Iowa City, Feb 9, 2019 / 04:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal court ruled Wednesday that a Christian club at an Iowa college cannot be kicked off campus due to its religious standards for student leaders.
In the fall of 2017, the University of Iowa re… […]
Vatican City, Feb 9, 2019 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An environmental group is asking Pope Francis to abstain from all animal products during Lent, promising a $1 million donation to a charity of his choice if he does so.
“Today, Pope Francis, I am asking you to join me in abstaining from all animal products throughout Lent, and to endorse the Million Dollar Vegan campaign,” Genesis Butler wrote in a Feb. 6 open letter to the Roman Pontiff.
“Should you join me, the Blue Horizon International Foundation will donate $1 million to a charity or charities of your choice as a gesture of their utmost gratitude for your commitment.”
While a vegan fast is not now prescribed by the Church, the practice would hearken back to practices of the early Church, and of the Christian east.
Butler, 12, is an animal rights and environmental campaigner. Her letter is backed by Million Dollar Vegan, a non-profit group which highlights the effects of animal farming on climate.
She recalled that in Laudato si’, his 2015 encyclical on care for our common home, Francis “stated that every effort to protect and improve our world will involve changes in lifestyle, production, and consumption.”
She also expressed her appreciation for his “speaking out on climate change, habitat loss, and pollution, and for reminding the world that Earth is a home we all share.”
Butler said that “the current eating habits of predominantly richer nations are causing global destruction and devastation,” as animal farming is resource-intensive relative to calories yielded.
The activist said that “moving towards a plant-based diet will have substantial environmental benefits.” She said it would protect the environment, “help feed the world’s most vulnerable,” and “benefit human health.”
An accompanying petition asking Pope Francis to try vegan for Lent and to encourage others to do the same has garnered more than 33,000 signatures.
This year, the Lenten season begins March 6; Easter Sunday will be April 21.
Under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, Catholics aged 18-59 are to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. And Catholics 14 and older are to abstain from meat on all Fridays; this rule allows the use of eggs, milk products, and condiments made of animal fat.
But in times past, a vegan Lent would not have been so different from Catholic practice.
According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, “during the early centuries the observance of the [Lenten] fast as very strict.”
The reference work says that in the early Church the Lenten fast allowed one meal per day, taken towards evening, and that “flesh-meat and fish, and in most places also eggs and lacticinia, were absolutely forbidden,” but that the practice “began to be considerably relaxed” in the west from the 9th century.
The 12th century Decretum Gratiani, a compendium of ecclesiastical law, includes the text of a letter which was believed by Gratian to be from St. Gregory the Great to St. Augustine of Canterbury. This letter says that during Lent “we abstain from flesh meat and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, eggs.” A critical edition of the Decretum calls the source of the quote Pseudo-Gregory, and according to Dr. Mark DelCogliano, an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, the quoted text “first appears in Gratian.”
Writing in the late 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas said that it was “common custom” that those fasting abstained from meat, eggs, and dairy products, but were allowed fish.
It is said that the practice of calling “Fat Tuesday” the day preceding Ash Wednesday derived from a period when the use of animal products was barred during Lent. “Fat” Tuesday was thus the last day to use up the meat, cheese, and animal fat stored in the home.
And while not precisely vegan, the traditional Byzantine fast barred the use of meat, dairy, eggs, and fish. Animal-based foods that were permitted included honey and invertebrates.
In the Byzantine rite, Lent is preceded by a pre-Lenten period known as Fore-Lent. The last two Sundays of this preparatory period are known as Meatfare Sunday and Cheesefare Sunday.
Under traditional fasting rules, Meatfare Sunday was the last day before Easter to consume meat, and Cheesefare was the last day to use dairy products. The Lenten fast then began on the Monday after Cheesefare.
Washington D.C., Feb 8, 2019 / 06:38 pm (CNA).- A joint congressional resolution for a “Green New Deal” is the latest effort aiming to apply political solutions to environmental problems. Whatever the merits of the proposal, one theologian says, Christians must think hard about what their faith says about environmental policy.
“To think that the U.S. government can be agnostic about the environment is a little like thinking it’s agnostic about faith: policies will impact the environment, for good or for ill,” Joseph Capizzi, professor of moral theology and ethics at Catholic University of America, told CNA.
“It strikes me that the Christian approach to the environment would require us to think about our policies’ impact on creation. Or, to put it differently, about whether our policies give God his due in their impact on his creation,” said Capizzi, who also directs the Institute for Human Ecology.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., have proposed a joint resolution to recognize “the duty of the federal government to create a Green New Deal.”
The non-binding resolution would not create new programs, but its passage would convey the sense of Congress and provide justification for further legislation.
The new resolution cites the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, which said that a rise in global temperatures must not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Though Capizzi said addressing particular policies is beyond his expertise, he said Christians are a “future-oriented people.”
“We look in hope to the coming of our savior and our reflections on how to live now should always have an eye towards their long-term impact on the world into which, in hope, we bring our children,” he said. “We have justice-based responsibilities to our children to care for the creation God intends for them as well as for us.”
As a theologian, Capizzi said, the specifics of the proposal “are less interesting to me than is the idea that politics must attend to humanity’s relationship with all of God’s creation.”
The political proposal comes as the Trump administration has worked to promote domestic gas, oil and coal production by loosening regulations including environmental protections.
Green New Deal backers cite goals including zero-net greenhouse gas emissions from power production; halting a rise in global temperatures; and de-carbonizing the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. It envisions major infrastructure upgrades to power grids and transportation and upgrading all buildings to maximize energy efficiency, water efficiency, and affordability. Other goals in the resolution include “clean manufacturing”; reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from ranches and farms; and shifting away from nuclear power as well as fossil fuels.
Critics say some efforts against fossil fuels have caused major unemployment and community displacement in parts of the country dependent on the coal industry and other resource extraction.
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., whose state economy is heavily based on coal, criticized the effort, saying it “shuts everybody down.”
The resolution’s many promises include aid for both communities facing the most significant changes from climate change and communities affected by shifts away from fossil fuel use. It promises to ensure high wages and better jobs for workers currently in fossil fuel industries.
The non-binding plan promises a federal jobs guarantee, as well as other Democratic goals like a family wage, adequate family leave, paid vacations and a secure retirement as well as universal health care.
Any proposal is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate. The resolution could play a role in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not give Green New Deal backers the committee leadership they wanted. She told Politico their proposal is “one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive.”
For Capizzi, environmental politics should be motivated by the goodness of creation.
“The starting point for Jewish-Christian approaches to the environment is the Hebrew Bible’s teaching that God created the world, and then, at different stages but before humans are created, we are told he viewed his creation as ‘good’.”
These things that God names “good” include “the creation of land and gathering of waters, the fecundity of the earth, (and) the creation of sea and land and flying creatures.” The creation of humans is “a part of the story of God’s creation of a universe he names as good and within which humanity lives.”
“This is the starting point for Christian reflection,” Capizzi told CNA. To this is added the “classic notion of justice” expressed in the imperative “give to each what he or she is due.”
“We are to give God his due by giving his good creation its due. We do this in our relationships as human beings, but we do this as well in our relationship with the creation of which we are a part – even if a special part.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have an Environmental Justice Program, under the conference’s Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development. It draws from St. John Paul II’s 1990 World Day of Peace message, the U.S. bishops’ Nov. 14, 1991 pastoral statement “Renewing the Earth,” as well as encyclicals such as Pope Francis’ 2015 Laudato si’.
The bishops make some policy recommendations about environmental laws and regulations. They opposed the Trump administration’s June 2017 withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which aimed to combat climate change and global warming through reducing carbon dioxide emissions. They said they objected to a March 2017 executive order from President Donald Trump that rescinded and weakened many environmental protections.
They have backed a national carbon emission standard and other carbon mitigation goals.
Denver, Colo., Feb 8, 2019 / 05:43 pm (CNA).- A long-awaited summit on sexual abuse will take place at the Vatican two weeks from now.
The meeting was announced in September, in the months after allegations of sexual abuse and coercion on the part of … […]
Washington D.C., Feb 8, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Two Democrats in the U.S. Congress this week reintroduced a bill that would permanently repeal the Mexico City Policy, a regulation that is seen as a barometer of U.S. presidents’ abortion… […]
Mobile, Ala., Feb 8, 2019 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- A Muslim man convicted of murder has been executed in Alabama without his imam present, despite the man’s requests to have his spiritual advisor with him during his execution.
Domineque Ray, 42, was sentenced to death for the 1995 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. Ray specifically requested that the Christian prison chaplain be excluded from the execution chamber, and asked that his imam be present to “provide spiritual guidance for him at the time of his death.”
He also requested that he not be required to undergo an autopsy, as that would have conflicted with his religious beliefs. The warden reportedly denied the first two requests and said she had no authority to grant the third.
Consequently, the prison’s officials said they would allow the Christian chaplain, Chris Summers, into the execution chamber to kneel and pray with the prisoner, though the prisoner would not be required to pray with the chaplain. The officials reportedly said it would be a security risk to let a non-employee of the state’s correctional department into the execution chamber.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a stay of execution until it could determine whether the prison had violated the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, after Ray appealed the prison’s decision. In defending the prison’s decision, the state said Ray’s imam, Yusef Maisonet, would be allowed to visit him on the day of the execution and could accompany him up until he entered the execution chamber.
The Supreme Court decided 5-4 Feb. 7 that Ray’s execution could go ahead, and he was subsequently executed that evening by lethal injection. The court’s majority cited the last-minute nature of Ray’s request as a reason for vacating the stay.
The Christian chaplain was reportedly excluded from the execution, as Ray had requested.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent, calling the court’s decision “profoundly wrong” and quoting from the court’s decision in the 1982 case of Larson v. Valente: “The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.”
“But the State’s policy does just that,” she wrote.
“Under that policy, a Christian prisoner may have a minister of his own faith accompany him into the execution chamber to say his last rites. But if an inmate practices a different religion – whether Islam, Judaism, or any other – he may not die with a minister of his own faith by his side.”
Kagan acknowledged that prison security could constitute a “compelling interest” that could justify religious discrimination, but claimed that the state had offered “no evidence to show that its wholesale prohibition on outside spiritual advisers is necessary to achieve that goal.”
Kagan also spoke out against the Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the stay of execution because Ray did not file his request “in a timely manner,” pointing out that the Alabama state code does not explicitly prohibit “the inmate’s spiritual adviser of choice” from being present in the execution chamber.
The prison also reportedly refused to give Ray a copy of its own practices and procedures.
“So there is no reason Ray should have known, prior to January 23, that his imam would be granted less access than the Christian chaplain to the execution chamber,” Kagan wrote.
Ray’s imam told local media that he considered it important that he be present for Ray’s death in order to ensure that the inmate died according to his faith.
“I know the things that are required of Muslims before they die,” Yusef Maisonet, imam of Masjid As Salaam in Mobile, told AL.com on Feb. 1.
“We want to make sure his last words are, ‘There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet….If they exclude me, [a Christian chaplain and other prison staff] may ask him something and ask him to reply and those won’t be his last words.”
Dallas, Texas, Feb 8, 2019 / 03:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The University of Dallas has announced the creation of the St. John Paul II Social Thought Teaching Fellowship, with Dr. Ryan Anderson as the first fellow in the role.
The formation of the fellowship is part of the university’s plan to create an institute for Catholic social teaching, offering degree programs that include the philosophical foundations and applications of Church social teaching, opportunities for continuing education, and the promotion of research.
“The University of Dallas is already a center for significant work on Catholic social thought,” said University Provost Dr. Jonathan Sanford in a Feb. 7 statement. “Inviting Dr. Ryan Anderson will strengthen the university’s commitment to Catholic social teaching, provide new insights for our students, and help us to fulfill our mission to pursue the truth and cultivate justice.”
Sanford said the University of Dallas “is uniquely positioned to make a special contribution to the church and help shape culture through Catholic social teaching, and takes seriously its responsibility to do so.”
In a press release announcing the new program, the university applauded Anderson for his “clear and careful writing as well as his poise and civility in addressing controversial social issues.”
Anderson is a prominent Catholic speaker and author on marriage, sexuality, religious freedom, and natural law.
He has coauthored the books What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination. He is also the author of Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom and When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.
Anderson is a senior research fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation, as well as the founder and editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute. His research has been cited by Supreme Court justices in two cases.
As the inaugural St. John Paul II Social Thought fellow, Anderson will become an adjunct faculty member in the university’s Politics Department. He will teach two classes each year and will offer lectures and an annual conference, in cooperation with the American Public Philosophy Institute (APPI).
Anderson’s first lecture, entitled “Catholic Thought and the Challenges of Our Time,” will be held on campus March 25 and will be open to the public.
The talk will give an overview of Catholic social teaching and preview the courses Anderson will be teaching in the next two years.
Sanford attributed the new fellowship in part to the work of Rob Hays, head of the Dallas Business Ethics Forum, which promotes business practices and formation based on Catholic social teaching. Hays, a local businessman, contributed to the project and worked to obtain other contributions and corporate sponsorships.
Located in Irving, Texas, the University of Dallas is a Catholic university with a focus on the Western tradition of liberal arts education.
Richmond, Va., Feb 8, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- The first Virginia March for Life will be held on April 3, 2019, outside of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond.
The Virginia March for Life is being organized by a partnership between The Famil… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 8, 2019 / 01:50 pm (CNA).- Sen. Marco Rubio has called the humanitarian and political impasse in Venezuela “unsustainable,” and compared a blockade stopping food and medical aid from entering the country to a war crime.
The senator said leaders of the country’s security forces must choose between their orders and the needs of their families, neighbors and fellow citizens.
In a Feb. 8 interview with CNA, Rubio said that orders to prevent aid from crossing the border are illegitimate and should be refused by officers.
“They are being asked to do something that is illegitimate, they are being asked to do something that – if this were an armed conflict – would be a war crime,” Rubio said.
“Under the Geneva Conventions, the denial of the transit of food and medicine to civilian populations would be a war crime – that’s what they are being asked to participate in.”
The Republican senator from Florida is a key strategist and advisor to the Trump administration on the U.S. response to the political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
Rubio said that while international support is important, the escalating humanitarian and political crisis can only be ended by Venezuelan leadership.
“Ultimately it falls upon the Venezuelan people, and by that I include members of the National Guard, the armed forces, and the police forces, to decide their own destiny and their own future.”
“The international community is here to help and support, but this is their cause.”
On Jan. 23, President Donald Trump recognised opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate interim president of the country. Nicolas Maduro has refused to recognize Guaidó, and clings to power through his control of the military.
Maduro succeeded Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2013. In 2017, the U.S. Treasury Department called Maduro “a dictator who disregards the will of the Venezuelan people.”
Rubio told CNA that Maduro must relinquish power to bring stability to a country that has seen more than 3 million people flee the country since 2015 amid spiralling inflation, food shortages and mass demonstrations.
The circumstances under which Maduro might be persuaded to abandon power are unclear, the senator said.
“Do I think Maduro is going to exit power eventually? Absolutely. Do I think he is going to do it willingly? I don’t know. But a lot of that depends on the people holding him up,” the senator said.
“Here’s the bottom line: the rank and file military does not support Maduro, but they are not willing to face the very grave consequences of breaking with him.”
These leaders, Rubio said, have the opportunity and responsibility to allow aid into the country.
“There are four or five senior military leaders, starting with the defense minister [Vladimir Padrino López], who if they were to recognize the interim government, that would be the end of the Maduro regime.”
If military leaders recognize the interim government, Rubio told CNA, they could also benefit from amnesties offered by the interim government but “that window is closing, on them and on the country.”
“The further this goes, the likelier it is that senior military leaders like [defense minister Vladimir] Padrino will disqualify themselves from the ability to receive domestic and international amnesty: because they deny food and medicine and thereby commit a crime against humanity; because they try to follow orders and attack unarmed protestors and civilians.”
“It’s in their hands, they can decide to change the trajectory of Venezuela.”
In the meantime, protests continue in the country and, according to Rubio, the Venezuelan people “are well aware” that the Maduro and his loyalists stand between them and the flow of foreign aid into the country.
“There is no way, if current trends continue, that Maduro holds on to power,” Rubio said. “The question becomes: how does he leave? Does he leave through a negotiated exit or does some other even occur that forces his hand?”
Earlier this week, Maduro issued a request for Pope Francis to act as a mediator in resolving the political standoff.
While the pope said that such a request for mediation would have to come from “both sides,” Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo, Apostolic Administrator of Caracas, appeared to pour cold water on the notion of papal intervention, telling Argentina’s Radio Continental Feb. 6 that the suggestion was “non-viable.”
Rubio told CNA the request for papal mediation is a delaying tactic on the part of Maduro.
“He’s already done this before, the Vatican tried to mediate [in 2016] and it was a fiasco – they walked away from it knowing that he wasn’t sincere.”
“Maduro has a very simple plan: to buy time until he can fracture the opposition and the world’s attention is diverted to some other crisis and away from Venezuela.”
“That’s the model he has followed and he’s trying to pull it off one more time.”
The Venezuelan standoff began Jan. 10, when Maduro was inaugurated at the start of his second term. Both the National Assembly and the Venezuelan bishops’ conference declared at that time Maduro’s 2018 reelection to be invalid. Guaidó declared himself the nation’s interim leader Jan. 23.
Rubio paid tribute to Guaidó and other opposition leaders in the country, noting the real dangers they face.
“I have tremendous admiration for the risk that they are taking,” Rubio said. “They have always been at risk, there are a significant number of opposition leaders dead, in jail, or in exile as a result of this regime.”
But, he said, those committed to seeing genuine democracy in Venezuela recognize that they have had no other practical option than to put themselves at risk.
“As they themselves will tell you, the alternative would be for them to surrender and give in and live under this tyranny or have to leave their country.”
The senator told CNA that direct intervention by U.S. personnel – military or otherwise – remains “a controversial concept.”
“What there is a strong international consensus behind is that Maduro should not stand in the way of humanitarian relief reaching people who are literally dying,” Rubio said, but the moral imperative lay primarily on those carrying out Maduro’s orders.
“If Maduro is going to order that aid be blocked, then it is incumbent upon those that he is ordering not to follow those orders.”
“The military and its leaders are going to have to choose: do we follow these illegitimate orders that are hurting our own people or do we actually help them to reach the starving people of Venezuela, in many cases their own parents, their own siblings, their own families, their own neighbors.”
Rubio said that direct intervention is not something currently being contemplated in Washington. But, the senator noted, it remains an option to protect American personnel, including those trying to deliver food, medicine, and other aid to the country.
“Any U.S. personnel who comes in danger as a result of actions of the Maduro security forces- there will be grave consequences for it, they are well aware of it and they should govern themselves accordingly.”
“The plan here is not to have a caravan of American soldiers or aid workers entering Venezuela, the plan is to hand this over to whoever the interim government directs so that they can distribute in a non-political way.”
“The goal is to distribute the aid through non-governmental, non-political organizations inside Venezuela, for them to distribute through Caritas for the Catholic Church, the Red Cross and other NGOs that are operating within the country.”
Maduro’s security forces, who have erected roadblocks to prevent aid from entering the country, stand between food and medicine stockpiled across the Colombian border and Venezuelan organizations ready to distribute it.
Rubio said that while international pressure and consensus is important, responsibility for resolving the impasse lies with the soldiers blocking aid from entering the country. The senator suggested they should stand down.
“The choice is theirs.”
Vatican City, Feb 8, 2019 / 11:19 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In mid-nineteenth century Algeria, a French bishop sought to share the Gospel among the local Africans living in his diocese by forming a community that adopted the traditional dress in Algiers — a white cassock with a red fez.
One hundred and fifty years later, the Missionaries of Africa, commonly called the “White Fathers” for their distinctive attire, have grown to have more than 1,500 vocations in 22 African countries — 95 percent of which come from Africa.
Pope Francis welcomed members of the Missionaries of Africa and Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa to the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace Friday, and encouraged them to continue their mission on their 150th anniversary of their community’s founding.
“It is always for Him, with Him and in Him that the mission is lived. Therefore, I encourage you to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, so as never to forget that the true missionary is above all a disciple,” Pope Francis told the missionaries Feb. 8.
Founded by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie of Algiers in 1868, the White Fathers went on to evangelize in sub-Saharan Africa. Their priests notably brought Catholicism to Uganda, catechizing and baptizing St. Charles Lwanga and his 22 companion martyrs in the 1880s.
Today the White Fathers work to provide clean for orphanages in Tanzania, education for women in Burkina Faso, mental trauma aid for refugees in Burundi, and healing for victims of human trafficking in Kenya. They continue to be known for their dialogue with Muslim communities in Africa.
Pope Francis thanked the White Fathers and Sisters “in particular for the work you have already done in favor of dialogue with Islam, with our Muslim sisters and brothers.”
“May the Spirit make you builders of bridges among men. Where the Lord has sent you, may you help to grow a culture of encounter, be at the service of a dialogue that, while respecting differences, can draw wealth from the diversity of others,” he said.
The pope commented on the community founder’s zeal for abolishing slavery.
Called the “the apostle of the slaves of all Africa,” Cardinal Lavigerie was an outspoken opponent of the European slave trade in the 19th century. He traveled around Europe campaigning against the practice of slavery in Africa and elsewhere.
Today the White Fathers continue to fight slavery in the form of human trafficking with the establishment of the “Human Trafficking Rescue Center” in Ngong, Kenya.
“In the wake of Cardinal Lavigerie, you are called to sow hope, fighting against all today’s forms of slavery; making you close of the little ones and the poor, of those who wait, in the peripheries of our society, to be recognized in their dignity, to be welcomed, protected, raised, accompanied, promoted and integrated,” Pope Francis said.
“With this hope, I entrust you to the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Africa,” he added.
© Catholic World Report