Hello everyone,
The busy time at the seminary continues. I really think that there isn’t much of the other type of time. Classes are going well and wrapping up this week. I have written a lot in the last two weeks for class, but I still have a decent amount to get done before I get to leave. What I have left is the take-home exam for Political and Social Philosophy (Probably about 6 or 7 pages of writing), to finish my long paper for Gospel of Mark (about 10 more pages), and to memorize a part of a poem for my Humanities class (I don’t memorize specifics well, so this may be the biggest challenge of the three).
Everyone in my class is gearing up for the mission trips. The trip to Arizona leaves on Saturday. My trip to Burkina Faso with CRS will leave the seminary on Monday and go to Baltimore for some orientation to CRS. We will leave Baltimore on Wednesday and head to Burkina Faso.
We had our final conference call about the trip today; it is nice that plans are falling into place. I am getting excited. I don’t know all of what we will do there, but I heard during the conference call today that on the first day in Burkina Faso we will visit a shelter that CRS runs. It is a unique place. This shelter is for women who have been accused of witchcraft. Burkina Faso is about 50% Muslim with about 10% Christian (most of them Roman Catholic). The rest are still part of the indigenous belief systems. Actually, from what I have read, even the Christians and the Muslims still have a lot of the old beliefs. With this there is still a great deal of talk on witchcraft. When a woman is accused of witchcraft she is banished from her family, and normally the village. With such limited resources the country over, not much is allowed to go to these women. CRS has a shelter where they provide for these women. I am excited to see this.
We will also get to visit a seminary there. I don’t know much about it, if it is a college level seminary or a major seminary, or how many men they have studying for the priesthood. It will be interesting to see how much we are able to experience with these seminarian brothers across the world.
For each of the three conference calls we have had dealing with the CRS Global Fellows trip we have had assigned readings to go through and then some reflection questions to answer talk about when we are on the call. Today’s readings were dealing with the teaching on Solidarity. This is a deep theological principle within the Church. It is meant to bring out a lot of Jesus’ message of loving one another. In short it makes us remember the connection with all the members of the Church, all the members of the human species, and even all of God’s creation. It is a teaching that people can spend a lifetime on and not totally grasp. This is a big part of how I live my faith so I am excited to see how it plays out through CRS’ mission.
I want to take a brief moment to talk politics. I don’t do that much on here so I hope you will grant me a moment. Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a mandate that all insurance plans have to provide for free birth-control within the plan. This is up-to and including abortion causing drugs. When this was talked about last year HHS said that it would include a conscience clause to allow organizations to opt out of it. In the regulation that was published the conscience clause extends only to Churches and a couple of other very limited settings. It is good that HHS put in this small exemption, but it does not exempt some very important entities of the Catholic Church.
For example, Catholic hospitals, I have seen various stats from 1 in 6 to 1 in 4 of the hospitals in this country are run by the Catholic Church. This regulation would not exempt these institutions. It would possibly be allowed to exempt these institutions if they went to only having Catholic employees and only serving Catholic patients. This would go against our teaching of helping all people. One way or the other Catholics are being asked to violate their conscience.
The first amendment to the US Constitution starts out, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This mandate from HHS will severely limit our free exercise. If someone wants to say, “Well it doesn’t stop you from going to Mass” That is true, but that is not the extent of how we exercise our faith. This is a major infringement on religious liberty in this country.
The mandate does not require Catholics to use these drugs; however, it does require us to pay for things that go directly contrary to the Church’s teachings. With all honesty, many Catholics do use these drugs, but that doesn’t mean that they are in line with the Church’s teachings on that and these institutions are supposed to be run in accordance with our teachings, which this mandate will not allow in one way or the other.
Okay, the political rant is over. I’m going to get back to working on my papers. I’m not sure if I’ll have time to write again before I return from the mission trip at the end of the month.
Peace,
Adam
