Rome Newsroom, Feb 27, 2021 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Eight hundred years ago, a barefoot St. Dominic carried an icon of the Virgin Mary across Rome to entrust the Marian image to a new community of cloistered nuns, who have safeguarded the icon within the wa… […]
CNA Staff, Feb 27, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).- For Damien Richardson, it just seemed like another job. A man had asked him if he would clear out the house of his late sister in north Dublin.
Richardson, a waste contractor, set to work. His house cle… […]
Denver Newsroom, Feb 27, 2021 / 03:48 am (CNA).- As pandemic restrictions continue to affect in-person events, a pair of ministries for people with same-sex attraction and their loved ones is hosting a free, virtual Lenten reflection to foster spiritua… […]
CNA Staff, Feb 26, 2021 / 05:05 pm (CNA).- As religious services in British Columbia are still shut down by government orders, a Catholic archbishop is asking the government to reconsider and offer religious institutions the same rights as businesses.&… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 26, 2021 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Online retailer Amazon is still facing questions several days after it removed a book critiquing the transgender movement.
Ryan Anderson, who was recently appointed president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), said earlier this week that his 2018 book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” was no longer available for purchase on Amazon.com. The book critiques the biological, psychological, and philosophical areas of the transgender debate.
“I first discovered it on Sunday around 3 pm,” Anderson told CNA, adding he is not sure “when exactly it was removed.”
Anderson said that Amazon told him on Tuesday that the book “violates their ‘content policy,’” but, he added, “they won’t tell us what aspect of the policy it violated.”
“They won’t tell us what passage, what page, what sentence is the offending passage,” Anderson said.
An Amazon spokesperson told CNA in an email on Friday, “As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable. That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content as described in our content guidelines for books, which you can find here. All retailers make decisions about what selection they choose to offer and we do not take selection decisions lightly.”
On a webpage regarding its “Content Guidelines for Books,” Amazon states that if the company removes a title, “we let the author, publisher, or selling partner know and they can appeal our decision.”
Anderson said that Amazon “acknowledged that they did not contact us ahead of time, in violation of their own policy to first contact authors and publishers.”
He warned about the precedent that the de-listing could send. “This means that anyone who’s telling the truth that we’re created male and female, whether from a faith-based perspective or from a science-based perspective, can be banned on a whim and without explanation,” Anderson said.
Earlier this week, four Republican senators–Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Mike Braun of Indiana, and Josh Hawley of Missouri–sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos inquiring about the company’s removal of Anderson’s book.
The senators wrote that Amazon has not provided “a sufficient explanation as to how Anderson’s book, which reached the top of two of Amazon’s best-seller lists before it was even released in 2018, supposedly violated a vague, undefined ‘offensive content’ standard.”
“When Harry Became Sally prompted important discussions in the national media and among policymakers in 2018, and remains one of the most rigorously researched and compassionately argued books on this subject,” the senators wrote.
“By removing this book from its marketplaces and services, Amazon has unabashedly wielded its outsized market share to silence an important voice merely for the crime of violating woke groupthink,” they stated.
While Anderson’s book remains unavailable for purchase on Amazon, an ebook called “Let Harry Become Sally: Responding to the Anti-Transgender Moment” remains available on the retail giant’s website. The product description says some of the book’s proceeds will be donated to the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Anderson said that “When Harry Became Sally” may be purchased directly from its publisher, Encounter Books, “as well as from Barnes and Noble, where it is currently the #2 selling book in America.”
Madrid, Spain, Feb 26, 2021 / 03:11 pm (CNA).- While maintaining restrictions on transit, gatherings, and worship services amid the coronavirus pandemic, Spanish authorities will allow marches for International Women’s Day next month.
Various feminist organizations are already calling for demonstrations in various parts of Spain March 8. In Madrid, marches of up to 500 persons have been authorized.
The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, advises against the marches, saying, “there’s no place” for them because “the epidemiological situation would not allow nor make sense to hold these events.”
However, Fernando Simón, director of the Health Emergencies and Alerts Coordination Center of the Spanish government, has been in favor of the feminist events and said that they’re less risky than Holy Week processions.
Simón said,”it’s not the same to be under a litter carried by many people during Holy Week, than to be in a demonstration of 500 where distances can be maintained.”
The delegate of the Spanish government in Madrid, José Manuel Franco, told Onda Madrid public radio that the requests for a permit to hold marches they have received in the Spanish capital “have not been prohibited because they maintain the parameters required right now in this pandemic situation.”
In various autonomous regional governments in Spain, restrictions have already been announced for Holy Week celebrations and other celebrations associated with the Church, such as the “Sanfermines” in Navarre, which will not be held this year.
In a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, Luis Losada, campaign director for CitizenGO in Latin America, said that “it’s outrageous that (while we have had to) give up the Fallas of Valencia and San Fermin festivals, as well as Holy Week, the feminists insist on their own celebration.”
Fr. Juan Manuel Góngora, a Spaniard, said, “these days we are watching with astonishment how in the middle of the pandemic, the Government Delegation in Madrid is going to authorize the 8M demonstrations with ridiculous measures.”
“Allowing these demonstrations is a farce for all of us citizens who are complying with the imposed measures and it constitutes a shameful double standard,” Góngora noted.
“At the same time we are already hearing 24/7 that this year we must act as if ‘Holy Week does not exist,'” he added.
The priest said that “if on Easter Sunday I go out through the door of the church that I administer holding the monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament while the parishioners accompany me duly separated, what authority does (the government) have to impose a fine on me?”
“We Catholics must stop being timid before sectarian rulers, we should act with courage and claim our right to express publicly our faith while respecting sanitary measures, those that truly respond to the requirements of healthcare but which others are using under that guise to restrict freedom,” Góngora said.
Fr. Francisco José Delgado, another Spaniard, charged that “all this time we have been enduring a real ‘demonization’ of Catholic worship, despite the fact that there is no known source of infection associated with worship activities in Spain.”
“At the same time, we see how the public events of the state religion, since the March 8 marches are nothing else, are shamelessly promoted by Podemos in the government,” he said.
Delgado said, that “the Ministry of Health advises against these marches, shows this is more about the political confrontation between the political parties in the government than from a real concern for the health of the people, which has been missing in the decisions that have been made since the pandemic started.”
“In our case, as a Church it is difficult to distinguish what part of our self-imposed restrictions belongs to prudence and what part corresponds to posturing before the world. We have to obey, and in most places we won’t have processions, obeying the bishops,” he said.
“But perhaps the task of spiritual reconstruction should be planned that must come after all this, because the world’s ideological agenda is not going to back off a millimeter, while we seem to be in retreat,” Delgado lamented.
Spain has had more than 3 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, and more than 68,000 deaths. Per 100,000 people, it has had 6,802 cases, and 147 deaths.
Washington D.C., Feb 26, 2021 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- Girls cannot be silent when forced to compete against biological males in athletics, one attorney argued on Friday.
In the case of Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools, several female ath… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 26, 2021 / 11:02 am (CNA).- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is opposing the COVID relief package currently under consideration in the House, over its lack of pro-life protections.
In a digital campaig… […]
CNA Staff, Feb 26, 2021 / 06:05 am (CNA).- Australia’s Catholic bishops on Thursday issued a working document ahead of the first assembly of a landmark plenary council in October.
The text, released on Feb. 25, will inform discussions … […]
CNA Staff, Feb 26, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).- The president of the German Catholic bishops’ conference said on Thursday that he would continue to give Holy Communion to Protestants who ask for it.
Bishop Georg Bätzing told journalists at a pre… […]
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