Franciscan friar named cardinal says he is taking a leap into the deep

Image of the Virgin of Almudena in the streets of Madrid, Spain / Credit: ArchiMadrid

CNA Newsroom, Nov 9, 2022 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
Every Nov. 9, the Church in Spain celebrates the Virgin of Almudena, the patroness of Madrid, whose image “hides” … […]

CNA Staff, Sep 17, 2020 / 07:25 pm (CNA).- According to L’Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, those who have criticized the controversial French movie “Cuties,” released by Netflix last week “have not seen it or have really limited themselves to the poster. Otherwise they have not understood it or have looked at it with the wrong eyes.”

A review of the film, entitled “The boycott: Cuties is a hard, but educational movie,” and written by the newspaper’s TV critic Andrea Fagioli, claims that the film “does not revolve around a ‘scandalous sexualization of adolescents’ nor does it obviously ‘simulate pedophilia,’ as some of the more than 600,000 signatories of a petition against (Netflix) have claimed.”

In his review, Fagioli describes the story of Amy, the film’s main character, her struggles to integrate into Western culture and her eventual introduction to a provocative dance troupe, at age 11.

In Fagioli’s words, “Amy will become the leader, pushing the group towards an ever more daring dance. And here lies the controversial point, because the director absolutely does not force her hand on the sensual aspect. On the contrary: she tries to highlight, albeit in a contradictory picture, their innocence.”

“The problem, therefore, is not these kids who grow up too fast for certain things without having sufficient maturity or the necessary immune defenses. The problem is the world we have created around it,” with absent parents and too much social media, he argues.

“All this the director makes clear, even if the film cannot be presented to everyone. But when read correctly and presented well, ‘Mignonnes’ (‘Cuties’) can become an educational film,” Fagioli wrote.

The L’Avvenire review does not contain criticism of elements that have been lambasted across in the United States and Latin America, including long scenes of provocative dances, scantily clad 11-year-old girls performing in front of adults, camera movements deliberately focusing on private parts, or the inclusion of the naked breasts of a teenager.

Criticism of those aspects of the film have come not only from conservatives or religious groups, but also from moderates and liberals, among the U.S. Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard wrote on Twitter: “child porn ‘Cuties’ will certainly whet the appetite of pedophiles & help fuel the child sex trafficking trade. 1 in 4 victims of trafficking are children. It happened to my friend’s 13 year old daughter. Netflix, you are now complicit.”

The Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg, in a mostly positive review of the movie, acknowledged that “I can see how viewers might be turned off by the way Doucouré shoots the dance routines, using close-ups of her young actors’ bodies both to show us their abilities as dancers and to make us deliberately queasy.”

British journalist Izzy Schifano is another non-conservative critic. At UK website The Tab, Schifano wrote that the dancing throughout the film is about “biting their lips, twerking, squatting down and bouncing on their knees…Some of the dancing was so graphic I genuinely couldn’t watch.”

Schifano, who has positvely reviewed several risqué movies for The Tab, complained that in “Cuties,” “the camera panned up and down the girls’ bodies multiple times in the film, at points literally just zooming in” on the posteriors of children.

The analytics firm YipitData told Variety Magazine that on Saturday, Sept. 12, Netflix’s cancellation rate in the U.S. “jumped to nearly eight times higher than the average daily levels recorded in August 2020,” reaching a multiyear high, most likely as a consequence of the #CancelNetflix hashtag campaign.

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St. Helier, Jersey, Mar 12, 2021 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- Jersey has formed a citizens’ jury to determine whether assisted suicide should be allowed on the island.

Out of 477 people who applied to sit on the jury, 23 were “randomly selected to provide a broadly representative sample of the Island’, Channel 103 reported the government as saying.

An expert advisory team to the group includes several university professors from mainland universities such as Oxford and the University of Bristol.

The jury will meet virtually ten times over two months, starting March 18, to hear evidence and consider and debate the legal, ethical, and medical implications of legalizing assisted suicide.

Lawmakers in Jersey will ultimately make the decision whether to legalize assisted suicide, taking into account the jury’s recommendation, which is due in June.

Jersey is a British crown dependency, with its own government and legal system, though the British monarch remains head of state. It has a unicameral legislature called the States Assembly.

One of the expert advisors to the jury is Dr. David Jones, an Oxford bioethicist who is a member of the Healthcare Executive Group and the Department of Social Justice of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, as well as a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for life.

Jersey, along with Britain’s other channel islands, is part of the Diocese of Portsmouth. Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth has spoken out in recent years against proposals to legalize assisted suicide on another channel island, Guernsey.

In a 2018 Palm Sunday letter, Egan wrote that assisted suicide is “fundamentally incompatible with a doctor’s role as healer.”

“Someone near the end of life needs emotional support, comfort and care, good pain control, respect and loving communication – not suicide on prescription…Let us redouble our efforts to offer this support, not least to anyone tempted to suicide or a hurried death,” he wrote.

Guernsey’s parliament ultimately rejected the proposal to legalize assisted suicide during May 2018. Had the island passed the measure, Guernsey would have been the first place in the British Isles to allow assisted suicide.

During the early stages of the Guernsey bill’s proposal, a number of Christian leaders voiced their opposition to the measure in a joint letter signed by 53 pastoral ministers and 41 churches.

Assisted suicide and euthanasia are illegal in mainland Britain. Several countries in Europe, including Belgium and the Netherlands, have legalized the practice.

More than a half-dozen states in the U.S., including Oregon, have legalized assisted suicide, with New Mexico poised to be the latest. H.B. 47, which would legalize assisted suicide in New Mexico, is quickly moving through the legislature, drawing dismay from Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester.

The Australian island of Tasmania is expected to soon become the third Australian state to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia, after a bill to do so passed the lower house of the state’s parliament in early March.

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