Pope Francis celebrates Mass at the Rome campus of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Nov. 5, 2021. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.
Vatican City, Nov 11, 2021 / 05:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has called care for God’s creation one of “the great moral issues of our time” in a letter expressing his regret that he could not attend the COP26 meeting in Glasgow.
“Time is running out; this occasion must not be wasted, lest we have to face God’s judgment for our failure to be faithful stewards of the world he has entrusted to our care,” the pope wrote in a letter to Catholics in Scotland signed Nov. 9.
The pope’s message was read out by Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, the papal nuncio to Great Britain and Scotland, at a live-streamed Mass at St. Augustine’s Church in Coatbridge, a town eight miles east of Glasgow.
In the message, Pope Francis said that he was pleased to hear that Catholics in Scotland were praying for a fruitful outcome to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, taking place from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.
The Glasgow climate summit is meant to “address one of the great moral issues of our time: the preservation of God’s creation, given to us as a garden to be cultivated and as a common home for our human family,” he said.
“Let us implore God’s gifts of wisdom and strength upon those charged with guiding the international community as they seek to meet this grave challenge with concrete decisions inspired by responsibility towards present and future generations.”
Pope Francis has sought to galvanize efforts to protect the environment since his election in 2013. He issued the encyclicalLaudato si’ in 2015, ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris, which negotiated the Paris Agreement.
“As you know, I had hoped to take part in the COP26 meeting in Glasgow and to spend some time, however briefly, with you. I regret that this did not prove possible,” Pope Francis said.
The 84-year-old pope expressed his affection for Catholics in Scotland and asked them to pray for him.
“In these challenging times, may all Christ’s followers in Scotland renew their commitment to be convincing witnesses to the joy of the Gospel and its power to bring light and hope to every effort to build a future of justice, fraternity, and prosperity, both material and spiritual,” he said.
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 6, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- A lawsuit filed against the Vatican Secretariat of State by its former investment manager, Raffaele Mincione, includes new details about the Vatican’s investment in a London building.
Paula Scanlan, a women’s sports activist and former teammate of trans-identifying athlete Lia Thomas on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team, speaks to a crowd about her story. Originally only speaking out anonymously, Scanlan has since gone public about the emotional impact of having to share a locker room with a biological male had on her as a sexual assault survivor. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Independent Women’s Forum
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 19, 2024 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
The Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX regulations to offer protection of transgender individuals in women’s sports, educational programs, and school bathrooms has been blocked in half of the states in the country.
The new rule is currently blocked in 26 states as a coalition of states and conservative groups are fighting the rule in court.
Yet, for many of the country’s most populous states — such as California, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania — the rule took effect on Aug. 1. This means that the measure is impacting Americans in many of the country’s largest population centers.
Christiana Kiefer, senior counsel at one of these groups, the Alliance Defending Freedom, told CNA that “the Biden-Harris administration’s radical attempt to redefine sex in Title IX turns back the clock on women’s opportunities, erodes student privacy, and threatens women’s sports.”
“Policies that deny biological truth create real victims — particularly impacting the dignity and safety of women and girls,” Kiefer said. “We are hopeful that the courts will ultimately rule to protect privacy and safety, free speech, and fairness in sports.”
What is the new rule?
In April, the Biden Department of Education redefined the prohibition on sex discrimination in education, enshrined in the 1972 Title IX provisions, to include discrimination based on a person’s “gender identity.”
The new guidelines prohibit any policy and practice that “prevents a person from participating in an education program or activity consistent with their gender identity.” Schools that do not comply risk having their federal funding cut off.
According to May Mailman, director of the Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC), the rule means that any male can now assert that he has been discriminated against based on gender identity and claim a right to use a women’s space.
As IWLC director, Mailman said she has seen the personal impact that forcing schools to allow biological men into women’s sports and private spaces has had on young women. Ultimately, she believes the new rule amounts to “the elimination of women’s spaces.”
“You have Paula Scanlan, who’s an IWF [Independent Women’s Forum] ambassador, she was forced to undress before a fully intact male 18 times a week. And she suffered through it, but how many women would do it? Certainly not all. So, women are going to remove themselves from circumstances that require them to be naked or to do really private activities like urinating in front of males,” Mailman explained.
Scanlan is a women’s sports activist and former teammate of trans-identifying athlete Lia Thomas on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team. Originally only speaking out anonymously, Scanlan has since gone public about the emotional impact of having to share a locker room with a biological male had on her as a sexual assault survivor.
“That is the opposite of what Title IX was created to do, which is to give women opportunities. So, what you’re going to see is Title IX actually being flipped on its head. Women are going to remove themselves from educational programs like sports because it requires such indecency.”
Where is the rule in effect?
A slate of Republican-led states has challenged the rule in court, many arguing that it violates their state laws. As a result, the Biden administration’s changes are currently blocked in 26 states.
The Independent Women’s Forum has published an interactive map showing which states have successfully blocked the rule and in which states it is currently active. The map also shows which states have pending litigation on the rule. Credit: Image courtesy of Independent Women’s Forum.
The Biden Title IX changes are currently blocked in most of the South and Midwest, including Texas, Florida, and Ohio. Because of a Kansas lawsuit that was joined by several other states and conservative organizations, the rule has been blocked in over 3,800 individual schools across the country.
However, the blocks in these states are only considered “preliminary injunctions,” meaning they are temporary, pending further review in the courts. Because of this, the rule could eventually take effect in any of the 26 states where it is currently blocked.
The Biden administration’s Title IX change has already taken effect in 24 states, primarily in Western and Northeastern coastal states, as well as the Great Lakes region.
“It seems like half the country, but it’s actually more than half the country because if you think about population, this is California, this is New York, so for a huge portion of the population, they are now under the Biden regime, where male and female spaces are no longer protected in education programs,” Mailman said.
“In those schools, the Biden administration can absolutely go after a school if it does not police pronouns, if it has male and female locker rooms, if it has male and female bathrooms, if it has male and female scholarships … it affects all education programs that accept federal money.”
What’s next?
On Friday the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously denied the Biden administration’s request to partially enforce the new rule in several states where it has been blocked. Mailman explained in a video posted to social media that while the decision does not change much right now it does signal the Supreme Court may agree that Biden’s changes to Title IX are unconstitutional.
Ultimately, Mailman believes the fate of this rule depends in large part on the presidential election. If elected to the White House, Mailman said that a Kamala Harris administration is “absolutely going to take it further.”
“Judges are something that the president has a huge say in because they nominate them. You can’t be a judge if you don’t have the president,” she said. “So, the types of judges that Kamala Harris is going to put on the courts are the types of judges who are going to say that absolutely, Title IX is some gender identity law, even though it’s not.”
Eleanor McCullen testifies during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, March 24, 2022. / Screenshot taken from PBS NewsHour YouTube channel
Washington D.C., Mar 25, 2022 / 09:32 am (CNA).
A pro-life sidewal… […]
8 Comments
“Time is running out” (Pope Francis). Misplaced priorities? “We have to face God’s judgment for our failure to protect” the millions upon millions of infants entrusted to our care, to us, the Church, who are being slaughtered by abortionists and advocates Jeffrey Sachs recently appointed to a Vatican Dicastery. My penultimate addition to Francis’ most urgent concern for the welfare of planet Earth [no need to supplement my comment with a helpful response since I’m well aware of John Paul II’s fine, balanced concern with the environment].
Developmental economist Sachs’ appointment to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a strong advocate for population control via contraception, abortion, abortifacients makes a statement. Does it not? Where is there as herculean an effort [Francis’ message to save our planet persistently pounds our ears] to save life created in God’s image. Which creation has the greater value? Perhaps it will be thought a cheap shot if I mention devotion to Pachamama, goddess of the Andes protector of Mother Earth enshrined at the Vatican as having more influence with Pope Francis than the silent screams that keep pounding my ears so I won’t mention it here. I’ll be reverently silent.
A sequence of five points, here, adding to Fr. Morello who acknowledges John Paul II’s “balance” versus the less-so presentation by team Francis.
All to make the point that the moral witness of the Church, in future decades, depends upon telling the whole truth. As Pope John XXIII still taught on the eve of the Second Vatican Council: “But WHATEVER THE SITUATION, we clearly affirm these problems should be posed and resolved in such a way that man does not have recourse to methods and means CONTRARY TO HIS DIGNITY. . .” (Mater et Magistra, 1961, n. 191, caps added).
FIRST, the care for God’s creation is accurately defended when clearly presented as not only a moral issue (Pope Francis), but as also fully within Catholic Social Teaching. That is, as comprehended by “moral theology” (Centesimus Annus, n. 55)—rather than a mongrelized and possibly double-speak message as might be misunderstood by an “integral ecology.”
SECOND, the moral issue, then, is one of solidarity, foresight, and prudential judgment—ever careful not to be skewed by the urgency for some kind of action, e.g., uncertainties over the share of climate change (etc.) due to anthropological causes, the crafting of needed programs, the temptation to cast these kinds of issues in ideological terms.
THIRD, adding to #2, the problematic risk that the finite natural-resource baseline supporting a globalized industrial cultural is limited and subject to now-foreseeable exhaustion. In terms of solidarity, are future populations subject to indeliberate triage, say, as water tables decline, or as food source species are endangered or overharvested?
FOURTH, adding to #3, nature is not as “fragile” as is portrayed, but the resilience of ecosystems and food chains do work within boundaries (there really are boundaries!) beyond which irreversible collapse is likely, e.g., the risk to all oceanic life (and human food sources) if the surface-layer microscopic plankton are compromised by even slight atmospheric changes.
FIFTH, complexity and urgency of foresight, such as the above, invites slogans and blunt-instrument solutions. The Catholic Social Teaching, on the other hand, is charged, with articulating and bringing to bear the moral issues without fully identifying them with particular proposals.
Too much cognitive dissonance as moral theology and incremental science are too-much mingled together. As Fr. Morello points out, it is simply insufficient and misleading to spotlight traumatic ecosystem scenarios for tomorrow (and our indirect sins of omission, or lack of foresight) while discounting, it seems, the traumatic killing of innocent lives today (our direct sins of commission). Another of the “great moral issues of out time.”
What ever happened to the personal moral absolutes affirmed in Veritatis Splendor alongside the global concerns flagged in Laudato Si? To get all of this stuff right is a tough assignment for the apostolic Church, even for those clerical and lay witnesses to Christ who might be so inclined.
Valid points. Meeting the future successfully requires a coherent State Church effort [political moral coherence]. Pope Francis’ global involvement would be promising if it weren’t for his distancing as alluded from Veritatis Splendor and those irritating moral absolutes. Amoris and Laudato Si are designed to amalgam not revitalize. Maybe next papacy.
In Genesis 2:15, we read: “The Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and the keep it.” Yes, to Till it and to Keep it.
In the same book, (1:28), we are told: “And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’”
So, what Pope Francis teaches is exactly what God wanted Adam and Eve to do in the world He created. Being well endowed (created in the likeness of God) we have the capacity to follow the instructions in our Creator’s “manual”.
Does this mean that we have to accept the unfounded belief that our CO2 is causing global warming and, hence, climate change?
No, but it does mean that we should not pollute our environment (air, land, and water), and greedily, wastefully exploit our resources.
The Vicar of Christ is right in telling the Christians in Scotland (and us): “In these challenging times, may all Christ’s followers in Scotland renew their commitment to be convincing witnesses to the joy of the Gospel and its power to bring light and hope to every effort to build a future of justice, fraternity, and prosperity, both material and spiritual,”
This is accompanied by studying, working, raising children and so on. Francis means something else. Do you really believe that he speaks to “Climate Change Conference” about studying, job, marriage, children?
“Time is running out” (Pope Francis). Misplaced priorities? “We have to face God’s judgment for our failure to protect” the millions upon millions of infants entrusted to our care, to us, the Church, who are being slaughtered by abortionists and advocates Jeffrey Sachs recently appointed to a Vatican Dicastery. My penultimate addition to Francis’ most urgent concern for the welfare of planet Earth [no need to supplement my comment with a helpful response since I’m well aware of John Paul II’s fine, balanced concern with the environment].
Developmental economist Sachs’ appointment to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a strong advocate for population control via contraception, abortion, abortifacients makes a statement. Does it not? Where is there as herculean an effort [Francis’ message to save our planet persistently pounds our ears] to save life created in God’s image. Which creation has the greater value? Perhaps it will be thought a cheap shot if I mention devotion to Pachamama, goddess of the Andes protector of Mother Earth enshrined at the Vatican as having more influence with Pope Francis than the silent screams that keep pounding my ears so I won’t mention it here. I’ll be reverently silent.
A sequence of five points, here, adding to Fr. Morello who acknowledges John Paul II’s “balance” versus the less-so presentation by team Francis.
All to make the point that the moral witness of the Church, in future decades, depends upon telling the whole truth. As Pope John XXIII still taught on the eve of the Second Vatican Council: “But WHATEVER THE SITUATION, we clearly affirm these problems should be posed and resolved in such a way that man does not have recourse to methods and means CONTRARY TO HIS DIGNITY. . .” (Mater et Magistra, 1961, n. 191, caps added).
FIRST, the care for God’s creation is accurately defended when clearly presented as not only a moral issue (Pope Francis), but as also fully within Catholic Social Teaching. That is, as comprehended by “moral theology” (Centesimus Annus, n. 55)—rather than a mongrelized and possibly double-speak message as might be misunderstood by an “integral ecology.”
SECOND, the moral issue, then, is one of solidarity, foresight, and prudential judgment—ever careful not to be skewed by the urgency for some kind of action, e.g., uncertainties over the share of climate change (etc.) due to anthropological causes, the crafting of needed programs, the temptation to cast these kinds of issues in ideological terms.
THIRD, adding to #2, the problematic risk that the finite natural-resource baseline supporting a globalized industrial cultural is limited and subject to now-foreseeable exhaustion. In terms of solidarity, are future populations subject to indeliberate triage, say, as water tables decline, or as food source species are endangered or overharvested?
FOURTH, adding to #3, nature is not as “fragile” as is portrayed, but the resilience of ecosystems and food chains do work within boundaries (there really are boundaries!) beyond which irreversible collapse is likely, e.g., the risk to all oceanic life (and human food sources) if the surface-layer microscopic plankton are compromised by even slight atmospheric changes.
FIFTH, complexity and urgency of foresight, such as the above, invites slogans and blunt-instrument solutions. The Catholic Social Teaching, on the other hand, is charged, with articulating and bringing to bear the moral issues without fully identifying them with particular proposals.
Too much cognitive dissonance as moral theology and incremental science are too-much mingled together. As Fr. Morello points out, it is simply insufficient and misleading to spotlight traumatic ecosystem scenarios for tomorrow (and our indirect sins of omission, or lack of foresight) while discounting, it seems, the traumatic killing of innocent lives today (our direct sins of commission). Another of the “great moral issues of out time.”
What ever happened to the personal moral absolutes affirmed in Veritatis Splendor alongside the global concerns flagged in Laudato Si? To get all of this stuff right is a tough assignment for the apostolic Church, even for those clerical and lay witnesses to Christ who might be so inclined.
Valid points. Meeting the future successfully requires a coherent State Church effort [political moral coherence]. Pope Francis’ global involvement would be promising if it weren’t for his distancing as alluded from Veritatis Splendor and those irritating moral absolutes. Amoris and Laudato Si are designed to amalgam not revitalize. Maybe next papacy.
And the care of souls???
It’s sarcasm Ramjet.
In Genesis 2:15, we read: “The Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and the keep it.” Yes, to Till it and to Keep it.
In the same book, (1:28), we are told: “And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’”
So, what Pope Francis teaches is exactly what God wanted Adam and Eve to do in the world He created. Being well endowed (created in the likeness of God) we have the capacity to follow the instructions in our Creator’s “manual”.
Does this mean that we have to accept the unfounded belief that our CO2 is causing global warming and, hence, climate change?
No, but it does mean that we should not pollute our environment (air, land, and water), and greedily, wastefully exploit our resources.
The Vicar of Christ is right in telling the Christians in Scotland (and us): “In these challenging times, may all Christ’s followers in Scotland renew their commitment to be convincing witnesses to the joy of the Gospel and its power to bring light and hope to every effort to build a future of justice, fraternity, and prosperity, both material and spiritual,”
This is accompanied by studying, working, raising children and so on. Francis means something else. Do you really believe that he speaks to “Climate Change Conference” about studying, job, marriage, children?
… there is a really fitting article on CWR:
“makes a sharp distinction between the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’, the ‘historical Jesus’ being a mere man whose ‘ethical teaching’ somehow just happens to agree with the latest leftist shibboleth”
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/11/11/new-book-tells-the-story-of-the-secularization-of-sacred-scripture/
You should read it and maybe even get copy of the book.