Welcome to Thursday. COVID-19 cases continue to spike, putting already-strained rural hospitals in peril. An NCR commentator says that Fratelli Tutti offers a new language on Catholic-Muslim solidarity. The report on ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick is clear that Pope John Paul II promoted McCarrick despite several warnings.
COVID-19, federal response imperil already-strained rural hospitals
St. Mary's Hospital, a Catholic provider, closed in January 2016 after serving the city of Streator, Illinois, and its surrounding communities since 1887.
The hospital building has reopened under new Catholic ownership as OSF Center for Health-Streator, and the building was renovated. The facility now offers emergency room and primary care services. But it no longer offers inpatient care.
In the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Streator, like many rural communities across the country, lacks inpatient medical care, including equipment like ventilators. Patients with severe COVID-19 often need a ventilator to help them breathe and keep them alive.
The trend of hospital closures has only been accelerating during the pandemic — just as COVID-19 infection rates have begun to spike in rural areas. With 15 closures as of October, 2020 is on track to eclipse the previous record for closures set in 2019, when 18 rural hospitals shut their doors, according to University of North Carolina researchers.
You can read more the story here.
'Fratelli Tutti' offers a new language for Muslim-Catholic solidarity
When Asad Dandia, a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University, read Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis' new encyclical on solidarity, she saw a "passionate clarion call" from the leader of a religious community with comparable diversity and numbers as Islam, exhorting Catholics to "higher moral-ethical ideals in a shared idiom."
Though the encyclical doesn't mention "Islam" or "Muslims," its message is clearly brought to life by Muslim-Catholic encounters that serve as models for social solidarity across both traditions.
"Catholics and Muslims collectively account for roughly one-third of all people, and the well-being of the world is dependent not just upon our relationships with each other, but upon our relationships with humanity as a whole," Dandia writes. "It is not merely that our respective traditions teach us to be good and just, but that they offer us a language that can expand the horizons of what social solidarity can look like as the world grapples with crisis after crisis."
You can read more of the commentary here.
More background:
- Fratelli Tutti is part of the broader legacy that Pope Francis will leave the church on Catholic-Muslim relations, as well as interreligious relations, writes Jordan Denari Duffner.
- All of our coverage of Fratelli Tutti can be found here.
More headlines
- ICYMI: The report on disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick makes it clear that Pope John Paul II decided to appoint the priest as archbishop of Washington despite repeated warnings from high-level advisers.
- At Global Sisters Report, read about Cabrini Immigrant Services, an agency that has continued to provide food to hundreds in the New York City area, even as the need nearly doubled during the pandemic.
- A webinar hosted by the International Union of Superiors General introduced attendees to how men and women religious are using TikTok, the viral social media app, to share religious life with the world.
Final thoughts
If you missed our Facebook Live discussion on the McCarrick report with NCR executive editor Heidi Schlumpf, Vatican correspondent Joshua McElwee and abuse survivor Juan Carlos Cruz, you can watch it here. More background information on the discussion can be found here. You can catch up with all of NCR's coverage of the McCarrick report here.
Until Friday,
Stephanie Yeagle
NCR Production/Online Editor
[email protected]
Twitter: @ncrSLY
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