London, England, Nov 19, 2019 / 02:35 pm (CNA).- Developers acting for the Vatican Secretariat of State offered to raze a London parish hall and rectory and replace it with low-cost housing, in order to try to push through a luxury apartment developmen… […]
Havana, Cuba, Nov 19, 2019 / 01:34 pm (CNA).- With much of Cuban society today losing a sense of the value of human life, a Polish nun on the island has created an initiative to offer practical help and support to women facing difficult pregnancies.
Sister Filipa Bak of the Congregation of the Mother of God of Mercy, told EWTN News that she founded “Project Hope” with a dual purpose: to support pregnant mothers in need and to “help women who have had an abortion to find the forgiveness of God who is rich in mercy.”
These women “often find themselves in difficult situations, they’re losing their family, their partner,” she said. “The project aims to bring hope to women who have no way out, who don’t see the way out of these difficult situations.”
Pregnant women who work with Project Hope are assigned an aid who accompanies them with support and resources during the pregnancy and for one year after the baby is born. Each mom also receives a basket with clothing and other newborn necessities, which are collected through donations.
In three years of operation, Bak said the initiative has saved more than 90 lives.
They also work with moms to ensure their babies are baptized, “to become a child of God, to become a true member of the Kingdom of God that we have here on earth,” which is one of the project’s goals.
Bak said the project also interacts “with today’s young people who have lost the value of life,” hoping to help them regain an appreciation for the sanctity of all human life.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Washington D.C., Nov 19, 2019 / 11:30 am (CNA).- The Salvation Army has denied accusations that it is an anti-LGBT organization in the wake of the Chick-Fil-A Foundation publicly severing ties with the group.
“We’re saddened to learn that a corporate partner has felt it necessary to divert funding to other hunger, education and homelessness organizations — areas in which The Salvation Army, as the largest social services provider in the world, is already fully committed,” they said in a statement on Tuesday.
The statement came in response to an announcement on Monday by the Chick-Fil-A Foundation that it would no longer donate to the Salvation Army or to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Instead, the foundation has pledged $9 million each to Junior Achievement, Covenant House International, and local food banks near new Chick-Fil-A locations.
Chick-Fil-A has faced controversy regarding its past charitable donations. In 2012, after the founder of Chick-Fil-A stated his opposition to same-sex marriage, there were calls for a nationwide boycott of the chain. This boycott largely failed, and Chick-Fil-A is now the third-largest restaurant chain in the country in terms of systemwide sales, trailing only McDonald’s and Starbucks.
Both the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army promote the Biblical belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Fellowship of Christian Athletes includes on its application for employment the organization’s belief that God does not approve of same-sex relationships or premarital sex.
The Salvation Army said that a large number of the 23 million people they serve each year are part of the LGBT community, and that “we believe we are the largest provider of poverty relief to the LGBTQ+ population.”
The statement also condemned “misinformation” regarding the organization’s work, and that they serve everyone in need, regardless of their sexual orientation, religion, or gender identity.
“We urge the public to seek the truth before rushing to ill-informed judgment and greatly appreciate those partners and donors who ensure that anyone who needs our help feels safe and comfortable to come through our doors,” said the statement from the Salvation Army.
Fellowship of Christian Athletes did not respond to CNA’s request for comment in time for publication.
Despite the changes in donations, at least one LGBT organization remains skeptical of Chick-Fil-A.
“Chick-fil-A investors, employees and customers can greet today’s announcement with cautious optimism,” said Drew Anderson, the director of campaigns and rapid response at GLAAD, said on Monday.
GLAAD is an advocacy group for the LGBT movement.
“If Chick-Fil-A is serious about their pledge to stop holding hands with divisive anti-LGBTQ activists, then further transparency is needed regarding their deep ties to organizations like Focus on the Family, which exist purely to harm LGBTQ people and families,” added Anderson.
Anderson said that Chick-Fil-A’s past pledges have been empty promises.
“In addition to refraining from financially supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations, Chick-Fil-A still lacks policies to ensure safe workplaces for LGBTQ employees and should unequivocally speak out against the anti-LGBTQ reputation that their brand represents,” he said.
Baton Rouge, La., Nov 19, 2019 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Pro-lifers are hopeful that the re-election of Democrat John Bel Edwards as Louisiana governor could turn the tide in a party whose leadership has grown increasingly more pro-abortion with each election cycle.
John Bel Edwards was re-elected as governor of Louisiana on Saturday by a 40,000-vote margin, winning more than 51 percent of the state’s vote.
A Catholic, Edwards first ran for the office in 2015 on an explicitly pro-life platform and won more than 56% of the vote. His campaign aired a TV ad revealing that Edwards and his wife, then 20 weeks pregnant with their daughter, had discovered she had spina bifida in utero. They couple faced down encouragement from a doctor to abort their child.
Edwards signed a “heartbeat” bill into law earlier in 2019, banning abortions in the state as soon as a baby’s heartbeat is detected in utero—as early as six weeks gestation–with no exceptions for rape or incest.
Josh Mercer, editor of The Loop at CatholicVote.org, told CNA that Edwards’ signing the heartbeat bill into law proved his pro-life credentials and “made the difference” in what was “a tight race.”
Katrina Jackson (D), an outgoing Louisiana state representative and incoming member of the state senate, said that the “heartbeat” bill landed on Edwards’ desk as the state legislature was departing to focus on the election. Edwards signed it promptly despite widespread opposition.
“What it said when he signed it that quickly without doubt, was that ‘I’m pro-life, and regardless of a campaign, regardless of pushback, regardless of what’s being said, I’m going to stand on that principle,’” Jackson said.
“And do I think it made a difference in this election? I believe it did, because what it said to people is ‘I am who I say I am.’”
Edwards has also tried to link other issues with to his pro-life stance, and make it part of a broader platform.
Earlier this year he cited his administration’s three straight years of record numbers of foster care adoptions. Edwards also oversaw an expansion of Medicaid access in his state for adults making less than 138% of the federal poverty line. In 2018, he appeared with Vatican officials at the Louisiana Summit on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, and in 2017 at the opening of a shelter for human trafficking victims in the state.
In December of 2018, he told America magazine that “The idea of not doing the Medicaid expansion, I just couldn’t reconcile that, because I am pro-life. And the pro-life ethos has to mean more than just the abortion issue. [Abortion] is fundamental, and I understand how important it is, but it’s got to go beyond that. The job isn’t over when the baby’s born if you’ve got poor people who need access to health care.”
“He is just the real deal,” Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, told CNA of Edwards. “We like to think he’s the future of the Democratic Party.”
On marriage, Edwards in 2015 said that he personally opposed same-sex marriages but that marriage licenses from the state should not be denied same-sex couples, as the Supreme Court had ruled that it was the law of the land.
He issued an executive order in 2016–later overturned in the courts–that established employment protections for state and state contractor employees, on the basis of many categories including sexual orientation and gender identity. The order included a religious exemption for churches and religious organizations.
Despite Edwards’ pro-life stance, questions remain of how a similar Democratic candidate might fare with leaders in the Democratic Party who may say there is no litmus test on abortion, but without the evidence to support such a claim.
At the national level, the Democratic Party has increasingly adopted an absolutist line on abortion in recent years to the alienation of millions of potential voters, say Day and Charlie Camosy, a theology professor at Fordham University.
Edwards’ victory could “jolt” Democratic Party leaders “out of what is just an untenable position” on abortion, Camosy told CNA, calling the current party platform “about as extreme as it could possibly get.”
In 2016, the DNC platform called for the repeal of the Hyde and the Helms Amendments—policies barring taxpayer funding of abortions. President Obama’s 2012 faith outreach campaign director Michael Wear even called the platform “extreme” on abortion.
In 2017, DNC chair Tom Perez stated that “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health.” He subsequently met with Day after she requested a meeting on behalf of pro-life Democrats.
In the 2020 presidential election, Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden reversed his position on the Hyde Amendment this summer after backlash against his decades-long support for the policy. Other candidates have called for taxpayer funding of elective abortions, federal statutory protections of abortion, or have even said that the mother should be able to choose abortion up until the birth of the child.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in September that “there’s room in our party” for pro-life candidates. However, the party’s most pro-life member in the House, Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), has faced repeated primary challenges from an openly pro-abortion candidate and seen the chief of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) withdraw her participation in a fundraiser for him earlier this year after pressure from pro-abortion advocates.
The Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) on Monday announced a litmus test on abortion for any party candidates running for a state attorney general office, saying that it “will only endorse candidates who support the right to access abortion.”
“What is it saying about people like John Bel, and like me, and Senator Casey, and all the elected pro-life Democrats across the country, the Democratic voters who are pro-life?” Day asked. “If there’s a litmus test, does it apply to us too? That they don’t want our votes?”
While, according to one study, nearly seven in ten of the party’s voters identify as pro-choice, many voters might still be turned off by more extreme stances on abortion, Day and Camosy said.
Gallup in 2019 reported that 45% of Democrats say abortion should be legal “under certain” conditions, and 14% say it should be illegal in all conditions.
To what extent those “certain” conditions of legality amount to, however, is unclear. Gallup reported that 58% of Americans nationwide would oppose a “heartbeat” bill, such as the one Edwards signed into law.
In 2018, Gallup reported that while 60% of Americans supported legal abortion in the first three months of pregnancy, nearly two-thirds of Americans wanted abortion to be illegal “in the second three months of pregnancy”; that support rose to 81% for illegality in the final three months of pregnancy.
And in advance of the 2020 presidential election, pro-life Democrats in swing states—and even in some heavily-Democratic states—are reportedly disgusted by the party’s extreme support for abortion.
“We have pro-life democrats in New York who are just so upset about the trajectory the party has taken,” Day said. Earlier in 2019, the state’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law that could allow for many late-term abortions even up until the birth of the child.
Even before the law was enacted, New York had one of the highest rates of abortion in the country, Day noted. In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the state had the highest rate of abortions per 1,000 women age 15 to 44, in 2014, of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
“What has it done to address that?” Day asked.
A recent New York Times poll showed President Trump level with or beating Democratic frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in key swing states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, although he was slightly behind Joe Biden in most of those states. Abortion “has got to be one of the major reasons why,” Camosy said.
In Wisconsin, Camosy said, he knew “without any hesitation at all that there’s a ton of religiously-minded Democrats who are Democrats mostly because they share their views on economics or about a social safety net or about supporting unions in particular, who would identify as pro-life or at least identify as abortion skeptical.”
These voters “in fact are totally turned off by what is in the Democratic Party’s platform.”
Yet for now, some pro-life voters are wary of a party whose leadership has supported abortion access at the top and whose presidential candidates support taxpayer-funded abortions and at least some late-term abortions.
“Catholics long for the day when both parties nationwide try to outdo each other on the pro-life issue, but that day is sadly not here yet,” Mercer said.
Buffalo, N.Y., Nov 19, 2019 / 09:40 am (CNA).- Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo has released a video statement following his recent ad limina visit to Rome with the bishops of New York. Bishop Malone used the message to insist he is “wholly commi… […]
Vatican City, Nov 19, 2019 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Tuesday appointed Msgr. Francis Malone, pastor of an Arkansa parish known for having generated many priestly vocations, as the next bishop of Shreveport, Louisiana.
Malone, 69, is the pastor o… […]
Washington D.C., Nov 19, 2019 / 03:00 am (CNA).- Pro-life Democrats and some election-minded politicos have faulted the decision of a Democratic state attorneys general organization to support only declared pro-abortion rights candidates.
The Democrat… […]
Topeka, Kansas, Nov 19, 2019 / 12:17 am (CNA).- As Kansas considers expanding its Medicaid program, the state’s Catholic Conference said its support is contingent upon the establishment of pro-life safeguards.
Last week, the Special Committee on… […]
There has been a fair amount of discussion and commentary among Catholics in recent years about “Nones,” notably the work of Bishop Robert Barron, who last week “outlined five paths Church leaders should take to […]
Urumqi, China, Nov 18, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- The Chinese government is defending its policy of mass detention and re-education of Muslims in the country’s northwest as an appropriate measure against terrorism, following a New York Times report that showed the direct involvement of senior government officials in ordering the policy.
Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, criticized the newspaper’s report Nov. 18, saying it smeared China’s efforts against extremism, but not disputing the authenticity of the leaked documents, The Times reported Monday.
The Xinjiang government said the earlier Times article was “completely fabricated by hostile forces at home and abroad … America’s New York Times has again fabricated and concocted fake news about Xinjiang. This is nothing more than getting up to its old tricks, and is completely unworthy of refutation. This despicable conduct will surely be met with the contempt of wiser minds in the international community.”
The Times reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping laid the groundwork for the development of the mass detentions in a series of private speeches to officials in 2014 in which he called for “absolutely no mercy” toward ‘terrorists’.
In Urumqi on April 30, 2014, Xi said that “the psychological impact of extremist religious thought on people must never be underestimated. People who are captured by religious extremism — male or female, old or young — have their consciences destroyed, lose their humanity and murder without blinking an eye.”
In another speech in Xinjiang, Xi stated: “There must be effective educational remolding and transformation of criminals … even after these people are released, their education and transformation must continue.”
According to the Times, 403 pages of documents, nearly half of which were speeches from Xi and other leaders, were leaked to it “by a member of the Chinese political establishment who … expressed hope that their disclosure would prevent party leaders, including Mr. Xi, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.”
Among the documents, the Times said, are a model script for officials encountering returning university students who ask what has happened to their disappeared family members.
In the script from officials in Turpan, 120 miles southeast of Urumqi, the students were to be told that if their family members “don’t undergo study and training, they’ll never thoroughly and fully understand the dangers of religious extremism … No matter what age, anyone who has been infected by religious extremism must undergo study.”
The students would be told to “treasure this chance for free education that the party and government has provided to thoroughly eradicate erroneous thinking, and also learn Chinese and job skills,” which “offers a great foundation for a happy life for your family.”
If the students asked if their relatives had committed any crime, they were to be told that while they hadn’t, “it is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts … freedom is only possible when this ‘virus’ in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health.”
The documents also detail the government’s reaction to officials deemed to be inadequately zealous in the repression of the Uighurs.
Wang Yongzhi was appointed to run Yarkant county, 830 miles southwest of Urumqi, in 2014. Wang had detention facilities built which housed 20,000 people, but expressed misgivings about the policy, and released some 7,000 internees. After that, he was “detained, stripped of power and prosecuted” in 2017, according to the Times.
Xinjiang has experienced some terrorist attacks, including a massive knife attack at a train station in 2014 in which 31 people were killed and 141 wounded, but the Chinese government has repressed reports about the extent of the attacks, the Times reports.
The main victims of the Chinese crackdown on Muslims in the region are an ethnic group called the Uighurs. An estimated 1 million Uighurs have been detained in re-education camps in Xinjiang in the past three years, as part of a widespread effort by the government to “Sinicize” religion in the country.
Inside the camps they are reportedly subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination. Outside the camps, Uighurs are monitored by pervasive police forces and facial recognition technology.
The Chinese government at one time denied the camps even existed, but has since shifted to defending its actions as a reasonable response to a national security threat.
Government officials from the region said in July that the area’s re-education camps for Muslims have been successful, with most of those held having been reintegrated into Chinese society.
Uighurs can be arrested and detained under vague anti-terrorism laws. Violence in the region escalated in the 1990s and again in 2008.
During a Sept. 23 UN event on religious freedom, US vice president Mike Pence mentioned that “the Communist Party in China has arrested Christian pastors, banned the sale of Bibles, demolished churches, and imprisoned more than a million Uighurs in the Muslim population,” and a fact sheet issued by the White House said the administration “is deeply concerned” for the interned Uighurs.
And the US State Department hosted a panel on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly Sept. 24 to draw attention to the “human rights crisis in Xinjiang,” where partipants heard first-hand accounts of repression of Muslim groups in Xinjiang.
John Sullivan, deputy secretary of state, said at the panel that “The UN must seek the immediate, unhindered, and unmonitored access to Xinjiang for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The United Nations, including its member states, have a responsibility to stand up for the human rights of people everywhere, including Muslims in Xinjiang. We urge the UN to investigate and closely monitor China’s rights abuses, including the repression of religious freedom and belief.”
“We cannot be the only guardians of the truth nor the only members of the international community to call out China and demand that they stop,” Sullivan stated.
Pakistan is among the few Muslim-majority countries to have warned against the escalating persecution of the Uighurs.
The US Commerce Department in October added 28 Chinese organizations to a blacklist barring them from buying products from US companies, saying they cooperate in the detention and repression of the Uighurs.
© Catholic World Report