Month: May 2022

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News Briefs

Pope Francis: Faith is not something only ‘for old people’

May 4, 2022 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Francis speaks at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square on May 4, 2022. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Vatican City, May 4, 2022 / 07:35 am (CNA).

Pope Francis said on Wednesday that having faith is not something only “for old people,” but an essential element of life.

“In many trends in our society and culture, the practice of faith suffers from a negative portrayal, sometimes in the form of cultural irony, sometimes with covert marginalization,” Pope Francis said at his general audience on May 4.

Speaking in St. Peter’s Square, the pope said that having faith is, instead, something to be proud of because “it has changed our lives, it has purified our minds, it has taught us the worship of God and the love of our neighbor.”

“The practice of faith is not the symbol of our weakness, but rather the sign of its strength,” he said.

The pope spoke at the general audience about the witness that the elderly can offer to younger generations by remaining faithful until the end, like the biblical figure of Eleazar, whose story is described in the Second Book of Maccabees.

Pope Francis encouraged the elderly to be like Eleazar in showing young people a consistent witness to the faith.

“We will show, in all humility and firmness, precisely in our old age, that believing is not something ‘for old people.’ No. It’s a matter of life,” he said at live-streamed audience.

The pope compared the tendency in modern society for people to claim to “have an interior spirituality,” and then do whatever they please, to “the first heresy of the Gnostics.”

The Gnostic heresy, named for the Greek word “gnosis,” meaning “knowledge,” exaggerated the importance of knowledge over faith and considered the body and matter to be evil. The result was a denial of the Incarnation of Christ and a focus more on thinking rather than living a good Christian life.

Pope Francis said: “The practice of faith for these Gnostics, who were already around at the time of Jesus, is regarded as a useless and even harmful external, as an antiquated residue, as a disguised superstition. In short, something for old men.”

“The pressure that this indiscriminate criticism exerts on the younger generations is strong,” he added.

The pope said that the “seductive trap” of Gnosticism is the proposal that “that faith is a spirituality, not a practice.”

“Faithfulness and the honor of faith, according to this heresy, have nothing to do with the behaviors of life, the institutions of the community, the symbols of the body. Nothing to do with it,” he said.

Pope Francis highlighted the commendable example of Eleazar, who “lived the coherence of his faith for a whole lifetime.”

He said: “The biblical story … tells of the episode of the Jews being forced by a king’s decree to eat meat sacrificed to idols. When it’s the turn of Eleazar, an elderly man highly respected by everyone, in his 90s … the king’s officials advised him to resort to a pretense, that is, to pretend to eat the meat without actually doing so. Hypocrisy … These people tell him, ‘Be a little bit of a hypocrite, no one will notice.’”

“It is a little thing, but Eleazar’s calm and firm response is based on an argument that strikes us. The central point is this: dishonoring the faith in old age, in order to gain a handful of days, cannot be compared with the legacy it must leave to the young, for entire generations to come,” the pope said.

Pope Francis remained seated throughout the general audience. He required assistance as he slowly hobbled up a ramp to reach his chair in St. Peter’s Square. The pope is reportedly receiving therapeutic injections for his knee injury this week.

In his greetings to pilgrims from different parts of the world, the pope encouraged people to pray the rosary every day during the month of May. He encouraged Polish pilgrims, in particular, to “entrust the fate of your homeland and peace in Europe to the Holy Virgin.”

Addressing French-speaking pilgrims, he greeted members of La Voie romaine (the Roman Way), an association supporting a group of mothers of priests walking from Paris to Rome to ask the pope to lift restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass.

The mothers left the French capital on March 6 and arrived in Rome on April 30. They were expected to meet the pope at the end of the general audience, presenting him with thousands of messages from Catholics who say they were adversely affected by the motu proprio Traditionis custodes.

[…]

The Dispatch

Extra, extra! News and tidings for May 4, 2022

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The Dispatch

The Russian Path Not Taken

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I’ve been thinking recently about Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” and its relationship to a deceased Russian Orthodox priest. As the Soviet Union was crumbling in 1990, two roads metaphorically diverged in a […]

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News Briefs

Roe v. Wade ‘egregiously wrong from the start’? Key passages from leaked Dobbs draft ruling

May 3, 2022 Catholic News Agency 0
Capitol police placed fencing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 1, 2021, during oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in an attempt to separate rallies by abortion supports and pro-lifers. / Katie Yoder/CNA

Denver Newsroom, May 3, 2022 / 18:00 pm (CNA).

The Supreme Court’s previous abortion rulings were “egregiously wrong from the start” and on a “collision course with the Constitution.” These are among the colorful phrases of a 98-page preliminary draft of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could return abortion law to the U.S. states and their voters.

The draft in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked on Monday evening. The Supreme Court stressed that the document “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.” But the draft shows some insight into the thought of author Justice Samuel Alito on how the court might overturn the pro-abortion decisions Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Here are some choice thoughts, phrases, and arguments from Alito’s draft:

Mandatory legal abortion is overruled, the debate goes back to the states.

“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” the draft concludes. “The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito said in his introduction. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion and no such right is explicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely: the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

It’s about human life: Abortion ‘fundamentally different’ than related court decisions   

“Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged, because it destroys what those decisions called ‘fetal life’ and what the law now before us describes as an ‘unborn human being’.” (p. 5)

“None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion.” (p. 32)

‘Egregiously wrong from the start’

“Stare decisis, the doctrine on which Casey’s controlling opinion was based, does not compel unending adherence to Roe’s abuse of judicial authority. Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have inflamed debate and deepened division.” (p. 6)

Women’s voices on abortion must be heard through the legislature and the ballot box, not the courts

“Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.” (p. 61)

The states have ‘legitimate interests’ to regulate abortion.

“…procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right because such a right has no basis in the Constitution’s text or in our nation’s history.

“It follows that the States may regulate abortion for legitimate reasons, and when such regulations are challenged ‘under the Constitution, courts cannot ‘substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies’.

“…These legitimate interests include respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development, the protection of maternal health and safety; the elimination of particularly gruesome or barbaric medical procedures; the preservation of the integrity of the medical profession; the mitigation of fetal pain; and the prevention of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability.” (p. 65-66)

Roe v. Wade was ‘on a collision course with the Constitution’ from day one.

“…Roe’s constitutional analysis was far outside the bounds of any reasonable interpretation of the various constitutional provisions to which it vaguely pointed. Roe was on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided, and Casey perpetuated its errors, and the errors do not concern some arcane corner of the law of little importance to the American people.

“Rather, wielding nothing but ‘raw judicial power,’ the Court usurped the power to address a question of profound moral and social importance that the Constitution unequivocally leaves for the people.

“Casey described itself as calling both sides of the national controversy to resolve their debate, but in doing so, Casey necessarily declared a winning side. Those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the state’s interest in fetal life—could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views. The Court short-circuited the democratic process by closing it to the large number of Americans who dissented in any respect from Roe.” (p. 40)

Abortion precedents relied on bad history and bad reasoning

“The weaknesses in Roe’s reasoning are well-known. Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, it imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation.” (p. 42)

“What Roe did not provide was any cogent justification for the lines it drew.” (p. 46)

“The Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion, and therefore those who claim that it protects such a right must show that the right is somehow implicit in the constitutional text.

“Roe, however, was remarkably loose in its treatment of the constitutional text. It held that the abortion right, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, is part of a right to privacy, which is also not mentioned.” (p. 9)

“Roe either ignored or misstated this history, and Casey declined to reconsider Roe faulty historical analysis. It is therefore important to set the record straight.” (p. 16)

“Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe was handed down, no federal or state court had recognized such a right…

“Not only was there no support for such a constitutional right until shortly before Roe, but abortion had long been a crime in every single State. At common law, abortion was criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was regarded as unlawful and could have very serious consequences at all stages. American law followed the common law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s expanded criminal liability for abortions.” (p. 15)

“By the end of the 1950s, according to the Roe Court’s own count, statutes in all but four states and the District of Columbia prohibited abortion ‘however and whenever performed, unless done to save or preserve the life of the mother’.

“This overwhelming consensus endured until the day Roe was decided. At that time, also by the Roe Court’s own count, a substantial majority—30 States—still prohibited abortion at all stages except to save the life of the mother…

“The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions. On the contrary, an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.” (p. 24)

The Supreme Court can’t settle the abortion debate

“This Court’s inability to end debate on the issue should not have been surprising. This Court cannot bring about the permanent resolution of a rancorous national controversy simply by dictating a settlement and telling the people to move on. Whatever influence the Court may have on public attitudes must stem from the strength of our opinions, not an attempt to exercise ‘raw judicial power’.” (p. 64)

[…]