Pope Leo XIV appoints Cardinal Cupich to Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State

Rome Newsroom, Oct 16, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Fifteen-year-old Carlo Acutis died within a week of being diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia, offering his suffering for the pope and for the Church. Following his beatification last Saturday, his… […]

CNA Staff, May 19, 2020 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- Future seminarians should receive an “absolutely solid formation” in hospital ministry, a priest working with coronavirus patients has said.

Fr. Joe McNerney, a full-time hospital chaplain in the Diocese of Portsmouth, England, said that before the COVID-19 crisis, healthcare chaplaincy was a sometimes marginalized ministry.

“I think now we are seeing the absolute importance of hospital chaplaincy and how essential a ministry it is — not just during this time, but even when this thing passes — and that people in their seminary training have an absolutely solid foundation as part of their formation,” the priest told CNA.

McNerney, who has worked in hospitals since 1997, said “the whole way of doing chaplaincy has changed enormously” since the pandemic.

Strict preventative measures amid the pandemic force chaplains to focus on being alongside patients “during this very, very distressing time for them,” he explained.

“You think of these patients, and especially the ones in the COVID wards, where all they’re seeing is eyes,” he said. “Everything else is covered up. You realize how much you communicate through your facial expressions who you are — the smile, the twinkle in your eyes. Anything to let them know you care about them as a person. You’re not a clinician just wanting to go in and do something. It’s the same also for the doctors and the nurses. They’re finding that a struggle because it is so hard to communicate.”

McNerney said he was struck by how important it was for patients on coronavirus wards to be able to hold a rosary or small cross throughout their ordeal. He had asked local Catholics to supply rosaries to hospital wards and they had responded “magnificently.”

“It’s a great comfort to have something in your hands that connects you with your Catholic faith, with your Catholic community. It’s very, very important,” he said.

“Unfortunately because of the situation we’re not able to give Communion. If a patient’s ventilated, you can’t. It’s just out of the question. The sacrament of the sick plays an important role. But that abiding presence of something tangible — a rosary or a holding cross — can offer quite a comfort.”

McNerney, who was born in Seattle, Washington, and moved to the U.K. in the early 1980s, noted that at the start of the pandemic it was sometimes difficult to ensure that Catholic chaplains had access to coronavirus patients in the larger hospitals. But he said he had not heard of any cases in which Catholics died from COVID-19 without the sacraments.

“I’m not saying it hasn’t happened. I don’t know. But sometimes you have to be inventive in the way that you minister. You have to be prepared for what I call ‘liturgy on the hoof.’ The Sacrament of the Sick, last rites, are all very important, but you have to adapt the way you do it. It requires a bit of inventiveness,” he said.

He emphasized that hospital trusts saw chaplains as “absolutely essential” and that most misunderstandings were caused by the pressure of responding to a national health emergency.

He said: “I don’t think it’s anything deliberate. My experience is that they are just so, so, so busy. They’re fighting, trying to do everything.”

“In our induction that we do with staff we say it’s good to do a ‘spiritual care assessment’. Well, that’s not high on their list, through no fault of their own. They’re struggling with the physical stuff.”

McNerney’s comments were echoed by Fr. Mark Elliott Smith, who volunteered to serve as a chaplain at NHS Nightingale, London’s coronavirus field hospital.

Asked if the Church was marginalized during the crisis, he said: “Here, at least, absolutely not. In fact, it seems to me that a hallmark of the Nightingale is that the contribution that a chaplain can make is valued, and that spiritual, pastoral, and above all sacramental care is made available.”

“I would add that the Church will clearly want to continue making a vigorous case for its active presence in times like these, but my feeling is that the Church will be knocking at an open door.”

Elliott Smith said that he agreed “to a certain extent” with McNerney’s call for all seminarians to be trained thoroughly in hospital chaplaincy.

“The recent pandemic tells us that you can never know what lies round the corner, but I would be wary of, say, making great adjustments to seminary formation until we have a longer perspective,” he commented.
 
He said the Church needs to assess the impact of the nationwide lockdown on Mass attendance and then draw conclusions about future priests and their formation.
 
“Priesthood is an intensely practical life in many ways, but what a priest actually does flows from who he is, and has been formed to be,” he said.
 
“Of course, it’s good to know what a hospital chaplain actually does, but if the priest has had a solid priestly formation, and has a modicum of common sense, becoming a chaplain should not hold too many terrors.”
 
Elliott Smith said that while serving coronavirus patients he had drawn comfort from praying the Prayer to St. Michael: “Holy Michael, Archangel, defend us in the day of battle.”

McNerney said he had felt sustained throughout the crisis by a prayer from the Divine Office: “Give us perfect peace, Lord, so that we may delight in serving you all the days of our life, and at the last, with Our Lady’s help, come safely to your presence.”

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful prayer,” he said.

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CNA Staff, Apr 1, 2020 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- As the British Parliament’s permissive abortion law takes effect in Northern Ireland, pro-life leaders strongly criticized the law, pointing to the coronavirus response as proof of the need to protect the lives of the most vulnerable.

“Every unborn baby matters regardless of age or ability, gender or background. He or she has the right to be protected in a community where everyone belongs and deserves our respect,” the Catholic bishops of Northern Ireland said March 31. “Every woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy matters too. She has a right to be cared for within a community where she is protected from any pressure to abort her baby.”

“As the number of deaths caused by Coronavirus continues to rise, news reporters frequently remind us that behind the statistics are real people. Their lives matter regardless of age or ability, gender or background,” said the bishops, noting the heavy government investment in treating patients and protecting medical staff.

“Against this background, we are saddened and dismayed at the Government’s decision to introduce extreme regulations for the delivery of abortion services in Northern Ireland,” they said, citing an “overwhelming will” among the people of the region to “protect the life of every human being.’

Previously, Northern Ireland’s laws only permitted abortion in cases where a woman’s life is at risk, or where there is a permanent or serious risk to her mental or physical health. Backers of the law said it had saved over 100,000 lives by avoiding the permissive law that took effect in other parts of the United Kingdom in 1967.

The new law and accompanying regulations took effect March 31. They mean no explicit legal protections for unborn children up to 12 weeks into pregnancy, compared to legal abortion allowed up to 24 weeks in other parts of the U.K. In some respects the law is more permissive than the rest of the U.K.

Doctors, registered nurses, and registered midwives may perform abortions under the rules. In situations where pregnancy is believed to risk a woman’s physical or mental health, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks. There is no time limit where the pregnancy is deemed a risk to the life of the mother or in cases where the unborn child is deemed to have a fatal abnormality or a substantial risk of severe mental or physical impairment.

The Northern Ireland pro-life group Precious Life has focused on the responses to the government’s late 2019 consultation on the new abortion law. About 79% of respondents voiced opposition to any abortion in Northern Ireland.

Bernadette Smyth, director of Precious Life, said, “thousands of pro-life people throughout Northern Ireland responded in total opposition to a change in the law.”

“Yet, we have seen this week, that the U.K. Government are willing to ignore the results of its own consultation because they are so bloodthirsty and devoted to destroying and killing human lives through abortion in Northern Ireland, even at a time of unprecedented national crisis,” Smyth continued. “People are outraged, upset and hugely frustrated that their democratic voice has been ignored.”

“It is horrifying to learn that one of the most permissive, extreme and inhumane abortion regimes in Europe will be introduced to Northern Ireland by the British Government,” she said. “This is in spite of the fact that our elected representatives returned to Stormont in January and at a time when the U.K. has been brought to its knees by the Coronavirus pandemic.”

“And right in the middle of a national crisis, when people in Northern Ireland and across the world are uniting under the shared understanding that all human life is precious and must be protected, the British Government are still intent on killing and destroying innocent and vulnerable human life in Northern Ireland,” she said.

The Catholic bishops too said the consultation process had been “utterly ignored.”

While Precious Life is circulating petitions asking legislators to repeal the abortion provisions, the bishops said members of the Northern Ireland assembly have some influence. However, their remarks suggested repeal would be very difficult.

Politicians and others opposed to the regulations should not “meekly acquiesce to their promulgation,” they said. Where the regulations exceed the 2019 Act of Parliament, legislators can repeal them.

The traditionally Protestant and pro-U.K. Democratic Unionist Party also criticized the new abortion law.

Paul Givan, DUP Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly said they were “the most extreme, radical, abortion laws anywhere in Europe.”

“It is a travesty that this has been allowed to happen,” he said, objecting that the laws were introduced despite the return of devolved government to Stormont.

While abortion is typically a devolved issue of local control, the British Parliament legislation was passed during an absence of a local government. The parties of the Northern Ireland Assembly could have blocked the law from taking effect, but failed to reach any governing agreement due to a dispute between the two leading governing parties, the DUP and the second-largest party, the nationalist Sinn Fein. The nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party also walked out of a final critical meeting.

Besides the Catholic bishops, leaders in the Church of Ireland, the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and the Irish Council of Churches had called on the Northern Ireland Assembly to reconvene to block the abortion legislation.

The nationalist parties traditionally draw support from Northern Ireland’s Catholics. Sinn Fein has turned towards backing legal abortion, while some SDLP leaders have made comments welcoming the changes.

Caoimhe Archibald, a Sinn Féin MLA, said it was “only right and proper that woman can access abortion services without having to travel, that they are free to be able to have healthcare in a modern and compassionate way”.

Among the nationalist critics of the new regime is Peadar Tóibín, leader of the new political party Aontú.

“The right to life is a human right. It is the most important human right that anyone of us have. With out the right to life no other human right can be guaranteed,” he said April 1.

“The current crisis has seen society radically change its behavior, to protect the lives of the most vulnerable. This is something that we in Aontú have always understood,” he said. Sometimes we all have to limit our personal choice and autonomy to protect the lives of others. The slogan ‘my body, my choice’ rings particularly hollow now when we realize that in reality we are all in this together.”

Tóibín cited the Sinn Féin Mayor of Belfast’s statement in response to the coronavirus pandemic that “Every Life Matters.”

“The hypocrisy is breathtaking,” he said. “The abortion law that Sinn Féin helped introduce will directly end thousands of live.”

Tóibín was deputy whip of Sinn Fein’s delegation to the Republic of Ireland legislative body known as the Dail, and still holds a seat in that body. However, he was pushed out from the party over his support for the unborn and opposition to legal abortion. Like the nationalist party Sinn Fein, Aontú competes in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

He charged that the Westminster-based Parliament, Sinn Féin and the SDLP leadership had “forced abortion on demand into the north of Ireland against the wishes of the people.”

“I say forced, because every opinion poll in the north stated that the majority of men and women sought that the issue of abortion would be decided, not in London but in the north of Ireland. It was not just public opinion that held this view. Legally it was a devolved matter. It was for the elected representatives of the north to decide,” he said.

He objected that Sinn Féin had rejected its nationalist stand against British legislation in Ireland and had instead “openly lobbied for Westminster to legislate for abortion on demand in the north.”

“For the first time in 200 years of republicanism, its leadership went cap in hand to London and demanded that it legislate for Ireland over the heads and against the will of the people,” he charged.

Across all Ireland, pro-life advocates have voiced concern about possible changes to government policy to allow at-home abortions using abortion pills during the coronavirus pandemic.

Pressure to legalize abortion in Northern Ireland increased after a 2018 referendum effectively legalized abortion in the Republic of Ireland by a vote of over 66% in favor of removing constitutional protections recognizing the unborn baby’s right to life as equal to the mother’s.

The new law also requires the recognition of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.

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