Catholic News 2

Washington D.C., Jun 20, 2017 / 03:09 am (CNA/EWTN News).- President Donald Trump’s changes to U.S. policy on Cuba will end up weakening human rights in the island country, the United States bishops have said.

“The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in solidarity with the bishops of Cuba and the Holy See, has long held that human rights and religious freedom will be strengthened through more engagement between the Cuban and American people, not less,” said Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace.

“For decades, we have called for the U.S. travel ban and embargo against Cuba to be lifted,” he continued in a June 19 statement.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops objected that the move would affect U.S. citizens’ travel to Cuba and would hinder U.S. commerce with entities controlled by the Cuban government.

Last week, President Donald Trump delivered a speech on Cuba policy announcing the changes.

“I am canceling the last administration's completely one-sided deal with Cuba,” the president said, charging that President Barack Obama’s policy ignored human rights violations and the Cuban government’s role in fostering instability in other countries.

CNN characterized the changes as only partial. U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations will continue, and the governments’ respective embassies in Washington and Cuba will remain open. There will be no restrictions on Americans bringing Cuba-produced products like rum and cigars out of the country.

At the same time, there will be strict enforcement of authorized exemptions that allow travel between the U.S. and Cuba. The Trump administration will bar commerce with businesses owned by Cuba’s military and intelligence services.

President Trump’s move asks the U.S. Secretary of State to launch a task force concerning the expansion of internet access in Cuba and to repeat the U.S. opposition to U.N. efforts to lift the embargo on Cuba until more is done to address human rights concerns.

Bishop Cantu, speaking in his role with the U.S. bishops, urged that President Trump consider the ramifications that his order’s implementing regulations will have for “many ordinary Cubans who have taken advantage of new opportunities to support their families.”

He said the president is correct that serious human rights concerns remain.

“The Cuban government must be urged to respect religious freedoms and to extend greater social, political and economic rights to all Cubans,” he said. “The fruits of investment in Cuba should benefit individuals and families, and not the security forces.”

At the same time, Bishop Cantu suggested the president look to Pope Francis.

“Pope Francis helped our nations to come together in dialogue,” Bishop Cantu said. “It is important to continue to promote dialogue and encounter between our neighboring nations and peoples.”

Bishop Cantu is about to depart for a pastoral visit to Cuba at the invitation of the Cuban bishops.

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Newark, N.J., Jun 20, 2017 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Last month Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark welcomed a pilgrimage of self-identified LGBT pilgrims, with an archdiocesan spokesman saying it should be seen in the context of welcoming everyone, not as archdiocese sponsorship of the event.

“I think that the central point that is missing from the majority of the media coverage and blog postings about this pilgrimage is that the cardinal was asked whether he might welcome a group of pilgrims who identify as LGBT. He said yes, we welcome all in the name of Christ,” James Goodness, communications director for the Archdiocese of Newark, told CNA.

“This was not an event sponsored by the archdiocese, and we did not promote or advertise it,” Goodness said. “It was a purely private event.”

Some news coverage of the pilgrimage depicted it as a shift within the Church.

Cardinal Tobin did not concelebrate Mass or preach at the pilgrimage, which Goodness described as a private event.

“He simply offered a word of welcome as he would do for other groups of pilgrims,” the spokesman said. “It is important to note that the cardinal feels very strongly that welcoming people is a first step in any relationship, and that, as Pope Francis says, we have to meet people and minister to them where they are.”

The group included self-identified LGBT Catholics from around New York and New Jersey. The May 21 visit included a Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart and a tour of the cathedral.

The cardinal greeted the group at the Newark cathedral. “I am Joseph, your brother,” he said. “I am your brother, as a disciple of Jesus. I am your brother, as a sinner who finds mercy with the Lord.”

“The word I use is ‘welcome’,” Cardinal Tobin said in an interview before the Mass, the New York Times reports. “These are people that have not felt welcome in other places. My prayer for them is that they do. Today in the Catholic Church, we read a passage that says you have to be able to give a reason for your hope. And I’m praying that this pilgrimage for them, and really for the whole Church, is a reason for hope.”

The cardinal said it was appropriate “to welcome people to come and pray and call them who they were. And later on, we can talk.”

Goodness told CNA there is a chapter of Courage in the Newark archdiocese, which has been active “for many years.”

Courage ministers to Catholics with same-sex attraction and their friends and family who want to live according to Catholic teaching.

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(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis made his second visit to Rome’s Cathedral, St. John Lateran, in as many days on Monday evening to open the Diocese of Rome’s annual pastoral conference.

Ahead of his visit, the Holy Father met with a group of refugees who have been hosted by some of the thirty-eight Roman parishes and religious communities who responded to his 2015 appeal that parishes to do their part by hosting those persons fleeing war and poverty.

Listen to Linda Bordoni's report:

Pope Francis opened Rome’s annual diocesan meeting on Monday evening with a reflection on how to accompany parents in educating their adolescent children.

Offering several “assumptions” for this aspect of pastoral care, the Bishop of Rome invited the city’s pastors to think in the Roman dialect, that is, with the faces of their flocks fixed in their minds.

“Family life and the education of adolescents in a big metropolis like this requires particular attention," he said. "The complexity of the capital does not admit of reductive syntheses, but stimulates us to think in the form of a polyhedron, in which every neighborhood finds its own echo in the diocese”.

Pope Francis then reflected on the modern experience of being “uprooted”.

He said “an uprooted society or uprooted family is a family without a history, memory, or roots… For this reason one of the first things we must think about is how to provide roots and relationships and how to promote a vital network that allows them to feel at home.”

The Pope said the adolescent experience is one of tension and transition between childhood and adulthood.

He called this a precious and difficult time in which the whole family is called to grow.

And he invited the Roman pastors not to treat adolescence as a “pathology to be medicated”; rather, he called it “a normal part of growth,” since “where there is life there is movement and change”.

The Holy Father said this offered parents a unique opportunity to stimulate young people by involving them in projects that challenge them to reach their full potential.

In conclusion, Pope Francis said one of the greatest threats to the education of teenagers is the idea of “eternal youth”.

He said when adults want to stay young and young people want to be adults there is a hidden risk of leaving teenagers out of their own growth processes, because parents have taken their place.

This, the Pope said, deprives teenagers of an experience of confrontation necessary for growth into adulthood.

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(Vatican Radio)  Cardinal Ivan Cornelius Dias, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and Archbishop Emeritus of Bombay in India, died in Rome on Monday at the age of 81.

Cardinal Dias was born on 14 April 1936 in Mumbai, India. He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Bombay on 8 December 1958 and held a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Lateran University.

He entered the Holy See’s diplomatic service in 1964 and was posted to the Nordic countries, Indonesia, Madagascar, La Réunion, the Comorros, Mauritius and the Secretariat of State.

Cardinal Dias served as Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Urbanian University from 2006 until 2011.

With his death, the College of Cardinals numbers 220, of whom 116 are Cardinal-electors.

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Portland, Maine, Jun 20, 2017 / 12:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Starting next month, Oregon will be the first state to offer a non-binary option on forms of DMV identification for residents who do not identify as male or female.

Oregon residents will have the option to mark “X” instead of female or male on state IDs, driver’s licenses, and learner’s permits.

The X is for non-binary, meaning the individual identifies as something other than either sex. This may include non-gender or some combination of both sexes.

The state’s Transportation Commission approved the option on Thursday, and it will officially go into effect on July 3. It follows an Oregon judge’s decision last year to recognize an army veteran’s legal change to non-binary sex; the first state in the U.S. to do so.

Jamie Shupe, who won the decision to change recognized genders last June, provoked the state’s transportation department to decide how to officially recognize and record “third-gender” residents.  

Shupe had entered the army as a man and was discharged as a woman, but, according to the Guardian, he claimed to have continued struggling with his identity until he believed he was something other than male or female.

There are nearly 20,000 Oregon residents who recognize themselves as transgender, making it one of the top 10 per capita transgender states in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute, a sexual orientation and gender identity think tank at UCLA law.

Oregon’s new policy has joined it with countries like Germany, Pakistan, India, Australia, and Canada who also offer a “third-gender” option, according to the BBC.

California is close behind with a similar proposed policy, which would not only offer a third binary option on driver’s licenses but birth certificates as well. The bill recently passed California’s senate in May and has been sent to the state assembly.

 

 

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