The post Solving Mounting Problems Using xDesign appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

The post Mastering SOLIDWORKS Visualize and Creating the FIRST Global Challenge Field appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

The post Educators, Students Join the 3DEXPERIENCE Open COVID19 Community appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

The post Teaching and Learning 3DEXPERIENCE and SOLIDWORKS From Home with Open COVID19 Community appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

The post Aero Design Series – Stock Wheel – Part 3: Saving and Renaming appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

FSI Briefs No 5, April 2020. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have launched guarantee programmes to support bank lending to companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. This is essential to avoid a sharp contraction in bank credit that would exacerbate the pandemic's adverse impact. The design of such programmes needs to strike a difficult balance between responding promptly to the pandemic and maintaining a sufficient level of prudence. Key features of a sample of programmes (eg target beneficiaries, coverage of the guarantee, loan terms, length of the programme) reflect this tension. Incentives were created for the banks to join these programmes by exploiting flexibility in existing prudential requirements, while central banks have often provided liquidity support. Programmes are, however, subject to operational challenges and, ultimately, fiscal capacity limits.

Advanced preliminary release for Q4 2019 quarterly data on debt service ratios (DSRs) for the private non-financial sector (PNFS) for 32 countries have been updated. DSRs for PNFS breakdown sectors, ie for households and for non-financial corporations are also available for 17 countries.

FSI Briefs No 6, May 2020. Regulatory actions in the current circumstances need to focus on preserving banks' lending activity without jeopardising their solvency. This means that flexibility in capital requirements, including through the use of regulatory buffers, and capital conservation should go hand in hand. Basel III provides for automatic distribution constraints when capital falls below specific thresholds. In the current context, this may disincentivise firms from following authorities' recommendations to use capital buffers. Blanket distribution restrictions imposed through supervisory action may help address these disincentives to the extent that they are not linked to firms' individual capital positions and thus remove any possible stigma effect. Most authorities have undertaken initiatives in relation to banks' distribution policies in the Covid-19 pandemic environment. However, practices across jurisdictions diverge markedly as regards scope and stringency.

Banks' performance on equity and debt markets since the Covid-19 outbreak has been on a par with that experienced after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. During the initial phase, the market sell-off swept over all banks, which underperformed significantly relative to other sectors. Still, markets showed some differentiation by bank nationality, and credit default swap (CDS) spreads rose the most for those banks that had entered the crisis with the highest level of credit risk. The subsequent stabilisation, brought about by forceful policy measures since mid-March, has favoured banks with higher profitability and healthier balance sheets. Less profitable banks saw their long-term rating outlooks revised to negative. And the CDS spreads of the riskiest banks continued increasing even through the stabilisation phase.

We document that corporate pension contributions respond to tax-based incentives using the 2017 Tax Cut & Jobs Act (TCJA) as a natural experiment. The TCJA cut the U.S. federal corporate tax rate, temporarily increasing contribution incentives for sponsors of defined-benefit retirement plans. We exploit cross-sectional variation in ex-ante exposure to these incentives.

Bank of Italy Working Papers by Concetta Rondinelli and Roberta Zizza

Bank of Italy Working Papers by Eleonora Porreca and Alfonso Rosolia

Central Bank of Chile Working Papers by Carlos Madeira

Central Bank of Chile Working Papers by Gee Hee Hong, Matthew Klepacz, Ernesto Pasten and Raphael Schoenle

Here’s what we should be expecting in the war on Covid-19.

Magical thinking won’t protect us.

Cord cutters have more choices than just Netflix and Hulu. We break down the best video streaming services for your money, whether you're looking to completely replace cable or watch the latest original content on-demand.

In this nightmarish moment, we’re feeling warm and fuzzy about the cold and calculating Andrew Cuomo.

Beware men who never admit having been wrong.

David Dowdy, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, will deliver the presentation “Simple Principles for Interpreting Complex Models: How to Make Sense of COVID-19 Projections,” at 4 p.m. via Zoom webinar on Thursday, April 30, as the next presentation in its Dean’s Lecture Series: Perspectives on the Pandemic.

The College of Health and Human Development will host M. Daniele Fallin, Sylvia and Harold Halpert Professor in Mental Health and chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, at 4 p.m. via Zoom Webinar on Thursday, May 7, for the next presentation in its Dean’s Lecture Series: Perspectives on the Pandemic. This presentation, “Mental Health and the COVID Pandemic,” will summarize recent findings on the psychological effects of the pandemic, as well as offer some strategies for prevention and intervention as the pandemic, and its after-effects, continue.

The 2020 Special Olympics Summer Games, slated for June 11 to 13, are being canceled due to concerns related to coronavirus. The games will shift to virtual events, with details to be announced in the near future.

Apple's latest iOS 13.5 beta release includes a new Health app feature that allows iPhone and Apple Watch users to automatically send Medical ID information to first responders.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues around the world, countries are extending periods of national lockdown and increasing the need for people to stay home. AppleInsider has compiled a list of free resources, apps, tools, and services that are still available to use while social distancing.

Early Thursday morning, Apple announced it is awarding $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund plus manufacturing machinery design assistance to COVID-19 test kit collection equipment manufacturer COPAN Diagnostics.

Instead of every meeting attendee staring at a flat Zoom screen, Apple is looking to the future of video conferencing with Memoji-style avatars arranged in augmented reality around each meeting attendee.

Apple's Jeff Williams says that supply chains are running well and that the company is optimistic about the future for the economy both for itself and for America as a whole.

It's not exactly surprising that with all of the uncertainty in the world, Apple decided that it couldn't provide useful revenue guidance for its fiscal Q3 ending in June. It is unexpected, however, that Apple felt confident in announcing a silver lining to the pandemic -- it expects to sell more Macs and iPads in the summer of 2020 compared to 2019.

Apple has refreshed the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Magic Keyboard, the start of Apple's online WWDC has been announced, the iPad Pro Smart Keyboard gets a teardown, and your hosts provide a massive roundup of HomeKit and smart home devices.

Last March, analysts and tech bloggers dumped out arrogant contempt over Apple's latest product introduction. This year, those new offerings helped save Apple's Q2 earnings and are projected to bolster its June quarter performance despite the pandemic.

Amid one of the worst economic downturns in years, Apple has outperformed most expectations that analysts have placed on it. Just shy of two months into the COVID-19 pandemic, its share price has returned to levels not seen since before the crisis.

Apple frequently places movies on sale, and this week is no exception. Here's the latest batch of movies that you can get on the cheap for this Mother's Day weekend.

She only came for a week, but impacted lives of several families with children with autism. Isabel Black shares about her experiences in Montenegro.

Student Amy from the USA used her summer vacation to serve with OM in Montenegro and Serbia, sharing God's love with the young and old.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 10:48 am (CNA).- A Catholic nurse said the coronavirus pandemic has presented challenges she has never encountered before—and that a prayer life is critical to get her through her shift.

“If I don’t have my faith in me, I cannot give what I don’t have,” said Maria Arvonio, a registered nurse for almost 40 years and a board member of the National Association of Catholic Nurses. 

As the current night shift supervisor at Virtua Willingboro Medical Center in southern New Jersey—a COVID-19 “hot spot,” she says—Arvonio told CNA she and her colleagues were facing a new kind of disease.

Over the decades she has had experience treating previous diseases including the AIDS epidemic, before which nurses didn’t wear gloves. “I’m still standing—that is God,” she said.

Yet the new coronavirus pandemic is something unprecedented, she admitted. “It’s different in that it appears that no matter what we’re doing, it seems to just multiply,” she said.

As she treats COVID-19 patients, Arvonio told CNA that she leans on her prayer life to lead the team of nurses at the hospital.

“I cannot help those other nurses stand strong, if they look at me and I look afraid. Why would they want us to continue to work? I cannot show fear,” she said.

“I start my job with prayer. Before I even go into the workplace, I’ve already been either doing the rosary with someone, praying ‘Jesus, come and seal me in your most Precious Blood, Blessed Mother help me,’” Arvonio said.

Arvonio was one of several nurses to appear at the White House on Wednesday for National Nurses Day, and told President Trump of her experience treating patients in a COVID-19 “hot zone.” New Jersey has been one of the hardest-hit states by the virus, with nearly 132,000 confirmed cases and more than 8,500 deaths.

Treating the person, and not just the sickness, is part of the mission of nurses, she said at the event. “It’s not just our science, it’s our compassion.”

In an interview with CNA after her White House appearance, Arvonio said she pressed an official close to the President on the need for the administration to push for more access to COVID patients by hospital chaplains.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has reportedly been working on guidelines for restarting religious services as states begin to loosen stay-at-home restrictions. CNA reported that on April 28 and 29, officials from the White House domestic policy council and the CDC had discussed the matter with four Catholic bishops who are resuming public Masses.

New Jersey, Arvonio said, has allowed golf courses and liquor stores to be open, but Catholics do not have public Mass. “That’s a problem,” she said.

The spiritual needs of the COVID-19 patients are just as real as their physical needs, she said. As a board member of the National Association of Catholic Nurses, U.S.A., Arvonio says that organization’s mission is critical now more than ever, to emphasize caring for the spiritual needs of patients. 

In the case of one patient who was heading to hospice, a priest could only talk to her remotely, on Zoom.

“She was in tears, an elderly woman worried to leave on hospice because her priest wasn’t there to give her the last rites. This is wrong! This is our right as a Catholic!” Arvonio said.

For some hospitals, chaplains cannot administer the sacramental anointing because of a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) available for them. Yet, Arvonio said, she has seen staff wearing PPE in situations where it’s not necessary.

“Look at how we’re using our equipment and give it to the essential personnel, which is the priest,” she said. “We need him in the hospital more than ever.”

“We need to start thinking about getting the spiritual care back to these patients. They need their priests, they need their pastor.”

She has started making care packages for patients to provide something tangible in the absence of the sacraments; for one patient she assembled a care bag with holy water, blessed oil, and plastic rosaries. “I said ‘he’s not alone. God always has somebody for every person,” she said.

Washington D.C., May 7, 2020 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- The White House service for the National Day of Prayer on Thursday focused on protection from the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump said Americans will continue to pray for divine assistance as the nation faces “unforeseen and seemingly unbearable hardships.”

Sister Eneyda Martinez of the Poor Sisters of St. Joseph community in Alexandria, Virginia was one of the religious leaders present to lead attendees in prayer.

“Merciful Savior, heal and comfort the sick so that with health restored, they may give you praise. Divine Physician, accompany our caregivers, so that serving you with patience they may heal wisely. And through wisdom, guide our leaders, so that through seeking remedies they may follow your light,” Sister Eneyda Martinez prayed at the service in the White House’s Rose Garden.

The National Day of Prayer was designated by Congress in 1952, and scheduled in 1988 to be observed annually on the first Thursday in the month of May.

In attendance at the White House service were President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, as well as Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence, and Paula White, and other religious leaders from Catholic, Christian, and Mormon churches, and Jewish and Hindu faiths.

The prayer service emphasized prayer for protection from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as prayer for the sick and their families, and health care workers.

“Christ, the Anointed, protect us in body and in spirit, so that free from harm we may be delivered from all affliction,” prayed Sister Eneyda Martinez.

Vice President Pence urged Americans to be “persistent in prayer,” especially for the families of the dead, those sick with the virus, and health care workers, many who have “literally taken the place of loved ones” in being the only close contacts of COVID-19 patients.

On Thursday morning, Trump issued a proclamation, noting the importance of prayer during the pandemic.

“During the past weeks and months, our heads have bowed at places outside of our typical houses of worship, whispering in silent solitude for God to renew our spirit and carry us through unforeseen and seemingly unbearable hardships,” Trump stated.

“Even though we have been unable to gather together in fellowship with our church families, we are still connected through prayer and the calming reassurance that God will lead us through life's many valleys.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control was reportedly drafting guidance for states to reopen public accommodations and religious services, but according to the Associated Press on Thursday, the document was buried by the administration.

That document reportedly advised against churches holding services if they were not in a “community no longer requiring significant mitigation.”

However, if that and other certain conditions were in place, churches should take precautions such as ensuring social distancing, wearing of masks by congregants, and intensifying cleaning of churches, the CDC document reportedly said.

State orders have varied in their restrictions on public gatherings during the pandemic; a Kansas stay-at-home order allowed religious gatherings of 10 or fewer people, while Illinois prohibited all religious gatherings.

After every U.S. diocese stopped public Masses during March, Catholic dioceses have started offering public Masses, beginning with the diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, with several other dioceses following suit in ensuing days.

Officials from the CDC and the White House spoke with four of the bishops on April 28 and 29 about the resumption of public religious services.

Denver Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 08:19 pm (CNA).- A Christian ethic of service and solidarity must be an important feature of the business response to the coronavirus epidemic and its economic impact, Catholic business educators have said.

For Karel Sovak, associate professor in the University of Mary’s Gary Tharaldson School of Business, two of the biggest skills that business can bring to recovery efforts are self-awareness and empathy.

“A business needs to help the community identify who they are, which may have been lost during this time of stay at home,” he told CNA. “Businesses need to help communities focus on what makes it viable in the first place, which are the people. Business can be used as a force for good only if they understand what that ‘good’ means. Being aware of those strengths can help transform a community as they seek to overcome any devastating tragedy, natural or otherwise.”

He cited the symbolic unity and mutual support shown by individuals and businesses, whether by showing hearts in windows, purchasing gift cards for businesses, or taking meals to essential personnel.

Over 75,000 deaths are attributed to Covid-19 in the U.S., with over 1.25 million confirmed cases, John Hopkins University said Thursday. Efforts to prevent the spread of infection led to public officials’ orders to close businesses, with the exception of some businesses deemed essential services.

Millions of people have been left unemployed due to the closures, while those with essential jobs worry that their places of employment are newly dangerous.

Sovak emphasized the importance of trust as a business skill, but noted that low trust and polarization were problems even before the epidemic. Community is about bringing people into communion, and business has a role to play in that community building.

“Business can reassure families, non-profits and churches that they are there for them. Solidarity is the word that comes to mind when determining how to establish trust,” he said. The social and spiritual nature of the human being means people will need to come together once again “to use the gifts God gave to each person to meet the needs of others.”

Laura Munoz, associate professor of marketing at the University of Dallas’ Satish and Yasmin Gupta College of Business, said her business school emphasizes both a skill-based and a virtue-based education that can help respond to the crisis.

Business professors aim to help students become resilient and adaptable. They must become critical thinkers “aware of multiple stakeholder perceptions in an ethical way,” she told CNA. These skills can also help in the service of others, as in the case of a business student who used her business skills to fund raise for an Argentine orphanage on social media.

“Yes, skills are needed but they cannot come if the ‘business person’ is not aware of the needs of the environment and does not have love, charity, for others,” said Munoz. “Businesses that acknowledge that serving a community is give and take, not just take, will probably receive more community support as well.”

For Sovak, Catholic business education focuses on virtues, “servant-leadership,” and upholding the tenets of Catholic social teaching.

“There is no proof that any instruction can adequately prepare anyone, let alone young minds, for such a large-scale disruption as this pandemic has caused,” he said. However, teaching students the cardinal virtues of prudence, courage, justice and temperance is a good path in both strong economies and in economic downturns.

Such an education helps students “to understand that life is not about them; it is about serving others who are in need, which is what we are called to do.” Students should be prepared “to recognize their vocation is more than a job and they are called to greatness, ‘magnanimity,’ especially in dire times.” This helps them to “focus less on self and more on the situation at hand” and to bring about “true humility.” This path helps students be optimistic and trusting in innovative ways and help contribute to solutions

“Life is full of disruptions, simply because we can’t predict the future,” Jay Wesley Richards, assistant research professor at the Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Business, told CNA. “I think two of the most important business skills are simply virtues. One is courage—which means you’ll act even if you might fail. The other is resilience or anti-fragility—which means you learn from disruption and failure. The pandemic, and more precisely, the shutdown in response to it, is a historic and massive disruption. But disruption itself is part of life.”

Richards said one of his classes this semester had been discussing looming disruptions from technology and “the need to develop virtues and skills that humans will always do better than machines.”

“The discussion was mostly abstract until spring break, when the semester itself was disrupted by the pandemic shutdown, and we had to move online,” he said. “Suddenly, we were using disruptive (if imperfect) video-conferencing technology! At that point, students started asking more questions about disruption in the economy.”

Economic downturns in the business cycle are a standard topic in business education. Munoz said a pandemic is one of many possibilities taught through case studies, role playing, business planning, and discussions.

“We focus on going beyond a disruption and thinking ‘so what? How do we continue?’”

“Instead of the business coming to a stop, we think: ‘and what else can we do? How else can we do it?’” she said.

Michael Welker, an economics professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, reflected on the need for creativity given the conditions of a pandemic event.

“Such an event, in our lifetimes, is one that is unprecedented, complex, and so widespread, that there is a need for courage, openness to failure, iteration of ideas and experiments, and a need for management decisions to frame their enterprise cultures to engender this powerful way that human beings image the Creator,” Welker said.

Efforts to re-open businesses and other social venues, including places of worship, have come to be the focus of debate, planning, and activity.

Welker said the focus on “restarting the economy” means a focus on “a critical aspect of human life--a prudent and wise engagement with the world in many dimensions.” These dimensions include work, leisure, community, worship, and recreation. He suggested any approach to “restarting” the economy should take place in a context that recognizes “the great dignity of work” with the added sense of “the essential things, which are beyond just ‘making a living’.”

“This disruption has brought much multi-dimensional damage to people,” he said. “I believe authorities are attempting to walk the fine line between a serious and known risk and the need to get people into ‘normal’ living and acting, with the heightened concerns for safety and health.”

Sovak said that while there was indeed economic disruption, in part the economy “never really stopped.” Consumers continued to purchase, many people found different ways to trade, and the government infused additional money seeking a positive impact.

“If we are discussing how to get people back into the mix of work, travel, or play, again, much of that never stopped with work at home, it just got more creative,” he said.

At the same time, Sovak said that a too cautious approach to re-opening business will mean many businesses close, unable to adapt to the coronavirus epidemic.

There is also another risk.

“The risk of being too reckless means this thing (the epidemic) will come back around in a couple of months and bring about an even more devastating grind to the economy,” he added. “Again, the virtue of prudence comes to mind on how to tell what the times call for.”

“This isn’t a one-size fits all solution – what is controllable and what is predictable will be two ways to view the danger,” Sovak continued. “How much certainty does one have in the situation? The more certainty there is, the less risk and easier the decision that can be made.”

Richards similarly said there is no one right answer for a business response.

“Every business will have specific, even unique challenges, depending on where it is and what it does,” he said. “But the same general rules apply for businesses as for everyone else: Treat every person with respect and dignity, and that includes employees and customers.”

“It’s a serious mistake to present the current debate as if it were between the ‘economy’ on one side, and ‘lives’ on the other,” Richards said. “We should care about the economy precisely because we care about human lives and well-being. Really families, real companies, employers, and employees. Real lives.”

Richards cited the massive unemployment in recent weeks. The unemployment rate was at an historic low of 3.5% in February. Since mid-March, 33.3 million people have filed unemployment claims, making the unemployment rate higher than 20%, BBC News reports.

“There’s no such thing as a zero-risk option this side of the kingdom of God,” Richards continued. “Any challenge, like the coronavirus, involves a multi-side risk: Lives were at stake no matter what path we took,” he said. “The path of wisdom lies in understanding what the real risks are, and how likely various outcomes are. Only then do we have much chance of responding so that the benefits are greater than the costs.”

In the coronavirus epidemic, policymakers face the challenge of making “far-reaching decisions without having very good information to work with.”

“A response that puts 30 million people out of work isn’t just an economic inconvenience. It leads, and will lead, to loss of life and well-being,” said Richards. “The president understood this from the beginning. This is why he worried on Twitter that the ‘cure’ not be worse than the ‘disease’.”

“The question we will be asking for the next several years is this: Did the government response, and in particular, the shutdown of businesses and shelter-in-place orders for healthy people, save more lives than, in the long run, it will have cost?”

Sovak told CNA there are signs that tell whether a business mentality is dominating a discussion or or being neglected. When there is “negativity, pessimism or placing blame,” a conversation is likely headed in a wrong direction, whether a business community is being criticized or is offering criticism.

“Business certainly can’t solve every issue or does it have all the answers; however, there can be many benefits in taking a business approach to address any situation,” he said.

At the same time, a business analysis may not appeal to many, given the human cost.

“People are acting on emotion more today than facts and reason. Thirty million people are unemployed – putting a business touch on that doesn’t help that situation,” Sovak said. “Supply and demand means prices will rise, and inflation will come about but that doesn’t mean we have to bring that approach into the conversation when many people’s lives have been disrupted both financially and health-wise. This is where empathy has to come into play.”

CNA Staff, May 8, 2020 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- A federal judge in Arkansas on Thursday upheld the state’s requirement that women obtain a negative coronavirus test before having an abortion.

Calling the decision “agonizingly difficult,” Judge Brian Miller for the Eastern District Court of Arkansas said the state’s testing mandate—which applies to all elective surgeries and not just abortions—is “reasonable” during the public health emergency and was not done “with an eye toward limiting abortions.

The judge noted that “it is undisputed that surgical abortions have still taken place.”

The abortion clinic Little Rock Family Planning Services had requested a temporary injunction on the state health department’s requirement that elective surgery patients obtain a negative new coronavirus (COVID-19) test result within 48 hours before the procedure.

Previously, the health department ordered a halt to non-essential surgeries on April 3 to preserve resources for treating COVID-19.

The Little Rock abortion clinic performed abortions while claiming they were offering “essential” procedures, and after the health department ordered them to stop on April 10, the clinic challenged the state in court. The diocese’s Respect Life Office noted that women were traveling to the clinic for abortions from nearby states such as Texas and Louisiana.

The clinic won its case for a temporary restraining order at the district court level, but the Eighth Circuit appeals court subsequently overruled that decision and sided with the state.

The April 3 directive was updated April 24 to allow for some elective surgeries provided certain conditions were met. Elective abortions were included in the “non-essential” surgeries that were allowed to continue on April 24.

These conditions included no overnight stays, no contact with COVID-19 patients in the previous 14 days, and a negative COVID-19 test for patients within 48 hours of the surgery.

According to the clinic, which asked for a temporary injunction, three women were seeking to obtain “dilation and evacuation” abortions but were prevented from meeting the state’s testing requirmenet. One woman said she was unable to get a COVID-19 test; another said the lab could not guarantee she would receive results in 48 hours. The third woman was unable to get an abortion in Texas, and drove to the Little Rock clinic; she was told the results of her test would not be available for several days.

In response, the state’s health department said that four surgical abortions had still been performed at the clinic between April 27 and May 1, with COVID-19 test results having been obtained within 48 hours of the abortions, and thus the directive was not an “undue burden” on women seeking abortion.

In his decision on Thursday, Judge Miller said that the pandemic is a serious threat, noting that at the time of the opinion more than 70,000 people had died in the U.S. from the virus including more than 3,500 people in Arkansas.

He said the case “presents the tug-of-war between individual liberty and the state’s police power to protect the public during the existing, grave health crisis,” and noted that the three women as well as others “are very troubled. There is a strong urge to rule for them because they are extremely sympathetic figures, but that would be unjust.”

Denver Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 05:29 pm (CNA).- Mother’s Day is going to look different for most families this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

For Catholics, some churches are in the process of slowly re-opening public Masses, but the dispensation from the Sunday obligation continues to stand, as the virus has not gone away and a cure or vaccine has yet to be found.

While most Catholics are eager to return to Mass, a small group of Catholics are relieved that they will not be sitting in a public pew this Mother’s Day.

“We actually heard from one woman who said, ‘I kind of feel badly about saying this, but I'm sort of glad that we won't be in the pews this year for Mother's Day,’” Ann Koshute, founder of Springs in the Desert Catholic ministry, told CNA.


“That's something that we hear and that everybody I think on the team has experienced at one point in this journey,” she said - the desire to avoid Mass on Mother’s Day. That’s because Koshute, along with other members of her ministry, have had painful experiences with infertility, and the customary Mother’s Day blessing given to mothers at many parishes that day can bring their grief and sense of loss poignantly to the fore.


“I think that so often people in our own families, our friends, and even our pastors don't really understand the full extent of the pain and the grief or even the full extent of the issue of infertility, of how many couples are really dealing with it,” she said.


The pain of infertility, and the lack of resources available to Catholics on the subject, was why Koshute and her friend, Kimberly Henkel, founded Springs in the Desert, a Catholic ministry to spiritually and emotionally support women and couples experiencing infertility and infant loss. Originally, Henkel and Koshute, who have both experienced infertility, thought they might write a book. But they decided to start with a ministry website and a blog that could bring people together and allow for other women and couples to share their experiences. The group is relatively new, and held its first retreat in Philadelphia in December. They were set to hold a second one this weekend - Mother’s Day weekend - in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, when, well, the pandemic hit.

Now, they’ve moved the retreat online and opened it up to Catholics across the country - and they’ve been overwhelmed by the response.

“We thought that we would be really excited if maybe a couple dozen people found out about it and came. We are over 100 participants now. And it's free and it's going to be available all weekend,” Koshute said. The retreat is trying to address the emotional and spiritual experience of infertility and loss for a broad range of people, Henkel said - from mothers who have miscarried, to women who are past child-bearing years and still grieving the loss of infertility, to women “who feel like their biological clocks are ticking and just haven’t met the right guy.” But now that it's a virtual, pre-recorded, watch-at-your-leisure retreat, it also has the potential to reach a population that is often more reluctant to gather in groups and talk about their experiences of infertility: men. “It's mostly women who are emailing us (about the retreat), although we know that many of their husbands will watch with them. But we've also had a few men email us,” Koshute said.


“One in particular, it just really touched my heart. And he said that he was searching the web for help for his wife on Mother's Day. And I was just so filled with praise and thanksgiving to God for that, for a husband to see that hurt in his wife and to want to find a way to help her,” she added. Men and women typically experience the grief of infertility quite differently, Koshute noted. “For us women, it's so visceral because life is conceived within us and we carry that life. But for a man, it's so different,” she said.

“(Men are) kind of distant from that experience until the child is actually born. And so I think many times men, the grief and the burden that they carry is their wife's. They really carry her sadness and I think feel at a loss because they want to make everything right. They want to fix this, and they want to make her whole. And the mystery of infertility is that it's not that simple. And that's one of the things that makes it so difficult,” she said. Henkel said she experienced her own difficulties in trying to discuss infertility with her husband. Now that they’ve experienced the joy of growing their family through adoption, she said, he is much more open to inviting other men to share their experiences. Henkel said she is hoping that an additional benefit of this retreat being online is that it will facilitate discussions between couples watching the videos together. Both Henkel and Koshute said that while the experience of infertility and loss is painful, and they want to help couples acknowledge and accept that pain, they also want Springs in the Desert to be a positive and supportive experience for couples and women, where they can find hope and redemption even in their suffering. One of the topics they focus on is how all women are called to motherhood in their lives, whether it is spiritual or biological.

“My experience has shown me that my motherhood is really engaged in so many ways that I never considered before,” Koshute said.

“Not just with my godson or with other children in my family, but with women who are older than I who are friends and who might come to me with a difficulty or problem and I can help them,” or by helping family members in need or through charitable works, she added. “That's one of the messages that we try to get across to women and to couples as well, that those kinds of things, what we would maybe refer to as spiritual motherhood, is not illegitimate,” she said.

“It's not second-place. It's a real way of engaging and living out our motherhood. It's also not a replacement for a baby. So it's not as if you go out and volunteer in your community and now you won't have this longing for a child anymore. But we've really found through our own experience and through talking with other women that the more we kind of put ourselves out there and give ourselves to others, the more that we can begin to see that motherhood enacted in us.”

Henkel said she also likes to encourage couples to look at the ways God is calling them to be fruitful in their marriages outside of biological children.

“We really encourage these couples that they are not forgotten, they're not being punished. That God loves them so much and that he has something amazing for them. He's using this to draw them near to him and to allow them to cry out to him and ask for him to guide them, to lead them, to give them his love and show them what fruitfulness he has for them, what place in ministry and mission he has for them.” Henkel and her husband in particular like to share with couples their experience of foster care as one example of where God might be calling them to be fruitful. After a frustrating and expensive experience with some adoption agencies, Henkel and her husband decided to look into giving a home to children through foster care.

“Here is a situation where these children really need families,” she said. “It's hard because there's no guarantee you're going to get to keep this child, so there's a sense of this new greater level of having to learn how to trust God.” “I think that with a couple discerning that fruitfulness, it's also discerning - where is God really calling you? There's so much need in this world. And he wants to use us.”

Couples interested in the Springs in the Desert Mother’s Day weekend retreat can sign up for free online at the Springs in the Desert website. Content will be uploaded and available for anyone who registers, Henkel said, even if they register late. The retreat team will also be hosting a live talk on Sunday, May 10 at 2 p.m. Eastern on the ministry’s Facebook page.

“There's a place for you in Springs of the Desert,” Henkel added. “There's so many women who have reached out to us in Philly. We added several more women to our group, to our team, our official team, women who came to the retreat. One woman had come there and she said she had had a miscarriage, and neither one of us has experienced that. So we said, please join us. We want your voice.”

“We're trying to really bring the voices of many different women to our team so that people will feel there is somebody that is talking they can really relate to. Because there are all of these different situations, but they've got obviously a very similar undercurrent.”

Todd Colvin, Ambrosino Brothers

Todd Colvin, Ambrosino Brothers

Todd Colvin, Ambrosino Brothers

Todd Colvin, Ambrosino Brothers

Todd Colvin, Ambrosino Brothers

Todd Colvin, Ambrosino Brothers

Todd Colvin, Ambrosino Brothers

Todd Colvin, Ambrosino Brothers