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Washington D.C., Feb 15, 2017 / 03:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A repeal of Washington, D.C.'s physician-assisted suicide law moved through the U.S. House on Monday, but is in a race against time to pass through Congress and be signed by President Trump by Friday.

Members of Congress “have the Constitutional responsibility to do this,” Gloria Purvis, host of the show “Morning Glory” on EWTN Global Catholic Radio, told CNA of the move to repeal D.C.'s “Death With Dignity Act.”

The city council did not “even seek the voice of their own people” through putting the issue to a referendum even though community leaders, disability rights groups and many African-American senior citizens opposed it, Purvis, who has also served on the National Black Catholic Congress' Leadership Commission on Social Justice, noted.

The House Oversight Committee voted 22-14 on Monday to send a measure disapproving of Washington, D.C.'s assisted suicide law to the House floor for a vote, Jason Calvi of EWTN News Nightly reported.

Back in December, the D.C. city council had passed the Death With Dignity Act, joining five states that have statutes legalizing physician-assisted suicide and Montana, where it is currently legal due to a 2009 decision by the state’s supreme court.

Congress, however, has 30 legislative days to overturn laws passed by Washington, D.C. That time period will expire after Friday. A repeal measure must pass both houses of Congress and be signed into law by the President.

The act could be effectively nullified by the House refusing to fund the D.C. health department in its appropriations bill, Purvis said. Attorney General Jeff Sessions could also take action against the law, saying it conflicts with the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act from 1997 which prohibits federal funding of the practice.

Nevertheless, the act “devalues life,” is “morally repugnant,” and is “not in the interest of the common good,” Purvis insisted. In the situations of terminal patients who are suffering, “the answer is to care for them,” she said, rather than serve “the radical 'I'” mentality of a culture of autonomy.

Disability rights advocates are also pushing Congress to repeal the law, calling it “dangerous and harmful public policy.” At the same time they are urging Congress to leave in place the Affordable Care Act, saying that “any degradation in health care will drive increased demand for assisted suicide.”

Physician-assisted suicide enables serious ethical abuses to occur when someone has a terminal illness, the disability rights argued. The coalition includes the American Association of People With Disabilities, the Disability Rights Center, the National Council on Independent Living, and the group “Not Dead Yet.”

“Assisted suicide is a prescription for abuse: an heir or abusive caregiver can steer someone towards assisted suicide, witness the request, pick up the lethal dose, and in the end, even administer the drug – no witnesses are required at the death, so who would know? Many other pressures exist that can cause people with compromised health to hasten their death,” they stated.

The language of the bill could enable abuses like this, Purvis insisted, as it allows patients to “ingest” a lethal dose of drugs. A dose that is administered by a third party to an unconscious patient could technically be “ingested” by the patient and thus legal, she explained.

Patients with a terminal diagnosis can also suffer from treatable depression, a mental disorder that can affect their judgment to request a lethal prescription and which can be manipulated by others, the coalition added.

“When assisted suicide is legal, it’s the cheapest treatment available – an attractive option in our profit-driven healthcare system,” they argued.

Civic efforts to fight teen suicide are also undermined by the message of this bill, Purvis said, as it implies that some lives are not worth living.

Such legislation purports to bring greater empowerment and freedom to sick patients, but it’s an ethical “slippery slope,” Professor Charles Camosy of Fordham University argued in a recent opinion piece in the New York Daily News.

Although supporters will argue that assisted suicide helps terminal patients avoid intense suffering and pain, patients will “far more likely” choose it out of “not wanting to be a burden on others,” he wrote.

“On other issues, liberals rightly focus on how laws affect vulnerable populations,” he said, explaining that “liberals in Massachusetts” defeated the issue at the ballot box because they were “worried that older people, already thought to be a drain or burden in a culture which worships youth and capital production, might be pressured to consider assisted suicide.”

“Those of us with progressive philosophies must instead unequivocally affirm the goodness of the existence of the old and sick. Especially when our consumerist culture tells them they have no net value,” he said.

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Vatican City, Feb 15, 2017 / 04:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As children we are taught that bragging is bad, especially when we do it to people who have less than us, however, for Pope Francis, there is one thing we should never hesitate to flaunt to whoever we meet: our hope in Christ.

Speaking of bragging, the Pope said Feb. 15 that contrary to the typical effect boasting has, “the hope that we have been given (in Christ) does not separate us from others,” and nor does it lead us “to discredit or marginalize them.”

“Instead, it is an extraordinary gift for which we are called to become ‘channels,’ with humility and simplicity, for all.”

Continuing his catechesis on the theme of hope, Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims during the general audience in the Pope Paul VI hall, reflecting on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans in which the saint speaks of boasting “in hope of the glory of God.”

“So our greatest pride is to have as a Father a God who has no favorites, who does not exclude anyone, but who opens his home to all human beings, beginning with the last and the distant, because as his children we learn to console and support each other,” he said.

In the passage from Romans, St. Paul tells us to boast about the abundance of grace we receive from Christ Jesus, Francis observed. “Paul wants us to understand that if we learn to read everything by the light of the Holy Spirit, we realize that all is grace! Everything is a gift!”

If we learn to pay attention to everything, both in history and in our own lives, we begin to notice how God is “above everything,” and how we can see his hand in everything, he said.

The Pope said we are all called to recognize this point, to accept it with gratitude and to turn it back to God “in praise, blessing and great joy.” This, he said, is what will help us to experience true peace and freedom.

“And then this peace extends to all areas and to all the relationships in our lives: we are at peace with ourselves, we are at peace in the family, in our community, at work and with the people we meet every day on our way,” he said.

St. Paul also encourages us to boast of our sufferings, he said, noting that this can at times seem to be at odds with the peace found in recognizing our blessings and the grace present in our lives.

However, boasting of our sufferings is what makes our praise “the most authentic, the most true,” he said.

“In fact,” the Pope added, the peace the Lord offers us “should not be understood as the absence of worries, disappointments, failures and the causes of suffering.”

If this were true, then our peace would be very short-lived, he said, adding that “the peace that comes from faith is instead a gift...it is the grace to experience that God loves us” and there is always a guarantee that “he does not leave us alone even for a moment of our lives.”

It is the knowledge of the security of God’s love for us that helps us to bear suffering patiently, even in the most difficult moments, because “the mercy and goodness of the Lord are the greatest of all things and nothing will tear us from his hands.”

Our boast is that “God loves me,” Pope Francis said, and had pilgrims repeat with him the prayer “God loves me. God loves me.”

“That's why Christian hope is solid, why it does not disappoint,” he concluded. It isn’t based on what we do or on what we believe, but on “the love that God has for each of us.”

With this in mind, “now we understand why the Apostle Paul exhorts us to always boast about all this.”

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(Vatican Radio)  The half-brother of North Korea's leader has apparently been assassinated. A critic of the North Korean regime, Kim Jong Nam lived in exile.

Listen to Alastair Wanklyn' report:

Kim Jong Nam was at an airport in Malaysia when two attackers stabbed him with what appeared to be a poisoned needle. He died on the way to hospital. That's according to reports citing Malaysian police and the South Korean government.

Kim was the older half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He largely lived in exile, after apparently embarrassing the ruling family when he was caught trying to enter Japan with a forged passport.

He was an English-speaker who would talk to journalists, offering a human face of North Korea's reclusive ruling family.

He was also a critic of the regime. When his father, leader Kim Jong Il died, he told reporters he opposed dynastic succession.

There is no comment from North Korea, and some analysts say it's unclear why Kim Jong Nam would be targeted for assassination as he posed no immediate challenge to the leadership.

But North Korea has perhaps the world's worst human rights record. Activists say there next to no freedom of religion, and the nation imprisons or executes people for minor challenges to the state.

Several members of the ruling family have been killed, including just over three years ago the uncle of leader Kim Jong Un.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, South Korea's government said it will check on security for high-risk people living there. A spokesman said North Korean defectors and others involved in North-South dialogue should be extra vigilant from now on.

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Vatican City, Feb 15, 2017 / 12:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Hopes are on the rise for an agreement between the Vatican and China on the appointment of bishops, with Cardinal John Tong Hon, Archbishop of Hong Kong again making the case for a possible proposal.

He made his case in a Feb. 11 article for the Hong Kong's Sunday Examiner newspaper, and follows up on his previous article from August 2016. His latest article is filled with a certain optimism.
 
Cardinal Tong wrote that a Vatican-China agreement on appointing bishops will be “the crux of the problem and a milestone in the process of normalizing the relationship between the two parties,” but it is “by no means the end of the issue.” It would be “unrealistic, if not impossible” to expect disagreements to be cleared up overnight.

To summarize, Cardinal Tong maintained that Chinese government will finally recognize the Pope as the supreme authority of the Church, and the Pope will be given the power to veto any candidate to the episcopacy he does not deem fit for the post. The cardinal also explained that the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, that is the state-controlled church, will turn into a voluntary body with which bishops can freely affiliate. He voiced optimism for the eventual reconciliation of the seven illicit bishops appointed without the Pope's consent. The cardinal also hoped for the future recognition of the bishops of the “underground Church.”
 
Despite the general optimism seen in Cardinal Tong’s words, the final agreement is yet to come, a source with knowledge of the Vatican-China talks told CNA under condition of anonymity.
 
The source explained the agreement this way: “The Chinese government wants to keep control of the appointment of bishops, and Rome cannot diminish the supreme authority of the pontiff. So, we meet in the middle.”
 
One possible plan for agreement is that “the Holy See may accept the election of candidate for the episcopate, though it knows that these elections take place under state control and that bishops of China’s bishops’ conference all belong to the government-controlled patriotic association.”

On the other hand, the source added, the Chinese government would “accept that any 'election' needs to be approved by the Pope, even though no elections should take place to appoint a bishop.”
 
The source compared this situation of mutual agreement to a famous image of three monkeys: “I don’t see, I don’t hear, I don’t speak.” He added that “although the Holy See is conscious that elections are not free, they are fake,” Vatican negotiators prefer to “silently accept this, in order to have bishops faithful to Rome and in communion with the Pope since the beginning.”
 
Cardinal Tong, in his latest article, noted that Catholic doctrine places the Pope as “the last and highest authority in appointing bishops.” This means that “if the Pope has the final word about the worthiness and suitability of an episcopal candidate, the elections of local churches and the recommendations of the bishops’ conference of the Catholic Church in China will simply be a way to express recommendations.”
 
Cardinal Tong thus aimed to respond to the concerns of Cardinal Joseph Zen, his predecessor as Archbishop of Hong Kong. In speeches, letters and articles, Cardinal Zen took a strong position against the agreement, saying that it undermined the authority of the Holy See. Cardinal Zen asked the Holy See not to make any agreement before China guarantees full religious freedom.
 
According to Cardinal Tong, there are three issues at stake: how to tackle the issue of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association; how to deal with the seven illicitly ordained bishops, who are excommunicated latae sententiae for having violated canon law; and how to handle the issue of more than 30 bishops from the underground Church, whom the Chinese government does not recognize.
 
The cardinal said a relationship between the patriotic association’s concept of an “independent, autonomous and self-run Church” and the self-nominating and self-ordination of bishops is “a relationship between theory and practice.” Both practices “are in fact the product of a distinctive political environment and pressure.”

The Archbishop of Hong Kong said that under the possible agreement the Pope will “now play a role in the nomination and ordination of Chinese bishops” and that “Beijing will also recognize the Pope's right of veto and that the Pope is the highest and final authority in deciding on candidates for bishop in China.”
 
According to Cardinal Tong, this way the Vatican-China agreement would turn the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association into “a patriotic association in its strict, literal sense,” that is: “a voluntary, non-profit, patriotic and Church-loving organization composed of clergy and faithful from all around the country.”
 
The situation is far more complex than this, since de facto every “official” bishop recognized by Beijing is required to be a member of the patriotic association. Critics of the possible agreement noted the case of Shanghai auxiliary Bishop Taddeus Ma Daqin, who dared to resign from the association at his ordination Mass in 2012 and was immediately placed under house arrest. Though he appeared to renounce his stand against the Catholic Patriotic Association in mid-2016, he is still living in isolation in Shanghai’s Sheshan seminary, with no episcopal dignity.
 
In addition to this situation, UCA News has reported that China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs on Jan. 26 posted a decision to “enhance government legal powers over religious work” through an amended regulation in order to “maintain accountability via the strict management of Communist Party members.”

The Chinese administration also stressed that the Chinese administration said it would “steadily push forward” to the Catholic Church “to elect and ordain bishops on its own.” This is a positive sign for Sino-Vatican relations, observers said.
 
If the problem of the appointment of bishops would finally find a solution, a solution would still be needed for the seven bishops who were illicitly ordained and thus de facto excommunicated.
 
Beyond the illicit ordination, some of these bishops are also accused of moral misconduct that needs to be assessed.

The difficulty, as Cardinal Tong says, is that given the unstable relationship between China and the Holy See, the Holy See cannot investigate directly. Thus the Chinese official institutions would need to investigate, a process that would take time.

The Pope is the only one who can lift such an excommunication. Participants in the illicit consecration can secure a papal pardon but they “need to show repentance,” the cardinal said. He added that all of the bishops illicitly ordained are willing to pay their obedience to the Pope.
 
According to CNA’s Vatican source, the Holy See is looking for a “midway point” for the election of bishops and an agreement between “the practice of choosing candidates by a diocesan patriotic commission” and finding candidates that “can be also appreciated and accepted by the underground community.”
 
The source also added that “it is undeniable that the agreement does not fulfill all the requirements, we are not satisfied with that.”

“Anytime there is an agreement, it means that you lose some freedom. That is a problem for us. But we do understand that at the moment we cannot do anything better,” the source said.
 
The agreement could be a solution that would allow the appointment of bishops in still-vacant dioceses. The Chinese administration abolished some dioceses, and the Holy See could dissolve some dioceses too to address the current situation.

“Once, some dioceses were entrusted to missionary congregations, and nowadays these congregations are no more, and there are no more foreign missionaries in continental China,” the source said.
 
The possibility of a “Vietnam solution” for the appointment of bishops was even put on the table.
 
The agreement will likely be based on Cardinal Pietro Parolin’s model implemented in Vietnam back in 1996: the Holy See proposes a set of three bishops to the Hanoi government, and Hanoi makes its choice.
 
However, CNA's source maintained, “China always dismissed a Vietnam solution.” For him, the situation in Vietnam is “completely different.”
 
Despite the initial difficulties like Hanoi’s delayed responses that left dioceses vacant for a long period, the Vietnam situation has worked out decently and there is a relationship of significant trust between the parties.

The Holy See has appointed a non-resident envoy to Hanoi, a first step toward the possible establishment of diplomatic ties.
 
The Chinese situation is even more complex, and also implies the necessity that the Chinese administration will recognize the 30 underground bishops.
 
According to Cardinal Tong, this problem is “not deadlocked.” In his view, the underground Church results from a special political and historic period when “there was no mutual trust between the Holy See and Beijing, and this indirectly led to a lack of trust between the government and the unofficial community bishops.”
 
However, the cardinal notes, “should there be an agreement between the Holy See and China that will imply considerable mutual trust between the parties. The bishops of the unofficial community would no longer be regarded as the opposition for insisting on religious principles.”

This means the government’s view of them would improve.
 
Cardinal Tong also underscored several times that the underground bishops in China are in fact “examples of patriotic citizens.”

He said the government attitude towards these unofficial communities has “changed a lot in recent years.” As mutual trust develops between Rome and Beijing, so too will stability and strength.
 
The talks for an agreement do not include the establishment of diplomatic ties. That will come later, according to CNA's source knowledgeable of the Sino-Vatican dialogue.
 
At the moment, the Holy See’s nunciature to China is established in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. The country is seen by the People’s Republic of China as no more than a rebel province.
 
The Holy See relationship with Taiwan is one of the biggest hurdles to the establishment of any diplomatic tie with China.
 
In recent decades, the nunciature has no longer been headed by a nuncio, but by a lower ranked diplomat, a chargé d'affairs. Msgr. Paul Fitzpatrick Russell, the most recent chargé d'affairs, was appointed apostolic nuncio to Turkey in March 2016, thus leaving a vacancy in the post.
 
It was thought that the vacancy was intended to ease relations between the Holy See and mainland China. The post in fact did not stay vacant. The new chargé d'affairs is Msgr. Sladan Cosic. The nomination was not publicly announced, and this has also a meaning.
 
According to CNA’s Vatican source, the Holy See would be ready to drop its diplomatic presence in Taiwan, but this would not harm relations there. The Holy See could even strengthen its presence on the Taiwanese territory, with a more specific focus on pastoral concerns.

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