Atlanta, Ga., May 10, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- Following the passage of the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act in Georgia earlier this week, a promised boycott by film and television figures has failed to materialize.
Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed the bill into law on Wednesday. Actress Alyssa Milano wrote an open letter Kemp in March, threatening a widespread entertainment industry boycott should the LIFE Act pass. The letter was co-signed by about 50 Hollywood actors.
At the time of the bill's signing, Kemp said that “I realize that some may challenge [this bill] in the court of law. But our job is to do what is right, not what is easy.”
So far, only the three companies–Blown Deadline, Killer Films, and Duplass Brothers Production– have said that they will only consider filming in Georgia if the law is overturned. None have previously worked in the state.
Milano herself is still filming for her current project “Insatiable,” which is shot in Atlanta. While she remains on set, the former child star of “Who’s the Boss?” told BuzzFeed News that she would not return to the show if it were to be renewed for a third season, unless production was moved from Georgia.
The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents entertainment companies such as Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, and Netflix, all of whom actually film movies and television shows in Georgia, has not taken any position on the boycott.
MPAA spokesman Chris Ortman told the Hollywood Reporter that the organization had taken no decision to boycott the state, citing its deep ties to the local economy and the likely legal challenges the law will face.
“It is important to remember that similar legislation has been attempted in other states, and has either been enjoined by the courts or is currently being challenged. The outcome in Georgia will also be determined through the legal process,” said Ortman, adding, “We will continue to monitor developments.”
Actress Ashley Bratcher, who lives in Georgia, did not join in on the calls for boycott. Bratcher, who starred as pro-life activist Abby Johnson in the film “Unplanned,” wrote a rebuttal to Milano defending the legislation and the sanctity of life. During the filming of Unplanned, Bratcher learned that she was herself nearly aborted.
The Supreme Court found in the 1973 decision Roe vs. Wade that a woman in the United States has a constitutional right to abortion. Since that decision, laws that criminalize abortion prior to fetal viability have typically been overturned as unconstitutional.
The so-called “heartbeat bills” have faced challenges in every state where they have been passed. These legal battles have prompted some pro-life advocates, including Catholic bishops, to withhold endorsing the legislation.
Tennessee’s Catholic bishops chose to oppose their state’s heartbeat bill over concerns that it would not stand up to judicial scrutiny. They voiced concern that it was an imprudent approach to fighting legal abortion, citing other states where legal challenges to such bills ended up further enshrining a legal “right to abortion” and forcing the state to pay significant sums of money to the lawyers representing the pro-abortion challengers to the laws.
The Georgia law is set to go into effect on January 1, several pro-abortion organizations have promised to challenge it in court.
The entertainment industry also threatened to boycott Georgia should Kemp be elected governor. This boycott did not materialize.
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Washington D.C., Dec 23, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- The U.S. bishops have welcomed changes to the way abortion coverage is billed in some federally-funded health plan exchanges, saying the changes will allow Americans to choose health care plans consistent with their views.
Those who purchase health plans “have a right to know if they are paying for elective abortion,” said Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“While the Affordable Care Act still allows government-subsidized plans to cover abortion, at least with this rule, Americans can now see and try to avoid complicity by choosing plans consistent with their consciences,” he said Dec. 23.
“I commend the administration for enforcing the law, for its efforts to ensure transparency in healthcare, and for attempting to respect unborn human life.”
Section 1303 of the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, mandates that if a qualified health plan covers elective abortions, it must do so by collecting a payment separate from the standard premium, and depositing that payment into a separate account. The previous regulations allowed for health insurers to collect an abortion surcharge without separately identifying it on monthly invoices and without collecting it separately.
That changed on Dec. 20, when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued the Exchange Program Integrity final rule.
One of its new provisions concerns health insurance exchange plans set up under the Affordable Care Act and covering elective abortions—procedures which under federal law cannot be funded with federal funds.
These plans must now send customers separate health insurance bills for abortion coverage. The agency justified the rule on the grounds that it better aligns with congressional intent in segregating payments for elective abortion.
The rule appears to allow consumers to avoid payment on the surcharge without losing coverage. The fact sheet for the rule states “if the policy holder fails to pay the separate bill in a separate transaction as instructed by the issuer, the issuer may not terminate the policy holder’s coverage on this basis, provided the amount due is otherwise paid.”
Critics have long argued that enforcement of these regulations under the Obama administration was so permissive as to render the rules meaningless. A Government Accountability Office report in 2014 found that many insurers were ignoring requirements to segregate abortion coverage funds.
The Trump administration rule had been proposed about a year ago, but it had not been finalized and implemented.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said the rule “will ensure compliance so that ‘separate’ no longer means ‘together’ when it comes to funding abortion.” The law will “provide transparency about abortion funding hiding in Obamacare,” she said, referring to the 2010 health care legislation.
“President Trump has delivered an important victory for American consumers and taxpayers, the majority of whom oppose using tax dollars to pay for abortions.”
Jacqueline Ayers, vice president of government relations and public policy at Planned Parenthood, opposed the rule on the grounds it tried to reduce access to abortion.
“This rule won’t just require separate payments, it further splits off abortion from other reproductive health care and puts up massive barriers to access,” she said.
Ayers added that Planned Parenthood, which is the largest abortion provider in the U.S., “vehemently opposes this rule and will continue our work to stop the administration’s attacks on our health and rights.”
The Association for Community Affiliated Plans, which has 60 Medicaid-focused health care plans, also opposed the rule, CNN reports.
“Requiring people to pay two bills for one product — health coverage — is a non-solution in search of a problem,” said Margaret Murray, the association’s CEO.
Critics of the previous rule have sought change under the Trump administration. In 2018 U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), in a letter to the Department of Health and Human services signed by 102 Members of Congress, requested regulations to make consumers aware of the surcharge.
In October 2019, more than 40 pro-life organizations sent a letter to the Trump administration backing the new changes. Signers included leaders with the Susan B. Anthony List, the National Right to Life Committee, March for Life Action, Americans United for Life, and the American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYNS.
They said that insurance companies could create “hidden abortion surcharges” which mean health plan enrollees are “unknowingly paying into plans that subsidize elective abortion.”
Their letter cited the Hyde Amendment, first passed in 1976, which bars federal funding for most abortions. They objected that the treatment of abortion coverage violates the amendment in principle. Requiring separate payments would help provide transparency.
While the Hyde Amendment applies to federal health care programs including Medicaid, pro-life advocates have voiced concern for years that the Affordable Care Act does not follow its requirements.
Federal rules against taxpayer funding for abortions have had longtime support even among pro-abortion rights politicians, but the Democratic primary candidates for president have increasingly rejected them. Following criticism from pro-abortion rights activists, former vice president Joe Biden retracted his support for the Hyde Amendment in June.
Dainelys Soto, Genesis Contreras, and Daniel Soto, who arrived from Venezuela after crossing the U.S. border from Mexico, wait for dinner at a hotel provided by the Annunciation House on Sept. 22, 2022 in El Paso, Texas. / Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
CNA Staff, Sep 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Long a champion of immigrants, particularly those fleeing war-torn countries and impoverished regions, Pope Francis last month delivered some of the clearest words in his papacy yet in support of migrants — and in rebuke of those who turn away from them.
“It must be said clearly: There are those who work systematically and with every means possible to repel migrants,” the pope said during a weekly Angelus address. “And this, when done with awareness and responsibility, is a grave sin.”
“In the time of satellites and drones, there are migrant men, women, and children that no one must see,” the pope said. “They hide them. Only God sees them and hears their cry. This is a cruelty of our civilization.”
The pope has regularly spoken out in favor of immigrants. In June he called on the faithful to “unite in prayer for all those who have had to leave their land in search of dignified living conditions.” The Holy Father has called the protection of migrants a “moral imperative.” He has argued that migrants “[must] be received” and dealt with humanely.
Migrants aboard an inflatable vessel in the Mediterranean Sea approach the guided-missile destroyer USS Carney in 2013. Carney provided food and water to the migrants aboard the vessel before coordinating with a nearby merchant vessel to take them to safety. Credit: Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Catholic Church has long been an advocate and protector of immigrants. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) notes on its website that “a rich body of Church teaching, including papal encyclicals, bishops’ statements, and pastoral letters, has consistently reinforced our moral obligation to treat the stranger as we would treat Christ himself.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that prosperous nations “are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.”
Popes throughout the years, meanwhile, have expressed sentiments on immigration similar to Francis’. Pope Pius XII in 1952, for instance, described the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt as “the archetype of every refugee family.”
The Church, Pius XII said, “has been especially careful to provide all possible spiritual care for pilgrims, aliens, exiles, and migrants of every kind.”
Meanwhile, “devout associations” throughout the centuries have spearheaded “innumerable hospices and hospitals” in part for immigrants, Pius XII said.
Implications and applications of Church teaching
Chad Pecknold, an associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America, noted that the catechism “teaches that nations have the right to borders and self-definition, so there is no sense in which Catholic teaching supports the progressive goal of ‘open borders.’”
“There is a ‘duty of care’ which is owed to those fleeing from danger,” he told CNA, “but citizenship is not owed to anyone who can make it across a national border, and illegal entry or asylum cannot be taken as a debt of citizenship.”
Paul Hunker, an immigration attorney who previously served as chief counsel of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Dallas, agreed.
“States have to have responsibility for their own communities, they have to look out for them,” he told CNA. “So immigration can be regulated so as to not harm the common good.”
Still, Hunker noted, Catholic advocates are not wrong in responding to immigration crises — like the ongoing irregular influx through the U.S. southern border — with aid and assistance.
Paul Hunker, an immigration attorney and former chief counsel of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Dallas, says Catholic advocates are not wrong in responding to immigration crises — like the ongoing irregular influx through the U.S. southern border — with aid and assistance. Credit: Photo courtesy of Paul Hunker
Many Catholic organizations offer shelter, food, and legal assistance to men, women, and children who cross into the country illegally; such groups have been overwhelmed in recent years with the crush of arriving migrants at the country’s southern border.
“It’s the responsibility of the federal government to take care of the border,” he said. “When the government has created a crisis at the U.S. border, Catholic dioceses are going to want to help people.”
“I completely support what the Catholic organizations are doing in Mexico and the United States to assist people who are there,” Hunker said. “The people responding are not responsible for these crises.”
Latest crisis and legal challenge
Not everyone feels similarly. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation of multiple Catholic nonprofits that serve illegal immigrants in the state. Paxton alleges that through the services it provides to migrants, El Paso-based Annunciation House has been facilitating illegal immigration and human trafficking.
A lawyer for the group called the allegations “utter nonsense,” though attorney Jerome Wesevich acknowledged that the nonprofit “serves undocumented persons as an expression of the Catholic faith and Jesus’ command to love one another, no exceptions.”
There are considerable numbers of Church teachings that underscore the need for a charitable response to immigrants. In his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII argued that man “has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own state,” and further that “when there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there.”
In the encyclical Caritas in Veritate, meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 acknowledged that migration poses “dramatic challenges” for nations but that migrants “cannot be considered as a commodity or a mere workforce.”
“Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance,” the late pope wrote.
Edward Feser, a professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College in California, noted that the Church “teaches that nations should be welcoming to immigrants, that they should be sensitive to the hardships that lead them to emigrate, that they ought not to scapegoat them for domestic problems, and so on.”
Catholic teaching does not advocate an ‘open borders’ policy
Yet Catholic teaching does not advocate an “open borders” policy, Feser said. He emphasized that the catechism says countries should accept immigrants “to the extent they are able,” and further that countries “may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions.”
There “is nothing per se in conflict with Catholic teaching when citizens and politicians call on the federal government to enforce its immigration laws,” Feser said. “On the contrary, the catechism backs them up on this.”
In addition, it is “perfectly legitimate,” Feser argued, for governments to consider both economic and cultural concerns when setting immigration policy. It is also “legitimate to deport those who enter a country illegally,” he said.
Still, he acknowledged, a country can issue exceptions to valid immigration laws when the moral situation demands it.
“Of course, there can be individual cases where a nation should forgo its right to deport those who enter it illegally, and cases where the manner in which deportations occur is associated with moral hazards, such as when doing so would break up families or return an immigrant to dangerous conditions back in his home country,” he said.
“Governments should take account of this when formulating and enforcing policy,” he said.
The tension between responding charitably to immigrants and ensuring a secure border was perhaps put most succinctly in 1986 by the late Father Theodore Hesburgh, who served as chairman of the U.S. Select Commission for Immigration and Refugee Policy that was created by the U.S. Congress in the early 1980s.
“It is not enough to sympathize with the aspirations and plight of illegal aliens. We must also consider the consequences of not controlling our borders,” said the late Father Theodore Hesburgh, who served as chairman of the U.S. Select Commission for Immigration and Refugee Policy that was created by the U.S. Congress in the early 1980s. Credit: Photo courtesy of University of Notre Dame
Writing several years after the commission, Hesburgh explained: “It is not enough to sympathize with the aspirations and plight of illegal aliens. We must also consider the consequences of not controlling our borders.”
“What about the aspirations of Americans who must compete for jobs and whose wages and work standards are depressed by the presence of large numbers of illegal aliens?” the legendary late president of the University of Notre Dame reflected. “What about aliens who are victimized by unscrupulous employers and who die in the desert at the hands of smugglers?”
“The nation needn’t wait until we are faced with a choice between immigration chaos and closing the borders,” Hesburgh stated nearly 40 years ago.
Wichita, Kan., Apr 9, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- A group of five friends, and scholars of the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton, are launching an online lecture series with the hopes of sparking interest in Chesterton’s work, and infusing joy and humor into a country reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.
The series, “Tuesdays with the Troubadours”, began April 7 and is put on by the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a lay apostolate.
The presenters will offer a short talk on a topic related to the faith, followed by a panel discussion and a Q&A. Participants can sign up for the free series and receive a link to join via Zoom video conferencing.
William Fahey, president of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire, told CNA that he and the other four presenters— The Troubadours— became friends as presenters at the annual Prairie Troubadour Conference, put on by the G.K. Chesterton Society and held in Fort Scott, Kansas, 160 miles east of Wichita.
The goal of the series is to recreate virtuallythe spirit of that conference.
“I tossed out an idea in an email exchange—almost as a fanciful thought—that all of us should just give an online conference,” Fahey told CNA.
“Everyone moved on the idea quickly…it was the fruit of friendship.”
Fahey said he hopes the friendship and levity of the group will come across online.
“Joy is of the Christian spirit,” Lahey said, citing the motto of the college he leads, which is taken from St. Paul: caritas congaudet veritati; charity rejoices in the truth.
“Catholics, especially on the cusp of darkness, can get quite melancholy and gloomy. But I think the Catholic character…is to laugh when the chips are down and ride on,” he said.
What is a troubadour, anyway?
Troubadours were medieval poets and storytellers, who went from place to place and often lived a mendicant lifestyle. St. Francis of Assisi in particular is often remembered as a “troubadour of God” for his mendicant lifestyle and joy.
Christopher Check, president of the media apostolate Catholic Answers, told CNA that his presentation, set for April 28, will focus on the importance of storytelling, especially in education.
He pointed out that many students today are fed a steady diet of practically oriented readings, with a decreased emphasis on stories that “capture the imagination and impart a moral truth.”
“And yet, when Our Lord wants to impart a truth, what does he do? He tells stories,” Check said.
“This is the educational device par excellence: the story. And Our Lord knew it.”
Joie de vivre
Chesterton, the inspiration for the series, was born in 1874 and became a prolific writer and staunch Catholic apologist after his conversion to the faith. He is renowned for writing apologetic classics such as “Orthodoxy” and “The Everlasting Man,” as well as for his fictional “Father Brown” series, among many other works.
He died in 1936 and is remembered for his humor and wit.
Check said the virtual conference aims to whet participant’s appetites for the writings of Catholic authors like Chesterton, and to be in the company of fellow Catholics “and feel that joy” when the coronavirus outbreak ends.
Joseph Pearce, another presenter and director of book publishing at the Augustine Institute, told CNA that Chesterton’s way of seeing the world was and is very Catholic, because a sense of humor, infused with grace, is crucial for evangelization.
Troubadours, in a Catholic sense, have a spirit of joie de vivre that comes from faith in Christ, Pearce said.
Chesterton brought people to God through a hearty cheerfulness and jollity, with a smile on his face, Pearce said.
“Basically, the victory is already won. We, as Christians, understand that God is in charge…we really should be walking around full of that joy, the joie de vivre that comes from the joie de crist, from the joy of Christ. And if that’s not present, there’s something wrong,” Pearce told CNA.
Fostering a troubadour attitude
The spirit of the troubadours has a rambunctiousness about it, Pearce said.
“The whole idea of the format is that the seriousness of the message is nonetheless delivered with ‘levitas’— gravity with levity,” he explained.
He mentioned a famous Chesterton quote from his book “Orthodoxy”: Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
“Yes, I want to talk about serious things, while at the same time having that Chestertonian levity,” Pearce said.
“That’s what we should be aiming at. What Chesterton succeeded in doing so well is something that we disciples of Chesterton should try to emulate,” he said.
Lahey recommended that Catholics wishing to foster a “troubadour” attitude within themselves ought to read such authors as Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan— “things that are adventurous; things that make them want to live large and risk.”
Check agreed, also recommending that Catholics tend to their interior spiritual lives during the coronavirus outbreak. He recommended praying the Divine Office at home— “in that prayer, you’ll see penitential psalms, but you’ll also see psalms of joy,” he said.
He also encouraged Catholics to get a copy of the Mundelein Psalter and say Lauds and Vespers around the kitchen table.
“We’re about to enter the Easter Season, where the feasting really just goes on and on and keeps going on, a time of great joy,” he noted.
“And all of the Divine Office is going to reflect that joy. So that is a sure recommendation I would make to people.”
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