Europe

Belfast, Northern Ireland, Jun 1, 2018 / 04:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After Ireland voted to legalize abortion in a referendum last week, efforts have increased to legalize the procedure in Northern Ireland as well.

On May 25, the people of Ireland voted to overturn the country’s 8th amendment, which recognized the equal right to life for the unborn child and the pregnant mother. As a result, abortion had been banned in the nation except when the mother’s health is deemed to be in danger.  

Just over 33 percent of the predominately Catholic country voted to keep the amendment, while more than 66 percent voted to repeal it.

However, abortion is still prohibited in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, unless a woman’s life or long-term health is at risk.

Abortion activists gathered at the main court buildings in Belfast on May 28. Several women took abortion pills in front of the police, although it was not clear if they were pregnant and had thereby broken the law.

In order to circumvent the country’s pro-life laws, the pills were delivered by small robots controlled from the Netherlands. The robots were sponsored by local and international abortion advocacy organizations, including Women on Waves, Women on Web, and Rosa Northern Ireland.

Police attempted to remove one woman from the protest after she had taken the abortion pills publicly. However, they later abandoned their efforts and only seized the drugs and robots.

U.K. Prime Minster Theresa May has faced pressure from pro-abortion groups in Northern Ireland. However, she stressed that legislative change would depend on local officials.

“It’s important to recognize that the people of Northern Ireland are entitled to their own process which is run by locally elected politicians,” said James Slack, a spokesperson for May, according to NPR.

Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which currently holds the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, has said that it remains committed to the pro-life cause.

“The DUP is a pro-life party and we will continue to articulate our position. It is an extremely sensitive issue and not one that should have people taking to the streets in celebration,” its leaders said in a statement following the May 25 referendum.

Bernadette Smyth, director of the Precious Life pro-life group in Northern Ireland, emphasized the need to inform and support women to help them choose life.

“Women in crisis pregnancies need real help and support. Abortion is never the answer,” she said.
 

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Lisbon, Portugal, May 30, 2018 / 02:23 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After heated debate, the Portuguese Parliament voted on Tuesday to reject multiple proposed laws that would legalize euthanasia in the country. The vote drew praise from local bishops.

Four l… […]

Northampton, England, May 30, 2018 / 12:09 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As an investigation into the life of Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton nears a close, admirers of the English writer voiced hope that his sainthood cause could soon be opened.

“Che… […]

Rome, Italy, May 29, 2018 / 10:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Gerhard Müller reflected recently on the rise of gender ideology, saying it flourished in the vacuum left by the collapse of fascism and Soviet communism as a “new religion”.

“Marxism and fascism, anti-Christian ideology, fell. Capitalism is in crisis. There was room for true philosophy, for theology, for Christian religion. But people preferred to invent a new religion, which believes in the human being rather than God,” the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told CNA May 25.

The cardinal spoke before the presentation of the Italian edition of Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay, by Daniel Mattson.

“People cannot be classified according to their sexual orientation,” Cardinal Müller said. “We do not have human beings who are more special than others. Man must be described according to his persona and the fact that he is created in the image and likeness to God and his vocation to eternal life.”

This character fits “every human being.”

Speaking about pastoral care for homosexuals, the cardinal noted that “the Church has always had respect toward every human person, beyond any categorization.”

He also emphasized that “in gender ideology you can count dozens of genders, while human being is created as man and woman: this is our nature, and the God cretor’s will is expressed in this nature.”

Cardinal Müller underscored that people “must resist those who organize as an ideological group and want to change all the society, imposing their thought on every people.”

That is “an imposition of a unique thought,” as ideological groups “attack all those who do not think their way, they insult, they even destroy the human dignity of people who think differently from them.”

He said these people “are a lobby, an organization with their own interests.”

Cardinal Müller praised Mattson for not labeling himself as gay, but as “Son of God.”

“We can talk about anything in the secret of confession and with pastoral care, but no man can identify himself with a category that does not exist in reality,” Cardinal Müller said.

He also stressed that this construction comes from Marxist thought, because “the Marxist rationale claims that mind does not recognize reality, but it builds reality: when the communist party says that 2+2 is 5, everybody must believe it.”

Gender ideology and pastoral care for homosexual people are among the most discussed topics in the Catholic Church.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in 1986 a Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, which said, “We encourage the Bishops to provide pastoral care in full accord with the teaching of the Church for homosexual persons of their dioceses.”

“No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral. A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin,” it added.

And Benedict XVI discussed gender ideology in his final Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia, on Dec. 21, 2012.

In the speech, he said that “the profound falsehood of (gender) theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.”

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Sligo, Ireland, May 29, 2018 / 03:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Republic of Ireland moved to legalize abortion over the weekend, one bishop has said that practicing Catholics who voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment should consider going to confession… […]

Rome, Italy, May 26, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The 16th century St. Philip Neri is known for joyful holiness and for the foundation of the Congregation of the Oratory, but the legacy he left in Rome can still be traced today, even walking in th… […]

Rome, Italy, May 25, 2018 / 11:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his most recent “mercy Friday” outing, Pope Francis visited a school recently named after a little girl who passed away, but who left her mark on the institute when a international library was created in her honor.

Established in the 1950s, the school – originally named the Comprehensive Institute of Via Rocca Camastra – is a state school that expanded to four other locations in the 1970s, and just this year received permission to be renamed as the Comprehensive Institute of Elisa Scala.

Elisa Scala is the name of a little girl who attended the school, but who died in 2015 at the age of 11 from a form of fulminant leukemia. After her death, Scala’s parents launched a project in the school aimed at sharing Elisa’s passion for books and libraries.

With their help, a small space called “Elisa’s Library” was established, and a project called “Give a Book for Elisa” was launched in order to fill the space with books.

Donations came in the thousands. Some 20,000 books in different languages from all over Italy, Europe and even Australia now line the shelves of the library, which is included on the list of public libraries in Rome.

According to a Vatican communique on the pope’s surprise May 25 visit to the school, Francis arrived around 4 p.m. local time and was greeted by Scala’s parents, Giorgio and Maria, as well as the director of the school, Claudia Gentili, and hundreds of children who attend the institute.

Pope Francis gave Scala’s parents several books to put in the library, all of which were dedicated to Elisa.

The children then sang for the pope, and he greeted the dean, staff, parents and students present before heading back to the Vatican.

Pope Francis’ visit to the school is a continuation of his “Mercy Friday” custom, which he began in 2016 during the Jubilee of Mercy.

Originally planned once per month for the duration of the jubilee, the pope has continued the tradition after the end of the jubilee as a means of practicing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. He has met with refugees, children, women freed from sex trafficking, and the terminally ill, among others.

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Rome, Italy, May 25, 2018 / 10:29 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For the first time in five years, seminarians and student priests from the North American College in Rome will hit the soccer field to battle it out for the winning title in the city’s holies… […]

Dublin, Ireland, May 23, 2018 / 11:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Ahead of Ireland’s abortion referendum on Friday, pro-life and pro-abortion rights debaters have squared off in a country where voters will be asked to remove constitutional protections for the unborn, known as the Eighth Amendment.

“What the government has proposed is an extreme law, stripping every right in the constitution for the unborn… taking away the right to life for the right to kill,” said Maria Steen, a speaker with the Iona Institute. “What the government is asking us to do is to become judge and jury over the lives of babies in the womb.”

The May 23 debate on Ireland TV3’s The Pat Kenney Show comes ahead of a May 25 referendum on whether to repeal the pro-life language in the Republic of Ireland’s constitution, which recognizes the equal right to life of mother and unborn child. The language dates back to a 1983 referendum passed with the support of 67 percent of Irish voters.

In the four-person debate, Ireland’s Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty of the Fine Gael party claimed that abortion opponents failed to provide abortion alternatives and “haven’t been willing to look or support anything in 35 years.”

Doherty, who describes herself as “pro-life” despite her support for the repeal, charged that keeping the amendment means ignoring women in crisis, reported the Irish news site BreakingNews.ie.

A “yes” vote would remove the constitution’s pro-life language, while a “no” vote would preserve it.

In a March 2018 case that some have compared to the Irish Roe v. Wade, the country’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that unborn children have no other rights except those guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment.

If the repeal vote is successful, Irish lawmakers are expected to propose legislation allowing unlimited abortion up to three months into pregnancy, and up to six months into pregnancy in cases where there might be risk to a mother’s physical or mental health.

About 3,000 Irish women travel to the U.K. for abortions each year. The procedure is largely illegal in Northern Ireland as well.

At one point in the TV3 debate, Independent Senator Ronan Mullen rejected the claim that there is evidence that mental health is valid grounds for abortion. He also cited a woman who was considering traveling to the U.K. for abortion, but then reconsidered.

“This woman told me ‘the time it took me to arrange an abortion in England is the time it took for me to change my mind’,” he said.

Doherty contended that the 72-hour waiting period in the draft legislation provides a period for women to reconsider an abortion.

Another debater, Colm O’Gorman of Amnesty Ireland, said “the Eighth Amendment has not stopped abortion. It has stopped some abortions, but it has forced others to continue pregnancies.”

Steen summed up her argument against repeal: “Women who need their health looked after deserve better than an abortion. We think this is a step too far. We all think taking the rights of all unborn children is fundamentally unjust.”

A Tuesday night debate on the show RTÉ Prime Time was a two-person debate between Minister for Health Simon Harris of the Fine Gael party and Sinn Féin Member of Parliament Peadar Tóibín.

“Wanted, unwanted. There are not two classes of people–we are all one. The child is the weakest individual. She has no voice.” Tóibín said, according to BreakingNews.ie.

Harris charged that opponents of the referendum sought to force rape victims to carry their pregnancies to term.

For his part, Tóibín cited his experience working with rape victims in County Meath.

“Meath will have legalized abortion in Meath before it has a rape crisis center,” he said.

Tóibín charged that repeal would allow a general practitioner with only six months of psychiatric training to decide whether a woman may have abortion on mental health grounds. He charged that repeal would mean abortion on demand.

The repeal effort is backed by Ireland’s major political parties.

Overseas involvement has also been a matter of controversy.

Financier and philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and its pro-abortion rights grantees Amnesty Ireland, Abortion Rights Campaign Ireland, and the Irish Family Planning Association have run afoul of Irish political finance rules barring foreign funding of political campaigns.

Ireland is part of the foundations’ broader strategy against pro-life Catholic countries, according to a document reportedly hacked from the foundations and posted to the site DCLeaks.com.

“With one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, a win there could impact other strongly Catholic countries in Europe, such as Poland, and provide much needed proof that change is possible, even in highly conservative places,” said the foundations’ proposed 2016-2019 strategy for its Women’s Rights Program.

The internet giant Facebook has banned foreign-backed ads related to the Irish referendum, including small ad purchases from Irish-American pro-life advocates. Google has banned both foreign and domestic ads.

The latter move was seen as a blow to the Irish pro-life cause. The Save the 8th campaign’s strategy relied on intensifying its internet ad campaign in its final weeks, Pat Leahy, politics editor of the Irish Times, said in a May 10 analysis.

The Irish Times suggested that companies have become afraid that if voters reject the referendum, they will face blame and further scrutiny for allegedly influencing elections.

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London, England, May 23, 2018 / 03:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Conservative Party member of the British parliament Jacob Rees-Mogg is in the spotlight this week for recent comments he made regarding anti-religious bigotry in the public square.

Rees-Mo… […]