Year: 2018

Baltimore, Md., Jan 5, 2018 / 04:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An appellate court struck down a Baltimore city ordinance Friday, ruling that the city’s pro-life pregnancy centers would not be forced to display in their waiting areas information relating to abortion services.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ Jan. 5 decision, a victory for Baltimore’s pregnancy centers, was a unanimous 3-0.

Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns, Inc., a pro-life pregnancy center in Baltimore, along with the Archdiocese of Baltimore and St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Congregation, Inc., sued the city of Baltimore in March 2010 after a city ordinance was passed the previous year which required it and other organizations promoting alternatives to abortion to post signs in their waiting room saying that they do not perform abortions and will not refer patients out for an abortion.

The ordinance only applied to “limited-service pregnancy center(s)” that do not provide abortion or birth control.

Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns said that they should not be forced to post this information as it ran contrary to the center’s mission. The center operates in space owned by a Catholic church, and provides pregnant women with counseling, sonograms, pregnancy tests, prenatal vitamins, diapers, and other needs completely free of charge.

The mayor of Baltimore and the City Council were joined in the suit by a variety of pro-abortion groups, including NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood of Maryland, and the Maryland Abortion Fund. The city argued that the ordinance was lawful due to the center’s “deceptive advertising” and the various health risks from delaying an abortion.

Previously, the center had run advertisements on Baltimore busses about its free pregnancy tests, counseling, and alternatives to abortion, but did not mention that it is a center religiously opposed to abortion.

In October 2016 the district court ruled in favor of Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns, Inc., but the ruling was appealed and sent to the 4th Circuit.

In the appellate court’s opinion, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson said that the City of Baltimore could not provide a single example of someone who entered the Greater Baltimore Center thinking that she could obtain an abortion or abortion referral, and that the center had a history of “affirmative advocacy of abortion alternatives.”

Wilkinson said the city ordinance was “neither viewpoint nor content neutral,” as it was aimed specifically at clinics that do not provide abortion services.

“We do not begrudge the City its viewpoint. But neither may the City disfavor only those who disagree,” wrote Wilkinson.

On the city’s defense of the ordinance combating “deceptive advertising,” he also said the ordinance was “overinclusive” as it applied to all pro-life pregnancy centers, regardless if they do any sort of advertising whatsoever.

Wilkinson wrote that it was the “compelled speech” mandated by the signage that violated the First Amendment, and that while the City of Baltimore may view abortion as acceptable, the Greater Baltimore Center did not, and that it indeed is “antithetical” to its mission to do so.

“At bottom, the disclaimer portrays abortion as one among a menu of morally equivalent choices,” said Wilkinson. “While that may be the City’s view, it is not the Center’s. The message conveyed is antithetical to the very moral, religious, and ideological reasons the Center exists. Its avowed mission is to “provid[e] alternatives to abortion.”

This, said Wilkinson, is where the City of Baltimore violated the First Amendment.

“But, at least in this case […], it is not too much to ask that they lay down the arms of compelled speech and wield only the tools of persuasion. The First Amendment requires it.”

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Washington D.C., Jan 5, 2018 / 12:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Several Catholic bishops’ call for clarity and compassion on sexual identity issues such as transgenderism drew the ire of a dissenting Catholic group which is part of a well-funded LGBT activism network.

New Ways Ministry’s executive director Francis DeBernardo encouraged his group’s supporters Dec. 18 to write the four bishops who signed the recent letter. Claiming gender transition helps people “become closer to God,” he said the letter is “denying transgender experience” and “promotes a false scenario about how gender topics are being taught to children.”

The Dec. 15 letter “Created Male and Female” was published on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Catholic signers included Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who chairs the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth; Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, chair of the bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage; Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, chair of the bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty; and Bishop Joseph Bambera of Scranton, who chairs the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

Other signers included religious leaders from Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Baptist, and Muslim backgrounds.

The religious leaders stressed that male and female are God-given differences that must be publicly acknowledged, and that those who are confused about their own identity deserve authentic support.

Their letter voiced the belief that “God created each person male or female; therefore, sexual difference is not an accident or a flaw – it is a gift from God that helps draw us closer to each other and to God. What God has created is good.” They cited the Book of Genesis on the creation of humankind: “male and female he created them.”

DeBernardo, however, contended the letter was based on a scientifically false idea of gender. He rejected the idea that gender is a choice, portraying it as something discovered through one’s biological and sociocultural development.

“To force someone to live inauthentically is neither healthy nor holy,” said DeBernardo. “Reading this statement makes one wonder if any of these leaders have ever listened to the journey of transgender people. If they had, they would find that transgender people often experience their transition as not only a psychologically beneficial step, but one that also involves important spiritual dimensions. Transitioning helps people become closer to God. That is something religious people should support.”

The religious leaders’ letter said the movement to enforce the idea that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man is “deeply troubling.”

They voiced concern that children are affected by current trends in sexual identity and are harmed when told they can change their sex or are given hormones that can affect their development or render them infertile.

Desires to be identified as the opposite sex are “a complicated reality that needs to be addressed with sensitivity and truth” and with a response of “compassion, mercy and honesty,” the letter said.

The letter is in line with writings from Pope Francis, who has addressed sexual identity issues several times. In his 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, he said young people “need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created.” And in his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’, he linked the acceptance of the human body as God’s gift to accepting the entire world as a gift from God. “[T]hinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation,” he warned.

New Ways Ministry has faced correction from leading U.S. bishops in the past, including a March 2011 statement from Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington. A February 2010 statement from Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, then-president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, said the group’s claim to be Catholic “only confuses the faithful regarding the authentic teaching and ministry of the Church with respect to persons with a homosexual inclination.”

In 1999 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by the future Pope Benedict XVI, said New Ways Ministry’s founders took an approach to homosexuality that had “ambiguities and errors” which cause confusion among Catholics and harm the community of the Church.

New Ways Ministry’s current backers include the Arcus Foundation, founded by billionaire heir Jon Stryker. The foundation also backs the Equally Blessed Coalition, of which the group is a part. A 2014 grant for this coalition aimed “to support pro-LGBT faith advocates to influence and counter the narrative of the Catholic Church and its ultra-conservative affiliates” in connection with the Catholic Church’s Synod on the Family and World Youth Day.

In 2016 New Ways Ministry gave its Bridge Building Award to Father James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large of America Magazine. The priest’s lecture at the award ceremony was the basis for his book Building a Bridge, on Catholic-LGBT relations.

Catholic pastoral approaches to sexual identity and transgender issues in line with Church teaching are underway, though rarely on an organized basis.

In February 2017 a spokesperson for the U.S. Bishops’ Conference Office of Public Affairs told CNA most pastoral care has largely taken place “at a local and personal level.”

“As attention to and awareness of this experience has grown, we are seeing more efforts regionally and nationally to respond in a way faithful to the Catholic understanding of the human person and God’s care for everyone,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said that dioceses with their own chapter of Courage, which aims to accompany Catholics with same-sex attraction, are in a good position to respond to people with questions about their sexual identity.

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Washington D.C., Jan 5, 2018 / 02:51 am (CNA).- It’s been a little over a year since the 2016 election that polarized the nation and left deep political divides among family and friends.

Another election may be the last thing many Americans want to think about, but with midterm races just 10 months away, the already tense political rhetoric is about to become even more heated.

This election season comes at a time of broad dissatisfaction with America’s major political parties. Harvard’s Institute of Politics recently found that only 29% of young Americans age 18-29 had a strong party affiliation.

An NBC / University of Chicago survey found that just 26% of American adults said the Republican and Democratic parties are doing an adequate job representing the American people, while 71% said a third party is needed.

What would a viable third party look like? Is a third party even possible, or is it more likely that we will see major party leaders scramble to recover eroding loyalties by redefining party values and principles?

It’s always tough to predict what will happen in politics. But since Catholics make up roughly 1 in 4 U.S. voters, they have a chance to shape the trajectory of existing and new political parties over the next few years.

And in fact, Catholics have a duty to shape the political landscape. The US bishops have repeatedly taught that Catholics should take an active role in the political process; discouraging blind partisanship, and encouraging that, “our participation should help transform the party to which we belong.”

In order to do this, we first have to understand what the Church teaches about politics. What exactly is the nature and purpose of the state? Catholics on both sides of the aisle often claim that their party’s view of government embodies the vision of Christ. But is that true?

In 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War drew to a close, Pope John Paul II penned a momentous encyclical, Centesimus annus. In it, he reflected on another encyclical, Rerum novarum, the work by Pope Leo XIII that had laid out the foundations of Catholic social thought one hundred years earlier.

Through the lens of Rerum novarum, and looking at the events taking place in his own time, John Paul II wrote:

“The Marxist solution has failed, but the realities of marginalization and exploitation remain in the world, especially the Third World, as does the reality of human alienation, especially in the more advanced countries. Against these phenomena the Church strongly raises her voice.”

However, the Pope didn’t stop there. He continued:

“Vast multitudes are still living in conditions of great material and moral poverty. The collapse of the Communist system in so many countries certainly removes an obstacle to facing these problems in an appropriate and realistic way, but it is not enough to bring about their solution. Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces.”

The words of John Paul II have been echoed by his successors. Both Benedict XVI and Francis have had sharp criticisms for Marxism and for an “unbridled capitalism” that relies entirely upon the machinations of the free market, without recognizing the need for values that can only be upheld through intentional human action.

So what does the Church propose? John Paul II clarifies: “The Church has no models to present; models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one another.”

In other words, it’s up to Catholics to work for the best solution we can in our current circumstances.

What does it mean to put the Church’s social teaching into practice in 21st century America? It’s a complex question, but before we can even start proposing answers, we need to know what the Church’s social teaching is.

What does it mean to say that the dignity of the human person “is the foundation of all the other principles and content of the Church’s social doctrine,” or to say that “society and the State exist for the family”? What are the principles of the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity? What is the universal destination of goods and how does it relate to private property? What is the preferential option for the poor?

Again and again, the bishops have clarified that it is not the Church’s role to tell people whom to vote for at the ballot box. Rather, the Church talks about issues and principles. To understand what the Church teaches about the issues – from abortion to migration – and to exercise the prudential judgment necessary to turn those ideas into policies, we must first understand the foundational principles. John Paul II describes the Church’s social teaching as “an indispensable and ideal orientation,” a viewpoint, and a framework on which to build.

As we enter into what is certain to be a heated election year, why not make it a (belated) New Years Resolution to learn more about Catholic social teaching? Centesimus Annus is a great place to start. So is the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. To catechists, teachers, and members of the clergy: Why not resolve to teach the Church’s social doctrines more frequently, to help equip Catholics as they prepare to vote?

Educating ourselves on these issues can help us be better citizens, and better Catholics. In the words of Pope Francis: “A good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of himself, so that those who govern can govern.”

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