Vatican City, Oct 4, 2018 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Archbishop Charles Chaput told the Synod of Bishops that the confidence to announce the truth of the faith is essential to the Church’s mission, and especially her service to young people.
Chaput deli… […]
London, England, Oct 4, 2018 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Amid a British investigation into sexual abuse, Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster is expected to face questions regarding the way his archdiocese handled allegations of misconduct made against his p… […]
Vatican City, Oct 4, 2018 / 10:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Polish archbishop participating in the Vatican synod on youth said Thursday that today’s young people have benefited from technological progress, but face a world that is “poorer in p… […]
Vatican City, Oct 4, 2018 / 09:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Young adults are struggling to realize their passion, something to center their lives around, and the Church can help them find meaning, one young synod participant from Vietnam said Thursday.
&nbs… […]
Belfast, Northern Ireland, Oct 4, 2018 / 07:45 am (CNA).- A new legal challenge has been mounted to Northern Ireland’s abortion law calling it incompatible with human rights because it does not allow abortion in cases where the unborn baby has a fatal abnormality. Pro-life advocates are arguing that abortion is not the compassionate choice, even in the most difficult circumstances.
“We can and will do so much better for women and their children in Northern Ireland than offering them the barbaric violence, distress and heartbreak of abortion,” said Bernadette Smyth, director of the Northern Ireland group pro-life Precious Life.
“Those working to overturn our legal protections for the unborn are attempting to make abortion appear to be a compassionate response to a woman facing a poor diagnosis for her unborn baby,” she said Oct. 2.
The plaintiff is seeking a high court decision against the current restrictions. Sarah Ewart travelled from Belfast to England for an abortion after a 20-week ultrasound scan led to a diagnosis of anencephaly for her baby, the Irish Times reports. The condition means the baby’s brain and skull do not develop and causes death either before birth or shortly afterwards.
“Pregnancy should be a happy time, whereas it has been a scary time for me, every scan I went to, I feared,” Ewart told the Press Association.
“Five years ago, I didn’t think I would still be fighting now, but we are going to go all the way, we are part of the U.K., the same laws should apply here,” she said.
Ewart now has two children and would like to have more, but said this was daunting given that doctors have told her she faces a risk of a similar pregnancy.
Smyth, however, thought the case for legal abortion was misleading.
“People are being fooled into thinking that abortion is a humane answer for a baby who is not going to survive for long after birth,” she said. “The heart-breaking reality however is that these late term abortions for babies with life-limiting conditions literally tear these babies apart in the womb, and so often leave women suffering with long-term grief, regret, anxiety and other mental health problems caused by the abortion and their knowledge that their baby’s death was a chosen one.”
Abortion is allowed in Northern Ireland only if the mother’s life is at risk, or if there is risk of permanent, serious damage to her mental or physical health.
In June the U.K. Supreme Court threw out a previous challenge to Northern Ireland’s abortion law, saying the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, which brought the case, did not have standing to do so. However, a majority of the judges said that the Northern Ireland abortion law framework is incompatible with human rights laws insofar as it bars abortion in cases of pregnancy by rape or incest or in cases of fetal abnormality. The U.K. government has so far not legislated any change.
Grainne Teggart, Northern Ireland campaigns manager for Amnesty International, said that taking the case to the Belfast high court should secure the necessary declaration that Northern Ireland’s abortion law violate human rights as they are enshrined in national legislation for the U.K.
Teggart said Ewart and other women should not have to go through the courts.
“The U.K. government has the power to change the law now and bring an end to the suffering of women here,” she said.
Precious Life said that Ewart “should have been offered real care and options, such as the loving support system of perinatal hospice care.”
“This service gives families the precious time they need with their sick babies, and gives these babies the dignity and love they deserve, no matter how short their lives may be.”
The pro-life group said that at 20 weeks into pregnancy, babies are close to surviving outside the womb. “Babies do not deserve to be killed so barbarically for any reason, or simply because they have a disability,” said the group.
“We must work to inform the people of Northern Ireland about the reality of abortion and what happens in the abortion procedure.”
Precious Life stressed the need to educate Northern Ireland about “what really happens in the abortion procedure.” The organization said that during a late-term abortion – between 15 and 24 weeks – the unborn baby’s body parts are “pulled apart piece by piece with a long-toothed clamp and removed.”
“The baby’s head is grasped and crushed in order to remove through from the mother’s cervix,” it added.
In an induced labor abortion, potassium chloride is injected into the baby to stop its heartbeat before delivery.
“If aborted alive, the baby will be left to die,” said the group. It cited National Health Service statistics estimating that in Britain, 66 babies a year are “left to die after late-term abortions gone wrong.”
“This is not healthcare. This is not compassion. This is cold-blooded killing,” Precious Life said. It urged the people of Northern Ireland to “continue to stand with us as a light in the darkness and a voice for unborn babies and their mothers who deserve all the help, love and support we can offer to encourage them to choose life.”
Northern Ireland’s abortion law could be taken up by either the Northern Ireland Assembly or the Parliament of the United Kingdom, but the Northern Ireland government is currently suspended due to disagreements between the two major governing parties.
The Democratic Unionist Party, the largest party in Northern Ireland and a key member of the U.K.’s governing coalition, is opposed to changing the law. Sinn Féin, another prominent party in Northern Ireland, backs a law that permits abortion.
In the neighboring Republic of Ireland, constitutional protections for the unborn were repealed following a May referendum. Lawmakers there have said they will work to pass taxpayer-funded abortion and implement legislation that will prevent Catholic-run hospitals from objecting to performing abortions.
Vatican City, Oct 4, 2018 / 05:03 am (CNA).- Pope Francis donated to recovery efforts in Indonesia after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the Sulawesi coast, leaving at least 1,400 people dead.
The pope sent $100,000 in recovery aid through the Va… […]
Tulsa, Okla., Oct 4, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Whether you dress up as a ghoul, a hero, or a saint, Halloween has a Christian origin that should inspire us to remember our mortality and our redemption in Christ, Bishop David Konderla of Tulsa has said.
“In contrast to popular culture’s observance of Halloween, even the customary appeal to the ‘frightful’ has a devotional meaning in the Catholic tradition. Props such as skulls and scythes have historically recalled our mortality, reminding us to be holy because we are destined for judgment,” the bishop said, citing Hebrews 9:27 and Revelation 14:15. “Visible symbols of death thus represent a reminder of the last things – death, judgment, Heaven, and hell.”
Bishop Konderla discussed the upcoming holiday, which falls before the Nov. 1 feast of All Saints, in a Sept. 28 memorandum on the celebration of Halloween in the Diocese of Tulsa.
Halloween has origins in the Catholic liturgical calendar, he said, but the customs surrounding it have “drifted from the feast’s intended meaning and purpose.” The name itself derives from the archaic English phrase “All Hallows’ Evening,” referring to the Eve of All Saints. Since All Saints can begin with evening prayer the night before, Halloween is the feast’s “earliest possible celebration.”
“While the ‘Gothic’ aspect of Halloween reminds us of Christian teaching about the resurrection of the dead, our culture often represents this in a distorted manner, for when the dead are raised they will in truth be ‘clothed with incorruptibility’,” said Bishop Konderla.
When separated from Catholic teaching, the holiday’s grim, ghoulish, or “Gothic” costumes can be mistaken as “celebration or veneration of evil or of death itself, contradicting the full and authentic meaning of Halloween.”
“For the Christian, Christ has conquered death, as has been prophesied and fulfilled,” he said. “Christ has conquered death by his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, the Paschal Mystery whose graces are evident in the glory of all saints.”
The bishop also discussed the custom of dressing up as Christian saints.
“The custom of dressing up for Halloween is devotional in spirit,” he said. “By dressing up as the saints whom we most admire, we imagine ourselves following their example of Christian discipleship. This practice allows the lay faithful in festive celebration to become ‘living icons’ of the saints, who are themselves ‘icons’ or ‘windows’ offering real-life examples of the imitation of Christ.”
“In dressing up as saints we make Christian discipleship our own in a special way, following the exhortation of St. Paul: ‘Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ’,” he said, citing Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.
Bishop Konderla invoked the imagery of the saints used in the Book of Revelation.
“Proper veneration of the saints naturally leads to adoration of the Lamb who was slain, whom the saints adore and follow wherever he goes,” he said. “True devotion to the saints, through our prayers and imitation of their witness, leads us sinners back to Christ.”
The bishop also voiced a few warnings. He said it is important to avoid Halloween popularizations of things that are contrary to the Catholic faith. These include the glamorization or celebration of “anything involving superstition, witches, witchcraft, sorcery, divinations, magic, and the occult.”
“We want to be good models of Christian virtue for those we serve and make clear distinctions between that which is good and that which is evil,” he added.
“Let us urge one another this Halloween to express in every detail of our observance the beauty and depth of the Feast of All Saints,” Bishop Konderla concluded.
“Let us make this year’s celebration an act of true devotion to God, whose saints give us hope that we too may one day enter into the Kingdom prepared for God’s holy ones from the beginning of time.”
Guadalajara, Mexico, Oct 4, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA).- After an event featuring abortion rights activists was held at a Mexican Jesuit university, the president of the Mexican bishops’ conference reiterated that the Church opposes abortion, and said that he had no prior knowledge of the event and that this forum was not authorized by the Church.
Abortion is illegal in Mexico. However, in 2007 Mexico City, the country’s capital, decriminalized abortion for up to 12 weeks for any reason. By some estimates, there have been two million abortions there since that time.
In his communiqué entitled “No to Abortion,” Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega stated “Our position as believers is founded on both Sacred Scripture and the magisterium of the Church as well as natural law and what science has demonstrated regarding the beginning of the existence of the human being,”
“Serious scientific studies prove the existence of a life, of a different person, from the moment of conception. Respect for life must not be subject to a debate, nor some eagerness for ‘openness’ or to be ‘cutting edge,’ even less so for questions of taste or feelings, as if respect for life could depend on what some people feel or think,” the prelate pointed out.
Nor can respect for life, he added, “be subject to the arbitrariness of personal conscience alone, because the conscience must be objectively formed and because what it in question is the life of an innocent person.”
“When we talk about this issue—and we don’t accept abortion—it’s not a matter of intolerance or rejecting dialogue, but of coherence with the right of every person to live, especially if it’s an innocent person, the one yet to be born,” Cardinal Ortega pointed out.
The controversial university program was held Sept. 26 at the ITESO (Institute of Technology and Higher Studies of the West), Jesuit University of Guadalajara. It was entitled “Dialogue concerning the Right to Decide,” and featured three presenters wearing the green kerchief of the pro-abortion movement in Latin America. The speakers were affiliated with organizations that promote the legalization of abortion in Mexico and other countries in the world: CLADEM, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights; GIRE, the Informational Group on Chosen Reproduction, and Catholic Women for the Right to Decide.
CLADEM campaigns for legalized abortion throughout Latin America. GIRE has reportedly received more than $100 million dollars from the International Planned Parenthood Federation over the last ten years. Catholic Women for the Right to Decide (Catholics for Choice in the U.S.) has been condemned by bishops in various parts of the world.
At the center of the controversy is the Jesuit priest and outgoing rector of the university, Fr. José Morales Orozco.
In defending the university’s decision to hold the event, Fr. Orozco stated that “ITESO is for life, is against abortion, but before that it is for freedom of conscience,” explaining that “people have every right and obligation to decide in conscience what they see and nobody can judge, only God.”
In a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, and ITESO spokesman said that “human life is sacred and always must be cared for and respected” and pointed out that Orozco “at the activity made it clear that the university is for life and against abortion, and for freedom of conscience.”
ITESO “dialogues with people of different religious and political beliefs, different ethnic and cultural origins. A respectful exchange of ideas is brought about with those who think differently because this is how the reflection of the university is developed and deepened and knowledge is increased.”
The university added that “abortion is one of the five main causes of maternal death, and these cases occur especially with poor women. It’s an issue that must be reviewed and discussed from the ethical and moral point of view, as well as its implication in terms of social justice and public health policy.”
Nevertheless, there was no presenter at the forum to explain the Church’s teaching or its basis in the sciences.
In response to the event, the president for the National Front for the Family for the state of Jalisco, Jaime Cedillo, demanded that ITESO not be a “platform to promote” abortion advocates.
Speaking to ACI Prensa, Cedillo criticized that the event at the Jesuit university was used “as a promotion of an international movement sponsored by large organizations that promote abortion.”
“At an educational institution like the university, which has a Christian inspiration, it can’t lend itself as a platform for the culture of abortion,” he noted.
Cedillo expressed his dismay that the position against abortion was not presented in order to open the doors to “a healthy debate at the university.”
He added that if a university “defends a clear position, obviously it can’t led itself to a scenario that openly promotes something to the contrary.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
ROME, October 3rd, 2018 — The XV Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops opened in Rome on Wednesday. In one sense, that’s about all the news there is to give: the real working sessions […]
Dublin, Ireland, Oct 3, 2018 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A “small but significant” number of general practitioners in the Republic of Ireland are appealing to the county’s health minister to exempt them from being forced to refer pat… […]
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