CNA Staff, Dec 16, 2020 / 12:50 am (CNA).- The Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, last weekend unveiled a new statue of the Blessed Mother, after a previous statue was destroyed more than two months ago.
A new statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe was dedicated… […]
Vatican City, Dec 15, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Since it was unveiled last Friday, the Vatican’s nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square has elicited diverse reactions on social media, many of them strongly negative. […]
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2020 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- Hungary’s Parliament passed a law Tuesday defining the family as having a woman as the mother and a man as the father, effectively banning adoptions by same-sex couples and complicating adoptions by sing… […]
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- The Supreme Court of India agreed Monday to consider a petition that the requirement of annual confession in the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church violates its members’ privacy rights.
Three members of the Church, which is part of Oriental Orthodoxy, have petitioned the court after some of the Church’s priests allegedly used information learned in the confessional for blackmailing and both sexual and monetary exploitation.
India’s Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Dec. 14.
The petitioners called the Church’s requirement of confession a “serious intrusion into the privacy of a person.”
The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church codified its constitution in 1934. That constitution requires that all Church members over 21 years go to Confession annually. It also requires that a confession register be kept in each parish.
The petitioners argue that the requirement of confession violates the protection of life and personal liberty and freedom of conscience and free profession found in articles 21 and 25 of the Constitution of India.
They also took issue with the Church’s ability to remove members from its registers for failure to support the Church financially.
Fr. Johns Abraham Konatt, a spokesman for the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, said that “confession is one of the seven sacraments of the Church.
He told UCA News, “There might be a few instances of misuse of confession, but that does not mean that the sacrament should be done away with.”
The petition comes amid reports of some priests using the confessional to exploit women for sexual purposes, and men for monetary purposes.
In mid-2018, five priests of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church were accused of using confession to blackmail and sexually abuse a 34 year-old married woman. They have since been suspended.
At the time, a proposal to abolish confessions in all Churches in the nation was put forth by India’s National Commission for Women, a government advisory agency.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay said at the time that he was “shocked” by the proposed ban.
“(The ban) betrays a total lack of understanding of the nature, meaning, sanctity and importance of this Sacrament for our people; and also an ignorance of the strict laws of the Church to prevent any abuse,” he said. Such a ban would be a violation of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the country’s constitution, Gracias said.
“Millions of people from all over the world, over the centuries, have testified to the spiritual benefit of this Sacrament and to the grace, pardon and peace they have experienced as a result of receiving this Sacrament,” he added. “I am confident the Government will totally ignore this absurd demand from the Commission.”
According to local media, the National Commission for Minorities vice-chairman George Kurian also criticised the proposal during a TV discussion, calling it unconstitutional and saying that it unnecessarily provokes division and misunderstanding among minority communities.
The Oriental Orthodox Churches rejected the 451 Council of Chalcedon, and its followers were historically considered monophysites, those who believe Christ has only one nature, by Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox.
The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church is based in the Indian state of Kerala, where most of its dioceses are located.
The government of India is officially secular, while nearly 80 percent of the population identifies as Hindu. About 2.3 percent of India’s population is as Christian.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom earlier this year recommended that India be designated by the State Department as a “country of particular concern” — a designation reserved for the worst violators of religious freedom or the countries where the worst abuses are taking place and the governments do not stop them. USCIRF had not recommended India for the CPC list since 2004.
Christians have been subject to increasing attacks by mobs in India, with national and state governments failing to protect them and administer justice to perpetrators. A 2020 Open Doors report noted at least 447 verified incidents of violence and hate crimes committed against Christians in India in a year, many of them by radical Hindus.
Last fall, my daughter was starting her senior year of high school, looking forward to making all the memories that would mark the end of this chapter in her life. But life took an unexpected […]
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- The International Criminal Court has declined to investigate the Chinese government for their detention of ethnic and religious minorities, the organization announced on Monday. While declining to proceed with the allegations of human rights abuses, the court left the complaint open for the possibility of future action.
The complaints were filed by two groups of exiled Uyghur people: the East Turkistan Government in Exile and the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement.
According to the court’s report, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court received allegations on July 6, 2020, that “Chinese officials are responsible for acts amounting to genocide and crimes against humanity committed against Uyghurs falling within the territorial jurisdiction of the Court on the basis that they occurred in part on the territories of Tajikistan and Cambodia, States Parties to the Rome Statute.”
China is not a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a 1998 treaty which makes genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of agression as international crimes. Tajikistan and Cambodia, however, are signatories of the Rome Statute.
Per the report, however, the International Criminal Court lacks jurisdiction in this case, “since the actus reus of each of the above-mentioned alleged crimes appears to have been committed solely by nationals of China within the territory of China, a State which is not a party to the Statute.”
The Chinese government admitted in October 2018 that “re-education camps” for members of the Uyghur population had been established. The camps were first spotted on satellite imagery in 2017.
The highest estimate sets the total number of inmates in the camps at 3 million, plus approximately half a million minor children in special boarding schools for “re-education” purposes. Survivors have reported indoctrination, forced abortions, beatings, forced labor, and torture in the camps.
While the International Criminal Court will not be investigating China, a lawyer representing the East Turkistan Government in Exile expressed optimism that additional evidence will show that the court has jurisdiction in the matter.
“The (Office of the Prosecutor) has in effect asked for more evidence if it is to be able to open an investigation,” said Rodney Dixon, QC, the lead barrister who submitted the complaint, said in a press release on Tuesday, December 15.
“The OTP says there is insufficient evidence now, but further evidence can be provided which can lead to an investigation being opened. The fact is that the file is not closed as we have submitted under Article 15(6) was acknowledged by the OTP, the purpose of which is to get an investigation opened which the Prosecutor will consider,” he said.
“We are submitting further evidence to get an investigation opened. This process before the ICC is ongoing and we are hopeful that an investigation will be commenced.”
Dixon referred to this as “a very important moment” for the Uyghur people.
“The millions of Uyghur victims who are suffering terrible atrocities at the hand of the Chinese Government officials need justice and we are hopeful that the ICC will take up this investigation,” he said.
“We will be providing highly relevant evidence that will permit this to happen in the coming months. We are engaging with the Office of the Prosecutor as these proceedings go on with the aim of opening a full investigation.”
The repression of Uyghurs is part of a widespread effort by the Chinese government to “Sinicize” religion and culture across the country.
In October, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a resolution to declare China’s actions against the Uyghur population as a genocide, and express “the sense of the Senate that the atrocities perpetrated by the Government of the People’s Republic of China against Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region constitutes genocide.”
The senators said that China’s actions violate the norms outlined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and called for an international response to China’s actions.
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2020 / 04:21 pm (CNA).- A ban on headscarves for elementary school students was discriminatory and unconstitutional because it singled out Muslim girls’ headscarves, the Austrian Constitutional Court has ruled.
The court said the law banning headscarves for girls under 10 years old “contravened the principle of equality in relation to freedom of religion, belief and conscience.”
Drafters tried to keep the text of the law neutral, banning “ideologically or religiously influenced clothing which is associated with the covering of the head.”
Judge Christoph Grabenwarter, however, said additional material from the government made it clear that the law could only be understood as targeting Muslim head coverings. The law violated the principle of equality and the state’s obligation to be religiously neutral because it singled out Muslim students.
Grabenwarter voiced concern of the ban’s effects on students.
“It carries the risk of hindering Muslim girls’ access to education and more precisely of shutting them off from society,” Grabenwarter said, according to the German news site Deutsche Welle.
Austria’s coalition government of the center-right People’s Party and the far-right Freedom Party passed the measure in 2019, just days before the government collapsed amid a corruption scandal.
Backers depicted the proposal as a “child protection law,” claiming it protected girls and women against sexism and politicized Islam. They also said it would protect the nation’s culture from Islamic influences and the infiltration of parallel societies.
The new government, a coalition of the People’s Party and the left-wing Green Party, had wanted to extend the ban to girls under age 14.
Two Muslim children and their parents challenged the law, noting that it applied only to headscarves and not to smaller religious head coverings like those of Jewish or Sikh boys. In addition to religious freedom and equality concerns, they objected to the law’s infringement on religious upbringing of children.
Umit Vural, president of the Austrian Islamic Faith Community, praised the decision, the German news site Deutsche Welle said.
“Equal opportunity and the autonomy of girls and women in our society cannot be achieved through bans,” said Vumal, who also criticized pressuring girls to wear a headscarf.
“We don’t condone disparaging attitudes towards women who decide against the headscarf… and we also cannot agree with the curtailing of the religious freedom of those Muslim women who understand the headscarf to be an integral part of their lived religious practice.”
People’s Party Education Minister Heinz Fassmann said the ministry would “take note of the judgement and look into its arguments.”
“I regret that girls will not have the opportunity to make their way through the education system free from compulsion,” he said, according to Agence France Presse.
In 2018 the Muslim community in Austria had voiced concerns over the proposal, calling the proposal “counterproductive.” They said that “very few” girls under age 10 wear headscarves to school.
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2020 / 03:25 pm (CNA).- A federal judge on Monday ruled against Tennessee for a second time this year, refusing to reinstate a 48-hour waiting period for abortions while the state appeals to a higher court.
In October, Judge Bernard Friedman ruled unconstitutional Tennessee’s mandatory 48-hour waiting period for women seeking abortion, which had been in effect since 2015.
Though waiting periods have been struck down before in state courts, this case marks the first time a federal court has struck down an abortion waiting period.
In the legal challenge brought by Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, Friedman wrote that most women are already certain about their decision to have an abortion when they go in for their first appointment.
The judge said the regulation placed an “undue burden” on women’s “right to abortion.”
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery filed a motion in November in the U.S. District Court in Nashville asking Friedman to keep the waiting period law in place while the state seeks the opinion of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
On Dec. 14, Friedman refused, reiterating his opinion that “the Tennessee statute constitutes a ‘substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion’ and, thus, an undue burden.”
Tennessee Right to Life, a pro-life organization active in the state, decried the court’s October decision, contending that the waiting period had saved “countless unborn lives” and spared women the regret of abortion by allowing them extra time to identify life-affirming resources near them.
“Not only is this decision a slap at Tennessee’s abortion-vulnerable women, it is an affront to Tennessee’s voters who passed a 2014 constitutional amendment in which allowing a short waiting period was a key factor,” Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life, said at the time.
“Our organization remains committed to seeing a similar statute drafted and enforced during the next legislative session.”
Tennessee’s law required abortion doctors to inform a woman during her first appointment “that numerous public and private agencies and services are available to assist her during her pregnancy and after the birth of her child” if she chooses not to have the abortion.
Barring a medical emergency, a patient was then required to wait 48 hours before the second appointment and proceeding with the abortion.
Under Tennessee law, the district court’s striking down of the 48-hour waiting period would automatically bring a 24-hour waiting period into effect for the state, but Friedman also blocked the state from enforcing the 24-hour requirement.
At least 26 states mandate waiting periods for women seeking abortions, most of them 24 hours. Five states— Utah, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota— have a 72-hour waiting period in place.
In Iowa, the legislature passed a 72-hour waiting period during May 2017, which the Iowa Supreme Court in 2018 declared unconstitutional. The Iowa House and Senate passed a 24-hour waiting period requirement for abortion during June 2020, which also requires a woman to have the chance to view an ultrasound of the unborn child and to receive information on adoption.
In January 2020, the authors of a study from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) reported that approximately 95% of women who had abortions did not regret their decision five years after the fact, even if they did initially experience regret. Friedman cited that study in his opinion.
Dr. Priscilla Coleman, a professor of human development and family studies at Bowling Green State University who testified in the Tennessee case, told CNA that she disagrees with that study’s conclusion and methodology.
In addition, larger studies have turned up opposite conclusions. While it did not directly measure “regret,” a study by Dr. D. Paul Sullins of The Catholic University of America published in 2016 followed more than 8,000 women for over 13 years, and found that a significant increase in the relative risk of mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety for women who have abortions.
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- The Supreme Court accepted a church’s appeal against coronavirus restrictions in the state of Colorado on Tuesday, even after the governor reclassified churches to stop the rules applying.
High Pla… […]
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- On Oct. 9, 2016, 12,000 people filled a soccer stadium in northern England for a momentous event. The edge of the pitch was lined by women in saris carrying bright umbrellas with silver fringes jingling in the… […]
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