CNA Staff, Oct 6, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Face coverings must be worn outdoors within the territory of Vatican City State to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, a Vatican official announced Tuesday.
In a Oct. 6 letter to Vatican department heads, B… […]
Rome Newsroom, Oct 6, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Ahead of the expected renewal of the Vatican-China deal this month, the former underground bishop of Mindong has announced his complete resignation from public life.
Bishop Guo Xijin, 62, wrote in a letter… […]
CNA Staff, Oct 6, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The U.S. bishops’ religious freedom chair has called for better protection of churches and other houses of worship, following a recent series of acts of vandalism.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami joine… […]
CNA Staff, Oct 6, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- Former vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, repeated his pledge to codify a right to abortion into federal law should the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Speaking at an outdoor town hall event airing on NBC Monday, Biden was asked what he would do to protect “reproductive health rights” should Judge Amy Coney Barrett be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
“Number one, we don’t know exactly what [Barrett] will do, although the expectation is that she may very well move to overrule Roe, and what the only thing–the only responsible response to that would be to pass legislation making Roe the law of the land,” said Biden. “That’s what I would do.”
After decades of previous reservations about unrestricted abortion and Roe v. Wade, which he originally said went “too far,” Biden committed to enshrining the full extent of the decision in law during the 2019 Democratic primary contest.
Kirsten Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, responded to Biden’s renewed pledge, saying it was “sad to see [Biden] move from recognizing the humanity of preborn children to pledging to make abortion the law of the land if elected.”
“Pro-Life Democrats, we have to mobilize to make sure this does not happen if he is elected,” Day said via Twitter.
President Donald Trump, who is back at the White House following a three-day hospitalization for the coronavirus, encouraged his own supporters to vote against Biden, and against congressional Democrats’ plans to potentially add more seats to the Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, Trump said that “Joe Biden just took a more Liberal position on Roe v. Wade than Elizabeth Warren at her highest.”
Trump also said that Biden “wants to PACK our great United States Supreme Court.” Biden was asked if he would support court-packing were he elected following a Barrett confirmation during the presidential debate last week, he declined to answer.
The president also noted that Biden had endorsed Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who sparked controversy in January 2019 after he said that if a baby were sufficiently disabled at birth, it could be “kept comfortable” and might be resuscitated if the mother wished, and there could be a “conversation” between doctors and the mother.
Several states have already passed laws codifying a right to an abortion should the Roe decision be overturned in future. There is no federal law enshrining abortion rights.
The Democratic Party platform has rapidly evolved on abortion rights during the 21st century. As recently as 2004, the platform was calling for abortion to be “Safe, legal, and rare.” The 2020 platform was the first to call for a codification of abortion rights into law, in addition to calls for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment and Mexico City Policy, which limit U.S. tax dollars from funding abortions.
Despite the Church’s absolute condemnation of abortion as the taking of an innocent human life, Biden has frequently touched upon his Catholic faith throughout his campaign, including a series of recent spots on Catholic radio stations.
He has also released ads saying that he was partly inspired to run for president due to an encounter with religious sisters at the Vatican.
In the ad, which was released during the Democratic National Convention, Biden narrated how once, after having a brief meeting with Pope Francis at St. Peter’s Basilica, he departed the church and ran into a group of religious sisters.
These sisters, said Biden in a voiceover, “to me, epitomize everything Pope Francis talked about in his homily and what he stands for. About generosity to other people, about reaching out, about making it a point to understand that we are our brother’s keeper,” said Biden.
Biden said the idea that people have an obligation to look out for one another had been imprinted on him during his Catholic upbringing and “being educated by the nuns.”
“That’s what those lovely women I’m talking to symbolize to me,” said Biden.
Despite that evidently favorable encounter with nuns in Rome, Biden has been quite critical of a religious order in the United States.
Shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania on July 8, Biden said he was “disappointed” by the decision and promised to reinstate Obama-era policies requiring the sisters to ensure access to birth control in violation of their religious beliefs.
CNA Staff, Oct 6, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- Poland’s bishops said Tuesday that Catholics who opt to receive Holy Communion in the hand during the pandemic “cannot be accused of disrespecting the Eucharist.”
The bishops made the c… […]
Rome Newsroom, Oct 6, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Italian media reported this week that a woman with a company based in Slovenia received at least half a million euros from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State in connection with Cardinal Angelo Becciu…. […]
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 6, 2020 / 07:30 am (CNA).- Senator Kamala Harris’ 2016 senate campaign was supported by several large donors who were executives at pro-abortion groups. Harris went on to repeatedly grilled judicial nominees on abortion while in the Senate.
Harris is considered a champion of the abortion industry. When the Biden campaign announced her inclusion on the ticket in August, Planned Parenthood Action spent five figures on an online video ad promoting Harris as “OUR Reproductive Health Champion.” Planned Parenthood Votes also released a fact-sheet “Nine Reasons to Love Kamala Harris.”
Harris will participate in the Vice Presidential debate against Mike Pence on Wednesday, the event is due to be held in Salt Lake City, Utah. Abortion is a key issue among voters in both parties and, while the topic did not feature prominently in last week’s presidential debate, it is expected to be a central flashpoint between Harris and Pence, with the California senator widely predicted to reaffirm her party’s absolute support for abortion – a key donor and supporter base.
Harris in her 2016 Senate campaign was 11th among Senate candidates in the amount of contributions she received from the “abortion policy/pro-abortion rights” sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. She received $38,830 in total from these groups.
Although Harris ran against another pro-abortion Democrat, Rep. Loretta Sanchez— who had a 100% rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) in 2016—Harris received the endorsement of the national pro-abortion group.
Harris’ campaign hauled in $5,000 from NARAL in 2015, and received two more donations of $2,500 each in 2016. EMILYs List PAC, which works to elect pro-abortion women candidates to political office, contributed $10,000 to Harris’ campaign in 2016, along with earmarking other contributions from individual supporters.
The pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights contributed $4,400 to Harris’ election bid in 2016—more than they gave to any other candidate that cycle aside from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In addition to the support she received directly from these organizations, Harris also benefited from officials at these groups and their affiliates contributing to her 2016 campaign as individual donors.
Linda Wyatt Gruber, a California philanthropist who was formerly on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, gave $10,000 to the Kamala Harris Victory Fund—Harris’ PAC—in 2016. She also made two donations of $2,700 each to Harris’ campaign that year.
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, gave a total of $4,400 from two donations to Harris’ campaign in 2015 and 2016. The current chair of the board of the center, Amy Metzler Ritter, was also listed as a Harris donor in 2016, of $1,000; in a later donation to Senate candidate Mark Kelly, Ritter was listed in her current position as chair of the board at the same address.
A pediatrician at Stanford University who specializes in access to contraception and abortion, Sophia Yen M.D., gave $5,355 to Harris’ campaign in 2015; she contributed another $1,400 to the campaign in 2016. Later in 2019, Yen gave $2,800 to Harris’ presidential campaign.
Yen founded the birth control prescription and delivery business Pandia Health, based in Sunnyvale, California, and has been outspoken about expanding the availability of birth control and abortion.
In July, when the Supreme Court protected the Little Sisters of the Poor from the HHS contraceptive mandate, Yen said the ruling “hurts those with uteri” and “imposes the employers’ religion on the employees.” After Alabama and Georgia passed laws banning most abortions, Pandia Health allowed new customers to sign up for a pledge where the company would donate $5 to pro-abortion groups with every purchase.
Another “physician” at Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, Glenda Newell-Harris, M.D., gave $3,000 to Harris’ Senate campaign in 2015, and later gave $2,800 to Harris’ presidential campaign in 2019.
Before she was elected to the Senate, Harris served as attorney general of California, and before that was the San Francisco district attorney. In 2016, she received critical support from Bay-area philanthropists and influential donors.
Two members of the board of trustees for Planned Parenthood of Northern California, based in San Francisco, were donors to Harris’ 2016 Senate campaign.
Mary Jung, currently on the San Francisco Arts Commission, gave $850 to Harris’ 2016 senate campaign and in 2019 gave $1,000 to Harris’ presidential campaign.
Loren Kieve of Kieve Law Offices in San Francisco, was also on the board of trustees of Planned Parenthood of Northern California and made two donations of $2,700 each to Harris’ senate campaign in 2015 and 2016. A Nov., 2015 newsletter of Planned Parenthood of Northern California listed Kieve as a new board member.
Two CEOs at regional Planned Parenthood affiliates donated to Harris’ campaign in 2016, and even to her presidential campaign in 2019.
Susan E. Dunlap, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles, made two donations of $1,000 each to Harris’ campaign in 2016, and gave another $1,000 to Harris’ presidential campaign in 2019.
A board member of Planned Parenthood-Illinois Action, Bernadette Chopra, gave $1,500 to Harris’ campaign in 2015.
Two doctors who were instrumental in the creation of the HHS contraceptive mandate were also Harris donors in the 2016 cycle.
In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) charged a panel of doctors to report on preventive care “gaps” that needed addressing. Congress had passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and HHS was drafting its guidelines and rules to implement the law’s preventive services mandate.
This panel, the “Committee on Preventive Services for Women,” recommended that the HHS mandate the “full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling” be covered in health plans, cost-free. This “range” of drugs and procedures included the Plan-B emergency contraceptive, which can act as an abortifacient.
The HHS accepted all the panel’s recommendations and crafted its contraceptive mandate that employers cover these drugs and procedures in their health plans; as many religious non-profits and businesses were not exempt from the mandate, eventually hundreds of lawsuits against the mandate were filed in court, including the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Two of the doctors on this panel were Harris donors; panel chair Linda Rosenstock, currently the dean emeritus at University of California Los Angeles school of public health, made two donations of $1,000 each to Harris’ campaign in 2016. Kimberly Gregory of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles also gave $1,000 to Harris’ campaign in 2015.
Another Bay-area doctor, Dr. Nancy Milliken, helped found the National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center which offers abortions, among other services. She gave $2,700 to Harris’ campaign in 2015, and four years later contributed $2,800 to Harris’ presidential campaign. She called the panel’s mandate of cost-free contraceptive coverage “central,” in a 2011 UCSF publication.
After she won her 2016 Senate campaign, Harris was appointed to the Senate Judiciary Committee in January of 2018—a prominent assignment where senators vet Supreme Court and federal judicial nominees, and executive appointees. In her time on the committee, she repeatedly pressed nominees on the issue of abortion, including her grilling of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in September of 2018, Harris asked him about abortion and the “right to privacy,” and whether he thought a 20-week abortion ban was constitutional. She cited a letter by 31 “reproductive rights groups,” including by Planned Parenthood and NARAL, that stated concern about Kavanaugh.
In 2018, Harris also grilled three other federal judicial nominees about their membership in the Knights of Columbus, citing the Catholic group’s opposition to abortion, in line with Church teaching, and asking nominees if they were “aware” of that stance when they joined the Knights and if they agreed with it.
Harris asked nearly a dozen nominees about the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. She also repeatedly brought up Roe v. Wade and asked nominees where they stood on the Supreme Court’s 1973 abortion ruling.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 6, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- In his new encyclical, Pope Francis reiterated that the death penalty is “inadmissible.” Did the pope change centuries of Church teaching with that statement? A leading theologian told CNA that the pope’s teaching was a development, not a rupture with the Church’s past.
In Fratelli Tutti, released on Sunday, Pope Francis cited both Pope St. John Paul II and new language added to the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty, calling the practice “inadmissible” and urging for its abolition worldwide.
“Saint John Paul II stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice. There can be no stepping back from this position,” Pope Francis wrote in paragraph 263 of the encyclical.
“Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the Church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide,” he said.
Some Catholic commenters have claimed that Pope Francis’ statement constituted a “definitive change” in Church teaching.
But the pope’s teaching was a development in line with statements of recent popes, not a rupture from doctrine, theologian Fr. Thomas Petri told CNA.
Fr. Petri is dean and acting president of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.
“When you talk about the development of teaching, you’re always talking about growing from what has come before, and never sort of a rupture,” he said.
“I definitely think it’s in the line of what previous popes have taught,” Fr. Petri told CNA, pointing to Popes St. John Paul II and St. Paul VI as examples. “There has been an increasing hesitation about the use of the death penalty by the state.”
The Church’s position on the death penalty has always been part of the ordinary magisterium, Petri said, the teaching that “states have the right to inflict the penalty of death.” St. Paul admonished Christians about the legitimate power of the state to “bear the sword,” in chapter 13 of his letter to the Romans, which Pope Francis cites in Fratelli Tutti.
Many saints and popes have upheld this right of the state to punish justly, Petri said, and “no pope can somehow come out and contradict that”—an act which would indeed be a “rupture” in Church teaching, the theologian said.
Pope Francis, he said, did not contradict Catholic teaching. In the 2018 revision to the Catechism, the pope referred to the death penalty as “inadmissible” but did not call it “intrinsically evil”—and this was a significant choice in words.
“There was a clear message of not using that word [intrinsically evil], when I think a lot of people would have liked him to use that word,” Petri said.
Petri told CNA that Pope Francis is speaking in continuity with recent popes including Pope St. John Paul II, who issued “a very strong statement” about capital punishment in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae; he said that the death penalty should only be used “when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society,” but added that because of improved security in prisons, “such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
Popes John Paul II and Francis have worked with the “prudential application” of the Church’s magisterial teaching on the authority of the state, Fr. Petri said, and not reversed it.
The Church has historically taught that the “primary reason for punishment” is “retribution,” he said, which is not revenge but “the idea that the punishment has to fit the gravity of the crime.” Secondary reasons for punishment included the rehabilitation of the criminal and the protection of society.
John Paul II put “protecting society” at the “front and center” of the Church’s teaching on punishment, Petri said, and Pope Francis has continued this teaching in his magisterium, which reflects a new understanding of punishment.
Many in society view the death penalty now “simply about protecting society from killers and people who are dangerous, being a deterrent, and maybe rehabilitation,” Petri said, and supporters of the death penalty’s continued use should consider if “it cultivates or curries in them emotions of revenge,” which “is not retribution.”
While Popes Francis and John Paul II are making prudential applications of the Church’s teaching in areas of faith and morals, the level of assent required to their teaching is not just “prudential,” Petri explained.
When a cleric takes a profession of faith before becoming a pastor or a dean of a seminary, he said, he must assent to not only divine revelation and definitive propositions of Church teaching on faith and morals, he said, but also the teaching of the pope and bishops exercising the authentic magisterium.
“That’s more than just giving it the benefit of the doubt, it’s basically saying ‘I’m going to subscribe my intellect and will to what you’re teaching even if I don’t understand it, I’m going to try to understand it.’”
For a teaching that has been repeated frequently in statements and high-level documents, including in the Catechism, it’s hard to dismiss assent as merely a matter of prudence, Petri said.
“You can probably disagree with whether or not there should be life prison terms, but not this. I don’t think you can say this about the death penalty issue.”
CNA Staff, Oct 6, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).-
At an outdoor rosary rally and Mass held Oct. 3, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone encouraged Catholics to renew their respect and devotion to the Eucharist as indoor Masses resume across the city.
“Have we accepted this fast from the Eucharist as an opportunity God has given us to renew our devotion and love for the sacrament?” Cordileone said during his homily at the rally outside the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption.
The office of San Francisco’s mayor announced Sept. 29 that places of worship will be permitted to hold services indoors at 25% capacity, up to 100 people, beginning Sept. 30.
The city had been allowing only one worshipper at a time in places of worship, regardless of the building’s size, while allowing multiple patrons in other indoor establishments. Parishes in San Francisco had been adapting to the restrictions by holding multiple concurrent, outdoor Masses each Sunday.
The Oct. 3 annual rosary rally began at St. Anthony of Padua Church in the city’s mission district with a procession to the cathedral.
Reflecting on the city’s namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, Cordileone held up Francis’ devotion to the Eucharist as an example, and noted that in times of scandal, corruption and division within the Church, the temptation can arise to criticize and “do things our own way.”
“Instead, let us take our lead from the poor man of Assisi, and tend to the inner work: prayer, fasting, love and respect for the Blessed Sacrament, embracing and serving the poor,” he said.
“The real work of reform begins within each soul and within the heart of the church.”
Cordileone urged Catholics to prepare for receiving Communion by frequently going to confession, praying and attending Eucharistic adoration, CatholicSF reported. Worshippers should be prayerfully silent whenever they are in the presence of the Eucharist and should dress properly for Mass, Cordileone said.
At the rosary rally, five families were selected to pray each decade in a different language: English, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Latin.
At the end of the rosary, Archbishop Cordileone renewed the archdiocese’s consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which was first done in 2017, CatholicSF reported.
Cordileone also encouraged Catholics to participate in a national virtual rosary, to be led by Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles Oct. 7, on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Beginning Sept. 30, outdoor worship services in San Francisco may host up to 200 people. Singing or chanting indoors will be prohibited, and “the place of worship must conduct a health check of patrons before they enter the facility.”
An estimated 1,500 Catholics in San Francisco had marched in Eucharistic processions across the city Sept. 20 to protest the city’s continued restrictions on public worship.
“One person at a time in this great Cathedral to pray? What an insult. This is a mockery. They are mocking you, and even worse, they are mocking God,” Cordileone said at the Mass following the processions Sept. 20.
The US Department of Justice had on Sept. 25 warned San Francisco officials that its restrictions on public worship in the city may have been unconstitutional.
The DOJ on Sept. 25 sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, warning that the city’s rule allowing only “one worshipper” in places of worship at a time regardless of their size— while allowing multiple patrons in other indoor establishments— is “draconian” and “contrary to the Constitution and the nation’s best tradition of religious freedom.”
Archbishop Cordileone said last week that “respect for each other’s rights and compassion for each other’s needs are core San Francisco values. God bless Mayor Breed for responding to her constituents’ call.”
He added, however, that “California’s limit of no more than 100 people inside of a house of worship regardless of the size of the building is still unjust. We want and we intend to worship God safely: with masks, social distancing, sanitation, ventilation, and other such safety protocols. But we will not accept believers being treated more severely than other, comparable secular activities.”
CNA Staff, Oct 6, 2020 / 12:59 am (CNA).- On August 4, a fire in the capital city of Beirut, Lebanon spread to a warehouse containing some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate.
The substance, which had been stored without the proper safety precautions, igni… […]
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