Year: 2019

Washington D.C., Apr 8, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has criticized Vice President Mike Pence for his views on gay marriage, saying that his civil marriage to his same-sex partner has led him closer to God.

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, contracted a civil marriage with his partner Chasten, in a June 2018 Episcopalian ceremony.

Before he became vice president, Pence was Indiana’s governor from 2013 until 2017. In that office, he supported an attempt to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, and signed the 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. The act was criticized by gay rights activists as permitting discrimination by religious organizations.

“My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man,” said Buttigieg, speaking April 7 at a fundraiser for the Victory Fund, an organization dedicated to electing homosexual political candidates.

“And yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God.”

Buttigieg said that he wishes “the Mike Pences of the world would understand” that he was born gay and that he cannot change this. “Your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator,” Buttigieg said.

Both Pence and Buttigieg are baptized Catholics, but neither attends Mass. Buttigieg describes himself as a devout Episcopalian. Pence attends an evangelical church and has described himself as an “evangelical Catholic.”

Earlier this year, a brief controversy arose after it was announced that Pence’s wife, Karen, had taken a job teaching art at Immanuel Christian School. Immanuel Christian School considers homosexual sex acts to be “moral misconduct,” and employees are not permitted to engage in or support these activities.

Pence has denied criticisms that he is “homophobic,” saying that his support for traditional marriage law and religious freedom initiatives, including Indiana’s 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, are not borne of homophobia.

Pence said in 2015 that Indiana law “does not allow businesses the right to deny services to anyone.”

In 2015, he said on Twitter that “If I saw a restaurant owner refuse to serve a gay couple, I wouldn’t eat there anymore.”

The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a lifelong partnership between one man and one woman. While teaching that homosexual acts are in themselves disordered and sinful, the Church also says that of those who experience same-sex attraction must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.

Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P., Petri, vice president and academic dean at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, told CNA that the Church’s view on human sexuality is rooted not only in tradition and scripture, but also in the natural law.

“Quite simply, the Catholic tradition going back not only to Judaism but to the natural law is that sex is ordered to procreation and the raising of children. Sex brings a man and a woman together in a union that is not only life-giving but also bond-creating. It’s a union that cannot be simulated by any other type of genital activity,” Petri said.

“Insisting that sex can or should work any other way is to lie to oneself in a desperate attempt to justify a disorder of sexuality and self-image.”

Petri told CNA that he rejects Buttigieg’s claim that God creates anyone to have a homosexual sexual orientation.

“To further conclude that God positively wills people to have disordered desires approaches the line of material heresy and flies in the face of what Christians have believed about God for two thousand years,” he said.

Last week, Pope Francis said that experiencing homosexual desire is not itself sinful, likening the experience to a disposition to anger, and underscoring the Church’s teaching that only acts, including acts of the will, constitute sin. The pope also noted an increasing sexualization of young people in society, and cautioned parents against making assumptions about their children’s sexual orientation.

On Meet the Press on Sunday, Buttigieg also defended earlier remarks in which he appeared to question President Donald Trump’s belief in God, suggesting that Trump’s Evangelical Christian supporters are hypocrites.

Trump, said Buttigieg, is not following scriptural imperatives for believers to care for widows and immigrants, and therefore is not behaving in a Christlike manner.

“The hypocrisy is unbelievable,” said Buttigieg. “Here you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in scripture in church, where it’s about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants, and making sure that you’re focusing your effort on the poor–but also personally, how you’re supposed to conduct yourself.”

Self-described white born-again/evangelical Christians voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016, with 81 percent in favor compared to only 16 percent voting for Hillary Clinton.

Historically, white evangelical support for Republican presidential candidates has never fallen below 74 percent. In 2016, the Protestant/other Christian vote split was nearly identical to the 2012 election.

Catholics, particularly Hispanic Catholics, supported Trump in 2016 at higher levels than they did Mitt Romney in 2012. The last time a Republican presidential candidate won majority support among Catholic voters was George W. Bush in 2004.

In response to Buttigieg’s comments on biblical imperatives, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked the mayor about his thoughts on abortion. Buttigieg, who considers himself pro-choice, said that he thinks abortion is a moral question that should be decided by a woman and her doctor, not by “a male government official imposing his interpretation of his religion.”

The Church teaches that abortion is the deliberate ending of an innocent human life, and is a grave sin.

Dr. Chad Pecknold, associate professor of systematic theology at the Catholic University of America, told CNA that Buttigieg offered “a very selective account of Christianity.”

“Mr. Buttigieg invokes Christian authority wherever it can be made to agree with his politics, and yet finds it irrelevant wherever it disagrees,” said Pecknold.

“This approach makes Christianity into a political plaything. This is perfectly illustrated by the way Mr. Buttigieg claims that public policy should favor the poor, but not the unborn. When he calls out other politicians for their Christian hypocrisy, it’s less a matter of theological expertise than a case of the pot calling the kettle.”

“Authentic Christian political thought does not choose between those who need to be protected and defended,” Pecknold said.

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Sacramento, Calif., Apr 8, 2019 / 02:02 pm (CNA).- A California Senate committee has passed a bill requiring student health clinics on college campuses to provide abortion pills.

Senate Bill 24 would require all public universities in the state to off… […]

Chicago, Ill., Apr 8, 2019 / 12:15 pm (CNA).- A religious sister can expect that if she is faithful to her vows, fervent in prayer, and zealous in following Jesus, her face might someday wind up on the front of a holy card.

But few religious sisters expect ever to find themselves on a baseball card.

Sister Mary Jo Sobiek, OP, though? She’ll premiere on a Topps baseball card this summer.

The sister, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, caught attention from baseball scouts and casual fans last year, when she threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Chicago White Sox game last August.

The sister bounced the ball off her bicep before delivering a strike straight over the plate.

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Sobiek, a teacher at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois, didn’t expect her pitch to go viral. But it did. Video clips got millions of views, made ESPN’s Sportscenter highlight reel, and were featured in national media.

The sister is no stranger to a baseball diamond. She played shortstop on the softball team at Cathedral Catholic High School in St. Could, Minnesota, and continued playing softball at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.

“Growing up, I was naturally gifted as an athlete — that was my God-given gift,” Sobiek told the Duluth News Tribune last year.

“To be a good athlete, you have to be strong in body, mind, and spirit,” Sobiek told Runner’s World.

“There will be times that you’ll lose, and you have to know how to prepare your mind for those failures. Striving towards sainthood requires the same level of discipline, humility, and stick-to-it-ness.”

After Sobiek’s pitch, Topps decided to place her on a baseball card in their Allen and Ginter series, which features baseball players along celebrities.

“We wanted to feature her on the set because she is a huge sports fan, a lifelong baseball fan,” Susan Lulgjuraj told Chicago’s WBEZ.
 
“And when we saw her throw that first pitch last year, it kind of clicked. We said, ‘How cool would it be to feature Sister [Mary] Jo on a card?’” she added.

Sobiek, 49, earned $1,000 for appearing on the card, which she intends to donate for a scholarship fund in her name at Marian Catholic High School.

Though her baseball card debut is complete, Sister Sobiek fans and memorabilia collectors will be waiting, most likely a while, for the release of that holy card.

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New York City, N.Y., Apr 8, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The Holy See’s representative to the United Nations told the UN Commission on Population and Development that insistence upon a “right to abortion” at their annual spring meeting detracts from the commission’s efforts to address the real needs to mothers and children.

After UN representatives from European countries called for “speeding up progress” toward “universal access to sexual and reproductive services, including safe and legal abortion,” Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the UN, spoke out.

“To formulate and position population issues, however, in terms of individual ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ is to change the focus from that which should be the proper concern of governments and international agencies,” Auza said April 3.

“Suggesting that reproductive health includes a right to abortion explicitly violates the language of the ICPD, defies moral and legal standards within domestic legislations and divides efforts to address the real needs of mothers and children, especially those yet unborn,” the archbishop continued.

The Vatican representative also called for action to be taken when migrants are exploited, for “responsible consumption” of the world’s resources, and reaffirmation that the family is the fundamental unit of society.

Auza said that many of the questions involving the transmission of life cannot be adequately dealt with unless in relation to the good of the family.

“Governments and society ought to promote social policies that have the family as their principal object, assisting it by providing adequate resources and efficient means of support, both for bringing up children and looking after the elderly, to strengthen relations between generations and avoid distancing the elderly from the family unit,” he said.

Planned Parenthood’s Director of Advocacy María Antonieta Alcalde also participated in the UN Commission on Population and Developement’s 52nd session April 1-5.

“Every year, millions of women and girls are forced to continue their pregnancies due to a lack of access to safe and legal abortion,” Alcalde told the UN Commission April 3.

Alcalde called for “comprehensive sexuality education; access to sexual and reproductive health services; access to safe and legal abortion; and civil society participation” to be included in the commission’s program of action.

The UN population commission concluded its fifty-second session reaffirming their commitment to the “programme of action” adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo 25 years ago.

Saint Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to the Secretary General of the Cairo conference in 1994 stating that he was gravely concerned about the draft final document of the population and development conference. He noted that there was already a “tendency to promote an internationally recognized right to access to abortion on demand, without any restriction, with no regard to the rights of the unborn.”

“The vision of sexuality which inspires the document is individualistic,” St. John Paul II said.

The pope asked the Secretary General, “What future do we propose to adolescents if we leave them, in their immaturity, to follow their instincts without taking into consideration the interpersonal and moral implications of their sexual behaviour? Do we not have an obligation to open their eyes to the damage and suffering to which morally irresponsible sexual behaviour can lead them? Is it not our task to challenge them with a demanding ethic which fully respects their dignity and which leads them to that self-control which is needed in order to face the many demands of life?”

“Political or ideological considerations cannot be, by themselves, the basis on which essential decisions for the future of our society are founded. What is at stake here is the very future of humanity,” St. John Paul II said.

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