Twenty-Five Things that Caught My Eye Today: China & NBA, Flannery O’Connor & More (July 29, 2020)

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3. ESPN investigation finds coaches at NBA China academies complained of player abuse, lack of schooling

4. Fr Joseph Aymanathil, the anti-COVID-19 ‘warrior priest’ is dead

Raymond Baptist, president of Kolkata Catholic Renewal Services, told AsiaNews that Fr Aymanathil had been serving the poor since the beginning of COVID-19. When the city was locked down, Fr AC regularly visited the slums, especially the children who lived there. He handed out food packages to families in various Kolkata slums.

Baptist said that he worked with Fr A. C Joseph for over 20 years, noting that he was following exactly in Mother Teresa’s footsteps on the same Kolkata streets

5. Italy: Controversial verdict may force legalization of assisted suicide

A court in the Tuscan province of Massa-Carrara ruled July 27 to acquit Mina Welby and Marco Cappato for helping Davide Trentini commit suicide in April 2017 at Dignitas, a physician-assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland.

6. This New Orleans couple had a boy they were trying to adopt taken away, and a state agency is under fire

The couple watched as the toddler they’d hoped to call their son headed on a one-way flight for New York, to live with relatives he barely knew – which included an older brother.

“He is a trusting, loving child. And now this experience of deep betrayal by people he trusts,” Courtney Landry said in despair as she recounted the departure. “To him, it might as well have been our choice to leave him at the airport. He doesn’t know.”

For the Landrys, the July 2 transfer marked a wrenching coda to a bitter child welfare and adoption case that challenged the state’s overarching focus on placing children with kin. 

7. This nun aims to get Ghana’s children off the streets, and into school

Sr. Anthonia said that passion to restore dignity among young people who have made mistakes in life inspires her apostolate.

“The work at Rays of Hope for me is not just work but rather it is a ministry and a call. Ordinarily, when you look at it with human eyes, you might not want anything to do with it,” she said.

8. I was within 90 minutes of execution for a crime I didn’t commit 

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10. Henry Olsen: Portland’s protests will not end well for anyone

No matter how woke or unprejudiced, people will not live in places where their lives, liberty and property are at risk. Every day that mayors in places such as Portland or Seattle permit this to happen, they send a message to people across America: Think twice about coming to live here. That can’t be a message they want to send, yet it is the one that is being received.

11.Seven years later, still no trace of Jesuit priest kidnapped in Syria

12. Ruth Graham to Join New York Times religion team (This strikes me as very good news. Pray for her, you who pray!)

13. Cardinal Zen: In Vatican II, Catholics hear ‘real voice of the Holy Spirit’

The authentic work of Church reform comes “only by a decision of the legitimate authority, 1.not by an arbitrary choice of anybody, and surely not by undoing the past,” Zen added. 

“The Holy Spirit of today doesn’t contradict the Holy Spirit of yesterday.”

14.  Jennifer A. Frey: Don’t Cancel Flannery O’Connor

From a Catholic perspective, is the life and fiction of Flannery O’Connor still worth celebrating, in spite of the fact that she harbored some of the racist attitudes of her time and place? I believe that it is. As a devout Catholic, O’Connor knew that we are all marked by sin and therefore in need of God’s merciful grace. As a disabled woman in the male-dominated world of literature, she faced and overcame many challenges by placing the Eucharist at the center of her life. In her fiction, O’Connor reveals a vision of grace centered on the power of God’s love to break us out of our own complacency, in spite of our sins and our dispositions to sin.

15. Hospice Stands Firm Against All-Out Attack

Only faith-based institutions are exempt in B.C. from compulsion to provide MAiD on their premises. Stripping away that last protection will lead to the board being quickly swamped by MAiD advocates, says the president of the society that oversees governance of the hospice. In fact, Angelina Ireland adds, it’s been clear for months the whole goal of a social media-driven membership campaign was to build the numbers to overwhelm and oust the existing board of the Delta Hospice Society.

“It’s an organized attempt to infiltrate the membership with people whose only basis for being together is to have euthanasia in the hospice,” Ireland tells me in an interview.

16. Timothy P. Carney: Arbitrary coronavirus rules separating families in public are only spreading it more

That’s when we were told that, by law, we couldn’t actually eat together as a family.

The hostess told my wife that no groups larger than six were allowed at a single table. We replied that we understood the logic of that rule but that every rule has a reason. In this case, a rule barring seven or more people is aimed at preventing large parties of friends, or multiple families, since such parties run a higher risk of spreading the virus. It’s an extension of the common COVID-time prohibition on large gatherings.

17. Daily Signal: I Felt Gay Attraction for Years and Didn’t Want It. Counseling Helped Save My Life. 

If counseling bans had been law in 1989, blocking me from the therapy I was asking for, I probably would have killed myself. I would not have been satisfied with a government-mandated gay identity.

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19. CBN News: ‘The World Has No Idea What Is Happening’: Extremists Massacre, Behead in Mozambique Reign of Terror

20. Dante Stewart: Alright

There is a certain type of depression that descends upon those forced to deal with the tragic conditions to which Black people are subjected in this country. In this moment of struggle, it becomes critical—I would even say spiritual, moral, and political—to narrate and normalize Black joy in the face of brutality.

21. Samuel Gregg: The woke war on religion

22. Fr. Roger Landry: Imitating St. Martha’s Virtues and Learning from Her Misunderstanding

23. Onion: L.A. Designates Open-Air Dining Areas Along 101 Freeway Median

24.  New York Times: A Clue to Van Gogh’s Final Days Is Found in His Last Painting

Because of the way light is depicted on the roots, Mr. van der Veen says he believes that van Gogh was looking at his subject matter at the end of the afternoon, about 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. He says he thinks this means that van Gogh probably spent the entire day painting.

25. Aleteia: Hush! The mysterious portrait of St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin

St. Anne’s gesture of placing a finger to her lips is the only known such depiction of its sort. There are a number of different interpretations of its meaning.  Some scholars posit that she is asking for silence, which according to the website ArchaeoTravel.eu, might allude to “divine silence.” Another theory is that the gesture simply indicates that she is praying.