Gulf Pine Catholic

12 Gulf Pine Catholic • March 1, 2024 There are also Americans who continue to swallow Russian propaganda hook, line, and sinker: becoming, in effect, Putin’s political enablers in the United States. The Russian war on Ukraine was preceded for years by a massive disinformation campaign, using troll farms to flood the internet and social media with lies: among them, that a murderous tyrant, who assassinates domestic critics while causing mayhem outside Russia’s borders, is somehow a defender of “Christian civilization.” American vulnerability to Russian propaganda has a long, tawdry history, dating back to John Reed’s journalistic celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution and continuing with Walter Duranty’s New York Times cover-up of Stalin’s deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor of 1932-33. That trajectory of malfeasance has now reached a grotesque nadir with Tucker Carlson playing the lickspittle, allowing Putin the preposterous claim that Poland had itself to blame for getting invaded by Hitler in 1939. The contemporary Russian propaganda barrage has had its effects in a dysfunctional U.S. Congress. Ukraine’s determination to survive, underwritten in blood, has degraded Russia’s military, strengthened NATO, called Europe to its senses, and thereby made a significant contribution to the security of the United States: an immensely wealthy country in which $92 billion was spent betting on football, basketball, and baseball in 2022-23. Politicians arguing that we cannot afford to support Ukraine militarily, or who insist on linking military assistance to Ukraine to the resolution of their domestic policy grievances, are either delusional or unwilling to explain the geopolitical facts of life to their constituents. In either case, they might take a lesson from Arthur Vandenberg. Senator Vandenberg, a budget-balancing Republican fiscal conservative, opposed many New Deal and Fair Deal programs during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. But when President Truman sought his support for the Marshall Plan and NATO, Vandenberg didn’t demand in return the repeal of one of his bugbears, the National Labor Relations Act . Arthur Vandenberg was an adult. Would that there were more of them in Congress today, standing in solidarity with our unbroken Ukrainian friends and allies. George Weigel’s column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver. Catholic Difference From page 8 Seven U.S. cardinals pledge to help heal Ukraine’s wounds of war through new fund BY GINA CHRISTIAN ( OSV News ) -- With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine entering its third year, seven U.S. cardinals have become patrons of a new effort to heal the suffer- ing of Ukraine’s people due to Russian aggression. On February 20, the Ukrainian Catholic bishops of the U.S. announced that their Metropolia Humanitar- ian Aid Fund has been restructured as the “Healing of Wounds of the War in Ukraine Fund.” The fund is aimed at “healing physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds inflicted by the criminal Russian invasion,” said the four bishops, Metropolitan Arch- bishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Archeparchy of Phila- delphia; Bishop Paul P. Chomnycky of the Eparchy of Stamford, Connecticut; Bishop Benedict Aleksiychuk of the Eparchy of St. Nicholas in Chicago; and Bish- op Bohdan J. Danylo of the Eparchy of St. Josaphat in Parma, Ohio -- in a report accompanying the announce- ment. In the report, the U.S. Ukrainian bishops said they were “especially … grateful to the seven Cardinals of the Catholic Church in the US -- Cardinal Blase J. Cupi- ch of Chicago, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galves- ton-Houston, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of San Diego, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, and Cardinal Joseph William To- bin of Newark -- who have graciously agreed to serve as patrons” of the new fund. The Metropolia fund, representing the four epar- chies of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the U.S., was established in January 2022 as Russia’s troop buildup on Ukraine’s borders signaled an invasion. All contributions to the fund -- which totaled more than $7.5 million from some 6,400 donors, with $7.2 million so far distributed -- were dedicated to humani- tarian projects operated by the Ukrainian Greek Catho- lic Church or by trusted nonprofits partnering with the UGCC. Donations were applied to five focus areas of sup- port: internally displaced persons and refugees (now totaling 3.7 million and 6.5 million, respectively, ac- cording to the United Nation’s Displacement Tracking Matrix and the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refu- gees); medication and first aid; church ministry; emer- gency food assistance; and supply chain and logistics. The aid provided by the fund included over 13,000 hemostatic bandages and gauze, 11,000 tourniquets, 200 traumatic head injury kits, three anesthesia ma- chines, and the creation of a fully stocked operating room, as well as more than 27,000 food kits and the feeding of more than 100,000 individuals. The fund had no administrative costs, as Archepa- rchy of Philadelphia staff and volunteers donated their time to processing contributions. “The donations, whether from individuals or fami- lies, students in Catholic and public schools, parishes or dioceses across the nation, fraternal organizations and companies, have been transformative,” the bishops wrote in their report. “Dear friends, you have walked alongside priests ministering near the frontlines and supported the network of parishes of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. … You brought comfort, com- passion, and restored hope.” The new fund has already been seeded by major contributions from the Archdiocese of Boston and the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, which had donated $500,000 and $529,056, respectively, to a Long Term Aid Fund that was subordinate to the Metropolia Fund . That $1,029,056, to be redirected to the Healing the Wounds of the War in Ukraine Fund , will along with new contributions help provide urgently needed assis- tance in addressing the often unseen wounds of war. The World Health Organization has estimated that as many as 9.6 million Ukrainians may experience mental health conditions as a result of Russia’s war. The invasion, which continues attacks initiated in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the backing of military separatists in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, has been declared a genocide in two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wal- lenberg Center for Human Rights . Ukraine has reported more than 125,834 war crimes committed by Russia to date in Ukraine since February 2022. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the unlawful deportation and trans- fer of at least 19,546 children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. “The solidarity demonstrated by people of goodwill with the brave people of Ukraine, who are defending their freedom with courage and resilience, is a source of authentic hope that God’s truth will prevail,” said the U.S. Ukrainian Catholic bishops in their report. Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X at @GinaJesseReina.