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Robert George reflects on Trump admin’s latest religious liberty moves

October 9, 2017 CNA Daily News 2

Washington D.C., Oct 9, 2017 / 03:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Two sets of announcements by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services issued Friday both promise to broaden religious freedom protections in the United States.

The first announcement, by the HHS department, broadens the religious freedom exemptions to the department’s contraception mandate, which has been facing federal lawsuits from conscientious objectors since its introduction in 2011.

The second announcement was a memo issued by the Department of Justice, in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions explained in a detailed twenty-point memo, the legal principles all government agencies should consider when dealing with religious freedom concerns.

Neither announcement will automatically resolve religious freedom cases currently within the court system.

In an Oct. 6 interview with CNA, Robert George, a professor of constitutional law at Princeton University and visiting professor at Harvard University, explained the implications of these two announcements for religious freedom supporters throughout the country.

 

According to the administration this has been a pretty big day for religious freedom. Can you provide a general reaction and walk us through an overview of what the new HHS mandate adjustment and DOJ rules mean for religious freedom?

Well I think this is a big day for religious freedom. I see much greater value in the guidance that been issued today than in the executive order on religious freedom from a few months ago, which I was very disappointed in, as you know. I felt that order was essentially meaningless. The guidance today I think is genuine and I think it is very likely to make a positive difference. The administration goes clearly on the record and instructs all relevant agencies of government that the [Religious] Freedom Restoration Act applies even where a religious assurance seeks an exemption from a requirement that the entity confer benefits on third parties.

This is point 15 of the 20 key principles for Religious Liberty issued by the Justice Department.

And this is a big point in dispute between the two sides in this debate over religious freedom. And the administration comes down squarely in favor of what I certainly believe is the correct view.

Another key point that the guidance makes clear in point 19 is that religious employers are entitled to employ only persons whose beliefs and conduct are consistent with the employer’s religious precepts. Now I interpret that to mean that an employer may, if the religious employer chooses, for religious reasons choose to employ only members of its own faith. But it also means that the employer, if it chooses on the basis of its religious faith, can choose to hire people who are not of the same faith, but limit those employment opportunities to prospective employees whose conduct is in line with the moral teachings of the faith. Now this is very important. It means for example that a Catholic school could say, “We don’t insist on hiring only Catholics to be teachers in the school. Perhaps we insist on Catholics as teachers of religion, since it’s a Catholic school. We are perfectly happy to hire a math teacher, social studies teacher, and literature teacher who are Hindu or Protestant or Jewish or Mormon or Muslim.”

But, even if they choose to do that [a Catholic employer] can choose to employ only people from their own faith or other faiths who live their lives in line with Catholic moral teaching. So if for example the school says, “We do not want to employ people who are living in a cohabiting partnership outside of marriage,” under this guidance, under point 19 as I interpret it, the employer is entitled to do that, and that’s protected as a matter of the employer’s religious freedom. This is a very important point.

You know, I do have a question about point 20 that has to do with the first word and the point – that what is “generally.” The point says, “generally, the federal government may not condition federal grants or contracts on the religious organization altering its religious character beliefs or activities.” What I don’t know is what the exceptions are. I assume “generally” is meant to state a rule, but to contemplate that there are exceptions to the rule. So I think we need clearer guidance from the administration and from the Justice Department about the conditions under which the federal government may legitimately condition federal grants or contracts on their religious organization altering its religious character beliefs or activities. Since it’s presented as a conditional norm not as an absolute norm we really need some clarity about what the conditions are, or what the exceptions are. And I cannot find that clarity in in the material released today. But I do think we need it.

I’m glad you brought up the Executive Order and its shortcomings. Could you briefly explain what your concerns with the order were, for those who are unfamiliar?

There was very little in the March executive order that was actually operative in such a way as to protect everybody’s religious freedom.

To the extent that there was much operative, it had mainly to do with the interpretation and application of the Johnson Amendment, which forbids political advocacy of certain sorts by churches.

I said at the time that the Johnson Amendment, while problematic both constitutionally and as a policy matter, was not among the top 20 items on a list of genuine concerns about religious freedom. It’s very rarely, if ever, enforced. It does have something of a chilling effect which is why would like to get rid of it. But, to those who have not been chilled by it, have by and large been left unmolested by the government. So it was not a problem in desperate need of fixing.

There were a lot of other things like the protection of employers against being forced to hire people who were in same-sex partnerships, for example, where the employers faith judged those kinds of partnerships to be immoral, or other sorts of sexual partnerships – perhaps co-habiting opposite sex partners without benefit of marriage.

That was nothing in there to protect employers in those domains. So, what what we see today goes in the right direction on a number of those issues, including you know those two areas – points 15 and 19 – that I already called attention to.

Now I know that the preparatory materials for the guidance points, says that this guidance does not resolve any specific cases. It offers guidance on existing protections in religious liberty and federal law.

Of course there are cases that are pending. So the proof will be in the pudding. We need to know whether those government officials – including those in charge of litigation matters who have cases pending that jeopardize the life of religious employers. We need to know whether they will interpret these guidance points in ways that will cause them to relent in attempting to limit the freedom of those employers. I certainly hope that they will, but this is by its own terms, this guidance does not dictate to any official that he or she resolved a specific case in a particular way. It says that it doesn’t do that. It says, “this guidance does not resolve any specific cases.”

So since that’s true, we’ll need to know how officials interpret the guidance and apply the guidance to specific cases. That will be the proof. That will be the proof in the pudding.

We’ll see whether these cases are resolved in ways that are respectful of religious freedom, or whether these guidance points are treated as if they’re meaningless and officials carry on with cases in the way that some have been carrying on with these cases: in ways that limit the religious freedom, or attempt to limit the religious freedom, of these employees.

There’s some important points that have been well-established, but it’s good to have them reiterated since they remain controversial. Point three is an example of that: the freedom of religion extends to persons and organizations. There’s there’s a view that’s been circulated by people who are in truth enemies of religious freedom, although they would not admit to being that – but they are.

There’s a view that says religious freedom rights extend only to individual persons and not to organizations like churches, schools, religiously based social service providers, and so forth. This guidance in point three makes very clear that this administration’s position is that freedom of religion extends to religious organizations and not just individuals, so that’s good. It’s not new, but it’s good.

Switching gears to the changes to the HHS mandate: how does this adjustment impact the longstanding battle over mandate we’ve been seeing for the past six years?

Of course, your best source of your best source of information on that, Addie, is the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom. I’m would certainly myself defer to what the lawyers there said because it’s their case and they have been completely on top of this, and they’re excellent lawyers. As you know I’m a member of the board of the Becket Fund, and a member of what’s called the Corporation of the Becket Fund as well.

I think our lawyers have done a fantastic job in these cases including Little Sisters of the Poor case, so I would really defer to their judgement.

I will say this though: I believe an authentic, faithful, honest interpretation of these guidelines by the government officials who have responsibility for that litigation would it cause them to basically concede to the Little Sisters, and to acknowledge that to the extent that the regulations purport to impose upon religious organizations a requirement that they provide, or in any way to implicate themselves in providing contraceptives or abortifacient efficient drugs in violation of religious teaching, that the government would simply concede the government has no right to do that. The regulations cannot be enforced against those religious entities. But again, the proof will be in the pudding.

We’ll see whether the public officials to whom this guidance is addressed apply the guidance in that way. That’s the point again about the guidance itself not resolving specific cases. So we’ll see.

There’s other point that’s worth making, just to step back from all this for a while.

Even as late as the middle 1960s there were still jurisdictions – including Massachusetts and Connecticut – that prohibited the sale, distribution, and even use of contraceptives. Those were longstanding laws put on the books by Protestant majorities in the 19th century to protect public morality.

The reason that efforts to repeal those laws consistently failed in the legislatures of Connecticut in Massachusetts and some other states, although they succeeded in some states, the reason they failed in other states is that some of the legislatures felt that the widespread availability of contraception would would weaken the public morality and open the floodgates to promiscuity, adultery, divorce, family abandonment, and all the things that comes in the wake of a collapse of sexual morality. The Supreme Court struck down the anti-contraception laws in 1965 in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut and in 1972 in the case of Eisenstaedt v. Baird and they did that at the request of liberals who insisted that contraception was a deeply private matter in which the public had no right to intrude.

The Supreme Court found a so-called right to privacy, according to the justice system the right to use contraception, because it was a private matter. One cannot help but notice how liberals have changed their tune. They no longer regard contraception as a private matter: once they broke down the laws against contraception on the grounds that it was an allegedly private matter, they suddenly shifted back to treating it as such a public matter that they’re going to force people in general to pay for other people’s private contraception. They’re even willing to force religious conscientious objectors like the Green family and Hobby Lobby and a Little Sisters of the Poor to make themselves complicit in one way or another in providing other people’s allegedly private contraceptives.

So, one cannot help but perceive a rather huge dollop of hypocrisy in the way the contraception issue has been treated by the progressive movement to from the middle 1960s to the middle 2010s.

If it’s private, leave it private. If it’s not private, then they had no business asking the Supreme Court to strike down laws prohibiting it in the name of a putative right to privacy.

They really should make up their minds whether it’s private or not private.

Another change is that the mandate now protects those with non-sectarian conscience objections to the mandate. Can you speak to the importance of this expansion for those who object to these issues for non-religious reasons?

Yes. Many people do not derive their moral convictions from a religion, and many religious people believe that even apart from divine revelation there are moral truths that can be known by the disciplined application of reason even apart from what might, in addition, be known by religious authority by virtue of the teaching of a church or a body of scripture or what have you.

In both cases it’s sometimes described as natural law.

It appears that in this guidance, it’s acknowledged that conscience formed on the basis of non religiously based, or not necessarily religiously based, on a moral reflection deserves conscience protection in the same way that religiously based moral convictions deserve conscience protection.

Back to the DOJ update … Can you comment on the DOJ guidance on how to address all religious freedom objections. What other cases or situations can this apply to outside of the contraceptive mandate or providing potentially abortifacient procedures? What are some of the other kinds of cases that the DOJ guidance might impact?

Yes, I mean I knew one thing would be in those states that have moved to assisted suicide, I think the guidance system provides some promise of protecting religiously based health care-providing institutions like Catholic hospitals or other religiously affiliated medical institutions from being forced to participate in assisted suicide or, for that matter, in abortion. The same with individuals as well as institutions: doctors in state facilities for example who cannot in conscience participate in assisted suicide or abortion in places like Oregon that have taken the step of embracing assisted suicide.
It could be that if there are some states or municipalities that move in the direction of banning male infant circumcision – there’s a movement that strongly is pushing for bans on male infant circumcision– the movement is called the intactivist movement– if such laws are adopted I think that this would strengthen hands of Jewish organizations and Muslim organizations that will seek to preserve the right on a religious basis to have their male infant children circumcised. We’ve seen this in Europe: some some jurisdictions in Europe have banned male infant circumcision and their movement is alive here in the United States. One can easily imagine certain jurisdictions, certain municipalities, maybe a state, banning circumcision, so it could become important in that area.

These these protections will protect not only Catholics and other Christians, but members of non-Christian faiths as well.

What else should our readers know about these two religious freedom updates?

Probably the most important thing to remind people in closing is that the guidance or principles designed to guide public officials but, they don’t dictate results. The same is true of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, by the way. It simply gives the religious claimant today in court and requires that the government prove that its imposition on a religious claimant is supported by a compelling state interest and represents the least restrictive or least intrusive means of prosecuting that interest. It doesn’t dictate the result.

So while I welcome and I think all friends of religious liberty and of conscience should welcome this guidance, we need to hold off cheering until we see how the guidance is actually interpreted and applied by public officials. It’s when we see actual cases being resolved – whether those cases are in litigation or whether their decisions about whether to bring a case or how to bring a case – until we see actual cases. Until we see the guidance actually applied to concrete disputes we won’t know whether to cheer. So what that tells us is there’s a human element. Rules don’t apply or interpret themselves. Human beings interpret and apply rules. So we need to see the human beings in the bureaucracy interpreting and applying the rules and then we’ll see whether there’s anything worth cheering about here.

But I do like to believe of the principals and I think if they are faithfully and authentically interpreted, it will mean a very desirable set of protections for religious freedom. Protections that are now many years overdue due to the assaults on religious freedom during the Obama administration.

[…]

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Expert ‘shocked’ at lack of awareness about online abuse

October 9, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Rome, Italy, Oct 9, 2017 / 12:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At the close of a Rome conference on child protection online, a leading expert in the field said that while the statistics are well-known, he was surprised by the lack of awareness about the problem.

He added that all sectors of society need to take a more pro-active approach to the difficulty.

“If you study this field and if you work in it, you know about the numbers. I am more amazed about the lack of realization in many people about the scale of the problem about which we speak,” Fr. Hans Zollner SJ told CNA Oct. 7.

President of the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center of Child Protection (CCP) and a member of Pope Francis’ commission for the protection of minors, spoke to CNA at the close of a four-day conference on “Child Dignity in the Digital World.”

Organized by the CCP in collaboration with the UK-based global alliance WePROTECT and the organization “Telefono Azzurro,” which is the first Italian helpline for children at risk, the conference took place Oct. 3-6 in Rome and was the first of its kind on a global scale addressing the issue of online safety.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin opened the conference on day one, and other participants include social scientists, civic leaders, and religious representatives. Discussion points include prevention of abuse, pornography, the responsibility of internet providers and the media, and ethical governance.

In his comments to CNA, Zollner noted that the European Union currently has a campaign called “One in Five,” referring to the fact that one in five young people in Europe has, at some point, been sexually abused.

“If you realize, if you think a little bit, I’m shocked, so I don’t know why the existential and the psychological harm that is done does not really translate into concrete political action to counteract this,” he said.

“(It’s) for me one of the mysteries that I can’t explain” other than perhaps “it’s too big, it’s too shocking, so you put it away because nobody can deal with it,” he said. “So we need to start dealing with it step by step, and bringing down the numbers of those who have been harmed.”

Zollner also touched on what he believes were the main takeaways of the conference, the role of both the Church and society at large in safeguarding from online exploitation, and action points for the future, which he said need to have a more “preventative approach.”

Please read below for CNA’s interview with Fr. Zollner, edited for length and clarity:

What, for you, are some of your impressions after the conference? How do you think it went? What are some of the highlights?

I’m really amazed and I’m very happy because this conference was the first of its kind in bringing people together of different areas, of different levels of responsibility in society, in business, on the internet, social media corporations, different religion and so forth. So it was the first of its kind and it went very well, I heard it from I believe every single person who participated, because it was not sectoral. On other occasions we would have only the business people, and here the government people and here the scientists. They were really together and they were discussing, so the format worked really well, where in the morning we would have sessions with top experts who have done research for many, many years and decades. And in the afternoon we would have all these people in mixed groups, meaning from different countries, languages, professions and so forth, to get together and they spoke to each other and challenged each other, and they came up with very interesting ideas, reflections and proposals.

There were outstanding experts in the research in what do we talk about, what is online sexual abuse of minors, what is the impact on the brains, the relational developmental and emotional side of young people when they watch pornography or when they themselves are abused as objects of sexual abuse which is then posted and sold on the internet. What can we do to prevent such uploading of material of that kind, and what can we do so that the people who are likely to become offenders don’t do what they do now? Very often in a hidden space where people say, even police say, there are very few means to tackle that.

We’ve heard from Interpol that if you take together all the sex offenders who commit crimes online, we wouldn’t have enough prisons to put them in. So we need to have a preventive strategy so that people don’t commit crimes. And we need to do that by bringing that together lawmakers, law enforcement, companies who have the technological means with the algorithms and photo DNA recognition which is out there already, but it is not applied thoroughly enough and consistently enough, so we really need to work together.

This was our intention, bringing people together so they enrich each other and they enhance what we can do so that young people grow up in a safer world, also a safer online world. The networking has created so many new relationships and there are so many ideas and concrete proposals for follow-up conferences in different parts of the world: Latin America, Asia, Africa. The ripple-effect is there, so we are happy about that.

So you think some of these regional conferences will actually happen before a second global conference?

Sure, sure. We have worked for more than two years to organize this one, so it’s not around the corner, but I have heard that next year there are concrete ideas and they are already talking to each other, people from Asia, people from Africa, people from Latin America, people who would like to have something among religious leaders, an interreligious prevention conference, if you wish. So the faith communities talk to each other and help each other to understand how much they can do in their schools, in their communities, in their institutions whatever they are, to have for example risk-free WiFi access, so we could do much in terms of preventing abuse happening in open space WiFi for example. Unlimited access doesn’t mean there is an unlimited possibility of crime.

In terms of bringing all these people together, you said it was a model that worked. How was the interaction, and do you expect these connections to continue in the future?

Absolutely. All of the feedback that I’ve heard from the working groups was that it was very interesting, interesting for the participants, interesting also because we invited 10 representatives of the ‘digital native’ generations, so young students here from around Rome, and they brought into the discussion the voices of young people and how they perceive what the adults talk about and what those decision makers think is necessary, whether that’s something reasonable for young people, or they don’t see a need, of they think you should invest here. So we have a lot of leads. It will will be the task, in the aftermath of this congress, that we will concentrate on 3-4 lines that we can really follow through. Some of the major foundations that were represented here, big foundations, gave us the prospect that they would actually help us to find funding for some of these projects. On a large scale there are a lot of possibilities.

One needs to be focused, one needs to be on target, but you can do many things at the same time. For example, one could ask advertisement companies to do their job and help young people become more aware of the risks that are connected to access to internet, engaging in chats and the exchange of messages with unknown people. So all this is a wide range of measures and possibilities and people who were here were probably in this moment, I believe there were no better prepared people to talk about this than these ones. They have a lot of passion for the protection of minors, you could feel it in the big hall, in the small groups. It was just a spirit of communion and a spirit of common intention and interest.

You mentioned that there have been offers for specific investments. What would be the areas that you think should be targeted first if you had the funding?

Of course, the scientists and the governments said, the government responsibles who were here, ministers, those who were the independent commissioners in their country, etc, all of them said they need reliable data. And interestingly enough, for example the question of work in prevention has not been researched well enough. So we need to go into depth and breadth, because we’re talking about millions and millions of young people who are at high risk of being abused, and becoming abusers of other young people when they do ‘sexting’ or even ‘sextortion.’

So one area for scientists would be research in different kinds of prevention measures, safeguarding measures, and finding out where are the keys, so that young people don’t become victims. In the same line, but on the other side, so to say, how can we prevent people who are at risk of becoming abusers, adults who have sexual interest, sexual attraction to minors, how can we prevent these people from acting out? So this would be on the scientific side, but many, many more projects can be thought out. On the side of lawmakers, they need to come up with something that transcends national, legal boundaries, because internet companies are multi-national, and if there’s one thing that became clear in this conference it’s that there is no institution, no science, no single approach, no single nation that can tackle this, because it goes far beyond, in any sense, far beyond what the internet offers, where the access is possible, where the servers are, where things are uploaded, etc. So there needs to be serious thinking about how there can be a joint-effort on the sides of governments.

So we are happy that the WePROTECT initiative partnered with us in our effort, as well as Telefono Azzurro. But there is already an initiative by the British government, and the foundress, Baroness Joanna Shields, was a member of our steering committee, so very dedicated persons who have already had much impact on at least a certain number of governments, even if you can’t ask how much they really then really implement, but there are 70 governments already on board. Then of course we would expect, and in one of the interventions yesterday there was a very strong call on internet providers and software companies like Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Snapchat and whatever to do what they can and to maybe even pay a price in their economic profit, because we’re talking here about billions of dollars and euros, so it’s a big business out there, and having more coherence in the policies that all these companies claim to have and more implementation of that would be a huge step forward. Another area would be in law enforcement, when we talk about the ‘dark net,’ so the hidden traffic that happens below the radar, purposely hidden, how can police intervene if you know that 83 percent of traffic that is going on in the ‘dark net’ has to do with sexual images of children.

Both Microsoft and Facebook attended the conference. What kind of feedback and interest did you see from them on this point?

We really appreciated Facebook’s help, they supported us, they brought it on Facebook live, the major events were streamed with their help. I’ve seen very dedicated people. As the Baroness, who is the British government’s internet safety person, who was at Facebook and I believe also worked for Google and Microsoft, she said in her speech that there are people very committed to the ethical code.

But then we see, obviously, that other interests come into play and there are hard decisions to be made.

Either you protect children coherently or you make more money because you don’t follow your own ethical standards. We heard yesterday that if you compare the use of pornography by young people to the use of cigarettes by young people, maybe in a few years’ time it will be possible to sue pornography companies for bringing out in an unrestricted manner pornographic material that is freely accessible, and if one day it is convincingly shown, robustly shown and scientifically proven that watching pornography at the age of five or eight or 10 has this harmful outcome in young people and for adult life, then the companies will be sued on that.

There are many areas where we need to act, and what I perceive is that everyone has taken something for him or her self back home, and I think this is a good starting point for something that could become a movement.

In listening to the talks and hearing the information, many of the numbers and content were shocking for me personally. Was there anything you heard that was new for you or that you were surprised by?

If you study this field and if you work in it, you know about the numbers. I am more amazed about the lack of realization in many people about the scale of the problem about which we speak.

The European Union has started a campaign called “One in Five,” saying that one in five young persons in Europe is sexually abused, online or offline; one in five, which means every fifth young person you see on the street, the European Union officially says has probably been abused sexually. So 20 percent of the whole population. If you realize, if you think a little bit, I’m shocked, so I don’t know why the existential and the psychological harm that is done does not really translate into concrete political action to counteract this, (it’s) for me one of the mysteries that I can’t explain. Except if I say it’s too big, it’s too shocking, so you put it away because nobody can deal with it. So we need to start dealing with it step by step, and bringing down the numbers of those who have been harmed.

Looking at some of these phenomena, some of the general developments in this area, what are the next, most urgent steps moving forward in terms of action-points. You guys made a list of action-points in your declaration, but what are the most urgent right now?

Right now is to do and apply whatever can be applied in terms of technological means and measures on the side of internet companies and social media. They have many keys and they can and should apply them coherently and according to their own ethical standards. Secondly, governments need to talk together international bodies like UNICEF and the UN in getting governments moving.

Like the Italian government has now engaged in and committed to a very strong position in terms of wanting to do something for the online safety of children. And thirdly all of the scientists that were here, we will have a call for papers. We have invited all the participants here of a high level, the highest level, the stars in the field, to produce original research that will prove what is helpful in terms of prevention, in terms of creating a safe environment, what is helpful in dealing with perpetrators.

As far as the Church goes, both the Pope and Cardinal Parolin mentioned that the Church has learned a lot from her past mistakes in this area, and can given her experience can be a leading voice moving forward. How can the Church lead in this area?

Simply by offering a platform like this one. We asked people from different parts of the world, from different political backgrounds, from different religious backgrounds, from different attitudes towards this whole question of, for example, freedom of expression, and content limitation, and everyone whom we invited came. So it seems that the Catholic Church here in an academic setting here at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and our Center for Child Protection, offered a platform for discussion. We offered a completely free area of discussion of a time, of the forum for the working groups to engage. We chose the names, but not according to a preconceived criteria. We chose the best of the best and they came.

We had a UN person tweeting these days, who is responsible for cyber-crime in the UN, and he said this climate here is outside of political gain, so we can talk freely, we can share freely, and we can really focus on the real issues. So there is a role that we see and that the Catholic Church can play, humbly, within the limits of the surprisingly small resources that we have.

If you talk about the ‘foreign ministry’ or the ‘research ministry’ of the Church, this is but a very, very, tiny portion of what one ministry in one country would have in terms of personnel and so forth. But there seems to at least be this possibility to convene people. What you see in trafficking, the question of human trafficking, has happened with the Santa Marta Group, or with ecology and the climate change topic. So there are issues in which the Catholic Church is seen as engaged, but also as a neutral territory where you don’t need to come up with the ideological battles.

What gives the Church the authority to be able to speak on these issues and arrange these sorts of meetings?

If you show that you are serious about the issue and the scientific world wants to see data, wants to see results, wants to see proven statements. Of course from the political side it’s the pledge that the Holy Father has repeated today, and to do whatever can be done so that young people are safe and safer in the Catholic Church.

[…]

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Don’t rush to judge Columbus, anthropologist encourages

October 9, 2017 CNA Daily News 4

Providence, R.I., Oct 9, 2017 / 10:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The controversies surrounding Christopher Columbus are sometimes misplaced and should not overshadow Columbus’ Christian motives in his voyages, a scholar of religious studies and anthropology has said.

“In recent times, Christopher Columbus has become the symbol for everything that went wrong in the New World, so much so that it has become difficult to celebrate the holiday commemorating his discovery of the New World,” Carol Delaney, a visiting scholar of religious studies at Brown University, told CNA.

“I have been dismayed by the lack of knowledge about the man by those who are rushing in judgment against him and changing the day that commemorates his extraordinary achievement.”

“While we may not agree with the scenario that motivated Columbus, it is important to understand him in the context of his time,” she added.

Delaney, who holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, is author of the 2011 book “Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem,” which examines Columbus’ religious motivations for his voyages.

Her book warns against misjudging Columbus’ motivations and accomplishments “from a contemporary perspective rather than from the values and practices of his own time.”

In her view, some criticism “holds him responsible for consequences he did not intend, expect, or endorse” and blames him for “all the calamities” that befell the “new world” he was once celebrated for discovering.

Columbus has been a major figure for Catholics in America, especially Italian-Americans, who saw his pioneering voyage from Europe as a way of validating their presence in a sometimes hostile majority-Protestant country. The Knights of Columbus, the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world, took his name and voyage as an inspiration. At one point in the nineteenth century there were efforts to push for the voyager’s canonization.

In 1892, the quadricennial of Columbus’ first voyage, Leo XIII authored an encyclical that stressed Columbus’ desire to spread Catholic Christianity. The Pope stressed how Columbus’ Catholic faith motivated his voyage and supported him amid his setbacks.

In recent decades, some critics have stressed the negative aspects of Columbus’ voyage and European colonization of the New World, noting that European colonists’ arrival brought disease, violence and displacement to natives. Columbus Day holidays and parades have drawn protests from some activists.

Some U.S. localities have dropped observances of Columbus Day, while others have added observances intended to recognize those who lived in the Americas before Columbus sailed.

Delaney, however, questioned interpretations that depict Columbus as a gold-hungry marauder who did not care for the natives.

She said Columbus was motivated by the belief that all people must be evangelized to achieve salvation and by the belief that he could ally with the Great Khan of Cathay and secure enough gold to support an effort to retake Jerusalem.

“There was no intention of taking land or enslaving the people of the Khan, ruler of one of the greatest empires at the time,” Delaney said.

On his first return voyage to Spain, Columbus brought several natives who were not enslaved. Rather, they had been baptized and educated.

“One became his ‘adopted son’ and translator on future voyages, two were adopted by the (Spanish) king and queen,” she said.

After Columbus’ ship the Santa Maria ran aground on his first voyage, Columbus left 39 men on an island in the Caribbean with special instructions.

“He told them they should not go marauding, should not kidnap and rape the women, and should always make exchanges for food and gold,” Delaney explained.

“When he returned with more ships and people he found that all of the men whom he’d left behind had been killed. Unlike the priest who accompanied him, Columbus did not blame the natives, but his own men; clearly, they had disobeyed his orders.”

Delaney acknowledged that Columbus on later voyages enslaved some natives who resisted Christianization. At the same time, he also punished his own men who perpetrated misdeeds against the natives.

The scholar has also questioned uncritical treatments of the Spanish friar Bartolomeo de las Casas, who is sometimes compared favorably to Columbus.

While las Casas is now remembered primarily as a defender of the rights of native Americans, she said this came later in life. The friar also owned slaves, endorsed slavery, and operated plantations. He also helped suppress a native rebellion

Columbus never owned slaves and yet is “reviled and blamed for everything that went wrong in the Indies,” Delaney said in her book.

 

This article was originally published on CNA Oct. 13, 2014.

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Migration, Reformation center of Pope’s meeting with German president

October 9, 2017 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Oct 9, 2017 / 09:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday Pope Francis met German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Vatican for a conversation focused largely on migration and ecumenical dialogue in the country in light of the Reformation anniversary.

According to an Oct. 9 Vatican communique, discussion between the Pope and Steinmeier, elected in February, touched on the “good relations and fruitful collaboration” between Germany and the Holy See, and emphasis was placed on the “positive interreligious and ecumenical dialogue” in the country.

Special mention was made of the relationship between Catholics and Protestants in light of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which Pope Francis marked at the end of October 2016 with a trip to Sweden for a joint-commemoration of the event with Lutheran Church leaders in the country.

Discussion also turned to the topics of both the economic and religious status of Europe, and the world as a whole. Particular emphasis was placed on the issue of migration and “the promotion of a culture of acceptance and solidarity.”

Migration has been a hot topic in Germany recently, which is among the most popular migration destination in the world after the U.S.

In 2015, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel opted to allow more than one million asylum seekers into the country, as migration reached a fever pitch due to war in Syria and surrounding countries.

However, with most of those asylum seekers ending up in Bavaria, Merkel met backlash from her Bavarian allies in the Christian Social Union.

In response, on Sunday – two weeks after a federal election in which her party received the lowest level of  support since 1949 – she and members of her Christian Democratic Union party met with CSU reps on Sunday to reach an agreement over the migration issue.

Both sides agreed to cap the number of incoming refugees at 200,000 per year, with a few small exceptions.

The deal was likely part of the 55-minute long discussion between Pope Francis and President Steinmeier, who subsequently met with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Vatican Secretary for Relations with the States, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.

At the beginning of the meeting, Pope Francis, who lived in Bavaria for a brief period of time as a Jesuit, greeted the president in German, and the meeting concluded with an exchange of gifts: the president giving the Pope an antique print from the 1600s by Dutch painter Johannes David, and an emblematic book with various designs and drawings, which the president said was for the Pope’s “private library.”

For his part, Pope Francis gave the president his usual gift to heads of state: a copy of his 2014 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, his 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Si, and his 2016 post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia, as well as a medal of St Martin.

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Why this young woman spoke up against ‘Men for Choice’

October 8, 2017 CNA Daily News 3

Washington D.C., Oct 8, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Men are often told they have no voice in the abortion debate, yet an ongoing program, “Men for Choice”, seeks to amplify the voices of men in order to support abortion.

One young woman, concerned about the program’s ability to silence the voices of all who speak up for the unborn, and in particular women who have been mistreated because of abortion, decided to stand up and voice her opinion on the men’s abortion advocacy.  

“People are always talking about choice, but it’s only one choice,” said Kate Bryan, a resident of Washington, D.C. “That’s what I feel about Men for Choice: they’re really only pushing for one choice and if you don’t stand with them, you shouldn’t have a voice.”

Bryan and a friend protested against an event promoting Men for Choice, an ongoing program coordinated by NARAL Pro-Choice America, a national abortion advocacy organization. Together, they carried signs reading “Real Men Don’t Exploit Women” and “Real men feed their babies they don’t kill them.”

She and a friend attended a Sept. 26 rally of Men for Choice in the nation’s capital, and said she plans on protesting future Men for Choice events. Bryan said she was motivated to protest for her pro-life beliefs, as well as her interest in supporting women’s voices and pushing back against what she described as the “exploitation” of women.

Bryan said she finds it “interesting” that the pro-abortion organization is trying to promote men’s support for abortion, given that it can open up “so many opportunities for abuse, coercion.” Bryan pointed to several examples of coerced abortion and the pressure some women faced from family and partners to get an abortion.

Bryan also participated to help educate attendees on the facts of abortion procedures. “Most people go into events with minds made up on abortion,” Bryan told CNA.

However, many of the women she talked to at the event didn’t know basic facts about abortion procedures, at what ages these procedures are performed, and NARAL’s policies on abortion. She said that several of the women she talked to expressed disbelief and then surprise as they came to accept these facts.

“I don’t know if we changed anybody’s mind, but at least we challenged people to think,” Bryan said.  

The experience was different, however, when encountering the male protestors, Bryan stated. “The majority of men that were walking past mocked us,” she recalled. “We weren’t doing anything, just standing out there with our sign, and we were happy to talk to people.”

Despite some of the more tense interactions, Bryan said she’s glad she protested.  “Abortion doesn’t lead to freedom. It’s not empowering to women.” Bryan said she would like to see more “real choices” for women, like community support for pregnant women, better workplace protections, and family leave.

“I really feel passionate about empowering women and giving them opportunities and helping them find true freedom,” Bryan stressed. “Women deserve better, men deserve better and children in the womb certainly deserve better.” 

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Australian bishops meet in Rome as Church reels from recent crisis

October 8, 2017 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Oct 8, 2017 / 09:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Last week, Church leaders from Australia traveled to Rome to meet with Vatican authorities to discuss the various crises Catholics in the country are currently undergoing, largely tied to a history of clerical sex abuse.

According to an Oct. 7 communique from the Vatican, the leadership of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference traveled to Rome last week to meet with officials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and other relevant offices of the Holy See “for a wide-ranging discussion concerning the situation of the Catholic Church in Australia at this time.”

Topics covered in the discussions included the ongoing investigations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which recently suggested that the Catholic Church be legally bound to break the seal of Confession when sexual abuse has been disclosed within the Sacrament.

They also recently carried out a third investigation into Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, who is currently facing multiple charges of past sexual abuse in Australia.

Other topics covered, according to the communique, included the relationship between the Church and society as a whole, the re-establishment of trust following the abuse crisis and a call for greater participation of laypersons in decision-making roles in the Church in Australia.

Members of the Australian delegation were Archbishop Denis James Hart of Melbourne, President of the bishops’ conference; Archbishop Mark Benedict Coleridge of Brisbane, Vice-President of the conference, and Justice Neville John Owen of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council in Australia.

The main discussion took place Thursday, Oct. 5, while a conference on Child Dignity in the Digital World was taking place simultaneously at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.

Key participants from the Vatican side were the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin; the Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher; the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, P.S.S.; and the Secretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

The meeting fell just two months after the Royal Commission, established in 2013, released 85 proposed changes to the country’s criminal justice system.

In addition to suggestions tightening the law on sentencing standards in cases of historical sexual abuse, the use of evidence and grooming, the commission recommended that the failure to report sexual abuse, even in religious confessions, be made “a criminal offense.”

The suggestion was met with harsh opposition by Church leaders, who called the decision a “government intrusion” into the spiritual realm, which until now has been respected and upheld.

A day after the meeting took place, news broke that Cardinal Pell, who returned to Australia from the Vatican in June to face several charges of historical sexual abuse, will return to court in March for a hearing in which he will defend himself against witness testimonies.

Police in Victoria, Australia announced at the end of June that they would be charging Pell, 76, after several witnesses had come forward with accusations in 2016.

As the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy since 2013 and a member of the Council of Cardinals advising Pope Francis, Pell is the most senior Vatican official to ever be charged with abuse.

With the permission of Pope Francis, Pell took leave from his responsibilities in the Vatican in order to return to Australia for the court proceedings. At a brief, preliminary hearing in July shortly after returning, Pell told the court he would be pleading “not guilty” to all charges, and will maintain his innocence, as he has from the beginning.

According to BBC News, the committal hearing will be held March 5, with up to 50 possible witnesses available to give testimony. The hearing is expected to last four weeks, after which the magistrate will decide if there is enough evidence to take the case to trial.

 

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Pope Francis dedicates October to praying for the unemployed

October 8, 2017 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Oct 8, 2017 / 06:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Having dignified work is a topic Pope Francis has continuously returned to since his election, and it surfaced again in his latest prayer video, which urges viewers to spend October praying that employees have just working conditions, and for the unemployed.

The video, published Oct. 3, opens showing a young woman in an office searching through files and, when she can’t find the one she is looking for, an older colleague comes over and helps her.

As the scene plays out, Francis speaks in his native Spanish, saying “we should always remember the dignity and rights of those who work, condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and help to ensure authentic progress by man and society.”

The video depicts various scenes of people working in inhumane conditions, before switching to show an unemployed man walking around the city handing out resumes. As he stands on the corner, a pizza delivery man he bumps into sees the folder of resumes and writes down the phone number of his company.

In the next frame, the formerly-unemployed man is shown delivering a pizza to the woman who helped her younger colleague in the first scene, drawing a smiley face on her napkin when he sees that she is stressed out about her work.

Francis closes the video making an appeal to viewers, asking them to “pray that all workers may receive respect and protection of their rights, and that the unemployed may receive the opportunity to contribute to the common good.”

Launched as a special project for the Jubilee of Mercy, the videos are part of a larger initiative of the Jesuit-run global prayer network Apostleship of Prayer, and are filmed in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center (CTV) and the Argentinian marketing association La Machi.

The Apostleship of Prayer, which produces the monthly videos on the Pope’s intentions, was founded by Jesuit seminarians in France in 1884 to encourage Christians to serve God and others through prayer, particularly for the needs of the Church.

Since the late 1800s, the organization has received a monthly, “universal” intention from the Pope. In 1929, an additional missionary intention was added by the Holy Father, aimed at the faithful in particular.

However, as of January, rather than including a missionary intention, Pope Francis decided to have only one prepared prayer intention – the universal intention featured in the prayer video – adding a second intention for an urgent or immediate need if one arises.

The prayer intentions typically highlight issues of importance not only for Pope Francis, but for the world, such as families, parishes, the environment, the poor and homeless, Christians who are persecuted and youth.

Work is something that is especially important for Francis, and has been since his election. Not only has he highlighted the dignity of work and the need for humane working conditions regularly in his speeches, but in nearly every trip he’s taken within Italy he has met with the local working force.

In his speeches, he typically advocates for a more just society with equal opportunity, for managers to be honest and to steer away from temptations of corruption, and for everyone to have the right to a fare wage.

He has also spoken out frequently on common problems in the working world that impact Italy specifically, condemning businesses that pay employees “under the table” with no set contract or benefits, or employers who only hire workers for 10-month contracts that don’t include the summer months, so as to avoid paying them a full year’s wage.

In his latest trip within Italy, which he made to the dioceses of Cesena and Bologna, the Pope again met with workers, unemployed persons and union representatives, telling them that to seek a more just society “is not a dream of the past but a commitment, a job that everyone needs today.”

We cannot grow accustomed to the number of unemployed people in our communities as if they are a mere number or a statistic, he said, but instead, we must help the poor and needy around us to find work, thus restoring their dignity.

He said we must also dethrone the profit-mentality that often governs our intentions, instead placing the human person and the common good at the heart of what we do. But for this to happen, “it is necessary to increase the opportunities for decent work.”

“This is a task that belongs to the whole society,” he said. “At this stage in particular, the whole social body, in its various components, is called upon to make every effort, because work, which is the primary factor of dignity, is a central concern.”

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The ‘novelty’ of Christianity is love, not revenge, Pope Francis says

October 8, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Oct 8, 2017 / 04:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis said the new and unique perspective offered by Christianity is an attitude of love, rather than revenge, which God continues to adopt even in the face of our sins and errors.

“Here is the great novelty of Christianity: a God who, though disappointed by our sins and our errors, does not go back on his word, he does not stop and above all does not take revenge!” the Pope said Oct. 8.

“God loves, he doesn’t take revenge! He loves, and waits to forgive us,” Francis said, explaining that like the Israelites in salvation history, God calls each of us to form a relationship, and alliance, with him.

And “the urgency of responding with good fruits to the call of the Lord, who calls us to become his vineyard, helps us to understand what is new and unique in Christianity,” he said.

“This is not so much the sum of prescripts and moral norms, but it is first of all a proposal of love that God, through Jesus, made and continues to make through humanity,” he said. “It’s an invitation to enter this story of love, becoming a living and open vine, rich in fruit and hope for all.”

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday Angelus address, which he centered on the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew that recounts how the master of a vineyard hires tenants to oversee it.

However, the tenants mistreat and kill his servants when the master sends them to collect the fruits. The tenants, Francis said, “assume a possessive attitude: they don’t consider themselves simple managers, but owners,” and refuse to hand over the crop. Even when the master sends his son, the tenants kill him in hopes of taking the son’s inheritance.

In his speech, the Pope noted that this parable offered by Jesus illustrates in “an allegorical way” the warnings and rebukes given by the prophets in the history of Israel.

This is also a story that belongs to us, he said, because it speaks of the alliance God wanted to establish with humanity, and which he also calls each of us to participate in. However, like any “love story,” this history of alliance with God “has its positive moments, but it is also marked by betrayals and refusals.”

To understand how God responds to the refusals opposed to his love and his proposed alliance, the Gospel passage puts forth the question on the lips of the master: “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?”

Both this question and Jesus’ response about the stone rejected by the builders becoming the “cornerstone” of a new foundation, Francis said, highlight “that God’s disappointment for the wicked behavior mankind is not the last word!”

“Through the ‘discarded stones’ – and Christ is the first stone that the builders rejected – through situations of weakness and sin, God continues to circulate the ‘new wine’ of his vineyard, which is mercy,” he said.

And the only thing that can impede the “tenacious and tender” will of God, he said, is “arrogance and presumption, which at times even become violence!”

Faced with these attitudes, rather than going back on his promise, God “retains all his power to rebuke and admonish,” telling the arrogant and presumptuous that “the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and it will be given to a people that will bear fruit.”

We too are invited to become part of God’s vineyard and to bear good fruit, Pope Francis said, but stressed that in order to do so, we must be open.

“A vine that is closed can become wild and produce wild grapes,” he said. “We are called to go out of the vineyard and put ourselves at the service of our brothers who are not with us, to shake up and encourage each other, to remind each other that we must be the vine of the Lord in every environment, even the  most distant and uncomfortable.”

The Pope closed his address asking for Mary’s intercession in helping each of us “to be everywhere, especially on the peripheries of society, the vine that the Lord has planted for the good of all.”

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