New York City, N.Y., Sep 28, 2019 / 06:01 am (CNA).- As displaced Christians return to their homes in the Middle East, the Vatican Secretary of State encouraged U.N. representatives Friday to help rebuild a culture ravaged by the Islamic State.
Cardin… […]
It’s not often that network television offers a serious exploration of matters of faith, good, and evil, as well as the presence of the devil in modern society. The new CBS drama series Evil, which […]
Washington D.C., Sep 27, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Catholic leaders and organizations have condemned an announcement by the Trump administration that it intends to cap the number of refugees admitted to the United States at 18,000 for the 2020 financial year.
The 18,000 figure will not include people who are claiming asylum. A person seeking asylum does so after arriving at a port of entry. A refugee is processed before arriving in the United States.
The new proposed figure marks a 40% drop from the previous year’s ceiling of 30,000.
In a phone call with journalists, a senior administration official explained that the new refugee policy would prioritize refugees by the basis for their application over region of origin. The administration said that the large backlog in asylum cases is part of the reasoning behind the reduced number of refugees. There are nearly 400,000 asylum cases currently being processed by the U.S. government.
“First, we’re prioritizing those who have been persecuted for their religious beliefs,” said the official, explaining that 5,000 places would be reserved for this category.
“The U.S. is committed to advancing religious freedom internationally, including the protection of religious groups across the globe.”
An additional 4,000 spaces will be reserved for Iraqis who assisted the United States, and an additional 1,500 places will be reserved for Honduran, Guatemalan, and El Salvadoran nationals who do not otherwise qualify for asylum.
The remaining 7,500 spots will go to eligible claimants not otherwise covered by these categories.
A statement released by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the policy shift.
“We are currently in the midst of the world’s greatest forced displacement crisis on record, and for our nation, which leads by example, to lower the number of refugee admissions for those who are in need is unacceptable,” said Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of the Diocese of Austin, who chairs the USCCB Committee on Migration.
“Refugees are among the most vulnerable people, fleeing war, religious persecution, and extreme targeted violence. Turning a blind eye to those in need with such callous disregard for human life would go against the values of our nation and fail to meet the standards that make our society great,” added Vasquez.
Vasquez also voiced concerns about a proposed executive order that would allow cities and states to turn away refugees.
“We fear the collateral negative consequences, especially for refugees and their families, of creating a confusing patchwork across America of some jurisdictions where refugees are welcomed and others where they are not.”
Vasquez urged President Trump and Congress to “work together to restore U.S. refugee resettlement to at normal, historical levels.”
Catholic Charities USA said Sept. 27 that the organization “strongly opposes yesterday’s action by the Administration to historically reduce the number of refugees welcomed into the United States, a record low since the program began in 1980.”
“We call upon the Administration to consider the refugee resettlement program’s mission to provide protection to those in need for humanitarian reasons. The program should return to consistent refugee numbers rather than focus primarily on its use for partisan-based purposes,” Catholic Charities said.
Catholic Relief Services, which exercises humanitarian ministry around the world, was similarly opposed to the proposed cap.
“The world depends on the United States taking in its share of the 26 million vulnerable refugees,” said CRS executive vice president for Mission and Mobilization Bill O’Keefe in a statement.
“How can we ask a country like Uganda, a developing country smaller than Wyoming, to take in a million South Sudanese refugees unless we step up and take in at least 95,000 of the most vulnerable?
“Fundamentally, we are talking about other human beings – children and families – seeking safety and a decent life. Admitting refugees reflects the values on which this nation was built, the teaching of Christianity and other faiths, and basic human decency,” he added.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services acting Director Ken Cuccinelli told reporters Friday that persecuted Christians seeking refugee status in the U.S. will be turned back if they seek to bypass the refugee cap by seeking asylum at the border.
“I take issue with how you ask your alleged question,” Cuccinelli said, before clarifying that the administration will “turn them back” if persecuted Christians attempted to walk across a national border in order to claim asylum in the counry.
The United States’ refugee ceiling remained relatively stable from the fiscal years 2000-2016, at around 70,000 annually. In his last year in office, President Barack Obama raised the ceiling to 110,000 for the fiscal year 2017.
President Trump moved to limit the number of refugees who were admitted to the United States as one of his first acts in office. The United States averaged about 67,000 new refugee admissions each year until Trump took office, and that number has since been repeatedly lowered.
Lansing, Mich., Sep 27, 2019 / 04:08 pm (CNA).- A federal judge in Grand Rapids has halted a new state policy requiring adoption and foster care agencies to certify same-sex couples, regardless of their religious mission, or else lose state funding.
U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker issued a preliminary injunction against the policy Thursday. He said statements by Attorney General Dana Nessel calling religious foster care agencies, among other things, “hate mongers,” raise a “strong inference of a hostility toward a religious viewpoint.”
Nessel had in March put forth a new state rule that would bar adoption and foster care agencies from state funding if they refused to place children with same-sex couples.
The Michigan Catholic Conference said in a statement to the Detroit News that “it’s encouraging to see that Dana Nessel’s animosity toward Catholics has now been recognized in federal court.”
Michigan’s foster care system currently has nearly 13,000 children in it, and more than 600 children “age out” of the foster care system each year without having been adopted.
St. Vincent Catholic Charities, located in Lansing, recruited more new adoptive families than nearly 90 percent of the other agencies in its service area in 2017, legal group Becket reports.
“This case is not about whether same-sex couples can be great parents…What this case is about is whether St. Vincent may continue to do this work and still profess and promote the traditional Catholic belief that marriage as ordained by God is for one man and one woman,” Judge Jonker wrote in his opinion.
The ACLU first filed a lawsuit in 2017, after two same-sex couples approached St. Vincent Catholic Charities and Bethany Christian Services to adopt children referred to the agencies through the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. The couples claimed that in 2016 and 2017 the agencies referred them elsewhere.
The State’s health department opened investigations into the complaints. Then on March 22, 2019, Nessel settled with the ACLU and required all adoption agencies to match children with qualified same-sex couples in order to receive state funding.
The settlement came despite a 2015 state law, passed with the support of the Michigan Catholic Conference, protecting the religious freedom and funding of adoption agencies. The settlement provided that the state must enforce non-discrimination provisions in contracts.
St. Vincent Catholic Charities challenged the new rule, along with a married couple and former foster child who had used the agency.
Judge Jonker noted that through the state’s Michigan Adoption Resource Exchange process, certified prospective parents can access children from any other agency, including St. Vincent. Through this process, same-sex couples have in the past been able to adopt children in St. Vincent’s care, he said.
“What St. Vincent has not done and will not do is give up its traditional Catholic belief that marriage as instituted by God is for one man and one woman,” the judge said.
“Based on that belief, St. Vincent has exercised its discretion to ensure that it is not in the position of having to review and recommend to the State whether to certify a same-sex or unmarried couple, and to refer those cases to agencies that do not have a religious confession preventing an honest evaluation and recommendation.”
Jonker called Attorney General Nessel’s efforts to force St. Vincent to certify same-sex couples a “targeted attack on a sincerely held religious belief.”
“Leading up to and during the 2018 general election campaign, she made it clear that she considered beliefs like St. Vincent’s to be the product of hate,” Jonker wrote.
Becket, the law firm representing the adoption agency and several other plaintiffs in the case, called the ruling a “major victory.”
“Our nation is facing a foster care crisis, and we are so glad that Michigan’s foster children will continue having all hands on deck to help them find loving forever homes,” Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket, said in a Friday statement.
After oral arguments in the case, Melissa Buck, an adoptive mom and one of the plaintiffs in the current case, shared her personal story of working with St. Vincent to adopt five children with special needs.
“It’s the best and the hardest thing we’ve ever done, and there were challenges that we weren’t equipped to face on our own—but we were never alone. St. Vincent was there for us every step of the way, at all hours of the day or night, for anything we needed, even if it was for just a shoulder to cry on,” Buck said.
“We chose to foster and adopt through St. Vincent because the faith and values that motivate their ministry make them the very best at what they do, particularly finding homes for the children who need it most.”
Laws barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or barring state funding from adoption agencies considered discriminatory have shut down Catholic adoption agencies in Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, and Illinois, among others.
Washington D.C., Sep 27, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The House and Senate have passed a joint resolution to terminate President Trump’s February declaration of emergency at the U.S.-Mexico Border, before departing for a two-week recess. The support f… […]
Rome, Italy, Sep 27, 2019 / 03:41 pm (CNA).- Pro-life advocates are decrying the ruling of an Italian court this week that decriminalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in the cases of patients who have an “irreversible” condition and are experiencing “intolerable suffering.”
According to the court’s ruling, anyone who “facilitates the suicidal intention… of a patient kept alive by life-support treatments and suffering from an irreversible pathology” will not be penalized, The Telegraph reported.
The ruling made in the majority-Catholic country was met with strong opposition from the country’s Catholic bishops’ conference and other opponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The ruling creates “the preconditions for a culture of death, in which society loses the light of reason,” Bishop Stefano Russo, Bishop Emeritus of Fabriano-Matelica and secretary-general of the conference, said after the decision, according to the AP.
The decision came after the court considered the case of Fabiano Antoniani, known as DJ Fabo, who in 2017 died at the age of 40 at a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. The DJ had quadriplegia and was left blind after a serious car accident in 2014, and required assistance for eating and breathing.
Marco Cappato, an activist for euthanasia and assisted suicide, had been accused of assisting in DJ Fabo’s death, but was effectively cleared by the court. Under the previous law, he would have faced a possible 12 years in prison for participating in an assisted suicide.
“…as of today, all of us in Italy are freer,” Cappato said after the ruling, The Telegraph reported.
A week prior to the ruling, Pope Francis told an audience of Italian doctors that euthanasia and assisted suicide offer “false compassion.”
“It is important that the doctor does not lose sight of the singularity of each patient, with his dignity and fragility. A man or a woman to accompany with conscience, with intelligence and heart, especially in the most serious situations,” he said Sept. 20.
“With this attitude, one can and must reject the temptation – induced also by legislative changes – to use medicine to support a possible desire for death by the patient, providing assistance to suicide or causing death directly with euthanasia,” Francis added.
Euthanasia differs from assisted suicide in that it occurs when someone else is the one diretly to kill the patient, typically through a lethal dose of medication. Assisted suicide occurs when a patient administers a lethal dose of medication or some other lethal medical intervention to kill themselves.
Care Not Killing, a UK-based organization that promotes palliative care instead of euthanasia or assisted suicide, expressed “concern and disappointment” at the decision of the Italian court in a statement.
“Alarmingly, this ruling seems to allow for those with chronic, non-life threatening conditions, which in the UK would apply to around 11 million people,” Dr. Gordon Macdonald, Chief Executive of Care Not Killing, said in the statement.
“The current law exists to protect the terminally ill, disabled people and the vulnerable from feeling pressure, real or perceived from ending their lives as we often see in those places that made this change,” he said.
Concerns about coercion and discrimination against the elderly, the disabled, and the mentally ill are common among opponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Macdonald noted that in the states of Oregon and Washington, where assisted suicide is legal, terminally ill patients who choose to die often cite fears of being a “burden” on family or caretakers as the reason for their decision.
He also noted that cancer patients or others with serious illnesses in these states have been “refused potentially life-saving and life-extending treatments, while being offered the poison to kill themselves.”
Macdonald also noted that in Canada, which legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2016, promises of improved palliative care have “not materialized” and any safeguarding measures originally put in place have already been removed. In the Netherlands and Belgium, such laws have expanded to allow non-mentally competent adults and “even children” to choose euthanasia or assisted suicide, he added.
“This is why Parliamentarians across the UK have repeatedly rejected attempts to introduce assisted suicide and euthanasia, more than ten times since 2003, out of concern for public safety, including in 2015 when the House of Commons overwhelmingly voted against any change in the law by 330 votes to 118,” he noted.
“It also explains why not a single doctors group or major disability rights organization supports changing the law, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians, the British Geriatric Society and the Association for Palliative Medicine. Our current law does not need changing.”
Simone Pillon, an Italian legislator, told The Telegraph that human life is “sacred and inviolable” and that the ruling would “weigh on (the judges’) consciences for life.”
A Catholic association of doctors told The Telegraph that they would not comply with the new ruling.
Berlin, Germany, Sep 27, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- The plan for a “binding synodal process” recently approved by the German bishops will be sent to a controversial lay group for amendment and approval, CNA […]
Islamabad, Pakistan, Sep 27, 2019 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted a man Wednesday who was sentenced to death for blasphemy in 2002, saying there was a lack of evidence against him.
Wajih-ul-Hassan was exonerated Sept. 25, with the court deciding that prosecutors hadn’t proven that letters which were the basis of the accusation had in fact been written by him.
Pakistan’s state religion is Islam, and around 97 percent of the population is Muslim. The country’s blasphemy laws impose strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad. Although the government has never executed a person under the blasphemy laws, accusations alone have inspired mob and vigilante violence.
The allegations against Hassan arose from letters he allegedly wrote to a lawyer, according to Dawn, a Karachi-based daily.
The lawyer, Ismail Qureshi, had sought amendments to the Pakistan Penal Code, saying that blasphemy should be punished only by capital punishment; the PPC also allows life imprisonment as a sentence for the crime.
Hassan allegedly wrote letters to Qureshi in 1998 which the lawyer deemed blasphemous; Qureshi went to the police and filed a petition against Hassan the following year.
Mohammad Amjad Rafiq, additional prosecutor general of Punjab, told Dawn that in 2001 Hassan confessed before a manager at his place of work; the manager then took Hassan to a police station, where he was arrested.
The next week, a handwriting expert said that Hassan’s writing matched the blasphemous letters.
Hassan was convicted and sentenced, a decision which was subsequently upheld by the Lahore High Court.
But the Supreme Court overturned Hassan’s conviction this week, saying Hassan’s “extra-judicial confession” and the testimony of the handwriting expert were not strong enough evidence of his guilt, and there were no witnesses to the supposed crime.
“Presumption of innocence remains throughout the case until such time the prosecution on the evidence satisfies the court beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of the offence alleged against him,” the Supreme Court’s decision reads.
“There cannot be a fair trial, which is itself the primary purpose of criminal jurisprudence, if the judges have not been able to clearly elucidate the rudimentary concept of the standard of proof that prosecution must meet in order to obtain a conviction,” it continued.
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are reportedly used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities; while non-Muslims constitute only 3 percent of the Pakistani population, 14 percent of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.
Many of those accused of blasphemy are murdered, and advocates of changing the law are also targeted by violence.
The blasphemy laws were introduced between 1980 and 1986. The National Commission for Justice and Peace said more than 1,300 people were accused under this law from 1987 until 2014. The Centre for Research and Security Studies reported that at least 65 people have been killed by vigilantes since 1990.
More than 40 people are serving a life sentence or face execution for blasphemy in the country.
Last year, the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned the blasphemy conviction of Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman who was accused in 2009. Her initial conviction had also been upheld by the Lahore High Court.
Buffalo, N.Y., Sep 27, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Buffalo is shutting down its credit cards, effective Friday afternoon. Although some have interpreted the move as a step towards bankruptcy, officials said the decision was unrelated to rece… […]
Lahore, Pakistan, Sep 27, 2019 / 09:59 am (CNA).- A Catholic bishop in Pakistan has warned of an increase in young Christian and Hindu girls being kidnapped, then forced to convert to Islam and marry their captors.
“There have been many kidnappi… […]
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