Do coronavirus closings violate religious liberty? A religious freedom expert weighs in

March 16, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Mar 16, 2020 / 01:06 pm (CNA).- Few were surprised when the Chinese Communist Party banned church services in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in Hubei province. But the Italian government decree suspending all public religious ceremonies — leading to the suspension of Masses in the pope’s own diocese — provided more of a jolt.

All four of the vastly different countries with the most documented cases of the Covid-19 coronavirus — China, Italy, Iran, and South Korea — have suspended religious services.

As more government leaders will soon face tough decisions in the face of a spreading pandemic, the president of the Religious Freedom Institute told CNA about important criteria to ensure the protection of a foundational freedom.

“There must be a presumption in favor of full religious freedom for all religious communities in every country, especially in democratic countries. Italy’s decision in this case does not change that presumption, but it does show that in very limited circumstances, temporary limits on the freedom to gather may licitly be applied,” the RFI’s Tom Farr told CNA.

“No right with public effects is absolute, including the precious right of religious freedom,” he added.

Farr was the first director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, and subsequently taught religion and foreign affairs at Georgetown University and the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.

He said that these “limited circumstances” include instances when the extent of deadly infection is exceptionally high.

“Given Italy’s current designation as Level 3 by the U.S. CDC, which indicates the presence of ‘Widespread Community Transmission,’ Italy’s decision seems reasonable, especially in light of the fact that, to use the CDC’s description, ‘There is limited access to adequate medical care in affected areas’ of Italy and this reality understandably contributes to this extraordinary move,” Farr said.

“Absent this level of community transmission, the justification for such extraordinary measures to restrict religious gatherings quickly becomes much more tenuous,” he added.

When Italian government decreed the suspension of all civil and religious ceremonies, including funerals, on March 8, there had been 7,375 documented cases of the coronavirus leading to the deaths of 366 people.

In the days since that decree and a national quarantine, the number of cases in Italy has soared to 27,980 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 2,470 deaths on March 16.

Along with religious ceremonies, the Italian government also decreed the closure of all schools, universities, museums, movie theaters, concerts, gyms, archaeological sites throughout the country. The following day, the Prime Minister announced a national quarantine.

The religious freedom advocate explained that any government exercising its authority in such an extraordinary fashion should abide by the following criteria to ensure religious freedom:

“Such decrees may not be employed arbitrarily, for example, to target a particular religion or religion in general. They must be public, clear, and transparent. They should be preceded by consultation with the religious communities involved.”

Decrees banning religious freedom also “must be grounded in overwhelming evidence, available to all, that public health would be severely endangered without such a decree. They must be time-limited, with a clear and public expression of when the ban will end,” Farr told CNA.

The Diocese of Rome announced the cancellation of all public Masses shortly after the Italian government decree went into effect. Since then, Church leaders in Rome have debated whether churches in Rome could remain open for private prayer during a national quarantine.

“It is of course the right and the duty of any religious community to challenge in lawful ways any act by government that it considers an illicit restriction of its religious freedom. In some cases a community might find itself in the position of needing to engage in principled, civil disobedience. As I understand it the Catholic Bishops of Italy and the Holy Father have agreed to this decree, from which I infer they believe it prudent and just,” Farr said.

“It would be difficult to imagine such a sweeping decree in the United States, where the Constitution provides to all Americans and all their religious communities the right of free exercise of religion. However, should there be clear and overwhelming evidence that, in particular locations, the public health required a ban on all gatherings, it is not inconceivable,” Farr said.

Numerous state governments have announced prohibitions on gatherings of more than 250 people in recent days.

The Archdiocese of Seattle was the first in the U.S. to cancel public Masses in response to a government directive, and dozens of dioceses have followed suit. Others have granted general dispensations from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass, and some bishops, like Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, have encouraged parishes with high Sunday Mass attendance to consider adding more Masses.

Farr said that such banning large gatherings, if not specifically targeting religion, is understood to be within the government’s prerogative at a time of crisis.

“An American bishop bringing suit against a ban, whatever its size, would very likely prevail if the ban were only on religious gatherings. However, he would have trouble prevailing if the ban is on all gatherings, religious or not, and the act is easily justified by a dire threat to public health and welfare,” Farr said.

“Speaking as a Catholic for whom the sacraments are not optional, and are necessary to health and welfare, however, I would hope that the Italian Church, or the Church in any jurisdiction would do everything it could reasonably do to make the sacraments available in ways that would be consistent with just authority,” he added.

 

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How should healthcare be distributed when hospitals are overwhelmed?

March 16, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

New York City, N.Y., Mar 16, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).-  
As there are concerns over the ability of the healthcare system to manage the coronavirus pandemic, discussions are being had over what criteria should be used if healthcare must be rationed.

Globally, there are 153,517 confirmed cases of Covid-19, and 5,735 deaths.

In Italy, where the virus has hit particularly hard, some doctors have said they have had to overlook older patients to focus on younger ones who are more likely to survive.

And in the UK some doctors have said they may have to prioritize care for those patients with better chances of surviving.

As these conversations are being had, CNA spoke via email with Charlie Camosy, an associate professor of theology at Fordham University, about what principles should be used as doctors might face such choices.

Among Camosy’s research interests are bioethics and distributive justice. Among his works are Too Expensive to Treat? Finitude, Tragedy and the Neonatal ICU and Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consisten Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured People.

 

 

What principles should be used in deciding how to distribute limited treatment for coronavirus?

The first thing to say is that there are virtually no universally agreed-upon principles to do this–excepting, perhaps, the idea that health care providers, first-responders, law enforcement, and others primarily responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the polity should get priority.

Beyond that, there is tremendous disagreement – at least in the culture at large. What one believes about this largely come from their first principles related to what they believe in their hearts and souls about the good, true, and beautiful.

Catholics, of course, have these principles…and they differ especially from the utilitarian mindset that dominates so much of secular ethics and medicine today. We serve the most vulnerable first. Those people are Christ to us in a special way and we will be judged according to how we treat them. We don’t think about, say, how long they might stay on a ventilator vs. how long someone we might encounter next week might stay on a ventilator. We also don’t think about how long they might have to live if the treatment is successful vs. how long other someone we might encounter next week might live if their treatment is successful.

It makes sense, especially in a triage situation, to treat those first who are most likely to benefit from the treatment. And there many be a disproportionate number of younger people in the former category. But that is not the same as deciding that we ought to prefer to the young to the old because they have longer to live. Some of the ways very public figures have downplayed the threat by talking about it it mostly affecting the old have been disturbing. As soon as a Catholic hears that we should be outraged and leap to the defense of this already marginalized population which bears the faith of Christ in a special way.

You said in a recent Twitter thread that many providers are ‘uncritically utilitarian’ in rationing. How exactly? By using the Quality-Adjusted Life Year model?

Well, I think the QALY model reinforces something that was already there. Scientists and medics, in addition to being disproportionately secular, have absorbed a utilitarian mindset in which probably ultimately come down to solving an equation. While that might feel better than living in the uncertainty and messiness of Christian ethics, the decision about how to handle what is coming our way are too complex to think about this way.

Do you believe that “help those who can likely benefit from treatment first” is a good principle?

I do.

Could you address what Catholics should do in their daily lives amid coronavirus to practice the Church’s social teaching?

The Church has been at its finest in plagues and pandemics. We need to live our our principles now more than ever.

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Pope Francis reforms Vatican City courts with new law

March 16, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Mar 16, 2020 / 11:30 am (CNA).- The Holy See announced a new law governing the judicial system of the Vatican City state Monday. The motu proprio provides enhanced safeguards for the independence of judges and prosecutors in Vatican City to better address economic, financial and criminal cases in the sovereign territory.

Law CCCLI was signed by Pope Francis on Friday, March 13. 

“Administering justice,” the pope said in the preamble of the new law, “is not just a necessity of a temporal order.” 

“The cardinal virtue of justice, in fact, illuminates and summarizes the very purpose of the judicial power proper to each State, which is essential above all to cultivate the personal, generous, and responsible commitment of those who are vested with the judicial function,” Francis said.

In the legal text, the pope explained that the law is part of an ongoing process of legal renewal to replace the original 1929 laws of Vatican City, which began with the adoption of a new fundamental law for the city state in 2000.

Francis said the changes are aimed at adapting the Vatican courts to better enforce the law, and to ensure the city state’s compliance with international commitments.

“In the last decades, the Vatican legal system has undergone a season of regulatory reforms in economic, financial and criminal matters, also as a consequence of the adhesion to important international conventions,” the pope wrote, making the changes necessary to keep the wheels of justice turning in the Vatican.

“In continuity with this work of progressive legislative updating and institutional reorganization, I would now like to introduce some changes to the structure of the judiciary, aimed at increasing its efficiency,” he said.

The law provides for new measures to protect the independence of judges and prosecutors in the city state, making explicit that Vatican magistrates are, subject to the law, answerable to the pope directly and to no other office or authority.

Article 2 of the new law states that judges “are hierarchically dependent on the Supreme Pontiff” and “in the exercise of their functions, they are subject only to the law.”

The new norms also codify the ability of prosecutors to deploy the judicial police of the Vatican courts, and grants the law enforcement agency enhanced budgetary independence, explaining that they are not required to account for spending to any other body within the curia.

“The judicial authority has direct use of the judicial police, which it can also use for the notification activities,” the law says. “The judicial bodies enjoy autonomy of expenditure for their operation, on the basis and within the limits of the accounting provisions in force in the State. The relative charges are borne by the Governor’s budget [of the Vatican City state].”

The judicial police, which are a separate section of the Vatican City Gendarmes, are under the direction of the Promoter of Justice, the courts’ chief prosecutor, who is to have two assistants, one of whom “carries out his duties on a full-time basis, without having subordinate employment relationships or carrying out freelance professional activities on an ongoing basis.

Judicial independence is further protected by article 8, which says that judges should be chosen from “tenured or retired university professors, and in any case from well-known jurists who have gained proven experience in judicial or forensic, civil, criminal or administrative matters.”

While recommendations for judicial appointments are still to be made by the Secretary of State, who has overall responsibility for the governance of Vatican City, the article prevents the appointment of curial civil servants to serve as judges, pointing out the necessary conflict of interest.

The pope’s reform, which repeals and replaces the 1987 Law CXIX of St. John Paul II, also underlines the supremacy of canon law in the Vatican’s civil legal system.

The new Law CCLI grounds Vatican City civil law in the Church’s canonical legal system, making the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the curia’s highest canonical appeals court, as the final court of cassation for the civil judicial system, charged with hearing appeals related to legal procedure and judicial competence.

Citing 2008 Vatican City state legislation issued by Pope Benedict XVI, which states that “the Vatican legal system recognizes in the canonical order the first normative source and the first criterion of interpretative reference,” Pope Francis said that canonical principles are essential to understanding and applying Vatican City laws.

“This is a founding and precious link that I hope can be increasingly explored by the judicial bodies of this state, in order to express its underlying potential and that the juridical norm puts to the work of the interpreter,” the pope wrote in the legislation’s preamble.

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US reporting mechanism for episcopal abuse cases launched

March 16, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Washington D.C., Mar 16, 2020 / 10:33 am (CNA).- A national third-party reporting system for allegations of abuse, neglect, or misconduct against bishops in the US has launched.

The Catholic Bishop Abuse Reporting Service is operated by Convercent Inc., “an independent, third-party entity that provides intake services to private institutions for reports of sensitive topics such as sexual harassment through a secure, confidential and professional platform” according to a March 16 statement from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

The system gathers and routes reports of abuse to the appropriate ecclesial authorities, so that the reports can then be investigated.

The reporting system does not replace reporting abuse to civil authorities, but some reports, such as those of sexual abuse of a minor, will be conveyed also to civil authorities.

The system is meant only for allegations involving bishops.

It allows for reports of a US bishop who has forced someone to perform or to submit to sexual acts through violence, threat, or abuse of authority; performed sexual acts with a minor or a vulnerable person; produced, exhibited, possessed or distributed child pornography, or recruited or induced a minor or a vulnerable person to participate in pornographic exhibitions; or a bishop or administrator of a local Church who has “intentionally interfered with a civil or Church investigation into allegations of sexual abuse committed by another cleric or religious.”

In Nocember 2019, the general counsel for the US bishops’ conference said that a process would be in place promptly to filter out irrelevant claims and ensure that allegations pertain to bishops and to those acts of misconduct for which the system is meant.

When a report is received through the system, it will be forwarded to the metropolitan archbishop “and a designated lay staff member who will assess the report.” If the report regards the metropolitan or the metropolitan see is vacant, it will go instead to the senior suffragan bishop, and to a member of the bishop’s staff.

After review by the metropolitan and a layman, the report will be sent to the apostolic nuncio with an initial assessment; he will in turn send the report and assessment to the Holy See, which will determine if a formal investigation is warranted. If so, it will authorize a bishop to oversee it. The investigators will include lay persons, and should normally be completed within 90 days of the Holy See’s determination.

The system is paid for the by dioceses and eparchies of the US.

In September 2018, the US bishops’ executive committee had initially proposed a third-party reporting mechanism to handle accusations made against bishops. The decision followed new claims of sex abuse that had been made against Theodore McCarrick in the summer of 2018; in August, McCarrick was removed from the College of Cardinals and assigned a life of prayer and penance.

At their November 2018 meeting, however, the U.S. bishops did not take substantive action on the abuse crisis following instructions from the Vatican that they not act until a clergy sex abuse summit in Rome would be convened in February 2019.

After that February summit, Pope Francis issued his apostolic letter Vos estis lux mundi, which outlined a canonical process of handling accusations of abuse, neglect, or misconduct made against bishops.

To handle such accusations, the U.S. bishops voted overwhelmingly at their June 2019 to authorize a third-party reporting mechanism to receive accusations made online or by phone.

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Scholar hopes Vatican archives will give ‘fuller, transparent’ picture of Pius XII

March 15, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Washington D.C., Mar 15, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- A researcher from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum told CNA that she hopes the recent opening of the Pius XII archives in the Vatican will give historians a fuller, more transparent image of the wartime pope. 

Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming, the museum’s director of international academic programs, has been unable to travel to Rome to view the archives due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but told CNA that she hopes to make the trip in April. 

Brown-Fleming spoke to CNA Thursday about what she expects to find in the archives. 

The Vatican officially opened the archives, which cover Venerable Pius XII’s entire pontificate — March 1939 through October 1958 — on March 2. It is the first time scholars have been granted access to the  approximately 16 million documents they contain. 

Pius XII remains a disputed figure, with some historians criticising him for not making a more explicit denunciation of Hitler and the Nazis, and others pointing to Mit brennender Sorge, his 1937 encyclical to the Church in Germany, and the limits imposed on him by the Lateran Treaty.

After examining the documents in the archives, Brown-Fleming said that historians will “definitely have a more fair reading of [Pius XII].”

“I think that on both sides of the argument there has been picking and choosing as to ‘let’s show this document and interpret it this way and ignore these five documents,’ and his critics have done the same,” she said. “So I’m not sure either side has been completely fair, because there’s been no access to the full documentation.” 

Brown-Fleming thinks that the public opinion will likely end up “somewhere between the two polar opposites that we’re seeing now,” but that this will not happen until the archives have been fully studied. 

“But it will be a fair and transparent reading,” she said. 

Pius XII died in 1958, his cause for canonization was opened in November 1965, by Pope (now Saint) Paul VI during the final session of the Second Vatican Council. On December 19, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI declared him “Venerable,” meaning the Church has determined that he led a life of heroic virtue.

A practicing Catholic, Brown-Fleming told CNA that she hopes she is able to find documentary proof that the Church and individual Catholics in Europe invoked the tenets of their faith and tried to save their Jewish neighbors. 

“Did they respond in a uniform ‘love thy neighbor’ way, or did they parse in their minds? I think it’s going to be very interesting to know,” she said. 

A big question, and one that Brown-Fleming hopes will be answered by the archives, concerns Pius XII’s actions in September 1943, when Rome’s Jewish population was rounded up and deported. 

“There’s a big question around whether Pius XII gave orders to have Roman Jews hidden. Many Jews were hidden including on Vatican grounds,” she said. “Did he order that? Did he know about it and say, okay, ‘this is not a good idea because it puts Vatican property in danger’? Did he say, ‘yes, please do this and save who you can’?” 

“We know that Jews were rescued by Catholic families in Italy and in France,” said Brown-Fleming. She told CNA that she was hopeful her time in the archives will reveal the motivations behind why these families chose to risk their lives to save people: “Was it because of messaging from the pope or was it spontaneous?”

Another question Brown-Fleming wants the archives to answer is what Pius XII knew in the post-war era, when a Vatican “ratline” enabled many former Nazis to escape to South America.

“In the Cold War period, many Nazis escaped to South America with the help of the Vatican–lower level officials,” she said. “But how much did the Pope know about this? That’s a very big question.” She is also hoping to find information about Pius XII’s personal attitude towards the Jewish people, which is “something that’s very hard to discern in public messaging.” 

Once she is granted permission to travel to Italy and examine the archives, Brown-Fleming intends on starting her research in the Vatican Apostolic Archive. She explained that there are four reading rooms in the archive, and that the first room is dedicated to indices. She says the plan is to look for certain keywords in the indices.

Once those keywords are found, Brown-Fleming will request the entire folder. She hopes that, similar to the 2003 opening of Pius XI’s archives, the United States Holocaust Museum would be given permission to reproduce the some of the contents of the archives and keep them in Washington.

Regardless of what is found, Brown-Fleming said she is glad that there will finally be answers about the legacy of Pius XII, and she is confident that whatever is uncovered will be a positive move for the Church.

The archives will “kind of settle those questions” regarding Pius XII and the actions of the Church during World War II, “even if the answers aren’t always good. And I don’t think they always will be, because we’re talking about human beings and even a pope makes mistakes.” 

“We’re going to find a mixed record, but at least we know what it is,” she said. “And then once we know what it is, we can really wrestle with that.”

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Seven Italian priests have reportedly died of coronavirus

March 15, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Cremona, Italy, Mar 15, 2020 / 09:58 am (CNA).- Seven priests have reportedly died in Italy of the COVID-19 coronavirus. They are the first priests known to have died from the virus, now a global pandemic which has struck Italy more gravely than nearly any other country in the world.

Among them Monsignor Vincenzo Rini was a priest of the Diocese of Cremona, close to Milan, and near Italy’s epicenter of the pandemic.

In addition to Rini, 6 priests in the Diocese of Bergamo have reportedly died of the coronavirus, according to bergamonews.it.

Bergamo’s Bishop Francesco Bechi told Italian journalists that in addition to six priests in his diocese who have died of the virus, 20 others have been hospitalized.

Bergamo, a city northest of Milan, has been identified as the region most afflicted by infections of coronavirus in the country.

Msgr. Rini ran Cremona’s diocesan newspaper for 30 years, and was at one time the president of the Italian bishops’ news agency. He was also a novelist, and a noted literary expert, who served as the Church’s liaison to the Cristina di Savoia Cultural Congresses, which aim to promote Christian culture in Italy.

In Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, journalistic colleagues of Rini wrote that the priest “represented an open window to hope, the virtue that had always characterized his life.”

He will be buried in the chapel of the diocesan cemetery in Cremona. Bishop Antonio Napolioni of Cremona, himself recovering from coronavirus, expressed his condolences to the family and friends of the priest.

More than 21,000 people in Italy have been infected with coronavirus, and nearly 1,500 have died.

Priests in other countries have also been afflicted with coronavirus. Earlier this month, a French priest was hospitalized with the virus, and last week a priest in Peru was among the first patients to be hospitalized for coronavirus in that country.

This story is developing and has been updated after publication.

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