CNA Staff, Jun 26, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Churches and other places of worship in Ireland will be permitted to open to more than 50 people, following a new exception to the country’s Phase Three coronavirus reopening. The exception was announced… […]
Rome Newsroom, Jun 26, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Scientists confirmed this month that a crucifix in the Italian city of Lucca is the oldest wooden statue in Europe.
A radiocarbon dating study conducted by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Florence dated the 8-foot wooden crucifix to between 770 to 880 AD.
The study was commissioned by the Cathedral of Lucca to coincide with the 950-year anniversary of the cathedral’s consecration, which took place in the late 12th century.
Devotion to the crucifix, known as the “Holy Face of Lucca,” spread throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, as pilgrims stopped in the walled Tuscan city on their way along the Via Francigena pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome.
Dante mentions the Holy Face of Lucca in his “Inferno,” and English King William II took a solemn vow in the name of the Holy Face in 1087.
The scientific study confirmed the local Catholic tradition based on a historical document stating that the crucifix arrived in Lucca in the late 8th century, according to the Archdiocese of Lucca. However, it does not lend evidence to the legend that it was carved from life by Nicodemus, a contemporary of Christ.
“For centuries much has been written of the Holy Face, but always in terms of faith and piety,”
Annamaria Giusti, scientific consultant for the Lucca Cathedral, said in a statement issued by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics.
“Only in the 20th century did a large critical debate begin around its dating and style. The prevailing opinion was that it was a work to be dated in the second half of the 12th century. Finally the assessment of this antique has closed this age-old controversial problem,” Giusti said.
“We can now consider [it] the oldest wooden statue in the West that has been passed down to us.”
In the carbon-14 study, three samples of the wood were taken from different parts of the crucifix and one of the linen fabric to be evaluated. Each piece dated to between the last decades of the eighth century and beginning of the ninth century.
Archbishop Paolo Giulietti of Lucca hailed the study’s results as a timely “message of salvation that comes from Jesus of Nazareth, crucified for love and risen in the power of God.”
“The Holy Face is not only one of the many crucifixes within our Italy and our Europe,” he said. “It is … a ‘living memory’ of the crucified and risen Christ.”
“It is a memorial that has its origins in antiquity, as today’s announcement confirms for us, and that has left indelible traces in the culture, spirituality of Lucca and the entire continent.”
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Cathedral of Lucca has postponed planned events celebrating its 950 year anniversary to the fall. It is unclear whether the city’s annual September 13 candlelight procession honoring the Holy Face will take place this year as many similar processions in Italy have been cancelled.
The at least 1,140-year-old crucifix can be viewed inside of the Lucca Cathedral of St. Martin.
CNA Staff, Jun 26, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Somewhere between Mars and Jupiter there is a hunk of rock that now bears the name of a living English Catholic priest.
Fr. Christopher Corbally said Wednesday that he was “thoroughly surprised” w… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The parliament of the Channel Island of Guernsey voted Wednesday to approve a bill expanding abortion time limits, and removing time limits altogether on the abortion of unborn children with disabilities.
Votes held June 24 on 12 propositions made by the health and social care committee of the States of Guernsey carried each of them.
Under the new law meant to ‘modernize’ the territory’s abortion law, the abortion time limit will be increased to 24 weeks, as it is in the UK. The previous law, adopted in 1997, permitted abortion up to 12 weeks. There will be no upper limit on when a child with “significant fetal abnormality” can be aborted. These propositions were approved by a 23-13 vote, with one abstention.
The new law also decriminalizes the procurement of abortion outside the legal framework; drops a requirement that the mother consult with two medical practitioners; allow nurses and midwives to preform medical abortions; and allows medical abortions at home.
It will 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.”
Guernsey is a self-governing Crown Dependency for which the UK is responsible, located off the coast of Normandy. The new law will extend to Guernsey and its associated islands, but not Alderney and Sark, which are also part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
During debate on the propositions, according to the Guernsey Press, Deputy Richard Graham commented that “I regret that Health & Social Care have identified the UK as the gold standard to be followed, instead I would urge them to look to those countries that have low abortion rates, and seek to learn lessons from them, they are no less civilised, no less compassionate than we are, and they strike me as a far better abortion role model than the UK.”
The Bailiwick Express reported that Deputy Emilie McSwiggan, a member of the health and social care committee, said: “What we are trying to do is find a way through that is as compassionate as it can be, which is as fair as it can be, which balances and reflects the choices that people have to make and allows people to make those choices safely and within the context of a legal framework that is clear and modern and fair.”
Several amendments to the new law, which sought to reduce the proposed time limit on abortions or to maintain limits on the abortion of unborn children with disabilities, had been defeated June 19. The amendments 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.
Earlier, a sursis motivé to stay the deliberation of the draft law and allow for broader public consultation had been defeated.
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 debate last week.
Bishop Egan of Portsmouth, the diocese which includes Guernsey, 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 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.”
In a joint letter, John P. Ogier, pastor of Spurgeon Baptist Church, and Fr. Bruce Barnes, the Catholic Dean of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, criticized the timing of the debate amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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.”
CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- England’s metropolitan archbishops urged Catholics Thursday to consider going to Mass during the week rather than on Sunday after public liturgies resume July 4.
In a message to the Catholic commu… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis appointed Thursday an apostolic administrator to take charge of a Polish diocese whose bishop is under investigation over his handling of an abuse case.
The Vatican announced June 25 that the pop… […]
Madrid, Spain, Jun 24, 2020 / 06:07 pm (CNA).- The mayor of Boadilla del Monte, a town just west of metro Madrid in central Spain, has offered to take the statue of Saint Junipero Serra toppled last weekend in San Francisco.
Serra’s statue was t… […]
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.
— 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.”
© Catholic World Report