Pittsburgh, Pa., Sep 12, 2018 / 11:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of recent sex abuse scandals, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh has announced a Year of Repentance in the diocese.
He has asked all the clerics to fast and pray for the purification of the Church, and invited all Catholics to join the initiative.
“Faced with the sinful actions of the members of our own ranks of the clergy, who are called to manifest the example of Christ, we feel both shame and sorrow, and are reminded of our own sinfulness and the need for mercy,” Bishop Zubik wrote in a Sept. 10 letter to the clerics and seminarians of the diocese.
“I invite the faithful to join with the clergy as they desire in our acts of prayer and penance. The year is open to individuals to go beyond what I am requesting as we continue to pray that the Lord come to our aid.”
The Year of Repentance will include the observance of the Ember Days, which were traditionally days of fast and abstinence.
Bishop Zubik has asked that on each of the 12 Ember Days in the coming year, clerics of the Diocese of Pittsburgh fast, abstain from meat, and make a Holy Hour.
Ember Days are tied to the seasons of the year, and are held on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of four weeks: the third week of September, the third week of Advent, the first week of Lent, and the octave of Pentecost.
In the Pittsburgh diocese’s Year of Repentance, the Ember Days fall Sept. 19, 21, and 22, 2018, Dec. 19, 21, 22, 2018, March 13, 15, 16, 2019, and June 12, 14, 15, 2019.
Bishop Zubik will inaugurate the Year of Repentance Sept. 23 with Vespers and a Holy Hour at the cathedral.
The year will close with a Mass for the Assumption Aug. 15, 2019 to serve “as a sign of hope and healing for victims and for renewal in the Church through the intercession of Mary.”
In his letter, Bishop Zubik also encouraged the clerics of Pittsburgh to consider restoring the recitation of the prayer to St. Michael after all Masses.
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Cincinnati, Ohio, Apr 8, 2017 / 05:32 am (CNA/EWTN News).- U.S. immigration authorities should show mercy on a detained Catholic mother with a special needs child, who fled Mexico when drug cartels began to persecute her family, the Archdiocese of Cinc… […]
Nebraska Capitol. / Credit: Steven Frame/Shutterstock
CNA Staff, Nov 1, 2024 / 14:55 pm (CNA).
Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has released an advisory clarifying that the state’s preborn protection law does not prohibit miscarriage care or lifesaving care amid a pro-abortion advertisement campaign that told the public otherwise.
“The Department of Health and Human Services has received several inquiries, from physicians and health care providers, expressing concern regarding recent radio and television ads that included incorrect and misleading information regarding the Preborn Child Protection Act,” the Oct. 28 advisory reads.
The health advisory came amid an advertising campaign by advocates of Nebraska’s Right to Abortion Initiative 439, which advocates for a right to abortion up to fetal viability in the state constitution. The campaign featured multiple ads that stated that women couldn’t receive miscarriage care and necessary health care because of Nebraska’s current law.
“Any time misleading information causes confusion among health care professionals, it could cause harm to the health and well-being of their patients,” stated the advisory by Dr. Timothy Tesmer, the chief medical officer of the DHHS in Nebraska.
In the health advisory, Tesmer didn’t name which ads the department was responding to, but he clarified that the current law, which protects unborn children after 12 weeks’ gestational age from abortion, provides exceptions for medical emergencies and for cases of rape or incest.
But an advertisement campaign by pro-abortion group Protect Our Rights: Nebraska for 439 told the public otherwise. In one advertisement, advocates said that in Nebraska, there is “an abortion ban that threatens women’s lives” and that “doctors can’t help them even if the pregnancy won’t survive. It puts their lives in danger.” Other advertisements by the same group state that doctors “can’t properly care for patients” and claim that women get sent home “because of the confusing abortion ban” when they have miscarriages.
Allie Berry, the campaign manager for Protect Our Rights, told NBC News that she believed the advisory referred to her group’s ads but said the advisory was designed to “confuse voters.”
The advisory noted that a medical emergency is legally defined as either a threat to the pregnant woman’s life or a “serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
“The act does not require a medical emergency to be immediate,” Tesmer noted in the advisory. “Physicians understand that it is difficult to predict with certainty whether a situation will cause a patient to become seriously ill or die, but physicians do know what situations could lead to serious outcomes.”
Nebraska also has a competing pro-life amendment, Initiative 434, which would prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions for medical emergencies and cases of rape or incest. Another advertisement by Protect Our Rights claimed that Initiative 434 would make Nebraska’s current law permanent and “opens the door” to banning miscarriage care and IVF.
The health advisory clarified that a variety of medical treatments are not prohibited by the Preborn Child Protection Act, including the removal of a child’s remains after pregnancy loss and the termination of a preborn child produced by in vitro fertilization (IVF) but not implanted in the mother’s womb. The advisory noted that any act intended to save the child’s life, as well as treatment for ectopic pregnancies, is not prohibited under the current law.
“Physicians should exercise their best clinical judgment, and the law allows intervention consistent with prevailing standards of care,” the advisory continued. “The law is deferential to a physician’s judgment in these circumstances.”
Political context
With two contradicting abortion-related measures on the 2024 ballot, Nebraskans will decide Nov. 5 on protection for unborn children in the nation’s only competing abortion ballots.
Marion Miner, the associate director of Pro-life and Family Policy for the Nebraska Catholic Conference, told CNA that “these lies … are abortion activists’ attempt to terrify voters into approving a radical pro-abortion constitutional amendment they would never otherwise support.”
“Abortion activists are putting women’s lives at risk in a gambit to advance a pro-abortion political agenda,” Miner added. “There are real potential human costs, including lost lives.”
She noted that “misinformation by abortion activists …is putting women’s lives at risk.”
“These lies have become so rampant in the weeks leading up to this election that public health officials felt the need to correct the record to prevent this misinformation from provoking a public health crisis,” Miner said.
Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, pointed out that this pro-abortion rhetoric is not isolated to Nebraska.
“This falsity that has been parroted by [Vice President] Kamala Harris and unchecked by most of the media leads women to delay seeking care and gives doctors pause when they need to act immediately,” Pritchard said in a statement shared with CNA.
“This falsity that has been parroted by Kamala Harris and unchecked by most of the media leads women to delay seeking care and gives doctors pause when they need to act immediately,” said Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Credit: EWTN News/Screenshot
“Every state with a pro-life law, including Nebraska, protects women who experience a miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, or any other medical emergency in pregnancy,” Pritchard emphasized. “This care continues to be available under ‘life of the mother’ exceptions, which allow physicians to rely upon their reasonable medical judgment.”
Recently, Harris amplified claims by several news outlets that two women died as the result of Georgia’s pro-life laws. But doctors say one woman, Amber Thurman, died because of the abortion pill and medical malpractice, while the other woman, Candi Miller, died of side effects from the abortion pill after she didn’t seek medical help.
“Women who need medical care should not be made to believe, because of ads they have seen on TV or in political mailers, that they have no option but to stay home instead of seeking treatment,” Miner said.
Let’s see if I have this straight. The bewildered clerics and savagely wounded faithful of the Diocese of Pittsburgh are being commanded by their bishop, hand-picked by disgraced Lavender Mafia Cardinal Wuerl, to fast and pray for “mercy” and “hope and healing” as the direct result of uncountable and unimaginable acts of homosexual rape, child pornography, and sacrilege committed by 99+ priests identified by the Pennsylvania Attorney General. Bishop Zubik’s clerical diktat is silent on what penance and prayer he has imposed upon either Cardinal Wuerl or himself for these unspeakable atrocities. The diktat is also silent on what penance and prayer have been imposed on the 99+ identifiable homosexual priest-rapists who committed these crimes. The diktat is further silent on why the faithful and clerics of the Diocese of Pittsburgh are being implicitly being held guilty of these crimes and are being required to perform penance for acts of which they have been the innocent victims.
Before anything else and as an absolute precondition, “mercy” and “hope and healing” are only possible once the cancer of grievous sin — in this case, the grievous sin of pervasive clerical homosexual perversion — has been cut out and removed. Bishop Zubik and his clerical “Year of Repentance” diktat are silent on any concrete and specific steps that are being undertaken to uproot the pervasive clerical homosexual perversion that has been the cause of the crisis his flock now faces.
I would submit that Bishop Zubik’s “Year of Repentance” diktat is nothing other than yet another spin in the delay-deflect-and-deny cycle that has been the cynical strategy of bishops in the this country for 55 years. The repentance that is needed is Bishop Zubik’s. The penance and prayer that are needed are Bishop Zubik’s. The resignation and disgrace, whether voluntary or forced, are Bishop Zubik’s. Without these, the sham and the cover-up will continue in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and the only real “repentance” will be that of his flock that still again they have been deceived and manipulated.
Let’s see if I have this straight. The bewildered clerics and savagely wounded faithful of the Diocese of Pittsburgh are being commanded by their bishop, hand-picked by disgraced Lavender Mafia Cardinal Wuerl, to fast and pray for “mercy” and “hope and healing” as the direct result of uncountable and unimaginable acts of homosexual rape, child pornography, and sacrilege committed by 99+ priests identified by the Pennsylvania Attorney General. Bishop Zubik’s clerical diktat is silent on what penance and prayer he has imposed upon either Cardinal Wuerl or himself for these unspeakable atrocities. The diktat is also silent on what penance and prayer have been imposed on the 99+ identifiable homosexual priest-rapists who committed these crimes. The diktat is further silent on why the faithful and clerics of the Diocese of Pittsburgh are being implicitly being held guilty of these crimes and are being required to perform penance for acts of which they have been the innocent victims.
Before anything else and as an absolute precondition, “mercy” and “hope and healing” are only possible once the cancer of grievous sin — in this case, the grievous sin of pervasive clerical homosexual perversion — has been cut out and removed. Bishop Zubik and his clerical “Year of Repentance” diktat are silent on any concrete and specific steps that are being undertaken to uproot the pervasive clerical homosexual perversion that has been the cause of the crisis his flock now faces.
I would submit that Bishop Zubik’s “Year of Repentance” diktat is nothing other than yet another spin in the delay-deflect-and-deny cycle that has been the cynical strategy of bishops in the this country for 55 years. The repentance that is needed is Bishop Zubik’s. The penance and prayer that are needed are Bishop Zubik’s. The resignation and disgrace, whether voluntary or forced, are Bishop Zubik’s. Without these, the sham and the cover-up will continue in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and the only real “repentance” will be that of his flock that still again they have been deceived and manipulated.
Amen.