Coalition Releases Guidelines for Public Schools on How to Combat Bullying and Uphold Free Speech

A coalition of seventeen education, religious, and civil liberties groups (including the National School Boards Association, American Association of School Administrators, National Council for the Social Studies, and National Association of State Boards of Education) recently released new guidelines aimed at helping public schools uphold the First Amendment while combating harassment and bullying. 

“This guidance document, the product of months of collaboration among national organizations, will help public school officials balance the First Amendment rights of students and the student safety concerns associated with peer bullying and harassment,” said National School Boards Association General Counsel Francisco M. Negrón, Jr., in a prepared statement. “We hope that public schools will rely on it as they make on-the-ground decisions in this area. Public schools can be a shining example of a forum in which constitutional rights are respected and cherished, and where individual dignity and safety is guarded.”

According to the guidelines, “Harassment, Bullying and Free Expression: Guidelines for Free and Safe Public Schools,” students should be able to attend public schools where they are free to share their views and engage in discussions about religious and political differences while simultaneously attending safe schools that prohibit discrimination, bullying, and harassment.

To access a copy of the guidelines, please visit:

Religious Freedom Education Project/First Amendment Center: “Harassment, Bullying and Free Expression: Guidelines for Free and Safe Public Schools”

Media report:

Education Week: Groups Urge Balance Between Censoring, Stopping Bullies (22 MAY 12)

Background information:

Religious Freedom Education Project/First Amendment Center

National School Boards Association

American Association of School Administrators

ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

National Council for the Social Studies

National Association of State Boards of Education

Lumen Gentium: The Mystery of the Church (7)

Chapter I of Lumen Gentium is entitled “The Mystery of the Church.” It continues as follows:

“7. In the human nature united to Himself the Son of God, by overcoming death through His own death and resurrection, redeemed man and re-molded him into a new creation.(50) By communicating His Spirit, Christ made His brothers, called together from all nations, mystically the components of His own Body.

“In that Body the life of Christ is poured into the believers who, through the sacraments, are united in a hidden and real way to Christ who suffered and was glorified.(6*) Through Baptism we are formed in the likeness of Christ: ‘For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body’.(51) In this sacred rite a oneness with Christ’s death and resurrection is both symbolized and brought about: ‘For we were buried with Him by means of Baptism into death’; and if ‘we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be so in the likeness of His resurrection also’.(52) Really partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. ‘Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread’.(53) In this way all of us are made members of His Body,(54) ‘but severally members one of another’.(55)”

(50) Cf. Galatians 6:15; 2 Corinthians 5:17.

(51) 1 Corinthians 12:13.

(52) Romans 6:15.

(53) 1 Corinthians 10:17.

(54) Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:27.

(55) Romans 12:5.

(6*) Cfr. S. Thomas, Summa Theol. III, q. 62, a. 5, ad 1.

 

To access the complete document, please visit:

Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Lumen Gentium

Thank You, Lord

Thank you, Lord, for the many ways in which You call us to be stewards of Your creation, of the resources with which You entrust us.

Msgr. Pope on the Seventh Commandment

“Some one stole my iPhone today, so I thought, maybe it would be good to post on the the 7th Commandment: You shall not steal!

“At first glance this commandment seems pretty simple and straight-forward: ‘Don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to you without permission.’ True enough, the seventh commandment does call us to respect the rights of others in regard to their personal property. This understanding alone, however, is incomplete.”

In a recent commentary, Monsignor Charles Pope (pastor of Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian Parish, Washington, DC) reflected on the Seventh Commandment and its implications for our relationship with other people, including our duty to to act with justice in regards to the goods of this world.

To access Msgr. Pope's complete post, please visit:

Msgr. Charles Pope: What’s mine, is God’s. And What’s Yours is God’s. A presentation on the 7th Commandment (31 MAY 12)

Reflection Starter from Arthur Ashe

“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.” – Arthur Ashe

Car 54, Where Are You?

One program I used to enjoy in my younger years was Car 54, Where Are You? It just so happens that some of the show’s episodes have been put on YouTube.

Here is one of the episodes, "Stop Thief," originally broadcast on 16 December 1962:

YouTube: Car 54, Where Are You? “Stop Thief” Part 1

YouTube: Car 54, Where Are You? "Stop Thief" Part 2

Background information:

Wikipedia: Car 54, Where Are You?

Federal Agencies Collaborating to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Asthma Disparities

The White House Council on Environmental Quality, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently unveiled a Coordinated Federal Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Asthma Disparities.

Nearly 26 million Americans are affected by this chronic respiratory disease, including 7 million children, especially minority children and children with family incomes below the poverty level. Asthma rates of African American children are currently at 16 percent, while 16.5 percent of Puerto Rican children suffer from the chronic respiratory disease, more than double the rate of Caucasian children in the United States. The annual economic cost of asthma, including direct medical costs from hospital stays and indirect costs such as lost school and work days, amounts to approximately $56 billion.

The action plan is designed to coordinate efforts to improve asthma management and prevention, including:

• reducing barriers to asthma care by ensuring that the populations most severely impacted by asthma receive evidence-based comprehensive care, which includes access to medical services, education, and environmental interventions;
• building local capacity by enhancing capacity to deliver integrated, community-based asthma care systems;
• targeting services to identify the children, families, and communities most impacted by asthma disparities; and
• accelerating prevention efforts to increase understanding of the cause or causes of asthma and test interventions that may prevent the onset of asthma.

For more on the action plan, please visit:

President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children: Coordinated Federal Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Asthma Disparities (May 2012)

Federal Action Plan: One-page fact sheet

EPA: Children's Health Protection: President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children

Holy Father's Prayer Intentions for June

Pope Benedict's prayer intentions for June are:

General Intention: That believers may recognize in the Eucharist the living presence of the Risen One who accompanies them in daily life.

Missionary Intention: That Christians in Europe may rediscover their true identity and participate with greater enthusiasm in the proclamation of the Gospel.

Lumen Gentium: The Mystery of the Church (6)

Chapter I of Lumen Gentium is entitled “The Mystery of the Church.” It continues as follows:

“6. In the old Testament the revelation of the Kingdom is often conveyed by means of metaphors. In the same way the inner nature of the Church is now made known to us in different images taken either from tending sheep or cultivating the land, from building or even from family life and betrothals, the images receive preparatory shaping in the books of the Prophets.

“The Church is a sheepfold whose one and indispensable door is Christ.(26) It is a flock of which God Himself foretold He would be the shepherd,(27) and whose sheep, although ruled by human shepherds; are nevertheless continuously led and nourished by Christ Himself, the Good Shepherd and the Prince of the shepherds,(28) who gave His life for the sheep.(29)

“The Church is a piece of land to be cultivated, the tillage of God.(30) On that land the ancient olive tree grows whose holy roots were the Prophets and in which the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles has been brought about and will be brought about.(31) That land, like a choice vineyard, has been planted by the heavenly Husbandman.(32) The true vine is Christ who gives life and the power to bear abundant fruit to the branches, that is, to us, who through the Church remain in Christ without whom we can do nothing.(33)

“Often the Church has also been called the building of God.(34) The Lord Himself compared Himself to the stone which the builders rejected, but which was made into the cornerstone.(35) On this foundation the Church is built by the apostles,(36) and from it the Church receives durability and consolidation. This edifice has many names to describe it: the house of God (37) in which dwells His family; the household of God in the Spirit;(38) the dwelling place of God among men;(39) and, especially, the holy temple. This Temple, symbolized in places of worship built out of stone, is praised by the Holy Fathers and, not without reason, is compared in the liturgy to the Holy City, the New Jerusalem (5*). As living stones we here on earth are built into it.(40) John contemplates this holy city coming down from heaven at the renewal of the world as a bride made ready and adorned for her husband.(41)

The Church, further, ‘that Jerusalem which is above’ is also called ‘our mother’.(42) It is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless Lamb,(43) whom Christ ‘loved and for whom He delivered Himself up that He might sanctify her’,(44) whom He unites to Himself by an unbreakable covenant, and whom He unceasingly ‘nourishes and cherishes’,(45) and whom, once purified, He willed to be cleansed and joined to Himself, subject to Him in love and fidelity,(46) and whom, finally, He filled with heavenly gifts for all eternity, in order that we may know the love of God and of Christ for us, a love which surpasses all knowledge.(47) The Church, while on earth it journeys in a foreign land away from the Lord,(48) is like in exile. It seeks and experiences those things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right-hand of God, where the life of the Church is hidden with Christ in God until it appears in glory with its Spouse.(49)

(26) John 10:1-10.

(27) Cf. Isaiah 40:11; Exodus 34:11 ff.

(28) Cf John 10:11; 1 Peter 5:4.

(29) Cf. John 10:11-15.

(30) 1 Corinthians 3:9.

(31) 1 Romans 11:13-26.

(32) Matthew 21:33-43; cf. Isaiah 5:1 ff.

(33) John 15:1-5.

(34) 1 Corinthians 3:9.

(35) Matthew 21:42; cf. Acts 4:11; 1 Peter 2:7; Psalm 117:22.

(36) Cf. 1 Corinthians 3:11.

(37) 1 Timothy 3:15.

(38) Ephesians 2:19-22.

(39) Revelation 21:3.

(40) 1 Peter 2:5.

(41) Revelation 21:16.

(42) Galatians 4:26; cf. Revelation 12:17.

(43) Revelation 19:7, 21:2 and 9, 22:17

(44) Ephesians 5:26.

(45) Ephesians 5:29.

(46) Cf. Ephesians 5:24.

(47) Cf. Ephesians 3:19.

(48) Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:6.

(49) Cf. Colossians 3:1-4.

(5*) Cf. Origenes, In Matth. 16, 21: PG 13, 1443 C, Tertullianus Adv. Marc. 3, 7: PL 2, 357 C, CSEL 47, 3 p. 386. Pro documentis liturgicis, cfr. Sacramentarium Gregorianum: PL 78, 160 B.Vel C. Mohlberg, Liber Sactamentorum romanae ecclesiae, Romao 195O, p. 111, XC:.Deus, qui ex omni coaptacione sanctorum aeternum tibi condis habitaculum..... Hymnus Urbs Ierusalem beata in Breviario monastico, et Coclest urbs Ierusalem in Breviario Romano.

 

To access the complete document, please visit:

Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Lumen Gentium

Thank You, Lord

Thank you, Lord, for the beauty and mystery of the oceans.

Catholic Women Who Changed the World

In a recent Catholic Herald article, writer Mary O’Regan offered a brief profile of ten Catholic women who “transformed the planet with their holiness, untiring work, and incredible creativity.”

To access this Catholic Herald article, please visit:

Catholic Herald: Ten Catholic women who changed the world (31 MAY 12)

Reflection Starter from George Eliot

“There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.” – George Eliot