Bishop Barron goes to Washington

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Washington D.C., Jun 25, 2021 / 16:10 pm (CNA).
The Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX protections could end up hurting women’s sports and contradicting the purpose of the statute, legal experts critical of the new pol… […]

Booneville, Mississippi, Sep 5, 2019 / 03:05 am (CNA).- After a wedding venue employee in Mississippi cited her Christian beliefs in refusing to host the wedding of a mixed-race couple, a Catholic scholar clarified that “marriage is a colorblind institution.”

“A man and a woman, regardless of their race, can unite as one-flesh as husband and wife, and that marital union can give rise to new life and connect that life with his or her mother and father,” said Ryan T. Anderson, the John Paul II Teaching Fellow at the University of Dallas and a co-author of “What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense.”

Anderson told CNA that race is not relevant to the nature of marriage, and the race of a person does not negate any of the requirements of a valid marriage.

His comments come after a woman in charge of a wedding event venue in Mississippi apologized for declining to host the wedding of a mixed-race couple, something she had claimed violated her “Christian belief.”

According to the Washington Post, a black groom-to-be and a white bride-to-be had scheduled their wedding celebration to be held at Boone’s Camp Event Hall in Booneville, Mississippi. They were finalizing plans when they were informed that the venue retroactively declined to host their celebration because the wedding would violate the owner’s Christian beliefs.

The groom’s mother and his sister, LaKambria S. Welch, drove to the venue to demand answers. In a filmed exchange first posted by the website Deep South Voice, Welch can be heard calmly asking a woman in a gray shirt about the cancellation.

“Well we don’t do gay weddings or mixed race,” the woman in the video said. “Because of our Christian race – I mean our Christian belief.”

Welch told the woman that she, too, is a Christian, and asked the woman from where in the Bible her belief came.

“Well, I don’t want to argue my faith,” the woman responded. “We just don’t participate. We just choose not to.”

“Ok. So that’s your Christian belief, right?” Welch said.

“Yes ma’am,” the woman replied.

After the video spread on social media, the venue issued an apology that has apparently since been deleted. According to The Washington Post, the apology was reportedly written by the woman in the video, who said she did not know that the Bible did not condemn mixed-race marriages.

“As my bible reads, there are 2 requirements for marriage and race has nothing to do with either!” the apology post said, according to the Washington Post. “All of my years I had ‘assumed’ in my mind that I was correct, but have never taken the opportunity to research and find whether this was correct or incorrect until now.”

The incident drew intense criticism on social media as well as from Booneville city officials, who said on Facebook that they were “aware of the comments recently made by a privately owned business located within the city of Booneville. The City of Booneville, Mayor, and Board of Aldermen do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, age, national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status. Furthermore, the City of Booneville, Mayor, and Board of Aldermen do not condone or approve these types of discriminatory policies.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not object to interracial marriages. In fact, when the Catechism speaks about “mixed marriages,” it is in reference to couples of mixed creeds who marry – for example, a Catholic marrying a Protestant (or other baptized non-Catholic).

“Difference of confession between the spouses does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle for marriage, when they succeed in placing in common what they have received from their respective communities, and learn from each other the way in which each lives in fidelity to Christ,” the Catechism states.

“But the difficulties of mixed marriages must not be underestimated. They arise from the fact that the separation of Christians has not yet been overcome. The spouses risk experiencing the tragedy of Christian disunity even in the heart of their own home,” it adds.

The Catechism, and other Catholic documents, do not mention interracial marriages as immoral for any reason.

The Catholic Church does teach, however, that the sacrament of marriage must be between one man and one woman: “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”

The Catechism adds that men and women must give themselves to each other in marriage freely, totally, and fruitfully, meaning that the couple must be open to life. The sacrament of marriage also “requires the inviolable fidelity of the spouses.”

For a same-sex couple, marriage is impossible according to the teachings of the Catholic Church, because sexual acts between same-sex couples are “contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved,” the Catechism states.

Instead, people with same-sex attractions “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and are “called to chastity,” the Catechism states.

Anderson clarified that interracial marriage differs from same-sex marriage, because the biological sex of the individuals involved is directly relevant to the nature of marriage, unlike their race.

Because the Catholic Church is concerned for the good of spouses, children, and the greater society, Anderson said, it teaches that marriage must be between a man and a woman.

“While marriage must be a colorblind institution, it can’t be sex-blind. Only a man and a woman can unite as one-flesh, and every child has a mother and a father,” he said.

“So it’s for good reason that marriage is about uniting the two halves of humanity–male and female–for a common good they participate in that, in turn, benefits the general common good.”

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CNA Staff, Oct 30, 2020 / 04:21 pm (CNA).- A strong majority of New Zealand voters approved the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia for the terminally ill Oct. 30. Foes of legalization said many voters appeared confused about the measure’s far-reaching effects and warned that the move will have consequences for the vulnerable.

The nationwide referendum passed with support from 65% of voters on Friday. It allows terminally ill persons who are believed to have six months or fewer to live to be euthanized or to take a lethal dose of prescribed drugs themselves, on the condition that two doctors agree the person is well-informed. Patients are eligible if they show significant, ongoing decline in physical ability and experience “unbearable suffering that cannot be eased.” The law will take effect Nov. 6, 2021.

Legalization opponent Euthanasia-Free NZ said some 80% of adult New Zealanders appeared to misunderstand the referendum. Only 20% knew the act would not make it legal to turn off life support machines. Such a practice is not illegal under current law.

“It seems that most New Zealanders voted for an end-of-life choice that is in fact already legal,” Renée Joubert, executive officer of Euthanasia-Free NZ, said Oct. 30.

Surveys indicated similar confusion about eligibility criteria. Only 29% knew that terminally ill people who have depression or another mental illness would be allowed to seek euthanasia. Only 13% of adults knew that the act does not require an independent witness.

The New Zealand law does not require a waiting period before a lethal dose is prescribed, nor does it require a competency test.

In November 2019 the New Zealand Parliament approved the bill, officially called “The End of Life Choice Bill,” by a vote of 69-51. The bill had the backing of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of the ruling New Zealand Labour Party and her main rival, Judith Collins of the center-right National Party, the New York Times reports. Voters had to approve the act in referendum in order for it to become law.

An earlier version of the bill would have allowed those with severe or incurable conditions who were not terminally ill to seek euthanasia or assisted suicide as well.

Joubert objected that parliament voted down more than 100 amendments that “could have made this law safer” and said the law lacks safeguards that have been standard in U.S. law.

“It’s disappointing that the New Zealand public were generally uninformed about the details of the End of Life Choice Act,” she said.

When New Zealand’s National Party was governing the country, a parliamentary study on assisted suicide and euthanasia proposals concluded that “the public would be endangered” by legalization of the practices.

In 2017, the National Party-controlled Parliament’s health committee said submissions on the proposal “cited concern for vulnerable people, such as the elderly and the disabled, those with mental illnesses, and those susceptible to coercion.”

“Others argued that life has an innate value and that introducing assisted dying and euthanasia would explicitly undermine that idea. To do so would suggest that some lives are worth more than others. There were also concerns that, once introduced, eligibility for assisted dying would rapidly expand well beyond what was first intended,” the committee said.

In 2018 the Catholic bishops of New Zealand published resources against assisted suicide legislation and encouraged Catholics to oppose legalization. The Nathaniel Centre, the New Zealand bishops-founded Catholic bioethics center, posted resources on Church teaching on euthanasia and assisted suicide to their website and social media pages ahead of the referendum.

Ahead of the election, the Nathaniel Centre said the act is “badly drafted and seriously flawed.”

“It will expose many New Zealanders to the risk of a premature death at a time when they are most vulnerable. Whatever one’s views about the idea of euthanasia, it is not compassion to vote for a dangerous law,” the center said. “The group most at risk if we legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide are those vulnerable to the suggestion they would be ‘better off dead’ – our elders, disabled people, and people with depression and mental illness who find themselves fitting the eligibility criteria.”

The center cited the Lawyers for Vulnerable New Zealanders, a group of over 200 lawyers, including some supporters of euthanasia, opposed the act on the grounds it is too broadly drafted, “dangerous,” and “broader in its scope and riskier than comparable laws overseas.”

Other opponents of the act included the New Zealand Medical Association, Hospice New Zealand, Palliative Care Nurses and Palliative Medicine Doctors.

David Seymour, the lawmaker who sponsored the act, praised its passage as “a great day,” the New York Times reports. In his view, the vote made New Zealand “a kinder, more compassionate, more humane society.”

Pope Francis has on multiple occasions spoken out against assisted suicide and euthanasia, both of which are “morally unacceptable” according to Church teaching. In 2016, Pope Francis told medical professionals that assisted suicide and euthanasia are part of the “throwaway culture” that offers people “false compassion” and treats human persons like a problem.

Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada and Colombia. Doctor-assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland. Some U.S. states have legalized assisted suicide.

Also on New Zealand’s ballot was a proposal to legalize recreational marijuana use, allow adults age 20 and over to buy cannabis from licensed outlets, and allow adults to grow the plant at home. Advertising and smoking the drug in public would be banned. That proposal failed by a vote of 53% to 46%, according to preliminary results.

The country already has legalized medical marijuana.

Critics of the recreational use legalization warned that it would make the drug more accessible to children, Bloomberg News reports. They said cannabis is a serious drug harmful to mental health, especially among adolescents.

For their part, advocates said legalization would weaken the power of drug trafficking gangs, regulate quality and raise awareness of health risk through the use of warning labels. They said indigenous Maori people are disproportionately arrested and convicted for the drug.

Some figures suggest that New Zealanders are among the biggest users of marijuana in the world, with 80% having tried the drug by age 20 and 12% reporting use of the drug in the past year.

Pope Francis criticized drug use and legalization in a 2014 address to the International Drug Enforcement Conference in Rome.

“Let me state this in the clearest terms possible: the problem of drug use is not solved with drugs! Drug addiction is an evil, and with evil there can be no yielding or compromise,” the pope said. “To think that harm can be reduced by permitting drug addicts to use narcotics in no way resolves the problem. Attempts, however limited, to legalize so-called ‘recreational drugs’, are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects.”

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