Pelosi silent on pro-abortion attacks: ‘I’m very Catholic and I support abortion’

Salt Lake City, Utah, Mar 9, 2019 / 04:50 am (CNA).- A school district in Utah has issued an apology after a fourth-grade student was told by a teacher that he must remove the cross from his forehead on Ash Wednesday.

William McLeod, a student at Vall… […]

Cardinal Joseph Zen, former bishop of Hong Hong, attends the funeral Mass for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on Jan. 5, 2023, in St. Peter’s Square. / Credit: Diane Montagna

Rome, Italy, Jan 17, 2023 / 07:21 am (CNA).

Cardinal Joseph Zen has said that he is “very concerned” about what could happen with the ongoing Synod on Synodality and that he is praying that “our pope will have greater wisdom.”

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Giornale published on Jan. 17, Zen said he hopes the synod will change from its current course.

“I fear that the synod is repeating the same mistake of the Dutch Church 50 years ago when the bishops backtracked and accepted the faithful to lead the Church; then their number decreased,” he said.

The retired bishop of Hong Kong was likely referring to the Pastoral Council of Noordwijkerhout held in the Netherlands between 1966 and 1970, which called for Church authority to be carried out in dialogue, for women to assume ecclesial roles, and for priestly celibacy to be optional in the Church.

The council followed the publication of the “Dutch Catechism,” a text so controversial that Pope Paul VI asked a commission of cardinals to examine its presentation of Catholic teaching. 

In the interview, Cardinal Zen also reflected on his private meeting with Pope Francis when he was allowed to travel to Rome for the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI earlier this month, calling it “a wonderful meeting, very warm.”

“I thanked the pope for the good bishop appointed to Hong Kong in 2021,” Zen said, referring to Hong Kong Bishop Stephen Chow.

He said Pope Francis replied: “’I know it well, he is a Jesuit!’”

The cardinal, who turned 91 last week, also told the pope about how he has dedicated his time over the past decade to prison ministry in Hong Kong and has baptized several prisoners: “Francis said that he was very happy for my ministry.”

Zen himself was arrested last year under Hong Kong’s national security law. He said that Catholics in China are living in a difficult situation and “we must never forget to pray in these difficult times.”

“Many faithful bear witness to their faith conscientiously but we know that when the situation becomes difficult, some think only of their own interests. We continue to uphold truth, justice, and charity. Darkness will not win over the light,” he said.

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Washington D.C., Nov 24, 2017 / 03:47 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Little Sisters of the Poor are returning to court to defend their exemption from the federal contraception mandate, after two states filed lawsuits challenging the exemption.

“No one needs nuns in order to get contraceptives, and no one needs these guys reigniting the last administration’s divisive and unnecessary culture war,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at Becket Law and lead attorney for the Little Sisters.

The Little Sisters of Poor are religious sisters dedicated to living with and caring for the elderly poor. In recent years, they have been embroiled in a lawsuit challenging the federal contraception mandate, which requires them to offer an employee health plan covering contraception, sterilizations and some drugs that can cause early abortions. Catholic teaching holds contraception and abortion to be gravely immoral.  

Last month, the Trump administration announced changes to the mandate, including a broad religious exemption that offered protection from its demands to the Little Sisters and other objecting religious non-profits.

“The new rule should mean that their lawsuit against the federal government will soon end,” said Becket, the religious liberty law firm representing the sisters.

However, the states of California and Pennsylvania are now suing, challenging the Little Sisters’ religious exemption.

The HHS contraceptive mandate, issued under the Affordable Care Act, required that cost-free coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and some drugs that can cause abortions be included in employer health plans.

The original mandate had only a narrow exemption for houses of worship and their integrated auxiliaries. Following a wave of lawsuits on the grounds of religious liberty, the Obama administration released a “religious freedom accommodation” for faith-based non-profits that were not directly affiliated with a house of worship.

Under the accommodation, these groups could send a form to the government outlining their objection to the mandate, which would trigger a government directive to an insurer or third party administrator to provide the cost-free contraceptive coverage in employee health plans.

However, many groups argued that the accommodation still required them to participate in the provision of products that they believed to be immoral. Furthermore, they argued that, despite the government’s insistence that birth control products are free for insurers to provide, the cost of the objectionable products would ultimately be passed on to them in the form of higher premiums.

More than 300 plaintiffs filed lawsuits against the mandate. In 2014, Hobby Lobby, a craft supply retailer owned by a Christian family, won a case against the mandate in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision.

In 2016, a bundle of cases challenging the mandate and its accommodation made its way to the Supreme Court – including the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Archdiocese of Washington, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, and other Christian colleges and universities.

After oral arguments in the case in March of 2016, the Supreme Court, in a rare move in the middle of a case, directed both the government and the plaintiffs to submit briefs explaining if, and how, a conclusion could be reached providing the contraceptive coverage while at the same time respecting the religious freedom of the non-profits.

Both parties submitted briefs, and in May of 2016, the Court voided the federal circuit court decisions involving the plaintiffs, and sent the cases back to their respective federal courts. The Court directed the lower courts to give all parties time to come to an agreement that satisfied their needs.

In October 2017, the Trump administration announced a modification of the mandate. While the original rule remains in place, a much broader exemption is granted to non-profits and some for-profit companies, if they can demonstrate a religiously-based objection to the mandate’s demands.

A moral exemption to the mandate is also permitted, although not for publicly-traded for-profit companies. The moral exemption would protect, for example, secular crisis pregnancy centers, which object to the mandate on moral rather than religious grounds.

The “accommodation” offered to non-profits by the Obama administration is now voluntary. Non-profits can have their insurer or third party administrator offer the coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives, and drugs that can cause abortions, but they do not have to do so under law.

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