Paris, France, Dec 4, 2018 / 09:35 am (CNA).- French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced Tuesday morning that the government would suspend the imposition of a proposed fuel tax increase for six months. The planned increases, originally set to tak… […]
Shrewsbury, England, Dec 4, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a pastoral letter marking the first Sunday of Advent, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury dedicated 2019 as the diocesan Year of Holiness, calling attention to the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on the universal call to holiness.
“It is this universal call to holiness which I wish all of us, clergy and people, to focus upon anew. It is striking that, amid all the crises of the 20th Century, the central message of the Second Vatican Council was that every one of us, in every state of life, is called to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of love: that is, called to become nothing less than a saint,” Bishop Davies wrote.
“Advent is a time of renewed hope leading us to the light of Christmas,” he said. “It is a journey we make in the darkest days of our year. Such days evoke the dark shadows in the world around us, and those failures in the lives and witness of Christians which have at times cast dark shadows over the face of the Church, obscuring for many, the clear light of Christ shining from her.”
He said that “our renewal in holiness” is “the only renewal of the Church which will ever matter … It is why only saints resolved the crises the Church has faced throughout history and why they have proved to be the great evangelisers.”
“It is also why, today, amid the dark shadows of scandal and the challenge of a new evangelisation of western societies, it is urgent to recall this one goal of every Christian life for it is in the saints that the true face of the Church shines out. For, though they can have their place, no pastoral programme; no discussions amongst us; no re-organisation or re-structuring can ever accomplish this; only our striving for holiness to become the saints we have been called by God to be.”
Both “our Christian calling and the ultimate goal of every human life” is “to become, in the end, a saint,” said Bishop Davies, recalling that Christ told us “that this is the one thing which alone matters.”
The bishop noted that Pope Francis wrote in a recent letter that “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”
“A saint is someone who reaches the complete and everlasting happiness of Heaven. We might say that holiness is happiness … it is only by being holy that we can be truly happy.”
Bishop Davies said: “The Holy Father writes, ‘Do not be afraid to set your sights higher, to allow yourself to be loved and liberated by God’. For holiness, he writes, is ‘the extent that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we model our life on Christ’s’. We can never reach this goal by our own unaided efforts. By the grace of God we can!”
He encouraged everyone in the Diocese of Shrewbury to recall in the coming year that there is found in the Church, holy though composed of sinners, everything needed to grow in holiness.
“In daily prayer, frequent Confession and, above all, in the Holy Eucharist, we are given the Divine means, the grace to reach this goal,” wrote Bishop Davies.
“This is our purpose as we enter anew into Advent,” the bishop concluded. “Let us ask Our Lady, she who is ‘full of grace’, to accompany us along the path to the holiness, the true happiness to which we are called. In the beautiful words of the Second Vatican Council, we know that in the most Blessed Virgin Mary the Church has already reached perfection and in our struggle she shines out for us as a sign of certain hope and consolation until the day of the Lord shall come in splendour.”
Bogotá, Colombia, Dec 4, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA).- The Diocese of Cúcuta, Colombia, has been awarded a Portafolio Award, an annual recognition in the country given to organizations and people promoting economic and social development.
The a… […]
Vatican City, Dec 3, 2018 / 08:44 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For the 50th anniversary of a Jesuit college in Rome, Pope Francis challenged members of the college community to reflect on the origins of the Society of Jesus as they seek spiritual fruit.
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Islamabad, Pakistan, Dec 3, 2018 / 07:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A group of advocates for religious freedom have formed a commission for the protection of minorities’ rights in Pakistan, amid growing fears of intolerance toward religious minorities … […]
Syracuse, N.Y., Dec 3, 2018 / 06:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Diocese of Syracuse has released a list of 57 priests credibly accused of abusing a minor, with some of the charges dating back to the 1950s.
“It is my fervent hope and prayer that this effort will bring some peace and healing to those who have been directly harmed and to all members of our community of faith,” Bishop Robert Cunningham of Syracuse said Dec. 1.
Stressing that no clergy credibly accused of abuse of a minor are in active ministry, he said the list includes both deceased priests and living priests removed from all ministry.
The accused priests were ordained as far back as 1911.
Some abuse victims have not wanted the names of their abusers released. While the diocese previously yielded to their wishes, Bishop Cunningham said, “upon serious reflection and prayer, I have concluded this practice has become a roadblock to moving our local Church forward.”
The 75-year-old bishop, who has submitted his resignation upon reaching retirement age under Church law, added that it was not fair to leave such a decision about abuse disclosure to his successor.
“The news over the past few months of the tragic failings of the Catholic Church has been deeply distressing and has caused many to lose faith and trust,” he said. “It continues to weigh heavily on our hearts. Personally for me, as your bishop, I have prayerfully considered what I can do to help rebuild trust and forge a path to restoring and strengthening the faith.”
A credible accusation, the diocese explained in documents accompanying the bishop’s letter, meets one of several criteria: the allegation is “natural, reasonable, plausible and probable”; the allegation is corroborated with other evidence or another source; or the allegation is acknowledged or admitted by the accused.
Some additional allegations have been reported to the appropriate district attorneys and will be added to the list if found credible, the diocese said.
A compensation program run by the diocese determined that there are 85 known abuse victims, as of September. A diocesan compliance officer works with accused priests and regularly monitors them.
Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick told Syracuse.com he has reviewed the list released by the diocese several times. His office and the diocese have taken steps to ensure that accused priests who are still alive do not pose any danger to children. There are 19 such priests in the diocese.
Bishop Cunningham told Syracuse.com that Catholic leaders had for a time taken the view that sex abusers were not criminals, but psychiatric patients suffering “a sickness that we thought was treatable.” Priests, including some in the Syracuse diocese, were sent to Catholic treatment centers like the Southdown Institute in Canada and St. Luke’s in Maryland.
The bishop also said previous generations had a poor understanding of the damage caused by sexual abuse.
“Not just in the Church, but in society at large, there’s been an evolving understanding of child sexual abuse, the trauma it causes, the difficulty it causes,” Cunningham said in his letter.
“I don’t think the church ever intended to cover anything up,” Cunningham continued. “They frequently handled situations as families wanted or as society was doing at that time. I think it’s a slow awakening to realize how serious this issue is. And it covers much more than the Church.”
The 2002 approval of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People ended the practice of treating priests and returning them to active ministry.
The U.S. bishops had intended to address sex abuse again at their fall general assembly, but the Congregation for Bishops ordered them to postpone voting on resolutions until a special global meeting of the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences to address the sex abuse crisis, set for this February at the Vatican.
Seattle, Wash., Dec 3, 2018 / 05:16 pm (CNA).- Coffee giant Starbucks and microblogging website Tumblr have each announced they will be taking steps to prevent the online access of pornography.
Tumblr announced Monday that sexually explicit content and nudity will be banned on its blogging platform, effective Dec. 17.
The policy comes after the site was removed from Apple’s App Store in November. Images of child pornography had reportedly been uploaded on the website, after the filters had failed to block them.
According to the new ban, GIFs, videos, and images exposing genitalia, along with illustrated sexual acts, will be prohibited. Art featuring nudity will be permitted, as will nakedness in some photos of public events like political protests.
In a similar move, Starbucks announced last week it will block access to pornographic material viewed through WiFi networks at the company’s stores beginning next year. The coffee chain banned in-store pornography in 2016, but did not install filters to prevent customers from accessing pornography.
The recent decision comes after an internet-safety group, Enough is Enough, pressured Starbucks to restrict the pornography accessed on the café’s WiFi.
The coffee company said recently that it had been looking for a way to block pornography on its network without thwarting access to other websites.
Details on the new filters have not been released, but Starbucks has said it will introduce them sometime in 2019.
“We have identified a solution to prevent this content from being viewed within our stores and we will begin introducing it to our U.S. locations in 2019,” the representative told NBC News.
Starbucks made the announcement shortly after Enough is Enough re-issued a petition Nov. 20 which has more than 26,000 signatures. The petition was a second attempt by the group to campaign against the lack of porn restriction on Starbucks’ WiFi.
In 2014, the non-profit pressured Starbucks and McDonald’s to create a porn-free environment on publicly accessible WiFi.
Donna Hughes, CEO of Enough is Enough, said McDonald’s quickly responded to fix the problem, while Starbucks promised to act but did not. At present, Starbucks has only filtered porn in its U.K. locations.
“Starbucks has had a tremendous opportunity to put its best foot forward in protecting its customers from images deemed obscene and illegal under the law, but they haven’t budged, despite their promise two years ago,” Hughes said in a Nov. 26 statement.
“We demand Starbucks do the right thing by keeping its promise of two and half years ago,” she said. “We applaud Starbucks’ commitment to protect children in its UK stores, but what about America’s children? …There’s no reason why Starbucks can’t offer that same level of commitment of WiFi safety to its loyal customer base here in the United States.”
Hughes said that because Starbucks did not follow through with its 2016 commitment, the company has kept open an for child pornography to be accessed under the radar, and for teens to bypass parental controls.
Enough is Enough ran a thank-you campaign for Starbucks after it promised to block porn in 2016. Hughes told NBC News that, this time, the group will withhold applause and continue to apply pressure until the changes are seen.
“They won’t get an applause until they’ve actually implemented safe Wi-Fi filtering,” Hughes said. “This time we’re going to wait and see, and we’re going to keep the pressure on.”
Major porn websites have issued statements in response to the decision. The pornographic video-sharing site YouPorn, released a memo which banned the Starbucks’ products from the organization’s offices, beginning in January 2019.
A similar site, Pornhub, also issued a statement, noting it would be rolling out “Safe for Work” content – nudity-free videos. The category contains topics like video game reviews and advice from porn stars.
However, sexual and obscene advertisements may still be encountered in the “SFW” webpages. It is unclear if the new ban will block entire domains containing pornography, or allow access to parts of the websites which do not have sexually explicit material.
Brussels, Belgium, Dec 3, 2018 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the first criminal investigation of euthanasia since Belgium legalized the practice, the country’s authorities are looking into the 2010 death of a woman with Asperger syndrome whom prosecutors say may have been illegally poisoned.
Thirty-eight year old Tine Nys was reportedly diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a mild autism spectrum disorder, two months before being legally euthanized. Asperger syndrome is one of the most common mental health conditions leading to euthanasia in Belgium, along with depression and personality disorders, the Associated Press reports.
Euthanization of adults was legalized in Belgium in 2002, and of minors in 2014.
The country’s euthanasia commission had previously dismissed Nys’ family’s complaint.
The deceased woman’s sister told the Associated Press that though Nys suffered from mental health issues, it was “unthinkable that those problems warranted her death.” She also alleges that the doctors fumbled Nys’ euthanasia procedure, and that Nys was so desperate to die that she “manipulated the test” administered to her to ensure she was diagnosed with incurable Asperger syndrome.
After Nys’ family filed a criminal complaint, her doctors attempted to block the investigation. The psychiatrist who approved Nys’ request to die, Dr. Lieve Thienpont, reportedly wrote that Nys’ family was a “seriously dysfunctional, wounded, traumatized family with very little empathy and respect for others.”
The doctors who approved Nys’ euthanasia, including Thienpont, will now face trial for poisoning, according to a prosecutor for the case. A conviction in the case could carry a lifetime prison sentence.
Joe Zalot, a staff ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, said Catholic teaching holds that both euthanasia and assisted suicide are impermissible.
“Both are immoral, but I would say euthanasia has a much greater gravity because…in many cases, you’re killing the patient without the patient’s consent, even; the patient doesn’t even know what’s going on,” Zalot told CNA.
“There are other cases of families of people who were euthanized, both in Belgium and the Netherlands, who are raising some very serious questions about what doctors are doing, after their loved ones were killed without them even knowing about it,” he said.
Teaching in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, St. John Paul II wrote that “euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”
Zalot said: “Euthanasia is akin to murder. You are taking someone’s life, and from the Catholic Church’s perspective no one should have the ability, let alone the right, to take another person’s life,”
“The mercy [killing] arguments you’ll hear…’We’re doing this to alleviate someone’s pain’…in most cases pain can be alleviated without resorting to [euthanasia].”
“Belgian doctors are essentially taking it upon themselves the determination of a person’s ‘quality of life,’” Zalot said. “’Quality of life’ has essentially become a buzzword to support euthanasia or assisted suicide.”
In the United States, seven states and District of Columbia allow assisted suicide, where the doctor provides the patient with a means to kill themselves.
“If you look at the progression of it, you look at what has happened in Belgium, in Switzerland, and in Canada…That is coming to the United States,” Zalot said.
“And it’s going to come through the states that have already legalized assisted suicide…I would guess in the next five or so years.”
Belgium’s law allows minors of any age who are terminally ill to request euthanasia. Parental consent, as well as the agreement of doctors and psychiatrists, is required.
In 2016 and 2017, three minors availed themselves of the procedure and were euthanized, according to a government report.
There were 2,028 euthanasia deaths in 2016, and 2,309 in 2017, a 13 percent rise year-on-year. The report found that cancer is the primary reason individuals seek euthanasia.
“It’s the slippery slope at work,” Zalot said. “You have an untreatable, terminal physical disease, and that’s where the advocates [of assisted suicide and euthanasia] always start…People say it’s going to be limited to instances of terminal illness. Well, it’s not.”
Dublin, Ireland, Dec 3, 2018 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The Irish organization Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has written an open letter to the country’s bishops, requesting a national assembly to discuss potential reforms to the Church.
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Jakarta, Indonesia, Dec 3, 2018 / 02:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Human rights groups are criticizing a smartphone app being rolled out by the Indonesian government which would allow citizens to file heresy reports against groups with unofficial or unorthodox religious practices.
The app, “Smart Pakem,” is available for download in the Google Play store and was launched by Jakarta’s Prosecution Office, which said it aims to streamline the previously-tedious and complicated written heresy reporting system.
Users can report from their phones the practice of any unrecognized religion, or unorthodox interpretations of the country’s six officially recognized religions: Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Protestantism.
“The objective…is to provide easier access to information about the spread of beliefs in Indonesia, to educate the public and to prevent them from following doctrines from an individual or a group that are not in line with the regulations,” Nirwan Nawawi, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, told AFP.
While Indonesia has a secular government, about 87 percent of the population is Muslim, making it the largest Muslim nation by population in the world. The remaining population is mostly comprised of Christians (10 percent) and Hindus (2 percent).
The constitution of the country officially invokes “belief in the One and Only God” and guarantees religious freedom, but strict blasphemy laws embedded in its criminal code have been criticized by national and international human rights groups.
Critics worry that the new heresy app could further undermine religious tolerance and freedom in a country where discrimination and attacks against religious minorities, and even among different sects of Islam, are not uncommon.
“This is going from bad to worse – another dangerous step to discriminate religious minorities in Indonesia,” Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono told AFP.
Bonar Tigor Naipospos, vice chairman of human rights group Setara Institute, told AFP the app was “dangerous” and will “create problems” if a majority of people decide they don’t like any particular religious minority.
Earlier this year, multiple attacks on Catholic parishes in the country led to Church leaders asking Catholics to be on high alert during Holy Week. On May 13, three bombings at Catholic churches in Indonesia left 11 dead and at least 40 others injured.
Attacks and persecution against adherents to indigenous religions in the country have also increased.
According to AsiaNews, Komnas HAM, an Indonesian human rights group, has called for the removal of the app and requested a meeting with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which told the group that further evaluation of the app was needed before the meeting could take place.
© Catholic World Report