At the same time, overall hate crimes decreased, according to new data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University.

There were 122 hate crimes targeting Asian Americans in 16 of the country's most populous cities in 2020, a study of police records shows, the study found.

This compares with 49 such crimes in those cities in 2019.

The first spike in anti-Asian hate crimes occurred last March and April, "amidst a rise in COVID cases and negative stereotyping of Asians relating to the pandemic."

New York City saw the biggest increase. It recorded 28 hate crimes in 2020 compared to three in 2019 — an 833 percent jump.

Other cities with large increases included Philadelphia and Cleveland (200 percent increases) and Boston and Los Angeles (increases of over 110 percent).

These spikes occurred even as overall hate crimes in those cities fell seven percent - a drop likely caused by pandemic lockdown measures, the study found.

The study is seen as a reliable predictor of annual FBI hate crime statistics for the whole country, released every November.

Brian Levin, executive director at the hate and extremism center, predicts when the FBI data for 2020 is released, it will show a "century-high" number of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.

"For our Asian American friends and neighbors, this is similar to a post 9/11 time, similar to what we saw with Muslims and Arab Americans," Levin said, referring to the increase in hate crimes targeting those groups after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), whose district in Queens has recently seen anti-Asian hate crimes, says racist rhetoric and misinformation from public officials is to blame.

"We saw discriminatory rhetoric coming from President Trump and Members of Congress including from the highest-ranking Republican in the House," Meng said.

"Although Donald Trump is no longer in office, his past anti-Asian rhetoric and use of terms like ‘Chinese virus' and ‘Kung-flu' continues to threaten the safety of the Asian American community. So many Asian Americans" are currently "living in fear."

This hate and fearmongering is another chapter in a long history of racism, nativism and xenophobia against Asian Americans, beginning in the 19th century, when Asian immigrants were deemed "the yellow peril" and accused of being filthy disease carriers, Meng said.

Throughout the pandemic, Asian American and Pacific Islander advocacy groups and local governments recorded sharp upticks in anti-Asian racist attacks and harassment.

In recent weeks, there has been a wave of high-profile incidents, including in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area, both with large and robust Asian American communities. Many of the attacks have involved older Asian Americans.

In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden condemned anti-Asian racism and pledged to take more action. The Department of Justice has said it will devote more resources to investigating such incidents.

Source

• Huffington Post
• Images: BBC

For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science.

In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt.

COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.

Our interventions to date have largely focused on mitigating the rate of spread, flattening the curve of morbidity.

There is no treatment at hand, and no certainty of a vaccine on the near horizon.

The fastest vaccine ever developed was for mumps. It took four years. COVID-19 killed 100,000 Americans in four months.

There is some evidence that natural infection may not imply immunity, leaving some to question how effective a vaccine will be, even assuming one can be found.

And it must be safe.

If the global population is to be immunized, lethal complications in just one person in a thousand would imply the death of millions.

Pandemics and plagues have a way of shifting the course of history, and not always in a manner immediately evident to the survivors.

In the 14th Century, the Black Death killed close to half of Europe's population.

A scarcity of labour led to increased wages. Rising expectations culminated in the Peasants Revolt of 1381, an inflection point that marked the beginning of the end of the feudal order that had dominated medieval Europe for a thousand years.

The COVID pandemic will be remembered as such a moment in history, a seminal event whose significance will unfold only in the wake of the crisis. It will mark this era much as the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933 ascent of Adolf Hitler became fundamental benchmarks of the last century, all harbingers of greater and more consequential outcomes.

COVID's historic significance lies not in what it implies for our daily lives.

Change, after all, is the one constant when it comes to culture.

All peoples in all places at all times are always dancing with new possibilities for life.

As companies eliminate or downsize central offices, employees work from home, restaurants close, shopping malls shutter, streaming brings entertainment and sporting events into the home, and airline travel becomes ever more problematic and miserable, people will adapt, as we've always done.

Fluidity of memory and a capacity to forget is perhaps the most haunting trait of our species. As history confirms, it allows us to come to terms with any degree of social, moral, or environmental degradation.

To be sure, financial uncertainty will cast a long shadow.

Hovering over the global economy for some time will be the sober realization that all the money in the hands of all the nations on Earth will never be enough to offset the losses sustained when an entire world ceases to function, with workers and businesses everywhere facing a choice between economic and biological survival.

Unsettling as these transitions and circumstances will be, short of a complete economic collapse, none stands out as a turning point in history.

But what surely does is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America.

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism.

At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America's claim to supremacy in the world.

For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington.

For more than two centuries, reported the Irish Times, "the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity."

As American doctors and nurses eagerly awaited emergency airlifts of basic supplies from China, the hinge of history opened to the Asian century.

No empire long endures, even if few anticipate their demise.

Every kingdom is born to die.

The 15th century belonged to the Portuguese, the 16th to Spain, 17th to the Dutch. France dominated the 18th and Britain the 19th. Bled white and left bankrupt by the Great War, the British maintained a pretence of domination as late as 1935, when the empire reached its greatest geographical extent. By then, of course, the torch had long passed into the hands of America.

In 1940, with Europe already ablaze, the United States had a smaller army than either Portugal or Bulgaria. Within four years, 18 million men and women would serve in uniform, with millions more working double shifts in mines and factories that made America, as President Roosevelt promised, the arsenal of democracy.

When the Japanese within six weeks of Pearl Harbor took control of 90 percent of the world's rubber supply, the U.S. dropped the speed limit to 35 mph to protect tires, and then, in three years, invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber industry that allowed Allied armies to roll over the Nazis.

At its peak, Henry Ford's Willow Run Plant produced a B-24 Liberator every two hours, around the clock.

Shipyards in Long Beach and Sausalito spat out Liberty ships at a rate of two a day for four years; the record was a ship built in four days, 15 hours and 29 minutes. A single American factory, Chrysler's Detroit Arsenal, built more tanks than the whole of the Third Reich. Continue reading

Examples of anti-Catholicism in the United States are surprisingly easy to find.

Moreover, Catholics themselves seem to be increasingly aware of the spectre of anti-Catholic bias.

In the past, a largely immigrant church would have quietly borne the sting of prejudice, but today American Catholics seem less willing to tolerate slander and malicious behaviour.

In addition, the question of anti-Catholic bias has recently been brought to the fore by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Emboldened by its public-relations successes, with attacks on television shows like "Nothing Sacred," Broadway offerings like "Corpus Christi" and last year's exhibit "Sensation" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, this organization has made anti-Catholicism a hot political issue.

But this raises a critical question: How prevalent is anti-Catholicism in American culture? Is it, as some have termed it, "the last acceptable prejudice?"

Is it as serious an issue as racism or anti-Semitism or homophobia?

Or are rising complaints about anti-Catholic bias simply an unfortunate overstatement, another manifestation of the current "victim culture," in which every interest group is quick to claim victimhood?

In short, is anti-Catholicism a real problem in the United States?

Historical Roots

It is, of course, impossible to summarize 400 years of history in a few paragraphs. But even a brief overview serves to expose the thread of anti-Catholic bias that runs through American history and to explain why the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. called anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people."

The eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. called anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people."

To understand the roots of American anti-Catholicism one needs to go back to the Reformation, whose ideas about Rome and the papacy travelled to the New World with the earliest settlers.

These settlers were, of course, predominantly Protestant.

For better or worse, a large part of American culture is a legacy of Great Britain, and an enormous part of its religious culture a legacy of the English Reformation.

Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, in his landmark book American Catholicism, first published in 1956, wrote bluntly that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia."

Proscriptions against Catholics were included in colonial charters and laws, and, as Monsignor Ellis noted wryly, nothing could bring together warring Anglican ministers and Puritan divines faster than their common hatred of the church of Rome.

Such antipathy continued throughout the 18th century. Indeed, the virtual penal status of the Catholics in the colonies made even the appointment of bishops unthinkable in the early years of the Republic.

In 1834, lurid tales of sexual slavery and infanticide in convents prompted the burning of an Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Mass., setting off nearly two decades of violence against Catholics. The resulting anti-Catholic riots (which included the burning of churches), were largely centred in the major urban centres of the country and led to the creation of the nativist Know-Nothing Party in 1854, whose platform included a straightforward condemnation of the Catholic Church.

By 1850 Catholics had become the country's largest single religious denomination. And between 1860 and 1890 the population of Catholics in the United States tripled through immigration; by the end of the decade, it would reach seven million.

This influx, largely Irish, which would eventually bring increased political power for the Catholic Church and a greater cultural presence, led at the same time to a growing fear of the Catholic "menace."

The American Protective Association, for example, formed in Iowa in 1887, sponsored popular countrywide tours of supposed ex-priests and "escaped" nuns, who concocted horrific tales of mistreatment and abuse.

By the beginning of the 20th century, fully one-sixth of the population of the United States was Catholic.

Nevertheless, the powerful influence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist organizations were typical of still-potent anti-Catholic sentiments.

In 1928 the presidential candidacy of Al Smith was greeted with a fresh wave of anti-Catholic hysteria that contributed to his defeat. (It was widely rumoured at the time that with the election of Mr Smith the pope would take up residence in the White House and Protestants would find themselves stripped of their citizenship.)

As Charles R. Morris noted in his recent book American Catholic, the real mainstreaming of the church did not occur until the 1950's and 1960's, when educated Catholicssons and daughters of immigrants were finally assimilated into the larger culture.

Still, John F. Kennedy, in his 1960 presidential run, was confronted with old anti-Catholic biases and was eventually compelled to address explicitly concerns of his supposed "allegiance" to the pope. (Many Protestant leaders, such as Norman Vincent Peale, publicly opposed the candidacy because of Kennedy's religion.)

And after the election, survey research by political scientists found that Kennedy had indeed lost votes because of his religion.

The old prejudices had lessened but not disappeared.

Contemporary Prejudices

But why today?

In a "multicultural" society shouldn't anti-Catholicism be a dead issue?

After all, Catholics have been successfully integrated into a social order that places an enormous emphasis on tolerance.

Moreover, the great strides made in dialogue among the Christian denominations should make the kind of rhetoric used in the past outmoded if not politically incorrect.

But besides the lingering influence of our colonial past, and the fact that many Americans disagree with the Catholic hierarchy on political matters, there are a number of other reasons for anti-Catholic sentiments.

Most of these reasons are not overtly theological. (However, as the recent flap at Bob Jones University demonstrated, strong theological opposition to the church still exists among small groups of Baptists and evangelicals in the South.)

Rather, these sentiments stem mainly from the inherent tensions between the nature of the church and the nature of the United States.

First, in any democracy, there is a natural distrust of organizations run along hierarchical lines, as the Catholic Church surely is. The church's model of governance can strike many as almost "anti-American." (Many Americans, for example, view the church's ban on women's ordination largely in terms of democratic principles, or "rights" and "representation.")

Second, the church's emphasis on community, as well as what St. Ignatius Loyola famously called "thinking with the church," is often seen as at odds with the American ideal of rugged individualism.

This attitude manifests itself whenever the institutional church is criticized but personal faith is celebrated.

This is also the philosophy represented in such movies as "Dogma" and "Stigmata." The implicit message is that while organized religion is bad, "spirituality" (especially in a highly personalized form) is good. Similarly, in a pluralistic society, the church's emphasis on the one, eternal truth can strike some as difficult to comprehend.

Third, in a rational, post-Enlightenment society the church's emphasis on the transcendent seems at best old-fashioned, and at worst dangerously superstitious.

The church teaches a transcendent God, embraces mystery, seeks to explain the nature of grace, and believes in the sacramental presence of God.

The rational response: How can an intelligent person believe in such things? Continue reading

If I see a headline in the newspaper or online, I skip over to another story.

If it comes up on my NPR podcast, I touch the arrow that advances me to the next story.

If it is on CNN, I switch to the Hallmark channel.

I feel guilty, but I simply cannot take it anymore. I am sick of the violence and our country's inability to do anything about it.

I see no point in listening to the same story over and over again.

News stories about mass shootings always follow the same 10-point template:

1. initial confusion about what happened;
2. onsite interviews with those who escaped the scene;
3. talking heads speculate about the motive of the gunman;
4. a press conference by police chief and mayor;
5. calls for greater gun control from Democrats;
6. calls for thoughts and prayers from Republicans;
7. a Trump tweet;
8. more speculation on motive of gunman;
9. coverage of funerals;
10. interviews with victims' families.

Nothing changes, except people buy more guns.

We move on to other news until the next shooting.

It doesn't matter where the shooting takes place—gay bar, church, primary school, university, shopping center, baseball game or on the street.

Nothing shocks us enough to make us demand change.

And yet, mass shootings are only a minor contributor to the deaths from gun violence.

Gun violence is common in most inner cities, but it gets little coverage in newspapers read by the white community. And gun suicides, spousal shootings, and accidents are so common that even white victims are ignored unless a child is involved.

I am afraid that others may soon respond to mass shootings that same way I do, the same way we do to other gun violence—ignore it and move on.

No matter how horrible something is, if it is repeated time and time again, we get accustomed to it.

We can't let this happen. Religious leaders cry out but few listen.

From Rome, Pope Francis took notice of the shootings in El Paso and Dayton on August 3 and 4, where at least 29 were killed and dozens more were injured. These followed closely after the killings at the garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif.

Texas Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the shooting "terrible, senseless and inhumane."

Franciscan Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, KY, tweeted: "More senseless gun killings… more white nationalism… more disregard for the sanctity of human life… We need to create the beloved community Jesus envisions now."

Many Catholic leaders have called for government action to curb gun violence.

In their 2000 pastoral statement on criminal justice, the bishops wrote, "We support measures that control the sale and use of firearms and make them safer (especially efforts that prevent their unsupervised use by children or anyone other than the owner), and we reiterate our call for sensible regulation of handguns."

For many years, the USCCB has supported what it calls "reasonable measures" to address the problem of gun violence. These include:

• A total ban on assault weapons, which the USCCB supported when the ban passed in 1994 and when Congress failed to renew it in 2004.
• Measures that control the sale and use of firearms, such as universal background checks for all gun purchases;
• Limitations on civilian access to high-capacity weapons and ammunition magazines;
• A federal law to criminalize gun trafficking;
• Improved access to and increased resources for mental health care and earlier interventions;
• Regulations and limitations on the purchasing of handguns;
• Measures that make guns safer, such as locks that prevent children and anyone other than the owner from using the gun without permission and supervision; and
• An honest assessment of the toll of violent images and experiences which inundate people, particularly our youth.

The bishops also support a "more appropriate minimum age" for gun ownership and a ban on "bump stocks."

None of these recommendations has gone anywhere.

We still do not have sensible regulations of handguns, let alone a ban on assault weapons.

The country needs to do something before mass shootings become so common that people follow my bad example and start ignoring them. Over 60 percent of the public wants stricter gun control.

True, gun control is controversial, but the Pew Research Center found bipartisan support for some proposals

"Around nine-in-ten Republicans and Democrats (both 89%) say people with mental illnesses should be prevented from buying guns," according to a 2018 report from Pew.

"Nearly as many in both parties (86% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans) say people on federal no-fly or watch lists should be barred from purchasing firearms. And majorities of both Democrats (91%) and Republicans (79%) favor background checks for private gun sales and sales at gun shows."

But Congress cannot even enact such minor controls.

Enough is enough.

We must demand that our government do something about mass shootings and other forms of gun violence.

• Thomas Reece SJ is is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America.

In the latest Quinnipiac poll (which thankfully includes a set of questions about religion), 55% of Catholics say they will definitely not vote for Trump in 2020, as opposed to 32% who say they definitely will vote for him and 12% who say they'd consider it.

Even if all those who are only considering voting for him end up in his corner, the resulting 55-44 margin would be a major blow to his reelection chances.

In 2016, Catholics voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton by 50% to 46%.

Given that Catholics make up roughly a quarter of the electorate, the 15-point shift away from him would equate to nearly four percent of the entire popular vote.

The poll suggests that the overall Catholic shift towards the Democrats in last fall's midterms is continuing.

In 2016, Catholics preferred Republican to Democratic House candidates 53% to 46%. In 2018, they swung the other way, favoring Democrats 50% to 49%.

When it comes to Trump, the shift among Catholics is more pronounced than among other religious groups.

In 2016, 39% of non-Catholic Christians (Protestants and others) voted for Clinton.

In the Q-poll, the proportion who say they definitely won't vote for Trump is up just two points from that, to 41%.

Nones show a comparably small point increase, from 67% who voted for Clinton to 70% who say they definitely won't vote for Trump.

Interestingly, the slippage is somewhat greater among white evangelicals.

Where 80% of them voted for Trump in 2016, now 60% say they'll definitely vote for him, and another 15% are considering it, for a total of 75%.

Where 16% voted for Clinton, now 24% say they definitely won't vote for Trump.

What accounts for the proportionately greater Catholic shift?

A number of explanations suggest themselves.

Even relatively conservative Catholics retain elements of Catholic social teaching that put them at odds with Trump policies. Continue reading

• Image: Religion News Service

We address you as you approach this year's national meeting in Baltimore because we know there is nowhere left to hide.

It's over.

All the manipulations and contortions of the past 33 years, all the attempts to deflect and equivocate — all of it has brought the church, but especially you, to this moment.

It's over.

Even the feds are now on the trail. They've ordered that you not destroy any documents. The Department of Justice is conducting a national criminal investigation of how you've handled the clergy sex abuse scandal.

It is a point in our history without precedent.

We want you to know that you aren't alone in this moment, you've not been abandoned. But this time it must be different.

This time it won't be easy.

From fable to sacred text, we know how this goes.

The point is reached where all realize the king wears no clothes, the righteous accusers read the writing in the sand and fade away, the religious authorities receive the Master's most stinging rebukes.

As a class of religious rulers, the loudest among you have become quite good at applying the law and claiming divine authority in marginalizing those who transgress the statutes.

The prolonged abuse scandal would suggest, however, that you've not done very well taking stock of yourselves.

We have no special insight into why this moment — the Pennsylvania grand jury report, the downfall of Theodore McCarrick — has so captured the public imagination and pushed the church to this outer limit of exposure and vulnerability.

There are theories, not least of which is that the opportunists among us are attempting to use this moment to bring down the only pope who has actually dethroned bishops and a cardinal for their crimes and indiscretions.

But that's an issue for another time.

The reality, we all know, is that it has been going on for a long time.

The first national story appeared across four pages of this publication in the summer of 1985.

The worst of it occurred during the pontificate of the hastily sainted John Paul II, a giant on the world stage, but a pastor who let wolves roam his own flock.

His idealized concept of heroic priesthood apparently left him incapable of hearing the truth from credible witnesses, including the few bishops who dared disturb that idealized world with troubling reports.

He promoted to the end Marciel Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legion of Christ, and a persona who came to represent the worst of the abuse scandal.

Maciel, an accomplished sycophant, kept scrutiny at bay with his ability to spread a lot of young priests and a lot of money around the Vatican.

The point beyond dispute is that we are at a moment in U.S. church history — and perhaps in the history of the global church — without precedent.

This is not about debatable matters — celibacy or the filioque clause, or the primacy of Scripture or whether the Earth is the center of the universe or whether women should be allowed ordination or any of the hot button issues that have kept us roiling and at each others' throats these past decades.

This, instead, is about a rot at the heart of the culture entrusted with leadership of the Catholic community.

A rot so pervasive that it has touched every aspect of the community's life, disrupting all of the certainties and presumptions about who we are and who you are that helped hold this community together.

Those who worked so ardently in the past to enable you — the faithful, so betrayed, who just couldn't believe you would engage in such a deliberate cover up. Continue reading

• NCR editorial staff
• Image: Onyx Truth

Germany, for instance, went through a string of devastating attacks between 2002 and 2009.

Between 1996 and 2008, major school shootings also occurred in Finland and Scotland, among other places.

But in Europe, there hasn't been a major high-casualty gun attack on a campus in almost a decade.

Meanwhile, Wednesday's shooting in Florida was at least the sixth of its kind in the United States this year — 45 days into 2018.

There is widespread consensus in Europe and abroad that some school shootings are impossible to prevent, but the numbers still speak a clear language: There are some things countries can do, and Europe appears to have learned from uncomfortable lessons.

The most frequently cited reason for why mass shootings — not necessarily in schools — are more frequent in some countries than in others is the prevalence of handguns.

In his famous study, "Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries," University of Alabama criminology professor Adam Lankford found a link between the number of guns and mass shootings that killed four or more people.

The data set ranged from 1966 through 2012.

The study indicated that a decrease in the number of weapons also would probably result in a decrease in shootings.

That's exactly what happened in Australia after the country tightened gun legislation following a mass shooting in 1996.

It would also explain why countries where gun ownership is rare, such as France or Britain, have largely been spared such catastrophic incidents.

Apart from arguing that Lankford's overall data set is misleading because it doesn't take into account politically motivated violence, critics also questioned whether the number of weapons is really the most significant factor.

They point to one nation in particular: Switzerland.

Switzerland has one of the world's highest ratios of firearms per person, with an estimated 45.7 guns per 100 residents, according to the Small Arms Survey.

Only two countries have a higher ratio: Yemen, with 54.8 guns per 100 residents, and the United States, with 88.8 guns per 100 residents.

Other studies have even indicated the share of households with weapons may almost be the same in Switzerland as it is in the United States.

Those statistics have big margins of error, but they still point to a legitimate question: Why has there never been a school shooting in Switzerland, despite the Swiss enthusiasm for weapons? Continue reading

• Image: Huffington Post
• Note: In the USA 18 year olds can buy an AR15, but not buy a beer.

The ceremony presided over by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington and the director of the Board of Trustees of the Shrine, symbolically marked the completion of the largest Catholic Church in America, construction of which begun in 1920.

Nearly a century in the making, the National Shrine was fittingly completed on the patronal feast of the American Catholic Church, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

The "Trinity Dome," as it is called, is the central and largest dome of the basilica.

Now, only two years away from the centenary year commemorating the founding of this glorious basilica, pilgrims can behold with awe, 180 feet in the air, the amazing site of the completed mosaic on its interior.

Made in Italy, the mosaic consists of 14 million tesserae (pieces of Venetian glass) across 18,000 square feet, making it one of the largest mosaics of its kind in the world.

It depicts the Most Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception, and a procession of saints associated with the United States and the National Shrine.

In 1789, the same year that George Washington was inaugurated the first president of the United States, the Catholic hierarchy was established in this country.

The first diocese in the American missionary territory was erected in Baltimore on November 6, 1789 with John Carroll as its first bishop.

Seeking aid from heaven to assist the fledgling mission territory entrusted to his pastoral care, Bishop Carroll consecrated the United States to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception, making her the patroness of the new country.

As years passed, the Catholics of America yearned for a visible sign of their nation's consecration to Our Lady, the Immaculate Conception.

In 1846, an excerpt from a Massachusetts newspaper told of "a magnificent Catholic church [to] be built at Washington, DC after the manner of the great cathedrals of the Old World from subscriptions of every Catholic parish in America."

From this initial desire, American Catholics worked to build a National Shrine through the late-19th, into the 20th and now the 21st century. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report article by Father Seán Connolly, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York.
• Image: The Catholic Sun

It's a foolishly high-stakes challenge in which two drivers risking death, drive on a collision course towards each other until one of the drivers chooses to swerve away.

Since neither driver wants to be called "chicken," meaning coward, they both push the decision to swerve away to the last possible moment, each hoping that the other driver will be the one to back down and swerve away.

This is a very dangerous game - a game now being played between North Korea and the United States.

But in this game of chicken the high-stakes of two possible deaths increases to hundreds of thousands of probable deaths. And if it goes nuclear, the stakes rise to millions dead.

During the course of this year North Korea has launched over 20 missiles - some flying over Japan - and according to seismic readings may have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. And if not already, it is getting close to being able to hit the U.S. with one or more nuclear armed missiles.

For its part, the U.S. has deployed in the Pacific three aircraft carrier strike groups. This armada of warships carrying attack aircraft and cruise missiles is capable of launching a massive preemptive attack upon North Korea.

Now add to this perilous saber rattling, highly insulting verbal attacks from President Trump on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission," and the counter insults from Kim Jong-un that Trump is a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard," and we have before us a nuclear-armed war game of chicken.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Un grow up! This is no time to act like macho, self-centered adolescents. Think of the carnage that will result if you continue on this collision course.

Policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, James McKeon, told me that the U.S. and North Korea need to have "talks about talks," that is, conversations with no preconditions, in order to set the stage for formal negotiations.

McKeon added that "No preconditions diplomacy is the only viable option. If the Cold War proved anything it is that talking to adversaries is not appeasement, it is smart policy that helped avoid nuclear war."

A clear example here of difficult, serious and successful diplomacy took place between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missiles Crisis - 55 years ago - when calmer heads prevailed in avoiding nuclear war (see: http://bit.ly/2z7JpRV).

President Trump during his U.N. speech threatened to "totally destroy North Korea" (see: http://cnb.cx/2ypyGFy). This runs completely against Catholic social teaching.

The world's Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council solemnly declared: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation" (see: http://bit.ly/1lmUu1K).

Like the world's bishops of Vatican II, today's bishops, and every single disciple of the nonviolent Jesus, should condemn this dangerous violent brinkmanship - before it's too late!

Let us never forget that we are called to follow not the god of war, but the Prince of Peace.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net

"It's hard to find a vein," he said, but he finally found one in his forearm and injected himself with the brown liquid. Blood trickled from his arm and pooled on the step, but he was oblivious.

"Are you O.K.?" Rita Lopes, a psychologist working for an outreach program called Crescer, asked him.

"You're not taking too much?" Lopes monitors Portuguese heroin users like Mario, gently encourages them to try to quit and gives them clean hypodermics to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Decades ago, the United States and Portugal both struggled with illicit drugs and took decisive action — in diametrically opposite directions.

The U.S. cracked down vigorously, spending billions of dollars incarcerating drug users.

In contrast, Portugal undertook a monumental experiment: It decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001, even heroin and cocaine, and unleashed a major public health campaign to tackle addiction.

Ever since in Portugal, drug addiction has been treated more as a medical challenge than as a criminal justice issue.

After more than 15 years, it's clear which approach worked better.

The United States drug policy failed spectacularly, with about as many Americans dying last year of overdoses — around 64,000 — as were killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars combined.

In contrast, Portugal may be winning the war on drugs — by ending it. Today, the Health Ministry estimates that only about 25,000 Portuguese use heroin, down from 100,000 when the policy began.

The number of Portuguese dying from overdoses plunged more than 85 percent before rising a bit in the aftermath of the European economic crisis of recent years.

Even so, Portugal's drug mortality rate is the lowest in Western Europe — one-tenth the rate of Britain or Denmark — and about one-fiftieth the latest number for the U.S. Continue reading

• Nicholas Kristof, writes about human rights, women's rights, health, global affairs for The New York Times.

After his own commission on the opioid crisis issued an interim report this week, Trump said young people should be told drugs are "No good, really bad for you in every way."

The president's exhortation to follow Nancy Reagan's miserably inadequate advice and Just Say No to drugs is far from useful. The then first lady made not a jot of difference to the crack epidemic in the 1980s.

But Trump's characterisation of the source of the opioid crisis was more disturbing. "The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place," he said.

That is straight out of the opioid manufacturers' playbook.

Facing a raft of lawsuits and a threat to their profits, pharmaceutical companies are pushing the line that the epidemic stems not from the wholesale prescribing of powerful painkillers - essentially heroin in pill form - but their misuse by some of those who then become addicted.

In court filings, drug companies are smearing the estimated two million people hooked on their products as criminals to blame for their own addiction.

Some of those in its grip break the law by buying drugs on the black market or switch to heroin. But too often that addiction began by following the advice of a doctor who, in turn, was following the drug manufacturers instructions.

Trump made no mention of this or reining in the mass prescribing underpinning the epidemic.

Instead he played to the abuse narrative when he painted the crisis as a law and order issue, and criticised Barack Obama for scaling back drug prosecutions and lowering sentences.

But as the president's own commission noted, this is not an epidemic caused by those caught in its grasp.

"We have an enormous problem that is often not beginning on street corners; it is starting in doctor's offices and hospitals in every state in our nation," it said. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian article by Chris McGreal, a senior writer for Guardian US.
• Image: Hospitals & Health Networks

Well the answer is obvious: Of course you wouldn't.

Yet that is very similar to what the United States and many other more economically developed nations are doing.

Despite the tragic fact that approximately 40 current armed conflicts worldwide are causing over 150,000 deaths annually, countless serious injuries, untold destruction and 28,300 people per day fleeing from their homes, many of the wealthiest countries continue to pour flammable weapons into these volatile conflicts. And the U.S. is leading the pack.

Accounting for 33 percent of arms exports to over 55 nations, the U.S. is by far the world's leading arms merchant, followed by Russia, China, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.

And worse yet, according to the Congressional Research Service, poorer nations continue to be the primary focus for weapons suppliers.

The value of all arms agreements in 2014 with economically developing nations was over $61 billion.

And as always, the poor suffer.

The U.S. ranked first in worldwide weapons sales in 2015 with $40 billion in deals signed. Of the six largest weapons manufacturers in the world, five are American, with Lockheed Martin ranking first.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the 100 most profitable weapon producing companies in the world raked in over $400 billion in arms sales in 2013.

Weapons are big business - a bloody business followers of the Prince of Peace should have nothing to do with.

Moral courage is needed here. The Gospel demands it!

Imagine the good that would be accomplished and the goodwill that would be established if we converted our weapon plants into factories that construct goods that protect and enhance life - especially the lives of the poor, vulnerable and the life of our common home planet Earth.

Instead of producing instruments designed to kill like M-16s rifles, F-35 Lightning II fighter jets, M1 Abrams tanks, and abortion vacuum aspiration machines - which are instruments of war against unborn babies - we could massively produce humane products like low-cost house building kits, water pumps, water filtering kits, modern latrines, farm tools, wind turbines, solar panels, mass transit trains, affordable electric cars and mobile hospitals.

For those who think this is naive, consider that the reverse happened during World War II.

According to historian John Buescher, no American cars, commercial trucks, or auto parts were made from February 1942 to October 1945.

"The auto industry retooled to manufacture tanks, trucks, jeeps, airplanes, bombs, torpedoes, steel helmets, and ammunition under massive contracts issued by the government".

Since history has proven that we can quickly retool industry from building peaceful vehicles of transportation and commerce to constructing instruments for war-making, let's do the right thing and turn all of this around.

Let's make history, good history!

History that future generations will thank us for.

In the words of the prophet Isaiah, let us finally beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks; so that nations will no longer raise the sword against one another, nor train for war again.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

But out of respect for the country that permits you do that, you tend to walk and work in silence, offering no political or public comment or opinion outside of preaching the gospel in word and more hopefully in action.

This is not from an undue fear because "the truth will set you free", but rather it is for respect. One realises that you don't have the same rights as the full citizens beside you and that the culture is not your own.

However when you are on the "underside" as usually I have found myself to be, you realise that what the institutional "status quo" says is often far from what the many poor and local people think and experience. Here, I might add it can refer to both church and state.

In our case here on the southern border of the USA with Mexico, it came to my attention the comment of one of Brownsville's daughters when on the 4th April she represented her region at the Capitol in Washington DC with a delegation of the "Southern Border Communities Coalition" which travelled there to manifest the feeling of many people from the southern border who live on the "underside".

"Southern Border Communities Coalition" is a movement which stretches from San Diego on the Pacific coast to Brownsville here in the Gulf of Mexico. Like the nation-wide and larger "ACLU" (American Civil Liberties Union) the former tries to make known that here on the southern border, the people don't just sit under cactus bushes and vegetate but are real people who are affected by the decisions made in Washington and state capitals off times without reference to them.

Proof of that is in this little pudding quoted below: At a recent meeting of the "Southern Border Communities Coalition" delegation at the Capitol, Washington DC, our lady delegate from here had this to say:

"Daily life is changing for the worse in my border community. My neighbors live in fear that a traffic infraction may turn into a deportation. Local police are being asked to enforce immigration laws and that violates the trust with the community.

Now the president is proposing spending our taxpayer dollars on expensive and unnecessary walls. We already have walls. I live right next to one that divides our community. Our community is poor. More walls will not alleviate our poverty, pave our streets, or provide the public services we need. Walls are not the answer to anything."

• Tony O'Connor is a New Zealand-born Marist priest who has worked in Latin America for over 30 years

Garcia explained to me that since the undocumented have no legal status in the United States, they are forced to take undesirable, poorly paid jobs, which offer no benefits. Unlike poor U.S. citizens, undocumented workers and their families cannot receive food stamps, Medicaid, or housing assistance. They are at the lowest rung of American life.

So why do they come?

Garcia said, "They come because most often they and their families are extremely poor, and they cannot find jobs in their native countries that pay a living wage. And that the U.S. has many more low-skilled jobs than there are Americans who are willing to take them."

But why don't they enter legally?

Because there are not enough low-skilled temporary worker visas available. And yet the demand for such workers is quite high. Plus the expense and burdensome government red tape required of employers tempts many of them to use "contractors" who often unscrupulously recruit undocumented workers.

According to "The Hill" (http://bit.ly/1rm6iF0), certain segments of the U.S. economy like agriculture, are overwhelmingly dependent upon illegal immigrants. "In terms of overall numbers, The Department of Labor reports that of the 2.5 million farm workers in the U.S., over half (53 percent) are illegal immigrants. Growers and labor unions put this figure at 70 percent."

Kevin Appleby, director of international migration policy for the Catholic-based Center for Migration Studies, told me the situation is filled with hypocrisy. Among many employers and politicians "there is a nod and a wink" to keep the system benefitting numerous employers at the expense of undocumented workers who have virtually no rights.

Therefore, millions of foreign workers are forced to cross deserts and often face drug gangs to fill vacant American jobs in order to support their very poor families.

To learn more visit Farmworker Justice (www.farmworkerjustice.org).

Saint John XXIII, in his encyclical Pacem in Terris ("Peace on Earth") wrote, "Every human being has the right … when there are just reasons for it … to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there."

Garcia asked that I raise the following questions on behalf of the undocumented: "Should undocumented immigrants have to live in an underground world? Is it right to use closed borders for the purpose of exploiting cheap labor? Why is it so acceptable to have undocumented workers perform the jobs few Americans are willing to do - pick our fruits and vegetables, wash dishes, and work in meat slaughterhouses?"

Lord Jesus, heal our nation's indifference, and inspire us to welcome these strangers as valuable members of your one human family, so that on the Day of Judgment we may gladly hear you say, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

And to be honest, Yemen wasn't on my radar screen either, until I met Barbara Deller.

For 12 years Deller worked as a hospital nurse-midwife in Yemen, and later served as a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, advising ministries of health in numerous countries in Africa and Asia and the Middle East.

She explained to me that Saudi Arabia's military campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen has greatly increased the suffering of this already desperately impoverished nation of 27 million people.

Earlier this year, when Houthi rebels took control of Yemen's government, an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia attacked the Houthis because they claimed the Houthis are backed by Iran - Saudi Arabia's archrival.

With U.S. and British support, Saudi Arabia has been pounding Yemen for the last several months with ongoing airstrikes; and is suffocating Yemen with a crippling air, land and sea blockade.

Sadly, as is always the case with war, masses of innocent children, women and men are bearing the brunt of untold suffering.

Deller said, "My personal contacts in Yemen include a young woman in Sana'a [Yemen's largest city] who has three small children and is due to deliver any day now. She has little food and water.

"She said as the intense bombardment starts in the evening she lies with her children in the dark and used to pray that God would protect her and her family.

"Now she says she prays that God will let the next bomb kill them all as it is so excruciating waiting for a bomb to hit.

"If she has any problem while giving birth, she could easily die, as the one maternity hospital in the city has been bombed.

"All of her neighbors have fled the residential area, but they have no money and no place to go."

Reportedly, even before the war, about half the population lacked access to clean water, and the country imported 90 percent of its food from abroad. But in the last several months the ongoing Saudi-led airstrikes, along with its blockade, has pushed Yemen into a full-fledged humanitarian disaster.

In June, the United Nations raised Yemen's crisis status to Category 3 - its most severe level, shared only by Syria, South Sudan and Iraq.

In support of the plea of several nongovernmental aid agencies for a cease-fire, and the lifting of the blockade in Yemen (http://bit.ly/1hUYcoG), please email (http://1.usa.gov/1LAHIj2).

And please consider making a donation to Save the Children by calling (NZ) 0800 167 168. And request that your gift be designated for Yemen.

Yemen's Country Director for Save the Children, Edward Santiago, said "Children are bearing the brunt … not only have they been killed during airstrikes and fighting, but the homes, schools and hospitals they rely on have been damaged or destroyed. Many families don't have the food, fuel or medicine they desperately need to survive" as a result of the blockage.

As believers in the God of peace, how can we possibly ignore the suffering people of Yemen?

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist.

Today, when the Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, for example, insists that Muslim immigrants ‘want to use our freedoms to undermine… freedom', it can be easy to forget that for most of US history, Catholicism, not Islam, was the bogeyman against which Americans defined themselves as a free, noble and (some have said) ‘chosen' people.

It was a desire to get away from what the English Puritan Samuel Mather in 1672 called ‘the manifold Apostasies, Heresies, and Schisms of the Church of Rome' that drove the Puritans to Massachusetts in the 1620s and '30s.

They believed that the Church of England was tainted by the remnants of Catholic theology, and they thought these ‘popish relics' destroyed the freedom people needed in order to accept salvation from God.

Because Americans held onto this Puritan understanding of Catholicism for centuries, the idea that the founding of Massachusetts had been a bold bid for ‘freedom' became an almost religious truth.

Even though people were actually executed and banished in colonial Massachusetts because they held ideas about religion that were considered ‘newe & dangerous', schoolchildren still learn this myth in US classrooms.

In 1774, John Adams felt sorry for the Catholics he observed at a mass in Philadelphia. The ‘poor wretches,' the future US president told his wife, were ‘fingering their beads [and] chanting in Latin, not a word of which they understood'.

A century later, the cartoonist Thomas Nast was less sympathetic on the pages of Harper's Weekly. Nast's Catholics in the 1860s and '70s were violent and drunk ‘Paddys' and ‘Bridgets' too ignorant to think for themselves and dominated by priests who worked to obliterate the separation between church and state. Continue reading

Sources

• Aeon
• Image: The Skibbereen Eagle

The president's comments came, Thursday, on a nationally televised address.

Obama said Pope Francis wrote to both Cuban president Raul Castro and himself urging them to find a way to resolve Cuba's imprisonment of US citizen Alan Gross.

"His Holiness Pope Francis issued a personal appeal to me and to Cuban President Raul Castro urging us to resolve Alan's case," Obama said.

Later in the address, Obama thanked Francis for his example.

"In particular," Obama said, "I want to thank His Holiness Pope Francis, whose moral example shows us we should work for the world as it should be instead of accepting it as it is."

Pope Francis offered his congratulations to the two governments.

A statement from the Vatican Secretariat of State confirmed, in recent months, the Holy Father had written to both leaders during them to "resolve humanitarian questions of common interest".

In October, the Holy See also met with delegations from both countries in the Vatican, providing "its good offices to facilitate a constructive dialogue".

The communique says the Holy See will continue to offer support for initiatives on the path of both countries to strengthen bilateral relations and promote the wellbeing of their respective citizens.

Sources

• Vatican Radio
• NCR
• Image: America Economia

He will travel to the World Meeting of the Families, said Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

The Catholic public event, which celebrates the family as the basic building block of society, will be held in Philadelphia next year.

Conservative Philadelphia Archbishop, Charles Chaput, who has publicly criticised Pope Francis' Synod on the Family is welcoming the Holy Father's visit, calling it "the answer to countless prayers". Continue reading

The same may be said of the planet as a whole.

Whether intellectually or intuitively, many are asking the same question: Where are we heading?

How do we explain the long list of financial, environmental and humanitarian emergencies, epidemics, small and larger conflicts, genocides, war crimes, terrorist attacks and military interventions?

Why does the international community seem powerless to prevent any of this?

There is no simple or single answer to this conundrum, but two factors can shed much light.

The first involves a global power shift and the prospect of a new Cold War.

The second relates to globalisation and the crises generated by the sheer scale of cross-border flows.

Is a new Cold War in the making?

The geopolitical shift has resulted in a dangerous souring of America's relations with Russia and China.

The dispute over Ukraine is the latest chapter in the rapidly deteriorating relationship between Washington and Moscow.

In what is essentially a civil war in which over 3,000 people have been killed, the two great powers have chosen to support opposing sides in the conflict by all means short of outright intervention.

The incorporation of Crimea into Russia, Moscow's decision to use force in Georgia in 2008 and its support for the independence of the two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are part of the same dynamic.

The conduct of Russian governments in the Putin era has been at times coercive and often clumsy at home and abroad.

But the United States has also much to answer for. For the last 25 years its foreign policy has been unashamedly triumphalist.

In his 1992 State of the Union address, President George Bush senior declared: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War". Continue reading

Source

• Joseph Camilleri in The Conversation

Joseph Camilleri OAM was the founding Director of the Centre for Dialogue, La Trobe University.

Part of Fr O'Connor's ministry, working in the Brownsville Texas parish, is to visit two detention centres, one for captured minor migrants and the other for captured adult migrants.

Given their personal circumstance and after all they have been through, Fr O'Connor offers a listening ear.

Fr O'Connor says that despite their detention he has a quiet admiration for the detained minors.

To get to the detention centre they travel around 1,200 miles.

Outlining a typical journey, Fr O'Connor says the kids ‘train surf'; travel on the top of long trains called the "Bestia" (the Beast), they walk and bus through Central America and Mexico, they cross over the border in the desert where there are no high fences and border control and are either caught or in some cases give themselves up.

The minors that make to the detention centres are treated very well, but many get left in the desert, Fr O'Connor says.

Not all end up in detention centres.

"Others make it and cross the border without getting caught and end up hiding for a time in ‘stack houses', where hundreds are locked in a room", he says.

The atmosphere in the adult detention centre is very different, run by the State, they are more like a prison; barbed wire included, he says.

"Those in red overhauls have serious criminal records in the USA, those in "safety orange" have light criminal records and the blues (majority) are just ‘illegals' caught crossing the divide", he said.

With more than 1,300 adult men detainees Fr O'Connor suggests it is not all negative.

"The last time there we had a full auditorium for mass, lots of pretty gutsy confessions too. Who says "men don't cry?

As well as "locals" currently there are three from Ghana, one from Somalia, people from Ecuador, Peru and five Chinese; whom he thinks made their first communion.

Commenting on his new mission, Fr O'Connor says that after being on mission in Peru and Venezuela for more than 30 years, he says it's taken a bit of time to get his feet on the ground.

With the Peru - Venezuela district closing, Fr O'Connor was asked by the Society of Mary's Superior General, Fr John Hannan, join the Marist mission in Brownsville, USA.

Fr O'Connor says while preferring to work with the more physically poor he can see the wisdom of living to saying, "‘Where the captain sends, the sailor goes'. It works for me".

On Tuesday 8 July, 2014, BBC reports:

"The fate of tens of thousands of child migrants in the United States is turning into a major political problem for President Obama.

"This week he is expected to ask Congress for US$2bn to build detention centres and hire new officials - just to cope with the number of unaccompanied children arriving from Central America.

"Many of President Obama's supporters are upset at plans to send the children back to their home countries."

Fr Tony O'Connor is a New Zealand Marist, working in the United States and part of the Society of Mary USA Province Brownsville Parish ministry.

Sources

• Fr John Murphy, Society of Mary New Zealand
• Image: Press TV