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A Challenge to Vermont Catholics: Stop Proposal 5

Posted on by Submitted Article

Vermont Catholics have grown weary of divisive politics, particularly the politics around our state’s abortion laws. Tragically, Vermont law currently allows abortion through all nine months of pregnancy (Act 47), and there is little hope for change as long as the current legislative supermajority remains in place. Meanwhile, Catholics, along with all those in the pro-life community, continue to focus on providing hope, support and alternatives to abortion and strive to change hearts and minds, always keeping in mind that statutes can be amended and repealed. More difficult to change is the State Constitution, however. The Vermont Legislature is moving forward with an amendment that, if passed, promises to enshrine unlimited, unregulated abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy in our state’s founding document. Proposal 5, also known as Article 22, would permanently block any attempt to protect the unborn — even those who can survive outside the womb. It is expected to reach the final phase of the approval process in time to be put before the voters in November 2022.

This is a battle we can’t ignore and a critical crossroads for Catholics to engage our commitment to protect the dignity of all human life, particularly the most vulnerable. Between now and November 2022, a coalition of organizations and faith communities will be collaborating to help voters understand why Proposal 5 must be defeated.

The campaign against Proposal 5 will kick off with a groundbreaking Life Symposium Oct. 2 in Burlington. Sponsored by the Vermont Right to Life Committee Educational Trust Fund, the day-long event will explore how the lives of the unborn, the rights of families and children and conscience rights for medical providers will be threatened if this amendment makes its way into the Vermont Constitution.

There has never in recent memory been an opportunity to hear so many heavyweights of the pro-life community speak here in Vermont, including:

+ Helen Alvare, a nationally known legal expert and law professor and founder of Women Speak for Themselves, will give the keynote address on “The Case Against Proposal 5.”

+ Catherine Glenn Foster, president of Americans United for Life, will offer a workshop on how health care workers can protect their consciences and their jobs.

+ Maureen Curley, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, will talk about the impact of abortion on women.

+ Melissa Ohden will give the lunchtime address, “Abortion Survivors: Not a Myth.”

+ Savannah Dudzik of Illinois Right to Life will offer a youth-focused workshop aimed at encouraging and equipping young people to be effective pro-life advocates.

It will take every one of us to defeat Proposal 5, so even if you have grown weary of divisive politics, prepare to engage in this most important effort to stop Proposal 5 from becoming a permanent blot on our Constitution.

Learn more about Proposal 5 and the Life Symposium at vrlc.net There are scholarships available for students and young adults.

— Carrie Handy is a member of the Life Symposium Planning Committee and a member of Immaculate Conception Parish in St. Albans.

—Originally published in the Sept. 11-17, 202, edition of The Inland See.

 

 

A Catholic Covid update

Posted on by Cori Urban

It has been about a year since life changed drastically because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and although strides have been made with knowledge about how to fight the coronavirus and vaccinations to prevent its spread, Vermont Catholics cannot let these developments or pandemic fatigue cause them to let down their guard and stop following guidance to wear a mask, maintain social distance and continue proper hand-washing procedures.

That’s the message from a Vermont deacon who is a member of the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists and the National Catholic Bioethics Center and from the Diocese of Burlington’s director of worship.

“Even as people are being vaccinated, others are still contracting the disease. Public health officials continue to urge people to continue to wear masks and maintain social distances, to

wash their hands frequently, especially after touching surfaces likely to have been touched by others,” said Deacon Pete Gummere, who is certified in Catholic healthcare ethics by the National Catholic Bioethics Center and is a clergy member of the Catholic Medical Association.

“The risk of transmission will remain elevated for some time.”

And according to Director of Worship Josh Perry, individual choices that one makes to follow or disregard guidance have a ripple-effect on church communities, in either a positive or negative way. “So even as the vaccine becomes more widely distributed in the coming weeks and months, it’s important to keep the mask-wearing, hand-washing (which is really a good idea with or without a pandemic) and physical distancing up,” he said. “Approaching this virus from multiple angles of mitigation will help us overcome it more quickly.”

Parishes in the Diocese are following protocols for the public celebration of sacraments, and the Diocese will issue guidance and recommendations when it comes to upcoming celebrations – for Lent and Easter, for example — but the overall guidelines for celebrating liturgy remain unchanged and center around mask-wearing, physical distancing and hand-sanitizing.

“Despite the strong feelings that people have about the protocols in general, the Catholic Church in Vermont has received the protocols from the bishop rather openly,” Perry said. “When we first re-opened in June, I think there was a sense of relief and gratitude that our churches were once again available for public celebrations of liturgy. We tweaked the protocols and opened things a little bit more later in the summer.”

Many questions and suggestions came to the Bishop’s Office and the Office of Worship about how best to implement the protocols. “As we progressed in the fall, we realized that these protocols have kept our churches open for worship. In March, no one could imagine that in early 2021, we would still be dealing with this as much as we are. But the Church is indeed pulling through it,” Perry said.

Addressing questions about vaccination, Deacon Gummere prefaced his answers saying his comments are “fully consistent” with the teaching of the Catholic Church, specifically the

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the bishop of Burlington.

There is no absolute Church teaching for or against vaccination to protect against Covid-19. It is a personal choice that should be based on moral principles, which he noted, include the Fifth Commandment and the law of love — or charity — that “tells us to take good care of our own health and that of our neighbor.”

He noted that a moral question does arise in connection with the fact that both of the vaccines licensed in the United States (Pfizer and Moderna) were developed in the laboratory using cells derived from a long-established line of embryonic stem cells obtained through abortion, though, he pointed out, the production of these vaccines is done without further or on-going reliance on tissues derived from abortion.

“Therefore, because of the need to care for our own health and that of others (Fifth Commandment and law of love) and because we do not join in the intention of abortion, the bishops have instructed that we may receive the vaccines,” said Deacon Gummere, who has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Pontifical College Josephinum  where he taught Medical Morality for Deacons and Moral Theology for Deacons and who consults within the Diocese of Burlington on matters of bioethics. “The preferred vaccines are those with a less direct connection with abortion (i.e. Pfizer or Moderna), provided that no vaccine that is free of any connection is available.”

As the world — and the people of the Diocese of Burlington — continue to deal with the pandemic, Perry urged everyone to continue to have patience and charity with pastors, parish staff and parish volunteers such as the ushers who are encouraging them to sanitize their hands as they enter the church.

“These protocols are tiresome. There’s no doubt about that. But they are important. They have allowed our churches to remain open despite the increase in cases in Vermont this fall and winter,” he said. “The health department, of course, urges vigilance in watching out for symptoms and to get tested if people feel it’s necessary, but they’ve determined that the protocols in place do reduce the possibility of wide-spread transmission.”

—Originally published in the Spring 2021 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

 

 

 

A call to relationship

Posted on by Bishop Christopher Coyne

“This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35).

The “call to discipleship” is a call to love. This issue of Vermont Catholic magazine focuses upon how people in our Vermont Catholic community live out that call to serve the Church and others in love. You will notice that this call is a universal call to love. It is not restricted to those who wear a clerical collar or a religious habit. It is a commission that flows from the waters of baptism.

There’s a wonderful moment toward the end of the Rite of Infant Baptism after the child has been baptized. It’s called the “Ephphetha” or “Prayer over Ears and Mouth.” Ephphetha is an Aramaic word meaning “be opened.” It was uttered by Christ when He healed the man who was deaf and dumb (Mk 7:34). In the Rite of Infant Baptism, the celebrant touches the ears and mouth of the child with his thumb saying: “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. May He soon touch your ears to receive His word, and your mouth to proclaim His faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father. Amen.”

Right from the earliest moment of Christian life, the moment when most of us were baptized as children, we are reminded that we are being commissioned to receive and proclaim the Word of God, the Word that is love incarnate. We do this both in word and in action in our homes, our towns and our work place. My friends, you have such an opportunity to help others know Him as you do because you are in those places, places where there is no bishop or clergy or religious, places that can still know Christ because of you.

Still whatever our path in life, the most important starting point for us is to recognize that the “call to discipleship” is first a call to a relationship — a deep, spiritual, devoted love of the Master. It is a relationship that must be cultivated in a daily prayer in which we abandon ourselves to the one who knows us more than we know ourselves. Christ knows our deepest longings, our deepest needs and our deepest desires. The poet George Herbert in 1603 wrote a profoundly moving poem entitled “The Call.” In it, Herbert offers the prayer of a believer as he/she seeks that deep relationship with Christ:

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:

Such a Way, as gives us breath:

Such a Truth, as ends all strife:

Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, My Light, my Feast, my Strength:

Such a Light, as shows a feast:

Such a Feast, as mends in length:

Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:

Such a Joy, as none can move:

Such a Love, as none can part:

Such a Heart, as joys in love.

You and I stand in the light and the joy of the Easter season, knowing that our Way, our Truth and our Life lives as the glorified and resurrected Son of God in heaven. It is in that light that we live the call to discipleship, spreading the Good News that Jesus is Lord to His praise and glory forever and ever.

God bless and happy Easter.

—Originally published in the Spring 2019 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

A call to denounce Planned Parenthood founder

Posted on by Submitted Article

The Vermont Right to Life Committee has called upon Planned Parenthood of Vermont to join with Planned Parenthood of Greater New York in denouncing their founder, Margaret Sanger, for her active involvement in eugenics.

On July 16, 2020,  the Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund released a statement declaring that “racial justice, gender equity and access to abortion should be key components of reproductive rights.” The organization also has publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement, including the defunding of police.

“Despite their current rhetoric, Planned Parenthood of Vermont has never publicly distanced themselves from the eugenic beliefs of their organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger,” said Mary Hahn Beerworth, executive director of The Vermont Right to Life Committee.

“In Vermont, Planned Parenthood exerted their political dominance in our Statehouse as they pushed through Act 47 and Proposal 5,  to protect their abortion business, allowing for abortion up to birth with no regulations. Planned Parenthood also secured additional state tax-payer monies in 2019,” she continued. “Vermonters should be concerned that an organization that has yet to denounce its eugenic past is expanding its reach in our state once again.”

Sanger’s Vermont Connection

Margaret Sanger was not only heavily involved in promoting the eugenics movement that swept the nation in the early 1900’s but was connected to the Eugenics Survey in Vermont. Sanger joined those calling for the targeting of the poorest families for “voluntary sterilization.” In her book, “The Pivot of Civilization,” she referred to some people as “inferior classes” and used derogatory terms to define them: “fit” or “unfit;” “the feeble-minded and the mentally defective.” Sanger writes about the possibility that “drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society” to limit the “over-fertility” of these inferior classes. Sanger’s association with the Ku Klux Klan is well-documented.

Her involvement in Vermont’s Eugenic Survey was unique. Sanger was in direct contact with Henry Perkins, the pro-eugenics professor of zoology at the University of Vermont. Under the guise of the Vermont Commission on Country Life, social workers under the guidance of Perkins targeted poor families for extinction by sterilization. In Vermont, the victims of the program were often of Abenaki descent. After gathering enough “evidence,” social workers were allowed to commit members of a family to various state institutions such as the Brandon Reform School, homes for unfit mothers or jail. Once those institutions were filled, their victims were offered “voluntary sterilization” as condition of their release. The program’s promoters referred to sterilization as a “treatment” ostensibly for the disease of their defective genes (“Breeding Better Vermonters, the Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State”).

The so-called science behind eugenics was eventually exposed as false, and the whole concept of eugenics fell out of favor as the horrors of Nazi concentration camps came to light. Public opinion grew increasingly hostile to the notion of eugenics and eventually those involved, both nationally and locally, quietly folded up and dissolved their organizations.

Ultimately, it was at Perkins’ personal urging of the members of the American Eugenics Survey that the board allowed Margaret Sanger and her organization to become the future of eugenics. In the book, “Breeding Better Vermonters, the Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State,” author Nancy L. Gallagher states, “Only after much deliberation and at Perkins’ urging, did they (AES) agree to collaborate with the Birth Control League, the predecessor of Planned Parenthood.” Gallagher is one of the UVM researchers who discovered Perkins’ records in the library attic.

In 2019, Tom Sullivan, then president of the University of Vermont, issued a formal apology for the university’s involvement in the eugenics survey.

“The Vermont legislature is considering a resolution that would officially apologize for the state-sanctioned involvement in eugenics (J.R. H 7), yet Planned Parenthood of Vermont continues to celebrate Margaret Sanger and has not denounced her participation in eugenics,” Beerworth said.

—Excerpted from a July press memo from The Vermont Right to Life Committee.

—Originally published in the Fall 2020 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

 

 

A ‘Buen Camino’ to Essex Catholic youth

Posted on by Cori Urban

High school students from the Essex Catholic community will make a youth pilgrimage to the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain this summer.

The pilgrimage, scheduled for June 16-30, will cover a 135-mile section of the 500-mile Camino.

“Our hope, going forward, is to rotate doing high school pilgrimages and service trips every other year,” said John McMahon, confirmation director at St. Pius X Parish in Essex Center and faith formation director for Holy Family St. Lawrence Parish in Essex Junction. He and Chris Dawson are coordinating the trip; they have led several World Youth Day pilgrimages and high school service trips from the parishes.

Their pastor, Edmundite Father Charles Ranges, is supportive of this pilgrimage experience. “Learning often comes from experiences. This pilgrimage should be an experience of a life time and promote vital Christian discipleship,” he said. “It will involve the body and soul of all the pilgrims and lots of walking.”

In the Middle Ages, Santiago de Compostela, the third most important city of pilgrimage after Jerusalem and Rome, attracted pilgrims from all parts of Europe. It remains one of Spain’s most remarkable cities with old quarters, churches and an air both ancient and mystical.

There, in the city’s cathedral, are kept the sacred remains of the Apostle James the Greater who is said to have converted Hispania/Spain to Christianity.

By the 1980’s, only a few hundred pilgrims per year registered in the pilgrim’s office in Santiago. In 1987, the route was declared the first European Cultural Route by the Council of Europe; it was also named one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites. Since then the route has attracted a growing number of modern-day international pilgrims.

The Vermont pilgrims will begin in the town of Ponferrada and walk 12-18 miles a day for 10 days to reach the Cathedral of St. James. They will be journeying not only for themselves but for the two parishes, praying for unity and for the needs of parishioners. “Although the destination is far away and sounds quite exotic, this endeavor will be both arduous and austere — in other words a true pilgrimage experience that will hopefully sharpen each pilgrim’s spiritual life and connection to the Church,” McMahon said.

The churches’ religious education program will support and promote this pilgrimage to help these young people raise fund and to give religious education families a chance to have their own concerns and prayer requests incorporated into the daily prayers of the pilgrims.

This also will “build unity within our two parishes by encouraging our families to pray daily for the pilgrims” while they make this journey and allow these pilgrims to add parishioners’ prayer requests to their daily prayers, McMahon said.

Father Ranges hopes that all who are involved will gain a greater love of the Christian faith and of the Church. “Hopefully, they will come back with new enthusiasm for being active members of our parish community,” he said.

“The pilgrims will be traveling with our financial and spiritual support and prayer requests. There is lots of parish enthusiasm about the whole experience so I know that it will be successful.”

For more information, contact John McMahon at john.mcmahon@essexcatholic.org.

—Originally published in the Spring 2019 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

 

‘A beautiful place’: Vermont Catholic Charities residential care homes

Posted on by Mary Beth Pinard

James Kennedy is “just a kid” from Brooklyn, New York. He loves Brooklyn where he grew up with his older sister and brother. James attended St. John’s University

in Brooklyn for his undergraduate and law degrees. He still loves to go into Brooklyn with his brother and visit the street where he grew up, the street where he played punch ball and football. He loves looking at the trees that are still there from

his childhood and remembering punching the ball into them, which was an automatic home run.

James is one of the residents of St. Joseph Residential Care Home in Burlington that is operated by Vermont Catholic Charities Inc. He moved into St. Joseph’s last year.

“St. Joseph’s is a beautiful place,” he said. “The people have impressed me from day one, and I sleep like a baby every night.”

He enjoys the food, talking with other residents and listening to the harpist and trumpeter when they come to play. Recently, he was encouraged to participate in “bowling in the hall” by the activities manager. With a chuckle, James explained that he is left handed but bowled right handed that day. He missed all the pins, but had a great time doing it!

James is a retired tax lawyer. He worked for the federal government with stints in St. Louis and Chicago. He settled in Connecticut for 40 years and then moved to Vermont to be near his family. Prior to moving, he remembers traveling to Vermont for visits, and as soon as he passed into Vermont, he turned the radio off to absorb the beauty of the Green Mountain State.

Vermont Catholic Charities is proud to be able to serve people like James at its four residential care homes in Burlington, Derby Line and Rutland. Their mission is

to provide residents with safe, caring and homelike environments where every person can enjoy a pleasant living experience rooted in Christian dignity. What makes the homes special are the residents and dedicated, caring staff.

“I have had a passion for caring for the elderly for as long as I can remember. It’s very fulfilling to know that I have the privilege to help shape a person’s final years into a meaningful, happy and dignified experience,” said Anne Steinberg, administrator of Michaud Memorial Manor in Derby Line. “The staff and residents at Michaud Manor are one big, happy family. It is important for me to work for an organization that makes the residents the top priority. As a non-profit organization with a faith-based focus, we always put the residents first, and it shows in the care that we provide.”

Andrea Van Woert, director of nursing at Michaud Manor, said, “I strive to be a positive leader to the nursing team, the organization and my community. This requires providing high quality education and support to staff, residents and family members. I aspire to have a positive impact on someone’s life every day.”

The homes provide private rooms and suites to individuals who require mild to moderate supervision and oversight with daily activities. Services include 24/7 nursing oversight, individualized medication management, onsite meals, housekeeping, laundry services and social activities.

Keeping with the Catholic mission to serve others, Vermont Catholic Charities accepts residents who are on Medicaid upon admission. If you or a loved one is interested in learning more about the homes, contact Vermont Catholic Charities at 802-658-6111.

—Mary Beth Pinard is executive director of Vermont Catholic Charities Inc.

—Originally published in the April 6–12, 2019, issue of The Inland See.