Most anti-Brexit polemic is so inane, banal and stultifyingly dull that it hardly warrants the time and effort of a response. Occasionally, however, we come across a piece of rhetoric which is clever and imaginative […]
Washington D.C., Feb 7, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg emphasized this week his position that abortion should be legally permitted at any point in a pregnancy.
Placing any limits on abortion “shoul… […]
Fort Worth, Texas, Feb 7, 2020 / 11:16 am (CNA).- An appeals court heard arguments Tuesday regarding the medical treatment of a terminally ill child in Fort Worth, and whether a law regarding the dispute resolution process is constitutional.
Tinslee Lewis was born prematurely Feb. 1, 2019, and has since been in the cardiac intensive care unit at Cook Children’s Medical Center.
Physicians at the hospital believe life-sustaining treatment for Lewis is medically inappropriate, a decision affirmed by an ethics committee. Lewis’ mother, Trinity, wants treatment to continue, and has gone to court to prevent the life-sustaining treatment from being withdrawn.
The Texas Advance Directives Act allows physicians and health care facilities to withdraw life-sustaining treatment considered medically inappropriate after 10 days.
The Second Court of Appeals of Texas heard arguments in the case Feb. 4. It is unknown when it will rule in the case, and it has ordered that medical treatment for Lewis be continued until it does so.
Joe Nixon, the attorney for the Lewises, said TADA grants “medical paternity over autonomy,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins argued that TADA should be halted.
Cook Children’s attorney, Amy Warr, argued that doctors may decline to provide care if it “causes suffering without medical benefit,” citing conscience rights.
The case has divided the pro-life community in Texas.
Dr. Joe Pojman, Texas Alliance for Life’s executive director, said ahead of the hearing that “We believe the dispute resolution process in Texas law is both good public policy and is constitutional.”
He added that “the Texas law is among the best in the nation. It balances patients’ rights to make end of life decisions with the rights of physicians to not indefinitely order painful, medically inappropriate interventions to terminally ill patients that only prolong their deaths with no proportional benefit.”
Texas Alliance for Life, along with the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and several other pro-life groups, disability advocates, and medical groups, filed an amici curiae brief Jan. 29 supporting TADA.
The brief said TADA has given physicians and families “a structure for having difficult end-of-life conversations—and for reaching a resolution if the families and treating physician do not ultimately agree.”
“A medical intervention that could further prolong life can also, directly or indirectly, inflict significant suffering without proportionate benefit to the patient. A physician might conclude that making further interventions on a patient near the end of life, in a medical situation with no meaningful prospect for cure or recovery, would inflict only harm on the patient—violating one of the oldest and most deeply held principles of medical ethics. Medical providers in that position face not only an ethical dilemma but also feel moral distress over being the instrument used to inflict that non-beneficial suffering on a patient.”
The amici curiae brief called TADA a “carefully balanced statute” that should be upheld by the appellate court.
It added that striking down TADA would constitute judicial activism, stating that “disagreements about a policy decision made by the Legislature, however deeply felt, do not state a constitutional claim.”
In explaining its interest in the case, the Texas bishops’ conference said it rejects “medical decision-making based on flawed “quality-of-life” arguments which are often used to falsely justify euthanasia. “The bishops have consistently supported the truth that decisions regarding treatment should be made through this lens of the inherent sanctity of all human life while recognizing that underlying medical conditions can have an impact on the effectiveness or appropriateness of certain medical interventions.”
“They believe that treatment decisions should be based on whether or not the expected benefit of the treatment outweighs the burden to the patient. Some may claim that this is a quality of life decision, or one that allows discrimination, but they are wrong—it is an assessment of the quality or effectiveness of the treatment or intervention, not the quality of life for the patient.”
The Texas bishops’ conference said it supports “continued legislative improvements” to TADA, “particularly those that safeguard against any discrimination in providing necessary and effective life-sustaining treatment,” but it “generally supports” the law’s framework “as a balanced dispute resolution process that respects both patient dignity and healthcare provider conscience.”
Trinity Lewis is being supported by Texas Right to Life, which has said that “the 10-Day Rule has robbed countless patients of their Right to Life and right to due process.”
Texas Home School Coalition is also supporting Trinity, in light of its concern for parental rights. In an amicus curiae brief of Jan. 27, it argued that “in permitting an ethics committee” to substitute their decisions regarding Tinslee’s best interest for Trinity’s decisions,” TADA “violates the substantive due process rights of [Trinity] and potentially all parents seeking medical care for their children.”
The home school group charged that “the quality of one’s life is so personal that the decision must belong to the one living it or the person designated to make that decision. The doctors believe that pain and suffering without a medical probability of recovery is immoral. Mother believes that God still has a plan. The state cannot determine whose beliefs are superior.”
Its amicus brief asked, “How can the state possibly have a compelling state interest in ending the life of a child for no other reason than the doctor no longer wishes to provide care for her?” It also characterized TADA as having “no limitations on the reason for the doctor refusing to honor the patient’s directive,” saying it “is so vague that a doctor could decide not to continue providing services for any reasons, such as the color of the patient’s skin or the religious beliefs of the patient.”
The state of Texas also filed an amicus curiae brief in the case Jan. 17 asking that the court declare TADA unconstitutional, arguing the statute “allows the government to deny an individual his or her life, and it does so without constitutionally sufficient process.”
It characterized the statute’s dispute resolution process as denying patients and their proxies “sufficient notice and opportunity to be heard,” as well as “a neutral arbiter to decide their fate.”
TADA includes a ’10-day rule’ that says when the attending physician has decided and an ethics or medical committee has affirmed that a life-sustaining treatment is medically inappropriate, but the patient or their responsible continues to request the treatment, the attending physician and the health care facility are not obligated to provide life-sustaining treatment after the 10th day after the decision is provided to the patient or their responsible.
The rule says the physician is to make a reasonable effort to transfer the patient in such a case to a physician who is willing to comply with the directive.
TADA was adopted in 1999, without a dissenting vote. It passed the Senate unanimously, and the House on a voice vote. It was amended in 2003 and 2015. The 2015 amendment, which removed artificial nutrition and hydration from its scope, was adopted unanimously in the House, and by a voice vote in the Senate.
Joe Nixon, who is representing the Lewises, was a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1995 to 2007.
Tinslee Lewis has Ebstein’s anomaly, a congenital heart defect; chronic lung disease; and severe chronic high blood pressure, according to the AP. She has been on a ventilator since July, and also requires cardiac support, painkillers, sedation, and medical paralysis. She currently has severe sepsis.
The hospital said that Lewis’ healthcare providers agreed by August that continued care was futile, and had begun discussing with her family the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment by September. The hospital’s ethics committee decided unanimously Oct. 30 that further treatment was medically inappropriate.
The hospital intended to stop Lewis’ treatment Nov. 10, after disagreeing with the decision of her mother regarding her treatment.
At a December hearing, judge Sandee Bryan Marion said she would allow more time for an alternative facility to be found for Lewis’ care. Cook Children’s said at that time that it would take no action to withdraw life sustaining treatment from Lewis for seven days from the court’s decision, to allow plaintiffs to file a notice of appeal and a motion for emergency relief with an appeals court.
Dr. Jay Duncan, a physician attending Lewis, said at the hearing that until July, there had been hope she might be able to go home, but it became clear that surgical and clinical options had been exhausted and her treatment was no longer beneficial.
A judge acting for the Tarrant County district court ruled Jan. 2 that indefinite medical interventions for Lewis could be stopped, in accord with the Texas Advance Directives Act, but Lewis was granted emergency relief the following day by the appeals court.
Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth has offered to assist Lewis’ family “in seeking compassionate and appropriate care for her in a Catholic health care facility.”
Cook Children’s has said it has contacted “more than 20, well-respected healthcare facilities and specialists over the course of several months, but even the highest level of medical expertise cannot correct conditions as severe as Tinslee’s.”
Disagreement over end-of-life reform is among the three criteria on the basis of which the Texas bishops’ conference urged parishes in March 2018 not to participate in the activities of Texas Right to Life.
The bishops said they “have been compelled to publicly correct Texas Right to Life’s misstatements on end-of-life care and advance directives, in which Texas Right to Life implied that the legislation the bishops were supporting allowed euthanasia and death panels rather than the reality that the legislation reflected the long-standing Church teaching requiring a balance of patient autonomy and the physician conscience protection.”
Vatican City, Feb 7, 2020 / 10:51 am (CNA).- Six Catholic patriarchs from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq met with Pope Francis at the Vatican Friday to discuss the difficulties faced by Christians in the region and their mass emigration.
In the morni… […]
Vatican City, Feb 7, 2020 / 05:46 am (CNA).- Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the Amazon region will be published Feb. 12, the Vatican announced Friday. The document, which follows October’s Synod of Bishops on […]
Vatican City, Feb 6, 2020 / 08:51 pm (CNA).- During its general chapter meeting in Rome, the Legionaries of Christ religious order has elected a new superior general to lead the embattled religious congregation.
Fr. John Connor, LC, has been the North American territorial director of the Legionaries of Christ since 2014. He will serve a six-year term as superior general of the religious order of priests.
Connor’s election comes during a time of widespread public criticism of the Legionaries of Christ, which reported in December 2019 that since its founding in 1941, 33 priests of the Legionaries of Christ have been found to have committed sexual abuse of minors, victimizing 175 children, according to the 2019 report.
The order was founded by Mexican-born Fr. Marcial Maciel, who himself abused at least 60 minors, according to the order, and is accused of using the religious congregation he founded to provide him access to abuse victims, and funding to support mistresses, children he fathered, and an alleged drug habit.
In 2006 the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, removed Maciel from public ministry and ordered him to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance. The Vatican congregation decided not to subject him to a canonical process because of his advanced age. Maciel died in 2008.
In 2009, Benedict ordered an apostolic visitation, or worldwide administrative review, of the religious institute, and then placed it under direct Vatican oversight. Benedict ordered the congregation to develop and implement new governing documents and policies, after Church officials found substantial problems in the Legion’s formation and governance structures.
Pope Francis has continued pushing for reforms to the religious order.
The general chapter now taking place in Rome, and consisting of representatives of the order from its nine territories, is tasked with electing new leadership, and discussing how to address the ongoing controversy surrounding the religious order.
While the chapter is taking place, some have called for the Vatican to suppress the group, but Pope Francis has given no indication he plans to do so.
In Mexico and elsewhere, some victims of abuse perpetrated by members of the order have said the reforming the group is impossible without a wholesale change in leadership.
Some critics have suggested that reforms are mostly a kind of window-dressing, and some have questioned whether the order has a legitimate charism – a term used to describe the spirituality at the heart of a religious order’s identity.
Connor was ordained a priest in 2001. He worked in fundraising for the order, oversaw its Regnum Christi lay apostolate in New York, and served in other leadership positions.
In 2014, Connor told reporter John Allen that within the religious order were “men who are very capable of governing who weren’t associated with the founder.”
“For me, nonassociation with the founder is a very important issue,” Connor added, while emphasizing his hope that the order would commit to greater transparency.
Connor has faced criticism for his handling of misconduct allegations against a priest in the Legion, Fr. Michael Sullivan. In 2017 Sullivan was accused of “showing affection and favoritism” toward two young women; in one case the behavior was alleged to have begun when the woman was a high-school student, according to a 2019 letter from Connor.
Sullivan, who said he had not crossed “emotional or physical boundaries with any minors,” was sent for a psychological assessment and then continued in ministry. In late 2019, “another person came forward indicating that Fr. Sullivan crossed over the emotional and physical boundaries of a pastoral relationship with her and others,” the Legion said.
Sullivan was subsequently removed from ministry and admitted to some forms of sexual misconduct with adults, which “mainly affected young women.”
Once Sullivan was removed from ministry, a spokesperson for the Legionaries of Christ said that the priest should have been subject to restrictions on his ministry.
In December 2019, the spokesperson told KBTX that while the order does not believe Sullivan broke any laws, “in hindsight, we now understand that additional restrictions should have been placed on Fr. Sullivan prior to returning to ministry” in 2017.
The spokesperson added that “Fr. Connor has been meeting with those most closely affected, including the women who have come forward with claims in 2017 and most recently.”
In a 2018 letter to Legionaries and Regnum Christi members, Connor reflected on the scandal that has plagued his religious community.
“Over these last years of our renewal, I have been moved often in prayer by the fact that the Risen Jesus kept his wounds. You would think that a glorified body would be perfect and unmarred. But Jesus kept his wounds. There is a lesson in this for all of us,” the priest wrote.
“In the Legion’s 2014 General Chapter we had conversations about whether or not to change our congregation’s name: to definitively put our past history behind us and get a fresh start with a new name. Many were shocked the Legion did not change its name and formally separate itself from her scarred and wounded history. At the time I kept thinking, I am proud to be a Legionary; we cannot forget our history. The wounds we suffered in the past – as well as those we inflicted – are part of us. They are part of our story.”
Connor added that “as your territorial director, I have a tremendous desire for this gift of merciful healing for our entire spiritual family, extending also to those who no longer participate in it. I desire this healing because I know that wounds exist. Most hurts were not intended, but resulted from human weakness combined with imbalances in our past ways of thinking and operating from which our Lord continues to purify us.”
“I want to express my own sorrow for hurts I may have caused. I know that in the past I have been convinced of my own opinions and the direction I wanted to go and have often not stopped to listen to others, take their opinions to heart, or communicate the reasons why I make certain decisions,” he added in that letter.
There are fewer than 1,000 priests in the Legionaries of Christ, and the religious order runs schools in South and North America, and in Europe.
The second National Conservatism conference concluded in Rome on February 4, and the day will surely become an important one for the resurgence of right-wing political thought. Politicians, from Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban to […]
Santiago, Chile, Feb 6, 2020 / 06:18 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis on Wednesday appointed bishops to the dioceses of Osorno and San Bartolomé de Chillán, both of which had been left vacant in 2018 amid the sex abuse scandal of the Church in Chile.
On Feb. 5 Bishop Jorge Enrique Concha Cayuqueo, O.F.M., was named Bishop of Osorno, and Father Sergio Hernán Pérez de Arce Arriagada, SS.CC., was named Bishop of San Bartolomé de Chillán. Both had been serving as apostolic administrators of their new respective sees.
The chanceries of both Osorno and Chillán had been raided in September 2018 amid an investigation into sexual crimes against minors committed by members of the Church.
The Diocese of Osorno had been vacant since the June 2018 resignation of Bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid, who had been accused of covering up abuses of Father Fernando Karadima.
And the Diocese of San Bartolomé de Chillán fell vacant in September 2018 with the resignation of Bishop Carlos Eduardo Pellegrín Barrera, S.V.D., who had been accused of a sexual crime.
Six Chilean sees remain vacant.
Bishop Concha was born in 1958, and took solemn vows in the Order of Friars Minor in 1983, and was ordained a priest in 1986. He was appointed an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile in 2015.
During Bishop Concha’s tenure as apostolic administrator of Osorno, he worked for reconciliation and renewal in the diocese and for improved relations with the faithful.
He said that he understood this job as “the search for peace, for unity, for rapprochement among all. I initiated dialogue, listened to a lot of people, visited all the communities, was always open for them to ask questions and made myself available to people. ”
Bishop Concha also reorganized pastoral and social ministries, optimizing economic and human resources.
Fr. Perez was born in 1963, and made perpetual vows with the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 1989; he was ordained a priest the following year.
Beside working in formation and counseling at schools and in youth ministry in various assignments, Fr. Pérez de Arce was the provincial superior of his congregation from 2005 to 2011. He served as president of the Conference of Religious Men and Women of Chile from 2011 to 2014. During the same period, he was a member of the National Council for the Prevention of Abuse and Accompaniment of Victims of the Chilean bishops’ conference.
The abuse committed by Karadima became the focus of attention in Chile after the 2015 appointment of Bishop Barros to Osorno. Barros had been accused of covering up Karadima’s abuses.
Pope Francis initially defended Barros, saying he had received no evidence of the bishop’s guilt, and called accusations against him “calumny” during a trip to Chile in January 2018. He later sent Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to investigate the situation in Chile.
After receiving Scicluna’s report, the pope apologized, said that he had been seriously mistaken, and asked to meet the country’s bishops and some survivors in person.
In May 2018 he met with Chile’s bishops and asked all of them to offer their resignations, to be accepted or rejected later. He rebuked them for systemic cover-up of clerical abuse and called them to make deep changes.
Chilean officials have investigated 120 allegations of sexual abuse or cover-ups involving 167 Church officials or church workers, Reuters has reported.
Now that the presidential election nears, many of us in the Catholic world are pondering how Catholic interests will make themselves heard in the contest. Yet in pondering these matters, many Catholics are coming to […]
Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- A new International Religious Freedom Alliance with 27 member states was announced on Wednesday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo said that the alliance would include “like-minded partners … […]
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