Brussels, Belgium, Jan 8, 2019 / 03:19 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Jews and Muslims in Belgium could face difficulty finding food prepared according to their religious rules, as new animal slaughter regulations banning kosher or halal slaughter began to take … […]
Honolulu, Hawaii, Jan 8, 2019 / 02:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Hawaii’s law legalizing assisted suicide went into effect last week, but many physicians and pharmacists are choosing not to prescribe or dispense the needed medication.
The Our Care, Our Choice Act was signed into law in April 2018, and took effect Jan. 1.
“A minority of physicians feel prepared to actually participate in terms of writing a prescription,” Dr. Daniel Fischberg, medical director of the The Queen’s Medical Center palliative care department told the AP.
According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, The Queen’s Medical Center and Hawaii Pacific Health have both said their pharmacies will not fill prescriptions for assisted suicide, and patients may not administer the medication at their locations.
CVS has said that their pharmacists can choose whether to fill prescriptions for assisted suicide drugs.
The law allows a terminally ill adult Hawaii resident to receive a prescription for a lethal medication if two doctors find that the person has fewer than six months to live and is mentally competent. The patient must undergo a mental health evaluation to determine that they are not “suffering from conditions that may interfere with decision-making, such as a lack of treatment of depression,” according to the AP.
The patient must make two requests for the life-ending medication, with a 20-day waiting period between requests, and sign a written request witnessed by two people, one of whom cannot be related to the patient.
A doctor may dispense the medication, but it must be self-administered.
The law includes criminal penalties for tampering with a request for lethal medication or coercing such a prescription.
Health care providers and facilities are free not to cooperate with assisted suicide under the law.
The Hawaii health department expects 40-70 requests for assisted suicide in 2019.
While the Our Care, Our Choice Act was being considered, Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu wrote that his wonder at the bill “is compounded when I think of how, until now, we have prided ourselves on helping people not take their own lives. We have suicide prevention programs and hotlines, and have always considered suicide a tragedy that wreaks havoc on so many survivors who feel grief and frustration that they were not able to prevent this ‘autonomous’ decision from being made.”
Bishop Silva pointed out that under the law, the death certificate of one who commits assisted suicide will list as the immediate cause of death their terminal disease.
“In other words, it will lie about the real immediate cause of death, which is freely and deliberately ingesting a poison into one’s system,” he wrote. “If we call it another name besides suicide, then it may become respectable. Under no circumstances should we call it what it is, since certain insurance benefits may not be available to one’s estate if one commits suicide. So let’s also lie to the insurance company by calling it ‘death with dignity’ or some other title that will make it sound more respectable.”
In addition to Hawaii, assisted suicide is legal by law in the District of Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, and Colorado; and in Montana through a state supreme court ruling.
“The African Church is confronted with an immense and original undertaking; like a ‘mother and teacher’ she must approach all the sons of this land of the sun; she must offer them a traditional and […]
Gallup, N.M., Jan 8, 2019 / 12:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Proposed legislation in New Mexico would repeal the state’s laws criminalizing abortion, which date to the 1960s but have not been enforced since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in… […]
Washington D.C., Jan 8, 2019 / 12:45 pm (CNA).- The March for Life has announced a bipartisan group of legislators who will address the upcoming March for Life at a rally immediately before the event, being held in 10 days time.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-M… […]
Washington D.C., Jan 8, 2019 / 09:00 am (CNA).- Opus Dei announced Monday that it had paid a settlement following accusations of misconduct against a priest of the society made in 2002.
Fr. C. John McCloskey was the subject of a complaint by a married woman to whom he had been giving spiritual counsel. As a result of the complaint, Opus Dei paid a reported settlement of $977,000 to the woman in 2005.
At the time of the complaint, McCloskey was serving as the director of the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington, D.C. The center is a popular venue among Washington Catholics, offering daily Mass during the working week and a program of Catholic events in the evenings.
McCloskey had a high public profile during his time in Washington, preparing several senior politicians for reception into the Catholic Church, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and serving U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.
In a statement released by Msgr. Thomas Bohlin, Vicar of Opus Dei in the United States, the prelature expressed its sorrow and called any case of harassment or abuse “abhorrent.”
“What happened was deeply painful for the woman, and we are very sorry for all she suffered,” Bohlin wrote. “I am very sorry for any suffering caused to any woman by Father McCloskey’s actions and pray that God may bring healing to her.”
“I am painfully aware of all that the Church is suffering, and I am very sorry that we in Opus Dei have added to it. Let us ask God to show mercy on all of us in the Church at this difficult time.”
The Washington Post reported that McCloskey groped the woman on several occasions while giving her spiritual direction. According to that report, the woman was left with feelings of guilt and shame, and struggled with depression. The Post also reported that the woman took her concerns to McCloskey in the confessional, where he absolved her.
Bohlin said that Opus Dei had acted swiftly when the complaint was first made, telling McCloskey to have no further contact with the woman and to offer spiritual direction to women only through a screen in a traditional confessional – something Bohlin noted was already a rule for Opus Dei priests.
“After investigating the complaint in subsequent months, we found the complaint to be credible, and in December 2003, Father McCloskey was removed from his position at the CIC,” Bohlin said in the statement.
After leaving Washington, McCloskey was first sent to the United Kingdom before being assignments in different regions of the United States. McCloskey has since returned to the Washington area because of his declining health.
Bohlin stated that McCloskey’s ministry had been restricted since he left Washington, and his contact with women limited to the confessional. “Throughout the years, we were careful to ensure that he would not have any opportunities to engage in the kind of actions that led to the complaint.”
Opus Dei is personal prelature founded in Spain by St. Jose Maria Escriva in 1928 and first approved by the Vatican in 1950.
According to Opus Dei, McClosky is currently suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease and is unable to say Mass, even privately, as he is “largely incapacitated.”
“I would also ask you to pray for Father McCloskey as his health continues to decline,” Bohlin said.
The prelature released details of the complaint at the request of the woman involved in the settlement in an effort to encourage any other potential victims to come forward.
Brian Finnerty, spokesman for Opus Dei, told CNA he was not aware of either the woman who brought the complaint or the society had contacted the police.
Opus Dei said it believes there could be at least two other women similarly abused by McCloskey in Washington, and that the group has attempted to make contact with one of them. In his statement, Bohlin said the prelature had received no complaints about McCloskey concerning his time in ministry either before or after his term as director of the CIC.
According to the statement from Msgr. Bohlin, the woman who raised the original complaint remains in contact with Opus Dei’s ministry in Washington. She told the Washington Post this week she is “very happy with how it’s being handled right now. They listened.”
Vatican City, Jan 8, 2019 / 04:58 am (CNA/EWTN News).- To serve the poor and sick in a generous manner is a powerful form of evangelization, Pope Francis said Tuesday in a message for the upcoming World Day of the Sick.
“The Church – as a … […]
Santa Fe, N.M., Jan 8, 2019 / 02:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Proposed legislation in New Mexico could legalize assisted suicide in the state, and may even allow for the prescription of deadly drugs outside the state via telemedicine, and by healthcare professionals other than physicians.
Deacon Steve Rangel, associate director for the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the bill was disheartening to read.
“In our Catholic faith, we know the dignity of life from conception to natural death,” he told CNA.
“Here we have an attack on [life]. It’s really disheartening that we even have to be put in this type of position…Our driving force has always been to prevent harm and loss of life.”
Rangel cited several particularly objectionable points in House Bill 90, known as the “Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act,” including a provision that medical practitioners other than doctors can administer the drugs, without ever having examined the patient in person.
He also pointed out that the bill reduces the waiting period for assisted suicide from 15 days to 48 hours.
“We all get down. We’re human beings,” he said. “But at [a patient’s] most vulnerable point, are we going to let them make a life decision like that?”
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, an international organization with a headquarters in Ontario, told CNA that this assisted suicide bill jumped out at him as particularly expansive and vague.
“This bill allows nurses and physician assistants to be involved also. So you have this wider group of people who can be involved in the act itself of prescribing,” he told CNA.
The current bill allows for the prescription of assisted suicide drugs after a healthcare professional examines a patient via telemedicine.
“A doctor could assess you, or even a nurse, by telemedicine. So you have a terminal condition, supposedly, and this is going to be approved that you can die by assisted suicide but your interview for this process is done over a screen,” Schadenberg said.
“To me, this is a crazy thing because we’re talking about life and death.”
The bill includes a provision that makes assisted suicide acceptable if it can be determined that a terminal condition will cause a patient’s death “in the foreseeable future.”
“’Foreseeable future’ is not defined,” Schadenberg noted. “So it’s wide open…basically you can have your interview by telemedicine, and die two days later because your terminal condition that you supposedly have might cause your death in the ‘foreseeable future.’”
The bill also removes conscience protections, he said, because although doctors are not required to prescribe the lethal medication, they are mandated to refer the patient to a medical professional who will.
“So if you think it’s wrong to prescribe lethal drugs for a patient, knowing that they’re going to die by assisted suicide, then it must be equally wrong for you to send them to a doctor who’s willing to do that,” Schadenberg said.
In addition, the bill does not clearly define whether residents of states other than New Mexico might be allowed to avail themselves of assisted suicide. It was reported in some publications that the bill lacks a residency requirement completely, meaning patients coming from other states to seek the procedure, so-called “suicide tourism,” could become a reality.
Most assisted suicide laws, such as Oregon’s, Schadenberg clarified, explicitly state that the patient must be a resident of the state in order to qualify for the procedure.
The New Mexico bill, however, only has an indirect residency requirement under the definition of the word “adult,” which is defined as a resident of the state. But the word “adult” is only mentioned once in the bill, under the proposed form that must be signed to be approved for assisted suicide, he said.
“But even under the wording of this bill, it still seems a very weak way of defining a resident. It’s very awkward.”
Schadenberg said some advocates of assisted suicide are calling for a complete elimination of waiting periods for the procedure.
“We’re talking about life and death,” he said. “Obviously you could be depressed today, and the purpose of the waiting period is not to be onerous and force suffering people to have to live 14 more days. It’s that you might be depressed, and the way to ensure [assisted suicide] is your real will is to create a waiting period. You might be feeling better in two weeks.”
Schadenberg said about 20 states introduced assisted suicide bills in 2018, but only one state actually passed the measure.
“This is not what you’d call an inevitability,” he said. “The opposition to assisted suicide has been very successful, but the sad reality is that it only takes one state and things look bad…New Mexico I’m very concerned about. There’s no question about it.”
Rangel echoed Schadenberg’s consternation at the bill’s current language, but reiterated that as Catholics the best approach to terminal illness is compassion.
“We align ourselves with our Lord’s pain and suffering,” Rangel reflected. “I have a priest friend who has [Multiple Sclerosis,] and when he’s feeling the most pain, that’s when he offers it up for other people’s intentions. I thought that was so powerful…We truly are compassionate for those who are suffering.”
He said his own daughter suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident, resulting in the loss of part of her brain which has left her cognitively impaired.
“Did she lose some things because of the injury? Absolutely,” he said. “But at the same time, [we gained] so many other blessings. So we look for the blessings in everything in life…she loves people, people respond to her, and so if you’d ask me, ‘Iis that quality of life?’ I would say absolutely.”
Assisted suicide has been illegal in New Mexico since the 1960s, but doctors have been protected from liability for removing life support from terminally ill patients since 1978.
The New Mexico Supreme Court previously ruled in June 2016 that assisted suicide was not a “fundamental or important right” under the state constitution, after a woman with terminal cancer expressed her wish for “a more peaceful death.” At that time the New Mexico Supreme Court suggested a “robust debate in the legislative and the executive branches of government” to determine if the law needed to be changed.
The states of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, plus the District of Columbia, have already legalized assisted suicide.
Istanbul, Turkey, Jan 7, 2019 / 08:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople on Saturday signed a tomos of autocephaly for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, formally recognizing the Church’s independence.
The tomos was signed Jan. 5 at St. George’s Cathedral in Istanbul, after Bartholomew I concelebrated a Divine Liturgy with Epiphanius I, Metropolitan of Kyiv and primate of the newly-created Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Among those present at the signing were Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and several other Ukrainian government officials.
The tomos, or decree, has been delivered to Kyiv, where Epiphanius put it on public display following a Divine Liturgy celebrated Jan. 7 at St. Sophia’s Cathedral.
Bartholomew’s formal conferral of autocephaly is the culmination of a process that began amid the collapse of the Soviet Union, and gained momentum after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and Russian backing of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The Ecumenical Patriarch’s intention to create a single, autocephalous Church in Ukraine is motivated by a desire to unify the country’s 30 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, who were until recently split among three Churches: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), which is linked to the Russian Orthodox Church, and two Churches which had claimed autocephaly, but were not recognized by other Orthodox Churches: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
Autocephaly for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine has been a fiercely contested subject between the Patriarchs of Moscow and Constantinople, with the Russian Orthodox Church seeing the move as an infringement of its jurisdiction and authority.
Bartholomew had announced Sept. 7 he was sending two envoys to meets with civil and ecclesial leaders in Kyiv to prepare for Ukrainian autocephaly. In response, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said later that month he would remove Bartholomew’s names from the diptychs, and would not concelebrate with him.
The Ecumenical Patriarch declared Oct. 11 he would grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. At the same time, he restored to communion Metropolitan Filaret, head of the UOC-KP, and also revoked the right, granted in 1686, of the Russian Patriarch to consecrate the Metropolitan of Kyiv.
In response, the Russian Orthodox Church broke communion with Bartholomew Oct. 15, calling his recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine “lawless and canonically void.” Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chair of external Church relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, said that “the church that acknowledged the schismatics has excluded itself from the canonical field of Orthodoxy.”
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was established Dec. 15 at a “unification council” held by representatives of the UOC-KP and the UAOC. In addition, two bishops of the UOC-MP, Alexander Drabinko and Simeon Shostatsky, participated in the unification council. Soon afterward, they were declared schismatic by the UOC-MP, and their sees vacant. Both have joined the OCU.
Several UOC-MP parishes have also reportedly joined the OCU.
It was at the unification council that Epiphanius, 39, was elected primate of the OCU. He had previously been Metropolitan of Pereyaslavsky and Bila Tserkva in the UOC-KP.
Along with ecclesial leaders, Poroshenko has been a strong backer of Ukrainian autocephaly. At the conclusion of the unification council he said, “We are now creating an independent Ukraine. And this event is as important as the referendum on our independence adopted more than 27 years ago.”
He linked an independent Church to Ukrainian patriotism, and said: “Autocephaly is part of our state pro-European and pro-Ukrainian strategy, which we have been consistently implementing for almost five years. All this is the basis of our own way of development, development of the state of Ukraine and development of our Ukrainian nation.”
Fr. Alexander Laschuk, a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priest, canon lawyer, and professor at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, discussed with CNA both the inter-Orthodox and the ecumenical implications of Ukrainian Orthodox autocephaly.
For the Orthodox Church in Ukraine “it’s a sign of maturity that the Ecumenical Patriarch, who is first among equals, sees they can be a self-governing Church … that’s a sort of vote-of-confidence for the Church in Ukraine.”
Within Eastern Orthodoxy, Laschuk said, the decision also will play into debates about how autocephaly is granted, given that “the power of the Ecumenical Patriarch is not the power of the Holy Father, so how decision are made is much more complicated at times.”
While Constantinople is the traditional and historical center of Eastern Orthodoxy, Moscow has long exercised considerable influence and power, both because of its size and because of its closeness to Russian civil authorities.
The debate over the granting of autocephaly plays into the relations of Constantinople and Moscow, and their relative importance and power. Both the Russian and Ecumenical Patriarchs have written to the heads of the other Eastern Orthodox Churches, asking them not to recognize, and to recognize, respectively, the OCU’s autocephaly.
The decision for autocephaly, Laschuk said, will also have a tremendous impact on ecumenism.
For example, because of the presence of Eastern Orthodox bishops with whom it is not in communion, the Moscow Patriarchate chose not to participate in the 2007 meeting at Ravenna of the commission for dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
“It will also affect ecumenical dialogue in the sense of ‘who is our bargaining partner’, for Catholics,” Laschuk said. Previously, the Holy See dialogued only with the UOC-MP as “canonical Orthodoxy” in the country, but “clearly that’s changed” with the recognition of the OCU by Constantinople.
The priest added that he thinks the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, “is excited to have a partner with which he can actually dialogue; we won’t have the union of the Churches tomorrow, but if you can’t even talk to each other, it’s hard to get much done … I think His Beatitude is very happy he has someone with whom he can talk, and be in the same room with, which was not the case previously.”
He commented that “entire regions of Ukraine” are becoming increasingly Seventh-Day Adventist or Pentecostal, and that “collaborative activity by the more traditional Churches is a very welcome thing, as opposed to sort of, warring factions.”
Major Archbishop Shevchuk had written to Epiphanius Dec. 20 to congratulate him on his election as primate of the OCU, commenting, “We have all witnessed how the Lord, through the power and deeds of the Holy Spirit, in cooperation with your good will, heals the wounds of church divisions and enmity, giving opportunity to reconcile with our brother in Christ.”
“At this significant moment, I extend my hand on behalf of our Church to you and all the Orthodox brethren, offering you to begin our path to unity, to the truth. Because the future of the Church, our people and the Ukrainian independent European state depends on how we today will cherish unity and overcome what separates us.”
Major Archbishop Shevchuk added that “we are grateful to the Lord who has blessed the participants of this, without exaggeration, an important event that will enter the history of independent Ukraine as a great God’s gift on the way to the complete unity of the Churches of Volodymyr’s Baptism.”
He noted that “the Churches of Volodymyr’s baptism … live in one liturgical heritage, from the depths of beauty and God-inspired wisdom we draw spiritual strength. Even today, we are not in full eucharistic communion, but are called to jointly overcome the obstacles that stand on the path to unity. This historic mission and the foundation of the future patriarchy of the united Kyivan Church were laid by even the glorious church men Peter Mohyla and Josyf Veliamyn Rutsky.”
The words of the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church allude to the 988 baptism of Vladimir the Great, Grand Prince of Kiev, which resulted in the Christianization of Kievan Rus’, a state whose heritage Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus all claim.
The Christianization of Kievan Rus’ forms the roots of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).
Gizo, Solomon Islands, Jan 7, 2019 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- Known as the “flying bishop” of Solomon Islands, Bishop Luciano Capelli visits Catholics across dozens of islands by piloting a small airplane he also uses to deliver food and medicine.
Capelli, an Italian, was a Salesian missionary in the Philippines for 35 years before coming to the Diocese of Gizo in October 2007. He arrived six months after an earthquake destroyed homes, schools, and churches across the Solomon Islands, a nation of nearly 1,000 islands in Oceania.
“My first task was to encourage the people to rebuild the cathedral, the seven parishes and the 12 schools,” he explained in an interview with the Missioni Don Bosco portal.
The Diocese of Gizo is comprised of some 40 islands with a total population of 136,347 inhabitants, 11 percent of which are Catholics, i.e. about 15,000.
With financial support from the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Capelli was able to take flying lessons and the diocese received an ultralight small airplane.
In the plane, which he himself has piloted since 2011, he visits hospitals, schools and communities, bringing medicine and basic necessities.
Capelli said that isolation is a major challenge for people in his diocese, adding that this is resolved “with a presence.”
“Presence is possible only if there is a means to take you.” Thanks to the airplane, he can visit each mission location between three to five times a year, whereas without it he would have to use a dangerous and more costly boat, he told Askanews.
Capelli has been particularly busy since October 2018, when he decided to send one of his dioceses’ two priests to Italy for advanced studies.
Speaking to Missio Italia, the prelate said that “it’s a sacrifice, and to no little account, depriving us of 50 percent of the clergy! But I trust that the Lord will make new vocations flourish and there will be new ones to come for a an effective and courageous evangelization.”
“We have been working a lot these years with young people and the new generations to train catechists and leaders in the communities. I’m not afraid!”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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