Catholic News 2
ATLANTA (AP) -- Republican President Donald Trump's pledge to scrap limits on church political activity could have sweeping effects that extend beyond his conservative supporters to more liberal congregations, including the black evangelical church that has long been a key component of the Democratic Party's electoral machinery....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate is poised to confirm President Donald Trump's nominee for education secretary by the narrowest possible margin, with Vice President Mike Pence expected to break a 50-50 tie....
BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian authorities have killed as many as 13,000 people - possibly more - since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said on Tuesday....
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A Palestinian Cabinet minister is calling on the international community to punish Israel over a contentious law it has passed that could retroactively legalize thousands of West Bank settlement homes....
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- State and federal lawyers will argue before a panel of federal appellate court judges Tuesday in the pitched fight over President Donald Trump's travel and refugee ban that could reach the Supreme Court....
Vatican City, Feb 6, 2017 / 06:45 pm (CNA).- In the wake of President Donald Trump’s recent policy on refugees, U.S. Catholics should stay close to their bishops, who are providing a clear, correct and unified response to the issue, a Vatican official said.Jesuit Fr. Michael Czerny is secretary of the new Vatican Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, which includes an office for refugees and migrants, currently headed by the Pope himself.Fr. Czerny told CNA that right now, the U.S. bishops are doing a good job responding to the policy. “I think the key is for Catholics to stay close to their bishops. Dialogue and unity are the two keys to a moment like this,” he said.“And the bishops are speaking clearly, they’re speaking loudly, they’re speaking with a great deal of unity. Those who are concerned should listen to them, and also should reach out to help them.”Earlier this week, Cardinal Joseph Tobin told CNA that accordi...
Vatican City, Feb 6, 2017 / 06:45 pm (CNA).- In the wake of President Donald Trump’s recent policy on refugees, U.S. Catholics should stay close to their bishops, who are providing a clear, correct and unified response to the issue, a Vatican official said.
Jesuit Fr. Michael Czerny is secretary of the new Vatican Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, which includes an office for refugees and migrants, currently headed by the Pope himself.
Fr. Czerny told CNA that right now, the U.S. bishops are doing a good job responding to the policy. “I think the key is for Catholics to stay close to their bishops. Dialogue and unity are the two keys to a moment like this,” he said.
“And the bishops are speaking clearly, they’re speaking loudly, they’re speaking with a great deal of unity. Those who are concerned should listen to them, and also should reach out to help them.”
Earlier this week, Cardinal Joseph Tobin told CNA that according to Fr. Czerny, Pope Francis has confidence that the U.S. bishops are giving the issue “a Gospel response.”
“The bishops in the United States are responding as their vocation calls them to, as their mission calls them to,” Fr. Czerny said. “They are acting as real shepherds of the people…not just of the people in their own flock, but they are really shepherds to all people.”
Asked what the Holy See’s plan is for engaging with the U.S. government on immigration policies, he said that they plan to use the U.S. bishops as their first line of communication and engagement, watching them and supporting them in whatever way they need.
“They’re responding very well,” he said. “And for the moment, they’re the people to listen to on this issue.” For the average Catholic, if they have something to offer, suggest or contribute to their bishops, they should do so, he said. “I think a Church united around its bishops will respond really well.”
United with the bishops, U.S. Catholics can help influence political leaders to enact policies that support and uphold the dignity of all human persons.
“As citizens and as Christians,” Fr. Czerny said, “we need to help our leaders to reflect and enact our real values.” If, for whatever reason, they start to push policies that “are violating our basic principles and our own fundamental history, then it’s up to us to se them straight.”
“There’s no justification for whipping up fear and hysteria when a calm approach can certainly find good solutions and can promote the common good.”
In response to the argument that accepting refugees into a country will endanger its citizens by increasing the likelihood of acts of terrorism, he said that this is something it is easy to be “tricked into” believing through imagery or misleading reporting.
But, he pointed out, if governments are honest, and they look at how they may have actually contributed, or are contributing, to the current situation, they’ll “find more useful things to do with their energy than scapegoat refugees.”
“There are other ways in which governments in their foreign policy, in their trade policy, in their security policies, have done a lot to promote and provoke the very terrorism that they are now regretting,” he said.
The solution is not victimizing refugees, the solution is solving problems at their roots, he said. “That’s the job of governments, that’s why they are instituted and that’s what they should be spending their time and energy doing.”
In the end, immigration is an issue that is affecting the entire world right now, not just one or two countries. And the challenges and difficulties are real, he acknowledged. “But I can’t imagine a situation where one would say afterwards that it was too bad that we let them in, we wish we hadn’t.”
“So I think we need to have some faith and hope, and use our considerable resources and our ingenuity to find solutions. And the solutions are waiting to be found, and everyone of good will is ready to give a hand, and that will make us all a better people.”
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AP) -- President Donald Trump on Monday accused the media of deliberately minimizing coverage of the threat posed by the Islamic State group, saying news outlets "have their reasons" for not reporting what he described as a "genocide" underway at the hands of the group....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump made an unsupported assertion Monday that terrorist acts in Europe are going unreported. A look at the matter:...
PRAIRIE DU CHIEN, Wis. (AP) -- She tugged 13 envelopes from a cabinet above the stove, each one labeled with a different debt: the house payment, the student loans, the vacuum cleaner she bought on credit....
Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2017 / 04:37 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A bill that would protect health care providers’ freedom to opt-out of abortion mandates they find objectionable has once again been introduced in Congress.“This bill is needed to give health care providers the right to provide medical care without violating their deeply held beliefs,” Sen. James Lankford, sponsor of the bill in the Senate, stated on Friday.“Americans have very different views about abortion, but we should not force anyone to participate in it or provide coverage,” he added.The Conscience Protection Act would protect health care providers from federal, state, and local abortion mandates if they conscientiously object to assisting with abortions. It would also protect religious employers from having to cover elective abortions in their health plans, and establishes a “right of action” for all entities if they believe their religious beliefs on the matter are violated.T...
Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2017 / 04:37 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A bill that would protect health care providers’ freedom to opt-out of abortion mandates they find objectionable has once again been introduced in Congress.
“This bill is needed to give health care providers the right to provide medical care without violating their deeply held beliefs,” Sen. James Lankford, sponsor of the bill in the Senate, stated on Friday.
“Americans have very different views about abortion, but we should not force anyone to participate in it or provide coverage,” he added.
The Conscience Protection Act would protect health care providers from federal, state, and local abortion mandates if they conscientiously object to assisting with abortions. It would also protect religious employers from having to cover elective abortions in their health plans, and establishes a “right of action” for all entities if they believe their religious beliefs on the matter are violated.
The bill was introduced in Congress last year and passed the House 245-182, but did not receive a vote in the Senate.
Its sponsors say that doctors religiously objecting to abortion are not sufficiently protected from abortion mandates. Medical professionals must file a grievance with the civil rights office at the Department of Health and Human Services, and some complaints reportedly sit undecided for months or years.
Some states have already been forcing religious employers to offer abortion coverage and have coerced health providers into assisting or performing abortions.
Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), who introduced the Conscience Protection Act in the House, pointed to California and New York abortion mandates as examples of this, including the case of a New York nurse who in 2009 was forced to assist with an abortion.
Cathy Cenzon-Decarlo, a nurse at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, said the hospital coerced her into helping with an abortion there. She requested an investigation by the HHS, which in 2013 found that the hospital had to change its policies to accommodate employees with conscientious objections to abortion.
California recently forced all employers, including religious groups, to cover elective abortions in their health plans. Last June, the former head of the HHS civil rights office ruled that religious groups which opposed California’s mandate were not protected and would have to comply with it.
In light of these incidents, last March leading U.S. bishops asked Congress to pass the Conscience Protection Act.
The bill would “address the deficiencies that block effective enforcement of existing laws, most notably by establishing a private right of action allowing victims of discrimination to defend their own rights in court,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore said in a joint statement in March of 2016.
Other religious groups pushed for Congress to pass the bill last year, including the Christ Medicus Foundation, a non-profit which advocates for Catholic teaching and ethics in health care.
“Conscience is the sacred space of human dignity where persons exercise their sincerely held, reasoned beliefs,” Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), another sponsor of the bill, said on Friday. “It is a true poverty that this most cherished American principle is under assault, violating the good of persons and communities.”
