President Joe Biden

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White House: Biden will reverse Mexico City Policy

January 28, 2021 CNA Daily News 1

Washington D.C., Jan 28, 2021 / 06:43 am (CNA).- President Joe Biden announced Thursday morning that he will be reversing the Mexico City Policy.

 

The policy prohibits U.S. funding of foreign NGOs that perform or promote abortions as a method of family planning. The White House announced that Biden would be issuing a Presidential Memorandum later on Thursday that “immediately rescinds the global gag rule, also referred to as the Mexico City Policy.”

 

The policy, first instituted by President Reagan in 1984, is traditionally rescinded or reinstated by new presidents upon entering office. Republican presidents have enacted the policy, while Democratic presidents have all rescinded it.

 

In 2017, the Trump administration reinstated it and subsequently expanded upon it. While the policy traditionally applied to a limited amount of international family planning funding—ensuring it did not go to groups promoting abortion as a method of family planning—the administration expanded it to include billions of dollars in global health assistance.

 

Rep.Chris Smith (R-NJ) stated on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration’s expanded policy—Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance—was critical to ensuring U.S. taxpayers were not complicit in promoting abortions abroad, especially in countries with pro-life laws.

 

“Many countries throughout the world have been besieged by aggressive and well-funded campaigns to overturn their pro-life laws and policies,” Smith said. “The Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy was designed to mitigate U.S. taxpayer complicity in global abortion.”

 

Smith pointed to a new Marist poll showing that more than three-quarters of Americans oppose their tax dollars funding abortions in foreign countries.

 

“Americans overwhelmingly oppose using U.S. foreign aid to subsidize abortion,” he stated.

 

In addition, Biden will direct the Department of Health and Human Services to review and consider rescinding another pro-life policy, the Trump administration’s Protect Life Rule.

 

That policy required recipients of Title X family planning funds to not refer for abortions, nor be co-located with abortion clinics. As a result of the rule, Planned Parenthood withdrew from the Title X program in 2019 and forfeited around $60 million per year in grants.

 

The White House on Thursday said the memorandum to be signed by Biden “reflects the policy of the Biden-Harris Administration to support women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights in the United States, as well as globally.”

 

Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci—White House chief medical advisor on COVID-19—promised board members of the World Health Organization that the administration would rescind the Mexico City Policy and uphold

 

“And it will be our policy to support women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and  reproductive rights in the United States, as well as globally,” Fauci said. The term “sexual and reproductive health and rights” is commonly used in international diplomacy to refer to a number of procedures and issues including abortion and contraception.


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George Weigel: Cupich’s criticisms of Gomez are baseless

January 22, 2021 CNA Daily News 8

CNA Staff, Jan 22, 2021 / 07:56 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Jose Gomez, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, showed courage in releasing a statement on the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration despite opposition from within the conference, said papal biographer and longtime Church observer George Weigel.

Weigel said Gomez displayed “episcopal courage” at a time when others demanded “a reprise of the accommodationist approach to Catholic public officials long championed by Theodore McCarrick.”

Weigel, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Washington D.C.’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, penned an essay published in First Things on Friday, commenting on the statement released by Gomez on Inauguration Day and the subsequent criticism from Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago.

The statement from Gomez noted that Biden’s inauguration marks the first time in 60 years that a president has professed the Catholic faith. This presents a unique circumstance, Gomez said, particularly because Biden is in support of legal abortion and has pledged to increase taxpayer funding for it.

Cupich later criticized Gomez for releasing the statement, saying it was an “ill-considered statement” that “was crafted without the involvement of the Administrative Committee, a collegial consultation that is normal course for statements that represent and enjoy the considered endorsement of the American bishops.”

Norms from the bishops’ conference, however, indicate that standard procedures were followed ahead of the release of the statement.

Weigel argued that Gomez releasing a statement on the inauguration was in keeping with the recommendations from the Working Group on Engaging the New Administration created by the bishops at their November 2020 meeting.

As Gomez told his brother bishops, Weigel said, the working group had proposed “a letter to the new president from Archbishop Gomez, writing as a pastor. The letter would promise support for the new administration in areas of agreement. It would also identify administration policies, including abortion, that the bishops believed violated human dignity, and it would urge the new president to reassess his positions on these questions.”

The letter did just that, Weigel said. It noted numerous issues of concern among both political parties, but said that “the continued injustice of abortion remains the ‘preeminent priority’.”

“By any reasonable standard, Archbishop Gomez’s statement was balanced and measured; absent the controversy that erupted before and after its release,” Weigel said.

However, he said, “Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark put intense pressure on Archbishop Gomez to make no statement, as did the apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre.”

Weigel said the controversy “underscored the statement’s firm, clear, and unambiguous stance on the ‘preeminent priority’ of the life issues—and thus heightened the impact of those parts of the statement that the dissident cardinals may have found so objectionable that they tried to quash the entire document.”

He said Cupich’s suggestion that Gomez was somehow acting against the norms of the bishops’ conference “is itself unfair and irresponsible.”

“To suggest that there was something unprecedented here is to falsify history,” he said. “What was indeed unprecedented, as Archbishop Gomez pointed out in his statement, was the situation of a president of the United States who professed a devout and heartfelt Catholicism and yet was publicly committed to facilitating grave moral evils.”


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Secretary of State nominee says he will fill LGBT position at agency

January 22, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2021 / 02:45 pm (CNA).- President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State pledged to appoint an LGBTI envoy at the agency, and says he will permit embassies to fly the “Pride” flag if confirmed. 

 

Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. State Department, was asked about filing the LGBTI Special Envoy position at the agency during his confirmation hearing before members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Jan. 19. 

 

Filling the position is “a matter, I think, of some real urgency,” said Blinken, who served as deputy secretary of state during the Obama administration. 

 

The administration created the special envoy position in 2015 to help counter violence against persons identifying as LGBTI around the world, as well as helping overturn laws criminalizing same-sex conduct. 

 

“We’ve seen violence directed against LGBTQI people around the world increase,” said Blinken on Tuesday. “We’ve seen, I believe, the highest number of murders of transgender people, particularly women of color, that we’ve seen ever.” 

 

However, when the position was first created, some religious freedom advocates warned that the administration’s objective could be “more revolutionary” than simply countering violence abroad. They told CNA that the agency could pressure developing countries to redefine marriage and promote transgender ideology.

 

The Trump administration did not fill the position.

 

Blinken said on Tuesday that he believed that the United States is “playing the role that it should be playing in standing up for and defending the rights of LGBTQI people is something that the Department (of State) is going to take on, and take on immediately.” 

 

Blinken further pledged to “repudiate” the 2020 Commission on Unalienable Rights, established in 2019 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and which produced a report on human rights in 2020. 

 

The report stated “Foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure, from the founders’ point of view, are property rights and religious liberty.” 

 

In 2019, it was reported that U.S. embassies were prohibited from flying the LGBT “Pride” flag during the month of June, which is traditionally known as “Pride Month.” 

 

Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) asked Blinken if he would change this policy as secretary of state. Blinken said that the U.S. embassies would be permitted to fly the flag.

 


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U.S. bishops praise Biden’s repeal of travel ban

January 21, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Jan 21, 2021 / 08:45 am (CNA).- After President Joe Biden on his first day in office revoked a travel ban from certain Muslim-majority and African countries, leading U.S. bishops praised the move.

 

 “We welcome yesterday’s Proclamation, which will help ensure that those fleeing persecution and seeking refuge or seeking to reunify with family in the United States will not be turned away because of what country they are from or what religion they practice,” stated Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

 

Cardinal Dolan chairs the religious freedom committee of the U.S. bishops’ conference (USCCB), and Bishop Dorsonville chairs the conference migration committee.

 

On Wednesday, President Biden had issued a proclamation revoking President Trump’s executive order from 2017, along with several of Trump’s ensuing actions to restrict travel into the U.S. from several predominantly Muslim and African countries. Biden’s proclamation was among his first executive actions while in office.

 

Biden said that travel bans “are a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.”

 

The initial 2017 action by President Trump– was considered by some to be essentially a “Muslim ban,” a continuation of his promise on the campaign trail to shut down travel into the U.S. by Muslims, purportedly for security reasons.

 

At the time of the initial ban, the USCCB said it “targets Muslims for exclusion, which goes against our country’s core principle of neutrality when it comes to people of faith.” 

 

Since the original order, the administration later added other countries to the list that were not Muslim-majority nations, including African countries. The travel ban was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

 

Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Dorsonville said that reversing the travel ban would help refugees and victims of violence.

 

“We look forward to working with this new Administration in accompanying immigrants and refugees and continuing the welcoming tradition, which has helped make the United States the diverse and prosperous nation it is today,” they stated.

 

Other Catholic groups praised President Biden’s proposed actions on immigration on his first day in office.

 

Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), tweeted on Wednesday of the “Muslim Ban” that “[i]t’s only fitting that this be among the first Trump policies to go.”

 

“The ‘Document on Human Fraternity’ from @Pontifex and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb calls on us ‘to unite and work together’ and ‘advance a culture of mutual respect in the awareness of the great divine grace that makes all human beings brothers and sisters,’” she tweeted.

 

Biden on Wednesday began a series of other executive actions on immigration, including the preservation the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and declaring a halt to border wall construction.

 

In addition, Biden’s transition team promised he would send an immigration bill to Congress that would, among other acts, offer a path to citizenship for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders.

 

That policy would protect “vulnerable people and families” from countries such as El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti from deportation, said Bill O’Keefe, executive vice president for mission, mobilization and advocacy at Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

 

“Based on our presence in Latin America and our Church partners there, we know these countries are not prepared to reintegrate their citizens and are overwhelmed from the consequences of natural disasters, insecurity, and COVID-19,” O’Keefe told CNA in a statement.

 

 


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Full text: Fr. Leo J. O’Donovan Inauguration Day invocation prayer at the US Capitol

January 20, 2021 CNA Daily News 2

CNA Staff, Jan 20, 2021 / 11:30 am (CNA).- The inauguration ceremony of President Joe Biden started with an invocation prayer delivered by Catholic priest Leo J. O’Donovan, Jesuit, a former Georgetown University President.

Here is the full text of this invocation prayer:

Gracious and merciful God, at this sacred time we come before you in need – indeed on our knees. But we come still more with hope, and with our eyes raised anew to the vision of a “more perfect union” in our land, a union of all our citizens to “promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” We are a people of many races, creeds and colors, national backgrounds, cultures and styles – now far more numerous and on land much vaster than when Archbishop John Carol wrote his prayer for the inauguration of George Washington 232 years ago. Archbishop Carol prayed that you, O creator of all, would “assist with your Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude the President of these United States, that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently useful to your people.” Today, we confess our past failures to live according to our vision of equality, inclusion and freedom for all. Yet we resolutely commit still now to renewing the vision, to caring for one other in word and deed, especially the least fortunate among us, and so becoming light for the world. There is a power in each and every one of us that lives by turning to every other one of us, a thrust of the spirit to cherish and care and stand by others, and above all those most in need. It is called love, and its path is to give ever more of itself. Today, it is called American patriotism, born not of power and privilege but of care for the common good – “with malice toward none and with charity for all.” For our new president, we beg of you the wisdom Solomon sought when he knelt before you and prayed for “an understanding heart so that I can govern your people and know the difference between right and wrong.” We trust in the counsel of the Letter of James: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” Pope Francis has reminded us “how important it is to dream together… By ourselves,” he wrote “we risk seeing mirages, things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand, are built together.” Be with us, Holy Mystery of Love, as we dream together, to reconcile the people of our land, restore our dream, and invest it with peace and justice and the joy that is the overflow of love. To the glory of your name forever. Amen.

Who is Father Leo J. O’Donovan?
Father O’Donovan is a Catholic priest, known as a friend of the Biden family. He was the main celebrant at the funeral Mass for Joe Biden’s son Beau who died in 2015 after battling cancer. He was 46 years old. Beau was the eldest son of Joe Biden and his first wife Neilia Hunter Biden, who also passed in a car crash in 1972 with their infant daughter Naomi Biden.

 


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