Washington D.C., Feb 23, 2017 / 03:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Anti-Catholic state laws from the 19th century are today being used by secularists to fight public funding of all religious organizations, warned a religious freedom advocacy group.
State Blai… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 23, 2017 / 02:34 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A death row inmate in Texas deserves a new sentencing hearing because his own lawyers called on an expert who claimed he was more likely to be dangerous because he is black, the U. S. Supreme Court has said.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the Feb. 22 decision in Buck v. Davis, saying: “When a jury hears expert testimony that expressly makes a defendant’s race directly pertinent on the question of life or death, the impact of that evidence cannot be measured simply by how much air time it received at trial or how many pages it occupies in the record. Some toxins can be deadly in small doses.”
The man sentenced to death, Duane Buck, was convicted for two 1995 murders, which included killing his ex-girlfriend in front of her children. He also shot his step-sister at close range.
Buck will now be able to argue before a lower court that he should have a new sentencing hearing.
The 6-2 ruling was dissented from by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The case before the Supreme Court did not argue for Buck’s innocence, but emphasized his attorneys’ handling of the sentencing hearing, which considered whether Buck met the standard for “future dangerousness,” CNN reports.
Dr. Walter Quijano, a psychologist retained by Buck’s own defense attorneys, spoke at the sentencing hearing and claimed that the fact that Buck was black “increased the probability” he would commit future acts of violence.
Texas law allowed the jury to impose capital punishment only if it found unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that Buck was likely to commit acts of violence in the future.
Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller defended the sentence before the high court. He said Quijano’s testimony played a limited role at the trial. Other evidence of his future dangerousness cited the brutality of the murders, his lack of remorse, and the testimony of an ex-girlfriend.
During oral arguments, Alito said the race-related testimony was “indefensible” and “bizarre.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked “What competent counsel would put that evidence before a jury?”
In the dissenting opinion, Thomas said the lower courts had followed proper standards in upholding the sentence, National Public Radio reports. He added that the jury that sentenced Buck had sufficient reasons to recommend a death sentence on grounds other than Quijano’s comments.
Thomas wrote that “Having settled on a desired outcome, the Court bulldozes procedural obstacles and misapplies settled law to justify it.”
Washington D.C., Feb 23, 2017 / 12:27 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday night, the Trump administration withdrew an Obama-era guidance that had directed schools to allow students to use the bathroom or locker room of the gender they currently identify … […]
Washington D.C., Feb 23, 2017 / 02:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Recent American guidelines for human gene modification have raised important ethical questions, especially with regard to modifying the genes of unborn children and of reproductive cells.
The National Academy of Sciences last week released a 261-page report on guidelines for editing the human genome to treat diseases and other applications. The report covers a wide array of topics, from the editing of adult cells for therapies such as cancer treatment, to the editing of embryos and germ cells (reproductive cells, i.e. ova and sperm), to the question of human enhancement.
John DiCamillo, an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, spoke to CNA about the perils and the promises of gene editing, as well as the oversights contained in the National Academy of Sciences’ report.
“Gene editing generally can be morally legitimate if it has a directly therapeutic purpose for a particular patient in question, and if we’re sure we’re going to limit whatever changes to this person,” DiCamillo explained. In this regard, the report’s guidelines for laboratory treatment of somatic – or non-reproductive – cells and human trials of somatic cell treatments were reasonable, he noted.
DiCamillo pointed to upcoming clinical gene therapy trials for cancer and proposed gene therapy treatments for disorders such as sickle cell disease. However, it’s important to limit these trials to non-embryonic persons, to ensure that the modifications – intended as well as unintended – are not carried in the patient’s reproductive cells.
While this would mean that patients treated for inheritable diseases “could still transmit it to their children,” any children who then developed the disease could themselves be treated through the same process.
The question of transmission to descendents opens up two more points discussed in the National Academy of Sciences report: the modification of ova and sperm, as well as edits to the genomes of embryos. Both of these changes would mean that people would maintain these edits in all of their cells for all of their lives – and could pass on these edited genes to new generations.
“There could be limited situations that could exist where the germ line could be legitimately edited. In other words, making changes to sperm, to eggs, or to early embryos as a way of potentially addressing diseases – inheritable diseases and so forth,” DiCamillo stated.
However, permitting edits to germ line cells could also be “very dangerous on multiple levels,” he warned.
There are considerable, and not yet fully controllable, risks to genetic manipulation. A person conceived with edited genes could experience a range of “unintended, perhaps harmful, side effects that can now be transmitted, inherited by other individuals down the line.” An embryo who experiences gene modification could also carry and pass on edited genes, particularly if edits were performed before his or her reproductive cells began to differentiate themselves.
The National Academy of Sciences’ regulations surrounding germ cells and embryos are also problematic for what they overlook, DiCamillo commented.
Manipulating sperm and ova requires removing them from a person’s body; if conception is achieved with these cells, it is nearly always through in vitro methods. This practice of in vitro fertilization is held by the Church to be ethically unacceptable because it dissociates procreation from the integrally personal context of the conjugal act.
In addition, scientific researchers rarely differentiate between experimentation on sperm or ova – which are cells that come from a human subject – and embryos, which are distinct persons with their own distinct genomes, DiCamillo noted.
The National Academy of Sciences’ guidelines reflect this lack of distinction between cells and embryos. “That’s very misleading because embryos are not germ line cells; they are new human beings,” DiCamillo said.
For research on embryos to be ethical, he continued, therapies should be ordered to treating and benefitting that “that particular embryo, not just for garnering scientific knowledge or seeing what’s going to happen.” DiCamillo condemned policies that see destruction of embryonic persons as a back-up if research does not go as planned, as well as current policies that require destruction of embryos as standard procedure.
“We’d be in that area of very dangerous exploitation of human life and destruction of human life,” he warned.
While the guidelines stumble across ethical roadblocks in regards to gamete and embryo research, the new report’s rules regarding human enhancement are strong, DiCamillo said.
The ability to edit genomes could also be used for purposes other than medical treatment. A whole host of human traits could be enhanced or changed, such as vision, intelligence, or abilities. “There’s any number of things that we could do to change the qualities of human beings themselves and make them, in a sense, super-humans … this is something that would also be an ethical problem on the horizon,” he warned.
The existence of these gene altering therapies raises a question of how much modification and enhancement is permissible. DiCamillo praised the report for its recommendation “entirely against enhancement efforts and that these should not be allowed.”
Currently, gene editing of both germ cells and somatic cells is legal in the United States, including on embryos. However, various US government institutions have policies in place prohibiting federal funding of such research efforts on germ cells and on embryos.
Furthermore, Food and Drug Administration regulations prohibit gene modification on viable human embryos – meaning that human embryos who receive gene modification are always destroyed.
The new guidelines from the National Academy of Sciences are significant because they lay a groundwork for future policy on human gene modification. They cautiously welcome the use of gene therapy on human embryos who are not later targeted for destruction after experimentation concludes.
DiCamillo recalled, however, that “they are merely guidelines – they are advice from the National Academy of the Sciences to the government in regards to future policy. This is not itself a new regulation or policy that the government has established.”
The ethics of gene editing has been questioned for several years – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addressed the issue in Dignitas personae, its 2008 instruction on certain bioethical questions. It has become more pressing recently, however, because a new technique known as CRISPR is easier to use and less expensive than previous means of gene editing.
Although the ethical questions surrounding gene modification are many and there are a number of problematic applications of these technologies, DiCamillo cautioned Catholics not to renounce completely human gene modification: “We don’t want to be hyper-reactive to the dangers. We have to realize there’s a great deal of good that can be done here.”
He pointed again to the kinds of modifications that can treat deadly genetic diseases and treatments that can be done in an ethical manner, with full respect to the dignity of human persons.
“We do need to be attentive to where the dangers are,” he warned, “but we don’t want to … automatically consider any kind of gene editing to be automatically a problem.”
Richmond, Va., Feb 22, 2017 / 04:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of Virginia’s two dioceses on Tuesday decried Governor Terry McAuliffe’s veto of a bill which would have redirected state funding away from abortion providers and toward community health centers.
“Surrounded by Planned Parenthood supporters at a veto ceremony outside the Governor’s Mansion this morning, Gov. McAuliffe said his actions protected the rights and dignity of Virginia women – when, in fact, his actions harm the dignity of the women deceived by the multi-billion dollar abortion industry as well as the tiniest females, those still in the womb whose lives are brutally eliminated by abortion,” read a Feb. 21 statement of the Virginia Catholic Conference.
The conference said it “upholds the timeless truth that every human being, born and unborn, has an equal right to life. The Conference finds Gov. McAuliffe’s pride in protecting an organization that destroys life and harms women and their families deeply offensive. We will continue to fight for the day when Virginia law protects all human life, at every stage of development, from conception until natural death.”
The conference represents the public policy interests of Bishop Francis DiLorenzo of Richmond and Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington.
McAuliffe, a Democrat, had vetoed an identical measure in 2016. The bill, HB 2264, had been introduced to the House of Delegates, the lower house of the Virginia legislature, by Ben Cline (R – Rockbridge). McAuliffe claimed that the bill would disincentivize businesses who wish to invest in Virginia.
It would have barred Virigina’s health department from providing funds to any entity that performs abortions not covered by Medicaid, and would have redirected the money to other health clinics which provide more comprehensive health care services.
The bill passed in the House of Delegates Feb. 7 with a 60-33 vote that fell along party lines. A week later, Feb. 14, it passed in the state Senate with a 20-14 margin.
After the veto, Cline expressed his hope that the Virginia General Assembly would override the decision. “This important legislation would have prioritized taxpayer dollars toward providers of more comprehensive health care services, and the governor’s veto undermines those efforts to improve health care in rural and underserved areas,” Cline said in a prepared statement.
The Virginia bill and McAuliffe’s veto come on the heels of the national legislature’s moves to block funding to Planned Parenthood on both the state and the national levels. Last week, the House of Representatives rolled back Obama Administration regulations blocking individual states from defunding Planned Parenthood. Furthermore, both the House and the Senate have set in place measures that could lead to the eventual blockage of Planned Parenthood receiving federal funds.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R- Wisc.) has repeatedly advocated using funds earmarked for Planned Parenthood on community health centers and other forms of health access for low-income citizens.
Baltimore, Md., Feb 22, 2017 / 02:11 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Both Pope Francis and St. Francis of Assisi provide the right perspective on caring for creation in a way that places care for humanity at its center, said Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta.
… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 22, 2017 / 02:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Through its annual rice bowl initiative, Catholic Relief Services has announced it will be promoting a “culture of encounter” in its Lenten operation.
“At a time when there i… […]
Stockton, Calif., Feb 22, 2017 / 12:04 am (CNA).- If President Donald Trump is the candidate of “disruption,” similar disruption is needed to build a better society, Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego told a gathering of faith-based groups co-sponsored by the Vatican.
“Well now, we must all become disruptors,” the bishop said Feb. 18 at the U.S. regional gathering for the World Meeting of Popular Movements, which aims to promote structural changes for greater justice in racial, social, and economic areas.
“We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families. We must disrupt those who portray refugees as enemies rather than our brothers and sisters in terrible need. We must disrupt those who train us to see Muslim men, women and children as forces of fear rather than as children of God.”
“We must disrupt those who seek to rob our medical care, especially from the poor,” he continued. “We must disrupt those who would take even food stamps and nutrition assistance from the mouths of children.”
At the same time, the bishop told the multi-religious audience of the need for constructive action: “as people of faith, as disciples of Jesus Christ, as children of Abraham, as followers of the Prophet Muhammad, of people of all faiths and no faith, we cannot merely be disruptors, we also have to be rebuilders.”
The Feb. 16-19 conference was held in Modesto, about 30 miles southeast of Stockton. It was organized with the support of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, and the PICO National Network.
The PICO network is composed of faith-based community organizations. It claims 1,000 member institutions representing over 1 million families in 17 U.S. states. The network’s Latin American branch has been supported for a decade by Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, who now coordinates the Council of Cardinals advising Pope Francis. The cardinal addressed a launch event PICO’s “Year of Encounter with Pope Francis” campaign in early 2015.
The Pope himself sent a message to the California meeting that praised the gathering’s “constructive energies” and criticized the brutality of an economic system “that has the god of money at its center.” He encouraged their efforts “to fight for social justice, to defend our Sister Mother Earth and to stand alongside migrants.”
For Bishop McElroy, the meeting was an opportunity to call to rebuild the country.
“Let us disrupt and rebuild. And let us do God’s work,” he said, advocating the advancement of human dignity and equality.
“We must rebuild a nation in solidarity, what Catholic teaching calls the sense that all of us are the children of the one God,” he said, calling for a $15 minimum wage, decent housing, food for the poorest, and attention to environmental issues in the face of industrial threats.
“We must identify the ways in which our very ability to see, judge and act on behalf of justice is being endangered by cultural currents which leave us isolated, embittered and angry.”
Citing Benedict XVI, he said that truth itself is “under attack” and “whole industries have arisen to shape public opinion in destructively isolated and dishonest patterns.”
He said social issues like jobs, housing, immigration, economic disparities and the environment must be made “foundations for common efforts rather than of division.”
Bishop McElroy flatly criticized free market ideology as a rival to human dignity.
“The fundamental political question of our age is whether our economic structures and systems in the United States will enjoy ever greater freedom or whether they will be located effectively within a juridical structure which seeks to safeguard the dignity of the human person and the common good of our nation,” he said.
“In that battle, the tradition of Catholic social teaching is unequivocally on the side of strong governmental and societal protections for the powerless, the worker, the homeless, the hungry, those without decent medical care, the unemployed.”
He placed property and wealth in the context of Catholic teaching that sees creation as God’s gift to all humanity.
“Wealth is a common heritage, not at its core a right of lineage or acquisition,” he said. “For this reason, free markets do not constitute a first principle of economic justice. Their moral worth is instrumental in nature and must be structured by government to accomplish the common good.”
The bishop stressed the “intrinsic human rights” to medical care, decent housing, protection of human life, food, and work. These rights are not merely negotiating points to discuss after the free market system has distributed wealth, he said.
“Rather, these rights are basic claims which every man, woman and family has upon our nation as a whole,” he said, warning that these rights are being denied to large numbers of people.
Bishop McElroy cited Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium and its description of an economy that excludes some people from meaningful participation in social, political, and economic life.
The bishop said that statements like “this economy kills” are not simply exaggerations. He suggested many people have known someone the economy has killed: a senior citizen who can’t afford medicine or rent; a mother or father who is working two or three jobs and is “really dying because even then they can’t provide for their kids;” and young people who turn to drugs, gangs, or suicide because they cannot find a job.
“Now mourn them,” he said. “And now call out their name; let all the world know that this economy kills.”
At other times, Bishop McElroy has been outspoken against the proposed removal of a statue of St. Junípero Serra from the U.S. Capitol, and against a California law barring health plans that restrict abortion coverage.
He urged in 2015 an overhaul of the US bishops’ voting guide to reflect how Pope Francis has “radically transformed the prioritization of Catholic social teaching and its elements.” And following the release of Amoris laetitia, he suggested that the divorced-and-remarried may make a “discernment of conscience” that “God is calling them to return to full participation in the life of the Church and the Eucharist.”
In addition to Bishop McElroy, other scheduled speakers at the Modesto conference included Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton; Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development; Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark; Bishop Shelton Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux; Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles; and Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces.
One co-sponsor of the event, PICO Network, came to public attention in August 2016 when a cache of documents attributed to billionaire financier George Soros’ Open Society Foundations were hacked and posted to the site DCLeaks.com.
The documents said the foundations committed $650,000 in funds for PICO Network and Faith in Public Life in 2015 to use Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S. to influence the 2016 elections and cultivate influence within the Catholic Church.
It claimed the grantees were involved in “the long-term project of shifting the priorities of the U.S. Catholic Church to focus on issues of injustice and oppression” and claimed that some U.S. bishops sought to curb Pope Francis’ influence on social justice issues. The documents are not always accurate and erroneously indicated the World Meeting of Popular Movements would take place in 2016, rather than 2017.
The same cache of documents indicated that the Soros network funds abortion advocates in Ireland as part of a strategic model to overturn abortion restrictions in Catholic countries. The Soros foundations also took part in a multi-million dollar effort to respond to videos appearing to show the politically powerful abortion provider Planned Parenthood was involved in the illegal sale of fetal tissue and body parts from aborted babies.
According to the documents, the Soros foundations gave $450,000 to the group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good from 2006-2010, crediting the group for changing Catholic voters’ priorities on abortion. Emails to and from leading Democratic Party strategist John Podesta, published on WikiLeaks, claimed that Catholics in Alliance was a group founded with the intent of creating a “Catholic Spring” revolution against the U.S. bishops.
Christopher Hale, who became Catholics in Alliance’s executive director in late 2013, told CNA in October 2016 that the group was not concerned with the internal politics of the Catholic Church. The group has become more critical of abortion groups in recent years.
Washington D.C., Feb 21, 2017 / 08:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States must be prosecuted and condemned by the government to curb their rise, a religious freedom expert insists.
Regarding recent bomb threats made to Jew… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 21, 2017 / 03:11 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- People with severe mental illness are much more likely to be incarcerated than treated for their disorders, advocates said at a recent panel, and changes need to be made in order to break the v… […]
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