Chinese scientists, officials denounce gene-editing of embryos

Kansas City Chiefs’ kicker Harrison Butker (left) and Kansas City Chiefs’ punter Tommy Townsend watch the ball during Super Bowl LVII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on Feb. 12, 2023. / Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images

Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2023 / 11:07 am (CNA).

The game-winning kick in Super Bowl LVII was made by a Catholic, who later gave credit to his teammates and glory to God.

With the score even at 35-35 and seconds remaining in the game, Harrison Butker kicked a field goal to give the Kansas City Chiefs a victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, 38-35. 

The 27-year-old kicker is outspoken about his Catholic faith, and many on social media were quick to point out that during the game he was wearing what appeared to be a brown scapular around his neck.

The scapular, which is made up of two pieces of brown wool and is worn hanging across one’s chest and back, is a sacramental from the Carmelite tradition that anyone can wear as a sign of their consecration to Mary.

As the ball went through the uprights, his teammates embraced him in a joyous celebration. Butker had just helped give the Chiefs their second Super Bowl victory since 2020.

“The offensive line did a great job blocking. Great snap, great hold — and thankfully, that ball went through. All glory to God,” Butker said on Feb. 12, according to Arrowhead Pride. 

In an interview with CNA in 2022, Butker opened up about his love for the Traditional Latin Mass, saying: “I think it really entices a lot of young people who are looking for answers. They’re looking for happiness. And for me, I found happiness in embracing the faith offered in the Catholic Church.” 

“I felt like I wasn’t able to embrace it until I saw it completely exposed in the light. I knew that I had discovered authentic Catholicism. And I found that at the Traditional Latin Mass, in the traditional sacraments, and I think a lot of young people have found that as well,” Butker said.  

Butker’s game-deciding field goal looked effortless, despite his having missed a field goal earlier in the game.

In the first quarter, Butker’s 42-yard field goal attempt ricocheted off of the left goal post, resulting in a missed opportunity to give the Chiefs an early lead.

Speaking about the missed kick after the game, Butker said he just focused on the next opportunity to score a field goal.

“You got to get that out of your mind and just focus on the process and the next opportunity that you get.”

“But I felt like as the game went on, I was hitting a better ball, a better rotation, and yeah, glad that last kick went through,” he said.

Butker became the deciding factor on Super Bowl Sunday, but that’s not the only game he helped clinch for the Chiefs. Just two weeks earlier at the AFC Championship game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Butker hit the game-winning field goal with three seconds left to send the Chiefs to the Super Bowl.

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who led his team to victory, also talked about the importance of his Christian faith at a news conference ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“I know that I’m blessed to be in this position … and so to have a faith backing, I know why I’m here — and it’s not about winning football games. It is about glorifying him,” Mahomes said.

“I have no pressure when I step on that football field, because I know why I’m here.”

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Baltimore, Md., Nov 13, 2019 / 09:44 am (CNA).- The USCCB’s migration committee chairman hopes that Congress can come to a solution regarding the situation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy recipients, as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a case seeking approval to eliminate the program altogether.

Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin told CNA Nov.12 that while he and his brother bishops have been advocating for a congressional solution to DACA, their main concern now was the situation of the approximately 700,000 DACA recipients.

“Those people need also to have someone advocate for them. So the bishops need to speak up and say very clearly that these people, we don’t want separation of families,” said Vasquez. About 256,000 children have at least one parent with DACA status.

There are fears that if DACA were to be repealed, these people would then be deported, splitting up the family. This is “a big concern for the Church,” said Vasquez.

“The Church is always going to advocate on the side of the family, because the family is very important,” he added.

DACA recipients, he said “already are…part of the fabric of this country” and contribute to the economy and to their communities.

“They’re leaders already in many of our parishes and churches,” said the bishop.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in three cases – Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of University of California; McAleenan, Secretary of Homeland Security v. Vidal; Trump, President of U.S. v. NAACP – which concern whether the Trump administration may end DACA outright.

President Barack Obama introduced DACA via executive memorandum in June 2012. It permits people who were brought to the United States illegally as children to apply for temporary protection from deportation and work permits. The program was set to expire in 2017, but this has been delayed after Congress was given a chance to codify parts of DACA into law.

Congress failed to pass DACA into law, and the partisan-based debate over immigration and border security has continued.

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision about whether President Donald Trump would be permitted to end DACA in the spring or early summer of 2020.

As for Vasquez, he will continue to hope that Congress can come to a solution.

“My hope and prayer is that they would be able to do something, they’d be able to reconcile and come together and take care of these people,” he said. “I think deporting them is the wrong answer. It’s not the way to address this issue.”

[…]

Montgomery, Ala., Jun 7, 2019 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- A Catholic ethicist raised concerns over a bill that would mandate “chemical castration” as a condition of parole for incarcerated pedophiles. The issue is at the crux of an Alabama bill that has passed the state’s legislature and now is awaiting the governor’s signature.

The bill, HB379, would mandate so-called “chemical castration” as a condition for granting parole to convicted sex offenders who offended against children 13 years of age or younger. The treatment would be provided and supervised by the Department of Public Health, and would be paid for by the parolees, unless they could demonstrate the inability to pay, the bill states.

The bill defines the chemical castration treatment as: “The receiving of medication, including, but not limited to, medroxyprogesterone acetate treatment or its chemical equivalent, that, among other things, reduces, inhibits, or blocks the production of testosterone, hormones, or other chemicals in a person’s body.” Medical experts have raised multiple concerns about the bill including the fact that a judge, rather than a doctor, would inform parolees about the possible and serious side-effects of the treatment, according to the Washington Post.

In comments to CNA, Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, an ethicist with The National Catholic Bioethics Center, said that blanket mandates of medical interventions “can raise more problems” than they solve.”

Pacholczyk said a case-by-case approach would be more appropriate.

“If testosterone-reducing agents are to be employed in a sensible fashion, it should be on a case-by-case, medically-indicated (and rehabilitation-oriented) basis, rather than as a universal requirement for every situation of establishing parole for convicted pedophiles,” Pacholczyk said in email comments.

A proponent of the bill responded to questions about whether the bill is inhumane, stating that he believes the “punishment should fit the crime.”

Rep. Steve Hurst, who introduced the bill, told local media that convicted pedophiles “have marked this child for life and the punishment should fit the crime.”

“I had people call me in the past when I introduced it and said, ‘Don’t you think this is inhumane?'” Hurst told CBS affiliate WIAT-TV.

“I asked them what’s more inhumane than when you take a little infant child, and you sexually molest that infant child when the child cannot defend themselves or get away, and they have to go through all the things they have to go through. If you want to talk about inhumane, that’s inhumane.”

According to Catholic ethical principles, punitive measures should always be ordered toward “rehabilitation and repentance, not towards the inflicting of unreasonable or disproportionate harm upon an individual who has committed an offense,” Pacholczyk added. For example, he said, the Catholic Church would not condone chopping off the hands of a repeatedly-offending thief.

Likewise, “chemically castrating” a person so as to “actively strip away any vestige of an offender’s personal sexuality and render him sterile, androgynous, and/or inert, this could raise legitimate ethical concerns about violating that person’s bodily and personal integrity,” he said.

“This would be a moral concern particularly if other means of treating these individuals were not exhaustively pursued, such as incarceration, directed treatments and therapies, counseling, spiritual support, etc.,” he added.

In some cases, the priest noted, it could be morally and ethically licit for a sex offender to take drugs that would lower their testosterone levels and overall libido “to more manageable levels” if it were found to be medically appropriate for that specific person, and if it were part of a broader therapetic regimen involving “extensive psychological and other supportive counseling aimed at helping them order their sexual impulses so as not to re-offend,” he said.

In those particular cases, the term “chemical castration” may be an improper term, Pacholczyk noted, if the goal is the overall healing and restoration of normal, baseline hormone levels in a person.

[…]