I have beside me a new book by Father George Rutler. It is called The Stories of Hymns: The History Behind 100 of Christianity’s Greatest Hymns. It is quite simply the most fascinating book about […]
Beijing, China, Mar 5, 2017 / 05:31 am (CNA).- For some 35 years, the population of China was strictly controlled by the Communist government’s one-child policy.
Parents were only allowed one child, and additional pregnancies meant forced aborti… […]
Vatican City, Mar 5, 2017 / 05:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On the first Sunday of Lent, Pope Francis said if we want to fight against the temptation of sin, we must be familiar with the Word of God – treating the Bible more like how we treat our cell… […]
London, England, Mar 4, 2017 / 04:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Is it ok to abort a baby who has been diagnosed with Down syndrome? What about if you find out the baby is a girl, and you wanted a boy?
One UK ethics watchdog recently endorsed early pregnancy tests to screen for Down syndrome but opposed the same tests to find out the baby’s sex, lest it lead to gendercide.
And that logic is far too widespread, says a disabilities rights group, which is challenging such thinking in a recent petition.
“While many denounce gendercide and few would argue that parents should be free to abort a girl because they prefer a boy, when it comes to Down syndrome, the logic tragically changes. It becomes a valued individual ‘free and accepted choice’ to discriminate against people with genetic variations. How is this possible?”, asks a petition from Stop Discriminating Down, a project of the Jerome Lejeune Foundation and DownPride.
This week, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics published its findings on non-invasive prenatal testing, recommending it should not be used to reveal the unborn child’s sex, lest it promote sex-selective abortion.
However, it also recommended that NIPT be accessible to parents who wish to find out whether their child “has a significant medical condition or impairment, but only within an environment that enables them to make autonomous, informed choices.”
The test involves taking a blood sample from the mother at around 9 or 10 weeks of pregnancy. It is a non-invasive way of testing for genetic conditions and variations in the unborn child, and is thus safer than invasive measures such as amniocentesis, which carry a risk of miscarriage and other harms to the child.
The Nuffield Council’s recommendations would encourage the use of NIPT to screen for Down syndrome, Edwards syndrome, and Patau syndrome – “fetal anomalies” that in England, Wales, and Scotland are grounds for abortion under the Abortion Act 1967. The National Health Service will offer NIPT to pregnant women whose unborn children have a high risk of these anomalies from 2018.
The Nuffield Council noted that 74 percent of pregnant women in the UK currently choose to have a screening test for Down syndrome, and that between 89 and 95 percent of women abort their child after receiving a Down syndrome diagnosis.
It estimates that annually, nearly 200 more fetuses with Down syndrome in the UK will be identified, and there will be an estimated 17 fewer miscarriages related to procedures such as amniocentesis.
However, an additional 200 fetuses who are identified as having Down syndrome means, given the figures provided by the Nuffield Council, that nearly between 178 and 190 of those fetuses will be aborted.
“To offset the possibility that the increased use of NIPT might adversely affect disabled people, the Government … have a duty to provide disabled people with high quality specialist health and social care, and to tackle discrimination, exclusion and negative societal attitudes,” the Nuffield Council wrote in its report.
The council acknowledged, however, that introducing NIPT could affect the specialist health and social care received by disabled persons, and the importance attributed to research into their conditions.
And “Making NIPT available on the NHS could be perceived as sending negative and hurtful messages about the value of people with the syndromes being tested for,” it added. “Disabled people and their families might be more vulnerable to discrminination, stigma or abuse if NIPT gives rise to perceptions that people are ‘to blame’ for having a baby with a disability.”
The council also recommended that NIPT be accompanied by “accurate, balanced and non-directive information for women and couples,” and that private providers of the test be monitored to ensure their advertising is neither misleading nor harmful.
Turning from screening for “fetal anomalies”, the Nuffield Council said that “NIPT should not generally be used to find out whether a fetus has a less significant medical condition or impairment, has an adult onset condition, or carries a copy of a gene tht does not cause a condition on its own. Nor should it be used to reveal non-medical features of the fetus, such as sex.”
It added that “the Government should ensure that private NIPT providers stop offering fetal sex determination,” and that it should establish that “whole genome sequencing of fetuses is not offered outside research environments.”
The report of Nuffield Council acknowledged “the offer of NIPT to determine the sex of the fetus at an early stage of pregnancy may increase the risk of sex selective terminations taking place,” which they said “there is some evidence that sex selective terminations have happened in the UK, and they are known to occur in other countries.”
Sex-selective abortions are illegal in the UK, but in recent years the government has been criticized for a lack of enforcement.
The UK’s Department of Health has expressed concern for the pressure on pregnant women in some south Asian immigrant communities to have boys, and former Minister of Parliament Paul Uppal has said “the expectation is there – I’ve seen it firsthand myself.”
Advocates for persons with Down syndrome are strongly opposed to the expansion of NIPT.
Stop Discriminating Down says that “Government encouraged selective abortion, the refusal to provide health-benefits, or the refusal to provide adequate medical care equal to that provided to their typical peers is a social and moral crime against all people with disabilities and their families who thanks to developments in research, medical care, and social acceptance have many possibilities. The expansion of government sponsored prenatal screening and abortion stand in stark contradiction to the social progress made over the past 40 years towards an inclusive and equal society.”
“While throughout the world we petition, walk, and meet together to fight against discrimination and to protect biodiversity, no-one should have to defend threats to their life because of his or her genetic make-up. In a humane world aware of the need for acceptance and inclusion of differences, people with Down syndrome should not be discriminated against.”
In October 2016, Archbishop John Ribat became the first cardinal from Papua New Guinea, a South Pacific nation of about 7.5 million people, more than one-quarter of whom are Catholic. But in this geographically remote […]
Vatican City, Mar 4, 2017 / 09:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Saturday that while liturgical music has often struggled to live up to the quality and beauty the mystery of the Eucharist requires, we can promote its renewal by investing in a solid musical education for clergy and laity.
“Certainly the encounter with modernity and the introduction of the languages spoken in the Liturgy stirred up many problems, of languages, forms, and genres” he said March 4. “Sometimes a certain mediocrity, superficiality and banality prevailed, to the detriment of the beauty and intensity of the liturgical celebrations.”
“For this the various actors in this field, musicians and composers, conductors and singers of choirs, liturgical animators, can make a major contribution to the renewal, especially quality, of sacred music and liturgical chant.”
The Pope spoke to participants at the end of an international conference on Sacred Music held March 2-4, titled “Music and the Church: worship and culture 50 years after Musicam sacram.”
Organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Congregation for Catholic Education in collaboration with the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music and the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm, it looked at sacred music 50 years after the Second Vatican Council.
“Half a century after the Instruction of Musicam sacrum, the conference wanted to elaborate, in an interdisciplinary and ecumenical perspective, the current relationship between sacred music and contemporary culture,” Francis noted.
“Of great importance, it was also a reflection on the aesthetic and musical education of both the clergy and religious and the laity engaged in the pastoral life, and more directly in the choirs.”
The Church has a great responsibility toward liturgical music, the Pope continued, because it deals with the sacred mystery of the Eucharist, and that sacred music, to that order, must balance the past and present in a way that invites full participation and lifts the congregation’s hearts to God.
The “dual mission” of the Church, Francis said, “is, on the one hand, to safeguard and promote the rich and varied heritage inherited from the past, using it with balance in mind and avoiding the risk of a nostalgic vision” that becomes a sort of “archaeology.”
On the other hand, we have to also ensure that sacred music and liturgical chant don’t ignore “the artistic and musical languages of modernity.”
All those responsible for liturgical music, on whatever level, “must know how,” he said, “to embody and translate the Word of God into songs, sounds, harmonies that make the hearts of our peers vibrate, creating even an appropriate emotional climate, that puts in order the faith and raises reception and full participation in the mystery that it celebrates.”
“Active and conscious participation” in the liturgy constitutes being able to “enter deeply” into the mystery of God made present in the Eucharist: “thanks in particular to the religious silence and ‘musicality of language with which the Lord speaks to us,’” he quoted his homily at Casa Santa Marta Dec. 12, 2013.
Quoting from the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Pope Francis said that “Liturgical action is given a more noble form when it is celebrated in song…and with the participation of the people.”
He highlighted the document’s emphasis on the importance of “active, conscious, full” participation by the entire faithful, quoting that the “true solemnity of liturgical action does not depend so much from a more ornate form of singing and a more magnificent ceremony than on its worthy and religious celebration.”
To promote this requires “a proper musical education…in dialogue with the musical trends of our time, with the demands of the different cultural areas,” he said.
Concluding, he thanked all of those who participated in the conference for their commitment to sacred music, and asked for the blessing of the Virgin Mary, “who in the Magnificat sang the merciful holiness of God.”
“I encourage you to not lose sight of this important goal: to help the liturgical assembly and the people of God to perceive and participate, with all the senses, physical and spiritual, in the mystery of God.”
Vatican City, Mar 4, 2017 / 06:35 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As Pope Francis leaves Sunday to begin his annual Lenten retreat, Fr. Giulio Michelini, the priest leading this year’s spiritual exercises, said he hopes Christians around the world will be inspired to join in.
“I will be grateful to all those that are listening to us, that these exercises will be shared by all who believe in Jesus Christ,” Fr. Michelini told CNA. “We can do them together.”
“I know that people will go to work, will go to school, will be busy during these days,” he said, but “we can read the Passion according to Matthew’s Gospel, and that can be a way to pray to the Holy Spirit so that the Church will be more united.”
Pope Francis and members of the Roman Curia will make their annual five-day spiritual exercises retreat at the Casa Divin Maestro in Ariccia, a city located some 16 miles outside of Rome. Located on Lake Albano, it is just a short way from the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.
This year’s retreat, which runs March 5-10, will be led by Fr. Giulio Michelini, a Franciscan of the Seraphic Province of the Friars Minor of Umbria.
He said that his preaching for the week will be an in-depth examination and reflection on the Gospel of Matthew, starting with the Last Supper and moving through the Passion to the Resurrection.
“I will try to go deep into the Jesus that the disciples saw and followed,” he said. “So there will be a reflection on the humanity of Jesus,” as well as a meditation on relationships.
Most importantly, the retreat “will be a time of restoration,” Fr. Michelini said. “We will quit working, talking, doing the usual things that the Pope, Bishops and Cardinals, and households do.”
They will pray, and there will be time to walk around the beautiful grounds and lake outside the retreat house, he said, “a time to quit, to stop and to reflect.”
This is the fourth consecutive year the Pope and Curial members have held their Lenten retreat at the house in Ariccia.
While the practice of the pontiff going on retreat with the heads of Vatican dicasteries each Lent began some 80 years ago under the pontificate of Paul XI, it was customary for them to follow the spiritual exercises on Vatican ground. Beginning in Lent 2014, Pope Francis chose to hold the retreat outside of Rome, true to his background as a Jesuit.
This time of Lent, Fr. Michelini said, is a good period to slow down and to reflect on our spiritual lives and how they may be in need of enrichment. “It is helpful to remember that we are only human,” he said. “We need to eat, we need people to help us too.”
“And so the 40 days are a way for us to reflect not only on the poor, but also how we are poor, in a different sense.”
Especially in wealthy Western countries, where we have enough food and money, we don’t necessarily know what it is like to experience need, he said.
“Fasting and praying is not only a way for those who believe to be more in touch with God, and to have the same experience that Jesus did in the desert, but it’s also a way to be more human. Because we normally have everything.”
Readings: • Gen 2:7-9; 3:1-7 • Ps 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17 • Rom 5:12-19 or 5:12, 17-19 • Mt 4:1-11 Several years ago I was out to dinner with a group of people, including a […]
Concerns that Pope Francis could cause a schism in the Church have been percolating in Catholic circles for some time now: US Catholic,Crux, Inside the Vatican, The Spectator. More recently, though, a narrower and more technical question has begun to surface, namely, whether […]
Orlando, Fla., Mar 3, 2017 / 04:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- President Donald Trump visited a Florida Catholic school on Friday, praising the Catholic education system and touting his support for school choice programs.
“You understand how much your students benefit from full education, one that enriches both the mind and the soul. That’s a good combination,” the president told Bishop John Noonan of Orlando at St. Andrew Catholic School March 3.
He toured the pre-K-8th grade school, located in Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood, and spoke with students, who presented him with two cards. He visited a fourth grade class, the Associated Press reports.
President Trump responded to a girl who told him she wanted to own her own business, saying she’s “gonna make a lot of money. But don’t run for politics.”
His tour was followed by public comments attended by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Florida Gov. Rick Scott, various Catholic school officials and Bishop Noonan.
There, President Trump reflected on the contributions of Catholic education.
“St. Andrew’s Catholic school represents one of the many parochial schools dedicated to the education of some of our nation’s most disadvantaged children, but they’re becoming just the opposite very rapidly through education and with the help of the school choice programs,” he said.
He praised the school principal, Latrina Peters-Gipson, for her work, saying, “The love of what you do is really fantastic.”
The visit marked the president’s first official trip to a school since he took office. According to the Washington Post, about 300 of the school’s 350 students are beneficiaries of a Florida tax credit program that funds scholarships for families with limited resources.
Henry Fortier, superintendent of schools in the Diocese of Orlando, said the visit was an “exciting opportunity to share the good news and the work that we do.” He said school choice has also been an important part of his career in previous administrative roles in the archdioceses of New York and Baltimore.
“I know that there’s a lot of controversy about school choice for parents and lots of people have different opinions, but I see it as a partnership,” Fortier said. “It’s not a situation of us versus them, it’s a situation of us providing opportunities to our parents so that they have the right to choose an education that is appropriate for their children.”
“It shouldn’t be for just the wealthy that can afford it,” he said, lamenting that many working class families do not have the opportunity to choose the education for their children.
Fortier said the diocese’s schools work closely with their public school counterparts.
He said 25 percent of students in the Diocese of Orlando are in the state of Florida’s Step Up tax credit scholarship program. Of those 25 percent, 727 graduated in 2016, a graduation rate of 100 percent with a 99 percent placement in college or the military.
The superintendent touted the schools’ higher-than-average school scores on college entrance exams and student tests.
President Trump, repeating a campaign phrase, said education is “the civil rights issue of our time.”
“It’s why I’ve asked Congress to support a school choice bill. We’ve come a long way, I think. We’re ahead of schedule in so many ways when it comes to education.”
He predicted schools like St. Andrew would have “a fantastic relationship” with the Secretary of Education that would create “a lot of good things for your school and for the entire system.”
Bishop Noonan prayed for the president, his family, and everyone present.
“We pray for this day in dialogue that we may share the good news, and the future of our students,” he said.
President Trump thanked the bishop for his “uplifting prayer” and praised the bishop’s support for schools like St. Andrews.
The president’s visit drew criticism from some public school advocates like Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who characterized the president’s visit as a continuation of an “ideological crusade.”
Weingarten said that many voucher programs do not improve students’ academic outcomes and are not transparent in their spending and teaching policies.
Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor at The Catholic Association, said the president’s visit was appropriate given Catholic schools’ “record of success.” She said Catholic high school students are twice as likely as public school students to graduate college and their high school education is half the cost as public schools.
According to Ferguson, Catholic high schools in inner cities have a 99 percent graduation rate.
© Catholic World Report