Month: March 2020

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News Briefs

NY bishops worry state would go up in smoke after marijuana legalization

March 25, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

CNA Staff, Mar 25, 2020 / 02:17 pm (CNA).- The New York State Catholic Conference on Monday indicated its opposition to a bill that would legalize the sale and use of recreational marijuana.

“New York’s medical, education and law enforcement communities have urged the state to reject recreational marijuana legalization, and so does the New York State Catholic Conference,” the conference said in a March 23 memo.

The Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act is currently in committee, and has been supported by Gov. Andrew Cuomo as part of his proposed budget. The governor has said it would generate $300 million in tax revenue.

“There are many policy issues that I laid out back in January and we’re going to pursue all of them,” he said, according to The Post-Star.

Medical marijuana has been legal in New York since 2014.

The Catholic conference noted that the state is now “in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic, and said that “it would be the height of irresponsibility for the state to legalize a substance designed to be inhaled deeply into the lungs of the user at this time in particular.”

“Science has not told us yet the impact of marijuana smoke on coronavirus patients. Our health care system is poised to be flooded with patients; we must not take any action that could potentially increase bad outcomes for those who are sick.”

The conference also pointed out that coronavirus has led to the closure of the capitol to visitors.

“To pass controversial legislation on major social issues at such a time when public hearings cannot be held and advocates cannot make their case would give the impression that the voice of opposition has been silenced,” it said. “This is too important an issue for government officials to determine in the absence of full and open debate.”

The memo referred also to the arguments in its 2019 statement opposing plans to legalize recreational marijuana.

At that time, the bishops said egalization would be disastrous, and accused the state of “encouraging destructive behavior” to raise tax revenue.

Legalizing marijuana for recreational use would be akin to opening a “Pandora’s Box that will have multiple deleterious effects on individuals, families, and all of society,” said the statement.

“Vice is not an appropriate economic development engine for a state that prides itself as a national progressive leader,” said the bishops. “Our state motto is Excelsior (ever upward), but policies that exploit addiction instead lead us ever downward.”

The bishops said that no increase in state revenue would be worth the “increased teenage and childhood usage, harmful effects on developing brains, addiction, natural progression to harder drug use, increased impairment-related transportation accidents and deaths, and other potential public health and safety issues.”

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News Briefs

Senate passes coronavirus economic rescue bill

March 25, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Washington D.C., Mar 25, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- The Senate reached a bipartisan agreement early Wednesday morning on a rescue package for the U.S. economy as part of the government response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (… […]

The Dispatch

“Wittenberg” in synodal slow motion

March 25, 2020 George Weigel 12

As Yale’s Carlos Eire masterfully demonstrated in Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650, there was no one “Protestant Reformation” but rather several religious movements, often in disagreement with each other, that shattered western Christendom in […]

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News Briefs

Bishop Steven Raica to follow Bishop Baker as head of Birmingham diocese

March 25, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Mar 25, 2020 / 06:56 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Wednesday accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Baker of Birmingham, Alabama, nominating Bishop Steven J. Raica of the diocese of Gaylord, Michigan, as his successor.

Baker, 75, has been a bishop for 20 years. He headed the Diocese of Birmingham since 2007. The pope has appointed Baker apostolic administrator of the diocese until Raica’s installation.

Raica’s Mass of installation will be held June 23 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Birmingham, according to the diocese.

The Diocese of Birmingham covers more than 28,000 square miles of Alabama and serves over 104,000 Catholics.

In a statement March 25, Baker promised his prayers for Bishop Raica and pledged collaboration and support.

The 67-year-old Raica, a Michigan native, has been bishop of Gaylord since August 2014.

He has experience working in deaf ministry and is fluent in American Sign Language. He can also speak Italian and Polish conversationally.

Born in 1952 in Munising, Raica was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Lansing in 1978. In 1998, St. Pope John Paul II named him a prelate of honor.

As a priest, Raica served in various parishes in Burton, Flint, Ovid, Charlotte and Bellevue. He served as co-rector of Lansing’s St. Mary Cathedral and chaplain of Olivet College in Olivet.

He was also superior of Casa Santa Maria, the North American College’s graduate studies house in Rome. He served as spiritual director and adjunct faculty at the college from 1999-2005.

From 2007-2009, he was vice postulator of the sainthood cause of Servant of God Antonietta Meo, a devout Italian girl who died of cancer at the age of six in 1937.

Raica is also a music lover with an affinity for classical, jazz, classical organ, and choral music. He enjoys reading, cooking, travel and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, according to the Diocese of Gaylord in 2014.

The bishop holds both a licentiate and a doctorate in canon law from the Gregorian University in Rome.

He wrote his doctorate on Canon 1529 of the code of canon law, which concerns a judge’s role in collecting evidence in canonical trials.

As a priest, he served on the Lansing diocese’s tribunal as a pro-synodal judge, the promoter of justice, and a tribunal judge.

 

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No Picture
News Briefs

Pope Francis: The Church’s pro-life message is more relevant than ever

March 25, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Mar 25, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that the Church’s pro-life message is more relevant than ever as the world faces the coronavirus pandemic.

“The attacks on the dignity and life of people unfortunately continue even in our era … We are faced with new threats and new slavery, and legislation is not always to protect the weakest and most vulnerable human life,” Pope Francis said March 25.

“The message of the encyclical Evangelium Vitae is therefore more relevant than ever,” the pope said in his livestreamed Wednesday audience.

This year’s Solemnity of the Annunciation marks the 25th anniversary of the encyclical Evangelium Vitae promulgated by St. John Paul II on the value and inviolability of human life.

Pope Francis said that the coronavirus pandemic makes the encyclical’s message on the defense of all human life more urgent.

“Today, we find ourselves relaunching this teaching in the context of a pandemic that threatens human life and the world economy. A situation that makes the words with which the encyclical begins even more demanding,” the pope said.

Pope Francis then quoted the first line of the 1995 encyclical: “The Gospel of life is at the heart of Jesus’ message. Welcomed by the Church every day with love, it must be announced with courageous fidelity as good news to men of all ages and cultures.”

Pope Francis said: “The life we ​​are called to promote and defend is not an abstract concept, but always manifests itself in a person in flesh and blood: a newly conceived child, a poor marginalized person, a sick person alone and discouraged or in a terminal state, one who has lost his job or is unable to find it, a rejected or ghettoized migrant.”

The pope explained that the Catholic Church has a particular responsibility to ensure the protection of every individual human life, which in itself is unrepeatable and of inestimable value.

“The defense of life for the Church is not an ideology,” he said. “Every human being is called by God to enjoy the fullness of life; and being entrusted to the maternal concern of the Church, every threat to dignity and human life cannot fail to affect its heart.”

“Beyond emergencies, such as the one we are experiencing, it is a question of acting on a cultural and educational level to transmit to future generations the attitude of solidarity,” he said.

In his televised Wednesday audience delivered from the library of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis praised the “silent testimony” of many people who are witnesses to this “Gospel of Life” by serving the sick, the elderly, and those who are lonely and poor.

He said that their lives mirror the example given by the Blessed Virgin Mary, who went in haste to help her cousin Elizabeth after the Annunciation.

“Dear brothers and sisters, every human life, unique and unrepeatable, valid in itself, constitutes an inestimable value. This must always be announced again, with the courage of the word and the courage of actions,” the pope said.

“Therefore, with St. John Paul II, who wrote this encyclical, with him I reaffirm with renewed conviction the appeal he made to all twenty-five years ago: ‘Respect, defend, love and serve life, every life, every human life! Only on this path will you find justice, development, freedom, peace and happiness,’” Pope Francis said.

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