Filipino bishops support mandatory drug tests for students

Manila, Philippines, Oct 27, 2018 / 01:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent survey found that the Bible is the most frequently read book in the Philippines.

The country’s National Book Development Board commissioned a readership survey for 2017, the… […]

Canberra, Australia, Jul 6, 2019 / 06:01 am (CNA).- Australia’s coalition government has proposed the introduction of legislation that would make it unlawful to discriminate against people on the ground of their religious belief or activity.

The proposal is being made to implement a commitment made in the 2019 federal election.

The legislation would also establish a religious freedom commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Moreover, it would amend existing laws regarding religious freedom, including marriage and charities law, and objects clauses in anti-discrimination law.

It would be made clear that religious groups cannot be required to make their property available for same-sex marriage celebrations.

The office of prime minister Scott Morrison said in December that “Australia is a place where discrimination on the basis of a person’s identity – including their religious identity – is unacceptable.”

“It is also a place where we respect the right of religious institutions to maintain their distinctive religious ethos. Our laws should reflect these values.”

The government wants to make religious belief and activity a protected class, like race or sex. It also hopes to ensure that groups rejecting same-sex marriage are not stripped of their charitable status.

A review of religious freedom in Australia was finished in May 2018, making 20 recommendations; among these was a Religious Discrimination Bill.

The government has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to report on how to balance competing claims of religious freedom rights and LGBT rights.

Australia has seen debate over religious freedom in recent years with respect to the seal of the confessional, hiring decisions, and same-sex marriage.

When same-sex marriage was legalized in Australia in 2017, efforts to include amendments that would protect religious freedom failed during parliamentary debate.

Morrison’s coalition government is led by the Liberal Party, which is joined by the National Party.

The opposition is the Australian Labor Party.

Labor senator Kristina Keneally told the ABC July 3 that “we are willing to have discussions with the government and work with the government on a religious discrimination and freedom act.”

Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney noted last year that “we cannot take the freedom to hold and practice our beliefs for granted, even here in Australia,” and that “powerful interests now seek to marginalize religious believers and beliefs, especially Christian ones, and exclude them from public life. They would end funding to faith-based schools, hospitals and welfare agencies, strip us of charitable status and protections.”

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Manila, Philippines, Jul 26, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- Catholic leaders in the Philippines are calling on Catholics and lawmakers to resist President Rodrigo Duterte’s call to revive the death penalty.

The president called for its reinstatement during a lengthy State of the Nation Address in Manila July 22, while activists, clergy, seminarians, and nuns protested the president in the rainy streets, according to UCA News.

Church leaders have said that despite his claims of success, Duterte has helped bring about “the most trying period in the nation’s history.”

“A vision of a country where peace and justice reigns, sovereignty is cherished and human rights are upheld … has been sliding into oblivion,” an ecumenical group said in a statement, according to UCA News.

The country, the group noted, is undergoing a crisis that is not only social and political, but moral and spiritual as well.

“The regression of our country’s democracy, the emboldenment of a tyrannical regime and the oppression of the people are fueling a national catastrophe,” they said.

Rodolfo Diamante, executive secretary of the Episcopal Commission on Prison Pastoral Care, urged caution for lawmakers when considering legislation that would reinstate the death penalty.

“We urge them to study the bills thoroughly and determine if they will really address the problems of drug trafficking and plunder,” he said, according to CBCP News.

Diamante also urged lawmakers not to reinstate the death penalty as a quick fix, or in order to appease Duterte.

“They have been elected by the people to work for their welfare, not the President’s,” he said. “Don’t give our people an illusion and a quick fix ‘solution’ to our problems. They deserve something better.”

The death penalty was abolished in the Philippines under the country’s 1987 constitution. In the 1990s, the policy underwent varying periods of moratorium and reinstatement, until it was abolished again under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2006, according to Human Rights Watch.

The last time death penalty legislation was considered by the country’s Congress in 2017, it faced strong opposition from lawmakers, UCA noted.

The Philippines is a majority-Catholic nation, with roughly 86% of the country’s 104.9 million people identifying as Catholic.

In August 2018, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a new draft of the catechism’s paragraph regarding capital punishment. Quoting Pope Francis’ words in a speech of Oct. 11, 2017, the new paragraph states, in part, that “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

Reasons for changing the teaching, the paragraph says, include: the increasing effectiveness of detention systems, growing understanding of the unchanging dignity of the person, and leaving open the possibility of conversion.

Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P., a moral theologian at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., told CNA at the time of the revision that he thinks this change “further absolutizes the pastoral conclusion made by John Paul II.”

“Nothing in the new wording of paragraph 2267 suggests the death penalty is intrinsically evil. Indeed, nothing could suggest that because it would contradict the firm teaching of the Church,” Fr. Petri added.

Duterte has a rocky relationship with the Catholic bishops and clergy of his country, frequently calling them various names and even calling for them to be killed, in large part because they have resisted his war on drugs, which has lead to a spike in extrajudicial killings since he took office in 2016.

Bishop Antonio Tobias of Novaliches hosted a “Mass for Truth” for activists before Duterte’s SONA address. Tobias, along with two other bishops, was recently charged with libel and sedition for allegedly accusing Duterte’s family of having connections to the illegal drug trade, UCA reported.

Tobias said that the war on drugs was gotten worse since Duterte came to power in 2016, despite his vows to quash it.

 “After three years, the number of drug users increased and many have died,” Tobias told UCA News.

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