Catholic News 2
BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iraqi businessman Zaid Nazo has always been sure of his nation's deep passion for food and wasn't afraid to dream big when he transformed his small Baghdad coffee shop in 1999 into a casual dining and takeaway restaurant. Today, the 41-year-old father of two has opened four branches and his chain is one of the most popular in Iraq....
SYDNEY (AP) -- They gather under the blazing sun and blue skies of an Australian beach, looking out at the water that once symbolized so much misery: Terrifying boat trips marked by sickness and death and the constant dread that their own lives might be nearing the end. But today, the sea will become their unlikely savior....
MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Bernie Sanders are angling for victories in Tuesday's Wisconsin presidential primaries that could give their campaigns a needed boost, but still leave them with mathematically challenging paths to their parties' nominations....
HOUSTON (AP) -- The Latest on the championship game of the NCAA Tournament between Villanova and North Carolina (all times local):...
HOUSTON (AP) -- One good shot deserved another....
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Indonesia's environment and forestry minister says Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio lacked complete information when he criticized the destruction of rainforests during a visit to a protected national park last month....
SEVIERVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- A sightseeing helicopter crashed Monday near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in eastern Tennessee, killing all five people aboard, officials said....
PANAMA CITY (AP) -- Panamanians have long shrugged off their country's checkered reputation as a financial haven for drug lords, tax dodgers and corrupt oligarchs. If they're crooks, they've learned from the world's wealthy nations, they like to joke....
By Nancy Frazier O'BrienBALTIMORE (CNS) -- As Canadaprepares for the legalization of assisted suicide throughout the country inJune and nearly half of the U.S. states take up some kind of legislativeproposal on the topic this year, questions arise about its pastoralimplications.What should a hospital chaplaindo if confronted with a patient who expresses a determination to use assistedsuicide? Can anointing of the sick be given to such a patient? How do pastorsdecide whether a person who carried out an assisted suicide should receive aCatholic funeral?Experts in Catholic health careand ethics seem to have reached agreement on the answer to those questions: Itdepends."At this point in time, youreally can't give an answer," said Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter ofCharity who headed hospitals in Florida and the District of Columbia beforebecoming president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association in 2005."If someone confessed ortold a priest about their individual situation, their indi...
By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
BALTIMORE (CNS) -- As Canada prepares for the legalization of assisted suicide throughout the country in June and nearly half of the U.S. states take up some kind of legislative proposal on the topic this year, questions arise about its pastoral implications.
What should a hospital chaplain do if confronted with a patient who expresses a determination to use assisted suicide? Can anointing of the sick be given to such a patient? How do pastors decide whether a person who carried out an assisted suicide should receive a Catholic funeral?
Experts in Catholic health care and ethics seem to have reached agreement on the answer to those questions: It depends.
"At this point in time, you really can't give an answer," said Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity who headed hospitals in Florida and the District of Columbia before becoming president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association in 2005.
"If someone confessed or told a priest about their individual situation, their individual culpability about the decision remains between the person and God, and the priest cannot talk about it," she added. "I don't think we ought to ever decide what should happen in the internal forum between the mercy of God and a priest working with someone."
Marie T. Hilliard, director of bioethics and public policy at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, also said the question is not a matter of ethics but of "the governance of the church in terms of access to sacraments."
"The denial of absolution is not at all our call at the NCBC, nor the call of any one ethicist, but the judgment of the confessor at the time, considering the intention of the penitent to reform," she said.
Assisted suicide is currently legal in Oregon, Vermont, Montana and Washington state. A California law allowing assisted suicide takes effect June 9 and a Canadian court order permits it throughout the country beginning June 6. An effort to bring the California law before the voters failed to gain the 365,880 signatures needed to place the issue on the November 2016 ballot.
In Canada, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa, Ontario, did not specifically address the pastoral implications of assisted suicide in a letter read at all Masses in the archdiocese March 5-6. But he said, "From not only a Catholic perspective but any rational perspective, the intentional, willful act of killing oneself or another human being is clearly morally wrong."
He quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says, "Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable."
"To formally cooperate in the killing of the disabled, frail, sick or suffering, even if motivated by a misplaced compassion, requires a prior judgment that such lives do not have value and are not worth living," the archbishop added. "But all human life has value."
In an interview with Canadian Catholic News, Archbishop Prendergast said those who choose to participate in assisted suicide do not have "the proper disposition for the anointing of the sick."
"The rite is for people who are gravely ill or labor under the burden of years, and it contains the forgiveness of sins as part of the rite," he added. "But we cannot be forgiven pre-emptively for something we are going to do, like ask for assisted suicide when suicide is a grave sin."
The Code of Canon Law says anointing of the sick "is not to be conferred upon those who persevere obstinately in manifest grave sin." But the 1983 code now in effect dropped a norm from the 1917 code that had denied a Catholic funeral to those "who killed themselves by deliberate counsel."
At least one canon lawyer thinks the practice of denying a Catholic funeral should be revived in two specific cases -- to the murderer in murder/suicides and to "suicides committed in accord with civil euthanasia laws."
In a March 29 email to Catholic News Service, Edward Peters, who holds the Edmund Cardinal Szoka chair at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, affirmed the views about assisted suicide he outlined in a 2013 posting on his blog, "In Light of the Law: A Canon Lawyer's Blog."
"A key point of these (civil assisted suicide) laws is to rule out suicide motivated by depression, mistaken prognosis, third-party pressures and so on," he wrote. "In other words, the observance of these laws eliminates the very factors upon which ministers can base their doubts about one's personal culpability for self-slaughter and grant the church's funeral rites to those killing themselves."
Peters was commenting specifically in that blog post on the case of 45-year-old deaf twins Marc and Eddy Verbessem, who requested lethal injection in Belgium after learning that they would go blind at some point in the future. Belgium's assisted suicide law does not require that a patient be terminally ill before making such a request but only that he or she be suffering "unbearable pain." The twins' brother Dirk told news media that the thought of being dependent on others was unbearable to them.
By committing suicide together, "I think they plainly and publicly committed a gravely sinful act, left a horrid example to others facing these or similar physical challenges and contributed mightily to society's growing assumption that the disabled are better off killing themselves," Peters wrote.
Both Archbishop Prendergast and Sister Carol stressed in their comments that hospital and church personnel must help Catholics understand church teaching on end-of-life decisions and the fact that there is no obligation to undergo what the CHA president called "massive amounts of intrusive but futile care."
"We see that as our responsibility. We are finding over and over again that there are misunderstandings about dying and that the church's teaching gets misrepresented and misunderstood," she said. "People need and deserve an understanding that whether they are fully in control of their thought processes and their faculties, their wishes and autonomy are going to be respected. Dying patients have a right to make those choices" or designate someone to make those decisions for them.
Archbishop Prendergast said in his letter that the church "does not advocate prolonging life at any cost. Rather, the church is guided by the principle of the quality of life that considers the whole person and not simply keeping the body going no matter what."
"As rational Catholic Christians," he wrote, "we ask the question in evaluating whether or not to accept life-prolonging treatment: Is there a reasonable hope of benefit without excessive pain, expense or other serious problem?"
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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.
IMAGE: CNS/Paul HaringBy Cindy WoodenVATICAN CITY (CNS) -- As discussions continue betweenVatican officials and leaders of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, PopeFrancis met at the Vatican with Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the society.The Vatican press office confirmed April 4 that the meetingtook place but provided no details. On its website, the SSPX said the meetingtook place the evening of April 1."Pope Francis had wanted a private and informalmeeting, without the formality of an official audience," the SSPX notesaid. The meeting "lasted 40 minutes and took place under a cordialatmosphere. After the meeting, it was decided that the current exchanges wouldcontinue. The canonical status of the society was not directly addressed, PopeFrancis and Bishop Fellay having determined that these exchanges ought tocontinue without haste."Last September, Pope Francis had expressed his hopes that"in the near future solutions may be found to recover full communion withthe priests and...
IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- As discussions continue between Vatican officials and leaders of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, Pope Francis met at the Vatican with Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the society.
The Vatican press office confirmed April 4 that the meeting took place but provided no details. On its website, the SSPX said the meeting took place the evening of April 1.
"Pope Francis had wanted a private and informal meeting, without the formality of an official audience," the SSPX note said. The meeting "lasted 40 minutes and took place under a cordial atmosphere. After the meeting, it was decided that the current exchanges would continue. The canonical status of the society was not directly addressed, Pope Francis and Bishop Fellay having determined that these exchanges ought to continue without haste."
Last September, Pope Francis had expressed his hopes that "in the near future solutions may be found to recover full communion with the priests and superiors of the fraternity."
"In the meantime," the pope wrote in the letter, "motivated by the need to respond to the good of these faithful, through my own disposition, I establish that those who, during the Holy Year of Mercy, approach these priests of the Fraternity of St. Pius X to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins."
Although the society is no longer considered to be in schism and the excommunication of its bishops was lifted in 2009, questions remained over whether the sacraments they celebrate are valid and licit. The bishops were excommunicated in 1988 when they were ordained without papal permission. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the society and the bishop who ordained them, also was excommunicated; he died in 1991.
Talks aimed at fully regularizing the status of the bishops, priests and faithful attached to the society have occurred, with some pauses, since 2000. The talks have focused particularly on the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and especially its documents on religious liberty, ecumenism, liturgy and relations with other religions.
In an early March interview posted on the society's website, Bishop Fellay confirmed the talks were ongoing and "are making headway. There is no hurry, that's for sure. Are we really moving forward? I think so. I think so, but it is certainly slow going."
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Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden.
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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.
