GOP defense bill would end abortion, sex-change drugs at VA facilities

Washington D.C., Nov 7, 2018 / 02:31 pm (CNA).- Jeff Sessions has stepped down as attorney general. The decision came at the request of President Donald Trump.

A known defender of religious liberty and the right to life of the unborn, but a controversial actor in recent asylum and immigration debates, Sessions submitted his resignation on Wednesday afternoon.

In an undated letter, Sessions said “At your request, I am submitting my resignation.”

He continued, “I came to work at the Department of Justice every day determined to do my duty and serve my country. I have done so to the best of my ability, working to support the fundamental legal processes that are the foundation of justice.”

Sessions cited his successes in prosecuting “the largest number of violent offenders and firearm defendants” in history, as well as his work targeting transnational gangs, combating the opioid epidemic, and enforcing immigration law during his time as attorney general.

Rumors of Sessions’ departure from the administration had been circulating for months. In August, Trump said that Sessions would be staying as attorney general until at least November, but only weeks later appeared to avoid the question when asked if Sessions’ job was safe.

Tensions between the president and AG were said to begin following Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from oversight of the Justice Department invesitgation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s nomination of Sessions as attorney general was cheered by pro-life groups due to his record in Congress as a Senator for Alabama. National Right to Life gave Sessions a perfect 100 percent rating throughout his Senate career.

In July of this year, Sessions created a religious liberty task force to ensure proper implementation of a memo from the year prior. In announcing the task force, Sessions said there was a “dangerous movement” afoot that was “challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom.”

Sessions also garnered significant controversy over his handling of immigration issues, particularly the family separation policy. In June, he was criticized after citing Romans 13 to justify the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration.

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” said Sessions.

Romans 13 states, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Those critical of Sessions noted that the same verse had been invoked in the past to defend slavery.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston and president of the USCCB, was publicly critical of Sessions stance on immigration at the start of the conference’s Spring General Assembly.

DiNardo said that Sessions’ alteration of the United States’ policy on asylum seekers “elicits deep concern because it potentially strips asylum from many women who lack adequate protection,” and could “erode the capacity of asylum to save lives, particularly in cases that involve asylum seekers who are persecuted by private actors.”

DiNardo also joined Bishop Joe Vasquez, who chairs the USCCB’s migration committee, in condemning family separation as “not the answer” to immigration issues, as well as being “immoral.”

Until a replacement is nominated, Matthew G. Whitaker, Sessions’ former chief of staff, will serve as Acting Attorney General. President Trump said that Sessions’ replacement “will be nominated at a later date.”

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Minneapolis, Minn., Aug 23, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- A federal court has reversed a decision dismissing a lawsuit brought against the Minnesota Human Rights Act. In a decision issued Friday, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated claims that the la… […]

Participants in the Church in Australia’s Plenary Council in Sydney, July 9, 2022. / Australian Catholic Bishops Conference

Denver Newsroom, Jul 12, 2022 / 10:09 am (CNA).

The Catholic Church in Australia has concluded its Fifth Plenary Council. After months of debate and discussion on Church governance and pastoral priorities, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth declared the council closed on Saturday. 

“There will be no renewal of the Church if we put ourselves above Christ or in some perverse way push him to the margins,” he said in his homily at the closing Mass in Sydney July 9. The plenary council, in his words, tried to “reimagine the Church in Australia through a missionary lens.” The archbishop encouraged members of the plenary council to continue to ask themselves what the Holy Spirit is saying.

The final session was held in Sydney over six days. 

A plenary council is the highest formal gathering of all particular Churches in a country. It has legislative and governing authority. Laypeople were invited to participate in council sessions, and they joined bishops to vote on binding resolutions to be sent to the Vatican for approval. 

All members signed a concluding statement. Council members characterized the council as an expression of synodality.

“Synodality is the way of being a pilgrim Church, a Church that journeys together and listens together, so that we might more faithfully act together in responding to our God-given vocation and mission,” the statements aid, adding that in their deliberations “the Holy Spirit has been both comforter and disrupter.” 

Members of the plenary council also confirmed the plenary council’s decrees, which all Catholic bishops present then signed.  The decrees will be sent to the Holy See after the November meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. Six months after the Holy see receives this notice, formally known as a “recognitio,” the decrees will become law of the Catholic Church in Australia.

The plenary council formally recognized a duty to care for the Earth as a common home and to promote and defend human life from conception to natural death. It encouraged the Church to join Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’” Action Platform and to develop existing action plans in the spirit of the pope’s 2015 encyclical on God’s creation and care for the environment.

The plenary council backed more use of general absolution, an alternative to individual confession generally only used in emergencies. It also endorsed an effort to seek a new translation of the 2011 Roman Missal. 

Defeated proposals included one to allow lay people to preach at Masses.

On July 6 more than 60 of the 277 members protested the failure to pass motions on women in the Church, including the defeat of a motion to support the ordination of women as deacons if Rome agrees. The lay members voted for the proposals, but there were not enough votes from the bishops to pass the measures.

After some controversy, the council passed a motion to reconsider proposed language on women in the Church, which later passed in a slightly modified form. 

“Much has been made of the division and drama of the week and that might frighten some and delight others,” Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney told The Catholic Weekly. “But I think the remarkable thing is that it did not break the Church. It did not lead to a walkout or schism or an alternative assembly being set up down the road as we’ve seen at different times in history.”

“In the end with more prayer and reflection we ended up with a much improved chapter on the dignity and roles of women,” he said.

The council decrees include the establishment of diocesan pastoral councils across Australia, diocesan synods to be hosted within the next five years, and broad consultation about the creation of a national synodal body for Church collaboration.

The plenary council’s closing statement said members “sought to be faithful to their commission to listen to and hear ‘what the Spirit is saying to the churches’.” It acknowledged the disruptions to daily life caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and war.

Some moments during the council’s final week were “calm and harmonious” while others were “tense and difficult,” the closing statement said, adding, “every moment has been blessed; the entire week has been grace-filled, though never a cheap grace.” The statement praised “practices of listening and discernment” as “essential dimensions of the implementations of this plenary council.”

 “They will re-shape our engagement with the world, our evangelizing mission and our works of service in a rapidly changing environment,” said the statement, adding, “the work has only begun.”

The implementation will be reviewed by the Bishops Commission for the Plenary Council. Interim reports will be published in 2023 and 2025, with a final review report set for 2027.

Archbishop Fisher reflected on the plenary council’s achievements and possible shortcomings in remarks to The Catholic Weekly. 

“There’s been a direct engagement with some of the really ‘hard’ issues, like Indigenous issues, child sexual abuse and the place of women in the Church,” he said. “Those discussions were sometimes very emotional and potentially very divisive. Yet in the end there was a high level of agreement on most of them.”

“It’s much better that such matters were confronted directly rather than presenting a kind of faux unity by avoiding the hard issues,” the archbishop continued. 

He praised the assembly’s work to offer “some good thoughts on liturgy, marriage catechumenate, youth ministry, formation programs for lay leaders including those in rural and remote areas, and stewardship of the earth.” He also welcomed its appreciation for the place of the Eastern Catholic Churches in Australia.

However, Fisher worried there was not enough content dedicated to the “missionary impulse” and to “a passion for bringing people to Christ, to conversion and new life in Him.” He thought there was too little attention paid to people on the margins and there were “no practical proposals” to promote religious freedom at a time when it is “clearly threatened.”

He worried that “ordinary” priests and lay Catholics, including those born overseas, were underrepresented in the assembly, and this might have had a distorting effect on the proceedings.

Still, he said, most proposals had “a very high rate of acceptance among the lay members and the pastors.”

“Everyone will find some good things in the final decrees when they come out, and people should look for those, look for inspiration and encouragement in their own missionary discipleship,” said Fisher.

People will also find gaps and subjects they think should have been addressed, Fisher said. He wondered why so little attention was given to lay men, mothers, vowed religious, or “Catholics whose principal vocation is in the world.”

“There’s very little that speaks to the crisis of vocations to marriage and parenting, and to priestly and religious life,” he added.

While there is a whole chapter on the importance of the liturgy, especially the Eucharist and the sacrament of Penance, Fisher said, he had wanted to see “positive proposals” on how the Church can secure the priests who can celebrate those sacraments.

In late 2021, Fisher said he hoped the council would focus on priorities like responding to a culture of secularism and declining religious practice.

Last year he told the Catholic Weekly that currently only 1 in 10 Catholics in Australia regularly attends Mass. The Church in Australia is experiencing a vocations crisis, not only to the priesthood, but also to marriage and religious life. 

In addition to a culture of secularism, the Church continues to respond to sexual abuse scandals. A 2017 royal commission report found that the Catholic Church and other institutions in the country showed serious failings for decades in protecting children from abuse.

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