A Brazilian court has ruled that “Catholics for the Right to Decide” must remove the term “Catholic” from its name, as the organization’s goals are incompatible with the values of the Catholic Church. The organization is an outgrowth of the U.S.-based Catholics for Choice, which advocates for pro-abortion policies.
“In defending of the right to decide on abortion, which the Church clearly and severely condemns, there is a clear distortion and incompatibility of the name used in relation to the aims and specific actions of the association, which directly attack morality and good customs, in addition to harming the public good and interests,” said a decision from Judge Jose Carlos Ferreira In a Sao Paolo lawsuit.
The suit was filed by the Don Bosco Center for Faith and Culture Association, which argued that the use of the term “Catholic” by the pro-choice group is fradulent, since “under the pretext of defending the ‘reproductive rights of women,’” it is actually promoting the “murder of babies in the womb.”
A lower court had dismissed the complaint as unfounded and said that only an ecclesiastical authority had standing to bring such a complaint.
But the Don Bosco Center then filed an appeal with the Second Chamber Court, which ruled in the center’s favor Oct. 27.
Ferreira wrote in his decision that Catholics for the Right to Decide represents a “public, notorious, total and absolute incompatibility with the values” of the “Catholic Church in a general and universal way.”
In addition, the judge ruled that “freedom of speech will not be compromised in the least, and the association may defend its values and ideas (including abortion) as it deems appropriate, provided that it uses a consistent name, without presenting itself to society under the name of another institution that publicly and conspicuously adopts opposite values.”
Chris Tonietto, a Brazilian legislator and attorney who worked on the case, said after the ruling that “the name was considered subversive because it perverts the meaning of Catholicism itself, which is why we say that they created confusion.”
“This organization has always acted to create confusion, so much so that the name ‘Catholics for the Right to Decide’, was certainly used in an abusive and undue way,” he said.
On its Facebook page, the NGO stated that “it was not officially notified” of the court’s decision and “became aware of the decision through the press.”
The organization pledged to “take the appropriate measures after receiving the court order.”
Catholics for the Right to Decide was founded in 1993, as the U.S. organization Catholics for Choice expanded into Latin America. In recent years, the group has invested millions of dollars to promote the legalization of abortion in Latin America.
In October 2012, a spokesperson for the U.S. bishops’ conference told journalists that Catholics for Choice “is not a Catholic organization.”
“It never has been, and it was created to oppose the Catholic position on abortion,” the spokesperson said.
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The members of the general board of directors of the Regnum Christi Federation, before its first general convention from April 29 to May 4, 2024, in Rome. / Credit: Regnum Christi
ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 27, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).
The Regnum Chri… […]
Quibdo, Colombia, Jul 6, 2018 / 04:11 pm (ACI Prensa).- The bishops of the Chocó Department in Colombia denounced Thursday the crisis occurring in the impoverished region due to crime and an onslaught by illegal armed groups which have been met by government inaction.
A July 5 statement signed by the Chocó Inter-ethnic Solidarity Forum, the Standing Roundtable of Dialogue and Agreement of the Indigenous Peoples of Chocó, and the dioceses of Quibdó, Apartadó, and Itsmina-Tadó denounced this situation and demanded concrete action from the government.
Located in Colombia’s far-west, Chocó has one the lowest living standards among the country’s departments. More than 80 percent of its population are Afro-Colombians, and almost 13 percent are indigenous. Only five percent are white or mestizo.
Violence in Chocó has continued despite a 2016 peace deal between the national government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) which was meant to wind-down the country’s 54-year conflict among the government, right-wing paramilitaries, and left-wing guerillas.
The text states that little progress has been made in the implementation of the peace accord with the FARC, and not fully controlling the territories left by the guerrillas has left the inhabitants of Chocó “quite helpless, at the mercy of paramilitary groups, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and other armed actors.”
Although the Colombian army and navy conduct operations in the department, these forces “are not sufficient to counteract the actions of groups outside the law. The Army has a network of informants in the civil population, which violates the principle of distinguishing between civilians and combatants, and despite the implementation of infrastructure projects, healthcare activities and social integration, without effective security the civilian population is put at grave risk due to the intensity of the armed conflict in the region.”
In the cities of Chocó “the murder rate is above the national average,” the leaders wrote. “Illegal armed actors exercise territorial control in extensive areas, they systematically extort the inhabitants, they construct invisible boundaries, they impose schedules on the people’s free movement, they restrict access by foreigners, they engage in small time drug dealing, they use adolescents as informants (called bell-ringers) and they very frequently rape minors.”
Another aggravating factor is the presence of the Clan del Golfo, a drug-trafficking paramilitary group which continues to fight in the Colombian conflict. Clan del Golfo “occupies and contests ethnic territories” the bishops said, and “is financed by black market mining operations, takes part in the production and distribution of cocaine, [and] extorts and forces people from the communities to be their informants.”
In addition, the ELN guerilla group continues their terrorist actions, recruiting “black and indigenous minors,” forcing the communities to participate in their meetings and obstructing “their traditional work.”
The bishops recalled that “the ELN stormed into a community festival” May 13, killing “José David Hurtado Mosquera in the town of Pogue, a black community in Bojayá township.”
They are therefore urging the Colombian government “to guarantee the free movement and security of the leaders, communities, and organizations in the Chocó department; that the safeguards and commitments established in the Chapter on Ethnic Groups of the Peace Accord be fulfilled; that the illegal armed groups be disbanded; and that the grave humanitarian, social and environmental crisis in Chocó be addressed.”
They also requested the various law enforcement agencies to exercise more effectively their responsibility concerning the protection of human rights in the Chocó department.
They also called on the Colombian government and the ELN to assume the demands of the Humanitarian Accord and to establish a cease fire, “respecting human rights and international humanitarian law.”
Additionally, they asked the authorities to implement the peace accord with FARC.
Finally, they asked that “the Roundtable Talks with the ELN in Havana be continued, with the criteria of truth and coherence, and respect for the trust of the Colombian people.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, described Claudia Sheinbaum’s victory as “very bad news for life, family, and freedoms.” / Credit: EWTN Noticias/Screenshot
ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 5, 2024 / 18:50 pm (CNA).
Various pro-life, pro-family, and lay leaders of the Catholic Church in Mexico have reacted with concern to the election of Claudia Sheinbaum as president of the country.
Rodrigo Iván Cortés, president of the National Front for the Family, described Sheinbaum’s victory as “very bad news for life, family, and freedoms.”
For the pro-family leader, Sheinbaum represents continuity with the same progressive agenda of the outgoing administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Citing the growing legalization of abortion and use of gender ideology throughout the country, Cortés explained that “the López Obrador regime culminated in a culture of death, of ideology, not only of gender confusion but also of socialist populist indoctrination.”
However, in an interview with “EWTN Noticias,” EWTN’s Spanish-language news program, Cortés emphasized that just as people didn’t vote for López Obrador because of his position on abortion, gender ideology, or for freedoms to be canceled, people didn’t vote for Sheinbaum for those same reasons. What happens, he indicated, is that “when they come to power, they implement [that agenda].”
For Juan Dabdoub, president of the Mexican Family Council (ConFamilia), there are “two important factors” that would explain Sheinbaum’s victory in the presidential elections.
The first, he told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, is that in Mexico there is “a poor political culture, which makes a large majority of the people manipulable.”
A second factor, Dabdoub noted, is that “Mexican Catholicism has failed in something extremely important that Pope St. John Paul II already pointed out: ‘A faith that does not create culture is a useless faith.’”
In a Jan. 16, 1982, speech, John Paul II said: “A faith that does not become culture is a faith that is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived.”
For the president of ConFamilia, “Mexico has stopped being a country of practicing Catholics and has become one of simply baptized people; and when a Catholic doesn’t live his faith in the outside world, that is, outside his home and his parish, those who dominate the world take control.”
Dabdoub considered Sheinbaum’s victory to be “a brutal threat” to the defense of life, family, and freedoms, since she has “a radical progressive agenda.”
‘Formation and serious work are needed’
For Father Hugo Valdemar, who for 15 years headed the communications office of the Primatial Archdiocese of Mexico when Cardinal Norberto Rivera led the archdiocese, “Catholics must learn that social media are not enough to really influence; serious formation and work are needed, otherwise everything remains up in the air.”
“The big problem is that we haven’t been seriously forming the laity, and nothing is being done to do so,” he told ACI Prensa. However, he noted that with a Sheinbaum administration, “the Church is not in danger. I don’t see an adverse climate, much less persecutory, and Christian values have been violated for a long time.”
What’s next in the battle for life and family?
Pilar Rebollo, director of the Steps for Life platform, pointed out that Sheinbaum’s election “means much more work” for pro-lifers: “It requires us to be united, it requires us to be coordinated,” anticipating possible “frontal attacks on what we know as our values that are foundational.”
Rebollo also emphasized the importance of serving underserved and vulnerable populations, which, she considered, were key to Sheinbaum’s victory. This, she said, must be done “not out of a desire for numbers but zeal for souls, a desire to [heal] wounds, zeal for humanity, to see Christ in others.”
It should be noted that all three candidates for president — Sheinbaum, Xóchitl Gálvez, and Jorge Álvarez Máynez — backed the legalization of abortion and the LGBTQ policy agenda, so Mexican voters had no real alternative to vote for a pro-life and pro-family candidate.
Sheinbaum is the first person of Jewish ancestry to be elected to Mexico’s presidency. In February of this year, she visited Pope Francis at the Vatican, where she asked him to bless a rose wrought in silver by a Mexican artisan. She later presented it to the rector of the Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance anticipates that Claudia Sheinbaum will govern under the shadow of the current president and his leftist party. Credit: EWTN News Nightly/Screenshot
During her campaign, Sheinbaum was seen wearing a skirt bearing the image of the revered Virgin of Guadalupe. According to Jason Poblete of the Global Liberty Alliance, Sheinbaum also wore a rosary around her neck at a public event. He and others suggested that this was an act of demagoguery intended to appeal to Catholics, who comprise approximately 78% of the country’s population.
Sheinbaum, 61, holds a doctorate in physics specializing in energy and taught at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. Her political militancy began during her student years, joining a group that became the founding youth movement of the socialist Party of Democratic Revolution. She later joined the ruling Morena party. She has been described as a climate activist, having been part of a Nobel Prize-winning commission advising the United Nations on climate change.
Sheinbaum’s tenure as Mexico City mayor was marked by progressive initiatives. For example, the World Economic Forum, led by Klaus Schwab, noted that as mayor she ended public school policy requiring gender-appropriate uniforms for children. Sheinbaum said: “The era when girls had to wear a skirt and boys had to wear trousers has been left behind; I think that’s passed into history,” and added: “Boys can wear skirts if they want and girls can wear pants if they want.”
While she did not raise the issue during her campaign, Sheinbaum’s Morena party is a firm supporter of abortion. The newly-elected congress will be seated in September, one month before Sheinbaum’s inauguration, thus allowing incumbent president López Obrador an opportunity to push through his legislative initiatives.
Poblete told “EWTN News Nightly” that the 2024 election may have led to a Morena majority in Mexico’s Congress, which has vowed to amend the constitution in order for Mexican Supreme Court justices to be elected by popular ballot, thereby confirming partisan control of the heretofore independent judiciary, which would rule on issues such as abortion and matters of gender ideology. He fears that Sheinbaum will govern under the shadow of the current president and his leftist party.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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