Month: January 2021

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News Briefs

Mexican bakers replace Christ child with Baby Yoda in king cake for Epiphany

January 6, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Mexico City, Mexico, Jan 6, 2021 / 03:11 pm (CNA).- Several bakeries in Mexico decided to replace the Christ child with Baby Yoda in king cakes for Epiphany, causing controversy.

King cake, or rosca de reyes, is a crown-shaped sweet bread traditionally eaten in Mexico and other countries on Epiphany.

Inside the bread a small figurine of the Christ child is placed, which some businesses have replaced with a figurine of “Grogu,” also known as “Baby Yoda”.

In a video shared with CNA’s sister agency, ACI Prensa, Father José de Jesús Aguilar, deputy director of Radio and Television of the Archdiocese of Mexico, recalled that the tradition of “hiding” the Christ child in the king cake “reminds us that the Christ Child was hidden from Herod’s sight so that he could not murder him.”

“For this reason it is customary to find the hidden figurine of the Child Jesus and it can only be found by those who have a good heart and who want to follow the light that the Magi followed,” he explained.

“I respect all the opportunities, all the creativity that merchants and pastry chefs can have, but I would say that this could be used at another time, such as for Children’s Day or birthdays,” he observed.
“Catholics, Christians, should continue to value this tradition, because if not, after a while what seems important is not meeting the Christ child, the child Jesus, remembering and appreciating the story of the Gospel, but simply having fun, eating the bread and finding your favorite character within it,” he said.

For this reason, continued Fr. Aguilar, “I invite you to value, take care of and continue with this tradition that the Child Jesus appears within the Three Kings Bread.”
Father Luis Fernando Valdés, doctor in theology at the University of Navarra, expressed that he was “convinced that the people who put Baby Yoda in the Three Kings Bread do not do it with malice or with the intention to bother Catholics.”
What is more noticeable, he pointed out, is that people “no longer identify the Christian sign, which is that we celebrate the child who appears on Epiphany, that is, it is God who becomes visible in Jesus and that is what the Magi, who were not Jewish, discover.”

“When this Catholic, religious context is not in view but only the gastronomic tradition then it sounds even nice to put a baby Jesus or a Yoda or a ‘something’, because the religious element is no longer being taken into account but only the element of surprise and culinary tradition,” he said.
Business decisions like this one, he continued, are “an invitation to the apostolate or for ourselves to rediscover the signs and help others to discover them” and are “an occasion for good catechesis.”
Father Mario Arroyo, doctor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, said that when faced with this type of business decision, “the truth is that you no longer know whether to laugh or cry.”
“I don’t think that it is something against Christianity or something against faith, or that it is not done with the intention of persecuting religion. It is simply a symptom of the degree of secularization of society, we are returning to a new paganism,” he said.
“It is an opportunity to take responsibility: just as the first Christians had to evangelize a pagan world, now Christians today have the wonderful task of launching ourselves confidently into the evangelization of a neo-pagan world,” he said.


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The Dispatch

Catholic coherence, Catholic integrity

January 6, 2021 George Weigel 11

In 2007, the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean completed their fifth general conference with a final report, known from the Brazilian city where they met as the “Aparecida Document.”  Its principal authors included […]

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News Briefs

The College of Cardinals in 2021: Who could vote in a future papal conclave

January 6, 2021 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Jan 6, 2021 / 03:01 am (CNA).- As of the first month of 2021, the College of Cardinals is composed of 229 members, 128 of whom are under the age of 80, and therefore eligible to vote for the next pope in a future conclave.

It was St. Paul VI who established, on Nov. 20, 1970, that cardinals aged 80 and over could not participate in the process for electing a pope.

Paul VI wrote in his motu proprio Ingravescentem aetatem that “the higher good of the Church demands that we consider the problem of old age also in relation to the eminent office of Cardinals, for which we have shown special concern several times in the past.”

The office of cardinal “is indeed a matter of an office with particularly serious and delicate tasks,” the pope stated, “both because of the very singular connection which binds it to Our supreme responsibility at the service of the whole Church, and because of the high responsibility it entails in the vacancy of the Apostolic See with respect to the universal Church.”

Paul VI declared that after reaching the age of 80, a cardinal loses the right to elect the Roman Pontiff and, therefore, the right to take part in the conclave.

In 2021, six cardinals of the Catholic Church will lose this privilege: three from Africa, two from Europe, and one from Oceania. Four of the six were given the red hat by St. John Paul II in his last two consistories, in 2001 and 2003.

The first cardinal to turn 80 years old in the course of the year — on Feb. 27 — will be Gabriel Zubeir Wako, archbishop emeritus of Khartoum. He was made cardinal by St. Pope John Paul II in 2003.

On March 8, Cardinal Wilfried Fox Napier of Durban, will lose the right to vote in a future conclave. He was also made a cardinal by John Paul II.

Also made a cardinal in 2003, Cardinal George Pell, former prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, will turn 80 June 8.

On July 19, Cardinal Maurice Piat of Port Louis will have his 80th birthday. He was given the red hat by Pope Francis in the November 2016 consistory.

Cardinal Beniamino Stella, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, will reach age 80 Aug. 18. He received the red biretta from Pope Francis’ first consistory, held in February 2014.

The last cardinal to turn 80 in 2021 will be Angelo Scola, archbishop emeritus of Milan. St. John Paul II made him cardinal in the 2003 consistory, when Scola was patriarch of Venice.

The continental breakdown of the College of Cardinals is that 108 hail from Europe, 54 of whom are electors. There are 16 North American cardinals eligible to vote, out of a total 26. There are nine cardinals from Central America, of whom seven are electors. South America has 25 cardinals, 14 of whom have voting rights. Asia is represented by 27 cardinals, of which 16 are under age 80. There are 28 African cardinals, 17 of whom are electors. Oceania has four cardinal electors and two non-electors.

 

Hannah Brockhaus contributed to this report.


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No Picture
News Briefs

As LA County limits emergency care amid COVID surge, ethicists weigh in

January 5, 2021 CNA Daily News 1

Washington D.C., Jan 6, 2021 / 12:25 am (CNA).- Los Angeles County has announced it is limiting non-COVID emergency care, due to hospitals having reached a “point of crisis” during the pandemic, promoting ethicists to discuss whether the act is justified.

On Monday, the Emergency Medical Services Agency for Los Angeles County issued two directives limiting emergency care during the pandemic, because of a spike in COVID hospitalizations.

One directive stated that emergency medical personnel should not transport patients who suffered cardiac arrest to the hospital, if they could not be revived in the field. The directive was given “due to the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on EMS and 9-1-1 receiving hospitals.”

Another directive stated that supplemental oxygen should only be given to patients with less than 90% oxygen saturation due to “the acute need to conserve oxygen.”

The actions were taken as the number of COVID hospitalizations is expected to spike after the Christmas holiday season, according to the Los Angeles Times.

One medical ethicist told CNA that the county had to make a difficult decision in extraordinary circumstances.

“I think they have gone about a very difficult decision in a reasonable way,” said Dr. Barbara Golder, staff member with the Catholic Medical Association, in an interview with CNA.

With the virus spreading around the country, many local health systems are seriously burdened or at capacity, Golder said. “I’m inclined to believe that this is, in fact, a very extraordinary circumstance,” she said in reference to Los Angeles.

The county’s director of health services, Dr. Christina Ghaly, stated on Monday that many area hospitals “have reached a point of crisis and are having to make very tough decisions about patient care,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

She added that the current numbers of COVID cases in the county are still reflective of the post-Thanksgiving surge with a post-Christmas surge yet to come—a point that Golder also made.

“It’s not going to get better,” she said of an anticipated post-Christmas surge of virus cases looming. “It’s really bad right now.”

Los Angeles county has seen an increase in COVID-19 cases since the end of October. More than 9,100 new COVID cases were reported on Monday, according to county health data. In some areas, ICU bed shortages have been a concern.

There have been a total of 10,850 deaths and more than 827,000 confirmed COVID cases overall in Los Angeles County, according to data provided by Johns Hopkins. While the number of reported cases is the highest by far among U.S. counties—Los Angeles is the most populous county in the U.S.—the rate of 8,189 infections per 100,000 residents is high, but is topped by many other counties around the country.

However, Charles Camosy—a theology professor at Fordham University—emphasized that care is being limited in Los Angeles due to an expectation of a further COVID surge, and not because hospitals are already overwhelmed.

“To be clear, they are *not* overwhelmed now. This directive is in *anticipation* of having traditional capacity (no hospital ships, no converted convention centers, no cooperating facilities in other counties) overwhelmed,” he tweeted.

Ghaly, explaining the county’s policy of not transporting cardiac arrest victims who had not been resuscitated in the field, said that the county was “emphasizing the fact that transporting these patients arrested leads to very poor outcomes.”

“We knew that already and we just don’t want to impact our hospitals,” Ghaly said.

Camosy noted that “[t]he phrase ‘poor outcomes’ is quite suggestive,” adding, “it is likely that [Ghaly] and others mean that patients who are likely to survive cardiac arrest for the during of an ambulance ride are likely to be disabled in ways which lead them to judge that a limited number of beds should be given to able-bodied patients.”

“If there are better explanations for this policy, I’d genuinely like to hear them,” Camosy added.

However, Golder said that it is not necessarily unethical to limit care for patients with a low expectation of survival—if the situation is one of true “triage” where demand for care is great and resources are limited, and as long as patients are not denied care on the basis of age or disability.

According to studies, patients suffering cardiac arrest who are taken quickly to a hospital still have around only a 5% chance to survive and eventual discharge, she said. During a pandemic, they would essentially be competing with COVID patients for limited health care resources.

While this population may be mostly elderly, she said, it could also include younger patients—and the county’s policy did not explicitly discriminate against the elderly.

“Nobody likes to see these things happen,” she said. “There’s always a limit on what we have available, and sometimes our demand exceeds it. And we’re just there, we’re there all over the country.”

In the spring of 2020, Camosy was one of three scholars to warn against health care triage plans that explicitly discriminated against the disabled.

As doctors in various jurisdictions were considering how to ration health care if hospitals were overwhelmed with an influx of COVID patients, Camosy was joined by Princeton law professor Robert George and Harvard sociology professor Jacqueline Rivers in demanding that care not be denied patients on the basis of their age or disability.

Camosy warned that many state health officials, hospital heads, and leading doctors lack ethics training and make decisions on a utilitarian “quality-adjusted life years” approach that favors younger, healthier patients and discriminates against elderly and disabled patients.

“As somebody who has studied bioethics, and who is a professor of bioethics, I know the overwhelming majority of them have virtually no ethics training,” Camosy told CNA.


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