Asia – Pacific

Yangon, Burma, Oct 3, 2019 / 12:01 am (CNA).- Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon has decried Burma’s ongoing violence, and encouraged religious leaders to raise their voices in defense of the vulnerable.

“Not a single day passes without the heart wrenching news of innocent civilians being displaced or killed or maimed by the ongoing conflict in Lashio, other Northern regions and Rakhine State,” Cardinal Bo said Oct. 1.

“[I was] pained by the silence of religious leaders,” he added.

Beginning in late 2016 the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group who have mostly occupied Burma’s Rakhine state, faced a sharp increase in state-sponsored violence in their homeland. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced, and the military has been accused of conducting numerous human violations such as rape and murder.

Despite widespread use of the word Rohingya in the international community, the term is controversial within Burma. The Burmese government refuses to use the term, and considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They have been denied citizenship and numerous other rights since a controversial law was enacted in 1982.

Burma is also known as Myanmar, a name which the U.S. government and many democracy activists oppose, because they say it was illegally imposed on the country by its military dictatorship.

According to UCA News, on the day of the cardinal’s statement, five civilians were injured during an artillery attack in Rakhine. A Buddhist monk, novice, teacher, and two students were harmed.

Bo criticized the government asking, “where is the mercy?” He said the military forces are not concerned with the people’s safety nor have these groups shied away from heavy weapons, like arial bombs. He also said many citizens lack basic necessities.

“I had served as the priest and bishop in this area for almost 20 years. Most of these people are extremely poor and innocent people,” he said. “Striving for basic needs is their daily unending struggle. No group had done any economic development for these people.”

“A ferocious conflict rages in around them, forcing them to flee. With pain and sorrow, I have been witness to their tears, their blood and their brokenness,” he added.

Bo expressed disappointment with the lack of response from the Buddhist and Christian communities. He said that in Burma the Buddist population has 500,000 monks and 70,000 nuns, and the Christian community has over 1000 pastors and 2000 Catholic nuns.

“Some silence can be criminal. The war pursued is unjust and unholy. Our prayers and rituals are nullified by the blood and tears of innocent people,” the cardinal said.

“Myanmar people are peace-loving and follow the guidelines of their religious leaders. There is a huge potential for peace through religious leaders. Kindly raise your voice against this mutilating war,” he said. “Kindly speak out. Peace is possible, Peace is the only way.”

Since 2018, conflicts between the Myanmar military and Arakan Army have displaced 33,000 people in Rakhine and Chin states, UCA News reported.

At a United Nations forum in New York in July, Cardinal Bo emphasized the important role of religious leaders in Burma. He urged world leaders to recognize the positive influence of religion and its members.

“The nation has been wounded by festering wars,” Cardinal Bo said, according to UCA News. “For the nearly six decades of its existence, the country has been at war, brother against brother. So much blood and tears have been shed.”

“[The role of religious leaders] in maintaining peace through imparting values like compassion is an extraordinary contribution to the peace of Myanmar,” he added. “Religious people impart great values in society.”

[…]

Canberra, Australia, Oct 1, 2019 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- Freedom for Faith, a Christian legal think tank, expressed concerns last week over unintended consequences of the Australian government’s religious discrimination bill, urging that it be re-drafted before it is passed.

“Freedom for Faith welcomes the considerable efforts that the Government has made to consult on the drafting of this Bill. Many features of it are very good, including general provisions for protection of people of faith from discrimination in Commonwealth law; but Freedom for Faith also has significant concerns about certain provisions which have consequences that are probably unintended,” the group said in its Sept. 25 submission in consultation on the bill.

The most prominent concerns of the think tank, which says it “exists to see religious freedom protected and promoted in Australia”, relate to staffing policies in faith-based institutions; use of property inconsistent with a religious purpose or religious beliefs; and enrolment of students in faith-based educational institutions.

The religious discrimination bill is intended make it unlawful to discriminate against people on the ground of their religious belief or activity; establish a religious freedom commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission; and amend existing laws regarding religious freedom, including marriage and charities law, and objects clauses in anti-discrimination law.

The coalition government wants to make religious belief and activity a protected class, like race or sex. It also hopes to ensure that groups rejecting same-sex marriage are not stripped of their charitable status.

In its current version, the bill would not protect religious statements that are “malicious, would harass, vilify or incite hatred or violence against a person or group or which advocate for the commission of a serious criminal offence”.

Freedom for Faith maintains that as it is written, the bill could “suggest a very limited scope for religious organisations to retain their ethos and identity, and conversely an expansive scope for suppression of free speech. It is difficult to reconcile these Notes, at various points, with government policy as expressed by the Prime Minister and Attorney-General.”

Freedom for Faith said that “the overwhelming concern of faith-based organisations across the country with whom we have spoken is about the effect of the Bill on their religious mission, with particular reference to their staffing policies.”

Prime minister Scott Morrison has promised the bill will not take religious freedom backward, but the think tank stated that “the difficulty is that this Bill does, in relation to staffing of faith-based organisations … If the issues are not resolved, this may lead us to conclude that the Bill is better not being enacted. That said, we have every confidence that the Attorney-General will be able to sort the drafting problems out.”

Freedom for Faith said it is important that faith-based groups be able to appoint adherents of their religion, as their programs are part of their mission and ministry.

“This Bill, in its present form, will make it very difficult indeed for faith-based organisations to preserve their identity and ethos, although the Explanatory Notes to s.10 say that it is the Government’s intention to support the rights of faith-based organisations to retain their culture and ethos in their staffing policies,” the legal group wrote.

It warned that the bill supports “the view that only faith-based organisations with a policy of requiring all staff and volunteers to be adherents to the faith will be protected,” while many such organizations in fact only prefer that that staff be adherents, or that there be a “critical mass” of adherents so as to preserve its character as a religious ministry.

“Even if a Catholic school or other charity did have a policy of only employing Catholic staff, it would only be lawful if this could reasonably be regarded as in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs and teachings of Catholicism,” the think tank warned, as an example.

“That may be a difficult test to satisfy in the eyes of a court,” it continued. “The court may find it hard to see how the Catholic school’s preference in terms of employment may reasonably be regarded as being in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of the religion. The school, however, may take the view that it is a necessary implication of their doctrines that they want to maintain a Catholic ethos by having a ‘critical mass’ of believing staff. Whether or not this policy does flow from religious doctrines – it is really about the purpose of having a Catholic school – it would be best if the legislation made it clear that such a policy was not unlawful.”

Another problem in the bill identified by Freedom for Faith is that its definition of a “religious body” excludes hospitals, aged care providers, publishing houses, and youth campsites run by religious groups.

As written, the bill would “prevent Christian publishers and Christian youth campsites advertising for Christian staff. This would be a bizarre and profoundly damaging outcome of laws ostensibly designed to bolster religious freedom,” the legal group noted.

Freedom for Faith urged that the bill “make a positive statement … that it is lawful for a religious body, a faith-based educational institution or a charity established for religious purposes, to appoint, or prefer to appoint, staff who practise the religion with which the organisation is associated.”

It said this is preferable to the bill creating exemptions so as “to get away from the language of having a ‘right to discriminate’”; because “there is a lot of opposition from the left of politics to any exemptions under anti-discrimination laws,” and there would be campaigns for repeal; and because, since the government has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to report on how to balance competing claims of religious freedom rights and LGBT rights, “it does not make much sense to create new exemptions in legislation at the same time as two organisations that report to the Attorney are busily working to reduce or eliminate them.”

The second main objection of Freedom for Faith is that the bill could make some religious groups “act contrary to their beliefs if they were never permitted to rely on good faith religious objections to the use of their premises.” For example, a Catholic hospital could be made to provide euthanasia on its premises.

Thirdly, the legal think tank said the bill’s current form “may not allow schools to preference students of a particular faith. So for example, Catholic schools may not be allowed to give preference for admission” to the Catholic children.

Freedom for Faith suggested a number of other, minor improvements to the bill, and provided a suggested draft for a new section on employment.

Similarly, the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, which has reportedly worked closely in the past with the local Catholic diocese, has said the religious discrimination bill is so flawed that it cannot be supported in its current form.

Some conservative members of parliament have asked instead for a religious freedom bill. Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, of the Liberal Party, voiced concerns July 9 that the bill does not go far enough, saying it “would be defensive in nature and limited to protecting against acts and practices by others which are discriminatory on the grounds of religion.”

She said that “quiet Australians now expect the Coalition to legislate to protect their religious freedom.”

Australia has seen debate over religious freedom in recent years with respect to the seal of the confessional, hiring decisions, and same-sex marriage.

Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney noted last year that “we cannot take the freedom to hold and practice our beliefs for granted, even here in Australia,” and that “powerful interests now seek to marginalize religious believers and beliefs, especially Christian ones, and exclude them from public life. They would end funding to faith-based schools, hospitals and welfare agencies, strip us of charitable status and protections.”

[…]

Beijing, China, Oct 1, 2019 / 04:32 pm (CNA).- On Tuesday, the People’s Republic of China marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the country’s communist regime. While some world leaders offered congratulations, others reflected on t… […]

Hong Kong, China, Sep 30, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The persecution of Catholics in mainland China is increasing after prominent Catholic figures in Hong Kong continue to speak out against the communist regime, according to reports.

The reports from Bit… […]

New Delhi, India, Sep 30, 2019 / 02:05 pm (CNA).- A religious sister with the Missionaries of Charity has been released on bail 15 months after her arrest. She is accused of cooperating with the sale of a child from a home for unwed mothers, although her supporter argue that she was coerced into confessing.

Sister Concelia Baxla, 62, was arrested in July 2018, along with Anima Indwar, an employee at the Nirmal Hriday home in Ranchi.

Sr. Concelia was released Sept. 27 on a 10,000 rupee bail, the equivalent of $150, and two sureties of the same amount, ucanews reports. The sister was also instructed to leave her passport at the court.

The religious sister, who suffers from diabetes, had been denied bail twice previously – once last October on the grounds that her release could interfere with the investigation into her congregation, and again in January because charges had not yet been pressed, according to ucanews.

Her lawyer argued that Sr. Concelia should be granted bail because she is not facing direct charges, and noted that Indwar was granted bail shortly after her initial arrest.

Sr. Concelia had been sister-in-charge of the unwed mothers section at the home since June 2017. Indwar was entrusted with escorting the unwed mothers, their babies, and their guardians to hospital and to the Child Welfare Committee office when the religious sisters were engaged with other duties.

Police said a couple reportedly paid 120,000 rupees ($1,760 USD) to Indwar for a baby from the home. The couple complained that Indwar took their money in exchange for a child, and that she later took the child back from them without returning money.

Initial reports suggested that three other infants may also have been sold.

Indwar has admitted that she sold children. Sr. Concelia said that she found out about the sale later, after a baby was missing during a Child Welfare Committee check. The sister says she informed authorities and that she did not take any money from the sale.

A police source said that Indwar provided to police a handwritten note from Sr. Concelia asking Indwar to take the blame on herself, Matters India reports.

Sr. Concelia’s defenders, including the bishops of India, are asking whether she was an accomplice, or the victim of a coerced confession.

Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, Auxiliary Bishop of Ranchi, said shortly after the arrest that Sr. Concelia’s lawyer was only permitted to meet with her for 10 minutes, during which time, she said she was forced by police to give her statement, according to the Hindustan Times.

Sister Mary Prema Pierick, superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, said in July 2018 that the congregation was “deeply saddened and grieved” by news of the alleged sale, adding that they were coopering fully with the investigation.

However, a spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity said that the order stopped dealing with child adoption in India back in 2015.

The Albanian-born Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata in 1950. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, and canonized in 2016. There are now 5,167 Missionaries of Charity sisters, both active and contemplative, around the world. The order has 244 houses in India.

In addition to the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, members of the Missionaries of Charity take a fourth vow pledging “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor.”

[…]

Tokyo, Japan, Sep 29, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- In the age of mass communication, the Catholic Church is finding previously unimagined opportunities for evangelization – namely, over the internet.

However, for the small minority of believers in Japan, the internet is far less connective. Much like their diocese and parishes, which are hardly seen or experienced outside the walls of the Church or rectory, Catholicism has not yet found a way to thrive on the Japanese end of the internet.

“In Japan, the connection between Catholics is only within the church, and hardly outside it,” said Tomomi, a Japanese Catholic in her twenties who lives in Tokyo.
 
“I’ve been [in] the Catholic Church since I was a kid, but I think I must say that outside the Church there is no connection between the believers.”
 
With the entire world connected over websites and messaging applications, the ability to evangelize domestically and abroad to groups and persons outside of Catholic social circles has never been easier.

Technology has, by many measures, become one of Catholicism’s most powerful areas of growth.

Pope Francis has held Internet-focused conferences in the past, inviting online celebrities and activists to the Vatican in order to discuss opportunities for cooperation and humanitarian efforts through the use of the internet.

The Vatican website is available in a staggering number of languages, as are the pope’s official writings and the church’s official announcements – it takes its commitment to universality seriously.

By all regards, the Catholic Church appears to be dedicated to keeping abreast of today’s hyper-social internet culture, making sure its message can be heard regardless of geography, income, or skill set.

But while Japan is a technologically advanced country, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Japan is, technologically, behind.

“Each diocese in this country is trying hard to take steps forward with fairly limited resources, resulting in slow progress,” Satoh Takaharu of the conference’s social communications division told CNA.

Takaharu is the extremely polite and timely staffer who answers messages submitted through an embedded inquiry form on the CCBJ’s infrequently-updated website. The process through which she communicates is not intuitive. The answers to inquiries cannot be replied to, and so replies to her answers must be submitted through the initial form. It can be cumbersome.

The inquiry form is, for some, a promising sign, though. Many Japanese parishes’ official contact email addresses are hard to come by online. If an inquirer does stumble upon the email address of a parish, priest, or bishop, there’s a good chance of it being out of date.

“[The conference] finds technical difficulties in increasing its presence on the internet,” Takaharu said.

Why is progress slow? It’s not for lack of enthusiasm, according to the CCBJ.

What the Japanese church lacks, they seem to claim, is effective management and simple computer know-how.

“The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan has no expert staff on IT and SNS,” Takaharu continued. SNS stands for ‘social networking sites.’
 
“Although some discussions on the necessity of using SNS have been made, the Church in Japan has yet to launch an initiative geared to take next steps due to the reasons mentioned above.”
 
In the West, even unofficial, lay Catholic social media communities and evangelization movements have become prominent enough to warrant mentions in the New York Times and other major publications.
 
But in Japan, this form of online community is rare, and only scarcely populated in comparison to other nations. This is, no doubt, a direct result of the low percentage of Christians in Japan (less than 2%), but even this tiny, vibrant community’s efforts can be hampered by the Japanese Church’s lack of infrastructure online.
 
Much like an actual church needs a priest to function properly, many online lay religious communities are looking spiritual and social leaders to rally around – in this case the very same priests who lead their physical churches.
 
“American and European priests have their own [social media] accounts and often communicate. In Japan, even the priest does little [communicating] on Twitter,” lamented Tomomi.
 
Without official clergy accounts and church-sanctioned groups, it can be difficult to find other Catholics online. Religion isn’t a common topic of Japanese online discussion, especially if one belongs to a minority religion imported from the West.
 
Without beacons to flock to for familiarity, many Catholics in Japan say they are mostly left rogue and homeless online without a serious community to engage with about their faith.
 
Some Church officials in Japan are aware of the deficit and of the potential benefits to going digital. In emails on the subject, Church officials expressed support for the few Japanese priests reaching out through social media.
 
“Some bishops and priests are using SNS actively and its usefulness is duly valued,” said Takaharu.
 
“The Catholic Church isn’t influential [in Japan],” said Tomomi. “But…we need to unite the Japanese believers with each other. That’s what we can do online.”
 
There are movements, though. They’re small, and mostly contained within individual parishes. These groups may be a good starting point for the outward expansion of the Church, and for greater involvement in the communities around local parishes.
 
Warinthorn is a 28-year-old resident of Japan originally from Thailand. He is a university student and has lived in Japan for 12 years.
 
He converted from Buddhism to Catholicism while in Japan, at the age of 25.
 
“In my university there’s a Christian club, like YMCA, where they go camping, arrange sessions of bible studies, etc. But all of its members, in my knowledge, are Protestants,” said Warinthorn.
 
Warinthorn has noticed the ways in which Catholics have managed to build support networks online. But he said they are not without problems, some of which will likely seem familiar to Catholics in the West.
 
“There’re quite active communities of Japanese Catholics on Twitter and Facebook, but as someone who has seen the contents, I must say that they don’t reflect the reality of Church life here. Most people tend to be more aggressive on social networks, both to other Catholics and to the hierarchy,” said Warinthorn.
 
Also, “the statements of the bishops of Japan are usually politically left-leaning, which is something annoying to some believers,” he said
 
Offline, things run a little smoother.
 
“In my parish there’s a variety of active groups doing many kinds of activities, including non-liturgical ones, such as visiting homeless people and [giving] them onigiri-rice, or serving curry rice to anyone every Monday. However, their activities are parish-centered and depend in many ways on the parish’s support.”
 
Many Japanese citizens have never talked about religion with a Christian. Many Japanese citizens have never even been inside Church. The internet may prove to be where many Japanese are exposed to other Japanese professing Christian values and ideas for the first time.

“In a stable society like Japan, with such a different understanding of religiosity from the West, it’s totally natural thing that the Catholic Church is experiencing only marginal growth. The only things that we can, and should do as believers, is to learn about our own faith, be of one mind and to form our consciences in accordance with Catholic teachings, and to witness Christ to people around us, such as friends and family.”
 
Warinthorn is optimistic.
 
“Although there’s a lot of temptations from the society that could make us dilute the faith, I have seen a number of believers, whose witnesses are by no means dramatic or heroic, but have succeeded in bringing their friends and family to Christ.”

[…]

Islamabad, Pakistan, Sep 27, 2019 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted a man Wednesday who was sentenced to death for blasphemy in 2002, saying there was a lack of evidence against him.

Wajih-ul-Hassan was exonerated Sept. 25, with the court deciding that prosecutors hadn’t proven that letters which were the basis of the accusation had in fact been written by him.

Pakistan’s state religion is Islam, and around 97 percent of the population is Muslim. The country’s blasphemy laws impose strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad. Although the government has never executed a person under the blasphemy laws, accusations alone have inspired mob and vigilante violence.

The allegations against Hassan arose from letters he allegedly wrote to a lawyer, according to Dawn, a Karachi-based daily.

The lawyer, Ismail Qureshi, had sought amendments to the Pakistan Penal Code, saying that blasphemy should be punished only by capital punishment; the PPC also allows life imprisonment as a sentence for the crime.

Hassan allegedly wrote letters to Qureshi in 1998 which the lawyer deemed blasphemous; Qureshi went to the police and filed a petition against Hassan the following year.

Mohammad Amjad Rafiq, additional prosecutor general of Punjab, told Dawn that in 2001 Hassan confessed before a manager at his place of work; the manager then took Hassan to a police station, where he was arrested.

The next week, a handwriting expert said that Hassan’s writing matched the blasphemous letters.

Hassan was convicted and sentenced, a decision which was subsequently upheld by the Lahore High Court.

But the Supreme Court overturned Hassan’s conviction this week, saying Hassan’s “extra-judicial confession” and the testimony of the handwriting expert were not strong enough evidence of his guilt, and there were no witnesses to the supposed crime.

“Presumption of innocence remains throughout the case until such time the prosecution on the evidence satisfies the court beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of the offence alleged against him,” the Supreme Court’s decision reads.

“There cannot be a fair trial, which is itself the primary purpose of criminal jurisprudence, if the judges have not been able to clearly elucidate the rudimentary concept of the standard of proof that prosecution must meet in order to obtain a conviction,” it continued.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are reportedly used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities; while non-Muslims constitute only 3 percent of the Pakistani population, 14 percent of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.

Many of those accused of blasphemy are murdered, and advocates of changing the law are also targeted by violence.

The blasphemy laws were introduced between 1980 and 1986. The National Commission for Justice and Peace said more than 1,300 people were accused under this law from 1987 until 2014. The Centre for Research and Security Studies reported that at least 65 people have been killed by vigilantes since 1990.

More than 40 people are serving a life sentence or face execution for blasphemy in the country.

Last year, the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned the blasphemy conviction of Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman who was accused in 2009. Her initial conviction had also been upheld by the Lahore High Court.

[…]

Geneva, Switzerland, Sep 26, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- The Chinese government is harvesting organs from religious and ethnic minorities, a human rights organization told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday. 

The China Tribunal, which calls itself an “independent, international people’s tribunal” that investigates allegations of organ harvesting in the country, is led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. The tribunal said they found evidence that China is continuing to forcibly collect organs from political and religious prisoners, despite saying they stopped the practice four years ago. 

“Forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, including the religious minorities of Falun Gong and Uighurs, has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale, and that it continues today,” said Hamid Sabi, a lawyer for the China Tribunal speaking at the UN meeting. 

The tribunal estimated that “hundreds of thousands” of people have been used to harvest organs, including hearts. This constitutes crimes against humanity, said Sabi, and is equivalent to genocide.

“Victim for victim and death for death, cutting out the hearts and other organs from living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people constitutes one of the worst mass atrocities of this century,” he added. 

Although organ donation and transplantation is “a scientific and social triumph,” Sadi said that China’s practice of killing the donor is a crime.

“It is the legal obligation of UN Member States and the duty of this council to address this criminal conduct,” he said. 

China has admitted in the past that it would regularly take the organs of prisoners on death row and use them in transplants, but said they stopped in January 2015. According to the China Tribunal, it is unlikely to be true. The tribunal says there has been an “explosion” of transplants in China over the last two decades, as well as an increase of “transplant tourists” who travel to China to purchase an organ. 

These numbers “suggest a larger supply of organs than could be sourced from executed criminals alone,” says the China Tribunal’s website. This data, coupled with reports from prisoners, leads the Tribunal to conclude that “prisoners of conscience,” who have been detained for no reason other than their faith or ethnic group, are being killed in order to supply organs for the country’s organ trafficking industry. 

Groups detained en masse in China include Uighur Muslims, Tibetans, practitioners of Falun Gong, and people who worship at underground “home churches” that are not recognized by the government. 

On Tuesday, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan spoke at the UN General Assembly, and demanded an investigation into the alleged human rights abuses in the province of Xinjiang. Xinjiang is home to most of the country’s Uighur population. 

“The UN must seek the immediate unhindered, and unmonitored access to Xinjiang for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” said Sullivan. “The United Nations, including its member states, have a responsibility to stand up for the human rights of people everywhere, including Muslims in Xinjiang.” 

Sullivan added that it is imperative that the UN work to continue to monitor China for human rights abuses, especially “the repression of religious freedom and belief.” 

An estimated 1 million Uighurs, members of a Muslim ethnoreligious group, have been detained in re-education camps in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, a region in China’s northwest that is roughly the size of Iran.

Inside the camps they are reportedly subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination. Outside the camps, Uighurs are monitored by pervasive police forces and facial recognition technology.

The Chinese government has said reports on the camps by Western governments and media are unfounded, claiming they are vocational training centers and that it is combating extremism.

[…]

Sydney, Australia, Sep 26, 2019 / 11:18 am (CNA).- The archbishop of Sydney lamented a controversial new law decriminalizing abortion in New South Wales, and stressed that the Church will work to offer support for women facing difficult pregnancies.

“Today is a very dark day for New South Wales,” said Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney in a Sept. 26 statement. He called the new law “a defeat for humanity.”

“The Abortion Law Reform Act 2019 may be the worst law passed in New South Wales in modern times, because it represents such a dramatic abdication of responsibility to protect the most vulnerable members of our community,” he said.

“Since the abolition of capital punishment in New South Wales in 1955, this is the only deliberate killing ever legalised in our state.”

A law removing abortion from the Crimes Act in New South Wales passed by a vote of 26-14 in the state’s upper house on Wednesday.

The Abortion Law Reform Act 2019 allows abortion for any reason up to 22 weeks of pregnancy; after that, it allows for abortions if two obstetricians agree.

Previously, abortion was only legal in NSW if a doctor determined that a woman’s physical or mental health is in danger. “Mental health” had been interpreted by courts to include “economic and social stress.”

According to supporters of the bill, it clarifies what they believe were previously ambiguous terms in penal code with regard to abortion. But according to conservatives who oppose the bill, it opens up the possibility for abortion at any time for any reason as long as two doctors agree.

Fisher emphasized that although abortion is now legal in New South Wales, “our commitment to life continues.”

“Care for pregnant women, new mothers and their babies will still be available through Church agencies and pro-life organisations,” he said.

“The Catholic Church, other Christian churches, people of other faiths and women and men of goodwill will continue to work together to turn our culture around, so that every vulnerable woman and baby is supported and abortion becomes unthinkable.”

The legislation had drawn opposition from the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Church of Australia, and the NSW Presbyterian Church.

Debate on the bill in the state’s Legislative Council had been delayed over the summer, following concerns that it was rushed through without proper consideration. The bill had previously passed the Legislative Assembly Aug. 8 by a vote of 59-31.

Under the legislation, it will still be a criminal offense for individuals to perform abortions without the proper authorizations, carrying a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment for doing so. Doctors would also have to obtain “informed consent” from patients before performing abortions.

Originally titled The Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019, the bill underwent several changes before reaching its final form.

Initially, it did not mandate any counseling or period of consideration for the woman, according to The Catholic Weekly, the Archdiocese of Sydney’s publication.

That was later changed to require medical practitioners to offer counseling to a woman seeking an abortion if they believe it would be beneficial, The Guardian reported.

Critics of the bill had also objected that it would require doctors with conscientious objections to refer women to other abortion providers. The final legislation instead requires them to direct women to the NSW Health website or hotline, which can then connect them with a doctor who will perform the abortion.

Another amendment prohibits coercing a woman into having an abortion, or preventing her from doing so. The crime is punishable by up to two years in jail, Australia’s ABC News reported.

In addition, it clarifies the obligation of doctors to care for a baby who survives an abortion attempt, and prohibits abortions based solely on the sex of the child, according to ABC News.

In his statement, Fisher thanked the members of Parliament who opposed the bill, and those “who worked tirelessly on amendments to make this bad law a little better.” He also thanked the members of the public who prayed and spoke out against the law.

He encouraged Catholics to pray and work for pro-life leaders, and to renew their commitment to helping pregnant women in need.

“We can still put an end to the scourge of abortion in this state by making it unnecessary, no matter what the law says,” the archbishop said.

[…]

Sydney, Australia, Sep 25, 2019 / 06:40 pm (CNA).- In the wake of a major clergy sex abuse scandal and the high-profile, controversial trial and conviction of sex abuse of Cardinal George Pell, government and Church officials in Australia are scrambling for solutions.

Among these proposed or enacted interventions are those that would break with teachings or traditions of the Catholic Church.

One such oft-proposed intervention is the scrapping of the seal of confession, a proposed solution included in the Australian Royal Commission’s report on clergy abuse published last year.

Earlier this month, the Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania passed a law requiring priests to violate the seal of confession if anything in the confession indicated or implicated someone in a case of child sex abuse. The laws add religious leaders to the existing list of mandatory reporters, and failure to report abuse is punishable by time in prison.

Unlike in other countries with similar laws and policies, reports of child abuse made in a sacramental context are no longer exempt and must be reported.

A similar bill is being considered in Queensland, ABC in Australia reported.

If priests were to follow this law, they would be in serious violation of the teachings of the Catholic Church. According to the Code of Canon Law: “The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church also states that priests are bound to keep confessions secret without exceptions: “Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him. He can make no use of knowledge that confession gives him about penitents’ lives. This secret, which admits of no exceptions, is called the ‘sacramental seal,’ because what the penitent has made known to the priest remains ‘sealed’ by the sacrament.”

Bishops in both Tasmania and Victoria have said that their priests are unable to follow these news laws. The bishops of Australia also defended the seal of confession in their written response to the Royal Commission report last year.

“Personally, I’ll keep the seal,” Archbishop Peter Comensoli during an August 14 interview with ABC Radio Melbourne, shortly after the bill was introduced to the Victorian parliament. The archbishop said that he would urge anyone who confessed to abuse to report themselves to the police. However, a priest is forbidden from ordering a penitent to turn themselves in to the authorities.

Australian priest Fr. Kevin Dillon told ABC radio in Australia that he believes the seal could be changed because the rules of the seal of confession are “not written in scripture” and instead are taken from the tradition of the Church.

In another reaction to the sex abuse crisis, some Catholic officials have said that the formation of seminarians needs to be completely reimagined.

Typically, a seminarian studying to be a priest enters 7-8 year program of classes in philosophy and theology, with focuses on spiritual, human, academic and pastoral formation.

But according to an investigation by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, using data from the Royal Commission’s investigation, “seminaries had become places where repressed young men would experiment sexually with one another with little consequence, before some of them turned their attention to children in their parish,” The Age reported.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, president of the Australian bishops’ conference, told Crux in August 2018 that “In seeking to combat clericalism, we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Clearly, it requires a radical revision of how we recruit and prepare candidates for ordination. Much has changed in our seminaries, but one has to wonder whether seminaries are the place or way to train men for the priesthood now.”

The Age reports that a new “national program of priestly formation” is already being developed and will be considered by the Australian bishop’s conference in November.

One change already announced by Church leaders is that seminarians will be subjected to the same training and screening as other Church officials by the Catholic Professional Standards Ltd, a group that safeguards against child sex abuse through trainings and audits of Catholic bishops, priests and religious. The independent group is chaired by a lay board; its members are the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia.

Sheree Limbrick, chief executive of Catholic Professional Standards Limited, told The Age that a rethinking of seminary formation should also include “ongoing formation, support and supervision” of seminarians and priests, and that the audit process would help hold seminarians and priests accountable.

Francis Sullivan, the previous head of the church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, told The Age that within the Church there are already “quite a lot of conversations about whether the seminary model is fit for purpose any more – that a revamp of the system is long overdue.”

“I think people like Archbishop Mark Coleridge are seriously considering whether the system works or whether there should be more of a focus on seminarians being integrated into academic and parish life,” he said.

The Age reports that Coleridge has previously mentioned a possible “apprenticeship model” of formation for seminarians, where they would study the same classes but have a closer relationship with a parish on the ground level. Coleridge declined further comment to The Age on the subject.

Shane Healy, a spokesman for the Melbourne Archdiocese, told The Age there was “no intention” to close the diocesan seminary, Corpus Christi, and that the bishops and leadership of the school were “committed to Corpus Christi College being a place of excellence in the formation of our future priests.”

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