Washington D.C., Jun 2, 2018 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A proposal introduced earlier this year aims to expand the practice of surrogacy within the U.S. in an effort to include same-sex couples as surrogate parents and to loosen state supervision ove… […]
Washington D.C., Jun 1, 2018 / 04:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Fifty years after the sexual revolution promised female empowerment through casual sex “without consequences,” scholars are looking into the far-reaching social effects of that revolution.
“Unlike our forerunners in 1968, those of us living today now have access to something they didn’t — 50 years of sociological, psychological, medical, and other evidence about the revolution’s fallout,” said author and scholar Mary Eberstadt in the opening speech at a conference entitled, “The #MeToo Moment: Second Thoughts on the Sexual Revolution.”
“The time has come to examine some of that evidence,” said Eberstadt.
Eight female scholars presented research on birth control, infertility, the hook-up culture, sexually transmitted diseases, pornography, surrogacy, and sex trafficking at the May 31 conference, co-sponsored by the Catholic Women’s Forum and Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture.
“The #MeToo movement has forced us to confront the reality that when it comes to sexual politics, women remain very much at risk,” said Dr. Suzanne Hollman, a professor of clinical psychology at George Washington University.
Seventy-eight percent of women said they regretted their most recent hookup encounter, according to a 2012 study cited by Hollman.
When Dr. Monique Chireau was in medical school at Brown University training to be an obstetrician-gynecologist 20 years ago, cases of venereal warts were extremely uncommon.
“Now it is a common disease,” said Chireau, who discussed the rise in sexually transmitted diseases and their lasting effects. Sexually transmitted diseases have reached an all-time high in California, according to data released by the California Department of Public Health earlier this month, which showed more than 300,000 cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in 2017. These sexually transmitted diseases can lead to infertility, explained Chireau.
“Women spend [their] 20s trying to avoid pregnancy and their 30s trying to become pregnant,” said Dr. Marguerite Duane, an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University in her discussion of research on birth control versus fertility awareness based methods.
“The explosion of sexual activity thanks to the pill has also been accompanied by levels of divorce, cohabitation, and abortion never seen before in history,” observed Eberstadt. “It has also, as the #MeToo movement shows, contributed to a world in which 24/7 sex is assumed to be a sexual norm to the detriment of those who resist any advance for any reason.”
“The belief that sex is a casual, non-intimate, recreational, adversarial behavior” and pornography use among men are two of the main predictors of sexual violence against women, said another psychologist, Mary Anne Layden, who has treated both rapists and rape victims in her cognitive therapy practice.
Pornography provides the “perfect learning environment” to train men to force sex on women, deafening their ability to perceive consent, according to Layden, who directs the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
She cited multiple studies that have found that pornography’s overwhelmingly violent content leads to violence against women.
One study of students 18 to 21 years old found that the earlier the male child was exposed to pornography, the more likely it is that he will engage in non-consenting sex as a young adult.
“The libertarian conceit that pornography is a victimless crime is over,” said Eberstadt, who called pornography “the sexual revolution’s bastard son.”
The sexual revolution empowered “the already strong and makes the weaker parties more vulnerable than before. This is true, for example, of the young women who were recruited for and demeaned by egg harvesting,” continued Eberstadt. “It is true of the women and children exploited in the frightening rush to normalize prostitution.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found an 846 percent increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking online in a period of only five years, said Professor Mary Leary, who specializes in criminal law and human trafficking and teaches at The Catholic University of America.
Women are also being exploited in the surrogacy industry, another arena in which “bodies are commodified,” explained Jennifer Lahl, the founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl has testified at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on surrogacy and egg trafficking.
“The global fertility industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar a year industry,” said Lahl. “Earlier this week, Market Watch announced this industry will reach $30 billion dollars by 2023.”
“As the years go by we have larger sample sizes and more studies being published, we are learning more and more about the very real harms to women who serve as surrogates or egg donors and also the children that were born of these technologies,” Lahl explained.
“Bodies of women in particular are valued for their reproductive capacities — their eggs, their wombs. Children become objects of design and manufacture when highly desirable eggs are sought from women of certain intelligence, features, capabilities are brought together with carefully picked sperm and often gestated by another woman, even a stranger in another country, a third world country,” she continued.
“This is the largest social human experiment of our time — we are learning as we go of the harms to women and children. Where else in medicine do we allow such things to happen?” asked Lahl.
Gendercide is another global consequence of the sexual revolution’s promotion of abortion, said Mary Eberstadt. “Around the planet millions more unborn girls are killed every year than boys. They are killed because they are girls.”
“This grotesque outcome could not have been foreseen half a century ago, but we see it now. It is as anti-female as it is possible to be,” she continued.
In responding to the victims of the sexual revolution, the Church must remember that “our responsibility is healing,” said Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. in a keynote address.
The cardinal encouraged Catholics to reach out to reach out through encounter and “accompaniment of this generation.”
“Our task is not only to have clear in our mind the teaching, but to be able to reach out to them in a way that they begin to hear us,” he said.
Catholics in the Diocese of Cleveland help hundreds of refugees resettle and integrate into the US every year. […]
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.
Youngstown, Ohio, Jun 1, 2018 / 02:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop George V. Murry, S.J., of Youngstown, Ohio was released from the Cleveland Clinic Tuesday evening, following a month of intensive chemotherapy treatment, the diocese said.
“Diagno… […]
What we see in Ireland and throughout the West is Belloc’s pagan life “without Christian revelation” and Ratzinger’s “Church of pagans who call themselves Christian”. […]
Des Moines, Iowa, Jun 1, 2018 / 11:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An Iowa judge is temporarily blocking the state’s newly-signed “heartbeat bill” from going into effect, he announced on Friday.
Judge Michael Huppert issued a temporary injun… […]
Vatican City, Jun 1, 2018 / 09:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Sports touch the lives of many people, and while they can be a vehicle for character growth, they can also pose moral dangers, as in cases of abuse or corruption, warned a Vatican document released… […]
Vatican City, Jun 1, 2018 / 08:29 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Friday that Pope Francis has tapped Slovakian-born Bishop Milan Lach S.J. as the new head of the Ruthenian Eparchy of Parma, which encompasses a large portion of the Midwest region of the United States.
Born in Kezmarok, Slovakia in 1973, Lach, 44, has been the apostolic administrator for the vacant eparchy since 2017.
His appointment as the eparchy’s new bishop was announced in a June 1 communique from the Vatican. The news was published stateside in Washington D.C. by the pope’s ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Christophe Pierre.
Headquartered in Parma, Ohio, the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma governs the majority of Ruthenian Catholics throughout the Midwest. The eparchy encompasses the majority of Ohio, apart from certain eastern border counties, as well as Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
The Ruthenian Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic Church and in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. Ruthenian Catholics use the Byzantine rite and are led by the Ruthenian Archbishop of Pittsburgh.
Bishop Lach was admitted to the Greek-Catholic seminary in Presov, Slovakia in 1992, and three years later he entered the novitiate with the Society of Jesus in Trnava.
After finishing his theological studies at the University of Trnava, Lach was ordained a deacon for the Society of Jesus in 2000, and was ordained priest for the order in the Diocese of Kosice in 2001.
That same year he began working in the scientific area of the Center of Spirituality East-West of Michal Lacko in Kosice. In 2009, he was tapped as the center’s superior, a role he held until 2011.
Lach also obtained both a master’s degree and a doctorate from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, completing his studies in 2009.
In 2011 the bishop was named vice dean of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Trnava for foreign relations and development.
He was named auxiliary bishop of the Archeparchy of Presov of the Byzantines by Pope Francis in June 2013, and in 2017 he was named apostolic administrator of the Parma eparchy when the former bishop, John Michael Kudrick, retired.
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