Denver Newsroom, Apr 29, 2020 / 08:30 pm (CNA).- The numbers of women seeking at-home medication abortions through an experimental U.S. telemedicine provider has reportedly doubled under the coronavirus epidemic, though pro-life advocates said there ar… […]
Denver Newsroom, Apr 29, 2020 / 05:13 pm (CNA).- While the coronavirus has shut down universities and artistic events, the drama department of a Catholic university performed a play nevertheless, through a video conference.
A production of Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” was meant to be staged last week. Because of the pandemic, the Catholic University of America’s Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art instead performed the play on Youtube.
Eleanor Holdridge, chair of the drama department and the play director, told CNA that the play was a blessing, allowing the students a break from isolation and bringing art into homes amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“It was great because it was something to be working as a group towards. It was something we didn’t have to give up and that we can have hope towards in the midst of this crisis,” she said.
“We sort of had a virtual cast party. We all watched it. It went live on the 23rd, Shakespeare’s birthday. So the cast families all watched it together and then we kind of met up afterward to have a real cast party.”
The performance was not streamed live. Instead, each scene was recorded separately and then the actor’s scenes were placed side-by-side as if in a video conference. If the scene was a monologue, then the actor would appear solo on the screen. In between acts, pictures of the sets would appear along with music pieces composed by Roc Lee, a sound designer and composer.
The actors were encouraged to situate themselves in areas of the house with blank walls and good lighting. In one instance, Holdridge said, a student recorded himself huddled in a corner of the house to evoke his character’s imprisonment. Prior to the play, the costume designer video chatted with each cast member and then helped them pick out the best costumes from what they have at home.
She said the online play was also very challenging. While rehearsals usually go for about four hours, it was much more difficult to keep everyone on track while online, and the session had to be shortened. She also said the gestures of acting were too large for the screen and the actors had to focus heavily on speaking with only a little body movement.
As students were feeling distraught and isolated, she said, the play was a unique opportunity for the actors to get back into university life.
“[College is] about what you’re learning, obviously, but you’re also learning how to be your own person away from your parents and you’re learning how to be a member of society. You’re learning how to work with your friends and peers towards something,” she said.
“I feel like they very much needed to feel like they were working, not just with faculty but with each other towards a goal.”
Holdridge also said the event was an opportunity to promote art within the household during the pandemic. She highlighted the importance of acting as a promotion of empathy.
“The art of acting and theater … is a really wonderful way in which to teach or learn empathy. You can’t do what we do without feeling empathy … You have to imagine yourself to be many different characters or find the motivations of many different characters,” she said.
“So in terms of having empathy towards other people and not having a rigid scorn or scoff at other ways of being is, I think, one of the great things that theater is and what it can do.”
Marie Kottenstette, a senior English and drama major who played Isabella, said it was a valuable learning experience, and, although it was not ideal, it was an important opportunity.
“Being able to work and act, even if it isn’t exactly what we’re used to, was important,” she said. “I feel like we’re still learning and growing. We’re in college so we’re constantly learning and this was definitely a learning experience.”
CNA Staff, Apr 29, 2020 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- Venezuela’s prolonged social, political and economic crisis has only been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic, the archbishop emeritus of Caracas, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, charged Tuesday.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Venezuela has been marred by violence and social upheaval under the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro, with severe shortages of food and medicine, high unemployment, power outages, and hyperinflation. Some 4.5 million Venezuelans have emigrated since 2015.
In response to the threat of the virus, the government imposed a nationwide stay at home order March 17. According to government statistics, to date there have been 329 cases of COVID-19 with ten deaths. The country is ill prepared to handle the crisis, with chronic shortages of medical supplies, and many doctors have left the country.
“The national reality is terrible,” and the government has no answers, Urosa said in an April 28 statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.
While the cardinal acknowledged the lockdown has prevented the spread of the virus, he pointed out that “the quarantine has hurt a great many people because the economic, social and logistical conditions in the country weren’t taken into account,” including “the extremely serious problem of the gasoline shortage for transport, especially for food.”
In some cases, crops are rotting in farmers’ fields due to lack of fuel to transport them to market.
Especially hard hit, the cardinal said, are “informal” workers who are paid off the books, and who are now “barely surviving,” and only with “the help of family members, social organizations and the Church.”
On April 25, Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez announced state intervention and oversight of several food supply companies in order to control the prices of 27 products for 180 days.
Urosa criticized the intervention, calling it “an extremely serious mistake, since it will probably result in greater shortages. Price controls are acceptable, but intervening in efficient businesses is not. The government can’t even manage to supply gasoline.” “The state-run petroleum industry has collapsed, and now Venezuelans’ food is in danger!”
“The current government doesn’t have any answers for such elementary things such as the extremely serious problem of the gasoline shortage” and runaway inflation. “In the last 40 days, the dollar has doubled in value, which is undoubtedly the fundamental cause of the spike in prices,” the cardinal said.
Urosa decried political persecution, which “has gotten worse since March because amid the quarantine, the government has ramped up the repression. During these weeks the government has jailed, even without due process, many political activists, especially from the inner circle of Juan Guaidó, president of the National Assembly and leader of the Venezuelan opposition.”
Guaidó declared himself the nation’s interim leader Jan. 23 last year following Maduro’s inauguration for a second term. Maduro won a May 2018 presidential election, which was boycotted by the opposition and has been rejected by much of the international community. The United States was swift to recognize Guaidó as interim president, eventually followed by over 60 countries. Both the National Assembly and the Venezuelan bishops’ conference declared Maduro’s reelection to be invalid.
With the military firmly in support of Maduro, however, opposition protests calling for his resignation have failed to oust the leader.
On March 30, Guaidó charged that the Maduro regime had unleashed a new wave of harassment against his close collaborators. Andrea Bianchi, the wife of close associate Rafael Rico, was kidnapped, beaten and then left naked on a highway. Two others, Rómulo García and Víctor Silio were also picked up and later charged with possession of marijuana and a handgun.
The NGO Venezuelan Program for Education-Action in Human Rights reported that during the state of emergency, 34 people have been arbitrarily arrested and attacks against politicians, journalists and healthcare workers have increased.
“The bishops have always strongly criticized the political repression by the government and once again I call for the release of all political prisoners. They are even in greater physical danger because of the pandemic situation we’re going through,” Urosa stressed.
On March 26, “the Trump administration unsealed sweeping indictments against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and members of his inner circle on narcoterrorism charges, a dramatic escalation in the U.S. campaign to force the authoritarian socialist from power,” even offering “a $15 million reward for information leading to his capture or conviction,” the Washington Post reported. time.
In response, the Maduro regime activated a plan against the Venezuelan opposition called “Operation Bolivarian Fury.”
The archbishop emeritus denounced these recent “threats of violence by the government against Venezuelans. Maduro himself has spoken of a supposed ‘Bolivarian fury’ as a threat against members of the Venezuelan opposition in case of international problems. That’s illegal, unconstitutional and unacceptable from every point of view. That threat of violence is intolerable.”
The cardinal said the government has used the quarantine simply as an opportunity to strengthen its social and political control.
On April 25, the Maduro regime placed shipping containers on the Caracas-La Guaira highway to prevent demonstrators from other cities who have been protesting the shortages of food, water and electricity in other cities from getting to the capital.
“Why restrict the right to free transit?” the cardinal asked.
The Maduro regime also blocked the highway in February 2019 to prevent humanitarian aid from entering the country from Colombia.
Guaidó charged April 24 on Twitter that “a dictatorship of corrupt and incapable people has brought us to a crisis where farmers are losing their crops while families are starving to death in the barrios. They turned the richest country in the region into a hell. They’ll leave here, the sacrifice has been enough already.”
As signs of hope, Urosa pointed to ongoing work of Caritas Venezuela and the creative ways the clergy has reached out to the faithful through social media. “Our message is one of encouragement, trust in God, solidarity and hope in this dark hour,” he said.
Catholics “have an unshakeable faith in God who is love,” who had died and risen and “has shown us the merciful face of God.” “We’ll come out of this,” the archbishop said, “the suffering we are experiencing has united us closer to God and opens to us the gates of heaven.”
The archbishop encouraged Venezuelans to always stand in solidarity with each other and “to be the face of God to those in need. God is love and is with us. Let us join ourselves to him and the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy in this painful hour.”
A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been adapted by CNA.
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 29, 2020 / 01:32 pm (CNA).- During its bankruptcy process, the Diocese of Buffalo has announced it will end financial support and health benefits for priests facing substantiated allegations of sexual abuse.
“Following discussions and subsequent agreement with the Creditors Committee, which has been appointed as part of the Diocese of Buffalo’s Chapter 11 process, the Diocese will cease all financial support and health benefits for priests with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse,” the Diocese of Buffalo told CNA April 29.
The decision is scheduled to take effect May 1. It is expected to impact 23 priests who have been receiving “sustenance payments” totalling $600,000 annually, according to Buffalo News.
Eligible priests will continue receiving pension payments from a priest pension program, which, according to a 2017 statement from the diocese, is managed by a board of trustees and not directly overseen by the diocese.
“None of the 23 individuals affected currently has faculties to function as a priest within the Diocese. The nature and details of the allegations that resulted in their faculties being suspended relate, in most cases, to allegations raised many years ago,” Greg Tucker, a diocesan spokesman, told CNA.
“The Diocese is directing these individuals to information and available resources elsewhere for their health insurance and other sustenance needs going forward,” Tucker added.
Canon law requires that dioceses provide for the “decent support” of all incardinated clerics, with bishops required to offer at least the provision for basic sustenance, even to clerics not in ministry.
In the wake of the sexual abuse scandals in the United States, several priests either accused or found to have committed sexual abuse of minors have appealed to the Vatican regarding their right to basic sustenance, including access to health care, and that right has been upheld by Vatican officials.
The priests who will lose support from the diocese remain clerics, incardinated in the Buffalo diocese.
“None have been laicized,” Tucker told CNA. “These are priests whose faculties have been suspended based on substantiated claims of abuse.”
While the priests in question have been accused of sexual misconduct, the diocese did not specify how many have been found guilty, or even how many have been given the benefit of due process or formal trials in either canon or civil law.
“The allegations pertain to many years ago – decades in fact, and precede the formation of the Independent Review Board. That said, whatever investigative process in place at the time determined that the allegations were ‘substantiated’ either because they admitted the offense or there was a criminal investigation, or allegations were corroborated based on multiple allegations – and those priests were then relieved of their priestly faculties,” Tucker said.
“In later cases (2002 and after), there was an independent investigation and an Independent Review Board recommendation. In some cases, the diocese initiated a canonical process and in other cases it did not,” Tucker added.
The decision was communicated in an April 23 letter to the 23 priests from Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, temporary administrator of the diocese, and in a conference call.
Scharfenberger told the priests that while sustenance payments and health care coverage will cease, the changes will not affect existing pension payments.
Some priests, however, are concerned those payments will not be enough, and it is not clear whether all those affected by the change qualify for a pension.
Michael Taheri, a lawyer for one affected priest, told Buffalo News that the diocese’s behavior is “unconscionable.”
“As a Catholic, I’m ashamed,” Taheri said.
His client, Fr. Samuel Venne, was removed from ministry in 2018 after an allegation of sexual abuse dating back decades. Venne told Buffalo News he was a cancer survivor with no other income beyond $500 per month from social security.
“How am I going to pay for my medicines? Where am I going to live?” Venne asked Scharfenberger.
The priest also said that he has consistently maintained his innocence, and passed a polygraph test as part of the diocese’s investigation into the allegation against him.
The announcement by Buffalo comes as the diocese has had to make staffing cuts and filed for bankruptcy in recent months.
In February, the diocese filed for Chapter 11 reorganization after being named in hundreds of new sexual abuse lawsuits filed in New York state courts. Another RICO lawsuit was filed in August alleging a “pattern of racketeering activity” by the diocese.
The state’s Child Victims Act had set up a one-year lookback window for such lawsuits, as many cases of child sex abuse have long-expired statutes of limitations.
Earlier in the month, the diocese closed its Christ the King seminary which had been running a $500,000 average annual deficit for a decade.
On March 19, the diocese said it would be accelerating cuts to staffing for its Catholic Center, eliminating 21 positions and moving three more from full-time to part-time.
As other Catholic dioceses and parishes applied for, and received, emergency loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, the dioceses of Buffalo and Rochester filed a lawsuit against the Small Business Administration saying they were wrongfully excluded from the program because of their bankruptcy debtor status.
Scharfenberger, who is Bishop of Albany, was appointed temporary apostolic administrator of the diocese in December. The last bishop of the diocese, Bishop Richard Malone, resigned after a Vatican-ordered apostolic visitation, or investigation, of the diocese under his leadership.
CNA Staff, Apr 29, 2020 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- A legislation scrutiny committee of the House of Lords last week published a report on the abortion regulations imposed on Northern Ireland by the British government, noting that the regulations are more expansive than were required by law.
Among the key criticisms in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s April 23 report was the six-week duration of public consultation on the proposed regulations. The committee includes members of the Conservative Party, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats, as well as crossbenchers.
“In our view this is too short for so sensitive a topic, the committee wrote. “Added to which, it took place during the General Election period and in the run up to Christmas, neither of which conforms with best practice. Of the over 21,000 responses received, 79% registered general opposition to any change to the established position in Northern Ireland.”
The committee received a number of submissions that “criticise the Government response to the consultation for failing to explain why such a strong level of objection has been overridden,” and which “assert that no attempt has been made to engage with them to address their objections or with the restored Northern Ireland Executive, and that certain provisions … were not included in the consultation document.”
In addition, the Lords’ committee said that the regulations should not have been made so soon before a parliamentary recess: “While acknowledging that due to the current coronavirus crisis, Ministers have had much to occupy them, we find it regrettable that the Government chose to lay so controversial an instrument just as a recess started and, more importantly, so close to the implementation date set out in the 2019 Act, thereby denying Parliament an opportunity for scrutiny before the instrument came into effect.”
The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020, which came into force March 31, allow elective abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy; abortions up to 24 weeks in cases of risk to the mother’s physical or mental health; and abortion without time limit in cases of severe fetal impairment or fetal fetal abnormality.
Previously, abortion was legally permitted in the region only if the mother’s life was at risk or if there was risk of long term or permanent, serious damage to her mental or physical health.
The new framework was adopted to implement Westminster’s Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, which decriminalized abortion in Northern Ireland and placed a moratorium on abortion-related criminal prosecutions, and obliged the UK government to create legal access to abortion in the region by March 31.
The NI EF Act required that the recommendations of a UN report on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women be implemented.
The legislative scrutiny committee said its report on the regulations sets out the key points made in submissions from members of the House of Commons, House of Lords, and the Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as churches and other organizations.
“This Report also notes several instances where the Government’s administrative process for bringing these Regulations forward appears suboptimal,” it added, before drawing the regulations to the special attention of the House.
The committee noted that nearly all the submissions it received are critical of the regulations’ provision for conscientious objection.
Conscientious objection is allowed for direct participation in abortion, but not for ancillary, administrative, or managerial tasks associated with the procedure, because, according to the regulations, that “would have consequences on a practical level and would therefore undermine the effective provision of abortion services in Northern Ireland.”
The exclusion of those carrying out ancillary, administrative, or managerial tasks from conscientious objection may be “too narrow and does not adequately protect” the rights to religious or philosophical beliefs under the European Convention on Human Rights.
According to the committee, the Attorney General for Northern Ireland submitted that ancillary staff are unlawfully discriminated against because the Northern Ireland Act 1998 prevents the Assembly and the Secretary of State “from enacting any provision which discriminates against any person or class of person on the ground of religious belief or political opinion.”
The committee wrote that “Given the sensitivity of the issues around conscientious objection, the House may wish to ask the Minister to consider further the scope of the policy and how it will be interpreted.”
The report also discussed the regulation of abortion in cases of severe fetal impairment or fetal fetal abnormality.
Several submissions said the abortion of those with severe impairment is contrary to EU law because the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities “extends to those in the womb,” but that the region’s attorney general acknowledged that the NI EF Act required the implementation of such a regulation because of CEDAW.
“There therefore appears to be a question over which UN Convention should take priority,” the committee wrote.
However, the Northern Ireland Office holds that the UNCRPD is not a binding law, and added: “we do not agree that the provision extends protection to those in the womb.”
The legislative scrutiny committee noted that the “the regime chosen largely mirrors the services available in the rest of the UK. In the light of the overwhelmingly negative response to the consultation exercise, it would have been better if the reasons for the specific policy choices made, were explained in more detail in the EM, and the House may wish to press the Minister for further explanation.”
Other submissions noted that “severe disability” could be interpreted differently and could include cleft lip or Down syndrome, and that the CEDAW recommendation requires the provision of abortion for “severe foetal impairment”, while not “perpetuating sterotypes towards persons with disabilities.”
“The House may wish to press the Minister about how these provisions will be interpreted,” the committee noted.
Some submissions also noted that because the baby’s sex can be identified at 10 weeks, and elective abortions are permitted up to 12 weeks, “there is a significant omission in the Regulations in that … they do not prevent abortion on the grounds of the foetus’s gender.”
The report concludes noting that “the NIO states that, where possible, this statutory framework mirrors the Abortion Act 1967 so that provision will be broadly consistent with the abortion services in the rest of the UK. The NIO was, however, obliged by law to implement the specific recommendations of the CEDAW Report which relate to Northern Ireland. This report has sought to expand on some of the Government’s policy choices and also to air the main issues drawn to our attention in submissions, to assist the House in the forthcoming debate.”
Right to Life UK spokesperson Catherine Robinson said April 28 that the committee “chosen to draw these regulations to the special attention of the House. The Committee has reported on a number of serious issues with the regulations.”
“MPs and Peers at Westminster must take on board these problems and vote against the regulations when they are brought before Parliament,” she added.
The regulations are due to be voted on before May 17.
David Alton, Baron Alton of Liverpool, commented April 25 that Northern Ireland’s abortion law “should have been decided in Northern Ireland not imposed by Westminster. Both Parliament and the Northern Ireland Office have shown great contempt for the people of Northern Ireland – and for normal constitutional and parliamentary good practice – in seeking to impose, by diktat, laws which in the rest of the UK have led to one child in the womb being aborted every three minutes.”
Lord Alton wrote that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report highlights “that this issue needs to be reconsidered in Northern Ireland by the Assembly which is responsible for what the law and policy on this issue. Riding roughshod over the Assembly in this way shows contempt for devolution, power sharing, proper political process, and the people of Northern Ireland.”
The bishops of Northern Ireland have encouraged members of Northern Ireland’s devolved legislature to debate the regulations, and, “insofar as they exceed the requirements of the Northern Ireland Act 2019 … to take steps to formulate new Regulations that will reflect more fully the will of a significant majority of the people in this jurisdiction to protect the lives of mothers and their unborn children.”
Northern Ireland rejected the Abortion Act 1967, which legalized abortion in England, Wales, and Scotland; and bills to legalize abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormality, rape, or incest failed in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2016.
Northern Irish women had been able to procure free National Health Service abortions in England, Scotland, and Wales since November 2017. They are allowed to travel to the rest of the UK to procure abortions during the coronavirus outbreak.
The amendment to the NI EF Act obliging the government to provide for legal abortion in Northern Ireland was introduced by Stella Creasy, a Labour MP who represents a London constituency.
© Catholic World Report