Europe

Dublin, Ireland, Jan 2, 2020 / 02:29 pm (CNA).- A pro-life rosary vigil on New Year’s Day outside Dublin’s National Maternity Hospital sparked calls by abortion supporters for “exclusion zones” around clinics in Ireland.

On Wednesday, dozens of pro-life advocates—the Irish Times estimated “around 100 people”— gathered for a rosary vigil outside National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street in Dublin, on the one-year anniversary of a law allowing for legal abortion up to 12 weeks in Ireland.

“Today 1st Jan 2020, the feast of the Solemnity of Mary, Holy Mother of God, we gathered at the National Maternity Hospital for a public rosary vigil in memory of all the babies murdered this year across Ireland,” the group Our Lady of Lourdes Protectors tweeted. Another rosary vigil is reportedly planned for Saturday night.

Another picture posted online showed several protesters holding pro-life signs outside GalviaWest Medical Centre in Galway, on Thursday.

Pro-life advocates have been protesting and praying outside abortion clinics and GP practices in Ireland since abortion was legalized in the country.

In May of 2018, the Irish voted overwhelmingly in a national referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment and allow for legal abortions. Previously, abortion had been banned in the nation except when the mother’s health is deemed to be in danger.

The Eighth Amendment was officially repealed on Sept. 18, 2018, and a law was enacted in December legalizing abortion up to 12 weeks pregnancy, and thereafter in cases where the mother’s health is seriously at risk. The law went into effect at the beginning of 2019.

Professor Mary Higgins, a consultant OB/GYN at National Maternity Hospital who campaigned for legal abortion in the referendum, took video of the vigil outside on Wednesday and tweeted “wonder why we need exclusion zones.”

In a Thursday radio interview on RTÉ Radio 1’s “Today with Seán O’Rourke”, she acknowledged the protests were peaceful and involved singing and praying the rosary. The chants, singing, and rosary, however, were “disturbing” to the women in the post-natal ward two floors above the vigil, she said.

Higgins noted on Twitter that Wednesday’s protests occurred “beneath the windows of a postnatal ward, in front if people leaving after a miscarriage, with small coffins, crosses and unsavoury images.”

Since pro-life advocates began protesting outside abortion clinics in Ireland, exclusion zones have been discussed as a means of keeping the protests at a certain distance.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties is campaigning for “safe zones” to “allow people to access healthcare in private and with dignity, as is their right.”

Ireland’s health minister Simon Harris said on Thursday that he is working on a “constitutional” way of setting up exclusion zones.

“Appalled to see,” he tweeted in response to Higgins’ video of the vigil. “I don’t wonder why we need it at all. Have been engaging with Attorney General, Gardai & service providers about how best to bring it in in a manner that is constitutional etc. Can assure you I am committed to it and will be meeting cross party on it this month”.

Senator Catherine Noone of the Fine Gael party also tweeted that “exclusion zone legislation” to establish a boundary outside abortion clinics and GP practices for protesters “needs to be a major priority for the start of the new term.”

“The danger is that it might never happen if there’s a change of Government,” she said.

Luke Silke, a spokesperson for Students for Life Ireland, opposed the imposition of exclusion zones while appearing on RTÉ Radio 1 with Higgins on Thursday.

He said that “introducing exclusion zones in Ireland, I feel, would create a very dangerous precedent for denying freedom of speech and the right to peaceful assembly, or protest, in public areas.”

Silke noted that he did not care for some of the “tactics” used by the pro-life protesters in Dublin. On Twitter, he specifically mentioned the use of small coffins right outside a maternity ward as problematic.

“Our goal would be to save lives and empower women,” he said.

Higgins, appearing simultaneously on the radio show with Silke, said the protests and the images used by them unnerved children and women and argued in favor of exclusion zones. The use of small coffins was “triggering” for women who have had miscarriages or babies stillborn, she said.

“I have no issue with peaceful protests. I do have an issue with where they are and how they’re directly underneath our post-natal ward with newborn babies,” she said.

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Paris, France, Dec 27, 2019 / 09:12 am (CNA).- This year Christmas Mass was not celebrated at Notre-Dame de Paris for the first time since the French First Republic, and the cathedral’s rector says that there is a significant chance the building … […]

Würzburg, Germany, Dec 20, 2019 / 10:24 am (CNA).- In what came as a surprise to many members of the Catholic elite in Germany, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI has launched a foundation for Catholic journalism in his home country.

“I want the Catholi… […]

Shrewsbury, England, Dec 17, 2019 / 02:06 pm (CNA).- Gavin Ashenden, a former Honorary Chaplain to the Queen in the Church of England who was consecrated a bishop in a Continuing Anglican ecclesial community, will be received into the Catholic Church on Sunday.

He will receive confirmation Dec. 22 during a Mass at Shrewsbury Cathedral from Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury.

His wife, Helen, became a Catholic about two years ago in the Diocese of Shrewsbury.

“Having come to believe that the claims and expression of the Catholic faith are the most profound and potent expression of apostolic and patristic belief, and to accept the primacy of the Petrine tradition, I am grateful to the Bishop of Shrewsbury and the Catholic community in his diocese for the opportunity to mend 500 years of fractured history and be reconciled to the Church that gave birth to my earlier tradition,” Ashenden has said.

“I am especially grateful for the example and the prayers of St John Henry Newman. He did his best to remain a faithful Anglican and renew his mother Church with the vigour and integrity of the Catholic tradition,” he added. “Now, as then, however, his experience informs ours that the Church of England is inclined to be rooted in secularised culture rather than the integrity and insight of biblical, apostolic and patristic values.”

Ashenden added that St. John Henry Newman’s experience “also inspires ours, and charts the way to our proper ecclesial home which is the rock that is the Petrine charism of faith and witness in our struggle for salvation and heaven.”

Ashenden was raised in London and Kent, and studied Law at Bristol University. He studied for priesthood in the Church of England at Oak Hill College, and received orders in 1980.

He served 10 years as a parish priest, and taught 23 years at the University of Sussex, lecturing in literature and pyschology of religion. He also earned a doctorate writing on Charles Williams, a writer and member of the Inklings. He was a member of the Church of England’s General Synod for 20 years.

Ashenden was appointed an Honoray Chaplain to the Queen in 2008.

He was consecrated a bishop in the Christian Episcopal Church, a Continuing Anglican ecclesial community, in 2013, while remaining an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen, Christian Today reported in 2017.

In 2017 he resigned from the Royal Household and relinquished his Church of England orders after a passage from the Quran denying Christ’s divinity was read at the Glaswegian cathedral of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

“It should not happen in the holy Eucharist and particularly a Eucharist whose main intention is to celebrate Christ the word made flesh come into the world,” he told BBC at the time.

Later that year, Ashenden left the Church of England, “convinced that the consecration of women to the episcopate represented the replacement of apostolic and biblical patterns with the competing culture of the values of Cultural Marxism, and dissenting from the increasing accommodation of the Church of England to radical secular views on gender.”

His episcopal consecration was announced in 2017.

When a Church of England bishop delivered a sermon while sliding down an amusement park ride built inside of Norwich Cathedral in August, Ashenden told the BBC that the event was a “mistake” that misjudged “what a cathedral is good for.”

“For such a place, steeped in mystery and marvel to buy in to sensory pleasure and distraction, is to poison the very medicine it offers the human soul,” he said.

Ashenden has said that praying the rosary and researching Eucharistic miracles helped lead him to the Catholic Church.

Bishop Davies commented that “it is very humbling to be able to receive a bishop of the Anglican tradition into full communion in the year of canonisation of St John Henry Newman.”

“I am conscious of the witness which Gavin Ashenden has given in the public square to the historic faith and values on which our society has been built. I pray that this witness will continue to be an encouragement to many,” he added.

Ashenden wrote in the Catholic Herald that “I watched as Anglicanism suffered a collapse of inner integrity as it swallowed wholesale secular society’s descent into a post-Christian culture.”

“I came to realise (too long after both Newman and Chesterton had already explained why) that only the Catholic Church, with the weight of the Magisterium, had the ecclesial integrity, theological maturity and spiritual potency to defend the Faith, renew society and save souls in the fullness of faith,” he said.

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Washington D.C., Dec 16, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- A bipartisan bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives to hold Russia accountable for what Congressmen claim is the persecution of religious groups in occupied territories of the Ukra… […]

Rome, Italy, Dec 13, 2019 / 05:27 pm (CNA).- A new film opening this weekend tells the story of Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, whose refusal to fight for the Nazis in World War II led to his imprisonment and death.

Franz was beatified by the Catholic Chu… […]

Warsaw, Poland, Dec 12, 2019 / 03:42 pm (CNA).- A coalition of abortion advocacy groups has launched a hotline service to inform Polish women on how to procure abortion inside and outside of the largely pro-life country.

“Abortion without Borders” was released Dec. 11 by a collaboration of six pro-abortion organizations, including Abortion Dream Team, Kobiety w Sieci, and the Abortion Support Network.

The service will advise callers on how to purchase abortion drugs online or refer them to abortion clinics in the Netherlands, Britain, or Germany. The project will also provide financial assistance to women unable to afford the process. According to the Guardian, this may cover travel and medical costs.

The project will be offered to women seeking an abortion in Poland, which has some of the most pro-life laws in Europe. The country bans abortion except in cases of fetal abnormalities, rape, incest, or life-threatening emergencies.

According to Thomas Reuters Foundation News, official figures state that about 1,000 women receive an abortion in Poland each year, but abortion advocates believe the number to be much higher. They estimate that tens of thousands of women receive an abortion annually through abortion drugs ordered online or by traveling to other countries to get the procedure.

Last month, Poland was among 11 countries affirming the univeral right to life on the sidelines of the Nairobi Summit, saying the gathering was too focused on “reproductive rights.”

The joint statement said “there is no international right to abortion; in fact, international law clearly states that ‘[e]veryone has the right to life’ (e.g. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).”

“The ICPD notes that countries should ‘take appropriate steps to help women avoid abortion, which in no case should be promoted as a method of family planning’ (ICPD 7.24) and to ‘reduce the recourse to abortion’ strongly affirming that ‘… [a]ny measures or changes related to abortion within the health system can only be determined at the national or local level according to the national legislative process’ (ICPD paragraph 8.25).”

The bishops of Poland issued a pro-life statement in 2018 after the “Halt Abortion” bill was approved by the parliamentary Committee on Justice and Human Rights. If passed, the law would prohibit the practice of eugenic abortions – those procured because of an unborn child’s congenital disorder or genetic deformity.

“Every conceived child has the right to birth and to life, regardless of innate diseases and genetic defects. The role of the state is to provide protection for every citizen, also in its first stage of life,” said Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, president of the Polish bishops’ conference.

“The right to life is a fundamental human right, there is no doubt in this matter,” Archbishop Gadecki added in a recent statement.

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London, England, Dec 10, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Every voter and politician must resist attacks on the right to life, and Catholic politicians must do so as both a human rights matter and as a “fundamental matter of our faith,” Northern Ireland’s Catholic bishops have said ahead of the Dec. 12 U.K. general election.

“We have consistently said that the equal right to life, and love, of a mother and her unborn child is so fundamental to the common good of every society that citizens deserve the fullest participation in the democratic debate about the legislation which governs it,” Northern Ireland’s bishops said Dec. 5.

Northern Ireland’s strong laws against abortion were drastically weakened Oct. 21, under an act of the U.K. Parliament that took effect due to the absence of a ruling executive in the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly.

“This was a tragic day for the unborn children who will now never bless our world with their unique and precious lives,” the bishops said. “It was also a sad day for our local democracy as this draconian Westminster abortion legislation was introduced over the heads of local citizens.”

“The right to life is not given to us by any law or government, and any law that removes this right is unjust and must be resisted by every voter and political representative,” they continued. “For Catholic politicians this is not only a matter of protecting the human right to life but also a fundamental matter of our faith. Voters have a duty to inform themselves on the position of election candidates in respect of their willingness to support and cherish equally the lives of mothers and their unborn children.”

The general election will be the U.K.’s third since 2015. Normally they would be held every five years.

The elections in England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland will determine who will fill a total of 650 parliamentary seats in the House of Commons.

Brexit is a central issue. Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes the early election will increase the number of Members of Parliament for his Conservative Party, making his Brexit plans easier to achieve.

The Conservative Party currently leads a governing coalition, with confidence and supply from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party. The Conservatives Party has not mentioned abortion in its most recent party platform.

Sinn Fein, a nationalist party putting forward MP candidates in Northern Ireland, backs legal abortion up to 12 weeks into pregnancy. However, its MPs do not take their seats in parliament.

Two U.K. opposition parties, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, have made the full decriminalization of abortion part of their party platforms. Recently, the Liberal Democrats deselected a former MP as a candidate because of his Catholic faith and views on same-sex marriage and abortion.

Party members are required to support these party platform stands on abortion. The move has drawn criticism from Church leaders like Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury.

“As Christians, we must express the gravest concern that a number of political parties have dispensed with considerations of individual conscience making unequivocal manifesto commitments to deny the unborn child the right to life,” Davies said Dec. 5.

“I cannot fail to draw your attention to this further radical assault upon the sanctity of human life, presented as a program for government and the danger of discarding the rights of individual conscience in determining the right to life of the unborn child,” he said.

The bishop asked for prayers for candidates and for “light in making the difficult choices which an election involves.”

Both Catholic and Anglican leaders have criticized the pro-abortion rights party platforms.

Christine Hardman and James Newcombe, who are Church of England bishops, have written an open letter on behalf of the House of Bishops promising the Anglican bishops will “vigorously challenge any attempt to extend abortion provision beyond the current 24-week limit.” Their letter responded to 383 clergy and laity who in their letter to The Times objected to the manifesto promises to decriminalize abortion.

The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales issued a Nov. 29 statement urging voters to consider issues of human rights and the dignity of human life.

The English and Welsh bishops laid out several criteria for voters to consider when choosing their new MPs, foremost of which is respect for human life, including in the womb, and including care for those who are terminally ill and dying “while resisting the false compassion of assisted suicide or euthanasia.”

The fate of Northern Ireland as the United Kingdom prepares to leave the European Union was another major focus of Northern Ireland’s Catholic bishops. They said the outcome of Brexit will have “a significant impact on our fragile peace and on our political, economic and social life.”

“Competent voices are needed to enunciate our concerns and we encourage voters to choose candidates who value positive relationships within and beyond these islands,” they said.

Other topics of the bishops’ letter included welfare reform, housing and homelessness, and human trafficking.

The major significance of the approaching election “brings an even greater responsibility on us, as followers of Jesus, to reflect in a conscientious and informed way on the breadth of issues involved,” the bishops said. They called for prayers for political candidates and respectful discussion about the issues at stake.

The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland also stressed the right to life as fundamental. The bishops’ pre-election message did not endorse any political party or candidate, but said abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia are “always morally unacceptable,” and that all politicians should be urged to resist the decriminalization of abortion, which leads toward abortion on demand for any reason.

The Catholic Parliamentary Office, an agency of the Scottish bishops’ conference, also reports on its website the votes of politicians on several bills, organized by parliamentary constituency.

These votes include the decriminalization of abortion, which the office said would clear the way for “abortion on demand, for any reason, up to birth.” MPs’ votes on a bill to legalize assisted suicide are also recorded, as are how MPs voted on the parliamentary act which imposed permissive abortion laws and same-sex marriage on Northern Ireland.

Distributions of a leaflet version of this information by priests in the Angus area prompted accusations of favoritism towards the local Conservative Party candidate because the leaflets noted the Scottish National Party candidate’s pro-abortion rights stand, the newspaper The National reports.

A spokesman for the Scottish Catholic Church rejected this claim.

“As you will be aware 59 different messages were sent out each one referencing the voting record of the incumbent MP. They show a range of voting behavior and do not indicate support or otherwise for any candidate, rather they offer publicly available information to parishioners on the most fundamental moral issues … addressed in the last parliament,” the spokesman said.

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Aachen, Germany, Dec 9, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- A German bishop has been relieved of all his diocesan responsibilities after being charged by prosecutors with taking more than $140,000 from an elderly woman’s account.

Bishop Johannes B… […]

Edinburgh, Scotland, Dec 8, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- After Scotland’s Catholic bishops stressed the right to life as fundamental, their parliamentary office has released a letter setting out the Church’s teaching on abortion and assisted sui… […]