How graduates can thrive, according to one Catholic entrepreneur

Washington D.C., Apr 15, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Global religious persecution spiked from 2014 to 2015, the Pew Research Center noted in a new report released this week.

“Government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion increased in 2015 for the first time in three years,” the latest annual Pew Research Center report on “Global Restrictions on Religion” began.

In 2015, there were “very high” or “high” levels of animosity shown towards religious groups in 40 percent of countries, the report noted, either through restrictive government laws targeting religious groups or violence or harassment toward adherents of specific religions by other members of society.

The 2015 percentage was up six points from 2014, when 34 percent of countries reported such levels of hostility to religious groups.

Pew’s report drew from various sources on global religious freedom, both from the U.S. government (annual international religious freedom reports of the State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom), the European Union and United Nations, and other non-governmental organizations.

The report was part of the “Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project,” funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation.

Certain countries and regions of the world showed especially high hostility towards religious groups. Russia, Egypt, India, Pakistan, and Nigeria all showed both government harassment of and social animus toward certain religious groups.

Some of the most common instances of hostility included “mob violence” waged against people for their religious beliefs or violence conducted in the name of religion, and also “government harassment and use of force against religious groups” Pew explained.

Certain regions fared worse than others on religious tolerance. Countries in the Middle East and North Africa featured the highest median levels by far of both “government restrictions on religion” and “social hostilities involving religion,” Pew reported.

However countries in sub-Saharan Africa showed the “largest increase” in the median levels of government restrictions in 2015, Pew noted, and both Europe and sub-Saharan Africa showed marked increases in “social hostilities involving religion.”

In Europe, there were many reports of harassment or violence against Muslims and Jews, continuing a pattern of both anti-Semitism on the continent and verbal or legal harassment of Muslims as the European Union deals with an influx of refugees from Muslim-majority counties like Syria and Iraq.

For instance, Switzerland showed an increase in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim incidents, including the desecration of a Muslim cemetery and an assault of an Orthodox Jew where one perpetrator shouted “Heil Hitler!”

Mosques and Muslims were targeted for vandalism or violence in the wake of the January, 2015 terror attacks on the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher market in Paris.

“France’s Interior Ministry reported that anti-Muslim incidents more than tripled in 2015, including cases of hate speech, vandalism and violence against individuals,” the report noted.

Thirty-two countries in the continent showed “social hostilities toward Muslims” in 2015, more than the 26 countries reported in 2014. Meanwhile, the number of European countries where there were social hostilities shown towards Jews remained high.

“The widespread harassment of Jews is notable because about eight-in-ten of the world’s Jews live in just two countries – the United States and Israel – but Jews continue to be harassed in a relatively large number of nations (74 in 2015),” Pew stated.

However, government officials also showed hostility to religious groups either through restrictive laws or rhetoric.

France and Russia in particular showed a spike, with over 200 “cases of government force against religious groups,” the report noted. These were mostly due to laws aimed at specific religious groups targeting the public exercise of religion, from France’s burqa ban to Russia’s treatment of some Muslims and groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses as extremists, jailing them without due process.

Some governments have been particularly restrictive of religious freedom for years, like those of China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Uzbekistan, the report noted. Others have more recently shown greater hostility, like Iraq, Eritrea, Vietnam, and Singapore in 2015.

Some of the government restrictions on religion were supposedly in reaction to terrorism. For instance, Muslim women in Cameroon and Niger were barred from wearing full-face veils after militants wore those veils to conceal bombs.

Both Christians and Muslims saw a sizable increase in the number of countries where they experienced harassment in 2015. Christians “were targeted by the highest number of governments in the Asia-Pacific region, where 33 countries harassed Christians in 2015,” the report said.

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Mass is said at the Oklahoma Catholic Men’s Conference in Norman, March 12, 2022. / Chris Porter/Sooner Catholic/Archdiocese of Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City, Okla., Apr 2, 2022 / 06:00 am (CNA).
On March 12, more than 800 Catholic men gathered i… […]

Washington D.C., Jan 29, 2021 / 06:30 am (CNA).- On Thursday, President Joe Biden struck down bans on U.S. funding of international pro-abortion groups—an act that could have far-reaching consequences.

 

Biden on Thursday issued a sweeping presidential memorandum on “Protecting Women’s Health at Home and Abroad,” repealing the Mexico City Policy and the Trump administration’s expansion of it.

 

However, what is the Mexico City Policy, and why is the repeal of it so significant?

 

The Mexico City Policy was first instituted in 1984 by President Reagan. It is named for the location of the UN population conference at which it was announced. The policy has been rescinded by Democratic Presidents Clinton, Obama, and now Biden; it was reinstated by Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Trump during their presidential terms.

 

Under the policy, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) cannot distribute family planning funds to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that perform or promote abortions.

 

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who has served as co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus for decades, was in office when the policy was first instituted.

 

He told CNA that existing policy—the Helms Amendment—had prohibited direct funding of abortions abroad, but stronger pro-life funding protections were still required.

 

“And the accounting trick that the pro-abortion groups were doing was that they would take the all of the U.S. funding and then tell us our money wasn’t being used to pay for abortion,” he said. “And then they would just fund abortions-on-demand, however many they wanted to do, and lobby for it.”

 

The Mexico City Policy, he said, “was all about saying if we care enough about the precious lives of unborn children who are going to be dismembered or chemically poisoned by an organization,” then “we’re not going to let bookkeeping tricks and accounting methods prevent us from as much protection as we can possibly provide.”

 

Many international pro-abortion groups that have partnered with the U.S. in the past—such as Marie Stopes International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation—aggressively promote abortion in developing countries.

 

“It is unrelenting,” Smith said of abortion advocacy by certain NGOs. “A lot of countries are pro-life, particularly in Africa and Latin America, and, sadly, we’re being forced to subsidize the lobbying and the performance of abortion by these groups.”

 

These groups work with multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and African Union to promote abortions in the developing world, he said. As an example, he noted that one NGO that received U.S. assistance wrote legislation in Kenya authorizing legal abortion.

 

The Mexico City Policy originally applied to around $600 million of U.S. international family planning funding. Critics call it the “global gag rule,” alleging that it silences recipients from referring for abortions or advocating for legal abortion.

 

However, beginning in 2017, the Trump administration not only reinstated the policy, but it also extended to more than $8 billion in global health assistance.

 

As pro-abortion groups withdrew from partnership with the U.S. over the pro-life requirements, their funding shortfall was not insignificant. The International Planned Parenthood Federation estimated in 2017 it would lose $100 million annually in funding, while Marie Stopes International estimated an $80 million funding shortfall.

 

Critics of the policy alleged that the pro-life restrictions were so broad they would hurt important global health initiatives such as AIDS relief. They argued that if NGOs forfeited U.S. foreign aid over the abortion restrictions, and the U.S. could not find suitable replacement partners, then there could be significant gaps in critical health care.

 

In August, a federal report found that the “vast majority” of U.S. partners in global health assistance accepted the new pro-life policies instituted by the Trump administration. For those which did not accept, either an alternative health provider, foreign governments, or donors stepped in to fill health care gaps.

 

Smith formerly chaired the House global health subcommittee, and in 2018 he authored a five-year extension of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He affirmed the conclusion that there were no significant gaps in health care as a result of the policy.

 

“So there wasn’t a single dollar cut for any health initiative—not one. It was redirected, but in most cases it was accepted,” Smith said.

 

“The issue is, abortion is not health care,” he said. “It is a very violent deed, and we don’t want complicity in global abortion.”

 

The Trump administration also applied funding restrictions to multilateral organizations because of abortion lobbying or alleged involvement in abortions.

 

In 2019, the Trump administration cut funding for the Organization of American States (OAS) because of its lobbying for abortion. In 2017, it stopped funding the UN’s population fund (UNFPA) because of the fund’s partnership with China on family planning—and alleged complicity in forced abortions and sterilizations under China’s two-child policy.

 

On Thursday, President Biden issued a sweeping order that repealed the Mexico City Policy and restored funding to UNFPA. He instructed federal agencies to begin reaching out to global health partners, to inform them that the previous restrictions on abortion performance, advocacy, and lobbying are no longer in place.

 

“Now more money will be flowing to the NGOs that so aggressively promote the destruction of innocent human life,” Smith said.

 

In addition, on Thursday Biden instructed the Secretary of Health and Human Services—Xavier Becerra has been nominated for the position but not yet confirmed—to review the Trump administration’s “Protect Life Rule.”

 

That rule applied to the Title X program, set up in 1970 to subsidize family planning and contraception. The Trump administration required Title X grant recipients to not refer for abortions or be co-located with abortion clinics. The original law that created Title X said that funding could not go to “programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”

 

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, withdrew from the Title X program in 2019 rather than comply with the new requirements. It forfeited an estimated $60 million annually in Title X grants by doing so.

 

Biden said the new prohibition on abortion referrals “puts women’s health at risk by making it harder for women to receive complete medical information.”

 

The idea of the Protect Life Rule was similar to the Mexico City Policy, Smith said: to ensure tax dollars don’t fund clinics where abortions are also being performed.

 

“We’re supporting the organization and, in this case, it’s under the same roof where babies are being dismembered or chemically poisoned,” he said.

 

The Biden administration is also withdrawing from the Geneva Declaration, a statement signed by the U.S. and 31 other countries in October stating that abortion is not an international human right.

 

Biden’s support for abortion—after he once supported the Mexico City Policy in 1984 while a senator—is “tragic,” Smith said.

 

“I’ve been in the pro-life movement for almost half a century, 48 years. This is tragic that a man who purported to be so pro-life—even during the campaign and then gave it up under pressure—will now become the most aggressive promoter of abortion on the face of the earth.”

 

“It was a core conviction, and you shredded your core conviction for political expediency. That, to me, is tragic.”

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