Manila, Philippines, Apr 24, 2019 / 04:09 pm (CNA).- Catholic leaders have offered prayers for the Philippines after two earthquakes struck the region this week.
A magnitude-6.1 earthquake hit the nation’s largest and most populous island of Luz… […]
In a 1985 article in the New York Times titled “One Too Many for the Muse,” J. Anthony Lukas noted that “an exhaustive roster of literary scrooders would be too long to publish here.” He […]
Washington D.C., Apr 24, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List has launched a new campaign to pressure members of Congress to sign the discharge petition for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
If 218 members of the House of Representatives sign the discharge petition, the bill will move to the floor, where it will be considered. Presently, 199 members have signed, including all but two Republican members, but only two Democrats: Reps. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) and Collin Peterson (D-MN).
The petition opened for signatures on April 2.
In an April 2 statement, Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ pro-life committee, called for the bill’s passage.
“Our nation is better than infanticide. Babies born alive during the process of abortion deserve the same care and medical assistance as any other newborn. To not provide care is a lethal form of discrimination against the circumstances of the child’s birth.”
“I strongly urge all representatives to sign this petition, and then vote for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. This bill would add specific requirements to help ensure that babies born alive after an abortion attempt can have a fair shot at life,” he said.
“The purpose of this campaign is to really focus on the House,” SBA List Vice President of Communications Mallory Quigley told CNA. “This is where the pressure point is now because the Senate’s already voted. We think this should be bipartisan.”
Quigley said that signing the petition would not present an electoral problem for Democrats, “especially for people who were elected in Republican-leaning districts.”
The new campaign, which will feature digital ads and events aimed at explaining what the Born Alive bill is, is focused on representatives in what SBA List considers to be persuadable districts.
Reps. Cindy Axne (IA-03), Collin Allred (TX-32), Abby Finkenauer (IA-01), Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07), Conor Lamb (PA-17), Lucy McBath (GA-06), Elissa Slotkin (MI-08), Abigail Spanberger (VA-07), and Haley Stevens (MI-11) have been singled out for attention, with each of them representing states won by President Donald Trump during the 2016 election.
“This is a very moderate proposal that we think they ought to support,” Quigley told CNA. She said the timing of the ad campaign was centered around the Congressional recess, when the members would be in their districts.
“Many Democrats who represent Republican-leaning districts have not yet signed the discharge petition to hold a vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser in the press release.
The bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), said that her legislation was “a measure that has passed with bipartisan support in the past.”
Presently, 26 states have some sort of legal protection for babies who survive abortions. Wagner said that it was important that this be extended throughout the entire country.
Dannenfelser said the bill “is urgently needed” as lawmakers in New York, Virginia, and other states push a “radical agenda of abortion on demand through the moment of birth and even infanticide.”
“The overwhelming majority of Americans – including 70 percent of Democrats – want Congress to protect vulnerable babies who survive abortions, yet Speaker Pelosi and House Democratic Party leaders have repeatedly blocked this compassionate, common-ground bill.”
She referred to the Democrats blocking the legislation as “extremists” who are out of step with their own party.
Polls have consistently shown that the majority of Americans, including Democrats and even those who call themselves pro-choice, are opposed to late-term abortion.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would criminalize doctors who do not provide age-appropriate medical care to an infant that is born alive after an abortion. It also would provide the mother of the infant the ability to file a civil suit against her doctor. It does not criminalize abortion nor add any new restrictions on abortion.
Piura, Peru, Apr 24, 2019 / 03:55 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of Piura, Peru, José Antonio Eguren, announced that he will withdraw a complaint of aggravated defamation against journalist Pedro Salinas, who was found guilty and convicted in the first instance by a Peruvian court.
In a statement published April 24, the archbishop said that “today I have presented before the First Unipersonal Criminal Court of Piura my request for withdrawal of the complaint filed against the journalist Pedro Salinas Chacaltana for the crime of aggravated defamation towards me.”
On April 22, the results of an April 8 judgment against Salinas were released. Judge Judith Cueva Calle sentenced Salinas to one year of probation and a fine of 80 thousand soles (about $24,000) for the crime of aggravated defamation against Archbishop José Antonio Eguren Anselmi.
In his statement, Eguren said the judgment provoked “a series of unjustified reactions, even within the Church , which I consider to impact a higher good, namely the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ.”
“As a bishop, my first responsibility is to watch over the portion of the People of God entrusted to me. For this reason, without prejudice to the outcome of the judicial process, I have decided to renounce my right to defend my reputation and good name,” he said.
The archbishop recalled that “my intention in presenting the lawsuit against Mr. Salinas, was to defend the fundamental right that we all have to the good name, to reflect on the value of the honor of the people, and to prevent those who would make false and offensive accusations without more foundation.”
Therefore, he said, “I trust that this decision will be understood in its proper dimension and can contribute to the unity of Peruvians and our Church, so important in the country’s current moment.”
The case of Pedro Salinas
Pedro Salinas is co-author of the book “Mitad Monjes, Mitad soldados,” published in 2015, which recounts the sexual, physical and psychological abuses committed by Luis Fernando Figari, founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, and other members of the same group. Eguren himself is a member of the group.
On Aug. 15, 2018, Eguren filed an aggravated defamation lawsuit against Salinas for comparing him in a January article to the Chilean bishop Juan Barros, who was accused of covering up the sexual abuse of ex-priest Fernando Karadima.
According to Salinas, Eguren himself would have a part of the system of physical, psychological and sexual abuse within the Sodalitium.
In the article, Salinas also cited an Al Jazeera article that accused Eguren of illegal land dealings in the city of Piura.
The archbishop reiterated in a statement on April 14 that Salinas declined to rectify those accusations and “dismissed all the information that was sent to him, via a notary, which proved that what he said was false.”
In the same statement, he said that he requested that Salinas not be incarcerated, and that any civil judgment imposed on the journalist be donated to a shelter unconnected with the Sodalitium.
Judgment is a “historical fact”
Percy García Cavero, Eguren’s attorney, told ACI Prensa April 24 that the judgment against Salinas is a “historical fact,” and that Eguren decided to withdraw from the lawsuit because “he understands that there are higher interests, that in the present moment of the Church, require him to renounce the right to defend his honor. “
“The purpose is obviously to maintain unity and avoid any type of damage to the process of reparation and accompaniment to the victims of the Sodalitium,” the attorney explained.
In this regard, he noted that the withdrawal of the complaint “is not a victory for Salinas, because Archbishop Eguren is not suggesting that is was wrong for him to complain, on the contrary.”
“He recognizes that he had every right, that his honor has been tainted and that an independent judge said so,” said Garcia Cavero.
The lawyer said that the issue “is legally settled,” recalling that the “sentence issued by the judge of first instance is fully valid in terms of legal oath.”
“It is important reference for journalists in terms of regular practice of the profession and I think it should be a resolution of analysis in different legal and journalistic academic environments,” he said.
This quarrel was a “historical fact that will not disappear because there was a process and a valid pronouncement that determined that Mr. Salinas Chacaltana slandered Archbishop Eguren,” he said.
“Although there is no penalty, civil compensation or any sentence, the sentence has a moral content,” he added.
The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae is a society of apostolic life founded in Peru to which the director of CNA, Alejandro Bermúdez, belongs.
This report was originally published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister agency. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Washington D.C., Apr 24, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- The founder of a Catholic health-share group has said that battling loneliness is crucial to opposing the growing acceptance of assisted suicide in popular culture.
Chris Faddis, co-founder of Solidarity HealthShare, spoke to CNA about the importance of respecting the dignity of all patients at the end of life.
Speaking to CNA during the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast April 23, Faddis said that a rising social and legal acceptance of assisted suicide is exacerbated by a lack of healthcare options that are both ethical and affordable, but is ultimately driven by loneliness and despair in the face of suffering.
“When you see no way out, something like a pill seems tempting,” he said.
Solidarity helps patients and their families find other options to assisted suicide to ease suffering and, Faddis said, expressed a kind of communion in its structure. In a health-share system, members of the organization help to pay each other’s healthcare costs. Members are self-pay patients who can see the provider of their choice while Solidarity helps to negotiate a lower rate, which would then be paid by the group of members.
“We’re just there to facilitate and to kind of direct them,” said Faddis. “The affordability is there because there’s no profit in it. We’re a non-profit, we’re just kind of facilitating that sharing.”
“In all ways, we lead our members to the options that are going to respect life, that are going to promote their dignity. We provide care management, we provide services. And we encourage them.”
Faddis, who serves as the Catholic health-sharing company’s chief operating officer, told CNA that the experience of suffering and death in his own family had formed his commitment to protecting human dignity at the end of life and led to his founding Solidarity. He served as a caregiver for his wife as she was dying of cancer, and experienced first-hand the importance of dignified and respectful hospice and palliative care.
The experiences like his, Faddis said, needed to be shared in the wider battle to resist a culture of death in which suffering has no meaning.
“If we don’t tell [an alternative view of suffering], the other side’s telling the horror stories of suffering all day long.”
Approaching death with dignity, Faddis said, is important for patients and families alike. “It’s worth taking time over,” he said, noting that his family benefited “in ways too many to count” from the care and support his wife received from their own community.
Solidarity does not pay for health services that are contrary to Catholic teaching, such as abortion, contraception, or euthanasia. When members are diagnosed with terminal illnesses, Faddis said that his organization works to ensure that members are directed to specific palliative care physicians who will not encourage assisted suicide.
Faddis said that an approach that underscores the value of life is especially important for terminal patients who are often feel as though they are a burden on their family and community. Terminal illness was, he said, a painful experience, but one that can be lived with dignity and meaning.
“When people are cared for well, then they can suffer well. So as they’re going through those difficult times, or just those difficult decisions, people can help them just by caring well for them,” he said.
Assisted suicide is now legal in eight states, and is being considered by an additional four. New Jersey’s Catholic governor recently signed it into law in his state, after “careful prayer.”
Faddis said that in the United States, there is a general fear of suffering, which has resulted in an embrace of a quick death.
“I think we have a responsibility to console and give solace to the dying,” he said, stressing that preventing isolation was a vital part of respecting the dignity of human life.
“And I think if we do that well, we’ve solved the problem. I mean, if you’re dying alone, you want the pill.”
Aside from the Philippines, Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor) is Southeast Asia’s only predominantly Christian nation. And when one talks about Christianity in that country, that basically means the Church of Rome: multiple sources […]
Washington D.C., Apr 24, 2019 / 12:40 pm (CNA).- Lawyers representing the US House of Representatives on Tuesday filed a motion in federal court to block funding for the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border, which President Donald Trump had p… […]
Vatican City, Apr 24, 2019 / 04:46 am (CNA).- To stop the spread of evil in the world, Catholics must go above and beyond, loving and forgiving others even when it is undeserved, Pope Francis urged Wednesday.
“Jesus inserts the power of forgiven… […]
Washington D.C., Apr 24, 2019 / 03:30 am (CNA).- In a decision that could have potentially far-reaching consequences, the U.S. Supreme Court has said it will hear cases involving claims that sexual orientation and gender identity should be included und… […]
Published a week short of his 92nd birthday, Joseph Ratzinger’s essay on the epidemiology of the clergy sex-abuse crisis vividly illustrated his still-unparalleled capacity to incinerate the brain-circuits of various Catholic progressives. The origins of […]
© Catholic World Report