Vatican City, Dec 12, 2020 / 06:45 am (CNA).- When truth and beauty are transmitted in art, it fills the heart with joy and hope, Pope Francis told a group of performers on Saturday.
“Dear artists, in a special way you are ‘guardians of be… […]
Vatican City, Dec 12, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- The Virgin Mary teaches us about God’s gift, abundance, and blessing, Pope Francis said Saturday on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“Looking at the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe we someh… […]
CNA Staff, Dec 12, 2020 / 04:28 am (CNA).- The lower house of Argentina’s legislature has passed a bill that would legalize abortion-on-demand up to 14 weeks in pregnancy, drawing dismay from pro-life groups and Catholics in the country.
The bill, passed Dec. 11, would permit abortions up to 14 weeks of gestation for any reason. The bill now proceeds to the upper house, the Senate, where it is expected to face greater opposition.
Fulfilling a presidential campaign promise, Argentine president Alberto Fernández introduced the bill to legalize abortion into the country’s legislature Nov. 17. Fernández took office a year ago and has made abortion legalization a focal point of his tenure as president.
Following a 20-hour debate, the country’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, passed the measure 131-117, with six abstentions.
Existing Argentine law allows abortion in cases when the mother’s life or health is in danger, or in cases of rape. Cuba and Uruguay are the only other countries in Latin America that have broadly legalized abortion.
This is the second time in two years that the Argentine Chamber of Deputies has passed a liberalizing abortion law. During April 2018, under the administration of Argentina’s previous president, the Senate rejected a similar bill.
On the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, the bishops of Argentina raised prayers “for the care of the unborn life” and asked legislators to protect life from conception, and to not approve the abortion law.
Pro-life demonstrations against the bill took place in more than 500 cities across Argentina Nov. 28.
Unidad Provida, a pro-life organization, on Friday urged senators to “correct this violation of human rights and thus honor the will popular” of the Argentine majority that defends the lives of both the mother and the unborn child.
Camila Duro of the Argentine Pro-Life Unity organization explained to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, that the demonstrations took place because the Fernández administration “wants to fast-track the legalization of abortion, turning its back on the majority of the Argentine people, and so we want to express our disgust with that move.”
Dr. María José Mancino, president of Doctors for Life Argentina, told ACI Prensa that contrary to what those who support the proposed law say, “abortion is not a health problem or a priority problem in Argentina. There are many other problems that are not being considered.”
Pope Francis on Nov. 25 wrote a note to women in his homeland who asked him to help make known their opposition to the bill, saying, “I admire their work and their testimony; that I thank them from the bottom of my heart for what they do, and that they keep going.”
Fernández said Nov. 22 that he hoped Pope Francis would not be angry because of his introduction of the bill to legalize abortion. Speaking to the Argentine television program Corea del Centro, Fernández, a Catholic, argued that he had to introduce the bill to solve “a public health problem in Argentina.”
The president’s reference to a public health crisis seemed to refer to unsubstantiated claims from abortion advocates in the country, who claim that women in Argentina die frequently from so-called “clandestine” or unsafe illegal abortions in the country.
In a Nov. 12 interview, Bishop Alberto Bochatey, who heads the Argentine bishops’ conference healthcare ministry, challenged those assertions, stating that abortion deaths have fallen by 62%, according to figures from the Ministry of Health.
María José Mancino, a psychiatrist and president and founder of Doctors for Life, has said that the bill does not contain adequate conscience protections for doctors who do not wish to perform or refer for abortions.
The bill also includes a provision mandating “comprehensive sexual education.” Educators in the province of Córdoba have objected, saying that the provision would pressure teachers to impose an abortive mindset on students, while ignoring the right of parents to decide on the education of their children.
According to the New York Times, Fernández has asked his team to avoid scheduling meetings that include only straight men, and has since August mandated that any audience of more than four people with the president should be made up of at least one-third women or self-identified members of the LGBT community.
Denver Newsroom, Dec 11, 2020 / 05:02 pm (CNA).- Three Muslims who claim the FBI wrongly pressured them into becoming informants on Muslim communities may seek monetary damages as part of their lawsuit under a federal religious freedom law, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a decision that strengthens legal action on religious freedom problems.
“This unanimous decision from the Supreme Court makes it clear that government actors have to take religious freedom seriously—they can’t change their tune and then avoid the consequences of their previous bad behavior,” Lori Windham, senior counsel at the Becket legal group, told CNA Dec. 11.
Windham said the court ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act “gives religious claimants another way to protect their rights.”
“Again and again, we have seen cases where a government official violates someone’s religious freedom rights, then backs down when he or she has to go to court,” she said. “That leaves the religious person without any way to protect her rights in the future.”
The Becket Fund, a legal group focused on religious freedom issues, had filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Tanzin v. Tanvir.
The case ruled on a lawsuit brought by three Muslim men, Muhammad Tanvir, Jameel Algibhah, and Naveed Shinwari, who said they were placed on the FBI’s No-Fly list in order to pressure them to act as informants on Muslim communities. They sought damages against individual officers, saying the matter falls under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which bars government from unlawfully burdening religious practice.
The Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs 8-0. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is new to the court, did not participate because the cases were argued before she was confirmed.
The lawsuit dates to 2013. The Supreme Court did not rule on the facts of the case, but on whether the plaintiffs could seek monetary damages against officers.
“A damages remedy is not just ‘appropriate’ relief as viewed through the lens of suits against government employees,” said Justice Clarence Thomas in the court’s Dec. 10 opinion.
“It is also the only form of relief that can remedy some (religious freedom restoration act) violations,” he said. “For certain injuries, such as respondents’ wasted plane tickets, effective relief consists of damages, not an injunction.”
Thomas said that the agents may cite the doctrine of qualified immunity to argue they are shielded from lawsuits, as the constitutional rights allegedly violated were not clearly established at the time of their conduct. However, that was not before the court.
Congress could take other actions to shield government employees from liability, he said, “but there are no constitutional reasons why we must do so in its stead.”
The plaintiffs were all U.S. citizens or green card holders. Tanvir, the lead plaintiff, was a lawful permanent U.S. resident living in Queens. He was a long-haul truck driver who would often fly home after finishing a delivery route. In October 2010 he was turned away attempting to fly home from Atlanta. Two FBI agents took him to a bus station and his trip home took 24 hours.
Tanvir quit his job, but faced other problems trying to visit his ailing mother in Pakistan. He was not allowed to fly three separate times, after purchasing plane tickets. FBI agents allegedly told him he would be removed from the No Fly list if he became an informant.
The Trump administration has been generally supportive of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, but in this case for its dismissal. The lawsuit would interfere with “sensitive matters of national security and law enforcement,” lawyers for the government argued.
Becket argued that government bodies commonly change harmful actions or policies as soon as they are challenged in court, then argue that because the harm has stopped those affected cannot bring a lawsuit.
“This doesn’t happen in every case, but when government officials have egregiously and knowingly violated someone’s religious freedom rights, they can be held accountable for their actions,” Windham commented. “If the case had gone the other way, it would mean there was no way to vindicate egregious violations of rights, so long as the government official backed down before the court rules.”
Windham said it was important to note that the court didn’t say how much the damages should be or decide whether the agents broke the law.
“This case just allows plaintiffs to have their day in court, and try to prove their claims,” she told CNA. “We have seen government actors violate religious freedom, and then back down, in cases involving free exercise on college campuses, churches using their own land for religious exercise, and prison inmates who want to worship or study religious materials. This decision makes it harder for government officials to get away with repeated violations of religious freedom.”
CNA Staff, Dec 11, 2020 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes of Mexico City has said he agrees with Pope Francis’ comments on same-sex civil unions, made public in a recently released documentary.
The cardinal expressed his support for the pope’s comment in an interview with Reuters published Friday. The pope’s comments were published Oct. 21 in the documentary “Francesco,” in which Francis was seen to call for civil unions legislation to protect same-sex coupes from unjust discrimination. The pope’s previously unpublished remarks were later found to have been made during a 2019 interview conducted by Mexican television network Televisa and cut from the interview before broadcast.
In the documentary Pope Francis said “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I stood up for that.”
“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”
“I completely agree,” Cardinal Aguiar told David Alire Garcia of Reuters Dec. 11.
Cardinal Aguiar said: “That can’t be. It just can’t be,” adding that “If they decide as a matter of free choice to be with another person, to be in a union, that’s freedom.”
In its 2003 Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”
Even if civil unions might be chosen by people other than same-sex couples, like siblings or committed friends, the CDF said that homosexual relationships would be “foreseen and approved by the law,” and that civil unions “would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.”
“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity,” the document concluded.
The apostolic nuncio to Mexico said in October that the Vatican Secretary of State had asked nuncios to share with bishops that the pope’s comments do not pertain to doctrine regarding the nature of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, but to provisions of civil law.
In a 2019 interview, unpublished parts of which were aired in Francesco, the pope commented at different times on two distinct issues: that children should not be ostracized from their families because of their sexual orientation, and on civil unions, amid discussion of a 2010 same-sex marriage bill in the Argentine legislature, which Bergoglio, who was then the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, opposed.
While filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky told CNA and other journalists that Pope Francis made comments calling for the passage of civil union laws directly to him, it later emerged that the comments were actually part of a 2019 interview of Pope Francis conducted by Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki.
It was subsequently revealed that several sentences spoken by the pope in the documentary were spliced together, out of context, from the 2019 interview.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that those who identify as LGBT “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”
The Catechism elaborates that homosexual inclinations are “objectively disordered,” homosexual acts are “contrary to the natural law,” and those who identify as lesbian and gay, like all people, are called to the virtue of chastity, and called to holiness.
CNA Staff, Dec 11, 2020 / 03:19 pm (CNA).- The secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship wrote to a petitioner last month rejecting their appeal against the Bishop of Knoxville’s decision to ban temporarily reception of Communion on the to… […]
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 11, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- After Virginia’s governor appeared to suggest that church attendance is immaterial to the act of worship, one theologian says that Catholics see worship differently.
On Thursday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) asked religious leaders to consider holding liturgies outdoors or virtually during the Christmas season, as he announced new restrictions on public gatherings to control the spread of the coronavirus.
“The holidays are typically times of joy and community. We gather together, we celebrate our faith, and we celebrate with family,” Northam said. “But this year, we need to think about what is truly the most important thing. Is it the worship, or the building?”
“To me, God is wherever you are. You don’t have to sit in the church pew for God to hear your prayers,” said the governor.
Northam, who has no formal theological education or training, added that “worship online is still worship.”
“So I strongly call on our faith leaders to lead the way and set an example for their members. Worship with a mask on is still worship. Worship outside or worship online is still worship,” he said.
Dr. Timothy O’Malley, director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life and academic director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, told CNA on Friday that for Catholics to stay home out of caution during the pandemic might be laudable or necessary, but it is incorrect to say personal prayer, or even watching Mass online, can like-for-like replace attending a Mass in-person.
“You can’t just watch Mass and get the same thing out of attending the Mass,” he said. “The Eucharist alone makes that impossible, to receive the Body and Blood of Christ on Christmas is a gift. It requires presence.”
“In-person worship matters,” O’Malley said, and if Catholics are unable to attend Mass, they should consider the possibility to “worship together in smaller communities,” including as individual families in the home.
“For Catholics, matter matters,” he explained. “And that means the Church building is not just a container for human activity. It is a sacramental sign of the mystery being celebrated, the union of heaven and earth, the embodied memory of what Christ has accomplished on the cross.”
But, O’Malley said regarding Northam’s suggestions for outdoor liturgies, Catholic priests have historically offered Mass outdoors and, given the spread of the virus indoors, it might be a smart move for Christmas Mass.
“Much of the history of the liturgy has grown out of, at least initially, outdoor processions,” said O’Malley. “There is nothing intrinsically un-Catholic about outdoor Eucharistic liturgies. And in the time of a global pandemic, it may be wise to consider such opportunities.”
Churches were not subject to the Northam’s new gathering limits in Virginia, and the governor indicated that the exemption was due to the recent Supreme Court ruling in Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo. In that ruling, a 5-4 Supreme Court majority halted the state’s restrictions that limited some indoor religious services to as few as 10 people.
“We are following suit with that,” Northam said on Thursday, noting that he would only encourage faith leaders and would not impose a legal mandate on them. He also imposed an indoor mask mandate on Virginians, but said the state would not be actively enforcing the order at churches.
In March, Northam’s public health restrictions made it a criminal offense to be at a non-essential gathering of more than 10 people—including inside a church. Local police stopped a Palm Sunday service at a Chincoteague Christian church that was attended by 16 people.
While both the Arlington and Richmond dioceses curbed Sunday Masses in the spring due to the spread of the virus, churches have been open again for Mass with the Sunday obligation still lifted during the pandemic.
O’Malley suggested that, for Catholics who are homebound during Christmas, they could perhaps pray the Liturgy of the Hours together.
“We can bend the knee before Christ in the creche. Worship in this sense, again, is not just thinking pious thoughts. It is using the material dimensions of Catholicism to enter into deeper communion with Christ,” he said.
In his letter Let us return to the Eucharist with joy released in September, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments said Catholics must return to Mass “as soon as circumstances permit.”
Cardinal Robert Sarah said in his letter of televised or live-streamed services that “no broadcast is comparable to personal communication or can replace it. On the contrary, these broadcasts alone risk distancing us from a personal and intimate encounter with the incarnate God who gave himself to us not in a virtual way.”
Rome Newsroom, Dec 11, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- A Vatican diplomat has called for a coordinated rollout of COVID-19 vaccines which ensures that the poor are not left behind.
Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič, permanent representative of the Holy See to the Unit… […]
CNA Staff, Dec 11, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- The number of people attending Sunday Mass in Poland fell by 1.3% in 2019 compared to the previous year, according to new figures released Thursday.
The Polish bishops’ conference announced Dec. 10 that… […]
County health inspectors can no longer surveil and harass worshippers at Our Lady of the Angels Church near Los Angeles or attempt to otherwise enforce California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 regulations that banned indoor Masses […]
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