Month: April 2018

Cincinnati, Ohio, Apr 10, 2018 / 02:19 pm (CNA).- A county-run needle exchange program hosted in a Catholic hospital’s parking lot has stopped distributing condoms, following action from Archbishop Dennis Schnurr and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
 
“This matter was addressed and favorably resolved last week, as soon as it came to the attention of the archdiocese,” Mike Schafer, director of the archdiocese’s communication and mission promotion department, told CNA April 9.
 
“Condom distribution is no longer part of the Hamilton County Public Health Harm Reduction Program, run from their van parked in the Mercy Health – Clermont Hospital parking lot,” he said. “Archbishop Schnurr engaged with Mercy Health leadership on this issue, with the resulting decision being to disallow condom distribution on hospital property.”  
 
The archdiocese was unaware that condom distribution was part of the Hamilton County Public Health Program until the fact was brought to its attention by CNA inquiries, said Schafer.

Mercy Health is not owned or operated by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Rather, its sponsors include the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, and the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor. The system has hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky.

The Mercy Health – Clermont Hospital in Batavia, Ohio had been hosting in its parking lot a van that was part of a county-run needle exchange program. As part of its harm reduction strategy, the program offered condoms, as well as injection equipment and other health services, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

“After engaging in further discussion with Archbishop Schnurr from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, we have asked the Hamilton County Health Department to discontinue the availability of condoms in the van,” Mercy Health spokesperson Nanette Bentley told CNA April 10. “The Hamilton County Public Health Department needle exchange program van will continue to serve the community, providing needle exchange and access to testing and resources.”

In April 3 comments to CNA, Bentley had described the program as “a harm reduction program aimed at reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and Hepatitis C.”

“The program includes needle exchange, access to testing and condoms as a holistic approach to harm reduction,” she had said, noting that clients would enter the Hamilton County Public Health property when they entered the van. The van was staffed only by county employees.

Previous news reports on the exchange program noted that condoms were distributed at the Mercy Health location, but not in a similar program hosted at two facilities of the Kentucky-based St. Elizabeth Healthcare system. That health system is sponsored by the Diocese of Covington.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center, which handles inquiries on Catholic bioethics issues, has always argued against condom distribution, Catholic bioethicist John Brehany, the center’s director of institutional relations, told CNA.

“One reason is that Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae teaches that every sexual act must retain its essential openness to procreation,” he said. In addition, “if someone has a dangerous disease, really, the better ethical action is not to expose someone else to it at all.”

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Washington D.C., Apr 10, 2018 / 10:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic pews in the US are emptying, according to data from a recent Gallup survey, which showed that Mass attendance is down to a 39 percent weekly average over the past 10 years.

From 2005-… […]

Washington D.C., Apr 10, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic University of America played host last week to a symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae, reflecting on the prophetic nature of the document, and on the lessons it still offers.

“In 1968, our university was at the center of a controversy regarding the document in the church in the United States,” said Catholic University of America President John Garvey during the symposium. “The fact that 50 years later, we’re hosting a conference to draw attention to what we now see as the wisdom Paul VI might be seen as a sign of the times.”

Humanae vitae took the world by storm when it was published in 1968. In the height of the sexual revolution, then-Pope Paul VI wrote that the use of prophylactics and hormonal birth control – which had only been on the market in the United States for less than a decade, and wasn’t legal for unmarried women until just three years prior – was morally unacceptable in the marital act.

“Consequently,” wrote Paul VI, “it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.”

The encyclical was not universally well-received, and former CUA professor Fr. Charles Curran led a dissent of nearly 100 theologians who were opposed to the content of Humanae vitae. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington described the nation’s capital as one of the “largest flashpoints of opposition” to the document.

The majority of the speakers at the symposium argued that in retrospect, Pope Paul VI was a man ahead of his time, and was able to accurately discern the negative effects that widespread contraceptive use would have on society.

Despite its rather unique history with the encyclical, CUA Dean of Theology and Religious Studies Fr. Mark Morozowich told CNA he considers it a “natural thing” for the college to have played host to the symposium.

“We view ourselves as a theologate–that is, working in lock step with USCCB and under, certainly, the direction of our own shepherd, Cardinal Donald Wuerl,” he explained. The university in the past has played host to similar conferences concerning other encyclicals, as well as one on the anniversary of the Protestant reformation.

Planning for the conference took about a year and a half, said Fr. Morozowich. He was part of the team who selected the speakers and the topics for the symposium.

“I think it is an important thing to understand the historical milieu out of which that document came, and out of which the very sort of reactions with all the tumult and society that was going on, explained Morozowich.

One of the major themes touched on by the speakers at the symposium was the prophetic nature of the encyclical, particularly in light of last year’s viral “#MeToo” movement, through which people shared stories of being sexually assaulted and harassed. Morozowich told CNA that he believes #MeToo is a sign of larger problems concerning the sexual revolution.

“It was a document that many are hailing today as being prophetic,” he said. “I think the #MeToo movement is a real symbol of the failure of the sexual revolution. It was a failure of liberation for feminists, because it wasn’t the real, concrete entering in to a dignified relationship. So when we look at Humanae vitae, it’s calling for clarity about what human sexuality is.”

One conference attendee said that she believed that the encyclical had an important message for modern women: that they don’t need to change themselves with hormones or implants in order to suppress their fertility. What’s more, she said, Humanae Vitae is a message of hope.

“Humanae vitae has a critical message today for all women, because Humanae vitae affirms that women are good as they are,” said Kat Talalas, communications director at Women Speak for Themselves.

“At a time where men and women increasingly feel alienated from each other, Humanae vitae affirms the good of married love. It shares the hopeful message that the romance of total unity open to new life is what we are made for, and can help provide the love, creativity, and connectedness human beings crave.”

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