Managua, Nicaragua, Apr 12, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis has asked Auxiliary Bishop Silvio José Báez Ortega of Managua to serve the Church in Rome for a temporary period. Báez has faced security concerns as a vocal critic o… […]
Rome, Italy, Apr 12, 2019 / 11:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis paid a surprise visit to a center for Alzhiemer’s patients Friday afternoon.
With this visit to the Emmanuel Village on the outskirts of Rome, the pope desired to turn attention to the ex… […]
Fargo, N.D., Apr 12, 2019 / 11:00 am (CNA).- North Dakota’s governor signed into law Wednesday a bill that outlaws the common abortion procedure known as “dilation and evacuation.” Mississippi and West Virginia also outlaw the procedure.
Tammi Kromenaker, director of the Red River Women’s Clinic, the sole abortion facility in North Dakota, told reporters that before deciding whether to file suit against the law’s constitutionality, she will wait until the verdict of an appeal of a similar 2017 law passed in Arkansas is reached.
The practice of dilation and evacuation is the most common type of abortion performed in the second trimester.
The new law would not prosecute women who undergo or attempt to undergo the procedure. Instead, doctors performing a dilation and evacuation abortion outside of emergency cases could be charged with a felony and punished by a $10,000 fine and up to five years’ imprisonment.
In addition to Arkansas, similar laws face injunctions in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Ohio, Louisiana, and Texas.
The new law was signed just one day before the signing of an Ohio law that bans abortion if a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Laws similar to that one are being considered in the legislatures of five other states, in a year when abortion has become a hotly debated topic in state legislatures across the country.
Buffalo, N.Y., Apr 12, 2019 / 10:52 am (CNA).- The Bishop of Buffalo said in a statement Thursday that despite media reports to the contrary, he has not been part of any cover-up of clerical sexual abuse, though he does intend to be more transparent about clerical sexual abuse and its financial impact on his diocese.
“For all the progress the Church and this diocese have made in preventing child sexual abuse today and in addressing abuse in the past, I recognize that more needs to be done. Of course, I am acutely aware of the times when I personally have fallen short,” Bishop Richard Malone said in his April 11 statement.
“On behalf of the diocese, I apologize to all those who have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of abuse in the past,” the bishop added.
The bishop’s statement did not respond directly to calls for his resignation, though it made clear that he intends to remain in his position.
The statement, Malone said, was a response to a local group called the Movement to Restore Trust, which has called the diocese to implement a slate of reforms, including greater collaboration with laity and financial transparency, while also calling the bishop to “revive the Spirit of Vatican II” in the diocese.
The group says it is comprised of “concerned, committed Catholics who are brokenhearted, disillusioned and, yes, angry about the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States, and particularly in our Diocese.”
The group’s organizing committee is comprised mostly of business and non-profit leaders, along with John Hurley, the lay president of Canisius College, a Jesuit school in Buffalo.
The Diocese of Buffalo has said it will work with Movement to Restore Trust to discuss lay collaboration in the diocese, and Malone emphasized that in his statement.
Malone came under fire in Buffalo after a whistleblower — his own former secretary— leaked diocesan documents and alleged in August 2018 that the bishop had omitted the names of some priests accused of abuse or misconduct from a list the diocese released last March.
The bishop has since faced calls for his resignation; the president of nearby St. Bonaventure University issued such a call April 12.
Malone maintains that he acted in good faith, and did not cover up any allegations.
In his statement, he said that allegations of cover-ups were “demonstrably false,” and said that the criteria used in compiling the Diocese of Buffalo’s list “resulted in many more priests being disclosed than if we had applied the criteria used” in nearby dioceses, including, Malone said, the Archdiocese of Boston.
Malon said that some have even criticized his list for naming some deceased priests accused of abuse, “but I decided on the rule to err in favor of transparency.”
“I am also mindful of the requests by some for even more transparency. The Movement to Restore Trust has asked me to be more transparent about several issues, including the abuse crisis’s financial impact on the diocese. I have taken those requests to heart, and I intend to be more transparent on a number of those issues as well.”
The bishop’s statement, nearly 3,000 words in length, noted the good record of the Diocese of Buffalo in handling allegations of abuse, and said that most reports made about priests in recent years have concerned situations that allegedly happened decades ago.
The bishop also lamented the scope of child sexual abuse in upstate New York.
“One report of abuse by a member of our clergy is one too many, and every Catholic in this diocese, including me, is horrified by each report. But even if the diocese is aware of only half of the total number of people who were abused by priests as children, that total number constitutes only a small fraction of one percent of the child sexual abuse that has occurred in this area,” he said, estimating that as many as 121,000 adults in his region may have been the victims of childhood sexual abuse.
“Most abuse will never be reported because it was perpetrated by family members, family friends, or neighbors. Also, because there is no institution associated with those abusers, most of that abuse will never be the subject of a lawsuit or a front-page story. But to forget or to ignore the vast majority of victims of child sexual abuse would be a tragedy.”
Malone said that local media has “provided minimal reporting” on nationwide efforts to end childhood sexual abuse, “all while providing constant coverage of decades-old clergy sexual abuse cases in Buffalo. The 9,000 children being abused here every year deserve better, and our community deserves reporting on the full panorama.”
“I provide this perspective not to minimize the horrific scale of the abuse perpetrated by priests in the past but rather to place it in the context of a wider societal problem of child sexual abuse that deserves more attention from the media and from us all. Child sexual abuse definitely has received attention from the Church. While the Church in the United States can be faulted for not having done enough in the past to address child sexual abuse, no other institution has done more in recent years to prevent such abuse from occurring,” he added.
The bishop ended his letter apologizing for a particular incident: his 2015 support of Fr. Art Smith, a priest who had faced repeated allegations of abuse and misconduct with minors.
“Lessons have been learned,” Malone said.
“I personally need to repent and reform, and it is my hope that this diocese can rebuild itself and learn and even grow from the sins of the past. I ask you to pray for me, pray for the Church, and pray for all those who suffered and suffer as a result of abuse as we go forward together to address the worldwide problem of child sexual abuse.”
Vatican City, Apr 12, 2019 / 10:09 am (CNA).- In the wake of massive flooding in Iran, Pope Francis has sent 100,000 euros (about $113,000) for emergency aid.
The money, sent through the Vatican’s office for the Promotion of Integral Human Devel… […]
Boston, Mass., Apr 11, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker signed into law Monday a broadly worded bill banning therapy for minors with same-sex attraction that seeks to change their behavior.
The Massachusetts Catholic Conference opposed the bill, saying it “attempts to create a solution to a problem which does not exist.”
It added that it will “deny the right of parents to engage therapists who could help their child who is experiencing gender dysphoria and is confused and uncomfortable with this experience.”
The bill passed almost unanimously in the Massachusetts legislature, with only eight members of the House of Representatives voting against the bill. In a Senate vote March 28, the bill passed with 34 in favor; five Republican Senators voted “present”, and there was one abstention.
It was signed into law April 8.
House Bill 140 forbids health care providers from engaging in “sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts” during sessions with minors.
“Sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts” are defined in the law as “any practice by a health care provider that attempts or purports to impose change of an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including but not limited to efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
Under the law, health care professionals will be permitted to “provide acceptance, support, and understanding” of a minor’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, to “facilitate an individual’s coping, social support and identity exploration and development”, or seek “to prevent or address unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices”, as long as they “do not attempt or purport to impose change of an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Those who are found to have engaged in “sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts” may have their licenses to practice revoked or suspended.
In a March 5 letter to state legislators, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference said H.140 is unnecessary because “licensed clinical professionals are highly trained in their field and guided by ethical principles. Those principals fundamentally form the foundation of their respective professions. Today it is unethical for a counselor to discriminate against anyone, or try to push a goal in therapy that is destructive to the client or contrary to the clients stated desires.”
It noted that minor who has “unwanted same sex attraction or gender identity, this law would prevent a licensed professional from counseling the minor towards a resolution to those unwanted urges … these professionals, with years of education and experience dealing with mental health issues, would be removed from the process of helping a young client struggling with these highly personal issues.”
The conference also noted the impact on parents, who “have the primary responsibility for the welfare and education of their children. Parental rights would be completely eroded by this Bill. This fact is particularly true if their child is struggling with feelings that are unwanted or causing the child confusion and the parents want and need the help and guidance of a professional.”
Massachusetts’ bishops were also concerned over the bill’s impact on religious liberty, saying the broad wording like goes beyond its intent.
The Massachussetts Catholic Conference stated: “As an example, a conscientious Catholic, working as a licensed professional, would counsel a minor, heterosexual or homosexual, to abstain from sexual activity. Would this violate the bill’s specific prohibition efforts to ‘change behaviors’? The language in the definition of the Bill certainly seems to prohibit such counseling.”
“The Church’s teaching acknowledges that the phenomenon of a person’s discomfort with his or her biological sex can be a genuine and complex reality that needs to be addressed by psychological professionals with compassion and honesty,” the conference added.
Senator Vinny deMacedo, who did not vote in favor of the bill, said that he does “not support coercive therapies,” and that “if there were evidence of these practices taking place in Massachusetts, we would wholeheartedly support banning them.”
However, “the vague wording of the legislation provides too much room for interpretation,” he added, according to the Boston Globe.
The Massachusetts Family Institute, which has opposed the law from the beginning, issued a statement on their website that they would be pursuing legal action on behalf of families and counselors impacted by the law. The Massachusetts Family Institute said the law was an attack on free speech.
“In the meantime, rest assured that the fight is not over,” said the statement. “We are working with local families and counselors and national legal experts to challenge this extraordinarily invasive assault on the rights of parents and the free speech of mental health providers.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson, who authored “When Harry Became Sally: Responding To The Transgender Moment,” told CNA that he thinks the law is not rooted out of concerns for patient safety, but is meant to prevent people with traditional viewpoints from expressing those views.
“Of course the state has authority to regulate medicine to ensure safety, but that’s not what this law is about,” said Anderson. “This law imposes an ideological ban because the state disagrees with the viewpoint of certain professionals. It’s not targeted at harmful practices, but at particular values.”
There is also a bill in the Massachusetts legislature, H.110, that would ban health care providers from attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of adults.
Massachusetts is the 15th state to pass a law banning conversion therapy.
Massachusetts’ law contains wording identical to that of a California law passed in 2012.
California’s law prohibits any therapy “to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex” among minors.
A 2009 American Psychiatric Association task force recommended that the appropriate response to those with same-sex attraction involves “therapist acceptance, support, and understanding of clients … without imposing a specific sexual orientation identity outcome,” and that efforts to change orientation “involve some risk of harm.”
The American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality to be a mental disease until 1973. A former president of the APA said in a 2012 video interview that within the organization, political stances “override any scientific results.”
Albuquerque, N.M., Apr 11, 2019 / 05:13 pm (CNA).- A federal jury found a former priest of New Mexico guilty on multiple charges of sexual abuse involving minors, Reuters reported.
Arthur Perrault, who was a priest in Albuquerque for 26 years, was fou… […]
Washington D.C., Apr 11, 2019 / 04:45 pm (CNA).- After the April 11 publication of a new essay by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, commentators are mostly discussing their perception of the politics surrounding the release, or Benedict’s assessment of the sexual revolution and its relationship to the crisis.
But lost in that discussion is the immediate practical application of the document, which articulates a theology of law that seems to support the ‘zero tolerance’ approach to addressing sexual abusers in the Church, which Pope Francis has long endorsed, even while he has not yet arrived at a practical way of delivering it.
At the heart of his new argument, the former pontiff insists that the purpose of punishing the perpetrators of sexual abuse is the salvation of souls, which is the highest law of the Church.
Recalling that, in the 1980s, the crisis of abuse began to reach Rome after decades of building at the diocesan level, Benedict’s essay explained that there was in Rome a double failure of law and theology, which left both victims of abuse and the faith itself unprotected.
While the previous Code of Canon Law contained a long list of specific crimes a cleric could commit – including a litany of sexual delicts – “the deliberately loosely constructed criminal law of the new Code” of 1983 offered a much pared down set of penal norms, Benedict argued.
He added that in accord with a prevailing ecclesiology at the time there also emerged among many canonists and bishops a false dichotomy between justice and mercy, in which mercy was seen to pre-empt and exclude the former, rather than following and tempering it.
Benedict highlighted the emergence of a kind of legal “guarantorism,” in which the rights of the accused seemed to be afforded the central concern of the canonical process, often at the expense of victims, restorative justice, and the public good.
Temporary suspensions and stints in therapy for abusive clerics were treated as adequate punishment, and local bishops were left with abusive priests they were expected to rehabilitate.
Under Pope St. John Paul II, reforms to the process began, starting with Rome’s decision to raise the canonical age of majority for these cases to 18, and to extend the canonical statute of limitations. The reforms under Pope St. John Paul II culminated in 2001, when Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela established new legal norms for the handling of “major crimes” against faith and morals in canon law.
Among the most crucial of St. John Paul’s reforms was, Benedict noted, the transfer of competence of sexual abuse cases from the Congregation for Clergy to the Congregation for the Doctrine if the Faith. This change was not, the pope emeritus explained, a merely bureaucratic move, but one rooted in a proper understanding of the nature and gravity of the crime of sexual abuse.
Benedict said the decision was a recognition that sexual abuse of minors is a crime against the immediate victim, and against the faith itself.
Certainly, the experience of recent decades appears to bear out the effect of the sexual abuse scandals on the faith all of Catholics, at least some of whom have lapsed in the practice of the faith following the sexual abuse crises.
This does not suggest that Benedict’s essay ignored concern for the right of defense. Instead, Benedict argued that “a properly formed canon law must contain a double guarantee — legal protection of the accused, legal protection of the good at stake.”
The idea that there is a legal necessity to defending the “good of the faith” in sex abuse cases will likely prove the most important contribution Benedict will makes to the ongoing progress of reform.
Benedict’s essay articulated its own version of “zero tolerance” in that framework, noting that “Jesus protects the deposit of the faith with an emphatic threat of punishment to those who do it harm.”
Presenting sexual abuse as a crime against the soul, not just the body, and recognizing that it can have cascading tiers of victims, refocuses the legal process through the lens of its most quoted maxim: “salus animarum suprema lex est.”
Benedict seems to argue that if the salvation of souls is the Church’s highest law, the protection of the faith should be understood as a legal good at least as important as protecting the rights of accused abusers.
From that vantage point, Benedict observed that there is much legal reform still to be done, and that Pope Francis is rightly carrying it forward.
Much of the ongoing discussion has centered around what other kinds of sexual misconduct, in addition to the abuse of children, should be canonically criminalized.
Some prominent bishops have insisted on distinguishing between the sexual abuse of minors and sexual misconduct between adults, arguing that potentially consensual sexual misconduct by clerics should not be accorded the status of a major crime. In light of Benedict’s essay, some are likely to see in that approach the juridic framework that Benedict described as guarantorism.
But other bishops, including Cardinal Séan O’Malley of Boston, have emphasized the importance of seeing sexual abuse of clerical power treated with the same gravity as abuse of a minor.
The pope seems to thinking along the same lines as O’Malley, demonstrated by his recent expansion of the definition of a “vulnerable adult” in the canonical norms of the Roman Curia and the Vatican City State.
Benedict’s theology of penal law, which holds at its center the crimes against the faith of the Church — and of the victims of abuse — offers a powerful rationale for Pope Francis’ action.
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea,” Benedict quotes from the gospel.
These little ones, the Pope emeritus wrote, are not only those who physically suffer abuse but also the “common believers who can be confounded in their faith,” be they children or adults.
‘It is important to see,” Benedict says, “that such misconduct by clerics ultimately damages the Faith.”
Set against this understanding of the depth of sexual abuse as a crime both physical and spiritual, Pope Francis’ ongoing efforts to articulate legally the policy of “zero tolerance” may find a renewed impetus.
Such a policy, Benedict has now argued, is essential to the salvation of souls.
Seoul, South Korea, Apr 11, 2019 / 04:39 pm (CNA).- South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled an abortion ban in the country to be unconstitutional, receiving mixed responses from Korean citizens.
Seven of the nine justices on the cou… […]
Cincinnati, Ohio, Apr 11, 2019 / 03:07 pm (CNA).- Ohio Governor Mark DeWine on Thursday signed a law banning abortion if a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Former Governor John Kasich had twice vetoed similar legislation.
“Government’s rol… […]
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