Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 23, 2025 / 14:45 pm (CNA).
An annual poll released before the March for Life has found that, as in previous years, a majority of Americans support some form of limitations on abortion.
The poll released on Thursday revealed that 67% of Americans support legal limitations on abortion and that 60% believe abortions should be limited at most to the first three months of pregnancy.
Conducted from Jan. 7–9, the poll surveyed 1,387 adults, with each region represented in proportion to its adult population.
Sponsored by the Knights of Columbus every year and conducted by the Marist Poll, the survey also found for the second consecutive year that 83% of Americans support pregnancy resource centers and 82% of respondents said they believed “laws can protect both the mother and her unborn child.”
Last year, the poll similarly found that 66% of Americans believe that “limits should be placed on when abortion is allowed” and only 33% believe that “abortion should be allowed without any limits” when given the two options.
“This year’s survey results show that Americans are once again firm in their belief that abortion should be significantly limited yet laws should include exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother,” Barbara L. Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll, stated in a press release announcing the results.
“This consistent year over year trend found in the annual Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll has continued, now nearly three years after the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision,” she added.
The survey also found that 62% of Americans shared the belief that health care professionals with religious objections should not be forced to perform abortions.
Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly responded to the results of the poll, stating: “The Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll once again shows that a majority of Americans support legal restrictions on abortion and an overwhelming majority support pregnancy resource centers, which assist mothers and their children in greatest need.”
The Knights of Columbus in the U.S. and Canada have raised a combined total of nearly $14 million in support of pro-life resource centers through the organization’sAid and Support After Pregnancy program.
“Being pro-life means being pro-woman and pro-child,” Kelly said, “and helping vulnerable women and their babies is in the Knights’ DNA.”
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A New York priest said his parish added a “pledge for racial justice” to Masses as part of its anti-racism initiatives, and that no one at the parish is required to participate in it. While video of the pledge has been the subject of criticism in the media and from some Catholics, the Archdiocese of New York has not commented on the matter.
“Under the sponsorship of the Pastoral Council, we held a prayer service for the victims of racism and commissioned our Sacred Space ministry to produce a display so that there would be heightened awareness. In that context, someone found a version of the pledge from a Unitarian Church in Texas,” Fr. Kenneth Boller, SJ, pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in New York City, told CNA Sept. 2.
“We invite people to take the pledge after the post communion prayer and before the final blessing-a time when many churches have announcements. People are invited to respond yes to each question. Some choose not to. That’s fine,” Boller added.
Liturgical law prohibits the addition of any components to Mass that are not prescribed by Church rubrics.
The General Instruction for the Roman Missal directs that each priest “must remember that he is the servant of the sacred Liturgy and that he himself is not permitted, on his own initiative, to add, to remove, or to change anything in the celebration of Mass.”
Similarly, the Second Vatican Council’s apostolic constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium, says that no person, “even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.”
For his part, Boller told CNA that the pledge is part of a broader effort in the parish to be attentive to racial justice.
“After the death of George Floyd our parish wished to be more pro-actively anti-racist. There had been a book discussion group on racism for 18 months and there was a recent history of dialog with an African-American Catholic parish in Harlem,” the priest said.
The pledge asks whether Catholics “support justice, equity, and compassion,” and affirm that “white privilege and the culture of white supremacy must be dismantled wherever it is present.” It also asks whether Catholics commit “to help transform our church culture to one that is actively engaged in seeking racial justice and equity for everyone,” and affirm “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”
The pledge gained attention earlier this week, when a redacted video of its recitation began circulating online. On Sept. 2, Fox News television host Tucker Carlson erroneously reported that the pledge, which he called “talking points from BLM” had “replaced the Nicene Creed” at the parish. In the same segment, commentator Eric Metaxas said that if the parish “had a swastika on the altar, it would be no different.”
“The people who are using these new terms — systemic racism or white privilege — these are Marxists,” Metaxas added. “If you do not reject this with everything you have, you are bringing about the death of Christian faith in America,” he said.
In June, Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, who is Black, wrote that “Prejudiced and racist attitudes of individuals also infiltrate institutional structures and organizations, thus forming the foundation for systemic racism….The residual effects of these attitudes are still felt by many Catholics of color today.”
The Archdiocese of New York told CNA it had no comment on the pledge and the controversy that surrounded its recitation during Mass.
A Vatican flag, with the incorrect design likely drawn from Wikipedia, and the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. / Bohumil Petrik/ACI
St. Louis, Mo., Apr 8, 2023 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
The flag of Vatican City, with its distinctive yellow and white, is instantly recognizable to many Catholics. Likely far fewer people, though, have scrutinized the papal coat of arms on the right-hand side, instead taking the intricate design — which includes famous crossed keys — for granted.
As it turns out, there’s a good chance that the coats of arms on many of the Vatican flags you’ve seen out in the world are rendered incorrectly. And it took until 2023 for the internet to start taking notice.
Imagine you wanted to print your own version of the Vatican flag. Where would you go to find a high-quality picture of one? If you’re like most internet users, your first stop would probably not be the Vatican’s official (but admittedly outdated) vatican.va website. You’re probably going to pull up Wikipedia, one of the world’s most visited websites and an endless storehouse of free image content. Flagmakers the world over appear to have done so over the years.
Imagine many people’s surprise, then, to discover that the image of the “Flag of Vatican City” displayed on Wikipedia has been wrong several times over the years, most recently from 2017 to 2022. (It was also wrong from 2006–2007.)
What is “wrong” about these flags, you might ask? It’s a small detail in the grand scheme of things but easy to spot once you know about it. The erroneous Wikipedia file includes a red disk at the bottom of the papal tiara as well as a different shade of yellow on portions of the coat of arms.
The anonymous Wikipedia editor who changed the look of the flag in 2017 wrote that he or she did so for “color correction” purposes, noting that the Vatican’s coat of arms includes the red at the bottom of the tiara. The only problem? The Vatican’s official flag design renders the coat of arms differently, with the circular bottom of the tiara in white.
The image was reverted to the correct one in 2022, but the damage was done. A casual internet search will turn up dozens of Vatican flags for sale that clearly used the incorrect image downloaded from Wikipedia. The incorrect flag has even made its way into emojis. (This whole situation gained attention last month after a Reddit user made a post about it.)
An inexpensive Vatican flag available for sale on Amazon that makes use of the incorrect Wikipedia flag design. Amazon/Screenshot
Father William Becker, pastor at St. Columbanus Parish in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, read the Reddit post with interest and amusement. Becker, a self-described “flag guy,” has studied the Vatican flag for years and even wrote an entire book about it. He has fond memories of raising the yellow and white colors over his alma mater, the North American College in Rome.
Becker told CNA that the saga of the Vatican flag on Wikipedia demonstrates a need for the Vatican to step in and clarify exactly what its flag should look like, especially considering the fact that Catholic churches all over the world display the Vatican flag.
It was precisely this lack of clarity on the official design of the Vatican flag that led Becker to create a website detailing, as best as he could, the correct design for the flag.
“Cultural communities in general have turned to flags in a stunning way,” Becker commented, citing in part a proliferation of cheaply made, mass-produced flags. And, anecdotally, there seems to be an ever-increasing interest in the Vatican flag as a way for Catholics to claim an identity, whether by flying a flag at home, waving it at a papal event, or by putting one in their social media profile picture.
The Vatican flag. Bohumil Petrik/CNA
Perhaps surprisingly, the Vatican flag is less than 100 years old, as is Vatican City itself. For more than a millennium before 1870, the pope ruled over the Papal States, large regions mainly within present-day Italy. After the Vatican lost control of the Papal States, it found itself a tiny island surrounded by an acrimonious Italy. It took nearly 60 years until the ratification of the Lateran Accords of 1929 ushered in harmony between the Vatican and Italy, and the creation of the world’s smallest sovereign country.
In the days of the Papal States, many different flags were used, but the yellow and white color scheme was a common feature. Becker said the modern design was first used by the merchant fleet in the Papal States from 1825 to 1870. In 1929, that design was chosen as the new flag of Vatican City, the sovereign country.
“It took a while in 1929 to get some flags made. The techniques of mass production weren’t available yet, and so it would have been a matter of sewing up some flags and fitting out buildings with flag staffs,” Becker noted, saying that during this time and for years afterward there was quite a bit of variation between the Vatican flags people flew, perhaps even more so than today.
“That’s kind of common with other countries too, especially those that don’t really take pains to standardize their design. [Nowadays] a flagmaker is likely to go to a source like Wikipedia, and it may vary in its accuracy,” Becker told CNA.
The same flag chosen in 1929 was reconfirmed in a revised Vatican constitution, issued by Pope John Paul II in 2000. The original Vatican flag was actually square, as indeed the official version is today. Since roughly the 1960s, though, buildings began to fly oblong state flags that followed Italy’s flag proportions, probably because most Vatican flags at the time were mass-produced there.
The flag has special significance beyond the walls of Vatican City as a marker for the Vatican’s extraterritorial properties, of which there are more than a dozen. These properties, which include major basilicas such as St. Paul Outside the Walls and St. Mary Major, are marked as the Vatican’s through their flying of the papal flag.
Becker said he hopes his website will serve as a helpful resource for anyone looking for the exact Vatican flag design, at least until the Vatican issues some kind of clarification on what exactly the flag should look like.
“The papal flag is interesting because on the one hand, the Vatican is such a small state, but the papal flag is seen all over the world. Anywhere there’s a Catholic church, you might be likely to run into a papal flag,” he said.
“It would be nice if somebody at the Holy See could, through their website or wherever, make some design specifications more available … design specifications that manufacturers could rely on a bit more.”
Parishioners of Holy Cross Church in Garrett Park, Maryland, learned in a Sept. 30, 2022, email that their pastor was suspended over allegations of sexual abuse of minors. / Farragutful|Wikipedia|CC BY-SA 3.0
Yes. Although the vast majority are for abortion to some degree, and approx 51% [Gallup] support expansive abortion.
Our Nation is primarily a prenatal death dealing society. Our Bishops are for the most part nominally against abortion, in that they don’t, except for a few who speak out against. The Vatican is nominal in that it condemns it, although it finds reasons to adopt a permissive approach in practice.
USCCB is by consensus [there are exceptions] privately and firmly against abortion but appears subdued due to the Vatican’s policy of extenuating circumstances. This subdued policy is most evident in the USCCB’s long held position of refusal to address the murder of prenatal infants within the political arena, contrary to the teaching of John Paul II who taught we’re morally obliged to address it politically and by vote.
Note: We do have several outstanding prelates who defend the life of the unborn, Cdl Cordileone, Bishop Paprocki, Archbishop Broglio, Cdl Burke among them.
Yes. Although the vast majority are for abortion to some degree, and approx 51% [Gallup] support expansive abortion.
Our Nation is primarily a prenatal death dealing society. Our Bishops are for the most part nominally against abortion, in that they don’t, except for a few who speak out against. The Vatican is nominal in that it condemns it, although it finds reasons to adopt a permissive approach in practice.
USCCB is by consensus [there are exceptions] privately and firmly against abortion but appears subdued due to the Vatican’s policy of extenuating circumstances. This subdued policy is most evident in the USCCB’s long held position of refusal to address the murder of prenatal infants within the political arena, contrary to the teaching of John Paul II who taught we’re morally obliged to address it politically and by vote.
Note: We do have several outstanding prelates who defend the life of the unborn, Cdl Cordileone, Bishop Paprocki, Archbishop Broglio, Cdl Burke among them.