Pro-life group concerned over NIH head’s support of fetal tissue research

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 28, 2022 / 16:35 pm (CNA).
Top luxury fashion brand Balenciaga has issued an apology after outcry over the company’s recent ad campaign featuring young children surrounded by sex… […]

Washington D.C., Mar 2, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Catholics attending Mass at the Conservative Political Action Conference convention, held outside Washington, DC, this weekend, told CNA their decision to support President Donald Trump’s bid for reelection is mostly because of his administration’s record on abortion. 

CNA spoke to several people who attended one of the daily Masses offered during the event Feb. 26-29. 

Several said they could not consider voting for Democratic candidates because of the party’s absolute support for abortion, even while some acknowledged that Trump himself once supported legal protection for abortion.

Javier Martin, an immigrant from Spain who now lives in New York, told CNA after Mass that while he does not agree with Trump on everything, the president’s policies align most closely with his own views, as compared to the other candidates running. 

“Policy wise, it’s much harder to vote for Democrats right now, if you felt the pro-life issue is imoprtant to you,” said Martin. “That’s just a non-starter on the Democrat’s side right now.” 

Martin said that he thinks that “Trump seems to be going in a better direction” than what other candidates are proposing. 

The annual CPAC conference is considered by many to be a reflection of the trends and topics of importance in populist conservative circles. While Trump was considered an outsider at the conference in the years before his presidential candidacy, the 2020 event had many of the trappings of a Trump campaign rally.  

Grace Dwyer and Lauren Pels are Catholic students who attended CPAC this year. They are both 17 and will be voting in their first presidential election this November. Both young women told CNA they plan to vote for Trump. 

Dwyer, who lives in the Washington area, told CNA that she was galvanized by seeing Trump speak at the 2020 March for Life, saying she found the event “really amazing.” 

“I’ve been [to the March for Life] every year since I was two, and just having the president there this year was amazing,” she said. 

Dwyer also appreciated hearing Vice President Mike Pence speak at the CPAC conference, especially, she said, because he stressed the Republican Party’s commitment to pro-life values, and invited disillusioned pro-life Democrats to join the Republican Party.

Being pro-life has “always been something big for me,” Dwyer explained. 

Pels agreed with Dwyer, and she said that she, too, plans to vote for Trump because of his pro-life record.

“A big thing for me is that President Trump is pro-life, especially with how far the left has moved on abortion,” said Pels, citing recent congressional debates over the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill that would require medical care be given to a child who survives an abortion. 

Pels also said she approves of how Trump had “stopped giving aid to fund abortions in other countries,” referring to the president’s Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy. 

Pels acknowledged that while “some of [Trump’s] past comments have been problematic and conflicted with Catholic beliefs,” she said his actions as president have outweighed his past statements and behavior, “especially when you look at what the actions of the left would have been, which are absolutely egregious,” Pels said. 

Another Mass attendee at CPAC cited the president’s pro-life views as the reason she will be voting for him in November.

Bernadette Repisky spoke to CNA after Mass at the conference on Thursday evening. Repinsky traveled to CPAC from the Philadelphia area, and she previously attended the conferences in 2012 and 2016. 

Repinksy told CNA that she “loves” Trump because of his pro-life views, and that she believes that “he’s doing more for my country than any president has ever done in my lifetime, and I’m in my fifties.”

Trump had previously supported the right to an abortion, something Repinksy said does not bother her. She also offered her view on criticisms of the president’s moral character, which include allegations of sexual assault and harassment. 

“So he might’ve been a Democrat in his former life, might’ve been a playboy in his former life, but I don’t judge him by that,” she told CNA. “That’s for God. I judge him by what he’s doing right now and what he says he’s going to do for us and for this country.” 

“I stand behind him one hundred percent.”

While every Catholic CNA spoke with at CPAC indicated plans to vote for Trump, even with reservations, nationwide polling shows that the Catholic vote in November is likely to be far more diverse. 

In the recent EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll, 46% of Catholics said that there was a “sure” or “good” chance they would vote for Trump, and an additional 8% of respondents said it was “possible” they would vote for the president. Slightly more than a third–36%–said they would “never” vote for Trump. 

Fifty percent of Catholics surveyed by the poll said they would consider voting for a third party candidate.

This was the first year that daily Mass was celebrated at the conference, held at National Harbor outside of Washington, D.C., with priests volunteering from nearby parishes. 

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC, told CNA that the decision to include daily Mass at the event came in response to widespread support for a vigil Mass celebrated on the final day of the conference last year. 

“There’s so many kids who are here from schools, and CPAC ends on a Saturday, and then most of them then get on airplane Sunday morning,” Schlapp told CNA. “And so we started with a vigil Mass last year and I got so much great feedback. I had people stop me in airports and train stations saying, thank you for doing Mass on Saturday night.”

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Nashville, Tenn., Sep 1, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An Evangelical Christian coalition’s statement on marriage, sexuality, and gender identity is “largely consonant” with Catholic thought, according to one commentator.

“The language of the document is clearly Evangelical, but its articles are largely consonant with Catholic understandings of human sexuality and sexual morality,” Stephen P. White, a fellow in the Catholic Studies program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told CNA Aug. 30.

“I think Pope Francis would agree with virtually everything in the letter,” White continued. “When man forgets his Creator, he loses sight of himself as well. We see the result of this in the confusion over sexual morality, but in many other areas as well. It’s what most of Pope Francis’ last encyclical, Laudato si’, was about.”

The Nashville Statement was published by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood after endorsement in Nashville by more than 150 Evangelical Christian leaders Aug. 25.

“As Western culture has become increasingly post-Christian, it has embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being,” said the statement. “By and large the spirit of our age no longer discerns or delights in the beauty of God’s design for human life.”

“Many deny that God created human beings for his glory, and that his good purposes for us include our personal and physical design as male and female,” it continued. “It is common to think that human identity as male and female is not part of God’s beautiful plan, but is, rather, an expression of an individual’s autonomous preferences.”

Denny Burk, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, said the statement aimed “to shine a light into the darkness – to declare the goodness of God’s design in our sexuality and in creating us as male and female.” He said the council prayed that the statement might provide churches and Christian organizations with “biblical guidance on how to address homosexuality and transgenderism.”

The council aims to foster a coalition of like-minded Evangelicals and influence a new generation of Evangelicals who are being pressured to abandon their vision of Christian teaching.

Signatories of the Nashville Statement include Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine; K. Erik Thoennes, a theology professor at Biola University; and Jerry A. Johnson, president of National Religious Broadcasters.

The statement includes 14 articles which each include affirmations and denials. It affirms marriage as a lifelong union of a man and woman; sex differences and sexual equality as a part of God’s creation; “chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage”; God’s forgiveness of sins; and salvation through Christ.

It rejects sexual immorality, whether heterosexual or homosexual. The statement affirms “our duty to speak the truth in love at all times, including when we speak to or about one another as male or female.” Another of its affirmations: it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism, on the grounds that “such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.” It is not “a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.”

The Nashville Statement affirms the ability of people with same-sex attraction to live a life pleasing to God, encourages a self-conception as male or female “defined by God’s holy purposes in creation,” and rejects “a homosexual or transgender self-conception” as inconsistent with God’s purposes in creation.

For White, the statement’s language reflected “the absence of Catholic sacramental theology, for obvious reasons.” He also questioned an apparent failure to recognize that chastity is a virtue for both married and unmarried people.

“But the basic outline of Christian sexual morality is there: our sexuality is good and God-given, sexual intimacy belongs in marriage and nowhere else, marriage is between a man and a woman, no sin is insurmountable to God’s grace, etc.”

White predicted a mixed reaction, saying “many will be grateful for simple sanity in a time of widespread confusion; others will see the affirmation of orthodox Christian teaching on sex and marriage as disconcerting, perhaps even hateful.”

“The Gospel doesn’t please everyone,” he added.

White said that Americans’ views on sex and morality have undergone drastic change. These changes are more than a shift in morality, in his view. Rather, they reflect “a fundamental change in our understanding of human nature itself.”

“Whether it’s individualism, or affluence, our technological power, we often delude ourselves into thinking we can do as we please…and that doing as we please will make us happy,” White said, citing the Book of Genesis. “It’s the oldest temptation in the book, literally: to make ourselves like gods.”

“Unfortunately, when man forgets God, he loses sight of himself as well,” he said. “We see the result of this in the confusion over sexual morality, but in many other areas as well.”

Nashville mayor Megan Barry criticized the statement on Twitter, saying it “does not represent the inclusive values of the city & people of Nashville”.

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