Catholic News 2

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Belfast, Northern Ireland, May 2, 2016 / 01:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Northern Ireland’s voters should use their vote to uphold the right to life, not violate it, the Catholic bishops of the region said.

“The social and moral teaching of the Church is clear, that it is never morally acceptable to support any policy that undermines the sacred inviolability of the right to life of an innocent person in any circumstances,” they stressed.

The bishops released an April 27 pastoral reflection message ahead of Northern Ireland’s May 5 elections.

“As Christians, our encounter with the risen Jesus, living and among us, is a decisive event that has consequences for every aspect of our lives. This includes our lives as citizens,” the bishops said.

Voting is a moral act, they explained: “Each vote cast, or not cast, potentially influences the values that will shape future law and policy.”

The bishops reflected on Catholic social teaching’s role in seeking the common good in Northern Ireland.

Their message, titled “A better future: towards a culture of life, care and hope for all,” discussed at length the protection of human life.

“Central to the good news that the Church proclaims is that the life of every person is sacred and inviolable, irrespective of the stage or state of that life,” their message said. They voiced regret that some people “caricature the Church’s promotion of the inviolability of human life, from conception to natural death, as a mere ‘religious doctrine’, and therefore to be dismissed in the name of a free and secular society.”

“The principle of the inviolability of innocent human life is the most fundamental of all moral principles,” the bishops continued. “This is not only a religious doctrine, but a universal human value upon which our very freedom and dignity as a person rests.”

“To deliberately and intentionally take the life of an innocent person, whatever their state or stage of life, is always gravely morally wrong. To co-operate in such an act, by supporting it directly or indirectly, as an individual act or as a social policy, is also gravely wrong,” said the bishops.

In November 2015, Northern Ireland’s high court ruled that Northern Ireland’s abortion law violated the European Convention on Human Rights because of its lack of exceptions that allow some abortions. Northern Ireland’s attorney general has appealed the ruling.

Among the other issues discussed in the Catholic bishops’ message was a call for all parties to address child poverty and systemic issues of social need, such funding for schoolchildren to have a nutritional breakfast.

Their message also discussed religious freedom, concern for persecuted Christians, faith education, environmentalism, and support for marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

 

Full Article

Vatican City, May 2, 2016 / 03:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Monday met with representatives of a centuries-old Marian order of priests and brothers dedicated to mercy, encouraging them to persevere in their service to the marginalized by clinging to the “strength and joy” of the Gospel.

“We do not rely on our own strength, but instead we always entrust ourselves to divine mercy,” the Holy Father told members of the Mercedarian Order during a May 2 audience in the Vatican's Consistory Hall.

“If God is present in your lives, the joy of bringing his Gospel will be your strength and your joy. God has also called us to serve within the Church and in the Community. Let us keep to this common path,” he said.

The Mercedarians are in Rome ahead of their 800 year anniversary in 2018 for their General Chapter where they will elect new governing body and decide on projects for the next six years.

The Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy, or the Mercedarians, was founded in 1218 in Spain by St. Peter Nolasco as a community dedicated to a life of prayer based on the Rule of St. Augustine in service to Christians imprisoned by Muslims.

Along with the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the Mercedarians take a fourth vow to give up their lives to those in captivity and in danger of losing their faith. Today, they work in 17 countries including the United States, India, Brazil, Italy, and Spain.

The Mercedarians work to serve the most marginalized members of society: prisoners, the hospitalized, addicts, and those living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. They also have a special emphasis on safeguarding the faith in families through parish work and education.

Pope Francis praised the order’s work over the centuries, noting that the priests and brothers became “like hostages” to the marginalized, dedicating their lives to “bring them consolation, to suffer with them, completing in their own flesh what was lacking from the passion of Christ.”

Although “there is much to remember” of the Order’s long history, “this memory must not be limited to an exposition of the past,” the Holy Father said, but should instead “be a serene and conscious act that enables us to assess our achievements, without forgetting our limits and, above all, to face the challenges that humanity presents to us.”

“The true life of the order must be sought in the constant effort to adapt and renew, so as to be able to respond generously to the real needs of the world and the Church, while remaining faithful to the perennial heritage of which (the Mercedarian Order) is a depository,” he said.

The Mercedarians, through their religious vows, have been made prophets who have received a “gift of the Holy Spirit for the service of the Holy People of God,” the Pope said.

“You have also received a gift, and have been consecrated for a mission that is a work of mercy: following Christ, bringing the good news of the Gospel to the poor, and the liberation of captives,” he said.

By following the Holy Spirit in service of the marginalized, “we must make ourselves small, unite ourselves with the prisoners” and in doing so will “encounter true freedom” of recognizing the Redeemer in the form of the “poor and captive.”

Pope Francis exhorted the Mercedarians not to neglect to “proclaim the year of grace of the Lord to all those who are sent to you,” namely, those facing persecution for their faith, victims of human trafficking, and school children.

“I offer my blessing to each one of you and for the entire Mercedarian family, and I beg you not to forget to pray for me,” the Roman Pontiff said in closing.

 

Full Article

Washington D.C., May 2, 2016 / 04:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The right to exercise religion came under sustained assault around the world in 2015, according to a new report from a bipartisan United States commission, affecting Christians, Muslims, Jews, among others.

“By any measure, religious freedom abroad has been under serious and sustained assault since the release of our commission's last Annual Report in 2015,” Dr. Robert George, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, stated Monday.

He was speaking at the release of USCIRF’s annual religious freedom report.

“At best, in most of the countries we covered,” George noted, the situation of religious freedom “failed to improve” or, worse, “spiraled downward” in 2015.

“I fear … that we’re losing the battle of ideas,” he stated in a May 2 press conference introducing the report. “We need the American people’s support on this,” he added. “The public needs to get behind this. We believe in religious freedom. It’s enshrined in the very first amendment to our Constitution.”

USCIRF is a federal, bipartisan commission that advises the State Department on religious freedom worldwide. It was created in 1998 by the International Religious Freedom Act.

One of the commission’s main tasks is to publish an annual report on the global state of religious freedom, noting the countries with the worst abuses against the freedom to practice religion.

Among the report’s recommendations is a list of countries that should be on the agency’s Countries of Particular Concern list, or the countries where the worst violations of religious freedom are taking place, either at the hand of the government or with impunity from the government.

The current CPC list includes China, Burma, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Eritrea. USCIRF has also asked the State Department to designate seven more countries as CPCs: Central African Republic, Nigeria, Iraq, Vietnam, Egypt, Pakistan, and Syria.

Respect for religious freedom declined in 2015 because of multiple factors, the report explained: religious violence by terror groups killing and displacing millions for their religious beliefs, governments continuing to imprison persons for their religious beliefs, and growing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Europe and Russia.

The terror groups Islamic State and Boko Haram have killed or uprooted millions from their homes in Iraq, Syria, and Nigeria in the last few years, inflicting a scourge of violence, torture, and abuse on entire minority populations and contributing to a global refugee crisis.

Meanwhile, the governments in those countries have not been able to protect their religious minorities in harm’s way. Iraq and Syria have shown a “near-incapacity to protect segments of their population from ISIL and other non-state actors, as well as their complicity in fueling the sectarian tensions that have made their nations so vulnerable,” the report noted.

In Syria, the Assad regime “has been guilty of inflaming those tensions” that helped create Islamic State, George said. The regime has been guilty of crimes against humanity committed against Sunnis and others, according to the report.

The U.S. should be a leader in accepting refugees and victims of religious persecution, the report said. The nation should set a goal of accepting 100,000 Syrian refugees and should provide sufficient funding for the vetting of these refugees. Congress should also “reauthorize the Lautenberg Amendment” to accept beleaguered Iranian religious minorities fleeing persecution by the government there, the report insisted.

In Asia, thousands of the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority group of Burma, have been disenfranchised by their own government and have fled their homes, having no legal protection. There are 1 million displaced Rohingya, according to the report.

Refugees fleeing Africa, Syria, and Iraq, especially from the onslaught of Islamic State and Boko Haram, either flee to surrounding countries that have become strained from the large refugee population, or make a perilous journey across the Mediterranean into Europe. There they are met with an increasing hostility, especially Muslim immigrants who face a rising tide of Islamophobia.

Muslims in Europe are harassed for wearing public symbols of their religion such as headscarves and face cloths. They are even subject to violent attacks. Far-right political parties that profit from xenophobia against immigrants, Muslims, and Jews are rising in popularity.

Furthermore, the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 “produced backlashes against Muslims by members of the wider societies, many of who blame Muslims collectively, which is of course itself a terrible thing,” George said.

Laws restricting religious acts such as circumcision and halal slaughter of animals have surfaced in Denmark and Holland.

Xenophobia and hate crimes – particularly against Jews – are now being committed with “impunity” in Russia and are a problem throughout Europe, resulting in “an exponential rise in Jewish emigration from Europe,” the report stated. Jews are being targeted by secularists, far-right political parties, and “Islamist extremists who sought recruits from disaffected members of Muslim communities,” George said.

Other governments, including those of China, Iran, Russia, Eritrea and North Korea, are actively persecuting religious minorities and jailing people simply for expressing their religious beliefs.

“The existence of these prisoners [of conscience], people who are being jailed, beaten, tortured simply for expressing their conscientious religious beliefs or beliefs about religion, are an indictment of every government that holds them,” George stated.

In Iran, the number of persons from religious minorities imprisoned because of their beliefs has increased under the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, with Baha’is, Sunni Muslims, Christians, and dissenting Shia Muslims all targed.

In China, Bao Guohua, a Protestant pastor, and his wife received 14 and 12 years respectively in prison for leading an effort against the state’s desecration of churches. The bulldozing of unauthorized churches in China has become such a problem that another Protestant pastor and his wife were buried alive in their attempt to stop the bulldozing of a church: Li Jiangong survived, but his wife Ding Cuimei died.

In Saudi Arabia, blogger Raif Badawi was jailed in 2012 for on charges of “insulting Islam and religious authorities.” Just “for speaking his mind, speaking his conscience, he has been subjected to horrific abuse,” George said. Another Saudi, Ashraf Fayadh, was arrested for “promoting atheism.”

In Uzbekistan – where Islam is followed by more than 90 percent of the population and where religious groups must register activity with the government – more than 12,000 Muslims have been imprisoned for unsanctioned religious activity.

Another problem for religious freedom is anti-extremism laws, which are often used to crack down on religious minorities under the pretext of fighting terrorism and extremism.

In Russia, such laws have been used against Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims. The law requires no evidence for an accusation of religious violence, and so persons can be convicted and jailed simply for “proclaiming the truth or superiority” of their religion.

Governments enforcing these anti-extremism laws “often fuels the very extremism they are purporting to fight,” George explained, and fighting terrorism “becomes a pretext” for human rights abuses.

This is evidenced in China where the state’s actions against the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority of northwest China, “has simply fueled violence,” he noted.

Blasphemy laws against words or actions showing contempt or mockery of religion are a pernicious problem in some countries as well – most notably in Pakistan, where no evidence is required for an accusation, and the crime can be punishable by death.

Blasphemy “might be insensitive or hurtful to many,” the report’s summary stated, but “blasphemy laws are not the answer. They inappropriately position governments as arbiters of truth or religious rightness, empowering officials to enforce particular views against individuals, minorities, and dissenters.”

Along with the recommendations for CPCs, the commission also has a “Tier 2” list of countries which “are not the worst abusers,” George noted, but where there are still “serious” and “significant” abuses occurring.  These countries are Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Laos, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, and Afghanistan.

Leaders of certain countries such as Egypt and India have said the right things about religious freedom and protecting religious minorities, but their administration is either complicit in the persecution of the minorities or powerless to stop sectarian violence, the report added.

“In a number of nations there has been a continued gap between the rhetoric of the regime and the reality on the ground,” George said, adding that “rhetoric doesn’t really matter unless it is accompanied by action.”

Full Article

IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Mcerlane, EPA

By Michael Kelly

DUBLIN (CNS) -- Northern Ireland's Catholic bishops urged Massgoers to support candidates opposed to legalizing abortion in elections to the region's power-sharing assembly May 5.

In a wide-ranging pastoral statement ahead of the polls, the bishops also urged Catholics to lobby lawmakers about issues as diverse as climate change and the right of church-run organizations to receive government funding.

Catholics at Masses April 30-May 1 were given pamphlets with a list of 10 questions that the faithful are encouraged to ask candidates, including their parties' policies on abortion and child poverty.

"The next assembly term will see further pressures being brought to bear on politicians to introduce abortion to Northern Ireland," the bishops said.

"The moral issue here is not whether what is proposed is abortion 'on demand' or some form of so-called 'limited' abortion. From a moral point of view, there is no such things as 'limited' abortion. Abortion is always the deliberate and intentional taking of an innocent, vulnerable human life, and a direct breach of the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,'" the bishops wrote.

"It is never morally acceptable to support any policy that undermines the sacred inviolability of the right to life of an innocent person in any circumstances," the bishops added.

They also appealed for politicians to tackle child poverty after the votes have been counted.

"It is an indictment on the priorities and preoccupations of the last assembly that Northern Ireland was the only region in the U.K. where levels of childhood poverty actually increased, with over 101,000 children in Northern Ireland now living below the poverty line," the bishops' letter stated.

The bishops reminded Catholic voters of Pope Francis' recent comment that there are "no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family."

They also called for a "new and more constructive political culture" and said a preoccupation with "tribal issues" and party point-scoring had alienated many people, particularly the young, from politics.

The letter also reaffirmed the importance of Catholic education and said the existence of government-funded faith schools is to be "celebrated and encouraged as part of a genuinely tolerant society that respects diversity and parental choice."

On climate change, the bishops wrote: "We encourage the next assembly and executive to play their part in contributing to those U.N. Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 that are ethically consistent and to support the many local individuals and organizations that provide international outreach and outstanding development work in some of the most disadvantaged regions of the world."

- - -

Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article