCK<br />
Thus his remarks, though powerful<br />
and needed, get only two cheers from<br />
me.<br />
In a culture like ours, where surrogacy<br />
is an unquestioned good — especially<br />
(but not only) in contexts of infertility<br />
and same-sex marriage — speaking in<br />
such morally and legally clear terms is<br />
admirable and even brave. One hopes<br />
that his allies, including some who<br />
accept and promote surrogacy, will be<br />
given the grace to hear what he’s saying.<br />
The Holy Father is speaking from<br />
his central moral theological commitment:<br />
resisting Western-style consumer<br />
throwaway culture. Instead of seeing<br />
God’s creation — including human<br />
beings — as merely products to be used<br />
and discarded, he wants us to recognize<br />
their proper value.<br />
The global surrogacy consumer<br />
network not only exploits vulnerable<br />
women, but also treats children as items<br />
for purchase. Tragically, in most cases<br />
of IVF, the “excess” human beings are<br />
often discarded as if they are waste.<br />
And it is doing so on a growing scale.<br />
An estimated 18,400 infants were born<br />
in the U.S. via surrogates from 1999 to<br />
2013, according to one study. But now,<br />
with the advances in surrogacy-related<br />
technology and growing popularity<br />
24 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
in the media, the global industry is<br />
expected to become worth $129 billion<br />
in the next decade (up from $14 billion<br />
in 2022).<br />
The desire to have a biological child<br />
is, for many, one of the most powerful<br />
desires in nature. But that desire cannot<br />
change the truth — a truth Christians<br />
like the Holy Father are bound to<br />
proclaim — that no one has a right to<br />
a child. Children are gifts from God to<br />
which we can be open, but can never<br />
demand.<br />
If everyone has the right to purchase a<br />
child on the open market (or even the<br />
“right to procreate” via the financial<br />
support of the government), this feeds<br />
the consumerist throwaway culture<br />
about which the Holy Father rightly<br />
warns us.<br />
But what about mercy and the<br />
Church as a field hospital? My wife<br />
and I — along with so many others —<br />
know firsthand the incredible pain of<br />
infertility. I wish the Holy Father had<br />
acknowledged that this pain is in part<br />
driving the demand for surrogates.<br />
Those bearing the pain of infertility as<br />
well as those who have used surrogates<br />
and are now beginning to question<br />
what they have done are among<br />
those who are hurting. They need the<br />
Church to be a field hospital which<br />
emphasizes God’s mercy on the way to<br />
speaking the truth in love.<br />
And they need a Church which focuses<br />
on other ways faithful Christians<br />
can be fruitful. Our spiritual father, St.<br />
Joseph, certainly provides a primordial<br />
example in his fatherhood of Jesus. (He<br />
was a foundational inspiration — and<br />
remains an ongoing help — for and<br />
with our three adopted children.)<br />
But let’s move even beyond adoption.<br />
The Church must do a much better job<br />
making space for childless people in<br />
the Church, both single and married.<br />
Far too often, one of the first questions<br />
I hear from Catholics I meet is, “How<br />
many children do you have?” Can you<br />
imagine how such a question hits for<br />
those bearing the pain of infertility?<br />
Having biological children is a wonderful<br />
gift to be given by God, and we<br />
must continue to make cultural space<br />
for these gifts, especially in a culture<br />
that is often hostile to children. But let<br />
us also make space for the wounded<br />
people in the Church bearing the pain<br />
of not having been given this gift —<br />
The global surrogacy consumer network not only<br />
exploits vulnerable women, but also treats children<br />
as items for purchase.<br />
and let us do so in ways which make it<br />
clear we value the gifts they bring to the<br />
table just as much.<br />
Charlie Camosy is professor of medical<br />
humanities at the Creighton University<br />
School of Medicine. In addition, he<br />
holds the Monsignor Curran Fellowship<br />
in Moral Theology at St. Joseph Seminary<br />
in New York.
AD REM<br />
ROBERT BRENNAN<br />
Why don’t I have a podcast?<br />
SHUTTERSTOCK<br />
Remember that bygone era when<br />
there were only three on-air<br />
national broadcast networks<br />
and — here in Los Angeles — another<br />
four local television stations? Current<br />
consumers of digital television would<br />
consider that a primitive state equivalent<br />
to cave paintings.<br />
But I actually pine for them every now<br />
and then.<br />
It was not a perfect system. Because<br />
of limited platforms, it was harder to<br />
find your niche either on the news or<br />
entertainment side.<br />
If you were a musician, you worked<br />
in dingy clubs and high school sock<br />
hops for years until you got your break.<br />
An actor may have worked for years<br />
parking cars or waiting tables and doing<br />
local theater only to get one guest spot<br />
on “Bonanza.” Many talented people<br />
never got a break of any kind, yet some<br />
of the most talented artists and news<br />
reporters still managed to burst forth<br />
from this cauldron.<br />
<strong>No</strong>w everyone is a star. And it seems<br />
I am the last person on the planet who<br />
does not have a podcast. There are<br />
literally tens of thousands of podcasts<br />
on every topic under the sun and many<br />
topics that do not deserve to see the<br />
light of day. It does not take much. If<br />
you have about 40 bucks you can get<br />
yourself a cool-looking microphone<br />
at an electronics box store, a little<br />
lighting from the same store and maybe<br />
a bookshelf behind you to give you<br />
gravitas and voila: you are a podcaster<br />
(obviously, you need a good internet<br />
connection, too).<br />
Podcasters have a tendency to take<br />
themselves very seriously with anchorman<br />
desks like they were working at<br />
CNN, but they come off looking more<br />
like Ron Burgundy. I have watched<br />
podcasters that are comical, intentional<br />
and unintentional, but most of the ones<br />
I have found are trivial and listening to<br />
them has not proven an effective use of<br />
time.<br />
And yet, they are legion.<br />
I wish I could say the advent of<br />
technology and its ability to distribute<br />
information so quickly and cheaply<br />
would be a boon for the Church and<br />
her adherents. But when I look at the<br />
Catholic blogosphere that dream vaporizes<br />
like when rubidium makes contact<br />
with water.<br />
It seems anyone with a microphone,<br />
free time, and a copy of the Vatican<br />
II documents, is now an ecclesiastical<br />
expert who needs to be heard. Before<br />
<strong>26</strong> • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
Robert Brennan writes from Los Angeles, where<br />
he has worked in the entertainment industry,<br />
Catholic journalism, and the nonprofit sector.<br />
this technology got so far ahead of us,<br />
before a person with limited income<br />
could use the internet to have his or her<br />
very own “channel,” the economics of<br />
media was a natural roadblock to too<br />
many people with too many opinions.<br />
You had to be really good on camera<br />
and have something positive to<br />
say — like Bishop Fulton Sheen — to<br />
be granted paid time on television.<br />
<strong>No</strong>w, if you get enough “likes” or your<br />
subscription numbers on YouTube are<br />
good enough, you can actually pay<br />
your utility bills off a podcast dedicated<br />
solely to how terrible things are in the<br />
Church today. The more anger, the<br />
more controversy, the more likes and<br />
the more clicks.<br />
It is a feeding frenzy but unfortunately,<br />
we are eating our own. Taking a random<br />
sampling of your average Catholic<br />
blog, you would surmise that the<br />
Church is on her last legs. It is a world<br />
of gloom and doom with prophetic<br />
warnings about the End Times and the<br />
coming of the AntiChrist.<br />
The hosts of Catholic-themed podcasts<br />
run the gamut from laymen and<br />
laywomen, priests and religious, and<br />
everything in between. There are good<br />
ones more interested in lighting candles<br />
against the night than relishing in<br />
the darkness, and there are far too many<br />
podcasts that mislead and all to readily<br />
rely on anger as their fuel. If you put<br />
14 of these podcasters in a room you<br />
will get 14 opinions on what is wrong<br />
with the Church, what is right with the<br />
Church, and what needs to be done in<br />
the Church.<br />
At the risk of sounding like a podcaster<br />
myself, I know what needs to be done:<br />
Stop listening to podcasts.<br />
If you are troubled by the way things<br />
are, say a rosary or pray a novena.<br />
Take solace in the irrefutable fact, not<br />
opinion, that Jesus promised to be with<br />
his Church forever. It is not always easy,<br />
it is not always pretty, but the Church<br />
traveling in its prison of time and space<br />
will do remarkable things and not so<br />
remarkable things.<br />
And as flawed as his bride may be, the<br />
consistency of Christ’s promise must be<br />
our focus, and not how many “likes”<br />
we can get by yelling fire in a crowded<br />
cathedral.<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 27
NOW PLAYING POOR THINGS<br />
BELLA’S BIG ADVENTURE<br />
Awards season favorite ‘Poor Things’ turns a<br />
Frankenstein bride into a sorority girl<br />
Emma Stone and Mark<br />
Ruffalo in “Poor Things.”<br />
| IMBD<br />
BY JOSEPH JOYCE<br />
Often in the English language<br />
there are words mistaken for<br />
synonyms while nestling adjacent<br />
or even opposed to one another.<br />
For instance, anyone who has ever had<br />
their heart broken quickly learns the<br />
chasm between “affection” and “love.”<br />
Many more then have their heart’s<br />
shards snapped further by a waiter<br />
conflating the merits of Coca-Cola and<br />
Pepsi.<br />
But more notable and more relevant<br />
to this review is the difference between<br />
“provocative” and “interesting.” It’s<br />
easy to reach the former, and even easier<br />
to mistake it for an achievement.<br />
Thus is the quandary with Yorgos<br />
Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” fresh off its<br />
Golden Globes wins earlier this month<br />
for Best Comedy and Best Actress in a<br />
Comedy for Emma Stone.<br />
Stone plays Bella, a Victorian woman<br />
resurrected from the dead by mad<br />
scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter, played by<br />
Willem Dafoe. Though perhaps resurrection<br />
is again one of those adjacent<br />
but conflicting synonyms: When Godwin<br />
finds her floating under the bridge,<br />
he places the brain of her unborn child<br />
into her dead mother’s skull. I’m sure<br />
the more squeamish have tapped out at<br />
that alone. But that is what they want,<br />
and we cannot let them win. Who<br />
“they” and “we” are, and what indeed<br />
what “winning” entails, is irrelevant to<br />
the mission at hand.<br />
Bella is quite literally a child trapped<br />
inside an adult woman’s body. She<br />
staggers about like a marionette at the<br />
mercy of a drunk puppeteer, and in<br />
true toddler fashion makes up for her<br />
limited vocabulary in violence with<br />
the words she does possess. Unable<br />
to pronounce his full name, she calls<br />
her creator “God.” It’s the most blatant<br />
of the blunt symbolism throughout,<br />
which I’m sure Lanthimos would<br />
insist is tongue-in-cheek. But it’s ironic<br />
turtles all the way down, and at the<br />
bottom of the stack is still a character<br />
called God.<br />
28 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
Bella is cared for by Godwin’s kindly<br />
assistant Max (Ramy Youssef), who<br />
with Godwin’s permission, bordering<br />
on insistence, proposes marriage. But<br />
even childlike Bella recognizes it is<br />
“God’s” attempt to keep her at home<br />
away from a wider world which he<br />
fears and she longs for.<br />
(While allowing for curiosity, I think<br />
the film overestimates a child’s mind<br />
for new experience. Children are<br />
natural reactionaries; ask them to<br />
sample new food other than chicken<br />
fingers and they’ll respond with all the<br />
liberality of a Russian czar.)<br />
With his permission she instead<br />
runs off with Duncan Wedderburn<br />
(Mark Ruffalo). A caddish lawyer (at<br />
the risk of sounding redundant) he<br />
takes advantage of Bella’s naiveté and<br />
whisks her off on a lover’s holiday.<br />
Bella’s accelerated mental progression<br />
now finds her in the thick of adolescence,<br />
so if Duncan uses her, she is<br />
an enthusiastic accomplice.<br />
But we are back again to the great<br />
divide of provocation and interest. In<br />
the longest stretch of the film we are<br />
shown in great detail the particulars<br />
of Bella’s sexual awakening, sequences<br />
that most readers of this magazine<br />
would find lewd and indecent.<br />
But throughout all this extracurricular<br />
activity my eyes averted from the<br />
screen not from prudishness but boredom.<br />
Sexuality is indeed part of growing<br />
up, but it isn’t the skeleton key of<br />
adulthood. Lanthimos takes Bella into<br />
the wider world, but his focus on this<br />
one aspect of her person shrinks it.<br />
She wants to see the pyramids, but she<br />
must settle for the ceiling.<br />
It even puts him at odds with his own<br />
thesis. Bella is an Edenic creature, her<br />
innocence putting her at odds with<br />
a fallen society. It would certainly<br />
explain her comfort with nudity. She<br />
eats sloppily, dances merrily, and lacks<br />
the patience for innuendo in polite<br />
conversation. Most importantly, she<br />
doesn’t fathom the absurd strictures<br />
her society places on women, and<br />
like most children ignores what she<br />
doesn’t understand.<br />
But Lanthimos groups her freewheeling<br />
sexual liberation in with<br />
her burgeoning feminism, a pairing<br />
that fell out of fashion somewhere<br />
between Rocky II and Rocky IV. It’s<br />
a retrograde feminism, not respecting<br />
women in all their baffling facets but<br />
to the extent to which they please the<br />
drooling patriarchy.<br />
In fairness, the film recognizes the<br />
abuses. For all his talk of spurning<br />
convention, Duncan grows more<br />
possessive the wider Bella’s perspective<br />
expands. He says he wants to show<br />
her the world, but we realize along<br />
with her that a narcissist thinks the<br />
world ends at his sightline. He tricks<br />
her onto a cruise ship where she can’t<br />
leave him, but that is only prolonging<br />
the inevitable. Rid of his dead weight,<br />
she later takes up a brief residency<br />
in a brothel, a rose-colored vignette<br />
on sex work where her sex positivity<br />
goes over like gangbusters. After her<br />
adventures she finally returns and is<br />
reconciled to her fiancé and “God,”<br />
her wild oats sufficiently sown.<br />
Perhaps as a Catholic I should<br />
endorse such a tidy resolution, but<br />
I have never found myself more<br />
offended at a film coming full circle.<br />
It meant all its provocations were for<br />
nothing, even its postures of defiance<br />
ultimately subjugated to conventional<br />
mores. What we watched for the last<br />
two hours was not a young woman<br />
bucking the absurdities of our society,<br />
but a sorority girl on a gap year<br />
abroad.<br />
In other words, “Poor Things” is<br />
about controlled rebellion, the cinematic<br />
equivalent of Woodstock hippies<br />
who went on to work for weapon<br />
manufacturers. I have more genuine<br />
respect for sticking to a principle, even<br />
in violation of my own, than dabbling<br />
in revolution only to embrace the cog.<br />
God can forgive any sins, but I can’t<br />
forgive you for wasting my time.<br />
Editor’s note: “Poor Things” is rated R<br />
for strong and pervasive sexual content,<br />
graphic nudity, disturbing material,<br />
gore, and language.<br />
Joseph Joyce is a screenwriter and freelance<br />
critic based in Sherman Oaks.<br />
Willem Dafoe in “Poor Things.” | IMDB
DESIRE LINES<br />
HEATHER KING<br />
Large and in charge<br />
Los Angeles’ Natural History Museum<br />
is mounting a super-duper<br />
show in Exposition Park through<br />
the spring.<br />
The museum recently unveiled “100<br />
Carats: Icons of the Gem World,”<br />
an exhibition of some of the highest<br />
quality rare gems on earth, including<br />
the world-famous Jonker I diamond,<br />
which has not been viewed publicly<br />
for decades.<br />
The centerpiece of<br />
the exhibit, the Jonker<br />
I Diamond. | AARON<br />
CELESTIAN/NATURAL<br />
HISTORY MUSEUM OF<br />
LA COUNTY<br />
“Right this way!” you can almost hear<br />
the carnival barker’s cry.<br />
Says Lori Bettison-Varga, the museum’s<br />
president and director: “Gems of<br />
such magnificent size and quality have<br />
never been displayed before in this<br />
quantity in one exhibition.”<br />
The 125-carat Jonker I, one of the<br />
largest cut diamonds in the world, is<br />
the centerpiece of the exhibition.<br />
The Jonker, found by a South African<br />
farmer in 1934, was at the time the<br />
fourth-largest uncut gem ever discovered.<br />
At 7<strong>26</strong> carats — a little over<br />
five ounces — it was later cut into 13<br />
smaller stones, the Jonker I being the<br />
largest.<br />
Far more interesting than the stone’s<br />
size, to my mind, is the intrigue surrounding<br />
it.<br />
From Wikipedia: “In 1949, King Farouk<br />
of Egypt purchased the Jonker I,<br />
but after he was deposed and exiled in<br />
1952, the gem was lost. After a number<br />
of years, the gem reappeared in the<br />
ownership of Queen Ratna of Nepal.<br />
The last known location of the Jonker<br />
I was in Hong Kong in 1977 when it<br />
was sold to an anonymous buyer for<br />
$2,259,000.”<br />
Lost? Wouldn’t you give anything to<br />
know how the gem made its way from<br />
Egypt to Nepal? Whoever the anonymous<br />
buyer was in 1977, today the<br />
Jonker I is owned — and on loan to<br />
the NHS — by Ibrahim Al-Rashid. <strong>No</strong><br />
further details given.<br />
In its 80 years of existence, the<br />
diamond has never been on display in<br />
a museum. Which just goes to show,<br />
really, what can you do with this exquisite<br />
jewel except put it in a safe?<br />
But the exhibition includes way more<br />
than the Jonker I. Other treasures<br />
include a 241-carat emerald known<br />
as “The Crown of Colombia,” a deep<br />
aquamarine beryl called “The <strong>No</strong>rthern<br />
Light,” an exquisite blood-red<br />
rubellite tourmaline, “The Princess<br />
Pink Sapphire,” and “The Ukrainian<br />
Flag Topaz.” Every stone in the exhibit<br />
is at least 100 carats (a carat weighs<br />
.007 of an ounce), which in the gem<br />
world is gigantic.<br />
“Every gem is a minor geologic miracle,”<br />
the museum notes.<br />
Think mountains, volcanoes, tectonic<br />
30 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
Heather King is an award-winning<br />
author, speaker, and workshop leader.<br />
plates, and mysterious movements<br />
deep within the earth’s surface. After<br />
millions of years, these brilliant, sparkling<br />
gems emerge (helped along by<br />
master cutters, polishers, and jewelry<br />
designers like Robert Procop, who<br />
figures prominently in the exhibit).<br />
But gems also have a sinister side.<br />
They’re mostly worn by women. At<br />
this level, they’re insanely expensive:<br />
in 2015, a “perfect” 100-carat diamond<br />
sold at Sotheby’s for $22 million. Put<br />
the two together and mayhem, at some<br />
point, is bound to result.<br />
Having spent most of my own<br />
unglamorous life reading rather than<br />
boning up on carats, the phrase “iconic<br />
gems” evokes any number of juicy<br />
stories, novels, and films where the lust<br />
for jewels has led to ruin.<br />
Anthony Trollope’s 1871 novel “The<br />
Eustace Diamonds,” for example, in<br />
which gold digger and pathological liar<br />
Lizzie Greystock marries the sickly Sir<br />
Florian Eustace knowing he will soon<br />
die and leave her a wealthy widow.<br />
The diamonds are a family heirloom<br />
that Lizzie coolly refuses to relinquish.<br />
Romantic hijinks and interminable<br />
litigation ensue, the upshot being that<br />
Lizzie, satisfyingly,<br />
gets just what Stained-glass windows<br />
she deserves.<br />
depicting the Parable<br />
Guy de Maupassant’s<br />
1884<br />
of the Hidden Treasure<br />
(left) and the Parable of<br />
the Pearl (right) in Scots’<br />
short story “The Church, Melbourne. |<br />
Necklace” is a<br />
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<br />
cautionary tale<br />
about a woman<br />
who disdains her loving, faithful<br />
husband and prefers to live in fantasy.<br />
When they’re invited to a fancy ball,<br />
she borrows an expensive diamond<br />
necklace from a friend, a move that<br />
results in one night of ecstasy and a<br />
lifetime of abject misery.<br />
That’s not even counting the German-born<br />
film director Max Ophuls’<br />
“The Earrings of Madame de…”<br />
(1953), a romantic drama that ends<br />
with a duel and an implied suicide.<br />
But far be it for me to be a wet blanket.<br />
The once-in-a-lifetime show runs<br />
through April 21. So go. Ooh and aah<br />
at these wonders of nature. Gasp at the<br />
brilliance, the vivid colors, the perfection.<br />
Ponder the fact that such gems<br />
occur nowhere else in the solar system.<br />
Let’s not forget, however, that Jesus<br />
also knew about jewels. “Again, the<br />
kingdom of heaven is like a merchant<br />
seeking beautiful pearls, who, when<br />
he had found one pearl of great price,<br />
went and sold all that he had and<br />
bought it” (Matthew 13:45–46).<br />
Here’s the distinction: the kingdom of<br />
heaven is not reducible to a stone. The<br />
kingdom of heaven, for which we’re<br />
willing to give up everything we own,<br />
can’t be bartered, bought, traded, or<br />
sold. It’s beyond price.<br />
And you never have to keep it in a<br />
safe.<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 31
LETTER AND SPIRIT<br />
SCOTT HAHN<br />
Scott Hahn is founder of the<br />
St. Paul Center for Biblical<br />
Theology; stpaulcenter.com.<br />
In Crete our faith<br />
Around this time every year, my mind returns to the<br />
island of Crete. Around a dozen years ago I led a<br />
pilgrimage there, in the midst of a cruise “in the<br />
footsteps of St. Paul.”<br />
There’s no detailed scriptural account of the apostle’s<br />
visit there. All we know is that he “left” his disciple Titus<br />
on Crete (Titus 1:5),<br />
ordaining him to lead<br />
the Church there. He<br />
had surely “laid hands”<br />
on Titus, as he had on<br />
Timothy (2 Timothy 1:6).<br />
Both men had received<br />
the grace of holy orders,<br />
and then they lived up to<br />
it. Thus we honor them<br />
together on the feast they<br />
share, <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>.<br />
In a letter to Titus, Paul<br />
aims an insult at the people<br />
of Crete: “Cretans,”<br />
he says, “are always liars,<br />
evil beasts, lazy gluttons”<br />
(Titus 1:12).<br />
Ouch. That hurts, even<br />
after 2,000 years. But Paul<br />
was quoting a Cretan<br />
poet when he said it.<br />
The poet’s name is Epimenides<br />
— a pagan! —<br />
and Paul actually quotes<br />
him more than once in<br />
the New Testament. He<br />
even refers to him as a<br />
prophet.<br />
Epimenides was a<br />
semi-mythical, semi-historical<br />
figure who lived on<br />
Crete in the sixth or seventh<br />
century before Christ. He was a shepherd who one day,<br />
according to legend, fell asleep in a cave and awoke 57 years<br />
later. He emerged transfigured, filled with supernatural gifts.<br />
His fame spread far, even to Athens, some 214 miles away.<br />
Athenians, centuries later, remembered Epimenides for<br />
delivering their city from a curse. They had been suffering<br />
“St. Paul,” by Hans Baldung Grien, 1484-1545, German. | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<br />
from a series of calamities, so they called upon the poet-prophet<br />
for help. He suggested that perhaps there was a<br />
god yet unknown to them, who would be willing and able<br />
to help if appropriate sacrifices were offered. So the people<br />
of Athens built altars to this nameless deity all over the city,<br />
and the legacy of Epimenides in Athens was an aggregation<br />
of altars dedicated “to an<br />
unknown god.”<br />
Paul spoke about such<br />
an altar when he was<br />
preaching in the city<br />
(Acts 17:23).<br />
In the same speech, Paul<br />
also quoted one of the<br />
poems of Epimenides.<br />
The poem said of a certain<br />
god: “In him we live<br />
and move and have our<br />
being” (see Acts 17:28).<br />
Paul apparently saw this<br />
line as a prophecy of the<br />
divine life that Christians<br />
experience through<br />
baptism.<br />
His citation is no<br />
happenstance. In fact,<br />
the line comes from the<br />
same poem from which<br />
he drew the insult that<br />
appears in his Letter to<br />
Titus. He knew the poem<br />
well.<br />
And he knew well what<br />
he was doing when he<br />
left Titus on Crete. Paul<br />
gave the island something<br />
better than the legendary<br />
Epimenides. He gave the<br />
Cretans a priest after the<br />
image of Jesus Christ. He gave them a bishop who would<br />
lead them away from lying and gluttony — a saint they<br />
would honor forever. When I visited his church in Crete, I<br />
saw his relics encased in silver.<br />
<strong>No</strong>w his feast is upon us. We’re not in Crete, but we can<br />
invoke his intercession. Please join me in doing so.<br />
32 • ANGELUS • <strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong>
■ FRIDAY, JANUARY 19<br />
Praise and Worship Mass and Healing Prayers. St. Frances<br />
of Rome Church, 501 E. Foothill Blvd., Azusa, 6 p.m. Celebrant:<br />
Father Parker Sandoval. Music by Clarissa Martinez.<br />
OneLife LA Holy Hour. St. Teresa of Avila Church, 2216<br />
Fargo St., Los Angeles, 7-8 p.m. Visit onelifela.org/holy-hour<br />
for more.<br />
■ SATURDAY, JANUARY 20<br />
Embracing the Winter of Life: Aging to Saging. Mary & Joseph<br />
Retreat Center, 5300 Crest Rd., Rancho Palos Verdes,<br />
9 a.m.-12 p.m. Workshop will help connect with your inner<br />
sage to the divine to help you age in comfort and health.<br />
Areas covered include spirituality, mental, geographical,<br />
financial wellness, and more. Email MarkMitchellSpeaks@<br />
gmail.com.<br />
100th Celebration. St. Sebastian Church, 1453 Federal<br />
Ave., Los Angeles, 10 a.m. Mass. Celebrant: Bishop Matthew<br />
Elshoff. Reception to follow. Email stsebastianoffice@<br />
gmail.com.<br />
OneLife LA. LA State Historic Park, 1245 N. Spring St., Los<br />
Angeles, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Join Archbishop José H. Gomez on<br />
a walk for life through downtown Los Angeles, followed by<br />
a festival with speakers, music, and food. Theme: “10 Years<br />
Together As One.” For more information, visit onelifela.org.<br />
Requiem Mass for the Unborn. Cathedral of Our Lady of<br />
the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 5 p.m. Archbishop<br />
José H. Gomez will celebrate the annual Mass for<br />
the Unborn to end OneLife LA.<br />
■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 21<br />
Feast of Santo Niño Mass. Cathedral of Our Lady of the<br />
Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 3 p.m. procession,<br />
3:30 p.m. Mass. Principal celebrant: Bishop Brian Nunes.<br />
Hosted by the Santo Niño Cruzada (SNCU) organization.<br />
Bring statues of Santo Niño for a special blessing.<br />
■ MONDAY, JANUARY 22<br />
Mass and Healing Service. St. Rose of Lima Church, 1305<br />
Royal Ave., Simi Valley, 7 p.m. Celebrant: Father Michael<br />
Barry, with Deacon Pete Wilson. Call 805-5<strong>26</strong>-1732.<br />
■ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24<br />
LACBA Family Law Clinic. Virtual, 2-5 p.m. Covers child<br />
support, custody, divorce, and spousal support. Open to LA<br />
County veterans. Registration required. Call 213-896-6537<br />
or email inquiries-veterans@lacba.org.<br />
■ SATURDAY, JANUARY 27<br />
The Indwelling Wholeness of the Trinity. St. Andrew<br />
Church, 538 Concord St., El Segundo, 9:30 a.m.-3:45 p.m.<br />
Retreat focuses on a contemplative experience to prayerfully<br />
enter the inner sanctum of the heart in the art of attention.<br />
Cost: $25/offering, includes continental breakfast<br />
and lunch salad bar. RSVP by Jan. 20. Contact nbstjames@<br />
gmail.com.<br />
■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 28<br />
Mass Honoring Sisters of Mercy. St. Pius X School, 10855<br />
S. Pioneer Blvd., Santa Fe Springs, 10 a.m. St. Pius X parish<br />
and school will celebrate 33 years of service by the Sisters<br />
of Mercy with a special Mass and dedication. Call 562-234-<br />
1165.<br />
Religious Jubilarian Mass. Cathedral of Our Lady of the<br />
Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 3:30 p.m. Religious<br />
sisters, brothers, and priests from the Archdiocese of Los<br />
Angeles will celebrate jubilee anniversaries.<br />
■ MONDAY, JANUARY 29<br />
End of Life Preparation. St. Bruno Church, 15740 Citrustree<br />
Rd., Whittier, 9-10:30 a.m. or 7-8:30 p.m. RSVP to<br />
Cathy by Jan. 10 at 562-631-8844.<br />
■ SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3<br />
Nun Run, 5K, 1-Mile, and Community Service Fair. La<br />
Reina High School, 106 W. Janss Rd., Thousand Oaks,<br />
8 a.m. 10th annual Nun Run, hosted by Sisters of <strong>No</strong>tre<br />
Dame, will raise proceeds for local and global outreach.<br />
Visit nun.run.<br />
■ SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4<br />
Rite of Election. Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555<br />
W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 3 p.m. The Rite of Election<br />
is the final required step for anyone preparing to receive<br />
the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and the holy<br />
Eucharist on the Easter Vigil. Email Leticia Perez at LPerez@<br />
la-archdiocese.org.<br />
■ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7<br />
Changing Seasons: Lent to Palm Sunday. Zoom, 7-8:30<br />
p.m. Class led by Father Felix Just, SJ, will explore Bible<br />
readings for Lent to Palm Sunday. Visit lacatholics.org/<br />
events.<br />
■ SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10<br />
Valentine’s Dinner. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church,<br />
23233 Lyons Ave., Newhall, 12 p.m. Hosted by the Italian<br />
Catholic Club of SCV, includes complimentary glass of<br />
wine. Cost: $45/person. RSVP to Anna Riggs at 661-645-<br />
7877 by Feb. 5.<br />
Malta World Day of the Sick Mass. Cathedral of Our Lady<br />
of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 12:30 p.m.<br />
Hosted by the Western Association of the Order of Malta,<br />
all are welcome, especially those who are suffering in body<br />
or spirit. Blessing and anointing of the sick will be administered.<br />
■ TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13<br />
Memorial Mass. San Fernando Mission, 15151 San<br />
Fernando Mission Blvd., Mission Hills, 11 a.m. Mass is<br />
virtual and not open to the public. Livestream available at<br />
CatholicCM.org or Facebook.com/lacatholics.<br />
■ THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15<br />
Youth Day: RECongress. Anaheim Convention Center,<br />
200 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim, 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Young<br />
people will enjoy a general session, keynote speech, two<br />
workshops, and Eucharistic liturgy. Speakers include Baby<br />
Angel, Chris Estrella, and Maggie Craig. Cost: $40/person.<br />
Register at recongress.org.<br />
■ FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16<br />
Religious Education Congress. Anaheim Convention<br />
Center, 200 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim. Events run Feb.<br />
16-18, and include speakers, sacraments, films, and<br />
workshops. Keynote speaker: Jessica Sarowitz, founder of<br />
Miraflores Films. Cost: $85/person. For more information,<br />
visit recongress.org.<br />
■ SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24<br />
Anniversary Mass for Bishop David O’Connell. San Gabriel<br />
Mission, 429 S. Junipero Serra Dr., 10 a.m. Celebrant:<br />
Archbishop José H. Gomez. Blessing of memorial exhibit to<br />
follow after Mass.<br />
Items for the calendar of events are due four weeks prior to the date of the event. They may be emailed to calendar@angelusnews.com.<br />
All calendar items must include the name, date, time, address of the event, and a phone number for additional information.<br />
<strong>January</strong> <strong>26</strong>, <strong>2024</strong> • ANGELUS • 33