Hong Kong priest: China trying to control religion in Hong Kong

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Brisbane, Australia, Sep 29, 2021 / 15:04 pm (CNA).
The Australian state of Queensland has voted to become the fifth state in the country to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia. The state’s Catholic bisho… […]

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, Apr 3, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Brunei implemented Wednesday a sharia penal code that punishes such crimes as adultery, sodomy, rape, and blasphemy of Muhammad with the death penalty.

“Brunei Darussalam has always been practising a dual legal system, one that is based on the Syariah Law and the other on Common Law,” Brunei’s prime minister’s office said March 30.

“In fully implementing the Syariah Penal Code Order (SPCO) 2013 from 3rd April 2019, both systems will continue to run in parallel to maintain peace and order and preserve religion, life, family and individuals regardless of gender, nationality, race and faith.”

It noted that its sharia law, “apart from criminalizing and deterring acts that are against the teachings of Islam … also aims to educate, respect and protect the legitimate rights of all individuals, society or nationality of any faiths and race.”

Brunei is a country of 2,200 square miles located entirely on the island of Borneo. It is an absolute monarchy led by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, and about two-thirds of the population is Muslim.

The country had already begun adopting sharia for Muslims in 2013.

The sharia penal code includes differing punishments for Muslims and non-Muslims, and adults and minors.

Under the newly-implemented code, lesbian sex will be penalized with a fine up to $40,000, whipping up to 40 strokes, or up to 10 years imprisonment; and theft with amputation.

Those who encourage Muslims to apostasize will be subject to a fine and imprisonment, as will those who persuade someone having no religion to become a believer of a religion other than Islam.

It punishes anyone who commits qatl (homicide) on a fetus by intentionally causing its miscarriage will be punished with diya (monetary compensation to the child’s heirs) and with up to 15 years imprisonment.

As the code was put into force, Hassanal Bolkiah said that “I want to see Islamic teachings in this country grow stronger.”

Sodomy was already criminalized, and previously carried a punishment of up to 10 years imprisonment.

Capital punishment was already a punishment for some crimes, though Brunei has not executed any offenders since 1957. The burden of proof to carry out the death penalty is particularly high, requiring several competent, adult Muslim witnesses of the crime in most cases.

The Catholic Church has consistently taught that the state has the authority to use the death penalty, in cases of “absolute necessity,” though with the qualification that the Church considered such situations to be extremely rare.

St. John Paul II said that “the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.” He also spoke of his desire for a consensus to end the death penalty, which he called “cruel and unnecessary.”

And Benedict XVI exhorted world leaders to make “every effort to eliminate the death penalty” and said that ending capital punishment was an essential part of “conforming penal law both to the human dignity of prisoners and the effective maintenance of public order.”

In a 1986 letter to the bishops on the pastoral care of homosexual persons, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated that “it is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action … but  the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered.”

“When civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase,” the congregation stated.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texan anti-sodomy law in the case Lawrence v. Texas, on the basis of the right to due process.

Reacting to that decision, Bishop Wilton Gregory, then the Bishop of Belleville and president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the court “has chosen to view homosexual behavior between consenting adults as a matter of privacy. However, human sexuality cannot be viewed this way. Sexual activity has profound social consequences which are not limited to those immediately engaged in sexual acts.”

He added that “The Catholic Church teaches, in agreement with other faith traditions and with what were once the norms generally accepted by society, that sexual activity belongs to the marital relationship between one man and one woman in fidelity to each other. This relationship is the basis of the family which is the basic unit of society. Respect for the purpose of human sexuality and the family needs to be reaffirmed in our society; and anything which reduces respect for them – such as yesterday’s Supreme Court decision – is to be deplored.”

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Melbourne, Australia, Mar 6, 2019 / 11:25 am (CNA).- An Australian court announced Wednesday that Cardinal George Pell’s application for leave to appeal his conviction of sexual abuse will be heard June 5-6.

Pell, 77, was convicted in December on five counts of sexual abuse stemming from charges that he sexually assaulted two choirboys while serving as Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. He has maintained his innocence.

It was the cardinal’s second trial, as a jury in an earlier trial had failed to reach a unanimous verdict. The first jury were deadlocked 10-2 in Pell’s favor.

Pell’s appeal will by led by barrister Bret Walker, SC, who will be assisted by Robert Richter, QC, the cardinal’s defense lawyer; Paul Galbally, his solicitor; and Ruth Shann, Richter’s junior barrister.

The cardinal’s appeal will be made on three points: the jury’s reliance on the evidence of a single victim, an irregularity that kept Pell from entering his not guilty plea in front of the jury, and the defense not being allowed to show a visual representation supporting his claim of innocence.

The appeal document, The Age reported, says that “the verdicts are unreasonable and cannot be supported, having regard to the evidence, because on the whole of the evidence, including unchallenged exculpatory evidence from more than 20 Crown witnesses, it was not open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt on the word of the complainant alone.”

Pell is incarcerated at the Melbourne Assessment Prison while he awaits the results of a sentencing hearing, which will be announced March 13.

In December, a district judge overturned the May 22 conviction of Archbishop Philip Wilson for failing to report allegations of child sexual abuse disclosed to him in the 1970s, saying there was reasonable doubt a crime had been committed.

The judge, Roy Ellis, said acceptance of the accuser “as an honest witness does not automatically mean I would be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he complained to Philip Wilson in 1976 that James Fletcher had indecently assaulted him.”

The news of Pell’s conviction has met with varied reactions. While many figures in Australian media have applauded Pell’s conviction, some Australians have called it into question, prompting considerable debate across the country.

Greg Craven, vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, suggested that the justice process was tainted by media and police forces that had worked “to blacken the name” of Pell “before he went to trial.”

“This is not a story about whether a jury got it right or wrong, or about whether justice is seen to prevail,” Craven said in a Feb. 27 opinion piece in The Australian. “It’s a story about whether a jury was ever given a fair chance to make a decision, and whether our justice system can be heard above a media mob.”

Pell was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Ballarat in 1966. He was consecrated a bishop in 1987, and appointed auxiliary bishop of Melbourne, becoming ordinary of the see in 1996. Pell was then Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014, when he was made prefect of the newly-created Secretariat for the Economy. He served on Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals from 2013 to 2018. Pell ceased to be prefect of the economy secretariat Feb. 24.

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