Catholic News 2

(Vatican Radio) The Vatican on Friday released details of Pope Francis’ trip to Sweden at the end of October to mark the joint Lutheran-Catholic commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

The Pope is scheduled to leave from Rome’s Fiumicino airport at 08.20 on the morning on Monday October 31st and arrive in the southern Swedish city of Malmö at 11.00.

Following an official welcome, the Pope will travel to the nearby city of Lund and pay a courtesy visit to the Swedish royal family before leading an ecumenical prayer service with Lutheran leaders in Lund cathedral.

In the afternoon the Pope will take part in a second ecumenical event in Malmö arena and meet with delegations of different Christian Churches present for the occasion.

The following morning, Tuesday November 1st, the Pope will preside at Mass in Malmö  for the Swedish Catholic community before travelling back to the international airport there for an official departure ceremony.

The papal plane is scheduled to leave Malmö at 12.45 and arrive back at Rome’s Ciampino airport at 15.30.

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Denver, Colo., Sep 9, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA).- A newly released report shows that traffic deaths, crime, emergency room visits and youth usage of marijuana have significantly increased in the two years since the legalization of recreational pot in the state of Colorado.

Released by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, the report compared marijuana-related statistics from previous years in Colorado to data from 2013-2015, the years after the legalization of recreational marijuana in the state in November 2012.

The results aren’t promising.

Marijuana-related traffic deaths increased by 62 percent in 2013, the first year of legalization of recreational marijuana. About one in five more youth are now reporting having used marijuana in the past month since its legalization. Marijuana-related hospitalizations in the state nearly doubled from 6,305 in 2011 to 11,439 in 2014.

“Perhaps there is not much value in saying to my beloved state of Colorado that ‘I told you so,’ but these results were entirely predictable,” said Dr. E. Christian Brugger, professor of Moral Theology at Denver’s St. John Vianney Theological Seminary.

Dr. Brugger has spoken and written about the moral questions surrounding the legalization of marijuana several times over the years, as his home state of Colorado has been central to the debate over the drug that has now spread to many other states.

“If there had been any sincere effort on the part of Colorado citizens and legislators to gauge in advance the harms that would arise from legalization, they would have foreseen precisely (these results),” he told CNA in e-mail comments.

The biggest health concern for young people using marijuana is its harmful effect on the brain, which continues its development well into a person’s 20s.

The main active ingredient in marijuana, THC, binds to receptors in the brain and can cause a significant decrease in IQ over time. A 2012 study published in the National Academy of Sciences found that adolescent exposure to marijuana can lead to an 8-point drop in IQ, on par with the drop seen in children exposed to lead.

Another concerning impact is the relationship between adolescent marijuana use and schizophrenia. A study repeated by multiple research groups has found that adolescent marijuana use can quadruple a teen’s risk of developing schizophrenia.

Marijuana can also be addictive, with one in six adolescent users developing a dependence over time.

A secondary health concern is traffic accidents, which make up the leading cause of death in 15-20 year-olds.

According to the report, in 2009, marijuana-related traffic deaths involving operators testing positive for marijuana represented 10 percent of all traffic fatalities in Colorado. By 2015, that number doubled to 21 percent. The amount of youth reporting marijuana use after legalization, compared to before, increased by about 20 percent. College-age Coloradans now rank first in the nation for marijuana use.

Crime has also increased in Denver and Colorado as a whole in the post-legalization years.

“Since 2014, there has been a notable increase in organized networks of sophisticated residential grows in Colorado that are orchestrated and operated by drug trafficking organizations. These organizations currently operate hundreds of large?scale home grows throughout Colorado. Harvested marijuana is shipped or transported out of Colorado to markets in the Midwest and East Coast. Home grows have significantly increased illicit production of marijuana in Colorado,” the report states.

And while marijuana has often been touted as an economy booster, the report shows that Colorado may be losing business from conventions that are no longer hosted in the state due to concerns about marijuana.

According to the report, 49 percent of meeting planners expressed concerns about marijuana when considering holding an event in Denver. VISIT DENVER, the marketing organization for the city,  found that Denver’s reputation as a clean and safe city where organizations can host events and conventions has decreased since the legalization of marijuana.

“The legalization initiative was never based upon a rational assessment of whether legalization would be good for our communities, it was driven by money and rotten politics,” Dr. Brugger said.

“And mark my word, those numbers will go up, not down, in the next years.” What's the solution?  “Re-criminalization of the possession and smoking of marijuana in Colorado,” he says.

Tom Gorman, Director of Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which released the report, also believes that the negative impact will only increase overtime.

“Any time you legalize a substance, you’re going to have more people using. The more people you have using, the more adverse (effects) you’re going to have on society, as well as the individual,” he told CNA.

“Alcohol is a perfect example of that, because so many people use and abuse alcohol. We almost have as many people addicted to alcohol as all the illegal drugs combined. We can expect the same thing from marijuana, although with alcohol you don’t necessarily drink and get drunk. With marijuana, you smoke to get (high).”

The report is also a good reference point for other states considering legalization of marijuana. Until now, there hasn’t been enough data available.

“Basically what it does is give you a look at actual data versus rhetoric.”

“If you look at it overall and you look at the trends, which are all negative, whether it’s emergency room visits or hospitalization or fatalities or drug use among our kids, the other states now have some data to make an informed decision.”

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(Vatican Radio)  North Korea confirmed on Friday it tested a fifth nuclear device in defiance of a UN resolution. The nuclear test came on the same day as the country’s National Day, celebrating the founding of the current regime.

Listen to Devin Watkins’ report:

North Korea’s state run news agency said the country carried out ‘a higher level’ nuclear test explosion, just hours after US president Barack Obama departed from his tour of Asia.

Pyongyang said the test had been of a miniaturized nuclear warhead capable of being mounted on a ballistic missile. That claim is unconfirmed.

What is known is that the test came on the north’s National Day honoring the founding of the current regime.

Also, the US Geological Survey reported a 5.3-magnitude ‘artificial’ earthquake in the same area where four previous nuclear tests were carried out.

The explosion appears to have been on the surface in the northeast of the country. Previous tests were conducted underground.

South Korea’s president said the detonation was twice as powerful as the last test in January of this year. He also called it an act of ‘fanatic recklessness’.

China, a long-time ally of North Korea, said it was resolutely opposed to the latest nuclear test and strongly urged North Korea to stop taking any actions which will worsen the situation.

There are fears the surface test could release nuclear radiation into the atmosphere. Both Japan and China have sent out military aircraft to collect air samples to monitor for radiation.

The international community imposed strict sanctions after the last nuclear test in January. It remains to be seen what’s in store for North Korea after this latest act of defiance.

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London, England, Sep 9, 2016 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- There are severe ethical shortcomings in a British doctor's proposal to help unconscious patients die so their organs can be used for transplants, one critic has said.

“The killing of an innocent human being is always wrong – even when a patient, such as the hypothetical patient discussed here, asks that he be put to death,” Edward Furton, Ph.D., an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA.

“Killing patients so that their organs can be used by others is equally bad.”

He suggested the argument showed the weakness of a worldview that sees no inherent value in the human body.

“If one approaches moral questions from the perspective of atheism or agnosticism, and then invokes a utilitarian calculus, the human body only has value as an object of use by others,” said Furton, who is also editor-in-chief of The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.

Dr. Zoe Fritz, a clinical research fellow at Warwick Medical School and a consultant physician for Cambridge University Hospitals, made a controversial case for involuntary organ donation in an Aug. 31 paper published in the U.K.-based Journal of Medical Ethics.

Fritz used the hypothetical example of a patient in a “persistent vegetative state” who was to have clinically assisted nutrition and hydration withdrawn. She argued that where a patient’s death is “inevitable” and when it is agreed by the courts that life support will be withdrawn, It could be in “the best interest” of an unconscious patient “to have a drug that would stop their heart and to have vital organs donated to a family member, acting as a means to the end of saving another,” the author said.

“‘Best interests’ should include the interests that people have previously expressed in the well-being of others; this extends to altruistic deeds,” said Fritz.

She suggested the hypothetical case of a mother who ran into the road to save her son from an oncoming vehicle, only to be hit by the vehicle and rendered permanently unconscious. Family members or a judge could decide the mother would have wanted her organs donated to save the life of her son, even if it meant being killed by a fatal drug.

“By extension, it could also be in the patients’ best interests to donate their organs to someone else, if that was consistent with their previously expressed wishes,” Fritz said.

Furton challenged the way the argument treated patients.

“Persons in the persistent vegetative state are not dead and are not dying,” he said. “They should not have their food and water taken away. When that is done, the cause of death is not an underlying disease (the persistent vegetative state is not a fatal condition), but the lack of hydration. The cause of death is thus dehydration. This is a type of euthanasia.”

“The author of the article shows no appreciation for the theological dimension of death. Her argument, again, is purely utilitarian,” Furton added.

From the Catholic perspective, he said, “death is the transition to another life.”

“We are free to use palliative drugs to make that passage easier, but we cannot directly kill anyone.”

Furton though the argument was too abstract from practical decision-making.

“True moral reasoning engages the everyday facts of life, and in the case of organ donation, the everyday facts of medical practice,” he continued. “We must reason from the perspective of common sense, not deduce conclusions from bizarre hypotheticals that do not occur in reality.”

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