Catholic News 2

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Philadelphia, Pa., Mar 22, 2017 / 03:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A bridge featuring crosses on the property of Villanova, a Catholic university in a Philadelphia suburb, will be built despite complaints from some local taxpayers.

After an hour long debate, the Board of Commissioners of the township of Radnor voted 6-0 last month to approve the controversial pedestrian bridge that will connect Villanova University's main campus with an expansion of the campus.

The crux of the debate was the two, 4-foot 7-inch crosses planned for the top of the bridge, which will be visible to travelers on Route 30 underneath. Some local taxpayers complained that the school was crossing the line of separation of church and state by placing the crosses over a public road.

“I think they are overstepping their sense of ecumenism to shove these crosses in our faces," Sara Pilling, a longtime resident and opponent of the crosses, told The Inquirer Daily News before the meeting.

Others argued that taxpayer dollars should not fund a bridge that will feature displays of religion.

Villanova officials argued that the school was within its rights to place crosses on the bridge, which will be owned by the university and on university property.

“On every building on campus, there’s a cross,” Fr. Peter Donohue, university president, told the Inquirer.

“I understand people’s sensitivities, but it’s just something we’ve always done. It’s just part of who we are. We are a faith-based institution.”

Some locals believe that a compromise would be to turn the crosses so they face the pedestrians, or to incorporate them into the design of the bridge in a more subtle way.

“While we recognize the importance of Villanova to our community and the notoriety it brings to Radnor, are there less ostentatious ways to reflect a Catholic institution?” said Roberta Winters, president of the League of Women Voters of Radnor, in an interview with The Inquirer.

Commissioner Luke Clark told local media that the bridge has been in the works for a long time, and is a way to keep safe the hundreds of students who cross that road every day.

“The design looks great. The crosses are going to go up there. Is it right or wrong? I don’t know. But at the end of the day it is on their property. They are a religious institution and the law for the most part is in their favor,” said Clark.

Even after the board unanimously voted to approve the bridge, some concerned locals contacted the non-profit Freedom From Religion Foundation. The foundation wrote a “strongly worded letter” to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), contending that they were unconstitutionally funding Christian symbols on the bridge and asked them to removed either the crosses or their funding.

The department told local media that its $3.7 million contribution to the project was for the portion of the span over the right of way it controls.

PennDOT said it could not control what the university did with its own property and with its own funds, which are providing for the crosses and most of the bridge.

After the township vote Villanova's assistant vice president of government relations and external affairs Chris Kovolski told The Inquirer: "We're pleased that the conversation tonight resulted in an outcome that allows the university to move forward."

Full Article

Washington D.C., Mar 22, 2017 / 04:11 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch made a crucial ethical distinction in his response to questions about doctor-prescribed suicide during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, said one ethicist.

When asked what his views were on end-of-life care in the case of a terminal patient enduring unbearable pain, Gorsuch replied that “anything necessary to alleviate pain would be appropriate and acceptable, even if it caused death. Not intentionally, but knowingly. I drew the line between intent and knowingly.”

This is an important distinction, said Edward Furton Ph.D., director of publications and an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. He told CNA that the situation presents the case of “double-effect,” where proper steps taken to alleviate a patient’s pain may have the side effect of causing their death, but are permissible when certain conditions are met.

“You’ve got a good intention, the action you’re doing is good – in this case, it’s alleviating the pain with appropriate amounts of medication,” he explained, emphasizing that the dosage of pain medication may never be lethal and should not render the patient unconscious except when “absolutely necessary.”

“You’ve got a side effect, which is not intended, but is foreseen. It is going to happen, but you don’t want it to happen, you’re doing your action for another reason. And there is really no other route to alleviate the pain. So this is perfectly appropriate, it makes good sense,” Furton said.

Gorsuch, a judge on the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, faced his third day of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday as he is considered for confirmation to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

He wrote a book in 2006 on “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.” Gorsuch explored various arguments made in favor of doctor-prescribed suicide and euthanasia before offering his own observations and opinions.

The book “was my doctoral dissertation, essentially,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. It was written “in my capacity as a commentator” and not as a judge, he clarified. The book was published the same year he was nominated and confirmed to the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

He argued in the book that “human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.” Regarding doctor-prescribed suicide, he upheld laws prohibiting it, basing his argument upon “secular moral theory.”

Asked by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to briefly discuss his book, Gorsuch suggested that doctor-prescribed suicide could pose a significant threat “to the least amongst us – the vulnerable, the elderly, the disabled.”

It does this by becoming a cheap end-of-life option offered to vulnerable people, he said. “I do know that when you have a more expensive option and a cheaper option, those who can’t afford the more expensive option tend to get thrust into the cheaper option.”

“It’s a long book. It’s complicated. And I do not profess to have the right, final, or complete answer,” he admitted. “I hoped, at most, to contribute to a discussion on an unanswered social question where all people – and I do think all people – have a good faith interest in trying to reach some consensus socially on it.”

Currently, doctor-prescribed suicide is legal in six states and in the District of Columbia, with some 25 states to consider legalizing it this year.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pressed Gorsuch on the matter on Wednesday, citing California’s End of Life Option Act that legalized the procedure in the state.

“I, in my life, have seen people die horrible deaths – family, of cancer – when there was no hope. And my father, begging me, ‘stop this Diane, I’m dying’,” she explained. “And my father was a professor of surgery.”

“And the suffering becomes so pronounced – I just went through this with a close friend – that this is real. And it’s very hard,” she continued, asking him what he thought of California’s law.

Gorsuch, speaking in his personal capacity, said that for some terminal patients, “at some point, you want to be left alone. Enough with the poking and the prodding. ‘I want to go home and die in my own bed in the arms of my family’.”

“And the Supreme Court recognized in Cruzan” – a 1990 decision on an end-of-life case – “that that’s a right in common law, to be free from assault and battery, effectively. And assumed that there was a Constitutional dimension to that. I agree.”

Gorsuch added that the matter of a terminal, suffering patient foregoing treatment was a personal one for him.  

“Your father, we’ve all been through it with family. My heart goes out to you. It does. And I’ve been there with my dad. And others,” he told Feinstein.

Speaking as an ethicist, Furton clarified that in end-of-life cases, pain management may certainly be used but should never be an overdose and should not render the patient unconscious except in extraordinary circumstances.

Pain medication should be “measured, so that it matches the pain that the patient is experiencing,” he said.

“You can’t just give them a massive dose, or something like that,” he said, as “it would bring about their death in a way that was not measured and not connected to a proper intention which is to alleviate the pain.”

And medication should not induce unconsciousness, except in extraordinary cases, he insisted.

“Another important element is that the loss of consciousness in a person who is dying is very significant, and shouldn’t happen unless it’s absolutely necessary, because we should meet our Maker alert and in a prayerful way,” he added.

Furton praised Gorsuch’s knowledge and treatment of the matter as someone who “has obviously thought about these issues very carefully.”

“So I think we should be happy that he has such a strong sense of where to draw the line in a case such as this, where you’ve got a person with intractable pain and needs to have it remedied,” Furton said.

“He understands that that is not intentionally killing somebody. It’s not euthanasia, it’s not physician-assisted suicide. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between those two, so it’s good that he does because he’s obviously going to be a man of considerable power and importance in the area of law.”

 

Full Article

IMAGE: CNS photo/Sebastian Scheiner, Reuters

By Judith Sudilovsky

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Less than a year after restoration work began, the Edicule -- the traditional site of Jesus' burial and resurrection -- was inaugurated in an ecumenical ceremony led by representatives of the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian churches, including Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

The 200-year-old structure was rehabilitated for the first time after Israeli authorities deemed it unsafe and leaders from the three churches that share custody of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher came to an agreement for the work to proceed.

Some did not believe the churches could overcome their centuries-old disagreements, but the project was a sign that "with God, nothing is impossible," Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, apostolic administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said at the March 22 ceremony.

"This apparent mission impossible became possible because we allowed God to enlighten our thoughts and our eyes and our relations. Things do not change by themselves. If we are here for this celebration, it is because the different churches and leaders were able to hear the voice of God and understand and realize and accept that it was time to build new relations between us of trust and respect," he said.

Franciscan Father Francesco Patton, custos of the Holy Land, said it was "providential coincidence" that this year, as the Edicule is restored, all the Christian denominations celebrate Easter on the same date. It was also fitting, he said, that it was around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher that the churches regained a closer relationship.

Armenian Patriarch Nourhan Manougian took the opportunity to mention the three other denominations with a presence in the church -- the Assyrian Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Coptic Orthodox. He asked that the Anglican and Russian Orthodox churches be allowed to offering their holy liturgy at the Edicule once a year, after Easter.

"We must pray earnestly to Jesus Christ to give us the wisdom to be able to absorb literally between ourselves his greatest commandment of love," said the patriarch. "We have no difference in regard to this commandment and, unless we accept his commandment and express it in our lives and deeds, how can we consider ourselves Jesus' disciples?"

Several hundred local faithful, pilgrims and international dignitaries filled the main area of the basilica where the Edicule is located, taking pictures and videos of the pink-stoned structure. The metal girders that British Mandate authorities added in 1947 to keep it standing have been removed.

"It is a very exciting day which hasn't happened in hundreds of years. It is a very big step, we are all united in celebration," said Marlen Mauge, 53, a Catholic from Jerusalem. "We would like to have more than one united celebration. It is a good message to the world."

Antonia Moropoulou, a professor at the National Technical University of Athens, directed the work at the site.

- - -

Copyright © 2017 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

Full Article

Full Article