Catholic News 2
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When he was alive, Prince made hundreds of millions of dollars - for record companies, concert venues and others. That much is certain. What's less clear is how much he left behind and who'll come forward to claim it....
MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- The Philippine military has come under increased pressure to rescue more than 20 foreign hostages after their Muslim extremist captors beheaded a Canadian man, but they face a dilemma in how to go about that and also ensure the safety of the remaining captives....
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- As the investigation into the killings of eight family members in rural Ohio entered its fifth day, more details slowly trickled out....
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Donald Trump is aiming for a sweep of all five Northeastern states holding primaries Tuesday, including Pennsylvania, leaving his rivals pinning their hopes of stopping the Republican front-runner on a fragile coordination strategy in the next rounds of voting....
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Russell Westbrook had 36 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists, and the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Dallas Mavericks 118-104 on Monday night to win the first-round playoff series 4-1 and advance to the Western Conference semifinals....
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- More than 50 opponents of North Carolina's new law curtailing protections for LGBT people and limiting public bathroom access for transgender people were arrested at the statehouse Monday night. It wrapped up a feverish day that brought several thousand of impassioned demonstrators for and against the law to the capital city for the opening of the legislature's annual work session....
Prince's longtime lawyer called the death of the superstar a complete shock and said Monday that the singer lived a clean and healthy lifestyle, disputing suggestions that he had a drug addiction....
PHOENIX (AP) -- There was a stark difference between the beginning and end of the criminal case against a man accused in a string of freeway shootings in Phoenix that sent a metro area into a frenzy as drivers feared they would be fired at on the interstate....
Washington D.C., Apr 25, 2016 / 04:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For years, expectant parents have relied on ultrasounds to find out the sex of their unborn baby. But now, technology allows them to pick the sex of their child before he or she even enters the womb – a development that ethicists warn could have grave moral consequences.Sex selection of human embryos orders a fertility company to “deliver a product” rather than a human child, said Dr. John Brehany, an ethicist and director of institutional relations at the National Catholic Bioethics Center.Also, these companies are “ultimately taking actions to simply throw out” and “discard human beings,” which is fundamentally wrong, he told CNA.Many expecting parents find out the gender of their unborn baby through an ultrasound screening, or through methods of prenatal testing that can determine the gender of a baby as early as 7 to 10 weeks gestation.However, more and more couples are opti...
Washington D.C., Apr 25, 2016 / 04:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For years, expectant parents have relied on ultrasounds to find out the sex of their unborn baby.
But now, technology allows them to pick the sex of their child before he or she even enters the womb – a development that ethicists warn could have grave moral consequences.
Sex selection of human embryos orders a fertility company to “deliver a product” rather than a human child, said Dr. John Brehany, an ethicist and director of institutional relations at the National Catholic Bioethics Center.
Also, these companies are “ultimately taking actions to simply throw out” and “discard human beings,” which is fundamentally wrong, he told CNA.
Many expecting parents find out the gender of their unborn baby through an ultrasound screening, or through methods of prenatal testing that can determine the gender of a baby as early as 7 to 10 weeks gestation.
However, more and more couples are opting not just to find out the gender of their baby, but to actually determine whether their next child will be a boy or a girl, through the process of “family balancing.”
Procedures can cost into the tens of thousands of dollars. Couples might want a boy to carry on the family name or parents of two boys might want a baby girl badly enough to spend $100,000 and endure multiple assisted reproductive procedures to have one, as one couple did.
Advances in assisted reproductive technology have made this more possible, combined with in vitro fertilization where the human embryo – fertilized in a lab – is implanted in the mother’s womb.
Technology like pre-implantation genetic screening can ensure that a human embryo is of the desired sex and free from unwanted genetic abnormalities. To better ensure a “successful” implantation, multiple human embryos may be implanted in the mother.
This is done “in the expectation that some embryos will be lost and multiple pregnancy may not occur,” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated in its 2008 document Dignitas Personae. “In this way, the practice of multiple embryo transfer implies a purely utilitarian treatment of embryos.”
The practice is on the rise in the U.S. A 2006 Johns Hopkins survey of U.S. fertility clinics showed 42 percent of clinics that conducted pre-implantation genetic screening offered it for non-medical sex-selection purposes.
Anna Higgins, an associate scholar at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute who just authored a report on sex-selection abortion, thinks there has been a notable increase in the use of the practice, based on doctors’ statements and the number of clinics advertising gender selection and family balancing, as well as their “commercial success.”
But according to decades of Catholic moral teaching, sex selection and in vitro fertilization are clearly wrong, Dr. Brehany said.
“First and foremost, it separates procreation from incarnated marital love,” he told CNA, noting that the human embryo is created from sperm and an egg from the father and mother in a lab, outside the marital act. “It separates procreation from the manner in which God has designed human beings to come in to being, which should be in an actual act of marital love.”
Also, he added, gender selection through assisted reproductive methods “almost instantly subjects the child to the standards and sort of the pressures, if you will, of production, and of producing an object.”
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for sex selection, he explained, involves pulling a cell out of a human embryo or zygote to run tests for its gender. This can not only endanger the human embryo, but if it is selected for implantation, the other human embryos that have been created are at risk of being discarded, frozen, or experimented upon.
Clinics are being paid to “deliver a product” according to the customer’s wishes, he said of the process, and are ultimately taking actions to simply throw out or otherwise discard human beings, and that’s profoundly problematic.”
Dignitas Personae makes it clear that in vitro fertilization is wrong: “The Church moreover holds that it is ethically unacceptable to dissociate procreation from the integrally personal context of the conjugal act: human procreation is a personal act of a husband and wife, which is not capable of substitution,” the document stated.
It also lists some of the evils resulting from the procedure – foremost the destruction of other embryos in the process, being discarded, frozen, or experimented upon.
“The blithe acceptance of the enormous number of abortions involved in the process of in vitro fertilization vividly illustrates how the replacement of the conjugal act by a technical procedure – in addition to being in contradiction with the respect that is due to procreation as something that cannot be reduced to mere reproduction – leads to a weakening of the respect owed to every human being,” the document says.
Ultimately, these assisted reproductive options used for sex selection “the Church would view as no better than abortion, and in some respects worse,” Brehany said.
“You’re picking one [embryo], you’re throwing out the others, and you’re doing this outside the context of marital love, which in some respects makes it worse [than sex-selective abortion], not better.”
Even the American Society of Reproductive Medicine admits that non-medical sex-selection is “controversial.”
Some of the arguments raised against it, the society noted in a 2015 ethics report, are that “long-term risks” to children might exist and that further evaluation needs to be done on the matter, along with the concern that parents will not be showing “unconditional” love to their children who deserve it.
Santa Ana, Calif., Apr 25, 2016 / 04:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent global survey reveals that the rise of radical Islamic extremism is the primary reason for the persecution of Christians around the world – and many of the victims are women.“Unfortunately, more and more women are the target of terrorist groups,” Emily Fuentes, communications director for Open Doors, told CNA April 20.“There are numerous international incidents of women being kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert from Christianity to Islam by radical extremist groups like Boko Haram. Many are also sold on the open market. This brutality is not only occurring in the Middle East but in Africa and in many other places.”The California-based Open Doors organization focuses on anti-Christian persecution in countries around the world. According to its 2016 World Watch List, the level of violence against Christians globally has reached an all-time high, with numbers almost doubling every ye...
Santa Ana, Calif., Apr 25, 2016 / 04:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent global survey reveals that the rise of radical Islamic extremism is the primary reason for the persecution of Christians around the world – and many of the victims are women.
“Unfortunately, more and more women are the target of terrorist groups,” Emily Fuentes, communications director for Open Doors, told CNA April 20.
“There are numerous international incidents of women being kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert from Christianity to Islam by radical extremist groups like Boko Haram. Many are also sold on the open market. This brutality is not only occurring in the Middle East but in Africa and in many other places.”
The California-based Open Doors organization focuses on anti-Christian persecution in countries around the world. According to its 2016 World Watch List, the level of violence against Christians globally has reached an all-time high, with numbers almost doubling every year. The report also found that Islamic extremism is “the primary driving factor in 35 out of the top 50 states.”
“In many of these countries, women are subject to persecution because they are considered second-class citizens because of their gender,” Fuentes added. “As minorities in both gender and faith, Christian women face double the persecution. Although we don’t have an exact number, we know that millions of women are being persecuted.”
In the last two years, the Islamic State group has reportedly executed 250 girls in for refusing to become sex slaves. Two years ago, Boko Haram infamously stormed a school in Chibok, Nigeria, kidnapping 276 teen girls. The majority of those girls are still missing.
Open Doors’ top 50 watch list ranked North Korea as the country where Christians are most persecuted, followed by Somalia, Iraq, Eritrea, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Most of the countries listed are either in the Middle East or Africa.
Last year, more than 7,000 Christians were killed for their faith. This is an increase from 4,344 in 2014 and 2,123 in 2013. The statistics do not include Christians killed in North Korea, Iraq or Syria, where reports are unattainable.
In 2015, there were 2,484 Christians killed for their faith in Nigeria—the most deaths of Christians in any country. The Central African Republic was second worst, with 1,088 deaths. Syria, Kenya and North Korea also proved deadly for Christians, with at least a hundred deaths in each country.
Fuentes explained that these countries fear public religious expression.
This can especially have an effect on women.
“Christian women tend to be more outspoken and devoted to their faith than men. Unfortunately, they end up paying a price for it,” she said, noting that some countries believe that religion is a threat to their rule. “Women are seen as valuing their faith and serving a God that is higher than the government and that is unacceptable to foreign governments.”
According to the Pew Research Center, Christian women are the largest religious group in the world, making up almost 34 percent of the global population. In many countries, these women pray more frequently and attend weekly church services more often than men. They also consider religion more important.
Fuentes underscored that the persecution of women goes beyond physical abuse.
“In these Muslim-dominated countries, Christian women are systematically deprived of their freedom to live and are denied basic human necessities,” she explained. “They do not have access to proper health care, nutrition or education.”
“Surviving is all about strategically going about their day and taking extra precautions like traveling with a male relative,” Fuentes added. “In some cases, it is easy for them to make small inconvenient plans. But most times, there is no solution--which puts women at grave risk daily.”
Fuentes said knowledge of this situation is lacking.
“There definitely needs to be a lot more education and advocacy on behalf of women who are facing persecution all over the world,” she said. “It is vital to assess international aid and relations with different governments to see how they are treating Christian women.”
She said it’s necessary to say that “persecuting women and people of faith is unacceptable.”
In March, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously voted on a resolution against the actions of the Islamic State Group against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East. The resolution officially recognized these acts as “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”
But Olivia Enos, research associate in the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, told CNA that identifying the problem is only the first step.
“The Obama administration has not made this issue a priority,” she said April 21. “It’s great that the U.S. government has identified these atrocities as genocide, but it really hasn’t done much to follow-up on this designation. If we want to demonstrate that religious freedom is something our government really cares about, then there should be next steps and action items.”
Enos said that only a more comprehensive approach can resolve this “ethnic cleansing.”
“Oftentimes, human rights issues are viewed in isolation from broader national security concerns when they really should be viewed as complementary to those efforts,” she said. “Advancing national security interests should never be to the detriment of human rights. A safe country is tolerant of different religions.”
“When you don’t defend religious freedom, you have severe human rights abuses,” Enos added. “It is not just religious freedom for women or one group of people, it is religious freedom for all.”
