Sydney, Australia, Mar 19, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- Catholic schools in Australia will remain open after pressure from the federal government and the intervention of the Archbishop of Sydney. The announcement on Wednesday came one day before the Ar… […]
Washington D.C., Mar 19, 2020 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- The lieutenant governor of Washington announced on Thursday that he will not seek re-election and instead will enter the Society of Jesus this autumn.
Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib (D), 38, will end his ei… […]
Vatican City, Mar 19, 2020 / 02:17 pm (CNA).- The prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life on Wednesday encouraged religious to intensify their prayer during the coronavirus outbreak, and to obey requests of religious and civil authorities for health’s sake.
“The most effective testimony we can provide is, in first place, the serene and convinced serenity to what we are requested from those who govern us, both at the state and church level, to everything that is requested to the protection of our health, as private citizens and as communities,” read a March 18 letter to consecrated men and women signed by Joao Cardinal Braz de Aviz and Archbishop José Rodriguez Carballo, the prefect and secretary, respectively, of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
“It is a duty of both charity and gratitude that each one of us, individually and as a community, may intensify constant prayer for all those who are helping us overcome this difficult moment. Authorities, members of government, health professionals at all levels, volunteers, all those who offer their valuable work for this calamity may be object of our prayer and the offering of our sacrifices!”
Cardinal Braz de Aviz noted that we are living this Lent “in a very particular manner,” that “no one could have thought of or imagined, and that really requires each day from each one of us a change in our style and way of living.”
“Normally during Lent we multiply charitable initiatives and intense moments of prayer and meditation to prepare ourselves with a renewed and purified spirit for the Easter celebrations, and in our communities the times of celebration and gathering become also more intense. Nevertheless, this year we are called to live the intense time of faith, always with the same intensity, but in a completely different manner.”
Addressing contemplative communities, he urged them to intensify their prayer “even with greater energy … with the certainty that the Lord will not take longer to listen and in his infinite mercy will push away this grave scourge.”
Those who cannot assist at Mass he urged to “offer up to the Lord with joy” this “great sacrifice,” and to live it “in communion with all those who cannot attend regularly because of the lack of priests.”
“For those who can, please do not stop providing concrete signs of closeness with our people, always in conformity with the norms established by the authorities and in full fidelity to our own charisms.”
The cardinal recalled that “the means at our disposal to eradicate misfortunes and calamities in our highly technologically advanced times are the same that were used by our forefathers” Prayer, sacrifice, penance, fasting, and charity; powerful weapons to obtain from the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus the grace of full healing from such a devastating disease.”
Portsmouth, England, Mar 19, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- The bishop of Portsmouth, England, has encouraged his flock to remain steadfast in prayer during the COVID-19 outbreak, telling Catholics they will remember how they lived this Lent “for many y… […]
For the first time in anyone’s memory, Catholics in the United States last weekend were unable to attend a public celebration of Mass. Members of other religious traditions were similarly prevented from attending services. The […]
Belfast, Northern Ireland, Mar 19, 2020 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- An English Member of Parliament and a US Congressman have joined calls for the British government to repeal the law dealing with abortion provision in Northern Ireland so the local government can legislate on the topic.
John Hayes, the Conservative MP for South Holland and The Deepings, and Chris Smith (R-NJ) have both urged that the region’s abortion laws be referred to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 decriminalized abortion in Northern Ireland and placed a moratorium on abortion-related criminal prosecutions, and obliges the UK government to create legal access to abortion in the region by March 31.
It was passed while the Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended, but the legislature resumed meeting in January.
“Though it is right to celebrate this restoration, we should remain cautious, for the foundations of the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland remain fragile. As the Province is an essential part of the United Kingdom, the UK Government has an ethical, as well as a constitutional obligation to defend and strengthen these foundations. Turning a blind eye to this duty would be a fundamental mistake,” Hayes wrote March 18 at Conservative Home.
“Just weeks ago we were celebrating the DUP and Sinn Fein putting aside differences to restore the assembly. Wouldn’t it be sadly ironic then if the UK Government imposed a policy on Northern Ireland, overriding devolution in the process, that unites the majority of voters from both parties in their hostility to Westminster.”
Hayes continued: “As many aspects of the proposed abortion framework go way beyond what is currently allowed in England and Wales, given the contrary views of the people in Northern Ireland, it seems likely this will be interpreted as the UK Government imposing its will on a reluctant part of the Kingdom which is doubtless disdainfully regarded by Whitehall’s liberal elite as antediluvian.”
Prior to the NI EF Act abortion was legally permitted in the region only if the mother’s life was at risk or if there was risk of long term or permanent, serious damage to her mental or physical health.
The British government held a public consultation on a proposed framework for the legal provision of abortion in Northern Ireland in November and December 2019. It proposed that elective abortions be available up to 12 or 14 weeks gestation.
It also proposed that “the gestational time limit in circumstances where the continuance of the pregnancy would cause risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or girl, or any existing children or her family, greater than the risk of terminating the pregnancy” be either 22 or 24 weeks.
In cases of fetal abnormality, the government proposed that abortion without time limit be available. It also proposed that abortion without time limit be allowed where there is risk to the life of the mother or it is necessary to provent grave permanent injury to her physical or mental health.
Hayes noted that the government’s proposal “went far beyond [the] limited legal requirements” of the NI EF Act.
“Quite why the Northern Ireland office officials chose to go so far beyond what Parliament wanted is a matter of speculation. Some say the Government might be using Northern Ireland as a ‘guinea pig’ to test policies before implementing them in England,” he wrote.
The MP noted that there is not “public demand in Northern Ireland for this greatly expanded abortion framework.”
The region rejected the Abortion Act 1967 that legalized abortion in England, Wales, and Scotland, and bills to legalize abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormality, rape, or incest failed in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2016.
Hayes proposed that “simplest way to stop the UK Government infringing on the devolution settlement is to repeal Section 9,” which would return “full control to the devolved administration.”
He warned that “feeding the feeling that Westminster is using Northern Ireland to test policies before implementing them in England could fuel Irish nationalism.”
“Rather than imposing a policy that is not being applied anywhere else in the Union, we should limit the changes to only those that are legally required, or repeal Section 9 altogether.”
Hayes concluded that “To re-empathise the Government’s commitment to the devolution settlement – the bedrock of the peace agreement in Northern Ireland – the Northern Ireland Office must repeal section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act, or – at the very least – not go beyond what is legally required while abortion is fully devolved to Northern Ireland and the new Assembly’s authority is honoured.”
And Rep. Chris Smith wrote to Brandon Lewis, Secretary of State of Northern Ireland, that “imposing a liberal abortion regime upon Northern Ireland shows a contempt for the Good Friday Agreement’s devolution provisions, and weakens the entire agreement, which is the framework for the fragile peace that Northern Ireland has known.”
Smith’s letter, in which he was joined by Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), was reported in the Belfast Telegraph March 16.
The US Representatives wrote that “imposition of Section 9 — which provides for a far more liberal abortion regime than currently exists in the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom … runs counter to the fundamental democratic principles of self-governance and self-determination.”
They encouraged Lewis to “let Northern Ireland work this issue out through its own representative Assembly”.
“Abortion on demand is not the will of the people in Northern Ireland, and if it were, Northern Ireland has a duly constituted Assembly by which it can balance equities and legislate on the matter,” Smith wrote.
In January, a newly-elected MP for a Northern Irish constituency also urged that section 9 be repealed.
“I want today to make the point to this House, on behalf of the many thousands of people across Northern Ireland who take a pro-life stance, that we want to repeal section 9 with immediate effect and allow for the Northern Ireland Assembly to debate, discuss and evidence-gather on this emotive issue,” Carla Lockhart said Jan. 8 in the House of Commons in Westminster.
Lockhart, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, was elected MP for Upper Bann in the 2019 UK general election.
“It is imperative that I speak on this to attempt again to highlight the anger, disappointment and frustration concerning the change in abortion laws that have been foisted upon the people of Northern Ireland,” Lockhart stated. “These changes came in the most roughshod way, with complete contempt for the devolved Administration and the views of the people of Northern Ireland.”
Lockhart stated: “I want a society in Northern Ireland that values life, and I want to see services that will help women choose life … help us create a culture of choosing life.” She asked for government provision of a perinatal palliative care center, a maternal mental health unit, and better childcare services.
Lockhart responded to the proposed framework saying that “it is incomprehensible that the Government, knowing that abortion was a devolved matter, has published consultation proposals to introduce changes which go far beyond what has actually been required by Parliament.”
The amendment to the NI EF Act obliging the government to provide for legal abortion in Northern Ireland was introduced by Stella Creasy, a Labour MP who represents a London constituency.
In October 2019, the High Court in Belfast had ruled that the region’s ban on the abortion of unborn children with fatal abnormalities violated the UK’s human rights commitments.
Northern Irish women have been able to procure free National Health Service abortions in England, Scotland, and Wales since November 2017.
Vatican City, Mar 19, 2020 / 12:19 pm (CNA).- Due to the coronavirus outbreak, Pope Francis suspended Thursday non-urgent trials in the Vatican City State’s judicial system until after April 3.
The suspension was made at the request of the sosti… […]
Chicago, Ill., Mar 19, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) conceded his primary race on Wednesday, saying that he stood by his pro-life principles even if they led to his defeat.
“There was one issue that loomed especially large in this campaign, the fact that I am pro-life,” Lipinski, a Catholic eight-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, told reporters on Wednesday as primary election results showed him more than 2,400 votes behind his challenger Marie Newman.
“Over the years I’ve watched many other politicians succumb to pressure and change their position on this issue,” he said, noting that his pro-life stance was based upon his Catholic faith and “on science, which shows us that life begins at conception.”
“I could never give up protecting the most vulnerable human beings in the world, simply to win an election,” Lipinski said.
“My faith teaches—and the Democratic Party preaches—that we should serve everyone, especially the most vulnerable,” he said.
“To stand in solidarity with the vulnerable is to become vulnerable. There is no higher calling for anyone. But politicians don’t like to be vulnerable.”
Lipinski, representing Illinois’ third congressional district on Chicago’s south side and suburbs, is recognized as the last reliably pro-life Democrat in the House.
In recent years, he joined Republicans in supporting a “pain-capable” 20-week abortion ban, a bill to mandate care for babies who survive botched abortions, and legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funds.
His opponent, Marie Newman, was backed by national pro-abortion groups who targeted Lipinski’s pro-life record in ads during the primary.
“We ran a good campaign against tremendous headwinds,” Lipinski said on Wednesday, acknowledging his defeat and offering his congratulations to Newman. “As I said during the primary, I’ll support the winner of the primary,” he said.
For the second consecutive election cycles, Lipinski faced an onslaught of opposition from progressive and pro-abortion groups.
Pro-abortion groups such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and EMILY’s List all joined a coalition that invested $1.4 million into the race, targeting him in digital, TV, and mail ads and highlighting his pro-life record.
Even two politically activist nuns from the Sisters of Mercy—Sisters JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy—publicly endorsed Newman in a campaign video. The endorsement was “the most embarrassing, or shameful, moment” in the race, said Joshua Mercer, editor of CatholicVote.org’s “The Loop.”
Lipinski said on Wednesday that he “was pilloried in millions of dollars of TV ads and mailers” on the abortion issue. He had told CNA in January that he had not seen as much support from pro-life groups as he had hoped for.
“The pro-life community doesn’t have as much money as the abortion lobby, for sure,” said Kirsten Day executive director of Democrats for Life in America. Ads from pro-abortion groups also targeted Lipinski for opposing health care, immigration, and the minimum wage, even where he had voted reliably Democrat on an issue. “There was no counter to that,” Day said.
Lipinski’s seat was a symbolical for the abortion industry, Mercer said, and groups like NARAL understood that.
“It’s very few times when abortion legislation in the House would rise or fall on one vote. The abortion industry understood how frustrating it was to their cause to have someone who was a very reliable Democrat say ‘no, I’m pro-life,’” Mercer said.
“They saw him as undermining their cause, and they saw the value in spending millions of dollars to defeat him.”
Some progressive Democratic members of Congress, including freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), officially endorsed Newman.
Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) made headlines in 2019 for backing out of a DCCC fundraiser to support Lipinski after she endured backlash from abortion supporters in the party. On Wednesday, she congratulated Newman on her victory and thanked Lipinski for his service.
Lipinski on Wednesday said that he “was shunned by many of my colleagues and other Democratic Party members and operators. I was shunned because of my pro-life stance.”
“The pressure in the Democratic Party on the life issue has never been as great as it is now,” he said.
Democratic leadership in the House and senators from Illinois “did very little” to back the eight-term incumbent, even as other Democratic members were endorsing Newman, said Day.
Lipinski voted often with his party, so “to receive this kind of treatment over his support for human life, it just is a bad direction for the party,” she said.
Some party leaders, such as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), have said that there is still room in the party for pro-life Democrats like Lipinski. Endorsements of his colleagues in Congress, however, never materialized as they did for Newman.
“They want the votes of Catholic voters,” Mercer said of Democratic Party leaders. “They don’t want the voices.”
In the wake of Lipinski’s defeat, political commentators said that the Democratic Party’s abortion extremism will come back to haunt them in the general election. Presidential candidates have endorsed abortion-on-demand even until birth, and all the candidates support taxpayer-funded abortions.
Day said that pro-life Democrats need to turn their attention to the general election and the party’s platform, which will be adopted at the 2020 convention in Milwaukee later this summer.
The 2016 DNC platform called for taxpayer funding of abortions in the U.S. and overseas, a significant shift on the issue. Day said that the platform contributed to the party’s extremist shift in favor of abortion, including efforts to unseat Lipinski.
Based on her conversations with moderate Democratic, independent, and Republican voters in Lipinski’s district, Day said the party’s abortion “extremism” had already convinced some of them to stay home on Tuesday rather than vote in the party’s primary.
“If the Democratic Party thinks that they’re going to do well in November with [Joe] Biden, who has really apologized for opposing taxpayer funding of abortion—if they think they’re going to get these independents to cross over and vote for Biden, I think that they’re going to be surprised,” Day said.
Biden, she said, needs to make “concessions” on the issue and there must be “drastic change to the [party] platform.”
Political strategist Jacob Lupfer said the pro-life movement could have done far more to save Lipinski.
“It is strategically insane for the party to move in this extreme direction,” Lupfer said.
While Students for Life volunteers canvassed for Lipinski in the closing days of the race, he noted, “the institutional pro-life movement did not make significant investments in this race commensurate with its wealth and power. The big pro-choice groups did.”
Mercer, however, questioned the lack of support Lipinski received from the “Catholic Left,” some of whom support presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who also endorsed Newman last year.
“It makes you wonder about what’s going on with the Catholic Left, that stuff like this happens,” Mercer said of pro-labor Lipinski’s defeat by the more liberal Newman who advocated for policies such as Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal.
“These are two Democrats. It’s like, what kind of Democratic Party do you want? Do you want it to be a cheerleader for the abortion industry? Then that’s Marie Newman. Or do you want the Democratic Party to say ‘we can be pro-labor, pro-environment, and still be pro-life’? That’s Dan Lipinski,” Mercer said.
Pro-lifers also need to recruit candidates from a more demographically diverse field, Lupfer said, noting that “it doesn’t look good for the movement when all the pro-life Democrats in Congress are moderate white men.”
The movement needs to be bipartisan to succeed on the national level, he said, and this means going on offense and running candidates in primaries in moderate and swing districts, targeting vulnerable incumbents.
Pro-lifers should “do what AOC did, but do it in reverse,” he said, referring to the unexpected success of young Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who ousted a Democratic incumbent in a 2018 primary.
“They need to go in and recruit black church leaders to run for Congress. Or go find Hispanic moms in state legislatures who are pro-life Democrats,” Lupfer said. “Go around the country and get 30 or 40 of these candidates and run them in Democratic congressional primaries against complacent, entrenched, or corrupt incumbents.”
Lipinski was one of the last remaining pro-life Democrats because he stood fast by his principles, Mercer said.
“It’s easy to get disappointed by politicians, and the enormous pressures that politicians face between voters and institutional party,” he said.
“Dan Lipinski was somebody who stood strong on the principle of defending the unborn, and was willing to pay whatever political price for it. And that’s a tremendous amount of courage.”
Auckland, New Zealand, Mar 19, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- New Zealand’s bishops have sharply criticized a new abortion bill passed by the country’s legislature on Wednesday.
New Zealand’s House of Representatives passed the Abortion Legislation Bill on March 18, legalizing abortion throughout the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.
“There is no longer any recognition of the rights of the unborn child in this new law,” Cynthia Piper said on behalf of the Catholic bishops of New Zealand’s six dioceses.
“That is a travesty of human rights. To hold that the fetus is not a legal person ignores the reality that a genetically unique human life has begun which is neither that of the mother or the father,” Piper said.
“That the law fails to recognise this does not change what is a biological and human fact.”
The bill passed the legislature on its third reading by a vote of 68 to 51, and now only needs royal assent—the approval of the governor-general—to officially become law.
Abortion had previously been illegal in New Zealand except in cases where two doctors decided that a woman’s physical or mental health would be in “serious danger.” After 20 weeks in pregnancy, abortions were only allowed in cases where the mother’s life was at stake, or to prevent serious injury, according to Radio New Zealand.
The new bill removes legal restrictions on abortion before 20 weeks of pregnancy, decriminalizing it and treating it as a health issue.
The legislation also allows for abortions after 20 weeks, under certain circumstances. The bishops’ conference had previously argued these circumstances would “significantly widen” cases of abortion on basis of the child’s disability.
For cases later than 20 weeks in pregnancy, a “qualified health practitioner” must consult another practitioner, and deem an abortion to be “clinically appropriate” given the physical and mental health of the woman.
The bishops’ conference also said that “a host of sensible amendments” were rejected by members of the legislature, including protections for babies who survive abortion attempts and bans on sex-selection and disability discrimination abortions.
In Behold the Pierced One (pp.97-98), Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) wrote: “When Augustine sensed his death approaching, he ‘excommunicated’ himself and undertook public penance. In his last days he manifested his solidarity with the public […]
© Catholic World Report