Wednesday, April 1, 2020

How college students can spend their time during the coronavirus

March 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1Print

Denver, Colo., Mar 31, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The coronavirus pandemic has led colleges across the country to close their dorms, and offer classes online. As students return home with time on their hands, Catholics involved in campus ministry have offered advice on how to spend this time wisely.

Father John Ignatius, SJC, who served as chaplain at the University of Denver, and Peter Nguyen, a FOCUS missionary for Harvard University, have emphasized the important role of community, spiritual life, and charitable actions amidst quarantine.

Ignatius, who also leads the Servants of Christ Jesus religious community, told CNA that displaced students should prioritize prayer, community, and exercise, while making efforts to limit their screen time.

“It’ll be so easy to binge on episodes [on] Netflix. [They should] decrease screen time and extracurricular time to be more relational,” Fr. Ignatius said.

“College students would do well to stay in touch with each other via phones … Hopefully it’s a live conversation by phone or by Skype or FaceTime or any of the mediums you’re actually having face time with peers that are at a distance.”

Fr. Ignatius said displaced students should also make time for charity, especially by picking up the phone.

“Just consider the consolation and the blessing that a grandson or a granddaughter could give to someone who’s isolated and scared. It makes all the difference in the world to have just a 15 or 20 minute conversation with the grandparents and just think beyond one’s own interests,” he said.

The priest added that students might also consider offering virtual tutoring to children they know have been displaced from school, or, if local laws permit it, offering snacks or essentials to homeless people while taking a walk.

Fr. Ignatius emphasized that the pandemic is an opportunity to reignite a neglected prayer life. He suggested students might pray the Liturgy of the Hours, or spend time reading scripture. He also pointed to resources from groups like FOCUS, which have made spiritual resources available online.

Nguyen, the FOCUS missionary, also stressed the importance of reinvigorating a prayer life, noting that too much free-time can become its own kind distraction from prayer. He said during these difficult times, it is important to rely on the Lord.

“I think the notion of free time is a little scary because [in] school they have all these activities and they have classes and they have their sacramental life ….It’s scheduled out and so there’s a certain safety and security in order that we as Catholics know is there,” Nguyen told CNA.

“If we’re in the crucible right now with the Lord, the one thing that will help sustain us is daily conversation and prayer with him.”

Nguyen pointed to some of the virtual options the students have available for them at Harvard. He said FOCUS at the university has started online events, including Bible studies and virtual praise and worship sessions, which last Sunday drew around 200 hundreds views from students.

“We believe the word of God is so effective, especially in this trying time. I think … people are kind of longing for a sense of spiritual nourishment,” he said.

While FOCUS has launched its discipleship program online as well, he said, the most important aspect is to focus on accountability and personal investment through consistent contact with these students, Nguyen said..

“In this time, we’re still doing virtual things in order to continue to minister to our students who we encourage to their friends through the use of Zoom and in conversation on the phone, et cetera… Personal investment is probably the most important thing that we can be doing right now,” he said.

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Tragedy, Contingency, and a Deeper Sense of God

All of the tragedies that I recount here are but dramatic examples of a general truth about the nature of things, a truth that we all know in our bones but that we choose, typically, to cover-up or overlook.

March 31, 2020 Bishop Robert Barron The Dispatch 3Print

coronaviruscalimar2020 — Passengers from the cruise ship Grand Princess arriving with protective face masks are seen on the tarmac at Oakland International Airport in California March 11, 2020. (CNS photo/Kate Munsch, Reuters)

I have lived in Santa Barbara, California for the past four years. In that brief time, my neighbors and I have experienced a number of real tragedies. Just over two years ago, the terrible Thomas Fire broke out in my pastoral region, in the vicinity of Thomas Aquinas College (hence the name). For a frightening month it made its devastating way from Santa Paula through Ventura, Carpenteria, Montecito, and eventually commenced to devour the foliage on the hills just north of my home. As I was standing one Saturday morning on my front lawn, staring uneasily at the flames, a retired fire captain stopped his car and yelled out the window, “Bishop, what are you still doing here? Embers are flying everywhere; this whole neighborhood could go up.”

We were all relieved when, just days later, rains finally came and doused the flames. But that welcome rain became, in short compass, a deluge, prompting a mudslide in the fire-ravaged hills above Montecito. Twenty-five people were swept to their deaths. In November of that same year, 2018, a disturbed man walked into a crowded restaurant and bar called the Borderline, located in Thousand Oaks, in the far eastern end of my pastoral region. He opened fire at random and killed thirteen people, including a brave police officer who tried to stop him. On Labor Day this past September, thirty-five people, sleeping below-decks in a diving boat moored just off the coast of Santa Barbara, were burned to death as fire roared through their cramped quarters.

I have thought of all of these tragedies as we Santa Barbarans, along with the entire country, are dealing now with the coronavirus crisis. I think it is fair to say that, at the turn of the year, no one saw this coming. No one would have predicted that tens of thousands would be infected by a dangerous pathogen, that thousands would die, that we would be shut in our homes, that the economy would go into meltdown. What seemed just a short time ago a fairly stable state of affairs medically, politically, and economically has been turned upside down.

Now, I don’t rehearse all of this negativity to depress you! I do so to make a theological point.

All of the tragedies that I’ve recounted are but dramatic examples of a general truth about the nature of things, a truth that we all know in our bones but that we choose, typically, to cover-up or overlook. I’m talking about the radical contingencyof the world, to give it its properly philosophical designation. This means, to state it simply, that everything in our experience is unstable; it comes into being and its passes out of being. Think of every plant, every animal, every insect, every cloud, indeed of every mountain, planet, or solar system, if we allow for a sufficient passage of time: they all come to be and will eventually fade away. And though we habitually divert ourselves from accepting it, this contingency principle applies to each of us. Whenever we get really sick, or a good friend dies, or a weird virus threatens the general population, this truth manages to break through our defenses. Teilhard de Chardin, a theologian-scientist from the last century, said that he acquired a keen sense of his own mortality when, as a boy of three, he saw a lock of his newly cut hair fall into fire and burn up in a split second.

Why shouldn’t this perception simply lead to existential despair, a Sartrean sense of the meaningless of life? Thomas Aquinas has the answer. The great medieval scholastic said that the contingency of a thing tells us that it doesn’t contain within itself the reason for its own existence. This is why we naturally and spontaneously look for the cause of a contingent state of affairs: Why did that cloud come to be? What is keeping that insect alive? Why am I writing this article? But if that cause is itself contingent, then we have to look for its cause. And if that cause is contingent, our search must go on. What we cannot do is endlessly appeal to contingent causes of contingent states of affairs. And thus we must come, finally, to some cause that is not itself caused and which in turn causes contingent things to be. And this, Aquinas says, is what people mean when they use the word “God.”

Critics of religion sometimes say that priests and ministers present themselves at moments of sickness and tragedy—in hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral parlors—because they are providing a pathetic crutch to those who can’t deal with the sadness of life. But this is hopelessly superficial. Religious leaders do indeed go to those places, precisely because it is there that people experience their contingency with particular acuteness and such experiences open the mind and the heart to God. When we are shaken, we seek by a very healthy instinct for that which is ultimately stable.

At the end of World War II and in the wake of September 11th, churches were filled across our country, and I would be willing to bet, when the coronavirus passes, they will be filled again. I would urge you to read this phenomenon not merely psychologically but metaphysically: tragedy sparks an awareness of contingency, and an awareness of contingency gives rise to a deeper sense of God.

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About Bishop Robert Barron 174 Articles

Bishop Robert Barron is an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. He is the creator of the award winning documentary series, "Catholicism" and "Catholicism:The New Evangelization." Learn more at www.WordonFire.org.

Indian bishop condemns ‘shocking’ disinfectant spray of migrant workers

March 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1Print

CNA Staff, Mar 31, 2020 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- A bishop in India has condemned the spraying of migrant workers and their children with disinfectant, after a video posted to Twitter showed public health authorities doing exactly that.

The video was posted to Twitter Sunday. The Times of India reported that families at a bus stand in the northern Indian city of Bareilly were told to sit on the ground, and were then sprayed with a bleaching agent mixed with water.

In the video, parents and their children sat on the streets of Bareilly and are showered with a chemical solution of chlorine mixed with water. Men in hazmat suits can be heard telling the migrants to close their eyes and mouths.

Bishop Ignatius D’Souza of Bareilly said spraying migrant workers with disinfectant was inhumane.

“This is inhuman, because these people are poor and marginalized and desperate our migrants labourers and their families. Their dignity cannot be violated in this inhuman and shocking manner,” the bishop said, according to Asia News.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi placed the country on lockdown as cases of COVID-19 in India have reached 1,251. The lockdown has closed down borders and forced migrant workers in India’s largest cities to return home to their villages.

Ashok Gautam, an officer in charge of COVID-19 operations in northern India, told CNN that as many as 5,000 people have been similarly disinfected before being allowed to return home.

“We sprayed them here as part of the disinfection drive, we don’t want them to be carriers for the virus and it could be hanging on their clothes, now all borders have been sealed so this won’t happen again,” he said.

Other government officials said the disinfectant was really meant for the buses and that the incident was a mistake. Lav Agarwal, an official of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said Monday that workers involved in the incidents have been reprimanded.

“This is an overzealous action done by some employees at the field level, either out of ignorance or fear,” he said, according to CNN.

D’Souza emphasized the difficulties facing vulnerable people returning to their home villages, noting that the Church in Bareilly has been distributing food packets to those who arrive. He said they have delivered these packages to displaced people located at bus and train stations.

The bishop added that wealthy and well-known people with with COVID-19 have been treated differently than poor people in India, according to Asia News. He said everyone needs to be treated with human dignity.

“Each person has to be treated with human dignity, the celebrities who tested positive in India (who travelled to Lucknow), received best treatment, our poor people do not deserve this indignity, it’s an affront against the dignity of the human person.”

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Texas coronavirus abortion rule back, after court grants stay

March 31, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0Print

CNA Staff, Mar 31, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- A Texas order prohibiting most abortions during the novel coronavirus pandemic is temporarily back in effect, after the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put a stay on a federal district court ruling on Tuesday.

After the Western District Court of Texas on Monday allowed elective abortions to continue in the state of Texas during the coronavirus pandemic through a restraining order, a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit issued the temporary stay on the district court’s ruling on Tuesday.

“UPDATE: Victory at 5th Circuit – Abortion ruling stayed!” tweeted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after the result.

Paxton had previously filed for appellate review at the Fifth Circuit, after the Western District Court of Texas on Monday halted the state’s executive order from going into effect that would have restricted most abortions during the new coronavirus pandemic.

The stay issued by the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday will give the court more time to consider Texas’ executive order, the judges wrote.

However, University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck saw the circuit court’s decision as a signthat the case will soon make its way to the Supreme Court. In 2018, the Fifth Circuit Court decided in favor of Louisiana’s abortion safety regulations, which require that an abortion doctor have admitting privilges at a nearby hospital. That case is now being considered by the Supreme Court.

Circuit court judge James Dennis dissented from the panel’s ruling, noting that “[a] federal judge has already concluded that irreparable harm would flow from allowing the Executive Order to prohibit abortions during this critical time.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued the executive order (GA 09) on March 22 halting non-essential surgeries and medical procedures during the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, in order to free up resources and medical personnel to treat COVID patients.

Abbott clarified that the order would apply to “any type of abortion that is not medically necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.”

Abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, filed an emergency lawsuit in a federal district court to continue elective abortions in Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, the court granted a temporary restraining order to allow abortions to continue. Federal judges in Ohio and Alabama also halted similar state restrictions on elective abortions from going into effect.

Paxton then filed for appellate review at the Fifth Circuit court on Monday. He said in his petition to the Fifth Circuit that the district court’s decision “endangers lives and hinders the State of Texas’s efforts to combat the deadly novel coronavirus.”

“The State of Texas faces today its most serious public-health emergency in over a century,” he wrote, noting that the executive order halting non-essential surgeries and procedures was meant to conserve “personal protective equipment (PPE)” for the expected surge in new coronavirus patients at hospitals.

“Exempting abortions from the three-week pause that applies to everyone else would deplete scarce PPE, reduce hospital capacity, and risk spreading COVID-19 to hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals across the State,” he wrote.