Los Angeles, Calif., Oct 28, 2019 / 07:11 pm (CNA).- As 16 wildfires continue to incinerate thousands of acres of land in California, destroying businesses and homes, Archbishop Jose Gomez has called for prayers for the victims of the fires.
“We… […]
Canberra, Australia, Oct 28, 2019 / 06:34 pm (CNA).- A government department in Australia has proposed the use of a face recognition system to curb underage access to online pornography, but the idea has been met with concerns over privacy.
The Department of Home Affairs wrote to a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs that it could offer a “suite of identity-matching services,” reported business tech news site ZDNet this week.
Among possible uses for this technology, the department emphasized the use of a face verification service to restrict teens and children from accessing online pornography. The system would match people’s faces with their identification document in government records.
Current efforts to verify users’ age on pornographic websites include requiring users to enter a date of birth or upload identification documents. However, the Home Affairs department said, these methods can be easily circumvented by minors entering a parent’s driver’s license information.
An identity-matching service would provide a more reliable method of age verification, and could also be used for other age-restricted online activities, such as gambling, it said.
“Whilst they are primarily designed to prevent identity crime, Home Affairs would support the increased use of the Document and Face Verification Services across the Australian economy to strengthen age verification processes,” said the Department of Home Affairs, according to ZDNet.
Before the program takes place, a piece of biometric legislation – the Identity-matching Services Bill 2019 – must first be approved by parliament. However, last week, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security demanded the entire bill be redrafted.
The committee expressed concern that the bill would allow the Department of Home Affairs to have too much surveillance power. It said the bill should be rewritten with a focus on “privacy, transparency and subject to robust safeguards,” the Guardian reported.
“In the committee’s view, robust safeguards and appropriate oversight mechanisms should be explained clearly in the legislation,” said Committee Chair Andrew Hastie, according to the Guardian.
The United Kingdom also tried to implement an age verification system, which would have required porn users to verify their age by entering their credit card information or purchasing a temporary porn pass. The program was originally scheduled to go into effect in April 2018, but encountered numerous technical problems and objections from critics who were concerned about privacy violations. After its implementation was delayed numerous times, the program was officially dropped on Oct. 16.
Kochi, India, Oct 28, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Sister Lucy Kalapura, whose dismissal from religious life was upheld by the Congregation for the Oriental Churches last month, has sent a letter asking that her case be further appealed before the Aposotolic Signatura.
She was dismissed from the Franciscan Clarist Congregation in August for several acts of disobedience, including a protest of the handling of another nun’s accusation that Bishop Mulakkal of Jullundur serially raped her.
“I am deeply obliged for providing me the opportunity for a further appeal to the Supreme Tribunal of the Signatura Apostolica. It is desired, in this connection, that an opportunity be granted to me to appear in person before the Tribunal to enable me to present to its honourable members my side of the situation,” Sister Lucy wrote in an Oct. 25 letter to Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.
She also asked that she be able to present her case to Pope Francis.
According to the FCC, Sr. Lucy has led a life against the principles of religious life by disobeying a transfer order, publishing poems after having been denied permission to do so, buying a vehicle, withholding her salary from the congregation, and participating in a protest against Bishop Mulakkal, who has been charged with several instances of raping a nun of a different congregation.
Bishop Mulakkal was charged with rape in April, and his trial is due to begin Nov. 11. A nun of the Missionaries of Jesus alleged that the bishop sexually abused her more than a dozen times over two years.
In her letter to Cardinal Sandri, Sr. Lucy said, according to News 18, that “what purports to be ‘disciplinary action’, and what in reality are reprisals, against me commenced only after I stood by the sisters of the Missionaries of Jesus in their efforts to secure justice for the outraged nun.”
“I wish to urge strenuously that the actions initiated against me, and the vindictiveness it reeks of, cannot be understood aright, if they are seen in isolation from the Franco Mulakkal matter as the trigger,” she added.
Sr. Lucy wrote that she is “a collateral victim of this Franco Mulakkal scandal, in regard to which the mettle of the Church’s commitment to truth and justice is being tested in full public view.”
She charged that “it does not have to be argued that the Holy See being made to be seen as partisan in this case, or as hostile to justice being available to a rape victim, is sure to discredit the witness and integrity of the Catholic Church for the years to come.”
The community’s superior general, Sr. Ann Joseph, wrote in August that Sr. Lucy “did not show the needed remorse and you failed to give a satisfactory explanation for your lifestyle in violation of the proper law of the FCC.”
Sr. Lucy said that the FCC’s charges of disobedience are a “deliberate attempt to paint her in bad light”.
In a January letter of warning sent to Sr. Lucy, Sr. Ann wrote that the nun had joined a protest regarding Bishop Mulakkal “without the permission of your superior. You have published articles in some non-Christian newspapers and weeklies … gave interviews to ‘Samayam’ without seeking permission from the provincial superior. Through Facebook, channel discussions and the articles, you belittled the Catholic leadership by making false accusations against it and tried to bring down the sacraments. You tried to defame FCC also. Your performance through social media as a religious sister was culpable, arising grave scandal.”
The letter also said Sr. Lucy failed to obey a transfer order given her in 2015 by her provincial superior, and that she published a book of poems despite being denied permission to do so, and used 50,000 Indian rupees ($700) from the congregation’s account “without proper permission” to do so.
Sr. Lucy is also accused of buying a car for about $5,670 and learning to drive without permission, and failing to entrust her salary from December 2017.
Sr. Ann called these acts “a grave infringement of the vow of poverty.”
The superior general added that Sr. Lucy has been corrected and warned several times by her provincial over her “improper behaviour and violations of religious discipline.”
“Instead of correcting yourself, you are simply denying the allegations against you stating that you have to live your own beliefs, ideologies and conviction. You are repeatedly violating the vows of obedience and poverty. The evangelization and social work you do should be according to the FCC values, principles and rules. The present mode of your life is a grave violation of the profession you have made,” Sr. Ann wrote.
After the denial of Sr. Lucy’s initial appeal was communicated to her earlier this month, she told the BBC that “I don’t see any point” in further recourse to the Apostolic Signatura, “since they have made up their mind.”
She maintained: “I am not going to leave the convent. The lifestyle I lead is as per the rules and regulations.”
Sr. Lucy was sent a series of warnings from January through March. The first asked that she appear before Sr. Ann to explain her disobediences, or face expulsion from the congregation.
In January Sr. Lucy said that the congregation was trying to silence her, and denied any wrongdoing.
In May the FCC’s General Council voted unanimously to dismiss Sr. Lucy.
Another nun of the FCC, Sister Lissy Vadakkel, was transferred earlier this year from Muvattupuzha to Vijawada.
Sister Alphonas Abraham, superior of the FCC’s Nirmala Province, said in February that Sr. Lissy’s transfer was unrelated to her acting as a witness in the case against Bishop Mulakkal.
Washington D.C., Oct 28, 2019 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- A South Carolina Catholic priest reportedly denied Holy Communion to presidential candidate Joe Biden on Sunday, because of the candidate’s support for legal abortion.
Fr. Robert Morey, past… […]
Washington D.C., Oct 28, 2019 / 05:12 pm (CNA).- A group of pro-life leaders is calling on the Trump administration to finalize a rule that would require abortion to be billed separately from other services in taxpayer funded health insurance plans.
A… […]
Washington D.C., Oct 28, 2019 / 04:39 pm (CNA).- As many pregnant students say they face pressure to have abortions to advance their education and careers, one pro-life group has released a “bill of rights” to help pregnant and parenting st… […]
St. Louis, Mo., Oct 28, 2019 / 02:40 pm (CNA).- A hearing began on Monday in Missouri to determine the fate of the state’s last remaining abortion clinic.
“Planned Parenthood’s stubborn refusal to correct its gross deficiencies is the reason Missouri may soon be the first state since Roe v. Wade in 1973 to be free from abortion clinics,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the group March for Life, stated on Monday before the hearing.
Mancini said the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic “has left the state no choice but to deny renewal of its clinic license” because of its health violations and failure to comply with health requirements.
“Planned Parenthood should put the safety of women before its profits – the women of Missouri deserve as much,” Mancini stated.
The Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission held the hearing on Monday, months after the state’s Department of Health and Senior Services in June refused to renew the license of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region to perform abortions.
Jacinta Florence, the Missouri & Arkansas Regional Coordinator for Students for Life of America attended the hearing.
“What’s tragic is that Planned Parenthood is fighting to stay open but doesn’t want to comply with Missouri’s laws designed to protect women’s lives at this dangerous location,” Florence said.
Before it refused to reissue a license for the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic, Missouri’s health department had submitted a “Statement of Deficiencies” of the clinic to a court.
In that statement, the department cited an “unprecedented lack of cooperation” on the part of the clinic, as well as its “failure to meet basic standards of patient care, and refusal to comply with state law and regulations protecting women’s health and safety that resulted in numerous serious and extensive unresolved deficiencies including multiple that involved life-threatening conditions for patients.”
Planned Parenthood reneged on its agreement to perform pelvic examinations as a “preoperative health requirement,” the state said, several doctors at the clinic refused requests to provide interviews with the health department, and the clinic would not have been prepared for a case of “severe hemorrhaging” of a woman that occurred at a hospital.
The clinic had submitted a “Plan of Correction” as requested by the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services, but it had not properly addressed all the stated deficiencies, the health department said.
Planned Parenthood responded by saying that the health department “weaponized a regulatory process” and required pelvic exams that it admitted were “medically unnecessary” amidst “public outcry and the medical community coming out strongly against” the required exams.
After the state’s refusal to grant a license, a judge and the Administration Hearing Commission both granted a temporary stay of the health department’s decision, allowing the clinic to remain open while the case was reviewed.
Missouri had also enacted a comprehensive abortion ban in 2019, with Governor Mike Parson (R) signing it into law in May. The legislation was supported by St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson.
Missouri’s law set up a multi-tier ban on abortions after eight weeks, 14 weeks, 18 weeks and 20 weeks, as well as bans on abortions conducted solely because of the baby’s race, sex, or Down Syndrome diagnosis.
The law was crafted to be able to survive in the courts, but a federal judge in August struck down all of the bans related the stage in pregnancy, leaving intact the disability, race and sex-selective abortion bans for the time being.
Meanwhile, as the fate of the St. Louis clinic is being determined, Planned Parenthood has opened a “mega” abortion clinic just 13 miles away across the Mississippi River in Fairview Heights, Illinois that will have the ability to see 11,000 patients annually.
The new clinic replaced a smaller Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights that offered medication abortions but not surgical abortions.
In a controversial move, the organization used a shell company under which the facility was purportedly being constructed, and tried to shield from public view the fact that the facility under construction was an abortion clinic.
Vatican City, Oct 28, 2019 / 12:15 pm (CNA).- Leaders of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam presented a signed declaration to Pope Francis Monday expressing their total opposition to euthanasia and any form of physician-assisted suicide, as well as voici… […]
Vatican City, Oct 28, 2019 / 06:15 am (CNA).- Pope Francis declared Monday that the Vatican Secret Archive be changed to the title of Vatican Apostolic Archive, to avoid the negative associations which accompany modern interpretations of the word &ldqu… […]
Baltimore, Md., Oct 27, 2019 / 04:08 pm (CNA).- The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will be electing a new president, vice president, and committee chairs, and will vote on seven action items during the upcoming Fall General Assemb… […]
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