Warsaw, Poland, Jan 15, 2018 / 12:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Lawmakers in Poland proposed pro-life legislation last week that would outlaw abortions performed because of a congenital disorder or deformity in the unborn child.
Members of parliament shot down a “Save Women” bill Jan. 10 that would have liberalized abortion access, allowing abortion through the first trimester of pregnancy and opening access to emergency contraception.
Instead, the country’s lawmakers promoted the “Stop Abortion” bill that would ban abortion for pregnancies in which the baby had received a congenital disorder diagnosis or deformity.
The new proposal, if passed, could eliminate the majority of abortions legally performed in Poland. According to Deutsche Welle, around 1,100 legal abortions took place in 2016. Of these abortions, 1,042 took place because the child was deformed.
“We have come to parliament today because we don’t want hospitals turning into abattoirs,” said Kaja Godek of the Life and Family Foundation, who introduced the bill to parliament, according to The Guardian.
Abortion in Poland is legal in Poland only in cases of rape or incest, if the mother’s health is threatened, or if the baby has received a fatal diagnosis or deformity.
The “Stop Abortion” bill began taking shape late in 2017; it was originally met with threats from the European Parliament, which said it would take legal action if legislators promoted the new restrictions.
However, Poland’s bishops’ conference dismissed the pressure of EU sanctions, and gave their full support for the abortion restriction bill.
“The Polish bishops’ conference underlines that the right to life is fundamental to every human being, so we should all protect this right for defenseless children,” said Fr. Pawel Rytel-Andrianik, a spokesman for the bishops’ conference, according to the Catholic Herald.
“Nobody can take this right away, nor can external or internal pressure change the scientifically proven fact that human life begins at the moment of conception,” he continued.
A crowd of approximately 2,000 met on the steps of the Polish parliament in Warsaw on Saturday to protest the abortion restriction bill. Many of the protestors held signs saying, “My mind, my body, my choice,” and “Women will die without abortions.”
“The women whose rights and freedoms are being violated today have been left to face this problem alone,” stated Anna Karaszewska of the Let’s Save Women 2017 group, according to Deutsche Welle.
The Law and Justice party (PiS), which has been in power since 2015, has introduced multiple pro-life bills over the past few years. The PiS has also effectively cut off public funding for in-vitro fertilization and required a prescription for the morning-after pill.
PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski supported the “Stop Abortion” bill, saying that all babies – deformed or not – have the right to life.
“We will strive to ensure that even in pregnancies which are very difficult, when a child is sure to die, strongly deformed, women end up giving birth so that the child can be baptized, buried, and have a name,” Kaczynski said, according to The Guardian.
The BBC reported in 2016 that it is estimated there may be 10,000 abortions performed illegally in Poland every year.
A 2016 bill to ban all abortions in Poland was defeated.
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Pope Francis celebrates Mass at the Granaries in Floriana, Malta, April 3, 2022. / Vatican Media.
Floriana, Malta, Apr 3, 2022 / 07:18 am (CNA).
Pope Francis lamented the “sacrilegious war” in Ukraine as he prayed the Angelus in Malta on Sunday… […]
Rome Newsroom, Jun 26, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Scientists confirmed this month that a crucifix in the Italian city of Lucca is the oldest wooden statue in Europe.
A radiocarbon dating study conducted by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Florence dated the 8-foot wooden crucifix to between 770 to 880 AD.
The study was commissioned by the Cathedral of Lucca to coincide with the 950-year anniversary of the cathedral’s consecration, which took place in the late 12th century.
Devotion to the crucifix, known as the “Holy Face of Lucca,” spread throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, as pilgrims stopped in the walled Tuscan city on their way along the Via Francigena pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome.
Dante mentions the Holy Face of Lucca in his “Inferno,” and English King William II took a solemn vow in the name of the Holy Face in 1087.
The scientific study confirmed the local Catholic tradition based on a historical document stating that the crucifix arrived in Lucca in the late 8th century, according to the Archdiocese of Lucca. However, it does not lend evidence to the legend that it was carved from life by Nicodemus, a contemporary of Christ.
“For centuries much has been written of the Holy Face, but always in terms of faith and piety,”
Annamaria Giusti, scientific consultant for the Lucca Cathedral, said in a statement issued by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics.
“Only in the 20th century did a large critical debate begin around its dating and style. The prevailing opinion was that it was a work to be dated in the second half of the 12th century. Finally the assessment of this antique has closed this age-old controversial problem,” Giusti said.
“We can now consider [it] the oldest wooden statue in the West that has been passed down to us.”
In the carbon-14 study, three samples of the wood were taken from different parts of the crucifix and one of the linen fabric to be evaluated. Each piece dated to between the last decades of the eighth century and beginning of the ninth century.
Archbishop Paolo Giulietti of Lucca hailed the study’s results as a timely “message of salvation that comes from Jesus of Nazareth, crucified for love and risen in the power of God.”
“The Holy Face is not only one of the many crucifixes within our Italy and our Europe,” he said. “It is … a ‘living memory’ of the crucified and risen Christ.”
“It is a memorial that has its origins in antiquity, as today’s announcement confirms for us, and that has left indelible traces in the culture, spirituality of Lucca and the entire continent.”
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Cathedral of Lucca has postponed planned events celebrating its 950 year anniversary to the fall. It is unclear whether the city’s annual September 13 candlelight procession honoring the Holy Face will take place this year as many similar processions in Italy have been cancelled.
The at least 1,140-year-old crucifix can be viewed inside of the Lucca Cathedral of St. Martin.
Archbishop Zbigņevs Stankevičs of Riga, Latvia (left), speaking during a Catholic conference in Warsaw in May 2022 on the natural law legacy of John Paul II (right.) / Photos by Lisa Johnston and L’Osservatore Romano
Warsaw, Poland, Jun 9, 2022 / 09:17 am (CNA).
Constant cooperation and dialogue among Catholic, Lutherans, Orthodox, and other Christian denominations have been crucial to protect life and family in the Baltic nation of Latvia, Archbishop Zbigņevs Stankevičs of Riga, Latvia, said during a recent Catholic conference in Warsaw.
In his speech, Stankevičs shared his personal ecumenical experience in Latvia as an example of how the concept of natural law proposed by St. John Paul II can serve as the basis for ecumenical cooperation in defending human values.
The metropolitan archbishop, based in Latvia’s capital, is no stranger to ecumenical work and thought. In 2001, he became the first bishop consecrated in a Lutheran church since the split from Protestantism in the 1500s. The unusual move, which occurred in the church of Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral in Riga, formerly the Catholic Cathedral of St. Mary, signaled the beginning of Stankevičs’ cooperation with the Lutheran church in Latvia, a cooperation that would ultimately become a partnership in the cause of life and the family. Since 2012, the archbishop has served on the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
“I would like to present this ecumenical cooperation in three experiences in my country: the abortion debate, the civil unions discussion, and the so-called Istanbul convention,” Stankevičs began.
Entering the abortion debate
Ordained as a priest in 1996, Stankevičs struggled to find proper consultation for Catholic couples on natural family planning. It was then that he decided to create a small center that provided natural family planning under the motto “let us protect the miracle [of fertility].”
This involvement in the world of natural family planning would lead him into the heart of the abortion debate in Latvian society, and, ultimately, to the conclusion that moral discussions in the public square benefit from a basis in natural law, something emphasized in the teachings of John Paul II.
“I knew that theological arguments would not work for a secular audience, so I wanted to show that Catholic arguments are not opposed to legal, scientific, and universal arguments, but rather are in harmony with them,” Stankevičs said.
“[A] few years later our parliament introduced the discussion to legalize abortion. No one was doing anything so I decided to do something. I consulted some experts and presented a proposal that was published in the most important secular newspaper in Latvia,” the archbishop said.
Stankevičs’ article, “Why I was Lucky,” used both biological and theological arguments to defend human life. He noted that his own mother, when pregnant with him, was under pressure to get an abortion; “but she was a believer, a Catholic, so she refused the pressure.”
After the Latvian parliament legalized abortion in 2002, the different Christian confessions decided to start working together to protect the right to life and the family.
In Latvia, Catholics comprise 25% of the population, Lutherans 34.2%, and Russian Orthodox 17%, with other smaller, mostly Christian denominations making up the remainder.
“We started to work together by the initiative of a businessman in Riga, a non-believer who wanted to promote awareness about the humanity of the unborn,” the archbishop recalled.
“Bringing all Christians together in a truly ecumenical effort ended up bearing good fruits because we worked together in promoting a culture of life: From more than 7,000 abortions per year in 2002, we were able to bring it down to 2,000 by 2020,” he said.
Map of Riga, the capital of Latvia. Shutterstock
Ecumenical defense of marriage, family
Regarding the legislation on civil unions, another area where Stankevičs has rallied ecumenical groups around natural law defense of marriage, the archbishop said that he has seen the tension surrounding LGBT issues mount in Latvian society as increased pressure is brought to bear to legalize same-sex unions.
Invited to a debate on a popular Latvian television show called “One vs. One” after Pope Francis’ remark “who am I to judge?” was widely interpreted in Latvian society as approving homosexual unions, Stankevičs “had the opportunity to explain the teachings of the Catholic Church and what was the real meaning of the Holy Father’s words.”
After that episode, in dialogue with other Christian leaders, Stankevičs proposed a law aimed at reducing political tensions in the country without jeopardizing the traditional concept of the family.
The legislation proposed by the ecumenical group of Christians would have created binding regulations aimed at protecting any kind of common household; “for example, two old persons living together to help one another, or one old and one young person who decide to live together.”
“The law would benefit any household, including homosexual couples, but would not affect the concept of [the] natural family,” Stankevičs explained. “Unfortunately the media manipulated my proposal, and the Agency France Presse presented me internationally as if I was in favor of gay marriage.”
In 2020, the Constitutional Court in Latvia decided a case in favor of legalizing homosexual couples and ordered the parliament to pass legislation according to this decision.
In response, the Latvian Men’s Association started a campaign to introduce an amendment to the Latvian constitution, to clarify the concept of family. The Latvian constitution in 2005 proclaimed that marriage is only between a man and a woman, but left a legal void regarding the definition of family, which the court wanted to interpret to include homosexual unions.
The Latvian bishops’ conference supported the amendment presented by the Men’s Association, “but most importantly,” Stankevičs explained, “we put together an ecumenical statement signed by the leaders of 10 different Christian denominations supporting the idea that the family should be based on the marriage between a man and a woman. The president of the Latvian Jewish community, a good friend, also joined the statement.”
The Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia, honors soldiers who died during the Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920). Shutterstock
According to Stankevičs, something strange happened next. “The Minister of Justice created a committee to discuss the demand of the constitutional court, and it included several Christian representatives, including three from the Catholic Church, which worked for a year.” But ignoring all the discussions and proposals, the Minister of Justice ended up sending a proposal to parliament that was a full recognition of homosexual couples as marriage.
The response was also ecumenical: Christian leaders sent a letter encouraging the parliament to ignore the government’s proposal.
According to Stankevičs, the proposal has already passed one round of votes “and it is very likely that it will be approved in a second round of votes, with the support of the New Conservative party. But we Christians continue to work together.”
Preventing gender ideology
The third field of ecumenical cooperation mentioned by Stankevičs concerned the Istanbul Convention, a European treaty which the Latvian government signed but ultimately did not ratify.
The treaty was introduced as an international legal instrument that recognizes violence against women as a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination against women.
The convention claims to cover various forms of gender-based violence against women, but Christian communities in Latvia have criticized the heavy use of gender ideology in both the framing and the language of the document.
The word “gender,” for instance, is defined as “the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men,” a definition that allows gender to be defined independent of biological sex and therefore opens the document to the question of whether it really is aimed at the protection of women.
Christian communities also question the biased nature of the committee designated to enforce the convention.
The governments of Slovakia and Bulgaria refused to ratify the convention, while Poland, Lithuania, and Croatia expressed reservations about the convention though it was ultimately ratified in those countries, a move the government of Poland is attempting to reverse.
“When we found out that the Latvian parliament was going to ratify it, I went to the parliament and presented the common Christian position,” Stankevičs explained. As a consequence of that visit, the Latvian parliament decided not to ratify the convention, Stankevičs said, crediting the appeal to the unity provided by the common Christian position argued via natural law.
“In conclusion,” the archbishop said, “I can say that in Latvia we continue to defend the true nature of life and family. But if we Catholics would act alone, we would not have the impact that we have as one Christian majority. That unity is the reason why the government takes us seriously.”
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