Hamilton, Bermuda, Feb 19, 2018 / 01:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The British government has said it will not overrule a Bermudian law passed earlier this month which abolishes same-sex marriage, less than a year after the institution was imposed by a court decision.
Bermuda’s parliament passed a bill in December 2017 which abolished same-sex marriage, and rather allowed both opposite- and same-sex couples to form domestic partnerships. The Domestic Partnership Act was approved by Bermuda Governor John Rankin Feb. 7.
“The Act is intended to strike a fair balance between two currently irreconcilable groups in Bermuda, by restating that marriage must be between a male and a female while at the same time recognising and protecting the rights of same-sex couples,” said Bermudian home affairs minister Walton Brown.
“Bermuda will continue to live up to its well-earned reputation as a friendly and welcoming place, where all visitors, including LGBT visitors, will continue to enjoy our beauty, our warm hospitality and inclusive culture.”
In a 2016 referendum, Bermudians had voted against gay marriage by 69 to 31 percent, but a May 2017 Supreme Court ruling legalized the practice.
As a British Overseas Territory, Bermuda is a self-governing territory under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. The British government is thus able to block Bermudian laws, but it was deemed inappropriate to do so.
“That bill has been democratically passed by the Parliament of Bermuda, and our relationship with the overseas territories is based on partnership and respect for their right to democratic self-government,” said British Prime Minister Theresa May.
Eight same-sex marriages were contracted in Bermuda while the practice was legal, and they will continue to be recognized.
Some proponents of gay marriage have advocated a boycott of Bermuda over the new law, but others have argued it would counterproductive and would only harm same-sex persons in the territory.
The Domestic Partnership Act 2018 already faces legal challenges in the courts.
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Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, described Claudia Sheinbaum’s victory as “very bad news for life, family, and freedoms.” / Credit: EWTN Noticias/Screenshot
ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 5, 2024 / 18:50 pm (CNA).
Various pro-life, pro-family, and lay leaders of the Catholic Church in Mexico have reacted with concern to the election of Claudia Sheinbaum as president of the country.
Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, described Sheinbaum’s victory as “very bad news for life, family, and freedoms.”
For the pro-family leader, Sheinbaum represents continuity with the same progressive agenda of the outgoing administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Citing the growing legalization of abortion and use of gender ideology throughout the country, Cortés explained that “the López Obrador regime culminated in a culture of death, of ideology, not only of gender confusion but also of socialist populist indoctrination.”
However, in an interview with “EWTN Noticias,” EWTN’s Spanish-language news program, Cortés emphasized that just as people didn’t vote for López Obrador because of his position on abortion, gender ideology, or for freedoms to be canceled, people didn’t vote for Sheinbaum for those same reasons. What happens, he indicated, is that “when they come to power, they implement [that agenda].”
For Juan Dabdoub, president of the Mexican Family Council (ConFamilia), there are “two important factors” that would explain Sheinbaum’s victory in the presidential elections.
The first, he told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, is that in Mexico there is “a poor political culture, which makes a large majority of the people manipulable.”
A second factor, Dabdoub noted, is that “Mexican Catholicism has failed in something extremely important that Pope St. John Paul II already pointed out: ‘A faith that does not create culture is a useless faith.’”
In a Jan. 16, 1982, speech, John Paul II said: “A faith that does not become culture is a faith that is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived.”
For the president of ConFamilia, “Mexico has stopped being a country of practicing Catholics and has become one of simply baptized people; and when a Catholic doesn’t live his faith in the outside world, that is, outside his home and his parish, those who dominate the world take control.”
Dabdoub considered Sheinbaum’s victory to be “a brutal threat” to the defense of life, family, and freedoms, since she has “a radical progressive agenda.”
‘Formation and serious work are needed’
For Father Hugo Valdemar, who for 15 years headed the communications office of the Primatial Archdiocese of Mexico when Cardinal Norberto Rivera led the archdiocese, “Catholics must learn that social media are not enough to really influence; serious formation and work are needed, otherwise everything remains up in the air.”
“The big problem is that we haven’t been seriously forming the laity, and nothing is being done to do so,” he told ACI Prensa. However, he noted that with a Sheinbaum administration, “the Church is not in danger. I don’t see an adverse climate, much less persecutory, and Christian values have been violated for a long time.”
What’s next in the battle for life and family?
Pilar Rebollo, director of the Steps for Life platform, pointed out that Sheinbaum’s election “means much more work” for pro-lifers: “It requires us to be united, it requires us to be coordinated,” anticipating possible “frontal attacks on what we know as our values that are foundational.”
Rebollo also emphasized the importance of serving underserved and vulnerable populations, which, she considered, were key to Sheinbaum’s victory. This, she said, must be done “not out of a desire for numbers but zeal for souls, a desire to [heal] wounds, zeal for humanity, to see Christ in others.”
It should be noted that all three candidates for president — Sheinbaum, Xóchitl Gálvez, and Jorge Álvarez Máynez — backed the legalization of abortion and the LGBTQ policy agenda, so Mexican voters had no real alternative to vote for a pro-life and pro-family candidate.
Sheinbaum is the first person of Jewish ancestry to be elected to Mexico’s presidency. In February of this year, she visited Pope Francis at the Vatican, where she asked him to bless a rose wrought in silver by a Mexican artisan. She later presented it to the rector of the Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance anticipates that Claudia Sheinbaum will govern under the shadow of the current president and his leftist party. Credit: EWTN News Nightly/Screenshot
During her campaign, Sheinbaum was seen wearing a skirt bearing the image of the revered Virgin of Guadalupe. According to Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance, Sheinbaum also wore a rosary around her neck at a public event. He and others suggested that this was an act of demagoguery intended to appeal to Catholics, who comprise approximately 78% of the country’s population.
Sheinbaum, 61, holds a doctorate in physics specializing in energy and taught at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. Her political militancy began during her student years, joining a group that became the founding youth movement of the socialist Party of Democratic Revolution. She later joined the ruling Morena party. She has been described as a climate activist, having been part of a Nobel Prize-winning commission advising the United Nations on climate change.
Sheinbaum’s tenure as Mexico City mayor was marked by progressive initiatives. For example, the World Economic Forum, led by Klaus Schwab, noted that as mayor she ended public school policy requiring gender-appropriate uniforms for children. Sheinbaum said: “The era when girls had to wear a skirt and boys had to wear trousers has been left behind; I think that’s passed into history,” and added: “Boys can wear skirts if they want and girls can wear pants if they want.”
While she did not raise the issue during her campaign, Sheinbaum’s Morena party is a firm supporter of abortion. The newly-elected congress will be seated in September, one month before Sheinbaum’s inauguration, thus allowing incumbent president López Obrador an opportunity to push through his legislative initiatives.
Poblete told “EWTN News Nightly” that the 2024 election may have led to a Morena majority in Mexico’s Congress, which has vowed to amend the constitution in order for Mexican Supreme Court justices to be elected by popular ballot, thereby confirming partisan control of the heretofore independent judiciary, which would rule on issues such as abortion and matters of gender ideology. He fears that Sheinbaum will govern under the shadow of the current president and his leftist party.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Sucre, Bolivia, Mar 27, 2017 / 03:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A bill in Bolivia that would allow abortions only for certain groups of women is uniting unlikely groups in opposition to the policy – namely, Bolivian bishops and pro-choice feminists.
Denver Newsroom, Apr 28, 2020 / 05:17 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Michael Miller of Vancouver has announced that he is donating to the University of British Columbia’s research toward a COVID-19 vaccine.
“May the search for COVID-19 solutions also be a moment of solidarity, of collaboration, and of growing together as a visible sign to the world of the healing and reconciliation so needed right now,” Archbishop Miller said April 27 as reported by the B.C. Catholic.
Ryan Thomas, a special advisor to the archdiocese, told CNA that Archbishop Miller wanted to express, through his donation, the Catholic Church’s support for science and medicine that contribute to the common good.
“The Church— as Pope Francis has said from the beginning of his pontificate— is called to go out, we’re called to engage, not called to retreat,” Thomas told CNA.
“From a scientific standpoint, that means identifying the research that is worthy of our investment, that meets the high standards that we have to protect life,” he said.
Thomas declined to specify the amount of the donation, but said that it was in the thousands of dollars.
The global effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine includes at least 50 other research teams, the university says, many of which in the U.S. and Canada have received government funding and are being conducted by large pharmaceutical companies.
Pro-life leaders have warned in recent months that among the many COVID-19 vaccines currently in development worldwide, in some cases researchers are using old cell lines derived from the cells of aborted babies.
It was important to Archbishop Miller, Thomas said, that the Church be seen to be promoting research into a vaccine that Catholics can support in good conscience.
A group of Evangelical Christians and Catholics in Vancouver began to rally around the idea of supporting a vaccine that corresponded to Christian ethical standards, and eventually presented the idea of supporting UBC’s research to Archbishop Miller.
Thomas said Miller made sure to inquire about whether UBC’s vaccine research makes use of aborted fetal cells, which it does not.
Dr. Wilf Jefferies, the project’s lead researcher, told CNA via email that his research team is currently in the process of validating the potency of vaccine candidates in preclinical trials, in order to assess their potential toxicity before trying them in human subjects.
The UBC lab is using immune-boosting components called adjuvants in its vaccine candidate, with the hopes of reducing the dosage of vaccine required for complete protection against the disease. In addition, Jefferies hopes that UBC’s vaccine will continue to provide protection against COVID-19 even if the virus mutates over time.
“I am heartened by the unity and kindness that is being demonstrated during this pandemic,” Jefferies told CNA.
“I think the response by the archdiocese is an affirmative and practical way to address the critical need in our society to develop a vaccine…I am sincerely humbled by the support we have received from the archdiocese and from other groups and individuals.”
So far, Jefferies’ lab has received grants from the government-funded Michael Smith Health Research Foundation and the Sullivan Urology Foundation affiliated with the University of British Columbia, as well as a number of private donations.
There are at least 1,000 clinical trials currently taking place around the world to test potential COVID-19 vaccines.
A group of pro-life leaders in a letter to the Trump administration earlier this month reiterated that development of a COVID-19 vaccine should avoid unethical links to abortion.
“No American should be forced to choose between being vaccinated against this potentially deadly virus and violating his or her conscience,” reads the April 17 letter to Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Fortunately, there is no need to use ethically problematic cell lines to produce a COVID vaccine, or any vaccine, as other cell lines or processes that do not involve cells from abortions are available and are regularly being used to produce other vaccines,” it continued.
The letter’s signers include Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities; the heads of three other bishops’ conference committees; and leaders of many other Catholic and non-Catholic groups.
The Pontifical Academy for Life has noted that Catholics have an obligation to use ethically-sourced vaccines when available, and have an obligation to speak up and request the development of new cell lines that are not derived from aborted fetuses.
The 2008 Vatican document Dignitatis personae strongly criticized aborted fetal tissue research. However, as regards common vaccines, such as those for chicken pox and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), that may be derived from cell lines of aborted babies, the Vatican said they could be used by parents for “grave reasons” such as danger to their children’s health.
In a 2017 document on vaccines, the academy noted a “moral obligation to guarantee the vaccination coverage necessary for the safety of others… especially the safety of more vulnerable subjects such as pregnant women and those affected by immunodeficiency who cannot be vaccinated against these diseases.”
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