Catholic News 2

Vatican City, Sep 29, 2016 / 06:44 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis is troubled by the international tensions arising from recent North Korean nuclear tests, said Greg Burke, director of the Holy See Press Office this week.

“Responding to a question about the delicate situation on the Korean peninsula, I can confirm the concern of the Holy Father and the Holy See about the continuing tensions in the area on account of the nuclear tests carried out by North Korea,” Burke stated in a statement released Sept. 27.

This concern, he added, “was reiterated today by Msgr. Antoine Camilleri, the Holy See's Undersecretary for Relations with States” during a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency held in Vienna.

On Sept. 9, the communist country carried out its fifth nuclear test with an underground explosion, which was celebrated by their leader Kim Jong Un, who ignored the protests of the international community.

In March, the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 2270, which included tough sanctions against North Korea after their fourth nuclear test, which they claimed to have carried out on January 6 this year.

Now, after the fifth test, the Security Council is preparing a new resolution to force Kim Jong Un to abandon the development of nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, on Sept. 27 the South Korean Minister for Unification, Hong Yong-pyo, warned that “there are signs that Pionyang (North Korea) is preparing to carry out a new test of its nuclear weapons this year.”

According the Yonhap agency, the new test could occur on Oct. 10, when the communist regime celebrates the 71st anniversary of the foundation of the Korean Worker's Party, a date which can be used as a pretext to carry out the sixth nuclear test or launch an intercontinental ballistic missile.


                   

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Washington D.C., Sep 29, 2016 / 02:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The use of a technique to conceive a “three-parent baby” dodged U.S. law and, critics say, may further alter the relationship between parent and child.

“This fertility doctor openly acknowledged that he went to Mexico where `there are no rules’ in order to evade ongoing review processes and existing regulations in the United States,” said Marcy Darnovsky, PhD, executive director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based think tank Center for Genetics and Society.

“No researcher or doctor has the right to flout agreed-upon rules and make up their own. This is an irresponsible and unethical act, and sets a dangerous precedent.”

U.S. doctors worked in Mexico to avoid U.S. laws that ban the procedures.

They performed the treatment on a Jordanian woman to prevent her from passing on a genetic condition to her child. The condition, called Leigh Syndrome, would be fatal to children due to a defect in mitochondria, the cellular structures that generate energy from food.

The woman and her husband had suffered four miscarriages. One of the children died eight months after birth and another at six years of age.

The doctors took DNA from the mother’s egg and healthy mitochondria from a donor egg to create a new egg to be artificially fertilized. The doctors created five embryos and only one developed normally, BBC News reports.

The boy conceived in the technique was born in April and is now five months old.

Darnovsky wished the infant and his family well, but noted that the Food and Drug Administration had raised “many cautions” about the risk to children conceived in these techniques and possibly to their own children.

“The precedent is very troubling – both in the sense of scientists who should know better `going rogue’ with a risky and experimental procedure, and in the sense that they're doing so using a technique that is technically a form of human germline modification,” Darnovsky said, referring to genetic modification of heritable traits.

The doctors’ team leaders include Dr. John Zhang, medical director at the New Hope Fertility Centre in New York City. They will present their findings at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in October.

The ethics of the technique drew criticism from Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor who has written on the ethical treatment of the human person in embryo, and Dr. Donald Landry, then-chair of the Department of Medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital. They sent a Feb. 18, 2014 letter to the Food and Drug Administration objecting to any human trials using the procedure.

"The desire to help women suffering from mitochondrial disorders or infertility is admirable and worthy," George and Landry said. “However, the needs of the children being created through novel technologies also must be taken into account.”

They said the procedure could lead to birth defects and other disorders. The procedure would take place with a relative lack of regulatory oversight.

The procedure using three genetic parents would be "a dramatic alteration of the first and most basic of natural human relationships, with consequences difficult to fathom or predict."

The fact that human beings have a single mother and father has been “inseparable from our most fundamental social institutions.” They called for greater moral scrutiny for any actions that would “purposely reconfigure the natural, biological foundation of the family.”

George and Landry also objected that the technique would necessarily involve the destruction of human embryos and permit “an unjust and immoral exploitation and instrumentalization of human life.”

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Rome, Italy, Sep 29, 2016 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The EWTN News Rome Bureau is now is just minutes from St. Peter’s Square, having launched its new office on Wednesday. The occasion sparked reflection on Mother Angelica’s legacy and the media network’s mission to serve the gospel.

“Today with this launch we step out in a new chapter in how we can serve our EWTN family with information from Rome,” Michael Warsaw, president of EWTN Global Catholic Network, told CNA Sept. 29.

The new office is on the Via Della Conciliazione in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica, the dome of which is visible from the building’s rooftop terrace.

“You can’t help but be here in Rome and in this place, so close to St. Peter’s Basilica, the tomb of St. Peter, and not be energized by that,” Warsaw said. “For all of us at EWTN that’s my hope, that this presence in Rome, so close to St. Peter, will energize us for the work of the New Evangelization in the years ahead.”

Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò, prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications, blessed the new location in the presence of dozens of EWTN staff, supporters, and guests. Several hundred people gathered for a rooftop reception.

Among the guests were Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, and Cardinal Raymond Burke, patron of the Knights of Malta. Other guests included Archbishop Georg Ganswein, prefect of the Papal Household; several other cardinals and bishops; U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Ken Hackett and several other ambassadors to the Holy See; and members of the Vatican press corps.

The office includes access to professional recording studios on the sixth-floor rooftop, advanced technical infrastructure, and a much improved and spacious workspace.

Warsaw said the new Rome office “really positions the network in an even better way to be able to bring news and information from the heart of the Church to our audience around the world.”

“It gives us a much bigger base of operations to be able to use at the service of the Church,” he said.

About 17 people work full-time in the EWTN News Rome office, as do three part-time employees. The multi-national, multi-lingual staff comes from the United States, Italy, Spain, Peru, and Kazakhstan.

From the Rome office, the EWTN News Bureau and its related EWTN agencies provide video news services in English, Spanish, and German, and written news services in English, Spanish, and Italian. This effort is complemented by EWTN News’ internet presence. Its social media reached 100 million people the weekend of Mother Teresa’s canonization.

The office will support staff and media production from various EWTN News sections: the National Catholic Register; CNA Group members Catholic News Agency, ACI Stampa, and ACI Prensa; and ChurchPop.

The impact of EWTN founder Mother Angelica, who passed away on Easter Sunday 2016, was still felt in Rome.

“If she could see this place here in Rome, she would see part of her dream realized,” Alan Holdren, EWTN News Bureau Chief, told Vatican Radio.

Warsaw agreed.

“I think Mother would be very, very pleased to see this development in Rome,” he said. “It was always her hope that the network could be a vehicle for bringing news and information about the Holy Father and the Vatican to our audience around the world.”

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston also saw the new Rome office as part of Mother Angelica’s legacy.

“I am convinced that Mother Angelica is now happy in heaven thinking that after all his work, there is now finally this place here in Rome,” Cardinal O’Malley told Vatican Radio. “The story of Mother Angelica is the story of a miracle. A cloistered nun has managed to do what the bishops and the U.S. Catholic foundations have failed to do.”

“EWTN is an important reality in the United States to reach Catholics,” the cardinal continued. “To have a headquarters here in Rome will help a lot to communicate to our people the message of the Holy Father and what happens here in Rome.”

Cardinal O’Malley said EWTN faces the challenge of communicating the faith to new generations.

“In the U.S. we now have a huge Hispanic population, and we are very pleased that EWTN also has programs in Spanish, for our migrants,” he said.

The beneficiaries of EWTN are truly international. During Mother Teresa’s canonization, her Missionaries of Charity sisters in India were watching the EWTN broadcast from St. Peter’s Square.

“That would be enough to motivate our work,” commented Holdren.

He noted the world’s many crises, including those in the Middle East.

“We serve an evangelical voice, we serve the voice of Christ, we serve the Pope’s message,” he said.

“To reach these places of crisis is a challenge. Through the satellite that Mother Angelica bought many years ago, we were able to reach these countries.”

“The challenge is to keep this widespread reach, but also reach people in modern Western society. In the face of so many problems and so many challenges, there are many hopes. We want to reach out with this Gospel message to deliver that truth which we believe leads everyone to the salvation that it accompanies.”

EWTN Global Catholic Network is now in its 36th year. Based in Irondale, Alabama, it is the largest religious media network in the world.

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Washington D.C., Sep 29, 2016 / 03:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For the millions of women using hormonal birth control, side effects are nothing new.

Headaches, mood swings and weight gain are all commonly reported side effects, not to mention more serious problems such as blood clots and migraines.

But a new, long-term Danish study is now showing a strong connection between hormonal contraception and another adverse effect: the risk of depression, particularly among teens.

“Use of hormonal contraception, especially among adolescents, was associated with subsequent use of antidepressants and a first diagnosis of depression, suggesting depression as a potential adverse effect of hormonal contraceptive use,” stated a Sept. 28 online publication of the Danish Sex Hormone Register Study.

From 2000-2013, more than 1 million women in Denmark were observed for the study, with ages ranging from 15-34. These women came from different backgrounds, with various levels of education and body mass index. They used a range of birth control methods, including IUDs, the pill, patches, and the vaginal ring.

Following these subjects, the study tracked the women’s birth control prescriptions, as well as subsequent antidepressant prescriptions or depression diagnoses. Women included in the study had no previous diagnosis of depression and did not have a history of using antidepressants.

Over the years, the study ultimately drew a clear connection between the use of hormonal birth control and an increased risk of depression, but not all women reacted in the same way.

Although hormonal contraception via devices, like a patch, seemed to have a higher risk than pills, the study overall found that the “use of all types of hormonal contraceptives was positively associated with a subsequent use of antidepressants and a diagnosis of depression.”

In addition, 15-19 year-old teens using a birth control device were shown at a higher risk – about three times more likely – of receiving antidepressant medication compared to the older age groups.

“Adolescent women who used hormonal contraception experienced higher risks than women in general,” the study noted.

The researchers did state that teenage users of progestin-only contraception more frequently use antidepressants compared to non-users, suggesting a connection between depression and synthetic hormones.

The Danish researchers speculate that the use of birth control more adversely affects teens because their brains are still in a crucial developmental stage. Synthetic hormones, such as progestin found in birth control, might be causing havoc in the molding of younger bodies, but experts have yet to find out the exact connection.

“This finding could be influenced by attrition of susceptibility, but also that adolescent girls are more vulnerable to risk factors for depression,” the study stated.

Although it would be hard to definitively state that birth control causes depression, the study did find a strong link between the long-term use of hormonal contraception and the first time use of antidepressants.

“Assessment of the association between the duration of use and the risk for first use of antidepressants demonstrated increasing relative risks with length of use,” the study noted.

“A total of 133,178 first prescriptions of antidepressants and 23,077 first diagnoses of depression were detected during follow-up,” the study found, adding that this number was not reflective of the depressed individuals who did not receive medication.

Moving forward, the study suggested that both women and doctors become aware of these findings and pay particular attention to any mood changes.

“Health care professionals should be aware of this relatively hitherto unnoticed adverse effect of hormonal contraception.”

Birth control has increasingly come under fire in recent years, as science continues to indicate that the high levels of artificial hormones contained within many forms of contraception have negative consequences.

Other recent studies on hormonal birth control have shown that it may be responsible for an increase in breast cancer risk, and that it may change a woman’s biological preference in picking a compatible mate.

The Catholic Church teaches that the use of contraception is immoral because it tries to separate the sexual act from its natural possibility of procreation.

If a married couple faces a just reason to avoid pregnancy, the Church teaches that they may do so through Natural Family Planning, a process that works with a woman’s natural fertile cycles and abstaining from sexual activity during the times that she is fertile.

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http://t.co/C4Kl30Djpv How art and technology are clearing up 'miscontraceptions' on women’s fertility #NFP pic.twitter.com/TZrlP273b2

— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) March 6, 2015


 


           

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