Europe

CNA Staff, Jun 24, 2020 / 03:25 pm (CNA).- The president of the leading Catholic women’s organization in Germany has declared her support for “reproductive rights” – including, “as a last, terrible resort” abortion – and for an initiative supported by the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Maria Flachsbarth has been president of the German Catholic Women’s Federation (KDFB) since 2011. The Catholic mother of two and member of parliament for the Christian Democratic Union is also a member of the Central Committee of German Catholics, the lay organization coordinating the controversial “Synodal Process” with the German bishops’ conference.

Speaking to CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, on June 19, a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development – for which Flachsbarth works as Parliamentary State Secretary – confirmed that Flachsbarth is committed to her support for “She Decides,” an initiative supported by Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood international affiliates form the largest global network of abortion providers.

The spokesperson praised Planned Parenthood, saying the organization has made “a major contribution to reducing the high maternal mortality rate in developing countries through medical support for mothers and children during pregnancy and birth.”

In Flachsbarth’s view, the SheDecides initiative is committed to “protecting girls and women from suffering, enabling them to live in health and dignity and offering them opportunities for education and a self-determined life,” the spokesperson also told CNA Deutsch.

This also includes access to “basic sexual and reproductive health services and self-determination over one’s own body.”

The spokesperson added that SheDecides aims to protect women from the consequences of “unsafe abortions.”

“For this purpose, access to a medically safe abortion is offered under the laws and regulations applicable in the country, as well as help with complications after an unsafe abortion,” she said.

“As a member of the German Bundestag, as Parliamentary State Secretary and also in my honorary office as President of the KDFB, I have always been committed to the protection of life, especially in the particularly sensitive phases at the very beginning and at the very end. Abortion is never a means of family planning. In individual cases it can be a last, terrible resort”, Flachsbarth told CNA Deutsch through the spokeswoman.

A similarly worded statement published June 19 on her website reiterated Flachsbarth’s position.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law” (No. 2271).

Pope Francis has repeatedly decried abortion and other attacks against human life, including in his enclycical Laudato si. In 2018 he compared the abortion of sick or disabled children to a “Nazi mentality.”

In April 2019, the Holy See’s representative to the United Nations told the UN Commission on Population and Development that the insistence on a “right to abortion” detracted from the commission’s efforts to address the real needs of mothers and children.

“Suggesting that reproductive health includes a right to abortion explicitly violates the language of the ICPD, defies moral and legal standards within domestic legislations and divides efforts to address the real needs of mothers and children, especially those yet unborn,” said Archbishop Bernardito Auza.

In September 2019, representatives of 19 countries, including the Holy See and the United States, told the United Nations that there is no “international right to abortion” and that “ambiguous” terms such as “sexual and reproductive health” should be removed from official documents.

Flachsbarth’s support for Planned Parenthood has been criticized by other party members of the Christian Democratic Union. In an interview with the newspaper Tagespost, CDU politician Hubert Hüppe accused Flachsbarth of being a “protagonist of the abortion lobby”.

Hüppe also called on the German bishops to intervene, saying they had a duty to do so. Otherwise, the bishops would themselves lose credibility, should the “open support” by the KDFB president remain without consequences.

To date, no German bishop has publicly commented.

The Central Committee of German Catholics’ president, Thomas Sternberg – another CDU politician – told CNA Deutsch June 22 that he was “in complete agreement” with Flachsbarth, and that, in fact, they reject abortion, despite Flachsbarth’s support for the SheDecides initiative and for Planned Parenthood.

He said: “From my point of view, this debate makes it clear how far away we are from the general conviction and view that abortion is about killing people. The way it is discussed as a purely women’s rights issue is a sad sign of a lack of awareness of the value of unborn life.”

Sternberg, who in 2018 spoke out against a proposed relaxation of Germany’s abortion laws, said there is “no contradiction” between his position and Flachsbarth’s.

“The ZdK has always vehemently stood up for the protection of life. In Germany we have a legal regulation according to which abortion without medical or criminological indication is illegal. But we also know that we can only protect the life of the unborn children together with an unintentionally pregnant mother or a mother in distress and not against her,” Sternberg said

To protect life, he said, it is necessary to offer “encouragement for responsible parenthood” and concrete help, he added.

Under a 1995 law, women seeking an abortion in Germany must seek counseling, after which can they receive a certificate enabling them to obtain an abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

In 1999, the Vatican ordered the German bishops to withdraw from the state counselling system over concerns that it compromised the Catholic Church’s unequivocal opposition to abortion. At the time, the Church ran more than 200 of the country’s 1,600 pregnancy counseling centres.

Sternberg told CNA Deutsch that the counseling regulation provided “protection” for unborn life.

He emphasized that both he and his predecessors had supported this regulation “even in the face of a strong social and political headwind,” “because we want to prevent abortions and can prevent them in many cases.”

He said: “At the same time we know that unfortunately abortion cannot be prevented in every crisis pregnancy case — Maria Flachsbarth speaks of this when she says that abortion can be a ‘last, terrible way out’ for a woman in individual cases. However, it is absolutely clear to us that abortion is not one of the means of family planning.”

Through education and information, he said, “women must be empowered to be able to decide on the number of children they will have and also on their future life.”

SheDecides was founded by Dutch politician Lilianne Ploumen in response to President Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to reinstate the Mexico City policy. Under that policy, foreign non-governmental organizations may not receive U.S. federal funding if they perform or promote abortions as a method of family planning.

SheDecides has won support from at least 60 countries, as well as dozens of NGOs. Within six months the initiative received pledges worth $300 million.

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 24, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- The mayor of a Dutch town has condemned vandals who defaced an image of Our Lady of Częstochowa and daubed the letters “BLM” beneath it.

Paul Depla, the mayor of Breda, a city in the southern Netherlands, said the incident was “particularly sad for the Polish community, for which the monument is of great value,” the Dutch regional newspaper BN DeStem reported June 22.

The image of Our Lady, which is revered by Poles and also known as the Black Madonna, was erected in a park in Breda in 1954 in thanksgiving for the city’s liberation from the Nazis. 

The Polish 1st Armored Division, commanded by General Stanisław Maczek, freed the city on October 29, 1944, After the war, 40,000 inhabitants of Breda signed a petition to award Maczek honorary Dutch citizenship. When Maczek died in 1994, he was buried alongside his fallen soldiers at a cemetery in the city.

The Black Madonna in Breda has been defaced and vandalised with the letters BLM.

The mosaic is dedicated to Polish soldiers of General Maczek who liberated the city in 1944 from the German Nazis.

We denounce this act of vandalism, which is offensive to Poles and Catholics.

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— Visegrad 24 ???????? (@visegrad24) June 23, 2020

The organizers of a recent protest for racial justice in the city also deplored the vandalism. 

Spokesman Patrick van Lunteren told BN DeStem that the organizers did not know who had carried out the act.

He said: “This hurts the Polish community and that is not the intention [of the demonstration]. People are now open to dialogue, but with these kinds of actions you lose sympathy.”

BN DeStem also reported comments by Frans Ruczynski, a former chairman of the General Maczek Museum, which commemorates the city’s liberators.

“This is very insulting to the Polish community,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

“Polish people are very religious. Every Sunday they go to church, with hundreds in Breda. Why would you want to hurt them? We don’t know if it comes from the left or right corner. But when it comes to Black Lives Matter, I don’t understand it. The Black Madonna has nothing to do with oppression at all.”

The original image of the Black Madonna is housed at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, Poland’s most popular place of pilgrimage. 

The authorities in Breda promised to remove the graffiti swiftly, but said initially that it would be difficult as the Marian image is made of mosaic tiles.

“This will involve specialist work for which the first steps will be taken tomorrow morning by the cleaning department of the municipality of Breda,” a spokesperson for the municipality told BN DeStem June 22.

The newspaper reported June 23 that the municipality had removed the graffiti successfully.

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 23, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- Several amendments which sought to reduce the proposed time limit on abortions or to maintain limits on the abortion of unborn children with disabilities were defeated Friday on the Channel Island of Guernsey.

A bill is being considered to ‘modernize’ the territory’s abortion law and increase the abortion time limit to 24 weeks, as it is in the UK. The existing law, adopted in 1997, permits abortion up to 12 weeks.

The territory is a self-governing Crown Dependency for which the UK is responsible, located off the coast of Normandy. It sets its own laws on abortion. The draft law would extend to Guernsey and its associated islands, but not Alderney and Sark, which are also part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey.

During a June 19 debate deputies of the territory’s parliament, the States of Guernsey, rejected four amendments to the bill. These would have retained the same time limits for the abortion of children with disabilies as of all unborn children; made clear that non-fatal conditions such as Down syndrome or cleft palate are not considered fatal foetal abnormalities; and changed the time limit for abortions to 16 or 22 weeks, rather than 24.

“The main debate continues and it remains to be seen whether any of the amendments are supported and so mitigate some of the worst excesses of the proposed amendments to Guernsey’s abortion law,” Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, the diocese which includes Guernsey, wrote in a June 23 message.

“We are saddened by the outcome of this week’s vote but remain committed to fight for the right to life for all from conception to the grave,” he added.

Amendments that would allow foetal pain relief after 18 weeks; to require that mothers affirm they consent to the abortion and have not been coerced; to offer counselling before and after an abortion; and to strengthen conscientious objection for medical professionals, are still up for consideration by the States.

A sursis motivé to stay the deliberation of the draft law and allow for broader public consultation was defeated by a 19-20 vote June 18.

The draft law would also decriminalize the procurement of abortion outside the legal framework; drop a requirement that the mother consult with two medical practitioners; increase the time frame for procuring the abortion of a child diagnosed with ‘fetal anomaly’; allow nurses and midwives to preform medical abortions; and allow medical abortions at home.

It would also force conscientious objectors to make referrals without delay; “make clear that health practitioners may not refuse to participate in care required to save the life or prevent serious injury to the physical or mental health of a woman”; and “create a power in the Law for the Committee for Health & Social Care to make regulations making further provision in relation to the circumstances in which the right of health practitioners to conscientiously object to the provision of care in relation to abortions may be exercised.”

According to official figures, 113 abortions were performed in Guernsey in 2018, with a further three involving Guernsey residents performed in England and Wales.

The Catholic Church on the island held an all night prayer vigil at St. Joseph’s Church in St. Peter Port  ahead of the debate last week. The parish is also urging parishioners to write their deputies, and to pray that the legislation fails.

Bishop Egan of Portsmouth urged Catholics earlier this month to resist the “fundamentally detestable” efforts to liberalize the island’s abortion law.

In a June 7 message he argued the proposed changes would violate the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and the injunction “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, which formed the basis of laws in civilized societies.

“This is why abortion and the current proposal to ‘modernize’ — that is, to increase — its availability in Guernsey is fundamentally detestable,” he said. “Under the bogus word ‘modernization,’ an attempt is being made to further liberalize abortion, to make it a lot easier and a lot more common.”

Egan said: “They want to allow abortions much later in pregnancy, abortions to be carried out with less red tape, abortions to take place at home and outside hospitals, and, grimly, abortions right up to birth for a disabled child, a child unwell, or a child with Downs syndrome. How must a person with Downs syndrome feel about this?”

“They refer to abortion euphemistically as a ‘procedure,’ a ‘termination’ with help from ‘the professionals.’ But what procedure can justify any professional terminating the life of an innocent baby? The more you see what an abortion is, the more you can see it is anti-life, anti-human and anti-woman.”

He added: “This is why I am appealing to all of you and to everyone of good will in Guernsey to resist and to face down these sinister proposals coming before the legislature. The post-COVID lockdown is not the right time to ram through legislation like this, not without a full, open and frank consultation and debate.”

In a joint letter, John P. Ogier, pastor of Spurgeon Baptist Church, and Fr. Bruce Barnes, the Catholic Dean of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, also criticized the timing of the debate.  

They wrote: “We believe this is an entirely inappropriate time to be considering such a sensitive and morally important issue, in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic and with such a truncated timescale for public debate and consideration.”

[…]

Rome, Italy, Jun 23, 2020 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Sister Stan Mumuni dedicates her life to caring for abandoned children with birth defects in Ghana. When the coronavirus pandemic spread to West Africa, she said that she ran to the market to buy soap and supplies, but the prices had already tripled.

“We ran to the place. The price has gone too high. We have to get food to store food to be able to feed these children,” Sister Stan said at a virtual symposium June 23.

Some of the children cared for by her religious order have such severe disabilities that they cannot eat solid food, but rely on milk. “Getting milk to feed them everyday was very, very hard,” she said.

“Many people are dying of hunger. We live in a poverty zone. … With the pandemic we have to struggle with the little we have to be able to even reach out to others to support them.”

As parts of Ghana went into lockdown, Sister Stan said that she received more and more phone calls. First, there were calls from the special needs schools asking her order to come pick up the orphaned children and bring them to their house as the schools closed.

Then there were the calls concerning newborn disabled children whose lives were at risk.

The Marian Sisters of Eucharistic Love, founded by Sister Stan in 2009, provide a home for children with special needs who were often rejected by their families and communities because of superstitious beliefs that associate birth defects with witchcraft. 

“At this period too, we have been called by so many priests: ‘Please rescue a child that is in danger,’” she said.

“‘Please, Sister, come, we have rescued two children that they wanted to kill them.’ ‘Please come, a woman gave birth and died and that child is considered ‘witch’ … and we need to do something about it.’”

Sister Stan said that although movement had become very difficult, she knew that God was calling her order to rescue these children. 

She recalled that she had heard this call very distinctly in the founding of the Marian Sisters of Eucharistic Love: “Christ told me: ‘Even though you have nothing, I am telling you to go and rescue my children.’”

“All this we have to risk our lives to go in search for such innocent victims,” she said. “Christ said: ‘Let the children come to me’ … children are precious to God.”

She added: “Our mission here on earth is to keep rescuing life, rescuing souls, and to keep spreading the good news of the kingdom of God.”

Sister Stan was one of several sisters who shared her religious order’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in the “Women Religious on the Frontlines” virtual symposium co-hosted by the U.S. and British embassies to the Holy See. 

Sister Alicia Vacas, regional leader of the Comboni Sisters in the Middle East, was also called to take risks to serve those in need amid the pandemic.

“Unfortunately one of our communities in Bergamo got infected at the very beginning of the coronavirus emergency, and we started receiving very bad news from the community,” Sister Alicia said at the symposium.

“And several young sisters, several of us nurses, we volunteered to go and reach them and to help them.”

Once she arrived in the town of Bergamo, located in Lombardy, the epicenter of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak, Sister Alicia said that the Comboni motherhouse “was in real chaos” because “everybody was sick.”

She estimated that 45 sisters of the 55 living in Bergamo were ill. Ten Comboni sisters from her community died during the outbreak.

“It has been a very powerful experience to live from inside the suffering of the people in Bergamo,” she said, adding that it has been an experience of Christ’s Passion.

“As a Comboni sister, I think it has been only a privilege … sharing with people’s lives, with people’s sufferings,” she said, calling it a “gift from God for the whole congregation.”

Sister Alicia, who is now back at the convent in Jerusalem, said that the coronavirus pandemic is not over and “the situation is very worrying” for many sisters in other parts of the world. 

The World Health Organization reported June 22 the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases, with more than 183,000 new infections documented worldwide in 24 hours.

Sister Alicia said: “I have been in contact with many sisters working in places like Jordan … in South Sudan, in Chad, in Ecuador, and I can see the sisters exposed to many risks with no equipment at all. They don’t work in many cases in government hospitals. They don’t have access to tests. So they are receiving suspected cases and patients without any possibility of protecting themselves.” 

“For many other sisters who are not working in medical issues, they have to face this explosion … of poverty and social crisis, and many sisters … are dealing with starvation,” she added.

Callista Gingrich, the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, said that the coronavirus pandemic “has caused vast unemployment, poverty, and food insecurity — further challenging the work of women religious.”

“I want to take a moment to recognize and honor the tremendous sacrifices made by women religious during this pandemic,” she said. “Here in Italy, and around the world, many faithful sisters have made the ultimate sacrifice while caring for others. As we continue our work together, let us preserve and honor their memory.”

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 23, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- An English cardinal welcomed the government’s decision Tuesday to permit the resumption of public Masses from July 4. 

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Englan… […]

CNA Staff, Jun 23, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- A few years ago Catholics in a suburb of Liverpool, England, recognized that they had a problem: parishioners didn’t know each other. 

“Even people in the next pew to each other were maybe sa… […]

Denver Newsroom, Jun 22, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The newly elected president of the Austrian bishops’ conference has sought to clarify his role in the publication of a book that suggests how a Church blessing of same-sex couples might be “celebrated” in Catholic churches.

Archbishop Franz Lackner of Salzburg was elected last week to chair the Austrian bishops’ conference. He has been connected to a controversial book concerning the possibility of “official” liturgical blessings of homosexual unions.

While Lackner has been reported to have commissioned or even published the book, a spokesperson said June 18 that the archbishop put in motion a study project on same-sex liturgical blessings, but he did not oversee the publication of that particular text.

The book, “The Benediction of Same-Sex Partnerships,” is edited by Father Ewald Volgger, director of the Institute for Liturgical Studies and Sacramental Theology at the Catholic Private University of Linz.

In its June 16 report on Lackner’s election as head of the Austrian bishops’ conference, CNA noted that the archbishop had served as chairman of the liturgical commission that commissioned the book.

Other reports have suggested a more direct connection between Lackner and the text.

In an April interview about the book’s release with KirchenZeitung, Volgger said that “the Austrian liturgical commission, chaired by Arcbishop Lackner, asked us to deal with” liturgical issues related to homosexuality, including the question of blessings for same-sex couples, which are the topic of the book.

English newspaper The Tablet reported May 6 that the book was “initiated by the archdiocese of Salzburg,” and that “the Austrian liturgical commission, chaired by Archbishop Franz Lackner of Salzburg had commissioned the book’s authors to address the question of an official benediction.”

New Ways Ministries, which describes itself as a “a gay-positive ministry of advocacy and justice for lesbian and gay Catholics,” reported May 25 that Lackner was responsible for publishing the book, because of “his desire for a more inclusive church.”

Television news program EWTN News Nightly also reported June 16 that Lackner commissioned the book. CNA and EWTN News Nightly are both services of EWTN News.

But in a June 18 email obtained by CNA, a spokesperson for the archbishop said that Lackner did not directly commission the book edited by Volgger, because his term as liturgical commission chairman ended in 2018. The archbishop did initiate the liturgical commission’s years-long study project on liturgical blessings for same-sex couples, the spokesperson explained.

While he was chairman, Lackner “asked the LKÖ to discuss the topic of liturgical offers for people in homosexual relationships in general,” the spokesperson said.

In the book’s foreword, Volgger offered more insight on the archbishop’s request.

“In the Liturgical Commission for Austria (LKÖ) on February 27th 2015 in Salzburg, the then chairman, Archbishop Franz Lackner, asked for an exchange on the question of blessings of homosexual couples. The occasion was a blessing ceremony in Switzerland, which had great media attention. In the discussion it became clear that  a moral theological clarification is needed, as well as a change in the magisterium on this point to allow for an official liturgy for same-sex couples.”

The blessing ceremony Volgger referenced was performed by a Swiss Protestant Reformed minister; the media attention Volgger referenced included an interview in which the minister, Sibylle Forrer, explained why she conferred the blessing.

According to Lackner’s spokesperson, the archbishop’s request “led to a study day in February 2016 and the LKÖ agreed, that the results of this study day should be compiled and that the topic should be further monitored.”

The 2020 text was part of the ongoing development of that project, as Volgger indicated to KirchenZeitung, as was a 2019 symposium on the topic. But since November 2018, Bishop Anton Leichtfried of St. Polten has overseen the Austrian liturgical commission. 

In his April interview, Volgger said that from his viewpoint, there are “a considerable number of bishops who would like to see a rethinking of sexual morality for the evaluation of same-sex partnerships.”

The priest also said that “a benediction,” of a same-sex couple “as it is proposed from a liturgical-theological point of view, would also have an official character, through which the Church expresses the obligation of fidelity and the exclusiveness of the relationship.”

In 2003, The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”

CNA asked Lackner’s spokesperson why the archbishop was only now attempting to clarify his involvement, given that he has been reported for months to be responsible for the book. CNA also asked whether the book has the official approval of the Austrian bishops’ conference, of which Lackner is now president, or of the conference’s liturgical commission.

The archdiocese has not yet responded.

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 22, 2020 / 05:30 am (CNA).- A bishop has urged Christians to speak out against plans to relax Sunday trading laws in the United Kingdom as the economy reels from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. 

In a June 21 homily at Shrewsbury Cathedral, Bishop Mark Davies criticized the government’s intention to lift the current six-hour limit on Sunday trading. 

“As we emerge from lockdown, it is regrettable that the government is considering removing the remaining legal protections of Sunday in order to make it a full trading day,” the bishop of Shrewbury said. 

“Proposals for unrestricted Sunday trading may be included within plans to revive economic activity and so place new demands upon the very shop workers and their families who have supported us throughout this crisis.” 

“Whatever economic advantages the government may calculate, the human loss will surely be greater if Sunday becomes just another working day.” 

The bishop, whose diocese covers the English counties of Shropshire and Cheshire, as well as parts of Merseyside, Derbyshire, and Greater Manchester, said that scrapping Sunday trading restrictions could lead to the downgrading of major Christian celebrations. 

He said: “We would be discarding the Christian heritage of a shared day of rest and all the human values which the observance of Sunday has involved.” 

“At a deeper level, Britain would be discarding a key element of our Christian identity for by logical extension either Easter and Christmas Day might equally be treated as merely another working day.”

“If degrading Sunday as a day of rest, of family, of community, of worship, marginally enhanced our faltering economy it would not be justified because of its deeper impact upon human wellbeing. This is a moment for us to raise our voices, so our Christian Sunday is not discarded by a political sleight of hand.” 

The bishop was speaking via livestream as public Masses are not permitted in the U.K. due to restrictions imposed by the government to contain the coronavirus. Churches were allowed to reopen for individual private prayer June 15. 

The Conservative government is planning to relax Sunday trading laws as part of its coronavirus recovery bill. According to the Office for National Statistics, the U.K.’s monthly gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 20.4% in April, the first full month of a nationwide lockdown.

On the same day that Davies made his remarks, the Daily Telegraph reported that more than 50 Conservative Members of Parliament opposed the change. It said that, given the scale of opposition, the plans “look to be in trouble.”

The U.K., which has a population of almost 67 million, has recorded 42,717 deaths from the virus as of June 22, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center — the world’s third highest reported death toll after that of the United States and Brazil.

[…]

CNA Staff, Jun 21, 2020 / 05:32 am (CNA).- Pope emeritus Benedict XVI will return to Rome and the Vatican on Monday, according to the Diocese of Regensburg.

The former pope has been in Bavaria since June 18. He flew there from Rome to see his 96-year-… […]

CNA Staff, Jun 20, 2020 / 08:24 am (CNA).- Pope emeritus Benedict XVI will visit his family’s gravesite and his former home in Pentling, Germany, in the afternoon on Saturday.

According to a June 20 statement from the Diocese of Regensburg, the … […]