US

New York City, N.Y., Dec 10, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Seven decades after its proclamation, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still being hailed as “a great triumph achieved at a tremendous cost,” in the words of St John Paul II.

The landmark declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris Dec. 10, 1948. It includes a preamble and 30 articles that provide for individual freedoms, denounce torture and slavery, and affirm the equal dignity of all people.

The Vatican’s diplomatic representative to the United Nations recently praised the declaration, saying the anniversary presented an opportunity to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,” but also warned that parts of the world are experiencing the consequences of failing to uphold those rights.

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, offered his reflections at a Dec. 4 conference commemorating the document’s 70th anniversary.

Since Auza was in Katowice, Poland for another conference, his remarks were read by Msgr. Tomasz Grysa. The conference was jointly hosted by the Holy See and Alliance Defending Freedom International at the UN headquarters in New York.

He said the then-recent atrocities of the Holocaust and two World Wars had “revealed that there are some actions so wicked that no one can or will justify them, and certain fundamental values that no one will dispute.”

Archbishop Auza hearkened back to St. John Paul II’s praise for the declaration, which he offered a year after being elected Bishop of Rome.

“When Pope John Paul II spoke to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1979, he called [the declaration] the ‘fundamental document,’ the ‘basic inspiration and cornerstone of the United Nations Organization,’ and a ‘milestone on the long and difficult path of the moral progress,’” Auza wrote.

“After the horrors of the first half of [the 20th] century, it was obvious that human progress could not be measured only by scientific and technological advances, since even those could become weapons against the innocent,” Auza wrote, affirming that “human progress” includes ethical development as well.

Auza noted that the preamble of the UN charter affirms “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,” but does not specify what rights are to be upheld. The Commission on Human Rights later elaborated both political and civil human rights in the declaration, making them “practical” so as to guide action.

“[The rights] were framed not only in relation to the State but also to various mediating institutes like the family, human community, and religious groups, since human beings are persons in solidarity and fraternity rather than isolated individuals,” Auza wrote.

The original declaration itself did not contain any enforcement mechanisms per se, but later agreements such as the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights sought to incorporate human rights principles into the legal systems of individual nations. The United States ratified that covenant in 1992.

On the occasion of the declaration’s 70th anniversary, Azua highlighted three of the document’s “fundamental presuppositions” that he said “are perhaps not as widely and deeply appreciated today as they were by the framers and the delegates who voted for its adoption” because of cultural changes since the 1940s.

He spoke of the document’s universality, which he characterized as an attempt to formulate rights that would be valid regardless of time, place, and culture, which presumes that there exist universal human rights rooted in human nature. This ties into the document’s objectivity, Azua said; if human nature is objectively the same everywhere, then this prevents the universality of the rights “to be denied for cultural, political, social, philosophical or religious reasons.”

“Human rights are premised on the existence of a nature objectively shared by all members of the human race by the very fact of their humanity,” the archbishop wrote.

“From that nature flows human dignity, which refers to the intrinsic worth of the person, no matter one’s circumstances, no matter how young or old, rich or poor, strong or vulnerable, healthy or sick, wanted or undesired, economically productive or incapacitated, politically influential or insignificant.”

In other words, this recognition presupposes that all human beings are equal in value.

Finally, Auza highlighted the unity of the declaration— the importance of applying all the rights listed, rather than picking and choosing which rights to honor “piecemeal, according to trends or selective choices”— as an important element that was highlighted by Benedict XVI in 2008.

“The Declaration, [Pope Benedict] was saying, is not, and cannot be allowed to become, a menu of rights from which one can choose according to personal, national, or international taste,” Auza wrote.

To this point, Auza highlighted some of the notable instances of human rights violations in the world today.

For example, an estimated one in ten children will be subjected to child labor, and “tens of millions are ensnared by various forms of so-called modern slavery.”

Article 18 of the declaration upholds the freedom of “thought, conscience, and religion,” but “in so many places changing one’s religion or even practising one’s faith is still a death sentence or a reason to be discriminated against.”

Many countries, such as Sudan, have laws that criminalize apostasy, or converting from the state religion, usually Islam.

Auza noted that Pope Francis has spoken out against the reinterpretation of some rights over the years that conflict with each other, leading to, among others things, a breakdown of the family.

“Human rights in general, and the Universal Declaration in particular, were not meant to be used as weapons to advance political, economic, military or cultural agendas contrary to the fundamental human rights,” he wrote.

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Cincinnati, Ohio, Dec 8, 2018 / 04:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Lawmakers in the Ohio Senate have delayed a key vote on a bill to bar abortions after an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable. Given Gov. John Kasich’s promise to veto the bill, th… […]

Los Angeles, Calif., Dec 7, 2018 / 04:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced Thursday that it has updated its list of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors.

The 2004 Report to the People of God covers 70 years of… […]

Washington D.C., Dec 7, 2018 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- President Donald Trump announced Friday his nominations for the positions of U.S. Attorney General and Ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump will nominate William Barr to be the next attorney general o… […]

Jackson, Miss., Dec 7, 2018 / 10:57 am (CNA).- The federal investigation of a priest who allegedly fundraised more than $42,000 fraudulently, including through a GoFundMe campaign, has led Bishop Joseph Kopacz of Jackson, Mississippi to ask those who d… […]

Washington D.C., Dec 6, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- An immigrant rights group hopes the Maryland legislature will protect migrant workers in the state from labor trafficking and fraud by banning recruitment fees, licensing recruiters for jobs, and prohibit… […]

Denver, Colo., Dec 6, 2018 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- During Wednesday’s funeral for George H.W. Bush, US President Donald Trump made headlines when he did not recite the Apostles’ Creed. Supporters and critics of the president speculated on what his omission might have meant.

But the occasion raises another important question: What is the Apostles’ Creed, and what does it mean?  

The Apostles’ Creed is a developed expression of the faith handed down by the apostles, which originated in Rome and is used by the Catholic Church and the ecclesial communities of the West.

The creed took shape in the second or third century in connection with baptism, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, wrote in his 1968 work Introduction to Christianity.

Catechumens in those centuries were asked successively if they believed in each of the three persons of the Trinity, responding, “I believe”.

“Thus the oldest form of the confession of faith takes the shape of a tripartite dialogue, of question and answer, and is, moreover, embedded in the ceremony of baptism,” Ratzinger wrote.

The middle section of the creed, concerning God the Son, was expanded in the second, or, probably, third century, and it was in the fourth century that a continuous text, detached from the question and answer format, began to emerge.

The text of the Apostles’ Creed was finalized in Gaul during the ecclesiastical reforms of Charlemagne in the ninth century. That text was received in Rome, and the creed has been used in the same form ever since.

Ratzinger noted that the Apostles’ Creed is focused on salvation history and Christology, and is rooted in the ecclesiastical form of faith: that “faith demands unity and calls for the fellow believer; it is by nature related to a Church.”

The creed was treated by the early Church as a kind of symbolum, a tradition whereby a ring, staff, or tablet would be broken in half, and the corresponding halves used as identification for guests, messengers, or treater partners.

“Possession of the corresponding piece entitled the holder to receive a thing or simply to hospitality. A symbolum is something which points to its complementary other half and thus creates mutual recognition and unity. It is the expression and means of unity,” according to Ratzinger.

“In the description of the creed or profession of faith as the symbolum we have at the same time a profound interpretation of its true nature. For in fact this is just what the original meaning or aim of dogmatic formulations in the Church was: to facilitate a common profession of faith in God, common worship of him.”

The Apostles’ Creed’s connection to a dialogue between the Church and a catechumen during the ceremony of baptism is thus reflective of the communal nature of faith, which arises in the Church.

It also demonstrates that it is in worship that doctrine “assumes its proper place,” Ratzinger wrote, and that the Church “belongs necessarily to a faith whose significance lies in the interplay of common confession and worship.”

According to the Pope emeritus, the Church herself “holds the faith only as a symbolum … which signifies truth only in its endless reference to something beyond itself, to the quite other.”

This profession of faith was called the Apostles’ Creed at least as early as 390, when a council headed by St. Ambrose used the term in a letter to St. Siricius.

A legend holds that it is known as the Apostles’ Creed because it includes 12 articles, each of which was contributed by an apostle before their dispersal.

This legend “has the disadvantage of calling attention to a division … into twelve articles,” Henri de Lubac wrote in The Christian Faith, “whereas the structure of the Creed is tripartite because Christian faith is essentially faith in the indivisible Trinity.”

Moreover, this legend was discredited when at the Council of Florence in the 15th century, the Latins were surprised to find that the Greeks did not use the Apostles’ Creed.

The Apostles’ Creed has not been received by the Eastern Orthodox because it was not a subject of the first seven ecumenical councils; their sole profession of faith is the Nicene Creed. This has led at least a few journalists to wonder if perhaps Trump is seeking admission to an Eastern Church.

The Apostles’ Creed was used liturgically in the Latin rite of the Church until 1955. Prior to that year’s reform of the general calendar and the rubrics of the Roman Breviary, it was recited at the beginning of Matins and Prime, at the end of Compline, and during the preces of Prime and Compline during certain seasons.

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Philadelphia, Pa., Dec 6, 2018 / 05:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new statistical analysis seeks to contextualize data about child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania, four months after a grand jury report detailed hundreds of abuse allegations… […]

Bradenton, Fla., Dec 6, 2018 / 03:39 pm (CNA).- Millie Francis almost died once. She’s willing to do it again.

This time, she says, it would be for Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Property managers at the retirement community trailer park where Francis lives in west-central Florida have reportedly demanded that she remove a piece of plywood from her mobile home, on which she has painted an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

But from the sound of it, they will have a hard time getting her to comply.

“They’ll have to kill me first,” Francis, 85, told the property management authorities, according to the Bradenton Herald.

“You’re not going to tell this old lady what to do,” she told the newspaper. “This is America. As long as I have two arms and two legs, I’m going to do it.”

Francis said she feels blessed to even be alive, after a scrape with death during surgery 16 years ago, during which she says she was declared clinically dead for 15 minutes.

Her fierce devotion to her Catholic faith and to Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of the Americas, have remained strong, and she said she’ll go to court if she has to. She does not plan to remove her painting.  

The painting of the Virgin Mary was done on a piece of plywood that replaced a window Francis had removed from her mobile home. She said wanted to replace the window with plywood because of a nosy neighbor, and because light from security guards’ flashlights bothered her at night.

Francis said she obtained permission for the removal from Vanguard Property Management at Bradenton Tropical Palms, the 55+ trailer park where she lives.

The inspiration for the image came to her during Mass, she said, when she was praying about what to do with the piece of plywood that would cover the space where he window once was.

“I don’t want to say I had a vision or anything like that, but felt enlightened and received the inspiration from our Lady of Guadalupe to paint her image. So I promised that I would,” she told the Bradenton Herald.

Janet Nowakowski, a Vanguard property manager based in Tampa, demanded that Francis remove the painted plywood, allegedly because Francis did not have the window removal project completed by Oct. 31, per her agreement with property management.

Vanguard representatives also told reporters that Francis did not fill out an architectural request form, or seek permission from the trailer park’s architectural review committee, before painting the Blessed Virgin Mary on the plywood that replaced the window.

Francis said that the window removal was completed on time, and believes the order to remove the plywood image is an act of discrimination against her Catholic faith.

Other neighbors have decorated their lawns and trailers with all kinds of things, she said, and her painting “isn’t hurting anyone.”

“There’s all kinds of stuff out there, but this is because I’m Catholic and it’s wrong,” she said. “With all the things going on in the world, I would think there would be more important things to worry about than this.”

On November 9, lawyers representing Vanguard gave Francis 30 days to remove the image. The deadline is fast-approaching – and falls three days before the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is on December 12.

 But Francis refuses to budge.

According to reporting by Mark Young at the Bradenton Herald: “Documents indicate that Francis did have permission from the committee to replace the window, and she was inspired to have the painting done while at church at the last minute. Francis said she not only completed the project on time, but also there is nothing in the park rules regarding decorating after the fact.”

CNA has contacted Tropical Palms trailer park for a copy of their property guidelines, but did not receive a response by press time.

More than 22 million Americans live in manufactured housing, the Manufactured Housing Institute reports. Manufactured home residents have a median annual income of less than $30,000. Mobile home parks are often owned by large corporations or distant landlords, and managed by third-party property management corporations.

Francis believes she has followed the rules at the trailer park where she lives.

While the stress of going to court has been affecting the octogenarian’s health, she said she plans to decorate for Christmas and shine a laser on the image.

She does not plan on re-applying for permission for the project. She said she has appealed to her local Knights of Columbus chapter, through her parish at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, for help.

“I just don’t know anything about this legal stuff,” she told the Bradenton Herald.

“They say I’ll have to pay their attorney fees if they prevail in court. I can’t afford this. I need help and I don’t know what will happen to me, but I do know I’m not taking it down.”

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Nashville, Tenn., Dec 6, 2018 / 01:43 pm (CNA).- Hours before David Miller is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee’s electric chair, the state’s governor has rejected Miller’s request that his sentence be commuted to life in prison.

Gov. Bill Haslam released a one-sentence statement Dec. 6, saying that “after careful consideration of David Earl Miller’s clemency request, I am declining to intervene in this case.”

Miller, 61, was convicted of the 1981 murder of Lee Standifer, whom he bludgeoned to death and stabbed. He was sentenced to death, and chose to be executed by the electric chair rather than by the state’s controversial lethal injection protocol.

Attorneys for Miller filed a clemency petition with the governor last week. The petition said that Miller “accepts responsibility for the death of his friend.”

The petition also argued that Miller suffers from “severe mental illness” that renders him “far outside that group of offenders who are the worst and for whom the death penalty is reserved.”

Miller’s attorneys said that sentencing courts had not considered “years of horrific physical abuse, sexual assault and neglect,” or their ensuing effects, when the man was sentenced to death.

Court records say that as a child Miller was routinely beaten by an alcoholic stepfather, and Miller says he was serially sexually abused by family members, including his mother, beginning at age 5. His family disputes his claims.

According to The Tennessean, Miller attempted suicide at age 6, and spent most of his childhood in state institutions. After a brief stint in the Marine Corps, he became a drifter, doing manual labor and hitchhiking.

In the early 1980s, Miller lived briefly with a Baptist pastor and his family in Tennessee, and during that time he met Standifer. She was, like Miller, in her early twenties. She was mildly brain damaged, and lived at the YWCA in Knoxville. The two became friends.

On May 20, 1981, Miller killed her. He was using LSD at the time, and drinking. He claims not to know exactly what happened, though he acknowledges his responsibility for Standifer’s death. He fled, and was arrested a week later, passing counterfeit bills in Ohio.

Miller’s attorneys have argued that Standifer’s death was the result of a psychotic fury, the result of post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological illnesses, manifested amid an argument between the two.

He was convicted in 1982 and sentenced to death.

Tennessee’s bishops say that while “there was absolutely no justification for the crime Mr. Miller committed 38 years ago,” the death penalty is not necessary.

In a Dec. 5 statement, Bishops Richard Stika of Knoxville, Mark Spalding of Nashville, and Joseph Kurtz, apostolic administrator of Memphis, wrote that “the Church teaches that the death penalty is simply not necessary when society has other means to protect itself and provide a just punishment for those who break civil laws. Rather than serving as a path to justice, the death penalty contributes to the growing disrespect for human life.”

“We believe that all those convicted of terrible crimes still retain their human dignity and deserve a chance to live,” they added.

“To recognize the dignity of the lives of those on death row is not to deny the dignity of the lives of their victims or their grieving loved ones left behind. The lives of victims and sinners alike should be respected; the taking of another life will serve no purpose but vengeance.”

Pope Francis is an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, revising in August the Catechism of the Catholic Church to classify its use as “inadmissible.”

The pope’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, called leaders in 2011 to “make every effort to eliminate the death penalty.”

Pope St. John Paul II prayed publicly for universal abolition of the death penalty.

In the 1995 apostolic exhortation Evengelium vitae, he wrote that governments “ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

Haslam has declined to stop two other executions in 2018.

Miller’s legal team has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution. He is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m., Dec. 6.

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