Catholic News 2

(Vatican Radio) The fate of Daniel Ramirez Medina, who`s been detained in Washington State, and is being held, in spite of being protected from deportation by US Law, will determine the futures of tens of thousands of people, who were brought to the United States as children, by undocumented parents. 

Listen to the report by James Blears: 

Daniel Ramirez Medina aged 23, was brought to the United States from Mexico as a seven year old child, by Parents who were undocumented.  

He`s  never been convicted of a crime, has a valid work permit  and  a job.  In 2014, Daniel became part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program.  This was renewed for him last year. 

He was detained by US Customs and Enforcement Agents, who were looking for his Father.  They say Daniel claimed to be a gang member. Daniel denies this.  His Attorneys have filed a law suit against his continued detention.  There will be a hearing on Friday. 

Last month President Trump signed an Executive Order, expanding the powers of Homeland Security.  Those who are undocumented and have criminal records are being prioritized for deportation.  

The question is if this will be expanded to those in the Deferred Action Program.  This currently covers more than 700,000 people.   During the Presidential Election Donald Trump said he wanted to abolish it.  But the current situation is not yet fully clarified. 

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(Vatican Radio) The new U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has warned allies of the NATO military alliance that they must start increasing defense spending by year's end or the Trump administration will "moderate its commitment" to them. Mattis made the remarks at a NATO summit in Brussels which was also overshadowed by reports that Russia violated a Cold War-era treaty by deploying a cruise missile, charges Moscow denies. 

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:

Mattis echoed a demand made repeatedly by President Donald Trump: The alliance must adopt a plan this year to force governments to meet a military funding goal of two percent of gross domestic product.  

He did not detail what the United States might do if NATO members failed to fall in line. But he warned the Trump administration would "moderate its commitment to them". 

Mattis made clear that NATO face major challenges such as Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. "The events of 2014 were sobering and we must continue to adapt to what’s been revealed to us in terms of our security challenges. The alliance remains a fundamental bedrock for the U.S.,” he said. 

RUSSIAN ROCKET 

The NATO alliance is also worried about other Russian actions. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance would be concerned if reports that Russia has violated a Cold War-era treaty by deploying a cruise missile prove true.

U.S. intelligence agencies claim the missile became operational late last year, possibly violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on the development and testing of cruise missiles.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin denied that Russia had violated this key treaty.

Amid these tensions, Stoltenberg seemed please that the new US defense secretary did not repeat President Trump's remarks that the alliance had become obsolete. “The challenges that we face are the most complex and demanding in a generation. 
Neither Europe nor North America can tackle them alone.Therefore I welcome the US commitment to the transatlantic bond,” the NATO chief said. 

Yet more discussions are expected on who will fund the expensive alliance. 

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Washington D.C., Feb 15, 2017 / 12:27 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- More than 10,000 pro-life advocates gathered at some 227 protest locations in 43 states and the District of Columbia on Saturday to call for the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

“This weekend was huge, but it was not the end,” said Mark Harrington of the pro-life group Created Equal. “We have momentum on our side. Now is the time to press forward.”

“The time has come to defund America’s abortion giant,” Harrington told CNA Feb. 14. “Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion chain, killing over 300,000 babies each year, and nearly half of their billion-dollar budget comes from our tax dollars.”

The protests, organized under hashtags like #ProtestPP, were headed by the leaders of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, Created Equal and the Pro-Life Action League.

Organizers reported a crowd of about 200 supporters in Pittsburgh, 300 in Orange, Calif., 400 in Cincinnati, and 450 in St. Paul, Minn., to name a few.

“Abortion, to me, is the greatest evil of our time,” Delia Tyagi, a 36-year-old demonstrator from Arlington, Va. told Reuters. “Planned Parenthood has wronged women in a lot of ways. I feel like we have the momentum to finally defund them.”

Harrington characterized Planned Parenthood as “an independently wealthy entity.”

“Planned Parenthood’s business model is centered on abortion,” he said. “Women have other options for seeking primary care, contraception, STI testing, and cancer screening.”

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the U.S. While direct federal taxpayer funding for abortion is generally barred under law, it receives federal funding in Medicaid reimbursements and Title X programs for family planning and preventive health services.

The politically powerful organization took a heavy hit in 2015 with the release of investigative videos appearing to show it engaged in the illegal sale of fetal tissue and unborn baby parts for research. Despite a well-funded publicity campaign to counter the allegations, the issue has not gone away.

In January 2017, a report from the House Select Investigative Panel said that abuses and possible criminal violations are taking place in the fetal tissue trade between abortion clinics and tissue harvesters.

David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, had organized the undercover investigation. He addressed the Orange, Calif. rally.

“I’m confident that together, if we keep the faith, take the next right step, at the end of the day we will soon see a day when there will no longer be a price tag put on human life,” he said, according to Reuters.

Demonstrations of support for Planned Parenthood also took place the same weekend, sometimes at the same locations as the pro-life protests.

Planned Parenthood supporters sometimes outnumbered the pro-life demonstrators. Its leaders told Reuters that their supporters have been energized by the election of President Donald Trump, citing the hundreds of thousands of marchers who demonstrated in Washington and across the country the day after the inauguration in support of women’s rights and legal abortion.

Abortion backers have also run significant fundraising campaigns following the Trump election. As of late December, Planned Parenthood told the U.K. newspaper The Guardian that it had received over 300,000 donations since the election, 40 times its normal donation figures.

For their part, hundreds of thousands of pro-life advocates had attended the March for Life in Washington on Jan. 27, which included an unprecedented address from Vice President Mike Pence.

Advocates of defunding Planned Parenthood said legislators had better funding options.

Harrington cited a Chiaroscuro Foundation report saying that over 1,000 federally qualified health centers in the U.S. offer similar services for women without providing abortion. He suggested these should be funded instead.

“Defunding Planned Parenthood is the right thing to do,” Harrington said. “Now it’s down to Congress and President Trump to fulfill their promise to defund Planned Parenthood, and do it now.”

He said the protests shouldn’t be seen as “a one-time effort” but “a daily commitment to defeat Planned Parenthood once and for all.”

 

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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Americans are feeling more positive toward various religious groups than they did less than three years ago.

While Americans still feel less positive about Muslims and atheists when compared with people of other religions, those participating in a Pew Research Center survey in January viewed people in those two religious groups more positively than in June 2014.

The survey overall, part of Pew's American Trends Panel series of studies, found that warmer feelings toward various religions were expressed by people in all of the participating major religious groups. The same holds true when the sample of 4,248 respondents is divided into groups such as Democrats and Republicans, men and women, and younger and older adults.

The study used a "feeling thermometer" that asked 93 percent of the respondents -- 3,939 -- to move a slider on a scale from zero to 100 degrees. The remaining 7 percent responded in other ways. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Jews and Catholics received the highest positive feelings, rising to 67 degrees and 66 degrees, respectively, from 63 degrees and 62 degrees in the earlier survey. Every other religious group measured except evangelical Christians moved upward on the scale this time around with Buddhists rising to 60 degrees from 53 degrees; Hindus to 58 degrees from 53 degrees; Mormons to 54 degrees from 50 degrees, atheists to 50 degrees from 41 degrees; and Muslims to 48 degrees from 40 degrees.

Even atheists were rated more highly, rising to 50 degrees from 41 degrees.

Evangelical Christians remained steady at 61 degrees.

The biggest difference in feelings toward Muslims can be seen when the results are reviewed by age. Young adults in the 18- to 29-year-old group rated Muslims at 58 degrees. Americans ages 30 to 40, ages 50 to 64 and older than 65 rated Muslims at 47 degrees, 45 degrees and 44 degrees, respectively.

Young adults, on average, tended to rate all religions within a small range, from 54 degrees for Mormons to 66 degrees for Buddhists. Americans 65 and older responded with a wider rating, from 44 degrees for atheists to 75 degrees for mainline Protestants.

Looking at Catholics, all age groups viewed that group positively, between 64 degrees by the youngest respondents to 71 degrees by the oldest participants. Overall, Catholics were rated consistently across all groupings in the study: in the low- to upper 60s.

The survey also found that Jews and Christians tended to rate each other warmly while atheists and evangelicals viewed each other negatively.

In looking at the responses from self-identified Republicans and Democrats, all religious groups except evangelical Christians saw a growing warmth being expressed toward them.

Catholics saw a modest gains to 64 degrees from 61 degrees among Democrats and 66 degrees to 69 degrees among Republicans. Muslims saw a 6-degree jump among Republicans, to 39 degrees from 33 degrees and an even wider gain among Democrats: to 56 degrees from 47 degrees.

Ratings for evangelical Christians remained steady among Republicans and Democrats at 71 degrees and 53 degrees, respectively.

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Editor's Note: The full study can be found online at https://tinyurl.com/jrjdykk.

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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.

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, a church law expert and former head of the Vatican's highest court, arrived in Guam Feb. 15 as the presiding judge in a church trial investigating allegations of sexual abuse leveled against Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron of Agana.

The Vatican press office confirmed a "tribunal of the first instance" was constituted by the Vatican Oct. 5 and its presiding judge is Cardinal Burke. Four other judges, all of whom are bishops, also were appointed, the press office said.

"When an action is in a 'first instance' court, that indicates that it is in the initial trial phase," according to the website of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles accusations of clerical sexual abuse.

Three men have publicly accused Archbishop Apuron of sexually abusing them when they were altar boys in the 1970s. The mother of a fourth man, now deceased, also accused the archbishop of abusing her son.

Archbishop Apuron has refused to resign, but in late October, Pope Francis named former Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Michael J. Byrnes as coadjutor archbishop of Agana and gave him full authority to lead the archdiocese.

Roland Sondia, who works for Pacific Daily News and is one of Archbishop Apuron's accusers, told the newspaper that he had received a letter from Cardinal Burke requesting his presence at the Agana archdiocesan chancery Feb. 16 "for the purpose of giving said testimony."

At a news briefing Feb. 10, according to Pacific Daily News, Archbishop Byrnes announced the archdiocese would adopt the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. Accusations of clerical sexual abuse involving minors automatically would be reported to civil authorities, he said.

Also at the briefing, the archbishop confirmed that Vatican investigators would visit Guam, but he provided no further information.

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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.

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