Speaker Pelosi won’t answer if unborn child is a human being at 15 weeks

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Philadelphia, Pa., Jan 22, 2020 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- On behalf of Philadelphia’s Pakistani Catholic community, Archbishop Charles Chaput encouraged the Pakistani prime minister Tuesday to shape a culture of religious freedom in the country.

“I urge you to make every effort to secure the full rights of Pakistan’s citizens of every religion. And please understand that I will be pressing this issue vigorously in the American public square on behalf of Philadelphia and other Pakistani Catholics,” the Archbishop of Philadelphia wrote Jan. 21 to Imran Khan, prime minister of Pakistan.

The letter, published in First Things, highlighted the Pakistani Catholic community in the Philadelphia area, whom Archbishop Chaput said “are grateful for their Pakistani heritage” and “whose Catholic faith was nourished in Pakistan.” He added, however, that “the hardships now faced by Christians in Pakistan profoundly concern them.”

The archbishop encouraged Khan to “work urgently to assure true religious liberty for all citizens of Pakistan, especially for members of minority faiths.”

Pakistan’s state religion is Islam, and around 97 percent of the population is Muslim.

The country was designated, for the first time, a “Country of Particular Concern” in December 2018 for its religious freedom record by the US Department of State. The designation had been recommended by the US Commission for International Religious Freedom in 2017 and 2018.

Archbishop Chaput noted that despite this designation, Sam Brownback, US ambassador at large for religious freedom, had in February 2019 “indicated that your nation shows a sincere ‘desire to change’ for the better on this issue. I thank you for your willingness to pursue that positive change.”

“I believe in the honest intentions of many in the Pakistani government to assure full religious freedom for their nation. But Pakistan still does not fully protect the religious liberty of all of its citizens,” the archbishop pointed out.

He cited reports that religious minorities in Pakistan face “chronic hostility, harassment, and persecution,” and that the government “seems to do little to ensure their personal safety and their
full participation in public life.”

This situation, he said, is both unjust and it “aggravates misunderstandings and resentments of Islam among American Christians and other concerned U.S. citizens.”

Archbishop Chaput noted in particular the abuse of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws; economic inopportunity for religious minorities; and attacks on minority houses of worship.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws impose strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad. Although the government has never executed a person under the blasphemy laws, accusations alone have inspired mob and vigilante violence.

The laws, introduced in the 1980s, are reportedly used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities; while non-Muslims constitute only 3 percent of the Pakistani population, 14 percent of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.

Many of those accused of blasphemy are murdered, and advocates of changing the law are also targeted by violence.

Citing such problems, the archbishop said that “a reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, and its investigation and prosecution procedures, is thus urgently needed.”

Turning to economic problems, he said that the government has long “promised to provide quotas for public and education sector jobs for Christians and other religious minorities … but such promises have not been fulfilled, and members of religious minorities in Pakistan still face job and opportunity discrimination.”

In 2013 the then-governing party, the Pakistan Muslim League (N), promised a quota for jobs in the educational institutes and the public sector for members of religious minorities. The Pakistan Peoples Party discussed an Equality Commission to monitor job quotas in Sindh.

Both parties are now in the opposition in the national parliament, and the proposed safeguards have not been put into action.

Finally, Archbishop Chaput said, “police too often fail to protect non-Muslim sacred spaces,” which have been frequently attacked.

“Little effort is made to prosecute and bring to justice the perpetrators of this religious hatred,” the archbishop stated.

“I do believe in the good will of many citizens of Pakistan and many members of your government,” Archbishop Chaput told Khan.

“I also know that Pakistan faces many economic and social challenges, and you have the difficult task of managing them. I respect the demands of your office, and I gladly pray for both justice and success in your public service.”

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Baltimore, Md., Nov 13, 2017 / 02:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the conclusion of a lengthy discussion on migration, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops decided Monday to draft a statement from their president expressing the need for humane and just immigration reform.

The Nov. 13 proposal was first floated by Archbishop Michael Sheehan, Archbishop Emeritus of Santa Fe. After debating how to go about preparing a statement, it was agreed by oral assent that Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the conference, would issue a statement with the assistance of the Committee on Migration, chaired by Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin, assisted by Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles.

The discussion followed brief presentations from Archbishop Gomez and Bishop Vasquez. The Los Angeles archbishop outlined the principles which guide the US bishops’ work on migration, which come from Strangers No Longer, a 2003 pastoral letter issued jointly by the US and Mexican bishops’ conferences.

“This is a time when newcomers [to the US] are fleeing violence or persecution or cannot find a livelihood in their own country,” he reflected, adding that the Trump administration has taken several steps on immigration that demand a response from the Church because they “have a direct impact on our pastoral care of immigrants, refugees, and DACA youth.”

The first of these is the decision to allow only 45,000 refugees in the coming fiscal year – the lowest level since the program’s founding in 1980, and the second consecutive year in which the number of refugees admitted will be reduced.

This move, Archbishop Gomez said, “is simply inhumane, particularly when our great nation has the resources and ability to do more” for those “fleeing tyranny and persecution.”

He urged the preservation of DACA, which provides reprieve from the threat of deportation for undocumented persons who were brought to the US as minors, many of whom only know the US “and are by every social measure, American youth.”

Bishop Vasquez then spoke, saying the bishops are advocating for a solution for the DACA youth in the form of the DREAM Act, which would provide those young people with residency in the US.

He encouraged the bishops to contact their legislators to pass the DREAM Act or similar legislation as a prompt and humane solution, noting that 85 percent of Dreamers have lived in the US 10 years or longer, 89 percent have gainful employment, and 93 percent have a high school degree.

The Bishop of Austin also addressed temporary protected status, which has been extended to migrants from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti because of acute conditions of insecurity in their home countries.

“It is not the proper time to return 300,000 individuals” to their home countries when they remain insecure due to natural and manmade disasters, he said. These individuals have jobs and support their families, many have mortgages, and they have some 270,000 children who are US citizens.

“ A longer term legislative solution for these brothers and sisters” is necessary, he said.

The US bishops’ “vigourous opposition” to many of the administration’s actions on immigration has been taken because the Gospels “compel us to do so,” Bishop Vasquez stated.

“ Along with the right choices on refugee resettlement, DACA, and TPS, we also need comprehensive immigration reform,” he added, saying there is a need for a path to legalization and citizenship, acknowledging at the same time that “our country also has the right, and the responsibility, to secure its borders.”

Responding to the migration committee’s presentation, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento maintained that “the existence of the TPS population is in a certain sense a condemnation of the inability of Congress and administrations over the past 21 years to provide comprehensive immigration reform,” saying that having held them “in this holding pattern for decades is unconscionable.”

Archbishop Gomez stated that “all of us have to have a conversion, and that’s why it’s so important to talk about this, because people don’t know what the Church teaches,” which echoed comments made by Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago.

The Chicago archbishop had lamented the “the poisoning rhetoric that is degrading of immigrants, and even demonizing of them,” which “is having an effect on our own people, because they pick up that language … there’s something wrong in our churches when the gospel is proclaimed but people leave parishes with that rhetoric still in their hearts.”

Archbishop Gomez commented that “it’s important for us to call people to conversion, and explain to them what is it we teach; it’s so essential for the future of our country.”

Bishop Vasquez reiterated the importance of conveying the Church’s teaching, and also of fostering personal encounters with immigrants or refugees. “Once you do that you understand the situation of persons … just like us, therefore we empathize and are in solidarity with them; that’s what brings conversion and change of mind.”

Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces raised the question of how to counter charges that immigration policy is a matter of prudential judgement, and that the faithful may therefore in good conscience come to a judgement which differs from that of the bishops.

Bishop Thomas Wenski of Miami responded that “we’re making our prudential judgement, too … in the light of Catholic teaching.” He emphasized that “immigrants are not problems, but brothers and sisters; strangers, but strangers who should be embraced as brothers and sisters. We’re offering what we think is best, not only for the immigrants, but for our society as a whole. We can make America great, but you don’t make America great by making America mean.”

Immigration reform, he maintained, must “include the common good of everyone: Americans and those who wish to be Americans.”

Bishop Soto responded that deportations do not fall under the category of prudential judgement, but rather were included by St. John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae among the sins which cry out to heaven, and so is not merely “consistent with Church teaching,” but “to discard it as a prudential judgement doesn’t reflect our tradition.”

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco recommended the five principles from Strangers No Longer as a sine qua non, on which “there can be no disagreement” among Catholics. “While there’s room for prudential judgement, it’s not something that can be taken lightly” because it “involves such basic considerations of justice.”

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