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Dallas, Texas, Jul 8, 2016 / 02:52 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid tensions following two high profile police shootings of African-Americans and the subsequent killing of police in Dallas, Catholic bishops have called on Christians to be a force for healing and compassion in response to hatred and inhumanity.

Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas said the shooting attack on the police is “staggering.” Writing in a July 8 blog post, he prayed for consolation and healing for the victims and their families.

“We have been swept up in the escalating cycle of violence that has now touched us intimately as it has others throughout our country and the world. All lives matter: black, white, Muslim, Christian, Hindu. We are all children of God and all human life is precious.”

“Let us implore God our Heavenly Father to touch the minds and hearts of all people to work together for peace and understanding,” he said.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, president of the United States bishops' conference, said that “When compassion does not drive our response to the suffering of either, we have failed one another.”

He condemned violence against both the police and those they suspect of crime or stop in traffic.

“The police are not a faceless enemy. They are sons and daughters offering their lives to protect their brothers and sisters,” the archbishop said July 8. “Jesus reminds us, ‘no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’ So too, the suspects in crimes or routine traffic stops are not just a faceless threat.”

The archbishop’s comments came at the end of a week marred by violence and racial tension.

On July 7, five Dallas police officers were killed in what authorities called a “sniper ambush” at the end of a peaceful protest against police shootings of African Americans earlier in the week.

Two days earlier, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot after an encounter with police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Sterling was selling CDs outside a convenience store when a homeless man approached him and asked for money persistently. Sterling showed the man his gun and asked him to leave him alone, according to CNN. The homeless man then called 911 and said Sterling had been brandishing a gun.

Two bystander videos of the shooting appear to show two responding officers tackling him and attempting to restrain him on the ground. Sterling was shot in the chest and the back.

Bishop Robert Muench of Baton Rouge responded to the shooting with an invitation to be “ambassadors of hope and mercy” offering support after the example of the Good Samaritan.

“This week in our community, as in our nation, and as in our world, we find ourselves facing the many emotions that accompany acts of violence,” the bishop said. “We experience sadness, anger, frustration, and fear. To all these, our Lord invites us to renew our trust in his promise of fidelity, to increase our prayer, and to renew our commitment to peace and mercy toward one another.”

“Truly, we are all called to be ministers of healing to a hurting world,” he said. “May fear not lead us into despair. May anger not move us to inflict pain upon others. Rather, moved by the grace of Christ’s suffering for us, may we in turn impart that grace to one another.”

One day after Sterling’s death, an African American man in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, was shot four times by a police officer and later died.

 Philando Castile, age 32, had originally been pulled over for an alleged broken taillight.

His fiancée, Diamond Reynolds, livestreamed the aftermath on Facebook as her four-year-old daughter sat in the car’s back seat. The video shows Castille laying in the seat of the car in a state of shock, groaning, with his shirt bloodied. In the video, Reynolds said Castile told the officer he had a firearm and had a concealed carry permit. She said that he was reaching for his wallet when he was shot.

The video, which reached over a million people on social media, shows Reynolds begin to realize her fiancé may be dying.

Both the officer involved in the shooting and the other officer at the scene have been placed on administrative leave as the incident is investigated.

Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda of St. Paul-Minneapolis responded by offering a Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul for the preservation of peace and justice

“As people of faith, we turn to the Lord in challenging times, seeking not only his consolation and healing but also his wisdom and guidance,” Archbishop Hebda said July 7. “In the midst of anger, fear and frustration, we need to come together as God’s family to pray that God’s grace might unite all people of good will and bring light into the darkness of this difficult time.”

He said the Mass would ask God to console Castile’s family, but also to “heal the divisions in our community,” to guide public officials towards the common good, and to “satisfy the longings of those who thirst for justice and peace.”

The two police shootings reignited racial tensions that had already been smoldering in some parts of the country. Protests were held in numerous cities, many linked to the Black Lives Matter movement.

It was after one of these protests that the Dallas ambush took place. Authorities have identified one suspect, who was killed by a police bomb squad robot after negotiations failed. Investigations are underway to determine whether other suspects may be on the loose.

In his statement, Archbishop Kurtz stressed that both police brutality and the killing of police officers must end.

“The assassination of Dallas police officers last night was an act of unjustifiable evil. To all people of good will, let us beg for the strength to resist the hatred that blinds us to our common humanity,” he said.

The archbishop called for national reflection on the need to place “ever greater value and the life and dignity of all persons.”

He called for honest discussion on race relations, restorative justice, economic opportunity, and “the question of pervasive gun violence.”

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Sacramento, Calif., Jul 8, 2016 / 03:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Churches and other organizations in California will be forced to buy insurance plans that cover abortions due to the Obama administration’s clear misinterpretation of a pro-life law, said prominent pro-life thinker Richard Doerflinger.

Doerflinger is a public policy fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture. He served for 36 years as head of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities for the U.S. bishops’ conference.

In a July 6 essay for Public Discourse, Doerflinger discussed what he sees as serious threats to the Weldon Amendment.

First passed in 2005, the amendment bars federal funds to state or local governments if they discriminate against institutional or individual healthcare entities that decline to pay for, cover, or refer for abortions. The amendment’s definition of healthcare entities includes “a health insurance plan, or any other kind of health care facility, organization or plan.”

In his essay, Doerflinger argued that the Obama administration “effectively overturned” the pro-life law when it failed to act against a California rule that required abortion coverage in churches’ health insurance policies – a rule that he said “egregiously violates” the Weldon Amendment.

“California’s mandatory abortion coverage policy is an open-and-shut case, a paradigm of the kind of abuse Weldon was directed against,” he wrote. “Yet through a mangled interpretation of the statute – one that ignores its plain text and inserts qualifiers and exceptions nowhere found in that text – the administration manages to neutralize the statute.”

In August 2014, California’s Department of Managed Health Care ruled that abortion coverage is mandatory in California health plans. The ruling drew several legal complaints from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Life Legal Defense Foundation and the Catholic Bishops of California.

They complained to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Human Rights that the rule violated the Weldon Amendment.

Jocelyn Samuels, director of the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, rejected the complaints in a June 22 letter. She said the complaining entities were not “health care entities” opposed to abortion and said that the seven health insurance firms involved themselves have no objections to providing abortion coverage.

The Weldon Amendment has repeatedly been enacted without change by Congress when either major party has been in control. Doerflinger said the administration’s move contradicted President Barack Obama’s stated support for the amendment and his signing of the law every year since 2009.

“He and his administration have repeatedly assured Congress and pro-life Americans that they support the law and would fully enforce it through HHS’s Office for Civil Rights,” he said. “Those assurances have now proven empty.”

Doerflinger reviewed what he said were the administration’s distortions of the law. He charged that the administration “mangles the text” of a remark from amendment sponsor Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Florida). The congressman backed protection for all health care providers, not only those with moral or religious objections.

Legally speaking, to decline to support abortion doesn’t require moral or religious grounds, he said. Further, protections for abortion objectors must be broad by their nature.

Non-religious health insurance companies should have the freedom to sell health plans that exclude controversial coverage, so that those with moral concerns have the option of purchasing a plan that meets the needs of their conscience, Doerflinger said.

“If, like the administration, you insist on protecting only those with an explicit moral or religious motivation, you may not effectively protect them either. They can object to plans covering abortions, but no one will be allowed to offer them anything else.”

He emphasized that the Weldon amendment bars discrimination against a health plan that excludes abortion. The state policy forcing insurance companies to sell only health plans that include abortion is “the most obvious form of discrimination possible” against such plans.

Doerflinger recounted the Weldon Amendment’s basis in an earlier law, the 1996 Coats-Snow Amendment barring government discrimination against medical residents and residency programs that decline to train in abortion procedures. That amendment was intended to protect these programs regardless of whether they refused to train on religious, moral or practical grounds.

The Obama administration’s newly restrictive interpretation may have a “frightening consequence,” Doerflinger warned. It may start coercing residency programs that have no religious affiliation to begin requiring training in abortion.

For Doerflinger, the president’s professed support for conscience laws means he should sign the Conscience Protection Act, proposed legislation that would address “the alleged ambiguities and loopholes the administration claims to find in the Weldon amendment.”

“If the president supports federal conscience laws on abortion and wants them to be enforceable, as he has claimed, he need only say he would sign the Conscience Protection Act into law,” the pro-life leader wrote.

 

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Washington D.C., Jul 8, 2016 / 04:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Ten states have announced that they are suing the federal government over a rule that would allow students to use the restrooms and locker rooms of their choice, rather than those that match their biological sex.

The July 8 lawsuit was filed in Nebraska federal court. In addition to the state of Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming joined in the legal challenge.

Friday’s lawsuit follows an earlier lawsuit by 11 states challenging the same federal directive.

“When a federal agency takes such unilateral action in an attempt to change the meaning of established law, it leaves state and local authorities with no other option than to pursue legal clarity in federal court in order to enforce the rule of law,” said a statement by Nebraska’s attorney general, announcing the new lawsuit.

“Current state law and federal regulations allow schools to maintain separate facilities based upon sex,” the announcement said.

“The recent action by these two federal agencies to require showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms be open to both sexes based solely on the student’s choice, circumvents this established law by ignoring the appropriate legislative process necessary to change such a law. It also supersedes local school districts’ authority to address student issues on an individualized, professional and private basis.”

In May, the Department of Justice and Department of Education sent a letter to all U.S. school districts announcing a new federal guidance, which instructed every public school in the country to allow students who identify as transgender to use the facilities – including restrooms and locker rooms – that match their self-determined “gender identity.”

“A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so,” the directive said. It added “a school must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity.”

The federal guidance may also affect sex-segregated athletics and roommate assignments on trips.

Although the directive does not have the force of law, it implicitly threatens schools that do not comply with lawsuits or a loss of federal aid, according to the New York Times.

For the purpose of Title IX compliance, the federal departments said they “treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex.” The guidance said gender identity is “an individual’s internal sense of gender” that may differ from “the person’s sex assigned at birth.”

In the last two months, the federal guidance has sparked controversy, with critics warning that it has a wide potential for abuse and endangers the safety and privacy of students.

The U.S. bishops responded to the “deeply disturbing” federal guidance by warning that it “contradicts a basic understanding of human formation so well expressed by Pope Francis: that ‘the young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created’.”

The bishops’ May 16 statement was authored by Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and by Archbishop George Lucas, who chairs the bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education.

“Children, youth, and parents in these difficult situations deserve compassion, sensitivity, and respect,” they said. “All of these can be expressed without infringing on legitimate concerns about privacy and security on the part of the other young students and parents.”

However, the federal guidance fails to achieve this balance, the bishops said, citing Pope Francis’ caution that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated.”

They stressed that the Catholic Church “consistently affirms the inherent dignity of each and every human person and advocates for the wellbeing of all people, particularly the most vulnerable.”

“Especially at a young age and in schools, it is important that our children understand the depth of God's love for them and their intrinsic worth and beauty. Children should always be and feel safe and secure and know they are loved,” they added.

Photo credit: Martin Haas via www.shutterstock.com.

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