Europe

Munich, Germany, Dec 10, 2018 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was named the new leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at a special party conference December 7.

A practicing Catholic, Kramp-Karrenbauer – known as AKK in the German press – was seen as the preferred choice of German chancellor and outgoing CDU leader Angela Merkel.

A married mother of three, Kramp-Karrenbauer previously served as secretary general of the party and minister-president of the western German region of Saarland. She defeated Friedrich Merz, a former member of the European Parliament and Bundestag, winning a run-off ballot with 517 of 1,001 potential votes.

As head of the CDU, Kramp-Karrenbauer is now widely regarded as a possible chancellor-in-waiting behind Merkel, who has said she will step down at the end of her current term in 2021.

Broadly seen as economically liberal, many political commentators have dubbed Kramp-Karrenbauer “mini-Merkel” and she is widely considered to be a continuity candidate with the current chancellor, who led the party from 2000-2018.

Kramp-Karrenbauer is known for her traditional social views, and has previously drawn attention for her outspoken opposition to same-sex marriage and gay adoption. As head of the Saarland region, she warned that same-sex marriage could create a legal precedent for recognizing incesuous and polygamous unions.

“If we open up this definition [of marriage] to become a long-term responsible partnership between two adults, then other demands can’t be ruled out, such as a marriage between close relatives or between more than two people,” she argued in 2015.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Germany in 2017.

While often characterized as a “staunch” or “devout” Catholic, Kramp-Karrenbauer has been a vocal supporter of female ordination in the Church. Earlier this year, she told the weekly newspaper Die Zeit that “It is very clear: women have to take positions of leadership in the Church,” eventually including women-priests but beginning with the “more realistic goal” of a female diaconate.

As the largest economy in the European Union, Germany politics plays a crucial role in the direction of the continent, with the German chancellor functioning as a de facto leader for the union. As Merkel’s acknowledged preferred successor, Kramp-Karrenbauer’s views on a range of policy issues will be scrutinized by leaders across the EU.

On the politically sensitive topic of mass-migration to the Europe, Merkel’s open-door policy to migrants in 2015 was widely seen as out of step with broader European policy, making Germany a beacon nation for refugees and economic migrants alike, and putting pressure on neighbouring countries.

Kramp-Karrenbauer has called for a more forward-looking debate on the subject of immigration and mass-migration.

In November, she told German television station NTV that she did not want to see a “backward-looking discussion” or “eternal debate about what was done right or wrong in the autumn of 2015.” Instead, she said, she wanted to see an “honest” discussion about the current effects of years of migration “uncontrolled and without integration.”

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Rome, Italy, Dec 7, 2018 / 10:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Continuing his ‘Mercy Friday’ initiative, Pope Francis visited two live-in health centers in the far southern suburbs of Rome today, where he spoke with residents and gifted a 22-pound C… […]

Dublin, Ireland, Dec 6, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A unique Irish cross marking the 1,400-year-old grave of a Catholic saint is in danger of destruction due to erosion, and the local community is seeking help to restore the “icon of Ireland’s early Christian heritage.”

St Mura’s Cross is carved into a slab nearly seven feet tall that marks the grave of St. Mura, the first abbot of a sixth-century monastery in the far north of Ireland in what is now County Donegal. The monastery, one of Ireland’s earliest, was founded by St. Colmcille less than a century after the death of St. Patrick. It became a center of religion and scholarship and its surrounding settlements gave birth to the town of Fahan, where nearly 600 people live today.

A nearby gable wall must be repaired before preservation efforts on St. Mura’s Cross must begin.

“Cracks have appeared on the wall and if we don’t stabilize that it could fall. If it does, it will fall on the cross and it will be destroyed forever,” Colm Toland of the Fahan Heritage Group told The Irish News in November.

St. Mura, said to be a descendant of the Irish king Niall of the Nine Hostages, died in 645 at the age of 94. He became the patron saint of the O’Neil Clan, whose leaders were among the High Kings of Ireland. His feast day is observed March 12.

Both a Catholic church and a Church of Ireland church in the Fahan area are named for the saint.

The cross is the only one of its kind to bear an inscription in Greek: “Glory and honor to the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit”. It is considered a unique inspiration of the Irish High Cross artistic tradition of massive and ornately carved stone crosses.

The saint’s cross was carved sometime from the sixth to the tenth century. The gable wall was built in 1608, using stones from the original monastery, the Irish state broadcaster RTE News reports. It is surrounded by a graveyard that includes St. Mura’s tomb.

The monastery and village were sacked by the Vikings twice in the middle ages, though the site’s current ruins date to the 17th century. Some monastery artifacts are now in museums in Dublin and London.

Fahan’s heritage group is seeking support to protect the cross and the nearby church gable ruins. The gable is one of the distinctive landmarks of the village and a favorite stop for tourists and wedding parties, Fahan Heritage Group said in its YouTube video “Save St. Mura’s Cross.”

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The stone-carved cross was distinctive for centuries, but now it has faded due to severe erosion attributed to acid rain or other environmental factors. The carving and Greek inscription are almost illegible.

“One thing we might have to consider is moving the cross to an indoor location and replacing it with a replica outside,” Toland said. “That way we could protect if from whatever environmental or pollution influences which are eroding it.”

Backers of the restoration include individuals from local community heritage and church societies, including historians, archaeologists, and architects.

They have launched an online fundraiser seeking an additional 15,000 Euro, about $17,000, to add to a startup grant from the Heritage Council of Ireland and funds from other sources.

“If left unprotected we will have lost an icon of Ireland’s earliest Christian period,” said the backers of the “Save Saint Mura’s Cross” project on the group fundraiser site fundit.ie. The fundraiser will close in mid-January.

They and the wider community are “determined to conserve the local history and heritage of Saint Mura’s monastic settlement from which the village itself grew.”

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Katowice, Poland, Dec 4, 2018 / 03:19 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At a UN climate change summit in Poland Monday, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin underlined the Holy See’s view that climate change is a moral issue and has an effect on… […]

Paris, France, Dec 4, 2018 / 09:35 am (CNA).- French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced Tuesday morning that the government would suspend the imposition of a proposed fuel tax increase for six months. The planned increases, originally set to tak… […]

Shrewsbury, England, Dec 4, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a pastoral letter marking the first Sunday of Advent, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury dedicated 2019 as the diocesan Year of Holiness, calling attention to the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on the universal call to holiness.

“It is this universal call to holiness which I wish all of us, clergy and people, to focus upon anew. It is striking that, amid all the crises of the 20th Century, the central message of the Second Vatican Council was that every one of us, in every state of life, is called to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of love: that is, called to become nothing less than a saint,” Bishop Davies wrote.

“Advent is a time of renewed hope leading us to the light of Christmas,” he said. “It is a journey we make in the darkest days of our year. Such days evoke the dark shadows in the world around us, and those failures in the lives and witness of Christians which have at times cast dark shadows over the face of the Church, obscuring for many, the clear light of Christ shining from her.”

He said that “our renewal in holiness” is “the only renewal of the Church which will ever matter … It is why only saints resolved the crises the Church has faced throughout history and why they have proved to be the great evangelisers.”

“It is also why, today, amid the dark shadows of scandal and the challenge of a new evangelisation of western societies, it is urgent to recall this one goal of every Christian life for it is in the saints that the true face of the Church shines out. For, though they can have their place, no pastoral programme; no discussions amongst us; no re-organisation or re-structuring can ever accomplish this; only our striving for holiness to become the saints we have been called by God to be.”

Both “our Christian calling and the ultimate goal of every human life” is “to become, in the end, a saint,” said Bishop Davies, recalling that Christ told us “that this is the one thing which alone matters.”

The bishop noted that Pope Francis wrote in a recent letter that “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”

“A saint is someone who reaches the complete and everlasting happiness of Heaven. We might say that holiness is happiness … it is only by being holy that we can be truly happy.”

Bishop Davies said: “The Holy Father writes, ‘Do not be afraid to set your sights higher, to allow yourself to be loved and liberated by God’. For holiness, he writes, is ‘the extent that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we model our life on Christ’s’. We can never reach this goal by our own unaided efforts. By the grace of God we can!”

He encouraged everyone in the Diocese of Shrewbury to recall in the coming year that there is found in the Church, holy though composed of sinners, everything needed to grow in holiness.

“In daily prayer, frequent Confession and, above all, in the Holy Eucharist, we are given the Divine means, the grace to reach this goal,” wrote Bishop Davies.

“This is our purpose as we enter anew into Advent,” the bishop concluded. “Let us ask Our Lady, she who is ‘full of grace’, to accompany us along the path to the holiness, the true happiness to which we are called. In the beautiful words of the Second Vatican Council, we know that in the most Blessed Virgin Mary the Church has already reached perfection and in our struggle she shines out for us as a sign of certain hope and consolation until the day of the Lord shall come in splendour.”

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Brussels, Belgium, Dec 3, 2018 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the first criminal investigation of euthanasia since Belgium legalized the practice, the country’s authorities are looking into the 2010 death of a woman with Asperger syndrome whom prosecutors say may have been illegally poisoned.

Thirty-eight year old Tine Nys was reportedly diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a mild autism spectrum disorder, two months before being legally euthanized. Asperger syndrome is one of the most common mental health conditions leading to euthanasia in Belgium, along with depression and personality disorders, the Associated Press reports.

Euthanization of adults was legalized in Belgium in 2002, and of minors in 2014.

The country’s euthanasia commission had previously dismissed Nys’ family’s complaint.

The deceased woman’s sister told the Associated Press that though Nys suffered from mental health issues, it was “unthinkable that those problems warranted her death.” She also alleges that the doctors fumbled Nys’ euthanasia procedure, and that Nys was so desperate to die that she “manipulated the test” administered to her to ensure she was diagnosed with incurable Asperger syndrome.

After Nys’ family filed a criminal complaint, her doctors attempted to block the investigation. The psychiatrist who approved Nys’ request to die, Dr. Lieve Thienpont, reportedly wrote that Nys’ family was a “seriously dysfunctional, wounded, traumatized family with very little empathy and respect for others.”

The doctors who approved Nys’ euthanasia, including Thienpont, will now face trial for poisoning, according to a prosecutor for the case. A conviction in the case could carry a lifetime prison sentence.

Joe Zalot, a staff ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, said Catholic teaching holds that both euthanasia and assisted suicide are impermissible.

“Both are immoral, but I would say euthanasia has a much greater gravity because…in many cases, you’re killing the patient without the patient’s consent, even; the patient doesn’t even know what’s going on,” Zalot told CNA.

“There are other cases of families of people who were euthanized, both in Belgium and the Netherlands, who are raising some very serious questions about what doctors are doing, after their loved ones were killed without them even knowing about it,” he said.

Teaching in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, St. John Paul II wrote that “euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

Zalot said: “Euthanasia is akin to murder. You are taking someone’s life, and from the Catholic Church’s perspective no one should have the ability, let alone the right, to take another person’s life,”

“The mercy [killing] arguments you’ll hear…’We’re doing this to alleviate someone’s pain’…in most cases pain can be alleviated without resorting to [euthanasia].”

“Belgian doctors are essentially taking it upon themselves the determination of a person’s ‘quality of life,’” Zalot said. “’Quality of life’ has essentially become a buzzword to support euthanasia or assisted suicide.”

In the United States, seven states and District of Columbia allow assisted suicide, where the doctor provides the patient with a means to kill themselves.

“If you look at the progression of it, you look at what has happened in Belgium, in Switzerland, and in Canada…That is coming to the United States,” Zalot said.

“And it’s going to come through the states that have already legalized assisted suicide…I would guess in the next five or so years.”

Belgium’s law allows minors of any age who are terminally ill to request euthanasia. Parental consent, as well as the agreement of doctors and psychiatrists, is required.

In 2016 and 2017, three minors availed themselves of the procedure and were euthanized, according to a government report.

There were 2,028 euthanasia deaths in 2016, and 2,309 in 2017, a 13 percent rise year-on-year. The report found that cancer is the primary reason individuals seek euthanasia.

“It’s the slippery slope at work,” Zalot said. “You have an untreatable, terminal physical disease, and that’s where the advocates [of assisted suicide and euthanasia] always start…People say it’s going to be limited to instances of terminal illness. Well, it’s not.”

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Dublin, Ireland, Dec 3, 2018 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The Irish organization Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has written an open letter to the country’s bishops, requesting a national assembly to discuss potential reforms to the Church.

 
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Geneva, Switzerland, Nov 28, 2018 / 12:18 pm (CNA).- A Vatican representative to the United Nations called on the international community to ban killer robots – known as Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) – in a speech in Geneva last … […]

Aberdeen, Scotland, Nov 27, 2018 / 03:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Student associations at both the University of Aberdeen and the University of Glasgow have recently blocked pro-life student groups from affiliating, limiting their access to funds and venues.

The Herald, a Glaswegian daily, reported Nov. 26 that the Aberdeen University Students’ Association prevented the affiliation of the Aberdeen Life Ethics Society, citing its own pro-choice policy.

The week prior, it was found that Glasgow University’s Students’ Representative Council had barred affiliation from Glasgow Students for Life.

In October, the University of Strathclyde (in Glasgow) lifted a similar ban on pro-life groups, following legal pressure. Strathclyde Sudents for Life argued that the student associaton’s no platforming policy violated the Equality Act 2010 “by directly discriminating against a group of students based on their beliefs.”

The Aberdeen Life Ethics Society had announced the rejection of its application Oct. 19, saying, “We were rejected because the Student Council passed a policy in November 2017 declaring AUSA to be ‘pro-choice’ and pledging to ‘no-platform’ any society that opposes abortion. Since our proposed society is unashamedly pro-life, we have been banned from affiliating.”

The pro-life group said that the pro-choice policy is “being used as political cover to ban student speech on campus, it also treats the student body as undivided on the issue of abortion.”

“Censorship is a growing epidemic on many university campuses in this country, and AUSA has now chosen to be the latest in a long line of students’ associations which selectively repress the freedom of speech of certain students and societies,” Aberdeen Life Ethics Society wrote on its Facebook page. “AUSA’s willingness to censor dissenting speech, regardless of the fact that such speech is protected by UK and EU laws, should be chilling to any fair-minded student who believes that the free exchange of ideas is vital to a university community.”

The pro-lifers noted that Ausa “prides itself on being radically tolerant, but its decision to block the formation of a minority-view society only serves to illuminate the lopsided nature of how tolerance is actually practised on our campus … for a students’ association which touts its supposed liberality, this outcome is an illiberal travesty.”

Ausa has cited its pro-choice policy, adopted in November 2017, as the basis for its decision. The policy says, in part, that “Ausa should oppose the unreasonable display of pro-life material within campus and at Ausa events.”

Lawson Ogubie, Ausa president, said that “students are encouraged to challenge or submit policy changes as is their democratic right as members of our students’ association.”

The SRC at Glasgow University made a similar decision. SRC president Lauren McDougall told the Herald that the council views affiliation “as a form of endorsement … Given the SRC’s campaigning on a number of related social issues over the years, including support for the recent Repeal the 8th campaign in Ireland, it would be contrary to our ethos to endorse a society which calls for limited rights for women.”

Glasgow Students for Life has called the decision “an assault on freedom of speech” and said the university “is legally obliged to foster an environment of academic freedom.”

The joint committee on human rights of the UK parliament has noted troubling barriers to free speech at the nation’s universities.

In a March report, the committee said that “whilst the original intention behind safe space policies may have been to ensure that minority or vulnerable groups can feel secure, in practice the concept of safe spaces has proved problematic, often marginalising the views of minority groups.”

“Minority groups or individuals holding unpopular opinions which are within the law should not be shut down nor be subject to undue additional scrutiny by student unions or universities,” the committee continued.

It added that “unless it is clearly understood that those exercising their rights to free speech within the law will not be shut down, there will be no incentive for their opponents to engage them in the debate and challenge needed to bring mutual understanding and maybe even to change attitudes.”

The committee’s point was echoed in a Nov. 23 post at The Spectator by Stephen Daisley, an alumnus of Glasgow University.

He called barring Glasgow Students for Life “an act of pettiness — and cowardice. Abortion advocates are not keen on debate because abortion is a practice that relies on hushed tones and closed doors. ‘Abortifacient’ and ‘dilatation and evacuation’ are not-nice terms for not-nice procedures.”

“What Glasgow University’s ethos-enforcers fear is not criticism of abortion by Glasgow Students for Life but the defence of abortion they would have to mount in response. Keep out the pro-lifers and your viewpoint enjoys a monopoly; let them in and you’ve got a dialogue on your hands,” Daisley wrote.

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