Denver, Colo., Feb 26, 2019 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- The National Catholic Bioethics Center issued a commentary this month in response to a December Vatican document on the moral liceity of hysterectomies in certain medical […]
Washington D.C., Feb 26, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- Republicans in the House of Representatives are seeking a vote on a new version of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act following a Senate filibuster of the legislation on February 25.
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Des Moines, Iowa, Feb 26, 2019 / 03:24 pm (CNA).- An Iowa Supreme Court decision declaring abortion to be a fundamental right bars the way to appeal a ruling against a pro-life bill, Gov. Kim Reynolds has said, leaving some pro-life advocates focused on an amendment to the state constitution to bypass the court.
“This was an extremely difficult decision, however it is the right one for the pro-life movement and the state of Iowa,” Reynolds said Feb. 18 in explaining her reasons not to appeal a ruling against a bill to ban abortions when a baby’s heartbeat is detectable.
“After this decision and because of Planned Parenthood’s legal maneuverings, I see no path to successfully appeal the district court’s decision or to get this lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court,” said the governor, according to Iowa Public Radio.
The Jan. 22 ruling from Polk County District Judge Michael Huppert blocked a 2018 law, signed by Reynolds, which would have required an ultrasound before an abortion to determine whether a fetal heartbeat can be detected – usually around the sixth week of pregnancy. The legislation made some exceptions for pregnancies conceived through rape or incest, as well as fetal abnormality, or if a doctor determines that a woman’s life is in danger.
Last year the Iowa Supreme Court struck down a 72-hour waiting period for abortion, on the grounds that “a woman’s right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy is a fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution.” Huppert cited that ruling in his January 2019 decision.
The U.S. Supreme Court has little jurisdiction over issues affecting the state constitution.
Under current law, abortion is legal in Iowa until the 20th week of pregnancy. The heartbeat-based law was among the strongest abortion regulations in the country.
Pro-life lawmakers in the legislature responded to the decision by backing a constitutional amendment saying there is no right to abortion in the state constitution. That proposed amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 9, must pass in two consecutive legislative sessions before going to a statewide vote.
Voters have passed similar amendments in Alabama and West Virginia.
The Iowa Catholic Conference testified in support of the amendment, saying it would make the state constitution “abortion-neutral.”
“Without this change, if or when Roe v. Wade is struck down or federal law is modified, abortion will remain a fundamental right in Iowa,” the conference said in its Feb. 10 newsletter. The state supreme court decision means strong scrutiny for “any regulation of abortion or efforts to restrict its public funding.”
At a Feb. 6 House hearing on the bill, Caitlyn Dixson, executive director of Iowa Right to Life, spoke in its favor.
“Iowa deserves to have laws that are able to change and evolve over time to reflect the thoughts of Iowans. The climate in Iowa today is pro-life,” she said, citing the legislative success of the heartbeat bill.
“It took an act of blatant judicial overreach to overturn the law, going directly against what Iowans want,” Dixson said.
She said the Iowa constitution itself recognizes “certain inalienable rights” including “enjoying and defending life.” She suggested that this contradicts the idea of “an unwritten ‘fundamental right to abortion’.”
Other legislative proposals in the state aim to restrict abortion provider funding and strengthen legal protections for the unborn.
One bill would increase the criminal penalty to life in prison for anyone convicted of intentional termination of a pregnancy, with the exception of an abortion. It would similarly call for life in prison for taking an action that one reasonably should have known would terminate a pregnancy, or terminating a pregnancy during the commission of a felony.
A different bill would deny state-administered federal funds to sex education programs run by any organization that performs abortions or regularly refers for abortion.
Both bills have passed out of subcommittee for further hearings.
A different proposed amendment declaring life begins at conception has passed out of a subcommittee Feb. 21 for consideration by a full Senate committee.
Republican Sen. Jake Chapman, the subcommittee head, said, “We’re not going to stop. We will continue to fight for life.”
Such amendments have never successfully passed a statewide vote.
The heartbeat-based abortion ban did not take effect pending the legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, the abortion provider Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and the Iowa City-based Emma Goldman Clinic, which also performs abortions.
The bill also barred all persons from knowingly acquiring, providing, transferring, or using fetal remains in Iowa. This did not apply to medical diagnostic samples, or forensic investigations, or to fetal body parts donated for medical research after a miscarriage or stillbirth.
Catholic bishops of the state had voiced qualified support for the bill’s “life-giving intent,” as well as its restrictions on fetal tissue and body parts.
Bishop Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa told CNA in May 2018 that Catholics might disagree about the strategy of supporting legislation that could be overturned by courts. He encouraged creative pro-life advocacy, saying Catholics should discern such questions carefully. He also encouraged Catholics to support the legislation if that is what their conscience tells them.
Abuja, Nigeria, Feb 26, 2019 / 03:05 pm (CNA).- Nigeria is in the midst of counting votes cast in a contentious general election, and Catholic bishops are urging the nation’s leaders to conduct a credible and transparent vote, while at the same time the bishops closely observe the election process.
A week before the elections were supposed to take place, the bishops called for all Nigerians to pray and fast for the success of the elections.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria announced Feb. 25 that Caritas Nigeria, in collaboration with the Nigerian Justice Development and Peace Commissions, had set up a “Situation Room” to collect observations and reports about the elections from diocese across the country.
The general election, during which Nigerians voted for a presidential candidate as well as for the Senate and House of Representatives, was originally scheduled for Feb. 16 but was delayed at the last minute until Feb. 23. Catholic Action Nigeria said at the time that the delay placed a burden on citizens, especially those who underwent difficult travels to vote.
The Independent National Electoral Commission is still counting votes. Incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari has the lead as of Feb. 26, having won 13 of Nigeria’s 36 states, according to the BBC. His opponent, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has won 11 states and the capital, Abuja. Uche Secondus, chairman of Abubakar’s party, has alleged that there have been irregularities in the election.
According to the Nigerian bishops’ conference, the Church has “actively engaged 3,823 accredited Observers, and 9,000 Citizen Observers to enhance data collection and collation” during elections. Father Zacharia Nyantiso Samjumi, Secretary General of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, signed the Feb. 25 report.
The bishops observed that voting at many polling places commenced very late. Some polling places experienced attacks from suspected Boko Haram militants; a 19-year-old man was killed at a polling place in the north-central region of the country. There were also some instances of people attempting to steal ballot boxes and technical problems with electronic card readers used to identify voters.
Some areas saw a low voter turnout a because security fears. In one area, armed men reportedly hijacked voting materials and abducted officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission and other officials. In at least two areas, armed men gunned a number of people down at the polls and “snatched ballot boxes.” In Lagos state, the bishops report that cast votes were burnt and voters were “chased by suspected thugs.”
The bishops also said their observers noted cases of buying and selling votes in at least ten states across the country.
“The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria is grateful to all Nigerians for their resilience and admonishes [the Independent National Electoral Commission] to improve on the electoral systems and processes for the purposes of credible and transparent future elections in Nigeria,” the report concludes.
The Nigerian bishops’ conference had released a Jan. 19 statement ahead of the election after meeting at St. Agnes Catholic Church in Lagos, Nigeria, specifically warning against illegal voting practices such as buying or selling votes.
“Being an election year, 2019 appears delicate; we call on Nigerians to carry out their civic responsibilities with diligence and patriotism,” the statement read, according to Pulse Nigeria.
“Nigerians should see the election as a duty to enthrone good leadership, and no amount of financial inducement should sway us.”
Nigeria became a democracy in 1999 and is Africa’s most populous nation, with the continent’s largest economy, but has for years faced attacks and kidnappings by the radial Islamist group Boko Haram. Last year, the militants burned 22 buildings, including a part of the Catechetical Training Centre in Kaya.
Vatican City, Feb 26, 2019 / 02:33 pm (CNA).- Alessandro Gisotti, interim Holy See press office director, confirmed Tuesday via Twitter that Cardinal George Pell is no longer prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy.
Pell’s term as prefect was to have expired Feb. 24. His resignation has not been noted in the Vatican’s bollettino, so it is believed his term lapsed and was not renewed, and he was not removed from office.
Gisotti’s tweet suggests that Pell’s loss of office by the expiration of his term has been communicated to him in writing, as required by canon law.
I can confirm that Cardinal George Pell is no longer the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy
— Alessandro Gisotti (@AGisotti) February 26, 2019
The cardinal was convicted in an Australian civil court in December on five charges of the sexual abuse of minors. A gag order preventing media from reporting on the trial and conviction was lifted Feb. 26.
Gisotti had issued a statement regarding Pell earlier in the day Feb. 26, which did not mention his status as prefect.
The statement acknowledged the “painful” news which has “shocked many people.”
“As already expressed on other occasions, we have the utmost respect for the Australian judicial authorities,” the statement said.
“Out of this respect, we await the outcome of the appeals process, recalling that Cardinal Pell maintains his innocence and has the right to defend himself until the last stage of appeal.”
The statement confirms that Pell has been barred from public ministry and from contact with minors during the course of the legal process, and will remain so during his appeal.
“In order to ensure the course of justice, the Holy Father has confirmed the precautionary measures which had been imposed by the local Ordinary on Cardinal George Pell when he returned to Australia. That is, while awaiting the definitive assessment of the facts, as is the norm, Cardinal George Pell is prohibited from exercising public ministry and from having any voluntary contact whatsoever with minors.”
Pell was the first prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, which was established in 2014.
Marguerite Duane, M.D., was a family-medicine resident setting her postpartum patients up with birth control when she first learned that there were family-planning alternatives with no side effects. She was dumbfounded that she could have […]
Leon, Mexico, Feb 26, 2019 / 01:51 pm (CNA).- More than 37,000 young people made a pilgrimage Saturday to the Christ the King shrine on Cerro del Cubilete in Mexico’s Guanajuato state.
The Feb. 23 pilgrimage was organized, as it is each year, by the national youth movement Witness and Hope and had as its theme “Youth to politics: Commitment of faith, solidarity and peace.”
This year the date of the 10 mile walk was changed from the last Saturday of January to the last of February, due to World Youth Day in Panama, which took place Jan. 22-27.
The aim of the pilgrimage, the organizers said, is “to prepare ourselves to engage in politics, true politics, without labels, without euphemisms, in the true sense of attaining the common good.”
The present Cristo Rey which crowns Cerro del Cubilete, a little more than 30 miles southeast of León, is 75 feet tall and was erected in 1950 as a tribute to the martyrs of the Cristero War. In the 1920s persecution by the Mexican government against the Catholic faith, which involved the banning of religious congregations, limitations on worship, prohibiting a priest from dressing as such, reached a point at which civilians in various parts of the country took up arms.
The Mexican government responded with even greater repression and the killing of priests and laity. Among the martyrs of the Cristero War was Saint José Sánchez del Río, who was executed at 14 years of age.
The Cristero forces were known for their cries of “Long live Christ the King” and “Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!”
The present Cristo Rey statue stands where a smaller one was dynamited in 1928 by the government of Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles, during the war.
Archbishop Alfonso Cortés Contreras of León celebrated Mass at the shrine and stressed to the young pilgrims the importance of being actively engaged in politics and seeking the common good.
Also attending the pilgrimage was Jerson Velasco, the director of the National Coordination for Adolescents and Young People of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference, who shared with the pilgrims about the suffering going on in his country.
“We have lacked food, we have lacked medicine, who have lacked a Christian government, but we have never lacked hope,” he said.
The organizers of the pilgrimage sent their “prayers and expressed their brotherhood with Venezuelan young people who are in the midst of fighting for freedom, democracy and the minimal guarantees of a decent life, without violence, without the shortages of the economic catastrophe and with respect for religious freedom.”
Vatican City, Feb 26, 2019 / 09:58 am (CNA).- The redemption of creation takes center stage in Pope Francis’ Lenten message this year, which connects man’s sinfulness to environmental issues.
“Sin leads man to consider himself the god of creation, to see himself as its absolute master and to use it, not for the purpose willed by the Creator but for his own interests, to the detriment of other creatures,” Pope Francis wrote in his Lenten message published Feb. 26.
“Once God’s law, the law of love, is forsaken … it leads to the exploitation of creation, both persons and the environment, due to that insatiable covetousness which sees every desire as a right and sooner or later destroys all those in its grip,” he said.
The pope’s message — originally written on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi in October — is a reflection on a line from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”
“All creation is called, with us, to go forth from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God,” Pope Francis said. “Lent is a sacramental sign of this conversion.”
Ultimately, Francis points to the traditional Lenten practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving as the remedy to the rupture between God, man, and creation caused by sin.
In fasting, we learn “to change our attitude towards others and all of creation, turning away from the temptation to ‘devour’ everything to satisfy our voracity and being ready to suffer for love, which can fill the emptiness of our hearts,” he explained.
Prayer leads us to “abandon idolatry and the self-sufficiency of our ego,” he added.
Through almsgiving, “we escape from the insanity of hoarding everything for ourselves in the illusory belief that we can secure a future that does not belong to us,” Francis said.
The pope warned against living “a life that exceeds those limits imposed by our human condition and nature itself.”
“The sin that lurks in the human heart takes the shape of greed and unbridled pursuit of comfort, lack of concern for the good of others and even of oneself,” Pope Francis said.
“Unless we tend constantly towards Easter, towards the horizon of the Resurrection, the mentality expressed in the slogans ‘I want it all and I want it now!’ and ‘Too much is never enough,’ gains the upper hand,” he said.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Vatican’s Department for the Integral Human Development, explained the logic behind this year’s Lenten message as rooted in the Church’s social doctrine of humanity as an “interconnected and interdependent part of the world” that God created, adding that the Genesis narrative places the human being as “high priest of creation.”
“The redemption of humanity and its liberation from evil and sin express the redemption of all creation from the curse and from all the evils that it suffers because of the sin of humanity,” Turkson said Feb. 26.
He continued, “In this Lenten time, awaiting the celebration of the memory of Christ’s redeeming work for us, so that Christ’s victory over sin and death may also become ours, we ourselves ‘who possess the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly waiting for adoption to children, the redemption of our body.”
“Every action of man, both for evil and for good has cosmic consequences,” Monsignor Segundo Tejado Munoz, undersecretary of the dicastery of Integral Human Development added.
“Every abuse, every theft, every murder, each of these makes a planet disappear. Every action of ours in that is evil, but also the good, has a reaction in creation, the need among all of us in conversion,” Munoz said.
The liturgical season of Lent for 2019 will begin next week on March 6. Pope Francis’ Lenten messages contains a reminder that “the ‘Lenten’ period of forty days spent by the Son of God in the desert of creation had the goal of making it once more that garden of communion with God that it was before original sin.”
“May our Lent this year be a journey along that same path, bringing the hope of Christ also to creation,” he said.
Vatican City, Feb 26, 2019 / 07:30 am (CNA).- The Vatican press office has issued a statement on the recently announced conviction of Cardinal George Pell on charges of the sexual abuse of minors.
The decision of the County Court of Victoria w… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 26, 2019 / 03:05 am (CNA).- A global marriage ministry is launching a new initiative to provide resources, encouragement and enrichment opportunities for military couples in Canada and the United States.
The project is part of Worldwide Marriage Encounter (WWME), in conjunction with the North American Military Services Outreach (NAMSO).
Worldwide Marriage Encounter, which originated in the 1950s with Spanish priest Father Gabriel Calvo, is a marriage enrichment program that offers weekend retreats to help couples foster communication skills, inspire family life, and promote friendships with other Catholic couples.
The military initiative was announced on Feb. 19 by Dave and Lucy Snyder, who first attended a WWME marriage retreat in 1977. They have held a range of leadership positions at WWME’s local and regional levels and been on the national board for a number of years.
Now a retired member of the U.S. Army, Mr. Snyder told CNA that the program hopes to create bonds between military couples and shed light on the specific challenges they face.
Military couples may find themselves encountering obstacles that other marriages do not experience, and they need to know they are not alone, he said, pointing to the support of priests and other families in similar situations.
“There is a good way to make it through our lives together and still be happy and faithful in our commitment,” he said.
At the website www.foryourmilitarymarriage.com, military couples share their experiences through a blog; links offer resources, statistics and tips for building health relationships; and an online network connects Catholic military couples, offering fellowship and encouragement for one another, regardless of age or stage of married life.
This online experience is part of a bigger NAMSO program, which also includes one-day marriage retreats at the local parish or military base. These six-hour events enrich marriages through workshops and lectures dealing with communication, combined decision-making, prayer, and cooperative service to the Church, among other topics.
Also offered are “journey talks” – four-part programs that take people on a journey of self, as a couple, with God, and with others.
“This is what we call positive reinforcement strategy, whether it is in couple prayer or learning to be better listeners [or] learning how to serve our community as a couple,” Snyder said.
“It’s really a positive and uplifting program.”
A major component of the program is the building of relationships with other military couples.
“NAMSO’s Marriage Enrichment program offers wisdom and insight from couples who have lived the military life and understand the unique challenges and circumstances that can put pressure on a military couple’s relationship,” said a statement on the website.
Snyder stressed that military couples face unique circumstances, including long-distance relationships during deployment, ongoing relocation of families, and potential struggles after military tours that may involve PTSD or injuries.
Couples who have been through these experiences already are able provide valuable advice to younger couples, he noted.
“That’s why we use active and retired military,” because the shared experiences create an “awareness of the struggles that military couples go through,” he said.
“There is kind of kinship there that most, especially the retired ones, have gone through … and are much more aware of some of the pitfalls that can happen.”
Marriage is important for society, Snyder said, but today it faces many distractions. He expressed hope that the new website and the NAMSO retreats can reinforce family life and sustain the commitment of marriage for couples in the military.
“We want to ensure that couples have good strong goals for commitment in their marriage because of the importance of marriage in our Church and then in our society, as we want to raise good, healthy kids [and] provide role models to them of a good marital relationship,” he said.
© Catholic World Report