Sacramento, Calif., Feb 24, 2020 / 05:20 pm (CNA).- Facing the threat of major cuts to federal HHS funds, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has said the state will not back down from its ban on health insurance plans that exclude abortion, eve… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 24, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- A new poll shows that Hispanics Catholics in the U.S. are more likely to attend weekly Mass and far less likely to support President Trump than other U.S. Catholics.
An EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Resea… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 24, 2020 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- While the Catholic Church teaches that procuring an abortion is always immoral, a majority of U.S. Catholics do not believe abortion is intrinsically evil and say it should be legal in all or most cases…. […]
Washington D.C., Feb 24, 2020 / 03:10 pm (CNA).- A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the Trump administration’s policy adjustments to the Title X program can stay, meaning that Planned Parenthood will continue to lose out on about $60 milli… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 24, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- The Supreme Court will decide if the city of Philadelphia was correct to terminate its relationship with Catholic Social Services because the agency did not work with same-sex couples in providing foster care.
The case, Fulton v. Philadelphia, will be heard by the Supreme Court at the opening of the next judicial session in October.
In March 2018, Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (CSS) was informed that the city would no longer be referring foster children to the agency for assistance because of its faith-based stance on same-sex marriage. The city then passed a resolution calling for an investigation into religiously-based foster care services, after a same-sex couple claimed they were discriminated against by a different faith-based agency.
For over a century, the city of Philadelphia worked with CSS to facilitate the placement of children in foster care. Catholic Social Services also assisted with home visits, training of foster parents, and placements.
CSS has not been the subject of any discrimination complaints by same-sex couples, and had never been asked to certify or endorse a same-sex couple. The agency says that it assists all children in need, regardless of a child’s race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, and, according to Becket, a law firm that promotes religious liberty, no couple had ever been turned away from fostering due to the religious beliefs of Catholic Social Services.
Two foster mothers who worked with CSS, Sharonell Fulton and Toni Simms-Busch, brought the lawsuit against the city. They are being represented by Becket. Fulton has fostered more than 40 children with the assistance of CSS over a period of more than 25 years. Simms-Busch adopted the children she fostered through the agency.
“CSS has been a godsend to my family and so many like others. I don’t think I could have gone through this process without an agency that shares my core beliefs and cares for my children accordingly,” said Toni Simms-Busch in a statement released by Becket.
She said she was “grateful” that the Supreme Court would be considering the case, and hoped the court would “sort out the mess that Philadelphia has created for so many vulnerable foster children.”
Both Simms-Busch and Fulton said that they chose to work with CSS, instead of one of the more than 20 other foster care agencies in Philadelphia, becausue the Catholic organization matched their personal beliefs and values.
The City of Philadelphia’s website says that prospective foster families should look to “find the best fit” when picking an agency.
“You want to feel confident and comfortable with the agency you choose. This agency will be a big support to you during your resource parent journey,” says the website.
Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket, said in a statement that she was “relieved” that the Supreme Court will consider the case, especially in the light of growing numbers of foster care cases in many states.
“Over the last few years, agencies have been closing their doors across the country, all the while children are pouring into the system,” said Windham. “We are confident that the Court will realize that the best solution is the one that has worked in Philadelphia for a century–all hands on deck for foster kids.”
Around the same time that the city severed its relationship with Catholic Social Services, Philadelphia issued a plea for more families to sign up to take in children in need due to a shortage of homes.
Before the relationship ended, CSS served about 120 foster children in 100 foster homes. In 2017, the charity says it helped more than 2,200 children in the Philadelphia area.
Seattle, Wash., Feb 21, 2020 / 06:04 pm (CNA).- After students at a Catholic high school in Washington state staged protests in support of two teachers who resigned their posts in order to civilly marry their same-sex partners, the Archbishop of Seattl… […]
Tallahassee, Fla., Feb 21, 2020 / 03:21 pm (CNA).- The Florida bishops applauded Thursday the passage through both houses of the state legislature of a bill requiring parental consent for minors seeking to procure abortion. The governor has said he intends to sign the bill.
The Florida House of Representatives passed SB 404 by a 75-43 vote Feb. 20. It had cleared the Senate by a 23-17 vote earlier this month.
“We praise our state’s legislative leaders for advancing this pro-life legislation, especially bill sponsors, Senator Kelli Stargel (R-Lakeland) and Representative Erin Grall (R-Vero Beach), who took on the difficult task of guiding it through the committee process and onto the floor of the Senate and House,” the Florida bishops’ conference said Feb. 20.
“We also commend the Democratic lawmakers who courageously crossed party lines and voted to ensure vital protections for parents and their children.”
The bill would require minors to received notarized approval from a parent or guardian, or to get consent from a judge after a hearing, before procuring an abortion.
Under the bill, minors seeking an abortion will be required to receive notarized approval from at least one parent, guardian, or from a judge. Doctors who perform abortions without the parental consent of a girl under 18 would face up to five years in prison for a third-degree felony.
The permission requirement would not apply in cases of “medical emergencies” when there is not sufficient time to obtain written permission from a parent.
The bishops noted that “Parental consent is required prior to a minor’s medical treatment in most every instance, this includes simple medical interventions such as taking an aspirin or getting one’s ears pierced. This legislation is a common-sense measure that holds abortion to the same consent requirements as most every other medical decision involving a child.”
Ingrid Delgado, associate director for social concerns and respect life for the Florida bishops’ conference, commented that “standards that relate to children’s health care should apply especially in the context of abortion, which critically affects the lives of two children.”
Rep. James Bush, D-Miami, voted for the measure, calling it “a good bill for our children,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Rep. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, a sponsor of the measure, said: “It is indisputable that abortion ends a life, and the decision to end a life is permanent and life-altering not only for the baby, but for the girl, the father and the family.”
Those opposed to the bill said it will create more difficulties for young girls who are already in a desperate situation, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Rep. Heather Fitzenhagen, R-Fort Myers, said that “we don’t live in a Utopia where parents always love and advise their children and young girls never get pregnant.”
The Florida legislature first enacted a parental consent law in 1979, but the state Supreme Court struck it down a decade later, saying it violated privacy rights.
Governor Ron DeSantis has said he thinks parental consent “deserves to be reconsidered” at the court, adding that parents “want to be involved with what’s going on with their kids.”
The Florida House passed a similar bill last year, but it failed to make it out of Senate committees for full debate.
Existing Florida law requires a minor seeking to procure abortion to give notice to their parent, or a judge.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, 1,398 minors, 193 of whom notified a judge rather than her parents, procured abortion in the state in 2018.
Twenty-six states require parental consent for a minor’s abortion.
Sacramento, Calif., Feb 21, 2020 / 11:26 am (CNA).- Underage pornography and trafficking videos have been found on the online pornography platform PornHub.
By Feb. 21, a petition on change.org calling on the site to be shut down and its executive held accountable for aiding trafficking had more than 207,000 signatures.
The petition points to several instances of child rape pornography found on PornHub in the past year.
Laila Mickelwait, Exodus Cry’s Director of Abolition and the author of the petition, said there may be more instances of this illegal material on this site as well.
“We already have evidence, and it is just the tip of the iceberg,” the petition states. “It’s time to shut down super-predator site Pornhub and hold the executives behind it accountable.”
The petition will be sent to the US Department of Justice, the FBI, US President Donald Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and several US Congressmen.
Mickelwait’s organization was established to abolish commercial sex abuse, sexual exploitation, and global sex trafficking. Exodus Cry is based on two principles: altering mindsets and changing laws.
Dr. Melissa Farley, executive director of Prostitution Research & Education, said the petition is proposing a fair and moderate position. She said the actions which occurred on PornHub’s watch are already illegal.
“Laila and her organization are taking a very reasonable stance. They’re only talking about children and they’re only talking about children that are being advertised for sale. Any prostitution of a child according to U.S. federal law is trafficking,” she told CNA.
“This is pictures of the trafficking of kids, in other words, pictures of the prostitution of children. To prosecute PornHub for profiting from photographs of the sexual assault of children for money…I’m delighted that her organization is taking this on.”
While Mickelwait did not originally plan to make a petition, she told CNA the initiative came about after she received feedback from people who were angry at the news regarding PornHub’s negligence regarding illegal material on its site.
“Everybody’s in agreement that children should not be trafficked and raped. Women should not be trafficked and raped for profit, for the sexual pleasure of billions of people who visit that website. There’s just no arguing with that,” she said.
During last year, 58 videos of sexual abuse and rape of a 15-year-old girl appeared on PornHub. The girl had been missing for a year when her mother found her on the adult website, leading to the arrest of her captor, Christopher Johnson, a 30-year-old Florida man.
Mickelwait said the 15-year-old girl had been approved by the supposed “verification system” of Pornhub, despite the girl being underage. She said that to upload a video, all that is needed is a valid email address.
“They had verified that 15 year-old-girl who was raped and assaulted on 58 videos on their platform … that was part of kind of what’s been called an explosive revelation of what’s happening on this website,” she said.
Michael James Pratt, head of GirlsDoPorn, was sued for over $12.7 million by 22 women who had been led to believe they were applying for “modeling jobs.” As it was actually a pornography shoot, the women who agreed to participate were told they would only appear on physical DVDs published in other countries and not online. The women were aged between 17 and 22.
Pratt is now facing charges in the US for trafficking and producing child pornography. He is reportedly on the run in New Zealand.
According to BBC, Rose Kalemba was abducted, beaten, and raped at age 14. Later a video of her sexual abuse appeared on PornHub. She found out about the videos through her classmates, who sent her links and bullied her for it.
After she discovered the videos, she would email PornHub over the next few months pleading for the content to be taken down and emphasizing her status as a minor, BBC reported. The website only obliged once she posed as her own lawyer.
Mickelwait said that because of the massive amount of content on Pornhub, she believes there are more instances of the sexual exploitation and child pornography than has been reported.
“If you go on my Twitter and you just scroll through, you could see case after case, after case, after case of instances where real rape, real trafficking is being uploaded to PornHub and PornHub is profiting off of that exploitation. It’s a huge problem,” she said.
“If we know that there’s 10, 12, 15, 20[cases], [then] there’s probably hundreds, thousands [of cases of sexual exploitation]… We have no idea how huge this could be based on the amount of content they have on their site.”
Mickelwait said the company that owns PornHub has a monopoly on the pornographic industry, having consolidated nternet porn.
“When people do things that are not okay, they need to be held accountable for that. But it also sets a precedent and example for anybody else who would try to do something like this and allow it, promote it, profit off of it. The public in the world is not going to put up with that,” she said.
“If it can happen to the world’s largest, richest, most powerful internet porn company, it could happen to anyone. I think that that’s why this is particularly important.”
She said that viewers of pornography are also harmed: “Experimental exposure to porn leads men and women to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity,” she said.
“Studies have been done that show that and demonstrate that when you watch hardcore violent pornography, it creates what’s called permission-giving beliefs about rape. It makes people believe what’s called the rape myths: that women want rape, that they deserve rape.”
Farley told CNA that all violent pornography is a problem, which may lead to extreme and violent fetishes or cases of prostitution. She said that all people harmed by sexual assaults in pornography should be compensated.
“My concern as somebody who’s been studying the sex trade for 20 years is that pornography is filmed documentation of sexual assault, humiliation, degradation, threats, and things like that. So any photograph of sexual assault is a problem,” she said.
“I would go much further. I would say that any pornography that harms anyone, whether they’re six, 16 or 60 years old, whether they’re male, female, trans, anyone who’s prostitution is filmed, who’s abuse is film, if they can show harm, they should sue PornHub for just everything it’s worth,” she added.
Vatican City, Feb 20, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- During a private meeting with bishops from the southwestern United States, Pope Francis talked about his 2019 meeting with Fr. James Martin, SJ, and about pastoral care and assisted suicide.
The pope met Feb. 10 for more than two hours with bishops from New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
Several bishops present at the meeting told CNA that in addition to discussions about his then-pending exhortation on the Amazon region, and on the challenges of transgenderism and gender ideology, Pope Francis discussed his Sept. 30 meeting with Martin, an American Jesuit who is well-known for speaking and writing about the Church’s ministry to people who identify themselves as LGBT.
“The Holy Father’s disposition was very clear, he was most displeased about the whole subject of Fr. Martin and how their encounter had been used. He was very expressive, both his words and his face – his anger was very clear, he felt he’d been used,” one bishop told CNA.
Martin met with Pope Francis shortly after a Sept. 19 column by Archbishop Charles Chaput criticized “a pattern of ambiguity” in Martin’s work, which Chaput said “tends to undermine his stated aims, alienating people from the very support they need for authentic human flourishing.”
“I find it necessary to emphasize that Father Martin does not speak with authority on behalf of the Church, and to caution the faithful about some of his claims,” Chaput added.
The meeting between Martin and the pope was taken by some as a response to Chaput’s column.
The meeting took place in a papal library ordinarily reserved for high-level audiences with the pope, which some journalists saw as a significant decision.
“By choosing to meet him in this place, Pope Francis was making a public statement. In some ways, the meeting was the message,” America Magazine reported of the encounter.
But bishops who met with the pope this week said that while Pope Francis had accommodated a request for a meeting with Martin, he was clear with them that he did not intend for it to convey any significance.
In fact, one bishop at the meeting told CNA that Pope Francis has said he “made his displeasure clear” about the way the meeting was interpreted, and framed by some journalists.
“He told us that the matter had been dealt with; that Fr. Martin had been given a ‘talking to’ and that his superiors had also been spoken to and made the situation perfectly clear to him,” another bishop said.
“I do not think you will be seeing that picture of him with the pope on his next book cover,” the bishop told CNA.
For his part, Martin told CNA Feb. 20 that “I can’t comment on what the Holy Father told me, since he asked me not to share the details with the media, other than to say that I felt profoundly inspired, consoled and encouraged by our half-hour audience in the Apostolic Palace, which came at his invitation.”
Two bishops told CNA that Martin’s work in regards to the LGBT community was also discussed with the heads of numerous Vatican congregations, and that some officials expressed concern about aspects of the priest’s work.
According to bishops present at the papal meeting, Pope Francis also spoke about euthanasia, and was asked about comments from Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who said at a December symposium that priests should “let go of the rules” in order to be present with people who have initiated assisted suicide.
At the symposium Paglia mentioned that he would be hold the hand of someone dying from assisted suicide, and that he does not see such an action as lending implicit support for the practice.
Pope Francis apparently told bishops that while priests must love mercifully those who have terminal illnesses, they can not “accompany” someone who is in the act of suicide, which the Catholic Church teaches to be gravely immoral.
One bishop told CNA that the same matter was brought up with the heads of Vatican offices, and “they were really clear that what [Paglia] said was a big problem, and that other bishops have brought it up.”
Vatican officials said “you just can’t do that,” a bishop said, in reference to any pastoral action that might seem to imply approval of, or cooperation with, assisted suicide.
Ed Condon contributed to this report.
New Orleans, La., Feb 20, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- A retired New Orleans judge heard arguments on Thursday on whether private correspondence between an NFL franchise and the Archdiocese of New Orleans should be made public.
Judge Carolyn Jefferson, a r… […]
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